Go on. Go on. What do you want
from me? Tell him. Tell him
good morning. Good morning.
Good afternoon. Good night.
This will be coming out on a
Monday. It's being recorded on
a Wednesday because because
I'm in Scotland for the
weekend. It's going away for
four days and he's taking a
little mark with him and that
might be why you're hearing
Connor's voice rather than
Ash's because Ash. Ash is a
difficult man to get hold of
during the weekdays and so
he's not. Steph's just not
here. So, Connor's the Connor's
the backup. Yeah, the backup
of the backup. Look, I've been
here more than Ash now. At this
rate. Ash is one week and then
you're the next week. Yeah.
That's how the new schedule is
taking place. We can't all be
together. Nice cold glass of
water. Nearly died. It's a
nice dynamic because obviously
you play all the weird ****
stuff. You put a little bit of
extra spice to it. And the
weird **** that you've started
playing. Yeah. The borders go.
All the **** Oh yeah. All the
mainstream weird weird stuff.
You haven't started Warhammer
yet. So, that's I remember. I
don't know if you're well even
sometimes it's a bit too nerdy
for me but I played Warhammer.
What was the one that was on
PlayStation? There was like the
FPS. Uh dark tide. Dark tide.
That's the more recent one. It's
the one that was on PlayStation.
You know, I I picked it up when
it first dropped but then it
almost immediately came to
Game Pass. Yeah. It was a bit
of a. That's where I played. It
was from Game Pass. It was
loose but like I think I said
it to you before that it wasn't
worth playing on your own. No.
Because it's not worth playing
with randoms because they're
every there's four classes.
Each one's got a dedicated role
so you've essentially got a
sniper a tank and then two sort
of like um I forget what the
last one was but so one of them
had um like magic powers and
other one was like a melee
brawler and I use the big keys
when I know that was the tank
style one. So there was two that
essentially did mainly there was
one that did um sort of like A.
O. E. style stuff and there was
one that was um single target
DPS. I don't know. I only ever
played the tank. No, no. The
problem with it was that
you could have to have the each
single one. So like one of each
for the four party slot. So,
you could have four of the
tanks which were just big
lumbering units. The the problem
was if you like I ended up
playing the sniper and if you
had a three other party members
that were the big fat lads, you
couldn't get a line of sight on
anything. Do you think they
were? It's great. The whole
point was to run in and and get
in the way. Get the aggro of
the chaff but but there was so
many tanks that were DPS were
meant to be hitting and you
couldn't because friendly fire
was if you shot your friends,
you weren't necessarily doing
damage to them but they were
soaking up your rounds. Yeah.
Yeah. And ammo was finite.
Yeah. He was wasting. So, you
was just shooting into the back
of your mate's head. I never
played it for that long but I I
I sort of enjoyed it was in
that weird phase you know where
you you're just flicking
through games trying to find
something that hits hits a bit
different. I think it was
definitely like if you had a
group of people that you wanted
to play against, you know,
randoms, we weren't having a
bad time but we weren't doing
high level stuff. I wonder how
it's doing now. I think it's
had a new, it's had a new DLC.
Yeah. On it. Yeah. I haven't
followed it because again, I
didn't really have anyone that
was going to pick it up even on
game pass to actually commit to
it and I think it had a quite a
bit of a flawed release when it
came out. I feel like Warhammer
on a hole isn't isn't something
that's really odd because I
really like figures like
collectors edition figures,
things like figures of
characters and all that ****
which not that I've **** other
than Funko Pops. You haven't
really got actual like mini
figs. Yeah, I haven't I haven't
got much going on but I always
like the look like black series
and **** is never going to be
my bank because I I would like
to weirdly how like I'm an in
box Funko collector but if I
have black series, I'd want to
take them out. If you actually
had something you could play
with it. Yeah, but all of the
like the Mirage Collectors
Edition obviously has a Basim
statue that's upstairs in in
Steph's room. Is this just the
I don't know. There's some
weight in that box. Yeah, yeah.
It's got all the stuff in it.
Literally, everything's in
there other than the ****
empty Funko other than the
statue. Yeah, my little
protector.
So, um yeah, I used to I used
to go to the
He was heavy into Warhammer.
They had like a dedicated room
upstairs where every Saturday
loads of them would go
upstairs and they're they're
like set it all up and he tried
to show me a couple of bits
before and the most the thing
that blew me away the most was
how **** expensive. Yeah.
Them them figures are. Yeah.
Jesus Christ. From anywhere
from I think the cheapest
single models are about 18
dollars and essentially there's
two sides of Games Workshop
which has been streamlined now
but it it all used to be two
separate sites and now it's
one is the um the resin kits
where you can get big. They're
probably as big as this this
gorilla gorilla in front of me
of just sheer resin and like
one part of it is like a grand.
Yeah. And that's just for like
a head. Yeah. Or or an arm or
a leg. It's ridiculous. You
know, it's definitely is it is
a real deal. Yeah. So, if you
**** that up. You can restart.
How? When you if you paint a
figure and I **** it up. So,
so, say, say, with the DND um
any figures, any of the minis,
say, I'll get one for for for
him.
Broom. Broom. Broom. We're not
having this if I if I get
something for that, it's going
to be unpainted. I then paint
that. Yeah. If I **** that up,
to strip it completely back to the plastic if you wanted to.
Or you can just, like the benefit is
you can just paint over it.
If you don't like it, you can repaint it.
So long as you, like there's the joke in the communities,
thin your paints because there's some bad things out there
where people have literally just like think rental property,
like white switches where it's just everything's white out.
Just straight over here.
Yeah, like you can do that
and you can completely ruin minis,
but all you do is you just get, you know,
paint thinner or white spirit
and just leave the little fucker in there.
I just don't got the artistic flair to fucking do it.
I think you'd be all right at it.
I think it'd be the initial stage.
