Hi everyone, Lisa Laflam here. Carry the Fire, a podcast from the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation, is back with 10 new episodes. Subscribe and share to help create a world free from the fear of cancer. Ah, it's a giant bomb cast!
We're here to blow you away! We're blowing everybody this week! That's right, we're pegging people, now we're blowing everyone. That's right, we de-pegged these stablecoins.
What? And we're re-pegging everybody else. Is that what they mean when they say, like, proof of stake? Yes.
They're like, let me see your proof of stake. All right, I thought you'd never ask. Go ahead, show me, we're all friends here. All right, are we on Twitch?
This is our last time on Twitch.tv. Here we go. Zip. This is a giant bomb cast!
I bought an air blower. In case you listen to the audio version, I don't know, I've been fucking... I'm blowing air out of my... It presses the keys on my keyboard, it'll press...
It gets too much air. Oh, it'll actuate a key? That's crazy. Yeah, it is powerful.
It is scary how powerful this thing is. I unpacked it this morning, and... For, like, other things, like, you know, inflating pool toys and stuff, if you line it up right or what? It doesn't...
I don't think it comes with any attachments that will work really well for that. Oh, no. That would be really smart. But, yeah, I don't know that...
I don't know that it comes with anything small enough to fit in the kind of standard kind of pool toy. Just, like, tape it to the lip of the thing. Yeah. Just have to custom blow it up, I guess, and see how it goes.
We are getting to pool toy season, so... You know, it's nice to be prepared. Just, yeah, just hanging out with pool toys. I went swimming and played with some pool toys over the weekend.
It was really sick. Fuck yeah. Just the toys. Just the toys.
No swimming. No, just... I was just out of a pool noodle. Just having fun.
Just, like, in someone's backyard with a fucking noodle being like, whoo! And they said, please, sir, you get out of our backyard and stop with the pool toys. Where did you even get that? We don't even have a pool.
Do you want to hear something so sad and stupid? Yes. All the time. Sad stories.
All the time, yeah. I have to keep my voice down because my wife is in the adjacent room, but the first summer of the pandemic, she was like, I want a pool. I was like, okay, we can't just buy that. So she got a makeshift blow-up pool that was, like, I don't know, 15, like, I guess 1,500 gallons or something like that.
It was, like, larger than a hot tub, and we put it in the backyard, and we found, like, a flat... And it has, like, a filter, and you put chlorine in it, and the whole thing. Yeah, it was, like, pre-event. She bought pool toys for this thing that were way too big for what we had.
It was insane. It was, like, some sort of weird, you know, stew that she was making. And things were too big, like, a regular-sized pool noodle, not fit in this thing. Every day, she'd go outside, it's a pH.
What was the diameter? What's going on with the pool right now? I'm going to check this out. It's, like, relax.
You've got a puddle in the backyard. So, I have a hard time visualizing, was it 1,500 gallons? How big is that, like, height, width, diameter? So, height, you're looking at, like, maybe 3 feet, maybe 4.
Diameter's, like, 6, 7 feet, maybe. It wasn't enough. Like, you could fit 5 people in there sitting comfortably. It was fun.
Like, we rock it a lot, because it's, you know, what was anyone doing in the summer of 2020? Sure, yeah. And it was fine, and it had, like, the same smell as, like, a regular pool, so that fun evokes the memory of, like, I'm in a pool, I'm in chlorine, this is a thing. Like, I gotta shower when I get out of here, kind of thing.
And, uh, it was just so cute and kind of a little sad, because it wasn't really a pool. That's not that sad. Did you pee in it, though? I can't say I did.
I might have, oh, no, my son, my son stood up and peed out the pool. Oh, that's right. Yeah, gentlemen. He was just like, ladies and gentlemen, I need to pee out of the pool.
He took his hat and lowered his monocle. Ladies. Lady, excuse the urine. That's very fancy.
Did it make it to the second summer, or did it pop in some sort of nightmarish accent the way all inflatable pools do? That's a good question. So, no, it did not make the second summer. Of course not.
No. Like, storing this thing was a fucking nightmare, also, because you're like, what do we do with this, like, gross? We removed the pool in about October of 2020, and in its wake was a perfect, like, nine-by-nine patch of the most rotten, disgusting grass you could ever imagine, and this shit smelled like a fucking landfill, okay? It was so rancid.
How big was your son peeing outside the pool? No, no, no, no. You're truly a New Jersey resident now. You're a landfill right out back.
We caught up with the toxic waste in our own backyard. No, it was because, like, all the grass was gross, and I guess, like, the chlorine constantly flowing over. It wasn't because of a couple tinkles outside the pool. That doesn't turn your backyard into a freaking nuclear waste site.
