Order up. Thank you. No. No, no.
Oh, come on. This is not happening. Turn off the water. Where's the shut off?
The pipe. They're there. Gosh, it's everywhere. Are we covered for this?
Don't know. Don't worry. A licensed TD insurance advisor can help you get the right insurance coverage to protect your business. Is that we're making insurance?
More human. I feel like it's a little too dark in this room. This is the giant bomb cast. I'm your host Jeff Gersman.
It's November 16th. 2021. And I have all the lights on in this room, but this is, this is, this doesn't feel, this doesn't look right to me. This looks dim or something.
I don't know. My camera shot. I thought you had a key light. Yeah, I do.
But I have it bouncing off the wall or the ceiling kind of up and down. So like if I turn it off, it's going to be even probably more dim. I could do this for you, Jeff. Like I just, you know.
Yeah. No. No. No.
No. No. No. No.
No. No. No. No.
No. No. No. No.
No. No. It's just the music. Oh God.
Oh. Oh, no. That's strange. Not having that, but I've got it.
And it's like no. Everyone's in a while and you open a window. Is it just like humidity? Just like just is it?
Are you in a swamp right now? No, it's actually it's it's fall here at the leaves of fallen. It's nice and cool outside I have to wear hoodie. It's that hotland stuff.
Mm-hmm. It's it's true for maybe a month out of the year. Maybe two Other than that. Sometimes it snows.
Oh, what? I heard that they went bananas the last time It's snowed half an inch. What the fuck is they? Cuz there's no like a winter freak Nick like what do we wouldn't?
Yeah, they have no way of getting rid of the snow once it is. They got no salt. They got no salt. Yeah, they got no salt.
They don't have plows. They got nothing. It turns to ice and then the entire fucking state is a skating rink. When I lived here before, I used to there was like a week when I couldn't go to work because I couldn't get out of the fucking driveway over there.
It was nuts. Damn. I'm sorry to have my relationship with the state down, but if there's just something in my brain that's not connecting where it's just like fucking salt, like just fucking figure it out. No.
No, you gotta like, you gotta store that stuff. Like all year in those big, you're a prefab looking They put salt in magnets. Can't we just send them to you, Jason? Yeah.
Yes. Care of. Yes. Yes.
You can like send me all your salt. All right, that'd be salt. It's your job though. What's that?
They're going to go on for years at all. They put it all in the code. Yeah. Actually, yeah.
They have to ship it from the ice. Yeah. I'm not kidding. They ship it from out of state if there is a need.
Yeah. I can't. I want it in the bay area. Yeah, yeah.
I want it to drive there when it rains. Oh man. We're thinking about taking like a vacation either up north or down south and then I didn't think about it. Come on over.
Like South, California. Like that's too long of a journey, Jason. I'm sorry. That's fine.
Go on. Wait. Hang out with me. My dumb butt didn't think that it would get cold in like the Joshua Tree Palm Springs area.
But in reality, it's probably going to get really fucking cold and I didn't want that. So now I got to think about a place where I could just be really, really just like, I just want to sweat in the winter. That's what I want. I mean, you probably have to go east for that.
That's got to be like, let's like, you got to go to Florida or something. Yeah. No one has to go to Florida. Sorry.
You've been sentenced to go to Florida. No. It's important. Your crimes.
You know what you did. Yeah. Yeah. And then I'm in the prison state now.
You said you're going to stick with people to Florida of the United States, Florida. Put that on a shirt. You're going to throw the book at them. We need to have a shirt.
That's right. We sent this you to hard time in Tallahassee. Everybody, anything with that? Your honor.
Anything with that? Hey, God, have mercy on your soul. How could you? Can I go with Jesse?
Live in midwest fabulous? Is that the thing? No. No, such thing is live in midwest fabulous.
I'm sorry to say, you know, I live in a fancy sounding place. Dish. You get some, what do you get? I've never had a hot dish, but I did it.
I don't know. Dish. I don't know. I don't know.
I don't want to know. Keep it away from me, because I have had the misfortune, the misfortune. I'm going to make up a whole new word to describe this. I met a seven layer salad once and it was horrifying.
Jan, like the first time I talked to Jan, I was like, Jan, I got to subject somebody to this fucking salad. This is a nightmare. It was just like, I got excited because I heard there was going to be a salad at this barbecue. I was just like, I like a good salad.
Maybe there won't be total crap food there because it's like the midwest. They don't know how to cook their freaking meat. Everything is like so well done. It's everything's a hockey puck.
