punishedsurge

[punishedsurge]

SBFC 004: It Can't Have All Been For Nothing [9/3/13]

Woolie: How does one shit their pants in fury?

They introduce themselves:

Woolie: I’m Woolie.

Liam: I’m Liam.

Pat: I am Pat.

Matt: I’m Pat. No, wait— no—

They talk about their names, Pat doesn’t like Patrick because it makes him feel like a little boy, Matt like Matthew because it makes him feel like a man. Woolie mentions family calls him something different.

Pat: Oh, shitface?

Matt: Disappointment?

Liam: Accident?

Matt: You guys have the most fanfiction together.

Pat: You’d think you would have each other’s backs.

Woolie: Says the OTP.

[Neither of these pairing are canon anymore.]

Their weeks:

Matt and Pat have started playing Killler is Dead, they are liking it but are bummed that it’s falling victim to a new trend in gaming. Matt says that weird Japanese games are falling out of favor and replaced with ‘AMC/HBO’ show games that are more focused on eliciting emotions from players that talk about it to their friends and gamer peers. They quickly talk about Bayonetta 2, Woolie finds it painful to think of an empty gaming booth for the title, Matt and Pat explain that it wasn’t empty, just that the vibe wasn’t there anymore. They also rip on Ryse, saying no one was in line for it. Matt went to the movies with his lady and played Dark Escape 4D by Namco, also to see You’re Next, which he says os pretty good.

[This emotionally charged story games haven’t gone away but their popularity peaked at this point, people still enjoy them but they’re relegated to certain types of games, mostly games aping Last of Us, 3rd person action but with the addition of an open world.]

Pat played Saints Row 4, he loves how different it is from it’s former contemporaries like GTA, and better than it’s newer ones like Crackdown and Prototype. He hasn’t gotten far in it because he was running around and collecting the clusters needed to upgrade.

The group talks about its quality as a title, stating it’s incredible that a dlc idea came together to be a full game, saying the extra time to flesh it out really helped. Seeing the game as a definitive title for the superhero genre, they wonder where the IP will go. Matt mentions how Volition will be doing something completely different for their next game, they think that’ll be for the best. Woolie loves the idea of going all the way back to Saints Row 1 with a small scope, Matt adds to the idea that the Saints are fighting over a small amount of money. Pat says that’s Payback starring Mel Gibson.

Matt: Volition should have made the Deadpool game, that works have nailed it.

Liam: Volition is super underrated.

Pat: Well their rating goes down because they’ve made some shit before.

[The aforementioned ‘new game’ must have been Agents of Mayhem, a spinoff of Saints Row that was a critical failure. The Saints Row reboot was sort of close to what they thought it should do, but the writing absolutely did the game a disservice. I never played it. Hilariously, Volition shut down almost exactly 10 years after the publishing date of this episode.]

Liam has played SMT 4 and Telltale’s TWD on the Vita. He describes how it feels the first episode is worsened by having to be a tutorial, Pat reiterates this point. Woolie is hyped for the Wolf Among Us after liking TWD. Liam also watched an anime called ‘Sunday Without God’, Woolie says the title sounds like a Ryan Gosling movie. He describes it as a serious drama that is kneecapped by having a moé art style. Because of the religious themes of the show, they bring up Evangelion and ‘adding it to the pile’, which Liam says to throw it off the pile. Pat and Liam say they don’t like the ‘third movie’, Matt says Berserk has a good trilogy of movies.

[Everyone loved the Wolf Among Us from what I recall, I never played it. Good to know the Ryan Gosling meme was alive and well at this point even when questionable dead bird app pages weren’t spamming mp4s of it. The reputation of the newer Evangelion movies hasn’t seemed to improve amongst the original fans, I think Pat liked the very last one? Idk. Those Golden Age movies are the only good Berserk animation media, that Black swordsman show sure was something.]

Woolie played Jojo All Star Battle. He says it’s sloooooow, Pat speculates its so you can see all the iconic poses. Woolie says it’s not a a great fighting game, like the devs said, it’s a Jojo game. Pat and Woolie compare the game to Evil Zone, where the game gets worse the more you know about fighting games. All star Battle is great fan service, but a bad fighting game, is all they really say. Woolie played it with a group but after a while everyone got up and played the Capcom Jojo fighter.

[Pat and Woolie got flamed by the game’s fans for their video because they made statements that were completely untrue, I’m sure they’ll mention that in next week’s episode.]

News:

Rustlemania has ended, they all reminisce about pro wrestling and their favorite wrestlers and moments.

Woolie’s faves are Kane and Rey Mysterio.

Liam’s faves are Kane Rey Mysterio, and also John Cena.