It was insane. And it smelled so bad, and I, like, pour all this weird chemical on the grass, but I'll tell you what. The green thumb that is my wife turned that shit around in March of the following year, and it is. That grass has never been greener, let me tell you.
Great. Yeah. Okay. Now, we would always aim much lower than that, and we'd get an actual kiddie pool, or, like, maybe something slightly bigger than that, because you're like, we need something for this weekend to get drunk in.
And it's like, we got, like, I don't know, four or five people over here, can we just like, let's go get one right now? And then it would sit out back for the rest of the summer until it popped some animal would on or something, you know, like, whatever. And then the rains come, and it washes away into the very corner of your backyard, and it stays there for another several months. You look at it, and go, like, oh, remember we had a pool?
Yeah, that was a weird weekend. That was weird. I keep talking with the idea, because I don't have, like, a backyard, and I really do want, like, a little, like, summertime hangout thing, but I do have, like, a little porch situation, balcony thing. I keep, we keep talking with the idea of getting a hammock, and we're like, ooh, are we hammock people?
Yeah, a hot hammock. Thinking about hammocks. Is it a hot hammock? We had a hammock as a kid.
It was fun. I'm scared of spiders and bugs. Yeah. Oh, yeah, you're not going to immediately live in the hammock.
Oh, yeah, they will. Yeah, I love that. I mean, they're going to get a hammock more than I will be. It's like, this is already ready already.
We just need to come out here and put some extra web down to fill in some of these gaps, and we're eating good. Mm-hmm. Let's live in. Yeah.
Would you all potentially double up in a hammock? That's my hammock person. Yeah, I mean. Scary weight distribution-wise.
That's a tight-knit hammock. Yeah. Yeah, you are asking for trouble, perhaps, with that imbalance. A couple people could be, you know, eating shit at the end of that.
I'm not, like, balanced enough to probably get out of a hammock. Yeah, hammocks can be trouble. It's, like, it's fun trouble. Yeah, if you lead to, like, a fun situation, like, oh, whoops, I fell here.
Oh, whoops, huh? Yeah. Whoops, I broke my clavicle. Oh, yeah, that depends on, like, how your porch is set up or your balcony is set up, just because then you don't want to fall out of the whole balcony.
Oh, yeah, that'd be hilarious. No, there's a railing. Don't worry. That was the funniest shit when, uh, whenever I think of hammocks, I think of fucking Reichert, who, like, only knew they existed once he had bought a house.
What? He was, like, yeah, he only realized, like, hammocks were a thing until he was, like, oh, I have two, like, trees that could support this thing. Oh, I see what this is all about. God damn.
Oh, I'm sorry. I started to go down that road. It's just so fucking stupid. I'm jealous of his brain.
I want that brain. I'm not. I am not. That seems like a fun time in there.
I don't know. I just think, like, why waste any time thinking about a hammock until you're living a life that can support a hammock? But you know about hammocks early on. You figure it out.
You've seen a hammock. Have you watched any cartoons? Right, yeah. Yeah, you've seen, like, sailors, you know, like, you know, sailors in some cartoon somewhere sleeping in their bunk and haunt hammocks or something.
That's, that's... God damn. Yeah, I don't know. The hammock, I think, like, as I was a kid growing up, it was between two very big trees, and so the hammock would get filled with tree shit and spider webs, and, okay, so...
Tree doesn't want it there. Tree's not like, oh, sweet. No, no, it's like, oh, there's a rope cutting into me. This feels, like, this feels bad.
We'll slowly overgrow this. So, like, the best of both worlds is that I think Florida's got this all figured out, which is weird. No, no, no. Florida doesn't have anything figured out.
No, let me get rid of this. Let me get rid of this. Let me get rid of this. How dare you?
They've got to figure it out because they're all into the enclosed pool where it's a big screen, so the sunlight still gets in. You're still technically outside. The critters don't get in. You don't have to skim your pool all the time.
Put a hammock out there. Less buggies in the hammock. They got the fenced-in porch situation all sorted out. I'll give Florida that.
Can we? Yeah. That's like, yeah. It doesn't take out the 4,000% humidity.
Like, that doesn't take out. It comes to the territory. Whatever. I like humidity.
Yeah, so we have our backyard. When you walk out the back, there is a big covering. And it's really nice because, you know, it gets fucking hot. And so it's like this really cool area.
You set up some furniture and hang out. It's an area off the side that you're like, let's build a fire pit. You know, you could do something like that. But this overhang, as nice as it is, there are just times of the year.