And so I was like, hey, at least it's going to be a salad there. Bad news, it's this thing, which is just like, there is lettuce in it, but I think you need more than just lettuce to constitute a salad, I think, morally, because this is not a salad. There's like mayo in it. There might have been cool lip in it.
I'm not sure what this white stuff was. Peas. Big difference with cool whipping. What's funny is I took a bite.
Couldn't not tell. Like there was bacon, there was devil eggs, there was carrots, shredded carrots. Yeah, sure. Sure.
Just so much mayo or cool whip. I don't know, but I was just like, fuck it. I got to try it. This is a food crime.
This is a nightmare. And I took a bite. It tasted like nothing. How can something with so much crap in it, bacon, eggs, nothing.
It tastes like fucking nothing. Water. It's some weird. I'm going to, I'm assuming you're okay with me sharing this.
Were you okay with me sharing the pictures? Yes. Yes. Yes.
You found the salad show. This is nasty. Yes. Thing.
What the fuck? That looks like something into a burrito at minimum. So what the fuck is that? That looks like pizza in the heart.
Is that corn in there? What is that? No cheese. Lots of different cheeses.
Sure. Just kale. Is that like a thing? It's like a little kale.
It's like a parsley up top, a spring. It looks like parsley. I don't know. Jan, put eyeballs in a mouth on that and you got pizza to the heart.
Make this up. Make this a final boss of Bugsnax too, because it's some disgusting thing. That was a where I'm sorry. Where was that?
And how did you not burn the place it was in down? Michigan and it was my in-laws house. So I'm sorry, Ma. Legging your salad.
Right. Sam. Fair. That's just what my bonkers were.
Yeah, that's if we're not talking food crimes, then we're talking food rhymes. All right, drop hot 16. No. All right.
Kale. You don't eat it. You might know. Can't do it.
I'll do it. Okay. P.S. I also have the power to make my shit really bright out of nowhere.
Mine light keeps dropping off my Wi-Fi network and it becomes difficult for me to adjust. It's a bad. I was suspicious of that choice by the company at the gato and feel like did a bad job with I feel like everything Elgato makes is like 80 to 90% there. But like the part that's not there, you're just like, who fucking did this?
Like you're just like incredulous. Like, why would you do with this? Yeah, exactly. I understand why you would want to put a light on a Wi-Fi controllable like platform, but also how much could it possibly be to then also add a manual on off switch to the goddamn thing?
I mean, it has one, but you flip it and then it just lights up and immediately goes dark because you have to turn it on from Wi-Fi. Yeah, there's no manual, like just my light. Turn the light on afterwards because mine fell off the network as well and I cannot get them back on. But when I turn them on, they flip on, they go off for a second and then five seconds later, they come back on.
So they just stuck at this default light forever. And I can't and I'm too bright. And you are very bright, Jason. I know.
But I can see my color temperature. Well, I just turn it off. Okay. I don't do that anymore.
Turn off. That just feels better to me. Yeah. And I would chill it.
Yeah, it's the chill zone. That's five. Well, let's talk about keeping here up at the top of the show. Handful of things here.
Giant Premium memberships are on sale. That's you want to keep the lights on, not this light, because this light, I turned off. If you want to keep the lights on a giant bomb, the best way is to go to giant bomb.com upgrade and check it out. We've got, you know, discounts on the premium membership.
You get, you know, the ad free experience, all that hot action. What else? Busy week this week, Dave Lang. Or up.
Thank you. No. No. No.
Come on. This is not happening. Turn off the water. Here's the shuttle.
There. There. Gosh, it's everywhere. Are we covered for this?
Don't know. Don't worry. A licensed TD insurance advisor can help you get the right insurance coverage to protect your business. Is that we're making insurance?
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Iron Galaxy founder, I was a C-3PO himself, is going to be streaming for extra life on Friday. He's going to be doing a hot 24. And as we're listening, we are not going to pre-empt him for UPF. Yeah, so we won't get in the way.
Yeah, no, no one could get in the way of the push-up party. A push-up club. Oh my gosh, push-ups are so fucking hard, y'all. I don't know what the last time of the day sucks.
Yeah, I've done successfully. I know. I did the other day. That was bad.
30. Wow, I can't do three. Yeah, I'm kind of with you on the chainsaw. See these noodles?
They catch you shit. You got those kids. I can hit you in the pool. Yeah.
