Brok The InvestiGator with Victor Mildew - Episode 29

[00:00:21] Speaker A: This is Episode 29 and today I am enjoy. I am joined by Victor Mildew. [00:00:31] Speaker B: I'm enjoined to be with you. [00:00:33] Speaker A: Right, dude, I was thinking as I was saying your name, Victor Mildew. I'm sure I've been calling you ad through it because of your old username ad seven, but I'm not sure if we will go Victor or ad. So I just went with Victor this time. If it changes up every time, tough shit. No, I can't remember. [00:00:51] Speaker B: Anyway, I keep trying to Stein in as the old one. Anyway. [00:00:54] Speaker A: Yeah, that's fine. It's all good. It's all good. How are you doing, man? [00:00:59] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm okay. I can't remember how long it's been since I've spoken to you. It's been a while, isn't it? You okay? [00:01:04] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm doing good. Just chilling. Not doing much, to be honest. Been doing a lot of hospital doctors and stuff like that recently. I've always got something going on with the doctors. I think. I had an appointment Monday. I've got appointment Thursday and I got another two next. [00:01:32] Speaker B: It's a good job you don't live in America in it. You'd be bankrupt. [00:01:35] Speaker A: I know. Jesus Christ. Sort your healthcare system out, America. That's not to say our healthcare system is like really good. It's just at least we have the NHS. Our healthcare system needs work in the sense of the government need to inject money into it instead of shoving up the greedy asses. That's my opinion anyway. Tory scum. Anyway, it's been a while, as you said. So have you been. [00:02:12] Speaker B: Yeah, not bad. Just sort of plodding on. I can't. Well, many people are saying, I can't believe where the year has gone. I mean, it's insane that it's November already. I mean, part of getting old that all the days seem shorter and that. But, yeah, not enough hours in the day, it seems. [00:02:30] Speaker A: Yeah. Are you working on a new Christmas song? [00:02:44] Speaker B: No. And the reason would be I would like to do one, but there's been no inspiration. And trying to do something like that without any real inspiration or sort of creative spark or anything is pretty much a no go because you're just. I mean, they're not the pretty shit anyway, but they'll be really shit. [00:03:05] Speaker A: No shit. How dare You? [00:03:11] Speaker B: Yeah, I'd like to. I'd better get on with it if I'm going to do it. Got about ten days. [00:03:17] Speaker A: Yeah. You need to get on with it ASAP then. No excuses. Dude. [00:03:24] Speaker B: Who can we go into leaving because I've got something to write about. Ed, you're a twat. Leave the forum. [00:03:32] Speaker A: That's it. I'm done. Never returning again. [00:03:35] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. Okay, then. [00:03:41] Speaker A: So, the podcast. For those who are unfamiliar, we tend to discuss three topics which are currently playing top news. We play together quite regularly. We don't have top news, but today I thought I'd make the effort and actually look for something. And fortunately, two threads were posted on the forum, so I thought, I'll just go with them. Yeah. So there you go. So we'll start with currently playing. And I would like to know, Victor, what are you currently playing? [00:04:17] Speaker B: I've had several things on the. Mainly, I've just started a game called Cross Code on the Switch. [00:04:24] Speaker A: Oh, I know, yeah, I played a little bit of it. [00:04:28] Speaker B: I'm really enjoying that. It was recommended by a friend, longtime friend from school, who was that before. Actually, he's Mr. RPG Man. We always like trading RPGs at school, and if he says an RPG is good, then it's always worth looking into. I'm really enjoying it. I mean, I don't know how far you got, if you really got a feel of what the game's about or anything. [00:04:51] Speaker A: I played it a couple of times. I didn't get that far. It seemed all right. It seemed kind of like RPGe. [00:05:06] Speaker B: Did you get into. Because it's got quite a long intro sequence. Did you get into sort of what I call the main world where you're doing just overworld battles and things. Did you go that far? [00:05:17] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:05:18] Speaker B: You'll be familiar with what's it called, the battle ranking system? [00:05:29] Speaker A: I can't remember. [00:05:32] Speaker B: Because outwardly it looks a bit like something like Secret of Mana, where you're just fighting the enemies, but as you are beating enemies, a little bar fills up along the top of the screen. You start off at rank D, and this happens in real time. So as you're beating enemies, say you beat, I don't know what the number would be, but say you beat five enemies or rank you up C, B and A, and then if you were to stop fighting, you've got a set amount of time to go off and start another fight and keep that chain going. And I really like that because it creates a really cool sense of urgency. Like if you want to keep a chain going and rank up within this fight, because then you get better drops. So there might be a standard enemy that might drop a bag of crisps, but if you were to rank up to rank A or S, if you keep it going, long enough. [00:06:20] Speaker A: S big bag of crisps. [00:06:21] Speaker B: Yeah, they start dropping salt and shakes and stuff like that, but surprisingly addictive that I wasn't thinking, well, I liked it at first. I was thinking, I know this seems like it's going to be quite cool, but that little dynamic of moving between different areas and trying to keep. Desperately trying to keep that thing going to get, say there's like a big mechanical bull and you've got to harvest some meat off it. The meat only drops at rank A or S. So a lot sort of going around the area, trying to hit the lesser enemies, get this thing up and then dash off while the chain's still going. It's surprisingly addictive little gameplay loop, but I'm really enjoying it. It's got a real old school Super Nintendo RPG charm to it. [00:07:06] Speaker A: Yeah, I started playing it. [00:07:09] Speaker B: I can't remember how long ago it. [00:07:11] Speaker A: Was while I was streaming on the GRK channel on a more regular basis than once a year, because I'm sure we were doing a GR played and I think me, I can't remember it was me and a few other people playing her. And I played like two or three times. And I was like, it's coming off Game pass now, so. [00:07:29] Speaker B: Well, okay, that's interesting. I wonder if that's where I've heard of it before then, because my mate recommended it. Just he's like, oh, you should play this. And I looked at the artwork and I didn't really recognize him, but something about it rang a bell and then I checked Game pass and it wasn't on it. So maybe was. Maybe that's why I've heard of it then. [00:07:48] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm looking on GRkade right now for GR played, right? No, but yeah, I don't really remember it very much, which is a shame because it could have been pretty interesting. I just remember it being like, all right, from where I played of it, but as I said, without playing a lore of it, it's hard to really judge a game. [00:08:22] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm not sure how big the game actually is. I mean, I've been grinding a bit to get level up a bit because I quite enjoy that aspect and leveling up is quite good fun if you can keep that chain going and seeing the XP building up, and if you die within that chain, you lose it all. So it's quite a nice little risk reward thing going on. It says I'm about 15% through and I've been playing for about 3 hours. I'd say about an hour of that is just milling around doing stuff I don't really need to be doing, like grinding. So it might be like a 25, 30 hours game maybe. [00:08:57] Speaker A: Yeah, GR played. I've locked beer. It's 123456. People were taking part. Jiggles, I think, was the one who mentioned it and I did a little image. GR played cross code and I replaced the face of the main character with his avatar, which at the time, it may still be is a dog. [00:09:23] Speaker B: Perfect. [00:09:24] Speaker A: Trying to make it a bit funny. [00:09:29] Speaker B: Yeah, it's good. I don't know. You never know with these things, do you? Like you think, oh, this game's amazing, and then a couple of hours in, you think, right, this is just the same thing over and over again. You drop it. So I'm hoping it keeps this kind of momentum up. I'm really enjoying the premise that the world you're playing is actually an MMO and you're playing some sort of unseen character that's playing this MMO. I think that's quite a nice little thing because it looks like it's going to be quite daunting at first. It's like, oh, God, this looks quite intense, but it's actually pretty simple. Nice little quest. [00:10:03] Speaker A: I remember enjoying where I played it, but like I said, because it went off Game pass, I stopped playing it, even though I did have it on PC, but I didn't want to have to start again. So, yeah, I kind of just. [00:10:14] Speaker B: I picked it up on the Switch. I could have got it on quite a few other things, but I thought it'd be perfect for the switch and it'd be really nice. It's a nice game to play off what you call it now, handheld mode. [00:10:25] Speaker A: Yeah, I get that. [00:10:28] Speaker B: Do you know if it's multiplayer? [00:10:30] Speaker A: I have no clue because it's like. [00:10:33] Speaker B: Secret Romana, and then you pick up the others, people that log know, log into the game world and you can sort of invite them to join your party if they're not sleeping