Like even I'm not that good at it,
but you just, it's one of those things
that if you do enough of it
and you find things that you like to paint,
like I did quite a few of the D&D minis
and I did some in a rush
before I ended up playing with my other group.
And they're not that great to look at.
And even the one I did for Ash,
like it's passable at a level of, truthfully,
it's the three foot rule.
If you're standing up at a table as far away
as this one in front of us now is that.
Plus Ash has got googly colorblind eyes
and he's really fucking seeing anything wrong with his figures.
He didn't even know what color he was.
He ain't got a fucking clue, you're sweet.
So, but yeah, there is an element of,
if you get a 3D printer up and going,
you can save yourself quite a bit of money,
but at the same time it's-
The initial outlay is fucking expensive.
It's expensive to have a 3D printer
and sometimes it's expensive to run it.
But if you're truthfully looking at,
a pack of 10 guys from Games Workshop costs you 30, 40 quid,
you could save yourself and you could make that
for those same amount for pence, 20p or something.
They're about that sort of value,
but there isn't a lot of,
if you're gonna take that professionally,
to a tournament, people don't like that
and they don't like you having proxy models.
Why?
Because it's elitist essentially,
because you've not paid the money to Games Workshop.
Oh, so you fucking-
You can't use that.
You can't join in the competition.
Yeah, it all needs to be direct mainline stuff.
Whereas if you're doing home games,
you can use whatever you want and that's the same for-
I wonder how that would work on a,
like obviously Daryl goes
to a couple of Pokemon tournaments.
I wonder if you could make your own Pokemon cards
that still follow the exact same as everything else.
They're just made yourself.
I wonder if that would fucking work.
If you've got very good,
that the hardest part for 3D printing
is finding the file, the print files.
So if you had something,
like there's a load of stuff out there.
Like I, in Warhammer, I like Space Marines.
I like Imperial Guard, but I also like,
I've got some Tyranids and bits and pieces,
other ones and Imperial Knights.
And there's a lot of decent stuff out there
that my pal collects orcs.
And there's enough stuff that could be very close,
but at the same time, there's a lot of them
because they're trying to avoid copyright infringement.
Everything looks very similar,
but there is differences in it
that you would be able to look at it and go,
that's not a GW model that we then tweet to.
If you can get things like recasts,
which it also is a gray area of illegality
in terms of people have copied Games Workshop stuff,
is that if you can't tell, then sure.
But some people are so anal on it, so up on it
that they can pick your part, your minis and your models.
I can't imagine anything nerdier.
They go into a Warhammer tournament
and someone telling you to fuck off.
Yeah, because you've got fake fucking figures.
Jesus Christ.
It is a sheer level of sweat that I couldn't go to.
I've only played home games.
There's no way I could go to a tournament
to play that kind of stuff.
And even then I've done it.
And the first time I've played it since I was about eight
or that sort of age,
that it took most of the day just to do a few rounds.
I don't think I could do a tournament
and fucking anything to be there.
No, it's far too intense and it's far too many.
Even when Darrell went to the Pokemon stuff,
I feel that it's far too many sweaty people.
Power up.
He's been beating ball with the children
and it's just group chat going off of him going,
these fucking kids are fucking lost again.
Cunts.
Yeah, there's too many people that make that their almost
life for me as a very casual player to want to turn up to.
Yeah.
Whereas I'm much more happy if there's 40K games
or any sort of Warhammer game,
like there's total war games.
There's one I was playing more recently,
Demon's Gate.
Something like that.
The demons get chaos hunters or something where you play
essentially beefed up space marines, gray knights,
and you just go around in an XCOM style,
hunting down monsters and Xenos and things like that,
all while you're doing some sort of overarching mission.
And it plays very much like XCOM
and it's the only one since Darktide
that I've kind of followed at the minute
and it's not been too bad,
but I've taken a little break from it
because it can be very intense.
You're right there.
I was just trying to think of XCOM.
You look a little bit lost.
Because I tried to play XCOM
when I had the fucking game pass.
There's a few versions of them.
There's, what have they changed it to now?
The more recent, because there was old school ones,
which I never really played
and apparently they were mental in terms of difficulty.
It was just punishing.
The whole game was just, you're gonna get fucked over
one way or another.
And then they released what?
Enemy Unknown or something like that.
And there was another one like The Bureau,
which was a bit of a weird one.
It was semi, almost like RTS.
Yeah, I remember The Bureau.
But no, XCOM is an enjoyable game.
It's one of those turn-based strategy ones
that if you got your head in the right game for it.
That's probably why I didn't fucking get on with it
because of turn-based strategy.
Yeah, you and Ash aren't really fans of strategy style games.
It's not my cup of tea.
Cause it's like everyone in the Discord at the moment,
well I say everyone, there's a couple of people
that are hollering about Mana Lords.
Yeah, I picked that up.
Which I know you've been playing a little bit of.
A few days ago, I played, what, two hours of it, I think.
Which is, it's not bad.
I feel like it's a blend of-
Like civilization.
Not Civ, it's definitely not like Civ
because that's massively micromanage everything.
Whereby you, I'm trying to think the best way to explain it.
Sims.
Sort of, you need to get good at Civ to know what you're doing.
You need to play quite a lot of it
to know the way that things work.
So, you know, you get, when you first start out,
you've picked a nation that has specific skills.
So like if you pick Britain, which is an option,
later game you get very good Navy
that can then have additional abilities.
And every different nation has different stats
that you kind of need to focus on
and decide what your end goal victory is gonna be.
Because there's so many different options
you can do, ones from conquest victories
where you just take over everyone's capitals
and everyone's cities.
Or you can do like financial victories
where just you have so much money.
You can just buy everything, buy people out.
You can have like cultural victories
where you've just amassed so much fanatical following.
They're just not my kind of game whatsoever, man.