At least, I don't know, we've only been here, you know, we haven't even been here quite a year yet. But we got here last year just in time for there to be the most mosquitoes I've ever seen in my life. And everyone was insisting, like, oh, this is an abnormal year for this. It's not normally like this.
Like, okay, cool. Welcome back to Carry the Fire. I'm Lisa Laflam, and this is Season 2 from the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation. We have 10 new and inspiring personal stories for you about what happens when world-leading doctors, researchers, and their patients come together to ignite breakthroughs in cancer diagnostics and treatment.
Subscribe to hear a new episode every week. Bet MGM and GameSense remind you to play responsibly. 19 plus 2HR, Ontario only. Please play responsibly.
If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connect Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. Bet MGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Big year for standing water. Yeah, yeah.
Shout out to standing water for getting it done last year big time. Nothing good can come from standing water. Yeah, but it just basically got me in a position where it's like, oh, this is a really nice area outback that we can never use because we're just going to get eaten alive out here. And it got me thinking, like, should I screen it in?
Unless you screen it in? Unless you screen it in. Because, you know, I feel like every year around this time, I start getting served these fucking ads for, like, the one guy who's figured out how to murder all the mosquitoes on your porch. And to bother to save him.
And it's just like some weird device. It's like, this is it. You just open the lid and it kills the mosquitoes in a mile radius and you put two AAA batteries and you're like, no, that shit doesn't fucking work. You wear the silver bracelet.
Yeah, you have to be like, what the hell? Oh, my God. I was reading something not that long ago that was like, hey, by the way, the bug zapper kind of vaporizes the bugs and you've been inhaling bugs all summer. Hell yeah, I have to live with that.
Oh, that's free protein. I can live with that. Honestly, if the solution was like, yo, you will get rid of all the mosquitoes in your backyard. They're like, you gotta eat them.
Fine. I don't care. You gotta eat them, but you don't know. It's perfect.
It's a perfect crime. Even better. This is a hamburger. It tastes a little off.
Whatever, it's fine. I mean, how many mosquitoes would you need to eat at once for you to taste them? It depends if they've drank blood recently, I think. Are they seasoned?
Are they cooked and seasoned? Or am I just putting them in my mouth? I just put them up. Mix them in the guacamole.
Like, I don't care. I just wanted to talk about, like, I just want to even out my tan, but then it eventually evolved into mosquito. Yeah, you can't do it. You can't even out your tan because the mosquito's gonna get you.
No. No. I'm like, their world is like a fucking seas candy, like, catalog right now. It's like 12 different shades of brown.
It's like, ah, God. Nuts and shoes. Nuts and shoes. Your walnut squares.
Hell yeah. I'm on five different kinds of brittle right now. I'm hungry now is what I am. I'm hungry.
I'm hungry for video games. You said the word. That's right. It's time to talk about them, I suppose.
If we watch. Loot River. Loot River. All right.
Yeah, we did that joke at the beginning of the video. I'm sorry for doing it. You say it out loud. My installed games I have not launched yet list for, let's say, three weeks.
Yes. Tell me about Loot River. Loot River is another roguelike, isometric point of view. But what differentiates this from other roguelikes is you have the power to control the different rafts or platforms as you are going through the dungeons.
And a lot of them are, like, kind of tetra-shaped. So you'll get your, oh, my God, this camera's killing me today. You'll get different shaped platforms, and they do a lot of play with verticality. So occasionally you'll be stuck in an area where you have to rejigger the tiles around to get the one to fit to go through the tunnels and everything.
And then occasionally you also have to deal with, like, all right, I've got to find a set of stairs to get up there because otherwise I can't go through this platform. And it's neat how it handles that. And it's cool because it's pretty simultaneous with the right analog stick. And I might have just been having problems here.
But I was trying to use a PS5 controller on the Xbox, the PC Game Pass version. And I did not for the life of me. Good at work. And then I tried playing this game.
It works with every other game. I don't know. Maybe it's just an isolated incident. So, but it was not a Steam game, right?
No, it was not a Steam game. It was on PC Game Pass. That will get you. Steam has a built-in layer that will translate that stuff when it needs to, when games don't natively support it.
And outside of Steam, it becomes much more your mileage may vary sort of deal. And then also moving the platforms around with the arrow keys. Well, trying to attack with like Q and E and R. So I don't recommend playing this on a controller.
It actually looks really cool. It kind of reminds me, Rory brought this up. It reminds me of Children of Morta. So kind of like that pixely-ish style you got going on.
