Justin, I went to a casino this week
and I think you know this is about me.
I like to gamble.
I think it comes down to my love for games.
Yeah.
You know what I mean?
Like I like to play games.
I like card games.
I like blackjack a fair amount.
To my understanding, you are not a fan necessarily, right?
So just a real quick backup.
I guess you posted on social media about this.
I did.
My wife said, oh, Peter and Josh went to a casino
and I was like, oh no.
It was my first thought.
I was like, oh no.
He's, no, no, oh no.
But yeah, I don't like gambling
because I find it to be a waste of money.
If I'm gonna spend $20 on something,
I wanna know what that gets me.
I don't want the chance of it getting me more money
that I can then later spend and lose.
So yeah, I am not a good gambler.
I find it very depressing.
Like I get depressed when I put a lot of money,
like I spend a lot of money on something,
even if it's what I want.
And then if I'm just gambling it away,
I'm just literally gambling money to get more,
I'm paying money to get money.
And that's like doubly bad for me.
Yeah, I mean, like I can definitely like,
like, hey, I can definitely see
why it becomes a problem for people.
Do you know what I mean?
Like I definitely understand that.
And I think that like, you know,
you should know yourself enough, not you specifically,
but like I think someone should know themselves enough
to whether or not they think that's the sort of thing
that would like very, very, very much excite them,
you know, like in an unhealthy way.
Yeah, yeah.
But I gamble responsibly.
I never, like I go in saying,
like this is the money I have taken out of my bank account.
This is what I'm gonna spend.
And if it is all gone, that is okay
because I'm spending this much money, right?
Like I'm just assuming that this money
is going to be gone for me.
Do you know what I mean?
So like I will go in,
like when I went to Clarif,
like I went into the casino with $200 in my pocket.
And I said, if I drain this, this is gone.
Like that's it, I'm not gonna, I'm not spending anymore.
And me losing that $200 isn't gonna like change my life.
You know what I mean?
Like I'm not going to not be able to pay rent
if I don't have this $200.
Just like going in accepting this could all be gone.
All right, so you went in this weekend saying $200
is the money I'm bringing in.
Yep.
How much money did you leave with?
$189.
Oh, okay.
So you had, how long were you there?
So we were like gambling in total
for probably about three or four hours.
We were down pretty bad at a certain point
that we got up pretty good and we wanted to keep going.
We took a break after getting up.
We had some dinner, did some other stuff
and then we went back to it.
And then both Josh, my roommate and I lost $40 each.
And we said, all right.
And that's enough of that.
I mean, hey, that's not bad.
So what casino, like let's get the,
I need some of the 411 here.
What was the casino?
What were the games you played?
Where did you eat?
What did you eat?
And then did you feel like it was a good day for you?
Let me start with your last one.
It was a great day.
I had fun.
And like, you know, like I was down $11.
Which is awesome for anything like entertainment
that would last that long.
I had a great time from like three in the afternoon
until we left at like 1130 PM, right?
Like I, for $11, I had a fantastic time.
And also like, yes, it is good to win money
when you play games, like when you gamble and whatever.
But I, as I sort of said at the top of the show,
enjoy to, I just enjoy playing the games.
You know what I mean?
So like, at the end of the day,
it costs less to go to Galpin Ghosts,
the arcade nearby us, you know,
to play a bunch of video games.
So like I had fun just, you know, gambling, whatever.
And walking away, being able to say,
I still have most of my money is not actually so bad.
Especially when I was down about $100,
roughly halfway through the night.
And so to end up there, I'll take it.
Good day, good day.
This was at the Horseshoe Casino,
right over the border in Indiana.
We went, well, I'm gonna talk about this
a little bit later in the show.
We went because Nick Offerman
was doing a standup set there.
And so we went to see that.
Oh.
He did, he mentioned The Last of Us a little bit
and talked about that for roughly 15 seconds.
But all in all, didn't love the show.
He didn't, he just like, he didn't,
he just had these like sentences that he would just say
and there weren't like jokes in them.
It would just be like,
I'm not gonna be like one of those standup guys
who just like gets up here and like hates on my wife.
I'm like, great.
Did his wife show up?
No, she did not.
Oh, because I went to see a standup special from him.
I'm a listener, I have quotes when I'm doing that.
And it was just like him telling like yarns,
like stories and stuff.
And then his wife showed up.
And it wasn't the most, I mean, it was fine.
It was fine.
Like I appreciated seeing him and I was like,
oh, this is fun to see him.
But no, it was, in terms of a comedy show, it was fine.
He sang a lot of songs.
He wrote a bunch of silly songs.
If I ever were to lose you.
Kinda, kinda.
But no, all in all, great night to be had.
It was a good time.
Again, for 11 bucks, I had a great time.
What was the food?
We just ate, it was like a burger place at the casino.
We didn't have time to.
Oh man, if you had a buffet there.
If it was a buffet, I would be.
There's nothing quite like.
Nothing quite like a casino buffet.
See, we had the casino, it was fine.
We were gonna play blackjack.
Blackjack is my game of choice.
But the tables were all $15
and that is a little rich for my blood.
Especially if I'm only bringing in 200 bucks.
So we played a game called the big six,
which is as I think streamlined as gambling can possibly get.
Basically, it's a giant pinwheel
with a bunch of numbers written on it
that when the pinwheel stops,
you bet on which number you think it's gonna be on.
There was a moment where we thought
we both almost won $2,000 each
and then it turned out to be $20
and we were very disappointed.
Yes, yes, yes.
Well.
But hey, make sure if you're gonna
gamble, gamble responsibly, please know your personality,
know your limits, know your funds.
It's Pinbox.
What you looking for?
["Pinbox Theme Song"]
What's going on everyone?
Welcome back to Hitbox episode number 136.
My name is Peter Hunspitek.
Joining me as always is my wonderful friend
and co-host Justin Makovich.
How are you man?
How are things?
How are you doing?
Oh, I mean the world keeps spinning.
I feel like we're to a point when it feels like
at least for the school year,
where spring break is this week, next week, the week.
So I always feel like when spring break comes,
anything that happens afterwards is just,
it's all a joke.
It's not important.
It's just, it's done.
And you know the one thing about being a teacher
that's really nice is that you're on your same schedule
that you've been on literally your entire life.
So it's like the nice wind down to the end of the year.
But then I have to tell myself,
well there's still eight weeks left when I come back.
But everyone's already.
But only eight weeks, that's actually not too bad.
Yeah, I know.
Were you impacted?
This is how dumb I am.
Was daylight savings this week or last week?
Last week.
Okay, I didn't even know.
See, that's the thing.
You never know now until you get in your car.
Unless you've got like a car that.
Oh, my car just does it automatically.
I don't even know anymore.
Oh really?
Wow.
I think it's just the stove that tells me about it.
But I bring that up because it was like six o'clock today
and the sun was still out when I got home.
And I was like, oh, it's beautiful.
It's perfect.
I see the sun finally.
It's the way to go.
It is the way to go.
We're gonna talk about some video game news.
Here's a quick preview of what's coming up.
Starfield's age rating gives away some saucy details.
Resident Evil 4 gets rave reviews
and the gaming community mourns the loss of Lance Riddick.
We're gonna talk about all of that and more before we do.
Here's a reminder.
Hop into our Discord server.
The link to that is in the description of this episode.
If you're feeling generous,
want to support us in what we do,
go to Patreon.com slash hitbox pod,
become a one dollar podcast producer
or a three dollar deluxe podcast producer.
If you do, you will join the ranks
of Dave Parker and Jay Knoll
and also get an additional 30 minute bonus episode
every single week.
And you'll get all of the previous ones as well.
I think we broke 35 or 36 last week.
So they're coming.
They're just continuing to roll out.
That deal gets better and better every week.
If you can't support us monetarily,
I'll go and hop on over to Twitter.com slash hitbox pod
at hitbox pod, really whatever you prefer to do
to get to Twitter and follow us there.
Justin, you want to head over to the Metacritic Roundup,
talk about the games that came out this week?
No, do I?
Do you?
I do actually.
Oh, okay, cool.
Metacritic Roundup.
Really yanking my chain there, dude.
I was like, I didn't know what was going to happen.
I liked it.
It was a fun sort of change in momentum.
You know, every once in a while,
I just forget what I normally say
and then I say what comes to my mind
and it's wrong usually, so that's what happened there.
It wasn't wrong.
It's just that I think this is a collaborative effort
and if you don't want to,
then Justin, we're not gonna do it.
But luckily, we are gonna talk about Resident Evil 4 Remake.
Oh, yeah, I gotta do it.
This is my draft game, man.
