Episode 163 - Monster Hunter's Ruling The Wilds

Summary

Episode 163 Summary: Monster Hunter's Ruling The Wilds

In Episode 163 of the Gaming Illuminaughty podcast, hosts @TheBlackHokage, @UtxJGTheDon, and @DevEthos delve into the latest developments in the gaming world. Released on March 17, 2025, this episode primarily focuses on the newest installment in the Monster Hunter series, "Monster Hunter Wilds," while also touching upon other significant gaming news and industry discussions.

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Monster Hunter Wilds: A Deep Dive

Overview: "Monster Hunter Wilds" marks a significant entry in the Monster Hunter franchise, aiming to attract both long-time fans and newcomers. Hosts explore the game's strengths and weaknesses based on their extensive playtime.

Positive Highlights:

• Story and Pacing:

  • Ms. 5000 Watts praises the game's narrative structure, stating, "I really, really like the story. I liked the pacing of it." [(03:32)]

• Character and World Building:

  • The introduction of local characters enriches the gaming experience. Ms. 5000 Watts mentions, "You get to know the people you're traveling with, and it definitely makes you care more about the characters." [(05:00)]

• Monster Diversity and Design:

  • The monster roster is lauded for its uniqueness. Ms. 5000 Watts enthuses, "You've got octopus, dogs, chicken T. Rexes... all super unique monsters." [(05:10)]

• Soundtrack:

  • The game's music elevates the experience. Ms. 5000 Watts notes, "The soundtrack is a step above every single one in the series." [(05:30)]

Areas for Improvement:

• PC Optimization:

  • A recurring issue is the game's frame rate on PC. Ms. 5000 Watts points out, "A lot of people are struggling to get decent frame rates out of the game." [(05:00)]

• Story Engagement:

  • While some find the story compelling, The Black Okagi expresses, "I found the story pretty boring," emphasizing that gameplay compensates for narrative shortcomings. [(10:04)]

Host Perspectives:

• DevEthos:

  • Despite performance issues, Ethos appreciates the game's mechanics, stating, "I still enjoyed my time playing it," and considers it a potential Game of the Year contender. [(10:10)]

• Yakuza the Don:

  • Yakuza the Don remains skeptical about the game's long-term appeal but acknowledges its immediate engagement. [(14:39)]

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Elden Ring Night Rain: The Co-op Evolution

Overview: "Elden Ring Night Rain" is a spin-off that emphasizes cooperative gameplay, enhancing the traditional Souls-like experience.

Key Features:

• Enhanced Boss Mechanics:

  • The game introduces bosses designed specifically for multi-player interactions. Ethos remarks, "The bosses are better designed for co-op." [(24:45)]

• Teamwork Dynamics:

  • New mechanics facilitate teamwork, such as managing mobs while one player tanks the boss. The Black Okagi highlights, "It's like team teamwork, where you manage different roles." [(26:27)]

• Content and Replayability:

  • Concerns are raised about the amount of content at launch. Ms. 5000 Watts hopes for diverse maps and events to maintain player interest. [(35:11)]

Host Experiences:

• DevEthos:

  • Ethos enjoyed the network test but worries about post-launch content sustainability. [(24:45)]

• Ms. 5000 Watts:

  • Ms. 5000 Watts appreciates the depth of new classes and the potential for varied gameplay. [(35:05)]

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Pirate Yakuza: Setting Sail in Hawaii

Overview: "Pirate Yakuza" is the latest side mission in the Yakuza series, transporting players to a whimsical pirate adventure in Hawaii.

Key Highlights:

• Narrative and Humor:

  • The storyline is intentionally nonsensical, a trademark of the series. Yakuza the Don describes it as, "None of it makes any sense, but that's the beauty of it." [(43:21)]

• Gameplay Mechanics:

  • New combat systems and ship battles add freshness. Ms. 5000 Watts praises the "intuitive pirate combat" and ship upgradations. [(46:00)]

• Engaging Missions:

  • Humorous side quests, such as interactions with quirky characters, enhance the gaming experience. The Black Okagi shares a funny mission about a headset that allows talking to animals. [(47:21)]

Hosts' Takeaways:

• DevEthos:

  • Finds the pirate combat loop enjoyable and appreciates the unique gameplay elements. [(48:03)]

• Yakuza the Don:

  • Enjoys the blend of humor and action but notes initial struggles with the mechanics. [(53:21)]

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Split Gate 2: Portal Mechanics Refined

Overview: "Split Gate 2" continues the legacy of its predecessor with improved visuals and smoother gameplay mechanics.

