Stray

Alex and guest hosts Isiah and Nick talk Stray.

Stray is an adventure platformer puzzler developed by Blue Twelve Studio and published by Annapurna Interactive. The story follows a stray cat who falls into a walled city populated by robots, machines, and mutant bacteria, and sets out to return to the surface with the help of a drone companion called B-12.

Stray was announced in 2020 and became highly anticipated. Following some delays, it was released on 19 July 2022, for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and Windows. It received generally positive reviews, with particular praise directed at its artistic design, cat gameplay, narrative, original score, and platforming elements; critics were divided on the combat and stealth sequences.

Isiah and Nick played Stray on their Windows PCs. Alex also played a little of the game on PC, but primarily played on the Steam Deck.

This episode is unofficially brought to you in part by Nurses.

Transcript

Alex: 0:21

Hello and welcome to another Lo5 episode. My name is Alex, and this month's show is going to be a little different as my co-host and little brother Luke is out on paternity leave. That's right, little bro and his wife Trish are proud parents of two wonderful twin boys, Arthur and Lewis, and I am one proud uncle. Incredibly happy for y'all, and I can't wait to get a controller in those little kids' hands. But in Luke's place, I have invited two of the homies, Isaiah and Nick, to come on and talk about what the internet affectionately calls the cat game. It was great having those homies on to talk about Stray, but before we get into it, I did ask our social following if y'all played Stray and what you thought. Here are a few of your responses. So Rick of Pixel Project Radio wrote in and said, As a lifelong cat lover and owner, they nailed the movements and mannerisms. Stray as a game, though, felt like it showed its entire hand up front. Pretty game, kitty game. It felt a little too on the rails for me to be super into it. Would love to mop my cat into it though. Dave from Tales of the Backlog said, Really enjoyed it. And thought it nailed all the cat mannerisms and ways cats get into mischief. Enjoy the atmosphere a lot too. We also had Listoff podcast write in, and they said Stray was the reason I signed up for PS Plus Extra, and I'm not disappointed. It was an endearing experience that kept a brisk pace and didn't overstay its welcome. I was surprised at how much I came to care for the kitty cat protagonist, and the story was surprisingly poignant. Live of Between Two Gamers wrote in and said, Cute game, if you're expecting an exciting and impactful story, you'll be disappointed. If your goal is to be a menace to society as a cat, you'll love it. Then we also have Stew World Order from Stew World Order Productions. I put about two hours into it. I like the idea, but the puzzle-based games bore me pretty quickly. Getting Down in Worry Podcast wrote in and said, I bought a cloud computing subscription and a controller just to play it, because it seems so appealing. But I found all the fetch quests really tedious. I think I'm just not much of a gamer. Big Nick, the Big Nick J on Twitter, said, Yep, the download glitched after a while at the same point every time. But from what I played, I liked it. And then finally, Gaming Together podcast wrote in and said, It is a cat. And you know what? You're right. It was a cat. Big thanks to all you who wrote in. Sorry if I wasn't able to get into this episode. I didn't give a huge window for those, but again, thank you for those who did write in. Stick around for a special guest during our Unsatching sponsored spot later on in the episode. For all those who are bummin that they didn't get their monthly dose of the low five bros, Luke did join me over the phone for a little side quest in segment, so that's coming as well. Although the audio was not great because we did it over the phone, so apologies there. But nonetheless, it's a good talk. Without further ado, I've got a couple of guest hosts with me today. The homies Isaiah and Nick. What are you doing? Hello, hello. Hello. Welcome. Thanks for thanks for joining for the Stray Podcast Game. Thanks for the invite. Heck yeah. Uh why don't why don't you give the listeners a little a little rundown, just a little background, whatever you want to say about yourself. We'll start with uh Isaiah.

Isiah: 3:58

Oh god, not much to say. Fucking play video games. Like to try and think I'm good. I know I'm not. Right on. That's about it. You got one of those big mouse pads? I got one of those big giant mouse pads. You know, I like to, you know, a lot of like a lot of neon lights. I heard the lights make you better.

Alex: 4:11

Me too now. I don't know if it makes me any better. I just like the vibe. I don't really even play first person shooters that often. So there's I'm really only doing it for the LEDs.

Isiah: 4:21

I just I just like raging at video games. That's it. Right on, man. Real real good at it. Let's let's hear a little bit from you, Nick.

Nick: 4:27

Uh, you know, I'm Resident Cat dude. Uh I have uh quite the healthy collection of cat shirts uh myself, if I do say so. Um I also enjoy a game from time to time. I'm more of a casual, as uh you know, my life uh sends uh take up most of my time uh by you know drinking and partying and the really important stuff, you know. Yeah. But yeah, uh more of a casual than anything now. PC Master Ace all the way, baby. Right on.

Isiah: 4:52

Same plus switch. That's different. Switch is different.

Alex: 4:54

So we all played this game on the on the PC then. Yes, right. Right on. I did a little bit on the this I did back and forth. I played on my PC and then the Steam Deck. It was a nice uh transition between the two.

Nick: 5:04

How was it on the deck?

Alex: 5:05

Uh it was really nice, man. It's not quite as pretty, but it it worked really, it was really smooth. It runs really well on there. It also has that gyro, which I'm a big fan of the gyro. Right. Yeah. Uh so if you're like if you turn the deck a little bit, your your uh point of view changes just slightly. And it was kind of fun. Got into the whole vibe of being a cat on uh you know while laying in bed. Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Nick: 5:28

Uh not to segue, but uh so with the uh new um cyberpunk DLC and like patch that just came out, if you get the vibrator, um it actually vibrates in your hand.

Alex: 5:37

Oh, no way. Yeah, totally, dude.

Nick: 5:38

Yeah, that's fine. Like this textual vibration, yeah, right. My hands on a deck. I'm not even lying, man. That's like, yeah, they included that in the patch. Oh, that's wild, right? That's wild.

Alex: 5:47

Well, cool, man. Well, thanks for the thanks for the little intro, boys. One of the reasons that I wanted to do the stray pod with the two of you is one, I know you're uh a couple of cool homies that love the video games, but also we are uh in your kitchen right now, so we brought the studio mobile, and we've got we're surrounded by cats.

Isiah: 6:05

Three three little asshole cats just roaming right now, pissed that all this stuff is happening.

Alex: 6:09

And I took my Allegra this morning, so I'm I'm ready to go for at least a little bit.

Nick: 6:14

Yes.

Alex: 6:14

I always try and bring a little bit of something to the studio, a little physical piece, so it's fun having some real cats walking around while we do the stray pod. So Stray is a 2022 adventure video game developed by Blue 12 Studio, which is a little indie joint. A lot of anticipation around this title. I know that it broke some some Steam records when it first came out. It's also on PlayStation Plus, I believe. So a lot of people have been playing this game, and it's a it's a cool one. Tell me a little bit, guys, about what you knew about this game under the lead up prior to prior to launch.

Isiah: 6:42

I tried to stay as out of the loop of it as possible. I wanted to go into it completely frickin' blind, uh, which was hard with how big of a launch it was. Oh man. And everyone and their mother was playing it, like, oh my god, have you done it yet? Like all of our people were on it. Like everyone, right out of the gates, too.

Alex: 6:58

Yep. I did my best to avoid spoilers as well. And I also did my best not to look up anything while I did this playthrough. How about you guys?

Nick: 7:06

Yeah, I mean, like, it's a pretty straightforward uh puzzle game. Uh, there was one instance though, like right away in the beginning when you get the little drone. I'm like, okay, I B12. Yeah, I'm clearly not doing something right because I can't find the fucker. Um so I had to like reload a prior save and go back and like, oh, okay, now you just follow him when he's going in the room. Oh, yeah. That's oh, it's so novel. Yeah, I didn't have to look up anything. Uh the puzzles, like I said, were pretty straightforward. For me, it was more of like a it had a lot of really good pillow shots. So I looked up like uh like what kind of Chivos you can get, and there's one if you like take a nap for like an hour. Okay, really? Yeah. So like I found this cool spot to take a nap, and I just like walked away from my PC and like made a sandwich and some shit. Yeah, smoked a couple cigarettes, came back, and like it's doing this cool camera rotation.