We gotta talk.
I gotta gloat for a second.
Yeah, this has a 93 on Metacritic.
Second highest reviewed game of the year, I think.
I think so on the PS5,
because the first one is I think Metroid Prime Remastered,
right?
Another remake remastered or whatever.
So Resident Evil 4 Remake on the PlayStation 5 is a 93.
On the PC, a 92.
Xbox Series X, a 91 and is unscored on the PS4
and not available on the Xbox One.
This seems to be a behemoth of a game
in terms of like,
we talked about this a little bit last week
after playing that demo.
This seems like it is going to be an excellent game.
What do these reviews tell you, Justin?
I mean, it tells me that it's Resident Evil 4,
but better, because the controls are better.
And it just seems like they've modernized it in a way.
When listening to some reviews
and hearing some stuff about it,
it sounds like there's some open-worldy kind of parts of it
with more like roaming around where you wanna go.
Was that in the original game
or my-ish?
So from what I saw, I think it was maybe the IGN review
talked about how instead of just going to the lake
for a one-off boss fight with that big monster thing,
you get on a boat in the lake
and you can take different paths and stuff like that.
That was not in the original.
But that sort of expansion of that
makes a little bit of sense,
because if you remember, the original game is level-based.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I think it's the first Resident Evil game
to kind of do that.
And five does that as well and six does as well.
But then they sort of drop that in favor of
not doing that in seven and eight.
But I think you look at something like Resident Evil 8
and that village is like a hub area.
But I think that's kind of how they could do it.
I don't know if they said that they dropped
the level format or not, but it seems like, yeah,
exploration is a little bit more of a central thing here
as opposed to-
And more like reason to backtrack rather than
just backtracking to try to get more money
to spend at the merchant or whatever.
So I think that stuff is the kind of stuff
that I think would pull me in to it a little bit more,
just to know that, hey, I can kind of do it the way I want.
But I gotta say, I think the sort of Metroidvania moments
that you get in Village, I love that format.
Like how you have the hub, how you go out like that.
And I'm sure this isn't that,
because it's still based off of the original.
But I just think that's such a,
that was such a cool way to do it,
that you felt like you could still explore.
Even though some areas were eventually knocked off to you,
you still have that home base to go to
that you felt comfortable with.
So I don't know, I don't know.
I think from what I'm hearing about this game,
it sounds like there were very positive changes
from the original.
And it looks good.
Graphically, it's pretty.
And yeah, I'm not as excited as I was about this game
before I played the demo though.
For the same reasons I said about last week,
how it still kind of feels like the Resident Evil shooting,
third person shooting, which I'm not a huge, huge fan of.
And this game is pretty action based,
if I'm correct, right?
Yeah.
I mean, yes, yes.
Yeah.
It's not like the other games where you can kind of get away
with like juking around them.
Yeah.
You have to do combat.
You gotta fight.
Yeah.
This is gonna be my weekend.
I'm not working on this one, so I get to enjoy this.
This is not, this is fun for once.
Completely for free.
Wow, that's actually nice.
To be honest, this is a game that I am really looking
forward to playing.
Good, good.
Especially after playing that demo.
And just like, you know, just, it's been so long
since I've been able to just sit down
and fucking play a video game and just like really get
like super stoked to just like play a video game
for a long time, you know what I mean?
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, no, these reviews, I'm not surprised by this at all.
I am simply excited.
Probably play this on PS4 probably, I think.
PS4?
Five, I mean, sorry.
I was like, dude, you're really.
No, I think I've been switching that up
and saying PS4 a lot lately on accident.
I think I said it on last week's episode where I said like,
rumors about the PS4 Pro and it's like,
yeah man, it came out in 2018.
Well, I keep saying Resident Evil 5 remake
instead of Resident Evil.
Yeah, you did ask me, you were like,
do you have Resident Evil 5 remake early?
And I was like.
No. What?
I was like, excuse me?
Do you think they're gonna remake that?
I was talking to Josh about this today.
So you've played, I haven't played five or six.
Yeah. But I think so.
I mean, I think like with the trajectory they're going on,
I know like that game is more updated control wise
and everything, correct?
Yes, yes.
And I think, I mean, putting it in the Resident Evil engine
and updating some of the stuff
and doing some of the thoughtful reimaginings
that they did with like, I'm using two as the example
of how they really did reimagine that a little bit.
I think they could.
And I think they're not gonna stop.
I mean, Resident Evil is more popular than ever.
I think this is the third best reviewed Resident Evil game.
Number one, Resident Evil 4 2005.
Number two, Resident Evil Code Veronica at like a 94.
And then number three is Resident Evil 4 remake.
And then plus like, I mean,
the Resident Evil 2 remake has done great.
The Resident Evil 3 remake, not as great,
but still people like it.
And then all the seven and village people love.
So I think they're definitely gonna do that.
And I don't think it would be a bad thing
because I think those games are inherently flawed.
Resident Evil 5 is like fucking racist as shit, dude.
Like it is, like that's, like,
that's I think the problem with it for me is like,
in terms of like, you wanna remake it mechanically
so that it feels in line with these games.
Sure, like that's fine.
But like, I would be curious to like,
see how they would handle that.
And even like, okay, if they're gonna like remove
like the racist stuff about it, like,
I mean, kind of at its core, it's pretty racist, you know?
And then to remake that and remove that sort of stuff,
to me, makes me like, it sort of throws me into a debate.
And I haven't like figured out how I feel on this
necessarily yet, so I'm not gonna like stand by any of this.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, we're just two guys on a podcast sitting here.
Two fucking white guys just talking about
how we think racism should be handled.
And you know, I'm willing to have my mind changed
about this sort of stuff too.
But like, my worry is that if you remake that
and remove all of that racist stuff,
like, there's an argument to be made that like, hey,
they might be trying to erase some of that history
that they did that, although on the other hand,
and again, I haven't thought about this fucking at all.
On the other hand, like, you can still buy Resident Evil 5.
Yeah. Like, you can see that.
And I don't know if they're,
I think it's a complicated subject is the whole,
is what I'm trying to get at.
So what makes the game kind of racist?
I mean, we talked about this before, but just refresh,
refresh my and the listener's memory.
I guess it's tough to know where to start.
Oh, no.
It is, it is, it is truly, it is pretty upsetting.
I think like, well, like on a just very surface level,
you have just a white military dude going to Africa,
some country in Africa, which by the way,
like Resident Evil like always kind of gets away with like,
we're in Europe.
And it's like, where?
It's like they speak in Spanish,
but it's like Mexican Spanish.
Like where in Europe are we?
Or they did that like Resident Evil Village,
where they're like, we're in Europe.
And it's like, what, where are fucking in Europe?
What are we talking about?
So they did that with Africa.
But I think a problem is that like,
Africa frequently gets that treatment, you know,
like it gets like, it's called a country.
Like if you like go into this country, this country,
or Africa, and it's like, yo, it's a giant ass continent.
You know, like with, with over like 30 or 40 countries in it.
So I think that general sort of like,
no, they're just in Africa is a little dicey.
And the fact that it's just,
it's a white guy shooting pretty much primarily
just black people in Africa.
And basically just like he shows up
and just starts shouting at people pointing a gun.
And when they don't like answer his questions,
he starts shooting them.
And I mean, they are zombies.
So like, I guess, you know, whatever,
but it's just, it's a bad look in general.
And then like, I think that like,
I don't know if they did a lot of research
on the cultures of Africa,
but it maybe feels like they didn't.
Cause you've just got like a bunch of like,
very stereotypical like grass skirts and like big,
I don't even know what the culture is,
but like big masks and stuff like that,
that just don't feel particularly well researched
or thoughtfully included.
So then like those are included as they are enemies.
You know what I mean?
They are only included to be like,
we are going to kill these people.
So like, what do you do about that?
You know what I mean?
To remake it, like you could not set in Africa,
but then it's, I think it's just a whole can of worms
that is worth untangling.
And I think there's potentially a way
for them to do it correctly, but I don't know if,
I don't know, it seems like a complicated issue
in my opinion.
Is this a like common critique of Resident Evil 5?
Yes.
And it's wild too, because like,
I'm not saying that like people weren't paying attention
to racism in 2010, but I think that like,
those conversations obviously were certainly happening,
but from what it seems like the moment
that this game was revealed, everyone was like,
Capcom?
Oh guys, guys?
Yes, yes, this is like, like anytime anyone plays this game,
it is always like, holy shit.
I'm sending you an article to look at.
But this is an article published four days ago
by the gamer, Jade King, called,
Resonable 5 is too racist for a remake.