Improvements Noted:

• Visual Enhancements:

  • Upgraded graphics contribute to a more immersive experience. The Black Okagi mentions, "The gameplay is smoother than ever." [(54:28)]

• New Weapons and Abilities:

  • Introduction of new tools adds strategic depth. The Black Okagi comments, "New weapons make the gameplay crisper." [(54:05)]

Concerns:

• Character Design Simplicity:

  • Some hosts feel the character designs are too generic and lack flair. The Black Okagi states, "Character designs are kind of too simple." [(54:05)]

• Pricing and Microtransactions:

  • Potential inclusion of microtransactions raises concerns about game integrity and player experience. [(54:05)]

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Additional Gaming News and Updates

Tony Hawk Remasters:

• Announcement:
  • Remastered versions of "Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3 and 4" are set to release.
• Host Opinions:
  • The Black Okagi suggests bundling previous titles for better value, while Yakuza the Don remains indifferent. [(56:05)]

Call of Duty 2026:

• Platform Support:
  • The upcoming "Call of Duty 2026" will discontinue support for PS4 and older Xbox consoles, focusing solely on newer platforms.
• Host Reactions:
  • Hosts express frustration over the exclusion of older consoles. The Black Okagi laments, "Developers are finally giving up on the almost 15-year-old consoles." [(58:35)]

Fable Reboot Delay:

• Update:
  • The reboot of the "Fable" franchise has been delayed until 2026.
• Host Perspectives:
  • While some are disappointed, others like Ms. 5000 Watts remain optimistic about the gameplay enhancements shown in trailers. [(60:14)]

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Social Justice and Industry Critique

GameStop CEO's DEI Rant:

• Situation:
  • During an earnings call, the GameStop CEO blamed Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives and "wokeness" for the company's struggles and store closures.
• Host Reactions:
  • The hosts vehemently criticize this stance, viewing it as misguided and harmful. Yakuza the Don states, "You're dragging this game because you already played it." [(124:01)]

Ubisoft's Community Management:

• Incident:
  • A fan, Grums, tweeted a controversial comment about "Assassin's Creed Shadow Ships," leading Ubisoft to respond professionally while restricting further comments.
• Analysis:
  • Hosts applaud Ubisoft's handling of the situation, noting the effective use of social media tactics to manage community backlash. Ethos remarks, "It's time to silence these idiots and make them look like idiots." [(137:43)]

Warner Bros. Games Studio Shutdown:

• Update:
  • Warner Bros. has canceled the "Wonder Woman" game and shut down the Monolith studio due to financial struggles and poor performance of recent titles.
• Host Critique:
  • The hosts express disappointment and frustration, accusing executive decisions of harming talented development teams. Ms. 5000 Watts emphasizes, "Developers don't deserve this." [(83:38)]

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Final Discussions and Recommendations

Rainbow Six Siege X Announcement:

• Overview:
  • Ubisoft announced "Rainbow Six Siege X," intended to be a major evolution of the existing game.
• Host Insights:
  • Concerns arise about whether it will be a true sequel or just an expansion with enhanced graphics. The Black Okagi questions, "Would they keep the multiplayer intact?" [(99:22)]

Console Leasing Programs:

• News:
  • Sony is reportedly offering leasing options for the PS5 and PS5 Pro in the UK.
• Host Opinions:
  • The hosts criticize these programs as exploitative, advising listeners to avoid them. Ms. 5000 Watts warns, "Don't do it." [(123:36)]

Community Interaction and Game Preservation:

• Discussion:
  • The decline of physical game copies due to tariffs and the shift towards digital-only releases threatens game preservation efforts.
• Host Concerns:
  • The Black Okagi highlights the importance of preserving physical media for collectors and future accessibility. [(129:44)]

Final Recommendations:

• Must-Play Titles:

  • Ms. 5000 Watts urges listeners to try "Monster Hunter Wilds" for its engaging combat and storytelling. [(141:39)]
  • Other recommendations include "Dance of Annihilation," "Lost Soul Aside," and the new "Divine Ascension." [(141:59)]

• Entertainment Beyond Gaming:

  • Hosts suggest watching engaging series like "Invincible," "Re Zero," and "Paradise" for quality storytelling outside of gaming. [(144:29) & (144:57)]

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Notable Quotes

• Ms. 5000 Watts: "Monster Hunter always has really, really good soundtracks. But this one is a step above every single one." [(05:30)]

• Yakuza the Don: "We are all grown. Hey, we ain't making no money off of this. So, you know, let's get it to a point where we can't do this anymore." [(01:35)]

• Ethos: "I still enjoyed my time playing it." [(10:10)]

• Ms. 5000 Watts: "Recluse class offers depth with dynamic spell combinations, enhancing co-op play." [(35:05)]

• GameStop CEO: "It's about DEI and wokeness." [(124:01)]

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Conclusion

Episode 163 of Gaming Illuminaughty provides a comprehensive examination of "Monster Hunter Wilds," highlighting its strengths in storytelling, combat, and sound design while acknowledging technical shortcomings. The hosts extend their analysis to other significant gaming news and critically address industry-wide issues related to corporate management and social justice. Through engaging discussions and candid opinions, the episode offers valuable insights for both dedicated gamers and casual listeners.

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Note: All timestamps correspond to moments within the provided transcript and reflect where quotes and discussions occur.

