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S7 E4: 3000 Years of Night
87 Plays9 months ago
From the latest game releases to reviews of True Detective S4, LX2048 and The Exorcist: Believer, Tom, Dan and Pete sit down and go over recent video games, movies and TV shows so you don't have to!
Beers Reviewed This Episode:
- Mountain Culture Beer - Lauter - Pilsner
- Philter Brewing - Watermelon Hibiscus Pash - Berliner Weisse
- Sunday Road Brewing - Samba Passionfruit - Sour
- Yulli's Brews - Smoked Mango Chilli - Sour
- Seeker Brewing - Pine Lime Icecream Sour
- Squinters Brewing - Aunty Sally's Mixed Berry Sour
- Seeker Brewing - Pine Lime Icecream Sour
- Ekim Brewing - Longboat Lager
- Bracket Brewing - East Side - NEIPA
- Kaiju! - Pleazure Kruze - Hazy Pale Ale
- Bracket Brewing - West Side - WCIPA
- Squinters Brewing - Drop Your Daiquiris - Sour
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Overview
00:00:29
Speaker
And welcome back. It's pixels and pints for your little ear plug Sunday afternoon treasure thing that I just couldn't figure out what to say. We are back for another news and reviews recording. It's our good one with me as usual is Pete. Hello. And Dan. Hello.
00:00:52
Speaker
There is a slight delay, apparently, from when I say their names and they respond. This is going to be a fun recording. That is going to be interesting. I think it was a human delay, not a technology delay. Oh, excellent. We are, again, reviewing a bunch of beers. We're talking about a bunch of movie content, game content, whatever content comes to our mind, to be honest. And as we do it, reviewing some, I think, primarily Aussie beers today, everyone. Yes. All Minds Aussie. Not all round.
00:01:20
Speaker
Hey, look at that, we're doing well. And yes, let's kick off with some beers. I'm gonna kick off with my beer because I'm still talking, so I may as well just keep that train rolling.
Beer Reviews and Tastings
00:01:30
Speaker
I'm having a New World Pilsner. That's starting with a Pilsner, it's delicious and refreshing, slightly warm day. This is the last can I had from the Mountain Culture for Fourth Birthday pack they did. They did four beers, they named them all after parts of the brewing process, which I thought was very clever. So this is the Lauter, which is their New World Pilsner.
00:01:50
Speaker
Um, they have a dry hopped crisp Pilsner base. They've used German, um, Haller tower, middle fruit and Citra, uh, is what they've done. And it's was deliciously, it's a slightly like slightly cloudy. Um, not as see-through and crisp and clear as you kind of used to for the few pilsens we've had recently. Is that chill highs or, or is that hazy?
00:02:16
Speaker
I mean, it's mountain culture. It's probably just hazy. Who knows? Do they know any other style? We don't know. And interestingly, Lauter is German for volume up. In addition to being a part of the beer making process. I don't know if that was a subtle dig for me to speak close to the microphone. Make it louder.
00:02:36
Speaker
This is being enjoyed. That'd make sense because the volume up is, it will order is the separation of grain and liquid. So volume up in the kettle. Yeah. There we go. It's a long boat. I'm going to roll it in, but let's roll with it. We've drawn longer bows, let's be honest.
00:02:59
Speaker
I will shout out that I am drinking this in my brand new beer glasses. Thank you, Dad. You got me these for my birthday. So shout out to old Jay Pig. Thank you, Jeremy. From Halletail Brewery in New Zealand. They're lovely to drink out of. Very, very nice glassware. But yeah, that is, it's kind of orangy, not wouldn't say pithy, it's just kind of orangy, lemony. Not as crisp as some of the other pilsens I've had recently. It's missing a little bit of that, like,
00:03:29
Speaker
bite, which you kind of want from that. But it is perfect for, you know, walking home from the bottle shop before the sun beating down. It's quite warm out too. Yeah. I knew exactly what beer I was having when I was walking home from the shop. I was like, nothing that I've just bought. I've got that one in the fridge and I'm cracking it today because it's perfect for this weather. Um, and I will give that a solid four out of five. Nice. Four out of five birthdays for mountain culture. Yeah. So that was for their fourth birthday. Well done. Crazy bastards.
00:03:59
Speaker
What have you got, Pete? What have you got? I'm drinking Filter Brewing's Watermelon Hibiscus Pash. It's a bit of a controversial name for it, but that's OK. I don't think it's got any passion fruit in it. I got to say, though, it's it's great. It's been a while since I've had a sour on the podcast, actually. It's I mean, it looks a little peachier in
00:04:25
Speaker
in the camera than it is in real life. But you get a really solid watermelon hit out of it, which is, you know, watermelon is quite a subtle flavor in beer a lot of the time. So I don't know what hibiscus tastes like. I don't walk around gardens eating flowers, but I assume it's in there. A little bit of sweetness on the end and it's nicely sour. It's not not puckering.
00:04:47
Speaker
But it is a balinovice, so it will tend towards a little bit more subtle sourness than punch in the mouth, warhead style stuff. So they just recently, they changed their watermelon supplier about 12 months ago, somewhere in that timeframe, to get that watermelon flavor to be more predominant. And they just found, they changed their hibiscus supplier
00:05:14
Speaker
probably six months ago. And it's somebody sort of local in my way, just passed my brewery out here. And that's all they do. They're just hibiscus syrup suppliers. So they're super focused. And Max, the head brewer there, was really happy when he found them because all that boost in flavor in the newer batches now is exactly where he wants it. And he was
00:05:37
Speaker
I saw him just after he did the first batch with the new hibiscus in it. And he was like a kidney candy store. He was so happy with how it had come out. He's like, you got to try this. I walked into the bar. He's like, you got to have this. And I'm like, OK, cool. No worries. I was going to get it anyway. But so grabbed it. And he was just so stoked that it had finally sort of boosted that flavor profile. And a beer with that boy yesterday, actually. What a good lad. Oh, did you? He's a good lad.
00:06:06
Speaker
Yeah, he bought me a beer. Delightful. Good. Um, I'm going to give that a four and a half. That's, that's a, it's an unusual flavor, um, to nail and they have absolutely fucking nailed it. So it's 3.2%. So you could drink shit loads of them and not trash. Yeah. It's nice and refreshing for this quite warm afternoon. Well, I think we've all kind of gone down the same route with the warmer day and.
00:06:36
Speaker
easier, refreshing beers to go. I got Sunday Road Samba Passion Fruit Sauer. Sunday Road. That's a fun can. It's a digital print can. This is the second or third time they've done the Samba. I don't think it's always been Passion Fruit.
00:06:53
Speaker
I could be wrong in that. But it's got a big passion fruit aroma to it and big passion fruit flavor as well. It's quite light on the body, which is what you would expect for the sour. It's not super sour. It's got a little bit of, little bit of tartness to it, but not super tart. It's actually got a little bit of sweetness that you would, you would get from eating like an actual passion fruit as well. Passion fruit flavor comes through really well. I'd like that sourness just to be a bit, bit more, but it's,
00:07:22
Speaker
super refreshing. It's five, five percenter. So it's a, it's a decent, decent whack for a, for a salary. I think I'm going to have to go, I'm only going to go three seven five or four two five. So I think I'm going to have to round it up and go four to five. But I'm still carrying that fucking care. Hey, I told Ed, I told Ed that asshole quarter point man would be back. So I've got to hold true to my word.
00:07:50
Speaker
Just for you, Ed. Just for you. Cool. Should we kick off with some news,
Gaming News and Industry Insights
00:07:56
Speaker
Tom? Let's kick off with some news. Tom's going to read off the teleprompter. We interrupt this broadcast with some breaking news from the front. Go to Tom. Yes. Yes. Welcome.
00:08:12
Speaker
So, some Xbox games are coming to PlayStation and PC. I don't know what those documents were. They were probably car parking fines, so let's just throw them back to the chasm from whence they came. So, yes, this was from the official Xbox podcast. It had Old Maid on it, Phil Spencer, the big boss of Xbox.
00:08:30
Speaker
Uh, look, we're getting four games coming over. They're coming to, um, well, these two of them are going to switch as well. Uh, but we've got sea of thieves, which is the big pirates game. So yeah, look, if you were looking for that pirate fix, just wait a bit. Don't go by skull and bones. Cause it's power. Um, hi-fi rush, which was it's a cell shaded animation. Um, it's a rhythm action game. And when I say a rhythm action game, it's not the action is, um, you have to do it to a rhythm, say like, um,
00:09:00
Speaker
I don't know if you ever saw that a metal singer, uh, the game that came out, which was doom that you had to, you got more points. If you shot to the beat, um, it came out recently. Uh, yes. So this one's more like, if you, I was picturing that lights over time with the move controller, beat beats over. No, no, a bit different to that. So this is more like, if, if you, um, if you complete an action in time with the music, it's playing the whole, the gimmick is the guy has a music player in his chest and that like,
00:09:28
Speaker
Emphasizes his attacks and like makes his attacks more powerful you get more bonuses when you when you do things in time with the music that's playing looks interesting but apparently people are very excited about a pants got great reviews on xbox there's grounded which is
00:09:44
Speaker
I summed up as co-op honey, I shrunk the kids. Um, so basically you play in a backyard, but you're tiny and you've got a survival based game, uh, co-op spiral based game, but you know, you know, the answer giant and you're a tiny person, you got to build a base and all that kind of stuff. And lastly, pertinent, uh, which is a medieval kind of side scrolling detective story. Um, and the animation for that is like you're playing through a living tapestry.
00:10:09
Speaker
So it's like that tapestry style of artwork. And that's how your character is portrayed. And he kind of moves the same way. They look interesting. Yeah, it's very unique. So they're all coming over. They were Xbox exclusive games. They're now moving over to I'm sure most of them are already on PC anyway. But yes, they're coming over to PlayStation. And the last two, Grounded and pertinent, are definitely coming to Nintendo Switch if you have one of those. So the name of that final game is Pentiment.
00:10:39
Speaker
Not. Oh, sorry. Yeah. My bad. It's just for anyone Googling it and wondering why they can't find it. Um, yeah, they look not the Xbox games I was hoping for, if I'm going to be completely honest. Um, I know we talked about in, in, in chat that I would love if the, if the fable series came across, I loved playing his war when it first came out, when my mates had an Xbox Halo, obviously I've played a bunch of those in the past. Um,
00:11:08
Speaker
But it feels like a step in the right direction for where we need to go to. Kind of get over console like exclusives i think it's it's dangerous to the game industry as a whole like. Sure release it first on one console but.
00:11:24
Speaker
six months, 12 months later, then yeah, definitely ship it over to another one. I think there are a couple of games. You think you're just going to double your sales? Like there are a couple of good games to release to like they're releasing two co-op games and two single player games, which I think is a good is a good blend. Sea of Thieves is Monkey Island, but co-op edits. It's so much fun. We played it for a little while. My Friday night crew. And I mean, the fun thing is you look, you look at like Black Flag and
00:11:53
Speaker
Where Skull and Bones falls down, the boarding mechanic in Black Flag where you would get on, then you would go and do ship to ship boarding. I'm talking about here. Once you disable a ship enough, you can get close and hook it in and jump on board and her melee. Swashbuckle. Yeah. In Sea of Thieves, what we used to do was you can load yourself into a cannon.
00:12:17
Speaker
And so we used to have fun, you'd load into a cannon and then one of your team members would aim the cannon and try and land you on the deck of the other ship, rather than actually close. Splat into the side or over the edge. Oh yeah, it's so much fun too, because if you overshoot it too, you just watch the ship sail through underneath you while you land in the water on the other side. It's just, it's pure, it's built for stupidity.
00:12:44
Speaker
like Sea of Thieves. It's it's just it's Monkey Island cross Jack Sparrow kind of shenanigans. It's a it's it's a lot of fun. The only thing we found about it was there's no and it's a good thing to so people can't out level new players or anything. There's no leveling up in it. Everything that you collect money wise and complete missions to to get points and money or anything like that is just purely for cosmetics. So
00:13:15
Speaker
Other than some sort of story elements and things like that is not a huge amount pushing you forward. So we played it for a good few weeks. And we still every now and then for maybe 12 to 18 months after it jumped back into it, just because it's like, yeah, it's just fun. It's just my final PlayStation.
00:13:37
Speaker
Yeah. I've been watching it for a long time, so it'd be cool to check it out. Yeah. And there's a lot of content in it now, story-wise content. So, yeah.
00:13:46
Speaker
Yes, but no, it's a good chance for I think it's a good chance now for Sony to return volley and they should definitely throw something out. Like they've already started obviously pushing some of the first party exclusive games to PC, you know, your uncharted horizons, all that kind of stuff. Yeah. But yeah, shed a love. Yeah, I think so too. Give Xbox some of those games. They deserve them. Like especially big properties like, you know,
00:14:09
Speaker
It doesn't have to be characters like maybe don't want to put kratos on an xbox for whatever reason like they probably like let's be honest xbox probably won't ever ship halo to sony it's just it's too pride driven in terms of that's our baby we're never gonna spider-man i'm happy to hand it over to tv studios to fuck it up though
00:14:28
Speaker
Yeah, well, you know, that's a different thing. They're trying to make money off that anyway, but yeah. They did also talk about, apparently there's some new hardware announcements coming towards the holiday season as they put it. So yeah, towards the end of the year. So whether that's a new version of the X, S, Z, Y, pick a letter, any letter, which one do you want? O, that's another one in there. Sure, let's use that. Yeah, so we don't know what they're gonna do there, but yeah. My Xbox O is playing up.
00:14:59
Speaker
Um, this is also comes on the back of Sony saying that they feel that the PS five is halfway through its life cycle as well. So, you know, there there's lots of rumors about a PS five pro already. Yeah. Yeah. Well, they've just done the slim. So it makes sense. So, you know, I'm sure within, uh, within the coming year and a half or so that we'll start to see rumors of the six or whatever they're going to call it next. Um, but for new, new tech and shaking his head furiously, how
00:15:29
Speaker
It's just ridiculous. I mean, we took so long with shortage of chips and things like that for people to even get their hands on fives. There's bugger all exclusive content for fives and there's already that talk about halfway through its life cycle. Like six is going to roll through and five is just going to go by the wayside and get like, why bother? Like why did we, why did we all waste our money on a five when
00:15:56
Speaker
three quarters of the stuff is still cross platform, cross generation. Anyway. Yeah. I mean, that's the thing there, there have been so many, so many games that have been released for the five, which are just either three or four remakes masters.
00:16:11
Speaker
Looking at you, Last of Us. Anyway, let's not get bogged down in that. But that does lead to what Dan was just talking about. Sony has said there are no first-party studio games for existing franchises, and that's the in bold and italics, coming to PS5 until at least April 2025. The games they kind of referenced when they said that were like, you're not getting anything else for your God of Wars, or your Spider-Man's, or your Uncharted's, all that kind of stuff. Oh, that's not first-party.
00:16:39
Speaker
That's not first party studios. So that's the thing. You will get some first party games coming out, but they won't be something from the PlayStation studios. Yeah. Kind of group of group of gaming studios. Well, no existing franchises. They might release new IP, but yeah. Um, so yes, that sounds unfounded in this day and age. How dare they not just regurgitate constantly.
00:17:06
Speaker
Well, you know, regurgitation has worked for birds for so many years, so why not work for the gaming industry? So what was their cloaca? I'm not suggesting they adopt it. Well, I mean, there's a market for it. Get on with it, Tom. You're the one who said cloaca. You threw me off. Sony have also announced, look, if you're wanting to update your security, you can use a passkey now rather than passwords for signing into consoles in the PS store.
00:17:34
Speaker
Peter, is that a good thing? Bad thing. Tell us, IT man. I haven't looked at how long the passkey is. So, I don't know. Excellent. Just put me on the fucking spot. Passkey's made different things for different companies. So if it's a four digit fucking pin number style passkey, then no, it's going to be shit in terms of security. If it's, yeah, so I don't think so.
00:18:03
Speaker
I'm gonna be completely honest, I use that as an excuse for me to take a sip of my beer. That's why I throw it to you. And then in a bit of fun news, some Google engineers have managed to hack the PS Portal to play some PSP games offline and natively through the software, installing some emulation software. So hey, if you're desperate to play some PSP games on with a DualShock 5 kind of controller, then you can now with your PS Portal if you've forked out the 320 bucks for it.
00:18:33
Speaker
Um, yeah, they figured out it ran around on Android and they were like, Oh, we know how to break that. Let's go. Um, so yeah, look, there's some good games on PSB. Uh, the only two I can think of for the God of Horse spinoffs, because I never had one, but yeah. Um, bit of fun for those who have those.