And it goes through a couple of good details
about how it was revealed, how like part of the setting
wasn't necessarily known about, the idea that you have
this kind of generic interpretation of Africa in general.
Yeah.
So, yeah, I think that's an interesting question.
Like what, is this the next game to remake?
Is this the next thing that they're gonna do?
Cause it does seem like they need a pretty significant
change to it in order to try to avoid that.
Because I think the last thing they wanna do,
if I'm correct, 5 sold really well, correct?
I don't know.
I mean, I would assume that like with each subsequent game,
they continued so well.
I thought 5 initially sold well, I don't know the thing.
And then 6 was a better game, but didn't sell as well.
Cause people were turned off by 5 or something like that.
It's a question of like, I think in terms of like
being a video game, 5 is probably a better game,
but it's fucking racist as shit, man.
Like, you know what I mean?
Like in Resident Evil 6, it's also kind of racist
against Chinese people, it feels.
But maybe in, I don't know.
Like I guess I'm less familiar with like racist stereotypes
against Chinese people than I am with black people
just because of like how we are in America,
you know what I mean?
Mm-mm.
But I don't know, like, yeah.
Like I would probably say that 5 is a, again,
like with all the context of what we just said,
5 is probably a better video game.
And it has a fuck ton of racist shit in it,
which is inexcusable and uncomfortable
and important to talk about.
But 6 doesn't have all of that.
But in terms of being a video game,
I would say it's like probably a little bit lesser.
I don't know.
I'm also gonna throw this out there.
I don't think Resident Evil is known as a series
for its deep and complex writing.
No, and I think that's the problem.
I think that like 4, like they sort of realized that
and like leaned into it.
And then they were like, well, let's keep doing that.
We'll do, let's a little bit like, you know.
Yeah.
Whatever movie, you know, and just, no, no.
Yeah, I don't know.
Like to me, I would say like,
I would say we're probably fine
without a remake of this game.
Probably fine without a remake of 6
because even then, if you're gonna remake 6,
like holy shit, that's gonna have to be a big overhaul.
I mean, it's the whole thing's multiplayer for starters.
It's got some cool ideas, but it's just like,
there is a lot to it that is like,
this would need to be just a completely reworked and redone.
I would say just leave these two be and Capcom.
Work on New Resident Evil stuff.
You're missing zero.
Remake zero, remake Code Veronica, I guess.
Remake.
Have you played Zero before?
Nope.
Zero plays from Peter.
I don't know.
Yeah, I was like, I was like.
Forced me to play Resident Evil, I will.
I wasn't gonna like it.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, so like, I don't know.
Like, I think that, I would say
you're probably better off just,
because I think like the nostalgia has run out
with Resident Evil 4.
Like, I would say people are not,
I would say most people do not remember Resident Evil 5,
like with nostalgia that they're gonna be like,
holy shit, they're remaking this game from my childhood?
I gotta go play that.
I don't think people are doing that,
but I think people might be doing that with Resident Evil 4
and 3 and 2, you know what I mean?
Yeah, yeah.
One could still use a remake.
It's got a great one.
But it's not in the way,
and I know this is like one of those things.
I know it's not in the way of Resident Evil 2.
Yeah, you can still play that,
but you still have the dated controls.
You still have other things.
And I think if they do a big enough reimagine, remake,
that is not just in terms of how it looks.
It's more in terms of how it plays
and the concept of it, like too.
I think people would still play that.
And I think that now's the time, bring it back.
Yeah, I think that's what that would be
a better task to undergo.
I don't know, I'm torn on this too.
So I just played it, and I think it holds up great.
It's just a different game than those ones.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
And so if you were to do that,
I think a larger reimagining would need to be done.
I'm gonna put the G virus.
It's interesting you say that.
There's the T virus, the C virus,
and I think the G virus as well.
All right, so whatever one of those viruses,
I'm putting it up to your neck,
and I was like, you got a choice to make right now.
Or I'm gonna insert this.
Resident Evil 1 remake, Resident Evil 5 remake.
What do you want?
One, one, one.
No, but there's only one right answer here.
Resident Evil 1 or Resident Evil 5 remake?
It is one.
All right, viruses, I'm holding this to your neck.
Which one?
Resident Evil 1 remake, Resident Evil 5,
6 remake packaged together.
What do you want?
You get one choice though.
There's only a right, run right answer.
One is a better game than both of those two combined.
All right, I accept.
Yeah.
No virus for you.
Thank you.
If you did, I would get the chicken legs
that they have in Resident Evil 6.
Game's fucking wild, dude.
Or maybe I get the butterfly wings.
I like the little, the neck thing, the neck bulges,
the goiters from 4.
Yeah, yeah.
Did you, have you finished Resident Evil 2 remake?
Are you still trucking along with that?
I did, I beat it.
You beat it?
Oh my gosh. I did.
And let me tell ya, let me tell ya.
Anything.
I really do think that story is pretty well told.
Simple, not overly corny.
But some of the plot beats are pretty like, oh.
Like as you're going through it the whole time.
I do have a very major negative complaint for it.
The whole section in the lab with the forest
felt like, oh, we got some padding we gotta fill out.
Yeah.
Did you end up getting the flamethrower in the sewers?
Oh yeah, I did.
When I played it the first time, I didn't.
And Alaina and I were like,
I guess I just don't have the item I need to get this.
And then we just moved on.
And then when we got to the plant place,
I was like, I wish.
I had a flamethrower.
I wish I had a flamethrower, that would've been way better.
Yeah, so go on.
I think that game is exceptionally harder
if you don't follow a guide.
Because there are things like missing the flamethrower.
Yeah.
If you miss the flamethrower,
you have made that game harder on yourself.
And I really do think a lot of the game
is about knowing what resources to use
and which ones to not.
Knowing what areas to kill everyone in
and what areas to just run by.
And I think that my experience playing the original,
I basically got like,
I could not get to the police station when I was a kid.
I mean, I was young at the time,
but I kept like, how do you kill all these things?
And I never have any ammo to do it.
Well, you just run past it, boy.
Yeah.
Why'd I say boy like Kratos, but.
I assume it's because you were talking to your younger self.
I was, you idiot.
Playing that at a Toys R Us, you're never gonna beat that.
Yeah.
But yeah, I think it definitely,
I think it holds up as a game.
I just can't say I enjoyed playing it,
but that might be the horror elements of it
that are just kind of like whatever.
Yeah.
I couldn't stop playing it if that makes sense.
Oh, that's a thing for me.
Like I kept thinking of it and I kept going back to it.
I agree with you entirely.
Yeah.
And to me, that's what makes it, in my opinion,
like a 10 out of 10 game is because it's scary
and I don't like playing it in the sense
that I didn't like watching The Shining
because it was really good at being scary.
But I was thinking about it
and I think it's really well designed.
And I have no nostalgia for the second one,
for like the original one.
Some of those boss fights fucking suck though.
Yeah, that's an area where it feels a little weird
where it's just like, all right,
and I guess time to shoot the guy a bunch of times.
Yeah, like the blob guy that you fight
like three different times, bitch won't die.
Like the second one where you have to use the crane
to kill him.
That sucks, yes.
If I did not read that guide,
I would have been on that fight to this day.
You haven't played the third one, right?
No.
The Resident Evil 3 remake.
So it's funny, you just said bitch won't die
and there's an excellent moment in the second,
in Resident Evil 3 remake where you escape the nemesis
and you push him into a giant lake
or maybe it's like the ocean or something
and Jill just looks at him and goes,
bitch can't even swim.
It's so good, it's so good.
Okay, so Resident Evil 3, is that similar
to the first half of two or the second half of two?
Well, it's more action focused.
Okay.
Yeah, if you didn't like the action,
like I think it's, I mean it's got that similar thing
of just like run around him, run around him,
you know what I mean?
But it has a more focus on action.
Okay, okay.
Is there enough ammo?
Yeah, but that's the thing,
like it has got that action focus
but it's also like here's an automatic shotgun
and a thousand shotgun rounds.
Yeah, that helps significantly.
I might like it more.
If you enjoyed Resident Evil 2 remake
and are looking for more,
I would play Resident Evil 3 remake
over doing the other campaign
because the other campaign, like the Jill one
or the Claire one is good and it's worth playing.
I really got a lot out of it
but at the end of the day, it is still the same area.
For the most part, it's the same areas.
You get a different story
and instead of doing the stuff with Ada Wong
with Leon, you do a bunch of stuff with,
I'm forgetting her name, this little girl.
And it's, yeah.
I got a new soundboard thing for you.
Yeah, what's up?
The Ashley screaming for Leon.