or something. I wonder if another player could control them. That'd be quite cool. [00:10:44] Speaker A: It would be, yeah. I don't know. I doubt it. Because Nd develop awareness or maybe they didn't have the resources to do it, or maybe they didn't think of her or maybe they know do something different. I don't know. [00:11:00] Speaker B: There's been some nice. Do you know if it was a Kickstarter or not? No. That's another thing. [00:11:05] Speaker A: I don't know. [00:11:06] Speaker B: An early access. Come on, Pedge, you should know. [00:11:09] Speaker A: Don't. [00:11:11] Speaker B: If it was an early access game. I'll have to read up on it because there's been a few Little characters that you find out. I know where that say, oh, I'm a developer. An NPC that just says, oh, I'm a developer. And this is where it says something like, oh, this is where the fishing mode was. I wonder if they'll put it back in. And there's another one where, oh, actually, no, it's a Pokemon reference. I was just thinking there's one building you go into which is clearly like a poke. Was it the Pokemon Health center thing? And they said about recharging your balls in there, but they took them out because players found it boring. It's probably a Pokemon reference, isn't it? [00:11:46] Speaker A: Does sound like. Yeah. [00:11:48] Speaker B: And I think it had a Pokeball symbol on the floor drawn in carpet or something. Yeah. But I'm enjoying that so far. I've also been playing, and I'm going to butcher the pronunciation of this because it's a French word, Uson, but spelled J-U-S-A-N-T which has just come on Game Pass, which is the Climbing game. I don't know if you've seen that. [00:12:10] Speaker A: Yeah, I've been meaning to play it. It looks interesting, even. [00:12:13] Speaker B: It's really good. [00:12:15] Speaker A: It looks really simple, but it looks really EnjOyable to just chill and play, obviously, because I haven't played. I don't know how in depth there is or if there's any kind of story, but just what I saw. The initial announcement did look like it was just something you could relax and play. [00:12:33] Speaker B: Yeah, it was about, I don't remember, four or 5 hours long, maybe the premise being that you're at the bottom of this huge, rocky Spire and you just got to climb to the top and you've just got a rope and you've got the triggers on your controller. One is your left arm, one is your right arm. And I don't know if you played Astro's playroom on the PS five with a monkey climbing bit. Yeah, imagine that. It's like that. [00:13:04] Speaker A: That's cool. [00:13:05] Speaker B: But more sort of skill based. Like, you've got to look and plan a route across somewhere and your length of rope is finite and you've got three hooks you can put in any point to anchor yourself in case you fall. But when you anchor one, you can also lower yourself down and swing. So there's lots of different routes to get to where you're going. There's lots of collectibles to find. And it's a really nice little puzzle. If you can see something which is clearly a collectible. That's quite obviously a collectible area. It's quite out of reach and planning. Well, how the hell am I actually going to get to it and having to actually really climb to get it? Climb to a bit, anchor yourself, lower yourself down, get to another platform, anchor onto something else. It's really good. It's really relaxing, really. [00:13:51] Speaker A: It's definitely very. Yeah, it's a very nice looking game, too. Yeah, I remember seeing. I think it was announced like a D three or something. It was like a games thing. Can't remember which one. There's so many. And I was like, oh, it looks pretty cool. [00:14:09] Speaker B: It's nice as well because of the nature of it just being this huge rocky spire that you've got to climb. Your objective, you always know your objective is up. There's no confusion of where you go and it's just how you go about progressing further up. And because of that, they don't make all the handholds or whatever it is you're going to be grabbing onto. They're not like slathered in white paint or yellow markers or. There's no really obnoxious big arrows to tell you where to go. It's always pretty obvious just by the way the terrain is laid out. This is going to be things to grip really nice. That's cool. Well, there might be a little patch of grippy bits, but there's no way of getting near it. You think, well, if I go another route, climb higher than climb the main route, latch on, then lower myself down and swing across, I might be able to get to it. Really nice. [00:15:01] Speaker A: Yeah, it does sound interesting. It sounds a little more involved than how it looks. But obviously, like I said, having not played it, only seen a trailer, can't. [00:15:11] Speaker B: Really judge really good. [00:15:14] Speaker A: Yeah, it definitely sounds like something I'd be interested in trying. I have think I've downloaded it on the Xbox, but I can't be quite sure. [00:15:26] Speaker B: I forget what else I've been playing on there. I played something else that was equally as that kind of feel. It was quite a short game. It'll come to me in a minute. But I finished three games over the weekend, one of which, the one we're going to talk about. So one was the one I was just talking about then. And there was another smaller one, completely escaped me. What it is, I'll come back to it. But I've also been. I got a new PC a couple of weeks ago and of course that means doing the traditional thing of just downloading all your own stuff and just mental and just going to all day that runs well, never play that again. [00:16:05] Speaker A: Download crisis, see if the PC can run it. [00:16:09] Speaker B: That game. Actually, it's funny, we've finally got to the point where Crisis doesn't actually look that good anymore. Really interesting. When you actually look at, you think it's pretty and all that, you think, yeah, we finally got into the realms of things looking really good. [00:16:29] Speaker A: Can't disagree with you there. I could just to be an ass, but I'm not going to. [00:16:37] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:16:38] Speaker A: So what games have you been playing on your PC? Just testing like quickly. [00:16:46] Speaker B: I've decided to fInally, permanently build myself a proper racing set up. So beforehand it was all set up in the other room, which I was sharing. Basically. My PC was on a desk that my wife worked at and I had like my racing stuff just pushed to one side and anytime I wanted to do anything, I would have to drag my chair across, move the monitor, move all the cables, push a chair out the way. And like I've said, with setting up VR in the past, the fact that you've got to deal with this stuff just really. It kills your enthusiasm to do something off the cuff. [00:17:20] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:17:20] Speaker B: And it's just a bit of faff and it just feels like shitty way to play. You're not sort of really in the zone of doing it. It's like playing with your TV in another room, almost just looking through a doorway. It's a bit strange that I thought I'd finally do it, so we swapped all the rooms about. So I got a proper big frame for a freestanding monitor thing. I've got a new setup. It's all just permanently set up. So I've got my VR headset, it's permanently plugged into my side. So if I want to play anything VR, I just press go and play it. If I want to play any racing stuff, I just connect the wheel rim to the base. Otherwise I've got my lap tray that swings in with my keyboard and mouse on, so I can just play in it and I can work at it, which is quite nice as well. So during the day, during the day, if I'm working at home, I just plug my laptop into the monitor and sit and work there. It's a really nice little space. So mainly I've just been playing, testing the old racing thing. I've not had a proper session on it yet, but just testing anything and everything. [00:18:26] Speaker A: Are you still playing that Formula One game you said you subscribed to before? [00:18:34] Speaker B: Oh, I. Racing. Is that the one might be. [00:18:37] Speaker A: You subscribe to it? [00:18:39] Speaker B: Yeah, that's my subscription. It's funny, that's actually been a year since I let that lapse. All right. Yeah, it's quite expensive. It's like 80 quid a year, which, in the grand scheme of it, if you're playing it a lot, isn't really that much. You'd spend that going down the pub twice, wouldn't you, if you were going to do it these days? [00:18:58] Speaker A: Well, in London, yeah. [00:18:59] Speaker B: It's ridiculous. I actually resubscribe at the weekend. They had a Black Friday thing, which is like 25% off, so I resubscribed to that and I just had a quick go on it and being able to pump all the graphics up to maximum now and it's like all lovely. So, yeah, I'm going to get back into that. I think I've got maybe five racing games on the go, a couple of which I actually properly play, and other ones every now and then when I just fancy playing go carts, I'll stick cart craft on. Or if I fancy playing some, just like proper Formula One, I'll stick the F one game on or something. But got a couple of main ones. Had I gone Half Life Alex again, I've forgotten how amazing that game actually is. [00:19:41] Speaker A: See, I need a proper VR headset on PC so I can play Alex and then Half Life Alex. [00:19:50] Speaker B: Here we go. I bought a Valve index headset as well because my old headset was letting the side down. I got a pretty cheap. I say cheap in relative terms, but I was considerably cheaper than it would normally cost to get one off eBay, which arrived in pretty much perfect condition. So I'd actually give you my old one. The problem is that it uses