Cool Cats Cast
Welcome to the Cool Cats Cast, the show where Cameron, Connor, and Jelani break down everything happening in the world of video games, tech, and nerd culture.
From what they've been playing, to the latest gaming news, hardware announcements, and all the geeky stuff the people can't stop talking about, they've got you covered.
And of course, they will be diving into the internet's finest source of entertainment: Steamy Steam Reviews. Whether they're hilarious, unhinged, surprisingly heartfelt, or completely ridiculous.
Tune In!
Cool Cats Cast
We've Been Gone...
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
The Cool Cats are back, this time with an extra cat! Join Connor, Jelani and new co host Cameron talk about the extended hiatus, what they have been playing and everything in between.
This episode includes a Jelani rant about corporate greed and AI, hot new games everyone's been playing and of course the bread and butter of the show, Steamy Steam Reviews!
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- Website : www.coolcatspodcast.com
Out there. Hello. It's I, the cat dead, son of a bitch. Welcome back to the Cool Cats podcast. I'm one of your hosts. The one and only, tried and true, the cat dead, alongside me, is not only my one old host, but a new host. We have a new guy. Or the Mac Daddy himself. Arisa Jelani, right? Damn it. Yeah. And then welcome to the pod, our new hosts. Cameron. Hello, Cameron.
SPEAKER_02I thought you forgot my name for a second.
SPEAKER_03You're going to build dramatic tension. Yeah, yeah. Yes. Hello. Guys, welcome back to the pod. It's been a whole entire year, apparently.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's been a long time.
SPEAKER_03Hello, new and old listeners. This is all new for me. Podcast. That's true. These are all new to Cameron. All new. These are. This is. These are. This is a gaming podcast Amongst Friends, where we talk about gaming related items. And tech. And tech. I was getting there. Welcome again. Happy Sunday. Happy week. Happy whatever time. Let's hear it. Cameron! Yeah. Since you're the newbie, welcome to the pod. Please introduce yourself. Let us know your gaming background and what you bring to the table, baby.
SPEAKER_02Sure, yeah. My resume. Here's my CD. Um I've actually known Connor for uh many years. Uh the cat dad, you guys might have. Um I've known him since uh what was it? Seventh grade for me, sixth grade for you, I think it would have been something. No, actually it was high school. Ninth? It was early high school, yeah. Um you would have been ninth, I would have been tenth, yeah. And uh we we met in like a computer graphics class and we uh did a lot of halo gaming back in that day. But uh I've been gaming for like 20 plus years, all sorts of different uh genres, shooters, MMOs. Uh I think that's primarily largely it. We do some other stuff here and there, but I think those are the two you know main genres that I usually enjoy. Um What was the other question? What's my we did my my gaming background and then what else? What else we got here?
SPEAKER_00Um of your favorite games, like what you've enjoyed through your life and things like that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, um, I'm a big Final Fantasy fan. I'll all say that um Final Fantasy has been a huge part of my just nerddom growing up. Um I currently play the Final Fantasy XIV MMO. Um I used to play Final Fantasy XI back in the day, um, so Final Fantasy is a big part. Um Star Wars, that's a big part of uh what I usually get into. I I play a lot of the old republic. Um so I spent a lot of my uh week doing that. Otherwise, uh my fiance and I play a lot of Elden Ring. We played a fair amount of that. We play through the Dark Souls games. Um not all of them, but we have beaten like bloodboard and that kind of thing. Um so she she's like my navigator, she always helps me out, and I'm the one that's steering, and she's the one that you know uh tells me where to go and looks things up and all that kind of stuff while we play, so it's a lot of fun. That's cool. Yeah, it's a good time. Yeah. But yeah, that's basically me. I'll I'll leave a little bit of uh you know the background unmapped so it can get so it can get revealed at a later time. But yeah, that's basically a good intro for me.
SPEAKER_03No, we would like all of your internet or info on the internet. Um I'm gonna take your uh social, your mom's maiden name, first pet's name.
SPEAKER_00Don't forget his res Reddit username. We gotta go through his post a comment history.
SPEAKER_02No, that that's all that's episode 100.
SPEAKER_03The detailers before we heard it, folks. A thousand dollars, we will reveal Cameron's Reddit username for you.
SPEAKER_00You guys know we don't have a Patreon or anything like that. How the fuck are we gonna take a thousand dollars?
SPEAKER_03I'll give you all my PayPal and I will keep it for myself.
SPEAKER_00That's uh Cameron is cute. Yeah, y'all can kiss my ass. Let's get through a year with the episodes, and then I'll start working on the Patreon and all that other side of stuff for us, all right?
SPEAKER_02Sounds good, sounds good.
SPEAKER_00Alright.
SPEAKER_03Um, Jelani, you just want to follow people up on uh what you're all about, sir.
SPEAKER_00Alright. Well, hi. I'm Jelani, your perennial podcast host. I I play games. Nah, but for real. Um I actually grew up playing a lot of PlayStation and Nintendo, a lot of Sony games. I did not get a chance to I'm one of those, what's it called? I was one of those church kids who didn't get a chance to play ready to M games until he left the house for college. Um, so needless to say, I played what's it called, Borderlands, a little bit of Call of Duty, and then I never went to church again.
SPEAKER_02So the devil got you on that one.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, but like growing up, I did a lot of Ratchet and Clank, a lot of what's it called, Sly Cooper, Spyro, like a lot of those things, obligatory Pokemon. Like I was like a huge Digimon fan. So you're stereotypical, like sheltered, nerdy kid. Like why am I saying like so much? That's I am so sorry. And I really shouldn't be, I should be practiced at this.
SPEAKER_02Here's here's my question for you specifically. Which which do you think was a better show? Well, not even think about the games. In terms of Pokemon versus Digimon, which was the better show? Digimon.
SPEAKER_00You know, Digimon was the better show. Pokemon. We're all agreed.
SPEAKER_02Okay, good.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, Pokemon was the better product, I am going to say. Yeah. Like, let's be a hundred percent honest. Misty, Kyrie, and Sora. Who like, come on.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. I mean, I will say that Ash was a little savage to Misty a lot of times. I mean, I guess they kind of had a sort of antagonistic relationship between the two of them.
SPEAKER_00Yo, their relationship was so weird that when they did the what's it called, musical, I don't know if anybody else saw the Pokemon musical and like theatrical musical. No. There was a whole aside where they're the like they addressed the romantic relationship, and that musical immediately became not canon. Wow.
SPEAKER_02Very quickly. I mean very quickly. They're children, so I can see why they would have pulled back a little bit from that. Um, but I just like I saw like a I think it was like a TikTok like reel or something like that recently, where he just like put all of the different times that like Ash just like completely just like just obliterates Misty's self-confidence. She'll like talk herself up and just do this like kind of like little hee hee kind of thing. He's like, wow, when's the girl, the cute girl, gonna show up? Because she like talks herself up and he's like, Wow, huh, interesting.
SPEAKER_00He's all their relationship was very kid Goku and Balma in Dragon Ball.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, for sure. That's a that's a show right there, because I remember my brother talking about how he because uh my brother has three daughters, and he all of his daughter, well, two of his daughters have watched pretty much all of Dragon Ball Z with him, I think. Yeah. So he had tried to go back and watch Dragon Ball, yeah, and that was not a good choice because Dragon Ball Dragon Ball was made in a time where don't watch Dragon Ball with your sons.
SPEAKER_00It's dated as a matter of fact. As a matter of fact, shit. Don't watch Dragon Ball with your sons.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, especially that yeah, do not because like there's straight up just like there's there's grabbing of like private parts and stuff like that. Like, it's bad. So yeah, don't definitely don't watch it with kids.
SPEAKER_00Dragon Ball was a show in which Bulma's panties were as almost as much of a character as Bulma, and that's a fucking problem.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03I was like, no go. Guys are talking about panties and shit. We're good. Start off right, baby.
SPEAKER_01Yo, that's not exited the conversation.
SPEAKER_03You just no, that's not until the end of the pod. That's when we get to talk about this.
SPEAKER_00Holy shit. We were we were talking about inflammatory opinions before we started recording, and now we are what, like not even 10 minutes in, and we are talking shit about Dragon Ball. So, Connor, how about you take your turn? You you take your turn.
SPEAKER_03Hey, thanks for asking. Uh again, I'm the Cad Dad, Connor, whatever you want to call me, uh Big Poppy, Moose, whatever. Um I'm gonna call you Big Poppy for the rest of the game. That's fine. My phone calls me Big Poppy. Um it really does. It really does. It's wild.
SPEAKER_02The uh Big Poppy, you got a text message? My how did you know?
SPEAKER_03It's actually a male. So Oh, come on, Big Poppy. You know he goes, uh, I got you, Big Poppy. I'm like, god damn. That's hot. That's hot. My earliest uh gaming memory, um, I used to spend a lot of time playing Sega and Super Nintendo. More specifically, apparently I was a big Castlevania fan when I was a baby. Like I would dance to it when my dad would play it.
SPEAKER_02Wait, you hold on. Hold on, don't just w walk over that. Like, I'm not sure.
SPEAKER_03I was in the high chair, right?
SPEAKER_00And I'd be like having a good time with the Castlevania theme. Uh Castlevania theme went hard as fuck, though.
SPEAKER_03I don't blame you. For sure. Um, that's fair. A lot of uh early PlayStation games, Crash Bandicoot being my probably my old-time favorite uh gaming series.
SPEAKER_02I love the actually recorded some, we recorded some Crash Bandicoot.
SPEAKER_03Back in the day, yes. Yeah, we did very knowledgeable in the Crash, more specifically the second and third one, and then when they got bought out by um uh Microsoft or whatever, those all suck. Um Sony. But uh well no Sony, whatever, yeah. But like they were on Xbox and they weren't even on like PlayStation anymore. Um weird. What else? Uh MMOs when I have the brain capacity and patience uh currently running through Final Fantasy and Star Wars with Cameron. Um if you ever want to join us, let me know. We'll add you and you can play with us. I'm a good ass tank. Uh what else? I really enjoy Counter-Strike, even though it causes me pain and anger. Suffering. Very much suffering.
SPEAKER_02Um I would say, even maybe for me, depression a little bit. Just a little bit. It can get a little crazy with the uh I I just like literally we I've been playing that game for what 15 years now, Connor? For a while. I think. I mean we we definitely took a a lot of years off. We we played it, and that's how we met our friend uh Brett. And then at a certain point we just stopped playing. And then we started recently playing again. Yeah. But like I I feel like I know everything that I knew then, you know. But even still, the game's like, nope, you're this certain rank. And then and then we just and then we just kept like it, we just kept going down, and I'm just like like, alright.
SPEAKER_00I thought I was getting better.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I thought I thought I was good at that game. Turned out that was not the case, but and you know what? It's okay. Yeah, it's fine.
SPEAKER_03Um it's how we get the boys together. Um you know, uh spend a lot of time playing Pokemon, more red, gold. Um I skipped the other ones. The uh Diamond and Pearl. I skipped those.
SPEAKER_00I don't understand. I don't know either. Those are some of the like those rooms were good. Uh Diamond and Pearl were fucking great. They were other than that, I had Pearl. What else? I had diamond.
SPEAKER_03Big Great Games.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, my little sister got Pearl. Oh my goodness.
SPEAKER_03Uh God, you want to have a Pokemon episode? Uh the You're the one talking about. I know.
SPEAKER_00I'm just bringing it up. Yo, yo. We'll we can offer we will absolutely have a Pokemon episode at some point in the future. Yeah, what is it?
SPEAKER_02It's a gaming podcast. We're gonna talk about games for an extended amount of time. Let's see how. What does Wave and Wind come out? We'll talk about it then. That's exactly what I'm saying. Is that what it's called?
SPEAKER_00Are those Winds and Waves, yes.
SPEAKER_02That's the new one. Wow, it's completely shifted off of colors, and now there's just like elements. Winds, waves.
SPEAKER_00Um They got caught doing red and blue forever, even after red and blue, and they're like, got it, damn it!
SPEAKER_02Uh soft pink for some. Other games.
SPEAKER_03Other games. That's probably it. I mean, big console gamer. What I was You're a big Halo guy. Yeah, yeah. Console gamer. Up in we'll talk about Halo here in a little bit. Don't worry. And then uh I'm just saying, you were a big Halo guy. And then uh got a PC, you know, 10 plus years ago. Uh who cares about PC Master Races 2026, gives a shit. Plus, RAM is fucking expensive. So yo, I'm gonna get into that.
SPEAKER_00Let me get it uh yo. I you saw my layout.
SPEAKER_02My first pop-off. Here we go.
SPEAKER_00No, we're saving it. We're saving it. Because dear lord, motherfucker, oh my god, the ram crisis makes no oh my fucking god.
SPEAKER_02It drives me nuts.
SPEAKER_03Alright. And then that's it. If you have any more questions, feel free to reach out to me. Um yeah, how do we feel about all that?
SPEAKER_02How do I feel about Ram?
SPEAKER_03Um to not be put on the list, it makes me sad.
SPEAKER_00But we'll stop it there. Look, look, I'm willing to be put on the list. Trump and his goddamn buddies fucked my PC gaming market to high fucking hell between their data center bullshit and all these goddamn terrorists. Dear fucking god. If it's not the fucking fascism, can you at least leave my fucking form of escapism the goddamn hell alone? Like, all right.
SPEAKER_02Ooh. Actually, to tack onto that, not to I know you're I know you're trying to temper your fire right now, but just to tack onto that just real quick. They're also the the pay server or the the like the pay processing companies through like Steam and shit like that are like they're talking they're censoring games now through forced payments going through, and like they're basically pulling games off of Steam because they're like dummy. That's a direct attack on this podcast. Yeah, exactly. That's what I'm saying. Especially with the fact that a lot of the reviews that you guys are doing with like the saucy, you know, the saucy reviews on Steam and stuff like that, a lot of those games are the ones that are getting censored.
SPEAKER_03Steamy, you mean?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, the steamy. Steve Steam reviews. Yeah, the steamy steam reviews, yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_03World famous, check Google. Uh I do have a message from Donald Trump for you guys, though. If you're not going to be able to do that. We have a what about the message from Donald Trump himself. Oh. Oh what is the I don't support the cool cats! I don't like him very much.
