[00:00:10] Speaker A: Hello, welcome to from 8bit to 4k.
I'm your current host. My good many names. I'm joined by my two other co hosts. We have Jax Homan.
[00:00:20] Speaker B: Hello, I'm Jax Hillman. It's me.
[00:00:22] Speaker A: And we have Pillow Pet.
[00:00:24] Speaker C: Hi, it's Pillow Pet.
[00:00:26] Speaker A: It's me, Mario.
[00:00:29] Speaker C: Yeah, it's a me, a Mario.
[00:00:35] Speaker A: Thank you for joining us. We have a Patreon that you can talk to us at part of. Oh, I'm messing this up. I've been. I'm having a little big problem guys. I just broke a couple of my fingers and I'm having problem focusing on things. So we have a discord first off that you can join us at. You can get that from the description down below and you can find us on
[email protected] the Four Wards podcast. And we have a shout out tier that we can talk to for people. We've got Codex, Ninja, Pillow pet himself, Scipius Esquire and Labana. Thank you guys. That's the 10amonth. For $5 a month you can get an exclusive feeds, get some behind the scenes info. You'll get some stuff like a little bit more context into why we picked certain things, what we're doing on topics and then just $1 a month tells us that you love us.
And we had a little bit of a wheel around what we were going to talk about today. But let's start off with what we're dealing with in our lives. Jax, wanna take it away right now? What are you doing? What are you playing?
[00:01:33] Speaker B: Sure. I have for the last two weeks been playing shitloads of Hades 2 basically since the moment I finished silksong. I bought Hades 2 because it got full release on Switch.
By the way, it runs phenomenally on the original Switch. That's where I'm playing it. It runs better than the original game did on the Switch. Like I have had zero performance issues whatsoever and the load times are super mild.
So yeah, I've been playing the shit out of Hades 2. I've done like 90 runs in the last two weeks.
Something approaching that.
I have reached the credits and am deep into the post game. I've built up relationships with a whole bunch of the other gods and other characters.
I've defeated one of the two. There are two different end bosses because unlike Hades 1 there are two different routes you can go in Hades 2. In both cases you're doing a run that is four regions with a boss at the end of each region. Just like Hades one. But you have an underworld route and a surface route, and they're completely different. There's different enemies, different buff givers that you can find during the run.
There's different bosses to fight. The surface route is definitely harder.
[00:02:54] Speaker A: It's also why you don't start out with the surface run.
[00:02:56] Speaker B: Yeah, you have to unlock the surface route through the game.
And the first few times you do the surface route, you will die very fast by design until you unlock some things that let you do the whole run.
But I'm at the point where there is the like, make the game harder options after you've cleared it. I've gotten two of the three statues from making the game harder and clearing runs. I've defeated the hard versions of all of the underworld bosses and all but the final boss on the surface, the surface final boss in the hard mode is absurd. He makes Extreme measures Hades from the first game look like a joke.
[00:03:38] Speaker A: And I remember listening to like when you very first started, you're like, there's no extreme measures here. What's going on? No, you just weren't there yet.
[00:03:44] Speaker B: Yeah, it takes longer to unlock than it did in the first game.
[00:03:47] Speaker A: But there's also like literally twice as much content.
[00:03:50] Speaker B: Yeah, it's great. I frickin love hades 2. I am gonna continue playing it. We'll see if I wind up matching the hundred and eighty seven runs that I did of the original game before I finally put it down.
But this game's a lot of fun.
[00:04:07] Speaker A: And the other point, I've also played some Hades I've been playing since early Access, but I stopped very early on and then waited for them to finish their content.
I obviously can't play that right now because I have a broken hand. And so we'll talk about some other stuff there. Hades 2 is also a $30 game, much like how Silksong was a $20 game. These games give you at least as much as a full AAA content game for literally half or less the price. Yep. Hades 2 is phenomenal. It's really well mastered. The music is great.
[00:04:42] Speaker B: Oh my God, the music. Okay, the music in general is phenomenal.
The second boss on the Underworld, the first route you do is Scylla and the Sirens. So naturally they sing a song. They decided to make them a rock band and they sing a song and then when you beat them, they write a new song about you and they sing that song and then they'll alternate between them. And then when you do the hard version, they add Charybdis to the band and have a third song that they now sing, which includes a Charybdis solo that is just the monster making, like, monster groaning noises like it's music. And it's so funny and it's so good.
[00:05:29] Speaker A: As you beat the bosses playing certain instruments. Those instruments die out of the music.
[00:05:34] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:05:35] Speaker A: And I think, if I remember rightly, you said something like, if you don't play with music on, there is a specific version that gets played.
[00:05:43] Speaker B: It's not that. It's. If you don't play with music on, they will have dialogue. It's very meta. They will call you a cheater for not being able to hear their song.
[00:05:54] Speaker A: Okay, that's it.
[00:05:55] Speaker B: It's hilarious.
In the same vein, when you fight Kronos, the Titan of Time, if you pause, he will bitch about it. He'll be like, wait, you can't do that. I control time. And if you fight the hard version of him, he will forcibly unpause the game for you until you unlock a thing that lets you pause during it anyway.
[00:06:19] Speaker C: So it's hilarious. It's like fourth wall breaking.
[00:06:21] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
[00:06:21] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:06:22] Speaker C: That's awesome.
[00:06:23] Speaker B: I fucking love Hades 2. Highly recommend.
If you're not good at roguelike games, it has an easy mode. There is a God mode you can turn on that makes it about 20% EAs to start and gradually easier from there until you find a difficulty level you can play at, which is great.
Like, no shame if you have to turn on God mode. The game is fucking hard.
It's just so much fun. You should play it. You should play the first game, too. The first game is also phenomenal, and the sequel does not negate the first game. Like, this is not a case of, well, sequel's better in every way. You should never play the first game again. No, they're different experiences because none of the weapons are shared. All of them are different. None of the bosses are the same. So it's a whole new experience in each game.
[00:07:13] Speaker A: Speaking of that, I'm going to bottle in off of that one. I was playing the original Hollow Knight after playing Silksong because it made me want to go play the first game. And they don't play exactly the same. They're similar, but they're unique enough experiences that absolutely. It's different. It feels different. It feels. You can tell that the second game has more iteration than that Hollow Knight. Silksong has its smoother animations. It's quicker movement. They've taken what they've learned from the first one and expounded upon it. That does not make the original Hollow Knight. Not fun. It's still a fantastic Metroidvania. And I had started to dump quite a lot of time into this. And then on Wednesday I broke three of my fingers and can't hold a mouse.
So I can't use my right hand for any gaming anymore. And I won't be able to for the next month, month and a half. So I have been spiraling, trying to figure out something to fucking do. And one of the games on my list of things that I've been meaning to get, Final Fantasy Tactics, the Evilist Chronicles. Cause I loved. Now, admittedly I had a very different version. I played the GBA one, Final Fantasy Advance Tactics. Not the same game at all.
Very similar mechanically, but storyline completely different. But also maybe similar. I don't know entirely. I haven't gotten far enough in to see if there's more similarities, but the work that they have done on this is fantastic. You can choose to play the original version or this new version. The new version has full voice acting, has consistent animation work so that the sprites have a lot more movement to them. There's a lot of really detailed work that they've put into modernizing and updating this game, but you don't need to do any of that. You can go and play the original as it's original. And I love tactics games. I'm a huge fan of Fire Emblem and I loved Final Fantasy Tactics Advance. This game I was going to be definitely playing because I wanted to play a game and now I kind of have to play it because it's one of the games I've been playing in and I can't do anything else.