Transcript

[The Black Okagi]

What's going on, Internet? The Black Okagi here, AKA TB Agent. To be honest, I like to welcome you all back to the Gaming Illuminati podcast. We are the Enlightened Gamers. And you're now tuned into episode 163. If you're watching the video [e-mail] GI updates, know this show is available on Apple, Spotify, Amazon and all other major podcast platforms. Also, be sure to rate the show five stars on Apple and Spotify. We need your five star rating to move up in the charts and bring in new listeners. Also, feel free to follow the podcast on social media. We drop daily content on our pages. We're available on Tick Tock, Twitter and Instagram. Our handle on every platform is at GI Updates. If you want to join the Discord, our Discord is Discord GGI updates. Links to all our social media platforms will be in the description box [e-mail] GI updates now, without further ado, allow me to introduce you to my co host, the first of which got his baseball fit on because he's ready to go to bat for the Yakuza series utx. Yakuza the Don say what up to the people.

[Yakuza the Don]

What's good? What's good? What's good? Welcome to back to another episode of the most inconsistent gaming podcast.

[The Black Okagi]

You saw that comment?

[Ethos]

I saw that comment too. I was like, really?

[The Black Okagi]

You know, it's funny, I read that.

[Ethos]

And I said, y keep coming back.

[The Black Okagi]

I said, I said, what does that have to do with you hitting the like button? Like, what does that have to do with it? That's crazy.

[Ethos]

Be more consistent.

[Yakuza the Don]

We are. Yeah, exactly. We all grown. Hey, we ain't making no money off of this. So, you know, again, let's. Let's get it to a point where we can't do this anymore often. So yeah, I just had to laugh at that. But you know, we've been doing it for years, so you know, I ain't tripping off of what it, but I just found it hilarious.

[The Black Okagi]

True, true, true. And my second co host was just telling us how she's been optimizing her time for Monster Hunter Wilds by touching more grass. Ms. 5000 watts say what up to the people.

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

Hello. Hello. I have come out of my cave of 97 hours played in wilds to be here. Thank you.

[The Black Okagi]

That is crazy. We appreciate you not only coming, but being on time. We appreciate that. That's amazing. And last but certain, not least is the man that's just happy to still have his lights on. Canada has not shut down Detrade as of yet. So we're able to record the show. EO threatening.

[Ethos]

Hey, your boy's gonna get my power shut off. So if I disappear off the podcast for a couple episodes, y'all know why. It's his fault.

[The Black Okagi]

So it is Donald Trump.

[Ethos]

I don't give a.

[The Black Okagi]

It is.

[Yakuza the Don]

All right.

[The Black Okagi]

Hey, I saw 20 eggs yesterday, man, so I feel you.

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

It's crazy.

[The Black Okagi]

So, yeah, a bunch of stuff has dropped since the last podcast came out. We got several games we got to talk about. We are officially in gaming season. We got more games they're going to be talking about in the next podcast as well. But for this big one, for this, for this first one, I mean, today, let's talk about some Monster Hunter Wilds. This is the new entry in the monster hunter series. Ms. Watch has been gushing about it for the last few months. Ethos, me and jg, this is our first time ever playing the series, and I think that was actually one of their goals. Capcom, to actually introduce a lot of new people into the series. And I saw that it's been wildly successful. Not to do a pun there, but I think on the launch day they had like 1.7 million people on Steam alone. Not even accounting. Console people have been going crazy for it. They say that the story is a little bit more cohesive in comparison to the last one. They like all the changes to the combat and the exploration and all that. But, I mean, you got. I think you said 90 something hours on it, Watts. I mean, you the most qualified to talk about it. So we're gonna give you the floor on this one. Give us the good, bad and ugly on Monster Hunter Wilds.

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

So I can start with the stuff that is not great because I don't think the list is very long. And that is mostly PC optimization. A lot of people are struggling to get decent frame rate out of the game. So the optimization could definitely be better. I'd like to see them do more. And they will, of course. Like, I think every game company cares about their optimization. It's just. It's hard. Yeah. So that's really the only downside that I have about it. The rest of it was, man, it has been an incredible journey. I really, really like the story. I liked the pacing of it. I liked how they introduced different areas of the game and they're like, hey, here's these local people. You get to know them. You get to know the people that you're traveling with, and it definitely makes it feel like you care more about the characters than in previous Monster Hunters, which I really appreciated. And like, man, the monster Roster is insane. Like, all of the monsters are super unique. You've got octopus, you've got dogs, you've got chicken T. Rexes. You've got, like, such a wide breadth of unique monsters that I've really enjoyed every single one of them. I don't think there's a single monster that I've seen that I've thought nag. I don't like that one. And the music, the music is banging. The music is incredible. The soundtrack is. They, like, Monster Hunter always has really, really good soundtracks. But this one is a step above, like, every single one. Especially the apexes have crazy music. So I've really enjoyed that as well. And currently I am in the end game. I'm HR, which is hunter rank, HR 96. And I'm farming end game things.

[The Black Okagi]

Do the. Do the monsters change in the end game or is it kind of farming the same over?