the two sensor base stations which plug in the corners, which I'm using with my new setup, and you would have to buy them, and by the time you bought them, you may as well just buy your own. Just give you my old. Yeah, it's a bit of a shitter. It's a shame because it'd be nice just to give that to somebody because you could play it, because that's what I played it on the first time and it was amazing. [00:20:39] Speaker A: It'd be nice to play a new Valve game. [00:20:42] Speaker B: Yeah, it's so good. I mean, you can see why these things don't come around very often, because the production in it, I mean, it's like a proper AAA. If it was something you just played normally as a first person shooter on a regular screen, you'd be saying, that's brilliant. There's no compromise in it. But you can also then, because of that, see why it would take so long to make One and why people would be reluctant to spend the money on developing something that not many people are going to get to play. [00:21:14] Speaker A: Yeah, it's a shame really. VR didn't take off as good as they were hoping, I guess. But still doing better than some expected, I guess. [00:21:24] Speaker B: Yeah, maybe like the quest headsets and things. I mean, quite a lot of people have got them. Yeah, my quest three seems to be doing pretty well. I mean, it's just finding that right market for it, really, isn't it? I mean, this is just locked to the PC, isn't it? Unfortunately, yeah. Think how many people could play it if you could play it on PSVR or Quest or something. But there you go. [00:21:51] Speaker A: It's not fame, man. Need to win the lottery and buy all the fucking stuff. [00:21:57] Speaker B: Yeah. Such a shame about those base stations, because, like I say, I'd give you that. You could happily just pass it to someone else when you're done. It's not like it's worth a great deal of money these days. But then you've got the silly things you've got to plug in the corner. And as amazingly accurate as they are, you've got to have. I've got poles set up in this room now, vertical and horizontal poles that are mounted to. And it's still a bit of a pain in the ass. [00:22:25] Speaker A: Yeah, sounds like really good VR where you haven't got wires or you haven't got any of these things and still perfectly accurate. Brian wouldn't know how they would do that, so fuck knows. [00:22:37] Speaker B: Yeah. Because I've got this as a permanent setup now. It's fine. But that was part of my thing before. I'd have to go and plug all those in, get an extension lead and. Yeah, now it's all plugged in. It's fine. But, yeah, I mean, say if you were to. I don't know where you game, I think you might have mentioned is your PC in your front room. [00:22:54] Speaker A: Everything of my gaming stuff is in the living room. [00:22:58] Speaker B: Yeah. See, just that in itself would be a pain because you've got kids about and stuff and it's just. What a pain. Yeah. So things like that. You can see why things like the quest are way more popular that you can just put that on and it uses sort of. They Call it inside out tracking where it doesn't have these external things. It's just got sensors in the camera which effectively visually latch onto things on your desk or around you and use those for tracking. [00:23:21] Speaker A: Yeah, fair enough. Isn't that. [00:23:25] Speaker B: It's pretty good, actually. Unless you're going absolutely mental and doing cartwheels and stuff, it's pretty good. The only thing it suffers with is because it uses those to then track the controllers in your hand. So if it can't see those, it can't accurately track them. So if you got your hands behind your head or something, which you can, and it's pretty damn good, though. [00:23:49] Speaker A: That's fair enough. I've obviously got PlayStation VR. Obviously. But I have got PlayStation VR, and I did have a go of that a couple of times. As enjoyable as it is, you haven't even got to set up all the other stuff, but it's still a pain to pull it out every time I want you. [00:24:05] Speaker B: Really. [00:24:05] Speaker A: It was just having to set up all the time. You'd be like, yeah, I play them all, but I can't be asked Faff especially. [00:24:13] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, it's like anything, isn't it? I don't know if you even got to go and get yourself a special controller out. It's still just that. Okay. It loses that pickup and playability. The setup I've got now, I consider myself pretty lucky to be able to do that because I don't think as many people that if you got a family or something or just don't have the space, would be able to have this kind of stuff just lying about effectively. I've got everything to hand here, but just. Yeah, because I've made that step of doing it, I'm using it more. Whereas if I was going to play Half Life Alex, I'd be like, right, I've got to pull that chair out of the room. I've got to then go move all the stuff off the desk. I've got to push the monitor out the way, plug the base stations in, unbox the headset. Can't be asked. [00:24:58] Speaker A: Yeah, I get that. It's a shame, but I need to sell the kids. [00:25:10] Speaker B: You could sell the kids and buy base stations, and then you can have the headset, and then we're all good. [00:25:28] Speaker A: Well, moving on to top news. WelL, we've got two top news topics today, which are the Nintendo indie world thingy. It's not a direct, is it? And then the Game awards announcements. I thought we'd mention them because why not? But did you watch the Nintendo Indie World? [00:25:50] Speaker B: I completed. That was tonight, wasn't it, at 05:00 yeah. [00:25:54] Speaker A: Did you watch it? [00:25:57] Speaker B: That's a no. I would like to pretend I did. [00:25:59] Speaker A: And go, yeah, I'll just mention a couple of the games that looked interesting to me. Shantay advance, risky Revolution. I think it was back in the day, 20 years ago, roughly. Maybe in 20 years ago, exactly. They were going to release Shantay two on the game by Advance. They never finished it and they got shelved. Well, they've now gone back and finished it with a lot of the original team. I think they said all of it, but I don't know, to finish the game and actually release it. And that's coming out next year, which is pretty cool. [00:26:35] Speaker B: Have you ever played a Shante game? [00:26:37] Speaker A: Yeah, I've got a few of them, but the first one I played was the Game Boy one, I think, but not on the Game Boy. It was on something else. [00:26:46] Speaker B: One of those series. I mean, I've only played. I put one on the Wi U, if you can remember what they are. Can't remember which one it was. It was on sale for something stupid, like one pound 50 or something once. I'll give that a go. Yeah, I really enjoyed it. [00:27:02] Speaker A: Yeah, I remember enjoying child, but obviously there's like five of them or something now. Six with this one, something like that, anyway. But it's basically a Metrovania with some interesting cool power ups and stuff. [00:27:20] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:27:20] Speaker A: If you don't like Metroidvanias, you won't like it probably, but people do. [00:27:25] Speaker B: It's got a cool female lead as well, which you don't tend to really get without making some just stupid thing out of it. It's nice. It's just a really cool little. [00:27:35] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. Don't forget about Sama. She's a cool. She's a cool lady, too. [00:27:42] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. I used to think she was called Seamus. My friend used to play Super Metroid and I didn't know that it was a woman. And I just saw the thing on the top and I thought it said Seamus. Seamus. [00:28:02] Speaker A: Seamus. Brilliant. Let's see where else Howe looked. All right. It's kind of like a turn based kind of strategy game where you've got to avoid these wolves and stuff, and you got to plan your move six steps in advance. So you got to kind of guess where the wolves are going. I think you'd like. You're a puzzley kind of guy. [00:28:25] Speaker B: Yeah, that sounds pretty cool. I'm looking at the Nintendo home page, and in typical Nintendo homestyle, they've got thumbnails of the games that were announced, but of course they've split it over twelve pages and then when you click into one, it doesn't give you anything just because it gives you the thumbnail out. So I can see how. And I just clicked into it says, I'm none the wiser. [00:28:47] Speaker A: Yeah. Another one that came up was like the star named EOS. And it's a puzzle game. Again, I mentioned now because it seems like something you might enjoy, but it did look all right, kind of. It's like a puzzley game with, like, camera and all that kind of crap. [00:29:03] Speaker B: Cool. [00:29:05] Speaker A: Another one was blade Chimera. That looks like a Metroidvania kind of set, like in the future. It looked pretty interesting. Looked very Castlevania to me, but like a futuristic castlevania. It's cool. A Highland song. It is obviously set in Scotland. From the way they described it. It sounds like you got to work your way through the mountains to get to the ocean, but there's, like, different routes you can take so you can play multiple times, and you're supposed to get there faster through different routes and experience different things and meet different people. So things like that. It sounded pretty cool. [00:29:46] Speaker B: That's cool. It's hard to tell with these Nintendo things. Do you know if any of these ones you've said so far are exclusives? [00:29:56] Speaker A: I'm not sure because I didn't write them down, but some of the ones that are shown were shown today were, like, timed exclusive. And two of the games that were