[00:09:16] Speaker C: And so speaking.
Speaking of tactics games, did you ever play Advanced Wars?
[00:09:22] Speaker A: I played the first one and never played Advanced Wars 2.
[00:09:25] Speaker C: I loved Advanced Wars.
[00:09:26] Speaker A: Advanced wars is good. Fire Emblem was always my favorite.
[00:09:29] Speaker B: All right, it's. It's time for some deep cut Jack's lore.
I love Advance Wars. I love advance wars so much.
The only FAQ I ever wrote on GameFAQs is for Advance Wars 2. Now, I'm not saying it was a good guide. I'm not recommending you go and look that up. I was a dumb teenager, but I love Advance Wars. I think Lash from the, like, bad guy faction was my, like, first video game crush when I was a kid. Like, advance wars is incredible. It's all of the tactical stuff of Fire Emblem, but with none of the RPG stuff. And then the story is just goofy fun.
[00:10:13] Speaker A: Yeah. Also, if you're not a fantasy Person. It's a sci fi kind of.
[00:10:17] Speaker B: It's more just like relatively modern. Like loosely sci fi. Loosely modern, yeah. Just cartoonish and fun.
[00:10:25] Speaker C: I'm trying, I'm looking it up right now, trying to look at the original cast because I'm trying to remember the name of the guy that I played with a lot.
[00:10:34] Speaker B: What did he do? And I can tell you, I think.
[00:10:37] Speaker C: He was just like an old man, I think. So it might have been Olaf. Yeah, Olaf, Yes.
[00:10:45] Speaker A: I just remember my first time playing through Fire Emblem and I got to the final boss and Hector was to level two unevolved. And that was like, oh fuck, I have to play with him. God damn it. And then you have a Hector story version and Hector is so much better than Elephant.
I'm so mad I didn't master Hector the first time, but. Oh yeah. So so far Final Fantasy Tactics has been fun. I have not gotten to play too much of it because I only just got it yesterday and I've been watching a lot of worlds.
[00:11:15] Speaker B: Yeah, you and me, both worlds has been fun. If you're into League of Legends, definitely.
[00:11:21] Speaker A: If you are a fan of esports, League of Legends puts on a show and it's great pillow. You've, you've, you've got some, some games I like there.
[00:11:33] Speaker C: So I'm going to stick with the theme here.
I have two games, both Pokemon related. The newest Pokemon Za.
I haven't put, got to put as much time as I'd like into it. I very critical of Pokemon games because I am nostalgic for the older games.
But this one here I've really enjoyed because it's my first experience with and I don't think they've done it beforehand. They changed the battle system up. It's no longer turn based as a typical Pokemon game is. It is action based.
[00:12:15] Speaker A: It's time based.
[00:12:16] Speaker C: So you still, what is it?
[00:12:18] Speaker A: Time based?
[00:12:19] Speaker C: Yeah. So you get your four abilities and you can select them. There's a cooldown on them and you can just rotate through all your, your abilities and it's, it's. Yeah, it's. It's time based and if you wait too long, you miss your opportunity and you can get attacked like there. You have to be quick on it. And I found what I like most about it is it gives me reason to use moves that I would not typically use in a normal combat. I don't want to waste my move on like using leer.
And this gives me a reason to use Lear because I'm waiting on the cooldown. Of an attack move to come up. So it gives me a good chance to like, use the. The stat reducing abilities. And what I like about it is the stat doesn't necessarily stay on the entire time of the.
The battle. So, like, if you use Lear, your defense lowers, but if the battle goes on long enough, your defenses will level back out. It's not permanent, which I've enjoyed.
I'm not a huge fan of the Wild zones or the. The. The Catching zones.
It is typical in Pokemon games that there are certain areas where wild Pokemon are and they stick. Stay true to this. But to me it feels more. It's a small. You're in Lemoy City, the whole Luminous City. Luminous City.
However you pronounce it the whole time.
[00:13:59] Speaker A: It's a weird French word.
[00:14:00] Speaker C: And we've, you know, we've been here before from final.
[00:14:03] Speaker B: From.
[00:14:03] Speaker A: From six. Yeah.
[00:14:04] Speaker B: Black and six. Yeah.
[00:14:06] Speaker A: X and Y. X and.
[00:14:08] Speaker C: Yeah, X and Y.
And you're here the whole time.
There's a lot of criticism to the game. You will find it that you'll never make Pokemon fans happy unless you go back to the original formula, which is fine. It's got its niche thing, but like all games, it's going to evolve. And the biggest criticisms that I've seen to this game are the graphics to it, whether it be on Switch 1 or Switch 2. I got it on Switch 1 because I still haven't found a reason to buy the Switch 2.
So there's just the one that pops in my head and I didn't even notice it because I don't look at it into this. I play the games for fun. I don't play them for the graphics.
There's balconies on the windows that are just literally painted in graphic details. It looks like. Like they're not 3D to them at all. I don't care about that. There's doors around the city that are just. Just part of the graphics. You can't go in them again. I don't care about that because I'm not trying to go into every house and explore.
That's not what the game for me was about. But it's. The story has been really good so far.
I love the combat mechanics.
I like the catching mechanics that they're bringing in, you know, so there is now, if you faint the Pokemon, you can still catch it. Like it's knocked out for a few seconds before it disappears.
[00:15:33] Speaker A: Yeah. But you're like.
[00:15:33] Speaker C: So you have to catch it.
Yeah. You get a chance to catch it, which I really Enjoy the. There is cheese ways that I refuse to do to get shinies that you can despawn and respawn in Pokemon by loading a zone. And the shinies, if they spawn in, will stay permanently. Like, the shinies will not despawn. So you won't lose those if you.
If you go load a zone or they despawn like that shiny will still be there when you come back, which is nice.
If I'm. I'm a natural hunter with it. I like to get them naturally. I don't like to cheese that aspect of it. I'm enjoying it quite a bit. I recommend going out and getting it. If you're like me and you just enjoy Pokemon for the Pokemon. I've never missed a Pokemon game. I originally was not going to be any interest at all in Za because to me, originally looking at it, I was like, oh, this is just a Pokemon battle simulator.
Like, that's how I originally saw the game. Like, I'm just going around the city battling. It's so much more than that. So I'm glad that I took the.
[00:16:39] Speaker A: Chance on plays a lot closer. If you played the original Legends. Pokemon Legends, Arceus. It's a lot closer to that than it is to the actual Pokemon. The regular Pokemon games, I think you were talking about the wild areas. Going from Legends, where it's zone after zone after zone where the entire area is wild, to these minuscule little sections where Pokemon are allowed to be. That's really the. The restrictive feeling that feels kind of off in comparison.
[00:17:07] Speaker C: Yeah, there's not Pokemon everywhere, but there are certain spawn points for certain Pokemons that aren't in wild zones that you can fire around the city. Like, I was going around the city, and I cannot remember the name of the Pokemon. It's the Fire Monkey.
Yeah. Yeah. And I just was happened to look up in a tree, and he was just hidden in a tree. And, like, I battled him and caught him, and I thought that was really cool. I found an Abra on a rooftop, like, just randomly, and he did his thing. It took me a while to catch him, because if he looks at you, he teleports away. So you got to wait I don't know how long for him to respawn back.
It was really cool. There's alphas. I mean, if you've played recent games, you know how alphas work. They're a stronger version of their base part, and they have higher stats if you catch them. I was like level 8 Pokemon running around still early in the game. And I Got attacked by a level 46 Pokemon, and I was just like, oh, okay.