SPEAKER_02Wow. I'm done. I'll fucking drink. I don't need him wanting her listening to the podcast.
SPEAKER_03Don't listen to the podcast. Fake news.
SPEAKER_01I've got news organization.
SPEAKER_00Look, look. The next thing, the only thing I want to hear about that man is when it happens.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I straight up Yeah. I I was talking to my fiance about it yesterday. And uh yeah, we're I think everybody in the world is kind of just hoping for a good news on a Sunday kind of thing, sort of situation. Just like having their little tea, like, oh look at that. Nice little headline to read.
SPEAKER_03I do like when he shits his pants. That's cool to talk about.
SPEAKER_00You mean every day of his the fact that we as a country now know like the body language signals of when he is on camera actively shitting his pants standing, it's great.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I watched a breakdown of it a few days ago. I don't know why I was watching a breakdown of it, but it's worth watching.
SPEAKER_00Because the modern media cycle loves shoving the reason for our depression in our faces.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, actually, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02It's a pretty good idea.
SPEAKER_03Speaking of depression. Hey! What do y'all been playing lately?
SPEAKER_00Not even lately. We haven't been here for like a fucking year. And Cameron's never been here. Like, let's hit it with the what have you been playing for the past like twelve months.
SPEAKER_03Let me really let me get it in here. Let me really start this this uh section here.
SPEAKER_04Hmm.
SPEAKER_03Well Hey, what have you been playing?
SPEAKER_02Oh, is that the segment? What'd you been playing? Um a lot of Star Wars. Star Wars, I I would say, is probably my biggest game that I've been playing. Uh The Old Republic. Um I'm just a big Star Wars fan. I I wasn't so like quite so much. Not that I didn't like Star Wars, but it's like until I really started like getting into the Old Republic and stuff like that. Like I think at that point I really, really started getting into it. And it's just a good game. Man, it's fun. It's it's like a single player game, but it's also an MMO. And it like I don't have to worry about like if anyone else like enterns my friends is online for me to be able to like log in and enjoy it, you know. So that's part of like the issue, because I I have been a guild leader for a few guilds now at this point. And one of my one of my issues when I'm playing an MMO is I get bored. I get bored kind of quick. And especially if it's like wow, where they have like dailies or weeklies or like a Final Fantasy, you have to like grind a thing called Tom Stones every week to get your like your weekly gear and stuff like that. And it's just it's it just becomes a grind and I have a hard time. And then like eventually, like everybody I know that's in the game stops playing, and I can't I can't play games by myself a lot of times. I have a hard time with it. Like if Counter-Strike, for example, like our friend Brett, he can play that game by himself all day, all night, like no problem. I can't do that on my own. I'm not gonna do it. It's like a slog, I'm not gonna sit there and just put myself through that for no reason. Yeah. So but like Star Wars is like I can like literally just log in and play for hours and not even think about the fact that I'm playing it by myself, because it's just it's just fun. It's a little Star Wars playground. So that's what I've been playing. What about y'all?
SPEAKER_00Do you want me to go first or do you want to?
SPEAKER_03I could tell you what Jelani's been playing with um a phrase, if you if you will, here. I wanna wake up where you are.
SPEAKER_00God damn it, every yo. That's been the last what? When did the when did Forza release? Maybe a couple weeks ago?
SPEAKER_03Uh a month?
SPEAKER_00Has it already been a month? I don't think it's been a month.
SPEAKER_03But yes, so to fill you in, that is the menu song. It's like this techno EDM song that just like hits and you like ascend to like another level and you're just ready to fucking race when you do that song.
SPEAKER_00I have like a hundred hours in that game already.
SPEAKER_03Wow, damn. That takes a lot. It's almost been a month. May 19th.
SPEAKER_00Alright, cool. That that feels a lot better. Um, yeah, so recently I play every Forza. Well, now I can't say every. I started with Forza Horizon 4, but I've played five and now six, and six is well, I'm a massive weeb, let's be a hundred percent honest. So six is like bait. It's set in Japan. They have bait. There's a whole ass radio station that's made out of J pop and anime openings. It is like literally catnip. Like the only thing that will attract me more is literal marijuana. Like we the only thing that could be better to me. And I'm I'm sorry.
SPEAKER_01Like No, that's amazing.
SPEAKER_00I did recently pick up like a race wheel and some pedals. And that's been really fun. Get a little similar going. Yeah, I need to pick up like a wheel stand or something. I do not have space in this place for a whole for a whole ass sim rig. So a nice little folded folding thing that I can like take up, put up and take down would be nice. But like that's fun. I realized almost immediately, like, Forza is really fun on wheel and pedals. Forza is not made for that. So I have more fun in like a set of Corsa and Beam NG. So there's that. But if we're gonna go for go ahead. I hear you winding up for something.
SPEAKER_02No, I'm just I'm enjoying your story. I love I I have never actually like gotten super deep into like a like a racing game. The I think the last time that I did was not far as a Grand Turismo. Grand Turismo 3, I think, was the last time that I really like me and my brother used to play it, and we would do the endurance races. Yeah. Yeah, and we would just get a PT cruiser going, because I don't remember ever getting really, really far in the game. But we always get a PT cruiser and just do like the four hour just in a circle, just driving around in circles. The only other like racing game I really ever did was uh Need for Speed Underground. Yeah, the underground games were like my my shit, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Uh that was go ahead.
SPEAKER_03That was like peak like final or final Jesus Christ. Fast and the Furious time. So like when the Underground came out.
SPEAKER_00I think Underground 2 came with like custom cards from the movie at one point. Yeah, one of the underground games.
SPEAKER_03It also really opened my eyes to uh crunk music because I'm pretty sure like Lil John and all of them are in there. Yes. Like, yes, dude, this is me.
SPEAKER_00I loved the what's it called? I love the especially how many different car games were out back then. Cause I grew up playing like I played a lot of PlayStation, so I had Gran Turismo. I I actually did start on three as well. I had the need for speed games. I don't know if anybody remembers fucking Midnight Club.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I was gonna say the dub edition, dude. Hell yes. There was burnout. Dude, burnout. Burnout 3. Burnout was back when it was. Yeah. And like damage. That was the fucking shit, dude.
SPEAKER_00Racing games. Racing games were a staple when my primary platform was what's it called? PlayStation was console. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02I don't think there was a better time in. And this is coming from someone who does not play racing games, but I think there has never been a better time for racing games than when Lil John's uh ski ski was the was the lobby music for Neaver's Speed Underground 2. Right. Like you know what's just so many young children out there at that time just having that song just blasted in the background weather I'm gonna play Nee for Speed Underground to you.
SPEAKER_01Awesome ski motherfucker.
SPEAKER_03Man, our parents must have thought we were D Gens, dude. What the hell is a skeet skeet? Oh no. Janice for sure thought that. Um I also it's funny, it's funny that there was like peak racing moments and like gaming in general, because I I I chalk it up to be like one actual thing in my mind now that I think about it. There was no online play. Yes. So it was just like you and like whatever AI, or maybe like your buddy came over and y'all just split screen that shit, and it was just like yo, let's listen to Little John and race each other um all fucking night.
SPEAKER_02I know Forza well actually I don't know if Forza had this. I know Gran Turismo had the you had to like race your ghost thing. Yeah. No, you can challenge that.
SPEAKER_00Forza Horizon didn't really do that. I know Forza Motorsport probably had that. I never I have never played motorsport. I'm not I it's not my thing. I grew up playing Gran Turismo. I I just don't I Forza Motorsport never really held any appeal for me. But like for six they have like time attack spots where you can like it's basically just hot lapping, like some of the smaller tracks to get your fastest time. I think if you go into time attack there's a specific mode you can go into where you can race your own ghost over and over and over, and it's really fun. It's really fun. I like hot lapping.
SPEAKER_03The uh it is Yeah. Sorry, go ahead.
SPEAKER_00It is stupidly addicting.
SPEAKER_03I was gonna say the the ghosts has been largely replaced by either like rivals of like your friends' avatars or drivatars. So you're always just trying to beat like your buddies' time on certain maps, and then also the goddamn drivatars, more specifically Bowie Knife 99, the infamous MPC who runs people off the fucking road. Is that like the one that's like everybody runs in? Yeah, he's just an asshole.
SPEAKER_00Yes, just a dickhead. Yes. Somebody he's a real player out there. The game seeded him from early, early on during the early access, and no matter whose game he shows up in, he's a fucking menace.
SPEAKER_02He's a terror. Wow.
SPEAKER_00Absolute menace.
SPEAKER_02What's it called? Subright cool though. I would be kinda I would be kinda happy if that was me. If that was like my my avatar out there, just like terrorizing the world.
SPEAKER_00Hell yeah, if like two days after Forza dropped, I what's it called? I woke up before I loaded up the game, went outside for a smoke, loaded up TikTok, and immediately saw my username on every I'd be like, oh, that's cool.
SPEAKER_02Hell yeah. Fucking causing some chaos out here in 2026, you know.
SPEAKER_00Right? I don't I don't drive like that. But you know what? I want to drive like that. You motherfuckers should live in fear of me. Fuck yeah.
SPEAKER_02You know where the real gamers play is Wave Race. Back in the Nintendo, I think it's Nintendo 64. Yeah, Waveraced, you guys remember? Yeah. Dude. Fucking uh that was that was uh jet skis, jet ski racing.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it's kinda like what's the one on PlayStation they had was um uh fuck, what was it called? I played that one.
SPEAKER_00Oh fucking PlayStation Ridge Racer?
SPEAKER_03No, Waveracer. It was like a Waver. I gotta find it. I'm I got it right here, I think. Uh well fuck me. JetMoto. There was Waverly Modo. Jet Moto. Oh, Jetmoto, yeah, yeah. That was like their flagship. I had Jetmoto 2. It was a fucking jam. Um I also played a lot of Kart.
SPEAKER_02A lot of Mario Kart.
unknownOh.
SPEAKER_00Yo, I'm a fucking that goes without saying.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Don't even fuck with me. I will play you.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, like if you're if you're a millennial in 2026 and you have zero, I'm talking zero Mario Kart experience, I want to know which rock.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00Because that's a really thick rock. That that rock must be leadlined like a motherfucker. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02My nieces are like around 10 years old now, and so like they're right around the edge where like we had been like actively playing. And my brother, like, he still tries to think, or he he likes to think that we're like still better than them, but they're like, they're catching up. Yeah, yeah. They're gonna get better than you before you realize.
SPEAKER_00They got them reflexes, and as time goes on, that reflex advantage will never go away. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03That's like the dad moment where like your your son beats you at basketball. You know what I mean? Like, that's like the nerd equivalent.
SPEAKER_00I'm no longer a nerd. You want to know why I got a vasectomy? Because I never want to have the moment when my son scores a headshot on me. No. One of those crispy across the map. Nah. Nah, I'd rather you just not exist.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Just put the controller down and be like, alright, I'm done now.
SPEAKER_03Just get out of here.
SPEAKER_02We're good.
SPEAKER_03We're good. I'll just have my child do it. Get Uncle Jelani. Go get him.
SPEAKER_00I'm a hundred percent okay with that. I am a hundred percent. Because if it's your kid, I know it's it's inevitable. We're done.
SPEAKER_03He's gonna come out 10 years old, he's gonna get on the mic. Hey, fuck you, Jelani. Bruh. That's crazy.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, D voice or 10 years old. Yeah, I know.
SPEAKER_00Yo, if you ever have a kid, I'm I'm putting him in the sim immediately. Immediately. We're gonna get you carting. If the what's it called? The podcast don't work out. We're gonna make your kid into an F1 driver and he'll pay for our return.
SPEAKER_03That's fine, dude. It's gotta be short though. It can be too tall.
SPEAKER_02Every single day he's gotta be doing his 250cc mirror, you know, runs because he's gotta know the backwards and forwards.
SPEAKER_00You know, gotta get those neck exercises in so he can keep his head straight under G forces.
SPEAKER_02And he doesn't get any food until he finishes his rounds and gets like finishes it like completely in one drift because you can't break your drift modifier.
SPEAKER_03He's gonna hit me with the uh dad, I gotta poop. You better do it in your fucking pants.
SPEAKER_04This is why we got so where are we?
SPEAKER_00And I'm I'm gonna preface this with Connor. Can I do you mind if I call you catfather? That's whatever, man. Whatever works. I don't think we're gonna be able to limit this to an hour and a half. We're doing alright, we're doing alright, we're doing alright, we're doing alright. Homie, homie, homie. Let's be so for real. Where are we?
SPEAKER_03You need to cut some fucking bullet points here. You're popping around like 10 minutes.
SPEAKER_00No, we're hitting everything.
SPEAKER_03We are hitting fucking everything. All right, so all of it. Forza a set of a BMG. Check. Uh go.
SPEAKER_00Alright, cool. I've been playing look, so the only other thing that's important, because we all know I like games where I get to be a robot or anything. So Armor Core 6. I played through it again. I actually beat it. It's fucking great. All three endings, beautiful. Chef kiss. Cool. Um there was Mouse PI for hire. Really, really fun game. If you go into it expecting uh a fun little boomer shooter with a really good theme, it's great. If you're going into it expecting an actual like war fucking murder mystery bullshit, you're fucking dumb. Moving on. Star Citizen. Oh god. What's my time limit, big guy?
SPEAKER_03You're good. Keep going. Uh limited.
SPEAKER_00Oh, limited. So, so, so, um, we're gonna start with anybody who's listened to the podcast before have no has known that I've been a long time Star Citizen fan and apologist. Actually, I don't know. Like, I'm gonna have to part.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I don't think recognition that second part.
SPEAKER_00I don't think you've been a fan of the Yeah, I I think almost every other time I've talked about the game, I've been pissed off about something because like it's been 13 fucking years. You have a fucking billion dollars. A fucking billion dollars. Cam, how much do you know about the Star Citizen project?
SPEAKER_02Uh I know it's been uh an active project since uh 1997, I think.