I've spent quite a lot of time in Civ.
I think it was Civ V with some of my powers
and in the past.
Yeah, but you would cause you're a fucking nerd.
You know what I mean?
Like you're a nerd.
All right, I'll go now then, see you later.
You're such a nerd.
Just a sweaty, ginger, middle-aged nerd.
Not middle-aged, so you can...
I'm one year older than you, so.
Yeah, you just like them nerdy games.
Yeah.
But it's fair enough.
Thing is, sometimes it's more,
I wouldn't say Civ is peaceful,
but Man of the Lords got an element of peacefulness to it
where in a sense that it's a blend of,
if you ever played a game like City Skylines,
which was a city sim.
And then you got, what is that?
Tropico?
Tropico.
Tropico, that's the one.
Something or other.
That was another, I never played that one,
but that is another styled game that I've,
you know, in the two hours I put into Man of the Lords,
it's very intense.
Because there is a lot going on straight away
and it does not hold your hand
in terms of what you need to be doing.
Is Man of the Lords a full release?
No, it's early access.
Fuck me.
Everything's early access.
I know, I know we just done a whole fucking,
last week's episode was quite heavy on early access.
That's the way things are now.
That truthfully, I think I'd rather have early access
for some stuff because you can still play the game
and help the developer.
At Man of the Lords, I think when you first start it up,
it says, look, I'll be making this game for seven years
and I think it's one man who's doing it.
So I truthfully bide your time and help him out.
I love that early access is basically just like
what betas used to be, but on a much more prolonged scale,
which sometimes it helps people
and other times it hit.
You look at something like Star Citizen.
Oh God.
I mean, fuck me.
How long has that been in early access for?
I don't even think that's out of alpha yet.
No, I'm not.
I don't think so.
And you can spend literal thousands of pounds.
The difference has been though,
that there is all the alphas and the betas
is that everything used to be closed betas before
and you had to have signed up within a specific time.
World of Warcraft is like that.
Within a specific, you have to be within a specific group.
You had to either be in the know
or you had to be a gaming channel or something like that.
World of Warcraft is still like that.
Yeah, someone would give you a key to say,
come and join our closed beta for like three, two, three
weeks and we're gonna iron out the kinks.
Whereas the amount of closed betas,
I feel like I've actually participated in
or even open betas that all of a sudden they just release
and say, oh, we've got an open beta for a week, get on it.
And you're there on the last day going, what?
I didn't even know this was about.
And you want it to play it.
Whereas now everything's early access,
which means it's open to the public.
Then truthfully, money's being invested in the game
because you've had to buy it anyway
or bought it at a discount.
That it's then influx of money into the company
to make it better.
So you can essentially finish their game,
which is a bit weird because you think, well,
if you're not ready to release a game
and you haven't got the money to release a game, don't.
I've been fucking, I've been playing well
since the Burning Crusade or just at the beginning.
How much money have you put into?
And I've never, never, never, never, ever
of every single expansion bar two that I didn't play
have got beta access at all, ever.
And so many other people kick off about it.
But the people that do get the fucking beta access
are people like streamers and fucking anyone,
anyone that makes some kind of content visually
always ends up.
Are you gonna start a What's the Button's Twitch profile?
Well, it's just annoying, man.
Like I get, I understand it.
It's very stream wow, yeah.
But it's like, when you spend all that money
in support for that long,
because obviously the War of the Wings
coming out this year and the beta access signups
went live last week, maybe a little bit before.
But you're not invited.
Yeah, I'm not invited.
I've fucking signed up twice.
Don't get fuck all from it.
No one in the Discord has got fuck all from it.
No one in the Guild has got fuck all from it.
So who are they handing the keys out to?
I don't understand.
It's very frustrating.
Friends and family and all the people
that are taking the influential.
Yeah, it's just annoying, man.
Because I'd love to be a part of it.
Because I feel like, with most games,
you're not gonna bother fucking actually reporting.
I just wanna play the beta.
But I feel like something like, wow,
that's gonna be impactful.
Because I'm gonna play this almost every day.
I'll take it seriously.
That's where the early access stuff,
what you almost gotta be careful of now
is where early access is so easily becoming the norm.
And in most ways, it's a very positive outlay
to get a game that's not struggling,
but needs a little bit of a bump.
I feel like you're gonna get more and more people
using that as an excuse for a fucking mediocre game.
And you go, oh, you can't say anything bad about it
because it's early access.
You can't.
It still needs to be a level of criticism.
We can't review this as early access.
You go, every fucking game's early access.
Someone's gotta say something.
Yeah, it is.
I don't know.
Yeah, truthfully, it shouldn't be above criticism
because that's the only way that games grow and get better.
But you shouldn't, at the same time,
you shouldn't be able to tear it down and say,
oh, well, it's shit because it's early access.
Because everything starts somewhere.
Yeah, last week when me and Ash were chatting about it,
we just settled on the idea that it just has to be
constructive criticism as opposed to just straight up
fucking ripping it out.
This game's shit, though, by it.
It's fucking, I put two hours into this game and it's shit.
Because it is.
You haven't even bothered to get past the intro or anything.
Oh, it's not good.
Have you seen that game that recently come out?
It's, you're a crab.
You seen that?
You're a crab and it's like, souls,
souls like, souls like, what was it called?
I'll have to Google it because it looked really fucking,
it looked really interesting.
Oh, I'm going to fucking kick myself on a nine.
I think it's like a proper stupid name.
Souls like,
souls like, if in doubt, become crab, crab game.
It is called another crab's treasure.
No, another crab's treasure, which is on steam
at the moment for the smattering of just anything
and everything on the state.
Very positive reviews, 93% out of 1,868.
It is on for 24.29 at the moment.
What have we got?
How much?
24, 24.
Too much money?
29.
Wow.
Is that too much money, you reckon?
Well, it's a crab game.