shown that howl and a game called backpack Hero, where you go through dungeons and item management is a big thing of it, and you upgrade your backpack as you go in your magical backpack or something, and then you come out of the dungeon and build up the town. Both that and howl are out today, but obviously tomorrow, yesterday, for the people listening. Yeah, yesterday they're already out. Obviously. Another one that came up was death trick, double blind, and that's a detective game set in a circus. And you play as two different guys, a PI with Amnesia and a magician, and you play as those two characters, and you've only got, like, a set amount of things you can do before you have to move on and stuff. So it sounds very puzzly, very interesting. Oh, nice. [00:31:11] Speaker B: Yeah, there's some good indie games coming out in there. Just, like, looking at the thumbnail that's on the first page and some of the ones that are on there. I mean, I recognize a few of them, but just think, Switch is such a great machine as long as they run well on it. It's such a great machine for playing this type of thing, isn't it. I mean, I almost feel bad when these things appear on Game Pass and I play them on my Xbox. I mean, it's lovely looking at them on a nice telly and things, but some of these things suit handheld play so much. [00:31:39] Speaker A: Yeah, I agree with her. I don't do much, and I'll play, though, because I don't need to. But some games do seem more suited to it. I think steering away from the indie thing, I think that's one of the big issues with Nintendo, with this console, because they merged the home and handheld consoles into one console. I feel like that they've dropped some of the unique handheld titles they had. [00:32:11] Speaker B: Yeah, I'd agree with that. My much neglected three Ds, I almost forget about that console, and every now and then I'll find it in my drawer, my game drawer. And of course, being a Nintendo console, it's like somehow the battery is still fully charged after not using it for 30 years or something. And every time I put that on, there's something about it which immediately leaps out, apart from the 3D aspect. Leaps out just being like, oh, it just feels really unique. It might just be some little quirky way a menu works or something that just. You can only get. Because it's a dedicated handheld game that you don't seem to get that sort of thing when you're playing handheld on the Switch. Because, like you say, it's got to work in exactly the same way when you dock it. [00:32:58] Speaker A: It's a shame, really. I still kind of prefer the Wi U to the Switch. Don't get me wrong. Obviously the Switch is slightly more powerful and what have you, but I thought the two screens was a lot more interesting than just one screen that you can take with her. Obviously, you can't take the Wi U withdo, but you can do asynchronous stuff, which I thought was really good. [00:33:26] Speaker B: It's a shame, isn't it? I didn't really use it that much, but when I did use it, I was playing. Was it a little Luigi game that was in. Can't remember what was in. Was it. [00:33:39] Speaker A: The ghost one? [00:33:41] Speaker B: Yeah, that sort of thing was really interesting. [00:33:44] Speaker A: Yeah, I enjoyed that. And the Mario One, where you have to, like. [00:33:50] Speaker B: Was it Mario Chase? [00:33:52] Speaker A: Yeah. In that one, you'd be chasing the other people, and in the other people would be chasing you. And in the Luigi one, you'd be chasing the other people as a ghost, I think. Something like that. [00:34:02] Speaker B: Yeah, that was it. The Luigi one, I really remember. Because you can see you control the ghosts, I think. [00:34:10] Speaker A: Yeah. I think you do. Yeah. [00:34:11] Speaker B: And you've got the screen. You've got what's on the telly on your thing, but you can see everything, but the person playing on the telly can't see you, and you just got to creep up on them and scare them. We had some proper good laughs doing that. Making each other jump. [00:34:26] Speaker A: Yeah. So definitely an interesting console, and it's a shame it didn't do very well. I think Nintendo shot themselves in the foot with announcements and, well, the other thing we were going to talk about was the game awards. They haven't actually been done yet, but I wanted to mention just, like, some of the categories and see what way your thoughts lie. So game of the year. Right. The choices are Alan Wake two, bulldars Gate three, Marvel SpidErman Two, Resident Evil Four, Super Mario Bros. Wonder and the Legend of Zelda, Tears of the Kingdom. Have you played any of them? [00:35:08] Speaker B: I've played Tears of the kingdom. I got Alan Wake came with my graphics card, so I have that to play. I haven't played the first one, and I looked earlier, and I've somehow got it on Steam. I think back when it was being delisted, I bought it in a panic, thinking, oh, I'm never going to get to play it, and then didn't play it. So I've decided I'm going to play that one before I play the second one. [00:35:32] Speaker A: Also, have you played control? [00:35:35] Speaker B: Yeah, I love control. [00:35:36] Speaker A: Have you played the DLC for Control? [00:35:38] Speaker B: I did, yeah. [00:35:39] Speaker A: Well, one of the DLCS for control links with the Alan Wake stuff. [00:35:44] Speaker B: Yeah. It's quite heavily, isn't it? Almost like he's writing the story. You're playing in that DLC, isn't he? [00:35:50] Speaker A: Yeah. It's really cool. [00:35:55] Speaker B: For me. [00:35:56] Speaker A: I've played four of the games in there. I've played a bit of Alan Wake Two, but I've only done the first chapter in the game, or whatever the fuck it's called. I've played Super Mario Wonder, but I've only done the first world fully. I've played Baldar's Gate three, but I haven't finished the game. I'm still on act one. I've played the Legend of Zelda, Tears of the Kingdom, but I've only done three of the four thingies. So none of those games I completed. [00:36:23] Speaker B: All right. [00:36:24] Speaker A: But every single one that I've played there, I've been enjoying even Alan Wake, too. I didn't personally like Alan Wake that much. I thought it was quite boring. A lot of people really like her especially the atmosphere now. And that is good. And the writing is good. Just. I found the gameplay a bit dull, whereas Alan Wake Two seems a little more interesting so far. But that could just be me. But I've only done a little bit, sort of like, I can't really judge too much. So, yeah, I just want to do your. So, technically speaking, by default, yours would be if you were to vote Tears of the kingdom. [00:36:59] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, fortunately, I think it's a pretty damn good game. I'd have to go back and actually try and suss out which games I've played this year, which came out this year, because I've got such a big backlog that sometimes you play something. The best game I played this year was this. And it's like, what's a ten year old game? I think it's quite possible that apart from the indies, it's quite possible. The only game I've played from this year is Tears of the Kingdom. But it's brilliant. I loved it. I mean, I did finish it. I left some stuff unfinished to go back to at some point, purposely left a nice little set of side quests to go back to. Looking at from the good buz, I've heard about all of these things. That seems outwardly to be a pretty solid list of Game of the year stuff. [00:37:54] Speaker A: Best game Direction of the same games. [00:37:57] Speaker B: Oh, okay. [00:37:59] Speaker A: Best narrative, the Alamic two, Boldards, Gate three, Marvel Spiderman Two, Cyberpunk 27 seven, Phantom Liberty and Final Fantasy 16. [00:38:16] Speaker B: I haven't played Cyberpunk at all. That's another one I want to get. [00:38:21] Speaker A: Yeah, I want to get. I've already played a little bit of. [00:38:23] Speaker B: A classic in it back when it was not doing well. I mean, within days or weeks of it coming out, you could get a PC key for that for like ten quid. [00:38:34] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:38:34] Speaker B: And now it's like, oh, it's really good now. Oh, great, I'll go and buy. It's like 40 quid, I think. Well, I've got enough stuff to be. I've got enough other things to play first, but I will get it. [00:38:45] Speaker A: Yeah, I completely gather. Best art direction, Alan Wake two, hi Fi Rush, Lies of P, Super Mario Brothers Wonder and the Legend of Zelda teaser Kingdom. [00:38:57] Speaker B: I have played hi Fi Rush. I didn't finish it, but I don't know if you played that one, but it looks stunning. [00:39:02] Speaker A: Yeah, I haven't played it, but I am interested in playing it. I got it downloaded, ready to play. I just haven't got to it. It's one of those games, man. [00:39:10] Speaker B: Yeah, because it came out, didn't it get announced? Like, nobody knew it even existed. Got announced and then just came out on Game pass the next day, didn't it? Yeah. [00:39:19] Speaker A: And everyone was raving about it and I'm like, damn, I want to play it, but I've played too many other games. [00:39:23] Speaker B: Yeah, I think that's why I dropped it, because I was enjoying it. I was like, but I don't really want to be playing this at the moment. There's other things I want to be playing. So I was like, I'll come back to that one, because I think they said it's never going to leave. It looks gorgeous. It's one of those things you can't quite believe that it's a 3D game. The artwork looks so animated and flat in a good way that you can't quite believe it's just all polygons. It's very pretty. [00:39:57] Speaker A: Yeah, I will get to it. Best VR AR. Have you played any of these? Grand Tourismo