Hello, I smell shit.
Can you not, genuinely not smell that?
No, you're having a stroke.
You can smell shit, like a bad kind of shit
or like a good kind of shit.
Actual poo poo.
Actual poo?
Well you haven't gone anywhere, you can't,
you ain't stepped in shit.
No, no, that's what I mean,
that's what I thought you farted.
No, that's a powerful fart.
If it's reached over you, are you good?
No fucking, mind me, is this Patreon or?
No, you said you wanted us to do the normal.
Yeah, I don't mind, yeah.
I'll save the poo story for Patreon then as usual.
Right, yeah, so save that for the fucking payers.
Right, well, do you wanna crack on then?
Yeah, I'm back, sorry I wasn't here last week,
probably gonna be like that every other week more likely
when my wife's working on the Friday.
Just the way our work schedules line up,
it doesn't really work.
It's all changed a little bit.
But there might be times where I'm two weeks in a row
hopefully, but, and then the week before obviously,
your boy was in Scotland, so.
I was in Scotland, I climbed Arthur's Seat.
Yeah?
Yeah, it's like a fucking,
in vans and chinos, I was feeling the fucking effects
of not being in the proper gear to do it.
Yeah, a bit.
But I did it nevertheless and it was most fun.
It's like a, I think it's like 250 meters up
or some shit like that, and it's all rocks and very fun.
It's impressive, man.
I thoroughly enjoyed it.
I'm on my little health kick, it was nice.
How you getting on with it?
It's all right, man, it's all right.
I'm fucking losing weight and eating better, all right?
And fucking running half an hour for four days a week.
It's cool, cause we're like the opposite,
cause I'm gaining weight and eating worse.
You used to be the gym bod that I had aspired to be.
And yeah, now, don't get me wrong,
I'm envious because fucking hell do I miss McDonald's.
Oh my God, however, in this new little turn of events,
I have discovered the KFC salad box.
Yeah, yeah, nice.
And oh, Jesus Christ, they're good.
Rice and that.
No, this one's just salad, salad and chicken.
It's fucking good, man.
Ooh, but the only saving grace I've got is that
if you're looking at fast food, kebabs are the best.
All right, they're like, out of all the bad shit,
they're the least bad shit because they're just fucking.
I mean like proper chicken kebabs, innit?
Yeah, chicken kebabs, or you can fucking don a kebab
to an extent because they ain't fried
or anything like that.
They're like, if you wanna have something,
then they're sort of like the best thing to have,
which is decent because you know me,
I fucking love a don a kebab.
Ooh.
Yeah.
The funny thing is I'm not really like that.
I don't like McDonald's.
I used to love KFC, I don't really like that no more.
I used to love Gregg's, don't like Gregg's.
You bang McDonald's quite frequently after these.
No, no.
Yeah.
Probably once in the last.
I'm pretty sure the last time.
Yeah, maybe the last time, but not normally.
Not normally.
It's only if there ain't no dinner on.
When I get in, I might grab something,
but I do not like McDonald's.
I'll buy McDonald's and eat it, but I don't like it.
It's just because it's convenient.
I don't think anyone fucking likes it.
I think you just get trapped into it, don't you?
But yeah, I'm not really a fast food man, bro.
But yet I still eat shit.
It's impressive.
Maybe your job holds it down a bit better.
Yeah, well I'm quite an active guy.
Exactly, that's what I'm saying.
As much as I don't want to be.
There's a whole plethora of things to talk about
and that have happened in the last meet that we had.
I'm very excited to talk about it.
You want, what you got?
No, what do you want to talk about?
Probably talk about pre-ordering the Assassin's Creed
shadows collectors edition.
Sorry to all the people that fucking hate Ubisoft
and say, don't pre-order.
And I know we've said that before,
but you can't say no to a really cool looking statue,
can you?
You just resale not as we do.
You just can't do it.
So what is it?
Is it June when Elden Ring Shadow of the Earth trees out?
It's like six weeks or something, five weeks now.
So that'll be a collector's edition on its way
with a fucking statue.
And then in November will be the Assassin's Creed shadows,
which I'm a bit dubious about because I was told yesterday
that game is shutting down.
Or is that just their storefronts
that are apparently shutting down?
I don't know.
I know the one where I live is no longer.
Yeah. So as long as they can still fulfill my order,
I don't give a fuck.
All right.
But when I see that collect, it's 240 quid,
which is obviously substantially more
than what the Mirage one was.
But you've seen it.
We showed each other and that fucking,
that statue looks fucking sick.
And the scroll that you get that you can hang on the wall
and the Suba, the fucking metal ring off a Katana
that's fucking, it's a good old little piece.
Perfect time to be dropping that sort of shit
just after Shogun.
Yeah, it's decent, man.
But it looks good.
And I say it looks good.
You don't see nothing.
From what I've heard from the inside
and what I've passed on to you,
all the little tip bits sound good, but they always do.
So I have to be skeptical.
Yeah, but what did they say about a Mirage?
Was it the same sort of wavelength?
They said they went back to their roots,
but no, that guy that I texted you yesterday,
he's like, he's not one to gas shit up.
So that's why I am excited and piqued to my interest
because if they've really, because Assassin's Creed,
when I listened the other day,
fully agree with Steph, I have to be honest.
I think inherently Assassin's Creed games,
i.e. Valhalla, Odyssey and Origins aren't bad games.
They're just not Assassin's Creed games.
And I'm not an Assassin's Creed fan.
I don't like, like yous like all that Animus shit.
I would rather that shit didn't exist
and it was just the Assassin's part.
I'd feel like that doesn't need to be there,
but obviously for Assassin's Creed fans it does,
which is fine.
But take that out and I would have,
I wouldn't have more fun
because it plays a very small part now, don't it?
Yeah, it's very, it ain't even fucking questionable.
I think there needs to be a combination
of Origins, Odyssey and Valhalla
mixed with your Assassin's Creed games,
because I feel like, we've had this discussion before,
but Valhalla has these things in like,
like the massive enemies in that.
They try and soak it in a bit of realism
and then they go over the top of it as well.
I feel like there needs to be a fine line toad somewhere
because I don't wanna fight gigantic soldiers
that there's no way anyone like that existed in the world.
And the combat was shit, if I'm perfectly honest with you,
because it was just the same doof, doof, doof.
And it was silly because you do the silly things.
Well, I don't personally like,
and I know some people will,
your uppercut them with an axe and they'll fly in the air.
I don't want that.
I'd rather that axe just dug in his chin.
Yeah, I'm the same, man.
Do you know what I mean?
So that's, I feel like if they can get the combat right
with the big world, but also actually have a story there.
Because it is gonna be open world, isn't it?
That's, and what was it?
Bigger than origins is the stamp of that size.
I am confident because from,
as much as, bear in mind,
we did a whole fucking episode on it.
As much as Mirage in my head was a flop,
it wasn't at the same time
because it was aiming in the direction
that I think is not only back to its roots,
but evolved for current time.
So they haven't strictly gone back
to this is what Assassin's Creed used to be.
I think they added the right bits
and then have built on them
for today's Assassin's Creed players.
And like I said to Steph,
they can either go with Assassin's Creed Shadows,
formerly known as fucking Project Red.
They can either go down the route of like Valhalla
and Odyssey and things like that,
or they can go down the route of Black Flag,
to Revelations Brotherhood,
or they can find the perfect combo
to put them together and go,
this is the identity of Assassin's Creed now.
Because I feel like when they went to Origins,
that's when they started,
they obviously changed the UI, changed the combat,
and they went into their new Assassin's Creed era,
which very much divided the fan base.
Whereas if they're able to put those two together
and do it properly,
and then own it and say,
this is what Assassin's Creed is now,
I feel like they're in with a good chance of it
being a decent game.
