From 8-Bit to 4K Episode 24: Adding Insult to Injury

[00:00:10] Speaker A: Hello and welcome to episode 24 of from 8bit to 4k. I'm your host this week. I'm Jack Sohman and I've got with me Mike of Many Names. [00:00:20] Speaker B: How's it going everybody? [00:00:22] Speaker A: And we've got Pillow Pet. [00:00:24] Speaker C: I am excited. [00:00:26] Speaker A: What are you excited about? [00:00:27] Speaker C: To be disappointed. [00:00:30] Speaker A: Fair enough. Guys. We're part of the Four Wards Podcast network which means we've got some patrons to shout out. I want to give a shout out to Codex Ninja, Pillow Pet, Labana and Uncle Chrisco for supporting the podcast network at the shoutout tier. If you want to support the podcast, head over to patreon.com the Four Wards podcast. $1 a month just tells us that you love us. $5 a month gets you an exclusive feed of some behind the scenes audio of our prep work before each show and $10 a month gets you that same exclusive feed. And we will shout your name out at the top of every episode. And all benefits extend to the main 4 wards podcast as well as this one. So last episode we talked to you guys about remakes that went above and beyond that were more than just a graphical overhaul. They reimagined maybe aspects of a game or an entire game and were exceptional, in many cases better than the originals and in almost every case a better way to introduce a modern non nostalgic player to that game. So we're gonna do the opposite. This week we've got two groups of games. We're gonna talk about some remakes that we don't understand why they felt the need to call this a remake or a remaster or anything. It's literally just the same fucking game. And I don't know why they refused to just call it a port or is otherwise pointless because we have one that's not one of those, but it's just as pointless. And then we also have some truly disappointing remakes for various reasons that we're going to talk about. And I want to do it in that order actually. So I'll kick things off with our oddball out. I want to talk to you guys briefly about the early 1990s. It was a special time. We had games on physical cartridges. We didn't even have CDs yet, but then we got CDs and they were this cool new thing. And Prior to the PlayStation, Sega made the Sega CD add on for the Sega Genesis, which let you play games that were based on CDs on your Sega Genesis. It also came with like some extra RAM and some other stuff. So the games were usually A little bit more capable than a regular Genesis cartridge game. Unfortunately, in the 90s, a lot of what the extra space on a CD got used for. Because a CD holds 700 megabytes of data. A game cartridge at the time held four. A big game cartridge like Chrono Trigger was a four megabyte game cartridge. [00:03:08] Speaker B: It would be another few years before you would get games that would be multiple CDs long. [00:03:14] Speaker A: Yes. So there was just. It was not possible in 1992 to make a video game where the video game content filled a cd, which meant most of what came out on the Sega CD was FMV games. And one of the most famous and notorious of these is a game called Night Trap. This is a game where you are like, in a, like, operations control room with a bunch of cameras watching a group of teenage girls having a sleepover. And you have to trigger traps to catch, like, attacking monsters and ninjas and vampires and all sorts of bullshit that are trying to kill these girls having their. Their slumber party. Like, I am not kidding. That's the premise of Night Trap. It's stupid. For whatever reason, this is the one of these shitty games that became famous and like, well known. So in 2017, they. Oh, the reason it became famous and well known is that it was one of the ones that was used as an example by Senators in U.S. congress of why video games were too violent in attempts to censor video games in the 90s. That's why I forgot about that. Fuck Joe Lieberman. I think that is an official stance of this podcast. Fuck that guy. [00:04:35] Speaker B: Yeah, probably. [00:04:35] Speaker A: So in 2017, they remastered Night Trap, a game that no one was asking for. No one wanted this to be remastered and they released it on PlayStation and Windows. And it's just. It's a fucking FMV game. It doesn't need to exist. No one wants this. There's no reason to play it. It's terrible. [00:04:59] Speaker C: But you got it in that sweet [00:05:00] Speaker A: 1080p upscaled from the original video, which was probably recorded on VHS tapes. It's. It's not a disappointing remake because no one was looking forward to it. It's not a bad remake. It's not any worse than the original was, but the original is so undesirable. And it's. It's important historically, but it's not a game anyone was itching to play again. So that's. That's our, like, why the fuck? As opposed to the next group. Mike, you've been very excited about this, and I think Pillow's gonna chime in. You've put one of the most remastered and remade video games of all time in the pointless section. [00:05:41] Speaker B: And that is the key. It has been remade and remastered, I think nine separate times. [00:05:48] Speaker C: 15 across 10 platforms. [00:05:51] Speaker B: Okay, fuck. [00:05:52] Speaker A: Explain what game this is. [00:05:53] Speaker B: This is Bionicle, if you haven't already guessed it. It's Elder Scrolls Skyrim. Why have they remade this so many times? Why? Why? I understand ports. Some ports are okay. You port one generation, you port to a new hardware. Okay, so you do it to a switch, that. That's two. And maybe later on you get a remaster. That's. That's three. Three to 15. Five times as many as there should be. [00:06:21] Speaker A: When and what did the original come out for? [00:06:24] Speaker B: The original came out in 111111 if I'm not mistaken. [00:06:28] Speaker C: Yeah, it came out in 2011 for PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. [00:06:34] Speaker A: Was it PS3 and Xbox 360? Really? [00:06:37] Speaker B: Yes, it was everything. [00:06:39] Speaker A: I thought Skyrim was a PS4 and Xbox One game originally. Goddamn. [00:06:44] Speaker C: It will get there. [00:06:46] Speaker B: It will get there. [00:06:47] Speaker A: But still, 15 years and it's got 15 remastered or re released versions. God damn. [00:06:53] Speaker B: And it's not one per year, really. There have been multiple in the same year. [00:06:58] Speaker C: What's really funny to me is Oblivion to me is just like a better game. And it's got one remake, just the one. [00:07:08] Speaker A: And from what I've heard, the remake is fine. [00:07:10] Speaker C: Yeah, it does exactly what it's supposed to do. It's upscaling, it's making it better without taking away the entire charm. Basically charging you for what modders already [00:07:21] Speaker A: did, which is its own. [00:07:24] Speaker C: But yeah, yeah. So what really gets me with this and like fun is the names that they give these remakes. And so for instance, like you got the original, then you got Legendary, then you got special, then you got the very special, and then you got an anniversary. [00:07:45] Speaker B: There's a, there's an anniversary edition, There's a definitive edition. [00:07:49] Speaker C: Yeah, like the ones that I can understand is when PlayStation came out with their VR and they're like, hey, let's put Skyrim on VR. That makes sense to me. It's cool. You know, it's a good use of some VR. [00:08:02] Speaker A: I have some frustration with that. I actually own that version of the game. Why the fuck was that never properly ported to PC? I think there is a Skyrim VR on PC. It's not the PlayStation version ported and it's a separate fucking product instead of just a mode within the game. So you can't use all your existing Skyrim Special Edition mods because it's a separate fucking program. [00:08:27] Speaker C: This. So the very special edition this is. You want to guess? I will give you guys if. Unless you've already looked it up, you'll never guess the console that it was released on. [00:08:39] Speaker B: I Very special. Let me guess. [00:08:41] Speaker C: It's Phone, Typhoon, Amazon, Alexa. [00:08:45] Speaker A: What the fuck? [00:08:47] Speaker C: It is a completely text based comedy version of the game that you play on Alexa. [00:08:55] Speaker A: What the fuck? [00:08:56] Speaker C: Now granted, I don't know how much this costs. I don't know how much it costs and I mean to be fair, I had to look this up, but it was a fully text based. [00:09:06] Speaker A: I would have loved that. That's out of all of the useless Skyrim remasters. That one's actually funny. [00:09:14] Speaker C: At least now I've never tried it. I'd be interested if it's just like you're. It's reading and telling you the story. I think that'd be kind of cool. Like if you're sitting in the kitchen like making dinner or something. You could play Skyrim with your voice. But I've never tried it. I'd be interested. I'll pay the $60 for it. I'm sure that's what they're charging. [00:09:35] Speaker A: Oh, probably it is Bethesda after all. [00:09:39] Speaker B: All right, the question is, is there a separate release for every single. There is a Switch 2 version that is the most recent one. [00:09:49] Speaker A: Okay, but is the Switch 2 actually trying to be different in any way or is it just most recent version of Skyrim? We ported it to Switch 2. [00:09:56] Speaker B: It already had a Switch version. Why didn't you have a Switch 2 version? [00:09:59] Speaker A: Because Switch games can't use the Switch 2 hardware. They actually have to have a separate version to be able to use Switch 2 hardware. Every Switch game that's got an enhanced port is Nintendo Switch 2 Edition or some verbiage thereof. [00:10:13] Speaker C: Like. [00:10:14] Speaker A: So that would actually has a Nintendo Switch 2 version. [00:10:17] Speaker C: Okay, that would actually make it 16 releases over 11 platforms. [00:10:22] Speaker A: But again, those are just generally ports that are removing some of the limiters from the Switch version because the Switch can't handle features. [00:10:32] Speaker C: It's essentially like when you get the free upgrade on PS5 for PS4 games, right? [00:10:36] Speaker A: If they're not charging for a expansion pass or expansion pack or whatever term Nintendo