SPEAKER_00Just kidding. Basically, it's the th 13 fucking years. And like, let's be a hundred percent honest. I'm not saying they haven't made progress. I'm not saying they haven't made progress. What I am saying is the progress they're making and the performance they're still putting forward is fucking bullshit for a billion dollars. Let's be a hundred percent real. Let's be so fucking for real. You guys like to the point where like even like I'm backing off because I'm like, I'm like, why are like you guys are adding shit that is fucking stup that no reason, no reason to add it before you finish making a fucking functional game. Yeah. Like, like, like, like, let's be let's be really for real. One moment. Let's let's let's be so like getting tune with your realness. You released a six hundred dollar show that last I saw. People paid six hundred dollars for this ship. Real money. Which is real money, which I'm gonna set that aside for what it is.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_00And it shipped with 81 listings on the bug report. What's it called for them? 81? 81 bugs. And you're selling that for $600?
SPEAKER_02Nah, dude. That should be illegal. That should be illegal. There should be there should be a a Congress-driven initiative that says that if you have more than 50 bugs on your goddamn ship, you cannot sell it for more than $2 or something.
SPEAKER_00But that and therein lies the problem. I'm like, yo, there are ships that are in the game that are still $100-150 that have been in the game for like at this point we can legitimately say almost a decade that still have bugs from release.
SPEAKER_02I have a question. So if you're playing Star Citizen, it does does your ship provide you with a tactical advantage against other ships? Like, is it pay-to-win if you're pit paying the six hundred dollars?
SPEAKER_03Like, it depends on what ship you have.
SPEAKER_00That's the wild thing. Is at one point, and that's another thing that's really that as that's blowing my mind a little bit. At one point, the promise, the idea was, yeah, you can pay a lot of money for a really big ship, but nine times out of ten, that's not getting you very much because you need actual people to man your ship. Like your ship doesn't like auto-fire the turrets or whatever. You need people in your ship to man it. But herein lies the problem. It's kind of hard to get people in your ship to man it because, like, even up to now, some a lot of the time, six people in a big ship versus six people in in like single seat fighters, seven eight times out of ten, you are going to be able to do anything, everything in the game outside of industrial play loops. Easier and better in six individuals. Okay. And that's fine. That's where that's where it is. That's where it is. That's your balancing for multiplayer is weird and it fucking sucks, but it's a trap that you trapped yourselves in when you went for realism over fun so many different ways in so many different times.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Like that's the thing, is like, how do you balance realism versus fun? Because like there's a certain point where realism stops being fun.
SPEAKER_00Oh, they passed that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, like a long time ago, I'm sure. Yeah. But I don't know. I would have to play it to really know for sure, like from my point of view, that kind of thing, but I definitely I don't know.
SPEAKER_00I just see what you're saying. I just I just want the game. I just like because they're not even out, right? It's still early access. No, it's still early access. That's crazy. And I think part of my another part of my personal complaint is it's been in what's it called? It's been in development for so long that a younger Jelani was really excited about the MMO component.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00About building from scratch and building everything up and all that other stuff. A Jelani now that works 40 hours a week has to and games as a side thing. Like just for fun in my off hours between like when I get out and the time I dedicate to spend time with my wife. I don't really have time to be playing Rust with spaceships.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, right. Like I that's crazy that they just what it seems like that they've done is they have just put the game into a state of where it's in like almost maintenance mode, which is crazy for a game that's not even out yet. And it it seems like they're literally just it's a cash cow for them because they they can sell sell ships for six hundred dollars, and there's there will be people out there that will buy them because just that's how whales work.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, they just had a concept sale for a ship, which is exactly what it sounds a sale for a concept of a ship that was five thousand dollars.
SPEAKER_02It reminds me, it almost seems like they're trying to get the community that was playing Eve Online. It seems like they're trying to get those whales that were putting like because wasn't there like a stupid amount of money that was like when because like there was like wars going on in Eve Online and there was like crazy like real life money that was being traded because of all this like real like war that was going on in that game and fucking wild.
SPEAKER_00But herein lies the problem. Eve online has a functioning economy where like you can start from zero in that game and earn what's it called? At some point, yeah, it was a functional economy. I'm not gonna speak to a game I don't play. Yeah, I don't play. But like there's a functional economy there. They both they took the time to create it, they have economists on staff that work on it. Yeah. The only in-game economy Star Citizen has, like Oh god, I don't even want to talk about the in-game economy. It doesn't exist, it doesn't exist. It's the same kind of in-game economy that like legitimately it has the in-game economy of a racing game.
SPEAKER_02Like, what would you be buying and selling in in that game?
SPEAKER_00You buy ships. That's about as at the top tier of everything in that game is buying a bigger ship. Okay. To do the thing that you want to do better. And that is fine. That is perfectly fine. It's just that, like, if the that is a fine goal. That is the goal of like a lot of different games. Why do you why do you raise cars in Forza? To get better cars. To get access to better cars.
SPEAKER_01True, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Why do you fight in armored core? Because I want better parts.
SPEAKER_02Right, but it's not something where like you know, you're in Star Citizen, you get like armor or something like that, and you go and sell that. It's not anything like that, right?
SPEAKER_00It's just the game there is no player-to-player economy right now. They're bare the only player-to-player economy is Gray Market.
SPEAKER_01Gotcha.
SPEAKER_00It's uh it's ran outside the game.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_02So it's kind of like CS's market in a way, a little bit where you can like the the skins and stuff like that where like it's completely outside of the game, but there is like a huge market out there for like the different skins and stuff that you can buy, and it's basically like the ships essentially.
SPEAKER_03Well, in kind of strike, you could buy them off the market that people sell. I guess that's true. Like on Steam market is directly tied to Steam. Yeah. There are other ones, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Oh, he's standing up.
SPEAKER_00Yep.
SPEAKER_02He got that standing desk. He's got that standy desk. He's ready to talk.
SPEAKER_00He's ready for his I got I gotta have a photo. Alright. Gotta get the gotta be able to get out there, get a good lung full of air for when I lose my shit next. Can we and we're gonna move off of me? I have so much to complain about, but let's not bore them with my complaints about a game that like I really should have stopped playing years ago.
SPEAKER_02I mean, hey, if it brings you happiness, I don't know if it does. It doesn't sound like it does. But not anymore. If it brings you happiness, do what you want.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Not in its current form. Absolutely not in its current form. At one point, yes, I loved it. Now I have like I have flight sticks and flight pedals, and I'm like, I bought all this equipment for a game that broke my heart. Tragic.
SPEAKER_02That's how it felt with Apex for a little while there, because I was a m my buddy and Connor knows him, but j uh Jordan and I. We've played so much Apex over the years, and there's a certain point where I like they were changing a bunch of stuff, and I'm I'm happier with the game now, but there was definitely a point in the game where they were changing a lot of things, and it felt like the meta that they were like trying to implement every like season was just like, oh, let's bring out a new gun and make that gun the new meta, and then like none of the other guns are gonna be as good. So they just kind of ruined the game for a little bit. But I had at that point already put like I would probably say like at least a few hundred dollars into that account because it's like I've been playing for like what since since 2019, so seven years, you know. So you know, all the different skins and stuff like that I've got it definitely it's like it's almost like a sunken cost fallacy where like you feel like because you've put so much money into it that you have to play it. And I mean, I'm not at that place anymore, but that's definitely like part of why I went back, is because like I felt like I had put so much money. I gotta go back into it, you know.
SPEAKER_00I've that is almost exactly what it is. I got an email uh few months back saying, hey, welcome to the chairman's club. Thank you for spending a thousand dollars on this game over time, and I'm like, Oh god. Alright, cool. Yeah, I don't this doesn't make me feel good. And also, like if I look back over like how much money you've gotten from me specifically, and what's it called, how I feel about the game right now, you're not getting much money from me going forward either. Because I'm like, Yeah, thanks for reminding me that I still give you money momentarily and making me think about like where this money is going. It's not gonna happen anymore.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I mean it's kinda like it's almost where like the same sort of thing, at least in terms of feeling how the way that you're probably feeling is the same thing that happens with like Netflix, where they keep uh increasing the amount of money that you're having to pay for your subscription without really adding anything worth doing that for. So it's like, why am I still giving you my money? Why man? I love how this became. It's just like eat the rich, just like kind of podcasts. I love that. I'm for it.
SPEAKER_00Became, yo, as long as I as long as I'm breathing, this will be an Eat the Rich podcast. Because like let's be a hundred percent. We now have a trillionaire in a world where billionaires shouldn't fucking exist. Put it out there. Let's just be let's be so fucking for real. Like, almost everything that's bad in the world, including the state of Star Citizen, can be traced to the fact that we have billionaires and now a trillionaire in a world where they shouldn't fucking exist.
SPEAKER_02They ruin everything, bro. Literally everything. It's like Reagan. Yes, it is that in terms of ruining stuff. Trickle down. Trickle down ruining stuff. Exactly. Well put. Thanks.
SPEAKER_03Trickle down ruining stuff. Um Jelani, you got anything more?
SPEAKER_00Nah. Okay. I'm good. Alright. The vitriol has I have uh I'm not going to say depleted. I'm saying I have to save it for things that I want to talk about later.
SPEAKER_03Sure. Yeah, okay. That's that gut energy. Love it. Uh Cameron, what have you been playing if you want to add more? I kind of went into it earlier.
SPEAKER_02I was doing some Star Wars. Uh we've been doing, and you know this, we've been playing Final Fantasy 14 on Mondays and Wednesday nights. That's been kind of a nice little community thing. Because that's a big thing for me. Is you know, we gotta have a little bit of community if we're gonna be playing MMMO. So that's been a lot of fun. Um outside of gaming, we've been doing some Uber Eats like delivery, that's been kind of fun. Sure. Nice little change of pace, a little bit extra income. I uh it kind of like works out too, because I used to do uh pizza delivery, but I don't know, maybe like ten years ago or something like that now at this point. But it's dude, it's so easy. You literally just go pick up a thing, and then you go to a place and you drop off the thing, and you just go pick up another thing, and then you go do it again, and it's great, and it's easy. So not been bad. Um this isn't a gaming thing. I've been watching a lot of Gundam lately, and just we're talking like shit.
SPEAKER_00That's beautiful. Yeah, I love that.
SPEAKER_02A lot of Gundam. I uh I didn't find this guy, Cameron.
SPEAKER_00He should have been on the podcast. My name's Connor way back in the day. Connor. Yeah, I like him so much more. He's fully replaced you in my eyes.
SPEAKER_03Here's the thing common thing me and Cameron have gone through through our friendship is that exact moment right there. It's exactly true. Not only and not to DOS us, but we share the same initials, C M, which is crazy. We're both you know, tall, hairy men. Um, and we're both nerds, so it's just like it's kind of people get us mixed up a lot.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it happens.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it's just the name. Uh we don't really look the same. I agree with you. No.
SPEAKER_04No.
SPEAKER_03Not all white people look the same.
SPEAKER_00I saw the trap. I saw the trap, and I'm like not today. Nah, bruh.
SPEAKER_02Nah, but yeah, that's definitely been something we've dealt with since we were teenagers. But hey, it's fine.
SPEAKER_00It's it is what it is. Look, look, I'd rather look, you guys, Cameron and Connor. I I love you guys, but at least nobody called you Jumanji growing up. Oh my god.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that would be the worst I ever got was people called me camera. Like like a camera. Like that's that's the worst I ever got.
SPEAKER_00That's not bad. Mm-mm. Gelato. Gelato's something I've gotten. That pisses me off. Gelato? Ooh, I'd be mad. Yeah. I'm not an Italian-shaved ice treat. I am a tiny, angry Jamaican man. There's a very large difference.
SPEAKER_03Gelato's sonato. Gelato's like a god. I I swear too. Chunky boy. Yeah, but I'm a chunky boy. We gotta get this shit right.
SPEAKER_00I love I love you to death, brother. Hold on. I got to do that. I love you to death, brother.
SPEAKER_03Do you want to piss off Italians? No. The answer is no. We don't want to piss off Italians.
SPEAKER_00Look, look, look. I might want that smoke because like I need you to understand who related the gelati thing. Gelato. Ooh. But hold on.
SPEAKER_03But hold on. Yeah, okay. He's gonna hit me with uh gelato's cold, so it could have ice on it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Well, hold well, sort of, kinda. Hear me out. Mm-hmm. Basically what he said. But gelato literally translates to frozen in Italian. Yeah, but ice. Literally the definition of it is fair. Fair.
SPEAKER_03So it's really the opposite of me. Gelani, what I'm trying to say is I know you want the smoke from the Italians, but don't you also want to be friends with the Italians? More specifically, your hero, Luigi.
SPEAKER_01Mancion?
SPEAKER_03You know what? Fuck it. You're right. Yeah. If that guy's not Italian. I don't know who it is.
SPEAKER_01Manioni.
SPEAKER_00Mancioni. Look, look. Patron saint of Eat the Rich. Was that racist? Was that just rageist? That's fun. No, no. We get to clear. We get to clear. Now if Jelani did it. It doesn't. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. It'd be weird. It'd be weird. Like maybe 50, 60 years ago it might have been. But I think, I think the rules of whiteness have been rewritten a couple of times since then. So I don't know. It gets kind of dicey.
SPEAKER_02The skating by it kind of rule book has been rewritten a few times.
SPEAKER_00Let's be honest. Italians haven't always been white. Neither have the Irish.
SPEAKER_03True.
unknownThat's true.
SPEAKER_03True, true, true, true, true.
SPEAKER_00But I'm just an angry Jamaican. I'm an angry, educated Jamaican.
SPEAKER_02I went to school for that shit. I went to school to be where I am today.
SPEAKER_00Did I get my degree? Absolutely fucking not. But I listened in class sometimes. I attended.