Isiah: 7:51

Like, oh yeah, the the nap, the nap spots that you can do. There's so many of them. Like you're in a bookshelf, like you're in a on top of a frickin' cliff overlooking a waterfall.

Alex: 8:02

Like there's a million different ones. I love too how the camera will will pan out a little bit, slowly pan out, and it gives you kind of a cool view of whatever wherever your nap spot is.

Isiah: 8:09

That was that's my favorite part about this game by a mile, is easily like the ambiance, the the sound design, like the the the soundtrack itself, even of when you're just walking around, sitting somewhere, scratching on a post, like rubbing on someone's legs, the music to it, and the yeah, the the angles, the shots, everything was so nice. Yeah, I thought so too.

Alex: 8:29

I I definitely was impressed by the by the soundtrack, and I thought that it really led to the immersion of this game. The weird part though is you could go up to like a uh stereo or whatever, and you can change the the song or whatever track is playing, which I was like, turn on the radio more or less. But I also thought it was weird because it'd be like it'd be hitting just the right vibe, and then it's like, okay, I'll change the radio station. Then it's like not it's like granted I changed the station, but nonetheless, I was like, well, that switched the vibe a little bit. Nick, you brought up it's a pretty much it's a straightforward puzzler platformer, right? Yeah, yeah. Uh, how'd you guys feel about that? I didn't I didn't yet know anything about this game other than it was a cat game. I guess I probably knew that it was gonna be a platformer. How did you guys like that experience? Did you think it worked well as a platformer?

Nick: 9:10

Yeah, I think it it did in a way, I think it was actually a little more approachable than it having to be like this really in-depth, just like hardcore puzzle grind, which uh it can lose me from time to time. Like I said, I'm pretty casual nowadays. Sure. So like I was looking forward to having something like easy enough for me to just like sit down, crack out on it, and just like bust through and have a good time with it. Right. So like uh no like real spoilers or anything like that from uh my people, other than the fact that it was short. You know, it is a short game. Yeah.

Alex: 9:36

Do you guys play in one sitting, or how did you how did you play through this?

Isiah: 9:39

Oh, ripped right through a butt.

Alex: 9:40

Did you? Oh yeah.

Isiah: 9:41

I remember waking up one day and this dude started playing, and I came back from doing something and he was just finishing, and I was like, going in the living room. I gotta get out of here. I I see I see things I don't know. I gotta leave. Oh god. I did it in three play sessions, more or less. Okay. I did I did one, took like a day break, got basically to the end, and then I wanted to finish the podcast, or I wanted to finish the game right before we did the podcast so I could be uh fresh and excited on it, if you will. I saw you on that Steam last night, though.

Alex: 10:08

Hey, you were too, you were too, you were too. No, that's true. I finished it last night as well. I did uh mine similar to you, Isaiah. I did mine in probably four or five different sessions, hour to two hour sessions. Took me just under six hours to beat the game. And I like doing the small bites like that, but I will say that doing it that way made it so when I picked it back up, I was like, what the fuck's going on? Right.

Isiah: 10:29

What are the controls? Unless you stopped at a chapter change, it was really hard to like, all right, what was I doing? Where was I at? Who am I following right now? And even just like pressing down on your D-pad to like B12 gives you a quote unquote hint. Yeah, yeah. It's just like, yeah, you're supposed to go find this guy. Like, do the do the thing, dummy. Yeah. Where?

Alex: 10:51

Those hints were helpful to me maybe once or twice, but otherwise I was like, come on, B12, like give me some more games. B12 are supposed to be a scientist, G. Like, you're helping a scientist, come on. Like because there's no uh it's not like a huge map, like the world in this game isn't huge. You are kind of contained, but I mean it's it's large, but you are contained to a certain area. But what I noticed doing those uh small bike gameplays, so I would come in and I would kind of forget what was going on in my environment, and it would take me a little bit of time to run around and figure out where everything was, where people were supposed to be. And I will say that uh I was yearning for a map, although I appreciate that there wasn't a map, but I was kind of I was like, oh man, it'd be really nice to have a map right now.

Isiah: 11:29

Some type of like, all right, this is where you just were. I don't know how many times in the slums that when you're going between your it was it was the blanket. The blanket is the one of like the first big uh fetch quest challenges for me. Cause I was like, all right, you gotta go to the laundry place to get the detergent to give to the guy, to give the blanket, to give to grandma to and I was like, where the f like I just ran by this laundry detergent place, like where did it go? Like I'm so confused right now.

Nick: 11:56

Yeah, that was a cool map. I like that because uh it had a really good uh cyberpunk aesthetic to it, and it was uh really pretty and it was fun to run around. The uh the action in that game's cool, like uh the parkour is like pretty, you know, um pretty easy and pretty lighthearted. So like you can you can zip around real quick, like and whatnot. It's it's intuitive, is what I was trying to say.

Isiah: 12:14

Speaking of the parkour, I think my favorite thing about this game is that there's not a dedicated jump button. You can't just be walking around and jump. You have to be a cat. Yeah. A cat's not just gonna walk down the road and randomly jump up. Right. You know, like you have to find a spot where the cat would, oh, I'm gonna jump on top of that refrigerator, and then you will, you know.

Alex: 12:32

Yeah, I appreciated that too. It was like at some times it felt limiting, but at the same time, like the game was just it gave just enough hints that there would be like, okay, so that looks like something I can jump on. So if I go up to it, and then it would give you a command prompt that says, Oh, you can jump on this. Yeah. And that that worked for me. I have talked to some other folks that have mentioned that they did feel uh shout out to Rick of uh Pitchel Project Radio, but he mentioned that he loved this game, although he did feel like it played itself quite a bit.

Nick: 13:01

It yeah, I can see a million percent does. Yeah, I can I can definitely see that.

Alex: 13:04

And you is is that a problem for you guys? Or what no, not at all.

Nick: 13:07

Like uh it's it was a nice little package, it was a fun little, fun little romp. My biggest thing though is like replayability for myself is probably not gonna happen anytime soon, but it it would be nice to introduce a new player to it.

Alex: 13:21

Sure, definitely. Uh, I would I agree with you that I'm not sure when I will pick this up again, although I did leave a lot of the memories behind, and the completionist in me is like, oh man, but all right, well, those memories because it does this thing too where you progress, if you progress too far in the storyline, you can't go back to get those.

Isiah: 13:38

There is a lot of places that no return, like you can't get half the achievements once you I know the big one is once you're out of the slums. There is there's like what 10 memories in the slums that you can unlock. I had like four of them, and I was like, where do I even go right now to get these memories?

Alex: 13:53

And I feel like there's only one or two, there's at three tops points in the game where they straight up tell you if you proceed, you're not gonna be able to go back. Yeah, and I feel like maybe I just missed it because I wasn't paying attention early on, but I do feel like I there was a point earlier where I missed a few memories that I definitely could not go back to, and I was like, oh, well, it's okay, Alex. Just just continue.

Isiah: 14:13

And yeah, like like we said with the replay, it's like I don't want to now go back and just to find those memories. Like if I go back, I want to play through the whole game again, not just achieve O Hunt, but you wouldn't even be able to on that save file because you you finished the game, you can't go back, you know?

Alex: 14:27

Like you guys are longtime cat owners. Tell me about the the animation in this game because I've I've read a lot of cool things about how well that they've captured the essence of a cat.

Nick: 14:36

It was evidence of sweet. Like when uh you get the cat harness for the first time, that you just fall over. Yeah, cat doesn't know what to do. Like perfect, like yes, exactly. Perfect. Yep, that is 100% cat. And uh yeah, B12's like, hey man, grow up, like you'll get used to it. Like, stop that, knock that crap off, you're not hurt.