So I'll probably mention that one again here in a little bit because that kind of scared me.
Another game, Pokemon.
[00:18:19] Speaker B: Before you move on from Za. What are you playing it on?
Are you playing on an original switch? A switch.
[00:18:24] Speaker C: Oled. Just switch one. Oh, I guess. Oled. I got the Legend of Zelda. Oled.
[00:18:30] Speaker B: Okay. How does it run?
[00:18:33] Speaker C: I've only played it handheld, and it runs phenomenally.
[00:18:37] Speaker B: Okay, so at least handheld runs well on the original switch.
[00:18:40] Speaker C: Yeah, I'll say. Not that I've. I've noticed at all. I've only, like I said, played it handheld. It's felt fine to me. I didn't notice any hiccups.
I'm not picky when it comes to Zelda games. So to me, it felt great. It felt like I was playing a Zelda game.
[00:18:56] Speaker A: I've only talked to one person who has experienced one crash, and they played for, like, 40 hours and they had one crash. Yeah.
[00:19:03] Speaker C: So I haven't had any, and I've maybe played for 10, and I get.
[00:19:08] Speaker A: Crashes on PC games. So it's like, I can't exactly say I have the perfect system with a PC.
[00:19:13] Speaker B: Fair enough. The reason I asked is I skipped Scarlet and Violet entirely because of how bad the performance was.
[00:19:20] Speaker C: I still play those ones. I'll go back and I'll be like, oh, that sounds. You know, Zelda to me is one of those games where I can go back and play all the older games but still enjoy and have fun with it. I have a hard time now, and I hate to say it, going back to the old formula. After playing the open world versions, I enjoy the, like, what's it? Is it let's go. Let's go Eevee and let's go Pikachu.
[00:19:43] Speaker A: I can't stand I.
[00:19:45] Speaker C: That I. I enjoy it because, like, to me, it's to. That. To me, that is fun because it is just like a.
A farming simulator for Pokemon.
[00:19:56] Speaker B: I was gonna say those are Pokemon cozy games, which is fine, but not for me.
[00:20:00] Speaker C: But I was. I think. Was that the first kind of not.
[00:20:04] Speaker A: Let'S Go was their first time trying to do the minor, like, Pokemon or scene in the open thing. And then they made Legends, and Legends got Open World. Right.
[00:20:15] Speaker C: I loved Legends.
It was to me, like, just a fantastic formula what I've been hoping for in Pokemon games since I was a kid.
[00:20:26] Speaker A: You know, Sword and Shield had the, like, wild zone in the front.
[00:20:31] Speaker C: Yeah. And they. I think that introduced the Raids.
[00:20:34] Speaker A: Yeah, the wild area where the raids were like that was the introduction was. There's a zone where there's wild Pokemon everywhere and there's tall grass. You can find either or.
[00:20:43] Speaker C: And then like the biomes changed, which was great. Yeah, you know, it was everything that I wanted in a Pokemon game since I was a kid. So I got really hype about it. Story was kind of short. The zones felt kind of empty. Other than just random Pokemon spawning up everywhere. That's the only negative I had towards it.
[00:21:03] Speaker A: I think out of everything like Legends, I think is the best done Pokemon. I have not played Za yet, but Legends itself seems to be like the future of Pokemon. It seems to be where Pokemon is best. When you get to.
[00:21:16] Speaker C: Yeah, I'm playing. Yeah, I'll say I've enjoyed it. Like, I mean, I'm an OG Pokemon fan. I've been playing since Red. However, Green, Yellow, Blue.
[00:21:28] Speaker A: I see a name on that list that I also was playing this past week because I didn't have anything else to do. And it was the one game I could think of to play before I got Final Fantasy that. That's a game I've been playing some recently. Talk about some. Some Poke Rogue.
[00:21:43] Speaker C: So I found this game recently and I don't remember how I found it.
[00:21:47] Speaker B: I just.
[00:21:48] Speaker C: It just popped up. I think I saw it on like TikTok or something and I was like, oh, that's cool. It is a roguelike Pokemon game. It's called Poke Rogue. Just exactly spelled one word, Pokey Rogue.
It is you.
You start off the game, you have a certain amount of starters that you can choose from.
It is just battle after battle after battle after battle. That's all it is.
[00:22:12] Speaker A: There's. There's no running around. There's no world to try and find it's new. Fight after fight after fight.
[00:22:18] Speaker C: There's random events that pop up where you can get like legendaries or un.
[00:22:25] Speaker A: Some guy selling illegal drugs.
[00:22:27] Speaker C: Like there's just a bunch of stuff pops up. Like you can buy like items. Like after every battle you can choose a list of free items and each one has a different, you know, quality of rarity. You know, there's pokeballs that you can pick from it. Potions, revives.
The potions, though you don't hold on to them. You don't have an inventory, like other than like your pokeballs. Like you don't keep a potion inventory or healing inventory.
You gotta use the potion then in there. Revives then and there.
[00:22:57] Speaker A: Yeah, there's. There's no e Combat items.
[00:22:59] Speaker C: Yeah, there's. When you catch a Pokemon, you get that Pokemon choice as a starter. The unevolved version of that Pokemon as a starter. So, for example, my last run, and I'm still really early at it. I think I've only done like 20 runs. 20, 30 runs on it.
I caught a Snorlax. Snorlax is very strong and probably overpowered. He carried me through like the first 50 levels by just body slamming everything. You get Munchlax and you level it up through friendship. The faster you can get the. What is the Silver Bell or something that you get the Friendship bell, whatever it is that the hold item you get. Hold items. Yeah. Soothe Bell. And the sooner that he's happy with you, the sooner he evolves and you can start getting that tanky boy up there.
[00:23:51] Speaker A: So I've played quite a lot of this. Have you beaten it yet?
[00:23:54] Speaker C: No.
[00:23:55] Speaker A: Okay, so the. The basic premise of the game is when you start the game, you start out with 10 Pokemon slots. Each Pokemon has a certain value, 1 through 9. I'm yet to see anything that's value 10.
And based on that, you get to build a team. The very first run you have, you have access to every starter in the game. Build a team and then you catch Pokemon up to the six.
They obviously have their level up stuff. There's extra things that you can get with. There's a bunch of IV stuff that's well into the complexities of the game. So there's reasons to catch more of the same Pokemon. So like, you'll get a starter and it'll have 15 in every stat or something like that. And you'll see a starter later on and you go like, oh, there's another starter. Why would I catch it? I already have one. Well, maybe he's got a better IV in health and so you'll catch that one and then that permanently upgrades your IV and health to that number. So there's reasons to see repeat Pokemon to catch them again and again.
It goes up to 200 levels.
You will be randomly facing gym leaders. You will be randomly facing evil teams. I've seen every team from Galactic to Rocket to Rainbow Rocket. I've seen everything you have Arrival, the rival fight are some of the hardest fights in the game.
Every 10 levels. So one through 10, you go through a zone. The last level is always either a gym leader or a boss Pokemon. Boss Pokemon have gated health, so they'll have like two major pieces of their health bar. And unless you can completely destroy an entire health Bar worth of damage. You could only do up to the health bar. So like if you do 2/3 of something's health in one hat, you'll only do half. But if you can do a full 100%, you'll do both ticks. So that's how like the health gating works in that it's really fun.
