#120: The Kenzo Conspiracy

Sacred Symbols, a PlayStation podcast is brought to you by, well, you. If you want to learn how to support our show, go to Collins Last Dan dot com. Greetings and salutations. Welcome back to Sacred Symbols, a PlayStation podcast.

This is episode 120. My name is Colin Moriarty. I'm joined as always by my co host Chris Ragon Chris. Hey, how are you today?

I'm glad I was your life. Yeah, it's not so bad. You know, it's the say it's it's it's ground ground. Groundhog's Day sale.

Yeah, you know, for the most part, but you know, I've actually been going outside because the weather's kind of cool. Mm. It's like it's like a fall kind of comfortable area before. It's like not cold, but also not hot.

It's ideal. Yeah. It's like a fall here in the Northeast, or I'm not really in the Northeast anymore. I guess I can't say here in the Northeast, but it's no doubt fall weather and it is nice out and beautiful day.

It was raining for a few days here, but yeah, everything's copacetic here as well. And we're joined today as we were a couple weeks ago, a few weeks ago, I think by our guest host, Dustin Furman, Dustin, thank you for joining us. It's your boy. I'm back.

Yes, I'm again. You're very welcome. Um, I felt like it would be important today to bring in another voice just to have as many opinions as we can get on the PlayStation 5 UI video, which went live today when we were recording this just hours ago. So yeah, one of the one of the Dustin off the, you know, Dustin off as it were Dustin off Dustin and pull him off the bench and get his opinions on this as well.

But of course, we have a show, Chuck full of other news, information and madness as well. I have, you know that in the exit surveys on Patreon, we lost another viewer for being too mean to Europeans, another listener. So I'm going to tell the European listeners today, it's all a joke. We, I actually really like you guys a lot.

I just, I have a lot of angst. That's good thing you like because I don't. Yeah, Dustin doesn't like you. I hate him.

I like him. Oh, Dustin hates Europeans. I didn't anticipate such a ratcheting up of the stakes, but I just want to be clear right off of that, you know? Yeah.

Fair enough. I'm going to be straightforward. Sure. Yeah.

No, I understand you putting all your cards on the table. Everyone knows now. Dustin hates Europeans. So yeah, I don't know.

Now you're getting a little nuts. You know, they got their fake money up there. They do have a maple syrup. What's going on?

What's wrong with the maple syrup? I don't have a problem. I think maple syrup is fantastic, but maybe there's maybe they like it a little too much or something. It's, you know, it's like a cultural identity.

I don't know. I feel like you're backtracking a little bit on what you just said. Rather quickly. I mean, I think you gave up your ground there rather rapidly.

Well, it didn't really take much. I don't don't commit any crimes, Dustin, because they're going to get it out of you. When you're interrogated. You can support us on Patreon for early ad free access to our show and lots of other perks, including a dedicated Discord channel and the ability to submit your questions, comments, concerns, lots of ideas to our show, et cetera.

Get your name in the credits, whatever the case might be. We really do appreciate your support over there. Obviously, the biggest perk for many is exclusive access to Sacred Simples Plus, which is our additional episode we do each and every week last week. We had Dustin and our friend, Mr.

Maddy, play is do a show all about role playing games, kind of the current state of role playing games, the future role playing games on PlayStation, et cetera. And so on. Awesome response to that episode. So we'll have them do another show soon.

In the meantime, I think next week, I was thinking about doing launch game rankings, but I might want to know what you're doing. I want to give that one more week just to make sure everything's settled in for the launch first, and then maybe we can do that. So maybe Chris and I will just jump in and do a mailbag. We haven't done one of those in a while.

So please look forward to that. But thank you guys so much for your support on Patreon. We couldn't do it without you, about 10,000 of you over there supporting us. Thanks again.

And if you listen on free feeds, I usually don't bring this up in too deep of a way, but if you listen on free feeds, please leave us nice reviews and nice ratings on iTunes or whatever we can really use the help to find new audiences. We appreciate it. Thank you for all of this. Now, we have some inquiries and some things together from the audience before we get into what we're playing as usual.

Before we do that, Chris, I wanted to throw it over to you, though, to just kind of inquire what's happening in your life. I feel like there's a lot going on in your life in terms. I don't understand. I don't know what's going on with your move.

Are you staying? Are you going? Like, talk to me like I'm a father figure and tell me what's happening in your life. Well, there's a lot of things in motion, but none of it is entirely concrete.

There's some things that are concrete, but then they hinge on things that aren't. And then there's like vice versa. So I'm hesitant to say exactly what is happening, exactly when. But the goal is to end up in New York fairly soon.

That's a terrible feeling to be in the, you know, an inching on important life decisions. Yeah. Yeah. It's a little uncomfortable.

It's like massive change, but, you know, I don't know. I think I'm, I could use it at the very least. Like it's a change in the direction that I would like, but at the same time, right? There's a lot of things to consider when, you know, when buying property, you know, so it's like, because that's what I'm trying to do.