Pat’s fave is Mick Foley.

Matt’s fave is Shawn Michaels and Undertaker.

John Cena: Hey kids, get 8 hours of drugs, drink your teeth, don’t do sleep.

Keiji Inafune appears on Kickstarter with a video for a new game, Mighty Number 9. They are all affected by the emotional tone of the video and really want this spiritual successor to Megaman.

[Might No. 9 turned out to suck and didn't honor stretch goals, namely the 3DS port. I’m just going to copy and paste this note for every episode they talk about it.]

Platinum Games’s Hideki Kamiya says he is not interested in being bought by Nintendo, but he doesn’t mind making exclusive games for Nintendo.

Matt: I think they’d work with anyone, as long as the lights stay on. “Satan? Sure!”

They joke this could save the Wii U, Liam mentions the rumor of a Platinum game exclusive to Xbox. They wonder if Bayo 1 will be ported to Wii U, Matt jests that Sega will port it and it’ll *totally* be a good port. Apparently Wonderful 101’s original art style was “Viewtiful Joe but darker,” according to Liam. Platinum evidently has plans for the 3DS, stating they want to make a Bayonetta game starring Jeanne and an Okami game for the handheld.

[The Platinum and Nintendo partnership has endured for a while now, Platinum has yet to be bought by anyone. As ‘working for Satan’ goes, they did make several licensed games that Activison published, Legend of Korra, Transformers, and TMNT. I only played Transformers Devastation, Soundwave’s theme kicks ass. Scalebound was canceled by Xbox after repeated delays and development difficulties, everyone blames Xbox unanimously but Platinum clearly has issues making games outside of the character-action genre; remember Babylon’s Fall? All 3 Bayo games are on Switch, I think Bayo 1 made it to the WiiU with new costumes. They have yet to make those spinoff games.]

2DS announced, Pat didn’t want to talk about it on the podcast. They don’t like the design of the product, but understand the market it’s for [Babies]. Liam wants it to come out in Japan so he can import it to play Japanese guys on it rather than buying another 3DS.

Woolie introduces the observation of the lack of world-shaking announcements in gaming. Bayonetta 2 kind of did it, Pat puts the ‘blame’ on the media cycle of gaming conventions and the like. They recount the LoZ Twilight Princess reveal, Woolie still gets tingles [lmao Tingle] when he watches it. Matt recites a quote:

Matt: When I saw some people in the crowd were crying, I knew video games were lame.

Pat was bummed he and Matt missed the live reveal of Megaman in Smash Bros., they found out through Neogaf posts. Liam says MGS5’s reveal could have been a huge one if it weren’t for other factors. They briefly recount refreshing the Smash Bros website for the announcements.

Matt: Now that it’s Megaman, I can’t think of anything else.

Woolie: They said ‘Megaman is special case. Please don’t expect other characters like this.’

Pat: Because it’s too nuts, you can’t beat Megaman.

Liam and Woolie: Simon Belmont.

[Simon and Richter Belmont both made it into Smash. Plenty of wild announcements came from Smash as well; Banjo&Kazooie, Minecraft Steve, Cloud and Sephiroth, and most impressive of all: Sora.]

Liam brings up Pokemon Origins, they’re excited for the prospect of it following the slightly more edgy tone of the manga (Red killing Brock’s Onyx, etc.) and the journey of a more competent protagonist. The hype carries over to the Pokken fight game.

Fight Game Time:

Third Strike sprites have been unearthed. They describe the some of the moves the characters had.

Mike Z has showed off Big Band in Skullgirls.

Woolie: I can’t wait for Skullguy.

Pat: He can’t win the tournament in canon, that would be weird.

[Not as weird as Mike Z, Pat.]

Capcom uploaded I Am Street Fighter, a documentary, on YouTube. They discuss the influence and popularity amongst gamers, especially the people making fighting games.

Pat: I’d buy an ass beating for a Q mask.

They get to talking about the Director of Cyber Connect studio, they then begin giving their woes gme about the studio’s game. Their main gripe is that their games are middling/bad fighting games, which is why they feel sour at the state of Jojo All Star. Matt calls all their games similar and barely justify their continuous releases, Liam gives them some grace by saying their Naruto games are getting better.

[Cyber Connect’s games haven’t exactly improved from these 2013 days in terms of overall gameplay, but their animations are incredible. They should really make 3D anime, that would be cool.]

Rest of the News:

Woolie: Avi Arad—

Matt: Fuck that guy.