We don't know what it is yet.
Look at the crab.
So it's been made in MS Paint.
Reviews, IGN.
Oh, IGN have reviewed it, yeah.
Another crab's treasure is so clever
and wonderfully ridiculous that it's absolutely
worth your time.
PC gamer, the most fun I've had with a souls like
since Elden Ring.
Everything about another crab's treasure just works.
It feels like it was made with a general love
for the game genre, but a desire to do something new
about this game.
Another crab's treasure is a souls like adventure
set in a crumbling underwater world.
As krill the hermit crab,
you'll need to wear the trash around you as shells
to withstand attacks on enemies.
Many times your size, embark on an epic treasure hunt
to buy back your repossessed shell
and discover the dark secrets behind the polluted ocean.
What is this in detail?
It looks fucking, here we go.
Poise breaking, dark souls difficulty, fish puns.
This is an absolutely great game worth, worth celebrating.
Jesus Christ.
It sounds like it's up your street then
when you've got something you can't be bothered to,
you can't be bothered to play WoW.
So you'll play crab play.
Solid 20 hours, souls like, fun and funny,
proof of carcinization, carcinization?
I don't know if that is.
Everything evolves into a crab long term.
Another, another, oh this is quite a juicy one.
Another, strong humor, low stakes and a good deal of fun.
Another crab's treasure is the perfect,
is that perfect seven out of 10 experience.
It's tough to find anything more than minor grievances,
yet you'd be equally hard pressed
to find anything extraordinarily worthy
of rapturous acclaim.
Combat is fast, fun and flashy,
but underpinned by a noticeable lack of enemy variety.
Systems that awkwardly overlap and supersede one another
and a catalog of bosses that once you've seen one,
you've seen somewhat them all.
The narrative is brilliantly satirical
and similarly charming with a surprisingly dark and mature
equally excellent final act.
However, a world that doesn't take itself all that seriously
engenders a similarly apathetic response
and the seascapes general lack of immersion
doesn't entirely gel with the story sparse,
exploration heavy nature of the souls like Sub-Zomba.
Everything works to varying efficacy
throughout Krill's 10 to 15 hour journey.
Yet there's almost always a little something missing,
a little something off or a little something
that doesn't quite fit.
And those little somethings culminate
into a crackling souls like, no doubt,
but one unlikely to end up
as an essential pillar of the genre.
See, best fucking review that you can have.
Well, someone's invested.
What it looks like.
Someone's been playing that on their Steam Deck.
It looks like souls like SpongeBob.
It does.
SpongeBob, me buddy.
I can't really zoom in,
but look, fucking, they're just fighting crabs and shit.
Okay, fair enough.
It does look decent.
Genuinely.
I don't think I'll be buying it, but okay.
Why don't you like it?
I think I'd rather spend 25 quid on-
Yeah, but you don't like souls likes, do you?
Well, I do, but I've been so far out of the loop with them
that they're not.
You're just comfy with your little fucking simulators.
I haven't got time to get good anymore.
They fucking can of Coke for your shell.
It's decent.
Yeah, but you don't need to, would you?
You can't be asked to get angry.
Pretty much.
You're-
Yeah, I don't think I'd be angry at work with you.
You're like me in a sense of,
you don't want to get angry at the game
and it pisses you off.
However, the difference between you and me in that sense
is I get so wound up, I refuse to not do it.
The stubbornness overtakes the fucking anger.
I go, I'm gonna have to do it
because it's pissing me off too much.
Oh yeah, I can do it.
I just don't, I can't be asked to come home
after everything and then be like,
I'm gonna be angry at a game for two hours
before I go to bed.
I love it.
I love it and I hate it.
Like fucking millennia.
This is pissing me off to my highest point
and it's going to ruin the rest of the day.
So I must do it.
And then once I do it, it's ruined the rest of the day
because I'm so pissed off.
Either way, I'm getting fucked up,
but I would have done it.
No, I'm all right.
Like Steph said before, I don't know how you can just sit
there for hours on end, the same shit happening
and still play this.
Because I can't stop.
But nine times out of 10, if I force myself to stop
and I come back like the following day
in a couple of hours, fresh brain and I'm ready to go.
I finished one and I finished three
and I haven't touched Elden Ring
because I can't remember what released
around the same time as Elden Ring,
but I never really picked it up.
I know that Horizon Forbidden West was released
alongside Elden Ring, I believe.
I wasn't on that.
I don't know what I was on at the time,
but I just got, you know, I might go.
Online Monopoly.
I might go, Online Monopoly, yeah, great.
So something Mark will be playing.
But yeah, no, it's those souls games.
I do like them and I like the lore and everything in them,
but you know, sitting down and slogging them out,
it's not something, you know, I can play other stuff
that's probably a little bit more up my street
in the limited time that I've got.
Yeah, I think someone like Elden Ring
just had that weird capture.
I don't know what it was.
I think it might've been also sort of like the hype
surrounding it and every video you was watching
was to do with Elden Ring.
So it's almost like the Helldivers trap as well,
where Helldivers is very good,
but ultimately it's very samey at the same time.
But where so many people are fucking invested in it,
you feel like part of a community.
So it's like, oh, even though I'm doing this thing
sort of like in my bedroom on my own or whatever,
or at home on my own, doing fucking whatever,
you're part of something much larger.
And I think that sort of same shit resonated with Elden Ring,
especially with the PvP side of it,
for that blissful fucking like two or three months
of playing it.
Same with Hogwarts Legacy as well, man.
When that first come out.
Bloody Hogwarts.
Have you played it?
No.
Shut up then.
I've got no interest in playing it.
You've got a fucking clue.
What an incredible game.
Fuck that.
Why?
Becky Harry Potter.
Why?
You don't play Harry Potter though.
You make your own person.
You make your own character.
Yeah, fuck that.
No.
Why?