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

Yeah, so there's about one fourth of the roster that you don't meet until you get post campaign. So the way that they have it set out in Monster Hunter, especially in. In general, but in this one, you have low rank, which is like most of the campaign, and that's kind of at night. Just think of it like a tutorial where it's really giving you breathing room to get to know the game and the systems and your weapons and how the game works. Like, they're not going to push you super hard. You're not going to be stuck on a fight for, you know, like weeks or something. And then after the credits roll, that's kind of like the beginning of like, okay, now, welcome to Monster Hunter. So you do have more story post the credits rolling in high rank, but there's only a little bit. It's kind of just like rounded out a little bit. So there is more of that. There's more monsters to hunt that you haven't seen. There's more cutscenes to experience, there's more armor to get, there's more weapons as a whole other weapons system in the end game where you're making this thing called arteon weapons, and you're basically taking a bunch of materials and trying to craft your perfect weapon with the right attack, the right element, the right affinity, and you're trying to roll on all of the stats that you want. That's kind of a big part of the end game.

[The Black Okagi]

Okay, okay, okay. And Ethos, you've been on it heavy. Give us some thoughts on the Monster Hunter. Wilds.

[Ethos]

Yeah, I, I actually enjoyed it. I put. Hold on, let me check.

[The Black Okagi]

Let me pull my gamer card real quick here.

[Ethos]

Yeah, I'm gonna put my game around. Let's see. I put like over 70 hours on the game, so I put in quite a bit of time too. Yeah, I, I thought. Yeah, I like, I, I liked it.

[The Black Okagi]

Just for you to say it's all right. Yeah. So many hours. It's all right.

[Ethos]

It's all right. I mean, compared to what I've seen other people do, I'm like, you know.

[The Black Okagi]

I don't have any mini. Nowhere near as many hours as y'all. Y'all talking about.

[Yakuza the Don]

Yeah, y'all. Both of y'all gotta lie. Half the roster hours, you know.

[Ethos]

But I, Well, I got it a little. Like I got like a day early, so I did get kind of a head start. I. I tried to get into Monster Hunter a couple times. I tried to get into it when Worlds came out and I think the world's just like too much, like way too early. I was just like getting overwhelmed with a lot of like the UI and stuff like that. And then I had a dragon attack me out of nowhere and I was just like, I. I can't figure this out without, like someone to help me. So kind of didn't really. Kind of haven't really touched worlds a lot. And then Rise was something I was interested in, but I was on the switch, so that was a whole other thing. I was like, I want to play this on the switch. But this one, I was like, okay, I'm gonna give it a genuine shake. I'm gonna play. And I'm glad I did. I. I haven't had a game like a grind game like this for a minute. I think the last one I got was into a bit was like, probably like Destiny 2 when like final Shape was out or like Final Fantasy. But I've kind of taken those games off of like a break for quite some time. So this was a nice game to like replace those games. I think. Like, it's really a gameplay focused game. I, I really like the. That's my type of thing as a gamer. Like, I enjoy those games that is like gameplay because like, story wise, it's just like the story was nothing crazy. I'll be honest with you. Like, I still was able to pay attention to like, what was happening, but at the end of the day I was like, okay, you know, there's some cool little like aura farms that were going on, some of the cutscenes. I was like, oh, this is cool. This is cool. But take.

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

Take pictures of your character.

[Ethos]

Yeah, yeah.

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

Oh, I look cool right now.

[Ethos]

I look cool. Let me take a picture of this. Let me record this. But really, like, it is a gameplay focused game. Like, I know that. I think both communities, like, they kind of cringe every time people try to make compare. Like, l like Souls game in this game. When people, like, when they try to compare the two, both of them either, like, say, like, oh, we're not like each other. Don't. Don't compare it. But I do think it's like a person that's played a lot of Souls games. I'm thankful that because I did play a lot of Souls games, when I jumped into Monster Hunter, I didn't feel like I was, like, mechanically. Like, I was like, oh, okay. I was like, okay, this makes sense to me. Like, the idea of, like, you know, making your attacks, you know, have meaning, like, timing your attacks, like those things that you learn. Like, a lot of times in Souls games, like, it carries over to here. I'd argue and say Monster Hunter is a little bit more punishing about it because Souls Games gives you a lot of, like, evasion, iframes, Windows, the Dodge, and stuff like that. This game does not give you that much unless you build your character a certain type of way. But I did, I enjoyed it. Like, I liked the Longsword. I tried great sword at first, but it was way too slow for me. So I switched to Longsword and was acting like an anime samurai character. And then recently I've been doing gunlance quite a bit, you know, mixing out. So I've been doing that. Try doing a little bit of bow. Also trying to do a little bit of charge was charge Axe, I think Charge blade. Yeah, Charge blade. So, yeah, I've been experimenting. I've been trying to touch, like, every single weapon to see, you know, what other ones I might like now that I'm done with the story. I'm in high. What's it called?

[The Black Okagi]

High.