uses for their paid upgrades, then the Switch 2 edition is literally just we ported it and that's fine. [00:10:50] Speaker C: I remember when it got released on the Switch. [00:10:53] Speaker A: Ports are good. [00:10:54] Speaker B: No, the problem was there were four editions released within two years. [00:10:57] Speaker C: Yep, like the big seller for the switch was like, hey, you can aim with your Joy Cons, you can aim your bows with the Joy Cons. [00:11:06] Speaker A: Why would you want to? [00:11:08] Speaker C: Because everybody's a stealth archer. [00:11:11] Speaker B: Yeah. Knows by this point in time there's probably a PS5 version of it. [00:11:16] Speaker A: Oh, for sure. [00:11:17] Speaker B: Xbox One thing. [00:11:19] Speaker C: The question that we have to answer here is pointless because there's so many. Not because it was done. It should have been done. But there doesn't have to be 15 of them. [00:11:32] Speaker A: The pointless is that most of these different versions are not interchangeable minor updates as an excuse to port to a new platform. It's not like, okay, we have Skyrim and then Skyrim Special Edition, which seems to be the current platform that everything Skyrim is based on. [00:11:53] Speaker B: No, Anniversary. [00:11:56] Speaker A: I'm getting there. [00:11:57] Speaker B: I'm getting there. [00:11:58] Speaker A: And then we ported that to everything. No, they have original Collector's Edition, Premium Edition, Legendary Edition, Special Edition, and then Anniversary Edition is just a DLC for the PC Special Edition version. It's then what they named their ports to modern platforms for the PS5 and Xbox Series X. But it is Skyrim Special Edition. Just then they added some stuff so they could sell it as DLC on PC. And that's the including. The whole thing is what they then ported to modern platforms. [00:12:29] Speaker C: You can fish. [00:12:32] Speaker A: Yeah, and that distinction is important. That on PC, Special Edition is the last like actual change to Skyrim. And then Anniversary Edition is DLC on top of it. The consoles get fucked up. [00:12:50] Speaker C: That's so funny. [00:12:52] Speaker A: There should literally just be two versions of this game. There should be the original version of Skyrim and then Skyrim Special Edition. And then Anniversary Edition can be DLC package for Special Edition. [00:13:02] Speaker B: I can give it the Switch or the VR one as well. Make it your VR game. Having fun with that? Sure, fine. [00:13:07] Speaker A: It should be a DLC included in the core game. So you can play your fucking mods on Skyrim VR on PC. Because I would love to play Skyrim in VR. [00:13:18] Speaker B: I don't. [00:13:19] Speaker A: I'm not going to play Skyrim unmodded. [00:13:21] Speaker B: I don't know how VR works in comparison to the base games. That was never one of the tech things I went into. I know there are technical differences between them, so they may have had to create a completely separate hardware for it. [00:13:34] Speaker A: Yeah, because they designed their game stupid, instead of just building VR into their existing product. [00:13:39] Speaker B: Well, VR was not there for their original one. So with the Special Edition, maybe they would have figured that out. [00:13:44] Speaker A: That's what I mean. Anyway, pillow you've got another Pointless remaster to talk about. Yeah, Probably a little less contentious. [00:13:52] Speaker C: Yeah, it's definitely not gonna be like Skyrim worthy. But I got the Last of us part one on here and let me just say that the PS4 version had already got a remake to 60fps and you know, and it ran beautifully. Then they re released it for $70 for PlayStation 5 and it was just a port of the PS4 game, a port of the remaster and they charged a full $70 for it. That's why it's kind of like pointless and borderline criminal. But I mean, great game. Ran great on PS4, ran great on PS3. Just like, why, why are you just scamming people out of money? And like this was all around the hype of the TV show when it came out. So, you know, people were buying into the hype and there it is. Disappointing. [00:14:48] Speaker B: Like why I feel like this was well before the show came out. This was like the remake was so long. [00:14:57] Speaker C: The remake for PS5 was time to release alongside the TV show. [00:15:03] Speaker B: Yes, the, the third remake. Because that is the third remake. [00:15:06] Speaker C: Yeah, that's the one I'm talking about, not the PS4 remake. That one was great. It upgraded, you know, the to 60 FPS and it gave you like good modern feel. [00:15:17] Speaker A: And then they upgraded the game hardware that could actually do. [00:15:21] Speaker C: Yeah, and then they sold a PS5 version. Like sold a PS5 version. Not just an upgrade to the PS5 version for $70. The exact same. [00:15:32] Speaker A: No changes and reminder. The PS5 is fully backwards compatible with PS4 games. You can load and play every single PS4 title on a PS5 and play them as intended on the PS4. So if you don't include any graphical updates or technical updates, the game already ran at 60fps at 8 in HD on the PS4. Your PS5 version is the exact same fucking game. Which is my complaint about Tales of Berseria Remastered. Tales of Berseria came out a decade ago. It got a remaster this year. This is the newest remaster in our discussion today. And Tales of Berseria, when it came out, came out on the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4. The PlayStation 4 version already ran at high frame rates with HD graphics. And then it was also released on PC. So then this year they decided to release Tales of Berseria Remastered. And I'm going to quote from this article about it, a game that is still readily available on current generation platforms today. And Tales of Berseria Remastered said, hey, that game that we've been selling on steam sales for $5 $10 consistently for years. We want 50 bucks. That's it. It just includes the DLC, 99% of which you don't fucking need. They're just, at best some costumes and at worst, cheat modes like you don't need any of that DLC shit. And then they also sell this remaster on PC where it's not even a port. I literally looked up YouTube videos showing a side by side comparison of original versus remastered graphics. And if you removed the labels, I could not tell you which is which. It's literally the same game. This should have just been a port. It makes no fucking sense to, quote unquote, remaster a PlayStation 4 game that was already high resolution and high FPS for the PS5. There's no graphical updates to make. Okay, I think that's the end of the soapbox of the pointless ones. Let's talk about the ones that hurt us. We're going to talk about some of the most disappointing video game remakes in history. And I want to kick it off with one that I think is going to catch people off guard if they're not super familiar, because I want to talk about Tony hawk's Pro Skater HD. No, not Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 2, the recent HD remaster of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 and 2, which is awesome. That game's great. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater HD was an HD remake of Tony hawk's Pro Skater 1 and 2 for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. It was terrible. For one. They literally just picked a few bits of content from both of the original games that it was drawing from. So, like, not all of the characters from Tony Hawkspur's Gator 1 and 2 are included. Not all of the levels from Tony hawk's Pro Skater 1 and 2 are included. And then on top of that, it doesn't have the music. The soundtrack. [00:18:52] Speaker B: Didn't it miss, like, the entire soundtrack? [00:18:55] Speaker A: It had some songs from Tony Hawk's Pro Skater and Pro Skater 2 and then a bunch of other shit. And to be clear, Tony hawk's Pro Skater OnePlus 2 has a bunch of songs that weren't on the original soundtrack too, but they made sure to include as much of the original soundtrack as they could license, which I think is literally all but one song. [00:19:16] Speaker B: Yeah, I think one person denied them. [00:19:18] Speaker A: Yeah. And they included every level and every character from the original games. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater HD is an insult to your memories of Tony hawk's Pro Skater 1 and 2 because it is Somehow a worse mashing together of Tony hawk's Pro Skater 1 and 2 then Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2X for the original Xbox, which was a re release of Tony hawk's Pro Skater 1 and 2 mashed together on the original Xbox. It was a launch title for the original Xbox. And the fact that this game 11 years earlier was a better HD remaster of Tony hawk's Pro Skater 1 and 2 than Tony Hawk's Pro Skater HD. [00:20:02] Speaker B: Thank you. [00:20:03] Speaker A: I think really tells the whole story right there. Pretty much like Tony haas, pro skater 2x had problems. It was not an amazing version of the game, but it wasn't bad. Alright Mike, let's. Let's do something a little contentious. Pillow talked about a Pokemon remake he really liked last week. Tell us about one you really dislike. [00:20:26] Speaker B: So these were released around the same time. In fact almost exactly at the same time. Pokemon, diamond and Pearl have been fan favorites for a very, very long time. Gen 4 is very well loved and [00:20:41] Speaker A: the Gen 4 is widely considered the best generation. Not necessarily just diamond and Pearl. That's also including the Gold and Silver remakes. [00:20:51] Speaker B: And one of that's one of the reasons why it was very, very hotly thought about. But then they made BDSP and the very first thing that everyone looked at was this weird Chibi art style that they did, which okay, I didn't like it, but I didn't hate it. It tried to make it squishier. It feels like it a friendlier and a vision which started off being kind of not great. And then they did nothing with any of the update versions. Every single innovation that they made through Platinum through Gold and Silver, that the Heartgold and Soulsilver remakes and multiple generations since, they just ignored all of that. To recreate verbatim what diamond and Pearl were, which was seriously frustrating because a lot of those innovations