I know I was trying to buy so I don't have to rent anymore because renting is stupid. So I'm in a situation now where it's like, well, I could move back to my parents for like five months and save a ton of money and get someplace that's even way, way better. But I would have to stay here for an ex- Yes. Like with my parents for an extended period of time.

And I love my parents, but I think any time you go back, it feels like regression. And that'll just like, you know what I mean? Like a feeling of like, Chris, I know exactly what you mean. Yeah.

So it's like I could see that potentially being pretty irritating for those for that brief period of time, or I could go now, but I have to get a bunch of shit sorted. And, you know, it's a big, it's a big move and I've never really done anything like this by myself. So it's just a bit. Yeah.

It's a lot. I haven't had it. I barely had time to play the video games that I want to play sucks. Yes.

No, I totally understand. I totally understand what you mean because I moved back with my mom for what five months when I was waiting for my house here. And it actually is pretty, I was actually pretty excited about it first. I love my mom.

She's awesome. Yeah. And she's a really great woman and she took good care of me when I was there. But when you when you've been out on your own and then you have to kind of go back to the nest, even if you know it's just a temporary thing, it is difficult.

And I was really eager to get out of there through no fault of hers, but just because I had to go. I mean, I just needed my space and I feel so much better mentally. You see, you're going to feel so much better, Chris, mentally, physically, emotionally. I think once you have some space, you should buy some sort of farmstead in Western New York, build a fallout shelter and really prepare yourself for what's inevitably going to happen.

Oh, yeah, everything's, everything's crumbling. Yeah. So it'll be nice to have a condo in the world collapses. Well, Dustin's a homeowner too.

So you'll soon be amongst our ranks and it'll be very exciting. We're wishing you the very best on that. And we'll keep talking to me like I'm a father figure. See advice for me.

I will. You can call him, dad, if you want. Yeah, call me dad. And like I do, probably like, yeah, doesn't I think I'll I think I'll save that.

You know, you probably moment for the right moment. Yeah, it'll lose its impact if I just if I say it every day. Sure. I want to just put you on my lap and do one of those, you know, like you're on my knee and I just kind of, you know, bounce.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like, like the like the sand is at the mall when they whisper about communism and the kids here.

Right. Right. If they're really they're getting they're getting off easy, those kids, if Santa's whispering about communism in their ear, because I'm sure some of them are whispering. That happened, of course, is that many years ago, a Santa Claus whispered about communism in your head.

And it's all downhill. Ever since it's yet another sign fell memory. Yes, of course. All right.

Let's see here. David Lindsey wrote in what's about our little trio here. He said, hey, dude, just wanted to say I'm digging the variety of hosts and co-host lately. Certainly I love the classic Colin and Chris do well, but I'm really enjoying hearing your voices and getting to know the other folks on your team a little better.

Keep that. Thank you, David. Yeah. I think it's going great, too.

We're getting a lot of really positive feedback about it. Oh, I got a question, a little bit of your fan. And though, David, you spelled my name with two L's. That's a pet peeve of mine band.

Your band. Your band. Yeah. But I do appreciate the kind words on the lesson.

We're very happy to have Dustin here and getting that integrated into this to Mr. Maddy plays who's a great YouTuber, great role-playing game, YouTube, right? I think it's been a lot of fun. So we've been getting really positive responses.

Remember, of course, the first episode that Dustin and Mattie are did. It was actually the persona five spoiler cast, which is free for everybody, whether you're a patron or not. So go check that out if you want and see what they're doing over there. Now, Alan Abraham wants to take Chris to task and well, we'll let him speak for himself.

He says, you're going to tell me with a fucking straight face that Chris Ray Gun can judge and chastise people that press their butt cheeks off the edge of a chair to let out a cheeky, silent dose of flatulence. But at the same time, this kid wears his fucking glasses in the shower. Is this some sort of sketch show that you're running here? Colonized and answered God, damn it.

That's all I'm talking about. Chris, people are really hung up on this. We get letters about this every week still. I mean, this is a story of you wearing your glasses in the shower.

This is this like months old. Now, I know that we're in like Groundhog's day of Groundhog's day at this point, but I don't feel like people are really relinquishing control of this story. They want more answers from you. And I don't know what else to say.

Yeah, I mean, I bring all sorts of, I bring my guns into the shower, you know, I bring whole drink, I bring magazines into the shower. Sometimes I'll read them and you know, it's like a speed reading thing. It's like how fast can I get through this magazine before it becomes paste in my hands. Sure.

And among other things, like sometimes I'll like, you know, the heat lamps in some bathrooms. Yeah, I'll just turn the heat lamp on and go to sleep in there. Wow, that's good. Does anyone know what really puts heat lamps?

That's like a real 70s and 80s thing, right? I think I don't. Yeah, that was my first apartment though, when I moved to LA, it had a heat lamp in the bathroom. Yeah, I remember thinking.

I remember thinking like, maybe like I thought at first it was just a normal light and something was really wrong with it. So I was like, is this? I brought everybody into the, into the bathroom and I was like, you can feel that, right? You certainly can.

And it's like a 400 watt bulbs or your electricity bill is like, you know, $700 a month. We'll use it. Oh, yeah. That's right.