I don't like the setting, to be honest.
I don't care for the setting.
What, Hogwarts?
Yeah.
I don't know why.
I just don't vibe with it.
I want, you know, I don't know why.
I like fantasy stuff, but I don't like Hogwarts wizards.
Why?
I don't know.
I just don't.
I feel like it was so-
Mission out.
I don't know.
It's not dark enough for me.
Like you've got wizards and they're just like,
I know there's like your forbidden spells
and stuff like that,
but there's not enough of that shit for me.
Yeah, it weren't.
Everything's very like,
because it's truthfully, it's quite kiddy.
I know it isn't, but-
Oh, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho.
Can it annoy people?
Good.
It's not kiddy.
It's-
It's a child's book.
No, it's whimsical.
I agree.
It weren't as dark as it could have been,
but it was a good old fucking crack.
Give that boy the bloody Avada Kedavra straight in the head.
It could.
Get rid of him.
It could.
It was fun.
It was fun to fucking do that.
Problem is is that there was no repercussion
of using them.
Like you, these were like forbidden spells
and fucking, I don't know, Voldemort will use these.
And then here I am doing it to like a frog.
And it's like, there's no-
There's no-
Some goblin.
Yeah, there's no repercussion to what I've just used.
For no reason, like absolutely no reason,
and nothing's happened.
So it's like suddenly these awful, forbidden,
but very powerful spells are no longer that fucking,
like they're still powerful,
but they're not naughty anymore.
Cause you can't, it'd be like in Skyrim,
if fucking every time you robbed something, nothing happened.
So I'm not getting the fun out of this anymore, am I?
Yeah.
No, it's just never, that whole section of everything,
the books didn't appeal to me,
the films didn't appeal to me,
and the game didn't appeal to me.
So it's not-
I want a Lord of the Rings game, please.
I want a decent one.
You want-
Go away, Darcy.
Someone, is that Darcy?
Yeah, he's ringing me.
Fucking hell.
That fucking four o'clock, yeah?
Four o'clock on the dot, ringing me.
Need a crack rock, fucking hell.
I just gotta lob my phone out.
This is podcast time, not fucking work time.
Darcy, go away.
Go away.
Leave me alone.
Yeah.
You want-
I wish that fucking Nemesis system wasn't patterned.
Yeah.
I've-
Something like that would be-
Why, why you would take a Nemesis system like that,
and then say, this is fantastic.
This is one of the best things that we've ever created.
No one can use it, and we're not gonna use it anymore.
Yeah.
We're gonna use it for two games,
improve it on the second game, tenfold,
and then no one can use it.
And then we're not gonna do anything with it.
So thank you.
See ya.
So, would you want something with a dedicated cast,
like from the Lord of the Rings,
so with Legolas, Boromir, Aragon, and your man, Gimli?
Yeah.
Or would you want it to be sort of like,
do you remember Third Age?
Which was, it was a turn-based one as well, but it was-
Third Age, Rings of Bell, I don't remember it.
It was very much like some of the middle ground,
like Final Fantasies, where the combat was turn-based,
and it was like you had your line up,
but then the rest of it, you could run around-
Yeah.
You could run around Moria and stuff like that,
and each, there was different sections
that sort of mirrored the first film,
and like the second film,
and it had its own unique characters.
I think even the main character
was looking for Boromir or something,
that was the whole tie-in.
But, so you had unique and new characters,
or would you want the ability to make your own character
for the Lord of the Rings world?
Because the problem with trying to have an ensemble cast
is you have to have named characters.
Yeah.
And what do you actually want out of a Lord of the Rings game?
You want, you gotta go down an MMO route,
haven't you, really?
Well, there is a Lord of the Rings MMO.
I know, but it's not fucking updated.
It's not up to scratch.
You just want a new MMO-y style,
probably like Elder Scrolls style,
Elder Scrolls Online, but like wow quality,
but Lord of the Rings.
Yeah, kind of.
I'd wanna keep the wow style of combat and everything.
I don't think I'd wanna switch over to ESO,
because then I feel like you just,
at that point you're just Skyrim in your...
Sort of, yeah.
I suppose, yeah, that's true.
I would want, yeah, man.
There's no one that's ever gonna take up that space,
because...
No, there's no, wow is the MMO.
Yeah, if it hasn't been done, if...
But then I don't know if I'd want wow
with a Lord of the Rings skin.
I'll tell you what, no, I wouldn't want an MMO.
I would want a single player Lord of the Rings game,
and I would want it to be a specific storyline
that somehow would tie...
Something...
Something like Shadow of War,
but Shadow of Morrow, but not...
Yeah, but beefier, I feel like...
More than the small...
Who made that?
I can't even remember who made that.
What, Shadow of War?
Fucking hell, we spoke about that before as well.
I know it was under...
Was it under Ubisoft in the end?
Or was it...
Shadow...
But either way, yeah, I get it,
because Shadow of War was good,
and Shadow of Morrow, the Shadow games were good,
and they were very unique,
and they actually had decent, unique...
They were kind of plain,
but they did have decent characters in it.
Like Talion was a decent idea,
and the whole union he had with Calabrimble was very good.
Yeah, it was very...
Warner Brother games were the publisher,
and then Monolith Productions were the developer.
WB.
And then, yeah, they fucking patented the Nemesis system.
Yeah, it was a shame, because that was quite clever.
It was very fucking clever,
and it's never been duplicated.
No one's ever done anything close to that.
And yeah, I feel like I would...
Yeah, I'd wanna sing...
Kinda like...
On the same par with something like God of War
or The Last of Us, like that type of deep storytelling...
Yeah, feeling the God of War.
...in Lord of the Rings.
Because, and like you have the...
There's so much lore involved in that,
that you can fucking, you can explore.
You stay away from the movies,
because I think they need to be left alone as their own gems.