Avi Arad has confirmed that movies for Uncharted, Mass Effect, and Metal Gear Solid. “They are coming along,” is evidently the quote. Pat talks about the leaks for the Uncharted script. They think the premse being set around a treasure hunting family is dumb and should just rip off Indiana Jones more directly, like the games have. Pat then says he wants Nolan North to play Nathan Drake, they made the character look like the actor in the third game, he says.

Pat then recounts the path of the Resident Evil movies, how he hated the original and then was forced to see the movie seres become a blockbuster success; he will die if that happens to MGS.

Woolie wants J.J Abrams to do the Mass Effect movie, stating he’ll figure it out. Liam ant the movie to have 3 different endings and have them all play in separate theaters so people can argue about it, like the Clue movie.

[Only Uncharted has come out of these 3 titles, MGS is close to being real, Mass Effect seems entirely dead. Everyone is sick of J.J Abrams nowadays, poor guy is like DJ Khaled, Struggling from Success.]

Matt Watch:

He and Pat did a radio interview on a show called FunkySway (FunkySwae?) 1690.

[I cannot find this interview anywhere. It was a college campus radio show, so who knows where you can find it?]

Letter time, letter time:

"Hey guys, which video game base has gotten the harshest fucking in the past couple of year?"

Pat: Devil May Cry

Matt: Megaman

Liam: Megaman

Woolie: Megaman

Pat: Yakuza (in the west)

“Could you guys clarify how you feel about Mirror’s Edge 2?”

The concerns come for the on-and-off teases of the game as well as cancellations. There is also apprehension on the combat shown off in the trailers, there seems to be a lot more of an emphasis on it.

I’m cutting the recap off here, too much talking.

See you for the next week recap.

[punishedsurge]

SBFC 003: My Snake Have Started to Move

Woolie sets up the website, it dies right away and he stays up all night trying to buy better servers and make sure the shit works.

Audible is the first ever sponsor, Woolie says it’s a product he uses and is comfortable advertising. He goes on to list Opie and Anthony as a favorite radio show on the service, he mentions they have Louis C.K interviews on their show. Some comic called Woolie Shitlocks.

[Anthony Cumia got kicked off the show with his name in the title because of racist tirades on Twitter dot com. Louis C.K was cancelled for jerking off in front of people, maybe DON’T do that?]

As Matt cleaned his snake’s tank it escaped the temporary enclosure, he calls out to the silent predator, its name is Jack. “My snake have started to move.”

Pat: Woolie, who are you?

Woolie: A black person.

They make it a point to introduce themselves so the listener knows who is who, and realize they didn’t do it last week.

Woolie: I’m gonna let everyone in on a little secret: Woolie isn’t a nickname.

Pat: That’s not a secret. Are you going to let people know the real secret? As to—

Woolie: NOOO. YOU SHUT THE FUCK UP.

[A mystery we still don’t know, probably.]

They talk about where the podcast is available. [You could listen to them on the Zune, what a fuckin’ throwback.]

On to their weeks:

Liam played Dragon’s Crown. He also watched episode 1 of RWBY, he says the action is good but the characters are shallow and tropey, the rest of the writing doesn’t fare better. He doesn’t think he’ll keep watching it. 6/20 review score.

[RWBY is fairly popular, I only see rule 34 in my feed on the rare occasion.]

Matt has been working on Rustlemania and playing Divekick, is hyped for Killer is Dead. His birthday is today (the day the podcast publishes, they record the day before) so his birthday is coming up.

Pat has an aside. He played Saints Row 4 on pc and tried to fix a texture issue, he ended up having the entire rig shit on itself and then just played Divekick on every other console he has. Dork girl beats his ass with Kenny in every match she picks him. He tried to play FF14 but it was broken so he was unable to, Woolie jokes it’s because of its massive popularity.

Woolie has been mourning his recently bought, pre-owned launch PS3 that was also repaired. The group talks about how many 360 consoles they have burned through; Woolie went through 3, Pat through 4, Liam broke 1 at work, Matt went through 5 at work and only 1 personal console. Woolie laments the issue with getting his saves off the console because apparently PS doesn’t automatically back up your saves digitally? Finally he looked up the podcast’s performance, Ep 002 hit #15 the day it came out.

Gamescom time:

They start with the Xbox showcase, or the lack of anything. They laugh at Fighter Within, Liam calls it flail simulator, Woolie calls it QWOP for Kinect. Matt wants to get a copy of Fighter Uncaged and compare the two games jokingly, he then says the game’s screenshots look nice, like it would be a game he’d play if it were an actual fighting game.

PS4 talk begins with talking about how ugly the red and blue Dualshock controllers are, Pat blames it on the ugly PS4 controller. They agree it’s way more comfortable than the PS3, Pat says it’s 1% better than the 360 pad, “Completely negligible,” he states. Pat feels the Xbone controller is worse and feels bulkier, doesn’t care for the ‘Impulse Triggers’, or rumble in general.