But again, this is Ubisoft.
Very, very good at making cinematics.
Nine times out of 10 will flop in the gameplay.
Yeah, I think the games suffer from their own,
their own setting as well.
So Valhalla, arguably my ideal game,
because it's the Vikings and I love the Viking history.
But let's be honest, England's fucking boring, mate.
Yeah, it is planned open fields and shit.
It's crap.
Yeah, for that kind of shit, it's not good.
But they didn't help themselves
because the story was so fucking spread out over,
do these exact same things
with a slightly different coat of paint on it,
travel four million miles to get there,
come back, speak to this person, rah rah,
and just do that rinse and repeat
with nothing really else going on.
It wasn't helping it.
It's very Final Fantasy.
Yeah.
But then, like, I look at Assassin's Creed Odyssey,
which was the Greek one,
which I also a big fan of Greek mythology.
And I loved that game.
That out of Origins Odyssey and,
was it Egypt Origins, Odyssey Greek,
and Valhalla, obviously the England Vikings.
The Origins Odyssey was by far my favorite.
And I completed that.
And I spent like nearly 100 hours on that game.
I loved it.
I loved the bones of that game.
So I feel like it always depends on the setting as well,
if you like the setting.
So I like Japan, I like Japanese stuff.
I like Samurai. I think most people do.
Exactly.
So I feel like that's already gonna put it
in a lot of people's thing.
Obviously there's a lot of discourse
about the main protagonist, blah, blah, blah.
But everyone, no one's ever gonna be happy.
Well, I'm just reading up on it
because I don't wanna start saying shit about it
and then get it wrong.
But I'm pretty sure that the male protagonist,
I can't remember their name,
is based off of a real Samurai-esque.
He is, but then also, I don't know the history of it,
but then you've got people arguing saying,
but he wasn't actually given the title of Samurai,
so he wasn't a real Samurai.
I was like, yeah, but also the Medusa wasn't real.
So you've got to draw the line somewhere.
And I didn't see anyone kicking up a stink
when Neo had a white protagonist in Japan.
Yeah, it's very difficult because the Japanese setting
for Assassin's Creed is something
that most Assassin's Creed fans have been begging for
for fucking years.
You're talking like well over a decade,
people have been asking for a Samurai setting.
It's perfect because they're like ninjas and stuff.
It is absolutely perfect.
And then when you had Ghost of Tsushima come out,
everyone was like, right, well, this is,
this is what we've been wanting.
It's not Assassin's Creed, but this is-
It's a bit of a spit in the face to Assassin's Creed fans.
Yeah, this is what we want.
And now, like you say, it's the perfect time
because of Shogun and I feel like in recent years,
the Japanese perspective in games
has always been a very popular setting.
But I feel like now in the last sort of like five years,
it's become quite more popular.
And it's annoying to see shadows get announced,
get the reveal trailer.
And then if you go into the comments
on any of the fucking videos,
whether it be YouTube, Instagram, fucking whatever,
it's just people ripping the shit out of it.
You go, oh, Ghost of Tsushima's coming out on the PC soon.
I'll be playing that instead.
It's like, what?
These are the same people that were begging for Ubisoft
to bring out an Assassin's Creed that's based in Japan.
So it's like now that you've seen it
and that it's on its way,
people are just comparing it to something else
that's very, very good and dismissing it straight away.
And it's just annoying because it's like,
this is the shit that you wanted.
Now you're getting it.
You're whinging about getting it.
People will always moan and they'll never be happy.
Even if it's the best thing ever,
people will still complain about it.
My only worry with Assassin's Creed, this one anyway,
as I've said before, I prefer playing as men.
Just my preference.
I hope you can do all the sneaky shit still
with the samurai guy.
I hope he's not just a tank fucking samurai guy.
I know he is the samurai,
but I'm hoping you can still sneak about with him
and all that stuff.
Just because I'd prefer to play as him.
He's just more my, who I'd prefer to play as.
What I'm liking the fact that it's on current gen only.
No, I didn't know that.
Yeah, that's very good.
It's only PS5 series X and S.
At fucking time we got something like that.
Yes, finally the tides are fucking turning.
And like that thing that you sent me
from the guy on Twitter,
it's been made on an upgraded engine.
It's been made for the likes of PS5.
There's none of this bullshit where it's,
oh, we've got to make it run on PS4 as well.
So we have to fucking sacrifice something
for something else and blah, blah, blah.
That shit's all been fucking thrown away.
It's you want to play this, you need the next gen.
And that's just it.
Which is fucking how it should be
because they've had more than enough time
to start doing this shit.
I have some details here if you'd like me to read.
Go on.
This is from Shinobi602 on Twitter.
I know he's quite big in the gaming world.
He says, that's increased shadow details.
I don't know how much of this is out in the open,
but this will all be factual that he'll know.
New gen only, PS5, Xbox Series X, PC
on an updated Anvil engine.
That's a one.
Takes place in feudal Japan in the year 1579
during the Azuchi-Momoyama period.
Time period sees a range of activity
including Portuguese merchants,
legions of samurai, Shinobi,
and J-suit missionaries, et cetera.
Oh look, this is what you said as well.
Large open world, as big as Assassin's Creed Origins,
which is not a bad thing as long as it's not shit.
Yeah, as long as it's filled with stuff to actually do.
Exactly.
Players two, protagonist, Yasuki and...
I know the names are struggling there.
Nao, Niu.
Nao, Nao.
Yeah, let's go Nao.
There are set personal quests
where you play as one or the other,
but you can freely switch between both
in the open world and during other objectives.
Is that the same as the one with the Eevee fry?
Did they do something similar to that?
It was, I think it...
Could you swap or were you...
No, yeah, you could swap.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, I feel like you could.
It's been so long since I played it,
I'm pretty sure you could swap.
So it sounds like that then.
Yasuki is a real historical figure.
He was brought to Japan by...
I still don't know how to say this.
J-suit.
I don't know if it's like J-sui or...
J-suit.
J-suit, whatever.
Missionary and then became a samurai and served.
Oda Nobunaga.
Nobunaga.
Nao is an agile shinobi who likes stealth,
but knows how to fight, can use a grappling hook
to traverse the environment.
Physics based, so it can be improbable.
I'm not sure what that means.
I think it means it beholdens to physics in that.
Ah, so it might slip off and stuff.
Yeah, I imagine so, yeah.
Yasuki's fighting style is more head on direct combat
with parries, breaking enemy armor plates,
decapitation, finishes, et cetera.
Nao uses a Kusarigama,
which is, I know what that is,
that's a chain on a, a hook on a chain, I think.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
A chain that can whip around and keep enemies at bay.
The team pushed on more,
this is stuff that I really think is fucking cool.
The team pushed on more destructibility
and sliceable objects with damage realistically replicated
from sword slices, arrow punch marks, et cetera.
Enemies can now be knocked out
if players want a pacifist play through.
Players can now go prone, sneak around,
which is laying down, I believe.
That's very cool.
It's never been fucking done in Assassin's Creed.
Fully dynamic lighting system illuminated by sunlight,
torches, lanterns, et cetera.
This is cool as well.
The game progresses through the four different seasons,
spring, summer, fall, and winter.
Each season brings with it environmental and gameplay
changes, for example.
You can crawl prone underwater in a pond during the summer,
whereas that pond will be frozen in the winter.
More examples, grass grows tall in the spring,
perfect for hiding while it dies off in the fall,
removing those hiding spots.
Hanging icicles on buildings can snap and fall off,
revealing your location during winter, et cetera.
You can hide in the shadows to escape enemies
and take out light sources to evade detection
a la Splinter Cell.
Create a customizable hideout
where you can grow and train your own Shinobi League.