became really core things and it was incredibly frustrating. But also it felt like as you played the game it was easier and easier because of these things. And then the kick in the pants is the one shred of difficulty the game finally has is in the Elite four. And if you're not looking for it and if you're not like you've gone through most of this game, everything has been a breeze for you right now. And then you hit the Elite four and then they are suddenly spontaneously Max iv, Max Eevee perfect items, competitive ready versions of their teams. Cynthia is the scariest trainer ever. And she was already scary, but now she has a perfect garchomp. A perfect Garchomp with items that make her better. [00:22:45] Speaker A: As in, like, literally the kind you would see on, like the online simulator battles. Yes, Pokemon, and not something that you would ever really encounter in a real game. [00:22:56] Speaker B: And suddenly their AI was tweaked to be that, like, actual competitive version of AI where it's trying to win now. So they spend the entire game lulling you into this previous sense of, well, we're just going to go through everything at as normal and then smack you with the single hardest Elite four that has ever been released in its hardest iteration. [00:23:23] Speaker A: I'm not going to lie that I kind of love that it was. [00:23:27] Speaker B: I am one of the few people who actually enjoyed that. But I understand why people were furious, because if you didn't actually go through the game as someone who's trying to do things, you hit. You hit the wall on Cynthia and you went, what the fuck just happened? And then to top all of this off, they explicitly, explicitly made sure that everything was back to its initial point. So that means things like the expanded Pokedex that you get from Platinum isn't there. So Pokemon that were released and ready for this game you couldn't use because they were part of the Pokedex that you couldn't get to until post. Cynthia. They are. They're taking steps backwards within this remakes by leaps and bounds. The remakes that they've done before this one, every single remake that they have ever made up until this point has added innovation, has taken things that have been made and molded them in and has expanded upon it and legitimately made the series better. You talked about it with Heartgold and Soulsilver. Those are possibly the best games in the franchise, and they're remakes. [00:24:49] Speaker A: They're also definitely the best remakes in the franchise. Omega Straight remakes, they don't reimagine anything, which is why we didn't really talk about them last episode. But like all gold and silver needed was being updated to modern ish Pokemon mechanics. [00:25:04] Speaker B: Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire. They. It is actually a remaster instead of a remake. They. They updated things, they tweaked things, they put things more towards the Emerald section and took the. The expanded storyline and then pushed it even further and added new content and gave you more things and brought content in from the current generation that was X and Y so that you could do things within this. [00:25:33] Speaker C: While we're talking about the updated Gen 3, I just want to say what blew my mind in that game when I played it was the open world [00:25:41] Speaker B: flying the flying on the ice and Lotus was amazing. Absolutely incredible. [00:25:44] Speaker C: Oh yeah. But that's all I wanted to add. [00:25:46] Speaker B: Yeah. Innovations. And they made this. You had a chance with the most beloved generation to do something brilliant and you ignored everything to do a perfect copy paste right up until the very end and then say, eh, fuck it. Everyone thinks things are too easy. Let's make this part hard. Which that's just. So it was a fun troll like there. Yeah. That had to be someone trolling there at some point in time. But why? Why just do this mindless remake and take nothing from any of your remakes you'd previously done, all of them ignored. To just make the single least popular Pokemon I think that has ever been released over. Let's go Pikachu and Eevee and I dislike them because of their game mechanics. [00:26:53] Speaker A: Yep. All right. Pillow, I'm not gonna give you a specific segue. Pick one of the ones on your list you want to talk about and explain to us what made the original good and why the remake is bad. [00:27:03] Speaker C: Well, I think I'm gonna just come out and say, like this one you will find on every list on the Internet talking about the worst remake slash remasters. And I am talking Warcraft 3 Reforged. It is heavily criticized to be one of the worst because of how they did it. Now to be fair, I did not buy this at launch, so I cannot speak from experience on this. So I'm just going to read through what I was able to put together. Online game breaking bugs. We all probably have heard about it. They were missing multiplayer features. They did not have the clans or ranked ladders. There was no ranked ladder. And that's why people played Warcraft 3. Why people played Warcraft 3 to this day. They liked the ranked ladder. It is still a highly competitive game, just like Starcraft. I would say it was missing a lot of the features. And the hard thing I think about this game that made it awful, is it forced people to install this game. A 30 gig update which took people's old games and completely ruined them. Like took them out. It forced an update on the original game. Whether you own this game or not. That I do remember. Yeah, we all know what a scumbaggy company Activision Blizzard is. It is nothing like the old Blizzard that was super friendly, loved its player base, listened to its player base. Activision is just criminal. And let me the icing on the cake on this because we don't have to spend forever on it because there's plenty of information out there on it. They added a Eula change to this reforged and they updated the user agreement. They updated their user agreement to claim complete ownership of any custom game made on the game. So they did not want another. Yeah, they did not want another Dota situation. And I am so thankful that this wasn't a thing back in original because we wouldn't be blessed with some of the games that we have today. [00:29:23] Speaker B: We would not have a podcast, we [00:29:25] Speaker C: would not that we would not have League of Legends. Like it just wouldn't be a thing. I mean it might be something similar but with how in not knocking Heroes Storm I think it was fun, but it's not the MOBA that you love. It was fun in its own ways. It was quirky. Like I loved playing going in and playing as Illidan and charging across the map and playing as all these cool Warcraft heroes. They didn't do a great job in my opinion for a competitive MOBA because of how it was designed. So I'm just thankful that they didn't have this greedy EULA agreement back then because we would probably be missing and there's probably games out there we don't even know or even thinking of that would not exist today if that was a thing back then. But you know, scumbaggy Activision, I'm not even going to say Blizzard scumbaggy Activision stepped in and of course ruined a good thing. But I have played the game recently and you know, in the past year or so because I was having a real itch of playing, you know, the RTS and this is while playing Starcraft and I came back and play reforged, it seemed fine. Now I don't know if some like what if they've reverted some of these decisions for the backlash. But I know as far as like the Grain Bakery game breaking bugs, [00:30:54] Speaker A: I [00:30:54] Speaker C: know that they promised upgraded cinematics and they didn't do that. Like that was canceled at release and I know a lot of people were mad and it wasn't talked about or they weren't giving warning about warning about it. They just released the game and didn't say hey, by the way, here's the game that we promised was going to be completely updated graphics, cinematics included. And if you know Blizzard they are. They make amazing, some of the best amazing the best cinematics and none of those were updated, which is very disappointing. And I could say to this day they're still not updated. You so you're playing this updated game and then you get thrown into a 20, 30 year old. I don't Even know when it was released. Graphic. [00:31:38] Speaker B: It is an old graphic. It still looks good because those old [00:31:41] Speaker C: ones are still really good. [00:31:42] Speaker B: Like some of Blizzard for the time they released they were the best cinematics. Yeah. And so they still look good. Yeah, but it's noticeable with things like that. And yeah, this was this. A lot of the selling points they talked about with the game just were lies, straight lies. They ended up, if I remember correctly, outsourcing half of the rework to a company in China and just taking it away from a Blizzard dev team so that the remake was not even by anybody from Blizzard. Like this was maybe out of any of the like well known reforged companies something that was so well regarded thrown in the dirt. [00:32:27] Speaker C: I would say Blizzard's downfall started when Activision joined. I know Blizzard in themselves were in some hot water for a while there, but that did all happen to act till after Activision joined. So I'm not correlating the two together. And Blizzard was a very good company. Like the people cared about the game, they cared about their customers and their player base. They cared and now they don't. And now it's just I wanted to bring Call of Duty into this. So this is where I'm going to bring it in. It's the Call of Duty. Here's a release every six months. Buy our game buyer that's just money hungry. That's all they want is money. And there are still employees at Blizzard fighting for their games. But man, do they have to go through some red tape. [00:33:17] Speaker B: Thankfully Activision is now gone. Unfortunately Microsoft has proven to be not [00:33:23] Speaker C: so they're not any better. [00:33:25] Speaker B: Good. They have a little bit more freedom thankfully than they did under Activision. [00:33:30] Speaker A: But if you want to understand how awful Activision has been for Blizzard, There is a YouTube group, a YouTube comedy group