Isiah: 14:54

A lot, yeah. A lot of the meeting new people, uh the the biggest one I think of of like being the cat, uh, I think it's in it's when you're in the underground, like the sewers, and you just get that uh that purple flashlight thing. Right, yeah, um, all of those what are they called? The basically face eaters. I don't know what they are. I don't remember what they're either, actually. But yeah, face eaters, crab crab heads, the mites. Whatever the mites, all of those start rushing you, and then the cat like slowly arches its back up and starts hissing, and then like B12 comes in to save you basically, you know. Well that's like the biggest oh yeah, just the the the backup, the hiss, the get the f away from me right now. Like let's let's party.

Alex: 15:33

I really loved how when you because you go around, you meet all these different characters, and how there's an option for a lot of them where you can just actually go and like rub up against their leg and then there'll be like a little heart that shows up on their face screen.

Isiah: 15:44

Yeah, the the fake faces that they have. Oh, speaking of the robots, that's uh one of the other ones that I loved about this was they almost seemed human. Right. And you could tell that they were all human-based. Like they robots showed emotion, which as we all know, robots aren't supposed to show emotion. Seamus and his dad, like the doc, like when they hug and the the face, the hearts pop up, it's like, oh my god, that was like a touching moment of robots showing emotion.

Nick: 16:11

Yeah, and it's cool because like uh there's a whole lot of like story that was kind of left unexplored. I just like I'm not saying I had a rush playthrough, but I was trying to like get through the game through the podcast and whatnot. So like they really didn't explain a whole lot about like the uh the background and the world space you're participating in, which you know is kind of cool, but at the same time, like like you're saying, the completion is in you and like the geek and you're like, I want to know what the fuck is going on. Like, who are these guys and like why are they robots? And like, why am I a catner robots? And like you know, that sort of thing.

Isiah: 16:39

It's almost build your own, sort of like finish your own story-esque of you here's the outline of what's going on, how how do you think this played out now? Like, how do you think they actually felt or what actually happened?

Nick: 16:50

Yeah, were there always robots there, or like were they created? Like, were there actually humans at one point?

Alex: 16:54

Like, you know, yeah, and some of those memories start to start to unfold a little bit of that story for you, but it you're right, at least it leaves a certain amount to the imagination. And I don't think they ever explain why a cat's involved.

Isiah: 17:06

Yeah, right. It's just because they're awesome, you know. I mean it's the name of the game, it's a straight cat, right? Or it's just straight cat, you know.

Alex: 17:11

I know that there's a lot of love on the internet too, that it's just like you know, kind of a standard orange tabby, and you know, there's not um which is kind of cool, you know.

Isiah: 17:19

As I don't think the cat you play has a name, but everyone on the internet just calls it orange because orange cat. Yeah, yeah.

Alex: 17:26

No, it's it's I'm I'm curious. So this this game definitely does, I think, what they set out to do with it. Was it Blue 12 or something like that? Blue 12 studios, something like that. So they're they're a small joint, and they they basically I feel like they delivered on what they you know what they set out to do. It is a smaller game, but I think that it hits everything that that I wanted it to do for them. And I'm really interested to see, like, especially because this game has been received so well, like what they'll go on to do, like if they'll continue playing in this world or if it's just a one-off.

Nick: 17:55

It's cool because it's like it's a tight little package, like you're saying, like it's well executed, it delivered on all the notes that it wanted it to hit. So like it was a solid, straight through, and like I can get through it in a sesh and not feel bad about myself, you know. Like I could sit there for like six to eight hours and just like grind and get through this game. And it wasn't even like a slog. Like, don't get me wrong, like I'm a clumsy idiot, so I died plenty of times in this game.

Isiah: 18:17

My favorite achievement, die nine times. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I definitely earned that one.

Alex: 18:21

Yeah, I saw that on uh on Nick's team. It was like the nine deaths, and I was like, ooh, I haven't died nine times. Maybe I'll be able to do that.

Nick: 18:26

I just dropped last night finishing the game. I am not very good as at video games as well as Isaiah, you know, like especially platformers. I'm just like, okay. So yeah, I got geeked quite a bit in that game.

Alex: 18:37

I cheesed it a little, I found you could cheese it a little bit, especially in those uh quote unquote like combat uh sessions. So there, you know, there's not a whole bunch of combat in this game, but you can die. The uh what do they call those sentinels or whatever can come out of the view? Yeah, yeah. And uh so they shoot these like electric darts at the cat, and it's kind of a bummer.

Nick: 18:53

Like those bumps that should bum me out. Yeah, well, they had my number, and like I'm like, how the fuck? Like, God, every time. Why are you shooting a cat? It's a cat. It's a cat. Like, yeah.

Alex: 19:02

I didn't notice though, if you sprinted and you did some zigzagging, which I think like cats, I don't know. I in my in my mind, anyways, I was like, if I was a cat, this is how I would run away from if you just sprint through those sessions, like honestly, spam B and sprint. Yeah, they're gonna get you. Like uh because what does B do? Is that the meow?

Isiah: 19:18

Oh well, well, I don't know. I don't know what controller you play on uh right right uh right button on my for me was it's uh like getting the uh getting the face crawlers off of you. So if I would just you hold right trigger and spam that, they're never gonna hit you. Totally. Very cheesable, right? But but also gets a lot of the point of a lot, like a lot of those when you're going through those not stealth missions, but uh like when you're sprinting through and chased by all those, you almost feel at a point like there's only one way to go, and they give you like six different options. So there was a couple of times where I died probably three or four times in the first five seconds of a chase sequence just because I didn't make the right turn. It's okay, I'm actually getting mad at this game right now. I don't want to get mad at this game. It's a cat.

Alex: 20:00

Right, man. The couple times that I did get really frustrated with this game is the puzzles are not super tough, but they can be tricky.

Nick: 20:08

They make you feel dumb. They make you feel dumb. Because you didn't hit the right box in the right way.

Alex: 20:12

Right, or you didn't find a certain item that it's like Isaiah and I were talking this uh about this not too long ago, but early on in the game, you're collecting a bunch of notebooks, and there's this one notebook that is inside of a box that you have to knock over, and then if then it's oh my gosh, I spend so much time.

Isiah: 20:30

But it's not even knocking over the box. You have to jump on a stack of boxes to jump to the other box to jump off of for this notebook to fall out.

Alex: 20:38

That was my that was I'm so close to my like my internet breaking point where I was like, I'm just gonna fucking look it up. I just don't know.

Isiah: 20:43

That is one where I did look up and I was like, I know it's in this room, I know I have to do something. I didn't look specifically, I have to get to this box, but I did. There were two times that I did go to the internet. One was last night because I was getting really frustrated and I was like, I need to finish the game. It was at the uh what do they call it? Antworld, where you're at that really long cylindrical. Yeah, with the waterfall. Like getting like, I think it was it was like one of the flowers. It was like a red flower or something you had to find. I was like, I'm going through the whole thing. I know there's levels, like there's probably one on each level. I see red arrows pointing places, like, where the f is this goddamn, you know.

Nick: 21:19

Totally. Funny thing about that notebook is like I am not a pro gamer by any any means, but like I accidentally came across it rather easily. Just happenstancially. That's that's the perfect one for that's the perfect way for you to do that. Yeah, because I'm just like doodle bopping around. I'm like, oh, a notebook, cool, dude. Right. Oh, I got a notebook, nice. I'm gonna write into that. Yeah, cool.

Alex: 21:37

The uh the only true gripe I have with this game is okay, the dialogue is fine. I I did enjoy the dialogue, but it drives me nuts in newer games when the dialogue repeats over and over. Yeah, like if you go, because like I was saying, I get lost sometimes and I'd keep talking to the same people or the same robots, and they would say the exact same thing to me. I'm like, oh, just please, just please cycle through a little bit more. Right. If you give me one other dialogue option, save something else. Totally. But oddly, at towards the end game, there was more of that. Yeah. So I wonder if it was like a time crunch thing and they just like wanted to get it out. Uh, because for instance, like if you talk to the DJs, there's this part where you go and you go into this crap, and it's it's it's like kind of a fun scene, and there's some fun like platforming puzzling going on in there too. But anyways, I talked to the DJ, and the DJ kept like doing different crowd pump up stuff, and I was like, all right, at least the DJ's got some lines. Right. Anything you guys did not like about this game?