Seven, Horizon, Call of the Mountain, humanity, Resident Evil Village, VR mode and Synapse? [00:40:13] Speaker B: I've not played any of them. [00:40:15] Speaker A: I'm surprised. I thought you would have. I don't know why, but I just assumed you'd have played grand Tourismo seven. [00:40:20] Speaker B: No, I haven't got a PSVR. Two. [00:40:23] Speaker A: It's not backwards compatible with the PSVR. [00:40:25] Speaker B: No. And I refuse to pay 500 pounds for something which is going to be craply supported. [00:40:32] Speaker A: That's fair. See what else that you might have an interest in. Content Creator of the Year, best YouTube face. [00:40:47] Speaker B: Did it say best YouTube face? [00:40:49] Speaker A: No, it doesn't. [00:40:51] Speaker B: Oh, I wish that was a category most anticipated game. [00:40:56] Speaker A: These are the five games for next year. Final Fantasy seven, rebirth, Hades two, like a dragon, infinite wealth. Star Wars, Outlaws, and Tekken eight. [00:41:12] Speaker B: Hades Two is a good show, isn't it? It is. [00:41:14] Speaker A: Even though I haven't played Hades, it's a game like I wanted to play. And then I heard that you need to complete it multiple times to get to the end, and I'm like, have I got enough time to do that? [00:41:26] Speaker B: Well, I've never finished it. I'm not good enough. I've got to the end, boss, a couple of times, but I thoroughly enjoyed playing up to that. I wouldn't say you need to do that at all, because it's one of those games. You could die within two minutes of starting a game. Like a typical game will last you unless you're having a good run. It might last you like, five or ten minutes and in that five or ten minutes, it's got loads and loads and loads of really well voice acted dialogue in it. And it just seems to have unlimited voice. Things like if you die to a certain character with a certain weapon in a certain room in a certain amount of time, when you go back to the start, someone will comment on it in those specific. I don't know how they've done it. That's cool. Yeah. Properly voiced, like, oh, Pez, you know, you died to Cerberus again, did you? I'll teach you for going in there with that shield. And then. Really. Yeah. They'll just basically take the piss out of you for dying to something. [00:42:30] Speaker A: Yeah, I'll have to have a look. [00:42:34] Speaker B: Really good soundtrack. [00:42:36] Speaker A: Really good. Yeah. I haven't viewed the soundtrack, but I've seen stuff about it and, like, just some trailers and stuff and I do want to get to it. Just getting around to it, man. [00:42:47] Speaker B: Yeah. What a nice problem to have, isn't it, that there's too many good games? I mean, we could be in a drought of crap games, but it gets to the point where you get to games way after the main chat about it's finished and then there's nobody to sort of really share that experience with, which is, I think, Final fantasies. I think that's going to be incredible. I mean, I really enjoyed the first chapter of the remake, but it's the sort of thing. It's quite nice to get in on some games, like Alan Wake two. I'd like to play that sooner rather than later because it's quite nice to sort of be able to chat with people about it while lots of people are playing it. Like with Elden Ring, I love that game. But most people had moved on from it, so there's not really many people to chat with about it. Whereas when Bloodborne came out and everyone was just discovering things, it's really nice to be there day one and discovering all this stuff that's going on. [00:43:40] Speaker A: No, I can get behind that. Yeah. I didn't really get into Bloodborne very much. I did play it for a bit, but I didn't get a bit of Elden ring. I fucking adored and played, finished it, and then I was streaming, like, every time I streamed, and when I was like, oh, I fancy playing some more Elden ring, but I can't stream right noW. Made a new character and played a new character. I don't do that with games. [00:44:13] Speaker B: I'd saved it for quite a long time. And also when you can build up sort of reward credit on your Xbox. I'd built up enough. I built up 50 pounds worth. So I just bought it for free. So I got it for free. Nice. Which is amazing anyway. And I knew I was going to enjoy it, but I hadn't really on purpose, I hadn't looked into what it really was. I just an open world Dark Souls game, basically. Okay, cool. I'm going to enjoy that. I wasn't quite prepared for how much I was going to enjoy it. I mean, I absolutely loved it. [00:44:44] Speaker A: Yeah, I've only finished two from software game. Well, two Souls born games, which is Dark Souls and Elden Ring. Every other one I've played, I've dropped because I just got bored. But Dark Souls I end up finishing. I enjoyed that Elden ring I played and I was like, yeah, I much prefer this. [00:45:09] Speaker B: The cool thing about it was as well is my wife, she saw me playing it right from the start and she enjoyed watching me play it because she's like, oh, I'll never be able to play something like this. But she enjoyed watching it like a film. So we played most of that together as well. [00:45:24] Speaker A: That's cool. That's cool. Good way to do it. So we're going to move on to we play together. And the game we played for the episode is Brock the Investigator, which is a nice bit of punnage because you play as an alligator. I think it may be a crocodile. No one knows. [00:45:58] Speaker B: Brock also rhymes with Croc. [00:46:00] Speaker A: Yeah, that's true. Would have been funny if his name was Croc the investigator, wouldn't it? [00:46:08] Speaker B: Or Croc. Yeah. [00:46:13] Speaker A: What did you think of Brock the investigator? [00:46:18] Speaker B: Well, I really enjoyed most of it. I mean, I finished it from. What mean? How did you get to finished? Oh, cool. That's cool. Then. I don't know what the spoiler policy is on this. We are just talking about all of it. [00:46:37] Speaker A: Yeah. Okay, spoilers ahead. [00:46:40] Speaker B: Spoiler alert, as one person's just gone and just turned the podcast off. [00:46:48] Speaker A: Damn. My only listener. [00:46:52] Speaker B: Yeah, I really enjoyed it. I find it quite an unusual mix of styles in There because it's like you've got outwardly, it seems like almost your first impressions. It looks like a bit of a flash game point and click game, but it's got really nice character art in it. I thought. They're really nice, expressive things. It's really well voice acted and. [00:47:22] Speaker A: It. [00:47:22] Speaker B: Deals with some quite good issues. Like the main character has an adopted son because his wife died in a fire. And it's quite heavy for what looks like a kids game. And I think their relationship is one of the main stories that runs through the whole game. [00:47:38] Speaker A: Yeah. Very strained, like. [00:47:40] Speaker B: Yeah. And you can switch between the two characters every now and then, which is quite a nice little touch. I wasn't expecting to be able to do. [00:47:47] Speaker A: No, no, I wasn't expecting. I just assumed you'd be brock doing your shit, like, and that's it. But then from chapter two onwards, I think you can switch between Brock and Charles. [00:47:58] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:48:01] Speaker A: His name is Charles. It's graph, as Victor just said. [00:48:08] Speaker B: But also when you switch characters, I was expecting it to be just literally just change characters and just pretty much like, who do you want to play as rather than playing anything different, if. [00:48:20] Speaker A: You get me, just like two separate stories going on at the same time. [00:48:26] Speaker B: Because Graph's at school, so you can switch to him doing bits of his class. The way the narrative works, which you discover when the game ends, it gives you, like, a tree of all the decisions you made. And then it just outright tells you that there's 25 endings, I think. [00:48:47] Speaker A: I have no idea how many endings there were. [00:48:49] Speaker B: Yeah, something like 25 endings. It says, hey, look, here's what you did, and here's where a major fork in the story happened. There seems to be a lot of replayability, but I thought it was. Hate to call him a tramp, but that's what the game calls him at the start. You know the guy that's outside Brock's apartment? [00:49:07] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:49:08] Speaker B: Did he die in your. [00:49:10] Speaker A: Yep. [00:49:11] Speaker B: Yeah. So that was an early thing. Like, oh, that's quite heavy for what looks like quite a kiddie game. I wasn't expecting this poor homeless guy to die. Because you didn't get him some medicine. [00:49:24] Speaker A: Yeah, I was going to buy medicine and I was trying to build up the money to do it, and then stuff happened and the game moved on. And then it's like, next day, Trump's dead on the floor. [00:49:33] Speaker B: Yeah. Because I thought, I'll just save some money up getting fights and go back and just. You walk out and Brock goes, he's dead. I was like, what? Because he's dead. Oh, no, I didn't get him his medicine. Like, oh, poor guy. That's pretty bleak. Yeah. So, hell no. I was like, oh, I felt really bad because you can choose to stick up from him off the squealers. So I thought that's that done next. And didn't really expect him to die from medical complications. [00:50:07] Speaker A: Yeah, he does actually say to you, like, Gary medicine and all that stuff, if you talk to him enough, he'd explain about it. But you tell him not to bother. He's going to die. Wherever. All you do is delay in the inevitable and stuff like that. [00:50:22] Speaker B: Yeah. And he's quite depressed, isn't he? And you can try and talk around and convince him that