that do skits called Viva la Dirt League. I highly recommend go check them out. They have skits where they have some of them playing like Activision executives in board meetings planning like expansions for their. They call it Skycraft, but it's clearly Warcraft analog and it's hilarious and depressing because it's not even satire, it's just more or less actually pretty much, yeah. [00:34:06] Speaker B: Like to understand the kind of love we used to have, if you heard that Blizzard was making a game, you essentially went all right, this is a pre purchase game. I'm getting this game because every single thing that they touched when they were in their prime was gold. Everything they made was fantastic. They were the innovators. [00:34:28] Speaker C: You always got your money's worth. [00:34:31] Speaker B: They were the innovators of the RTS genre with Starcraft and Warcraft, they were the creators of the arpg with Diablo, [00:34:38] Speaker C: they were what every MMO strived to be. [00:34:42] Speaker A: And I think the last time that it was true that a Blizzard game you could just trust to just buy pre order it was fine, was StarCraft 2 Wings of Liberty. [00:34:54] Speaker B: Both of the expansions for StarCraft II were legitimately fantastic. But StarCraft 2 Wings of Liberty was the last one that you went, I need this, this is this, this, this is coming. [00:35:03] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. Because we all felt that way about Diablo 3 and then release Diablo 3 happened and that was, that was the warning sign of oh, they've been activisioned because Activision had owned them for several years at that point. Activision bought them late Enough in the StarCraft 2 Wings of Liberty dev cycle. I don't think Activision was able to fuck up Wings of Liberty, thankfully. [00:35:27] Speaker B: Also the people that the last vestiges that we'll call them of the true core Blizzard development were always In StarCraft because StarCraft was for a lot of the original people, StarCraft was the game that made them really hype. [00:35:46] Speaker A: Also I think the most important aspect of why Warcraft 3 reforged is so insulting is Starcraft Remastered is good. [00:35:54] Speaker B: Starcraft Remastered is fantastic. And it came out, it came out after Warcraft reforged, didn't it? [00:36:01] Speaker A: No, it was first three years earlier. [00:36:03] Speaker B: Three years earlier. [00:36:03] Speaker A: So they had, they had done it right for their best game they ever made and then for their second best RTs they ever made, they fucked it up that badly. [00:36:15] Speaker B: Mm. [00:36:17] Speaker C: Like Activision. [00:36:18] Speaker A: I don't understand how that's even possible. [00:36:21] Speaker B: I have over on my desk over there an old code for my Warcraft 3 discs. I can't touch that anymore. I can't use it. [00:36:30] Speaker A: Yep. [00:36:31] Speaker C: Oh man. To go back to CD keys. [00:36:34] Speaker A: Alright, Speaking of CD keys, I'm gonna talk about one of the most disappointing remakes ever. And I actually briefly touched on this when we talked about our Steam sale topic. Do not under any circumstances buy Heroes of might and magic3hd. And I say that despite me also in the same breath saying you should buy and play Heroes of Might and Magic three. Heroes of Might and Magic three to this day is possibly the best in genre title for this specific sub genre of 4x games. Because this is a 4x. [00:37:09] Speaker B: Like this is proto 4x. [00:37:10] Speaker A: Yeah, it's expand your empire and take over the world type game. Heroes 3 came out in 1999. It got two expansions over the course of 1999 and 2000. And in 2000 they released Heroes of Might and Magic 3 Complete, which included both major expansions in one disc. So you could install the whole game all at once. It had some in game menu updates to reflect that it was a unified product. Heroes 3 Complete is great. It is the version you should buy. They sell it on GOG. So 2015 rolls around and Ubisoft is like, we've made a whole bunch of Heroes games since then. And like, people liked Heroes 4, it's fine. But it's not as good as 3. And we tried to make Heroes 5 more like 3 and it kind of fell flat a little bit. We're gonna remake three in hd. And for whatever reason, this HD remake only remade the 1999 original version of Heroes of Might and Magic 3. They didn't include the expansion content. They didn't include the random map generator. Because by the way, this 1999 game had the ability to just have the game generate random maps for you and play scenarios at your will forever with a whole bunch of different modifiers. Like, they didn't include that. It's such a lesser version of this game. And then apparently it also is like buggy and has other problems too. When Heroes 3 Complete is consistently one of GOG's biggest successes, that they include Heroes 3 Complete is to this day beloved. Everyone loves Heroes 3. Who remembers it? It holds up. And there's a Community HD Mod for Heroes 3 complete that is better at being an HD version of Heroes of Might and Magic 3 than Heroes of Might and Magic 3 HD Edition. And buying Heroes 3 complete and installing the community HD mod is cheaper than buying the HD edition. I am not kidding. Also, they did it five years earlier. Heroes of Might and Magic 3, the community mod was in 2010. Like, I do not understand how you fuck up that badly. As Ubisoft, a company that is known for consistently putting out adequate products, Ubisoft doesn't innovate. They don't make truly special things anymore. They haven't for a long time. I say that and then I immediately remember, wait, they just released a really good Prince of Persia, Metroidvania, like a year and a half ago or something like that. Two years ago. [00:39:58] Speaker B: Yeah, but they also just released Black Flag again. [00:40:01] Speaker A: I know. So like. But my point is like, they tend to re release shit a lot, but their re releases are usually fine. There's nothing really wrong with them. It's just like, oh yeah, it's that old game but on modern platforms. Okay. And then there's Heroes 3 HD. Genuinely worse than the community made HD version of their game that came out five years earlier. I'm so glad that they didn't have Heroes three complete delisted off Gog when they made this. That would have been the Activision way to do things. And for that Ubisoft gets one gold star of not as shit as Activision because they didn't delist their best version of the game for their shitty HD remaster. Alright, I'mma jump around a bit Pillow. Let's talk about some bad business decision remakes this time. [00:40:54] Speaker C: Okay so I'm actually if it's all right, I'm just gonna. The last one on my list is kind of really quick so I'm just gonna tie that in. I'm just gonna run with that one real quick. I want to talk about Conker's Bad Fur Day Live and Reloaded. Just play the original. If you want the full charming lusty squirrel. Just play the original. The the re Live and Reloaded destroyed the multiplayer when that was my biggest remember is like they just ruined it and turn it into a shooter and took away the charming game modes like Heist and all that fun stuff. But the big thing is it's like it had heavier censorship. Most the cuss words were bleeped out. Which is weird for a game that's got a mature audience. Like it's labeled mature. Why? Why like this is why people played this game. The art style was weird. They changed some of the models around. Like they took away the charmingness of the N64 and kind of just like ruined it for some reason. And this could be like go up to our original topic of why I just wanted to bring that out there. Just play the original. Don't even worry about the the newest release. [00:42:02] Speaker A: And more importantly the original is playable on I think both Nintendo Switch Online and Rare Replay. [00:42:11] Speaker C: Mm. It sure is. [00:42:13] Speaker A: Because they Nintendo made a deal with Microsoft. They got some of the their the Rare games for N64 onto Nintendo Switch Online at the same time that Microsoft got the rights to publish some of them. That's why we got like goldeneye for example on both. [00:42:29] Speaker C: So just play the original. Don't even mess around with Live and Reloaded. It's not worth it. You're gonna lose. It's a worse version of the game. But let's talk about what feels criminal here. Super Mario 3D all stars. It was a emulation. It was just an emulator of and it was bare bones it was overpriced. It was not a remaster of anything. [00:42:56] Speaker A: I was gonna say if it, if they had billed this as, oh, we ported these games and it's like 20 bucks, I don't think anyone would have had an issue. [00:43:04] Speaker C: No, it was just overpriced. They were charging you full price for a collection. It was just an emulation. I mean, you can go on there and play all. Okay, for the biggest thing is, is it didn't even really. It didn't even include Super Mario Galaxy 2. [00:43:21] Speaker A: Like, why, why wasn't that before Sunshine and Galaxy 1? [00:43:26] Speaker C: Yeah, they didn't even include Galaxy 2. Like, that doesn't make any sense to me, like, at all. [00:43:32] Speaker A: You haven't even gotten to the bad part yet. [00:43:35] Speaker C: So there wasn't that. It didn't have any of the extra content in it. The hard, the weird. They created a artificial scarcity in this game. Like, why would you. It was, it was a really. It was $60 for these three games and it was available from September 2020 through March 2021. [00:43:59] Speaker A: And then literally like six months. [00:44:01] Speaker C: Yeah, it was. They, they, they targeted FOMO. Fear of missing out. Like, like that's. Now it's gone. You can't get it. So I mean, granted, I don't know. It going back would. If it was a release or available right now, would you spend the $60 for it? [00:44:22] Speaker B: No. [00:44:22] Speaker A: No. And here's the funniest part. It's even more insulting because they also at the same time included Super Mario 64 in the Nintendo Switch Online N64 Classics catalog, because you literally can't have N64 Classics without Super Mario 64. Super Mario Sunshine is something they've announced will be in the Nintendo Switch 2 GameCube online service. And they released Super Mario Galaxy plus Galaxy 2 