Motherhood doesn't come with a manual. In a world of perfect feeds and curated play dates, it's easy to forget that your instinct is actually your best guide. Some things come naturally, and then there are parts that no one really sees. This Mother's Day, Little Bellies celebrates you and all the ways in which you show up.
Our wholesome and organic snacks are made for every milestone and moment, so you have one less thing to worry about. Learn more about how Little Bellies celebrates your little moments this Mother's Day at littlebellies.com. Do what's natural. Hey, it's Tuesday!
It's September. It's the 25th. Okay? It's the 28th.
Alright? It's the 10th moment. Keep going. It's the 10th moment.
Keep going. It's the 10th moment. Yeah, that's the extent of my layout, these Tuesday truths. It was 200,000 strangers.
It's the second or the third day of the week. Okay? Yeah, that's a fact. That's a fact.
It is either the second or the third day of the week. Take your pick. I opt for second. Third.
I'll say third. Yeah, I don't know. But actually, I like second, but it's actually the third. Yeah.
I like counting Sunday as the first day of the week because... It's the Lord's Day. It is the Lord's Day of the day of rest. Yeah.
If you count Sunday as your second weekend day, your only fooling yourself. That's the day for Dreddy Monday. That's the day for doing chores. That's your like half work, half rest day.
Your last day of the week is Saturday. That's the day you get to do things. You get to have fun. It's called the week end because it bookends the week.
You got Sunday at the start. You got Saturday on the other end of it. Boom, boom. We're in agreement.
We're in agreement. We're in agreement. We're in agreement. We're in agreement.
We're in agreement. We're in agreement. We're in agreement. We're in agreement.
We don't have to because we're both right. Yay! That's it. Ow!
Why? You do that. I moved my mic over so it can be too high five on the other. I'm leaving to become full time fully artists.
I should also announce. What else you got? I got like a horse. I got my hand hitting on the table.
I can do cup. Tapping on a coffee cup. Phone top. Tapping on a coffee cup.
Oh wow. That's real. That's very real. I got a wild outlandish burp.
Okay. You're hired. You're doing it. Wow.
Wow. We specialize in Dredudes. Yeah. I'll harp.
Yeah. I'll give you the Dredudes. Yeah. Yeah.
I'll give you the Dredudes. Yeah. Can you do it? Kazoo?
Okay. All right. Yeah. It's all right.
The million to dollar is one. Yeah. Excellent. Coming for you, Michael Winfield.
That's right. Watch your back. Oh, you're in robot noises and shit. Wait for somebody to say it.
Is he a natural? Is he? Yes. Oh, for sure.
He has to be. Okay. For me to continue operating. He has to be out there doing his thing.
We need somebody that we're chasing after. We're unfortunately at the point where those movies are old enough that you could wonder. I was thinking about police academy yesterday. Yeah.
I was thinking about Steve Guten. He was thinking about the movie. Right? Yeah.
It was great. Yeah. That's interesting. It was great.
Yeah. It's a good movie. Yeah. They were talking about rebooting.
I mean of course they were talking about rebooting it because they're talking about rebooting everything. I was thinking about making the TV show. Okay. Is it a cartoon?
There was a cartoon? Oh, sure. What comedy cabal would you trust with The Task of Rebooting? No, no.
nor Miller. Okay. Is it a call? Are they a full comedy enclave or there?
Or they're more than deck. They're kind of freewheeling duo. Oh, imagine Stella's police academy. All right, yeah, no, now I'm on board.
All right, you sold me. Get some piano phone. They're just busting Johnny Blue jeans. And I get extra strategy.
It's a very good deal. I saw a truck suit top that forced ripest on it and thought about a Viva variety. That's my weekend. Wow.
What a good weekend it was. Yeah, I'm back. You spent two weekends in New York. Boy, are my arms tired.
What do you think you need to do? Because I was walking there and walking your hands? You know, just pointing like, oh, wow, that's tall. Whoa.
It was a lot like upward point. So you're telling me in New York, there are things you think are tall. Yeah. Whoa.