life's worth living. It's quite heavy. [00:50:28] Speaker A: Yeah. There's quite a few place things that. Some of the things I was like, I'm not sure about it. It's even like one, like Chapter four. Finished chapter four. But I was like, I'm sure it's one of the other characters. I'm sure it's the robot. But I didn't go for the robot. I thought, I'm not going to go for the robot. I'll go for the guy accidentally killed himself. That's what I'm going to do. I don't want to be mean to the characters because they all seem likable. And I'm pretty sure it was the robot. [00:51:01] Speaker B: Yes, it was the robot because the thing that gave it away or tipped me off. Did you get to the dialogue where it showed its arms extending? Yeah, as soon as it showed that, I thought it's either going to be a suicide, as in the guys instructed it to push it up into the vents because you have to get the ladder down or the robot's done it. And I thought, well, there's a ramp there that goes up. I thought, maybe it's the robot. But when you're interrogating the robot, yOu've got to be quite on it because it keeps sort of proving you wrong. It keeps going, well, you've done this. And all the other characters are going, yeah, Brock, where's this going? And he starts doubting himself, going, oh, shit. Yeah, maybe I'm on the wrong path. And at one point it gives you the option to change your mind. So I was like, no, I'm sure it's the robot. So I'm going to stick with. Eventually, eventually proved it was the robot. [00:51:56] Speaker A: Yeah, I thought it was the robot, but I just didn't go with it because I just thought. [00:52:03] Speaker B: So what happened when you picked the other guy? What happened? How did it get resolved? [00:52:09] Speaker A: Everyone went off fine enough. And then Brock has a nightmare, and Brock has a nightmare with the guard of the police chief answering the phone. And a voice talked to him. And then he says, right, you kept your end of the bargain. And he hangs up. And then he says, right, there's a killer robot on the loose or something like that. And then Lords of robots leave. And then the next day, in the next chapter, you go to a sign that says, two scientists and a security guard killed by someone. No one knows who. [00:52:49] Speaker B: That's the robot. Well, that's really interesting then, because when you eventually suss out that it was a robot, you discover that the guy wasn't dead. [00:53:01] Speaker A: Really? [00:53:02] Speaker B: Yeah, he's not dead. So the final thing is, because you say, oh, you pushed him into the vent. Because it took about 20 minutes. A question. You push him into the vent, and he fell out the vent, on the floor, and he's dead. And the final part where the robot goes, well, something doesn't add up because he was nowhere near the vent. So, say if he fell out of there dead, how is he nowhere near the vent? It's like, oh, shit. And it tells you you've got one chance out of the nine choices there to prove, oh, no. It gives you five options of what to do. And it's like the weasel guy moved the body. This happened. The security guard came and I was thinking, shit, shit, shit. Hang on. Wonder if he's not dead. It might be that. So I picked it, and he goes, he's not dead. And everyone goes, oh, what are you talking? Shit? And then the guy wakes up. So, yeah, he wasn't dead. [00:53:53] Speaker A: Damn. We had quite a different change there. [00:53:56] Speaker B: Yeah. So that's really interesting then by picking one of the other people who it wasn't really. He wasn't. Yeah. So he fucking knew. [00:54:06] Speaker A: I should have gone with a fucking robot. [00:54:08] Speaker B: Fucking knew. It does a really good job of trying to dissuade you from sticking with it about two times in that questioning, it gives you the outright, gives you the option to switch to someone else. [00:54:24] Speaker A: Should have stuck with my gut. [00:54:27] Speaker B: I think that was the main bit where you did some proper sleuthing. I'd say there's only two or three times where you interrogate someone, but it's quite straightforward. It's not really anything other than. Just, here's what I think. Whereas this one was, as you've just proved, there was an actual different outcome from that. [00:54:48] Speaker A: Yeah. It was also like different endings. I had the fight together ending. Didn't have the canonical ending. [00:54:57] Speaker B: I got the canonical end then. So what happened at the fight? What happened at the fight together? [00:55:01] Speaker A: The fight together ending is you go and save Charles. [00:55:12] Speaker B: Graff. [00:55:13] Speaker A: Charles, you go save graph from the Scrielers. And then you go to meet up with Dee. Dee seems to be dead. And then you fight a lot of robots. You go back to your house afterwards anew, and Charles decide fighting to clean up the town together. And he doesn't go to the. [00:55:42] Speaker B: So hang on. A. So that's a huge difference from what happened in my one. You as Brock. Did you not go back to the. [00:55:55] Speaker A: Hang on. [00:55:56] Speaker B: Shay's garage? [00:55:58] Speaker A: I did go back. [00:56:00] Speaker B: Fuck. [00:56:01] Speaker A: It was to go back and use the fucking letter, weren't it? Fuck. [00:56:07] Speaker B: Well, in that case. God, yes. You got a really different ending. Because. I was going to say because I didn't realize it would be that difference. It's quite clever in. It's more in depth than you think. Yeah, this is quite deceptive. It's the most out of bloody left field. Did you have a final battle then? [00:56:28] Speaker A: No, the fight was like, shit. Tons of robots, right? [00:56:34] Speaker B: Yeah. This is fucking bizarre then. So the final fight for me was that the chief of police was a robot. [00:56:41] Speaker A: I fucking thought he would be. I was told earlier in the game that we've spoken to him a robot before, and I assumed it was him because he seems suspicious as fuck because. [00:56:52] Speaker B: It just came out of nowhere. He's a robot. And then you fight him in this sort of rubbish dump type area. And then he then brings in a giant robot that he fights inside. And you fight this giant robot. And then once you've done that, you go back to Shay's garage and you put a special password in. And then she's got what looks like an egg chair in there, and you go in it and effectively time travel back to the start of the. I was just. It was the most like, what the bloody hell's going on? I mean, she's all the way through the game. She's been saying sort of time travely type. [00:57:31] Speaker A: Exactly. [00:57:32] Speaker B: I was thinking, oh, I wonder where this is going. I wonder if she's just like some sort. If she's going to turn out to be a time traveler or some weird thing. But, yeah, for Brock to get in this egg thing and go, right, I'm going back. And then I thought, oh, that's quite a cool mechanism. I wonder if then when you do your new game, if you'll go, this looks familiar. Yeah, it could be, but something I did do. I went back to her garage. She pretty much tells you to bug her off and leave her alone for the rest of the game. I went back there, and there's a lock on the door, and I guessed what the password was. So this is way before I was supposed to have gone back there, like two chapters before. Then I went in there and she goes, what the hell are you doing here? You're not supposed to be here yet. This isn't how things are supposed to happen. And then a big earthquake happens and the world ends. [00:58:23] Speaker A: Wow. [00:58:25] Speaker B: Yes. You properly sequence, break it and the game ends. [00:58:28] Speaker A: That's cracking. [00:58:29] Speaker B: Yeah. Really? God, yes. Completely different. Because I was thinking, what bloody. Because I was telling my misses about. I was like, that game had the most out of nowhere, bizarre ending for the type of game it was. They're suddenly fighting, like, robot people and time traveling. [00:58:47] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, for me, it was fighting a lord of robots, and I mean, a lot of robots in a pit with me and Graff. Well, Brock and Graph were fighting loads and loads and loads of robots. Adi was dead. [00:59:06] Speaker B: Yeah. So in that fight, I forgot to get Dr. Pickles. [00:59:09] Speaker A: I left him locked up in his room. [00:59:11] Speaker B: Oh, did you? [00:59:19] Speaker A: Whoopsie. I think he's like Gerkin or something, and they're not. [00:59:27] Speaker B: I really liked his artwork. I thought the artwork on all the characters was really good. I thought it was really nice. It reminded me the stalk from the Disney Robin Hood film. [00:59:35] Speaker A: Yeah. I liked the Weasel guy, the other Dr. Mink. [00:59:42] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, Mink. Yeah. Because he looked really shifty, didn't he? [00:59:45] Speaker A: He did look really shifty. Even sounded really shifty. The voice acting, I thought was really good, actually, for everyone. [00:59:52] Speaker B: Yeah, really good. So that fight then, that pit that you're in, I was fighting with D and Charles wasn't there. I think you'd fallen out with him enough that he didn't want to take part. He didn't want anything to do you anymore. By then, I think he's just like a piss off. So, yeah, I was fighting with her and then fighting giant robots and then going off and time traveling. [01:00:17] Speaker A: That's cool. Did you pass the tests? Did you get into the dorm with. No. [01:00:29] Speaker B: I passed one of them. And then the bit where you go off to the museum. Was it a museum? Yeah, I passed that one. But I was over the thing that you needed to be in to get in there. And then the robot said, oh, but we're going to dock you something because your dad's a member