New Game Releases and Updates
00:18:52
Speaker
Moving right along. Uh, some game releases. Um, yeah, look, skull and bone, suicide squad. Fuckin dead in the water slash dead in Metropolis. Yeah. What a fuck up. Like I just, it's just unbelievable. Say it. No, no, no, no. I mean, I think it's all surprising.
00:19:16
Speaker
After all the delays they had, you just see how much trouble they were in. Both games took seven to nine years to be made and got pushed back. Skull and Bones got pushed up like six times or something, and it's not what anybody wanted. When they announced it, people were going, excellent. A follow-up to Black Flag, but outside of the AC universe, or AC
00:19:42
Speaker
bound mythology. And everybody was like, cool, give it to us. And then six or seven years. Yeah, they definitely did. They both day before it. And not on the glitch side of it, although Suicide Squad has had some glitch issues. But like even even Skull and Bones, there's a few comparisons visually. And I mean, when they're getting they're getting three and four star
00:20:06
Speaker
So three and fours out of 10 reviews from like established review sites being just like, look, sure, you get through the initial story. It's interesting enough. But then the end game content is just, it's boring and dull. Like why would you bother? Well, especially for Suicide Squad, like the spoilers here for anybody who cares long enough to jump forward 30 seconds. But the end game content sounds like it's going to be 12 more brainiacs to kill off.
00:20:34
Speaker
They, at the end of it, you get word that there's like 13 brainiacs. You've killed one of like 13 and it's like, cool. Like I would be, even if I'd paid and played for it, I'd be ropable if that's what they were setting up for ongoing. I don't know if you're saying the other thing they're coming back on and it feels like the biggest backpedal in a long time is that the suicide squad, you actually, the justice league you actually kill are not the justice league.
00:21:03
Speaker
So this is the big, which it really feels like a backpedal. And it's like, no, no, they're just, they're just clones that Brainiac has. And like the real, like the real Justice League are still captured on Brainiac ship or whatever. And it's just kind of like, Oh, you're just saying that because everyone, you just, you fucked Batman story. Like you kind of fucked the whole lot of them, but yeah. Um, yeah, there's been some people who've gone through, who obviously for some reason,
00:21:29
Speaker
You know, whatever reason they're dedicated to the game and they've gone through and they found these things that hinted like this is coming and they've secret codes they've deciphered from using calendars and numbers and shit. And it's just like, okay, all right. It just really feels like a massive back battle. Like it's a ship game. Well done. Good luck. The one thing I'll give them props for is character design.
00:21:51
Speaker
I mean, Superman is pretty hard to change. Green Lantern's pretty hard to change. Flash is pretty hard to change. Batman in the Arkham universe we've seen before. The Wonder Woman costume. Man, bang on. I absolutely love- Yeah, it's kind of like Earthworm and Wonder Woman.
00:22:07
Speaker
Yeah, it's just with some armor elements and I think at one stage she's got like a scarf around her shoulders and things like that. I think it's absolutely a fantastic costume design. I like all of the main four Suicide Squad costume design. I think Captain Boomerang looks great in his sort of outlandish, traditional slash modernized kind of get up.
00:22:32
Speaker
I think the character design for King Shark is cool and I think Harley and Deadshot like sort of fit right into their character elements. They look like the movie version though. Yeah, I just I like those designs they fit into that Arkham world. Harley's a bit different looking at what she was in the other games but I still think it's a good
00:22:55
Speaker
costume design for her. The voice sounds good from what I heard from her. She's a pretty iconic voice across the animated series and the Arkham series. So to have a new voice actor there is she did she did a pretty good job of that. I think I'll give him props. It's also not meant to be it's not meant to be Kevin Conroy's last recorded.
00:23:17
Speaker
part for Batman. Apparently there's another animated thing that he has already pre-recorded before his passing. And they have more games content, whether or not it's, yeah, whatever, whatever game it's for, but they have stuff he's already recorded.
Gaming Trends and Speculations
00:23:31
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. So there is like, everyone was like, this is a pretty shitty way to send off Kevin Conroy.
00:23:37
Speaker
shooting the Batman in the head. That's a massive spoiler, but whatever, it's all over the internet. They did say it was his last performance, and then once everybody backlash to it, they've gone, no, no, no, it's his last video game performance. He's got some lines in the anime. So again, the backpedals in, it's a very heavy backpedal. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's like trying to row backwards going down a waterfall, that one.
00:24:01
Speaker
But hey, let's move on to some successful games. Helldivers 2 is apparently amazing if you can get into play it. It's just the servers are just so full.
00:24:11
Speaker
Yeah, but everyone I've spoken to, like, I've been playing a lot of games online recently and everyone, every game I've jumped in online, everyone's like, Hey, you guys playing helldivers too? Cause Oh my God, it's amazing. It's just, it's also like some of the best cooperative online multiplayer that people have played in a long time, which feels really good. It's like you have to work together. There is no like.
00:24:31
Speaker
heroes, soloing it while everyone just kind of stands back and, and gets the credits. Like you have to work as that kind of team. And even down to one character's got the rocket launcher, but another character carries the ammo for the rocket launcher. And they, they're like, the other characters beside him loading the rockets into the back while one guy shooting. It's like, yeah, that, that sort of cool stuff. Like absolutely tickles my fancy. Yeah. I think the really cool thing as well as the, the game director has been like,
00:24:58
Speaker
Yeah, so many people have just now discovered Starship Troopers as a film, as a result of playing Helldivers 2. So it's for a new interest in that. Yeah, it's absolutely, you know, having a stellar, stellar film. Yeah, it is. So it looked very well done to those guys. We got some, some new games that we were interested in. Pacific Drive. I know that's what something Dan and I had said we did had an interest in is the kind of roguelike
00:25:23
Speaker
driving game. All three of us do. Yeah. Yeah. While it's like kind of the apocalypse is happening around you or some like whatever's going on and you build up the old station wagging, the kind of station wagon and then Banishes Goes New Eden also launched. So I'm excited to finally get into that.
00:25:45
Speaker
I was going to jump into both. I was going to buy banishes on launch day, but the game I'm going to talk about later on came out the day before. I got sucked into that and I'm like, if I buy banishes, one of them is going to sit around.
00:26:02
Speaker
So i'm just gonna finish the one i'm on and then i'm gonna buy vanishes and then i'll probably jump into pacific drive as well i think it looks good and a lot of people saying yes it's very it's a very unique gameplay loop it's not for everybody it has some some fiddly bits to it but it's it's i watched a a thirty forty minute gameplay by splatter cat splatter cat gaming and
00:26:24
Speaker
It looks like it's got the right amount of fiddliness and the right amount of story elements to it to make it a good delving and play. Yeah, fuck it. And look, some updates for some games already out as well. If you've played AC Mirage yet, you finally get the permadeath mode, if you feel bold enough to go through the game playing that. Seems like a really loose mechanic based game. Yeah, I was going to say, has that happened in an AC game before?
00:26:55
Speaker
Not that I can recall, but like I said, it is meant to be a much shorter story, so it kind of makes sense. But like I said, the actual game mechanics are fucking loose. Like it's always been a little buggy. There's input delays. There's fucking response delays. You can hit a riposte perfectly and still miss. I don't think it's the right kind of game to add a permadeath to.
00:27:20
Speaker
I think it's just a wee round of ideas fuck it let's copy someone else. I totally agree with Pete from my recent experiences. Yeah, less than fun. Spidey 2 is also getting a new game plus in March. They're also releasing a bunch of other content with it. They're doing a some really nice community fundraising though if you pre-order like some
00:27:42
Speaker
Look, they're just suits in the game, but it's going to help some less privileged people. So that's something you're interested in helping out with. It's a good way to do it. I need to bring this up on the podcast, Tom. I need to ask you something about Spider-Man 2 offline.
00:28:01
Speaker
Scandal. Not scandalous at all. I just want to know something. I'm not going to play it. I just want to know something, but I don't want to throw it in as a spoiler. Yeah, just message me now while we're talking. I'll respond to you. Hey, Ed, I know you're very excited. Final Fantasy Rebirth is out this week.
00:28:17
Speaker
Um, I know he's been waiting for that for a while. Um, it's been getting great reviews so far from, from early release reviews, uh, you know, eight to nines out of tens. So, um, I played the, the remake for final fantasy seven. I look, if I didn't have such a massive fucking backlog, I'd probably be jumping into it again, but it's meant to be huge. Look, if it's as good as gameplay was for the remake, then
00:28:39
Speaker
You're in for a treat. I'm sure Ed is positively salivating. Just sitting there waiting for his calendar to get around to Friday. And then Dark Forces remaster, Star Wars Dark Forces. One of the earlier Star Wars games is getting a remaster as many of them are.
00:28:56
Speaker
So that's also coming out this week. If you are a member who uses the PS Plus extras so you have access to the catalog, some games that are coming that you can add to your collection for the time they're on. You got AC Valhalla, Lego Jurassic Park and Lego Worlds for the kids or the kids at heart.
00:29:19
Speaker
And then Outer Worlds, which I really enjoyed. It's kind of, yeah. So that's the Spacer Edition, which has all the DLC as well. So the DLC did look kind of a nice little extra spin on the story that you get.
00:29:33
Speaker
Um, and then some other releases. So Peter, you're an Eldering fan now. Yeah. Shadow of the Earth tree just got announced. Uh, it's coming out June 21st, which is the big DLC they've been, everyone's been waiting for who played this. They've dropped their first video trailer of actual content too.
00:29:53
Speaker
Yeah, that was three days. This is getting, yeah, it's getting a physical release. Uh, there was a collector's edition going for the biggest collector's edition was like four, $550. And they got you a massive resin statue. You got the base game plus the DLC plus all the other things, but yeah, it was like, it was like a 50 centimeter statue though. It looked pretty. Oh yeah. It was massive.
00:30:16
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Set in a map that is huge too, apparently. It's the- Yeah, yeah, the map. That was the thing. They did a comparison. It was pretty fucking big for DLC. Almost like its own game. Yeah, so the largest area in the base game is a place called Leonia Lakes and it's massive.
00:30:35
Speaker
And so the DLC will be exclusively positioned
Game Trailers and Aesthetic Innovations
00:30:38
Speaker
in a map that's slightly larger than that. Having said that, the base game has like six or seven regions. So Leonia might be the largest region, but it's got six or seven other ones as well, plus the biggest underground network of caves I've ever seen in a video game. So.
00:30:56
Speaker
I also just had a side note there that, um, Elden Ring is still selling like hotcakes. Apparently the pace has picked up now. The DLC has been announced as well, but they're up to 23 million sales in two years, which is a fuck ton. Spider-Man 2 only just hit 10 million as well. Like for, you know, such a popular character to like. Yeah. Although, I mean, you say that, but Elden Ring has a huge following through the bloodborne fans. It's been up for two whole years and it was game of the year, which would have gotten its own level of attention.
00:31:28
Speaker
Um, it's also meant to be like the good, really good jumping point in, if you've ever wanted to jump into like film software games as well, which I'm sure is really helping that as well. And that's, yeah, that's exactly what you need. Something like, you know, well along in the series to finally be like, come welcome. Let us kill you. Wasn't it dark souls? Wasn't the tagline for dark souls prepared to dial something? Yeah, it was.
00:31:56
Speaker
I mean, yeah, that's the most common screen you see is you died. Oh, yeah. From software game. I play and then red writing you died. Yeah. Dark Souls two. Yeah. And yeah. That's all you say. Yeah. Some other DSLs coming coming out race in the next couple of little while. Warhammer 40k is coming to power watch simulator. Get excited, Pete. I'm amazed. I'm amazed that they did this crossover.
00:32:22
Speaker
I wrote all hail the Mark II Aquasantica Aquabus, which is the name of the weapon. Look, it's basically a Warhammer 40K vehicle model viewer with a power watch simulator baked into it.
00:32:38
Speaker
Yeah. It's dumb as fuck, but it's getting massive downloads and rave reviews for just how like therapeutic and peaceful it is. Just get in there and be like, yeah, I'm going to clean this tank. Watch the blood out of the inside of the APC. Exactly. Yeah. A couple of guts fall out of the tank tread and everything. Oh, it's even like, even like it's within the Warhammer environment too. It's not just a, yeah.
00:33:02
Speaker
Yeah, that's cool. Yeah, the Mars Adepticus, Adepticus Mechanicus, I think it is, Adeptus Mechanicus, are doing all the work. Yeah. Oh, I love that. That's fantastic. That's a bit of fun. That's a bit of fun. Also, Peacemaker from the John Cena character from the DC universe is coming to Mortal Kombat 1.
00:33:23
Speaker
Um, and he has all, all his helmet abilities. I watched the, the, the brutality that he does and it's very peacemakery. He fires the shotgun between his legs. Like it's his massive cock. You know, that's kind of, that's well on point with what they did with the character there. Um, and eagerly, eagerly is there pecking people's eyes out. Thank God for that.
00:33:45
Speaker
Um, and then that's, that's me done. I'm going to shut up for a while now. I just dropped, uh, I just dropped in of a game releases Nightingale. Nightingale is the big survival. I wasn't sure if you'd seen it. Yeah. Yeah. I've been following this one for a long while. It's, uh, the big survival game that's released, uh, this, uh, early access last week or something. It's meant to be one of the biggest.
00:34:10
Speaker
genre releases in a long time, but definitely the biggest one this year. It's set in a like a Victoria fantasy Victorian world where the fae exists and the mechanic of going to new biomes is really cool. You get like tarot cards and you mix and match the tarot cards on a gate, like a Stargate kind of thing. And that that determines the minerals and the difficulty of
00:34:35
Speaker
and the biome that you're going to go to when you go through this Stargate kind of thing and what you can mine and how you can level up and the difficulty on the outside of that Stargate and you can build your base on the more peaceful side in the realm that you're in and the whole idea is you've been cut off from Nightingale is the main city and the whole idea is to somehow get
00:34:59
Speaker
through these realms, build enough resources and I think they call it a homestead, build your homestead to a level. It's a bit of a new mechanic. I'll talk about that in just two seconds. It's to get back to Nightingale, to get back to the city. And there's giants in it and you fight the giants. There's a whole bunch of mythological creatures in there. I think some of it's procedurally generated and some of it's
00:35:29
Speaker
handmade, but it looks great. I mean, it's in early access. I've heard that it's not for everybody within this genre. I'd really like the genre. I'm going to talk about a game later on in this same genre, a very old one, but it seems very unique in what it's trying to do. You've got to build up your homestead to a certain level before you can access certain things and certain realms through this
00:35:51
Speaker
through this gate. So it forces you to build and level up your homestead and your equipment and everything before you can get through.
00:36:00
Speaker
the whole cool mechanics of Victorian area, steampunk-ish, thrown with fae magic. Like the way you do the whole Mary Poppins thing as a glider, you have an umbrella that can be extended as your glide mechanic to get down. So I think it's a really cool idea, really cool aesthetic. And I mean, if they pull off those big giant boss battles, it's gonna be something else altogether.
00:36:25
Speaker
I'm super excited to get to, I'm not going to play it in early access. I'm going to let it, let it roll for another probably six to 12 months. Yeah. Yeah. Let it cook through a little bit. And then I'm going to jump in. We'll probably jump in our Friday night crew and in probably six to 12 months. But yeah, I saw a little gameplay video of it and I was just like, Oh, so this game's been made for Dan. So that's fine. There's a few of those floating around at the moment.
00:36:51
Speaker
if i get to wear a a a little picky blinders cap a nice uh a nice vest walking around with a uh with a shotgun taking out fey monsters i'm uh more than happy with that last bit of news some people are easily pleased last last bit of news because we're a bit over time in the moment um so garth edwards has just announced he'd be directing the next jurassic
00:37:15
Speaker
Thing movie. I don't know. It's Jurassic Park, but not. And it's not Jurassic world. Cause that trilogy goes up to Jurassic universe. Where are we going? You've done park. You've done. Jurassic ascension. Bring it back. They bring it back. It's Jurassic state. One step back. We'll go one step forward. Slated for July, 2025. So I reckon that'd be sick.
00:37:44
Speaker
Gareth Edwards directing a Jurassic Park film, I think will be really fucking cool. This is that really run and gun documentary style war film. You could see him doing a good job of kind of changing the genre up. And I think if they want to keep moving, making these fucking movies and recycling the IP, they really do need to take it in a new direction.
00:38:07
Speaker
I agree. I'd much prefer to see him keep doing new IP, but I can see how he'll do a fantastic job of this. They give him free, free reign of this.
00:38:17
Speaker
It's also a smart move for him, where it's, look, do this one, get paid for it, and then you use that money to make your new one. To fund the next film, yeah. Get in good with another studio, get him to give him something, let him do his own thing after that. Yeah. And I just want to say, he was on Corridor Crew. Corridor Crew, the most recent Corridor Crew VFX artists react. He was originally a VFX artist.
