Giant Bombcast 03/11/2014 [Premium]

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Start your free trial today. Molly from Brook Up. Like, a month ago. Well, they're guitar players like bones or fuses.

A month ago, yeah. And about that. Well, do they break up or do they go out and announce their final tour? Okay.

They're retiring. Yeah. Okay. It's not like a good business break.

Well, it's kind of the same. I mean, it was just whether it's amicable. Put that microphone directly in front of your face. Also, you can move it around.

I'm aware of that. You can move. I'm talking to you, Brad. I figured out who I was thinking about.

If you'd like to know. Will you tell us? I could. All right.

Are you asking me to? Donna De Erico. Okay. She was trying to think of.

Yeah, she was in those movies. Yes. They watch. Oh, yes.

She was also a daywatch. Same thing. Apparently, he was married to a different playboy. To me, Baywatch was a movie.

It was a cinematic. It was so cinematic. It was like being there. Someone said it.

Who else would be in the modern day, Baywatch? Riff Raff. Okay. You're saying he's the only meaningful character to appear?

Yeah. Now, Riff Raff is not Jodi Hy roller. Yes. That is just clear name.

New Jersey. Yes. You sat next to you. All right.

Let's get into this. It's Tuesday. This is the giant bomb cast. This is our sixth anniversary apparently.

Someone wrote in to say that we started on the 11th of 2008. Oh, wow. March 11th. Does it count?

They're pointing down? Or that's just a big thing. I didn't do any research on this. He could be lying.

But that's our happy anniversary. That's our happy anniversary. Yeah. And finally, all right.

I am here. I'm Jeff. We got Vinnie. We got Drew.

We got Brad and we're joined by John Drake. He's trying to do it. He's very loquacious. John Drake of harmonics.

All right. You sat next to Riff Raff in an airport in New Jersey. The picture for me. What happened?

What was that like? I was in New Jersey. Okay. So already a great day at the Newark airport.

All right. I can smell the smell of the. Yeah. I've seen a person die in Newark airport.

I happen this time. Yeah. You just dropped it in front of three people. I've seen dying airplanes.

Jesus man. No. That's horrible. Jesus man.

Three. Yeah. Three people. Three airplanes?

Not at the same time. We're on the airplane in mid flight. One of them died and had her heart restarted on the plane and she ended up surviving. One of them died on the jet bridge and he died in front of his wife and was carried off in his stretcher with a chest and a crash machine.

I came back in that night to the same gate and I came back to the same gate and I came back to the same gate and I came back to the same gate and I came back to the floor with that guy and I was like, this is a haunted gate. We can fly through Newark anymore. You are spending too much time in airports and on planes. Yeah.

I said to my dad, three people out of the plane and I was like three people to see a lot of people die. I was like three more than most people. Yeah. Your dad fly a lot.

No, my dad's stationary. He stays in one place. I respect that about him. Yeah.

And then the third, the last person who died was a guy who died. I was flying back from Minneapolis and I was in the last flight out of the night. It was like a nine o'clock flight back to Boston, like a very late night flight and there's a huge nose storm so we were delayed and delayed. It was like 1130.

And I was on Delta and I was the last person on the upgrade list for this middle of the night flight. It was begging to be in the business class seats. I didn't get in so I was back and we'd taxi out and they were de-icing the plane. And then they said, you know, it's become more minutes and then I heard a big commotion coming from first class and the plane started taxiing back to the gate and the captain came on the overhead and said, for those of you and coach, we've had a passenger who is passed away unexpectedly.

We cannot use this plane. He has to be taken off the plane and then there has to be some people who are going to come out and investigate and make sure everything's okay. So we're going to get a different plane. Get off, get right back on board.

It's like 1130. I've been at the airport for seven hours. Sure. I'm going back on the plane.

I go out and get a soda and I'm going back and I see her. Mr. Drake, will you recheck? And I come up and she goes, here's your equity business class.

Jesus. Did you figure that's where that was going? And she said, do you want the seat or not? I was like, God, I'll take the seat.

Hey, man. Like the airline attendants, they said, you know, I feel like I should read his family a note and be like, your grandfather's sacrifice meant that my flight was two hours more comfortable than it would have been. That's thanks for bumming me out. Yeah.