The last boss is really hard. Really hard. I got to it like five or six times before I could face it. I start out with a couple of legendary Pokemon right now. Like, I have Miraidon, I have Kyogre. Each of those are nine points. They do not make you win the game immediately. They help a lot from the beginning, but you can still mess yourself up.
It's. It's very clever. It's also free.
[00:26:07] Speaker C: Pokerogue.net yeah, like it's, it's. It's optimized for mobile, it's optimized for computer. Like if you play it on your phone, like it. It sets up whether you have it on your side or vertical, however you want it.
I have found it's a little buggy on the phone, but you can still play it. That's where I've been playing it. It's just mobile. It's. I've been counting it as my mobile game the past some time. There's other aspects of it that I've really enjoyed and that's the experience shares.
[00:26:39] Speaker A: There's the one other thing. There's this little gotcha thing. No money is ever spent for this. You are never paying money for this game. They don't take money. So their little gotcha system is just something to make a little extra spice in the system so you can like randomly get eggs.
[00:26:54] Speaker B: Okay, I have a question for you then.
Where should someone go if they want to play Poke Rogue? Because I did a Google search for Poke Rogue and I got like five different sites all claiming this is where you play Poke Rogue.
[00:27:08] Speaker A: It is just called pokerogue.net.
[00:27:11] Speaker B: Okay, pokerogue.net is the place to go then.
[00:27:15] Speaker A: Poke. There's no apostrophe like Pokemon has. It's just Poke B o K E R O G U e dot net that's it. That's all there is to it. You make an account. There's. They're. They're not asking you for money. They're not asking you for anything else. You control a lot of settings. You can change information on that. You can have multiple accounts if you really want to. It remembers that you have an account. It remembers that you've done multiple Things like if your game crashes you can reopen the screen. It will remember where you left off in a run, things like that.
But if something is asking for your money, this is not the game.
It is entirely free. Nothing about it asks for any, any credit card, nothing like that. It wants a username and a password. It doesn't even ask you for an email.
[00:28:02] Speaker B: I mean I think the key here is just go to poke rogue.net don't go to other sites. Because I was not exaggerating. I literally see five different Poke Rogue play now type sites listed in the first page of Google results.
[00:28:16] Speaker A: The only, I had no idea which.
[00:28:18] Speaker B: One was the real one.
[00:28:19] Speaker A: The only weird mechanic that like exists in Pokemon that they don't have is Z Moves Mega Evolutions there terastalization is there.
Gigantamaxing is there. So if the more you know about Pokemon, the more you can do with this, there are reasons to use other like competitive strategies are useful in the game because they understand how to properly utilize moves and down do things. This game can be really hard. It is still a roguelike, but it's one of those tactical thinking hard games. There's no mechanical difficulty here.
[00:28:53] Speaker B: Okay, so I introduced the next topic then.
[00:28:56] Speaker A: No, I. I had to remember that I was the host in this one.
It's been a long. It's been a long fucking week for me.
So before we get on to our actual topic, we had a couple things that we each wanted to really talk about. So we're gonna talk about some, some non game related recommendations. For most of us right now, this is TV shows and movies. So Jax, you've got some anime you want to talk about. Take it away.
[00:29:19] Speaker B: Yeah, so we're recording this on a Sunday because I'm gonna go watch the Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid movie in theaters tomorrow and wasn't gonna be available to record on our normal recording day for four wards, so we're just recording both shows on Sunday instead. So that's my first recommendation. If you have not already seen Ms. Kobayashi's Dragon Maid, unfortunately you do need Crunchyroll to watch it. Which means you need to actually be an anime watcher because why else would you be subscribed to Crunchyroll? But Ms. Kobayashi's Dragon Maid is a fun slice of life about an office lady who gets drunk and wanders into the mountains and finds a dragon and befriends the dragon. And that dragon decides to come live with her as her maid. Because she is a maid. Otaku shenanigans ensue it's very cute. It's very funny. There's a ton of like playing with the concept of dragons aren't humans and didn't grow up in our society and don't take things for granted that we do and have totally different worldviews. That's where a lot of the humor comes from. Also, it has some of the best animation you'll ever see in anime. It has better action sequences than most Shonen anime do. It is gorgeous. So that's my first recommendation. My other two recommendations are available to you even if you're not an anime person because they're on Netflix and Amazon Prime.
My Netflix recommendation is Aggretsuko.
This is Aggretsuko is an anime about an office worker who gets so frustrated with her shitty boss and her shitty work environment, so she goes to karaoke and sings death metal to feel better. Also, by the way, this is made by the people who make hello Kitty and everyone is a cute animal person just like in hello Kitty. It's hilarious.
It is incredibly satirical and critical of corporate Japan and commercialism and capitalism.
It's very much like critical of the Sanrio Corporation that makes it, which is incredible that they allowed creators to have that much freedom. And it's just fucking funny with really good characters. So I highly recommend that.
My other recommendation is on Amazon prime and it is a show called Panty and Stocking with Garter Belts. Now if you don't know what this is, you probably heard that title in Automatically Tombed out.
However, I need to explain. Panty and Stocking with Garter Belt is what happens when you take some of the best anime creators in the business.
This is made by Studio Trigger. This is made by the people who made cyberpunk Edgerunners, who made bna, who made Little Witch Academia. They're really good at anime and they said what if we made an adult American cartoon? That's what Panty and Stocking with Garter Belt is is. It is an anime that is trying to be an American adult cartoon.
[00:32:19] Speaker A: And it is. It feels like an adult version of.
[00:32:21] Speaker B: Powerpuff Girls kind of with some. Some invader Zim elements and some like more scatological humor like you would see in like a South park or Family Guy type thing.
[00:32:33] Speaker A: If you're a fan of Freakin Morchi, you'll like this.
[00:32:35] Speaker B: Yes, it's raunchy. It's hilarious. Like, this is one of the funniest anime ever made.
They still. They're Studio Trigger. When they want to do good animation, they do.
And Also, this is more true of season one than it is of the new season. Season two just came out this summer. This has one of the best dubs in all of anime. If you are a native English speaker, this is an anime you should watch dubbed regardless of how you normally watch anime, period.
Those are my recommendations.
[00:33:08] Speaker A: Alright Pillow. Take us, take us to your recommendations pillow.
[00:33:11] Speaker C: So mine are probably more wide known.
I just consider these very good binge worthy shows. My all time favorite show and I've been a super fan. I probably watched the probably like 10 to 20 times. I've lost count. Supernatural.
If you don't know what Supernatural is, I will briefly explain it without doing any spoilers. It is two brothers who start off by looking for their dad and they hunt supernatural beings like ghosts and demons. And I'm trying to remember wind, dingoes, vampires, when dingoes forget what the wendigos.
Funny story on this one. How I first started watching it is I thought I was watching a documentary on ghost hunting.
That's good on, on Netflix. I was just like, oh cool. You know, I love ghost hunting, you know, documentaries. I'm, I'm a fan of horror like just in general. So I thought I was like, oh cool. You know, it is not a documentary on ghost hunting.
And I found that within the first five minutes of the show because there is something that happens in the first five minutes of the show that I was just like holy crap, what is going on here? I thought this was a documentary on ghost hunting. What is happening?
And I don't want to spoil anything if you haven't watched it, but go watch it.
[00:34:42] Speaker A: It's great.
It's completed, it has 15 seasons.
So it's got a lot of content for you to watch. And this is classic seasons, like 22 episode seasons.
[00:34:52] Speaker C: Yeah, like good, good seasons. There are, you know, like every other show there's going to be filler episodes that if you're, if it's your first time watching it, I recommend watching it every time. If you're a repeat watcher like me, there are guides online to which shows to watch or which episodes to watch to get the story.