on in 2025 as ports to the Switch and Switch 2. So all of these games are available currently. But for some reason, the 3D All Stars collection that's supposed to be like, celebrating these games, A, has a glaring omission, and B, was a FOMO release time limited at full price. What the fuck? [00:45:14] Speaker C: Shame. Fuck off on Nintendo. Shame on Nintendo. I mean, we don't have to spin forever. It's just disappointing. And like, why. Why are you doing this? Like, it's criminal. [00:45:26] Speaker A: It's really insulting. [00:45:29] Speaker B: Speaking of. [00:45:30] Speaker A: But I don't know if it's as insulting as my last entry, which is often number one on those worst remakes of all time lists you'll find online. That's how bad it is. So let me set the stage. Secret of Mana is technically the second game in its series, but it was most Western audiences first introduction to the Mana series. It was released in 1993 on the Super Nintendo. It presents a Zelda esque gameplay style, top down hack and slash type of gameplay, tells an okay story for the time, and it's super cute and charming. Secret of Mana is generally considered one of the best RPGs on the Super Nintendo. No qualifiers, just one of the best. It is generally talked about as being very slightly worse than Final Fantasy 6, Earthbound and Chrono Trigger, but only slightly. That's how good. Secret of Mana. [00:46:27] Speaker B: Some of the best RPGs ever made. [00:46:29] Speaker A: Exactly. Literally some of the best games ever made, it's slightly worse than those. So on top of that, this game had multiplayer. You could play Secret of Mana with friends if you had a multitap for your Super Nintendo, which admittedly no one did. But if you had one, you could play three players. Secret of Mana. So in 2017, 2018, something like that, they decided to remake this legendary classic title. And it's important to note, this isn't the only mana game remake. I think I talked about Trials of Mana last episode. Trials of Mana is great. It's the sequel to Secret of Mana. But the Secret of Mana remake, for whatever reason, they remade the game with 3D graphics that had no personality, no cuteness, no soul. It looks really bland. This is for 3D remakes. What like the mobile ports of classic final fantasies are to like pixel art of just. [00:47:34] Speaker B: This is like the TMNT one. [00:47:36] Speaker A: Yes, we've just. We've just blandized the entire thing. And then. That's not even the worst offense. They took the cute game and made it. Not cute is not the worst offense. The music in the remake sucks, which is saying something because the original game's music is incredible. It is one of the best soundtracks Square has ever put out, period. Ever. And somehow the remake, the music is just genuinely bad and the combat is bad. They somehow managed to make it. So okay, they ported the game to 3D, but because it's now in 3D, half the time you just miss your attacks because the game engine doesn't know how to think in 3D correctly. It's. It is such an insane, insultingly bad remake that even when it is on sale, it is an absolute do not buy. I. I cannot put into words how frustrated I was because Secret of Mana is my favorite super Nintendo rpg. I personally like it more than Chrono Trigger. Chrono Trigger is a better game, but Secret of Mana is my personal favorite. And this remake was so bad, I didn't even play it. I didn't give them my money. I saw what they did before they even released it. Like the. The trailers they put out. I looked at that and I'm like, what the fuck is this shit? And it's not like they can't do the cute in 3D. Trials of Mana did it. Trials of Mana is still cute. I don't fucking get it. This. This remake pissed me off so much, it hurt me in my soul. They should be fucking ashamed of themselves for shitting this out into the world. If you want to play Secret of Mana, go pick up the Secret of Mana collection that they've put out on Switch, I think. I don't know if it's on anything else. You can play Final Fantasy Adventure, which is The Seiken Densetsu 1. Secret of Mana, as it was intended on the Super Nintendo. And the Super Nintendo version of Trials of Mana officially released, it's regularly $20. That's a good collection. That's the only good way to play Secret of Mana on modern platforms. Otherwise, just pirate the SNES Realm. Collection of Mana. That's what they called it. Collection of Mana is fine. And also, by the way, came out about the same time as the remakes. They should be fucking ashamed of themselves. Okay, now that I'm off my soapbox, we got one more topic to talk about this week, which is what the fuck have you guys been playing? [00:50:18] Speaker B: We missed one. [00:50:20] Speaker A: Oh, you're right. You're right. [00:50:21] Speaker B: You missed the most criminal thing on the list. [00:50:26] Speaker A: Yes, you're right, Mike. [00:50:28] Speaker B: And this is a problem for many, many reasons. [00:50:32] Speaker A: Thank you. [00:50:33] Speaker B: We've talked about some bad corporations. We've talked about some greedy corporations and some greedy remakes. [00:50:39] Speaker A: This one's so bad, I forgot we hadn't already talked about it. [00:50:43] Speaker B: We've mentioned that Activision ruins everything it touches. We've talked about how Ubisoft is getting greedy and getting problematic. Both of these companies have nothing on the true Lords of Greed, the voted worst company in the world multiple times. [00:51:00] Speaker A: Yep. [00:51:01] Speaker B: EA ruined one of the most beloved games of the early 90s, and they could have had such a smash hit. But greed ruins everything. The game is Dungeon Keeper, and you may remember this as something that they tried to port for iOS and Android. It seems like a perfect match for this. You're. You just build a dungeon and you try and stop the heroes from coming at you, and that's a great thing. For like a mobile game. This is the perfect time to make a mobile game a really good game. Take something that, you know, works well, that plays well and put it into a format that. That works for it and is beloved. Only EA could not keep their grubby mitts out of things. And so this is the game that really like, highlighted how bad they were getting. Because you cannot play this game without interacting with microtransactions. You cannot. They made one of the easiest to play $10 games, period, into something that would cost you hundreds if you wanted to. Just keep playing riddled with microtransactions, with, with timing, delay things where, oh man, you gotta get the delay on this thing. Well, you better run it. Paid like two bucks here, three bucks there. It's worse because of the things that they did right when making the game. They got the original voice installer with rich ridding to do the voiceovers to get the humor right, to get the things that he is well known for. And then they couldn't stop themselves from essentially robbing you to try and play the game. And it didn't. It didn't even have the decency to play well because of how the break in gameplay works. With how all these microtransactions work, the gameplay flow just fails. And so you can't get into your groove to get into the play to try and do these things. You can't do it because there's a wall in front of you that's saying, no, you can't do this until you pay me 90 cents here, a buck here. [00:53:28] Speaker A: Fortunately, if you want to play the good versions of Dungeon keeper, Dungeon Keeper 1 and 2 are available on GOG. They are normally $6 each. They are currently on sale until July 30th for $2.39 each. Five bucks gets you both. Dungeon Keeper 1 and 2 on Goggles. They're great games. You should actually go play them. [00:53:56] Speaker B: You can also find them on Steam. They're not on site right now, but. [00:53:59] Speaker A: But get the GOG versions. The GOG versions run Great on Windows 11. They're DRM free. They are the definitive way to play the games. Okay, thank you for reminding us that EA is the original evil corporate overlords of gaming. Now let's talk about the shit we've been playing in the past couple weeks. And Mike, I'm actually gonna let you kick it off. I Talked about Heroes 3 earlier. You played the new Heroes. How is Heroes of Might and Magic Olden era? [00:54:32] Speaker B: I have played this new Heroes and I'm Impressed. This is still an early access game they have not fully released. Is only like 30, 40 bucks. It's not at full game price for what you expect for a new game to. Cause right now it's noticeably evocative of the Heroes 3 style. I've been explicitly playing the campaign for a little bit and I've gotten to try multiple different races to try a couple things over here, a couple things over there. I've gotten to get a feel for both the map and the combat style in the same way that it does. It's. It's very smart in how it does its. Its visual style and that it keeps a lot of the. The core, immediately obvious things from the original Hero's style and you Visual translation. Boom. I knew what I was looking at immediately. There are some new things and they're not bad, but I haven't done a lot into it. I'm not remarkably far into Heroes right now. I've got two, three hours into it, but I've got enough to get a nice first impression going. I'm gonna be playing a lot more of this. They've done some innovation that I think is smart, and this is the first time that I've seen something like this. Now maybe they've done it in other Heroes games and I'm forgetting about it because it's been a long time. [00:55:58] Speaker A: Okay. [00:55:59] Speaker B: When you do a Heroes game, you have your main character and then you have all of their units that they have recruited following them into battle. There's a base form of them and there's an upgraded form of them. So far, every one of those units has multiple upgrade paths. You have a choice between one or another, each of them doing something slightly different, and it is free to switch between them. [00:56:23] Speaker A: That's the important question I was going to ask. Because Heroes 4, I think, had diverging options for your armies in the towns, but it was a permanent choice in that town. So you generally just got one or the other and you were locked in. [00:56:39] Speaker B: Yep. I can go back now. You have to go be in