of the drummers already. So you dropped 50 points. So I didn't get in. [01:00:53] Speaker A: Yeah, I dropped 40, I think. So I was like, just ten points under or something. It's like, fuck you game. Fuck you game. [01:01:04] Speaker B: And then later on you can give the money that you were supposed to inherit to the hacker to try and cheat your way back in. It's interesting. That was dark as anything as well, wasn't it? Because I don't know if it links to the way you answered your interrogation questions by basically admitted to murdering my wife to see what would. No. [01:01:27] Speaker A: I said no. Yes. [01:01:29] Speaker B: I said, oh, yeah, I did it. And he goes, come on, Brock, like, I know you didn't. You're not that type of guy. He's like, oh, yeah, no, I'm not really. But I wondered if it was linked to that, because then Graff starts sort of thinking that Brock might be trying to kill him to get the inheritance. [01:01:45] Speaker A: Yeah, because of the fucking screen. Yeah. [01:01:48] Speaker B: And then they just have this screaming match back at the house. It's like, you only adopted me because you want to kill me off to get your inheritance. I was like, what the hell is this? [01:01:57] Speaker A: Yeah, I didn't get that happening. [01:02:06] Speaker B: Because he shut himself in his room. He's going like, graph. You know, I care about you. He's like, no, you don't. You're trying to kill me off. You just want the inheritance. No. How can you say that? And then he just says, oh, you did this? And he's like, oh, God, maybe I did, but it's like, god, this is dark as hell. This is. [01:02:24] Speaker A: Yeah, I would like to know what happened with some of the stuff. Like, it doesn't explain what happened with her because start of the game, it starts off, everything's on fire. You were walking towards her, and then she's like, calling you a liar and whatever else. And it's like, is that some sort of memory that has been suppressed? [01:02:47] Speaker B: Well, the time travel bit, the password to get in that door was time erases memory. So Brock, before he gets in the thing, he gets told that everything's gone to shit. But the only way to undo it is to pretty much go back and have another go. So I don't know whether you would then go back and you would go, oh, I remember some of this, but I think when the chief of police is doing the classic villain thing of saying why he did everything, I think he was the one that started the fire in the slums that she died in. [01:03:24] Speaker A: Bastard. [01:03:26] Speaker B: So he's remembering it differently. Interesting, but yeah, so that was the canonical ending. So it's interesting that in your game, maybe that maybe he did kill her by accident, by starting a fire. I thought it was nailed on. You know the director, the robot director in graph school. Yeah, I was sure that was going to turn out to be the wife. [01:03:52] Speaker A: Yeah, I thought that for a little bit, but it turns out it is actually the going to. [01:03:59] Speaker B: Yeah, I just thought, oh, he thinks it's his mum, but it's not really. And he's going to turn out to be brothers with graph or something. [01:04:04] Speaker A: But no, that'd be funny. But yeah, I enjoyed it all because obviously you had the point and click stuff. I did use a few hints sometimes. Not Lords, but I did use some because it was. Getting to the point was like, I need to get this game finished so I can talk about risk. [01:04:24] Speaker B: I did the same. If I hadn't had this deadline, self imposed deadline, really, because I wanted to finish it before we talked about it, I would have refused to. And with a point and click game, it's nice to really work out yourself sometimes, isn't it? But there's a couple of. Yeah, the hints I used, it was during is gathering the clues to interrogate for chapter four. I didn't have enough clues. [01:04:49] Speaker A: I used a lot there. [01:04:53] Speaker B: That's a bit of a critical criticism on that one was like, there was a lamp and I'd clicked on it enough times to exhaust the dialogue. And then when you had to go back and reexamine the scene, I clicked on it enough times so there was no other way of searching it. And then it said, oh, I need to go back and check the lamp. It's like, I checked that, like ten times over two different things. So to have to go and check it again, it's like, well, how would I have known to have done that? Apart from just that frustration going, oh, fuck it, I'll just click on everything again. [01:05:23] Speaker A: Yeah, that's what I did as well with certain things like that. And it's like, I checked the flowers, but I had to check the flowers again. But I think there was enough clues there to accuse anyone because it was one with the nanites and the coffee and the flower petals to make it seem like that maybe Mink did kill him and with the nanites and putting the flower petals in his coffee, because he did say he worked with it and it slowed the heart rate of the worms down his test subjects. [01:05:52] Speaker B: Yeah, that's like you say, there's enough to have done anyone, really. I mean, I wonder how you would have proved the security guard did it. But then you questioned security guard, and he had access to the records, which he wasn't supposed to have access to, and he could wipe them because he's supposed to wipe them at the beginning of every day. So he could have probably accused everyone. That's really interesting that when you accused the wrong person, it just went with it. It didn't go. It was me all along. And then. [01:06:22] Speaker A: I went against who I thought was the killer and went with, oh, maybe just. I don't know. I was like, I kind of like these characters. I'll just say it was him. It's like most of the time when an option come up, like, do something bad, I was like, like, no, I'll just leave it. Like, a lot of times, like, oh, try and do something. Oh, they seem a bit upset. Do you want to leave? I'll just leave them be. And I've done that quite a lot. And I think I shouldn't have. I should have just been a pushy dick. [01:06:53] Speaker B: Yeah, I did that. I've made a point of thinking every now and then I'm going to do what doesn't seem like the right thing to see what happens. Like saying in the interrogation, I thought, well, let's see what happens if he admits to murdering her. And it was good that it then turned around and went, don't be stupid. You're only saying that. Oh, yeah, maybe I am then. Because I wondered if you get some really bizarre. You get locked up or something when you get put in the cell with Sin. Isn't it? [01:07:20] Speaker A: Sin? Yeah. [01:07:21] Speaker B: When you get put in the cell, it seemed like there was a load of options for getting out of there. And in the end, I just beat up the guard. [01:07:30] Speaker A: Oh, you beat up the bay? [01:07:33] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:07:33] Speaker A: I didn't see, the way I got out was I had Sin call him over to fix Sin's sink because I broke Sin's sink. Yeah. And then he would come in, fix the sink and I would drop cat fur in this hat. He would put the hat on and pass out. [01:07:54] Speaker B: That's good, isn't it? BecaUse it said he's allergic to it. I think I just wound him up enough. I can't remember how I did it. I think just. I wound him up enough. He goes, right, you're asking for it now. And then just turned the thing off and just came in for a scrap and I just beat the shit out of it. [01:08:09] Speaker A: I had a fight with him later in the game and he was fucking hard as fuck for me. One hit would take off like, a third of my health. And I was like, okay, I'll go and level up a little bit and come back for this. Like, I leveled up once and it made very little difference, but I just started going, I'll just dodge more while he does his charge and punch him a couple of times and then Dodge and then punch. [01:08:30] Speaker B: I thought, it's quite interesting, the streets of rage type mechanic. I was playing with mouse and keyboard and I found it a bit I wished I'd had a pad to hand. That'd have been nice to have played that on a pad. I think it was suited more on just clicking them. It would have felt more connected to what I was doing rather than just waving a cursor and clicking a mouse. But it's pretty cool you could do that. And also, I liked that you could use that for puzzle solving. You could just flick into fight mode at any time, and if something was highlighted and red, you could just whack it and get a reaction off people. [01:09:01] Speaker A: Yeah, I remember I was in chapter four in the science area, in the room where the robot is. Yeah. And I was jumping on the table, and I was like, because one of the things Brock says is, I wonder how high I need to jump to reach that lever. I was like, okay, jumped a couple of times, couldn't reach it. Review press on the Xbox, Pad A and X. We do, like, an uppercut kind of thing. Well, that was reaching it, but it wasn't counting. So I was trying in different positions on the table just in case. That did work, but it didn't work, and I accidentally punched the case. Why did you do that? I was like, I didn't mean to. Sorry. [01:09:52] Speaker B: Yeah, it's good that they all react sometimes. If you were to jump on someone's computer desk, they go, what Are you doing? Yeah, I'm trying to work here. Do you remember the bit where you've got the professor, you're in a bunker, and he's tied up to, like, a shock machine. Do you get that? Did you accidentally kill him? [01:10:14] Speaker A: No. [01:10:15] Speaker B: You know the button thing I switched into the fight mode? I saw it as highlight. You could highlight it red. I thought, let's just punch it and see what happens. And when you break it, it just gave him a