But watch it all, they're great cinema.
So my next show is Breaking Bad and this show to me has a special place in my heart. It's very meme worthy.
It is a show about a teacher who gets cancer and is afraid of leaving his family with no money. So he decides to sell drugs and it develops from there as any drug dealer or drug manufacturer's life would. It's never good with just a little bit. So it just keeps growing and growing and growing and he becomes Heisenberg. Recommend checking that out. It's awesome.
My next show. I'm sure nobody's heard of this one.
The Walking Dead.
All this show has had lots of.
What's the word I'm looking for?
Not everybody's happy with the way it turned out. I for one, love it. Yeah, it's got a lot of controversy. Sorry, it's very late.
It's got a lot of controversy. Not a lot of people are happy with the way the show turned out. I for one, loved every episode. My favorite character in this is Negan.
If you haven't watched the show and haven't read the comics, you don't know who Negan is, so I won't spoil it. But he is my favorite character in the entire universe of this show.
I'm a big Walking Dead fan. I have watched all the spin offs. I'm current with all of them, minus Dead City. I don't even know if the new seasons came out for that yet.
I highly recommend. I have excellent. I love, I love the telltale version of the game. I think they got, what is it, two or three seasons of that.
[00:36:59] Speaker A: I'm not sure because I don't play it. I know it was very popular and I've heard great things about it.
[00:37:06] Speaker C: Highly recommend that and the other other Walking Dead shows. I think Fear the Walking Dead is very popular. I've watched that one. That kind of gives you a more of a story of how everything started.
[00:37:19] Speaker A: It's.
[00:37:20] Speaker C: And then eventually all the shows tie in together, which is awesome.
Very good, binge worthy shows. You'll find yourself watching multiple episodes in a row if it's something that catches your.
Catches your attention.
[00:37:32] Speaker A: All right, you, you took our Horror Month and really ran with it with this one.
So my, my philosophy for this one was I'm going to find. If you have a streaming service, I'm going to give you some form of recommendation. I've got one for hbo Max. I've got one for Amazon prime and I've got one for Netflix.
Each of them is very different. They're all really good with Netflix. Blue Eye Samurai. Blue Eye Samurai is very short right now. It's only like six, seven episodes or something.
[00:38:04] Speaker B: I think eight. But they're also longer episodes. They're like 40, 50 minutes.
[00:38:08] Speaker A: Yeah, it is wonderfully animated, fantastically voice directed. Music's great, story's great.
The protagonists in it are phenomenal. And I don't want to spoil much about anything else other than what I've said there. It is about a blue eyed samurai and every word in that has a connotation.
[00:38:30] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:38:30] Speaker A: So if anything about that interests you, it is a mature show and it takes itself seriously while also having some good humor in it. But it's a mature show.
It covers the mattress.
[00:38:41] Speaker B: When he says mature show, he means like there is nudity, there is gory violence, it's all of the above.
[00:38:49] Speaker A: It can be phenomenal though. It takes it seriously. Yeah.
The complete opposite direction.
There is this just came out maybe two weeks ago. There is a sort of interview documentary movie called John Candy. I like me because John Candy was this classic actor from the 80s that I really loved a lot of his stuff.
If you're a fan of some of the classic movies, fuck, he's in Home Alone, Planes, Trains and Automobiles. He's a comedy actor that was really an icon for when I was growing up and I heard that there was going to be this documentary and Ryan Reynolds was the person directing it. Like interesting what got him to direct it. And so a buddy of mine got me to a pre screening of the show. Fantastic time. You can find it on Amazon Prime. It's two hours. So it's longer than most documentaries because it's partly documentary, partly movie. It had me laughing like crazy. I cried for a little while. Emotions back and forth, but they, they play it really well. The final one, completely different direction. Again, this is your HBO Max one. This is a show called Chernobyl.
This is six episodes long. It's fucking heavy because it's entirely about the Chernobyl incident where a nuclear reactor blew up in Soviet Russia and what goes on with Soviet Russia era propaganda and how it got so bad and why the reactor blew up. It's deep, it's heavy. It does not shy away from the problems with Soviet era Russia and what goes on with fascism. Like this is deep, it's cutting, it's biting. But it's also really insightful and really personable and you get to, you get to learn just a tiny little bit about this one historic event that we've. Almost everyone's heard the name Chernobyl, even if you don't really know what it is. This, this event that changed a lot of the world.
And this is one of the reasons, I think, why, if you take history seriously, one of the reasons why the Berlin Wall ended up coming down was because Chernobyl happened and Soviet Russia could not maintain its, its perfect wall around the world. It's really interesting. It's very different. If you're up for serious, like, this is not a comedy time. This is just serious. If you're up for that kind of a story, Chernobyl's there. But now I've, I've sort of Keyline mentioned it at the end of Pillow's thing. We're going to talk about as our main topic, horror moments from non horror games.
And these are, you know, a horror game. When you see one, they're meant to do something to frighten you, give you this, this terrible tension system. And then there are games where you don't expect that to show up and suddenly it's there. And Pillow, do you want to start us off at this time? Give us one of your horror games. That's not a horror game.
[00:41:49] Speaker C: Yeah, so I am. If it's a game that I want to play, I'm going to preface it. If it's a game that I want to play, I do not watch any media coverage of the game.
Subnautica, the game that I'm going to talk about was not a game like that. I didn't watch any media coverage. I didn't know anything about the game. I just came across it odd steam and I was like, oh, this game's right at my wheelhouse. It's a survival game and it's in the ocean. I love the ocean. I'm a scuba diver. I love the ocean. It's great. I was like, cool. Survival game in the ocean. What could go wrong? Well, Subnautica is not just a game where you're stranded in the ocean. There's a lot of story to it. You crash land on this only as far as, you know, only ocean planet and you're scavenging materials from the ocean and you're just moseying about. And I was like, oh, you know what? Cool. I'm going to go check out the ship that exploded and see what I can find over there. I didn't know leviathans were a thing. I didn't know.
I was just, just chilled. The biggest thing that I came up to this point was like, what are those called?
Sand sharks. Like a sand shark.
And I was just like, oh, you know, you could swim away from those.
Well, I, you know, now this, now if I play this game, I'm well aware and there's, there's no spook factor to it to me more anymore. I didn't know that I was just swimming casually. I didn't have a seamoth. I didn't have the sea glide. I didn't have Anything. I was just swimming and I went over to this ship and I hear this loud scream and cry. I was like, what is that? And you know, I remember because it was dark out in the. In the world and I was like, well, that's. That's not normal. I was like, it's probably just a sound effect in the game to scare you. It is not just a sound effect. It was or sound effect. It was a reaper Leviathan.
And if you don't know what that is, look it up. It scared me so bad.
In this game that's not supposed to be really just horror, just survival that I paused the game. Like it freaked me out. Like I paused the game.
I didn't. Was not expecting it.
So, yeah, Subnautica. Big jump scare. Big scary fun. Great game.
[00:44:15] Speaker A: If you are someone who has problems with deep water, this game will terrify you in general. But the first time, if you don't know what Leviathans are and you see Leviathan pop up, oh boy, that's. That's an experience.
[00:44:31] Speaker C: It's a little late now to say it. Spoilers if you haven't. We might have to put something in the description, but there are some spoiler. Like if you don't want these.
[00:44:41] Speaker A: We're talking about horror moments in non horror games. We're spoiling these games.