Cool. I'm saying New York is the land of giants. Yeah. The New York Giants, there's the giant apple that is in the city.
Yeah. And just giant dreams, you know. It's a place where dreams are made of. Yes.
There's nothing you can't do. And yeah, it was a nice little vacation. Didn't really play any video games. None.
Not really. So I played a good chunk of Hollow Knight on the switch. Because I determined to like that game despite everything that my video game brain tells me, you know. It seems to be a common experience.
Yeah, there's a lot of people who really, really, really like that. And I could see myself liking it if it just was a little less punishing. To me, that's the number one thing. So I played probably at this point, I don't know, six-ish hours.
I've gotten a few upgrades. I have a dash. I have this downward slam move while running and jumping. So I've gotten a decent chunk into the game.
And so not knowing going in that it has a very like souls-like approach to death where you will, if you die, you lose, well, you lose air quotes here. All the money you're carrying and when you respawn, you can only carry about two thirds as much soul juice, whatever that stuff is called, when you recover your health. Soul juice. That's soul juice.
Yep. And you don't get it back until you go find and kill the your like ghost. The gang or ghost. No spawns where you die.
Wow. If it's like a boss fight, they'll do the room before. So you don't have to do that and kind of go brine some more or something. It's literally you that you're fighting.
Like, so you're like, it's like a little ghost. No, it's kind of a little ghost. I don't want to set you and we'll attack if you get too close. But it's very easy and I need to kill.
And the first time I lost like, I was just deep exploring, which I got completely punished for because I got about 800. Clams. It's like a weird. Yeah.
I don't know what the currency is. Shells. I mean, they're all bugs. Yeah.
So they're like kind of like snail shells almost. I lost them all and I died trying to get them back because I was just somewhere where I guess I shouldn't have been. And to me, that's really antithetical to the Metroidvania experience. Like, I like being able to explore up to my limits.
Like, oh, I'll find a door that I can't cross because I have this item or a jump that I can't make. I don't want me to turn around. But being punished for finding secrets and continuing to like, I've had a whole zone just like it. And the way that maps work in that game is you don't get a map until you find the map guy and he's hidden somewhere just in that zone, not even at the beginning necessarily.
So I couldn't even find my way back really to where I lost my stuff originally. And it was just really off-putting. Demoralizing. Yeah.
And you know, I did, I started to feel better about the way the combat fell, which is kind of my beginning complaint going in. I felt like there was a weird, not necessarily sluggishness to it, but kind of a, just felt like a couple frames of unresponsiveness. It's hard to describe, but it just felt off. It's not as snappy as like a dead cell.
Or even like Metroid, you know, or super Metroid. But I kind of got over that when I started getting more abilities, I felt like my movement was starting to flow better. And so that was kind of my main gripe of the game was pushed aside. But really, it's just so punishing.
It's really fucking hard. It's a very hard video game, which I don't mind. But when you're also like losing progress and I'm not playing a Souls game, which is all about kind of really sitting down and just learning patterns and, you know, having free 3D movement, I feel like 2D Souls games lose a lot of the, the, the, like, the finer details of us all of it. Being able to like move around the free world and just like run away to a corner and watch what the boss does.
There's flexibility to the Souls combat, like being able to kick people off ledges or, you know, yeah. I am around. Like, yeah, I guess I get 2D options become like, well, there's a backdash, you know, and then, and so, you know, I put it down temporarily. I'll go back to it when I have fewer games on my plate.
I said that last year. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know if I'm gonna go back to it.
Do you think that now that you have gone through the heartbreak of like getting deep in and losing your stuff that you can maybe like, like not, you know that and that there is this, you know, we'll call it a Souls like element. It's not really that. But like, now that you know that it's that, oh, it's that kind of thing. Will that cause you to play more carefully the way one might in a Souls game because that loss can be real?
I think I have to. And I think that kind of is maybe one of the reasons I'm not so excited to dive back in is because I in games that are exploration based. I really like being able to just like run down a line and keep running until I die. And then I just respawn back where I was before and then I'll choose a different direction to run.