00:38:45
Speaker
became a lead filmmaker. So it's really great to see his development and that they completely talk about the creator in this and it's really, really great to see his insight into the stylistic choices that he made for that movie. We've gone on heaps about it. That ILM did all the
00:39:06
Speaker
special effects for that movie from through his direction and and vision and it's just it's wonderful the way he talks about it with so much passion is everything we've said about that movie you could see him coming through in the style that he films in and it was a big passion project for him and he nailed it so go go watch him on the corridor crew yeah cool should we talk about our second beers yes
00:39:35
Speaker
Okay, fine. I'm drinking Yulie Brew's smoked mango chilli sour. Excuse me. It's one of the special batches. It's 4.4% I want to say.
00:39:53
Speaker
4.7. Head disappeared instantly. I might just be because I have some residual from the belinovirus in it. You get a lot of smokiness. It's almost like it's got that really nice bacon flavor through it. I'm not getting a whole lot of chili. Chili has oil in it too, which cuts the, and any oil in a beer will cut down head retention. Hmm.
00:40:21
Speaker
And I'm getting no mango, but it has warmed up a little bit because it has been sitting here for 40 minutes. So that may explain that. It's a very light sourness to it. Yeah, I mean, it's not bad. It's certainly different. And I love a good smoky beer. But yeah, in terms of balance of flavors, it's almost all bacon, no mango chili, maybe just a touch of fire at the end. I'm going to give it a 375.
00:40:52
Speaker
Thomas holding a can for some reason. I have that beer for my next one.
00:41:00
Speaker
Very good. I was just admiring the artwork, to be honest. So, yes, I'm having the... Only we planned this. Like, we haven't planned shit. So, I'm having the Pine Line Ice Cream Sour from... It's from the Collabuary 2024 between Seeker and 10 other breweries. So, this is with Stoic Brewing. And, yeah, look at that. It's a little... The Panther.
00:41:26
Speaker
going through the jungle. Look, they're very tongue in cheek written on the back. This beer is inspired by one of our favorite childhood treats and includes pineapple, lime, vanilla, and lactose. Can you guess what it is?
00:41:40
Speaker
Yes, I can. It's a fucking splice. And it's delicious. And it tastes exactly like a splice. It's amazing. Again, same kind of thing. My head absolutely dissipated instantly. It just went, looked poured in the glass, stayed for two seconds, and they went, fuck you, I'm out. But it's delicious.
00:41:57
Speaker
Yeah yeah and it's that it's it's not overpowering lactose it is really like it is just accentuating those those pine and lime flavors it is very very well balanced this is this is if you're trying to make that that ice frozen treat uh kind of thing they they've in my mind excelled at it um it's 7.5 percent um
00:42:17
Speaker
And yeah, it's showing none of that booze. It's really hidden underneath. It's very moorish. I really am just excited to drink this whole glass. I'm going to give that a 4.5. Nice. Very nice.
00:42:33
Speaker
We had that yesterday was Local Beer Day run by Crafty Pine. We did an event at our brewery out at the Australian Brewery in Rouse Hill. We made five beers from our brewery, put them on tap, and then we got three beers from three other breweries. So we had 14 beers all up.
00:42:53
Speaker
That was one of the ones we got from Seeker. My dad came down for the day. I've mentioned before, he's a diabetic, so I always get him to stay away from anything that's got too much sugar in it. And he asked for that one specifically. I'm like, you sure? It's got heaps of lactose in it, and it's a 440 mil can. Like, you sure you want that one? He's like, yep. And he loved it. So I'm glad he only had one because otherwise he'd be through the roof this morning.
00:43:21
Speaker
My beer is... Good. Very good. You go. My beer is from Squinters Brewing out at Panrith. It is Aunty Sally's mix berry sour. Pretty simple label there. Keeping it simple, keeping it good. Are they new? Squinters. Squinters has been around for probably two years. They're off the back of the mobile can guys.
00:43:51
Speaker
I'm pretty sure it's Cairna, so that's their brewery on the side of their mobile packaging side of things. It's called Squinters because the people that live out in Penrith Way, when they drive from Penrith to the city, they're driving into the sun.
00:44:11
Speaker
So they're squinting and drive home in the afternoon they're driving into the sun in the sunset that they're squinting coming back so apparently it's a bit of a thing out there that people from that area refer to themselves or others refer to them as squinters.
00:44:26
Speaker
because they're always driving into the sun. So that's where the name comes from. And their logo is the sun setting over the Blue Mountains. So that's a nice logo. That's good. So it makes very sour straight away. As soon as I started to pour it before I even drank it, I could smell the blueberry, blackberry kind of smell coming off it. I don't actually know what berries is in it. It's got very little information on the can itself.
00:44:54
Speaker
But it's got a good barrier characteristic. It's got a little bit more tartness than the other sour I had. So this one's balancing out that one very well. Different fruits, both express the fruit character really well. This one's got a little bit more tartness. Still gonna go 4.25. Still a very, very good beer. I think they're both balanced in different ways.
00:45:17
Speaker
Nice. Very nice. Very cool. We've got about 20 minutes to talk through some trailers. We've had quite a few actually drop. Yeah. I think we'll talk through pretty quickly about these. Yeah. Um, I don't know about you guys like desk training too. It's weird still. It's just weird. It's fucking weird. I'll play it. Why is a mask mate? Why is a mask made out of blue hands? Why? And why is George Miller in it?
00:46:02
Speaker
Like that trailer, that trailer had me sitting up going, oh, hang on, what am I watching? Like I was, I was very keen for that. It looks cool. It's definitely got the bones, the skeleton of Bioshock, but it's got a shiny new skin on side of that exoskeleton. Looks like magic and guns. Almost looks steampunk. Yeah. Which is kind of what Bioshock was. Yeah. Um,
00:46:07
Speaker
I have to admit, I haven't seen the trailer, but I will definitely play it because I enjoyed the first one so much.
00:46:27
Speaker
Look, and if you haven't played the Bioshock series and that they are available on PS4, like go get them and play them. They're great. They're still great. They hold up. Um, and then Rise of Ronin, it's Dan. I, I really emulating what you said recently where you were like the animation and the, and the, the artistry looks lackluster. It doesn't look any better in the latest stuff. It still looks a bit half done.
00:46:52
Speaker
Yeah, which I think unfortunately is a side effect of that's just what Team Ninja does. They don't focus on that. They focus on the gameplay mechanics and that falls to the wayside kind of thing. But yeah.
00:47:03
Speaker
It looks like an early PS4 game, mate. It doesn't look up to date. But it has to do something different to Ghost of Tsushima or it's just, everyone's going to compare it. So if they go with something that's a little bit more artistic and inspired or creative rather than go for reality, I couldn't blame them. Not that there wasn't a lack of artistry or creativity in Ghost of Tsushima, but you know what I mean? It needs to feel different. They have gone, I think, more
00:47:33
Speaker
technology, like historical technology, like vein of it, because they're starting to bring more gunpowder into it. Right, elements of gunpowder in Shoshima, but not to the extent you're going to have it in this. Yeah, okay.
00:47:48
Speaker
Um, also, you know, the, the, the team into games, um, are notorious for being super punishing compared to what I think sashima was, uh, as, as a sucker punch game. Like in terms of the difficulty, I think it all that's, that's the kind of people there, they're more trying to attract into this. And I think they're being very clever in this and they're going like,
00:48:09
Speaker
Yeah, it does look like Ghost Ashima, doesn't it? Yes, you were good at Ghost, so come play this. You surely won't hate it in three months when you've already paid us. There's a 300 odd year difference in terms of setting, too. Because Ghost was setting 12.
00:48:26
Speaker
80s 1270s and guns didn't come to japan until 1543 i'm googling this i have it's like i'm walking around with an encyclopedia no i'm pretty sure that game is seven like 15 1580 i'm pretty sure that's when the game's set yeah so there's a 300 year difference in terms of technology and culture and yes
00:48:42
Speaker
The culture will be the interesting part because Japan's culture went through a lot of evolution in those three, 400. So they are talking in this. I did watch the like the director kind of talk about it and they're like, it's literally people who are pro shogun and anti shogun. So like that's the big divide in this. There are some neutral players in it, but you kind of, you get to pick which camp you want to kind of go into.
00:49:07
Speaker
And that affects the style of gameplay you get. I'm not saying they haven't well thought it out at all. It looks like they put a lot of focus on the gameplay you're going to be going through. But again, it just looks...
00:49:23
Speaker
When it looks a bit a lot, a bit unpolished, it's just kind of like it throws you a little bit like, yeah. So that's the only downside for it. I, yeah, I would, I'm hoping that a demo, cause it's more of the gameplay side for me as well, being a team Ninja game that I'm a bit like.
00:49:38
Speaker
like cautious about going into because I played some of their other games in demos and I just really just haven't enjoyed them. So I'm hoping there is a demo that comes out so I can dip the toe in, see if it's enjoyable, love the time period, like love the setting and stuff. So I really would like to like, obviously we all loved ghosts. So would crave another game set in that kind of time period and area. So yeah, well, we'll see. We'll see as more comes out.
00:50:05
Speaker
Um, I think Dan should talk about forever winter. This is your find baby. Yeah. I mean, it was just a random one that popped up in my newsfeed last night. It was just a cinematic trailer, a post-apocalyptic kind of AI terminator. Something takes over the world.
00:50:24
Speaker
element that the the the art style caught me. It's kind of a mash up between a kind of uh it's less sci-fi than Terminator more more Mad Max meets Terminator um like dust duster jackets with some mechanical bits and pieces on the backpacks and and um rifles and that sort of thing we aren't like I said it was only as a uh cinematic that we saw so we don't even know
00:50:51
Speaker
Gameplay wise what it is. I didn't look up any further. I don't know whether it names what sort of gameplay it is It's listed as a cooperative horror third-person shooter. Okay, so a third-person shooter. Yeah. Okay, so it's So hopefully it's on that held over side of the vision Yeah, yeah, it just I think it looks cool. It was just a new sort of bend on
00:51:14
Speaker
stuff we've seen before that you say the division, it's taken that virus element out of it. So it's not human versus human. It's human versus human versus horde of machines. And yeah, just, just send it in a nuclear winter.
00:51:30
Speaker
Yeah, go check it out. It really is Mad Max. It's got that orange dusty filter color to it as well. So go check out Forever Winter trailer. I think it was good. I did mean to put this in the chat the other day when Pete was talking about how he was like, oh, give me a Terminator cult game and I'm all there for it. There is meant to be one announced in the next week. Sick.
00:51:52
Speaker
from Nacon, Nacon Studio Milan. February 29th, they're gonna showcase 30 minutes of new footage for various projects, including their Terminator game, set between Judgment Day and John Connor's resistant movement. So yeah, your wish has been granted. It's nice. Very exciting. Harold Halibut. What is Harold Halibut? And why are we talking about it? What makes it cool?
00:52:22
Speaker
Well, if you guys had done any fucking research for the news... We weren't doing trailers anymore, and we have 15 trailers to talk about. Yeah, you can still fucking watch them. What are you doing? Sitting at home, sitting on your hands, like fucking hell. Um, no, Harrod Halibut looks really cool because the animation looks stop-motion animation, but it's not.
00:52:41
Speaker
Thank you. Someone did the homework. It just looks cool. I think it's a really cool way to spin animation. What they did was they didn't do stop-motion claymation kind of footage for the game. What they did is they 3D-scanned the claymation characters they created and then animated those, but in the style of stop-motion. So I think it's super clever way to do it. Like six frames a second or something.
00:53:07
Speaker
Yeah yeah yeah and it's it's it's it's a real story driven game it's i think a bit of a detective story it's looks very indie which is which is yeah but it's it's innovative it's exciting it's like that's the kind of stuff we want to see coming forward from game studio so.
00:53:24
Speaker
That's why I threw it in there. But yeah, have a look at the trailer. Look, it might took you fancy. It might not. But it's why I threw it in there because it stood out. It stood out of all the shit that came out of. So yeah, and this is the other thing I want to say. So I found this, the stuff we just talked about, Death Stranding Judas and Riders of Rhone. That all came from the PlayStation February set of play. If you guys want to go find it online, look at the shows, those trailers. The stuff we're talking about now came from IGN Fanfest has been happening over this current weekend. And that was one of the games that
00:53:53
Speaker
that featured in that and the second one that came after that. Just before you get onto that one, that claymation style, the one I've got down below, Little Devil Inside.
00:54:05
Speaker
Kind of falls into that model animated side of it as well. There seems to be sort of two levels of gameplay and little devil inside. We just got a six minute gameplay trailer. There's an overworld map that looks like a camera has been put down on a claymation, like mini map kind of thing. And you'd travel across the mini map and you pick your next destination to go to. Really cool. Like it literally looks like a miniature.
00:54:33
Speaker
That featured in a state of play like months ago. It was like a first announcement thing. And so we got very limited look at it. So I'm glad there's more now. Sounds very Tiny Tina's because Tiny Tina in Wonderland the Overland map was like a like a little animated bubble head of her walking around on a map.
00:54:50
Speaker
Yeah, kind of like that. Same same but different. Yeah. But this very much looks like a, oh, I guess it looks like if you like had a model train set, like if any of our grandfathers had model train sets. Slightly topographical as it looks on the top down. All the trees kind of look the same because they're all the same model laid out and the grass is a standard grass that's
00:55:16
Speaker
not quite to scale and things like that to the trees that are laid on top of it. Looks really cool. And then you'd get down in third person when you get to these little hub sections, whether it's missions or towns or to talk to people. There looks like there could be some extra little. You kind of seem like a monster hunter in a kind of post-apocalyptic
00:55:39
Speaker
European kind of setting kind of thing. You're in a car, but it kind of feels a little bit Victorian as well with the dress and style. There is sword and shield combat in it against monster type of things. There's boss battles, mini boss battles. At one stage you dress yourself in a sheep's hood and do the whole sheepdog and wolf thing from
00:56:03
Speaker
from Looney Tunes and go out and there's a monster hunting the sheep and you're in the herd and he shoots the monster from within the sheep herd. I think it looks really cool. And once again, it's that claymation model kind of feel to the animation on it. And once again, super unique and I think it looks cool. Yeah, sick. The next game is dumb as fuck. I'm going to put that out there. It looks like a fucking mobile game.
00:56:33
Speaker
So this is the idea is somehow through science and or technology. You are driving a pickup ute and you end up in a medieval battlefield and you have a truck full of guns. So now it's you. There's more to it than that because there's Apache helicopters flying over the field killing people with rockets. Yeah. So the whole thing is like there's some way that you can you can travel back in time and you fight medieval knights, but you have modern weaponry.
00:57:04
Speaker
and it's dumb, it's stupid, and I just think it's, oh, come on, it's a bit of fun. Don't be like that. If we have four player co-op on that, you know we jump into it. It looks like those mobile games you see all the time where it's like, how many nights would it take to defeat this group of soldiers? Oh, those AI things, yeah. Yeah, or Nazis versus zombies and shit like that. That's what it looks like.
00:57:31
Speaker
I think it's stupid and funny, it's called King Magus and just go watch the trailer. It's walking a fine line between funny and stupid and the success I think is going to come down to which side it falls on.
00:57:46
Speaker
I think it's one of those ones that it's going to have a very short lived life. Yeah. Yeah. Everyone will go in and be like, Oh yeah. I shotgunned a guy in full medieval armor. Cool. I think that's, that's, that's dumb enough that you can go like, okay, that's funny. Um, yes, that was also, uh, that was the last little game. I thought that, um, Borderlands before Dan gets back quick. Here he is. He's here.
00:58:14
Speaker
Looks really fucking good. No. I think, nah, I'm caught in the middle in terms of, I think the character models are fantastic, except for Kevin Hart as Roland. I really don't like that. I hate Kevin Hart. He's too small. Yeah, he's too small. Dan versus Kevin Hart, Dan versus the Rock. Here we go. It can be the different scale now. I can be the big one and he can be the big one.
00:58:41
Speaker
He's been pointing down on him. I think Kevin Hart is the same across the board. I don't find him funny. I'd found him funny in his early years. I don't find him funny now because I've seen the character 20 times. And that's exactly what came across in the clip. Oh yeah, he's found his groove in that. But I'm looking forward to it. I'll definitely go see it.
00:59:04
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. You're not invited. Fuck you. Yeah, that's fine. I thought it looked... I like the idea of... And I mean, it's probably changed through the movie. I'd hope it would change through the movie. Everything looked too clean. All their costumes looked too clean.
00:59:20
Speaker
for being a Borderlands. And I mean, you get into Borderlands and it's like the art style is cel-shaded and there's clear dirt, dust everywhere, blood, blotches and shit on characters. It looked all too clean. Looks like people going to Comic Con as the characters from the game in their clean state before any bloody battles happened. Well, let's just wait and see what it's like. The comedy all missed for me. I didn't find it was funny at all.