Dude, I tried to get it when we did-
Oh, did you?
When we did that crossover episode with Buttmashing 101,
check them out.
But I couldn't find a clean one.
Although I was looking while we were recording a podcast.
So like-
Yeah, probably not, yeah, yeah.
But yeah.
Leon!
You know?
Yeah, I'm proud of that.
Can we finish our Metacritic roundup?
I realize we didn't even do that.
Oh wow, we're still, well, we did Resident Evil 4.
It was Resident Evil
and we're gonna talk about that a lot more next week too
because I am gonna play the fuck out of that.
Hell yeah.
Let's talk about Chia.
Chia, I also have on my fantasy team.
Chia, Chia, Chia.
Uh oh.
Yep, this is a good one, 79.
Mommy, okay, not bad.
79 on PlayStation 5, 78 on PC, unscored on PS4.
No, 79 is not a bad score.
It's just that for our fantasy team,
if I'm trying to win this year,
79 is just not acceptable.
Especially, here's the reason though.
I bought this, I picked this up
because there was one of the previews that said
this is like this generation's
or maybe like this year's Super Mario Odyssey.
And I was like, oh, I need that on my team.
And it is apparently not.
It seems like people are enjoying it,
Farron, well enough.
This is a game where you play as this,
I think she's like a girl in Hawaii
or maybe one of the Pacific Islands.
Or maybe it's not, inspired by New Caledonia.
I don't even know where that is.
Ooh, you know.
Hitbox, we're about to learn something.
It is in Oceania, so it's over by Australia.
I was gonna be like, you're making even less sense.
Oceania, isn't that like.
Maps.
I'm gonna tell you where New Caledonia is.
Have you ever gone down that rabbit hole
while you're looking this up?
People who like will have an image
and they tell you where it is in the world,
they'll like put a pin down
and whoever gets the closest wins.
Oh, that's like a game, isn't it?
Yeah, man, that makes me feel small and stupid
and very sheltered.
So, I don't know if we're all super familiar
with our Oceania geography,
but I'll give you a little bit of it.
New Caledonia is across the Coral Sea
from Australia, so that is to the east of Australia,
like central, eastern Australia,
really, northeastern Australia, rather.
It is across the Coral Sea to the east.
Coral Sea.
North of New Zealand by quite a bit,
a little bit west of Fiji, Tonga, and Samoa.
So, there you go.
Cool, the more you know, the more you know.
So, it's pretty southwest of Hawaii,
if that also helps,
like a fair amount southwest of Hawaii.
Anyway, Justin, Chia, you play as this little girl
who has the power to take control of any animal or object
and so you can fly like a seagull
or turn into like a little shell or something,
or like a banana and like roll around
and it's like used to like platform and puzzle
and all that sort of stuff.
I'm gonna be picking it up this week for work,
so I will let you know how I feel about it next week.
I'm not gonna be picking this up
because I got my second game to be launched on PS Plus
that I still haven't canceled,
premium or whatever I got,
because it's free on that service.
So, you're not gonna pick it up even though it's free?
Well, no, no, no, like I'm not gonna buy it.
Purchase it, yes, this is free for all.
I'm gonna download it.
To me, from what I'm seeing,
it's just like a very like pretty looking game,
has some running issues to it.
The combat is very basic.
The powers to possess things really come down to,
you wanna possess birds because you can fly quick,
everything else is just kinda like fine.
The mechanics look very similar to what you would see
in Breath of the Wild, obviously like a lot of gliding.
They did add this mechanic to like get on a tree
and get flung by the tree to give you
a little bit of momentum, so there's a little bit more
speed and movement with it.
So I think some interesting things about it,
but I feel like I'll be playing this game and be like,
well, any minute now, I'm gonna get Tears of the Kingdom.
Sure, that's fair, that's fair.
There is also a last of a style ukulele playing mechanic.
Do you remember when you're missing a finger
and it's really hard to play?
I do.
Maybe that'll happen in Chia.
You fucking imagine.
Equally as impactful.
Like if the game is just as gory.
Yeah, that's what they don't tell you about it.
Last thing in the Metacritic roundup here is Tetris,
the movie by Apple TV.
It has a 59.
We talked about this a little bit.
I read the book Tetris, The Games We Play,
and was surprised to see that this was like
an espionage thriller movie because,
well, that wasn't how it was in the book.
To be honest, to be honest, I'm not gonna watch this,
to be clear, this is starring Taron Eagerton
and no one else that I recognize here
just off of the castles here.
Listen, Ben Miles is gonna be really upset
you don't know him.
Toby Jones, also just equally as upset.
Rick Youn is like, come on, Peter,
we went to grammar school together.
Rick Youn, not really in, he was on Olympus has Fallen.
Yeah, remember that film?
I thought that was a fun movie.
With God of the.
Is that Morgan Freeman and Gerard Butler?
It is, that's a good flick.
Oh, that's pretty cool actually.
I liked it.
Six Degrees of Gerard Butler.
Olympus has Fallen.
Yeah, no, so Tetris, the movie though,
it's interesting because like I said,
the book, it wasn't like a spy thriller story,
it was more of an interesting corporate business story.
And I thought it was actually quite interesting
and I'm a little bit disappointed to see
that it's not taking that route with it,
that it's going for more of a suspense thriller
sort of thing.
Because I think the corporate stuff
is actually very interesting.
Basically, a guy got the rights to publish Tetris
worldwide from the maker.
His name's like Alexi something is the name of the,
Alexi Pajitatov, he's the guy who made Tetris.
And he basically gave the rights to publish it
to some guy in Europe.
And that guy misunderstood their communications
because it was like 1960 or 1980 maybe.
And basically they misunderstood each other
because of the translations and everything like that.
And basically this guy thought he had the rights
for all of Tetris and that he could then sell the rights.
So he basically sold the rights to three different companies,
one for the PC publishing,
one for handheld gaming publishing
and one for console publishing.
So basically he sold it to those,
to, I don't remember who was the PC one,
but then the handheld gaming one was to Nintendo.
And then the other one was to Atari.
The console gaming one was to Atari.
But when he sold it to Nintendo,
Nintendo thought that they had the rights to publish it
for both handhelds and consoles.
So then Nintendo and Atari get into a legal battle
and then they come talk to this guy.
And then that guy comes back to the Russian government.
It's like, I'm in some trouble here.
And then so they have to get all of them
to talk with each other.
And it's a very interesting story.
And I think that would be a very interesting movie
in my opinion, but they took a different route with it,
but whatever, I'm not gonna watch this.
Oh, I mean.
Read the book, it's pretty good.
I might, this might be one of those ones I'll watch
and then read.
I mean, it's not Apple TV Plus,
I gotta justify having that.
Ted Lasso's out right now, I've been watching that, good show.
Is it good?
I've been watching.
I know we talked about that,
but there's just some good moments.
I just, something about that makes me,
I'm done watching it.
I'm gonna be positive today, you know what I mean?
I'm gonna be positive.
I'm gonna watch this Tetris movie,
I'm gonna smile about it.
Yeah, I'll do that.
Maybe they watched Kingsman with Taron Egerton
and they were like, well, we gotta do some of that
in the Tetris movie.
Is the Kingsman 2 also, has some awesome scenes in it
involving Elton John?
From my memory, yeah.
It's not as good as the first one,
but I certainly enjoyed it.
Good fight scenes in there, good moments.
Yeah, I wouldn't say it's a flick
that everyone should see.
I wouldn't say it's an essential action movie
in the way that Kingsman 1 is.
And also, The King's Man, I think I liked okay.
That was fine.
In The King's Man 2, there's a meat grinder
as one of the central.
Pedro Pascal?
Oh my God, that's Pedro Pascal.
That is Pedro Pascal.
Wow.
I'm seeing, he is so memeable right now on the TikToks.
Dude, he's big.
The one of him just eating.
He had a pretty good Hot Ones interview.
Let's talk about the news,
if I can direct us to gaming news, is that okay?
Yeah, all two stories.
Yeah.
Starfield, Justin, is nearly upon us.
I mean, we've still got a while yet until it comes out.
But as all games must,
it is being looked at by content advisory boards
and so far has received an 18 plus rating in Australia
due to its depiction of interactive drug use.
It has a PEGI 18 in Europe and an ESRB M rated,
that's 17 and up, in the US.
Notably, while it does have that drug use in it
as outlined by the Australian government,
apparently there's not a whole lot of romance.
And by that I mean, no one's fucking in Starfield.
Apparently it's just not listed for anything like that.
Well, it's just when you're in space,
the mechanics of that are really hard.
Either way, has anyone ever had sex in space before?
Um.