You haven't got to adapt a fucking game from that.
It's already been done.
It's already been done many, many moons ago.
So many of those films are...
Many years ago, just the Lord of the Rings game.
Yeah, even that was good.
Yeah, it was very good, very fucking good.
If you could just pick...
I don't know what you would really run with.
It would be quite nice to see more of like
the dwarven side of things,
but then you kind of had that explored with the Hobbit.
What have you got?
There's that silly, terrible Moria game that came out
that wasn't very good.
Oh, the survival.
Yeah, that fucking flopped straight down, didn't it?
What is that? Is there another one?
Which is annoying because it had fucking John Rhys Davies
as one of the fucking voice actors in it.
I'd like to get to my wishlist, please.
And it just fucking flopped.
Where are you? There it is.
I don't know if it's specifically for...
Where are you? You're on here.
Return to Nangrim.
It'll let me open it, but the signal here is terrible.
Oh yeah, you're not on the Wi-Fi.
No, I'm not.
Sorry.
I'm not a regular.
Just a little scum.
What other fucking storylines could you roll with?
Yeah, I don't know.
Because the minds of Moria and all that kind of stuff,
I think that that dwarven side of things is always,
I feel like, explored in that sort of fantasy world.
Every man wants to be a dwarf.
Yeah, they're a big part of that industry.
Hobbits, I don't think hold enough essence to fucking...
Not really.
...captivate anyone.
Elves have been fucking overdone to...
You just have to be men.
People just did a cement.
You just have to be a human man.
You got Aragorn...
Rohirrim or Gondorian, you'd essentially have to be,
essentially.
Which would be a cool storyline,
a cool lore to write as a Rohirrim.
Yeah.
Maybe if they did something along the lines of
the arrival from Numenor,
like the essentially...
Or maybe something to do with
their takeover of Middle-earth
or even the Rohirrim side of it.
Or Gandalf's side to it.
The wizard side of Lord of the Rings.
Because I feel like that
isn't actually explored all too much.
It's quite vague.
Yeah, the films keep it very loose for the fact
he is essentially angelic.
Here's some wizards.
They're the most powerful beings you've ever met.
We're not going to show you exactly how they got to be
being how they were.
Oh, by the way, Gandalf actually died here
and was then fucking resurrected.
And we're not going to show you any of that
of how that actually happened.
But he's now white.
It's very...
Yeah, don't get me wrong.
I'm not fucking digging it because I feel like
in the movies doesn't need to be explored.
They do a very good enough job of just
throwing that in and you fucking...
It's too much other shit going on.
You love it.
Yeah, I definitely remember as a kid,
I didn't understand what was going on
and why he made a reappearance in the second film.
I was like, I don't know.
I still don't understand now.
I have no fucking...
All I know is that he was like, it wasn't my time.
Okay, but what brought you back?
Because he's a demi-god.
That's the whole...
What, Gandalf?
Yeah, Gandalf's basically an angelic figure in the universe.
Yeah.
The god, the creator of it said, well, like, yeah,
you need to be doing fixing Middle Earth now
because you're one of the only ones left.
Yeah, he's essentially white.
So it would be so incredible to roll with that one.
Come away from the dwarves, come away from elves,
even come away from the human side of it
because as cool as like Rohirrim and all of that would be,
I feel like that's an easy pathway to go down as well
because it's just humans with swords.
Whereas...
We're making another fantasy.
Yeah, whereas...
We're making another medieval fantasy style game,
but we're giving it Lord of the Rings skin.
Something down the wizardry aspect of it,
where you're forced into that ranged aspect of it
every now and then you can fucking throw in the melee
with what staff and bang, bang, bang.
That would be really cool.
You wouldn't take an order man's staff.
Walking stick.
But that's just a spitball there
that I'm sure has been fucking balled up
and thrown around a million times before.
I think it's difficult where Lord of the Rings
is such a big thing as well
to actually make a definitive plot line
and a definitive game because they can go quite...
The Shadow games were almost very throwaway in the world,
but they don't make that much difference.
In the plot that they run,
it does kind of hold us a lot of sway, but truthfully...
There's some lore involved with it.
It's not that deep overall.
But it's...
I feel like...
And I feel like Star Wars runs into that issue of...
They're so monumental.
If you were to create something like a game alongside that,
it's going to be so harshly critiqued
that it has to be decent.
You think you look at the current Star Wars games,
you got, or even like Outlaws that's coming out.
I was going to say, I literally was looking at where
the Outlaws was coming out and that's in late August.
Yeah.
And that will be heavily fucking knocked 100%.
Oh yeah, they were already banging on it at the minute,
even for the main character, just because she's a woman.
Yeah, pretty much.
Pretty much.
Because it's a bunch of sweaty Star Wars nerds.
Yeah, sweaty nerds are doing it.
I'm sure they'd be sweaty nerds for...
Well, it's just nerds.
Nerds are horrible.
Round them up and kill them.
But any Star Wars...
There goes the fan base.
Yeah.
Any Star Wars games are...
They do have that...
That critic around it, because you have such a loving fan base
of such a big IP.
People just want stuff that reflects their...
Their love for it.
Yeah, their love for it.
That...
And I'd be exactly the same.
And, Am, Gollum was fucking awful.
I was waiting so long for that.
I thought this was going to be fucking decent.
And then you do get annoyed when it comes out.
You go, this is shit.
Because this isn't what I love.
This is too fast at four graphics.
Yeah, this is absolute bollocks.
You could have slapped Unreal Engine 5 graphics on it.
It's still wank.
It's like that's not...
Hang on, let me get them Kong...
Yeah, that's...
Kong still frame.
That's not what...
That was crazy.
That shit, that was fucking...
That was ridiculous.
It was around the same time.
And the fact that that was like 50, 60 quid as well
is even more fucking mental.
That's just a straight up cash grab.
Yeah.