[Ethos]

High level. High rank. Yeah. I've been in high rank for a while. I beat up a lot of monsters. I've skinned a lot of monsters.

[The Black Okagi]

I've.

[Ethos]

I've worn them on a coat, you know. You know, the drip was immaculate. I got a couple of videos out there. You know, the drip was absolutely immaculate. But yeah, I genuinely, like, I definitely see it as a Game of the Year contender. Probably will definitely be nominated for that. I agree with Watts. Really the only con, the really big con that I have for it is just the performance on PCs almost abysmal. I had to go and do some like, surgery and like with config files and I actually started using AMD's FSR because for some reason it gives you better performance than dlss. For some reason. I don't know why that's happening, but it worked with mine. So my 3080 is getting more frames, so I at least get it. So at least it's like playable now. But yeah, that's stuff that like, you know, I mean, I've played against games. As long as the game is really fun, I can. There's. There's definitely a. I have like a, A threshold where like I can still like, even if the performance is really bad, I can still keep playing it as long as like the game is genuinely fun. So to see that put 70 hours in with like a lot of technical like mishap problems. Like I, I still enjoyed my time playing it.

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

So the weapons and armor is banging. Yeah, their designs for, for weapons and armor is crazy.

[Ethos]

Animations are awesome.

[The Black Okagi]

But it's pretty, it's pretty easy to track how to actually craft the armor that you want in the menus. I picked that up pretty. Yeah, I was worried about that. I think the game is gorgeous. That's one of the pauses I'll give. When you're in the open areas where there's actual a good amount of sunlight. When you're in the kind of those gray areas, then the game looks kind of muddy. But I know that, I know that's by design. I just preferred the more vibrant look. When it has that going, the game is really gorgeous. This is a gameplay focus game, kind of like what Etho said. And the gameplay is like. It is a lot of fun to hunt the monsters. Once you get in the flow of combat and you understand how to use the weapon that you choose to run with. I think the aiming system takes a little bit of getting used to. But I found what helped me is in the settings, you can, you can, you can turn it to a toggle before I was holding it and like it was kind of a to use because, like a lot of those monsters are really big. So the camera's spinning all over the place. But when you turn it on to the toggle, that's like one less button to hold on to worry about while you're trying to shift through like a million different menus because that takes a second to get too used to. But the combat is hard carrying this game because I disagree with Watts. I think the story is Pretty boring. I'm not gonna lie. I. I was really trying, but I was just like, yeah, let's get back to hunting these monsters. I'm just trying to level up my armor and stuff like that. But the good thing is the gameplay is so good, in my opinion. It carries like. You might enjoy the story. I didn't. But the gameplay hard carries it. So I don't really. I'm not too worried about that. And I think it's really cool that, you know, late game or in game they're going to be releasing like a lot of different content. So it's a game that you can just hop back on right away and. And hunt something even more dangerous than before. So to keep people coming back, I, I don't have as many hours on it as y'all, but I can say that like based off what I played, it does feel like a Game of the Year contender. I don't know if it'll be personally mine cuz I'm not the Monster Hunter guy. But I, I see why people love the series and I think this is the right one to get people into it. Cuz I think they streamlined a bunch of the systems to help it. It's still a cluster, but it's not as much of a cluster. So I think that'll help people get into it. What I will say another negative that I hear. None of you guys, maybe this is my personal experience. This one actually genuinely surprised me. A negative for me is not the game. The community has been insufferable for me. I'm not gonna lie. Like some of these Monster Hunter fans.

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

I haven't experienced that. I've always had like the community has always been like so sweet and supportive. I don't know if it's like a new Monster Hunter thing because this, this game sold 8 million and that's what I'm thinking. Three days.

[The Black Okagi]

I'm thinking it might be some new people in the community that are trying to prop themselves up.

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

I know every authority.

[The Black Okagi]

Yeah. Because like whenever I stream this game, like it doesn't, it doesn't hurt my feelings. It's more so of like. Yeah. I'm not gonna lie. They're comparable to the Souls community. It's more. So be conscious of how you talking to people who are new to the game because you're gonna make people quit the game. It was. A lot of. You're trash. I'm like, yo, I'm in the tutorial. Like what's.

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

That's crazy.

[The Black Okagi]

I want. I like the charge blade. I Picked that one. I was like, oh, this is cool. Half the chat, you can't use that. It's too advanced for you. All right, so y'all think I'm a dumbass. I'm using the charge blade. We're 15 hours into the game. I'm having no problems. I figured out the combos, I figured out how to the, the ebb and flow. I was like, it's not that goddamn difficult. I'm like, yo, y'all gotta chill out because it's supposed to be a community game or whatever, but other than that and the optimization, yeah, this is, this is a Game of the Year nomination for me. What you think, though, Jay?

[Yakuza the Don]

I've only played the demo, so I have no opinion about this game at all.

[The Black Okagi]

What a fraud. Freaking let's. That's game number one. 2025, he ain't play. Let's put that on the, Put that on the list. Because they swear they playing these games. They swear.