They lust for the White Xbox One, which was ultra limited at the beginning of the console cycle. They spiral down conversations about wanting specific color consoles and cobbling their limited run handhelds together to keep them for longer.

The rest of the news:

Wonderful 101 was meant to be a Nintendo crossover game, similar to Smash Bros. They discuss which weapons would correlate to which character, then Liam says, “Yo, a Captain Falcon character action racing game by Platinum!” Pat and Woolie pog. Pat believes there will a Star Fox-like level in Wonderful 101 that just barely skirts the line of being Star Fox, based on Kamiya’s constant talks about the IP.

[Platinum Games made a Star Fox game in 2016, I think people liked it.]

Matt brings up the issue with potentially making 101 a crossover game, claiming people would complain Nintendo is not making new IPs, but then voices that people are already complaining it’s not a crossover game. “Damned if you do, damned if you don’t,” he aptly says.

Pat: The problem is that new IPs are great, but crossovers are rarer than new IPs.

[AYYY LMAOOOO THIS ONE TRULY AGED LIKE SHIT. Sasuke, Doom Guy and Ariana Grande squadded up about to hit 2013 Pat like a fucking Mack truck.]

Rare is ‘kicking around ideas for their IPs’. They lament the state of the studio. Matt states ex-employees said they had dozens of game ideas and Xbox shot them all down because they didn’t include Kinect integration. Woolie and Matt mock Banjo Kazooie Nuts and Bolts. Pat doesn’t care about the upcoming Killer Instinct reboot, but says he’d care more if Rare was working on it.

[Rare has put out Rare Replay and Sea of Thieves, they worked with the devs who made KI and the newest Battletoads, and Everwild has yet to be a real game. Not a great record, but hey Banjo and Kazooie got into Smash Bros, that’s something I guess. Also Nuts and Bolts walked so TOTK could run. The validity of the last statement is irrelevant because I have played neither.]

This section is dubbed “SNK get your shit together” by Liam. Evidently there are 4 games called KOF Online, this most recent one is a MOBA. They joke about other kinds of weird spinoff games the series could be, RTS, etc. Woolie proposes Metal Slug as a Maple Story type of game.

Blizzard is not opposed to making World of Warcraft free-to-play. Pat claims they’re on the way to it, based on the decline of players in the game. He also mentions cosmetic packs that players can buy have been very successful. Liam asks their guesses for FTP, Pat says in 2016, Woolie mentions ‘Titan’ is delayed until 2016 so he guesses 2015, Matt agrees with someone, Liam says 8 months.

[WoW has maintained ‘free up to level 20’, which was started in 2011 from what I can see, so they’re all wrong. We can all blame WoW whales for the microtransactions hellscape being normalized, fuck you MMO dorks. Titan, a new MMO, was delayed in 2013 but was actually cancelled internally, a small team of 40 (from 140) were tasked with making a new game. They made Overwatch.]

Woolie doesn’t care about the FTP date because the farthest things on his ‘list’ are SF5 and the Mars Mission in 2023, where we’ll be sending humans up to the red planet to colonize.

[Lmao that Mars shit ain’t happening bud, grab a brewski and enjoy the end of the world if you can see through the smoke. Street Fighter 5 released on 2/16/2016, so he didn’t have to wait too long.]

FFXIV relaunched and people are turning around on the game, the problem is the server are entirely busted. [They go into a viewer question that asks which MMOs the boys played, it’s not interesting enough to reiterate here. But Pat did say this:]

Pat: Phantasy Star Online isn’t an MMO. PSO2 is, but you’re never going to get it, shut up.

[PSO2 is on all major consoles and is playable outside of Asia as of 2020, thanks Xbox.]

Fite Game time:

Woolie and Liam played Aquapazza. They like it as a fighting game but are confused as to why *this* one is coming to the West.

Woolie jokes that Undernight Inbirth is coming over, they all agree that it doesn’t need to come over. [It did eventually, as well as its sequel.]

Yatagarasu is getting renamed to Legend of Raven for the Western release, it is also switching from 3DS to Vita. They wonder why the full switch from the different handhelds, Matt says it’s because Nicalis is “a shit publisher that will do anything they can to get the easiest thing….” He is spoken over by Liam and Woolie who adamantly contest his claim.

Woolie says Nicalis deserves respect because he is the guy who convinced Pixel (creator of Cave Story) to get back into making games. Matt’s issue with them is that they promise new games for years, then do not support them. Woolie and Liam are still upset with ‘shit publisher’, Matt doesn’t back down.