Isiah: 22:31

Um minor performance issues. I I was I was wondering if it was just my rig uh that was, but obviously this is a PC port, it was ported from PlayStation to PC. So I never had any like everything looked great. I didn't have necessarily many frame issues, but my load times were atrocious. Like my load times were atrocious at times. I don't like I said, I don't know if that's just my personal hardware-wise, but uh yeah, like between Reddit and different reviews, uh, I've heard, yeah, like Steam Deck especially had some major issues, and a lot of like the dude was running it on 3080 Ti and he was struggling to hit like 40 frames.

Alex: 23:07

Oh okay.

Isiah: 23:07

You know, I didn't get major, major issues. That was a little one for me, like I said, PC port. I don't know, I I had some things written down. I think that was like my only biggest issue.

Nick: 23:16

Unresponsive controller times. Oh, okay. When you're platforming, it could be just a little wonky, but it's not anything you couldn't get over.

Alex: 23:23

Nick, you mentioned earlier about it really hitting that cyberpunk world quite nicely. I know you you are a big cyberpunk fan, like not just the game Cyberpunk, but beyond that, the whole idea of Cyberpunk.

Nick: 23:33

Right, right.

Alex: 23:33

Uh so speak a little bit to that, man. What how how do you think Stray hit that?

Nick: 23:36

Uh it really worked. So I really dug on the aesthetic just because I like that kind of like gritty night city kind of feel, and like you never see the sun until the end of the game, which is you know, spoiler, sorry guys. Well, that's what the game sounds like. Yeah, that's the whole game is getting to the sun. Yeah, the whole and like that's where you kind of start the game. You're already outdoors, and then you get stuck in this like dystopian cyberpunk kind of esque world filled with robots and stuff. So I mean it's the art direction is awesome, and I really liked you know how these robots are just kind of going about their daily life, you know, and they're they're living in this world that is just kind of like shitty, and it's it's pretty cool, it's great. And like I love that aesthetic. Like, I love the neon signs, like you know, pictures for like noodles and stuff, and like the DJs, you know, playing techno music and like the kids are hanging out in the courtyard, you know, bumping on a jukebox, and like that was pretty cool, man. I you know, I like that. I thought for it worked, you know.

Isiah: 24:26

The cyberpunk esque of it. I I love love cyberpunk, love the whole aesthetic and shtick of it, but I really liked how this almost felt post-apocalyptic cyberpunk, not necessarily just true cyberpunk of like technology everywhere, humans, this whole thing. This felt very another spoiler alert, the one after the plag happened, and it's just the robots left, and they've been what they there's like one hint in it that the dude says, or the robot says, tomorrow's my like 734th birthday, right? Or whatever it says. So, like you already know you've been this has been a long time that this has been going on. Very post-apocalyptic, almost just you can tell something really bad happened here. And there's still technology, but it's not around like it should be.

Alex: 25:08

I think it's funny. So this game, yeah, it's 2022 right now in the real world, right?

Luke: 25:13

Real world.

Alex: 25:13

Uh and you brought up the fact, and this is something that like gets rolled out in the story, but there's there's some sort of like Oh, we got some cat action.

Isiah: 25:22

Sorry if you heard that in the background, cats are going to the bathroom. Like I said, the ambiance, you know, there you go. It's a true story podcast. Go on, go on.

Alex: 25:28

Uh so there's there's some sort of, I don't know, the like like you mentioned, there's some sort of like disease or plague thing that happens in this world uh way earlier in the storyline. Like that not even the story. We're just hundreds of this is just part of what's happening or whatever. And that shit hits different in today's world with like.

Isiah: 25:45

I think it was almost intentional.

Alex: 25:46

I wonder. I mean, there's that, but there's a handful of other games that just like you know have this uh whole plague concept that it's like, oh man, playing playing today's world, I'm like shit.

Isiah: 25:55

I think we just kind of played through this in real life. Like, I don't know, we're like we're where we're at with riots and fucking coronavirus and you know totally.

Alex: 26:04

But it but it is cool, and I think that on top of that cyberpunk theme, I think the these robots that are in that you meet in this game, they all have their own very distinct personalities, which I really enjoyed. Yes.

Isiah: 26:14

So the same with yeah, like they show emotion, like you feel like that's not just a robot, that's a robot, that's a robot. Like that's what was it, like Zelta Bar. There's Clementine. Clementine's one of like one of my favorite characters in a video game now. And it's uh it's a robot.

Alex: 26:27

So Clementine's a cool character, I agree, but uh that robot was also another pain point for me because he had to go find her again. And I was like, well, where the fuck is she?

Isiah: 26:36

Wait, I get back home, I get back to her house, and it's all of a sudden blocked off and there's cops everywhere. Great, sorry, I'm sentinels, and the only peacekeepers, if you will.

Alex: 26:45

And the only cue you get is go find Clementine. It's like, well, okay, yeah. What do you mean? There's a lot of area to explore here, and I don't exactly remember what she looks like. I'll admit, yeah, right. That was another thing. It was like, oh man, but who is Clementine? Like, I need a little like compendium that had like pictures of all the people I've met or something.

Isiah: 27:02

Which I guess if now that I think about it, now that you say that, after you meet Beltazar, I think it's Belt or Zap Zanzibar, Zel Beltazar, whatever his name was, he gives you the postcard of Clementine. Oh, it has her address on the back. I just thought about this now. When you said that, I was like, God, I wonder what I can't remember what Clementine looked like. I guess I could have gone to my items and looked at that postcard.

Alex: 27:20

I feel like I might have given that give that to somebody though, don't you? I I do you give it to someone? It fell out of my items at the end because at the end I only had the battery and like some like a key or something.

Isiah: 27:30

Yeah, yeah, after right at the end when you when you lose B12 for the seventh time, whatever it is.

Nick: 27:36

Yeah, I don't want to say uh your inventory cycles in between uh maps.

Alex: 27:39

Is that what it does?

Isiah: 27:39

Yeah.

Alex: 27:40

Oh, okay.

Nick: 27:40

Yeah, because like I had some soda pops or something like that.

Isiah: 27:42

Oh, and the sheet music and all that.

Nick: 27:44

Yep.

Isiah: 27:44

So which I know I I did look this up afterwards, like all that sheet music that you can find. There's that barter trader guy. Yeah, yeah, there's the three different sodas, there's like eight sheet musics you can get. Yep. Uh yeah, and they all give you different it's I think it's just cheebo hunting at that point.

Nick: 27:58

Like totally hunting, but yeah, because like each one opens up like a little MIDI file and he sings you a song and whatnot, and that's that's kind of cool, but like, yeah, I was totally chevo hunting, and I think I missed an opportunity to actually complete that one. I did too.

Alex: 28:10

I was short, I was short of soda or something.

Isiah: 28:13

I only had one soda and I had like seven out of eight sheet music, and I was like, I am not gonna be able to find one soda or two sodas and a sheet music.

Nick: 28:22

There's also that like that piece of art you could barter for, and I'm like, I wonder what that does. It's probably like a memory or some shit.

Alex: 28:26

Totally, totally. Because you can interact with the with the vending machines and it'll pop out like a pop can, subcam, whatever. Yeah, but it but I didn't realize that they were important until like a chapter or two later, and I was like, oh man, I guess I should have collected all the sodas. Right? Yeah, like I said, a missed opportunity, you know, but like hindsight's 2020.

Isiah: 28:45

Yeah, but that does that does lend a little bit to its replayability, I suppose. For sure. Um if you're going for 100%, I would love to see a hundred percent speedrun of this game, see how long it takes. That was one thing, man. I was probably about two hours.

Nick: 28:54

I want to say there's a chevo if you like under two, I think.

Isiah: 28:58

I want to see a speedrunner break this game in 45 minutes, 100%.

Alex: 29:02

There's gotta be I'm gonna start working on it. There you go. You know, if you look back at your experience playing straight, what would you say was the what was the favorite thing about the game?