It's been a good run of like a year and a half or no one's died though. So, you know, looking up, although I don't know. So don't travel with you in the future. But Jody Hyrelder, riffraffs from the flight, I had de-playing because we blew the landing gear on our flight while taxiing out.

We're talking landing gear. Yeah. Yeah. So, I was just asking you to go back and we were waiting for any plane.

Abby, Abby from Titanfall was supposed to be on my flight and she ended up missing it for the delay that we had. And I just asked Jody Hyrelder for like half an hour waiting for this flight. And I texted Jeff being like, I think this is that dude that you always talk about. Did you talk to him?

Hell no. No, I don't want to interact with him. I'm giving him a number four on my list of people who died. Oh, man.

Just take me out. Sounds like a friendly little guy. Yeah. I don't know.

I have no real conceit of where he falls in the world. I don't know that he does yet either. Yeah. Yeah.

It's a very, you know, career getting off the ground. Which is nothing but the best. Yeah. So you asked that question and you got a whole bunch of other stories.

Yeah, I did. There you go. Wow. Yeah.

You make me want to fly. Like I can think of very few other places I want to pass away than like an airport like waiting online for like a business trip or something that don't want to go on anyway. I'm on this goddamn plane. I'm waiting.

I'm frustrated. I'm tired. And this is where I'm going to die. The context was it was Newark Airport at 445 in the morning.

I was flying to Nashville with me with CMT about the country track pack for Rock Band. And so I he died and I was in my coworker Tony and I was drinking my soda. He was drinking his coffee and said what a way to go. I said, yeah, I mean, yeah, it's terrible because I mean so so old.

And I was but you know, with his wife right there, I was like, oh, I thought he just met in Newark Airport. Like this is not the place I want to go out, not on top. Yeah. It's a wonderful state.

Yeah. You're Jersey. You're Jersey. The Garden State.

Yeah, well, it's all green. It's all green. Yeah. And they put an airport in it and ruined everything.

I just go to the airport. All right. Well, thank you for the amazing uplifting story. You're welcome, John.

We'll get back to you. We've been beneath my wings. Yeah. Brad, let's talk about the last week of action in your life.

It's been active. What did you anger drink? What? I don't want to sit next to John Drake anymore.

I don't want to sit next to John Drake anymore. Do you like this song? Keep talking it. Yep.

This is me talking. I'm bringing you back with the phone. There it is. Okay.

So it's not your mic. Because we usually don't use that microphone. So I thought, well, naturally this is the microphone that we can be broken. Is it your phone?

Who's got a crazy phone? Three, two, one. It's getting louder. It sounds like.

Oh, wow. Yeah. I actually feel like the way it sounds. I feel like if we speed this up, we will be in trouble.

It's going to be. You take that tone and speed it up. Yeah. Yeah, like, I'm for right off over.

This is Russian 7. It's amazing. It's one of the microphones. I just turned off all the mics.

Turn off mine. It's mine. Wow. Do you have a cell in here?

We do. I'm turning my thumb. I close my laptop. My phone's off.

I'm going to start feeling on these cables. Sure. Like our ghillie. Yeah.

I don't know. It seemed too over. I feel like it kicked in. Yeah.

I don't know. It's like a Atari game. I don't know. I don't know.

I don't know. You want to come tap on some stuff over here? I think we have any choice but soldier on. It kind of sounds like the noise from contact for the filter through all the stuff.

Yeah. I thought this was the new Ukraine Russian signal. Sure. It would be 77.

Yeah. You're not going to cut any of this out. I don't know. I hope not.

Yeah. Nice to meet you. Super regular. Yeah.

Still happening. There it's stopped. You just put the ground on it. It's stopped.

Whatever you hit me to stop. No, that was back. That's not. Yeah.

Yeah. It's back. Me, me, me, me. All right.

Yeah. That's back. That's off. That's still there.

Okay. Now the second button here. Check him back. Turn that one off.

Yeah. He broke. There I am. All right.

Okay. It's it's moaning, lamenting, whaling cry. Well, this is this rack mounted thing that has been here for since the dawn of time. Oh.

It's back. That's gone. All right. I forgot.