[00:44:45] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:44:46] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:44:46] Speaker B: At least this part of these games.
[00:44:48] Speaker A: Yeah.
Jax, you got some games there. Let's hear what your first one is.
[00:44:54] Speaker B: Sure. So my first one is the game BioShock. Now I don't mean Bioshock Infinite, I don't mean BioShock 2. I mean the original BioShock. Because I haven't played those other ones. I can't speak to them. The original Bioshock starts out with a creepy sequence that introduces you to the city of Rapture, this underwater city. And then as it's introducing you to it, shit goes wrong. On the elevator that you are on. And you hear cackling. You see this, you don't know what it is yet. Trying to break into the elevator you're in. And then suddenly it goes silent. And you're told, okay, it's safe to leave now by the guy on the radio that's talking to you. And you walk out and you have no idea what to expect.
And I highly recommend if you've never played the original BioShock, this is literally the beginning of the game. I'm not spoiling anything meaningful. This is like first five minutes, play it with headphones, turn off the lights. It's fucking freaky. They did such a good job of using horror elements to make your introduction to Rapture deeply unsettling. It does such a better job of conveying something is deeply fucked up and wrong here than the actual audio logs telling you what is actually fucked up and wrong in Rapture.
[00:46:17] Speaker A: So yeah, if I. That's my first and that was my first experience there. There's a game that I know is a horror game that I got six minutes into and I never played since. It's not BioShock, it's Dead Space. Got six minutes in. Elevator sequences are horrifying. Horrifying. Never got to play that game again. Put it down immediately. But I know that game is a horror game.
[00:46:43] Speaker B: So yeah, BioShock is not. It's a first person shooter with some stealth action elements, but it uses horror elements to create that introduction to its world.
[00:46:54] Speaker A: The atmosphere is incredibly dark. It's very tension high.
[00:46:58] Speaker B: Yes. And the first big daddy that you encounter is very intimidating and freaky and feels very horror esque. Even though you literally spend most of the game figuring out how to kill those things and farm them for resources.
[00:47:13] Speaker A: Yeah. So great horror introduction to a game.
Mine is significantly deeper into a game and if you are a classic gamer like the rest of us, you've played this game. When you've gotten to this level, the original Halo Combat Evolved, the Library, that game suddenly becomes a horror game and you've been a super soldier beating the shit out of aliens for a long time.
[00:47:41] Speaker B: Let's not assume everyone has actually played the original Halo. I don't recommend going back and playing the original Halo. It has aged badly with its copy paste rooms.
[00:47:51] Speaker A: I disagree a little bit. It still plays very well. It's still very fun. But you notice things that were very easily tricks. And if you can play, if you can play turn based games, you can play this.
[00:48:05] Speaker B: So you spend the whole game up to this point fighting the Covenant, these silly aliens with plasma weapons. And then suddenly at this point you go into this creepy library and the Flood are unleashed. They're a totally different alien race.
They don't seem to have any intelligence. They just swarm and are freaky as fuck.
[00:48:27] Speaker A: Yeah. Your first introduction right before this happens is a dude who knows who you are and is so terrified of what had just happened that he tries to shoot you and then kills himself because he's freaked the fuck out. The Flood is one of the best twists in a game if you've never seen it coming. Halo, the Library suddenly gets the. The atmosphere this needs to be. If you have the New version. Do not use the new graphics. The lighting in this ruins a lot of the. The horror elements of this because it was designed around the graphical limitations. The lighting is key. The graphics is key to giving this atmosphere of oppression of this. You're being hunted by unknown aliens that you've just unleashed that have done horrible body disfigurement to you and the Covenant and every one of your allies.
It's freaky.
[00:49:26] Speaker C: The best way I could describe this. It's the start of a zombie outbreak. Yeah.
[00:49:31] Speaker A: And you're at fault and like.
[00:49:33] Speaker C: Yeah, you caused it. Like it's. It's a virus. Like a seemingly a living.
Like I wouldn't even say unintelligent. Like just a virus that it's. It's scary. Like the sound like you guys were talking about like the, like the aesthetics of like the.
[00:49:53] Speaker A: For this, for this level setup is unbelievably good at getting this atmosphere of tension and an absolute like suspense to you. They. They use. They use this atmosphere like they use the new style of music. The crap. The engine that Xbox ad to deliver music on a level that is utterly horrifying. Done so well, if I can remember.
[00:50:18] Speaker C: And it's been a long time so I'm going to misremember some things, but up to this point the music and everybody's heard the Halo music. You know the intro. You're da da da. You're like upbeat like you're the hero. You're like you're the hero. You're. You're the guy. Like you are the guy. And then like we said, everything all of a sudden becomes you're not the guy anymore.
Like you're not him. The music just goes dull and scary and now all of a sudden you're shit in your pants.
Great contribution to like a non scary game being absolutely terrifying.
[00:50:55] Speaker A: And if you are going to try this and you're going to play it on the new remastered stuff, use the original graphics engine, for the love of God. Everything else may look a little bit duller, but when they did that remaster work with it, they absolutely ruined the lighting. They ruined. They really did.
Pillow you want to get.
[00:51:15] Speaker B: That's not exclusive to Halo 1 either. They ruined the lighting in Halo 2 as well.
[00:51:20] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. I got one more. But real quick, like back to the Halo. This is something best experienced raw.
So our experiences are not going to be your experiences. If you've. If you're listening to this and you're trying it out for your first time and then if you've played Halo 2 or 3 or any of the other ones and you already know what the flood is. You're not going to be able to experience for the first time.
Nothing will ever go back to. Because this was at a time where you didn't have let's plays and you didn't know what was coming. You didn't have tick tocks there was either. You didn't know like you couldn't experience it this unless you were playing it or watching someone play it at their house.
So go with that. Like take it knowing that it is not going to be the same thing that we experienced in the same atmosphere.
[00:52:15] Speaker A: This is another one of those coming. Play it in the dark with the lights off because that is the atmosphere. It is giving to you. I played this in my friend's basement and that was perfect.
[00:52:28] Speaker C: So I would assume everybody listening to this knows what World Warcraft is.
So put yourself. It's 2006, right? 2006.
[00:52:39] Speaker A: Yeah. Six is when BC came up.
[00:52:41] Speaker B: Something like that.
[00:52:42] Speaker C: It's 2006. You're in your. For me, very early teens and you're questing. The new expansion Burning Crusade just came out and you're excited and you're questing and you're going through. You're killing some demons and all of a sudden you hear this robotic screech.
I set the scene. You're, you're. You turn around and somehow this skull level boss mob just snuck up on you. It's giant, it's green. It's the biggest thing that you've ever seen up to this point, other than maybe Ragnaros and it one shot you and you're dead. And you're like, what the hell was that? The Fel Reaver. If you've played wow and you played back in BC when it was the, the newest expansion, you died to this thing and it scared the shit out of you. WOW is not meant to be a horror game. I mean it's got scary aspects just like any MMO does. But this scared the shit out of you as a kid or a teenager, aren't even an adult. Like you weren't expecting it because this is the first time like that you experience like a max level mob in a beginning level zone, like your, your introductory zone to an expansion. And the closest thing that I could say to like experiencing this is if you're alliance and you were in questing in Duskwood and you went to Darkshire and you ran into stitches.
[00:54:12] Speaker A: Yeah, that's. That's pretty much the closest it comes to like this is a. If you've played wow at all, you know, it's a hero fantasy. You. You're the guy. You're the one doing all the things. You're beating all the world bosses. You've been let loose in the new world to try and save it. And you're just doing questing mobs.