SPEAKER_02Nine out of twenty times. I used to skip school a lot, bro. I I was in I was in college for like ten years. Not a joke. On and off of school for a while. And that's because I kept skeptical. I go to I would like I I would go to I went to a college that had like the four hour blocks, you know? And it'd be like the the e like the four hour evening blocks. So it'd be like it'd be for like six to ten. And so I would get there and 15 minutes in, I'd just be like, oh my god, I'm so fucking bored right now. And like I would just be waiting and waiting and waiting until that first break. And as soon as the first break came, every single time, I would just get my shit and go. I would just leave. And then my teachers would be like, bro, you don't have good grades. And it's very easy to tell you why. And I'd be like, but hey, I mean, I eventually, you know what? I got my degree. I got there. I got there. So sorry, that's not great. Audio.
SPEAKER_03It's alright. Hey. Are you done? Everybody done? Okay. Alright. Okay. Let me let me do a I'm gonna do a rapid fire. Ooh, of what? Of what I've been playing.
SPEAKER_00What he's been playing. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03We're still there. It's okay. No, it's okay.
SPEAKER_02I thought you were just gonna like start spitting some facts or something like that.
SPEAKER_03No, well, these are facts. Okay, true. Play Pragmata. Almost done with it. It's that Capcom joint with the dad and the AI chick that the internet for some reason was like really into, even though she was like five.
SPEAKER_00Because we elected one of them to president, so now they're all crawling out the woodwork to talk about how much they like it.
SPEAKER_03What are you talking about? You don't live by the philosophy grabber right by the pussy? Anyways. I don't. No, I don't either. Noted, I do not. Ladies, I am single. That's the way to get him.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, all three of us, all three of us for different reasons are absolutely not doing that.
SPEAKER_03He's like every girl's like, sold. He said that, sold.
SPEAKER_02Hey ladies, just so you know, Connor won't grab you by the pussy. He's a cool guy like that.
SPEAKER_00Well not unless you ask him to see things.
SPEAKER_02If you ask him, he'll consider it.
SPEAKER_03Um Pragmata, pretty good. Capcom, I'm telling you, man. They're on a roll. Um, except for with Monster Hunters. Uh Monster Hunter, excuse me. Which wasn't a bad game, but it was fine.
SPEAKER_00Just a little uh it's a great game. It just it was what's it called? Optimized like fucking shit.
SPEAKER_03PC people got the bad end of the stick on that one.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, they they fucked up, made what's it called? They fucked up primary play station for development, treated PC like a port. Most of their sales came from PC on world. So it what's it called? Kinda tanked reception of Wild. We're hope we're currently hoping they pull an Iceborne and then Ascendance or whatever they're calling the expansion fixes a lot of the optimization issues. But now I'm gonna shut the fuck up and stop stomping on Connor.
SPEAKER_03You're fine. No, I will say that I don't think they should have used the RE engine, at least for that game, just because like it doesn't translate well with like Wait, they used the Resident Evil engine? Yeah, that's like their main thing they're using now.
SPEAKER_00But like it's just their in-house engine.
SPEAKER_03The problem is the people look great, and then like the monsters, some of the monsters are like sure. They look a little bit.
SPEAKER_00Right, but that's if you have the graphics card to run it.
SPEAKER_02Um I had it on PS5, so I never noticed anything, but that's just because the PS5 is a wonder machine that works for all games for no reason. Yeah, it does run everything pretty well.
SPEAKER_03Um Soros, I've been playing a little bit of here and there. That's the uh House Marquee people, they're the ones that made uh Returnal. Soros, yeah. Um it's like the Bullet Hell. Bullet Hell, yeah. Um we're seeing the ads for this. People were mad originally with the release because they wanted Returnal 2, basically. But they got this like new pro you know, protagonist and story, and it didn't sell super well, but it's still pretty well. Like, I like it.
SPEAKER_02Um that sounds like a boo fucking who for me.
SPEAKER_03You're right, exactly.
SPEAKER_02Um like I don't know. I just like a developer can do whatever the fuck they want. If you want to do a new IP, let them do a new IP.
SPEAKER_01It's not returnal too.
SPEAKER_00I will say have you go ahead.
SPEAKER_03I would say I will say, like, I don't know much about the story too too much now because like I play in like bits and pieces. Um but they said the story's kind of whack, but also I think people are like just like closet racists, and it's like an Indian guy who's like the main guy.
SPEAKER_02I don't know literally, I literally wondered that. I wondered if it like because it's like a a foreign right consider it to be a foreign.
SPEAKER_03I'm not gonna look into it because I'm not a racist shit, but I'm sure that's some sort of uh issue with some people.
SPEAKER_02I mean when I literally thought when I literally saw the ads for it, I was like, oh hell yeah, like representation, that's sick. Like I wanted to wanna see more like stories from other like cultures and religions and stuff like that making it to the mainstream. That's like that's progress in my opinion. That's a really good thing. But then you've got people just being fucking racist assholes for no fucking reason.
SPEAKER_00Well, once again we elected one of them. Yeah. Now they feel free to come out of their holes.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it's I mean, it's literally everywhere. The wrong person got the voice in the in the the wrong people got the voice uh elected.
SPEAKER_00Oh fucking fucking blame billionaires and gamergate.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_00Which is funny because if you look at the gamergate, it was started by billionaires. Yep. Continue. Wow. Gamergate, that's crazy.
SPEAKER_03The uh we talked about Final Fantasy and Old Republic, been playing that. The big news on the Cat Daddy front. Uh for so excited. Old Pod listening.
SPEAKER_00I'm so excited to hear him say this. These are the most beautiful, these are the second most beautiful words I'm going to hear outside of Morgan saying yes to my proposal.
SPEAKER_02Okay, well are you are you pregnant, Connor? Like what's I'm with child.
SPEAKER_03I have detached the parasite off of my PS5 that is Call of Duty.
SPEAKER_02Uh no way.
SPEAKER_03You forgot the I don't have a problem. That much of a problem, I should have said. I'm not I'm not a big fan of Warzone to where where it's at now. It sucks. The multiplayer is still fine. I am just not a fan of dedicating 235 gigabytes to a game I'm gonna play once every other week or so at this point. Yeah. Um much like Cameron, I don't really like playing games alone. Right? Yeah, multiplayer in general, hard to play alone. Call of Duty used to be my play-alone multiplayer game.
SPEAKER_02I can see that, yeah.
SPEAKER_03Um eventually I'm like, I'm good for now. Am I saying that when the new one comes out, I won't buy it? Not saying that. Because you know I'll be playing that shit. But for now, I'm at a point in my gaming uh career or whatever, that I have other shit I want to play. I have now made it a goal of mine to get through the Final Fantasy remake. Uh Final Fantasy VII, sorry. Uh seven? I love that for you. Yes. Because we'll get to it later.
SPEAKER_02A whole bit of announcement. Jelani, are you getting like haunted by a ghost or something? Like his wife's there. Yeah. He keeps like looking behind him.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, more my wife just got home. She was not by the pool when we started recording. So she just came inside to get something to eat. But yes, you did have Final Fantasy VIII all over the script. All over the script. And I went through and fixed it for seven because I figured you were talking about seven, yes.
SPEAKER_03It is um because they did announce the last uh revelation. Yeah. Also, I bought Sea of Stars on sale, which is a uh turn-based indie MMO. Uh they had like a mega release of their like expansion and everything together. It was cheap. Uh-huh. So I got that going. Uh dive into that.
SPEAKER_02I've heard that's a great H D RPG.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Um, other than that, Counter Strike, and that's it. Um But yeah, no more Call of Duty for now.
SPEAKER_02That's just that's just too much, man. 200 gig 200 plus gigs is just too much. Like I I'm like you where I I can play Call of Duty by myself. That's one of those, like I'll have a I'll have a phase every once in a while where I'll be like, I want to play just a shooter game that can just go in, be quick, get some kills, log off, no problem. And Call of Duty it it scratches that itch every once in a while. But like you said, like if it's gonna be taking up 200 gigs, that is that's three other games that I could be playing. Yeah, you know, yeah.
SPEAKER_00And I get it especially in a day when a storage is getting more and more expensive on computers, yeah. I can't justify letting you hog that much space.
SPEAKER_02Right. Yeah, for real. So like I I don't know, I I appreciate you know the the HD map, like packs and all that kind of stuff, and being able to play like multiplayer, war zone, single player, all that kind of shit at the same time, but just it's just not worth it.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it's just a crazy amount, and I'm sitting there, like I made a decision, I looked at it and I was like, when is the last time I really sat down and like grinded out from Call of Duty? And I was like, hmm. I'll wait till uh Modern Warfare 4 comes out.
SPEAKER_02But then I mean Battlefield 6 just got a paper uh update recently as well.
SPEAKER_03Yep. But it's not 200 gigabytes worth of fucking shit I don't give a shit about.
SPEAKER_00So yeah, I still haven't played I still haven't picked up Battlefield 6. How is Um, it's good.
SPEAKER_02I I don't know that they have like quite the the map count that I think a lot of people wanted from like a battlefield game. Like I think that there was like a lot of like smaller to medium sized maps that you know isn't like necessarily the battlefield kind of like um experience format. Yeah, exactly. So it's like a lot of people when the game was coming out, they're like, you don't have enough of these maps, and I think they just came over come out with some new big map, but I haven't played it personally. Yeah, we haven't played it. I mean I it's a great game, it feels really good. Like the all the combat's really, really great. The you know the vehicles are a lot of fun. So it's it's a good time. I just that's uh again, it's I I uninstalled it because I wasn't playing with anybody, and I don't I just don't play games on my own all that much.
SPEAKER_03So I think my biggest issue when we first started playing it when it first came out is that net code was fucking garbage.
SPEAKER_00Has that gotten better? That's my question.
SPEAKER_03I haven't played it since like this was like a big update.
SPEAKER_02You played it with us once, didn't you? Was it maybe it was during the beta, but I remember we're playing.
SPEAKER_00It was me. Yeah, I was in there during the beta, and yeah, that is around the time we met.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And the net code was atrocious. I'm not gonna sit here and say I'm good at first-person shooters like the two of you are, but I can hit a couple shots, and I wasn't hitting a couple shots, it was very frustrating.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, there would also be times where like you would be like fully around a corner and someone shits you, and it makes no sense how you just got taken out. And so I don't I don't know that they've fixed that, but I also haven't played very much.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, we haven't really extensively played. We had like a weekend where we hopped back in for a bit, but that was before the big update, which that came out like Tuesday, I think. Yeah, we we played like a few days ago, just for like a couple rounds, but that's it. Um yeah, that's a majority of it with me. I see here we have a brief little segment of summer game fest news. Uh I will preface this that we didn't do like a crazy uh deep dive like last year, because that was like three and a half hours of talking. But we did highlight some of them.
SPEAKER_00I feel like that's gonna be our standard from now on for what's it called, especially for the events coverage. It's like we need to just set aside like, hey, three uh this is going to be a four-hour recording.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_00To talk about like Summer Games Fist, the game awards, blah di blah blah blah, because they are pumping so much into these now.
SPEAKER_02Which is divided into two episodes too. Like, just take those four hours and just split it into and then just be like part one, part two kind of thing.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Um, but to I guess kick it off. I think half of these the beginning half are what Jelani added, so Jelani, what do you got? What do you got? Yeah. Game summer game fest. What are you hyped about here, Bub?
SPEAKER_00Um, we spent a lot of time talking about the racing as we grew up playing. So I'm kind of excited for clutch. Not from a like I'm excited for a new racing game, racing game like point of view. More I'm excited for a racing game that actually focuses on the story. We like my favorite racing game of all time was the old Need for Speed Most Wanted.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. That was a good one. Yeah, great.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and like I'm not gonna sit here and say the story was like immaculate. I'm not gonna sit here and say it was Oscar worthy, but I am gonna say it was compelling enough in and of its own that I wanted to race that I wanted to keep playing.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Because Forza has like what 500 cars every game, four or five hundred cars every game. And yeah, I spend a hundred hours, but the like I'm gonna be honest, going forward, I'm only gonna check in once a week to do my dailies to get the new car. I don't have any drive to keep playing the game. Yeah. Whereas, like, a good story will hook you, will bring you in, and we've been missing a lot of that. And that's probably a lot of why the racing game genre has shrunk.
SPEAKER_04Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_00And uh what else do I have? I have grave seasons. Uh looks like the cozy little farming game that they introduced with the fucking supernatural murder mystery vibe going.
SPEAKER_01Oh, that's cool.
SPEAKER_03Oh, yeah. Oh. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00I'm a I'm not excited for for it for me at all. I am very excited for it for Connor and Morgan.
SPEAKER_03Hell yeah. We love a cousin farmer game.
SPEAKER_00I'm very excited for it for what's it called, big guy over here and my wife. They'll both love the shit out of that game.
SPEAKER_02And I have us go ahead. I was just gonna say I can see uh my fiance Shay liking this game as well.
SPEAKER_00Mm-hmm. And then special mention to Stranger Than Heaven because it lets me take fucking what's it called? Pot shots at Drake, and everybody loves when I get to take pot shots at Drake. I don't know what the fuck.
SPEAKER_03I'm raising the roof for Stranger Than Heaven, baby. I'm I'm here for it. I'm just gonna I love the Yakuza guys and the fact that they're making this. And it looks incredible.
SPEAKER_00See, the beautiful thing, the beautiful thing, why I get to take pot shots at Drake. I don't know if anybody remembers Drake's diss track. What was it? Taylor made freestyle and how it had that snippet in it with the AI Tupac.
SPEAKER_03Yep, I remember.
SPEAKER_00Oh it was it was atrocious. It was one of the many fucking L's Drake took during that beef he had with Kendrick. The this so but the beautiful thing about this L is it's an L he gave himself. Cause well, he used an AI Tupac voice in the song. He didn't get permission from the estate. They threatened to sue. Of course. He had to pull the song down. Of course. And you wanna know why that's funny? You wanna know why that's funny? Because Drake, this bitch m Drake, with a thirst of a thousand, like just he's been caught in the desert for years. His thirst is so great to be welcome to the culture. So great. Wants to be like, wants to be there. But fucks this up, and then a Japanese game studio comes in and does like, you know, the right thing, you know, work with Snoop Dogg and the estate to release to to get to get Tubak into this game in a respectable way.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And look, nobody's complaining. Nope. It's great to do things. Yeah, there's a way to do things. And one would think, like, yeah. Is it really that hard to do things right, Aubrey? Are you really gonna let Are you really gonna let the Japanese treat one of our legends with more respect than you? That's fucking crazy work. But either way, moving on.