You couldn't hear it for a while. And I was like, why do you keep turning on it off? It's wrong with you. He's not wearing headphones.

It's actually the worst way to do this. I've got to feel for this stuff. Yeah. Yeah.

It's since the waves. All right. Now that we have eliminated the ghost from the system for now. You watched me, John.

You could have saved me. You sat in my seat. Brad. Jeez.

I don't. What? We were talking to you about the last seven days of your life. Yeah.

I don't mean the last. I don't mean the previous seven days. I mean. Do you have a fight book?

I'm going to go over the next week here. It's coming up. Jesus, man. Jesus.

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No, you've hit the nail on the head there. That's agreement. That's agreement. I'm really sorry.

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See you soon. Probably planned though, mostly. Okay, yeah, good call. Good call.

What else might I do? Yeah. The last seven days, I used some food, I slept, I attended some other needs, played video games. Alright, let's hear about the video games part of it, unless the food is interesting.

Let me think. Let me think. Man, not really. Okay.

Alright, talk to me. We want to talk about Titanfall or Dark Souls? I don't know. Can we flip a coin?

Yeah, sure. Well, I don't know. John, what should you want to hear about? I've played fair enough, I've not heard anything about Dark Souls in the middle of the day.

Brad has... Let's talk about Dark Souls. It's not bad. Nice.

Does that count? I'll have a table. The coin's gone, so now... Oh, no.

Brad's at 25 cents. Oh, well. Oh, there it is. It's under your foot.

Really? Yeah. This is the stupidest podcast. This is great podcast.

Yeah. Is that... Can we start yet? Hey, everybody, which was heads again?

I think it was fine. Okay. Okay. Tell me about Titanfall.

I like Titanfall pretty well. Yeah. There you go. Alright, now, Dark Souls.

Let's see, where to begin. I was a little let down by the campaign stuff. Like, seeing it makes me realize why they didn't get out there and talk about it. Sure.

I kept hoping they were holding back some crazy reveal about like we've revitalized the nature of online... No, it's like you're playing Team Deathmatch and then a radio play has happened. Right. Which is kind of hard to follow when you're occupied with trying to shoot everybody.

Yeah. Like, it's easy to tune out, you know? Yeah. It's kind of quick and painless.

It's not offensive. It sets them... It sets the state of the world, I guess, in terms of just like what is this conflict? What is this conflict?

It is a big corporation versus a scrappy militia on a frontier worlds that are not close to where they're from. So they have a refueling station that is the thing that lets them do big warp jumps back and forth to the faraway planet and then it's centered around that. But this big corporation? Yes, man.

Big oil, big space oil. The scrappy militia and this big corporation both have gigantic mix? Yep. Like the same kind of check.

Yeah, the exact same kind. That's a shitty big corporation or a really good scrappy militia? Yeah, I don't know. They're homesteaders, man.

They don't really get into the specifics of the conflict that much and by the end of it you're like, I'm not 100% sure what happened here, but I guess that's okay. I actually, I can't help when I play that game thinking about the ridiculous economics of that situation. Like how expensive this man? I think about the F 35 on 60 minutes a few weeks ago and talk about how those things are like how many million dollars a piece?

Like you go through these titans in like 30 seconds. Well, so it's a big resource fight. Okay. So they are fighting for these planets.

So at this point, I'm going to review the game and sort of yeah, more or less, I've been playing about 20 hours of it and play through the campaign one and a half times. I have gleaned from those multiple playthroughs. These are very resource rich planets. That doesn't necessarily go all the way to explain where the fact the big robot suits come from.

Sure. But at least you can go like, oh, well, I mean, they are resource rich planets. So if you set up the manufacturing facilities and they have robots that do all the manufacturing. Okay.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

War never changes, but robots are out of sky every two to four minutes before has changed. No, that's how war has been since World War one when the robots dropped out of the sky for the first time. Yeah. Onto those pointy helmets.

That's why they had this pointy helmets is in case the robot fell on that. Just shred them. Soft feet on those robots. Yeah.

This is like a really bad thing. They figured that out right through the gas tank. By the time we got to Korea, the feet had been hardened up pretty well. They played trins.

Yeah. I'm sorry. This is all explained entrenched. Yeah.

No, they had to cut it out. They changed iron brigade. Weirdly enough that board game was about robots. The robots.