Create, craft new gear, interact with other characters,
and choose your bases, layouts, decorations, and accessories.
There are huge castles that act as significant landmarks
throughout the open world that act as dungeons
and their own big levels.
Wanted to be a little more open
with how you complete objectives,
can tackle assassination targets in any order.
And my favorite point is there are no more synchronization
points that reveal all the points of interest on the map.
Instead, they act as high-vantage points
that let you look and discover them yourself.
So all of that in all sounds very fucking good.
And when that guy also said,
he's like, can't wait to get involved with this
and see more, blah, blah, blah,
that gets me excited for someone
that had zero interest in this a week ago,
not because we didn't know what it was really,
but more because I just had enough of Assassin's Creed.
But now if I am back interested again, well done Ubisoft.
And this is how it works.
And you see the, and we've all said no more pre-orders,
and then they bring out the collector's edition
and you go, all right, have my couple hundred quid,
that's fine.
I like the idea of the no synchronization points.
And I feel like we as gamers have grown too accustomed
to being given everything on a map.
And I feel like games like Elden Ring were very good
for removing that and showing you that,
no, this is fun.
This is in some respect more fun
than fucking giving you pinpoints on a map
for where you need to go.
You figure this out on your own.
So it'll be nice if they incorporate that
because I feel like one of the biggest drawbacks
from a Ubisoft game is the amount of shit
on the fucking maps.
The amount of shit on the maps.
And it's all the same fucking shit.
Worried about the dungeons.
They sound very cool with the castles and everything,
but are they gonna get very repetitive and boring
after like three dungeons?
Am I gonna be just rushing through that shit
because there's a reward at the fucking top
or once I've cleared it?
Like is that gonna be like their version of outposts?
Clear this outpost, clear this outpost, clear this outpost.
You know what I mean?
Well, I don't mind doing that,
but it has to be fun and worthwhile.
Like the trouble is with the games,
when they do things like this,
once you've got fucking a hundred pieces of wood,
I don't want to get wood as a reward.
It's not fun.
You know what I mean?
That is what they're giving you.
I've never thought of it like that.
Yeah, I know exactly what you mean.
What needs to be behind them is like cool,
like fucking amulets that give you powers
or weapons or armor or something.
Or appearances.
Something that is different from what you've got.
Don't give me resources and stuff like that.
Because I'm pretty sure I read that
you can also have like clan type things.
Like your own base where you're-
That's what I just read.
You can create your own Shinobi League.
Oh, of course you did.
Yeah, yeah.
That sounds very cool.
Because obviously you kind of had that
with Black Flag when you had your fleet.
And Valhalla, you had your own little Viking horse.
Yeah, man.
Your dual Vikings.
Yeah, and I like that shit.
I like having like your own little army
that you can fucking send out and do.
I think Revelations did it and all.
I'm not gonna buy it and I'm not gonna fucking buy this.
What's with it though?
Because I've seen a lot of discourse
about the collector's edition for it.
Not the collector's edition,
but the big bundle that they're selling.
Because it comes with all like the season pass
and all that sort of stuff.
If it comes with that,
then I think it's actually value for money.
Because without all that,
and if you want all the season pass,
now it's 130 fucking quid anyway.
Well, you mean does the collector's edition
come with that?
Yeah. Yeah, of course it does.
So that's what I mean.
So you've actually got value for money.
The collector's edition comes with all of it
as far as I'm fucking aware.
Because the...
I've got it on here.
So Assassin's Creed, blah, blah, blah.
We'll set you wild, blah, blah, blah.
If you want three days of early access
to Assassin's Creed Shadows,
as well as the season pass,
the gold edition clocks in at 95 quid.
The 115 pound ultimate edition has all of the above,
as well as the ultimate pack encompassing
the Sekiryu character pack,
including gear and weapon sets for both Nao and Yasuki,
blah, blah, blah.
So a load of like random shit.
And then finally,
the Assassin's Creed Shadow Collector's Edition
gives you the ultimate version of the game,
as well as a belt to hold of physical media and collectibles,
including statues of Yasuki and Nao,
an art book, world map, lithographs,
and more.
The PS5 and Xbox Series X versions
will include hard copies of the game discs,
while the PC version contains a digital download code.
You can purchase the Assassin's Creed Shadows
Collector's Edition from places like Game in the UK
or GameStop in the US.
So we get a fucking physical disc,
like I winzed about last time.
Physical disc.
You're giving me a fucking steel book,
you give me the disc.
You give me something I can put in that steel book.
They've listened.
They've obviously listened to what's the buttons.
Because we said this last time,
with Collector's Editions,
I'm paying a premium,
you're giving me a steel book.
Fair enough,
if you wanna go down the route of everything being digital,
get rid of the fucking physical discs.
I do understand it.
However, if I'm paying 150 to 300 quid
for a special Collector's Edition,
give me the fucking disc.
Put it in the hard case.
I find it highly amusing
that it's already on eBay for 350 quid.
Of course it fucking is.
Of course it is,
because that's what people do.
I never trust that either,
because so what?
They've bought the pre-order,
you then buy that on eBay off of that person,
and then what?
You just hope that when they get their Collector's Edition,
they send it to you.
Not only that,
you've also already lost part of your purchase,
because you ain't getting three days early access
if you gotta wait for it to get to them
and then send it to you.
Unless they give you the info that it's been bought on
and then you like change the address and all that shit.
I don't fucking know how it works.
I've never trusted it.
I've never needed to do it.
No, not for me.
But it is exciting nevertheless.
So are you buying it?
I think I will, yeah.
Not right now, but I think I will.
Like I said to you,
the fact that you buy it on game
and then they don't charge you until a week before.
I don't like that.
I'd rather pay for it now.
I don't like that part of it.
The Elden Ring one obviously we paid for up front.
I didn't.
Well I fucking did, I didn't realise.
I did the PayPal credit thing.
Yeah, see I was going to pay it off.
I was going to do that after I paid it
and then realised I couldn't.
That's what I might do with this one.
I might just PayPal credit it
and then hopefully I can pay that off.
Hopefully PayPal take that money
and then it sits there and I'll pay that
and then they'll take it, blah, blah, blah.
The statue is very cool.
I'm a big fan of it.
I like having that kind of shit.
Me and Steph, it's like,
other than Funko Pops, it's like a vice man.
Just having a cool statue or a game that you like is.
It's tangible.
It's very tangible.
It's a tangible object of something that you like.
So I've got a statue of Geralt fighting the Griffin.
I feel like I have Geralt.
I have something of him.
I mean that's why I want that Mind Flare statue so bad, man.
I fucking...
I thought I had it the other day.
The price of it was good and that.
And then I went through it all
and it was like the only thing that wasn't included
was the statue.
It's the only thing I fucking want.
It's the only thing I want, man.
I want any of the other shit.
I just want the statue.
Keep all the other stuff, bro.
It's the only thing I want, but.
Fuming.
One day, one day I'll have it.
It's a life goal.
But yeah, that's probably enough on Assassin's Creed.
Maybe it'll be a...
I'm really excited, though.
Maybe it'll be a Comic-Con.
Obviously I've got fucking Comic-Con, didn't I?
The end of this month.
Yeah?
Yeah.
Nice.
Fucking...
I'll have a little look for you
and see if there's anything fucking knocking around.
I'm going in looking for D&D dice.
That's what I'm...
Oh, fuck, yeah.
I've got Comic-Con at the end of this month.
Oh, we won't be able to do D&D.
Cause it's on the 26th.
Yeah, but it's not...
Is it the 26th next week, is it?
Is it?
I think it might be.
It must be, yeah.
It is in a...
Oh no, Sunday.
So I could potentially do the Saturday.
We could do the Saturday.
Comic-Con Sunday, is it?
Comic-Con's on Sunday, yeah.