But now I can't do that. Now it's like, okay, I'm gonna go scout out a couple of rooms and then get back to safety. What situation? Like, okay, this is an enemy I shouldn't be fighting and turn around.
What fight? What is the loop for getting safety? Is it like you find another thing to bank your stuff in? Is it basically the same?
Well, so there is benches which will recover your health and access at checkpoint, but then for money, you just either have to go to a bank, which I've only found one. There might be multiple in the world or go buy stuff. And then there's fast traveling. You know, so you can just go back to the town square by some things.
Oh, God. Huh. Like you lose your money if you don't spend it. Yes.
Seems harsh. Yeah. There's a lot of shops in the world that you can like talk to wait and corner and you can pump some money and to buy and upgrades and the like, you know, that was kind of it until I got back. I played a lot more Dead Cells.
I've up to 250 runs with zero complete and still. And right there with you. Yeah. And I think I'm like starting to dial it in though and focusing more on my runs and less on blueprint collecting because I got about, I'd say 80% of all the items unlocked because I'm just taking that hundreds grenade going down some alternate paths, like trying to take on elite forms of the bigger enemies.
My problem with that hundreds grenade is that I spent a lot of time getting the right scenario, getting the right load out to extract the proper blueprints. And then I always die and just waste so much time. Yeah. Because I just break through the doors so I wouldn't have to pay.
I just get a curse. And then I find a unit that I wanted to get a blueprint from. And I never get it. And then immediately the run after I tried this maybe 10 or so times, I got five blueprints in that single run.
And yeah, look at all these play on PS4, which has easy, safe file management. So I'm putting it out there. I mean, if you're trying to cross some boundaries here, you can always play on PC. You can just engines that just never die.
And so it just sells. They finally updated that thing. Yeah. Especially the issues that have been made in a while.
Yeah, that they would challenge bug and they put the pixel font in the console version. Nice. I noticed the font was different. I liked it.
I was just like, okay, this is a nice little quality of life thing. Bigger patch. Yeah. And then every time I talk about back, I have been really into cross code.
Yeah, I saw a lot of buzz about that every weekend. Totally. Yeah. So this is a game that's been in development for seven years.
A very small team. I don't exactly know how large, but the way the blog posts reads is like, we're like working really hard. Our title team here, early access for about three years. Oh, wow.
And it finally came out on the 20th. That's almost as long as early access existed. Yeah, at least as what we know as early access, like being as, you know, and stuff have been around. This is definitely maybe three, four years old.
And this game is getting a lot of us. Like you said, it's getting, you hear a lot of terms being tossed around and comparing it to secret amount and legend of cell. This is just a snap impression. But when I saw screenshots, I thought fantasy star.
Not so much. Not so much. It doesn't play like it. So this is a somestatic.
Yeah. It makes sense because the game takes place in a fictional MMO. So you are playing a avatar who is in the real world. She starts out in the, well, the game starts.
It's very JRPG anime bullshit story. If you can't get down with that, you are not going to be down with this game. It's made in Germany. Did I see?
It could be all in a team of tournament? Could be. Yeah. Which one surprised me because there was just, it's the game.
It's very dialogue rich. It's all about kind of creating this world. You can talk to everyone everywhere. But tell me about the balls.
I'll get to the balls. So yeah, it takes place within a virtual MMO. You're a sort of avatar talking to real people to be. Yeah, we don't know.
We all we know about you is you've played this game before and you lost your memory and ability to speak. With the player of the game lost memory ability to speak? The avatar. Or the character in the game.
There is no player for this character. That exists in the real world. Okay. At least as far as I know.
So it's like a Tron situation where the avatar got stuck out of the game into the real world? Maybe. You know, it's very ambiguous beginning. It's a lot less about setting up the story more about like you're just trying to learn this video game.