00:59:50
Speaker
I thought it was more than annoying. Definitely aimed at a younger age group than us. And is that tiny Tina with the ears or is that somebody else? Yeah. Yeah, it's tiny Tina. It is tiny Tina. I thought the make it rain with your body parts joke was not in any way delivered well in that trailer and was not funny whatsoever. I thought it was
01:00:15
Speaker
I thought she looked great as Tiny Tina. She was probably the character I liked the most and the maniac dude that you barely got to see in the trailer. But other than that, I thought everything else was fucking lackluster and shit. It looks like a B grade version for the people that are in it and the money that I think they've probably dropped on it. I think it looks like a B grade piece of shit.
01:00:42
Speaker
a B grade movie probably would have been better than what they're going to, they're turd that they're going to pump out on this side. Right. Moving on. I mean, I thought Cate Planchett looked great as, as the siren. So yeah. Uh, my, my problem, my, my, my, my main problem was it was literally Kevin Hart's too small to be rolled.
01:01:04
Speaker
Yeah. Um, and why not get claptrap the voice of claptrap back? Why, why, why did, well, Oh no, it's Jack. It's Jack being Jack black. Like just get claptrap back from the game. Like, why not? He's the one, he's the one voice that you can transfer and tie the, the people that love the games to the movie. It's the one that you can bring and it doesn't change anything, but they didn't.
01:01:35
Speaker
That makes Dan sad. Taking a deep breath. The next one looked better. I hope you thought it was looked better, Dan.
01:01:44
Speaker
Battlefront 1 and 2, the original Battlefront 1 and 2, like the originals we played on PS2 and back in the day, they are getting a remaster, not a remake, not a rehashing, whatever. They're just literally porting it towards modern consoles. So yes, we get the great 501st story that was narrated by Mr. Morrison. That was the best part of Battlefront 2 when you were just like,
01:02:10
Speaker
the really sad narration he did before you had to do the attack on the Jedi Temple as the 501st. The only thing for me is, look, I've recently gone back to playing Battlefront 1, the 2015 version, which was made by Dyson EA. So to see them just literally doing the, it's Aspire again, just doing the straight port. It's like, man, we've got these perfect assets
01:02:41
Speaker
come on, like, just give like, if you really, because that's the thing, they lost, they lost the coder, like, deal account, whatever you want to call it. This is your way as a studio to really prove that you're committed to bringing these classic Star Wars games to modern consoles.
01:02:57
Speaker
have a deal with Dyson EA, whatever you have to do to like split the split the profits or whatever, and just bring in the the newer character models, and the map models and just if I had the battlefront, the current battlefront, playing as the old school battlefront, carry the one double the two, yeah, blow it blow my fucking mind charge me, whatever charge me 120 bucks, I will drop that instantly.
01:03:25
Speaker
Like those games were my childhood and I fucking loved them. But yeah, I would just love to see like, I've really enjoyed the Aspire ports. I've talked about Republic Commandos, Star Wars Episode 1, going back and playing Knights, Jedi Knight 2. They're great, but it's like the nostalgia does run off after a while. Cause you're like, I know you can make these look better if you just put in a little bit of effort.
01:03:49
Speaker
So that's my only thing. I'm excited for them. I will play them, but I just wish they would take the modern assets we have and we know that exist in games. And I know they probably have to license them off. I imagine with Lucasfilm, LucasArts being connected to EA through that deal that's happened for the last 10 years. I'm sure they had to go through that anyway. So just use their bloody assets. God damn it. Make the camera shake.
01:04:19
Speaker
Sorry. Passion of the price. Last one, Dan. Uh, the vampire masquerade bloodlines too. That's a mouthful of a title always has been a mouthful at all. Word of world of darkness, uh, goes off the last, well, actually there's several games in the series now, the vampire masquerade. There's a few sort of.
01:04:39
Speaker
Story-driven games that are third-person or first-person they just released a dev talk and a gameplay trailer like 30-minute gameplay trailer at
01:04:51
Speaker
I really enjoyed it. Like I loved Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines. I loved Vampire the Masquerade. The first one, I forget what it was called, Redemption or something like that. I loved it. It was one of my favorite all time games. It's got a whole bunch of jank to it. It had some massive glitch issues that you couldn't finish the game if you glitched at a certain point almost at the final mission. But it was a character driven game within the world of darkness.
01:05:20
Speaker
which is a tabletop rule set for Vampire the Masquerade. The new game is first person, first person only. The old one was first person, but then third person when you had a melee weapon. This one I think is just both.
01:05:37
Speaker
first person they have set your character in this one kind of like cyberpunk that you play as v this one you play as fire now fire is a she's an elder she's been asleep since ancient times she's an ancient egyptian and she
01:05:54
Speaker
She's been asleep since Somewhere around there for a couple of thousand of years something happens that wakes her up She's got a secondary vampire voice in her head for some reason that they don't explain during the gameplay so you have these two player voices you have the person fire that you're playing with and the the sub voice in your head kind of like cyberpunk and Johnny Silverhand, so they're really playing on that that cyberpunk 2077 vibe and
01:06:23
Speaker
I really like that I thought it really brought the series into the modern age a lot of people have ragged on it that it doesn't feel like bloodlines but bloodlines was full of jank it was basically a broken game for all of its life and i feel that this actually brings it forward and to what we would expect these days.
01:06:43
Speaker
Combat looks cool. They only show one one of the vampire clans during the gameplay. They show a little bit of dialogue and one key mission in a warehouse, which you go through a bit of a loop because she gets stuck in kind of a.
01:06:59
Speaker
a psychological thing that is brought on by another vampire. So you go through a bit of puzzling, a bit of combat, a bit of dialogue. I thought it looks really good. It surprised me where it's at from about two years of not hearing anything. And the main person that was in development writing left or got fired, I'm not sure. It really surprised me that it's at this point of polish and I'm so glad it's coming out.
01:07:29
Speaker
Uh, and it's going to be interesting to see how it plays from here on out and how much of the fan base is going to turn around and come back to it. I'm a big vampire, the masquerade fan. I love it. You've always talked about it positively. Yeah. Yeah. Um, Kindred Kindred, uh, the TV series that was made by of all people, Aaron spelling back in the day in the nineties is still one of my favorite vampire media things of all time. Uh, and as well as bloodlines one, it was, it was great.
01:07:58
Speaker
really looking forward to it. Gameplay and the dev talk. The dev talk is really boring because the dude is definitely not a forward facing company man. A public facing. Oh, he is definitely one of the guys that he's, he's the brains, not the face of the face of the game. He shouldn't be the face of the game because he was super boring and
01:08:23
Speaker
That was probably my biggest complaint about the whole thing. Maybe he didn't sell it enough when he was talking about it. Somebody wheeled the smart guy out. Wheel him away! I'll be working with that exact type of person my entire career. Yeah, definitely.
01:08:42
Speaker
I think it looks good. I think the character, the main character that you play, I'm a bit disappointed, like a few other people that you're not creating your own character, but with what CDPR did with V and the voiced V in Cyberpunk. I'm really hoping these guys pull off fire the same as V because V in the end was great. And I was, I was... I can structure a story around a known character that way, I guess.
01:09:09
Speaker
Yeah. And Cyberpunk did it really well with the V existed in the world. Uh, I play a female V, so I'm going to talk about her as a she, uh, she understands the world that she exists in and with vampire, the masquerade bloodlines to fire is coming from a couple of thousand years of sleep. So she's not going to understand the world she's in, but.
01:09:33
Speaker
I think that's not a bad mechanic for drawing in new players to the world where she's going to be learning things about.
01:09:41
Speaker
probably reawakening her powers from when she's been for while she's been asleep, but also reintroducing herself to the massive political side of vampire, the masquerade, um, which is absolutely, it's a political game. They have hierarchies within the clans. There's multiple clans, uh, and they all have their own traits and everything. I think it looks great. I'm super excited for it. So I hope it's a, I hope it turns out to be as good as what cyberpunk is now.
01:10:12
Speaker
Yeah, cool. Excellent. I think we're going to get a break from there. So I guess we'll be right back. You didn't even get my little flat back joke on record. That's no fun. No, I didn't. Thank God for that. Cause it's flat or I flat.
01:10:42
Speaker
And we're back. I said I was going to follow up with the same beer that Tom had. So I'm following up with the same Seeker. Copycat. Copycat. What a dog. Collabathon beer with stoic brewing, the pine line, ice cream sour. And I completely agree. It tastes like a spice. It's got the more wimey citrusy tartness than I think the two sours I just had.
01:11:10
Speaker
It really captures that. I don't know what they use to get that, whether it's just straight lime juice or whether they found some flavoring or something, but it really does capture that vanilla, that biting through that icy outer shell of a splice and getting that tartness first and then that falling away to release the creamy vanilla ice cream beneath.
01:11:35
Speaker
It's really well constructed. I really like it. It's definitely a one can thing for me. But I'm happy it's a 440 can and not a 375. So do we get a little bit more of that goodness? Did you grab any more of them? I've got one more in the fridge. And I've got another, I think, 15 or 16 at the brewery.
01:12:01
Speaker
Yeah. So I actually, I was lucky enough. I was just at union before, um, we recorded. So I had lunch there and they did an NZ Pilsner with filter, which was super crisp, like way crisper than that mountain culture. I just had. Um, and then I also had their hazy pal. They did with, um, Audrey. And then I grabbed the, I think five of the other beers. They had six in the bottle shop, but they had other ones. Yeah.
01:12:26
Speaker
yeah other other collabs other than that one so they had another one the one i didn't grab because fuck that style was some yeah with some wheat wheat ale bullshit build belgian wit that they did with um
01:12:40
Speaker
with, um, rude, delicious beer. I'm really sorry. I should really, really, really well made beer. It's just that star just makes me. Maybe I'll do that next time, but yeah, I do have some of them and I did like it.
01:12:59
Speaker
What'd you give it out of five to end? I'm going to agree with Tom at 425. It's really well. It's the only reason it gets marked down for me is it's not an ongoing beer. It's a beer. I grabbed that one. I'm happy I drank it, but I'm not rushing back for another one because how it was.
01:13:23
Speaker
I also thought you said mountain codger and I just pictured an old three tooth man with a flano in the mountains. Yelling. I'm drinking Ekim Brewing Co's Longboat Lager. Okay. I sit corrected. We've tried a few of their beers. It's Mike backwards.
01:13:50
Speaker
It is, Mike, backwards you are. Pretty sure it's the brewer's name, is Mike. It's interesting for a lager. You certainly get that lager yeast, but the esters, it's quite light in the back palate. You've got a little bit of those esters. There's just something in it that's just a little unusual. It's almost bready.
01:14:17
Speaker
Certainly dry. As a longboat lager, does it use bike yeast, like the Norwegian one? It doesn't say. If I'm going to draw a long bow, that's where I would draw it. An Australian style lager using the finest Australian malt features light hot flavours with a crisp, easy drinking finish. So there's zero details here. There's zero details online. It was canned in December.
01:14:45
Speaker
So it's probably, it's, it's fine. It's only a couple of months old. Yeah. It's not, it's not bad. Like I'm not saying it's bad. It's just, it's unusual, which to me actually gives it extra points because a lager is usually a for us. It's a pretty boring style. I want to say refreshing style. They're definitely getting more interesting.
01:15:06
Speaker
Yes. But I like that, that Brett
Beer Tasting and Brewery Challenges
01:15:08
Speaker
-ness. I don't know if Brett's the right word. I'd really like for you guys to try it to tell me what your thoughts are. And I have four packs. I could save you. You guys won. Um, I'm going to give it a four to five. Um, that's higher than I would give a normal, just a base boring lager. Um, I'm digging the esters too. So yeah. Tom, I feel jealous. You guys have got some decent ABVs.
01:15:44
Speaker
Well, nice for some, isn't it? Look, some sad news came out of the beer world recently. Bracket have been told that they are basically being forced to move out of their current hold, a little cave. With a 70% increase in rent. Yeah, it's pretty fucked. So I have two Bracket beers, but they're, one's an east side IPA and one's a west side IPA.
01:16:00
Speaker
Yeah, I like I'm finished fun employment today. So fuck it. Let's get let's get lit boys. I mean,
01:16:11
Speaker
Yeah. Um, look, double drive. I don't know, bro. That looks like Wolverine. Let's go. Sneaky, sneaky, snowy, snowy. Um, this is the East side IPA. It's made with Raquel and, uh, Nelson seven. Um, the designs are pretty similar. Dan's I'm going to show it now just cause it pisses me off.
01:16:33
Speaker
There's a foot difference in the back? No, look, nothing. It's all just wiped off. Oh. Yeah. Oh. So if you compare the two, like similar designs, but there is nothing left written on that can. Could they get themselves in trouble because all the labeling's gone?
01:16:51
Speaker
If so all the all the all the like legal label is still there. It's just the the name and you can kind of see it says oven on the on the front anymore. Kind of still says bracket. No, not really. Digital printing is literally just been it's just been sitting in the fridge. It's come come out of the bag into the fridge. And that's what's happened. The digital printing is making a big difference in the industry, but it's still got
01:17:18
Speaker
A ways to go. I can tell you from personal experience, bonding acrylic to a flat metal surface is fucking hard because anyone who's ever painted miniatures in the old days.
01:17:37
Speaker
I was thinking the same thing. I left it alone completely. I was a bit wild last episode, so I thought, nah, no, I'll bring it in this time. Moving right along from boarding your acrylics to your solid metal service. This is what it looks like.
True Detective: Cultural and Narrative Analysis
01:17:51
Speaker
It's a classic East Coast hazy IPA. It's got that New Zealand flavor coming through. Fuck. You've got to stop banging that table, Tom. No, no, it's my banging table. That's why I installed it.
01:18:06
Speaker
It's getting worse. It is, it is, it is very, very tasty. Uh, I'm going to give that a 4.2. It's very, very nice. It's a, it's a, look, it's just true to bracket style. It's a little, little rich for, for my tastes going forward. So I'm really hoping the, the West side version of it is like super hoppy bitter, but I will find out shortly. Um, yeah. Uh, and for anyone playing at home, yeah, 7.3%.
01:18:32
Speaker
Delicious. Nice. True detective. Um, I'm so glad you guys punched it out. Yeah, you didn't like it. No, no, no. Oh, you did. You did beat me, Tom. No, no, Dan. I think Dan started before me and then I ended up beating him to the finale.
01:18:52
Speaker
Yeah. I got really delayed on the finale. I had a few things on, um, and some super fucking hot days in the brewery. I just didn't have it in me to sit there. That's the energy. And so everything I did the classic thing of it was, it was six, six episodes released weekly and we watched two in the last week being like, cool. Now we can spread it out in the last week. We don't have to wait too long. So we watched two on the Monday and then the Wednesday night, I was obviously.
01:19:17
Speaker
Unemployed. So I was like, okay, cool. Um, dinner's made. Let's, let's sit down and we'll watch an episode or two and then we can save two for like Friday night. And then, then we're good. Four hours later, I was just, Oh, shit. Yeah. Smash through it. It was great. It was just, it's so addictive. It's, it's, yeah, it's right back in where the first season was. It's just, it's so good.
01:19:37
Speaker
I thoroughly enjoyed the introduction of Inuit culture because I realized how little we have ever seen on screen of their actual culture. The singing, the tattooing, you know, the value system that they have.
01:19:52
Speaker
that community spirit, I just thought it was spectacular to actually get to see that and have like a window into it. I presume it's based on fact. Because why the fuck would you make it up when you could just go there and based on fact, right? No, it is definitely based on fact. I thought the really cool thing was so NS the town it said in is fictional.
01:20:09
Speaker
I don't know if you guys look that up. But Ennis the town is fictional, but it is based on the northernmost city in the US, which is the real top of Alaska. Literally, then you look at the sea, and then it's just the Arctic, like Arctic Circle, which is Utki Arvik is the town. It used to be called Barrow, but they went back to the traditional name for it. So that's the town it's set in. Fast. I want to go. I want to go 30 days of night. Like, really want to go.
01:20:39
Speaker
Like, let's, let's pull all our resources and do that as a piece of confined excursion. Let's go to the fair days and nights. It's like minus 40 degrees. Yeah. Fuck yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But it's also, but it's also a, a culture built around dealing with that though. Oh, absolutely. Yes. You got England and all the glasses double glazed because they're set up for the cold in Australia. We've got fucking fly screens on our windows. So, you know, it's, it's, it's sometimes we don't even have that. So, you know,
01:21:09
Speaker
I'm just a cat swatting flies as they try and enter. Yeah. I love them. The fantasy undertones or fantasy is not the right word. Supernatural. Supernatural. Supernatural. Yeah. The spiritual undertones. So just to just, Tom, you just said Barrow and that sparked a thing in my head. Barrow is the same city that's in 30 days of night.