Nick: 29:12

Mine's gotta be when you first get that harness on. You just follow her. Yeah, done. We're done here.

Isiah: 29:18

Mine, again, spoiler alert, the very end, once you open up the sun for everyone, uh, you you slowly start uh panning back as orange is like kind of looking back at you, and then it's the slow blink when like it's like the final scene before it goes to black. There's just this slow blink, which if you have cats, it means thank you. Oh, there's cats looking at you saying thank you, and then as it starts going black, you hear the meows. Ah, yeah. Like so you don't necessarily get you know uh reunited with your little friends at the end, but you hear them. Totally. So it's like, oh, is it is this straight two coming along? Like, ooh, am I gonna go find my friends?

Alex: 29:54

Like I would say overall the graphics in this game are pretty pretty good, but the the cutscene stuff. I feel very okay with doing that. And you know, I I would just echo echo a little bit of what you guys were saying. I would definitely recommend this game to just about anybody that um you know just wants an experience, really. Uh but kind of like what Isaiah was saying, really go into it, being ready to explore and play. I think that you know, we didn't uh I don't think any of us like really grinded through it super hard like for the pod.

Isiah: 32:06

But I do think it's the last hour, maybe which even at the end of that last hour, that's really all you can do is grind through it.

Alex: 32:12

I think it's one of those things like whenever you give yourself a deadline though, you're not allowing yourself to really explore as much as maybe this game allows you to. That is one thing. I do think that if you really want to like fully encapsulate this game, like go in and explore like everything out don't rush through it. Yeah.

Isiah: 32:29

But like I said, also uh try and come not like I said, don't rush through it, but don't take long breaks like Stallman and I did or uh like in between, like even a couple of day break, you're gonna be like, wait a second, what's going on right now?

Alex: 32:42

I do think the story's gonna be a lot more impactful if you play it in a bigger chunk like Nick did. Yeah. Because you're gonna get it, you're gonna get it all at once. Cool, dude. Well, thanks for doing this with me. The last thing that I want to do is get a little bit about what your side quests are. What are some other games you've been playing other than story lately?

Isiah: 32:56

I don't want to talk about it as great. I love playing online video games and beating up on children's uh League of Legends. It's been my life for 12 years, so I always go back to that and hate my life. Escape from Tarkov. Don't play it, don't buy it, don't support them. I have like a thousand hours in it, and I'm gonna put a thousand more in it, don't play it on. Nothing really too single player right now, though. Okay, that's that's right. I'm uh Smash tournaments. Okay, that's I'm probably gonna brought that up with me on the fucking Smasher Man. Let's do tournaments for years. I love tournaments love flip playing Smash Brothers love beaten up on. Super Smash Brothers melee for the Nintendo game. The 21-year-old party game for children. If you guys haven't played it, like flippy. Trust me.

Alex: 33:46

What else have you been playing?

Nick: 33:47

Uh I've been grinding up 76 quite a bit uh lately and whatnot. And like I hate playing with other people online, but uh it's actually a pretty good community just due to the fact it's still F small. So it's really rare, like running across other players and whatnot. And uh my buddy has a dedicated server, so yeah, it's it's totally dope. I I really enjoyed that. And then I uh got an old one that I've been uh working on. I I played back in the days game to 18 years old, Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines.

Alex: 34:11

Oh right off.

Nick: 34:12

Yeah, so I'm going through as uh the one vampire clan I never played before. So yeah, I kind of grinded on that right now. That's pretty cool.

Alex: 34:18

Oh, it's got a few things on the burner, but I just finished Marvel Spider-Man the remaster for the PC. I'll leave uh I'll leave any major spoilers out to anybody that that's not familiar with the Spider-Man story. But there's just stuff that got me at the end of that and the cutscenes in the stuff in that game are also top nuts. Like, oh my god, so good. And just, you know, zipper on the city of Spider-Man is it's pretty satisfying, right? Well, cool. That's another episode of Little5 Gaming. Thanks again, boys, for for costing. I was standing with it. Well, loops on its pot target seemed to article cool stuff. This has been a lot of fun. Uh fun place to write. Uh fun to talk about it with you guys, and look forward to having you back one these days. We've got to get Nick out of this date. This month, our autistic sponsor is a nurse. And I have a special guest this month as well, who is in fact a nurse. My wife and a hello. I'd like to make a little guest appearance on the pod. I wanted to bring you on and say what you're wonderful. More more reasons than the fact that you're a nurse, but there's another wonderful as well. And as many people may have heard in the news, there's a big strike happening in the MA that's on a strike. There sure is until 7 a.m. tomorrow morning, but we have been since 7 a.m. on Monday morning. Right. So it's a it's a three-day strike, and it's the biggest is the biggest strike that's ever happened for it is the largest nurse that's the largest nursing strike. There's uh about 15,000 plus nurses right now on strike. Um I think about 14 different outfits. Okay, and I know a lot of the address there's a lot of coverage. Why the strike might be happening and what the main reason is I would have to agree with the last couple of years we've spent a lot of products a lot of money to pay for those right. Oh, we maybe have to think about the pay for those hospitals, et cetera. But in my opinion, what I've also got the main reason that strike for uh what are a couple of reasons that we have strike for So the biggest reason behind the strike for is safe staffing and patient safety. Nurse strikes are never about money, they're never about uh personal gain. They're always about our patients and keeping our patients safe and ensuring that the hospital has the best possible health outcomes for our patients because uh we care deeply about our patients and we didn't go into this profession for money, we went into it for to save lives and to care for others and to give empathetically to others and the community around us. Very cool. Uh one of the things, uh one of the best words, if you will add around safe staffing. Yeah, so safe staffing is ensuring that the patient load that myself or another nurse gets is at a safe level where we are able to tend to all of our patients in the way that they need to be tended to uh to ensure that nothing goes wrong and to ensure that poor health outcomes do not occur. So that means that we don't have four patients that are all high, high acuity, which means are high, like extremely sick or in their worst possible situation, which is kind of the situations that we're seeing right now. Um we have four patients and they're all as sick as can be. So when all of your patients are as sick as can be, if something goes wrong with one of them and you need to give more attention to that one patient, we need it to be our staffing to be at a rate where we are able to give that attention to that one patient, and our other three patients are still safe. So that there would be another nurse nearby where I could say, hey, I need you to watch over my other three patients while I call this rapid. Or, you know, as when a call light or a bed alarm goes off, I'm able to get up and run to go to that patient immediately to make sure that they don't fall or something worse happens to them while meanwhile being able to ensure that my other patients are in safe conditions. Right. And your nightmares that the kick of four would have to be ticked. Yes, at night we have ticks, and yep, that at night we have ticks on the med-third floor is that you know I see you sometimes have uh one, or sometimes they have two, and sometimes they even have three days, which is extremely unsafe, and that is what we are fighting against because um poor health outcomes such as false, or such as uh not getting a catheter out in time, and so that catheter has an infection, you know, just not even recognizing something happening to one of your patients because you're stuck in another patient's room and unable to get to that patient. And these things can happen when you do not have enough staff on your floors watching and helping out. Well, I tell you what, Anna, I think you're wonderful. I think nurses are wonderful. Luke's gonna give a little shout-out to nurses uh in the next segment here in our side questing. But I just want to bring you on quickly just to talk a little bit about why it is that you know, a lot of people maybe are hearing about the strike, and I just wanted you to come on and say hello and kind of tell me uh exactly what you just did. So thanks so much for that. Yeah. And you know, also nurses do deserve some more money. We're saving lives. So why people are so against us getting paid more? I don't really understand, but uh whatever. That would make a lot of sense. I'll tell you what, everybody, support your nurses, give love to your nurses. You know, if you're gonna look into this, there's a lot to learn. And, you know, really the bottom line, these nurses out of here are working their hardest to make sure that you're safe and that you're alright.

Luke: 40:44

So we're recording, right?

Alex: 40:46

Uh, we are recording, yeah.