So you get to learn this island and the gameplay is like, well, the game is set up as an RPG. You're in this kind of fictional MMO world where there's other players and NPCs and you know, there are like clans and guilds and all that sort of stuff. But then the gameplay itself is actually quite different. It's kind of, I'm playing on GamePad.
I've seen a lot of people talking about mouse and keyboard being equally as good to play with. But I'm kind of play it like near in the sense that you're playing mostly on the shoulder button, the four shoulder buttons because you're a sort of dual joystick shooter. You aim with the right stick and you can L1 or R1 to launch orbs. And if you call it a reaction, your class is like orb of a manster or something.
And everyone gives you shit because it's like the weakest class in the game or whatever. You know, there's like the punching dudes all think you suck because you don't have a lot of melee ability. There is melee though. You can do sort of like a very simple chain combo for when enemies get up close to you.
Motherhood doesn't come with a manual. In a world of perfect feeds and curated play dates, it's easy to forget that your instinct is actually your best guide. Some things come naturally. And then there are parts that no one really sees.
This Mother's Day, Little Bellies celebrates you and all the ways in which you show up. Our wholesome and organic snacks are made for every milestone and moment. So you have one less thing to worry about. Learn more about how Little Bellies celebrates your little moments this Mother's Day at LittleBelly.com.
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Podcasts. But it's really cool. It's like this really immersive world. They talk that up a lot and I think that sometimes that works against games.
You know, if they focus really hard on story and dialogue and stuff like that and it just doesn't click with you, it's like, well, maybe you could spend more time making the game play better. But it's solid as it is. Jason, you have been checking it out too. I played it a few years ago actually.
So all this MMO stuff is completely, you know, yeah, the story was extremely light. They just kind of dropped you in. I found the comment really satisfying, just shooting the twin six stuff and like the sound effect that makes it a little feels really good. Sounds really good.
And there's like puzzle elements as well. So like these balls will bounce off of stuff. So you got like an arc at a run corners and shit like that. Maybe you hit the back of the enemy that has a shield up so you can like shoot behind them and give them the balls.
But then you got your up close melee stuff as well. So it plays very, very well. I was super intrigued. I actually had dibs on it like three years ago.
Like in our production doc, I'm like, I want to play this, but I want to wait until it's out of early access. But it was a balance. It was a balance. It was a balance.
It was a balance. I'm like in the reviews for the game talking about 10,000 hours with it. I feel like there's tons and tons and tons of stuff in there. I'm only I don't know, four or five hours in at this point.
And I've kind of just got a grasp of all the systems. But it very much nails that feeling of those old 16 bit RPGs kind of like being in a town and just walking around. It really reminds me of illusion of Gaia, which like kind of walking around the town and just looking for little corners and stuff and finding people in the corner who like have a quest for you or stuff that you could just kind of completely miss if you're not just kneeling around. It very much nails that like it feels it feels like you're in this virtual world, which is silly for a video game.
It's silly to say for a video game, but it does feel quite lived in. Does it feel like a game within a game? Yes. And like plays on that a little bit that kind of knocks on the fourth wall.
You know, there's some jokes about fetch quests and stuff like that. And kind of you have operators on the outside world kind of guiding you through the game and they'll make jokes, you know, about like low level fights and mobs and stuff like that. So yeah, I definitely got to put more time into it to kind of see where it goes. But it's set up a lot of really interesting options.
Good feeling balls. All right. Great ball field. Great ball field.
Yeah. Totally. Great balls. Oh, it's a force of holding up.
It's really good. We talked about it last week. We read a quick look. Yeah.
You're right. Right. We didn't really get specific on last week's podcast. But here's a quick look up on the site now if you want to see it in action.
It's not like a week out from full general release. Right. Yeah. So it's kind of hard to really see it in its full glory, I guess, because so much of the changes they've made are to make it a more online game and a more kind of living world.
And so I've seen that in fits and starts and I've been able to try most of the modes, but it's hard to get a full grasp of how that stuff will kind of pan out because there aren't enough players playing it yet. It's a really good for its horizon game. I think that they have added a lot of the way they've built the way the game reveals events to you, I think has improved dramatically in terms of like it always feels like you're getting a ton of new things to do instead of just like, here's the world. Here are the 20 speed traps go.