Yeah, I'd prefer to do Saturday anyway.
Maybe if you can sort that out there, mate.
Oh, we'll speak to Connor.
Maybe we can do that.
Speak to her when I get him.
We'll see.
But yeah, we're fucking...
I think it's me, me, Darryl, Connor, Mark,
Mark's Mrs., Steph, and Steph's mate Meg.
Just fucking seven of us going.
Hey there, Meg.
It's gonna be quite cool.
We'll do the same shit that we did last time
where everyone wears what's the buttons.
It's kind of a must.
And yeah, hopefully I won't have a cold this time
so I can smell just how bad it really was.
Because I've been reminded that it does stink.
But I'll be interested in all the D&D stuff
because obviously last Comic-Con I went to,
didn't pay attention to any of that kind of stuff
because we weren't in that world.
Whereas now we're involved with it.
So I can see it from a different perspective.
I fucking love it.
It's very exciting.
I was talking to a guy who worked there yesterday.
He was asking if I'd ever played it.
And I was like, yeah.
And he's an open-minded gaming guy.
He has the same beliefs and feelings as us.
And I was explaining it to him.
He said, it sounds cool.
And I showed him the app and it blew his mind.
We could track this is how much gold I've had.
This is how much gold he had, but now it's in my pocket.
Do you know what I mean?
And I was saying to him, I think D&D is,
from the outside looking in much like gaming used to be
where people were just like, if you're gaming, you're a nerd.
If you walked around in a Dragon Ball Z T-shirt
when I was a kid, I'd have got fucking whacked up, bro.
Do you know what I mean?
I'd have got hired in.
But if I walk around with a Dragon Ball Z T-shirt on now,
people would just think, yeah, it's cool.
He likes Dragon Ball Z.
Oh, look, it's fucking Goku, man.
It's Goku Z.
Exactly.
But that's how times have changed.
And I think D&D still hasn't got out of that point
where people still think, are you fucking nerd, man?
But D&D is one of those incredible things where
I don't think from our one session that we've played,
nine hours, we in the moment realized
just how much fun we were having.
No, how much we were laughing.
Yeah, exactly.
We were at Albert.
And all we were doing was looking at a green bit of cardboard
with me rolling a one.
Yeah.
I mean, and Connor had doodled on it in fucking Sharpie
or fucking whiteboard marker.
And that was it.
But this is why I think people don't understand.
Because I think the people that do get it are obviously
they're into it.
But they have the minds for it.
You have to have an imagination because you're
creating this off your own.
Connor gives you the pieces.
This is the story.
You need to get from here to here.
Now, in this space, now you create the stories.
Yeah, you couldn't have Mark playing D&D with us
because his character would be a brick wall.
You get nothing out of it.
You have to interact.
You have to make your own storylines happen
whilst you're being funneled along this thing.
But then Connor has to have the ability
to, when we go off the beaten path, to come up with something.
He must have hated it.
But no, but that's what I mean.
He has the ability to do it, right?
He's got the imagination to do it.
So in that respect, only certain type
of people that have the imaginations can play D&D,
I think.
So people that haven't got that, because there's
so many people that don't have that sort of thing.
They haven't got an imagination for fantasy lands
and all that sort of shit.
They're not interested.
So they wouldn't be like that.
So I think, yeah, D&D, if you're the right person for it,
I think it's fantastic.
I love it.
So I'm quite jealous here.
Keep an eye out for D&D stuff.
Yeah, because I want to get a proper, decent set of darts.
Because I just don't fucking trust my wooden ones.
They're pathetic.
They're obviously weighted more towards the fucking lower end
of the fucking one to eight.
There must be something going on with them ones.
So they've got that.
That'll be quite interesting.
I haven't played anything apart from my Steam Deck.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, forget about that.
You're still fucking.
I think that is the best thing I've ever bought in my life.
Genuinely, I think that that is the best piece of technology
I've ever bought in my entire life.
I think it is fucking phenomenal.
Have you taken it to work yet?
Absolutely not.
Not a chance.
I've got 38 pounds in my Steam Wallet.
Yeah.
Because for my birthday, Jem gave me
100 pound Steam vouchers.
So all I've been doing is going through games
that I like the look of, wish listing them.
And then whenever they go on sale, I buy them for like four
quid.
Fantastic.
So far, I own Chrono Trigger, Hades, Halls of Torn Men,
Rest of the Wicked, No Rest for the Wicked, Stardew Valley,
V-Rising, Valheim Ashlands, or Valheim, and Wizard of Legend.
How is V-Rising?
How are you getting on with that?
I love it.
I've seen quite a bit of it popping up quite a lot.
I'm too interested in fucking, well, Stardew Valley.
I've played for 37 hours.
All on the Steam Deck, yeah?
Yeah.
It's crazy.
Hades, I've played for 10, or 9.6, so 10 hours.
V-Rising, I've played for four.
But in the last two weeks, I've played for 31.1 hours.
What about something like Dredge?
I know Connor played that, and he said
he really, really enjoyed it.
It was quite a short game.
It's on my wish list.
I'll get to it when it's on sale.
I'll buy it.
As soon as it's on sale, I've got 30-odd quid in my wallet
still.
Soon as they go on sale, I'll buy them.
He fucking loves it.
I haven't downloaded most of them.
Have you switched it into desktop mode yet?
No, only that one time.
I'll never do it again.
I'm going to buy a dock for it, though.
I was looking at them yesterday on YouTube
seeing where they're working at.
They're really cool.
The ones that I was looking at, it's just a dock, basically.
And then you just use the plug that you
would have for your Steam Deck.
That plugs in to the dock.
And then there's a wire that comes out of the dock.
It's really small wire that just folds up and goes
into the charging port of the Steam Deck.
It's just a HDMI cable to the telly.
That's it.
Very simple.
Then I'm going to fucking blow my mind.
Have you then got, I suppose, you then just
got a connected controller to it?
Yeah, because you can use anything.
Anything.
Use your DualShock.
Yeah, I'm going to.
I'm just going to use my PlayStation Control.
And then I'm just going to play fucking all these games
that I like but on the bigger screen.
But yeah, it's just, I can't talk highly enough of it.
I was so nervous when I bought it.
Probably just another switcher.
I'll play it for a fucking couple of weeks
and then put it away.
Told you, man.
It's a different entity.
I'm always on the Steam Store just looking.
What's new?
What's this about?
What's got overwhelmingly positive reviews?
And what's incredible about it is you are not
a technologically minded person in the form of computers.
Not computers.
You've admitted before.
And that Steam Deck has the capability
to do some fucking technical and incredible things.
And yet here you are having the absolute time on your life
because you're just using it to fucking play games, which
is what it's there for.
You know what I mean?
You aren't unlocking its full potential
of what it can actually do.
And that does not fucking matter in the absolute slightest
because you are playing that Steam Deck the way
it was intended.
And the way it is intended to be played is how you want to play it.
I love it.
Which is perfect.
Hades 2 has just come out in early access.
You've heard of Hades, right?
I have, yeah.
One of the most popular fucking.
Yeah, when you go on the most played on Steam,
it's fucking up the top.
Yeah, so it's a testament to the Steam Deck
because Hades 2 has come out in early access.
And I was going to buy it.
But then I was like, I didn't like Hades 1.
But I had Hades 1 on my wish list anyway,
just because I thought it was cool to own.
So it went on sale for like seven quid or so.
So I was like, fuck it.
So I bought it.
But I was tentative because I thought,
well, because it's like an ongoing story to the second one,
I thought, I do want to play the first one to see
how you get to change character because you change your plan
of girl in the second one.
And the testament to the Steam Deck is I fucking hated Hades.
I thought it was so overrated and shit.
But the only time I've ever played Hades was on the Switch.