Pat tries to divert away from the topic by calling Capcom a shit publisher. They aren’t giving Ace Attorney 5 a retail release, and the WiiU version of Shadow over Mystara has been delayed until September. No one knows why he brought that up during the fite game section.

Ultra Street Fighter 4 is coming out and getting rebalanced. Liam and Pat will fight to the death over Hakan’s oil. Post hit KOs were breaking the game so they took it out.

Killer Instinct has a bit of info. They feel the model for KI is weird with the ‘packs’ that were being introduced, apparently they were different than the new character add-ons and is confusing. Pat would have preferred if they made the whole game then released “Super KI” later like Capcom.

Liam: The biggest bummer for me is that there’s no physical version.

Pat: Hey Liam, get used to that being a bummer.

Matt: Ken Lobb said the physical version will come out way later.

Pat: Oh, I meant in general.

[Killer Instinct’s model is the current model for most fighting games now: launch, add new purchasable characters and costumes, add other free stuff, update until you’re done. Lack of physical releases has only gotten worse, physical is disappearing everyday. I personally don’t care but the choice should remain.]

Pat is concerned about game preservation. If a digital storefront is closing, like Games for Windows Live, the games on it will simply disappear; he also brings up the issue of discs needing to activate via server pinging. He has an opinion about Xbox wanting people to buy into their online infrastructure, even though they have shuttered the OG Xbox online service as well as Games for Windows, though he doesn’t quite finish the thought. He does call those 2 services garbage, however.

[This section is still very relevant, but Pat hasn’t even seen the worst of it yet. Nintendo has closed the Wii, WiiU, and 3DS shops, entirely cutting off the last legal avenue to obtain those games easily; they clearly hate game preservation so it’s a good that emulation is a thing. Xbox has at least tried to get older games onto their backwards compatibility library, though the amount of exemptions is undeniable. We’re still waiting to the Xbox 360 closure coming July 2024, they are vocal about preserving as many titles as possible before then. PS and Xbox are no longer making all-new storefronts it seems, so that’s a plus.]

They have a discussion about how online services lasting longer than it’s initial lifetime is rare, they end up comparing games like APB to digital storefronts, which really aren’t comparable. Pat believes Steam is the gold standard that all other online services should be compared to.

Back to KI [yeah, we’re still on that topic], Ken Lobb promises that KI will be THE first party fighter, they will keep adding onto it rather than make a sequel. A new character was accidentally shown in a Thunder video provided to Gamestrailers, Woolie believes it was Kim-Wu but it is actually Sadira; Maximillian Dood is the only one with the footage of the character so he went sort of viral for it.

Matt thinks all the old characters should be in the game first before a new one, they rip on Spinal for being a dumb skeleton. They also speculate how the returning characters will play.

[Spinal is undoubtably awesome in this KI. The devs release both new and returning characters throughout the game’s life and no one really seemed to complain about all old characters not being before characters like Hisako and Rash.]

Ben Affleck is confirmed the new Batman, “what’s his face” is still Superman. Woolie describes Zack Snyder flicks as ‘cool action, nothing in between.’ Woolie gives Batfleck the benefit of the doubt because of Heath Ledger’s Joker, Pat says Affleck already sucked as Daredevil so he has no faith in the casting. Matt retorts with Chris Evans going from the Human Torch to Captain America. Matt continues with saying people shouldn’t be mad about Batfleck, they should be mad they’re getting ANOTHER Man of Steel movie.

Pat: Ben Affleck has like a 13 movie deal…

Matt: Everyone has a 13 movie deal.

Woolie: Until it tanks.

A bit of an aside, but they get to Mark Hamill voicing the Joker, they state how he’s ‘not doing it anymore’ because Troy Baker is voicing the character in Arkham Origin.

Pat: Troy Baker is going to be the new everything.

[Ben Affleck was fine(?) as Batman. We wasn’t Batman in very many DC movies, cameo or otherwise. Not naming Henry Cavill as Superman is hilarious to hear today because of his status as the unhygienic nerd’s power fantasy come to life: absolutely nothing against the man himself, he’s just a dude. Mark Hamill voiced Joker plenty of times after Arkham Origins; he has stated that he’s no longer interested in portraying Joker now that Kevin Conroy, his Batman, has passed. I hear Troy Baker a lot less nowadays, probably because game devs are avoiding using unionized actors.]

Matt Watch:

He is stalking Trish Stratus, iconic WWE Diva. She owns yoga studios in Toronto called the Stratusphere.

Questions:

“So, has many times has Matt been banned on Neogaf?”

3 times.

“At any point in your life, were you ever sucked up in a shitty card game?”