01:21:34
Speaker
the same town. Which makes perfect sense. It makes perfect sense. I didn't, yeah. Yep. Yep. And referencing last time 30 days of night, it's just because of what it reminded me of. And it's the throwback to what you said as well. So Barrow is also mentioned by Matthew McConaughey in season one, he says, my dad is going up to Barrow to live, which is the town that's meant to be based on. Yep. So there is meant to be like, there's a full obviously throwback to season one.
01:22:01
Speaker
And spoilers, spoilers here going forward, I think for season four of True Detective. Yes. The his his father is the dead spirit guy that points the lady to the the the Harry Potter's arm. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Comes up like an hunter or the or the and or his mother to
01:22:27
Speaker
to the um, so all scientists, the dead scientists, he's the, he's the spirit that takes her out there. So that's, uh, that's the tieback. I did. I did turn to Emma at one point after she, the Christmas episode where she's just like, yeah, look, I used to work at university and then I just got really bored of writing papers. I was like, Emma, that's our future. Yeah. And you're going to become a bad ass hunter bitch. And there's like slice a wolf open in the first episode, like absolutely.
01:22:55
Speaker
Apparently there's between sixty four and sixty seven days of uninterrupted nights. In the real town followed by eighty days of uninterrupted daylight day. No more nights more darkness. Where is if you go to Antarctica you get six months of uninterrupted darkness.
01:23:16
Speaker
That's crazy 180 days of night. The series was brilliantly written and acted like the actors fucking nailed it. I didn't see a weak point in it and the actual story to me was I love the fact that there were supernatural undertones.
01:23:35
Speaker
that weren't resolved into scientific fact at the end. Like they left it open-ended and unexplained. These people had visions, whether or not those visions were real or they occurred in their head. I think it actually leaned into them being real. That was the best part where they were just all like, you always, you always see the dead up here.
01:23:51
Speaker
Do you want to see the dead out there, Brian? Talk more about that. But I feel like they lent into it being real because, you know, there's one thing to hallucinate and then for other people to kind of ignore it or for it to be consistent within the narrative. But the fucking recurring motifs of like the orange. Five people saw that. Three people saw that fucking orange. That's not personal psychosis. That's something else.
01:24:20
Speaker
Yeah, I really enjoyed that. And then the polar bear. Yeah, the polar bear. Yeah, I really thought really the the CG animals as well were. Yeah. Some of the best scenes in a while. Yeah, yeah, they were really completely agree. Yeah. And really, also really clever to just on that.
01:24:43
Speaker
escape in the special effect point of view, the whole filming it within the 30 days of night gave him so much leeway to have smaller outdoor sets. You just have a building and then some streetlights and a blurred building and nothing behind it. And it made it feel, it made it feel
01:25:04
Speaker
closed in and isolated as it probably would be. It gave you that feeling is you saw a lot of people in the town and especially like even within the T-Bone accident that Jodie Foster ends up in the first or second episode. Like you see some people that are in a building, you see some people that are in a pub. So you know there's other people other than the main characters. There's people in the police station and everything like that. The school scene where you're not sure what time.
01:25:32
Speaker
But that's the whole thing, like the beauty of that, like 30 days of night is like there were a couple of times around when I was like, wait, what time of the day is it in the actual setting of the thing? Because it is 30 days of night. But it kind of becomes arbitrary. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I thought that was such a fascinating way to tell that story. Just the absence of light. Yeah.
01:25:52
Speaker
I did like the scale of the polar bear too. I don't think, I don't think a lot of people appreciate the scale of a polar bear being nine to 12 foot tall. Like that thing is a fucking monster. Yeah, like grizzlies, like they're always shown to be a little bit small. Wolves, wolves are a huge animal. Yeah, but a polar bear is the size of a car. Well, it's because in nature documentaries, you never have scale.
01:26:20
Speaker
It's just a call of air against a white background. Chasing a seal. And then I look at that and I go, I could probably fight it if I needed it. It's that old saying, and I was watching a lot of trail videos, American trail videos, when I was looking at wild camping and that sort of stuff. And I found a saying, if it's brown, and I looked up, if it's brown, lay down. If it's black, fight back. If it's white, good night.
01:26:46
Speaker
It's basically, if a polar bear comes for you, there ain't nothing you're doing to stop it because you can't outrun it. You can't outfight it. And if you play Fosters, it'll eat you anyway. Yeah. So anyway. But yeah, I think the casting was brilliant for that. Jodie Foster's obviously fantastic. She's brilliant. I haven't seen her in anything for years. She's such a grumpy.
01:27:13
Speaker
Rumpy bitch all the way through. Such a good bitch. Is there anyone in this town you haven't fucked? That was also the kind of boss that you'd want in that kind of environment. You'd want that, like, ruthless fucking bitch. Like, it was so great. It was so perfect. Kelly Reese, I don't know if you know this, she was a champion boxer.
01:27:34
Speaker
who played Navarro. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So she, she was, she was from, so we, we and I had a little cheer cause she's from Providence, Rhode Island where Emma grew up. Um, yeah, she's a champion world champion boxer. And she looks up and it's, it was, it was hard for me to gauge how tall and solid she was because I know Jodie Foster's really little.
01:27:59
Speaker
So it's like she's, she would have. Well, you got a scale of that when the doctor, uh, Ramda on the, uh, on the desk. So, you know, there was that, um, saying Christopher Everson's butt out was a new thing for me. And I don't think I'll ever financially recover from that financially recovered. Did you buy shares in his butt? Oh, I have. Yes.
01:28:28
Speaker
Yeah, it was a real weird surprise seeing Christopher Eccleston in that series. That really, it threw me for a second. I was like, oh, it's the doctor. Oh, no. Oh, no. That's not the doctor. Oh, well, that's why you were saying, oh, God. Sorry, I'm catching up now. Oh, okay. Yeah.
01:28:46
Speaker
Yep. I didn't put two and two together. I didn't actually know that was Chris Eccleston. Christopher Eccleston. He's aged quite a lot since we saw him in 2005, mind you. Yeah. Yeah. Has been 20 years. I think the overall play out of the story, I was really happy with the payout at the end with how it ended. I was happy that, like you said, there was no there was no conclusion to the supernatural stuff. It was all just left.
01:29:15
Speaker
ambiguous, like it was these things happen, but there was an actual real world explanation for the salal scientist death and those things played out. But there was still bits and pieces in there and about the tongue.
01:29:31
Speaker
the tongue of the murdered girl. Navarro asked about that and gets a really blank answer of, we know nothing about that. And I'm like, I couldn't actually read the lady that said it. Yeah, it was because earlier on.
01:29:47
Speaker
earlier on when she's having the discussion about it, she sort of has the same face about something true. And it's like, like, did she really not know about that? Or did, wait, wait, wait. If, if she did know about it and they did leave it there, how did she get it in the first place? So I'm sure there's probably something earlier on that we missed. Um, and yeah, quite possibly they might play, it might come out later on as the information on the series rolls on, but, um,
01:30:16
Speaker
I love it. It is a series that you could rewatch. There's enough density of content there. You want to rewatch it to figure out where you miss things. Yeah. Where you miss things going along. Yeah. I'll tell you what, I'm not going to- I think there's, sorry. No, no, no. I was just going to say that on the supernatural side of things.
01:30:36
Speaker
I'm kind of getting a bit fed up with true detective not going supernatural. It's, it's, it's such a tease to get to that. I want them to go full supernatural. Like I would have loved like just, I don't know, even something like a, like.
01:30:51
Speaker
an ice, an ice based animal that had been trapped in those caves and because of, well, that's scientifically explained it scientifically. Like it, whether it was prehistoric or it was just something that had just, you know, a polar bear that had just inhaled too many weird gases. They, they'd unearth trying to get that enzyme or whatever. They were trying to get out of the skeletons and stuff that had sent it crazy and it killed everyone and it'd become like mutated and shit. Yeah.
01:31:18
Speaker
The skeleton of the fossils of the creature that was in the spiral. I mean, that's what I took from that. There was something there within that creature. I went into full Lovecraftian on the side of this that it was some sort of.
01:31:37
Speaker
that it was some sort of elder god frozen in the in the ice because it was it was it was speaking to people. I just went I just went there and they were too isolated and they made it their own god kind of thing which is what happens you know in those kind of situations. Yeah.
01:31:52
Speaker
But then how does they, then you talk about the, the, the total Institute, uh, that was the sponsor, the connection to season one that was sponsoring Salal and everything like that. And the spiral motif, like, why would that make it down to Mississippi to these little weird back water heat cult in the back in the, in the, in the, in the body. And, um, and, uh,
01:32:18
Speaker
God, what's his name? I know he talks about the acid flashbacks that he has and he can't tell between reality and things like that, but seeing the void in the finale of season one, when he's in the little temple, the bone temple, he turns around and he sees the open void.
01:32:41
Speaker
I mean, it's probably me reading too much into and loving Lovecraftian stuff, but I mean, that's where I see it. It's just this elder god frozen in ice. Making them all go crazy. I'm not going to talk about it for a couple of these episodes, but going straight from that to Constellation.
01:32:59
Speaker
Um, requires zero adjustment. So constellation was the new science fiction. It's out. Yeah. Psychological thriller. Yep. So the first three or four apps are out and it's got snow and lizards in the first step. Uh, Apple, Apple TV, Apple, Apple plus whatever it's called. Um, and yeah, very similar psychological and, and also kind of Lovecraftian undertones.
01:33:23
Speaker
I mean, it's only, I'm only one airpin, so, you know, it could take a different direction. I mean, that's the thing. I just, I don't know. I just like, when they saw the fossil, I just would have liked it to have been a bit more maybe squid-like. So I could have been like, oh, maybe it is Lovecraftian. It's just like a tease. Like I wanted more of that supernatural side to come in. And I know that's probably from my own thing rather than what the story creator wants to evolve.
01:33:47
Speaker
Oh, okay. Bye-bye. Um, yeah. Brilliant though. Brilliantly acted all the way through. I, and this is full spoiler. If you want to skip ahead, this is full spoiler for the last episode. Um, so that you're giving a very, very, very big warning when the kid has.
01:34:05
Speaker
Yep. Do we want to, do we want to spoil it? I'm giving everyone, like skip, skip ahead a minute. And now, okay. Yeah. But when, um, prior has to shoot his dad, that was fucking harrowing. That was, yeah, it was. They made it seem very real. So brilliantly acted by that guy who's been in basically nothing, like more credit to him, but that was fucked.
01:34:30
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, it was. Holy shit. That hit me. Yeah. Like I started to make him clean it up afterwards. I mean, sick with it now. And then he had to turn to his fucking fiance and be like, I've got a thing to do. Nevermind. Yeah. Yeah. And then bad, bad ass, um, opportunity. I'm just being like, this is how we dispose of it. Yeah. I thought it was, um, I thought it was quite topical to talking about, um,
01:35:01
Speaker
using global warming and environmental destruction as a smokescreen to destroy the environment even more and to fund research stations to masquerade your environmental destruction. Yeah, the way the guy talks about the way the guy talks about the way the guy talks about the way the guy talks about the way the guy talks about the way the guy talks about the way the guy talks about the way the guy talks about the way the guy talks about the way the guy talks about the way the guy talks about the way the guy talks about the way the guy talks about the way the guy talks about the way the guy talks about the way the guy talks about the way the guy talks about the way the guy talks about the way the guy talks about the way the guy talks about the way the guy talks about the way the guy talks about the way the guy talks about the way the guy talks about the way the guy talks about the way the guy talks about the way the guy talks about the way the guy talks about the way the guy talks about the way the guy talks about the way the guy talks about the way the guy talks about the way
01:35:28
Speaker
Um, that's all I had to sound true detective other than it's, I think, I wish they had made season one, season four of season two and continued on that quite supernatural, but grounded in reality style. Not to say that season two wasn't already great, but- Well, I didn't like season two, but I get why they did it to kind of bring in more like, I think season two was more of a grab thing from being like, Oh, you don't have to be all into Matthew McConaughey's weird shit.
01:35:58
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. We don't know why we'll keep going.
Film Critiques: 3000 Years of Longing
01:36:04
Speaker
Yeah. What's next? You wanted to talk about 3000 years belonging. I watched it when it first came out. So I'm a bit rushed. I am very, I am very late to the party of this. Um, yeah, I finally sat down and watched it. I've been trying to watch it for ages, but I wanted to watch it.
01:36:20
Speaker
Um, and I don't think we talked about it on the podcast. So that's why I said, no, we haven't. Let's, let's do it. Um, so obviously it's George Miller as the director, um, Idris Elba and Tilda Swinton are the main actors. And it's kind of a George Miller fucked up tale of Aladdin. Let's just, let's just say what it is. It's George Miller talking about jinnies and jinns and the East.
01:36:42
Speaker
But I think the thing that worked for me is, obviously we've recently talked about how we're a bit worried by the trailer of Furiosa and if George Miller's gonna carry through. And that film for me was just like, oh wait, George Miller's still doing his weird shit. I think we'll be okay. That's what I took away from it.
01:37:02
Speaker
I didn't enjoy the film as much as I'd hoped. I found it, my opinion was that it was disappointing. It didn't have the payoff at the end that I was hoping for. It wasn't funny enough to be a fun movie and it wasn't serious enough to be a serious movie. I just, I just, I have to admit I didn't really enjoy it as much as I'd hoped.
01:37:25
Speaker
Oh, that's amazing. I thought it was such a good, like, such an interesting take on the whole three wishes thing in terms of every time that she went to make a wish, Idris' Elba's gin comes in and goes, whoa. Let me tell you a story about a wish. Anyway, back through his history and stuff.
01:37:43
Speaker
Yeah, and like I and I enjoyed the stories. I just to me, it was almost City of Angels in areas of of the interactions between the characters. I just.
01:37:56
Speaker
Yeah, just to me, there just wasn't the payoff I was hoping for. I was really hoping for a new retelling of the old story, but steeped in fantasy and tradition. And I just was more Scorpion King than it was the original fucking movie that I can't think of the name of right now. Mummy, thank you. Thank you. The 2004 cinema classic, The Mummy, starring Brendan Fraser.
01:38:24
Speaker
Don't get me started. Yeah, no, no. And I thought the pacing was a bit off too. Yeah, but I thought the offbeat pacing was very typical George Miller, which is what gave me hope for Furiosa. I took this as a bridging film.
01:38:39
Speaker
I took this as his like, let's make it, make some money, getting some arty, arty fucking shows, like I cinema things. And so I get some, like either some awards or some people go, Hey, George Miller's still got it. He's got like those, cause there were those flashes of color that he's like, I think it's a very typical George Miller, obviously, especially fury road, um, like that big splash of red. And then that's like a slow fade out of that red as the characters come through. Um, and then look.
01:39:08
Speaker
I'm gonna be completely honest. The Australian side of it really sold me again. Seeing the old ladies from the motorbike gang be the two old bitches next door really sold me. The final scene when they're walking through the park, that's Sydney Park where I walk Jasper all the time. So that's in Alexandria. So that was fucking cool for me. I've walked that hill so many times it's not funny. So I was like, holy shit, that's Sydney Park. Emma did the same thing. And then Megan Gale, you've sold me. Say no more.
01:39:36
Speaker
Megan Gayle was in it as a princess and I give it five stars. I was going to say I don't even remember Megan Gayle being in it. Well, I remember the princess story, but I don't remember that it was her in it. But yeah, I saw it so long ago. I saw it when it came out because it didn't get to cinemas because it was during COVID, I want to say. Yeah, well, definitely shot during COVID because there were so many scenes where they were just in public and they were wearing masks.
01:40:06
Speaker
Oh, okay. So they're like the side characters, like all the background characters are all wearing face masks and stuff. So I was like, Oh, cool. And there's a couple of things of like, Phyllis wouldn't go in the shops and she takes a mask off after she leaves the shop kind of thing.
01:40:18
Speaker
Like it was, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I thought it was a, and I think I'm in the same view as Pete. I enjoyed it, but I thought there might be more coming from George Miller. I thought there might've been a real,
01:40:41
Speaker
I mean, Mad Max is one big, Fury Road is one big chase scene. I mean, it's adrenaline from start to finish kind of thing. I was kind of going in with that kind of George Miller glasses on. And that's not what I received. But that doesn't mean I think it was a bad movie. And I probably should watch it again. Tilda Swinton and Idris Elba were great. And I like small stories that are big stories kind of thing. So
01:41:09
Speaker
I just think, to me, it reminded me of the Sandman, the Netflix series Sandman based on the DC Comics. But without the cool factor that the Sandman had with their small stories where he does talk about the old, you know, he has flashbacks, he talks about his old stories. And to me, that delivered where 3000 years of longing didn't.