All right here. Let's see. Oh, we got a letter about this. Ricore Ramon.

A lot of people wrote in about this. He said, wait, what on earth is a female caller? I've never heard that talk term a call girl. So last week I told you guys that and I do right now have a female caller here at my house right now, a female lady friend of mine.

And I called her a female caller, which is a kind of a Victorian reference to the old term gentleman caller, which people used to say, like, Oh, a gentleman caller came by requesting your presence today or whatever, or for luncheon or whatever. You know, if you watch down, I'll be like a guy, you know all about the gentleman caller. Oh, yes. So I was just kind of putting the female caller spin on it.

If I was going to hire a call girl, which teaches, oh, I don't mind that at all. I mean, do we got to do I probably wouldn't let you know in the podcast though. You know, so the baller moves he did though. It would be, I mean, it could be a baller move.

It could be a move of desperation. I don't know what judgment is for me, but I just feel like if I was going to get a call girl, I don't know that I would necessarily declare it here on the show. Listen to by, I don't know, 60,000 people a week. Yeah.

So really, really, publicly, really sure, you know, not necessarily the best, be a little more private. Yeah, I think then. Then you guys are maybe giving me credit for it. I just want to throw that out there.

I forget sometimes that there's probably about 10% of you listening to this show that don't know anything that isn't in like a visual novel or like in a Final Fantasy game. And so I get that, you know, they never said, Colin, they never said the term female caller in Final Fantasy seven. I have no idea what you're talking about it. And why haven't you finished Final Fantasy seven yet?

You know, et cetera, so on. So you only know things that are in Final Fantasy seven. The real world is Midgar. Well, it isn't.

All right. So thank you for writing it. Turbo charge nerd wrote in what's inside high-collar. I know this may give me an instant block.

It won't, but there's no such thing as a stupid question. Well, let's not get too carried away. I was too young during the Xbox 360 Red Ring disaster and I don't understand the historical context of wrapping your 360 in a towel. Sounds like something my grandfather would say back in my day.

Well, turbo charge nerd. It's really quite simple. I don't recommend anyone do this, of course. And the era of doing this is over.

But some people found that in that original run of Xbox 360s that were red ringing that if you turned it on and then wrapped it in a towel so that it overheated dramatically, it would fix itself. And it had something to do with some sort of welding inside the system. And it was like a meme before I guess there were really memes, but it really was as far as I understand it really worked for some people. Yeah.

No, I'm not recommending you do it. I can attest to this. It actually did work. Yeah, me too.

I did it also. It's insane. Like it's like some kind of spell book shit, but it really did inexplicably work. Like you didn't need any like worms, wort, or frogs breath or anything to get it working.

But literally wrapping it in the towel just somehow worked. It is deeply disconcerting to me, though, that there are people alive. You could have that sentence there, I guess. But that people that there are people alive that can't remember the red ring because that that really makes me feel like everything is crumbling even more so than it already is because I can't be that old that people who can write in perfect English can't remember something that I remember very vividly.

You know what I mean? Yeah, absolutely. I feel old as shit on this show all the time. You guys combined are like barely my age, you know?

So I'm like a 70 year old man. So it's really hard to be on the show and talk to you guys and away. I don't know what's going on with my lady for here. Someone was what was it last week because she listens to the show?

Oh, it was. There's that blonde Nickelodeon star that we were. Oh, Jodilua. Yeah.

And she was like, oh, you don't know who Joe Joe is. I literally I don't know, you know, who this is. And I don't and then we were in Target and there's literally a calendar, like a marquee calendar of this girl. And I'm like, how do I?

I'm going to sit there and watch. I'm like, how I never even heard of this? Where am I? I would have never heard of something like this.

And that's kind of where I'm at now in my own life. That's fair. Yeah. Because she was obviously in the marquee of she was before as we noticed Spongebob Squarepants in the list of drivers in the Nickelodeon Cart racing game.

And I thought that that was extraordinary. Yeah. I didn't see a Spongebob Squarepants calendar in Target. So it's so wild that we put it before Spongebob.

Matthew Urso also wants to take Chris to task. I'm sorry, Chris. You're getting a lot of attacks here this week, but actually the way it's got to be. Sometimes usually I get it and I'll get it a little more.

I think in a little while, but it says, hey, rock, hard, Colin and not busting Chris. Come on, man. Chris, you loveable degenerate last week on the show when talking about Sony now, only allowing players to buy digital on PSP, PS Vita and PS3. Oh, you mean PlayStation now letting you so not PlayStation now.

So we were basically saying last week that PS3, VDMP games can only be bought off of their storefronts now and not online or on the app. And Chris said, quote, what are you going to do by brutal legend on the PS3 in 2020? I mean, he says, I'll have you no, sir. That last winter I brought brutal legend for the PS3.

I'm sure this means there are other people out there like me who may do the same. Hearing you judge people like myself so quickly can tell me to write you in and ask you to think before speaking. Love you guys. I love the show.