So they had to take one. Red, we're. I mean, the campaign's fine for what it is. It's a good primer for all the maps.

Kind of. You don't really play on all the maps. It's literally like you could play that or not play it. Yeah.

You know, if you don't want people talking over you as you're doing it. I want campaign things. No, it's two separate multiplayer like matching areas. So in campaign, you play through nine missions in a set order, then flip size and play through them again.

When you play classic multiplayer, you're sent into a separate system that is more like Call of Duty where it's like, do you want one of these specific five modes or do you want the variety pack, which is all of them in one? Are you playing on the same map at any point or those nine? Yes. So you play, basically you play the campaign twice once from each side.

So as soon as you hit start, as soon as you hit, I want to play the campaign, it does some math and or what, I don't know, maybe it just flips a coin and decides which side you're going to be on first. Oh, that's not set. No, because they're militia players. Yeah.

Players. Yeah. There's no. Yeah.

It's all. It's all multiplayer. But in fact, that was kind of a bummer because 70 to 80% of the maps I played in the campaign, my team only had four players versus six on the other side. So we just lost all of them.

That's a weird pre-release thing. I think it is for the most part, although at some point, people will not be playing the campaign much. Yeah. In those menus, after you finish the campaign both ways, you go back in and quick play or pick a specific map and it has a message that says, like, man, man, you might take a little longer.

That's why I just wish they hadn't let it go six on four, you know, because then I just had the worst version of each of those missions. Can you not progress if you fail them? No, no, no, you don't. No, no, no.

It's an interesting trick or like, well, it's a trick. It's death. That's what I kind of bummed you about. We don't want to lose you.

You go on. So there's no stakes to anything that happens in the story. Yeah. There's just if you lose, there's a bunch of hang-dog dialogue about like, oh, well, we didn't get enough fuel, but we'll figure it out.

Yeah. We'll make do we always do. And then sure enough, they go into the next mission like, hey, guys, we did it. All right.

Let's go. And then at the end of the campaign, are they like, we won. Just fight against efforts. The bad.

So that's the other thing. So the determining thing that happens near the end of the campaign is factionless. So it sort of impacts both sides and you left going like, okay, well, I guess that's the state of this conflict for when they make another one. Oh, actually, wait, it doesn't come back in the multiplayer matches at all?

The multiplayer matches, it's just multiplayer. There's nothing to come back or so sorry. No, no, I mean, this thing that happens, third party or whatever that that happens doesn't play into any of the multiplayer stuff. No, nothing does.

Like I said, it's a radio play. Like this thing is happening in a small corner of your screen, like little headshots will pop up and go, we're covert operations going really well because you're covering us out there on the battlefield. I actually don't know what that crazy final event is because I got right to the end when they're like, all right, the main event is not to happen. Let's go fuck them up.

Yeah. And then enough people drop out of my match that it dropped me from my campaign and put me in the second mission of the entire campaign and somebody else is there. And that's another prerelease thing. Like, yeah, if you can't find players playing because when you're matchmaking, you are at a very specific point in the campaign, you're locked to a side and a map.

So if you can't find enough players who fill that exact specification, then it has to widen out and go like, well, we're going to roll you back to missions because we found players there, they're stuck there. And hopefully you won't mind. Like you're right that like for weeks, if not months after releases will be a problem for people, but like a year from now, you're not going to play. You're not going to play.

The other thing that I was a little bummed out by is that like they are just multiplayer matches, but they almost aren't because they flirt with creating custom content for each mission. Like this little bit tiny, like there's the one that starts out with a little kind of first person cut scene where your commander guys and is hiding like holding an enemy up by the neck and then they like throw them out a hole. You know what I'm talking about? Yes.

I don't have like an AI controlled like name Titan that like McAllen or whoever the general is in. I think those are grunts. I don't know that those are actual individual people. I could have sworn us all like the name of the AI.

Yeah, sometimes you'll start a mission out. There will be AI titans. Like I think it's going a little bit further. It's more making like some custom mechanics for each of those campaign missions.

Yeah. It would have been a lot more interesting. But like mechanics, not necessarily like here's an animation that's going to play out. It sort of doesn't matter.