So why do I love it now on the Steam Deck
but I hated it on the Switch?
And I don't know the answer to that.
I don't know.
Because it's exactly the same game.
But I hated it on the Nintendo Switch.
I fucking despised it.
I thought, this is shit.
I couldn't get past.
And I'm not a shit gamer.
I'll bang my head against the wall.
I'll get there.
I couldn't beat these fucking boss, this Minotaur
and this other geezer.
And I just couldn't do it on the Switch.
I really didn't enjoy it.
But on the Steam Deck, it's great.
The only thing that worries me is
I'm pressing the buttons too hard.
That just causes me so much anxiety.
What do you mean?
Tapping the buttons like Joe Attack.
I'm just like, oh, am I pressing them too much?
They're going to start getting stuck.
They're not going to get stuck.
I know, but that's how my brain works.
But even if they do, you just go and get it fixed.
I know, but I don't work like that.
My brain's just a panic.
No, I know what you mean.
I know what you mean.
After our last conversation, I've
started turning off my Steam Deck.
I keep it turned off now and turn it on every now
and then to make sure to update it and then charge it.
I just get so excited.
When I turn that on, I feel like a kid on Christmas morning.
I'm a Hades, because I've had Hades, the startup screen,
since day one.
Hades comes on.
That's probably why I wish this did it, to be honest.
It comes on.
And then it's instantly on.
I just go Stardew Valley.
I do a couple of days on that.
I've got loads of cows and fucking ducks now.
Have you kept it updated?
Yes, it's updated.
I can't not.
Every time I go on it, press Steam Deck,
there's a little red button next to the settings.
So I go to that and it says update.
And I just go, all right.
Fair enough.
I don't do anything.
That's all you need to do, isn't it?
Yeah, I think I'm just more prolific with it.
I check before it prompts you to fucking update it.
I think it's like, if it runs over by two days or something,
that's when it just says automatically to update it.
One thing that has confused me on it
is when I put Verizon on, when the starting screen comes on,
it all changes color.
It all goes yellow, blue, green, red, all lines.
And then a little phased out TV in the bottom,
where the main menu just doesn't load properly for some reason.
Apparently, that happens on some games.
Yeah, I haven't experienced that.
But it's all to do with fucking, it's all to do with,
like, what are them things called?
Pixels?
No, the protons or whatever on there.
Oh, yeah, the applicator, yeah, proton.
Yes, it's all to do with that.
And people are saying, like, oh, change it and fucking shit.
Well, fuck, I don't know how to do all that.
And I don't know if I want to.
Is it worth it?
Should I just leave it as it is?
I don't want to touch any of the settings.
But apparently, yeah, some fucking, some games,
that's something to do with the cutscenes.
They can't play properly.
So they just show this fucking screen.
Let me see what it is.
I'd be a bit careful about changing that kind of stuff.
Because if you fuck it up, it's a little bit more difficult
to put it right.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's why I don't want to do it.
Yeah, this is what's happened.
But this has happened to this guy on Dragon's Dogma.
This is the exact screen that comes up
when I put Hades on.
Comes up like that.
And then it's got this little fuzzy TV.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's all to do with this is what it says.
It's an issue with playing FMVs.
I call it the rainbow cutscene.
Here's how to fix it.
And I don't know about this.
So I don't know if this is normal or not.
But everyone vouches for this solution.
This is what everyone says.
Yeah, it worked.
Thank you.
Hold your power button or press the steam button.
Scroll down to power.
Select switch to desktop.
Already scared.
Open the Discovery store in the bottom left.
Once you have control of the trackpad,
search for Proton UpQT in the store.
Download, install, and then launch it.
Once a little window pops up, click add version.
Make sure it is selected with the compatibility tool,
Proton GE, and then whatever the latest version is.
Install it, go back to game mode, select the game,
select the gear on the far right,
then scroll down to properties.
Go to compatibility and check mark,
force the use of specific steam play compatibility tool.
Select GE Proton.
It makes sense.
It's pretty simple.
But then what scares me is go to the desktop
and then search for something in a store
and then download stuff.
What store?
When you go into the desktop mode,
it's like a little bag type thing.
And it's just the store,
like Google Play Store or something like that.
Just where you download different apps and shit,
different app, different stuff.
But what scares me is in my head on computers,
downloading stuff gives you viruses.
It will never give you a virus.
All right, that's what concerned me.
It won't give you a virus.
All right, okay.
Well, if that's the case, then I won't mind trying it.
It won't get you, it won't.
When you go into desktop mode,
everything that's on that desktop and in the settings
and all of that shit is meant to be there.
It would only be if you started going onto Google
and then trying to download shit from different places,
you have a potential of where you're gonna end up
getting a virus.
But again, times have changed a lot
from when we were all younger.
So viruses act and behave differently
and fucking they're not as prolific in the same way.
So yeah, the likelihood of you going on to desktop mode
given your Steam Deck of Viruses slim to none basically.
Well, this is good to know
and I'll be more confident in looking at it then,
but just going into desktop mode anyways,
just like an absolute no-no for me.
Soon as I said that, I was like, I'll just deal with it.
I'll just leave it.
I'm not fucking risking it.
Yeah, it's a bit scary.
But yeah, it's not causing it any harm
and that's not like I need to see the main menu.
It's the only thing that it comes up at.
Just, oh, pardon me, I'm just sicky but.
Nice.
Oh, nice.
Well, yeah, V-rising I think is,
I think you'd like it, really good.
Are you good?
You're fucking dying.
No, I'm just contemplating life.
Yeah.
So you start as a vampire obviously.
Create your own vampire, what you look like,
eyes, fucking all that bollocks.
And then you rise from your coffin
and then you run around doing your little tutorial,
kill this, kill that.
And then the game's basically just like,
you do what you want.
So basically it's just like a constant,
I don't know what games to think about.
It's probably much like that in Shrouded in terms of,
and Valheim to a degree where you build your castle
or you build your castle heart,
which is like, this is where I'm building.
And then it will be like,
your next objective is always do this to unlock.
So it's like, build a flooring to unlock walls.
And then you do that.
Yeah, it's that sort of stuff.
And then I'll do this to unlock research table.
So it's just constantly like that.
Standard procedure.
There's also like bosses that roam the world
and they have V blood and you can track the bosses
and they're all different levels and stuff.
And they always unlock new powers
and it's fucking, it's really cool.
You get to like suck people's blood.
Suck people off.
Yeah, basically yum yum.
And they have like a percentage
of how powerful their blood is.
And it will say when you hover over them,
like 80% blood, which is good.
And it will give you 80% of the buffs
that that say the warrior,
he'll give you 80% warrior blood buffs and stuff.
It's another cool thing.
Yeah, it sounds like the standard survival-esque type.
You can capture people, put them in prison
in your castle and then just feed on them.
So if you feed on someone, they die.
But if you put them in your castle,
they're like your fools.
You can just constantly fucking,
oh, I want rogue blood today.
And I found a fucking 80% blood rogue,
then I'll pop him in prison.
Oh, I found a 100% blood warrior.
I'll suck him off today.
You know what I mean, like that.
It's great, I love it.
But no, the game, I think,
obviously I'm playing on a solo thing.
So you can set your settings how you want it.
I set it to just PvE solo server, rah rah rah.
But I think if you set that to PvE,
if you went on a PvP server, I think that's nuts.
Because all the different plots of land,
there's like fucking hundreds of different places
you can build your castle.
But obviously only one person
can build their castle there.
So you build your castle, people can raid you and shit.
So you try and take your castle down, take your land.
But then vice versa.
And there's better spots to have like someone near lakes,
some are like in semi-trees.
That's quite cool, I like that.
So if you was actually with a pal,
or a couple of pals, you can just go fucking raiding out
and have a vampire castle.