It's like, OK, we complete the speed trap now for you more up here, but also every race you complete more of races up here in the different race disciplines. So I'm several hours in and I think I just unlocked like the final like type of race to be revealed, not to say that it's like this is the end of the game, but it's like I hit level 40 and that triggers the last like story chapter or the last set of story chapters you can take on. And so it's really open to you to kind of go around and do like, oh, well, I want to do a cross country race, which is kind of point to point, you know, less about being on the road than there's road races, there's street races, you know, dirt races, there's drift zones and different types of events like that. And each one of those has a different kind of progression through it.
So you know, you kind of level up your dirt racing to level seven and now the level seven races are available to me. I think you eventually get to level 10. I might be where it tops out based on how the achievements are written. So it feels like a smart change in terms of how they just kind of present the world to you, which I really liked.
It's not really as like a press of like when they first throw you in. Yeah, exactly. And also three just like, you know, they don't be into that world. It's like, oh, shit, that's a lot of stuff.
Three really felt like they were asking you to race very similar or the same events multiple times to in certain cases. And and that was frustrating. This doesn't really do that. You can you can take on a lot of these events in multiple modes.
So you've got like kind of the default campaign progression, you got rivals, which is like a ghost race or checkpoint or like a leaderboard thing, pure PvP of like, hey, if anyone else in this game wants to sign up to enter this race with me, hit X now, that's just like a hot or that doesn't fit on you. No, that's like, that seems to be based on you being in world with other players. So the game connects you to Horizon Life, which is their kind of connected world. And after you get through the kind of the tutorial phase of the first few hours of the game, it dumps you into a connected version of the world.
It's driving limited. Yeah, that is much better. I constantly lean on that, but it is. But it's, you know, it's, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's.
Motherhood doesn't come with a manual in a world of perfect feeds and curated play dates. It's easy to forget that your instinct is actually your best guide. Some things come naturally. There are parts that no one really sees.
This Mother's Day, Lil Belly celebrates you in all the ways in which you show up. Our wholesome and organic snacks are made for every milestone and moment. So you have one less thing to worry about. Learn more about how Lil Belly celebrates your little moments this Mother's Day at littlebelly.com.
Do what's natural. Like those players connect to the world and they stay there. It's not necessarily like players kind of seamlessly connect in and out, because they're passing on the world. Yeah.
It's like they could be elsewhere. Do we see enough? Yeah. I mean, obviously the game's on it.
I think it's 16. I think it's 16. I'm not positive. Pretty big math, but it is a big.
I see it is a big math. I see players together, which I think is awesome. But generally, there's a button you can hit to say what's active right now. In my experience, that number has almost always been zero, but when it clicks up to one, you're like, oh, that means someone has entered an event.
They've said they wanted to race against other players. I can opt in to join. Is this like transport you there? I said, yeah.
It's my understanding. It'll kind of warp you in. In my experience, no one's actually done that. Is there an advantage for doing that?
I know I haven't been able to get into an online. You're racing a team at that point, which is a different thing. I mean, it's still basically just reviewers playing the game right now. People who got a hold of early Xbox copies.
I don't think everyone playing is a reviewer. One of those games where you can pay $100 to play it early? Yes. I think the people playing as a Friday will have purchased a more expensive version of the game than Tuesday will be the wide release.
But it might also be that that's the date for game pass. I'm not actually sure about the release. So I've got all that. They've got a team adventure stuff, which is then similar things.
That's kind of a different online mode where you kind of opt into it and you'll get into these six player races, three on three. So if you finish first and fifth and sixth on your three person team, you might still lose because the points earned by places two, three and four are going to beat the first player's score and that sort of stuff. I've done some of that. There are people playing that right now pre-release.
So I've gotten in and mess around with that. And that's races and they've got kind of infected and other games they've done in the past there. Just very broadly in terms of handling, does it feel like the other? Totally.