It just creates a situation where there are no stakes and that's you know, whatever. It's a multiplayer only game. So like I guess I get that part of it, but it's one of those things that you like I feel like across the package, you look at it and go like, this is really well made. It's a lot of fun.

But for what you're getting for the money, like the value proposition I think is kind of tough on paper. And then in practice, you go like, well, like you started to really think about how do people play Call of Duty? And I bet that this game feels like that they sat down with a spreadsheet and go, well, we happen to know exactly how people play Call of Duty. Right.

So we're going to make sure we have team deathmatch and domination and a couple of other modes going to see, and then that's going to be the game. And you know, it's like anecdotal, you know, I talked to a friend of mine who pretty much just plays Call of Duty and like a handful of other games over the course of the year, but mostly just like Call of Duty. And I'm like laying it out for him and going, well, it doesn't have the co-op mode, doesn't have a campaign. It's just the multiplayer and yeah, it has deathmatch, yeah, it has domination.

He's like, okay, it's like a 60 bucks. It's just that's like, yeah, that's all I play. So whatever. Like he's already playing, he's already paying 60 dollars for that experience in a similar game.

So it's kind of an on factor. So that's kind of, that seems like what they're kind of banking on is people kind of coming to that conclusion, but I don't feel like they've necessarily made that case super well. Do you think that's because they didn't explain the narrative and story stuff in a campaign, you know, big upfront rollout way? Like if you had that expectation going into the two or three weeks of even playing it, would you have thought felt would you react differently if you knew going in the context you were going into?

I don't know. Was it surprising? Did you know going into the campaign was going to be sort of limited in space? I got to a point where like the amount of time they had spent not talking about the campaign, you get to point where like, well, clearly this is just going to be audio playing out over because they're talking about it, you know, it says campaign multiplayer.

Okay. Well, what does that even mean? Like, okay, well, you're going to be playing multiplayer, managing people against people. So you know, start to extrapolate from that and go, well, what could they do?

And then I'm like, well, they could have just audio play and sure enough. Do you think it would be better if they were more upfront about that stuff? I mean, I, you know, like, yes, I think that people should be more upfront about most things, but you know, is that better for them trying to sell games that I don't necessarily know about? Well, either you get out there and tell people or it seems like a dirty secret.

Or a standard back-ass. Yeah. I don't know. I'm a multiplayer.

It's good. Yeah. That's it is a lot of fun. It's the things that differentiate that game from from Call of Duty are really are the mobility of your player when you're on foot and the part where there are robots and both those things are really good.

Like the when you're running around jumping on shit while running doing all that crazy stuff, like it kind of feels like Mirror's Edge, but you're shooting people. So you've played a bunch now about shooting people well, not shooting people like Mirror's Edge style. Do you feel like you, is there a depth to the strategy with you and your robot now that you've played a good chunk of it, that kind of passed the first, you know, getting a robot, shoot guys. I think it depends on what to do.

They're probably going to be people that are very concerned with trying to keep their robot alive and are equipping it in such a way that they are aiming at taking out other robots. Yeah. That's kind of how I've been leading. Whereas I just put the assault rifle on it because then I can gun down human pilots that are on foot really easily.

And if that blows up, whatever. You know, if I have that thing for 45 seconds or, you know, and it blows up, fine. Like I'm pretty good on my feet and running around and jumping and stuff. So I feel like I'm so far, I mean, it's early going.

And, you know, obviously people will get their hands on the game and get way better way faster. But right now I am finishing like first or second almost every time on my team. So and that's with like treating the Titans like they just don't matter. Just I'm going to jump in it and then I'm going to get up in this other thing's face and hold down all my fire buttons until something blows up.

It will be me. It might be him at the same time. Great. In some cases, I'll be slightly more strategic about it if there's like two or three of them or if I get behind somebody, you know, there's like a little bit of strategy there because when the shields are down on one of the mechs, they'll have critical spots that you can do more damage.

So you get behind them. Oh, get them. So there's kind of that's a little useful, but more or less, you just I'll just get up in their face and shoot them. And then when I blow up and then I'll go back to being on foot and launching grenades at them, which are pretty damaging to I spec up my mech.

Excuse me, Titan. Yeah, I'm sorry. Stay on this chair. Yeah.