And Chris, I beg you, please don't retaliate by harming me with your mystical powers. Now, Chris, Matthew wasn't the only one. I think we got two other letters about this. So at least three other people in the audience took the time to tell you that recently they brought brutal legend, which came out in 2008 or 2009 at the latest.

On PS3, these people bought brutal legend on PS3. I guess. I mean, I can't. I can't know for sure that they're telling us the truth.

I can't. I feel bad saying this, but I don't know if I have the sympathy for this. I don't know if I have the good will to levy towards these three people, which is. It is you have to understand if you're one of these people that that's that's a wild thing that you've done.

Like that is. Yeah. Where did you find it? Because surely they don't have.

I promise you, if I walked into a game stop right now and said, do you have brutal legend? Maybe they'd have like a discarded game fly sleeve with like a scratched brutal legend disc on hand, maybe one. But like I I I struggled to imagine how you even got it because you certainly didn't download it, right? Because he has three stories.

So so fucked. Yeah. Like that would that would take you, you know, another two thousand and twenty years. So like I will say though, he did say last winter, I bought brutal legend.

So technically not in 2020. Mm. I will put that little caveat in there. Well, fair enough.

I mean, a lot of people now I'm afraid because you open up a whole nother Pandora's box of now. People are going to be like, well, I just went to my local game stop and there was a brutal legend in perfect condition. You know, I don't want to I don't want to hear anymore about it. Tim Shafer is probably like waking up right now because he's like, oh, what's what's going on?

So people are people buying brutal legend on mass again? Jack Blacksmith right in and let us know that brutal legend is still available at his little game stop. So it's probably going to get like a second wind now because we've mentioned it so much. You do have arcane power.

So that could be. Well, keep an eye out. Probably when we post this at the same time, they'll announce that brutal legend remastered is coming PS4, although maybe well, who public? Yeah, I publish it.

So I guess that wouldn't have anything to do with double fine anymore. Yeah, no. That was such a weird game. I really didn't like it very much.

I kind of liked the spirit of it. I enjoyed it as a concept. Yeah, it was a little strange. No doubt.

All right, let's see here. Andrew Walsh wrote it to us and said, good day fellas. I have a question on why you guys are so hard on the PS5's launch lineup. I've been looking at the previous generations launches and to be honest, they are all pretty terrible compared to the PS5.

It's just my two cents. Hope all is well and thanks for all the great content you guys do. Have we been unusually hard on the launch lineup? I don't know.

I think we've been about as hard. It's just that it's the it's the relevant launch lineup. So we're talking about it more in depth and we're, you know, we're talking about it in, you know, maybe harsher terms because it's, you know, it's the new launch lineup that we're supposed to be talking about. But I don't think we're particularly I have a feeling like if we had been doing this show back during like the PS3 or PS4 launch lineup, I'm sure we would have been equivalently or similarly harsh.

You know, I do think this is probably a better launch lineup than most PlayStation systems, but you know, it's still the presence of Spider-Man is really good. You know, that's like obviously like a really great thing. But it's also like, you know, it's like, you know, that's it and everything else is kind of. It's, I don't think it's I don't think we're being particularly harsh.

The Demon Souls fans are going to go. Now we have to hear from them. Well, I'm sure Demon Souls is fine. I will play it.

Dustin, you edit the show every week. Are we unusually hard on these, uh, this launch lineup? I don't recall anything that was harsh. That's, I was looking at this question.

I was like, I don't see anything. I mean, it's, if you have been, I mean, it seems pretty, it's pretty standard overall. There's a few games. Some of them will be good.

Some of them will be bad, but yeah, I've noticed anything. Yeah. All right. Well, fair enough, fair enough.

Shop Andrew band band band. Wow. We're getting a little, get a little flip it lately with the bands. Yeah.

Welcome to band practice, dude. Whoa. All right. James Gorgley wrote in us and say, Hey, boys, so this is a correction.

Last week, I nearly suffered a terrible accident while driving down a very busy road listening to your podcast. Chris, under the words stone cold Steve 316. About hearing this egregious misquote, I nearly plowed my car into a crowd of innocent bystanders. The actual quote from the great Steve Austin is Austin 360.

And it was usually followed by just whipped your ass, Chris. If you would so kindly do as well as to apologize to put some respect on the man's name, I'm sure all your stone cold Steve Austin will be fans would appreciate it. Thanks for everything fellas and it's always keeps smashing those asses. I guess we will keep smashing those asses.

I guess I will keep smashing those asses, but James is not the only one to write in about this. This is what I know nothing about wrestling at all. So it's not either. I have no idea.

I sincerely like if you show me a picture of some cold Steve Austin, I'm not. I'm not sure I would know right off the bat that that's who I was looking at. Yeah, I think I can see him, but although, like white grizzled strongman wrestlers and like the 90s and aughts, they all kind of look the same. They'll have like their handle bar mustaches and they all kind of already.

To be fair guys, though, I have never watched a wrestling match in my life. And when I was editing this, I was like, how do they not know this? I was saying you're supposed to be the producer. The show afterwards is already on the can.