SPEAKER_02I mean, I would never expect that from Drake, you know? Like, Drake doesn't respect things. He doesn't respect stuff like that.
SPEAKER_00You're right. But moving on from like other news where I get to drag bitch niggas, like they announced a new Gundam game. Connor, you're gonna have to fix the fuck out of these levels. I am about to find back with your audio editing. Yo!
SPEAKER_03Sorry, I got the other rogue orbit. He's still going.
SPEAKER_00It's so exciting! It looks so beautiful! It's everything I wanted from a gun to win. Yo! Yo! Yo! Look!
SPEAKER_03Uh look. The reveal was so funny because we're watching it, right? Together in a chat. I'm at work still, but I had it going and I had uh Jelani in a chat, and we're watching it, and a robot shows up with the iconic V Finn on the fucking thing. And I go, There's no way this is a Gundam game. And it looked so hype, and I think he peaked even more during the reveal. Like it was insane.
SPEAKER_00I was like, and the worst part, the reason I got so hype is because we were talking about people like game publishers that we really like that don't miss for us, and I was like, Band-Aid Namco, yes, they do have some like misses, but the fact that they take so many shots, like they have they're the Dark Souls people, they do the FromSoft games. Yeah, what's it called? And they allow Fromsoft to do whatever the fuck they want, basically. They're what's it called? They make the Dragon Ball games, like it's by all extension, it's like them and Atlas, but like I have a stronger connection with Bandai Namco because they also do fucking ace combat. And I've been playing ace combat since like PlayStation 2.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, ace combat is playing up with my dad a lot.
SPEAKER_00Yes, ace combat is like Bandai Namco has a place in my heart, and then I was telling these I was telling Connor and our friend about it, and then this came out, and I was I'm like, yo, this is what I'm talking about.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Bandai Namco's game is good. Because like my here's to kind of get, I guess.
SPEAKER_00Gundam games are usually bad.
SPEAKER_02To get like a a little bit into like gaming history, I guess. Yeah. But like like when I was growing up, and I guess all of us were growing up, like there was kind of like the there was the era of like you know, you go from the PS1 to the PS2, and then you've got the Xbox going to the Xbox 360, and there's these like these huge like graphical leaps being made. And so I feel like as we were growing up, we kept seeing all these like revolutionary changes happening, and like I've I've kept getting to this point of being like, we're gonna get to this era of like we have the the great technology, and that's gonna mean that's gonna translate into amazing games. Which like we do have, we do have amazing games, like don't get me wrong, but like we do like it's it's kind of like the the Call of Duty thing where you're like you just got rid of it because it's basically the same thing that it's been, even though it's been however many years, and we're like we're at a place where we have all this technology to be able to innovate, but they're not doing it in a way that really takes advantage of the new systems that they have available to them. Whereas like when this when I see this new Gundam game coming out, like I get excited because it's like I want to see what because I've played older Gundam games in the past, and so I want to see what they can do with the Gundam property and take that and put it into a new modern like Gundam game that's gonna be really, really fun, you know. Like one of the I I played, I don't know if you guys ever played uh like Dynasty Warriors or whatever, but there was a series of Dynasty Warriors games called Dynasty Warriors Gundam, and they went it was super fun, like I put a stupid amount of hours into these games, like uh especially the second one, like they because it's it basically is like a hodgepodge, it takes all the different Gundam stories and throws them into one like one kind of like not very like you know, the story doesn't make any sense really, but like it basically just gives you a reason to have all these different pipe pilots from different eras and stuff like that to be able to like fight on the same battlefield and shit.
SPEAKER_00And it's low-key like canonical and feels like the show because your gundam runs through so many enemies just like you do in the show.
SPEAKER_02That's what I'm saying. Like that it the even though it was a Dynasty Warriors game, it felt like playing Gundam because, like you said, you're just you're uh you're one against many, you're killing and just destroying all these different mobile suits because you're like you're the fucking guy, right? You're the Gundam. Yeah. And that's what I want from a game like this. And like I feel like if if it is like the same guys who are doing, you know, if it's from soft or whoever, like, you know, and they did armored core, they're gonna, I'm hopefully or hoping they're gonna do a really good job with this.
SPEAKER_00I don't think it's from soft making the game.
SPEAKER_02Oh, really? Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_00But I'm excited for a completely separate reason. It is not attached to an existing universe. Oh, really? It is not in Universal Sentry, it is not in the G Gundam, it's not double O. It's not Gundam Wing. It's its own thing, which allows them to do whatever the hell they want. And I've been I've been a big fan of what Gundam has been doing recently, and the fact that they are basing it in its own universe, and it's already doing things differently than Gundam has done before because there are very limited references in Gundam at all to fucking aliens. And this one right right off the rip in the what's it called in the trailer is like aliens. That looks like an alien monster type thing. That I it's very interesting. Like they're doing complete it looks like a very interesting shift in the story. It looks like a darker game. Like unique. Yeah, and that's what and that's what I was saying about it looks like this is a swing out of left field with a Gundam property, and I fucking love that shit.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_00This is like literally, yes, we're taking in we're taking an old IP and doing something new. But we're doing something fucking new.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I'm really hoping it's gonna be like I'm copping the fuck out of it. Yeah, I I I'm really excited. It it just looks good. I'm literally watching the trailer right now. It looks so good. It the trailer's.
SPEAKER_00If only to encourage this level of expect of this experimentation, I will be buying it. Hell yeah.
SPEAKER_02No, go ahead. I'll go. If that's cool. You're good. Um I was gonna say a game that I'm excited about is um Star Wars Zero Company. I don't know if I don't know if that's coming in. Yeah, I don't know if that's coming out this year. I think it's next month.
SPEAKER_00That's next month. Is it is that for real?
SPEAKER_03On Epic, I think though. It's one of those epic uh release windows, I think first or something. Oh no.
SPEAKER_00Oh, it says August 27th.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, August 27th.
SPEAKER_02Dude, I'm gonna be the absolute living shit out of that fucking game. I'm gonna be playing that so much. Oh yeah. I'll I'll cop the fuck out of it. Yeah, because I one, obviously, I love Star Wars, but like I I played a lot of XCOM. I I you know, I'm I wasn't the person that put like 200 out 200 hours or whatever into it. But like I I played a fair amount of the first one and then a decent amount of the second one. And the only reason I stopped playing is because I kept getting like a fucking 95% chance to kill something and I would miss multiple fucking times.
SPEAKER_00So let's not talk about that.
SPEAKER_02Um so yeah, and so it you know, eventually it got to a point where I just you know I just uninstalled or whatever, but like the graphics on this game look insane. The combat, like the fact that you get to use droids as like characters and stuff like that. It looks like there's gonna be a lot of characters to go from. Uh, I think I saw Anakin as like in the Yeah, he was the big reveal at the trailer. Yeah, so I don't know if they're gonna have like big heroes and stuff like that that you can like have on your team and stuff, but uh here's my thing. I think it's gonna be great.
SPEAKER_03Even for it, if there's not heroes, I like the idea of a Star Wars universe with like weird ragtag fucking anti-hero type fucking characters like Andor and like Rogue One, where it's just like these people who existed at some point in the universe. Yeah. Because they're not tied. I love Star Wars. I have shit tattooed tattooed on my leg.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03The s the Skywalker saga, everyone being tied to Skywalker bullshit. Fuck it. I don't give a shit. It's exactly it's exhausted to the fucking like uh but young.
SPEAKER_00What's it called? Yoda's descendant. I would love that.
SPEAKER_03I don't even want Jedi's. I want ragtag the the the reason I like Star Wars more than anything. I want weird fucking creature people. Yeah, characters doing weird shit. Yeah. Yeah. I don't give a fuck about Jedi's. I don't give a fuck about Sith. I just want ragtag like weirdos.
SPEAKER_02Characters that like live and operate in the space that are not necessarily like the what's the word? Like the the propagators of the space, I guess, or whatever.
SPEAKER_00You want less rise of the skywalkers and maybe more shit like Serenity.
SPEAKER_03I want yeah, exactly. You want like weird, low stakes, people just existing in this universe, kind of thing. That's why like the Mandalorian show kind of started off that way, and then it kind of got like I have to apologize.
SPEAKER_00Michael's going off in the background, and I don't know if you're gonna be edited, be able to edit it out. I didn't think if you if you guys hear it sounds different through Discord than it will in Audas. Oh, I don't hear anything through your mic at all.
SPEAKER_03So Michael's his cat, by the way. Oh, that's cute. He's got Michael, Lilith, and then uh Lucifer. Lucifer. Lucifer's the main man. Love Lucifer. Um, yes. Star Wars Zero Company. I think we're all gonna be playing this at this point. Yeah, absolutely. I've definitely been making content for it.
SPEAKER_00I'm not a huge Star Wars guy, but I like tactical shooters. That's fun.
SPEAKER_02It the kind of crazy thing is like I I call myself like a Star Wars fan, but that's kind of the funny thing, is like I'm not a Star Wars fan because of like I'm a huge like fan of the movies or whatever, which like I am. Like I love the movies or you know, but it's I think most of it comes from like the time I've spent on like the MMO and stuff like that. And that that is not even like what people would consider the primary like Star Wars content, you know. Like I'm you know, the stuff I'm playing is from like 3,000 years in the past, you know, so like it's it's a totally different thing, but it's still just I don't know, it's such a unique uh universe that I like. Like you said, I like seeing the different characters that are like part of the like world. It's like the broader scope. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00What's it called? Of people, especially the Star Wars fans that I know, even outside of you guys, are what's it called? Have a the expanded universe shit has a huge place in their heart, yeah and plays a bigger part in their modern fandom than anything Disney or Lucas Arts has put out. Yeah, for sure.
SPEAKER_02Like I even I even like the the prequel series. In fact, I think a lot of I think the prequel series has come to be a lot more highly favored than it used to be. I think when the prequel series originally came out, I feel like when it first originally came out, yeah, yeah, exactly. Like I think when it first came out, people hated it, and I think that's because it was the generation of the time that had only seen the first one hated it. And then like I was growing up with it, and so I was like, yay, this is great. And then now like the older Star Wars fans are the fans that grew up with the prequels, basically. And so now the new series the the new trilogy, but like I you know, I recognize its flaws, but I can still watch like the new trilogy and enjoy it as well. You know, it's different, but you know, it is what it is. It's still it's just more Star Wars for me. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um my only what's it called issue with the new tril I haven't watched all of it. I'm not gonna pretend that I have, I'm not gonna pretend that I'm going to be interested in doing so. But I am interested in the fact that I I've seen enough to of it to be like, oh cool, they have a really interesting new black character. I like him. I like they're never going to let him get anywhere near as cool as they should. And from what I understand, they didn't. So moving on.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. I literally I when that when that series was coming out, I thought that Finn was gonna end up being the new Jedi. And like it's it's not like I was disappointed by Ray being the Jedi, but like, why couldn't they both be Jedi or something?
SPEAKER_00You know, like why couldn't he at least be like somewhat source sent force sensitive?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, in some way, but it they just ended up just making him just like the the guy to rally behind for whatever. And I think that ultimately just comes down to the fact that the the three there was three different movies and they had three different directors for the Yeah, they really fucked up. Yeah, so and I think in reality it was more just a production like failure than and writing, obviously, of course. Just changing everything every single time. Like it's it's kind of an issue that's the the MMO is dealing with a little bit right now, where like the the the the sword game has like changed hands a few times at this point. Like it originally was the original team, and then they switched off to a different team when the game went more into like maintenance mode, and then now I think they switched over to I think it's broadsword or something like that. Yeah, and I think and now like broadsword, like it's no longer in maintenance mode, like they're developing for the game again, and they're like bringing new things and stuff like that, but like all these different like teams are wanting to do different stories, so like there's a very specific part of the game where like there's this big buildup of this one moment, and then that expansion ends, and then like the next one starts, and just like nothing comes to fruition from what just happened. And it's like it's it's basically the same thing as those movies where you know like the it's just the changing of hands is changing where the story's going, and it just completely flubs up the entire flow of it. So anyway, that's my diatribe.
SPEAKER_03Alright. Where's my cool anything else?
SPEAKER_02No, that's it. Sorry.
SPEAKER_03No, you're good. No, no, no. I I don't wanna I didn't wanna I didn't want to keep I didn't want to keep going. No, I just didn't know if you had any more uh input for the summer games yesterday or whatnot. Because I got a list that I'm gonna run through.
SPEAKER_02Um I don't know if it's summer because it's coming out in August or uh September, but Ion 2 is coming out.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, that'll be yeah. We gotta we'll we'll talk about that a little bit right now. Um right we used to play Ion. Uh in fact, I still have like the the steel book from like when we first bought it somewhere. Same thing with Swartor, Star Wars. I have the actual book somewhere.
SPEAKER_02Um it's I feel like it's probably like my bookshelf or something.
SPEAKER_03The problem I have with Ion 2 is that and it's mostly because it's mostly every Korean like MMO that comes out that I try. Yeah. Um that fucking grind is bro crazy. Korean MMOs love the grind. They love that grind.
SPEAKER_00Um I was wondering which Ion you were talking about. Yo, I played the uh uh I played the original.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00I ran a guild in Ion.
SPEAKER_02Wow, okay.
SPEAKER_03I loved this game. Yeah, I just remember like my favorite thing about it is when we first started off, since I was like a child. Is I was like, oh, I look badass immediately in this game. And that's like me. I like to look pretty and shit. Yeah, look cool.
SPEAKER_02Well, that's I I loved the races in that game, like the Asmodians versus the server, whatever. Like, I I love the whole concept of like, you know, one race being up at the top and then the other like the the Asmodians, so they like that's why they're all pale is because they don't have any sun, and then like the other race, it's kind of like an inverted world kind of. It's kind of stuck in that way. Um so I've really liked that. I thought it was really unique. My issue was I hit level 34 and it took me two fucking weeks to get to level 35, and I'm like, okay, I'm done.