[00:54:29] Speaker B: You're starting things off, literally picking up poop.
[00:54:32] Speaker A: Literally picking up poop. And then as you're. You're wandering around, the screen shakes a little bit. You don't know what's going on. And then do my questing some more. And then you'll hear the scream and you'll go, what the fuck was that? And you'll turn around and he's there. He appears up. He is massive. This thing is huge. You cannot miss it. And he snuck up on you out of nowhere. And then he one shots you because you can't run away fast enough. That was that. That's one of those horror moments in a game where you're like, fuck me. All right, Jax, give us your second one.
[00:55:05] Speaker B: All right. My second one is not a game. It is a movie that is not a horror movie. But the first entry in this franchise.
The first entry in this franchise uses horror movie techniques to build tension and really sell the craziness in this movie when they really didn't have the tech to do what they wanted to do yet.
Because my other pick is Jurassic park, the 1993 original movie. Jurassic park has all of the horror movie suspense building and timing and sound design and jump scares and everything.
The only reason it does not count as an actual horror movie is that it's an action adventure movie where the heroes survive the events of the movie.
That's it. That's really the difference.
[00:56:00] Speaker A: Yeah, it dodges a lot of the tropes.
[00:56:03] Speaker B: It's not tropey at all, but it's basically everything involving the T. Rex other than him eating the lawyer, is horror movie stuff.
The lawyer sequence is just hilarious.
[00:56:15] Speaker A: All of the raptors, the raptors and.
[00:56:18] Speaker B: The way they hunt the cast are horror. It's Jurassic park has so many good horror elements. And all of the sequels lose all of that. All of the sequels, even the original sequel, the Lost World, it's just a straight dinosaur action adventure movie.
[00:56:35] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:56:36] Speaker B: What's the original Jurassic park is if.
[00:56:38] Speaker A: If any of the others are your first Jurassic park movie, then they still sort of have the feel, but none of them get it quite the same as the first Jurassic park does because they've built up this tension that Isn't tension In the beginning of the series, you see everything clear out in the open, nice and easy to see. It's right in front of your faces. So you never have this. This horror portion except the raptors. You are never shown the raptors or the T Rex, actually, until horror time hits.
[00:57:14] Speaker B: Yeah, they literally frame the sequence brilliantly.
The way the T Rex is introduced. They show them feeding the dinosaurs and they put a goat in the pen for the T. Rex. And it's just chilling there. It's just like, hi, I'm a goat, whatever.
And then the cast are doing their thing. The power goes out and they look over, there's no goat there anymore. And then they're freaking out, like, what happened to the goat? Where's the goat? And then a bloody limb of the goat lands on top of their car.
[00:57:45] Speaker A: And this is with the pants. Like, this is the beginning of the horror sequence. The. The. Like the first introduction of horror is the raptors. They're. They're moving the raptors into a pen and there's this brief horror sequence that goes on where one of the people misaligns something and he gets dragged into the pen. And you know, from the start, raptors are bad business.
[00:58:06] Speaker B: Yeah. I love Jurassic Park. It is a 10 out of 10 movie that everyone should watch. But it definitely, like, I saw it when I was 10 for the first time and it was sending my heart racing. It is an intense film.
[00:58:18] Speaker C: I'd say the scariest part for that show, for me as a kid, wasn't the main Raptors or the T Rex. It was the little spitty Raptors.
[00:58:27] Speaker A: Oh, the thing with the little frills.
[00:58:30] Speaker C: Those scared me when they popped up their neck frills and, like, screeched. That was it for me as a kid. Like, that scared me. Wasn't the T Rex, because that was known to be scary. It was. The neck froze.
[00:58:43] Speaker A: Watching the Raptors hunt the kids through the kitchen was what got me. Look, these things are intelligent and they're coming for you. Oh, man.
Yeah. No, that as. As not a game. Yeah, that's. That's a great advice. That's. That is pretty much exactly how Halo does it. You have this perfect setup and then you have a great payoff that you. You. Unlike in Halo, you know, there's these things here because you don't know about the flood beforehand, but once it's introduced, the introduction is punchy, the atmosphere is perfect for it, and they sell it well.
And I. I have. I have another one that is very similar if any of you have ever played Batman, Arkham Asylum, that game is a good game. It's not a horror game. You're playing Batman and you get to play Batman running around Arkham Asylum trying to put the inmates back into their cells. But there are two sequences in Arkham Asylum in which suddenly the game is very different.
There is a sequence in the sewers where the crocodile is hunting you. And that goes from Batman being Batman to Batman being hunted by something big in the dark that you. You can't see. And you have a very hard time dealing with the croc.
And then there is the. More I don't remember if this is from Arkham Asylum or if it's from one of the sequels, but there is at least in one of them, if not two of the games, there is a sequence with Scarecrow where you are doused with the fear gas and suddenly everything is now this psychological horror to you as opposed to your. Your detective man doing detective things, punching up the bad guys. Now you're in a psychological horror now survive. It's. It's less punchy than, than Halo's or Subnautica's little pops there. Bioshock sets the scene a little bit better, but each of these takes you out of your element and suddenly you're in a new one and the tension is up and you don't know what's coming. And that really is what sells that whole horror bit. And I think that's what we're talking about when we're talking about horror in non horror games is that sudden, sudden flutter, that sudden change in tension especially. It's especially good if there's a good subtle change in music because that really sets mood.
But as we're talking about mood and things, I smacked my hand and it really hurt.
And that was meant to be a segue, but it's a great segue because.
Because I've messed up my hand. I can only play games with one hand right now. And it's really irritating. But thankfully, just in case you're someone who's in the similar situation to me or you're someone who's a little bit handicapped to begin with and doesn't have a great use of things, or you just want something that. These are maybe easier games to play in general because they're gonna be less timing based, these are. We each have some recommendations for games that you can play one handed because I need as many recommendations as I can get right now. So. Pillow. Take us away. Start us from the top.
[01:01:50] Speaker C: Yeah, Mine is another pretty well known game. I'm sure by now you've probably heard of it. Very easy to play with one hand. The Sims.
It's a very chill, cozy game. Life simulator.
It's. There is no stress of time. You play at your own pace, you do whatever you want.
You can just play with one hand. And I'm not gonna go too deep into it for time's sake. But yeah, check it out. The Sims. If you're on the handicap level of only having one hand or just want an easy cozy game, the Sims.
Do you want me to keep going with mine and close it out or.
[01:02:31] Speaker A: We'Ll do the entire. We'll do the DAR one for you.
[01:02:35] Speaker C: I have wrote down Sim City, but all sim builders or city builders games. You know, you got city skylines even. I think civilization can probably be done with one hand.
A lot of these, you know, trying to think of. Well, there's a lot of the tech stick with simplicity. Yeah.
Oh, RTS games like yeah, RTS games.
I'd count that in there kinda, you know, RTS is one of them.
[01:03:04] Speaker A: Some of them can be done with one.
[01:03:06] Speaker B: Most RTs require you to have a mouse and be able to hit hotkeys on your keyboard to be able to play at a adequate level.
[01:03:13] Speaker A: A lot of times not even talking.
[01:03:15] Speaker B: About like competitive, but even campaign.
[01:03:17] Speaker A: A lot of the old campaigns for Starcraft 2 are very open to you doing. Clicking. You can do the entirety of Starcraft 2 one handed because they're multi baseline.