Yeah, he, I had a roommate who would when so calm was big on the PlayStation 2. Every time he died, he would just do push-ups until the round was over. Oh, he did work down for him really well. I kind of like that.
That's a good idea. Well, probably I don't lose, so. Yeah, well, there you go. Those sounds sound like they're coming from some kind of horror video game.
Are they coming out of some kind of video or some kind of pyramid head? A new show coming to giantbomb.com soon. Jess, why don't you take it away? Describe this program for me.
Man, I'm super stoked. By the way, hi. I'm Jess O'Brien. If you didn't know, I'm new here.
I'm also a video producer. If fucking rules, love working with all these people. Thank you for fucking having me. I'm blessed.
Thank you for saying that. But love in the works. Love in all of it. This time, so every time you come on, you have to be training the show right now.
Sorry. You might know me better as Voidburger if you have seen any of my other work. It has done the same. You're the hamburger lady.
It's me from the hamburger train, right? It's me. But yeah, so I'm kind of known for giving a huge shit about Silent Hill games, too much of a shit about Silent Hill games, where many simply do not, including giantbomb. There's been a big, big void that I wish to fill as the burger in the horror genre in general.
But especially Silent Hill, oh my god, there's like freaking eight or nine of these damn things. Yeah, they're just coming out of the way. Okay. They can do it constantly.
Yeah, exactly. I have to. Silent Hill fans are in a really sick, cyclical relationship with the franchise, which I'm sure I'll talk about eventually during the new show, which is incredible. You're going to love it.
It's basically, did you like Metal Gear Scanlon? Well, how about basically the same thing? But with me, the Silent Hill expert guiding the Silent Hill super newbie, Jan Ochoa, that way, Jan Ochoa, who doesn't know a goddamn thing about Silent Hill to my extreme joy knows nothing about it at all. Same with the first episode.
You're going to adore how little this man knows about Silent Hill, just like I did. But yeah, we're going to run for the hills. Yeah, and that's awesome. All right.
Oh, yeah, playing Silent Hill one. Correct. Silent Hill one. Yeah, the first one indeed.
We would love to make this a long term situation. Allah, Metal Gear Scanlon, they did it. It depends. It's a lot of Silent Hill.
And it super, it super depends on Jan's comments for if we get the PT. Well, it's just probably the role of Daniel. You played by no one. Number one and number two, you know, keep this going long term.
If he's not ever done, thank you very much. Yes, speaking, it will be premium live stream show. Normally, we'll run Friday mornings or Friday mornings for Pacific West Coast folks. But tomorrow, we will be doing the first app of run for the hills.
I'm not going to be super important. It's going to be live, baby. Oh, my God. Tune in on the stream.
Yeah. Give that cheap premium and hop in. Yeah. Our product lastly from our hot block of pre news news.
So folks have noticed that QuickBooks on YouTube have changed. We're doing cut down versions of QuickBooks for YouTube trying that out. Long story short, I think for the last handful of years here, the thinking on my part is like, if we're not using these external platforms, the way they're meant to be used, it's a big waste of time and YouTube fucking hates long videos. So the bomb cast is still going to go up there, but I think that's going to be the only long video that's going to run.
We're going to show cut down videos there. Of course, the full versions will still live on the site. That's something we're still kind of fucking around with. So, you know, if you are not behind a paywall, by the way, like a lot of people can choose that that was behind a paywall.
It's super is it like, just want to lay that out there immediately that they are not buying a new wall. Definitely not the stuff that, yeah, that's no, that's coverage of new releases. We don't want to pay all that kind of stuff. So, yeah, that's kind of their, you know, meant to serve as kind of like, here's an introductory thing, if you don't already know who the fuck we are.
And so that's why they're kind of shorter cut down versions because, you know, the people don't watch those hour long videos and then YouTube takes that as a signal is just like, hey, someone only watched 20% of this hour and a half long video, 20% sounds low, and then whatever it happens. I don't know, we're going to fucking around with that. We love to hear your feedback. If you, you know, there are people who used that to watch videos on their TV, they're a handful of different apps out there for Genibon, on most platforms, Xbox, Apple TV, Roku.
I mean, Roku, Roku is a good question. The Roku app might be jacked these days. Roku is an interesting company. They build them into TVs now.
They build them into TVs now. That's a problem. You can just download the YouTube app on Roku. Oh, wait, no, they took the YouTube app off of Roku, I think.
No, they build it in TV. You still have one? Yeah, but you want to replace your Roku every two years, usually, because they get real slow and stop working. I never, so I'd even, this LG has its own, you know, OS and apps and all that other stuff.