The only progress you're making from run to run is one of the currencies you'll get as you're going through the dungeons is knowledge. And then you'll use that knowledge to unlock weapons, armor, and different headpieces. But the bummer side of this is it's not like how when you unlock a new weapon in Hades, you just unlock the ability to find it in your runs. So you'll get a stick-ass sword.
And when you first buy it, you can use it. But in any subsequent run, you will have to just maybe chance it. And maybe it'll drop from an enemy. Maybe it'll drop from a chest.
The platforming stuff, it works well. But when it doesn't work well, it really is apparent. It sucks because I've wound up trying to dash around. And because of the verticality, I've wound up being stuck on invisible platforms because I'm trying to dash around to avoid enemies.
But then I'll wind up on an invisible platform. And I won't be able to get off. And then I'll wind up like messing up my run. And sometimes the pathfinding with the enemies, sometimes they'll go through a diagonal where like two platforms are just touching tips on their diagonals.
But sometimes they won't. And sometimes it's okay if your character can do that. But I've had other instances with my runs where it breaks. And I don't know, like the combat, I wish it was better because it's kind of, you follow through with everything too much.
All the attacks have too much weight to them. And it's kind of off-putting based on your character size because you're like a skinny little dude and you're just going all in on each attack. That it's, unless you switch it to easy mode, you can't actually cancel out of that with a dash or whatever. Oh, okay.
Yeah. Although they have a bunch of different weapons. Yeah, so there's a light attack and a charge attack. The charge attack will vary depending on the weapon.
You also have different spells for weapons. But in my time with the game, the different runs, I just want to... but not using any of the charge attacks or any of the spells because I'm kind of just trying to get in and get out. Some of the charge attacks are neat because you'll throw a projectile or you'll do like an AOE type of thing.
You can charge it, definitely, but you're stuck stationary. But a neat thing you can do, though, because you can move all these platforms, you can hang out on the edge of a platform, charge up, and then kind of like go back and forth with a platform to like kite the enemies that come to the edge, and then you can wind up like moving your platform in, hitting them, backing out. There's a constant timer going on, so I'm assuming that you could kind of speed run the game if need be. There's a bunch of different modifiers to effect your runs.
I mistakenly had one that would pop up a boss at the end of the first level each time and I was confused and angry. He's like, what's going on? I thought I beat this already. Shouts out to Rory for pointing that out to me.
The other big thing is parrying in this game. They'll have a pretty decent indicator above their head when they're about to attack you, but the problem is because it's isometric, sometimes the attacks don't actually like line up with you and the parrying animation catches you out so often that you'll be in the middle of trying to parry, you'll miss because the attack won't hit you, and then they'll throw in another attack and then that won't line up. The game has the ability to be fast. I wish the combat just matched that speed because you can zoom around these levels, especially with moving the platforms around.
You can like avoid encounters left and right. I just wish that the encounters actually felt fun and you can get quickly overwhelmed with everyone because they're not scared about throwing a bunch of crap at you. That sounds cool, but like, I don't know. And also for a game called Loot River, there's more river than there's loot.
Okay. So it should be called river loot. I guess river loot almost implies more loot now that I'm saying it out loud. Right, right.
Like a river on loot. Yeah. And in my head, I keep thinking it's like the flute loop. Yeah.
That would be cool if you just had a loot that you could play at any time. It doesn't do anything. Maybe it does one thing somewhere when you really dig deep, but generally speaking, the loot does nothing but nice. This is also a very, very minor nitpick, but you can talk to different people in your sanctuary, which is like a hot area where you upgrade everything.
But it will keep replaying dialogue as you try and talk to people instead of just ending the prompt altogether and then starting it again. It's a very minor thing I realize to get bugged about, but I've been like, I've wound up staying at an NPC and mashing through dialogue only to realize, oh crap, they've been repeating the same thing forever now. It looks really neat. I just wish it was more fun.
Welcome back to Carry the Fire. I'm Lisa Laflam, and this is season two from the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation. We have 10 new and inspiring personal stories for you about what happens when world-leading doctors, researchers, and their patients come together to ignite breakthroughs in cancer diagnostics and treatment. Subscribe to hear a new episode every week.
Because, like, I don't know, I am again in roguelike fatigue because, no, Death Cells feels great. Rogue Legacy 2 feels amazing at this point now that I've gotten used to everything. But Hades kind of spoiled the isometric-ish style roguelike for me. Yeah, well, they had the, like, it was weird to see Steam, I mean, not that weird, but like, Steam had their, like, hey, we're having a rogue off here with all these rogues.