[Yakuza the Don]

I'm sorry, watch. I, I, I cannot, I can to play this game yet. I might get to it. But if only Musha wasn't coming out, like, honestly, I, I would have been like, like the biggest haters that that Monster Hunter got. I would have been, I would have been.

[The Black Okagi]

What does that have to do with.

[Yakuza the Don]

It comes out 20. It comes out 2026. But the fact that they announced it, you already know the deal.

[The Black Okagi]

So in 2026, you can't play this game in 2025.

[Yakuza the Don]

What? I didn't, I didn't say that. What are you talking about? I gave another opinion. I said I cannot play this game now. But I brought up another. This is a separate point. A separate point. I'm not playing it now because I am playing Yakuza and I will be playing Assassin's Creed. So this is the game that right now I am skipping because I prefer I have favorable the Yakuza and Assassin's Creed. I don't want to get into Monster Hunter right now. I played the demo and I was like, it's cool, but it's not something that I want to get into right now and waste all that time because I just can't deal with the super grindy games right now. Again, my life is not set up like that. So when I found out how, I mean, even though the story is, you know, once I heard Etho say it was pretty short, I'm like, okay, but still, Yakuza came out. I'm like, my priority is Yakuza. So that's what I'm playing.

[The Black Okagi]

Ethos I can't. I can't play the first Berserker this month because I got to play mass effect in 2028. So mass effect five just like.

[Ethos]

Oh, okay. I was gonna say.

[The Black Okagi]

You know, the good news is though, if you have any curiosity, jokes aside, if you do have any curiosity from the game, the short. The game is really short. It's only like 10 to 15 hours the story. And then on top of that, you can kind of turn your brain off, like, once you learn the combat, because unless you really like the story, it's a very gameplay focused game. It's one of those games you can lay on the couch or in the bed and just fight monsters and like that. It's not like I feel like with Yakuza, you have to really sit up and pay attention if you want to get the most out of it, I think. But I mean, ultimately that's this guy.

[Yakuza the Don]

Again, the newbie, you know, trying to tell everybody about Yakuza.

[The Black Okagi]

Anyways, I'm the Yakuza authority here now.

[Yakuza the Don]

Absolutely not. Absolutely you're not gonna do that here. But I mean, that's cool though. Like I said, I just, I. I just have different priorities. I was. I was just like. I wasn't captivated by the demo, honestly. You know, it just. It's just not my style right now. I will play it eventually, but it just. It's not peaking my interest, but I will. The majority of GI is playing it. Like, all y'all playing it. Siggy's playing it, Steve is playing it. So, you know, more people are getting into it. I feel like this is again comparable to Elden Ring, where nobody was playing Souls games except for a few people. Now more people are trying it out and they generally enjoy. Like, Siggy's addicted and I. And I know when Siggy gets into a game, he's locked in. Like, he will play the mess out of a game. And. And wild is it for him right now. It was rivals, but now that wilds come out, he is. He is totally on it. So. So I don't know if he's come to you or. Or homeless friend he tips, even need those, but I know he's been. He been super locked in. Like, as for people, I don't know if he's been playing more. So he been playing with anybody. Y'all been playing together?

[Ethos]

He's been playing with like Nomad.

[Yakuza the Don]

Nomad and Nomad playing.

[Ethos]

Yeah, I just been playing with like Dan and Dolphin. They've just been like throwing me the.

[The Black Okagi]

The ropes. Carrying you.

[Yakuza the Don]

Oh, so you still playing with the Rivals crew?

[Ethos]

Okay, what does that mean?

[Yakuza the Don]

I see what you. Yeah, this man segment.

[Ethos]

I like to play with people who are good at the game. I'm. I'm sorry. I like to play with people who.

[The Black Okagi]

Are good at the games.

[Ethos]

I play the crazy part every time.

[The Black Okagi]

We eat those and play together, we. Did we not slay every monster together? What is the problem? God, what are you talking about?

[Ethos]

I never can play with you. You're always, you're always playing late. And I'm like, I'm too tired for this. I'm old. I'm 30. I. I can't stay up. Like, like you, like when you play your games, you're in a different time zone. You're three hours behind me. You're in the past. I can't play with you.

[The Black Okagi]

Yeah, well, you're gonna be a thousand years behind me when the lights go out. What's the name?

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

To cap it off? I would just say, like, if you're curious about Monster Hunter, like, good combat, I think Monster Hunter is a great game to play because their combat, their animations, all of that is incredible. And this is definitely the best one that they've made to get you into it. It's not super punishing throughout the story so you can spend your time getting used to things. They introduce things to you properly instead of just being like, okay, you opened up the game, here's like seven things for you to read. They introduce it a little bit slower and in terms of, like, what you can end up doing. But when you get into high rank, you're making builds, you're making a bunch of different builds. There's a bunch of really interesting build making. So if you're into making builds and good combat, it's also good for that. And then they're putting out a title update at the very beginning of April, which is going to bring a new monster, and they're also bringing a monster that is higher than the current difficulty that we have. So the way the Monster Hunter does things is like, you've got low rank, you've got high rank, and then we've got tempered monsters, which are like, currently the hardest monsters. There's going to be something above that. So that's coming in in April.