Woolie: Marvel trading cards, Yomi

Pat: Triple Triad [Answer Validity Contested]

Liam: Magi-Nation, Neopets card game, Legend of the 5 Rings

Matt: Killer Instinct fighting card game, Udon Street Fighter

“Have you ever cosplayed?”

Liam: Brown haired guy in the blue team from Ouendan 2, Neku from TWEWY, Naoto from Person 4.

Woolie: Xavier Stone from Guitar Hero.

“Woolie, why do you hate Deadly Premonition?”

Woolie: I don’t get it. It’s weird in a way I don’t get. It doesn’t appeal to me.

They jokingly talk about the requirement to finish a game before you can dislike it. It leads to Woolie calling out “the i, Robot game.”

Pat: Binary Domain, a great game that you hate because it’s kind of racist.

Woolie: When your black character makes Cole Train look like Nelson Mandela, there’s a problem.

Pat: I wish that Nelson Mandela made Boateng look like Cole Train.

What’s coming up:

Maybe start the next LP, coming 9/1 or 9/2. Rustlemania, one-offs.

[punishedsurge]

SBFC 002: The Feel of a Podcast

Pat: Are you eating nuts?? Are you GOING NUTSSS?!

They discuss how podcast names should be naturally made during the episode’s runtime. Matt bangs out the title of this episode in under 90 seconds.

Dork Girl cameos in the background this episode. [She’s Woolie’s now-wife, right? Man, they did record at his place for a long time.]

Liam played Muchi Muchi Pork!, a bullet hell game. They force Liam to talk about it after trying to skim past it. Pat asks if the girls are over 18, Liam is confident at least 2 are. [I imagine most of them aren’t.]

Woolie calls AoT Shingeki no Koijin, Pat hates it. Dork Girl says just call it SNK, with leads into a conversation about abbreviations having overlap. FF is Final Fantasy, Fatal Fury, and Final Fight.

Pat proposes GoW, which is God of War and Gears of War.

Liam: Gears of War is ‘Gears’ to me.

Matt: And I always call God of War ‘Disappointing.’ But so is Gears Judgment.

[all go awwww]

Pat: It’s true though.

Liam: This is the first con I’ve been to in seven years where someone didn’t say ‘The Game’ as a phrase. [Got your ass 10 years later lmao, good job Liam]

Matt goes to the zoo to see red pandas with his lady friend, who I’m sure is Crymetina. [She doesn’t listen to the podcast because Liam talks about anime; she’s a keeper.]

The older trio talk about Disney cartoons, which eventually leads to only Matt and Woolie talking about NES Disney games.

Pat: Man, I really didn’t have a childhood.

Pat watched The Wire in the week between episodes. Woolie states that Spike Lee, Alan Moore, and Obama [not Malik the other one] love the show; Pat calls them crazy Warlocks, Matt brings it together by saying they’re a cabal of warlocks that live in a cave, which Woolie finishes by saying they encircle The Wire dvd box set. They also say The Wire has ruined every other cop show. [I haven’t seen it but it’s probably true.]

Woolie played Journey with his gf; Pat played with “SmokesBluntz420”. He also caught up with AoT, he said he stopped watching anime after Gurren Lagann and AoT brought him back in. He loathes shitty fan translations, proceeds to shit on the correct translations without knowing. [What a shit time for anime, trying to pirate it was so not worth it.]

Matt: I haven’t watched [AoT] because I’m busy working.

Divekick talk. It came out 10 years ago today! Zubaz got updated to have Fighterpedia on his shirt. [They spent a lot of cash putting Zubaz in indie games, jeez.]

Matt: I want a Booty Call game made by Telltale.

[I forgot that a thing for a while, ‘have Telltale make your choice-based narrative game’. Well, everyone sure did. Turned out great I heard, even!]

Woolie: Ubisoft, who continue to actually slowly gain my respect agin…

[It’s always funny to see praise of a big game corporation from the past.]

Woolie’s point is that Ubisoft announced Child of Light, it is lead by the Far Cry 3 creative director. Essentially, he thinks it’s cool he went from doing AAA games to something a lot smaller. They are excited it’s running on the UbiArt Engine, at the time it was only used for the Rayman IP. He claims the dev team is also 1/3 women. [I wonder how many of them still work there since the shitty work culture was alive and well then.]

Pat describes the potential work culture of the company as “grind on a AAA game and make it sell well, then you can make whatever else for 2-3 years until we need you to make money." [It’s not an impossible idea, Obsidian made Pentiment in between their far bigger releases, for example. Again, it’s funny to think about Ubisoft workplace culture after knowing all the foul shit they’ve done.]