Let's run off together. Yeah, we're gonna head out over here around back and sell you some roguelites. And, yeah, it just felt like we went through this phase of everyone being like, oh my god, every single game is this. You need to stop.
And I don't know that there was enough of a reset before suddenly we saw another rush of games like this. And I don't know that people are necessarily ready for a ton of, yeah, I don't know, Rogue Legacy 2 was doing it for me, but I guess I never really got super fatigued on the kind of rogue-lite stuff. I was always kind of there for a good one, but I get it. Like, some people are just like, I don't know, some people seem like they're done with procedural generation to a certain extent, which is a weird, maybe weird.
I think that's why something like Haiku the Robot was a neat palette cleanser because like, oh, it's inable progress. Oh, this map is gonna save this map? Sick. My little robot is gonna save this little robot?
Oh, cool. I'm just gonna get out here and just go through the stuff they built. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know.
Procedural generation is such a fascinating, I like it a lot, consensually. I'm just like, oh man, a robot made this for me. But, you know, in practice, the bad generators feel like the bad generators, but you do really well. And like the moving of the platform stuff in Loot River doesn't ever really come into play other than just like, all right, gotta reshuffle this stuff over here and now I'm just gonna zoom down here.
And like the maps are pretty big per dungeon, but it never really feels like they're using that puzzle aspect effectively other than just getting out of a situation or a small thing rather than it being like a big puzzle to work your way through. Yeah. All right. Well, I'll keep it installed.
We'll see how it goes. Jess, you've been playing Chrono Trigger. Yeah. Yeah.
How are you? What are you? Which version are you playing? Because I know that there's been...
This is on an emulator. Okay. But is this the actual original version of the game? Seemingly, yes.
I don't know much about it because my partner set it up for me because he's the one who's trying to indoctrinate me. Send him to jail. Send him to jail. Yeah.
And like get me more into, you know, genres I'm not super into. I'm not big into JRPGs. Unless they have like a little, like I'm not big into JRPGs and have a lot of grinding or are just menus. You know, you just do menu, do this.
There's a lot of them. I know there's a lot of them. So, you know, as a kid, I played Pokemon Red and Yellow. And even that was a slog.
Even though I was like way into the anime and it was the cultural zeitgeist at the time as a kid. That kept me going. Feeling like, oh, I understand these little critters and I like them. And the battle part was like my least favorite part.
I liked collecting little guys and all that stuff, which is why I like Arceus so much. Arceus, whatever. So, I'm not huge into JRPGs unless they have like a timing element or something that's more like active gameplay than just menus. I like Paper Mario for that kind of timing stuff.
And also, like, it's easy. I like easy JRPGs. I don't want to be like, oh, I have to, I'm buffed and he's debuff. He's weak against this.
That is where I punch out of a lot of those games too is the like buff and debuff end of things when it just becomes all status effects or some of my least favorite things in video games. Yeah, and like a lot of juggling of like different, you know, equipment for different block. We get to have a really high familiarity with some of those, you know, mechanics. And like, I don't find fun in that.
I understand like if other people do, obviously, like what you like. No shame there. But it's like generally speaking, not been for me and I just haven't been playing the right ones. There's exceptions along the way like I said Paper Mario, Undertale because it has so many like mini games associated.
Yeah, that's a different thing at some point. That's like, yeah. It's like, you know, it's not really that thing. Yeah.
There's some others that I'm blanking out on right now, but you know. Persona would, like Persona 5 specifically. I liked watching Persona. I liked watching Persona a lot.
I watched my partner play Persona. Music, absolute slaps. But also another complaint of mine is that JRPGs tend to be incredibly, incredibly long. And I just generally speaking prefer shorter games.
It's one of the reasons I like the horror genre is that you can't keep people around for 30, 40, 50, 60, 100 hours and have them still be scared or something. You know, you get used to it. So that's why a lot of horror games are like little nuggets, little bite-sized guys. We've got three ideas about scary stuff.
Here it is. There's blood coming out of the toilet. Now what? There you go.
We're done. You know, so that's why shorter experiences work better in that place. And of course, you know, the JRPGs get to be 200 hours long if they feel like it. But Chrono Trigger so far, I'm liking it a lot.
It does have like timing-based elements that I didn't know about. And for being from 1995, it has a lot of like conveniences in it that I didn't expect to find in a game that old. It doesn't expect you to grind. You can walk past a lot of the enemies and not get into a fight with them, which is something I love.
I love being able to be like, you know what? Not right now. Like, I don't feel like it. I think that'll come get you later if you don't.
I know. I'm still, you know, I'm still, you know, leveling up correctly. Like, you don't have to fight all the guys to be an appropriate level. Which is another thing I'm surprised about is that it's really balanced well.