[Ethos]

But Watts, what if I want to see a health bar go away?

[The Black Okagi]

There's a mod for that.

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

Don't install the mod. Stop it.

[Yakuza the Don]

Is that, Is that just the lore? Like, is Monster Hunter just always been like that? Like, you just, just continue to whack on the monster paws and tail until they go away. And there's just no. Like, is that. Is that part of the Lord Just to not know how much health the. The monster has. Like, is it.

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

So you generally know the way that they've done it is they. This is a monster hunting RPG is like how I'd like to explain it to people. It's not like a boss rush game. It's. You are being a monster hunter. So when you're fighting the monsters the way that they tell you, first of all, there's a heartbeat in the bottom left side of the screen. And as they get lower health, the heart will like, go lower and lower. There's also a skull that pops up when they're nearly dead. But the game has always done. And it has such a focus on you being immersed in the gameplay and not just looking at your bars that the monsters will start drooling, they'll start limping, you'll break parts off of them. They won't be able to use some of their ability. So an example is like, there's a monster called Gypsaros that blinds you. He won't be able to do that anymore. He'll lose the ability to do that. Monsters that spit fire won't be able do that anymore because you're breaking parts off of them. So it's. It's pretty easy to tell how much you've beat up a monster. And then they'll tell you, I think it's at 20% health, the heartbeat will get much, much smaller. So you know that like, okay, they're getting pretty low. And then the skull will happen. And you know that they're damn near dead, but they have, they have a bunch of attention. You need to, you need to not just stare at a bar and just like, look at, look at the game.

[Yakuza the Don]

I also watch an Avid bar hater. Okay.

[The Black Okagi]

All right.

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

I think it's fun. I. So if someone wants to do it when they're playing solo and they're only playing solo and they want to do that, then I, I guess. But I just think it. It's a big shame to miss out on the experience and the feeling that that gives you. Right. Because even though I see a skull on a monster, I know that they're getting towards being dead. But I don't know if they're one hit. I don't know if they're like multiple combos away from being dead. So when I'm there and I've used all of my healing and I've got nothing Left and I'm like man, I. I need to kill it now or I'm done. If I know that they have 10 health yet left, it just takes away like that entire experience of the game. So I think, I think it goes. I think it does go against the design of the game. And I think you're missing out on.

[Ethos]

A lot if you Pokemon is cooking up Yalls brain. Yeah.

[Yakuza the Don]

I mean that's an interesting perspective. I'm not mad at it.

[The Black Okagi]

Yeah, it's weird at first but then once you get better at the mechanics, you will start to notice all the cues in the moss. It's not that big of a deal. I also think the game is meant to be played co op because like I know the monsters are supposed to scale when you play co op but I'm not gonna lie, we played co op. We was running through them damn monsters. So like it's really not that big of a deal. I feel like solo it took me longer to kill monsters. So I mean because you only played the demo, I don't feel like you really got that. That full experience. But you know, I didn't at all.

[Yakuza the Don]

No.

[Ethos]

I will say it is funny. Funny meme that I saw someone sent me was Nata the little boy. You know how like in the story his whole thing is about like Ark Veil. Like he has like a bond with that monster. Right. And someone was like a. Once you kill him and then you turn him into a coat and you walk with. Not just like hey let me show you his bloodline real quick. He's like you showed his cloak and stuff so like you killed. It's pretty funny. But yeah, I think it's pretty cool. Overall I. I genuinely think it's a. Yeah, I enjoyed it. I'm. I'll definitely. I think I'm gonna go back and play Rise on PC and maybe I'll give world shot now that I. I know what. What I'm doing.

[The Black Okagi]

Okay. Okay. Okay. Well let's. That's our thoughts on it. Let's move on to another monster hunting type of game. Elden Ring Night Rain. It's coming out this summer. There was a network test, a beta and alpha. Whatever it was. We didn't talk about this last time. I mean we got to stream it. We can't talk about it.

[Yakuza the Don]

No, we didn't get to play and.

[Ethos]

I don't even know.

[The Black Okagi]

I was like we got the streaming. I'm pretty sure we can talk about it.

[Yakuza the Don]

He was saying we didn't.

[The Black Okagi]

No, no, no, we did it.

[Yakuza the Don]

Last part no, we didn't.

[The Black Okagi]

We didn't talk about it. Last part. Yeah. The days are blurring together. Elden Ring Night Rain. If you're not keeping up with it, it's a new spin off title where what's the name from software is taking assets and flipping them and making a. What is it? A Road light type of game where basically it's a run and there's three days and three nights and at the end of every night there's a boss and then at the end of the third night there's a final big boss and you're basically running around, you're collecting loot, getting better weapons, fighting the bosses throughout the environment, trying to level up your gear, all while not trying to die. We finally got to play the network test. Ethos, Give me the four. One, one. How are you feeling after the beta?