I suspect might not be a lot more survivable than that. Just consider how are you ranking on the leaderboards? I don't know. I did pretty well.

I fought for most part, not so much. Other times. How those burn cards work ebbs and flows. I haven't used them all, but I went with the heavy chassis for the Titan with instead of that because I'm she going to Jack for damage against Titans.

Yeah, what's the shields are down? It'll start to get real, but I went with this is more of a single shot, like single pole single shot, like mini rocket launcher thing. And that does murder on Titans. So I got into a lot more of like the dashing mechanical Titans is pretty satisfying.

It's really fast. It's really good for like you can around corners and put yourself, but they're actually putting like level between you and the other guy. So you're shooting recharge and stuff like that. It's no like dedicated melee weapon, right?

No, the Titans punch. You know, we have a sword or no, no, no. But people do jump kick though. Yes, that's right.

It's pretty much the best way to die to jump kick to death. Jump kick a Titan airport. So I want. I just want to step on you.

There are a lot of awesome moments that can happen over the course of this game just because the movement is so dynamic in a way that like it leads to ill shit happening like I jumped across this building and then ran on this wall for a while, jump right in this window and then shut this guy in the face and the cat running where so you can jump onto the backs of the robots. Yeah. And if it's friendly, you can just ride it around, which is useless because it moves around so much that you can't get a good aim at anything. It's insane.

Although you deal, you do feel super baller. Yeah, it is fun. But on an enemy, you land on that, you pull out your gun, you'll start to shoot at it, you know, through the shields and do a lot of damage. So there are a couple ways you can deal with that if that's happening to you.

One of which is just get out and shoot the guy. You know, get out, turn around, see him just there shooting at the top of your, your tightness. Go fuck it. So this guy decided he got out inside.

He was going to try to jump kick me off his mech, which was rad. So he gets out and I see him, you know, because I'm just shooting at the mech trying to kill it because you kill it really quickly when you're on top, you open it up, you shoot at the insides of it. And I see him start to run in my direction and I'm like, oh shit, if I could kill that guy, that would be really cool. So I'd swill over and go, I'm going to throw a grenade at him.

Meanwhile, he runs up to try to jump kick me. I throw the grenade and we both blow up and die. It was a real good, real dumb thing of just like that's rad. But the mech survived.

Yeah. So his mech goes on autopilot until he comes back and then he can get back and he wants to get back. Yeah. That's crazy.

So when you jump on a Titan and it has its shield up. You are through the shield. You're through the shield. I'm doing damage directly to the health.

Yeah. If you're right on him. You're doing the metal. It's right.

Yeah. For reels. Yeah, it's, it is a lot of fun. I think it's going to end up being sort of divisive because I think that it's been pumped up into this.

Like some, you know, like this is the thing that's going to turn around the Xbox one. Like as if I don't know that it necessarily has to be turned around at this point a little too early to make those kinds of calls. Like it's the bluer to the next generation. Also, either way, like my personal opinion is it should not buy a console just for this game.

Like, this is a great game. Like I really enjoy playing it. But you know, I think it's got some performance issues on well, there's also there's sort of that's totally an issue, but also just like this. Well, I think it's a more or less the style of game.

Yeah. Yeah, it's available elsewhere is what I'm saying. Yeah. So, I think it's a very specific set of situations and the frame rate is going to go real south real fast and I ran into one or two of those now.

You seek those out. Yeah, exactly. That's my job. No, Matt Seymour's than others.

Yes. Yeah. The one case, the worst I saw was one of the modes is called last Titan standing and everyone starts in a robot at that point. So it's, you know, maximum size, maximum explosions, all this stuff.

And it's a level where there's kind of an indoor area and you can kind of crouch to crawl in there through one of the doors. You know, it's a pretty tightly packed area. For whatever reason, everyone decided to get their robots into this small area or most of them did. It seemed like there were 12 people in there.

It was probably more like six or seven or something like that, whatever it was. Everyone started shooting all at once and the frame rate was just for a couple of seconds there. It was just real bad. And I've had to hitch up a couple of times to do like it's not, it's not the cleanest game, technically speaking, which is weird because, you know, it's like it doesn't, like a lot of those maps are not the hugest thing in the world.