Yeah. Well, that it's in the can because whatever doesn't, what do you just listen to it and whatever happens happens? Hey, I've edited out mistakes facts that you got wrong in the show. And I didn't even say anything because I'm just doing my job.

Wow. I appreciate that. How do you know this without knowing anything about wrestling? Because it's the shirt.

There's like people with shirts that say Austin, three, 16. I know the shirt says so cold Steve, three, 16. It was so much better. So it's better than Austin, three, six, eight.

It really is. It's way better way better. Stone Cold Steve. We got to get shirts made because we're going to have the new source soon for a merchant.

We got to get a shirt that says Stone Cold Steve. People are probably going to get murdered wearing that shirt. Oh my God. That's good stuff.

All right. Let's see what else we have here. Oh, this is a good question from Tyler. A festive question.

He says, hey, it's October and the month of spooky things. What's on the docket? Colin, you're finally going to play the evil within. Chris, are you going to finally play Resident Evil 7?

Thanks for keeping my sanity intact during the week. You're very welcome, Tyler. Thanks for writing. And by the way, did you guys see the picture I put up on Instagram and Twitter of the pumpkin I bought?

It is comically small. The comically small. I'm hoping that my neighbors understand that it's supposed to be a joke and that's not me being serious, but it's hard to know for sure. Are you guys going to play any doesn't you play any festive games this year?

I'm currently playing one that's borderline festive, but I don't know. I'm not. I just play those type of games whenever I want. I mean, usually it's more like watching either a TV show or movie is what I do.

Yeah. Yeah. I feel like festive. I don't know.

Like holiday themed games really only comes into account when it's like Halloween, you know, because you know, you play home alone. You know, no one's going to do that. So like it's really just scary games, which like come out all the time. And oftentimes they come out like early, like in the year, like obviously, like the last couple of rest of the games came out like what like March, January, like it's very early.

Like, I don't know. Like I don't really get into the spirit of like playing scary games around Halloween. It really is more of a TV thing. Like, I guess I'll watch Edward Scissorhands for the next three months.

You know, I'm totally with you, Chris. I have no, I don't really care about this time of year from that perspective. I like scary things all the time. So whenever I'm interested in watching a horror movie, I'll just do that.

But there are like classics. It's like the Christmas classics, right? Which I don't really care too much about because Christmas was never like, you know, the big thing about house is always new years, for whatever reason. But Halloween, whenever Halloween comes around, it's like, OK, now it's socially acceptable to watch, you know, night, number four Christmas or like Edward Scissorhands.

If you watch those movies, I feel like in like April, I feel like it's just stupid. I feel like you're stupid if you do. You know, no bones about it. Wow.

All right. Well, I appreciate your candor. Thank you for answering that question. We're really drawn lines with the audience.

This show, I know. I mean, well, you guys are. I mean, especially Dustin, I mean, Dustin told every Canadian and European listener that listens to the show that he doesn't care about them. He doesn't like them.

So well, thanks for that. That's going to be great for business. And Mark, Mark Zebra Jr. wrote in with a more serious question.

He asks, I haven't written here in a while. So I figure I'll just shoot you guys a hard-hitting question. How do you deal with loneliness? Whether it's an isolation or just a feeling of being alone or any other meaning for it.

This feeling has primarily been a part of me for my whole life. And as of recently, it's felt much more advanced. I'm trying to wait for coping with it, but there always seems to be a barrier that I can't break away from. Sounds like something I should be telling my therapist for sure.

But I thought I'd reach out to you guys and get some perspective on it. Anyways, they say if you guys think you have a nice day, thank you for writing in, Mark. Good to hear from you. Chris, how do you deal with loneliness?

Well, we can't be sued, right? I think we can be, but I shouldn't say anything. I was going to say I drink a decent amount, honestly. But well, that's OK to say that.

I'm saying I don't want anybody spiraling into a path of alcohol. Oh, that's their choice. I guess I'll do that, but that's their choice. Don't do that.

I wouldn't say that I drink that much. But I think generally speaking, I just sort of I try to just focus on getting things done. Whenever I'm in a mental block where things are really shitty and it's even it's hard to like get work done and it's hard to do things. I just sort of like push myself through to just do it because I know that at the very least, like if I spend the day miserable and make no progress, that's like way worse for the next day than if I had like done something and still felt miserable all day, because at least there's like some some up to go at the end of that because you can wake up the next morning and be like, I got all that done yesterday.

So I'm feeling better today just by virtue of having completed some menial task. And it doesn't have to be like crazy menial task or it doesn't have to be like a like a huge thing. But like even something is like, oh, if you've got like, I don't know, a closet that's like really, you know, unorderly just like organizing it or like cleaning or like just doing something to just to make life slightly easier so that it's not so cripplingly hard later on. I was going to say like, I agree with you generally, not only for the loneliness thing or the the malcontents or the sadness or whatever, but I find just staying busy and not giving myself as you're saying more things to worry about by remaining productive is is is really helpful to me.

So I agree with you there and maybe that's something Mark can consider when he's feeling lonely or isolation. Just keep your mind busy, work on a project, work on a hobby and all the rest. I think that staying productive is is the way to go. Dusty, you strike me as a chronically lonely man.