Barkley 2 talk. Truly a flash in the pan the first game was. They’re excited for it, Liam pledged a high enough tier on Kickstarter to get a CyberDwarf body pillow. [I wonder if he still has it.]

Games for Windows Live is officially closing. Woolie pairs it with EA Origin as ‘things that aren’t Steam that refuse to die.’ [Microsoft just rebranded the service with Xbox decals, it has cross-buy on select titles with the consoles; it also touts PC Game Pass more heavily than their actual store front. Origin just copied Game Pass’ model and is now bundled with GP.]

Killer is Dead launches to ‘tepid’ sales in Japan. It sold 20k on both consoles, Bionic Commando sold 24k. Matt argues that because the former’s sales are in Japan while the latter’s is in America, Bionic Commando still sucks more. They wonder why it sold the way it did, is it because people are tiring of Suda51? Lollipop Chainsaw is apparently the best selling Grasshopper game, Liam says. [Good job, James Gunn.]

Woolie says Poolside Identity is great, and that K. Dot’s Swimming Pools. [I prefer remixes over original songs too when they fuse niche things I like together, but jfc that’s a take alright.]

Gamescom predictions. Pat says they won’t announce an Xbox One Kinect-less skew. [He was right.] He also believes the earlier release of PS4 at a cheaper price will be a deciding factor. [Way too right.] Liam and Pat go back and forth over the decision of Xbox to go so hard with promoting Kinect, Liam is ‘I can see their business strategy for it’, Pat is ‘that shit is dumb’. Then there’s reference to the NSA news of the camera potentially spying on you, which they don’t go into because Matt and Woolie interrupt with talk of showing their cocks on Uno.

Sony at Gamescon predictions. “It’s going to be a big show for Vita, but it is a PS4 focused show,” so says John Sony. Pat wantsa Vita game, pushes back on “Vita is dead” claim by fans by saying 3 games for Vita would be a big show for the handheld. Woolie mentions that every game at the show for PS home consoles will be required to have remote play for the Vita.

Slightly off topic of Gamescom, they speculate on the rumor of a new Vita; they believe it’s so Sony can compete with a new Samsung phone called the Galaxy Mega, which has a 6.3in screen and a 720p resolution. Liam thinks the rumor is all crap. Liam finishes with reminding us that the Vita priced dropped in Japan to $210 USD, Pat comments that it needs a price drop and 2 more ‘killer apps.’ [Probably means for it to be successful in the West/North America].

[It’s funny to hear all the hopium for the Vita’s success, but not because it failed to perform and stay relevant. When you compare it to Sony’s new handheld (Project Q), it’s such a superior product and all it does better is just play games on its hardware without an internet connection. As someone who streams GamePass titles on my phone at work, it functions far better than remote playing from my Xbox; it’s still inferior to native hardware by a wide margin. The fact Project Q can *only* do remote play via wi-fi (as far as we know) is such a blow to this wretched device. Maybe Vita deserved better…]

FGC News:

Persona 4 Arena is getting an update, only is an arcade location test at the moment. They talk about new HUD stuff and character.

Woolie: You know what matters more to fighting games than story mode? Gameplay—

Matt: I don’t know about that. [Gottem, Matt]

Matt facetiously laments how Arcsys can make so many fighting games in so little time and Capcom can’t pull one together at all. They talk about game development; it’s not lost on anyone paying attention. Pat believes Arcsys is stealing Capcom’s crown when it comes to fighting game relevance. Matt is hyped for the newly announced Killer Instinct. Thunder looks awesome visually, Pat groans at the other’s excitement.

D4 talk. They say, “Twin Peaks”, the end.

Anime news. Space Dandy announced YEEEEEAH! They love the creator’s work but have some trepidation about the sexual nature of the show, Pat believes it’s tongue in cheek. [It is]. Liam also mentions the team’s interest in localizing the series and believes more anime should do it as well. [I want to say Space Dandy was one of the first ‘Simulcast’ anime, but idk for sure.]

Letter time, letter time.

“Why’s it called TheSw1tcher?”

Matt tells the story of how he beat his friend to school after he missed a train.

Pat: Oh god— I based my entire economic fortunes on this dumb joke??

“What game had the best soundtrack?”

Woolie: Katamari Damacy

Liam: Streets of Rage

Matt: Mario Galaxy 1

Pat: Anything by Simon Viklund

“Will Woolie ever cut his hair?”

Woolie: Never.

Matt: Unless Comicbookgirl19 tells you to.

“What does Liam think of Rwby?”

Liam didn’t watch it, they talk about Monty Oum’s former body of work. Mentions Xiao Xiao and Egoraptor. Dork Girl watched it, doesn’t have much of an opinion about it though.