And there's like, Plex app and other stuff like in theory that I would use. But no, the response time, I ended up going on buying an Apple TV because I just, I want to remote the one, I hit the thing, it moves. I want to hit it and not move because then I hit it again. It's like, it's like, you fucking eat an edible and you're like, this isn't doing shit.
And so you eat fucking five more. And then the cursor goes all the way over and you're like, I'm dying. Do you have like the old Apple remote that's like, gets lost all the time or do you have the new one with actual ads? No, my, my daughter grabs it and thinks she's using a, in a phase where she thinks everything's a phone.
So like the, the thing for my, my HDMI splitter matrix thing, she'll, that's perfect. Baby phone size. Yeah, she tries to work. She tries to wear pairs of boots and stuff like that.
The Apple TV remote is, it's, it's fucking dog shit. Yeah. The touch one. Oh my god.
Like what a, how can we be proud of that? Well, they replaced it, right? I mean, they replaced it. Yeah, they did.
Where's it at? Go buy new Apple TV. You can buy, you can just buy the remote. Yeah.
Okay. Okay. All right. But when I moved, I did not even hook my Apple TV back up.
No, it was just like, I don't need any of that in here. I'm like surrounded by enough screens that can do damage on the ground over here. Yeah, I don't know. Anyway, that's it for us news.
Let's talk about video games. There's a, there's a, it's a, it's shooting, it's shooting people weak around here in America. In America. All the days.
Um, a little, a little, a little too. Good. Like everybody. Yeah.
Way murdering battlefields out. It came out for people who spent a lot of money on it on Friday and then the wide release for people who did not spend nearly as much money on it is out today. I have played some chunk of this and it is a clunky, weird wreck of a video game that I really feel like every battlefield game they're getting a little bit further away from what I really, what people seem to really love about battlefield. And that's like a functional video game.
But, uh, there's just kind of a, the way they built all of their classes and this like operators with abilities and like their unlocks and all this other stuff just does not feel conducive to like finding your play style and all that sort of stuff. And I've seen a lot of complaints from people about various spawns. They're very easily camped. It's a, you know, higher player count.
So it's a lot easier just to plop some snipers near. This message comes from Viking committed to exploring the world in comfort journey through the heart of Europe on an elegant Viking longship with thoughtful service, destination focused dining and cultural enrichment on board and on shore. And every Viking voyage is all inclusive with no children and no casinos. Discover more at Viking dot com, a spawn point and just wipe people out.
It's, it's, it feels like even more of the battlefield problem of you spawn, you run for four minutes and then get one shot killed or something, you know, um, and their big thing of weather effects, like, you know, there's tornadoes and stuff like that that will occasionally happen in a map, which by occasionally seems to be most of the time. And it was neat the first time I popped out my wing suit and flew into a tornado and then just whipped around and flew out the other side and stuff. I was like, that's crazy. And then I landed into a window of a building and killed a guy and then three guys shot me.
And I was like, that was badass. So it's still got those moments, right? Where you're just like some crazy shit happened. And that's the cool thing about battlefield, but I feel like the rest of it is just kind of a mess.
Yeah, you showed off a little bit of the portal mode on a last UPF. Nobody been last UPF. I don't know. And that seemed insane.
And then I didn't realize that the game had it's kind of technically out at that point. I thought it was still in a beta and it's just wild at like the whole list of like custom games are just filled with XP farms. So I guess I saw people I was in game last night and I saw people in chat saying that all rewards have been removed from portal mode because of people grinding to the level cap too fast or something like that. But there are still some of those servers up where they're called XP farm and all this other stuff, but I not nearly as many as there were on day one.
That was literally the day the game launched that we were playing it. And so I don't know if that was considered an exploit or I mean it was funky, whatever. And so but like the tragedy kind of the narrative I see kind of popping up more and more and I can see why this is the case, but I'm just not a huge enough fan of the battlefield franchise to necessarily go all the way with this. But like it seems like people are like, man, the coolest thing you can do is launch portal and then just play bad company two classes on bad company two maps and not touch any of the new twenty forty two stuff.
It's really awesome that they let you play the good old battlefield games before they went and screwed it up. And that's like a that's probably not a good place for your game to be. No, no. Is there like a campaign at all to speak up?
No, it's got three modes. It's got the kind of the new the new the new guys the twenty forty two mode which has two modes in it break through and conquest. And that's pretty standard battlefield stuff, you know, and then it's got the portal mode where you can go. It's like custom game type stuff.