Yeah, as far as this, I mean, yeah, I don't really, I'm very thankful that I don't often feel lonely ever. I have other issues as far as like either self motivation or not feeling good enough or things like that. And I think that a lot of it can all apply. I think what you guys said as far as like, you know, making sure that your environment is a positive one and things like that.

But as far as loneliness, I mean, I don't know whether it's, you know, keeping the friends you have reaching out to them or if you know they're not available, trying to reach out to people in the circles that you do have available. And I mean, this is really not a plug. But I guess it is now that specifically online now you can really create some interesting and cool relationships with people that may not even be close around you that you can eventually call, you know, a real friend or something like that. So being part of a community like on a discord is always an option.

Yeah, very well said, very well said. Indeed. I don't know. I just I know a lot of people struggling out there.

I know this has been a difficult year for everyone. So not just people in our audience, but everyone. So keep your heads up. You know, he's right in the west and we'll have to be happy to talk to you, try to give you some counsel, especially me because I've I've seen and done so much money in my story life.

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Before we get into what we're playing, boys, I just wanted to call out real quick. Randy Pitcher, of course, who's the founder and leader of Gearbox down in Texas. Guys who do Borderlands, they're making the game Godfall or they're publishing the game Godfall, I should say, Randy Pitcher tweeted out pictures of the actual disc and the actual game case and everything. It's pretty much the first time we've seen a PSY five game off of the publishing press, let's say.

And so I just want to let people know if you want to go check it out. I mean, we already know what the box art looks like and everything, but just kind of a cool little oddity. If you guys want to go look at what you're going to be holding in your hands in the weeks to come. So check that out as well.

If you like, all right, let's get into what we're playing. Dustin, let's start with you. It says here that you're playing both Black Ops Cold Wars beta in quotes and then pray. Yeah.

So I'll start with Black Ops because that's the one that I played the least just because the so the beta was out early on PlayStation four. Now it's open beta, I believe on PS4 now, and it's a closed beta for a PC and Xbox, but yeah, I hopped into it a bit today and I dabble in Call of Duty specifically, like it's not an every year type of thing for me. Like every couple years, I'll find one that I like and invest some time into. And I really liked Modern Warfare last year, both the regular multiplayer and Warzone.

And so yeah, this new one is interesting just because I know that a lot of people are not very hot on it right now. And so what I play today, it's weird because they're the same type of game, right? They're both Call of Duty games, but apparently Treyarch uses their own engine for their Call of Duty games. And so it does have a bit of a different feel to it.

But what I played seemed to seem fine. In fact, it didn't strike me as entirely different from other Call of Duty games. It definitely has a different feel as far as like, there's like electronic music in the menus and some of the levels felt more movie-esque in a way instead of like modern military locations. Like I was playing specifically on a level four Miami and there was like tons of neon lights and stuff like that.

So yeah, I want to dive into the beta more and check it out. But just as a PSA for people on PlayStation, you can go check that out right now. Right on. I'm sorry, I didn't know.

I was just going to pop into Prey at this point. So I decided to check out Prey because I had played the demo on PlayStation 4 a while back whenever it first came out. And I was sort of found it interesting, but not enough to grab me. And I was thinking about it that it was one of those games that this generation that kind of slipped by me because I really, really love Dishonored Dishonored 2 and the expansion they did with Death the Outsider are all really fantastic and criminally underplayed games I think by a lot of just the gaming audience out there.

So I decided to check out Prey and I don't really know how to feel about it because it is so not that I expected it to be like Dishonored, but it's definitely a very unique game in that it's a mix of doing things stealthily and trying to get around this ship and you often don't have enough ammunition and you also don't have a lot of health. And so you're constantly feeling like you are on a razor's edge. And so far I've been kind of enjoying it, but I'm not really hooked. And I'm going to keep playing I think just because one of the more interesting aspects of the game that I've seen is the I can't remember there's some kind of alien creature, but you get to unlock abilities that the aliens use.

And so like I saw you can like turn into enament objects to both hide and like move around the station so you could turn into like a coffee cup or something. And so that's what really intrigues me about it is that more immersive sim style gameplay. So I'm going to stick with it for now, but I'm not like the story is mildly interesting, but it's not holding me. And so far I've mainly just been frustrated by how little resources I have.

But apparently from what I've seen online at the beginning is the slowest part of the game. So I'm going to stick with it. Yeah, that's cool. I'm glad people are playing because I heard I heard that Moon Crash was insanely good.

That's what I heard too. And like I've been wanting to jump into it, but it's like I have prey on PlayStation. All my saves are gone, so I have to start again. And it's like, and that first the intro of that game is really slow.

Yeah, dude, that Moon Crash DLC, Maddy, Mr. Maddy plays was telling me like, yeah, definitely if you check out Pray, and maybe it's not for you, consider hopping into that DLC because he said that he thinks it's like one of the best add-ons to a game this generation. Yeah, that's what I heard from a lot of people. So I'm looking forward to getting back into Pray at some point.