Luke: 40:49

Happy birthday, Al. It's not your actual birthday, but by the time you publish this, it will be on your birthday. And what a nerd publishing on his birthday. Did you take this date because it would be your birthday so you could celebrate it publicly like a fucking diva? Because I'm pretty sure you did.

Alex: 41:01

Uh no, bro. But when I when I chose when I chose the 15th as our publishing date, I didn't know that one day we'll be publishing on my birthday.

Luke: 41:13

And did you also know that you'd be doing that shit by yourself?

Alex: 41:17

I did not. Was that on the bro?

Luke: 41:24

Yeah, right. Uh two premiums, seven weeks early, Arthur Morgan. Low key, when we were playing Red Dead Redemption for the pod, I like definitely knew that one of these babies was gonna be named Arthur. So every time he was like, hey, Arthur, I was like, Man, I can't I can't I wanted to talk about it on the pod so bad, but I couldn't. Oh, that's cool. There you go.

Alex: 41:46

It's uh I didn't even think about that when he told me the names, dude, but that's cool.

Luke: 41:50

Yeah, I mean you thought of grandpa art, I'm sure, right away. I did. Uh the artvark shot for the homie. But yeah, no, um Arthur Patrick and Lewis Williams, two homies, uh came a little you know, Labor Day. We take that shit seriously as hell. We were visiting a friend in there, very, very young baby. The baby's about five weeks old at the time. And uh on the way home, Trisha was like, Let's get some cheese curds and a Virgin Bloody Mary, and I was like, No. And she was like, Man, it's the last day of summer, are you really not gonna celebrate? I was like, That is negative, but it worked. So then I rerouted and about two minutes later her water broke. So we're all put in the hospital and not eating cheese curds. Oh man.

Alex: 42:35

You put her under the rest, you're like, No cheesecurds for you, and she was like, Well, the babies are coming.

Luke: 42:41

Well then the babies were like, No, but eating cheesecurns on the wit, no just holds another baby there, and they're all jealous, and then the cheesecurds just took her to the next level, so boys, we're in the NICU, shout out to the Nicky, unsanctioned sponsor, and then I do should I separate or should I flow right into the unsanctioned sponsor?

Alex: 43:00

Oh, you can hit it right now, bro.

Luke: 43:15

Shouts out to the union, shouts out to anyone that chooses to be a nurse. So there you go, God bless you. Um they've been very kind to me and the latest. And uh yeah.

Alex: 43:26

Very cool, man. And uh teachers are doing well, your wife's doing well.

Luke: 43:30

She is, she's a champ, superhero. Endoendo, I don't know, whether you're she's a chosen one, whatever you want to call it. Yeah, no, she's doing good. So little too little too little black things. Um, and yeah.

Alex: 43:50

You're gonna you gonna buy them some video games, you're gonna give them to play some bids or what?

Luke: 43:54

Dude I have been thinking, and I was like, I thought today 'cause I knew we were gonna record and I was like, what are the games that you try to introduce your kids to? And I was like, I'm wearing a Zelda shirt right now from Target, 'cause Target knows what's up but like not the official sponsor, but maybe someday. But like is Zelda's like too obscure to like introduce to children? 'Cause like I think the reason we loved Ocarina Time is because we did not have a bevy of choices. So the obscurity you just pushed through, you had the guides, you had older siblings. Like if I put it in front of my kids and they'd just be like, I don't I don't know what the fuck to do. I had to sing a song in front of a fish, like what? That's stupid. So I'm like I I don't know. Like just the original one might be like a nice one.

Alex: 44:38

The whole like just head right into that first two levels until you fucking I did hook up uh I hooked my nephew up with the Game and Watch Mario anniversary deal the with the regular Mario on there. Oh words Yeah, he played it for a couple days. Then I think it is then I think it has led to things like lose its charge and he's never picked it up again.

Luke: 45:01

Fair enough. My nephew one of my nephews on True Stock. He loves Mario Mario like his absolute favorite, so I think it's a pretty solid one. You know, the Nintendo universe is pretty tailor-made to hook you as a child and keep you on as an adult, so bought the babies as I I sent you a picture on the Discord, but I I bought the baby some Star Wars bed sheets. We're definitely gonna indoctrinate them best we can. I think I'm gonna find like some some Yoshi plushies or some dumb stuff like that. I'm definitely just gonna lie a lot of that around. My buddy Ben, who just had a baby, a friend of his sent him I don't know what generation of Pokemon it is, so forgive me, but he sent him the three starters of that generation.

Alex: 45:40

Oh sure.

Luke: 45:41

And then whatever the baby picks when it's old enough to make a choice, he's gonna hide. Not like necessarily hide, but he'll keep like the main one in his crib. So you're trying to find all the goofy ways, so I don't know what else you think. What else would you indoctrinate these these your babies with?

Alex: 46:02

Oh man. You mentioned that you got some Star Wars playing, right? I wanna know which movie you're gonna which which movie you're gonna play first. Or are you gonna start with a cartoon?

Luke: 46:12

Oh man, when they're old enough to actually watch 'em, it's like one hundred percent a new host. There's just no doubt about that. They can't be like, This is cheesy because they'll be like fucking four, five. I will admit that like I was a little scaredy pants as a child and uh like I didn't like to be on the floor of the house alone, and I went downstairs by myself, I don't know what time of day, but like no one else is there, and I was like, Well, I want to watch Star Wars. Mom's like, I'm not getting up, dog. And I went down there and braved the scary ass house all by myself to watch Star Wars. So maybe that'll be the homies. They ain't got VHS and they'll probably never function with a VHS, but you know, people just have to listen to dad's dinosaur tales about watching Star Wars on the uh VHS. They'll probably plug in the Disney Plus to watch it. But you know, they'll have to brave those elements.

Alex: 46:58

Dude, I had uh I had an old coworker that was getting rid of uh her VHS player, and I was like, Let me get it for real so I can watch my old Star's VHS tapes.

Luke: 47:07

And she was like, So like by the time these boys are old enough to even operate when I don't know the kid like 'cause even as a kid, like half our VHS didn't work. Yeah. I think Kirby's a solid option. Kirby's cute as cute as heck. And uh pretty simple gameplay and that'll get him hooked.

Alex: 47:30

Kirby makes sense. They also just dropped uh news today about a new c a new old Kirby. Oh man.

Luke: 47:37

It's probably like sixty dollars, and I was like, what a lane, what a lane wreck, dude.

Alex: 47:41

Dude, I was looking at the um I was looking at the the digital store or whatever afterwards, it's definitely sixty bonus. I was like, You gotta be kidding me.

Luke: 47:49

I'm like listening to it, that's messed up, but like maybe. We'll still move on there.

Alex: 47:54

Thing is, is it has just enough added stuff it's as a Wii game, right? The return to Dreamland. But uh they've added they've added just enough stuff where I'm like, well, I guess now I gotta play it on the Switch.

Luke: 48:07

It's like I thought I was gonna buy the Super Strikers when it came out and I was like, I'm not gonna play this game. So like, yeah, you know. Pretty lack direct, you don't even need to address it. I don't know if you love the city RPGs.

Alex: 48:21

That 64 lineup though is pretty minty.

Luke: 48:25

Yeah, but I'm an Xbox boy as the as the you know, I've been anti Xbox my whole life, but whatever, you know, we're switching things up, and uh Rare is owned by Xbox now, so they are releasing a remaster of the game for Game Pass pretty soon.

Alex: 48:42

I saw that, that was pretty petty, and they dropped it like right as Nintendo dropped it, and it was pretty funny.

Luke: 48:56

Oh the Kotaku writer had a nice little quote about how like man, I'm I'm butchering it, but something's gonna split in the baby up. It's kinda funny, like they could have combined this, but both of them get like one good half of the equation, so it's just whatever, but we'll see.

Alex: 49:14

Oh, so Xbox will have like the remaster graphics, which are still shit, but but it'll be like a little floaters.

Luke: 49:25

Like one of those classics like you go back and actually play these old games you love and you're like, oh my god.

unknown: 49:30

Yeah.