[01:03:26] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. You can select difficulties. Yeah, I would definitely say you could play. If you're not playing competitive, you can go into an RTS easy mode. But I'm going to stick with my sim. My City Builder recommendation. Very easy to do one handed.
So the Sims and SimCity to keep it simple.
[01:03:44] Speaker A: All right, Jax, what do you got for me?
[01:03:47] Speaker B: So I've recommended this recently on a previous episode but my first one is a puzzle game called Baba Is yous. Baba Is yous has movement controls. So think like a D pad and one button which is to rewind one step of whatever you've done previously. That's it. That's the entirety of the controls in Baba Is yous. Very easy to play one handed. If you're playing a console version, you're just using the D pad and maybe setting the controller down and pressing the rewind button when you have to. If you're playing on PC, just map the controls so that they make sense on one hand for you, whatever that is for whichever hand is available.
Phenomenal puzzle Game. It's very much a puzzle game about rewriting the rules of the game and playing with your expectations. So for example, the first time you're introduced to the tile water, the rule water is sink is active. And if you walk into the water, you die and you have to rewind. Cause by the way, also when you fail, you can just rewind however many steps back you want, including just immediately before it at will. There is, there is no true fail state in Baba's U.
But water doesn't have to be sink. If you rewrite the rules by changing the words water is sink to say water is push, then you can push the water around and move it around. If you rewrite it to say water is you, you now control the water and can walk around as the water. It's phenomenal because the game then uses this ability to rewrite the rules of the game to create some truly devious puzzles that you feel like a genius when you finally solve. And you can absolutely play it one handed, regardless of which hand it is because everything is turn based. Like nothing moves until you do and then you move and everything else moves, however much it's going to move for that one step. And when you rewind, it rewinds one step, whatever that is. Very easy to play one handed.
My other answer, I'm borrowing from my wife because she has hurt her hand in the past and also just likes to eat while playing games and stuff. Classic JRPGs can mostly be played one handed. If we're talking like classic final fantasies, you may need to turn on wait mode because you can't menu as quickly as you can in active mode when you're playing two handed. But again, you're manipulating the D pad and then like pressing Confirm or cancel and it's just. You just do it with one hand. Literally set the controller down and just press the buttons as you need them one handed. It's fine. My wife has beaten entire games this way. So yeah, old final fantasies basically 10 and earlier fit this mold.
Chrono Trigger, Earthbound, Breath of Fire 1 through 4, Lufia 2.
Anything in that vein?
[01:06:40] Speaker A: All right, that's a, that's a good. Probably good chunk.
[01:06:43] Speaker B: Probably not so much things like Super Mario RPG or Sea of Stars because those require more dexterity.
[01:06:49] Speaker A: There's. There's a couple things that have like an action requirement to them, but those, those usually are like an innovative version on the, the classic. Yeah, we're gonna say pillow.
[01:06:58] Speaker C: Never mind. I'll let you go through yours because it might be covered in Yours it might.
[01:07:04] Speaker A: We'll see where we go from there. So I have a little bit more of a variety because I've been looking through them. Turn based strategy games in general are almost entirely one handed. You can do pretty much everything one handed with these.
If we're going to go a little bit further with them. I mentioned it very recently. The tactics games, you get things that are the grid based tactics games. You have XCOM, you have Final Fantasy Tactics, Fire Emblem, Advance wars, etc. These are entirely controllable through one hand.
And sometimes that one hand is your mouse hand and that mouse hand is all you can use. And you can't really use a keyboard too much for those you have point and click adventure games where all you're doing is pushing around the mouse and clicking on things. Now that's not the kind of game that I can play right now, but it's one of the type of games that you can do one handed. Or I could do it. It's just I'm not great at them out with my left hand. But most of those aren't time based so I could do it just be really slow.
[01:08:02] Speaker C: So specifically the game that comes to mind on that is Myst. If you've ever played that, I would recommend Myst.
[01:08:09] Speaker B: Myst and its sequel Riven, which Riven actually got a remake not very long.
[01:08:13] Speaker A: Ago, very recently, two or three years ago.
[01:08:16] Speaker B: I don't even think it's that long ago.
Let's see.
[01:08:20] Speaker C: I'm curious now while you're looking.
We talked about these games earlier and it's. It would kind of fall under turn based Pokemon. You can easily play that with one hand. There's no time constraints to it.
[01:08:34] Speaker A: The original strategy, somewhere between jrpg, jrpg, They're a mix between the two.
We didn't really mention it too much because I don't do them that much. But a lot of phone games are pretty much one handed games.
[01:08:48] Speaker B: So on that note, I had one that I just thought of just now.
This was a DS game. It is available on the Wii U as well and you can just get a DS emulator on your phone and play it there. It plays great. I speak from experience.
Kirby Canvas Curse. This is a Kirby game that is controlled entirely with the stylus. On the DS it's purely touch controlled. There are no buttons to press. You can absolutely play it one handed. Just set your phone on a desk or table and play with whichever hand you have use of. And you just draw paths for Kirby to roll along and go flying through levels. And it's, it's a lot of fun. It's a good game.
[01:09:29] Speaker A: Yeah. And we've, we've got some for both different types. Sometimes you can use keyboard, sometimes you can't. So we've got a pretty good list of things that you can do either purely mouse based or purely keyboard based, or neither.
So that, that covers pretty much what we've got.
Anything else you gotta say or.
[01:09:47] Speaker B: If you're a degenerate visual novel games, those are designed to be played one handed in the first place.
[01:09:52] Speaker A: There are, yeah, there's, there's that kind of visual novel, but there are other visual novel games that are less raunchy, shall we say?
[01:10:03] Speaker B: Sorry, it just occurred to me I had to crack the joke.
[01:10:06] Speaker A: Yeah, they're, they're, there are those. But there's also some actual heartfelt story games that are story games. Or you can go for the.
[01:10:13] Speaker C: We actually talked about it last episode. You can now play World of Warcraft one handed.
[01:10:18] Speaker A: This is true. You could be a keyboard turtle and I have a problem with it.
All right.
[01:10:26] Speaker C: Sorry. My webcam just like close up right into my face. I got one of those tracking webcams.
[01:10:33] Speaker B: The timing, the timing was impossible, impeccable. For you to be like, you can play World of Warcraft one handed and then it zooms right in on your face. I wish we were a video podcast just for that moment so the listeners could experience it.
[01:10:44] Speaker A: That was, that was really well timed. On. Complete accident. But on, on our, on our unintentional humor note that none of you will ever get to see.
This has been 8bit to 4k. I'm liking many names, of course, for Jax and for Pillow Pet. Thank you very much for joining us.
[01:11:01] Speaker C: Unintentionally, horror not being horror podcast.
[01:11:05] Speaker B: Boo.
[01:11:09] Speaker A: I don't, I don't have. I don't have a soundboard to get a scream in here.
[01:11:12] Speaker C: Oh, I. Wait, hold on, hold on, hold on.
[01:11:15] Speaker B: It won't be in your.
[01:11:17] Speaker C: Oh, it won't. Never mind.
[01:11:19] Speaker B: Well, maybe next time write in on the Discord. If you want us to, like, add sound effects to the podcast, please, please add more editing work for me.
[01:11:32] Speaker A: We would love feedback on anything. Give us reviews, give us feedback in the Discord. Anything to help us do this better for you. Thanks a lot for that one. I heard that it was checking me out for a moment there.
[01:11:43] Speaker C: Good night, everybody.
[01:11:44] Speaker A: Good night, everybody.
[01:11:45] Speaker B: Bye bye.