the town where you have access to the building that allows you to train them, where you get your recruits from, where you get more of them. And I can just flip a switch and it switches to the other one. Doesn't cost me any money. No cost, no cost. I can change it to the other one. That is wonderful feeling. Wonderful feeling. I was in a set of fights where I was having a problem with a certain type of monster and one of my units, conveniently, if I switched types, didn't allow reaction attacks, which is one of the core mechanics that you understand in a thing. So you go, all right, if I get him over here and I put him to do this attack, he will stop them from doing reaction attacks. Saved my entire ass for that campaign. Right. Because I was having such a huge problem with them sniping out my units bit by bit and making me become too weak to continue. It's not like a weakness thing, but it's a massive delay in where I want to be doing things that just felt fantastic to be able to go, all right, I see a problem here. I can fix it immediately. Boom. And the units, they have the essence of the old without being direct copies of it. This is not Heroes 3. And so it is not directly taking things from Heroes 3, but it does have echoes to it. It does have homages to it. So there are still places like the tower, the swamp. So there are echoes for what you used to have there. And there are very similar things. There's an entire race that I'm not familiar with that's fey based. Like, I've. I've just faced a bunch of fairies. I don't remember ever facing fairies before. [00:58:22] Speaker A: Which is because you never played Heroes 3 complete. [00:58:24] Speaker B: I did not face in one. [00:58:26] Speaker A: In the second expansion of Heroes 3, there were bees. [00:58:30] Speaker B: I don't remember fighting bees. [00:58:32] Speaker A: Bees, I don't remember. But fairies. Yeah. They were added later in Heroes 3. [00:58:39] Speaker B: Yeah. But it gets a lot of the core feelings correct. And that it has. The maps feel good to play. The visual language is very distinct. It's very obvious. And they haven't done anything mechanically that's gone backwards. It seems that the innovations that they have made have been all in a positive or a side made move. Like, there's a couple things where I remember you didn't have like an auto attack. You can't use your hero to attack that. You literally only cast magic back then. There's a way to do an attack. I don't remember how the frequency is on that thing because it's not something I'm looking at mechanically right now. But I know I can do it. And it's not remarkably difficult to do. I just. I haven't played enough to figure out what the core is yet. How often I can do it, why I can do it, et cetera. [00:59:27] Speaker A: Okay, I have a question for you. Does Heroes of Might the olden era support Hot Seat multiplayer? [00:59:36] Speaker B: Let me see if I can do that and open it up. I know it does multiplayer. [00:59:41] Speaker A: Let me explain what Hot Seat is Cause I assume newer gamers probably have no idea what the fuck I'm talking about. That's literally where you can just play multiplayer with multiple people at the same machine and you just take turns at the keyboard and mouse playing the game. Really fun for playing like co op levels with your friends or family members. Can be fun for PvP if you're not playing with Heavy Fog of War. And it's. It's the main way that my wife has experienced heroes 3 is playing hot Seat multiplayer with me. [01:00:16] Speaker B: Do you say whether or not that's Hot Seat within you? [01:00:19] Speaker A: This has also been a staple of the franchise and that's the other reason I'm asking. [01:00:24] Speaker B: Shared split screen is one of the things that it immediately says on its just base page. Let me open the game and see if it has something that says that. Just gonna. [01:00:34] Speaker A: Okay, while you're doing that I'll talk about one of the other games I've been playing this past couple weeks, which is last time I mentioned I finished the main story of Final Fantasy 7 Remake. So now I moved on to the Intergrade chapter which is the Yuffie chapter, which is all new content that was added to the game for the PS5 version of the game and then included in the PC port. You play as Yuffie and it chronicles Yuffie going to Midgar during the middle of the events of the Midgar segment of Final Fantasy VII remake and seems to at least start being set after the second Mako reactor mission for the main group. So fairly early on in the story, but not tremendously so. Mike, you're making a face. Is there Hot Seat multiplayer? [01:01:25] Speaker B: So here's what is directly under the multiplayer thing. It popped open a screen told me they're making an account that you can delete at any time. Sweet. That's fine. Find opponent lobby leaderboards. Hot Seat mode perfect. [01:01:37] Speaker A: That is important. Heroes of Might and Magic without Hot Seat is not a good game. Hot Seat is an integral part of it. Also Hot Seat also allows you to do like Steam play together and play over the Internet because this is a turn based game and latency does not matter. [01:01:52] Speaker B: Yeah, it's fantastic. [01:01:54] Speaker A: Hot Seat through that to be able to play this with your friends no matter where in the world they are. So anyway, I've started the Yuffie chapter and I'm not going to give any story spoilers. Don't worry Pillow, you're safe. It's weird. You do play as Yuffie. Yuffie plays distinctly. It's kind of interesting. So she has melee attacks with her her shuriken and then she can throw it and then do ninjutsu attacks while her shuriken like spins around and keeps hitting enemies over and over. It's very weird. It's. She feels kind of op. She also gets a parry guard mechanic, just baseline where she can just perfect guard things and block all of the damage. But then because they've already used the cast that existed in Midgar at the time in the main Final Fantasy VII remake, they add a new character for the Yuffie story named Sonon who is voiced by Alex Lee. So that's cool. But he's not even playable. He's a party member. You can issue commands to him, but you can't switch to him and control him and play him like you could Tifa or Barret or Aerith. He's in the same boat that Red XIII is in in Final Fantasy VII remake of like a supporting NPC character. And also the tone is kind of weird. The music is like. I don't know how to describe this, but it's like happy rap metal in several places. Which is not what I expected in a Final Fantasy VII remake of any kind. I went around the slums finding posters for a bar called the Happy Turtle and doing this let me access a shop where I can buy pieces for a real time strategy game based on the Fort Condor minigame from the original Final Fantasy vii. Which Fort Condor is at a point well past anything covered in Final Fantasy VII remake. Like I would have expected this to be something that would come up, I don't know, five hours into Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth. Not as a mini game and remake intergrade, but you go around the slums and challenge Wedge and Jesse and a bunch of other people to games of Fort Condor and you play a little mini RTS minigame. And it's weird. It's not bad, just weird. The. The tone in this. This side story is very jarring. I don't dislike it, but it's very jarring. It's very weird compared to the main story. I'm gonna keep playing it. I'm gonna finish it and then I'll move on to Rebirth. But I'm finishing the Yuffie thing first. I'll report back more when I've finished it. All right, Mike, what is this other thing in your list? Because then me and Pillow have a shared thing to talk about. [01:04:54] Speaker B: This other thing has no video game. But it is game. Actually, there is a video game for it. I just haven't played the video game for it. I have been doing an in person campaign that is a small scale miniature game. It is very much like a mix of a tabletop RPG and a minis game. It's called Necromunda. Necromunda is very Warhammer. It is, it is a Warhammer game. It is one of their very small side games. It is very tactical, very swingy, very fun. Generally speaking, you get seven, eight people. Each of you build yourself a little bit of a crew, a gang, and you go to war with each other, trying to steal resources, steal maps, steal other things. You, you just have fun little skirmish games against each other. It's. It's played on like a 2 foot by 3 foot map. You generally speaking have between 5 and 10 units on the field and you get attached to them. You start getting unique items, unique skills. You give them names, you give them powers and then they die because nothing is safe in this and it's very easy to lose everyone. The, the very first game I played, I completely wiped the entirety of his. My opponent's characters off the field took no damage. When you have a person taken off the field, you roll a set of dice. That dice determines what happens to them. The final dice number is just straight death. If you fail, you get insta dead and that character is now gone. That happened to his main character leader, instantly killed in the first battle. This made sure that he for the rest of the campaign until this week had no real leader. He had to promote a weaker member to it. And so all he could do was do small skirmish things to try and go in and try and raid people and pull out in, try and grab what he can and go out getting small resources here, small resources there. Until he finally got a couple of wins under his belt and now he has some money to start buying some, some other people to join his gang again. And it feels really fun. It's really incentivized for you to, to get customized with your stuff and have interesting little, little characters to play in. I'm very invested in this campaign right now. I've been having such a good time playing this and I've gotten to meet some people that I had not interacted with from the local games that we've been playing at and they've been so fun to talk to. And this is one of those things where if you have access to a local game store and you have the financial ability to play games, there's even if you've already done the purchasing, the ability to go there, drive out, play some games at the local