lethal shock. He goes and just dies. And the D goes, what the hell are you doing? You killed him. [01:10:38] Speaker A: Oh, sorry. [01:10:38] Speaker B: I didn't mean to kill him. And then just gave you a game over again. That's pretty dark, that it let you just outright kill the bloke. [01:10:48] Speaker A: Yeah, no, I didn't kill him. I freed him. No, I didn't. I freed him, and then I think he ended up getting locked in the room. So he was forever stuck in there. I'm assuming he's slowly, like the crystal maze. [01:11:04] Speaker B: You just didn't go and buy him back out again. You just left him in there. [01:11:08] Speaker A: Whoops. Didn't mean to do it, but, yeah, I would recommend this game to people who haven't played it even though we probably spoiled most of it for you, it's still worth. Because the journey is interesting and there's quite a bit of like when you go through the whole, the end where it shows you the chapters and the choices. There are a lot of choices, a lot more than you realize, that actually have an effect. And they do seem to. [01:11:33] Speaker B: Yeah, I'd recommend it as well. And also, I think even because I paid for it and because we're doing this, I stuck with it longer than I would have done if it had been on like game pass or something, I probably would have started it and gone. Taken one look at it and gone, this probably isn't for me because I stuck with it and I'm glad I did. I don't know if you poked around in the options when you finished it, but they had a. I think it's reading up on Cowcat, the developer. I think it's just a single person's. [01:12:03] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm sure I've heard a cowcat before, but it sounds familiar. [01:12:09] Speaker B: I didn't recognize any of the other games they've done, but I think it's one person. I was looking in the unlockables and there's a fan art section and everything was locked and I scrolled down and it said, submit fan art. And I looked at the message on there and it says something along the lines of, if you've got some fan art, send it to. And it lists the social media thing, it says send it to me and as long as it fits these guidelines, I'll put it in the game. I just thought that's really cool because I thought if you had a younger kid or someone just really, really likes drawing art or something, if you had a younger kid playing this, which you might not want them to because it's quite dark in places, but I was thinking if I was like twelve or something playing this, I'd probably really enjoyed it for a start and I probably would have drawn a picture and sent it to them because I thought I'd. [01:12:58] Speaker A: Be, I can't draw, so it would have been a stick person. [01:13:02] Speaker B: That's quite like a nice thing to do. I don't think I've ever seen that in a game before. I'd see that that sort of thing would normally be reserved for like Kickstarter bonuses or you have to almost pay your way in. But he's just like, no, I assume it's a he. I don't know. Could be anyone, couldn't it? But yeah, it could be a gator for all I know, but, yeah, I thought it was quite a nice little touch. [01:13:25] Speaker A: Yeah, it is really cool. And it's set on Earth. We will tell you that it's set in the future, like, way in the future. Yeah. In the museum, there's a human skull. And they say from, like a million years ago or something like that. [01:13:43] Speaker B: Yeah, that was it. They say something like all the people that used to live on this planet that all died out and they called them some human Ilius or something, wasn't it? Or. [01:13:51] Speaker A: Yeah, something. But they were saying they were quite intelligent, just not as intelligent as us and stuff like that. And also in the game, they're like, yeah, as humans. And I was like, wait, what? You're a fucking alligator thing. You're a human. I'm a human. But it seems to just be what they use, humans. Yeah. [01:14:13] Speaker B: I mean, I wonder if that's like an accidental hangover from a different draft of a script or something, maybe, because that does seem like a really OD, considering how consistent the rest of it is with everything being in character for them to call themselves, unless it's some sort they know that's just the people that live on Earth are called that or something and they've just stuck with the name. [01:14:37] Speaker A: Yeah, seems possible. I think we're going to end here as we've been going for a little power hour and a quarter, but I really enjoyed my time with it. I think it was a good game. I'm probably not going to go get different endings because there's just too many games to play. But it's very interesting. I had fun with it. [01:15:05] Speaker B: Yeah, likewise. I'm not going to go and play it 25 more times to get endings. I'll just read up on them. But like I was saying, with playing something when other people are playing it, I'm glad we both played it at the same time, because that was quite a wildly different outcome on that. I'd have had no idea that it could be that difference. That's really interesting. [01:15:26] Speaker A: Yeah, it's literally, you went back in time to start the game. I went home. Me and Graff were having a chat. His friend walks in, whose name I've forgotten all of a sudden, and says, oh, I've got to go to the dorm now because of the way the world is. And then he leaves and goes to the dorm. And then me and Graff are, like, chatting away and graph's like, yeah, I've realized that I've just been denying who I want to be. I want to be here with you. Helping sort out the. [01:16:07] Speaker B: I mean, they had this horrible screaming match and he said he hates Brock so much that Brock decides to go and time travel to try and put it right. [01:16:21] Speaker A: But does he? If that's the canonical ending, I wonder if there's like another ending that's meant to be the canonical ending or after that, like two playthroughs is slightly different. [01:16:33] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:16:36] Speaker A: That'S the proper ending. And all the other ones are like where you have meant to have gone back and done a different ending together. [01:16:44] Speaker B: At some point I'll keep it installeD. I might start and play like the first 1015 minutes or something and see if it makes any reference to it. That'd be quite a cool little thing to be if you were playing it through. And he makes a reference to it because in the hallway to his apartment, there's a shower and a toilet block that you can never go into. Yeah, I wonder if little things like that might open up. Who knows? [01:17:05] Speaker A: Have you ever punched the toilet door? [01:17:12] Speaker B: No comment. [01:17:13] Speaker A: Because I've punched the toilet door repeatedly. And then I hear, hey, leave me alone. It's occupied in here or something. [01:17:20] Speaker B: I thought you're talking about in real life. [01:17:24] Speaker A: No, in the game you do that and hey, leave me alone. Is someone in here? Kind of thing. And then I've gone back another day and done it and it's like, oh my God, you're back. Leave me alone. [01:17:36] Speaker B: No, there was no one in there when I did it. [01:17:38] Speaker A: I think I had to punch it a few times. It wasn't just like once, it was like a couple of times. Then it did it. [01:17:43] Speaker B: I punched the door at the apartment. [01:17:47] Speaker A: I didn't see. I just tried speaking to the doors. [01:17:50] Speaker B: Yeah, I just whacked them and then they was like, get the hell out of here. One of them gave me one of the little advert things to bugger off. [01:18:00] Speaker A: Nice. I didn't get a lot of them. I think I got like 50. [01:18:06] Speaker B: Did you scan the QR code on it? [01:18:09] Speaker A: No, I was thinking about doing it, I just never did. [01:18:12] Speaker B: It says the last digit is eight. They all say the same thing. The last digit is eight. So I wonder if in multiple playthroughs that code might be different as well. So you might pick up all the different codes from different playthroughs and then piece together what the code is for. That desk. [01:18:30] Speaker A: Yeah, the desk that's in the side room. [01:18:35] Speaker B: Yeah, Shay's side room. I wonder if that's how you're going to get the code is from multiple playthroughs. [01:18:43] Speaker A: Didn'T think of that. [01:18:45] Speaker B: Quite in depth, isn't it? [01:18:46] Speaker A: Yeah, that's a really cool game. Hopefully the next game they do that I play by them will be just as interesting. Yeah. [01:18:59] Speaker B: Now on the old radar of developers, if I see something by them, I'll certainly give it a go. [01:19:04] Speaker A: Yeah, definitely. SO yeah, that's going to be it from us. Would you like to plug anything? No. [01:19:14] Speaker B: For once look out for my Christmas song in February. [01:19:18] Speaker A: No, man, you need to get one up before Christmas. Need to enter into the charts, man. Yeah. [01:19:24] Speaker B: He only takes like 300 sales to chart these days. I think I could do it. [01:19:29] Speaker A: Exactly. Grkade would probably buy at least that many copies. [01:19:34] Speaker B: If I call it Balance Christmas Wonderland. [01:19:37] Speaker A: Then Joe buy fucking hundreds on his own. [01:19:42] Speaker B: There you go, there's the Genesis. [01:19:47] Speaker A: That's a good idea actually, but yeah, that is going to be us then I will be back in a week with a film, not sure where the film is going to be. And then in a fortnight be back with another game. I would like to thank Victor for taking part. It's been a pleasure as always, dude. [01:20:05] Speaker B: Yeah, it's nice. Thank you. [01:20:07] Speaker A: Good to chat to you, dude. And that's going to be us then. So bye bye, see ya.