SPEAKER_03Exactly.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_03So I'm hoping they don't repeat past mistakes, but they're probably they're probably gonna repeat.
SPEAKER_02It's probably gonna be.
SPEAKER_00Yo, it's a look, I'm sorry. We are just lucky it's not a gotcha game. I mean, you're right. It's let's be let's be 100% fair. We are lucky this is not a gotcha game.
SPEAKER_03I feel like the gotcha games are just not for our brain capacity. Like our look our group of people are millennial brains.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, because some of the uh, you know, like weird amount of money off these fucking once if they pulled out all the gotcha, what's it called, components and they were like, oh, we have to make a game where like the sixty dollars is what we're making and maybe like a story DLC. Yeah. Once they if if they ever actually said, like, okay, cool, this is how we're gonna make our money on this game, we would never talk if they actually did that, we wouldn't talk about Final Fantasy, we wouldn't talk about Grand Theft Auto, we would talk about because I feel like they have the chops and the skills that if they took it seriously, yeah, over. Done.
SPEAKER_02Put all their efforts into fun instead of like turning it and just the cash cow that it is.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, turning out new and what's it called, new and unique waifus. Like, yeah, that's don't get me wrong.
SPEAKER_02I love a good waifu, but like let's be honest. I mean, you don't have to you don't have to convince me, brother. We all love a good waifu. We're all waifu enthusiasts.
SPEAKER_00Like we might have been shit talking Dragon Ball earlier, but we watched it. We're still nerdy.
SPEAKER_02Titties? What? You say titties?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, titties. It's like we just happen to respect the titties.
SPEAKER_02You must respect them.
SPEAKER_00Um that's funny. It's like we acknowledge that the titties are attached to a human being that matters.
SPEAKER_02That's all you gotta fucking do. I think it's just when when you've when you have shows like Dragon Ball that look like they're cart like cartoons for kids, because it's it's about a game, but it's but it's very much not a cartoon for kids, it's a cartoon for adults. Like that's when it's a problem, because like that's that's where my brother got confused, because like we we grew up watching it because I think there very much was a misunderstanding back then. Or at least on Toonami for a minute, yeah. I mean, also though, like shows like Rocco's Modern Life, for example, like they they had sexualized humor in it, but kids were too dumb and stupid to like pick up on it and like actually understand it for what it was. So it's like, and then that way you had like that's why those shows were so good, is because they used adult humor that kids could also get behind. And yes, I don't know, I feel like the that era of like Nickelodeon. Because I I was actually Shay and I have been watching uh Invader Zim. We've been like going back through like the all the old episodes, and I think there's like 40 or 50 or something like that. But like and and it's crazy too, because they're only like 15-minute episodes, and it it's like Invader Zim is one of those shows where like because it's such short episodes, whatever happens in the show, like in that episode, doesn't fucking matter. Like, none of it. Like, you could literally the world could the world could end by the end of the episode, and they just end the episode and they just move on to the next episode like nothing fucking happened. Like and it but that's that's part of its charm, is because like they can just do whatever they want, and like I don't know, and anyway, I got a little sidetracked, but I got excited to talk about Invader Zim because it's great. Anywho, I don't know where I was going with that, but in oh yeah, it was uh I think Connor was talking about somehow we got onto Ion too. Yes, yeah, we were talking about Ion T would somehow end up on Invader Invader Zim somehow. Whoops. Hey, ADHD. No wolf's needed, bro. It's just ADHD, bro.
SPEAKER_03I don't know. Um I got a couple highlights from myself here. Alright. Um not necessarily gonna go super into death, but um Fables coming out next year. Ooh, yeah. Um we finally got news and some gameplay. Um always been a Fable fan. I even read a Fable book back in the day.
SPEAKER_02I feel like I heard that they're not gonna be doing the uh the like if you're evil, you look more evil stuff.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, which is That's kind of a bummer. Design choice?
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Um I feel like that was like everything about the for the original games, is like Well, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03That and like the weird quirky like fucking just you know, what's the one oh they always called you like a chicken chaser was like your fucking like derogatory term that they always use. Your chicken chaser. Your pencil pusher? Your little lint liquor.
SPEAKER_00Lit liquor.
SPEAKER_03Um love that gummer. Little little bit of alliteration. Right. That's that orbit, what's that orbit gum, right?
SPEAKER_00Yep, that's the orbit. You've got a dirty mouth. Who you calling dirty Cootie Queen?
SPEAKER_03Lint liquor.
SPEAKER_00Oh yeah, we loved that shit back in the day. You know, you know, we we literally just aged ourselves again. Nine times out of ten, most of our audience has no idea what a lint liquor is.
SPEAKER_02I mean, that's fair. I guess I don't know. I feel like if you grew up in the 20, 2005 to 2015, that that window of ten years, I feel like that's when that ad would have been airing.
SPEAKER_03Something like that. You know what else? Around then. You know what else will aid you? They're already making a remake for Halo Combat Evolved. Uh yes.
SPEAKER_00Which already another remake of Halo Combat Evolved. I was gonna say, I thought they already did that. They remade the fucking game, my dude. Halo Combat Evolved is basically Skyrim at this point.
SPEAKER_03No, no, no, no, no, no. No, no, no, no, no. Unless I could play it on my fucking uh CPU fan, whatever. You know what I'm talking about? The little screen. You're right, you're right.
SPEAKER_00The more accurate statement of that is Skyrim is our generation's Doom.
SPEAKER_03Right, yeah. I could play Doom in my Tesla.
SPEAKER_00Um I can play Doom on my graphing calculator.
SPEAKER_02Did you know that it has now been longer since the uh the sixth game's trailer has come out since Fuck, what was it? It's because it's been eight years since the trailer for the sixth game came out. So it has now been longer since the trailer came out for the game, since the gap was between uh Oblivion and Skyrim, I think it was. Yes. Like that's they milk the shit out of Skyrim and still lie.
SPEAKER_00Yo, they should have never released that fucking trailer. And all that trailer was was a Cityscape and then a name, and then they should have never seen the last fucking bag.
SPEAKER_03Right? They hit a song in there.
SPEAKER_00And by this point, they had a song in the trailer that they probably no longer have the rights to, and that song won't be in the game. Guaranteed.
SPEAKER_02Uh I think the I think the Oblivion remake was a test to s to gauge interest for how well the sixth game is gonna be.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, for sure. Yeah. I bought that one immediately.
SPEAKER_00Um I feel like on that note, they're gonna hit us with a Marrowin remake before they give us six. I wouldn't be surprised either.
SPEAKER_03I wouldn't be surprised. It's the year of remakes.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Yeah, remakes everywhere.
SPEAKER_03Um another remake I'm excited for. Ocarina of Time.
SPEAKER_00That's gonna print between Ocarina and Time, and if the new Pokemon games, what's it called? Yeah. Review well, Switch 2's off the shelf. I just in the notes.
SPEAKER_03The purchases are gonna be through the roof.
SPEAKER_00Morgan has a Switch 2. They announced the new Pokemon Wins and Waves games. I I saw the trailer and I'm like, wait, it looks like you guys are actually putting in effort this time.
SPEAKER_01It doesn't look like they, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Am I about to spend like $600 between uh Switch 2 and the new Pokemon game just to play this game? Oh my god, it looks like you guys are putting effort. Fuck! I told myself I wouldn't buy a Switch 2 unless they put effort and they fuck fuck.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, good examples, right?
SPEAKER_02Damn it, they did it. They called my boy Son of a bitch.
SPEAKER_00It's like you're re-releasing Ocarina of Time and you're putting effort into Pokemon. You must really want to sell that motherfucker.
SPEAKER_02Right. Um I wonder I wonder what all they're gonna add to Ocarina of Time. Like, I I I'm curious if they're gonna pull the Final Fantasy VII like remake approach where they add like 50 hours worth of content on the back. Because like if if they took everything from Ocarina of Time, like the original game, there's probably not gonna be all that much there. I mean, just think about like how fast people can like free run or uh speedrun that game. Like, so ultimately I don't know that there would be a ton there unless they started adding like a bunch of just like extra content on top of it. So I'm curious to see what they do to like fill in the gaps, I guess. If that makes sense.
SPEAKER_03No, yeah, I mean the thing that that's you're seeing with some of these remakes, like with um more recently they did the Star Fox uh remake, is that they took like the base, like this is what the gameplay was back in the day. Let's put a spin on modern day. So like Star Fox, from what I read and heard about with this new one, is it's still like that on the rails, but you can get off the rail. So there's like a clear objective forward, but you can also not like just you don't have to go do it uh you know, how the game wants to do it. You can like do it at your own freedom. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04So that's kind of cool.
SPEAKER_03With Ocarina of Time, they probably will end up adding um extra stuff because if now that I think about it, when they redid the um Link's Awakening remake on Switch back in the a couple years ago, whatever, however long, they added like another dungeon or two to the game to like spice it up a little bit. So like they should add more.
SPEAKER_02I was just gonna say I I I definitely think that they should because like I don't I don't want them to like dilute the experience, I don't want them to like overdo it and then like make everything worse because of that. I'm not saying like add things unnecessarily, I'm saying like take the world that you have and find things to fill in the gaps a little bit and just like round out the experience a little bit in a way.
SPEAKER_00Probably a couple new enemies, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Like take what's there and um and expand upon it versus like throwing things in from left field and saying, like, oh well we you know it's a remake, so we're just we're doing some random shit, you know. Like I I definitely think that they should, like, and I think that's one thing that remake did for Final Fantasy 7 did a in a really great way. It's like I I even think that they may have done overdone it a little bit in a way, like because there's there's just so much like side shit to do in Final Fantasy 7, to the to the degree where it's almost like it almost gets in the way. Um because they they sort of force you to do all the side stuff before you can like move on. And so it ends up being like, yeah, there's like 50 hours of just like side content that you don't even like have to technically do, except you do have to do it because you can't go forward in the story until you complete it. So I don't know, it's that's good news for Final Seven.
SPEAKER_00Final Fantasy VII remake is the game. It I started it the first chapter, I got a good point through it, but it's also the game a game that taught me, you know, Jelani, your obsession with doing every side quest in a game you play. You're this game is going to break your soul if you if you do that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's a really hyping it.
SPEAKER_03So you guys are really hyping it up for me because I want to play it.
SPEAKER_02I mean, hey, it's really good. Like especially once once you get to um not remake, but the next one after that, rebirth. Rebirth is just a phenom phenomenal game. Just just so so so good. Um I know there's a lot of haters out there who say like the the things that they do that to the story like are stupid or whatever, but I'm a fan. I like it, it's fun. You know, I think you can't just keep it to the the original story because if you do like you're gonna be done with the game in a few hours.
SPEAKER_00And everybody knows the original story.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_00Like even if you haven't played the game, I haven't played the game. What's it called? You know the original story because it is so ubiquitous within gaming culture.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Well, it's like hard cooked into like a nerd culture at this point.
SPEAKER_03If you like Final Fantasy VII, uh Jeff Keeley made a final announcement during Summer Game Fest about opening ceremony. No, sorry. He revealed the new Final Fantasy VII, the final part, which made up for the abysmal reveal at the video game of World Flash. Um Keely was here and he went down this way, right, after Highgard, and now he's kind of just right here now. He's like right in between now.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I feel like if he just kept his mouth shut at that time, I feel like that game might have survived.
SPEAKER_03Um about if that game should never have existed existed at all.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, fair. It shouldn't have. It was like f it was like five to ten two years too late for what it was. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03I don't know. The hype that he brought during that trailer was like the only hype it would have ever gotten in its life. Well, I was like, should we check on Keely? Is he going fucking manic? Like, should we just like check on it real quick?
SPEAKER_02It almost gave him anti-hype though, but like because uh he even mentioned it though, I felt like everyone jumped on it and hated it.
SPEAKER_03Like Yeah, but that's what I'm saying. He hyped it. And everyone was like, I don't want this. Why are you so excited for it? And then it came out, and they were like, fuck. I really don't want this.
SPEAKER_00Like, this doesn't look fun. What are you doing? It came out, and like, oh, if you guys did it right, it wouldn't be fun. You guys didn't even do it right. What's going on here?
SPEAKER_03I will say, um, Summer Game Fest also um came out with a uh little hype trailer for a game that is heavily inspired by a game a lot of gamers have been looking for um recently. Um we all love Titanfall 2, right?
SPEAKER_00Yo, that looks so weird.
SPEAKER_03So the hype the Titanfall II game inspired. From the developers of Splitgate. It's coming out in like two weeks.
SPEAKER_00What's the name of the game? Empulse.
SPEAKER_03Again. Empulse. E Impulse. Um, it is a wall running grapple mech 6v6 shooter. That's coming out on the 24th, I think. Yeah, 24th. It's good. Heavily inspired from Titanfall.
SPEAKER_02So I wish all the luck in the world. We uh we know we need some shooters that are innovating and trying new things out there for sure.
SPEAKER_03Well, to keep the people happy, they're like, you know what? People like Titanfall 2. Let's go ahead and just make our own version of it.
SPEAKER_00People been I mean, people have been asking for it forever.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00People have been begging, like, to the point where people are legit. There have been people I know who have sworn who have sworn they will never play Apex Lessons because it took away Titanfall.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah. That is a big concern.
SPEAKER_02I mean, I basically treat it I I kind of treat it like Titanfall 3, but I know it's not, but still.
SPEAKER_00It st thematically and story-wise it is, but like it isn't the Titanfall 3 people more. And at this point, let at this point I feel like a lot of people have gotten to the point where like, you know what? I am more than willing to separate Titanfall from the story if I g like if I get my Titanfall back. I will I will fall in love with a whole new setting and story just to get my gameplay back. Yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_02Because I mean it was just so unique and fun and fast and action-packed. Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_03Um that wraps up my good. It does look fun. Well, I'll play it.
SPEAKER_00Um I might actually give it a shot. Because it looks like it has actual, like, decent weapon customization, which is something I've always fucking complained about in Titan in Titanfall. Needing to be really like weapons and stuff. It it had a closer system to what was Ubisoft's game that came out? X Define. X Defiant. I don't know if you remember the gun customization in that.