game store, give it a shot. I have met five or six other people that I am now regularly talking to in another discord. And we are setting up another one of these campaigns to go on in the winter. I think everyone should do it. Do something where you can go out and share that one weird passion that you have as a nerd with other people there. Do it. Just do it. Do it. [01:08:20] Speaker A: Okay, Pillow, I'm gonna let you take the lead on talking about Palworld because you and I have both been playing Palworld separately. We haven't been playing it together. What's your impression on Palworld? Explain what it is. [01:08:35] Speaker C: So Palworld is a creature collection game, much like, and I hate to say it, it's, it's a, it's a very similar to Pokemon as far as mechanics go for battling. But yeah, it's. It's a creature battling open world survival crafting game where you're put on this world or this, this planet that has pals. Pals are the little creatures that start anywhere from being a sheep and move up to gods. And you're, you're collecting them, using them to help further your. Your base by putting them to work. They work for you. They'll mine. They'll help you build. You, you. It's, it's, it's. It takes a lot in depth on [01:09:39] Speaker A: the like, survival mechanics on this. You have to manage your pal's hunger. You have to manage their sanity. You have to make sure there's enough beds for them to sleep in. Like it does a lot of steps to. This is not off brand Pokemon. This is more like Valheim, if you inserted Pokemon into it, kind of vibe. [01:10:04] Speaker C: Yeah. So they have spheres, Pal spheres that you use to catch pals. Now, catching monsters is not a new concept. There was creature collection games way before even Pokemon came out. It is not a new concept. Catching them in a ball is not a new concept. It's, of course, it's very easy to look at this game and be like, oh, this is an obvious ripoff. It is not. This is its own intellectual property and that has been proven in courts. They have. Nintendo has taken away the throwing the ball to summon your pals, which. [01:10:44] Speaker A: There are mods to add it back if you want. [01:10:46] Speaker C: This is its own game and it takes it. I'm. I'm gonna compare them. It takes Pokemon. It makes it a better game for certain audiences that like the open world. I love open world. This game has collection, collector item. It has dungeons, has raids. It's, it's, it's its own game. And of course, like any game out there. It takes ideas from other successful genres. [01:11:19] Speaker A: One thing it reminded me a lot of is it feels very Breath of the Wild esque in a lot of ways. Yes, the way [01:11:27] Speaker C: feels a lot of Breath of Wild. I really enjoy like almost, I'd say over half I don't even know of. The pals you get have a unique ability that you can craft equipment and use for the use. Like in the open world there's puzzles. [01:11:47] Speaker A: To be fair, a lot of those are saddles so you can ride them. Flying mounts, water mounts and ground mounts. But also some of those are other things. Like this is a holster so you can pick this pal up and use it as a flamethrower. This is a gun that this pal knows how to use so it can start machine gunning down its enemies. That kind of stuff too. So it does vary. It's not all just oh well, you can ride all the pals or whatever. [01:12:15] Speaker C: You can also slaughter. [01:12:17] Speaker A: Yes you can. [01:12:18] Speaker C: You can slaughter your pals and collect their multiple ways. There's an assembly line. [01:12:26] Speaker A: There's an assembly line which is like the, the high end version of just taking a butcher knife and just being like and killing them. But you can also like, let's say you have one version of a pal that's like your buddy that's really good that you want to like make stronger. You can go collect a bunch more of that and then like sacrifice their souls to empower the soul of the one that you have. Yeah, it's like two different ways to do it. Exactly. [01:12:54] Speaker C: And I mean it's. It's. It's. It's really fun and a lot of the mechanics feel really fun. You know, it's separate of enough game that it is its own game. They are, they're proud of their game. They. It's been in release and in multiple battles with Nintendo and they stood up strong against them and they finally reach 1.0 and it is just a good game. I'm enjoying it. There's a lot to. I purposely stayed out of the early releases as it updated through time so I could enjoy this game. Like I'm playing my solo world and I'm having a lot of fun. [01:13:35] Speaker A: So same I waited for 1.0. I was aware of the game in the intervening time. I don't usually play a lot of survival, crafty buildy games. My wife loves this genre. She's been bugging me to play Minecraft or Valheim with her for years. So Palworld was the excuse of. It's in 1.0. Now it's on sale. Bought it for her, bought it for me. We're playing it together. That's what we're doing. So we are playing. [01:14:03] Speaker C: And not to mention single player. There's a Terraria crossover. [01:14:08] Speaker A: Yes. And an Ultra Kill crossover. [01:14:11] Speaker C: The Terraria one's pretty cool. I haven't went to the dungeon itself. There's the slimes. There's the demon eyes. You can catch them. They're not the greatest pals, but they're cool. You know what I mean? [01:14:24] Speaker A: Like, there's other games crafted Meow Mere. [01:14:27] Speaker C: No, I have it available to craft. I just have not crafted it. [01:14:32] Speaker A: I don't want to spoil how awesome it is, but you should craft Meow Mirror. It's hilarious. [01:14:38] Speaker C: I read the description. It does look funny. [01:14:41] Speaker B: As you say this, I'm realizing that one of the mounts we had in Terraria was just palworld creatures. [01:14:46] Speaker A: Yes, there was. There was a chillet and something else in Terraria. I think it was foxsparks. [01:14:55] Speaker C: What's your. What's your favorite pal? [01:14:57] Speaker A: Catris. I'm a sucker for the. The goth witch cat girl, which is [01:15:07] Speaker C: what I mean basically is you can't forget about our Egyptious Egyptian honey. You know, you got Sekhmet in there. She's awesome. [01:15:15] Speaker A: I do have a segment on my team. She is great. She beats the shit out of stuff and she's really good at helping around the base. [01:15:23] Speaker C: But I love my chill it. I love my chill it. You know, another really cool thing about these is all the pals are useful in different ways. Even like beginner pals. Like I could. I still have a cell ray in my party because I take no fall damage with a celery in my party. [01:15:40] Speaker A: It's true. My wife and I did figure out if you're mounted on a pal, you don't take fall damage either. So both her and I have been running around on our I can't remember the name of the wolf pal, but it's like the fastest dire how either of us have. Yes, dire how. It's the fastest ground mount either of us have found. So we both have one and we're running around on that. And you don't take fall damage while you're mounted. So jump off a cliff on your wolf. Who gives a shit? [01:16:05] Speaker C: Another cool thing they do is they take beginner pals and they make them different. Like they make them different elements. You got fire, earth, dark dragon, grass, wind, sand. All of these different. And like they. The next version is stronger. As stronger. You know, it's it's really cool how they incorporate and reuse their own assets. It makes the game feel fresh. There's a whole nother map in this game. When you get to the world tree. See, I mean I have yet to be. I haven't. I haven't been there. I haven't been there at all. [01:16:44] Speaker A: This gonna be. My next question is how far along are you? Because this game does have a like progression story. This is not a randomly generated map, guys. This is a handcrafted progression map. And like story and world. [01:16:58] Speaker C: How far are you solo world. I'm only like level 40. I think I just beat the sand tower, the desert tower. [01:17:08] Speaker A: I'm also level 40, but I've only just beaten the volcano fire tower. [01:17:12] Speaker C: Yeah. So yeah, I'm just right up there with you. I mean, admittedly I skipped. I've skipped all the text. I'm not haven't been really interested in this. [01:17:22] Speaker A: It's schlock. [01:17:23] Speaker C: Yeah. It's just. It's just some garbage thrown together. Like it might not be, but it [01:17:30] Speaker A: just seems flimsy premise to get you to play the game is what seems to be to me. [01:17:36] Speaker C: There is a lot for you. [01:17:38] Speaker A: This game also has a lot of world settings you can play with. What difficulty are you playing on? Or are you playing on something custom? Because it has custom difficulty modifiers. [01:17:47] Speaker C: I'm doing custom. I have reduced inventory weight. I have. I increase the multiplier of stuff that I pick up off the ground. It's. I've reduced the build times because I think build times are stupid. Other than that, like, I think I reduce the hatching times because I don't have a lot of time to sit around and wait 30 minutes for an egg to hatch and put it in its perfect habitat like you're supposed to do. And it's intended. I don't have time for that. I turned off the raids because they just got annoying. [01:18:21] Speaker A: They can be very annoying. [01:18:23] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:18:24] Speaker C: Like when I was trying to base [01:18:25] Speaker A: manage on our first base, which is in a like low level zone. But when we built one in the vault, in the like snowy vault, snowy mountain area, that one kept getting raids showing up before we were even set up to try to defend it. [01:18:38] Speaker C: Yeah. Like it just it on my solo world, like I was getting raided every time I fast traveled back and it's like, okay, now I got to sit here for five minutes and wait for this raid. And then like there's an NPC you can pay to turn the raid off. [01:18:51] Speaker A: Like I. I will say you don't have to wait. If you kill that npc, the raid is triggered immediately. [01:18:58] Speaker C: I didn't know that. [01:18:59] Speaker A: Which is hilarious because we learned that by mistake. We were