I feel like this is a Google moment.
I'm gonna, I'm in an incognito tab
because I feel like this could also be
a very specific fetish.
Has anyone ever had sex in space?
Uh, no.
I mean, they insist that they have not.
But American astronauts, this is according to dw.com,
don't know about it.
American astronauts famously avoid the topic.
The few experiments that have been conducted on SpaceX
focused on animals, not humans.
So there's, wait a second.
That's a very specific, very specific,
very specific clarification.
Few experiments conducted with animals, not humans.
Um, okay, so there is a Wikipedia page for sex in space.
And it is fucking wild.
Pulled up, pulled up.
Um, there's a lot here.
Basically, I'm looking under the planned attempts tab
where it says in June 2015.
I don't know, I don't know if we can, I,
Justin, we've never talked about the type of content
that we want on our programming, on our show.
We're just reporting news.
This is.
Can we talk about this?
This NASA?
This is from another website.
Oh.
Let's call it an adult website.
I mean, like, I don't wanna, okay.
In 2015, an adult website, one that is
widely renowned and pretty famous.
You might be able to guess it.
IGN.
Yep, planned, announces plans to make
its first ever film in space.
It had a crowdfunding campaign for the movie,
which is called Sexploration.
It received $3.4 million in 60 days.
God.
Oh no, it wanted to receive.
Oh, okay.
Yeah, it only raised.
People want that.
236,000.
It just didn't happen.
Love him or hate him.
If you want someone to back this,
you need to let Elon Musk know that this,
we must do this right now.
Oh, he's such a fucking child
that he would make it his ultimate goal.
To do that, yeah.
He's just such a, like,
let's, what if we did Sex in Space?
So basically what you're telling me is that
Bethesda was like, we did our research.
It's not been done, nor are we.
We're gonna be the most realistic
space simulator game ever.
Simulate drug use, great.
You can do that in space.
No sex, hasn't been done.
We don't know.
We don't know the physics.
Bethesda said, in space?
Not on our watch.
But, well, yeah.
So I don't know.
I always think it's interesting.
We talked about this with Xenoblade Chronicles 3.
I always find these leaked content
from ESRB ratings and stuff kind of silly.
Not silly, it's just funny to read about these moments
completely out of context.
Or if you remember, they listed all of the swear words
in Xenoblade Chronicles 3 and I was like,
oh, this is kind of funny.
All of them said by Uni.
Yeah.
Hear that, Noah?
Lance wants something a bit meatier.
That's one of the fours. Is that a swear word?
I don't know.
What?
What, meatier?
Lance wants something meatier.
What a good game.
What a 10 out of 10 game of the year
that we didn't give game of the year.
And I didn't give it a 10 out of 10.
I gave it an eight out of 10 on Game Skinny.
Should have given it a 10 out of 10.
Let's just end with it.
No, I think you would give it a 10 out of 10
after playing it for 70 hours, 60 hours.
Having finished it, yes.
In the middle of it, I don't know.
But isn't that a problem?
You stick by your choice.
Yeah, I would stand by it.
Yeah.
It was good. I liked it.
Clearly.
I don't know.
There's not much else to say about this.
I think we said everything that could be said about it.
And then some.
In a very different way than I imagined it would go.
And then some.
There's a new Persona 5 spin-off again.
It's called Persona 5 The Phantom X.
And it's a mobile game, and it's only gonna be in China.
And I'm upset about it because
now that I have a beefy smartphone,
I'm looking for games to play.
I know that when Zenla Zone Zero comes out,
that's the follow-up.
Who makes Genshin Impact?
Mihoyo?
Sure, I think that's their name.
That's a game.
When that comes out, that's gonna be
one of those mobile games.
I'm gonna give it a try on this here.
Galaxy S23 Ultra.
We're gonna see how it goes.
But Persona 5 The Phantom X,
I watched the trailer for.
Have you watched, did you watch it?
Yeah, yeah, I mean, it looks like a Persona 5-ass game.
It looks, I mean, it's like, you know, not copying.
I say that in a positive,
I know my tone seemed a little bit negative,
but I mean, it looks like a Persona 5.
It looks great, yeah.
It's got the style, the animation, the characters,
turn-based exploration, you're in the car,
you don't have Morgana, you have something else.
Something else, yeah.
The Velvet Room is in Aquarium, which looks awesome.
Is it spoiling anything?
Does Morgana ever turn, do you ever find out
why Morgana is a cat?
Yes.
Is it like a big reveal?
It is a big reveal.
I mean, like,
like, I'm not gonna spoil Persona 5,
but it is something that, like, Morgana's character,
like, it's pretty essential to his character.
And by the time, like, it is revealed,
he's been going on about it for about 80 hours,
maybe even 90, it's pretty late in the game.
And like, for me personally, I was like,
yeah, like, this was not as big of a deal.
Not the A-plot I was expecting.
Right, like, this was not as big of a deal.
Like, I could've kinda seen where this is coming from.
But yes, they wrap it up in an interesting way.
And in Royal, too, especially, it
expands on that a little bit more
in a way that I think is pretty fun, and also troubling.
Oh, okay, wow, okay.
Like, when it's all resolved, you're like,
okay, good, good, good, good.
But when you think that it's resolved,
it's a little bit like, huh, interesting.
Interesting.
But this Persona 5, the Phantom X,
should it ever release in the States,
I will play it, I would like to.
I mean, it looks like more Persona 5,
and if I can play Persona 5 on my phone,
you know that I'm about that shit.
And what if it doesn't release, what are you gonna do?
Just let it sit there and not thinking about it?
I will go on with my life.
You're not gonna learn a different language
or just struggle through.
Maybe I'll learn how to speak,
there's been like four languages in China,
like which one do you think this is?
Does it say in this article here?
It doesn't.
Yeah, I don't know, I'll be interested to see this
if it ever comes out here.
I would definitely play through all of this
to at least talk about it.
Although, listen, I love Persona 5,
and as I play more of Persona 4, by the way,
it just makes me think, damn, I fucking love Persona 5.
Do you think, does the game translate
to having mobile game gacha mechanics?
Is that gonna ruin the game, do you think?
Yeah, so I saw that it's like a gacha game.
I assume that it's just like the Personas you have.
Oh, okay.
Which are already kind of a crap shoot,
you know what I mean?
And I never get attached to them
because it's just like as soon as they are not useful
anymore, I just fucking ice them or fuse them.
Oh, wow, jeez.
You know what I mean?
I'm never gonna give you a pet.
No, I mean, would it ever not be useful anymore
in terms of looking cute and being cute?
I've been questioning my dog's usefulness
since the day we got him.
So then it's good that you have him and not me, I guess.
Yeah, I am hoping that this comes out here.
I don't know, I would like to play it.
But I'm also just ready for Persona 6.
Hey, Atlas, get on that.
What if they release this game and the ax actually,
it's Persona 5, the Phantom Axe,
but they cross out the five and they put a six in there?
I would be, I mean,
Resident Evil 6.
And it's actually just the Resident Evil 6 remake.
We all want it.
If it was a Resident Evil,
if they remade Resident Evil 6 in a style of Persona 5,
I'd play it.
Have you seen like there's all these things
like someone used Lego to remake Resident Evil 4,
like the opening scene from it.
That's awesome.
Then there was like a Studio Ghibli thing
that had like in the style of that, but part of the remake.
That's what we need.
I love that.
That's great.
There's also a mod that you can have.
Is Dick out?
I saw that.
Are we talking about the same thing?
I mean, we could.
Yeah, sure.
Well, what was your thing?
I was gonna say CJ from Grand Theft Auto San Andreas.
Oh.
No, I wasn't.
I was telling you to say the other one.
This is our, this is our sassiest episode yet, man.
That's the title.
Yeah.
Yeah, we got there.
Yeah, I mean, like I love Persona 5, but I'm also ready.
I'm ready for more.
I'm ready for something new, something fresh.
You know what I mean?
And like, I know that, you know,
hey, it's making them a lot of money
because people fucking love it.
I love it.
You know, I liked Persona 5 Strikers.
I played, you know, two hours of Dancing in the Starlight.
You know, I,
I love Persona 5 specifically,
but I'm ready for the next step.
Because if you look at like in playing Persona 4 Golden,
like compared to Persona 5,
like it's clear like that they just,
they took everything in Persona 4 Golden
and just like cranked everything up to 10.
And then that's Persona 5.
And that's why I love it.
And that's why I'm like a little bit less in love
with Persona 4 Golden.
P4G is the title screen calls it.
Old games are old.
Yeah.
Yeah, right, exactly.