Yeah. I mean, it's a forcing game through. They have changed some of the progression in terms of skill points that you assigned to cars and all that sort of stuff in some ways that are actually really smart. I was worried about it when we did the quick look.
Like every car has some skill. Oh, really? Yeah. I'm not going to get out of this car because I've already leveled it up.
But actually you earned so many fucking skill points that like every time I jump into a car because like, oh, I need a truck for this race. I just, I can go in and I always some of the stuff about changing cars and some of the stuff about like upgrading cars like you have to upgrade the car in specific locations and you can't just like on fly go make this S class. And some of that stuff can be a little bit of a hassle in a way that I wish it wasn't, but it's not a little. But generally speaking, I think that stuff is pretty good though.
I do find that I am sticking to one car because I've got like a good Subaru that I have put the right parts on to be very fast and it's a good off-road. It's good on-road. Yeah. It's like, yeah, this is like, yeah, that's like, this is a good car for any type of event.
It will do, it will do fine. You only need to pick, counter pick with truck if they're like a smart car, you know, when I match up. Totally. And that's the soundtrack.
It's good. Yeah. It's, you know, same type of the old different radio stations with different genres. I think three was not so great on the hip hop end of things.
I think they've done a better job here, but it's not location. Yeah, I was kind of hoping. I wish it was more than UK. It's not like a skint.
It was a lack of grind. Yeah, no grime. So at least not that I've unlocked. They unlock more radio stations you play.
Maybe they're saving the grind for the ASAP side. They do not. Yeah, no, that's bummer. It's kind of a little out of date, but not bad.
I from Kendrick Lamar's on there. Okay. It's a good song. It's fun to drive to the way you get the rights to or towards the way they use the soundtrack is good.
You know, we can only finish the race. It'll kind of pump the course a little bit. The game like for us all on the quick, maybe a little bit more irreverent than it used to be able to appreciate it. Like the dances and the scenery, you could floss in that game.
Oh, yes. What are they called the points of interest or whatever? The TV spots. Yeah.
You roll on places and hit the x button and it just cuts to a scene of your character doing whatever the sign like on top of some monument. Okay. Yeah. I feel like real dumb.
Yeah. Go look at the quick. Yeah, good. Scheres.
Like he rolls up on one of those and there's just a big shot like a wide-ass shot. You're a little carried back on. She's just flossing. What a waterfall or a cliff or something.
Like it's really dumb. It's, it's, it's pretty good. Yeah, but it's the connected world stuff ties into the seasons. Like every Thursday it'll change season.
Yeah. So if you like there hasn't been, like you we hit that point in the quick. Yeah. We did.
We did. After the Thursday. It's been, it's been Autumn the whole time. So what cars handle differently?
As in springtime, there's like a bridge near a dam that will kind of wash out. So when you drive through it, the water is risen up just so. So you're kind of like plowing through water. That's frozen like the freezes.
They emphasize that there will be routes you can take over frozen lakes that wouldn't be there. Other schools. And that's a school. And there are also season specific events.
So each time the season rings up and I'll say, hey, now this series is available in the autumn. And this barn find this car, you can only find it in this autumn season. It's in some garage somewhere. I'm trying to find it.
It looks like straight up have timers on them. Yeah, it's expires in four weeks. And then there's other timers on Fort Sathon, which is something that's a term they've used before. But now it's like at the top of every hour, Fort Sathon live kicks off.
And what it is, it'll be a point on the map you have to drive to. And it'll remind you, hey, in five minutes, this is going to start. You want to set a course there. It's very smooth about just like, hey, yeah, I want to drive to this thing.
So everyone on the server, all 16 players invariably just drive to this location. They spin donuts like idiots for a while. And it's like, hey, drive here and hit this jump over and over again until you've gotten 8,000 total yards of jump. It's like the burnout paradise coops.
And it's like, oh, OK. Now drive here and hit this speed trap over and over again. And none of them are super difficult. But you get a separate currency for it.