But like...
Yeah, maybe that's why it's difficult.
But at the same time, you also have...
From an innovation point of view,
you want people, you want studios to make games
that are detached from the mainstream.
Yeah, I was literally about to say,
there's too many games that are reliant on mainstream IPs.
Yeah.
Like Assassin's Creed is too reliant on the AC tag.
Like Valhalla Odyssey Origins is too reliant on that tag.
All the Star Wars games are a little bit too reliant on Star Wars.
Yeah, Assassin's Creed, drop it.
And then even, it's nice.
Well, a lot of games are like that.
There's no...
Probably why people don't want to touch a Lord of the Rings game
because they don't want to slap a Lord of the Rings title on it.
Yeah.
Truthfully, whereas it's easier to...
It's not even easy to come up with individual and unique ideas
apart from in the indie scene.
But it seems like only the small creators are the ones
that can come up with games that are by the by just unique.
I think...
And new and refreshing.
One of the only...
For me, anyway, one of the most notoriously unique
and just what the fuck is this?
This is incredible, but so fucking weird
and I've never seen this replicated before.
For me, would be something...
Control.
Yeah.
Control is so monumentally weird.
And I still, to this day, don't understand.
Don't know what the fuck is about the Hiss.
I don't know.
I don't know what the Hiss are, where they've come from,
why am I in this building?
I don't know what's happening.
My brother's here.
What's going on?
And that was such a good game.
I'm so happy that there's a Control 2 on the way.
That was with the redhead, wasn't it?
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And she had supernatural powers where...
Because I never really looked into it that much,
but I knew people were going on about it.
So good.
Was it PlayStation exclusive?
No.
Was it not?
No, it's on Steam.
It's real fucking good.
It...
Oh, it's just...
Yeah, because I think I'm confusing it a little bit with Prey.
I think it is.
Yeah.
Which is very like got the same kind of aspect of it,
but I think it's not the same because there's some weird alien
or whatever it is.
Control.
Type thing.
Control was just...
I can't explain the premise of the game, lore-wise,
because it's just so fucked up.
I think there do need to be more games that just don't explain
what is going on sometimes.
Yeah, because...
Just put out a game that goes,
you're just living this story.
Fuck knows what truthfully is going on.
It's a tight line to get people to walk because it is that if you...
So with control, you load up that game.
I don't know what the fuck's going on.
I have no idea what's happening.
I'm watching everything.
I'm listening to everything.
I don't know.
There's some weird fucking janitor.
I don't know.
He speaks funny.
I don't know what the fuck he wants, but he keeps popping up.
It's really weird.
There's a floating TV.
I don't know what I'm supposed to do.
You've got that, but then you've got an incredible combat system
that feels really fucking good.
Really cool supernatural powers.
Everything about it.
The combat is great.
The story, the visuals, everything else about it is great.
So that makes you stick around.
Okay, I'm interested in this game.
I'm going to stick with it to find out what the fuck this weirdness is really about.
And then you've got that unique combat style sort of pushing you...
Does it drop you straight in with the power?
I know probably not all of the powers, but...
No.
It drops you in...
With just enough to have a little bit of spice.
Because your one and only weapon is a gun.
And the gun changes.
So you have sort of like standard pistol, and then you can turn it into like a pistol, sniper, and shotgun, and so on.
But it's made out of cubes.
So it will just swap and rotate as when you demand it to.
Rubik's Cube gun, yeah.
Basically, yeah.
And it sounds boring, but it's actually so fucking good.
And then your weapons, you can pick up like these weird gem engram things that give it stats.
It will be like 10% headshot damage.
It will be like more health or like the standard bollocks.
And then yeah, later on, not that later on, you start to gain your powers from like possessed items, they call them.
And there's like ones that make you levitate.
Ones that like fucking...
You can pick objects up and fucking launch them and put like telekinesis type shit.
You can like bend the mind of the enemies and turn them into like your friends and shit like that.
And it just feels so good.
But it's such a mind fuck to work out what is going on because it is really odd.
And the place that you're in is really odd.
But because it feels and plays so good, you're more than happy to divulge into that and see what's going on.
Whereas if you drop someone into a game and they have absolutely no idea what they're doing,
and that game's not almost immediately engaging to play and fun,
most people are going to switch it off and go, that's not for me.
It's too fucking good.
I think unfortunately there's a lot of that now that I tend to find if a game doesn't really take me in the first little bit,
which unfortunately is quite a few games at the minute.
Like Dragon's Dogma 2 has kind of done that to a point where I was really struggling at the start
and then kind of enjoyed it and now I've hit that end game part that Ash was going on about.
And I'm like, I need to take a break again.
Because you don't have the time.
Yeah.
You just said you don't have the time for a Souls-like game.
You don't have the time to sit at home and get pissed off because you've had a long day already.
You don't want to waste your time.
Your precious hours at home just getting pissed off.
And it begs the question, something like Dragon's Dogma,
if there weren't the hype surrounding it, do you think you would have really stuck it out?
If you didn't have people actively telling you, no, this game's fucking sick.
This is decent. This is game of the year. Blah, blah, blah.
Here's all the clips. Look how fucking fun this game is.
I think I would have given it a fair whack because I played Dragon's Dogma 1 and I enjoyed that.
But then I enjoyed that in a time when I had a lot more free time versus,
to be honest, I don't feel that they've changed that much since the first game.
Like truthfully, they haven't changed much of any of the enemy types.
And the combat feels much the same.
They've actually changed out some of the classes that I used to enjoy from previous game.
They've just removed them.
That is a good game, but I think I've said it to you multiple times that it feels like the game
is synthetic in its length because there's no...
It's forcing.
Yeah, it's forcing you to backtrack and run around and things like that.
The fast travel is limited.
That it doesn't help you to get from A to B when you've got to fight
400 monsters between A and B and every left turn you take has got another six enemies to fight.