So like, if they do that, if they turn everything up to 11,
it's a little Spinal Tap reference for you.
For Persona 6, like, come on, I'm here for it.
Spinal Tap's a music group, right?
It is a mockumentary movie.
I was close.
It's about like a rock band.
Oh, okay, good.
I was like, oh, we're gonna miss.
And the joke in the movies that their amps all go up to 11
because, well, 10 was just not enough.
It's just, yeah, you go higher.
Always go higher.
Justin, here's something sad.
Lance Reddick died.
And he is, like, in terms of video games,
he is Commander Zavala in Destiny, Destiny 2.
I've never played that, so I can't really speak to that,
but I knew him most from, he's the concierge
in the John Wick series.
Like, he was literally doing press touring for that.
Yeah, he's also the bad guy in Horizon Zero Dawn
and Forbidden West, which when he appeared
in Horizon Zero Dawn, when I was playing that through
the first time, I was like, fucking, finally,
someone interesting and good.
Like, thank you for being in this game, Lance Reddick.
He's also, he was like a bad guy in Quantum Break as well.
He's in the Wire.
Resident Evil TV series, right?
Resident Evil TV series?
Oh yeah, he played Wesker in that apparently terrible
Resident Evil Netflix show.
Yeah, I mean, he's pretty great,
and I am a huge fan of him.
I was a big fan of his Twitter account, too.
He would tweet videos of him and his dogs
and stuff like that.
It's very sad, I don't know.
But he, basically, based on the people who knew him
and met with him in the games industry and talked with him,
he seemed to be someone who was just a true delight.
And so in Destiny 2, there are players,
like in the hub world, I assume,
again, I'm not really familiar with it,
players have been going up to Commander Zavala
and paying their respects, I assume,
by just hanging out and doing emotes and stuff like that
in front of him and everything like that.
In fact, I'm getting a little choked up talking about it
because it makes me sad.
He died, he died very young, very, you know what I'm saying,
he was 60.
Before his time, before his time.
Yeah.
Yeah, I think that's such a cool way to have that
video game tribute, so to speak,
and just kinda shows you how important he was
to people in games and his voice is so distinct
and well known and, you know.
He's so, his voice is so unique,
the way he articulates everything, yeah, go on, sorry.
He's always like, are you a bad guy?
Are you a good guy?
You're gonna be so good at that, you know what I mean?
Yeah, you're like, what's your deal?
Always questioning, always questioning.
Yeah.
Very, very sad, I don't know,
Josh broke the news to me, I had to sit down.
I was cooking dinner and I was like,
I'm heartbroken, it was sad.
Yeah.
I will miss Lance Reddick.
I always, every time he showed up in a game
or in a movie or whatever,
I was always very excited to see him, so.
That is a bummer.
Last of Us, there's been a handful,
I mean, you know, with the TV show,
it's been in the news a lot
and there have been a lot of details
because people have been like, so where's Last of Us 3?
Or people have been asking about,
where's season two and whatever like that.
Oh hey, also I meant to, I said I would mention this later.
I saw Nick Offerman, he played guitar for everyone.
He sang his little songs that he wrote.
That was so, I didn't mean it like that.
He played a bunch of songs that were funny.
And he also played the song from the show.
What?
Love will abide, take things in stride.
Yeah, it was very sweet.
And he interrupted himself.
He almost got to the end of it
and he just stopped and goes,
so any homophobes in here?
That's really good.
And one guy goes, woo.
And he stops and he sort of looks in that direction
and goes, well I appreciate your honesty.
But.
Wow, okay, I was not expecting that.
No.
Thanks for bringing me out of that.
Yeah, so a handful of things with The Last of Us.
Let's talk about the game first.
Apparently, they scrapped an idea
for a prequel game for Ellie's mom, Anna,
who we've known about through comics and stuff like that.
And then we finally saw, portrayed by Ashley Johnson
in the final episode of the series, of the TV show.
And basically, this was an interview with Variety.
Neil Druckmann basically said, he said this,
there was some stuff written for the mom and dad
when we were talking to this other game studio
to potentially do a whole Anna game.
I'm reluctant to say anything about it
because as I've now found out several times,
stories that I think are failures
and will never see the light of day,
sometimes see the light of day.
So he also goes on to say that like.
He could have just said, we'll see the light.
He just missed that, missed a quoteable moment.
He really did.
And he says, I wrote this short script about Ellie's mom
and how she gave birth to Ellie
and was bitten at the same time
and wasn't sure if she was infected during that birth.
And this became a little character drama
that spoke to the same themes of parental love
for their child and how much they're willing to do
even when you're on Death's Door.
So again, never say never about this sort of thing.
But I think at this point, we've seen it in the show.
And I don't know, would you want a game about this?
I wouldn't.
I don't know if we need a full game about it,
but I feel like there's so many ways to weave that story
into a narrative that makes sense.
We've already played around
with multiple playable characters
in both versions of the game, both games in it.
And I think, I don't know,
I think it could be interesting
to tie up part of Ellie's story a little bit
in a way to find out more about what her mom was like,
build that character, maybe makes more sense
about who Ellie is and how she becomes.
I don't know what their theme is.
Like, did they ever say what the theme
of the third game is gonna be?
Season one's about love, season two's about hate.
Season three's about indigestion.
Like, what's that gonna be?
Yeah, I know what you're saying.
And they walked that back, too, after the game came out.
They were like, no, it was just a line.
Yeah, I think I would probably agree with you.
I mean, just like off the hip,
I'm like, no, I don't think we need that.
But then I think, in hearing you say that,
yeah, I think it could potentially be kind of cool
to have the juxtaposition of,
here's what Ellie's mom went through,
and here's what Ellie is going through,
because she's a mom, you know what I mean,
with JJ and whatever.
So I think fatherhood was such a strong theme
of the first one, and in the second one, to some degree.
But to have motherhood be a theme,
I think it'd be kind of cool,
especially because that's just not a theme in video games.
Moms die in video games.
That's their role in video games, and that sucks.
So it'd be kind of cool to have that be
like an explored theme in a game.
Do you remember how, in the previews for Last of Us Part II,
so many people were talking about
how Abby could have been her mom?
Like that was one of the common,
the strands that was coming out.
So I don't know, I don't think people would have been upset
with that, so hey, speaking of Abby.
Yeah.
Yesterday night, Sunday, March 19th,
Neil Druckman tweeted, no Last of Us on HBO tonight,
because obviously the season's over,
but season two is already on its way,
Endure and Survive, and tweeted this image of,
it's just like a hand-drawn, painted kind of thing,
of a super muscular arm holding a hammer in front
of a bunch of wrecked stuff in the woods.
It's obviously very reminiscent of the scene
where Abby gets the hammer in the woods
when she meets Yarratt and Lev.
And I think, who plays Ellie in the show?
Bella Ramsey said that you shouldn't expect
Last of Us season two until late 2024,
early 2025 at the very earliest.
Hey, I mean, I don't need it right now.
I can't wait for it though.
The real question in our household is,
should I have my wife play the game,
or watch me play the game?
The first one or the second one?
The second one.
That's actually a very good question.
I would say yes.
And I think at the very least,
there's a really early part that you could get up to
that would, I think, make it exciting
about the second season.
Yep.
I'm so torn about that.
To be honest with you, I might not watch
the second season of the show.
Dude.
I'm so, I just don't watch a lot of TV.
This is the first season of a TV show
that I've watched in fucking forever.
That, and I was let down so drastically and whatever,
and the seeds that it has planted for season two,
I think have been done so poorly, in my opinion,
as we talked about in previous episodes,
that I just might sit it out.
I don't know, maybe, maybe not.
It could also be, I don't know,
I might still watch it out of curiosity and whatever, but.
You know what I'm saying?
I feel sad for you that that's your reaction
to the first season,
that you don't wanna watch the second season.
Yeah, I mean, I was pretty let down.
I think, all in all, I was pretty let down by it.
I was thinking about it a lot,
because I really listened to the Linda Rostat song,
Long, Long Time is what it's called,
that Bill sings and Fred sings.
That episode was so good,
and it had me so hopeful for how they were going to adapt
the rest of the show, the rest of the game into the show,
and I think they just,
I personally just think they really fumbled it
on a lot of levels,
but I think on the most important levels
of the characters of Joel and Ellie.
So yeah, I don't know, I just might sit it out.
Who knows, maybe not.
Well, the good thing is that we don't have to sit
with both of those characters for very long.
I guess not, huh?
I guess, I guess not.
But okay, here's the thing, though.
To me, in my cynical brain,
I think that they would give Joel,
hey, spoilers for The Last of Us 2, it's three years old.