I also feel like the economy works in that game. Like, I was worried at first, like, oh, here's a sword. I could buy it. But I was like asking my partner, like, should I wait?
Should I buy this? Am I just going to run into this in the world? And the answer is like, yeah, you're probably just going to run into that sword. And it'll be like the right time to use that sword anyway.
And you get tons of money all the time. And it's like, oh, thank God. I don't have to scrimp and save and like plots about like selling my old stuff, trading in new stuff. Like that sort of like finicky stuff is like, this is not the fun part.
Like, this is not part of the game for me. So I'm really surprised at how good the economy is. Like I'm constantly buying and selling and not worrying. Like, oh, do I have enough to spare to stay at the inn?
Like tons and tons of stuff. And it's like, oh, sick. This game's easy. I like that.
It's like, I don't have to freak out about this stuff. And yeah, I like that you can name all the characters. I'm naming them fucked up things to troll my pseudo-husband. Oh, no.
You gave them names already. It's not your place to chase them. I named Crono. I named him Corno.
Gotcha. Gotcha, bitch. I named Corno. That's a sick burn.
Fucked him up. Fucked him up. On Cron and on Crono. Yeah, I feel like that is in some ways one of the last games of that genre for me.
And when it comes down to it, because, you know, it's like for me, it was when Final Fantasy 7 came out. It was just like, here's this fucking summon. Here's this long-ass cut scene. Like that trilogy of Final Fantasy games on the PlayStation 1.
I was just like, man, fuck this. I'm so fucking done. And it probably came at a time also where I had entered my 20s and was like, I have things to do with my time now that aren't sitting here. And so this chapter of my life is fucking over and I am not going to play these anymore.
Yeah, I think I got a bad first impression, again, from being raised on Pokemon, which is, you know, your mileage may vary. I'm like, is that a good game gameplay-wise? You know, if we take nostalgia and set it aside and go back and be like, does this respect my time? Because I was thinking about how Chrono Trigger, you're going through all these different dungeons and stuff like that, they all look and feel so different and they really respect, they're not super-duper long, they're not super-duper dangerous, it's not like this real huge struggle.
And I was thinking about, you know, Mount Moon and all the caves you go into in Pokemon Red and it's just like how bullshit those caves were and how you had to have an escape rope or a shitload of potions and revives on you. You have to really, really prepare for the gauntlet of those caves. You get lost in them all the time. Yeah, but you're traversing an actual cave as an eight-year-old.
That's a cave jungle. They look really complicated at first glance and the caves in Pokemon look really simple, but they're totally opposite. I have not gotten lost in this complicated-looking factory, all these paths kind of lead to shortcuts that go to an earlier point where your save point is and I'm like, wow, they could design levels back then, I had no idea. Crazy.
Yeah, so I really got into Fantasy Star 2, which is a few years before Chrono Trigger came out, the genre had not, the genre did advance over the course of the 16th generation for sure, they figured some stuff out or at least tried different things. It doesn't necessarily feel like they were moving in a direction of just like, oh, we're streamlining this for more players. It was more like, in this game, we've decided that you can see the enemies and walk around them. It always felt really arbitrary which ones did and didn't do that.
It never felt quite like it was, we've learned some things and now we're doing it better and I always, always, always, whenever it comes up, whenever Fantasy Star 2 comes up, my first thought was like, I should fucking play that again because when I was in, I don't know, I was in junior high or something when I came out, I played the shit out of that game and finished it and had to like, I brought my Genesis to Oregon where my grandparents lived and they had a generator that didn't have power and they were nice enough to run the generator most of the day for me so I could sit inside and play Fantasy Star and, you know, just like, horrible, horrible. But hey, I had to fucking get through that shit but looking back on it, that game came with a fat strategy guide that just had maps of the goddamn dungeons in it because at some point when they were localizing that game, someone looked at it and was like, this is fucked, we need to enclose it. I don't think the Japanese version came with it, I could be wrong but at some point in the process someone said, this is fucking crazy, we need to, it's not going to be every single secret in the game or anything like that but we need to give people maps of these fucking dungeons because they're bullshit and now I wonder without that, is that game actually great on its own because my memories of it are outstanding. Play it without a manual.
I played the first two hours or so of that game over and over again over the last 20 years just like, I'm going to play it again and I got two hours in and I'm like, oh yeah, we went over to see what was going on with this machine over here and why are the monsters being made and then, oh yeah, and then this, okay, I think I'm good and then not continuing on. My other formative exposure to JRPGs was Final Fantasy X, whichever the one is with T.E.S. and Sin. Yeah, no, but that one felt really grindy to me and I never beat it and I told my partner like how far up I got through it before I was just like, oh, this game's going on forever, I don't care, never mind, I'm frustrated and I was apparently about to get to the final boss when I gave off.