01:41:38
Speaker
Yeah. Every hundred years was as a little, little story. One of the best scenes in the sand. Absolutely. Yeah. No, no. I 100% get you with that. I just think for me, especially seeing it recently, after we were talking about the furious, the trailer and how we.
01:41:54
Speaker
worried, we were concerned about how it was lacking George Miller, seeing that film and the way it was directed in that George Miller style, especially like the color verse and, and the color theme throughout certain scenes, I was just like, cool. Like we were, I think, I think the general consensus for us through the furious each other was that maybe he'd lost it to like a studio influence and stuff. And I looked at that and I went,
01:42:20
Speaker
I think he's still, I think we still have faith. I think he's still going to come through and it gave me more hope for Furiosa more than anything is what I took away from him, which is why I'm glad I watched it, watched it after seeing that to be like, Oh, cool.
01:42:35
Speaker
It just restored faith for you, but not for me. Yeah. I mean, that's what Dan Dan saying. Like maybe, maybe a secondary viewing might, you might see those things more. Yeah. Yeah. I'd be prepared to watch it again. Um, we call the food mover. Yes, absolutely. This, I watched the trailer for this last night on Amazon Pete and God damn did this peak my interest.
01:42:59
Speaker
It's not what I expected. So I watched LX 2048. It's going to be a really quick review. It is a traditional science fiction movie. It is not a fast paced modern Hollywood blockbuster science fiction movie. It's set in a dystopian future where the sun has warmed to the point where our atmosphere is thin to the point where it's you can't go out in direct sunlight.
01:43:23
Speaker
We have invented cloning, however, clones don't quite have the same emotional or range of emotional responses as the real humans, but they have the advantage of being able to work during sunlight hours. So the rest of society is basically caged.
01:43:42
Speaker
until nighttime. Most people hang out in virtual reality more than they do in real life. In fact, it is the primary source of employment, of entertainment, of friendship groups and that sort of stuff. And everyone is dosed on LX 2048, which is basically like a modernized version of lithium. It removes the peaks and troughs from your emotional spectrum, but turns people into happy,
01:44:11
Speaker
I content robots almost. And so that's the background setting. It's a very slow paced, contemplative movie. It's not like it takes a while to get into it. It's a slow burn. It's a really interesting commentary on society in terms of our always on, always connected lifestyle projected 20 years in the future.
01:44:37
Speaker
That tells the story of of john darcy's character who is unhappy with the way the world is around me doesn't take his pills. Which is very brave new world avoid the soma. And he sees reality for what it is and he's he's unhappy with his marriage is unhappy with the way the world works around him.
01:44:58
Speaker
And they have a, so him and his wife have a life insurance policy that if either of them die early, they'll be cloned. But you can choose in your life insurance policy if you like, you can tweak your significant offer slightly when they come back as a clone. So you might, you know, it might be physical, it might be emotional, it might be psychological. And that's kind of the background. I won't ruin any more of the film, but it's, if you don't mind a slow paced movie that makes you think,
01:45:28
Speaker
It has a very Shakespearean dialogue at the end when it it's climax won't deliver for people that are looking for a proper climax. It's it's more like a Shakespearean play climax. I thought it was fucking brilliant, though. It's a Roy, Roy Beatty tears in the rain kind of climax, is it?
01:45:50
Speaker
Yeah, and I said this to Tom in the break, it very much does elicit Blade Runner, like, thoughts. It is kind of contemplative in that manner. It doesn't go down that whole clone, you know, artificial intelligence route as strongly, but it is one of those thinkers.
01:46:09
Speaker
So I watched the trailer last night after we finished whatever we were watching. And I got, I said to Louise, it looks like Blade Runner across Equilibrium, which is exactly what you've just described. Yeah. Yeah. And it's also- What's it on Pete?
01:46:27
Speaker
I think it's Amazon Prime. It's a B grade, so it's a super low budget, almost, what's the word I'm looking for? Almost indie film from a director who wrote, directed, edited and produced it. And I think it's his first third ever film.
01:46:48
Speaker
Fuck yeah. Busy fucking lad. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, no, I, I thoroughly enjoyed it. It's not a perfect film, but like it's fucking excellent in terms of making you think. Yeah. I'm definitely going to watch it. Oh, good. Uh, and I mean, I'm going to lead into a bit of a downer too. The exorcist believer colon believer. Uh, it's the, the new in the long running. I believe in your colon, mate.
01:47:15
Speaker
Well, that's how it's written. I was about to make the same joke. I was hoping from the trailers, going back to a couple of episodes before about misleading in how trailers are cut. So the trailer for Believer, there's two little girls that get possessed this time, not one, like it was in the original Exorcist and maybe the others after it. I've only ever watched the original.
01:47:45
Speaker
The the two little girls in the trailer they get possessed the makeup makes them look like the original twins girl that gets possessed and all right I was The mother from the original movie is back and
01:48:08
Speaker
And in the trailer she approaches the two possessed girls and they say hello mother. I remember the trailer. Yeah, which really led that the mother from the original was going to play a big part in this one. Spoilers out here, she doesn't play a big fucking part. And that scene never happens. She comes across one of the possessed girls.
01:48:35
Speaker
very minimally and the hollow mother is. Said by an entirely different character at the very final seconds of the movie and they are not a possessed person so the trailer was completely misleading just got a fetish.
01:48:53
Speaker
Don't kink shame, Dan. And the whole thing that the two little girls, one family is very Catholic, one family is not of that religion and or very atheist on side of it. There is other religions that are bought in to try and exercise these two young girls. And in the end, it's the Catholics will save us all. Brought back in.
01:49:29
Speaker
Oh, that's the greatest joke you ever told. But that's how it plays out, man. That's how it plays out. And we were very disappointed in that side of it because they really led in bringing all these other people in that it might be a bit of everybody that
01:49:50
Speaker
I say this in quotation marks, saves the day. But no, we had to bow down to the Catholic Church coming in and saving the day again, which I guess goes back to the original exorcist, but is not. Well, you can't have an exorcism without the Catholic Church. Well, it's a Catholic right. Well, there's other religions that do exorcisms as well.
01:50:16
Speaker
As it's presented in modern media, it's usually a Catholic rite. R-I-T-E. Right. From the very first, from the intro to... It could be the other spelling of rite too, I don't know.
01:50:32
Speaker
From the very intro of the movie you get the feel that the other religions or other religions around the world are going to play a part because in the very intro of the movie the pregnant mother of one of the children later on is there in haiti and stay on the go religious a religious blessing in haiti and.
01:50:54
Speaker
that plays a part later on, but not a big part. Anyway, cut it all short. It could have been a good movie, and the trailer cut it to be kind of an interesting movie. In the end, it played out as a very, I've got mediocre written, and all I see is Immortan Joe saying mediocre in Mad Max now, and it was mediocre.
01:51:19
Speaker
From about halfway on, there was some really good, not good, there was some interesting elements to start with. It was a bit of a slow burn. It built up that thing like the original exorcist and then the back end was just mediocre. It was super modern Hollywood that just didn't deliver. Yeah.
01:51:39
Speaker
I don't know, man, you get me a good laugh. So that's fucking great. I really needed that. That was good. That was good. Episode titled Tom's belly laugh. And then my belly laugh. That was a full chortle. That was a full on chortle.
01:51:58
Speaker
My last review, I'm going to bring it up now so I don't speak about it in Are You Winning, Son? Blacksmith Song of Two Kings. I came across this in the Steam Next Fest demo month that they do, or several weeks.
01:52:14
Speaker
I was scrolling through all of the demos and the streams that they were doing on Steam. I was about to click out because I'd scrolled through about 30 games that had probably even more that they had on Nexfest. And this one popped up as the very bottom icon. I'm like, oh, Blacksmith. I clicked on that. And I mean, it hooked me. I sat there and watched the stream. I actually commented on the stream. It is so you, though. Yeah, it is.
01:52:42
Speaker
I think I would play it for a couple of hours and then put it down. I wouldn't even touch it. I don't know if I was the guy presenting it. It may have been the guy presenting it. The video that you linked was not a not a great exemplar of the game. I would watch, actually no Dan, I would watch you play it if you were commentating.
01:53:06
Speaker
That would actually really, that would really in hook me. And there's an upload right there. Yeah. Yeah. But watching, watching someone else I don't know play a game that I know you, that style of gameplay, passionate, passionate in that video. Yeah. Honestly. Yeah.
01:53:22
Speaker
I only, I only picked that I didn't watch him in that video and I didn't actually listen to him because I wasn't meaning for you guys to listen. Oh, I didn't watch that. It was a 90 minute video. I waited half an hour of my Sunday watching that fucking die. Fucking fucking shit. And also I know what this cleaver needs. It needs feathers. Oh shit. I've attached the feather to the fucking blade. Like Jesus, man. Oh, okay. I apologize for losing that one. But not the brightest crayon in the box.
01:53:50
Speaker
But because it's an indie game and a very small indie game, there's only hour-long chunks of...
01:53:58
Speaker
things of clips because it's people doing, I skipped 15 minutes ahead of time. It did seem early in the games, Genesis, like it, the controls look clunky. Didn't need some, I think some quality of life refinement. It's, it's a single dev who has the comments too. Yeah. It is clunky. It is clunky. It's clunky. But if you, if you can think about the, how do I put this?
01:54:30
Speaker
OK, so it's a 2D 2D game where you're looking at a forge, an old medieval forge background. It's got a fire burning in the background in the slightly foreground. You have it have an anvil and you have a hammer. So you can control the the the two dimensional material that you're using to manipulate, whether it's metal or or wood or whatever. You have a you have a you have a tool, whether it's a the hammer to hammer molten metal or or heated metal.
01:54:59
Speaker
or, or cutting down branches or logs or anything like that to create handles and things like that. So it's all two dimensional. So you can pull a steel ingot out of your inventory into the main panel, you drop it down onto the anvil and you can hammer it and manipulate it like molten metal. The
01:55:23
Speaker
The background programming of it to get the artificial molten metal to act almost like real molten metal or manipulative metal must be incredible. It's one guy, and he's been quite vocal on Discord about the mathematics that are used in the background for hammering out this block of metal to make it into shapes, that it's quite complex.
01:55:51
Speaker
I'm not questioning that, I'm questioning how do you make the blade stand upwards vertically on an anvil while also then dropping the mouse where you're holding it to grab the hammer and then grab the hammer in the right spot and then whack it.
01:56:06
Speaker
Like there's some quality of life enhancements that need to go into the game. I think that's also the people playing it too. So I actually find the hammer really great. So if you left click on up towards the head of the hammer, you can move it in a parallel, up and down, left and right. There's no tilt. You click it on the handle, it goes on a pivot and then your right click and how far and how fast you move the mouse backwards and forwards is the strength of your...
01:56:34
Speaker
Thank you he had he he'd have been down a piece of metal into a long skinny blade and then you need to squash the blade cuz you made it too long and skinny and so he tilted all that. He tilted the axe head on the anvil and every time we let go of it it a tip over and fall.
01:56:52
Speaker
And it almost fell off the anvil a couple of times into the ether and so he had to hold it at the top on top of the anvil and then quickly let go of his mouse so he could grab the hammer which was pre-positioned to whack it to be able to compress. And it's just stuff like that. You need some pincers or another person or a left hand.
01:57:13
Speaker
Well, the further the further long you get in the game, you actually get a vice attached to the anvil. So you can hold things within the vice and the vice is more used for bending metal bars. So you get within this. There's a whole story to the game. I want to try and blast through this pretty quick. There's an overworld hand-drawn map that you can get through. There's a fog of war over it, and it only releases as you do certain jobs and you go through a storyline
01:57:52
Speaker
The goblins masters, of course, you do. That's that's where that's where he lost me. And then you take you take jobs from the local people around and then I want different things made like a graveyard, a graveyard keeper is having the dead rise from the grave. So he wants a new steel grated door to pull over to seal his to seal his heart silver.
01:58:06
Speaker
within the game. And it's, it's a fantasy game. There's dwarves, there's goblins, there's, there's witches. Yeah. The dude played as a goblin. Yeah. Yeah.
01:58:14
Speaker
So you've got to bend the bend the arch over the door and then position all the cross beams to make the grate. And then you've got to rivet them all together in
01:58:26
Speaker
in the door and you've got to match the blueprint that is the job that the blueprints always shown to you in the forge as you're doing the job and you've got the axe thing that Pete was just talking about because we saw the guy dragging the axe head to the thing to be like yeah it's close but not close enough I was like yeah man.
01:58:45
Speaker
get positioning it wrong. I apologize for linking that video, but it's, it's incredibly relaxing. It's, it's, I, I play this of a nighttime.
01:59:00
Speaker
I load it up. I turn the music off. I put Spotify on in the background. I put a playlist in the background. I play the music and just have the sound effects of the hammer hitting the molten metal on the anvil. And it puts me to sleep. I fucking love it. It's so good. It's two-dimensional. At one point, you have to make a helmet for someone, an armored helmet.
01:59:25
Speaker
you get a steel ingot and all you have to do is dome it. There's obviously no, no coning it around a mould of any sort. So it's all two dimensional in that way. So obviously it's, you have to break reality
01:59:42
Speaker
to load that up, but it's a wonderful game done by one dev who, after the next first said, look, the response I've gotten from this, I'm not going to push the game back. It's release date was only about four days after next fest ended, uh, which was a two weeks ago. Uh, he goes, I'm not going to push it back. I'm going to release it on the date and you guys can all help me like find any bugs and anything like that. It's full released. I paid.
02:00:10
Speaker
It's collaborative, which is really nice. Yeah. One guy, he's taken a lot of the criticism extremely well. There is one person that needs to shut the fuck up in the Discord channel because they are just hammering and they're answering questions for him. And it's like, mate, chill out. It's not your fucking game. Let the dev answer those questions. Just shut the fuck up. Let this one poor dude that is obviously working a day job. It's a passion project.
02:00:39
Speaker
As well as coming back as and fixing this game of a nighttime, just shut the fuck up and let him do it. But this guy just keeps jumping in and doing things. And it really, I'm to the point now where, Hey man, you can't, you can't bend still that way. Maybe if you, if you hit the forge up to a high degree, shut up, shut up, you dickhead. Just let the guy have his fun. Yeah. Anyway, it's good fun. It's good, relaxing game. If you've got any, any, uh, wish to do.
02:01:07
Speaker
uh manufacturing not manufacturing forging or fabricating of medieval armors and tools and weapons and you want something relaxing to do it's the blacksmith the song of two kings is a way to go yeah nice onwards and up sweets onwards we shall talk about our beers last beers yeah last beers i can go halfway through mine go p go unless you want to go
02:01:35
Speaker
No. Go Peter, it's time for you to talk about your beer. Go Peter, go, go. I'm drinking. I'm drinking Kaiju's Pleasure Cruise Hazy Pale Ale. You want to see that closer? Oh, got the karakin.
02:01:57
Speaker
Yes, it's four point eight percent. I have to admit that I did try this last night because I was thirsty and I bought two four packs. Treat yourself. You're worth it.
02:02:09
Speaker
I did and I am. It's great. Look, it's not going to redefine the genre. It's a hazy pale, so it's not very high in ABV. Like, it's not a 6%er. But it's nicely hazed, as you can see in my glass. It is not see-through. It's got a real light, tangy,
02:02:35
Speaker
hot flavor through it. I don't know if you would describe it as, it's more orange juice than it is citrus. Like it's, it's juicy, but it's not bitey. The way that you get a lot of zestiness out of a lot of the other beers we've tried. You've got a question on it to be your tongue. Yeah. In terms of like piffy orange or like. Yeah. It's got a little bit of the bitey juice orange.
02:03:02
Speaker
Yeah, it's got a little bit of pith around the edges, but it's mainly just juice. Okay. Cool. Yeah. It's good. I mean, it's not trying to be anything, it's not. I mean, Kaiju make fucking fantastic beers, as we know. I'm sure this will be part of their core range, to be honest. Just looking at it in terms of it's a hazy pale that nails the brief, but doesn't do anything spectacular. I think it's a good core range beer.
02:03:32
Speaker
In terms of like the almost like sibling to the kaiju crush in terms of their like the whole aisle kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I'm going to give it a four. It's a nice round number. That's what I'm feeling. Excellent. That's what I'm feeling. What are you drinking, Tom?
02:03:53
Speaker
I'm having the opposite of the last year I had. So I just had a... I'll put this in for you, Pete. So I just had a bracket. This is their West Coast. The one that's completely rubbed off the can. So I've had to go on the website to get the information. So this is the... It's their West Coast IPA style. It's a really deep West Coast color, like really deep golden.