SPEAKER_03Scope silencers.
SPEAKER_02I remember after playing it, but yeah, I have to remember it just being like sights and silencers and stuff.
SPEAKER_00Mm-hmm. I am I am a real fan of like being let I like I really like the way Call of Duty and Battlefield do their weapons. I like that level of customization.
SPEAKER_02I agree. I um I haven't done a ton of it in like uh Call of Duty just because I haven't played Call of Duty a lot in at least in Warzone lately, but like Battlefield, absolutely I agree.
SPEAKER_00Mm-hmm. And it's not uh and as someone who has friends who like guns, is like, no, but like these are things you can actually do with guns. I understand why gun people like Call of Duty so much.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Like the whole desk thing where you show like the weapon on the desk and it shows them like you know, moving everything around. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yes. My father-in-law ha it was like that. Got this soul.
SPEAKER_02I think uh last Last of Us had some pretty nice kind of like weapon customization stuff. It would show you like it would show the character like literally like making the customization to the gun in the moment. That's dope. It was cool.
SPEAKER_03It is cool. Because it still exists. It's cool. It's cool.
SPEAKER_00Johnny, what do you got for us?
SPEAKER_03Uh I will say. Hold on a second here.
SPEAKER_00It's not really news. It's more just uh it's more just uh, hey, welcome back to Cool Cats Podcast. Here is an update on where I'm feeling about tech since you've last heard from me, heard me rant about tech.
SPEAKER_03Alright, ramble away. We're at two hours, but let's ramble. Yeah, what you got?
SPEAKER_04Hit us.
SPEAKER_00Alright, so we're gonna start off with the what's it called? Demon in the back of the closet, fucking AI.
SPEAKER_03Boo. Boo.
SPEAKER_00So anybody who's familiar with the show can like absolutely guess where I stand on us on AI. And like that's clear and present. I do want to touch on the fact, like, real quick, real quick. Like, there's two pieces of news that bring me genuine joy on the topic. A, how many of these data center projects have been cancelled dribble aid? Fuck yeah. It's been a massive problem. And I love the fact that a lot of this pushback has been local.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And it's like across the board, it doesn't matter whether it's red or blue, the nobody wants these things in their neighborhood. They chew through your water, they raised your electrical bills, and even the water they don't chew through, they destroy the quality of it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And that's not to mention the fact that they make a sound. A very noticeable droning sound. Due to like the humming. You have to you have to think about how much power is being generated, how much electricity is running, how much cooling product, and blah blah blah. They they are loud. So the fact that when you're getting so much small town local, what's it called, pushback on it, to the point where like I heard a story where a local official decided to push through a data center, despite the fact that like everybody in his what's it called, district hated it. They shot up his house and then like I think left burning shit or something like that.
SPEAKER_02Oh yeah. I mean, hey, you deliberately fuck over your community, that's what's gonna happen.
SPEAKER_00Sorry to say it, but I hate to be that guy and the it uh oh Cameron, these are the things that are gonna get us put in a list because I won't stop saying this. We as human beings need, like as Americans, need to remind the upper class why we have unions. Because unions were the what's it called, were the compromise we came to as a society to stop us from dragging the capitalists out of their house and killing them in the streets in front of their families. That is why we have unions. We need to make them afraid of their constituents. It needs to be a matter of, hey, we elected you. Either you represent us, or you will never feel safe walking around in the community you claim to represent.
SPEAKER_02For real. Like it it it that's why it gets so frustrating seeing like all these things happening at like the local level where just like they they literally think that they can just step on the community, do whatever they want, bulldoze whatever they want, bring it through, and then there's just gonna be no repercussions. And it's like neat. Yeah, like someone might not jump you or whatever. But yeah, but like like never be back in politics or whatever, like leadership role ever again. They should never be able to pick up any sort of office ever again.
SPEAKER_00Like, I'm excited for the fact that Steven Miller lives on a military base.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00Because he cannot leave. I want I want people to realize, especially these local politicians, that you don't have the pull Stephen Miller does. He can piss off the entire nation and then hide in a military base. You the mayor, the fucking what's it called? You the mayor, the elderman, the local representative, the guy on the city council, you'll have a military base to hide on.
SPEAKER_02Commissioners and shit, yeah.
SPEAKER_00No. And you know what? You're crooked ass cops, it doesn't matter what community you're in. The crooked ass cops, there's more of us than them niggas. And remember, this is fucking America. So you're crooked ass cops, they might have a bear cat, but you piss off the wrong neighbor, that guy has an AR-10.
SPEAKER_03Yep.
SPEAKER_00You won't make it into the bear cat. Yeah, there was a we need to get back to the point where you where the thing that kept our politicians and representatives, what's it called, doing their job was the fear of not doing their job.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Of the people.
SPEAKER_03I should hi.
SPEAKER_02They're saying hi. She says hi.
SPEAKER_00And it all circles back to like my favorite thing, another thing, other than the fact that the data centers are being delayed or canceled, is on the flip side. I don't know if you guys have heard this, but a lot of the AI companies have switched their enterprise customers over to token-based billing. What that means is now they are being actually charged. They're actually being charged for their AI use. Up until now, especially like Anthropic and OpenAI have been heavily subsidizing what's it called, especially corporate users to get them in the door, to get them addicted. And using these massive funding rounds they keep doing that you keep hearing about, where they raise billions and billions of dollars from private investors like Microsoft, Google, Blahity, blah, blah, blah. A lot of that isn't just going into infrastructure infrastructure. As a matter of fact, a lot of a lot of it isn't even going into infrastructure, as based by the way the deals keep flip-flopping between NVIDIA and these companies and the RAM manufacturers. Oh, we promised to invest this much money, but we're not actually gonna invest that much money and blah deep. It's like, oh, we put in a request for 78% of all RAM, but we didn't actually but put in the order, blah day, blah blah blah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Now they are actually having the now that they're wanting to go IPO, go public, they actually have to start billing their clients, and the clients are seeing the sticker shock, and that's really nice. Because up until now they thought, oh, this is a great way to save money on headcount. We can start firing people. Now that you're actually paying the cost for the service that you're using, you are realizing not only is it a buggy fucking mess that makes mistakes and that you have to babysit it fucking constantly, now that you're paying the full cost, it might be looking like to a lot of these dumbass motherfucking niggas that hey, paying a salary isn't that goddamn expensive.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Cause you know what? AI is fucking expensive. It costs a lot to do.
SPEAKER_02And not only just to do, but also to pay for the mistakes that it makes. Cause like that was another thing, like, where companies were like laying off their entire workforce thinking that AI could take over, and then lo and bug and behold, AI fucks up.
SPEAKER_00And you have to hire back half those people so they can check the fucking code.
SPEAKER_03No, the fucking stubborn CEO will do exactly that. Fire everyone that matters is doing jobs that he doesn't want to fucking do. And then when he realizes, fuck, this isn't doing exactly what I needed to do, and then when he goes to hire back somebody, it's they're like, fuck you. I've already done this shit. Go eat a bag of dicks.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I mean, that's what my like attitude about it. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_03The amount of people that's I will say before we go, the amount of people that on a daily basis, Jelani and I in our line of work, have to cater to this AI fucking mentality. Like, oh, I don't need for fucking real. I don't need a secretary to make my calendar invites and send them out to my clients. I'll have the AI fucking do it. Then they come back and go, oh wait, I don't know how to even do this, and it's inefficient as fuck. And then no one's like, no one wants to fucking work for this guy, or the hire out of country, which is fucking a whole nother issue.
SPEAKER_02Like you can have your AI your assistant use AI. Yes.
SPEAKER_03No, though they're whole ass replace the assistant.
SPEAKER_02That's what I'm saying. But but what yeah, but like instead of doing that, what they should do is like have the person utilize AI in such a way, make the job about making sure that the AI is being used right. Right, but but that person still has a job. Like something that they need to do and check on, and you know, how often do CEOs think that way, though?
SPEAKER_03You know what I mean? Exactly. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00No, they're taught from like business school. Short-term returns are what okay. Look, look, look, herein lies the thing. A lot of these CEO CEOs have MBAs. MBAs are degrees. You get it, you go to a school, you get a degree because it's teaching you to be successful. What the what makes a being a successful business person, being a successful MBA does not necessarily mean leading a company to success.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00To long-term success. Modern CEOs are trained, you need to make short-term gains, short-term gains, short-term gains to until you are ready to drop out so that they pay you your golden parachute. You get out. It doesn't matter if the company falls to shit, but immediately as you get out. You got out, you got your money, you're a success.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, as long as you got your golden goose egg. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. But I don't want to stop here. I don't want to stop here. If you want more on AI, I heavily recommend the better offline podcast with Z Ed Zitron. A very informative podcast. I I hope all of our listeners, even if you just get a taste of us and you're like, eh, I'm not a huge fan, please give him a listen. He will actually teach you something. But I am going to move on to something that I do know that I am an expert on, and that's the fact that, like, part and parcel to this AI thing, and we touched on it with all the like they are making orders for parts and like components that are in they're legitimately talking about ordering like large portions of the world market share of certain components. Jesus. They're eating the world's RAM capacity.
SPEAKER_03Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_00We cannot get GPUs at a reasonable price because most of the silicon is going towards enterprise level products.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Like storage. Like spinning disc storage saw a price spike recently. I want I want you guys to understand that in 2026 we had a price spike on spinning disc storage.
SPEAKER_02And that's so antiquated at this point.
SPEAKER_00Yes.
SPEAKER_02But we're having to get back to it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. The fact look, look. The P the PlayStation 5 is $900. The PlayStation 5 Pro is $900. The Pro version is $900. Valve brought out that Steambox thing that they were touting. It was originally going to be like hopefully a cost-effective alternative to keep people PC gaming as well. Now that is gonna be north of a band.
SPEAKER_03Yep.
SPEAKER_00That's gonna be well that's probably gonna be over a thousand dollars because of price. What we are looking at is like this is a legitimate problem within the gaming sphere. If we continue to see hardware prices spike, that will limit the consumer base for triple A games. Because you cannot buy a triple A, you cannot play a triple A game if you do not have a console or you cannot afford a computer strong enough to what's it called?
SPEAKER_04Right.
SPEAKER_00And if you start whittling down the consumer base for your triple A games, that starts spiking the price for games. Because what's it called? Supply and demand type shit. That even further limits your what's it called, your consumer base, to the point where like only the rich, only the ultra-rich can afford consoles, and then only they will be able to afford Call of Duty whatever whatever the fuck. Because we're in 20 now. The reason we don't they give don't give numbers to Call of Duty anymore, kids, is because Call of Duty 4 was almost 30 years ago.
SPEAKER_02Call of Duty 4, I think, is getting out of the way.
SPEAKER_00Actual COD 4 was almost 30 years ago, kids. I think it's 20 something years, 20 years now. That is why you don't get actual numbers on your Call of Duty anymore, because it it sounds weird as fuck. Because I think we're on Call of Duty 20.
SPEAKER_03Yep.
SPEAKER_00Either way 2007. Yeah. Thank you. Fuck it's been actually 20 years.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it's been a while. I remember playing. Oh fuck. Oh, yeah. Oh fuck. To pop on pop on to that as well. It's like you're already seeing you're talking about the triple A games being what they are, and and you're looking at like Red Thrift Auto, big example. How many times have we delayed that shit just because they they have to justify the quality of game that's coming out because they're gonna ask for a ton of money for you to play it.
SPEAKER_00They're gonna ask for $80 to $100 space.
SPEAKER_03And then you're seeing with I I just read the other day, I didn't include in the notes, but you're seeing AAA studios like Ubisoft cutting certain teams because you know they're putting yeah, you can't afford the people that are working because the people aren't buying games that you are putting massive amount of money into.
SPEAKER_00And it's not even a lot of the time because the games are bad. We've seen bad games sell hockey because they were interested. It's because people can't afford to buy mid or bad. They can't afford to experiment on these mid-ass experiments. People can only afford to buy something they can guarantee that they will enjoy.
SPEAKER_02It's almost like when we were yeah, good, good. I was just gonna say the Switch 2 just came out with its own. Like, I think it was like the second game now that is like a base flat rate of $80, like $79.99. Like the second one now that they have. So yeah, it's definitely like going up.
SPEAKER_03We're almost at like the the same um video gaming um environment that we had when we were kids. Remember when we were kids, you didn't have disposable income like you do now. Um whatever, you know, whatever you have. So you would get a game Christmas time, maybe your birthday, and then you played that game exclusively pretty much for like a whole entire year until you were able to afford or get the new one at the next holiday or whatever have you. We're almost at the point where that might be but the problem with that is right, but everybody's functioning adults with jobs now. Pumping out, yeah, but everyone's pumping out the these games that they're trying to just say, oh, this will be $90, but you're gonna have only 60 hours worth of gaming to do. No one no one's gonna do that.
SPEAKER_00It's going to keep it. My fear is that we already see Ubisoft having financial issues. They cannot, they cannot do what they've been doing. Putting out these massive the Ubisoft formula, put out a massive open world, what's it called? Throw throw a theme on it that people are interested in and keep it trucking. This one's Assassin's Creed themed. We're gonna throw it in, what's it called? We're gonna throw it in Japan. Oh, Far Cry, this is the guns open world. We're gonna throw that on this abandoned island on this. But what are we doing different? Oh, we'll throw in different guns and different attachments, but it's it it's it's Far Cry, it's what people it's what the people want. Yeah, but it they it's not working anymore.
SPEAKER_02No. Well, I think they would need to like ultimately what it comes down to because like if you look at Calcom, for example, Calcom, I think, is the one company that is a good example right now of making successful games that are fun, that aren't like overloaded with microtransactions. They're just good games, and that's like the Resident Evil series is crushing it right now because they like I think they got to Resident Evil 6 and it fucking sucked and they realized like, hey, if we don't start making good games again, we're gonna stop being able to make good games in general. And so like now they're making they've got Resident Evil 7, 8, uh I think even nine just recently came out, right? Like recently, so like And like that's not even the only thing that Capcom's doing right now. And so Cavcom is consistently, like for several different IPs right now, making good like stellar games. And I think that's what Ubisoft needs to take the hint on, is because I can't think of the last time that an Ubisoft game came out that a bunch of people were being like, oh my god, this is a crazy good game. I can't like I literally can't think of a single like I mean the X Defiant I guess was fun for a little bit, but like it wasn't enough on its own to you know obviously take that. I mean, I think they even shut down the studio that was working on it. I'm pretty sure it's like not even a game anymore.