Yeah, I remember I just walked away because of the combat, as I recall. It did really, I wanted that game to resonate with me on a Bioshock type level, but it just didn't. Yeah, no, but Pray is definitely more of a system shock kind of young. For sure.

Yeah, it feels more like, ironically, it feels more like a successor to system shock than Bioshock does not to, you know, disparage the holy name of Bioshock because Bioshock is amazing. But now it's definitely like a slower kind of like more resource focused kind of wandering through a space station. Chris says here that you're playing Crash 4, it's about time still. Yeah, I'm still playing it.

I haven't had much time to like play anything else with everything going on, but I'm still really liking it. I'm still fucking adoring it. It's it's still it hasn't gotten worse for me at all. It's so good.

We actually have an interesting question here because there's been some, I don't know if it's like grounded in reality. I guess we haven't really seen the the MPDs yet and stuff for this month, obviously, because the game came out in early October. But James Hain wrote it in was and said hello, crash and crunch Bandicoot. There's been reporting of the Saw Sales for Crash 4 and there's a lot of finger wagging as to why I've seen things such as reboot fatigue as well as a better than expected remasters of the insane trilogy.

To add a personal anecdote while I have some interest in getting it, I felt the lack of any PS5, skew or upgrade notice was a big detractor for me. I think also something I want to speak on is being burned by CTR's post launch edition of Microtransactions. Activision's up front, there wouldn't be any post launch microtransactions with their history on this as Pervina and Trussworthy. I think a publisher's track record has influenced my purchasing decisions and wondering if I'm alone here are people actually speaking with their wallets on this one.

So we don't know. I mean, this is all anecdotal, but it doesn't seem like this game is selling as strongly as expected. But I honestly think that a lot of that has to do with insane trilogy and comparing it to that because that game did so extraordinarily well. I think it exceeded everyone's expectations.

Do you feel like this game deserves to, I'm assuming it hasn't been selling well, Chris, are you feeling like this game is four crash fans and why would you think that people might be staying away from it? I don't know. I think there's probably a lot of factors. I know personally as somebody who was looking forward to it, not necessarily super hyped for it or anything, but I definitely had an eye on it.

I didn't even know when it came out. I found out the day that it was coming out that it was coming out that day and I was like, oh shit, wow, okay. So I didn't really see a lot of marketing for it. I saw maybe one trailer.

I feel like that might have a lot to do with it. But also, I just think in general, this is a pretty busy time in general. I think people are saving a lot of money for their consoles and the next gen and looking to Cyberpunk and looking to Spider-Man and looking to all these big hyperfire releases. And it's also just really fucking hard.

I don't know. I feel like I don't know necessarily why people would be saying away from it, but I'll be real. I don't know if I really care because I had it. I got a great crash for and I'm like fine with that.

I'm going to shoot at people. But I don't know. Yeah, I totally 100% agree with you there. As for me, I'm still playing East 8, lack of most of Daina.

I'm enjoying it. I was actually stuck for a little while in it and getting a little frustrated almost to the point where I can't deal with this anymore. But it was just a stupid thing right and see where I needed to go. So that's my fault.

Very similar thing happened to me when I was a kid with the Legend of Zelda, Link's Awakening on Game Boy. I almost threw the fucking Game Boy out the window when I was 10 years old because that game is a great game. That's such an absurd game. Yeah, it is.

It is. It is an absurd game. Like the shit that it expects you to do. It is a weird game.

I'm not incredibly fond of that Zelda game when they remade it or whatever recently. I couldn't get excited about that at all personally. Oh, well, the remake was really good. Oh, maybe I'll check it out then.

So there. Maybe I'll check it out then. Also, I've been playing a strategy role-playing game called Eichenfell. I put in probably seven or eight hours into this game in the last week.

I just bought it because I reached out on Twitter. I sometimes do again. People told me to check this game out. So I did.

And it's a simplistic kind of strategy role-playing game, turn-based, grid-based strategy role-playing game about this girl's sister is missing at her wizard academy and they go and try to find her. It's really cute. I went to tweet out to recommend and I did recommend to people on there. But I noticed that the person who made it blocked me on Twitter.

And so I noted that in my tweet because I didn't want to include him because then it looked like harassing him or something, even though I like his game. But then people were like, whoa, why'd you have to say that? And I'm like, because then someone would have said, why didn't you include this person in the tweet? So this guy hurt.

This guy apparently hates me. I still recommend you go buy his game. And I think it's actually discounted on for PS Plus users right now, at least at the time of recording. So go look at the video.

See if that scratches in his tree. I really dig that game a lot. And then GIGO operation blackout came out. I downloaded it on the 13th.

So I only played the first mission. It's pretty. I mean, it's definitely a budget game. I knew it would be Tom Hedge wrote in and said, Hey, guys, hope all is well Colin.

I know you're playing GIGO operation blackout. I'm a long time Joe fan. I need your first impressions or earlier review of the game. And I need it right now.

Yo, Joe, Tom, I'll tell you that it's not very good. It's a loose cover based third person shooter. It's cool. You can play as like different characters.