02:04:16
Speaker
Which, when I see that, yeah, indicates good. Good West Coast IPA. It's right on the verge of red.
02:04:24
Speaker
Yeah, they use the same hops. So this is the thing I've discovered with this. I couldn't tell you because there's nothing on the fucking can. Um, but yeah, so this is the West side as soon as is Raquel and Nelson seven. Um, but obviously when they use different malts, you're getting a different expression of those style of hops coming through. Um, this is a really multi, um, kind of.
02:04:50
Speaker
And not hot Bernie kind of like hot style coming through that West Coast RBA. It's just like really hot floral. It's probably the better way to describe it. So it's, it's just, it's.
02:05:01
Speaker
When I'm drinking it, it's, it's, it's right up in there. Like it's, it's caught in my throat kind of thing, like top of my throat. It comes back every time I like that, that florals comes through. Um, as opposed to like, if you're having like an East East coast kind of style where it's like super hazy, super hot, Bernie, you go to take that and it kind of like that sticks in your throat and it comes through and it's kind of burning. This is, this is, this is the malt is carrying it, but it's, it's super floral and like in a, in a really, really nice way. Interesting.
02:05:29
Speaker
Yeah, you don't usually get multi and floral at the same time. Usually florals what you'd expect out of something a bit lighter. Yeah, I don't. Yeah, obviously just interesting. The way they've done it, they, they, you know, they talk about cannabis notes. I didn't get any of that. Not that dank.
02:05:48
Speaker
It is delicious, but it's not that dank. It's the same ABV, it's 7.6 ABV. I'm going to give it a 4.5. I think it's much better than the east side. I think the hops they've used really work better in this style. And just the way they carry them through, like the whole through flavor is better carried, the east side kind of died off.
02:06:15
Speaker
Whereas this is, this is the whole way through the palette. So yeah, it's great. Um, and yet my, my office, um, like the way I want to get more West coast, you know, in my fridge is, is, is, is apparent here, but you know, this is an expertly style. Like it's delicious. I got enough. Looks nice. 17, 17 months of it.
02:06:43
Speaker
That's 7.6 percent. I think not. Oh, it's whatever. It's just it's a new job. It's only tomorrow. Doesn't matter. Yeah. Dan, what are you drinking, mate? I am drinking another. Yeah, well, that's why I muted myself. Do you have a seizure? Are you OK? Yeah. Another squint is it's called drop your daiquiris. It's a love it.
02:07:11
Speaker
Sorry, there's a lot of sunlight coming through here at the moment. So it's a mango and vanilla smoothie. Are you potentially squinting to see this kind? Yeah, definitely. Give yourself an uppercut, mate. It's actually really well balanced against the last one that I had was obviously a similar style. It's that, uh, oat creamy lactose vanilla styled, uh,
02:07:39
Speaker
New England. And this one doesn't have the tartness because obviously it doesn't have the lime in the mango and the vanilla are really well balanced on the front end of it. It's quite, it's very smooth. Once again, no, I mean, I've used this glass for the rest of the day or the whole day. So no, no head retention on there, but that's to be expected. It's
02:08:01
Speaker
Body-wise, exactly the same as the Resica and Stoic manual, lime ice cream sour one, lime ice cream sour. Yeah. So body-wise, same amount of lactose, same amount of residual sugar, but it doesn't have that sourness, that tartness to it. So that's really well balanced against that side for being a similar style beer. So I think another 4.25. Nice. Very nice.
02:08:31
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. The mango comes through really well. Like if the other one was a splice, this one is a Whisper. That's cool. I like that. That's a great differential. Yeah. I think that's why they balance each other so well, because that's the, that's the mindset that I'm in.
02:08:53
Speaker
You can tell that you're a beer judge. I'm going to quickly grab another beer and take a late while we do. Are you winning son? I'm going to breeze through my winning son. Cause Pete, I'm going to do it. Cause Pete's fucking terrifying. I'm going to talk for like 16 hours and you know what? It's fine. Um, so I've, uh, for those of you who have Tom, fuck off. Sorry. That was a.
02:09:21
Speaker
You're gonna have to tell him he's got a flag that one 58 54 No, so I have followed Peter's footsteps and I have started getting right through the Assassin's Creed collection I've never played most of them I skip most of them not for any particular reason just at the time nothing none of them took my fancy I have been playing multiple Assassin's Creed games at a time because I'm sorry I've also had a
02:09:50
Speaker
Full disclaimer, I have just had the last three weeks off because I'm in between jobs. So as I told you guys, I rebuilt that PS3, so I jump straight back in. So I've been playing Assassin's Creed 2, the original PS3 version.
02:10:05
Speaker
It is janky as fuck. And I'm so glad I got through it. And then I got through it and I was just like, I don't give a flying fuck about what the modern Assassin's Creed story is. And I will come back to that when Pete's back because I really want Pete's opinion on it. So I've jumped into the remastered version of Assassin's Creed Brotherhood on the PS4, which I'm playing on the 5 obviously, but it was on the PS store. And then on the PS5, I've been going through like the modern, well,
02:10:35
Speaker
Modern? No. So from Assassin's Creed Brotherhood, I will then play Revelations. I will then go through Assassin's Creed 3. I will then go through Liberations. I just Platinum'd Assassin's Creed 4 Black Flag. So I went back and did the multiplayer, which fucking sucked. And my big thing about
02:10:53
Speaker
PS4 games that had multiplayer is they never should have had them and it's a dumb fucking thing the developers did to try and extend the lifetime of the game Stupid it's led into the live service games and your idiots for doing it and condemn you to the depths of hell Anyway, I still did it so I went back and did I did Assassin's Creed 4 multiplayer It was horrible. I had to play the same game mode So I counted it up. I was getting 8,000 XP per game
02:11:23
Speaker
Which meant by the time I actually figured out how many games I had to play, I had to do 60 different games to get to level 55. But I did it. Assassin's Creed 4 multiplayer. Fuck you. That was dumb. Never again. Unity is the dumbest Assassin's Creed game I've ever played because the guy doesn't climb the way he wanted to fucking climb.
02:11:48
Speaker
currently trying to play the co-op. Yeah, I know Pete's fucking loving this, but trying to currently play the co-op, it won't connect you unless you disconnect your Uplay account from your PS account. And even then it goes, no, I don't like you. You can't play with your friends. You're going to have to play in random multiplayer. That's a new bug. No one knows how to play the fucking game. So that's fucking dumb. Anyway. That's not a new bug.
02:12:10
Speaker
No, I know it's not. It's dumb. It's dumb. Ubisoft, you dumb fucking idiots. Um, look, uh, I, just the thing for me, I know, I know, but no, and this is the thing. So the Ubisoft that I've, I've endured.
02:12:28
Speaker
I really don't care about the modern-day Assassin's Creed story. Why do they keep forcing it on me? It's dumb, it's stupid, and I don't care. It's been pointless since Desmond died. Exactly. He dies?
02:12:42
Speaker
He's good. He's a fucking idiot. He's a fucking idiot. You've seen him die. You've played through the first. Oh shit. You haven't played. No, I don't care though. No, I'm actually really glad that he dies. That makes me happy. I'm going to play that game now. So I get to the point where he dies. I'm going to celebrate by fucking shitting on his face. I got to be honest. The AC series has never been the same for me since Desmond died. I just, I really enjoyed the trilogy of games that he was in. I hate the modern day story.
02:13:12
Speaker
It takes you out of the Assassin's Creed story. From two. Okay. Well, that will develop because it ends up being its own storyline in parallel to the games. And I understand what you're saying because I felt the same way in two. But by revelations, it'll change. I predict.
02:13:34
Speaker
All right, well, we'll get to that because I'm currently going through brotherhood. But every time I get taken out of the ancient story to go do the modern story, I'm pissed off. Yeah, it's a chore. Well, it's even worse in unity. It's worse in three ever since after Desmond dies. It's just pointless. Syndicate was fucking fun as shit. I love Syndicate. I love playing as that.
02:14:01
Speaker
I just thought the story was badly written because they kept portraying, they wanted the character they wanted you to enjoy is Jacob. And then suddenly put the sisters like, no, stop it, Jacob, you're a bad man. Stop doing that. You're destabilizing the culture. And everyone was like, the culture.
02:14:19
Speaker
But let us kill everyone as Jacob, because he's a fun like, oh, let's go. Go on. Give that governor. So look, it's it's it's fun to go through the series. It's especially coming from your especially like, you know, knowing the way you played them. It's just it's it's it's fun to play. I will have to can I if I can do a little shout out to the guy who got me through AC for and AC unity. His PlayStation username, if you want to do it is Horace deathmatch.
02:14:47
Speaker
Dude's trying to do every AC game in chronological order, but he's like trophy collection. He's committed to it and I'm so happy for him. He's going through it and he's loving it. The only one I'm missing is Brotherhood, but I did much the same. I just didn't do it back to back. Is he doing it back to back? Yeah. That would be a fucking chore.
02:15:12
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I need to go back and do. Yeah. Yeah. I assumed you would. I've got to go back into Brotherhood Platinum now that they've re-released it and removed all the ridiculous. I will say if you are doing the SEO collection on PS. Trilogy. Yeah, which has Brotherhood on it. It is a really good remaster collection. I will give you that.
02:15:36
Speaker
It's a very, very. I've started brotherhood. I started brotherhood, but I'm like, oh shit, I'm going back to this graphic proxy shit.
02:15:43
Speaker
Feathers. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Feathers. Anyway, also, yeah. So my new thing is, um, I've jumped back into, which is a very obscure part of trophy hunting, which obviously I'm known for now, um, which is boosting boosting communities. So I've jumped back into battlefield, the battlefront 2015. And it's been amazing. I got through every single multiplayer trophy. I fucking hated.
02:16:08
Speaker
I spent, I spent one afternoon, seven hours with some dudes, some college dudes from the US and they got me through it. Got me everything that I fucking knew I wouldn't do. These guys were like, college dudes in the US get a lot of people through a lot of things. Now, like, let's, let's do it. Let's go. Let's go. Let's, let's, let's fucking play it. And yeah. And so it's just been, it's a really wholesome union. Have you joined a frat? I haven't joined a frat yet, but I think I'm close. I think they might accept me. Just the hazing to go.
02:16:36
Speaker
Well, no, I've definitely been hazed because I got absolutely fucking monstered in just classic deathmatch. But yeah, no, it's been super fun. I'm going back to some old games and some platinums that I never would have gotten if I hadn't found a community to help me to get them. And that was AC4. I want to play it fucking sucked. That was horrible. I don't want to play Wolfpack again.
02:17:01
Speaker
Sorry, but the Ezio trilogy for me, that multiplayer was unique and different and interesting and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Blending in as a clone, you've only got 8 schemes in the map and then you go to that and it's just like,
02:17:18
Speaker
Why did you guys fuck up? You're on a, you created a unique mechanic inside a game that already had a bunch of unique mechanics. You really could have developed that further. This brings back a big topic we've had before is why are these perfect single player games forcing us to play multiplayer?
02:17:38
Speaker
And that's what I'm going back to now. That's the thing I'm raging against. I just, I just don't think, I think the story of AC4 was brilliant. I loved AC4. I've, I've, I've enjoyed. Hang on. Black Flag. Yeah. Is that what you're talking about? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So like playing Black Flag.
02:17:55
Speaker
I know that's why I was trying to differentiate it with numbers. Um, but yeah, black flag, like pirates, and it was such a beautiful story. And like the outside of the story, which wasn't just like being a plunderers pirate was, it was actually in, they created an innovative game mechanic for the ship to ship combat. It wasn't perfect by a long shot, but it was at least innovative. Do I have to go back to some weird multiplayer where I just have to walk around like
02:18:20
Speaker
a shit map and suddenly blend in and go, sink. Oh, you're dead. Anyway, I did it. So I'm done. And yeah, look, it's it's.
02:18:32
Speaker
I, I, I pledge my allegiance to the people who did it at the time. I, and I take my hat off to them because it's, it's a fucked multiplayer thing and I wouldn't have threw it without the boosting community. And I know Pete, you did this. So like my, my hat off is to you. Um, but my big thanks is to the, my newly discovered boosting community that is like, um, old games, multi-players that are still active servers.
02:18:58
Speaker
And it's just people who just want to help you. And it's, it's so, so wholesome. You get messages really like, Hey, man, what travers do you need? Let's do this. We'll do this game mode. We'll do this game mode. We'll do this game mode. We'll do them all in a row. Like, we'll make sure you get your thing you need. I need this weird, very weird thing. Do you think you can help me with it? Okay. Yeah, man, whatever you need. Let's do it. And it's just like, yeah. So I've been playing with like,
02:19:19
Speaker
American college guys online where they're just like, Hey, I really need you to trample me with an ATSC 25 times. I'm like, yeah, man, I'll do it. Let's go. Let's let's jump online. I got it. It's the most wholesome online play that I've ever played. I'm really excited. Cool. When you get to brotherhood and you start doing the multiplayer ones, cause I know they took all the multiple route. No, I'm playing the remastered version. So I have to do any of the multiplayer anymore.
02:19:45
Speaker
Yes, that's almost a shame for you to understand my pain. There was Abstergo employees, the name of the trophy. I still memorized the trophy. 15 different kill bonuses in the same match.
02:20:00
Speaker
It's a twelve minute match and even with boosters, it was almost impossible to get. Yeah, I never got it. And I was in a boosting match like I was spent hours in a boosting match with people who knew what you had to do. But to get the pistol kill and the same as the poison kill and the same as the fucking double kill and I just.
02:20:20
Speaker
I've been playing with a guy online. And I did this with RDR, RDR one, to play those missions online. And the community I'm playing online, my main man Horace Deathtouch, and I throw it out to him. He's not gonna listen to this, but I throw it out to him. He's the guy who got me through most of them. Oh, find that fucker on Instagram and add him.
02:20:39
Speaker
No, he's such a cool dude. Like we just, we just talk games all the time. And then, and then it's just, it's two dudes just like, while we're waiting for a game, we're just like, Hey man, what's going on? He's telling me about his tattoo the other day. I'll tell him about Mike. I finished, I starting a new job. We're talking about work stuff. And it's just like, yeah, while we play a nine year old man. Oh, no, get him up here. I want to book him. Like, absolutely.
02:21:04
Speaker
Dude did die, yeah. Well, that took a turn. It's the most wholesome gaming I've ever been involved in. I'm so glad that I have dived into it. And I would say this to all our listeners, if you have any games that you wanted to get a platinum for or like achievement trophy for, and it's just multiplayer, jump online says dudes definitely doing it. There's communities who are definitely doing it. And if you want to do it, they'll help you do it. I've discovered it. I'm now addicted. That's cool.
02:21:34
Speaker
What are you guys playing? What are you winning, son? Dan? You're on mute, bro. You're on mute, you idiot. It's very animatedly talking. I was. I'm going to blast through mine because I want to hear about Elden Ring. So I think the last time we did one of these, I was part of the way through Cyberpunk Phantom Liberty expansion, and I didn't have a full view of what that story looks like.
02:22:01
Speaker
Excellent. It was full CDPR story. It was emotional to the end.
02:22:11
Speaker
The way it played out in the end and the choices you had to make were impacting on your character's story and lifestyle all the way through. And even Johnny Silverhand that's in your head, once you finish and make a choice at the end of the story and you get back into the main storyline and the main Night City open world, Johnny Silverhand makes a comment about, well, that's going to change things going forward.
02:22:41
Speaker
I know it has minimal impact on where the main story ends up but my character and me or my my character via me is already making different choices on.
02:22:59
Speaker
what they are doing in the world because of the effects of what you did within Phantom Liberty go through. It's an excellent story. It's amazing. I love all the extra bits and pieces that they added too. So they had an extra area called Dogtown. The little weapons, the case drops that I dropped in our chat the other day, which have the reverse Boba Fett, Django Fett, Sonic explosion sound.
02:23:28
Speaker
I have my headphones on very loud when I play. That goes to Pete being able to hear himself through my headphones and the microphone. I play my game sounds very loud.
02:23:45
Speaker
And to have one of those drones come through and have the sonic explosion sound go off every time a package is dropped within Dogtown is really cool just to run around and be doing missions. And I'm like, I need to go over there, but I want to go over there because that's where the drone dropped it and there's smoke coming up from the drop. So I need to go and get that shit. And it's it's a really addictive gameplay element that they've dropped into there.
02:24:12
Speaker
the new gang that they put in in Dogtown is great as well and it plays out through the rest of the story as well so hats off to CDPR for introducing another fantastic story element of the game. I then went and jumped into Conan Exiles because I love the world of Conan and everything that it has to offer for all the movies and I delved back into the Jason Momoa movie and then jumped back in and watched both of the Arnie movies as well. Never seen the Momoa movie.