You can configure what the two teams are. So you can make World War two guys fight against twenty forty two guys and, you know, which is neat in theory, but the the mismatches that people were using to create some of those platforms and some of that other stuff just it doesn't I don't know. I've yet to jump into one of those that like meshed those things together in a way that I was like, oh, this is really neat. It's like more that it's awesome on paper and then you get into it like people just seem to want to just play bad company too.
And then there's a was it hazard zone, I believe the hazard something is the name of the third mode. That's like a squad based. I have not tried that yet. It seems very focused on communication, which is hilarious because the game doesn't have voice chat.
Okay, they launched it without voice chat, which is a choice. And, you know, it seems like a very communication heavy sort of mode. So if you're not playing with friends there, it's a it could be could be kind of filthy. And yeah, I don't know, like it's it looked very cool.
As battlefield games do, it looked very awesome pre-release because they base around here's the crazy shit that can happen. I jumped out of this plane and I shot a rocket at a helicopter and it blew up and that was rad. And when you pull off stuff like that, which, you know, I'm not an amazing battlefield player, but I did a couple of things that I was like, that was cool. That was cool as shit.
How I killed those three guys and jumped out of this and did it, you know, but I don't know. That's not enough to like carry the game for me. I think if I had a if I had a crew of friends that was way invested in in battlefield, you know, I'd probably play more of it. That was the last time I played a lot of battlefield.
It was like battlefield four and that was the case. So it's just like, here's some good friends and we were just like, we were going to drive around this tank and get up the shenanigans. And that was a lot of fun. But this is a planet not that way.
Seems pretty. Unfun. I guess I would say dire is maybe a little harsh, but that was that was a very good one. Yeah, this trailer has almost worked on me.
I thought this would be the time I finally dip my feet into a battlefield, but just after seeing people that actually like battlefields, reception to everything. And then I mean, the portal stuff I could care less about because, you know, I don't really care about grinding for XP or whatever. It's more so just playing like a shooting game with friends. I don't know.
I just feel like I get really tired of those moments and just I just want to play. And the couple of times we've shown off battlefield on the site, like the time to kill just seems incredibly long and like you're running around for X amount of time, you get two shots off and then you get bought. Yeah, it's yes. You you short time to kill.
I guess. Yeah. You get wiped out fast, for sure. And yeah, and in some sick, sick way, this almost feels like it's the last time we'll talk about Battlefield 2042 because they also just went and put Halo out yesterday.
Imagine being EA. Oh man. That's unfortunate. Oh my God.
You've got battlefield in the middle of like a very tricky launch window where the early access, the people that paid $100 for the game are maybe not getting the experience that you would hope that they would. You know, you have work cut out for you in terms of getting the game on the right track. And then by the way, shadow drop of Halo Infinite free to play multiplayer on PC and Xbox. You're like, well, PlayStation numbers aren't going to be affected too much by this.
We hope, but like, God damn. Oh, not the same game or anything, but Halo came out is I am fucking blown away by how much fun I'm having with this. Yeah, same. And I'm not a Halo guy at all.
Like we played a bunch on stream yesterday. And then I played even some more last night. But like, I traditionally am not very good. That's fine.
I'm still having fun with it. I don't get exactly what it is. Maybe it's the grappling hook. Maybe it's just the different modes.
I don't know. But I'm having a great fucking time with it. It's it's super cool. Yeah.
It's now the time for me to finally get into Halo. Yeah. I mean, it's right now. There's never been a better time to do getting to Halo, I think.
And I've never been like a massive Halo fan. Like all this Xbox anniversary stuff is kind of weird because it's a lot of people waxing a poetic about Halo 1. And all I remember about Halo 1 is playing and going like I don't know. It's not nearly as good as any of the shooters I'm playing on PC right now.
But okay, sure, I guess it definitely hit with a lot of people. Like, yeah, there were a lot of people that were into the land parties. Like this took the spot of like Golden Eye, I think, you know, in another game. I think yeah, I think that maybe that would have hit different.
But I think both Golden Eye and Halo, I'm just like, what are you people doing? Like you could be like fucking three. I think I just wasn't in the right environment to get into those type of like competitive shooters in general and not very good at but I think like because like, I don't know, growing up, it was just like, if I went over to my friends house to play N64, it was always golden. I was just like, this shit again, I'm bad at this shit though.