like, okay, let's set up and. Let's set up and, like, wait for this raid to happen. And I was like, oh, there's this dude. He wants me to, like, bribe him to turn off the raid. I'm just gonna kill him. And then suddenly we were getting attacked and I was like, oh, I guess that makes sense. [01:19:18] Speaker C: I guess that does make sense. Which brings me to another funnier point. Pals are not the only thing that you can capture in this game. Yes, you can capture humans. [01:19:27] Speaker A: There's several different human factions throughout the game. And you can put them in pal spheres too. And they explicitly do not have special abilities because humans are not pals and do not have pal abilities. [01:19:40] Speaker C: But they can mine. [01:19:42] Speaker A: Yep. You can put them to work. [01:19:45] Speaker B: You can make Slavers. [01:19:47] Speaker C: Yes. They, like, they're not. [01:19:49] Speaker A: Dismantle them. [01:19:51] Speaker C: Yeah. Like, they're not good. But it's funny. It's like that's. There's comedy to it. Exactly. But there are some human characters in the game that are. You are meant to get, like, they join your party, which then they just become pals in, like, a lot of it. And I don't know. Do you know any of this? I don't want to spoil any of this for you. [01:20:14] Speaker A: No, I haven't run into any of that. [01:20:16] Speaker C: Okay. I won't. I won't. [01:20:18] Speaker A: I'm guessing this would be what happens after, like, you. You catch a grizz bolt and show it to the first boss. [01:20:23] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah. She joins you. [01:20:25] Speaker A: Okay. [01:20:26] Speaker C: Now, I don't know about any. [01:20:27] Speaker A: I just haven't actually found a gris bolt yet. [01:20:30] Speaker C: Granted, you could catch her before then. You can actually catch Unlimited Zoe's. You just go back to her. She just respawns. And so there's a lot of videos where people have harems of Zoe's and it's. It's funny, but the intended is to do her challenge and, like, she joins you and she rides a gris bolt. I don't know about the other syndicate power bosses. I've never tried to go back and find them, so I couldn't tell you. [01:20:56] Speaker A: Fair enough. No idea. My wife and I have been playing a co op world on the hard preset with two exceptions. For whatever reason, the default hard settings limit your maximum number of bases in the world and your maximum pals per base to much lower values than the default. And that Sucks. That's not fun. We want a hard survival experience, but that's not about being hard. That's about limiting you. That's no fun. So we, we raise and honestly, it's up to the max. So we can have as many bases and as many pals at the base as our base level allows. [01:21:38] Speaker C: Instead, like, honestly, the more pals in your base too, the harder it feels because there's more management. [01:21:44] Speaker A: You have to generate more food to keep them all fed. You have to build enough beds for all of them. You have to make sure there's medicine so that when they get hurt, they can get treated for it. Like, there's more shit to manage. So, like, it's weird that hard limits that let me have more bases and more pals managing those bases because, yes, that will give me more resources, but also that's the management challenge that is part of the fun of doing this kind of survival game. So that's weird. But you can change it. Yeah, that's what I wanted. That's why I wanted to talk about the settings from it. Palworld has really granular world settings. They have easy, normal and hard presets. But then you can play on custom and tweak individual variables for everything you can change. How much XP do you get? How likely are you to capture a pal? How much do you regen when you're out of combat? How much do your pals regen when you're out of combat? Do your structures deteriorate? And if so, how fast? Because if you don't build them within a base circle, they will deteriorate over time by default. And tons of other aspects. Like there's a ton of settings you can do. And I love this. Every game should have this kind of [01:22:59] Speaker C: granular difficulty toggles and they don't disable achievements. [01:23:03] Speaker A: Yeah, they don't give a shit. They want you to play the game and have fun the way you want to have fun. They don't want to tell you you're playing it wrong. [01:23:11] Speaker C: And like my, like I. My custom settings, I don't take away from the challenge of the game. I just give myself some quality of life. Yeah, you're taking away the mold to the time that I can put into it. [01:23:23] Speaker A: And most of those tedious aspects really suck in single player. They only make sense in a multiplayer environment. [01:23:28] Speaker C: Some cool settings that I've noticed that I haven't clicked on. They have hardcore settings, like multiple different versions where you die. It's permanent. Pals, permadeath. Pals and Permadeath characters. And they also have randomizer settings. [01:23:43] Speaker A: Yep. [01:23:43] Speaker C: Which from my understanding is exactly that. Like in your starting area you can get God tier pals that just destroy you. Yep. [01:23:55] Speaker A: Important to note, all of these settings can be changed after the fact, except for the randomizer, for obvious reasons, because there's no way to change that after the fact. So if you load up the game and start playing and you've like done a little bit and you're like, this is really easy, you can go and change it. That's what my wife did. She didn't realize she was playing on casual at first until I joined and was like, what difficulty are we on? This seems really easy. And she went and looked and went, shit, I'm on the wrong setting. We changed it to hard and we've been having fun since. She was wondering why the game was so easy. She just never thought to check the settings. And it makes quite the difference, especially for like boss hp because oh my God. Went from like the boss having a thousand GP to the boss having like 18,000 HP HP. The fight taking two seconds and taking two minutes. [01:24:47] Speaker C: Yeah. And you get really lucky and catch like some really strong pals with just lucky throws and just get lucky. It's very generous on even low percentages. I'm pretty sure right now the bug rates are or the catch rates are bugged in some kind of way. I can't quite put my finger on it, but I feel like there's a bug because I caught a level 60 [01:25:08] Speaker A: powder, had level 30% captures that take 20 balls to capture. And I've had 10% captures that catch first time. So I think it's just actually random. But it definitely. It does the same thing as Pokemon, where even if you essentially have no chance to capture it, you don't actually have no chance to capture it. You can get lucky. [01:25:29] Speaker C: I. I caught a Necromis, which is a legendary palace, a level 60. It comes with a pair at level like 30. And this is the flat fastest ground mount you can get. It's like, it's like, it's almost like a in game boss. I caught it with like a, like a three tier three ball and I had like a 0.02% chance to catch. Actually hold on. I. I put it, it was a 0.6% chance, threw it first throw, caught it and ran away. Didn't even try to go for his brother and I was just like, wow. And he's carrying me through everything. There are level sinks. So like if you catch a pal that's higher level than you are. It'll shrink that pal down to your level. But they. Their stats are just usually absurd. [01:26:19] Speaker A: Fair enough. I looked it up and yeah, Necromis looks like it is one of the only ones that is faster than Dire Howl. Dire Howl is really high up there for being such a low level pal when everything else that's fast is really high level. [01:26:32] Speaker C: I ride chill it everywhere just because of how fast it is on the water. [01:26:35] Speaker A: Fair enough. I have one more question for you before we wrap up on Palworld. Have you installed any mods whatsoever? [01:26:43] Speaker C: No. I'm a. I'm a purist. Usually in a lot of games, I don't do a whole lot of mods first run modless. [01:26:50] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm like that with a lot of my stuff too. [01:26:52] Speaker A: That's totally fair. I ask because this is an Unreal Engine game. I did install one of the mods that's like Unreal Engine tweaks that makes it run a little smoother. Definitely resolved some choppiness that I was experiencing. And then that also meant. Then I installed a mod that removes the caution screen that you get telling you, hey, you've modded the game. Heads up. Which I get showing once. But why the fuck does it need to show every single time you play the game? [01:27:18] Speaker B: I don't. [01:27:18] Speaker A: I don't get that. That's weird. And then, of course, I'm a degenerate. I want some titties in my game. [01:27:25] Speaker C: Oh, there you go. [01:27:28] Speaker A: But the mods definitely are not necessary to have a good experience. This is not Skyrim, where unmodded is just crap compared to modded Skyrim. But also, if you want, there's all sorts of crazy mods for Palworld. There's for people who want that. There's mods that let you add production queues in your bases. There's mods that let you change the building systems, let you do all sorts of other, like system changes. There's UI mods, there's mods that let you play as 2B or whatever else. Just change your player character into something else. You can play as Final Fantasy 7 if you want. [01:28:12] Speaker C: Is there a mod that lets you breed with pals? [01:28:15] Speaker A: I don't believe so. And that's what's kind of weird to me. [01:28:18] Speaker C: I'm surprised. [01:28:20] Speaker A: Yeah, I am too. But it is what it is. So, yeah, we've been playing Palworld. Palworld's a lot of fun. [01:28:28] Speaker B: It's just not for me. [01:28:30] Speaker A: And that's okay. It's not for everyone that's going to be it for this week for from 8bit to 4k. We'll be back in two weeks. I don't know what the hell we're going to talk about yet, but we'll figure it out. Jack, I've been Jack Sohlman for Mike and many names and for pillow pat. Have a great night. [01:28:46] Speaker C: Good night. [01:28:47] Speaker B: Send us topic suggestions. Good night, everybody.