Alex: 49:30

I'm gonna both have it from time to time, dude. It's it's a little clunky.

Luke: 49:35

Maybe a little clunky. You have to hit like the three prongs controller because whoever had three hands, I never understood that design. Um and then you have to hit R to aim, so you have to stop moving, and then it is wild.

Alex: 49:47

It is a little wild. But uh it worked well for the time, dude. It worked well for the time.

Luke: 49:52

Did it, or was it just like a lit game? A little bit of a little bit of both that was. Oh, all the Mario parties, that's actually cool.

Alex: 50:09

Fire parties, yeah, one, two, and three, ten eighty, dude.

Luke: 50:15

Uh huh, dude ten eighty, I'm I'm gonna play that for a few days for some pure nostalgia.

Alex: 50:19

It's gonna straight up kill people. Anybody that got a 64 controller for their for their Switch, like the the the NFL one. Yeah, the Nintendo start ramping up production of those fucking controllers, dude, because so many of them are gonna d destroy with people trying to get 1080s.

Luke: 50:36

Oh no, not even for that, dude. Mario Party, we used to literally wear like batting gloves, like Franklin batting gloves to play Mario Party like games, because all the games were just like twist this thing. We would get blisters, dude. It was so nerdy, but like it was also the early two thousands, late nineties is what we had to do. So we were just grinding on those controllers and we'd take our little batting gloves and we'd just that would help you prevent some blisters. It was it was pretty fire. Shots out of Ace, he knows what I'm talking about.

Alex: 51:03

Oh, that's great, man. Yeah, well other than that, man, we got we got what? We got the uh the Zelda News, but we all knew that was coming. I was a little surprised that it was actually pushed out until what, June or not June, but May. May, yeah.

Luke: 51:14

Not even Zelda News dog, it's just the name the name 14 more seconds of game delay voted than like tight. I get to jump on a giant stone glider that looks alright. That was due what?

Alex: 51:27

It was due at the end of l it was due like last holiday season.

Luke: 51:32

I mean, I'm all for games being delayed 'cause like we absolutely crush when games are buggy and crappy and even like Mario Volve for Mario Super Strikers right now. So like a second pre-TLC wave. I'm like, no, it's the second third of the game you didn't release, like don't lie to us. Yeah, no joke. So if it's the game as important as Breath of the Wild 2, take your time. But uh, to the folk making the drawers match back then, they pumped that out under a year or so.

Alex: 52:01

Uh you know what's funny in that direct, dude, when they were doing when they did the announcement for Golden Island in the Night. Oh yeah, we should probably tell you about this game. The recorded screenshot or record is of their NSO or whatever, and the profile in their NSO was totally Thanos' like like the Metroid Famous like electric thing, like the the lightning bolt. Like that was the logo, and I was like, oh I don't know if that was on purpose or not, but that was such a tease how they're just giving us any method that you know Metroid, like uh no update on the game.

Luke: 52:33

Nintendo is gonna do this, Nintendo is gonna do that for the direct, and then it comes out and it's like, hey, there's five titles you don't want.

Alex: 52:42

And what else would I indoctrinate the boys with? I don't know, man. I think they you gotta do I think Mario's a good one, a good one to start with. Probably like Mario Party or something like that would be pretty fun, but it's gotta be I think Kirby do Kirby and Mario. You gotta do those two. But outside of video games. I don't know, man. Give them a baseball glove. Maybe a basketball.

Luke: 53:04

You know, they they're raised in a split household, uh, a divided household of the Packer Vikings.

Alex: 53:10

Oh, cool Vikings dude took that game one.

Luke: 53:13

Yeah, right, no, it was real nice.

Alex: 53:16

People hit me up on Instagram, bro. Like people that are F all of Mo 5 being like, fuck the Packers, and I was like, This is great. People know that we're from Minnesota and they also know the Packers suck.

Luke: 53:26

Oh Lord. Hey man, you should be nice though. Packer fans travel better than anyone to gotta get them numbers up, dog. Uh no, um it's my it's my life dream for them for one of them to be drafted by the bears, because that would be the funniest thing when you feel those fans of the draft day tables. And if it's like everybody's like, well. Uh Ford games are pretty easy for indoctrination. That's for sure.

Alex: 53:55

Yep.

Luke: 53:56

Gotta love those. So, you know, we'll see. And then I'll let 'em play whatever gross Fortnite of their time is gonna be, you know. Whatever I think is lame, but I have to accept that, uh, you know. It never happened, though. It'll never happen. I'll own the 2K title of this household, I'll own the Madden title. Alex hold held all these titles for a brief period of time and then slowly lost all them in pathetic manner.

Alex: 54:25

Yeah, I've got 'em for you, those little babies. I haven't even talked to them yet, but I know.

Luke: 54:29

They're like, the the only title Alex holds is old fighter game from the nineties. So like Mortal Kombat Hill Wreck Me, or like Street Fighter, Hill Rock Me. Those are the only titles you still own, and you just have 'em. That's like, you know it's like having a season five. I will mess you up in a good beat about you know we'll see what, you know, games change too, but I'll I'll keep playing probably less 'cause, you know, being being a father and whatnot, but you know, gameback, bro.

Alex: 55:01

And Helmation.

Luke: 55:03

Well, you know, nice transition. Play it's fire, it's late. Great time. Oh, yeah. Great time. Play it's fire. Play it's fired, it's been great. Great time. Yo, I know you play like four minutes of it.

Alex: 55:26

I know I need to bring it back up. We'll see. I didn't like I didn't hate it. I just didn't encapsulate me. But I haven't had I haven't had Twin Babies, but maybe I had Twin Babies, I'll play more Slay.

Luke: 55:39

No, it's because it's like you have fifty games that you play at once, so it'd be hard to let it hook you. So you just gotta play a few more runs. Maybe when you're watching um Jersey Shore uh Wives or Vanderpump Rules or whatever it is that you watch with your wife and none of that shit anymore.

Alex: 55:58

We g we watch Summer House, we watch Winterhouse.

Luke: 56:02

We updated on my trash TV, I'm updated on my references, but you get the point. I know you ain't fully invested, so you might as well pull up some slay on the side and you know listen to the You ain't gotta watch any of that. You just gotta listen to it, and that's why I play this five.

Alex: 56:18

Yo, I need Spider-Man Remastered, bro.

Luke: 56:22

Great time to swing. Go to the ringer and and look up Spider-Man. Oh man, I probably wrote about the movie a lot. Ben Limber, a good video game writer when he's not writing about baseball. Did a good deep dive on the mechanics of the swinging in that game. Swinging in Spider-Man is so liberating.

Alex: 56:41

It's pretty cool, dude. The physics of it are awesome. And like the comments in the game's pretty fun too. There's a lot of good combos and stuff. I figured I'd crowd a little bit, the Andy. I'm not gonna I'm not gonna drop any spoilers on the pa but.

Luke: 56:59

I don't think I've ever had a more powerful video game moment. I mean, I'm not into I'm not into The Last of Us. Some people might might argue that that maybe it was a little bit more of an emotional pull at times, but like Oh yeah.

Alex: 57:10

Have you played that game or I don't know?

Luke: 57:12

Like games that just didn't work for us even though we know they're classics. That's like my number one. I've tried to play it literally three times. I love Naughty Dog games too. Like I played all the Internal games except for maybe some of the side content, but I can't do like the last of us. And I like I have friends that barely play video games, I love that game, so my game.

Alex: 57:32

Yeah, the thing about Spider-Man remastered though is is now I gotta wait for Miles around. Like I want it now. Uh it'll come to PC, it's not out yet, but they they said it's coming.

Luke: 57:45

So the biggest punch in my face of finally jumping off the PlayStation bandwagon and being an Xbox boy. I don't get Spider Man 2 which is coming out. Yeah, no, I can play Miles and 4. The next one that Spider Man entry is coming out on PlayStation 5, and then even worse too than the same developers and I can rain again.

Alex: 58:08

Oh yeah, that'll be cool.