And it just kind of like, I never got better because they weren't interested in teaching me, you know, they just want to win. So it was not, it was one of the situations where she's like, fine, I'm just not never gonna get at these things. So when I came around, yeah, I was. I just wanted to play Ocarina of Time.
What the hell? You know, it was just one of those like, one of those childhood things where it's just like, I'm clearly the fodder here. I'm here to lose this over and over again and not be fostered to enjoy the experience. So I think as a result, I never really got into like other similar competitive games in general, but especially shooters.
So I'm curious now, you say it's fun. I haven't played Halo multiplayer since Halo 3, and I got really way too into that. But like playing this about like riding a bike and like just the muscle memory, like instantly clicked and everything. And Jeff, you talked about like the zany moments in a battlefield, right?
Once you get the hang of that grappling hook pickup that you can get, and once you realize you can use that grappling hook to hijack other vehicles, the insane moments just like double. Because then like, especially in like the big battle modes, like you'll see someone on a bench, you'll be like, all right, I know what to do here. And you get that grappling hook off, and then you throw the other dude out of the thing, and then someone easily shoots you down. It's like, oh, that was amazing.
I'm not even mad. Yeah, it's like they put just cause stunt position into Halo or something that grappling hooks up. It's the vehicle hijack stuff is really fun. I wish it wasn't limited use.
I mean, you could probably play maybe a custom game mode where it just like all grappling hooks unlimited, just just go for it. And then, oh, when you get a grappling, I wasn't even mad again. When like I grappled off to someone that had a sword, and I was like, no, I'm going to knock him out. I'm going to knock him out.
And then like, I fumbled with my hands and he just looks at me, turns around and swipes me down. I'm like, mmm, I'll get that guy next time though. Next time I'm going to get it right. Yeah, there's like, there's just enough possibility, like the possibility space of like shit you can do is just wide enough to where you feel like there's a lot of things that are possible.
And I like getting a gravity hammer and, you know, just sneak it up behind. You know, I've been playing mostly not the big team battle stuff with the vehicles and all that. I've been playing these all our mats for V4 stuff. And so you're going to end up in like a lot of oddball matches and some of the other game types that are in there.
And you just have that moment, just like, I'm just going to creep around this corner and then gravity hammer everyone standing here, protecting the breath with the ball and stuff like that. Super fun. I think that the shooting feels very tight and I'm playing on a controller on PC. I mean, it's got, I've heard the mouse and keyboard stuff is totally fine, but it's just not my brain came really cool with that.
Yeah, no, same here. And it's there's a ton of options. It's like a very adjustable and more and more games are like this these days, right? But there's just a ton of controller config stuff and things in there to what I think helps address some of the, like sometimes Halo, I think my main criticism with Halo in general over the years has been sometimes it just feels like you're stuck in mud a little bit, you know, the movements a little sluggish, the jumps a little too floaty.
But like, you can, you just make the controller feel a little bit more responsive. And that's gone a long way to making me enjoy the game a lot more, I think. It's got a pretty good tutorial mode in there too to help learn the weapons and all that sort of stuff. But like, yeah, it's just a, it's a good ass time.
I think the maps are pretty good. It's out at the exact right time. I think, for me, like having all these other shooters come out and just like, not do it, not get it done, you know, call the duty last week and now battlefield and all this other stuff is like Halo was kind of the last hope. And it's like, okay, no, they nailed it.
And I think this is, it's free to play. And so this is going to be the dangerous part of it. But like, there's a big, I feel like there's going to be a big fashion element to Halo. Oh, yeah.
Yeah. Like not to the full like anime extent of like a fantasy star online too. But close. So I don't really like the, I don't really care about Master Chief and the way that dude looks like his stuff, like Jonathan, but all the different pieces.
And I felt this way about like Halo three and stuff when they started introducing like more customizable armor for multiplayer, like some of the people you can slap together out of those parts look badass. Yeah. And now they're selling that stuff. And that's dirty.
I mean, like I get it, right? It's it's free to play. So they're selling cosmetics. But I put 50 bucks into that thing and bought the battle pass and like this cool white outfit with this cool visor and this big piece over it and the sick.
Yeah, there's just some fucking sick looking people you can build out of those parts and hot colorways. They're selling like they're selling a bunch of stuff already, obviously, but like there's much like Call of Duty, they have specific armor colors and stuff like that to represent the esports teams that play Halo professional here. Yeah, colorway. Yeah.
And that's like a red black camo number that actually is kind of neat. No, that's not the one that's not the one I would buy. There's another I forget what it was like a space shooter. I forget what this space grinder is or something else.