Were you trying to get like specific like the Ultima weapons and everything and dodging lightning for hours? I was just playing like a schmuck and just being like, oh, there's so many invisible guys in this field that I have to fight if I want to cross this goddamn field and just being like, oh, really annoyed at how many battles there were and it's like, I didn't know that there were like JRPGs that had better balanced like encounter rates and don't just have a thing like a rappel where it's just like, are you sick of the game? Here's the thing that makes the game kind of chill out for, you know, a hundred steps or so. You won't be assaulted by a Zubat or some fucking elemental Davis in the field.
Think of when that switch for me happened because I was all in. Everything that sounds off-putting to y'all, I was like, oh, give me more, make this shit more complicated. Like the deluge of PlayStation 1 JRPGs, oh my God, as a child, I was living it up. give me that vagrant story.
Give me the legend of the Dragoon. That guy looks so cool, y'all. The story's kind of doing its own thing though, combat-wise, that's a cool, that game is built around something. It's not just like, hey, here's another one of these.
Yeah, but even then, like the stuff that was similar to Pokemon, so like your Monster Ranchers, your Dark Clouds, and well, I guess that's not necessarily like Pokemon, like Monster Ranchers specifically, I was like, let's do this. This Nsync CD gave me this one dude with an eyeball. But then maybe it was around the 360 era that I just stopped getting into JRPGs and then maybe like similar to Jeff where I felt like I just wasn't really respecting my time because I suddenly don't have the time to devote 20, 30 hours into a JRPG like around the 360 era and everything. That guy, exactly him.
Nsync gave me this dude. It's your boy Swayzo. Swayzo, there we go. What's poppin'?
Ah! Can we get him fluttering in the wind of the low-y thing? Oh yeah, sure, finally. You have my mic for it, you know, just smart.
No, I need it, I need it. Why is it a little? I need it much smaller. Whoa, look at that guy go.
I just imagine him putting his head outside of the car window and his tongue slapping in the wind. The wind would take that little fucker. He's so cute and small. He's a young man.
He goes out of a crane machine in Japan somewhere. Smuggled him back. He's my friend. What do you think about the music in Chrono Trigger Jazz?
It's pretty good. I was taken aback that I recognize a song from YTM&D. The Brian Peppers song. It's like...
I was like, oh shit, I'm never not going to relate this to Brian Peppers and that sucks. For those of you listening who were born in 2000, don't look it up. You don't need that poison. You got your own dank memes.
You don't need mine. Mine were bad. Mine were not dank. No, they're danking a different way.
Yeah, they're danking like a spoiled... They're danking the way that that grass was dank underneath the playable pool. There's a poison. There's a poison.
We randomly introduced that. We'll tidbit into the podcast. Is Final Fantasy X the Duke Nukem Forever of role-playing games? Chance Face.
Where they were like, here's a bunch of side shit that you have to do and all of it sort of sucks. Like in Duke Nukem Forever, you have to drive an RC car, you can play a pool table, there's a bunch of all this other stuff aside from being a shooter that they spend all this time on. And then in that game where they're like, here's this shit-ass chocobo race and here's this part where you play underwater, water below, and... No, no, because there's the stronger parts of Final Fantasy X the Duke Nukem Forever.
Sure, okay, all right. Did you want to be a Blitzball when you grew up? No, because I didn't want to swim. I knew I couldn't play that game.
No, a Blitzball. I'd still, I wouldn't be able to play it. I can't swim. I'd be ineffective as a ball.
I wanted to be the cool dead samurai dad guy, you know? That's the only reason why I slicked my hair back. That was the original daddy. That's a daddy right there.
Why do y'all think I got into robes? I just want to be that OG daddy, man. That was it? Yeah, that's it.
It was that and then... This is how we un-sexualize daddy. Sick robes and fat robes. Exactly.
Think about how much cooler Orin would be with a sick gold chain. That's right. And then Tidus would be like, damn. I forget the tiger guy's name or the lion guy's name, but who's cool too?
There we go. I just called him Worf. He was just Blue Worf. Okay.
I like that when you're little, you have a crush on Tidus, or Titus, however everyone pronounces his fucking name. You have a crush on him and Justice Meg Ryan from 1998 or something. But you grow up and you're just like, damn, Orin, though? My taste's never fine.