Oh, you could have like a whole fucking little empire there
where you've all put your little places near each other
and fucking, I'm being attacked quick.
You could have a vampire castle estate
and then just go and rule over,
go and invade other castles.
Send word to the north.
Mate, in that respect, I think it's really cool.
But I haven't got anywhere near there
because I haven't even built a wall yet.
I've built, I've got loads of tables and chests and stuff,
but I haven't built like a fucking enclosed thing.
I love it.
I love that you explained all of that.
And he's just like, I ain't got there yet
because I ain't got walls.
We're very similar, like you always say.
I'm not creative enough.
Yeah.
When I'm, in my thing, I've got the castle heart,
which is what pumps the castle, makes it work.
And you need to top that with blood
to get all your machines and stuff to always work
and craft and rah rah.
But where I've put everything is just basically
in like a, in the middle of an open field.
And when I look at that open field,
I don't see places to put walls and castles.
I just see open field and I'm just like,
I don't know where to begin.
Yeah.
So I just don't, I just go around killing people.
Yeah, so my thought process is, right,
I have all these things that I need to lay down
to craft things and fucking establish a plot,
blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Square, roof, things go in the corners.
That's exactly what I did.
Maybe a second floor that will be exactly the same
as the bottom floor, but with a bed.
I just don't have it.
Don't even do that.
I think stairs, that sounds complicated.
It's like when me and Connor were playing in Shrouded,
it was like, right, I'll go and get all the shit.
You crack on building.
And so he did.
Yeah.
And fucking there he is,
fucking doing all this weird, obscure shit.
But some, when you have a game
where you can create buildings like that,
which fucking millions of games have a building mechanic.
Some people create some crazy shit like buildings on Valheim.
But some people make some fucking mental shit on there.
Minecraft, I don't get where everyone gets
the creativity from it.
Fucking No Man's Sky, some of the buildings,
like the settlements and shit that you can go
and visit there that people have made.
It's just, it's incredible.
I'm very envious of people that could do that,
but at the same time, I think I got fucking no hope
in doing that.
There was one game that Connor was talking about.
I can't remember the name of it,
where it had a building mechanic
and I was like, fucking hell, of course it does.
But the style was you can unlock a house, right?
You put that house down.
You don't have to make the house.
You just put the house down and then there's a fucking,
there's a house for you.
Oh, look, here's a fucking, I don't know.
Here's a battle arena.
You may get to choose a different fucking color
and style of it, but you don't have to build
the arena itself.
You just have to find a square to plot it
into much like settlements in No Man's Sky.
Is he playing Mana Lords?
Is that what it is?
I don't think it was Mana Lords,
but he is playing Mana Lords.
Of course he is.
Everyone's fucking playing Mana Lords, isn't they?
Not me.
I'm playing Stardew Valley.
It's not my kind of game.
I know a lot of people in the Discord,
I'm fucking in the guild, are playing it
and are interested by it.
I haven't really done any looking into it
because I'm not bothered by it.
So I've got very little to say on Mana Lords,
just that the people that are playing it say that it's good.
I just fucking love it.
I love it.
I love Stardew Valley.
I love Hades.
I love all my games.
I feel like a child, you know, when they've like,
I love my games.
Just nerdy as fuck.
What fucking games are you?
That's just what I feel like.
I just, and all them games, we just said Valheim,
Fucking V-Rising, Mana Lords,
all playable on the Steam Deck.
I'm just like, yeah, I've accessed all these games
I never had before.
But now, Hades 2, I'd have been interested in that,
but just with the PlayStation, I couldn't play it.
Yeah.
Because there's no early access.
Yeah.
Now I can just go, yeah, I'll have a dip and dive in that.
I'll do that.
And I love it.
And it's inspiring me to just play more and more games.
And I feel like that was the main,
that was the main goal that Valve wanted
when they created the Steam Deck was
to get people to play those smaller games,
those games that you might not have heard of,
or like you say, don't have access to
because you're only on one console.
I think for an indie developer,
something like the Steam Deck is a fucking,
is a gold mine because you can,
I don't know what it is about the Steam Deck,
but I would much rather play indie games
or smaller developed games on that
than the big heavy hitters.
Yeah, I don't want to play heavy hitters on there.
I wouldn't want to play something like God of War
or Ghost of Shimmer on there.
I just wouldn't want to.
Yeah.
You can, but I like to see that on the big screen
because it's artistically, that's the whole point.
Ghost of Shimmer is so artistically fucking prevalent,
but the little indie games like Hades and that,
they're perfect for that.
I would have loved-
And I love them games.
I would have loved to have played
Colt of the Lamb on Steam Deck
because I feel like it was the perfect sort of
setup for that.
You know what it is?
It's all the games that are easy to pick up and put down.
Yeah.
That are perfect for the Steam Deck,
whereas the ones we have to pay attention,
like God of War, because you're invested in the story
and you want to feel everything,
they're the ones you want to play on the big screen
with the headphones and all that.
But when it comes to just pick up and play like Hades
and Roguelikes and fucking Stardew Valley
being the most obvious one,
it's just a little farming game.
I do a day on that and then I turn it off
and play something else.
Perfect.
That is exactly what it's designed for, I think.
And it's taken up all my time.
I'm obsessed with it.
Literally, I haven't really played the PlayStation.
It's all since I've got this.
It's all I think about, care about.
I'm glad you like it.
I don't like it, I fucking love it.
I'm gonna get a Steam Deck tattoo, like a Valve symbol.
I love it.
They're good investments, man,
because they're just very unique.
They're a very weird console to have ownership of.
You see what they're doing now?
They're incorporating this thing I see the other day
where you can connect to your PlayStation
and access your PlayStation library
without your PlayStation being on.
So-
What, on Steam then?
Yeah.
So fuck PlayStation Portal, I guess.
What?
That's what I read.
It was all over Reddit.
Everyone was going, oh, lol, what have they done?
Lol.
Poor PlayStation Portal.
What, so you'd be able to essentially
cast your PlayStation-
To the Steam Deck.
I don't know about cast, but where was it?
It was literally announced like,
I'll say announced, I don't know,
if it was like an app or something.
Yeah.
But it was, yeah, it was definitely something
that made me lol.
PlayStation on Steam Deck.
Let's have a look.
Let's have a look, let's have a look.
That's 25th of January, that's not fucking-
Can't see anything, that was recent now.
That's nine months ago.
Yeah, I'm not seeing anything that's recent, over.
I'll find it, don't worry, don't worry.
I'll find it.
Have some dead air for the minute while we're all
furiously fucking flicking through Google
trying to find something that resembles what we're-
I will find it, it might not be now or today,
but I will find it.
I've got a PlayStation to Steam Deck streaming app,
Chiaki for Deck.
Yeah, that sounds like it, that is it.
Recently put up another small,
this was the 19th of March is when this was,
it says recently put up another small update
to add in a couple of new options that sound quite useful
for those of you streaming a PlayStation to your Steam Deck.
Here's what the new version is.
Adds create Steam shortcut option for Linux and Mac,
allow setting console pin for console in settings,
blah, blah, blah.
Yeah, Chiaki for Deck, let's fucking Google that then.
Chiaki for Deck, PlayStation button.
Chiaki for Deck is a free and open source PlayStation
remote play client, license under the GNU,
blah, blah, blah, blah.
This license enables anyone to share
and modify the source code, blah, blah, blah.
Chiaki for Deck aims to provide tips and tricks
on using blah, Chiaki with the Steam Deck in the blah, blah,
blah, I have, fucking hell,
do they wanna say their own name enough?
Sick as hell.
I know, I want to, I wanna know what it does.
You dicks.
It essentially does what I said,
but I don't know how it works, if you know what I mean.