Some sick looking armor in there. Nope, for like 10 bucks. And I was looking at it and I'm like, I already spent $50 on this battle pass a bunch of like a bunch of boosts for the battle pass. And then this little white number put like I'm 10 more dollars for.
Oh my god. Yeah, yeah, it's dirty. It's dirty. And the the battle pass we should talk about a little bit.
I think the way they have built progression into that system is bad. Yeah, the negative thing about that game is like, so you don't just get XP for playing it like you do in Call of Duty or Battlefield. There are challenges that you have to complete and those can be as simple as play a match, but they could be as specific as kill an enemy with the bulldog shotgun thing or get to kills with this or blow up a warthog. I think is one of the ones I have right now.
And the only time you gain XP, which XP is only for that battle pass. So it's only unlocks for cosmetics and some of that other stuff. It's not like you're getting access to different guns or whatever. That's just not even how Halo is built.
So it's kind of whatever because it's cosmetic, but you can go out, you can go through a whole match and get nothing out of it on the other hand if you don't complete any of those challenges. And the downside to that is I've seen, I've not seen this first hand, but I've definitely seen a number of people complaining about it is that people will jump to a match complete challenge and quit trying to grind levels on that pass. So they'll jump in and blow up a warthog. Like, okay, I did this, quit out, get the challenge, just refresh, jump into another match, complete the challenge, jump out.
So it's like, not only is it inspiring people to play in ways that are not always built to win the match, which is the last thing you want on your team-based shooter, it is then also inspiring people to just quit as soon as they do the thing that they came to do. And that's even worse. Yeah, I thought a bunch of people are getting kicked from a couple of games I was playing last night because I popped in and then, you know, big team battle, super hectic people firing off everywhere. And then I'd have bouts where like half my team, maybe a good like two, three folks just quit out randomly.
And I thought it was just like connection errors and stuff, but oh, that explains it. Could be that. It's a game design error. They're accidentally incentivizing people to do this to other people who are just trying to play it regularly.
Yeah. And so I think they've acknowledged that they want to look into additional ways to earn XP in the future, but like that system, the system was like this in the beta. Please look at it and go like this, this can't. You cannot leave it like this.
And you probably need to fix it sooner rather than later because it's just really, it's kind of demoralizing in a way. Some of the chat, some of the chat mentions a good solution, award those chivos at the end of the match. That's a really good solution, actually. Like that's that's, you know, Call of Duty would implement a win bonus in eventually to kind of inspire people to stay through the end of the match.
Like you kind of get the bull if you are kind of completing it and not leaving. Yeah, different games have tackled that different ways. Yeah, that's one way to do it. But I just, at the end of the day, I think part of it is just like, I feel like I want to get something for like, I completed the match.
I was here for some time. I got this number of kills. I got this number of points in game. I defended the objective.
Like, like I played the game right. I should get something. Like if this system that you've built, not that like people need to get something just for playing the game, right? That's the route to fucking play to earn.
But like, at the end of the day, I like numbers going up. Yeah, at the end of the day, people like it when the numbers go up and they're probably just needing more ways for those numbers to go up, especially when you've got like, I need a thousand XP to go from level 25 to 26 and you complete a daily and it's 100 XP and you're like, I don't know that. But at the same time, also this battle pass is going to last until May. We'll get into that in the news.
So we've got plenty of time to grind all that out. Have y'all experienced any like issues playing through? It's been relatively solid for me, which I was kind of surprised by. Just that first time.
Yeah, just other than that initial download. Yeah, yeah, it seemed like a little rough out of the eight, but they, I mean, it seemed like they had the server capacity to make it happen. Halo, waypoint to the website has been completely broken for days. I've been unable to get on that, which I'm trying to redeem my double XP.
I got off a can of a rock star and I clicked the button and it just sits there forever. So clearly, there's more work to be done on that front. Geez, got 150,000 people playing right now. Yeah, it's, yeah.
And that's just on steam, right? I mean, that's just on steam. Yeah, it is, it is doing quite well at very exciting time. Maybe I shouldn't be surprised that people still like Halo, but at the same time so much has changed since Halo was on top of the world.
All right, let's just get all the shooters out of the way here real quick. Bright Memory Infinite came out on PC. Yeah, I'm interested in this. Yeah, it is a Jason game in a way.