And, you know, the buildings are pretty square. You know, it's not like the most dynamic looking environment. It's not like the buildings blow up. You know, nothing, nothing crushes cars don't crush when you step on them stuff like that.

It's not like this deforming environment. It's all pretty static. It seems like as a non-engineer, it should be able to run better than that. And they're out there talking about how they're not, you know, they're never done, they're working on performance, they're hoping to either get the resolution even higher or get the frame, you know, like that sort of stuff.

So I think they're aware of that. Yeah. And as a stand, it doesn't really earn its hitches based on what it looks like. Not that it looks bad, but it doesn't look like it should be bad.

I think the parts of it that look good to me are from an artistic and design perspective, like the design of the robots, the design of the players and their suits and all that stuff, the specters and that sort of stuff. I think all that looks great. You know, regardless of how it performs technically, I think the artists did a really good job. And in that respect, I guess that's the point I was going to make about not having seen those performance issues.

It felt pretty well made to me when I was playing it. You know, the animations are really, really cool. I feel like to your point about ill shit happening all the time, the ill shit's not, you know, accidental, like it's really cool things combining in awesome ways. And largely, I mean, I don't know about, you know, continued iteration to improve things like frame rate and resolution that's a hard thing to do on the fly.

But I trust Respawn more than a lot of developers just haven't been on the road with them for a while this year. Right. They are not joking around with this thing. They take it really almost crazily serious.

And you know, you just kind of the time they took for them to kind of start the studio stuff. Like they've been kind of on this road for damn near four years. So, yeah, they, they wouldn't, they had better belief in it because they've been doing it a real long time. Yeah.

So Jeff, why did you, why have you decided not to give a score yet? You know, it's, there's been a rash of just, it's, I've got this rash and I need to get it looked at before I can really just get me worked on. It's hard to sit down. Yeah.

It's a baby powder. You know, it's an online only game. Even, you can't even connect to the training part of the game, which is the only part you play alone, unless the servers are up and going. So there's just a lot that can happen when a game launches.

And you know, it's like there, there've been some really bumpy online launches recently. Nice. Look, you know, I know, you know, I know you, no, no, no, no, exactly EA. Though in this, we're in this case, like no part of the puzzle is actually dependent on EA because it's Microsoft servers.

Yeah. And it's responding to the development. So EA is just kind of there to like write checks and like sort of market the game. I guess we have to download this through origin.

Yes. Oh, they're still in it. Yeah. Fingers in there somewhere.

Actually, in all fairness, you will have to go through the origin authentication service, right? In that respect on the PC, you are dealing with the AR. Yes, you are logging into origin to play that. So, you know, it's one of those things that I think reviews have to change.

Different people are approaching it in different ways, you know, probably got their changing scores and after the fact, which I think is an interesting approach, you know, game is what it's kind of reviews in progress, joystick in the wake of the Titanfall release has introduced something called, was it status, state of service reviews where after 30 days they'll go back and look in on a game to see how it's doing, which is an interesting approach and stuff like that. So, you know, I could give it a score and then have it just have the game be completely unplayable, 100% for who knows six weeks or it could be six hours or it could just work at launch. The game started to roll out now where this is Monday recording this and the game is the PC version is rolled out in Asia and it sounds like the servers are holding so far. But it's one of those things, right?

I didn't feel comfortable. You know, like I went and played this game in a room about two blocks away with a bunch of other reviewers and that actually led to some other interesting things that you know, you can't really tell if that's the game or you know, I don't know anything about the internet of that place. I don't know anything about the configuration that they're using, all that other stuff. So, when I see things like the game completely hitching up on the server end, like, are these servers bunk?

Are they bad? Does the internet here suck? Because the code back because 24 people are trying to hit this server at the decade of server at the same time and go back down? Like, did they just logistically make a mistake by bringing everyone to this one location?

Yes, probably. Maybe. And so, you know, I've had some time to play at home. The servers went up kind of late Saturday night and I am now like level 41, which is actually basically where I was at the conclusion of the event that they had.

So, the leveling doesn't slow down. It does. Yeah. Geez.

I just get better at 41 in a day. Started playing Saturday night at the event. No, that was like 10 hours. Oh, okay.