And you also play as from both the Cobra and GI Joe perspective. So the good guy in the bag, I perspective is on different missions. So that's nice. There's a lot of fan service in it.

But it's, it's cutscenes are very budget with like kind of still frame appearances of characters and some questionable voice acting. And actually, my biggest problem with the game is so in GIGO famously, like when GIGO would shoot down a vehicle, the pilot would like jump out of the vehicle at the last minute and he wouldn't die and all of that. And like, you know, people like wind dying. So to get around that in this game, it's just all robotic enemies.

And there is a robotic type of enemy in Cobra called the bat. But otherwise, like everyone is supposed to be human. So it's kind of lame because you're just fighting at least in the first couple of stages. Like, play, you're just fighting the same robotic enemy over and over again so they can get around that.

So you can kill people in the game. And I understand that they had to get around that. But that's a fundamental flaw with this game. And I'm a little, I know that times have changed obviously, but the any SGI Joe games, which were both really good.

I mean, obviously they're eight bit size growers, but you could kill anyone you want in those games. So I don't really know what the deal is with that. I recommended if you're a G.I. Joe fan, just because I feel like we should be giving Hasbro as much money as possible.

So they keep making G.I. Joe stuff. But it would have been cool for them to have spent the money found a better studio, no offense to a Guanabe or whoever made it. But just found a better partner, spent more money on it, more time, and really gave us something worthwhile.

Because when you do stuff like this with licensed products, which are not very common anymore, it sticks out more. There's licensed products, especially of a bad quality or just not exceptionally common. So again, like the sticks out like a sore thumb and it's a little bit of a disappointment. But I actually didn't go in with any expectations.

So, no problems there. Thank you, Tom for writing in. All right, boys, let's talk about the big news of the week. It's the PlayStation 5 UI, the number one video on YouTube and trending at the time we're recording this.

And our show didn't know us. It sounds like you're saying ours, but with an H at the end of it says, what's up? I didn't think it was possible, but Sony has improved and made a better UI than the PS4. It is sleek, visually stunning and integrates lots of features that help gamers game more efficiently.

However, the one thing I am worried about is the lack of themes from when I saw it doesn't seem like themes are possible on this UI. The tiles are small. So the full screen has a bigger image of what the tile is. So I don't know how themes will work with this UI.

Am I wrong? Well, we don't know how themes will work. I don't care about themes. Be perfectly honest with you.

So it's not a huge problem for me. But I agree. It was a pretty sleek looking, although I think very busy UI. I'm curious to see what the boys think about it.

Chris, we'll start with you. What did you think about this UI video, the presentation, what stuck out to you? What didn't you like? Pautos.

Yeah, so I like a lot of the features that I saw. I thought the picture and picture kind of streaming of like you can share your screen. Like when you're in a party, I thought that was really cool. I think that's like a really cool idea.

And there's some other features there that are cool. I thought the game helps you. I just I don't know what like, oh, there's an achievement for finding the collectible things. Let me just pull up a video to find shows me where it is.

And it's and the guy said, thanks, game help. It's not like that is kind of dumb. But like for the most part, like the feature sets, I like quite a bit. That picture, picture thing specifically is like really cool.

But I'm with you in the sense that I really I'm seeing a lot of busyness and specifically in the control center. I think the actual main menu where it says games and media, and it's like the new cross media bar, I think that looks great. I think it's really cool. The tiles are a bit small, but I think overall it looks really clean.

It looks really good. But that control center thing looks so ugly. And I just don't know what the hell I'm even looking at half the time when they're in that weird menu. I don't know.

Is that weird? Is that a not weird opinion? No, I think I personally think it's incredibly although it's sleek and quick. It does look busy to me.

It's confusing, especially when you don't you're not able to play with it yourself. So you're just seeing what they want you to see. You don't know how it's going to feel and how it's quite functioning. But what do you think about everything?

Dustin, how did you feel about the UI video? Yeah, I think the features are interesting. They're cool. I mean, I sort of understand the whole game help aspect because they're probably looking at it like, listen, people all the time go to YouTube or they get out their phone and look up how to do something.

Why don't we just give them an option to do it that isn't going to take them away from the experience or the game directly? So my biggest concern about a lot of these features though is that it seems like it would be a lot of extra work for a developer to do. And so I'm just wondering, are developers going to skip out on adding like, you know, whether it's the game help stuff or creating special checkpoints where you can hop in through one of those cards because all that has to be manually added at some point. So, you know, I just hope that it's not one of those things that these features become primarily used only for first party games.

But I mean, we'll have to just wait and see on that. Yeah, I think you're right. I mean, I was thinking the same thing that because they were talking about how a lot of it is developed up to the developer and some of these games will allow like in-game help. They were showing obviously the new stack away game, which I think looks really cool.

I mean, I do want to say I want to reinforce what I said about that game a week or two ago that I really feel like that game looks great. And I'm excited to play it. It's more what I want what we plan to be, which is something a little looser and not so creation-heavy. So just seeing its vivid colors and stack away again, I thought was pretty neat.