I think that they would give Joel a bigger role.
To me, again, in my cynical brain,
the way that I view the creation,
the way that I view the way the creators view
The Last of Us HBO series,
I think that they would give Joel a bigger role
in The Last of Us Part 2,
because it feels like the show has felt like
an attempt to correct some of the perceived flaws
of the game.
And I think that some people critiqued,
hey, Joel's not in this very much,
even though he's in a fair amount of it.
And I think people didn't like that,
and I think that they might be inclined
to change that as a result.
And I think it'd be worse for it.
I think, I almost don't know
if that's what they're gonna do,
because I feel like even with the first one,
for all the changes they made,
they kept the core of the story,
they kept so many of the shots the same,
they kept so many of the stuff the same,
that I don't think they're just going to remake
the second season.
They might have to, like,
because I think part of-
When you say they kept so much the same,
that you think that they're not going to do that again?
You think that they're gonna use,
be a little bit more adventurous
with what they do with the second season?
No, no, no, they're gonna keep that
for the second season.
And I think part of the biggest changes,
minus those intros and outros when they had them,
was the character portrayals, the actors,
the way they delivered things,
the way they were portrayed in there.
And in terms of actually the craft of it,
I mean, using that last episode,
and using so many of the scenes,
the Pittsburgh, Kansas City car crash,
the shooting of Marlene at the end
of the ninth episode,
like so many of those things were done
very accurate to the game,
that I don't think they're just gonna be like,
well, we're gonna rewrite everything.
We're gonna totally change how the story is structured,
because I think part of what makes the sequel
work narratively,
is how they cut between present and past,
in that way, and they tell the story through flashbacks,
rather than just being a linear story.
And I feel like that's one of the most affecting moments
to me, is at the very end,
the porch scene wasn't expecting that.
It was what I wanted, I wasn't expecting it,
and it was both the most satisfying conversation,
yet the most unsatisfying conversation,
knowing what happens next.
But yeah, I don't know, I think,
yeah, I don't necessarily foresee them
rewriting problems out of the game.
I don't know.
I mean, the show.
I don't know, obviously, we'll see.
This season, I think, now that I've sat with it
and thought more about it,
and I'm very alone in this opinion of just like,
complete devastation.
That makes me so sad that that's how you like it.
You left it, and I definitely think there's the argument,
which one is better, which part is better,
what things do you like better in it.
And yeah, I think very well,
many people come away saying the game is better,
but I'm sorry that you didn't, you left
with not even wanting to see the next season.
I was expecting to walk away being like,
oh, the game is better, but that's probably just because
I played it first and I really liked the games.
And I walked away being like,
the game is better because the TV show is bad.
Do you know what I mean?
Like, and that's so disappointing to me
because I was so excited and whatever.
And you know, hey, whatever,
like sometimes you get disappointed with stuff,
but that is just my opinion.
One last thing here in the news,
this is kind of interesting.
Did you see this?
Apparently, according to some guy on Twitter
who posted some snippets from a LinkedIn profile,
apparently, Forspoken might have cost
over a hundred million dollars to make.
So basically the information comes from, like I said,
a LinkedIn profile for Alyssa Reimer, who, let's see,
was the lead writer of Forspoken.
And let's see where it is.
Oh yeah, basically in her, like, I don't use LinkedIn very
frequently, so I'm like having a hard time
like coming up with words.
So like, when you like say like, oh, I did this job
and you list like what you did for it,
you know what I'm saying?
In that, it says this, wrote the Bible script
and downloadable content for a fantasy triple A video game
parentheses, $100 million plus budget
with release date set for fall 2022.
And then in her like about section,
it also mentions that price.
It says she spearheaded the story behind Forspoken,
which cost over $100 million to make, which is a lot.
Like that is a significant amount of money,
especially for a game that I think flopped pretty hard
in terms of sales, right?
Yes, I'm not surprised though,
because when you have a big company that has money
and a game is just a game, how do you solve your problems?
Just throw money at it.
And you can fix problems that way, allegedly.
That doesn't mean the game's good,
just because you can throw money at something
doesn't mean it's always gonna be better.
I mean, baseball reference, the New York Yankees
don't win the World Series every year
and they spend a lot of money.
They have a lot of money, okay.
And just because you use money to solve your problems
doesn't mean you're allocating your resources
effectively, efficiently, all that kind of stuff.
I mean, bringing how many writers for this game?
Clearly, and the story was bad.
Yeah, it's interesting too.
I will say while this budget does seem like a lot
for something that was so,
if I said that compromised, does that make sense?
I'm not trying to be negative about the game necessarily,
but that does sound like a lot of money.
I will say that, I don't know,
I think the money's on display.
I think the issue really was with the writing
and then with some of the world design.
But I wouldn't say that it felt cheap.
It wasn't a really buggy game or anything like that.
The combat was cool and flashy and I don't know.
I guess it's always tough to know where money goes,
especially with a video game, you know what I mean?
Because there's just so many different aspects to it.
But I would never say that it feels like a cheap game.
I would say it doesn't feel like a great, well-written game
or super well-designed game at times, right?
But does that make sense?
Yeah, there's a scene in The Shawshank Redemption
when Andy's in the hospital
and they're trying to make him feel good for it
by searching for these certain rocks.
He wants to make a chess set out of these rocks.
So they're all out in the field gathering rocks
and one of the guys finds a rock.
He's like, look, I found one.
And they're like, that's actually just petrified horse poop.
So a game can look good.
Sure, that's very fair.
Can feel good.
But then you just push it and it's like,
ooh, actually, that's just horse poop.
So, Forspoken, I just made a Shawshank Redemption
horse poop connection to you.
Don't know if that's the best thing,
but I do love Shawshank Redemption,
so maybe it is a good thing for you.
I'll say this about Forspoken.
It's not a good game,
but it got torn apart on the internet
for things that I thought were inconsequential.
Yeah, people were like, oh, it's so cringey.
I'm like, yeah, I don't really care about that.
You're more than just not written well.
Everyone's sitting here loving this Resident Evil 4 remake.
Yeah, but hey, intent and tone,
those are important in our thing.
Yeah, I don't know.
This, while yes, it is a lot of money,
I think especially it is so tough because of it is,
because of how little it's sold.
I don't think that we got specific numbers or maybe,
but it was defined as lackluster sales,
which I would also probably understand.
I think it got a lot of bad press online,
you know what I mean?
Just based on those clips that, again,
we're taken out of context, although with context,
it still doesn't necessarily make people,
isn't gonna make people super interested in a,
if they're not interested in the writing in those clips,
that is in there, you know what I mean?
Yeah.
And I also think, and this is just a hurdle
that we as a world need to get over.
I think anytime that you put a black woman
in the lead of your game,
I think you're gonna run into some pushback from people,
not deserved pushback, right?
It's like shitty pushback,
but I think that that is still going to impact sales.
And it's shitty and it sucks.
And I'm not saying that they need to stop doing that.
In fact, I would say that what you need to do
is continue doing that so that people
can fucking get over it, you know, or die.
But I think that also is,
I think it is a cocktail of tricky stuff with Forespoken
in terms of its sales, if that makes sense.
Yep, there's sometimes very little difference
between a five out of 10 and a seven out of 10.
You know what I mean?
Like, it's just, and I think more people lean
towards the five out of 10 angle on this one
and just found reasons to hate it when,
most games you can find reasons to hate
if you really look into them.
Right, it's a similar thing.
To my understanding, I didn't play it,
but this seems like it was on the same level
as like Atomic Heart in terms of being like,
okay, in every area, you know what I mean?
But people seem to think Atomic Heart
is better okay than Forespoken.
By the way. Exactly.
But that game was not turned apart.
Did you play it?
No, I downloaded it.
It's my next thing, my next step.
But yeah, you know what I'm saying?
People fucking tore this game apart
where you've got some Atomic Heart
that just like seemed to be about as bad,
but just for whatever reason, and by whatever reason,
I mean all the reasons we talked about.
For all these reasons and more.
Yeah, it just didn't catch the ire
of the internet very much.
That's all I've got for the news.
Justin, I've been playing Hi-Fi Rush.
Oh. And I know we've talked
about it a lot on our show here.
But damn, it is so good.
It is really, really good.
I've been savoring it.
I just got to the eighth mission.
And it's just one of those games
that's just so full of creativity and ideas.
I think it's so snappy in its writing and stuff.
And I think it is also kind of an oddity
in the gaming space in that it is a video game
that I think is very funny.
I think the comedy really lands.
The characters are great, the writing is great.
And it's not just cheap laughs.
I think they really build to some of these laughs and stuff.