SPEAKER_03I think like the Division was like the like last really good IP that they kind of came out with. And then they made a second one and it they didn't learn from the first one and they kind of fucked it, and then it was just like a downfall from there because then they really put their eggs in a basket with fucking skull and bones. Yeah. And that shit is fucking hot garbage.
SPEAKER_00Well I want to circle back to like the problem is like Copcom is going to suffer for the hardware crisis because of we might not be able they might not be able to justify the next awesome experience because the install base has gotten so low. I'm worried about the Capcoms and the Bandai Namcos. Because they are doing cool things, they are employing great people, but they also rely on today on like you know a somewhat healthy gaming economy.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_00We are we are heading to a point, like rapidly, due to the affordability of just life in general, we're heading to a video game crash. We're heading towards a crash. Because people aren't buying new hardware, so the hardware market is going to crack like a fucking, what's it called, like a glass ball. Once the hardware market goes to shit, what's it called? All of the game devs will either be forced to learn to optimize their shit so that it can run on old hardware, or they're going the what's it called, sync like fucking, what's it called, rocks. Because once again, even if you price up the hardware, even if you price up the hardware and like do the supply and demand, you got fifteen hundred dollar, two thousand dollar PlayStation 9s, and the next Call of Duty is two hundred is two hundred dollars. At that point, you will not be sustainable because you will not be that Call of Duty will not have full lobbies. It will not be fun because you will not be able to maintain the install base. Sure, it'll be beautiful, it'll use the latest and greatest hardware and blah de blah blah blah, but niggas won't give a fuck because they don't got it at home. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I can imagine like Jim Bob, who does his fifty hours a week doing construction, comes home and plays that Call of Duty uh after the kids are done sleeping. He's not gonna be able to afford it because he's got his four kids to feed and his bum ass wife. Or whatever. I'm just making up Sonaria at this point. What? She's a bum, she doesn't work. His bum ass wife.
SPEAKER_02Get out of there. Look, look, we love women on this podcast, just so you know. Thank you. I'm still single, remember that?
SPEAKER_00Look, look, all I'm trying to say is remember everyone, the single guy said it, and we will we will have discussions with him after recording.
SPEAKER_03Nah. You know how I stand, you know where I stand. But you know what I'm saying, though? Like the people who are playing these games and were buying these games, yes, other than me, are the hardworking class people who are already paying too much for groceries, gas, whatever, at this point, and now they can't even now they can't even play their fucking Call of Duty anymore.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's kind of right. Like Call of Duty's Call of Duty's kind of like bread and butter is Loki kind of almost well, I've been in the public lodge recently. It's the same as Donald Trump. They have the same, what's it called? They'll have the same they have the same like what's it called, main audience. And that's also kind of like part of the thing that's hurting Trump is that his core he is hurting his core audience. It's the affordability.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, for sure.
SPEAKER_00It's the affordable it's not gonna be it's not gonna be the genocide, it's not going to be the fact that we are legitimately opening concentration grants for brown people in this country. It's going to be the affordability. Just like for gaming, it's not going to be the really shitty office politics that they keep having scandals for. That's what affects them. Yeah, it's not gonna be the what's it called. It's not going to be the fucking culture war shit. It's gonna be the money.
SPEAKER_02Mm-hmm. Yep. I mean that yeah, I super agree with you on that. Like, cause they don't care about anything until they can't afford their own stuff.
SPEAKER_00Exactly.
SPEAKER_02I didn't see anybody start complaining about anything until they couldn't afford things. Like you literally see it like all over. I mean, I'm not on Twitter anymore myself, but like that um like there's like subreddits and stuff like that that show like people complaining on like Reddit or uh on Twitter and Facebook and stuff like that. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Mr. President, I voted for you three freaking times, and still I can't go down to the stamp shop and get some stamps for a regular price. I can't do it.
SPEAKER_02And they get all mad about it, and then it's I don't know. It's like that's happy inside to see them struggling, but you know, that's just me.
SPEAKER_00That is but that's the core audience of a lot of these games. We're getting to the point where they can't afford not much less the software, the hardware to play it on.
SPEAKER_02Right. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00It's we are co if the gaming industry goes like this, we are gonna see uh we're gonna see a collapse in on itself. It's going to be great to watch because I especially for gentlemen like yourself who like really, really love exploring the indie game space and finding new and exciting things. I am worried because I'm a bit of a sheep. I I will admit that I'm a bit of a sheep. I like the forces, I like the Call of Duty's, I like the Borderlands, I like those AAA games. I like I am worried about that because I like I I like this basic ass, spend a lot of money, make a real big boom back. I like that shit. And the fact that like that that's going to the wayside, and now I'm gonna have to have actually have to think when I play games is very upsetting to me, and I'm really upset that the billionaires are taking away my triple A games like this.
SPEAKER_02I mean, well, I don't even know if it's gonna be like the triple A games, because like the triple A games I feel like are the ones that make the money, because those are the ones that people keep coming back to, they keep spending money on, they're spending.
SPEAKER_00Triple A games aren't what's it called? Are not it's not the car industry. Trump will let it die. Anybody would let it die. We've had a crash before. And our crash gave us our crash gave us a lot of the big players the prior crash gave us a lot of the big players we have now because they survived it.
SPEAKER_03Yep.
SPEAKER_02Uh yeah, that makes sense.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, you don't see a lot of uh Atari anymore.
SPEAKER_00Back then EA was a small upstart. Squaresoft?
SPEAKER_02Squaresoft. I should probably call it quits somewhat soon.
SPEAKER_00Oh, we're just doing I'm closing out on you guys aren't mad enough. You need to be madder. Just you need to be the world, not us. Incredibly enraged.
SPEAKER_03Not us. The world. Oh, the world.
SPEAKER_00Like you at some point, like, everyone listening to this needs to have like a little angry Caribbean inside them that is aware of how they are not only fucking you in like your day-to-day life, the way capitalism is destroying our mental health with this 40-hour work week, it's in those small hours where we are trying to get away and like relax. They are their dick is in that time too. Yeah, and you need to be mad about it. But on that note, I need to calm down, please, Connor. Please give me some steamy steam reviews. Hell yeah. I need to go to a happy place.
SPEAKER_03My one thing that I look forward to every podcast. Um, I have royally fucked my Steam recommended section due to this podcast.
SPEAKER_02We got ourselves a cat behind.
SPEAKER_03Athena's behind us?
SPEAKER_02No, that's Fran.
SPEAKER_03Or sorry, Fran. I am so sorry. You knew what I meant. Francesca. I didn't, actually. Okay, cool. Well, you have an Athena, don't even lie. Um, sorry, let me let me do this proper. It's time for the steamy Steam reviews. Okay. Anyways, I have royally goofed uh my Steam recommended section looking for adult content in the game. Yeah, it very much recommends. It's been tainted for years. Yeah, it's really bad. Your algorithm is screwed. Oops. It's okay. Um It's worth it. I'm pulling up them now. I did this last night around 12 a.m. So not too many uh good reviews on the newer uh uh uh Steamy games because apparently there's been some quality ones. Uh not my opinion. You know me, I don't I don't play his crap. He doesn't jerk off to these. Um let's see here. Not to these games.
SPEAKER_02Not to these games. I need a more intense experience.
SPEAKER_03First on the list, we got giant waifu wash simulator. Someone has capitalized on the power washing simulator uh craze.
SPEAKER_01Wait, you're power washing her with like a pressure wash?
SPEAKER_03Yep, so if you so choose to pull up this game. Be careful. No, I'm good. I'm okay. Yeah, be careful.
SPEAKER_02Sure.
SPEAKER_03I I don't uh this is a clean the city, serve a giant superstar, and shape your relationship in this relaxing power watching simulator set in a vibrant resort town. No pressure, just sat satisfying gameplay and choices that matter. Uh we're sitting at mostly positive. Oh good. Which is good. Um my favorite reviews are negative reviews, which is really funny. Okay. He posts five minutes of booba plus eighty minutes of boring low effort slop. Nothing exciting, not even worth a semi. Also, the cat sounds nearly drove me insane. Very disappointed. One thing I reflected on this on this review is the cat cat sounds. Who's making them?
SPEAKER_02Someone acted it for sure. That's a voice actor.
SPEAKER_03No, but I'm like, how is that part of the game? Are you pressure watching a cat? That doesn't sound ideal.
SPEAKER_02Um maybe maybe the cat is like a cashier or something.
SPEAKER_03I was thinking this is a play on words. Cat could mean pussy.
SPEAKER_02That'll do it. So they're saying the pussy sounds are weird? That's what I'm getting at. That's what they're saying is to probably the pussy sounds are weird in this game. I don't know what else is.
SPEAKER_03I wish they just straight up said that.
SPEAKER_02I wish he had it too, because that's funnier in my pussy sounds is the same really weird.
SPEAKER_03Actually, someone uh clarified it in another uh review here.
SPEAKER_02Did they say the pussy sounds were weird?
SPEAKER_03To be honest, game pretty average, and I could put recommend anyway, but one optimism uh optimism pour sometimes. And then two, that purring human cats. So there are human cats that are purring.
SPEAKER_02So maybe that's the the sound that someone was talking. Okay.
SPEAKER_03I like to think a vagina. Right. Um that's beautiful. I wish it was a human. Uh I don't get it. Anyways, I'm gonna end this one out with uh this game, sorry.
SPEAKER_02Um I guess we could just play the game.
SPEAKER_03Positive, no thank you.
SPEAKER_00That is absolutely a Patreon thing. Yeah, I'm gonna get banned. That is absolutely a Patreon thing.
SPEAKER_02Patreon only. You had to pay us to do it, sorry.
SPEAKER_03Um the last review for this game, positive. And as I quote, and I don't even clean my house at all.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_03Sure. Solid review. Alright, second game. This one's for the fetish people out there. Oh that last one was not. No, this is more No, that's pretty tame. This is more of a niche one. This one's called Fantasio. Um This one's actually from last year, but I just found it. Uh Synopsis. Win or be trampled. And Fantasio Fand or Fem FemDom Action RPG. As a novice adventurer ensnared by an alluring elf Mittress, navigate a treacherous quest filled with sex-crazed monster girls, thrilling combat, and a web of hidden schemes. Will you succumb to domination or rise to shape your fate?
SPEAKER_00Oh dear God.
SPEAKER_03I got one review for here. Boys create a second Steam account to play hentai games. Men play them on their main account with IRL friends and their friends list. Probably. Must buy if you're into fendom.
SPEAKER_02Sorry, I had to think.
SPEAKER_03You're good. One more.
SPEAKER_02You're fine. One more.
SPEAKER_03One more, we're gonna end it out. Pig Island.
SPEAKER_02Pig Island?
SPEAKER_03Pig Island. Oh god, oh god, here we go. Urban Explorer Kelly has to get an interview with the owner of the creepy house on Pig Island. But at first glance, it looks like nobody's home. Kelly is very determined though, and isn't going to just walk away. Not from a story like this. Too bad for her. Someone is waiting inside the house.
SPEAKER_02Dude, this sounds like a game that Queso would play.
SPEAKER_03He would be banned.
SPEAKER_02No, I'm just I mean, I'm just Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_03I know what you mean.
SPEAKER_02If like just in terms of the format and like the kind of spoopy, and it's like a you know female main character with like some sort of a stalker vibe, or like going into a place and there's like a creepy person kind of vibe. That's that's generally what he kind of plays. And I feel like that kind of just like fits right in there into that genre.
SPEAKER_03I will say that this one does have some pretty unique features um noted here. One being the love sense sex toys have support for this game.
SPEAKER_02Are you aware of those?
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_03So they're peripheral support. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So like a little thing that you can use.
SPEAKER_00You know how like you can use uh you can use a steering wheel in Forza?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it's just a steering wheel for your vagina.
SPEAKER_02Like playing video games? That's cool, I guess.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, like come on now.
SPEAKER_03Alright, I have two reviews.
SPEAKER_02This is where the games have been innovating over the last few years.
SPEAKER_03This is what matters to the gamers. Uh two reviews, and then we'll wrap it up here. Alright. I don't know what I just played, but I know what changed me. It's aggressively strange in a way that's should not exist. But I like it.
SPEAKER_02Hee hee. But I like it.
SPEAKER_03Wow. Yeah, the hee hee is what got me. And then to close it out. Close it out. After seeing that, I can't even blame anyone for going vegan. At the very least, I'll never look at a pork kebab the same way again.
SPEAKER_02Oh god, what did that pork kebab do?
SPEAKER_03I don't know. You have to pay.
SPEAKER_00I don't want to fucking know, Cameron. 449.
SPEAKER_03449 to find out what that's like.
SPEAKER_00I'm on what? My 35th rotation around the sun. I can go 50 more without knowing what happened to that corp pork kebab. I am with you. I gotta know. I'm gonna hit the I'm gonna hit the It's the pork for me.
SPEAKER_03Well, if you have any curiosities, Pig Island on Steam.
SPEAKER_02Well, I'm just gonna go get the game, the gamer facts got it. Yeah, the walkthrough. You get the walkthrough for Pig Island. See if I can check the walkthrough for the game.
SPEAKER_00Alright. I need to get all the steam. I need to get all the achievements.
SPEAKER_03There you go. Actually, uh, there are steam achievements.
SPEAKER_00Of course there are.
SPEAKER_03I just want to see what they are real quick. That's actually really funny. This one is just called She Hears Him Sniffing and Feels His Nose There.
SPEAKER_04Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Jelani. His name is Connor. The new guy is Cameron. It's been an absolute fucking pleasure being in your goddamn ears again, and we'll be back in two weeks. I am going to say we are the fuck out of here. Adi fucking host. Bye everybody.
SPEAKER_03Bye everybody.