So this is something that got announced for Xbox forever ago and was out on PC in various forms, but it is out and full now on steam. It is a first person shooter where you also have a sword and if you tap the sword button, you'll just swing it. You can hold it out to deflect bullets or you can hold down the sword button to lunge forward and do a launcher. And so it has a launcher, and then you can shoot them or pop up in the air for a mid-air sword combo, which I think it means the bar of a Jason game at that point.
And it is, it feels like a tech demo. Like if you weren't actually controlling it, you would go like, am I running like 3D Mark or something? Like if this just feels like a fake video game in a weird way, because you're just like running along and there's like crazy weather effects and a big black hole in the sky and just like it's very like flashy isn't the word. It feels, it's very effects heavy, but also sometimes looks kind of janky or looks like it has a small team feel to it, which I think it might as well.
I think it's one dude. I think it's one guy. Yeah, there it is. Yeah.
Yeah. Oh, wow. It looks very delicious. It has like a needlessly busy feel to it too.
I don't know why you're seeing it. Totally. Yeah. I don't know why I'm holding this.
They're trying to perfectly though. Just do it randomly. We're trying to, we're trying to get jump scares in preparation for the hills. So yeah.
Yeah. Busy is definitely the word, I think. And then you'll just be running along and then something happens with time or whatever and you're fighting all these ancient soldiers with swords and killing them to get currency and then flashing back forward to your future black hole nightmare world or whatever. It's me.
It's like it's janky in spots like, you know, first person melee always can be a little bit weird and I think this kind of has no exception, but it's cool for what it is. And I don't know, sometimes it reminds me of like fear when fear was on consoles or something where it was like, this was clearly more like you're kind of doing a lot with the controller. And it's just the gut that mobility like well, run, well, jump all this crazy other stuff that is it's more than the average shooter in terms of just those sorts of options. It's neat.
I don't know if I'll like keep going with it or not, but playing the first to hour, hour and a half of it or something. I was like, oh, this is a lot cooler than I thought it would be. But at the same time, yeah, maybe listen, sometimes it feels a little tech demo-y. Back on you played a weird West.
Yeah. I don't know where that is. No, I feel like I've seen the trailer and it's, this is the, this is Rafael Kong, the, the, the dark side of my magic slash arcane, the, um, yes, Cal Antonio, Cal Antonio. Yes.
So I believe Wolf Eye Studios is his new crew. So it's got that, you know, arcane pedigree thing going on. And I really didn't know what to make of it. It came in my inbox and, uh, I was sort of intrigued by the description.
So I started it. It is basically a top down, uh, kind of RPG slash blutery action game, uh, that takes place in like a very strange version of the Wild West where everything is spooky and everyone's kind of an undead demon and weird magic. Yeah, it's very, in the title. It is extremely weird.
It's also really good. I love this thing. I played about two hours of it and, um, it has a lot of interesting, uh, slash smart mechanics going on where you do have to juggle a little bit of your time. You play, uh, so I think there's like many different chapters of this game and the version of it, the preview version I have of it is just the first character where you're this like X bounty hunter that is, uh, retired and you are brought back into the game because someone like kills your family and they're like, Oh, well, I guess I got a bounty hunt again and, uh, no, you know, that old, that old tail and, um, yeah, it has a real cool look to it.
It is, um, like I said, it relies a lot on time. So you have to kind of manage like how long it takes for you to travel to points A to B, um, you're giving the sort of world map that you slowly explore and open up. There's side missions, but there is a sort of main track for your character to follow. Um, the, you know, it, I haven't played a lot of these top down sort of games.
I guess, you know, I didn't really get into this goal using, but I feel like that's probably maybe at least the visual comparison that a lot of people will sort of make and how this is presented. Um, again, I'm not, I'm unclear with like all the momentum beats of that other game. So I can't really make the direct comparison, but yeah, I was more like this is more of like an immersive sim in the same way that like dishonored and like great, right? Just from a top down.
Yeah, I think it's, I think it's tougher to make those two sort of comparisons, those two games and compare them just because of how differently it's presented. Um, you're shooting. So you have that 360 sort of like radius that you're controlling with the right stick. Would you say cowboy Diablo?
Uh, I've never gotten into Diablo either. So you're going to have to, is the actual actual, it's just action. It's just a hot sauce stand cowboy Diablo. Yeah.
So then yeah, like that is what you're doing. You, you have a lot of, it's interesting because you are doing a good amount of stealth too. So I get that arcane, like DNA in there, uh, kind of showing through in that regard. Um, but it's, it's just super fun.