That is exactly what I read.
That, I recognize what you're saying, that Chiaki thing.
I just wanted to find out fucking, what is it?
Here we go.
It's an open source client for PS4 slash PS5 remote play
that is accessible on Windows, Mac, Android, and Linux,
which makes it very compatible with the Steam Deck.
Playing on the same WiFi network
has always been very easy,
but if you wanted to play while away from your home,
it was a little bit harder, everything's just talking about
the setup of it, but by the looks of it, yeah,
it just allows you to stream your,
stream your PlayStation to your Steam Deck,
which that in itself is pretty fucking.
But it also said that you didn't need your PlayStation
to be on, which I just thought was madness.
Do you not?
That's what it said, but I can't find it,
but I will find it, and I will send it to you.
Don't you worry.
I think we should do some talking.
Yeah, no, it's terrible, I apologize,
the last 10 minutes of this podcast
would have been fucking wank,
because we're just trying to figure out fucking,
you can use track pads like the DualSense controller,
I mapped my left one for clicking and my right one
for swiping, great for games like Ghost of Tsushima.
I might have not worked as well when the dev
was gonna be pumping in the other project, blah, blah, blah.
So yeah, you can,
which is, yeah, yeah, if you can fucking manage
to do that shit where you can just stream your PlayStation.
I don't know how you would do it if it switched off.
I don't understand that.
We'll have to do some more research into it
and figure it out and then maybe speak about it
at a different time, but either way,
the Steam Deck's a cool, powerful thing,
I'm glad you have it, I'm glad you love it.
I love it.
Anyone else that's deliberating as to whether
they should get one or not, I would highly recommend
that you get a Steam Deck just because they're incredible.
I feel like if I didn't have a console,
I'd be more unhappy with this, genuinely,
because I'd say once I dock this, whatever.
I feel like that's how people feel with the Switch
or felt with the Switch when it first come out.
It's like the capability of this is crazy,
and then obviously what Nintendo then did was nothing.
The trouble is with Nintendo is they've got it all perfect.
They just don't have the library of games.
Like as I said this before, a lot of Nintendo,
if you're not interested in Zelda, Pokemon or Mario,
well then fuck you, I guess,
because no one wants to play the Witcher
on the Nintendo Switch.
They're just not optimized for it.
I'm not saying it's bad, but it's not gonna be very fun.
I'd like to see the capability of it
if it was harboring the same sort of hardware
that the likes of the Steam Deck have
in terms of capability, because the software
in the Nintendo Switch now is so incredibly outdated,
it can't run anything that is fucking new.
Look at what happens with Hogwarts Legacy.
That shit took fucking, what was that,
like seven, eight months after its initial release
for it to come onto fucking Switch,
and it looked dog shit.
They took out so much fucking shit
to be able to run it on that.
And you think if they come out with a Switch 2
that was on par with what we've got today
in terms of handheld devices,
I would be interested to see what those libraries look like
and what is involved, because obviously Nintendo
are, were, or are still trying to delve into that,
getting more variety of games on the Switch.
There is far more than there used to be,
but I agree with you.
They, if you're gonna play the Witcher,
or you're gonna play fucking, I don't know,
I know it's not on them, but like God of War,
Spider-Man, or those bigger games, Shadow of War,
and all that shit, you're not gonna play it on Switch.
You're not gonna.
Unless it's your only option.
And that's what I mean.
If my only option was the Steam Deck,
I would still be satisfied.
Genuinely, I think it is absolutely fantastic.
And what is really good for Valve
is that when the Steam Deck 2 comes out,
I'll be buying it, because I'm in now.
I'm in their ecosystem.
I will never buy another Xbox,
because it's gone dead for me,
unless Elder Scrolls comes out and I can't get that.
But that's another boat, isn't it?
But yeah, I'll be buying a Steam Deck 2.
Probably not until my Steam Deck
decides to get a little bit broken,
or just an excuse to be like,
ah, I don't really fancy it no more.
But yeah, I think it's an amazing bit of kit.
And I think it's not underrated,
because I know everyone raves about them,
but people should be screaming about these things.
I feel like the Steam Deck in the Steam Deck community
is very, very highly renowned,
and gets the praise that it deserves.
And it's also, you're throwing that type of thing
into a community that is fucking filled with nerds.
Not just that, right?
But have this right as well.
You say you've got a Steam Deck
and you've got a Nintendo Switch,
and you wanna play The Witcher 3.
Yeah.
Guess what?
You'll get The Witcher 3 on Steam for like four quid.
The Nintendo Store will be 50 quid.
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
That is scandalous.
Because fucking Steam is for the people.
That's what I mean.
And this is what I was saying.
Because I followed Steam Deck on Reddit and stuff like that.
It's always popping up now.
People were saying, Steam Deck was a month out of warranty,
and he thought he'd try it.
He was like, they fucking, they sent him a new one.
They sent him a new one because of this thing.
And then there's people with the ASOS ROG thing.
They sent theirs off.
Get fuck all back.
They broke it.
They sent it in for something minor.
I can't remember what it was, but something minor
that they just wanted fixed because it was still
in the warranty.
They then said they're not going to fix it
because there's something else wrong with it.
And if you don't fix this, pay to have this fixed,
then we will...
We won't touch the other thing.
No, it will come back, but it will be dismantled
and you'll have to put it back together yourself.
So you're keeping my console hostage.
Yeah, I don't get it back then.
What the fuck, and then there was just floods
of people saying, yeah, they are terrible.
But yeah, Steam, I'll buy this game knowing
if I don't like it, I can just refund it.
No questions asked.
They are amazing.
I think it's because the platform that Steam is,
I think they understand the demographic
in the community that they have hold of.
They are for the people as much as the people are for Steam.
They're amazing.
And I feel like there's an understanding
that if you piss off your customer base,
they will fucking drag you down
because you review bombing and shit like that.
Like the people that use Steam are so incredibly good
for the games that are on Steam and for the platform itself.
But at the same time, if you piss them off,
they culminate as fucking one hive mind
and just drag shit through the mud
because that's what they can do.
It's one of the very few places
where the community gets listened to quite heavily
because they're so influential.
But it's a symbiotic relationship
because things like with the Steam Deck,
you have a few people that will just fucking slag
the Steam Deck off for the sake of slagging it off,
but you also have a massive, massive group of people
to pull from that are giving constant feedback
and saying what could be helped
and figuring out new things and shit like that.
It's basically being developed by the people
that fucking bought it because they're just trying.
And that's what Valve wanted.
They wanted people to push the Steam Deck to its limits
and do the weird and fucking quirky things
and figure out what exactly you can do with this thing
alongside the people that actually made it.
It's very good, it's very good.
And Steam has a very good returns policy
and things like that.
They're just, yeah, they're top tier
when it comes to that kind of shit.
They're god tier.
They're the pinnacle of gaming to me.
I think all this stuff I've read,
I'm just like, you would never get that from Sony.
You would never get that from Microsoft.
And even the simplest thing,
I've bought this game and it's shit.
And I don't want this game.
Have your money back then.
That's fucking amazing.
You've had two hours or whatever it is to try it.
You should know if it's right for you.
And if you don't, then you don't like this product,
then have your money back.
That's how it should be.
Yes, exactly.
But you won't get that nowhere else.
No.
And that should be standard, but it's not.
And the fact that they are doing that,
that should get more fucking praise.
And that's why they're so popular
when it comes to your PC gamer,
when it comes to somewhere
where all your games are located.
Steam is usually the place where everyone
fucking puts all of their stuff.
It's a very difficult, they have the monopoly.
This is the sort of post I hear all the time.
And I'm always reading it with a smile on my face.
Bought a ROG Ally Z1 Extreme.