Did you get to the canon part?
Canon part? You would know.
I don't think so. Okay, no.
But it's like the whole game,
they set up this kind of trope of planning the mission.
And then for this one mission,
they kind of chies, I got this.
And they're like, oh, fuck.
And the way they had set the whole thing up
is just really funny.
But it's like one of the,
there's just so many good things about it that,
you're right, it is an oddity from it being humor,
from it being a new-ish genre that I haven't played before.
There's just so many things about it
that I still, I cannot get that game out of my head.
The beat, it's in my head.
But I just can't get it out of my head.
And I like it a lot.
I wish the story landed better.
It stuck its landing a little bit better.
Oh, really?
But this might be,
I'm thinking more of an anime trope here.
So hopefully this isn't a spoiler.
Do you know how they get through it at the end?
No, but based on what you just said, I can maybe guess.
What is your guess?
Okay, I guess like spoilers for my guesses of Hi-Fi Rush
and if I'm right or not.
It sounds like a power of friendship kind of thing.
Yeah, it's a power of friendship.
It leads everyone together.
It makes everything good, power of friendship.
Power of friendship.
I like that.
I liked it in Scarlet Nexus.
Remember when that game, at the very end is like,
we're just gonna win by being friends.
It's like, yeah.
Also, hey, that was a good game.
I enjoyed Scarlet Nexus.
The soundtrack is still banging in my head.
It was great.
I liked the style of it, like the actual art direction.
And same thing with this too.
It's interesting in playing this,
not to be that guy who's like,
this kind of reminds me of Persona 5,
but like kind of reminds me of Persona 5
in the sense that like it is so,
it leans so heavily into its artistic style, you know?
And just being like stylish in every aspect.
And yeah, you know, you can make the comparisons of like,
oh, well, does that kind of visual novel thing too,
where the characters, you know,
like show up on screen with text boxes and whatever.
But I think like on a less superficial level,
I think that there is a lot of shared DNA of just like,
this is a game that knows what it's going for
in terms of its style, both artistically
and sonically and all that sort of stuff.
And I think it's just,
like I think I'm in love with this game,
is what I'm trying to say.
And I'm trying to say for it,
although I might want to have it beaten for Resident Evil 4.
But I think I'm in love with Hi-Fi Rush.
I think it might be my favorite of the year so far.
I think my favorite of the year was playing Resident Evil
for the original one last week.
Yeah, did you finish it this week?
I just couldn't stop playing it.
I know, you love it so much.
Everything about it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, I just, I've been really enamored with it.
And something I think maybe is worth talking about
in like a bonus episode or something like that
for our lovely Patreon producers.
But it's interesting.
We sort of mentioned this at the top of the show
when we were talking about Resident Evil 4 remake
in like its score.
Metroid Prime Remastered scored extraordinarily well.
Resident Evil 4 remake scored extremely well.
Dead Space remake scored extremely well.
So far, those are like the highest scoring games
of the year.
But they're all remakes and remasters.
And I'm not trying to be that guy who's like,
what, can they get new ideas?
But I think it is worth pointing out to be like,
oh, that is kind of interesting, don't you think?
And for me, Hi-Fi Rush is the first thing of the year
that has been really truly standout
that isn't a remake or remaster.
And I think maybe the only thing so far for me
that's been like truly exceptional and exciting.
That isn't Dead Space remake.
That isn't from something from that.
We just unlocked a hippogriff in Hogwarts Legacy.
Yeah, is that exciting?
It was actually, to be honest, a pretty cool story moment.
But then the game is just the game.
Does it get any different?
Because I know we talked about it
when you first started playing it,
but in terms of being in interesting open world,
does that stuff that's outside of the actual Hogwarts castle
get any more interesting
or does it just sort of stay kind of generic?
Okay, so one of the coolest thing is the world in the game.
But as I'm playing the game, the easiest comparison
I saw people make this comparison is to The Witcher.
And I hate to say this.
Yeah, you hate The Witcher though.
Do I?
You said you did.
I mean, I beat it.
You beat The Witcher 3?
Yeah, in all the DLCs.
What?
We never talked about this?
Who are you?
I thought you hated it.
Oh boy, it's complicated, man.
Okay, sure.
But maybe I caught you on a day
when you were feeling a little like, meh about it.
But that's all right, go on.
But anyway, I keep playing and say,
I'd rather play The Witcher again.
Oh really, okay.
So wow, I guess that's sort of an...
But it's a loaded question
because I didn't hate The Witcher.
I liked a lot about it.
But yeah, I probably put like 85, 90 hours into that game.
I had no idea.
Who is it that hates The Witcher that I know?
Probably me.
That I talk to frequently on a podcast.
Probably me, I mean.
Maybe it's just you.
It's probably just me.
Did you ever hate play something
until you started playing it enough
to actually kind of like it?
Oh yeah, yeah, totally.
You got that turnaround moment that you're like,
oh actually, this isn't that bad.
I feel like I don't get to the turnaround very often.
I mean, I'm thinking of like,
I used to play a lot of, like when I was in high school,
I would go to GameStop or like,
Toys R Us when that existed.
And they would have like the $5 like bargain games.
And it was just shit in there.
And like, I loved, I like, I think this is maybe,
maybe comes through in our show.
In that like, we've been thinking and talking
about video games for a very long time.
You know what I mean?
Like, and like kind of like picking apart
like what makes them good and whatever.
I really got a lot out of playing bad games
because I would really find it interesting
about like what makes them so bad.
You know, so like for example,
I played a lot of Duke Nukem Forever.
Just to be like, what, like how did this happen?
You know, like what makes this so unfun?
Like I could talk all day about that.
Or like Aliens, Colonial Marines,
if you remember that one.
Like it's just like a piece of trash.
But like, why?
How did this happen?
What would have made this better?
You know, that sort of stuff.
Yeah.
I thought for a second,
like you were gonna end the episode again,
just shitting on Horizon.
Horizon Forbidden West, yeah.
I was like waiting for it.
Like your face the whole time was like.
Oh.
Yeah, just run for Forbidden West.
I mean, it's like, you know,
I had this realization recently
and similar to other things you talked about in this episode,
like this is not a formated full opinion yet.
Like I've not really like hashed this one out entirely yet.
But like, I think I tend to like games
in the same way that I like restaurants.
Where I like a restaurant that knows what you came for.
You know, does just a few things.
Like its menu is very limited,
but it's like, we just do this one burger
and this burger is perfect
and we're gonna make it for you this way.
That's your high-five rush, right?
But then I enjoy going to restaurants,
like diners where like the menu is like eight pages long
and it's just like super small text.
It's basically they hand you the Bible, right?
And they're like, pick something out of here.
And you look and they're like,
yo, you guys do tuna?
Like I don't think anyone should order your tuna, you know?
And that's like a horizon sort of thing.
And I just don't like going,
it's like horizon for me is like Chili's.
Like I've been, my friends really like Chili's.
But every time I go away from Chili's,
I order something new and I go,
I don't like that at all.
I love their skillet queso, like that is.
Okay, that sounds pretty good.
I've heard their salsa is also pretty good.
Yeah, and their chips are salt held together
by some flour.
Yeah, so there you go, right?
Powerful.
And don't get me wrong, I like a restaurant
that has all sorts of random ass shit on their menu, right?
You know, I like goes to Tsushima, right?
Same sort of concept maybe, but does that make sense?
Yeah, no, no, yeah.
That's not a formulated complete idea yet.
It's just, it was knocking around in my head.
Video game, me playing video games
is like eating at a restaurant.
I rarely tip.
Do you rarely tip?
No.
I was like, what?
Like podcast ended, Justin is canceled, holy shit.
Although it's funny I say podcast ended
because here we are at the end of the podcast.
Thanks so much for indulging us and chilling with us
for the past hour and a half or so.
If you want more Hitbox,
head on over to patreon.com slash hitboxpod,
become a $3 deluxe podcast producer like Jaynull,
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They've been real ones since the offset.
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It's like 15 additional extra hours of content.
Should you feel so inclined,
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And link to that is in the description of this episode.
Justin, am I forgetting anything?
You're forgetting that you once again did an awesome job
of closing out the show.
Oh my goodness.
And that you, Peter.
Me?
Hans Spitek, are an amazing person.
Right back at you, Justin.
Are you okay?
Yeah, you came right back at me a little quicker
than I was expecting, so.
Yeah, okay, yeah, sorry,
I should have said that a little softer.
Thank you.
Right back at you, Justin.
No, thank you.
What do I usually say?
I always remember.
All games are all bye.
Bye.
All right, that's, I'll stop recording.
Bye.