You can spend in the fourths of on shop on exclusive clothing and like pumped up cars and shit like that. So it's kind of a cool or the running bonus or, yeah, sorry. You're running man, both challenge and classic forms. And that's nice because it brings the players together.
And at that point, once you're together, you know, there's a button you can hit when you're someone to like, add them to your list or challenge them to a race or bring them in your convoy. Also stuff. So they've kind of constantly got reasons for players to come together. Yeah, because I like thinking back on my experience with previous Horizon Games.
I barely remember that they have multiplayer. Exactly. You just don't see it that much. Yeah, well, you know, it's all about it.
Like, you know, that's only the only stuff that you kind of have to go for it. Yeah, like it's not like the here or there just getting in your face. Totally. Yeah.
And it makes sense with the push to make it more online. Yeah. And I think that's the part that like really sets this apart from the previous games. It's not like the most dramatic night and day change, but it's the thing on top of it that makes you go like, OK, now this is a game I want to play week in week out in a way that like I would fall off of before it's a rise in three because it was so similar to two and one.
Yeah. It seems like there's plenty of content in there if you compare to like the crew. You know, totally this is you could play against other human players. So it's already better than the crew to.
Yeah, it's they made a lot of smart changes to a cross the board and that's really cool to see. It's it's good. And yeah, the online stuff I think is really neat and I want to see how that kind of shapes up over time as they kind of. You know, what's the second autumn look like post launch?
Is it going to be the same autumn events or do they have unique is like autumn to be significantly different than autumn one? The leaves get even more brown. Whoa. And this is going to lead to the situation where every time the season changes, you get in there and see what you I mean.
I'm sure no car is amazing enough that you really have to like grind for it or that you desperately need to get it. Like it would lead to a situation where like, oh, if that barn find is only available one week out of the month and I miss it, right, and it's car I really wanted. I have to wait another three weeks to get it. Yeah, exactly.
And that you kind of want to check in and get a destiny more later. It's kind of yeah, they kind of get some of this feeling of like you. There's this compulsion to keep up with stuff that you might not put as much time into if it wasn't limited basis. The world feels alive in a way that they have never done with the forts again before.
Yeah, but I mean, there's a downside to that, which is what I'm hitting in destiny where it's like, you know what, I don't actually really want to play that much of this game tonight. But if I don't, I'm going to miss your daily lock and go. Well, even more than that, it's like, oh, I finished three quarters of this bounty. I really don't want to play doesn't anymore.
But if I don't, I lose all that progress and look at the rewards. So I have to grind this out tonight. I've opted for it, not grinding that out. Yeah.
Yeah. After last night, I am on the same page. Yeah. But I think there's new stuff for anyway.
Forts there is. Yeah. But hopefully they don't run into this situation because I mean, we'll spend more time talking about Forts. Yeah.
I want to check it out. You know, once I've been able to kind of check out more of the online stuff and kind of have a firm grasp of how all that stuff works. But I'm super happy it's on Game Pass. Yeah.
Yeah. I like that's just kind of the blanket thing for all Microsoft games. No, it's like PC versions fucking fantastic. I mean, part of that, that is that is this is the reason I got a G-Sync monitor.
Nice. Like the games like this, because this thing is running between 70 and 110 frames a second at 1440p. No fucking tearing. Mm-hmm.
You know, and it just it looks fantastic. Um, and yeah, that's that's been really nice. The one thing I'll say before move on is that they still have those showcase races that they've always had that have just like every two years, you go, OK, here's another rubber banded race against a not car. Um, but there are only five of them and they front load them.
So you're done with those two case races super fucking fast. Right. And there's a really good like one of the last things you unlock is this. It's it's not it's it's a little I don't know that I like the story or the character or any other route stuff around it, but it's a series of races that are homages to other driving games throughout time.
Uh, in a way that like they specifically directly call them out by name. Wow. It's like the games like here like the first one is a character like, Hey, wait for this one for this in my top 10. It's like a YouTuber.