And that is exactly how me and Ash felt with Final Fantasy Online.
Yeah.
For getting through the first, like into the first expansion.
It is just synthetic.
It's that go and talk to this person and then talk to this person, go back to where you were,
talk to this person, give this person some cake, now pick some apples, go and fight this person.
That's all you're fighting done for the next 17 hours, go and talk to this person.
It's like you cut out this bollocks.
Which they are, to be fair.
They're bringing in a skip when fucking Dawn Trail comes out,
which cuts out a lot of that.
World of Warcraft done the same thing.
You start in Shadowlands if you're a brand new player.
That in itself doesn't make sense because as a new player,
you won't have any fucking clue what's going on.
But even then they've cut out, there's a lot of skips involved, which,
yeah, I know exactly what you mean.
When you've been forced, I think you need your handheld just enough
to point you in the right direction, especially with certain,
there's been games like ESO Online, hadn't played since it dropped.
And you were like, yeah, it's great.
It's great.
And I got in and went, what am I doing?
Where am I?
Where the fuck am I going?
Because no one's like guiding me in any direction.
And there's like 14 different routes you can take.
Yeah, ESO was a weird one because I remember
when me and Steph were quite heavy into it, like searching up,
because obviously once you get ESO Plus, you have access to all of the DLC,
apart from the current one, which is cool.
And it is like, what am I supposed to be doing?
You've got the main quest, which is from the original.
And obviously you do that because number one, if you're first doing it,
it's good for story.
And you've got Michael Gambo on this voice acting, the whole thing.
And then number two, it's great for fucking skill points and leveling up.
Fantastic.
But then after that, it's like, okay, well, what do I do?
What am I supposed to be doing here?
And you ask everyone, they go, do whatever you want.
Well, that doesn't help me.
I need some direction here.
I feel like linear games that give you a sandbox linear games.
Yeah.
Are very helpful.
Yeah.
And are like my preference.
Yeah.
But I feel like with a live service game, especially in MMO,
it's so difficult for new players to delve into that
when the game is already so well established and you have so much more going on,
especially something like WoW, Final Fantasy, ESO,
even to a point like games like Lost Ark, like ARPGs and shit like that.
Because for a seasoned player, so me, for example,
I jump onto WoW.
I know exactly what I'm doing.
I want to get to the end game.
Yeah.
I've made a new character, big splash boss, level that fucker up, get to the end game.
However, now it's with an outlook of, okay, let's start questioning the zones
I've never touched before because I want to enjoy it because I know what I need to be doing.
I mean, no rush and I know exactly where I am and how to do it.
You've done literally everything else.
Yeah.
There's nothing else for you to do apart from the stuff that you haven't touched.
Yeah. Whereas a new player...
For me, it was massively like, what am I doing?
It's overwhelming because the leveling at the moment is fucked.
So you level up way too fast for a new player.
You don't take anything in and then you're immediately thrown into Dragonfly,
which is the current expansion.
And you're like, I don't know what to do.
And then whenever you ask anyone, it's just get to fucking level 70 and then grind gear.
It's like, okay, but how do I do that?
What am I doing? I'm missing out.
And it's very, very difficult.
Obviously they're bringing out that remix on the seventh of this month,
which is Mr. Pandaria, where they have assured that they've scaled it so that you will start
at level 10 and then level up to 70.
But they've said many times, you will be able to do every single quest in every single zone
and all the dungeons without exceeding that.
It will be how it was in old school where for a very, well, not even for a brief period,
for a long time with WoW classic, like vanilla, very first fucking iteration of WoW,
there weren't enough quests.
You finished all the quests and it wasn't enough to get you to max level.
You just have to do dungeons and fucking grind and kill mobs and shit like that.
And obviously that's one extreme.
And now you've got the other extreme where you barely fucking touch any quests.
You can just spam dungeons and then boom, boom, boom.
And like, I think-
What did we do for my tank that just went into dungeons?
Just went through all of them dungeons.
Because then, again, you've got-
Still don't know what I'm doing.
You've got the problem of if you're playing a damage role, that's absolutely fine.
And is mostly recommended as a brand new player because whether you're questing,
doing PvP or you're doing PvE or you're doing dungeons, fucking whatever,
your rotation is your rotation.
You're just doing damage.
You can learn that fucking doing anything.
You're playing as a healer or a tank.
You need group content to figure out what the fuck you're doing.
But you can't do the group content as a new player because you don't know what the fuck's going on
and everyone says shit.
So as a tank, you can't just quest because you don't know what half your abilities do
because you don't need to use them because the game isn't hard enough at that point
for you to warrant using them.
It's very difficult.
Blizzard have actively said their new player experience is shit,
which I think is decent from them to come out and say,
it's nowhere near where we want it to be and we're sinking a lot of resources into making it.
Because I think they've realized that in order to continue as a company and as an MMO,
you need to make it more easily accessible to new players
because I guarantee most of the people listen to this that if they've never played WoW before,
won't have a fucking clue if they logged in because you don't.
No, it's very, there's nothing to hold your hand straight away.
No.
Apart from that, if you do the new version of the tutorial area, that basically pushes you
throughout to level 10.
And then there you go.
And then you're dumped out in your capital city and you're free to do whatever.
With zero direction, with about a million quests on offer.
Isn't the best.
And you're like, I don't know what to do.
Your favorite game though.
It is.
You can't leave it alone to play anything else.
Absolute addiction.
I'm raiding tonight and I cannot fucking wait because I'm not in work tomorrow.
And I can fucking stay up late and kill lots of bosses and get some gear.
But.
Meanwhile, I've got an early start.
You've got a nice early start.
But we'll fucking leave it there and do the Patreon.
Nice one.
Lovely.
Thanks for coming.
Thanks for listening.
See you later.
Thanks people.
Amen.