Luke: 58:10

Like I'm like you can buy the Texbox, but like, are you sure you're not settling? That's the only reason I'm not trying to be buying the black box right now. And I had to like pray. You know, I had to have a I had to have a nice moment with God and I was like, Am I a nice box boy? Because of um the antithesis of my existence with my whole life. And uh Wolverine right there. I got a war like superfire game. I can play it on the floor. I don't know, man. I like it.

Alex: 58:43

Superfire.

Luke: 58:49

Yeah, but I my game on laptop isn't like it's nice, but it's not like PS5, Xbox X period extra F range. So like games like that would feel inferior. Whereas the new Battle War I could play on the floor, so I'm just gonna see if anybody buys the physical and then I might play it.

Alex: 59:10

Um my next step in my game PC is to get a third monitor and do that triple monitor station dude.

Luke: 59:16

Third monitor dog.

Alex: 59:18

Yes, sir. No, no way, man. I'm talking about using all three screens for the environment. Like, so when I'm playing Spider-Man, I got New York on both sides of me and then the in the middle as well. I can't wait. Witcher when that's when that drops the next update, I'll be playing the Witcher in like fully immersive three screen land. It's gonna be awesome.

Luke: 59:40

Yeah, aren't they doing a reskin or a re a res up for the new uh Witcher 3?

Alex: 59:45

Uh they are. They announced that, but I don't know I don't know what the timeline is, but it's supposed to be coming. That's kinda I have not finished the DLC for that game, so I've been waiting waiting for that remaster or whatever.

Luke: 1:00:00

Like I if a full sixty dollars I'm sure what it'll be for me and I'll be like mm. I don't remember enough of the original like playing through it for it would probably be worth it if it's gorgeous enough, so we shall see. Um, you know what was more rewarding than uh Nintendo Direct for me though was the Ubisoft forward event. They're just going all attacking. Just all Ask Creed, uh I'm loving it.

Alex: 1:00:22

Dude, Ask Creed's its own franchise. I mean it's always its own franchise, but it's like its own beast now. It might not even it might as well not even be Ubisoft. They just might as well break off and be like, We are just Assassin's Creed, and that's all we ever do.

Luke: 1:00:33

Basically what they're doing, they're like, listen.

Alex: 1:00:35

Was it four or six games? How many games did they announce? Four?

Luke: 1:00:38

Well, I think uh the untitled Banter podcast put a nice um they put it in a nice way where it's almost like when Marvel is like, This is our next phase which we'll be seeing from our next batch of movies 'cause like Mirage is basically which I love dude, it's Middle East it's Baghdad, it's more of the self-action gameplay from the original games that I was super into, so like I'm super into that. And it's also a smaller experience on into all of that. But that's coming out like soon. But then in like a year the next like big big game is is it Japan? Yeah.

Alex: 1:01:17

Oh yeah, they got Japan, yep.

Luke: 1:01:19

And then two years after that is the next big big game, and that's Hex and that's like witchcraft and stuff, and I heard it might be in Germany. So like that's that's kind of an interesting slant as well. Dude, these historical murder sins, I just I can't get enough. And like reading an article about how they're getting rid of that silly overworld modern day storyline stuff, get rid of all that. I don't care about any of that.

Alex: 1:01:42

I know that's when whenever I play in any Assassin's Creed game when they jump back into like modern times, I'm like, oh, why do we gotta even do this?

Luke: 1:01:50

The author was bemoaning it and I was like, Dog, since the original game I hated this shit.

Alex: 1:01:55

It's like not that interesting. It doesn't matter to me at all.

Luke: 1:02:01

It was like it was like cool for like an excuse as to why this was happening, but like after I just kind of loved they're just like, listen, man, we're just giving you historical murder porn, like, just do it, dog. And I'm like, I'm here for it. Just give me breathtaking environments, vaguely accurate historical figures and buildings. And I'm here for it. And then there's a mobile game based in China, and I was like, oh my god, it's such a sick setting, and then they're like, Come in mobile, Assassin's Creed Jade, and I'm like, tight, waste of all of your resources, but whatever.

Alex: 1:02:30

No, I'm so tired of mobile gaming.

Luke: 1:02:32

Well, maybe because I got Xbox Band Pass, I'll buy one of those hideous-looking controllers that click to your phones.

Alex: 1:02:38

I have one, you can borrow it. I don't have a newer one, but I have one that works. This is great for some games. Uh it's not nearly as comfortable as uh holding a switch or a Steam Deck or something. There's something weird about having the controller and the phone hovering on top of it. A word, dude. But this isn't a fucking this isn't a news podcast, man, so we're gonna cut this shit.

Luke: 1:03:02

Do you want me to talk more about Save Aspire then? Because I put it down and I'm playing Civ Six now. Because I'm screaming Civ Six wasn't or no, which I should do.

Alex: 1:03:11

There's a Humble bundle right now. There's a Humble like two days got two days Humble bundle. Oh dude, I almost bought it, but I have like half the games already. It's still a good deal, but I was like, but I'd be able to do Civ Six on my computer. I don't have it on my computer yet. So that's and then it has cross save with um do you have it on the Switch?

Luke: 1:03:30

I do.

Alex: 1:03:33

Pretty dope.

Luke: 1:03:33

That's fuck wild. I will say that I bought Civ and a bunch of the expansions, not all of them, but some of them on Epic and it crashes and it's like Yeah, so like having it on Steam does sound nicer. And then XCOM, I love that style again, so like and I know XCOM's like the OG slash.

Alex: 1:03:55

Like tactical. Do you like taxi? Oh yeah, no, you're a tactical game person.

Luke: 1:03:59

Kinda man, it's just like I texted the day about how like I wish Fire Emblem wasn't about anime nonsense where teachers slash students date each other because that's just creepy as fuck for a teacher. Um but like 'cause I love that like chess type vibe. So like XCOM, those tackles, like the Mario Rabbids game is actually kinda lit. There's the the banner saga games, those are kinda lit. So I like that whole like chess grid, like each piece turn based. I think that's stuff's fire.

Alex: 1:04:29

So like when I see the gameplay I'm always like, Oh, it's so cool and then they bump into all the other stuff, dating sim stuff, and I'm like, uh Japanese got that Yeah, I saw the new Rabbids do that they're they're moving it to more like an open system, it's kinda weird. I'm not sure how that's gonna work. Kinda defeats the purpose of the whole tactical, but paid as much attention, but I'm sure it's still I'm sure it'll still be fun, dude.

Luke: 1:04:51

Got a good team behind that.

Alex: 1:04:52

Dude, if you're in the if you're into that tactical shit, you gotta play Empire of Sin, bro. Come on. Some gangsters, let's go. It's like both. It's uh it's a mesh of both, yeah. So the combat's all if the combat's all tactical and everything, and then then yes, you are like managing your little empire. But there's a lot of combat. Well we're dude. Congrats congrats to you guys and your we're gonna take up the we're gonna do like an hour on the on your guest appearance on on your podcast.

Luke: 1:05:23

Hell yeah, brothers. But uh, you know, shouts out to the babies. Shouts out to wrapping my lines from the prison foam.

Alex: 1:05:32

Congratulations, dude. Congratulations to you and the and the fan that's so cool. We'll get you back uh next month and talk about a little portal one and two. Sorry, Tyler.

Luke: 1:05:44

Hey Tyler, I will admit this is my last anecdote for I Ramble On Too Too Far, which is that I definitely drag, like I do this for all of the games, Alex looks. I'm such a bad partner. I'm always like, I don't want to play this game, and then I like force myself through and I have a good time. It's like half a game you pick. I do the same routines for portal. I definitely avoided portal as long as I can because I suck at puzzles and I don't like puzzles. I played so much of Portal in one day that I had weird dreams about jumping through portals and figuring out puzzles and I couldn't sleep, and I was like, God damn. So that's a fun word.

Alex: 1:06:15

It is completely cool, man.

Luke: 1:06:17

It's uh portal, good time. But uh happy birthday, Uncle Alex.

Alex: 1:06:21

Hey, thanks, Rob.

Luke: 1:06:22

Okay, so we're gonna be able to