So it's like my top 10 car video games here at the Horizon Festival. I wanted to do Outrun and this is the car from Outrun and we're going to drive like get. And it's like it's a great game. We're here and it's like fucking what the fuck it's cool.
It's neat. And it is there one that's lucky and wild and there's give you a gun. I haven't done them all, but hopefully, but like there's one for Project Gotham Racing that at the end of it, like the characters like they should reboot Project Gotham Racing and you're like fucking yeah, they probably should. Wow.
But you keep making forts it. This is a Microsoft Studio or games thing that but I'm sure you know what all the ones who put it right. Well, they talk about any racing games you would associate with deeply with Sony like the Grand Series before. I don't know.
It's a great I mean, you know, like out runs a Sega game. Yeah, but it was a fucking rock star. Right. Anything that is either Sony for party or like just something.
Extremely has like a brand identity with Sony. I don't know. I'm an engine racer would be the other one for me. Rich racer's Namco.
Well, well, yeah, but I mean, you're right. The first few rich racing games were very much PlayStation games. Yeah. Motherhood doesn't come with a manual in a world of perfect feeds and curated play dates.
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I don't know. But I bet they did do Ridge Racer. We'll be specifically talking about that 360 Ridge Racer games that they had along. The only Ridge Racer 6 is the best one.
That's the best one. It's kind of in line with Microsoft's philosophy back in Minecraft on Switch and like we're with other companies. It was really I was like kind of groaning at the start of it because it's just like, oh, it's like here's another mission in a mission like open world game where I am partnered with someone who is streaming or a streamer and their whole character is going to be the act shitty while I'm the real driver. But like that's not how they wrote the character.
Yeah. And so that end of it is like less shitty than a lot of other games. I think Wildlands had a guy that was like a big on- I don't know how to do something. There's another driving game where it was like you're, it's another driving game about the other reason where you're like doing the driving for someone who- Well, I mean, you too.
It was all about what I was saying. I think I've never been in the quick game. Yes, it was the last name for speed. You're playing as a rival to characters and you're down in your luck so you're driving for someone who's a car streamer.
Yeah. And it sucks. But like it's supposed to suck. Like the guy is supposed to be shitty.
So I thought that's where they were going with it and they don't. And there's a bunch of quick chat phrases, like canned phrases that you unlock that you can use in the world and love. It's like, okay, or I like Winter. I'm using Kill Control, you know, whatever.
And the next one I'll unlock for leveling up on that one that's the references to games is just game over. Yeah. It's pretty amazing. Okay.
So yeah, sounds fun. It's fun. Oh, and also you can earn XP for streaming games. That was my last question, which is speaking of streaming.
How about that mixer stuff? Is it activated? Yes. Yes.
It has a tight mixer integration, which- So instead of calling it experience points, the game just calls it influence. And for finishing races, you earn influence. For doing just about damn near anything you earn influence. And that's how you level up.
So when you stream the game on mixer, you earn influence for that. When you watch someone else's stream on mixer, well logged into your account that is tied to your Xbox profile because mixer is owned by Microsoft, you earn influence there as well. You earn more for streaming it than you do for watching it. So you're telling me that when the game launches, there's going to be about a thousand streams with zero viewers going for this game.
There's also a crew more based on many viewers you have. That would be the only thing. They said it would. Wow.
What? Wow. But right now, right now it seems like you earn 6,000 influence an hour for watching a stream and 15,000 an hour for streaming it. That's not a ton of grants.
No, that's like a 15,000. It's not going to be. It's not going to be. But it's more.
It is more. The numbers go up. It's different than your regular experience. No, that is the XP.
Wow. I'm just going to start my stream, tape down my accelerate button, set my controller down. There are already five to 10 streams on mixer doing exactly that. There's like someone who's just 24, seven, four to influence farm muted.
Oh, wow. It's just someone who is running the game. I was starting to say I can't decide if this is revolting or amazing, but now I'm leaning toward amazing. It's look.
I didn't think it's a revolting. Yeah, totally. Again, time like a that's the world we live in. We're already past the point of that.