02:24:42
Speaker
I dropped it in the chat that when I watched it again two weeks ago, I really enjoyed it. Like it has its flaws, but I went into it the first time with really high expectations and it didn't meet those expectations. But going into it now with Conan exile level expectations and a new modern way of looking at film,
02:25:09
Speaker
It's actually quite good. It's cohesive. It all exists within its world. It all belongs. The costumes are great. It feels like Conan Momoa. I always said from the very first trailer and the actor announcement, I thought he was a great pick.
02:25:29
Speaker
I'd only at that stage seen him in Stargate Atlantis and we knew we could handle himself. He was very physical actor within Atlantis. He could handle blades and swords and I was just like, yeah, you know what? He screams Conan to me. He was MVP in Atlantis. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, Shepard was a pretty, pretty good character. And like, but, but Momoa there, it just,
02:26:01
Speaker
pulling him in and making that absolutely mountain of a man shirtless, wearing half a kiln for 90% of the movie, uh, is just a, it's a, it's a draw card on both ends because every man wants to be him and every one, every woman wants to have him. And it's just, it was a, it was a win-win scenario all the way through and.
02:26:25
Speaker
The dialogue isn't as bad as what I thought it was originally. The actors are good. Rose McGowan plays a fantastic evil witch. She's just evil and
02:26:40
Speaker
and she has this flare to her that when she's when she's on screen she has this this creepy movement she wears these steel claws and I just I think she's good and great in that aspect it's a shame we haven't seen her more in
02:26:58
Speaker
those kind of like a Christina Rickey now has found really found her niche in those, those weird characters. Rose McGowan needs to get back in the game and find her, find her Christina Rickey niche.
02:27:14
Speaker
That and Hollywood needs more of those weird outlandish females. It's kind of missing. There's there's only those couple that want to play outside the stereotype kind of thing and stereotypes on many levels.
02:27:33
Speaker
Yeah, but I think it's a great movie. I agree with Al, the ending lets it down. The ending fight was rushed and to CGI, it should have just been Conan with the big bad on a field doing their thing. But there was too much CGI dancing around spinning wooden wheels to be bidding with the rest of the movie.
02:27:56
Speaker
I get away from Conan Exiles survival survival game. You're an exile in the Conan world. The soundtracks are excellent. I've played it. Oh, you have played it. Have you? How far did you get through it? I cheese the button. Oh, I think I think the world's great. I think my favorite track from it is an Oasis of Calm. I think is one. It's one of the earliest tracks on Spotify. It is one of the earliest. It is one of the greatest
02:28:25
Speaker
game soundtrack songs. And I listen to it daily. I fucking love it. Completely great. It brings me calm. It brings me calm. The best thing about that game is the soundtrack. It's wonderful. It's wonderfully Conan across the ages. It's a building game. The building mechanics in there are great. The aesthetic of it's great. If you go too far without getting bored, then you start to die. Yeah.
02:28:53
Speaker
Yeah, it's proper survival. You need food, you need everything to get through. The armor outfits are great. The exploration of the world is very interesting compared to other survival games. Other survival games push you to generic biomes to get things and come back. Conan pushes you to a biome and then you see this thing
02:29:16
Speaker
that is an obscure something in the distance. And you go, What is that? And once you get up to it, it is something it's substantial, and it is interesting and it and it's the thing that drives you forward to, to explore this world to collect the resources from this biome and be able to survive to say, Hey, I want to see and explore more of what this is. The building is great. It's a it's a fantasy medieval,
02:29:45
Speaker
Building thing you can build castles and you could you can go nuts from a very early element of the game Kind of where I want to get to in that it's it's it's fun it has it's very much Conan across the Momoa and Schwarzenegger movies it all blends and is all wonderful Trek to you me I started playing that it's very much a carus kiyosaka Yeah
02:30:12
Speaker
There are so I'm not even going to try and hear a sour here. So yeah, there we go. Side scrolling goes to Tsushima. It's all in Japanese. It's got a film grain on it. It's very arcadey. It's a couple of buttons here and there. Mine, mine, mine, mine sits in waiting to start. I played the first level and I I want to save it for when I'm ready for it.
02:30:38
Speaker
Yeah, it's it was one of the first games I started a couple
Unique Gaming Experiences and Mechanics
02:30:43
Speaker
of weeks ago. It was one of the first games where Louise was sitting with me and she said, I don't like watching you play this. This is boring. And I'm like,
02:30:53
Speaker
Whoa. That's what makes it perfect. Yeah. It's not slow. It's contemplated. Really? And that's exactly what it was. It was slow. She wasn't reading. It was all in Japanese and it was black and white. And she wasn't reading the subtitle. She wasn't invested in the character and the story with me going forward. It's a two dimensional gameplay, but because you're already invested in the two dimensional, three dimensional world that
02:31:23
Speaker
that you're invested in all of the dimensions of it as where somebody that's only a quarter paying attention to what you're doing isn't invested in it. So I'm only a very, I'm like 20% through the gameplay of it. I'm enjoying it. It's okay. You can pick it up and you can put it down. It's not, it's not super complicated. I quit the first mission. So yeah, I wanted to come back to it when I was ready for it. Yeah.
02:31:48
Speaker
Yeah, definitely. Yeah, and I think so. I think it will actually play out to be quite an emotional story. It starts off that way with a master and apprentice.
02:32:01
Speaker
storyline and the master's daughter gets brought into it with the apprentice and then it does a time jump. And I think it's going to be a very interconnected story all the way through. And that's fun. And then my other one is blacksmith, which I've already talking about. So I've played a lot in the last four weeks, as well as some other bits and pieces like green. I love this. If you could shut up so I can listen to Pete, because I want to hear about Wolverine. Yeah, so do I.
02:32:30
Speaker
That's where I was getting. I'm going to need to weigh in a minute. No, that would go, Peter. Let's hear it. So I finished Got a Wall Valhalla. We talked about that all. Got a wall.
02:32:43
Speaker
Ragnarok Valhalla good of war. Listen, I'm drinking this. This is fucking spectacular. We have tried this on the podcast before. So this is the bloodshot red IPA from Ekken brewing, but it was canned three days ago. Like it is fucking chewy and it's so damn good for a red. So damn good.
02:33:16
Speaker
I've got to say it is the most unique and fun gaming experience I've had in maybe 20 years. I've never expected it. I genuinely never expected it. It is difficult.
02:33:34
Speaker
But it's not so difficult that I've had to fight the same boss more than three times and lose. So it's not impossible either. I've never farmed anything, so I've never gone out of my way to level up to be able to outlevel this shit. I feel like I probably did outlevel some of the earlier bosses just naturally, and so they were probably intended to be a lot more difficult than they were.
02:34:00
Speaker
But the world, the setting is just so creative and unique. I've never played a game like it. And yes, it carries on from the Bloodborne series, so the aesthetic is quite similar. I sent you guys some screenshots, which I'll throw up on the video, the YouTube version of the podcast. That was great. Soledborne.
02:34:19
Speaker
The monsters, it's Kingdom Death Monster, which is a board game I've talked about years ago, in a video game. You have these dudes with these long drawn faces and these big, pustulous beards, but then they've got like,
02:34:37
Speaker
Mushrooms growing out of one side of their face it's completely overtaken their face and their their bodies actually a dragon but the split open and there's bloody arms coming out at you while you're fighting this thing. It's just like even the base yeah it's fucked up and it's scary and there are jump horror. There's jump scare moments but I don't think it's intended to be jump scare as much as horror.
02:35:05
Speaker
Really unique game mechanics. It has one resource slash currency in the whole game. And so every time you kill something, you gain runes and you can spend those runes on weapons and armor or necessary keys to unlock doors, or you can spend those runes to upgrade, sorry, to level up. And so the leveling mechanic is the same as the purchasing mechanic in the game. It's one resource for the whole game.
02:35:32
Speaker
Right. Okay. That's very unique. Yeah. Yeah. If you die, you leave all the ruins that you were holding behind. If you die a second time before you collect them, they're gone for good. But just working through the bosses, I'm about two thirds of the way through all of the bosses that you have to kill for the platinum.
02:35:57
Speaker
And there's probably five or six more bosses that you don't need to get for the platinum that I'll go and do anyway. And the law is utterly unique. I've never read anything like it before. And it's not spoon fed to you. No one explains what the fuck's going on. You just dropped in this world and a pair of underpants and a stick.
02:36:17
Speaker
That's literally how you start depending on the on the class you pick I pick the name so you do start the game in underpants and a stick. And the first thing you you see when you emerge from the little. Tomb that you're in is this night in full armor who's at least seven eight foot tall on a warhorse who's fully barded in armor and that thing can kick your fucking ass.
02:36:44
Speaker
It's unapologetically difficult. It's just, it's one of the best, like I said, it's one of the best gaming experiences I've had in 20 years. And then the environmental creativity is spectacular too. And that's, that's what I've tried to represent in some of those screenshots is the variety of environments. You know, there's, there's oceans or there's lakes of rocks. Where are you putting screenshots?
02:37:13
Speaker
on WhatsApp in the break. I sent like eight screenshots. Do not disturb with your telecommunication device.
02:37:23
Speaker
There's a couple of, so I've got a couple of pictures of this grotesque boss that I fought. I managed to take a few screenshots in the middle of combat, which I'm pretty proud of. I'm pretty proud that I managed to grab those screenshots in the middle of a boss fight. So that was between phases because it was a two phase boss fight. You have to beat him twice.
02:37:45
Speaker
Um, and he's the serpent serpent with the fucking split around his sides where all the bloody arms are coming out at you. I do like the fact that you have the crest. You've got a little, little pressed on your arm. Yeah. That's, that's my current armor set. Yeah. Um, there's a shot where I'm standing, uh, standing with a train in the background and that is actually, you're on the tree. This is the erd tree. One of the erd trees. Yeah.
02:38:10
Speaker
Um, and there are many in the game. Well, this is a, this is actually a Hallig tree. Um, and this is what I really love about the law. It's, it's different and unique, but it's, it's not spoon-fed to you. You have to read the text that, uh, that described the weapons and the armors and the ashes of war, which are like almost spells that you attach to, to weapons. You have to read through all the texts and kind of piece together the law bit by bit. Um,
02:38:38
Speaker
There's quests in it, but they're not traditional quests. There's no log.
02:38:44
Speaker
She doesn't tell you, like the Renner, who's the lady with the big, weird hat, Dumbledore style hat that I sent you a picture of. Mushroomy thing. Yeah, so she's actually a goddess. She's a goddess and she has a series of quests and if you follow all the way through the quest line, it will lead to a unique ending that you can elect to go through.
02:39:10
Speaker
But it's not she never any point says go here do this. She just says I'm the you know the queen of the moon is cast out of heaven I say heaven in heavy rotation marks. You know I lost this thing and then you might encounter it on your travels or you may not.
02:39:32
Speaker
So, yeah. Wow. I can tell why at one game of the year, I really can. And not as difficult, like it's, it's a harder, it's probably the hardest game I've ever played, but it's not as impossible to beat as I expected. So it is definitely accessible. Yeah. That's good. Like I said, I've never, I've never lost a fourth time. Hmm.
02:39:57
Speaker
I might lose seven or eight times and then we'll go back to it. No, I got to say the Valkyrie. The Valkyrie fight at the end of God of War on maximum difficulty was way more difficult than any fight I've fought in Elden Ring. Way more difficult. I hated that. I think most people do.
02:40:20
Speaker
But the thing is, if you, if you can't beat a boss, you could walk away and go and level up. And as long as your build wasn't stupid, then, cause it's, I think it's an eight stat game. I think there's eight or nine stats. Um, and there are interesting stats because you've obviously got your standard three bars. So health, endurance and mind, which is like spell casting. Uh, it's also special moves because each weapon has its own like special attack.
02:40:51
Speaker
And that costs mind, but then you've got endurance strength, um, uh, faith. Uh, I can't remember all of them and it's kind of irrelevant anyway, but like, there's a lot of stats in the game that you can play with that will affect your build. So you can be a heavy spellcaster. You can be, I'm a, I've built my entire character around using a specific sword that I found early on in the game called the blood fangs blade. And it makes characters bleed.
02:41:18
Speaker
And it's fantastic for about 90% of the creatures you encounter, but the other 10% don't bleed and it's fucking useless. So it's got like, there's an invisible, like a, an unspoken, like an undeclared bar. And if you, if you cut down their health, it's almost like a shield, you'll make them bleed and you'll do a shitload of damage in one hit, but only once you get past that bar. Hmm.
02:41:45
Speaker
So I don't know if I'm making sense, but it's, you're making complete sense. I a hundred percent get what you were saying. Yeah. But the aesthetic, that's frustrating as fuck. Yeah. But it's not, it's such an enjoyable game. Like I've, Oh no, that would ship me to tears. You got someone down and then they suddenly were like, Oh no, new health power. No, no, no. I killed you.
02:42:10
Speaker
Well, no. So, so that, that bleed bar is kind of an undeclared bleed bar that you might hit four or five times in any counter, but they've only got one health bar. So I'm saying it's like a, it's like an invisible shield. If you break through the shield, then you'll do bonus damage, but you're doing damage every time you hit it. You have to, you have to roll at the exact right moment, which is exactly what you'd expect out of that type of game. There is a block mechanic. I've never explored it. I've literally never even attempted to block a single attack.
02:42:48
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, I'm playing a very different type of character. I've yeah, I go balls to the wall and then you've got summons during boss fights so you can summon ghosts that can help you in your combat, which is souls esque. Apparently like that's that's been in all the other games. And I and I use what's well, well known as the most powerful one, which is a mimic. And it it literally creates a second copy of you that runs around as a ghost and inherits your weapons and combat and abilities and all the rest of it.
02:43:02
Speaker
because I'm not a build that uses a shield. I'm just not.
02:43:19
Speaker
So, um, I think you would both enjoy it for very different reasons. And I think you would not hit the frustration barrier that you're probably worried about. I think I'll probably smash out banishes and then I'll, Elden Ring will be the next one that I jump into. Yeah, cool. I know Tom's came to play it.
02:43:44
Speaker
I know I am keen to play it and I really like hearing your style of playing it. I think that really excites me the way you play it. That draws me in more than like seeing a review of something like knowing you and just being like, yeah, I want to play it like Pete plays it. But yeah, it's a long way down my list, unfortunately, because I have a very fucking list. The one thing I will say is you learn
02:44:08
Speaker
about 15 hours in that just because the monster is the size of a skyscraper, it doesn't mean that it's going to necessarily kick your ass. Because all of the monsters are huge in this game. Like 20 foot tall is average. Yeah. Anyway, that's what I've got to say on the topic.
02:44:33
Speaker
That sounds fucking amazing. Yeah. Yeah. I'm, I'm very keen to jump into it. I know you've been, I wouldn't say pressuring me, but you've been, you've been. No, we talked about it at the start cause you and I were going to launch the game together and then I felt like a bit of an asshole cause I felt like playing a game and didn't wait for you.
02:44:51
Speaker
No, it's because I was lost in the ether. I was 17 miles back and like, go Peter, run, go, please play the game. It's super exciting. I'm super glad you've jumped in and you show us what the game is about. That's, that's really cool. That's exactly what I want. Yeah. I mean, in-game content now, and I can tell you the difficulty curve is ramping up very quickly.
02:45:16
Speaker
No, no. So, so I guess true in game content, I probably misspoke. I'm at the end of the game content. So I'm, I'm up to the final three bosses in the main story. And I've got about 11 bosses total to kill. This is a bunch of trophy bosses that are optional. Um, but I'm at the end of the game and the curve is just like fucking even the trash mobs are kicking my ass now.
02:45:42
Speaker
Like you have to think about. It's not a game you can play drunk. I can, I can definitely confirm that. I mean, that sounds like something we could do. You never heard of Drunken, Drunken Poolmasters? I've, I've done a lot of stuff myself quite drunk successfully. This is not one of those games. I was about to say, is there a whole form of Kung Fu that's around Drunken? Basically me playing any first person shooter. Yeah.
02:46:13
Speaker
Anyway, it's fantastic. That's very cool, Pete. I'm very, I am, I am super excited to jump into Eldering and I'm glad that you've, you've done the recon for me. So thank you. I'm somewhat surprised given all of the, the preparatory discussion that we've had for that type of game. I was pleasantly surprised. Good. I'm glad you're enjoying it. Yeah. Anyway, I think that's us. We're done. I think it is. Yeah. Thanks very much for listening.
02:46:42
Speaker
Absolutely. Uh, look, game well, watch well, be well. See you later. You dog. Like and subscribe. Definitely do that. The facts you couldn't even get it out. Bye.