Took me three days to return it and order a Steam Deck.
I figured the higher refresh rate,
higher definition display and overall performance
would make me fall in love with this device.
But God damn, Windows 11 on handheld
is one of the worst user interfaces I've ever used.
The device seems to have zero personality.
It's a bland Windows 11 PC strapped into a small shell.
I tried so hard to love it
because of how much I spent on it,
1200 Australian dollars.
Fucking hell.
But I grew to quickly hate it
and found myself getting frustrated even looking at it.
I cracked yesterday and just returned it
for anyone in Australia.
I know JB Hi-Fi can be weird about returns,
but if you bring up the SD card issue
and declare you wouldn't have purchased it
if you had known consumer law requires
they provide you with a refund upon request.
And immediately I ordered a 512 gig Steam Deck OLED
as soon as I got home.
Very excited for it to arrive.
Is there any information?
No, straight out of the box.
And it's just filled with things like that.
Because that's another thing, before I bought it,
I was so scared because I was like,
but there's these other two handhelds on the market.
And what is the best?
Because that's a big sum of money to buy the wrong thing.
I did the same.
I did the same research and everything.
I nearly got the wrong.
But God damn am I glad I bought what I bought.
I just think like, just for user interface friendly,
literally, as soon as I turn it on, my library's there.
One button, I go to the store.
The- Amazing.
The Steam Deck is like a family dog
where you could have, you could buy
the best pedigree dog ever.
That's good at one specific thing.
One that's built for agility or fucking sheep herding dog.
Like specialize for something.
But your family dog is perfect.
It might not be the fucking fastest dog in the world.
It might not be the fucking biggest protector in the world.
But that is the thing that you love
because it's an all rounder.
And there's something special about it because it's yours.
And I feel like the Steam Deck within the handheld space,
other than the Switch, which I think is a separate entity
in itself, but on the PC handheld space,
the Steam Deck is just that culmination of everything.
You know what they're with the all rounder.
It is the all rounder.
The Rog might have better performance
than the fucking, the other one might have better fucking
visuals or whatever, but the Steam Deck does everything
good enough.
And whereas the others will fall massively flat
on other things.
And I think, and the common denominator I see mostly
about the Steam Deck is Steam Deck has the staying power
as opposed to the others.
Steam Deck will still be here in 10, 20, 30 years.
Whereas these might not be.
They probably will, but there's a chance they might not be.
Whereas Steam is already ingrained in gaming
in such a way that whatever it is that,
so for example, if I don't fucking, if I don't have my Steam
Deck anymore and Steam goes, we're not making any more
Steam Decks, well I'll go on Steam on the computer then
and there's all my games still.
Yeah, yeah, they're all just there.
Still there.
The library's all fucking connected.
I can go onto my computer now and play all of my Steam games
on the laptop.
Yep.
So they're there, you know, all right, they're digital,
but it's Steam.
Come on, fucking shower some Steam love, man.
I love it.
Steam is the goat.
Yeah, in the digital space with PC,
it's far easier than it is on the PlayStation
and everything like that because the external hard drives
and shit like that are far more easy and cheaper to buy
for a PC than they are for the likes of PlayStation
and shit like that.
The fact that everything's digital on PCs now
isn't nowhere near as much as an issue as it is potentially
for a PlayStation.
Unless you're playing games like fucking Call of Duty
and shit like that where they are still very hefty,
like memory-wise on a fucking PC.
It's not as crazy.
They also send you out a fucking amazing case for it.
It's very cool, isn't it?
It's a good case.
It's probably one of the best cases you could buy.
I've looked at other ones, and yeah, you
can get all these different types,
but it's got perfect amount of things
so your joysticks can fit in there.
It's massively padded.
If you tread on it, you're not going to damage the Steam Deck.
It's like perfect shell.
They don't have to do that.
They could have gone out for an extra 40 quid or whatever it
is, but they don't.
We want you to have your Steam Deck.
We want it to be protected.
And I know that they had some complaints
with the original Steam Deck, but on the OLED,
no complaints.
The fucking cable is like 400 meters long to charge it.
No, don't get me wrong.
It doesn't need to be that long, but I'm
glad they have done that.
That's the only gripe that I would,
main gripe I would have about my Steam Deck
is the cable for it is fucking tiny.
However, I'm almost certain that you can just buy and longer
cable.
I can't see why there'd be anything stopping me
from buying the same charger that you have for your OLED
as I can get for mine.
It just has to be more powerful, as powerful.
But like I say, these things that they've just given out
for free with it at a reasonable price, I'd say,
because what you're getting is not a Game Boy.
You're getting a computer in a fucking, in a shell.
This carry.
I can't wait to go and do some work where we go and do work,
but we don't do work.
We just have to sit there and hope nothing happens.
Nothing happens.
I can't wait to take that and just sit on it all day.
It's just perfect.
Or when I go to Ireland, I can just take that and just chill
in the evenings, just play that.
It's just like, wow, I've got all the best games I could have.
And I can sit anywhere in the world and play them.
And I fuck, honestly.
I'm so gassed.
I'm gassing it up too much, but I genuinely
believe that this is the best value for gaming equipment
you can get, not only for the hardware you get,
for its usability.
Hold on, sorry.
I'm very, very, very, very sorry.
Sorry.
I know you're getting this.
Sorry, I killed the flow because I'm fucking trying to buy a house
at the moment and blah, blah, blah, blah.
Carry on.
I apologize.
I genuinely can't.
All I was saying is I think that I can't remember exactly.
But I believe I was saying that I think Steam Deck is probably
one of the best investments in gaming,
if you were to pick one thing right now solely
for the future-proofness of all the stuff you get.
The price is not terrible in comparison to everything
that you get.
And the plethora of games that are available
and the prices you can get them at.
It's crazy.
If you were just to buy something,
you'd get so much value for your money.
Because a lot of the games, I've wishlisted so many games
that I've got slight interest in.
And as soon as they come up, sometimes I get an email
or whatever and it just says, oh, yeah, this thing.
You go on it, it's like three quid.
I'm like, I'll just buy it.
But I haven't downloaded most of them.
But I've got them for when I want to.
And I think that I've never really wishlisted games
on any console.
But because that is so preferable with all the fucking,
with all the deals and how often they happen,
I feel like, yeah, just let me know when they're three quid
and I'll buy them.
And the review side of things as well,
where you're looking at a game and you're humming
and hiring about it.
Straight fucking scroll down and there's the reviews.
And it will be the most recent reviews.
It will tell the overall opinion of said reviews
and how many there are.
And how many hours they've played.
And how many hours they've put in.
Which is massive.
So it's not just some idiot going, oh, this game's shit.
And then at the top, it will be played 30 minutes.
It's all didn't purchase.
And then what I think is very good about it as well
is it will tell you if they received the game for free
or not.
So if it was a promotion basis or what.
So you can see if it's a somewhat biased review or not.
But the fact that you can see the hour was played
and the last time they played it, I think that's great.
And if you're still not sure, buy it anyway.
Play it for an hour and then you don't like it
and get rid of it.
So it's what I mean.
I just think in gaming, I genuinely
think that this might be the greatest thing to buy
if you have nothing.
I genuinely believe that.
100%.
Yeah, I couldn't be happier.
I would give that 11 out of 10 all day every day.
I underestimated how much I was going to love it.
And I just.
Well, I'm very glad that you got one.
I'm very happy.
I'm very happy for you.
So am I if you couldn't tell.
It's very, very good.
We took up pretty much all the podcast
talking about Assassin's Creed and Steam Deck.
But here we are.
I apologize.
Yeah, I'm enthusiastic about it.
So there you go.
So there we go then.
Straight onto the fucking old Patreon.
That's where the juicy shit is.
So we'll speak to you later.
Oh, ro.