No one ever gives any love for Walker. No one's like, oh, damn. He's not himbo enough to be attractive. Like, I don't know.
And he's also got that semi-racist accent. Is he too frat boy to be himbo? I think, yeah. He's too frat boy and he's too racist.
Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, right? I mean, if he was a little less of both, we'd hit like a sweet spot of attractiveness. Yeah, just a slight bit.
Just a little bit. 10% less. You want zero. You want some.
Yeah, zero. You want some of that. Just don't. Was he voiced by John DiMaggio in Final Fantasy as well as Kingdom Hearts, or was that just Kingdom Hearts, that he was John DiMaggio?
I just hear racist bender when I hear him. Racist bender? I don't know. I don't know.
I don't know. I don't know. Chronic Trigger's good, though. I haven't noticed any overt racism yet.
There's cavemen, but... Well, you know, you're time-traveling. You're time-traveling. It's a plausible deniability situation there.
It is like, you know, the guy who did the Dragon Ball Z illustrations. He illustrated all the... Toriyama, yeah. Yeah, Toriyama.
He illustrated all the folks in there. So occasionally, look at a bad guy that has the big racist lips that look a little suspect. Yeah. That's a pretty good...
That's elegant. Pretty good ratio there. Yeah, it's great. Chronic Trigger, check it out.
Out now. Out now. Out now, I'm sure. It's very affordable.
I think there is a version of it on Steam. I don't know if that version of it or not, but... Out longer than half the people who listen to this podcast. Yeah.
Oh, yeah. 95. Yeah, okay. Potentially.
Potentially. Track to Yomi. Jan, you spent a little bit of time with the final version of this. Yes.
Track to Yomi seems like... Not to just tee you up here. I don't know what you think about it, but... Track to Yomi seems like a game that is disappointing people left and right, as it has come out, and people have to spend some more time with it.
Well, no. That's disappointing you, Jeff. It's disappointing me as well. Okay.
It doesn't mean so much that I decided, like, screw it. I'm just going to sit here and finish this game from Spite now. No, see, you do this. This is where you, like, you make all the right decisions until the most important one comes into the present.
If we were still writing game reviews on a regular basis, that is the exact attitude. Just finish this fucking game. Yeah, just to show it who's boss. You know, I just want my arguments to be bulletproof, and my grievances to be bulletproof as well.
I get that. So I'm like, well, maybe it's going to be super dope at the end. Maybe they're going to introduce the color red. Yeah.
Yeah, it's the giver. That'll turn this around. It's the giver. But if you are interested in Spite finishing a game, Trefti Yomi might be up your alley because it's not that long all in all.
I think they're clocked in about, like, three and a half to close to four-ish hours. That's tolerable. That's a Marvel movie. Yeah, so it's not too long.
It's like two multiverses of madnesses. Just play one in reverse. Is it better or worse than Multiverse of Madness? Oh, that depends on the person you're talking to, because I really liked it, because I'm a Sam Raimi freak.
But I don't think my partner... She might like Trefti Yomi more than Multiverse of Madness. And I say this as she's not someone that plays video games that much. So I'm just going to make a bold, clear statement on her behalf.
So what's so spiteful about it? You know, they do such a good job. Like, this game is... Trailers really well.
It looks really good watching it, right? That's what I was worried about. Whenever something looks like just that cinema, I'm like, okay, are you going to actually have the gameplay side back up that whole endeavor? And they do such a good job at framing certain moments, because you'll switch from 2D to 3D occasionally, and they'll do stuff like, oh, there's a dirty foreground, or the fire looks really good.
All the NPCs are strewn about in a way that looks like, oh, man, this looks like... Occasionally, it'll look like scenes from an animated current Sawa movie, right? Because they do a good job at paying homage to the black and white samurai film format. You have tons and tons of film grain.
There's some fun little effects that if you try and exit a little combat space, or when you enter in a fighting sequence after navigating around a cutscene, they'll kind of do like the film reels kind of speeding up just a little bit type of deal. But the gameplay is where it's a lot of bit of a bummer. The changing from 3D sequences to 2D sequences can be a little bit awkward. There is a lot of it because you're navigating around.
Because of the black and white nature of everything, and there are certain moments where the game is really, really dark as well, it's hard to find any type of collectible or any branching path. There are branching paths, other than it being a fairly linear game. You can wind up approaching certain instances differently. Like, all right, I can just fight these two dudes on this bridge.
Or I could saw off this bridge and they could die. Which is neat. The part where it's not neat is any of the samurai sword play. Oh, no.
How? When this is a problem in your sword game. Exactly, exactly. This has the opposite problem of Luke River, where everything is too floaty.