“When will you nerds talk about Jojo All-star Battle?”

Pat bought it, importing will take it a while.

What’s coming up: Rustlemania, 2 new playthroughs. Maybe Matt’s Bomb-ass Zoo Adventure.

[punishedsurge]

SBFC 001: This is Gonna be Terrible. [08/13/13]

1hr 12min runtime, respectable.

“TheSw1tcher” man…

Rustlemania and LoU this year on the channel, awesome.

Dragon’s Crown talk. [Still haven’t played it.]

Wonderful 101 demo talk, haven’t played it either. “WiiU is a Platinum Box.” They wonder why games are developed to need the big gamepad. [I mean of course Nintendo wanted devs to utilize it.]

Matt: I bought a brick with a screen, it’s called a Vita.

Pat: Woolie, you’re the only person without that particular brick!

Woolie: This is the worst peer pressure ever.

Matt talks about the vita making his hands cramp and ache, says meaty man hands are to blame. [I agree, mobile gaming ergonomics still suck.]

Guacamelee talk. [Haven’t played this either.]

Divekick talk, [Me no play.]

Liam: AoT and Free are the best anime ever. Free has well developed characters and abs.

Smt 4 talk.

Pat: It’s not like Persona. That would be like saying Darkstalkers is like SF because they’re 2D fighters by Capcom.

Project CrossZone talk. [No play dis either nope nope nope. They all dropped it eventually for being too long and not seeing characters they like.]

“Visual Sex Game” Ghost Song kickstarter talk. [It hit it’s funding but didn’t get released until 2022?! What the fuck.]

Shitting on Shadows of the Eternals. [CP charges dropped on someone in the dev team in between kickstarter campaigns. Oof.]

Project Phonenix talk. The various titles and IPs the team had worked on screams that the game is too good to be true. [And it was. This shit died with zero fanfare lmao.]

Pat: Diablo 3 is a weird game because it’s so good and one decision fucking ruined it (the auction house). [Sounds kind of like Diablo 4 tee-hee lol.]

Yatagarasu kickstarter talk. Bunch of small Japanese fite game devs came together for this kickstarter. Matt and Pat had issues with the characters, Matt for their designs and Pat for half the cast being palette swaps. [Max made a video about this too.]

Project Awakened mention. Matt is glad it’s kickstarter failed because it looked like shit. Looking at it, it’s hard to argue against him. [They confuse the name with “Project Awakening”, a much newer game that looks like a more generic FF16.]

Infamous and Prototype talk.

Woolie: Second Son is the first one that looks interesting.

Liam: I played Festival of Blood, that one was good.

Woolie and Pat both like Prototype more.

Pat: Infamous clearly had better production and gameplay, with more thought put into it— but you run faster in Prototype, so I’ll play that one.

Atlas sale. Index Corporation turned out to be fucky-wucky and stopped existing because of bankruptcy. The entire company is up for sale, Sega is offering 201 million dollars for the company.

Pat doesn’t like it because Sega’s output sucks, which even then wasn’t all that true. But he’s right about them axing Sega USA after bad business practices which lead to a lot of games not coming to America, except for European PC games? Idk sure I guess.

Woolie doesn’t like Sega because they ‘mistreated Platinum.’ Name a more overrated game developer (I still like their old games)

Liam accurately describes Sega’s plan for Atlus, “let them cook”, basically. He also argues there’s a huge market for Persona in the West.

Pat: Persona and SMT have a larger market out here than Yakuza ever had. [I feel Yakuza is a lot more popular than Persona nowadays, but idk]

Pat tells Liam to shut the fuck up about his desire for Project Diva to come out, he punches back by asking when Streets of Rage 4 is coming out. Pat responds with “Never”. [It finally came out in 2020, I dunno if he played it or like it.]

SALTY BET MENTIONED GODDAMN I FORGOT. [It’s still going to this day, I looked it up on Twitch and it had 300+ viewers.]

Discussion about pot splitting and collusion in the FGC. “Spooky is going nutssss” is dropped. The boys also shame players who did it. [One of the guilty is Justin Wong, one of Matt’s co-hosts on Triple K.O.]

MATT WATCH: One of the people he’s ’stalking’ is Bryan Singer for his return to the X-Men movie series with Days of Future Past, after going to a talk with the director he thinks he’s a cool enough guy.

[Dude has had sexual harassment/assault allegations since 1997, definitely not cool lmao. Pre-MeToo era Hollywood really protected shitty people, still do.]

Outro is that dope KI sample by Mick Gordon. So much better than the choice to let Woolie put on 144p songs at the end.