[Ethos]

Oh, it was awesome. I loved it. I loved every second of it.

[The Black Okagi]

You don't remember?

[Ethos]

I was gonna make a comparison to be like, it's like Monster Hunter. You go and hunt the monster in the. The Guardian at the end. But no, I mean, I. I like it. I think one thing we've all been asking for for a very long time was like, Elden Ring Co Op. This is not that. So I think for people that are like not paying attention and it's getting marketed or getting labeled as it's Elden Ring Co Op. And then they buy and they're like, this isn't like, I'm not playing Elden Ring, like in the format that I was used to, you know, a couple years ago when I played it. I do like, it's different though. I think that like, makes it a little more fresh than if I just been like, okay, here's like Elden Ring, but you can play with your friends now or something like that. I do like that they've kind of designed the game to work with co op, especially with the bosses. I definitely could tell from like an AI standpoint like that they've definitely done a lot of work. Kind of similar. Like, I've noticed now that I'm playing Monster Hunter. Monster Hunter does it too, but it's very conscious of knowing that it's not just fighting one person. That's always been kind of the weakness. I think of like a lot of the Souls games co op or why people would argue and say it's easy mode is because it's always felt that like a lot of the bosses in like the Souls games at Elden ring are designed AI design. Their bots are designed to work against 1v1. And when you introduce a second character, sometimes the locking, you know, sometimes you get those feel bads where you're just like, like, how did he. Like, like where, you know, like, he looks like they're about to swing on one person. And also it's just like 180s and turn on someone else and hits them. So, like, a lot of the. The new bosses have felt like. Like nothing has felt like I got cheated. Like, I. I wasn't expecting the boss to hit the person that they were gonna hit. It does a lot better with, you know, projecting who it's they're trying to aim at. And the cool part is it.

[The Black Okagi]

It's.

[Ethos]

They've added new mechanics so that some bosses that, like, you know, you think you're just fighting him, they throw up mobs or there's extra stuff happening. So it kind of creates this, like, cool, like, co op, like, like team teamwork, like, idea of like, okay, I'll take care of the. The mobs and keep them away from you. You. You aggro the boss as a tank. You aggro the boss so that the boss doesn't focus, you know, our, you know, our mage or our, like our healer. And then I'll, like go in and do the DPS in burst where we can try to burst them to win. So it kind of has this, like, I'm not gonna say mmo, but like, you know, like MMORPG light type of dungeon experience kind of all siphoned into this, like, really quick, like, boss rush type of. It's like a boss, boss, boss rush, roguelike battle royale, game co op. And it's like they took all these different aspects and they pushed it all together and it works. And I think that's not shocking considering that this is the same thing that eldering was a couple years before it came out where everyone was like, it's different because it's open world. Oh, will this break the formula? And it ended up. No, it actually ended up. They nailed it. So this is another thing where it's like, are they gonna. Is this gonna break the formula or is it gonna nail. I think their track record at this point is like, they know what they're doing. I think they're gonna nail it. I think it's gonna be a cool thing. I actually genuinely think this might be the perfect game, kind of how Wilds is for Monster Hunter. I think this might be the perfect game to get people into souls games. I think that big scare factor of being by yourself and how tough it is not to say that this game isn't tough because that Wolf boss was definitely like a really fun challenge, but. And I've died a couple times during the beta. But that's crazy.

[The Black Okagi]

I've been on the first try.

[Ethos]

Who.

[The Black Okagi]

Who are you playing with when that happened?

[Ethos]

Randoms. Oh, I. I was helping you. That's why you did it.

[The Black Okagi]

That's a lie. That's a.

[Ethos]

Game. I forgot.

[Yakuza the Don]

Yeah, yeah.

[Ethos]

I told them what to do. That's why. Yeah, yeah. You all check the. Thanks for reminding me. I forgot. I'll give myself a pat. Yeah.

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

Were you pinging. Were you pinging all the map ethos? Because that's. That's who the leader is.

[Ethos]

Yeah, yeah, I was.

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

The leader is the one pinging the man.

[Ethos]

Yeah, I was definitely. I was. I was the one telling him ahead of time, hey, they're gonna split in three. Watch.

[The Black Okagi]

He did.

[Yakuza the Don]

No, he did tell him.

[Ethos]

Yeah.

[The Black Okagi]

And did I not say when he was swinging that rope? I said, why are y'all rolling back? Just roll forward so we can attack. Y'all was running away. Don't try because I knocked the one.

[Ethos]

That was also telling you, get ready. He's about to.

[The Black Okagi]

I got the footage.

[Yakuza the Don]

I was also dead. He. He also did.

[The Black Okagi]

I was outside.

[Ethos]

Yeah, don't let him try to.

[Yakuza the Don]

He gave us the tag, bro. He told us.

[Ethos]

I was giving you all the tech I had. The first time I do it, I. That was the first time blind. I didn't know what he was doing. But anyways, what I was saying was I. I was saying, just like Monster Hunter, I think this is gonna be the perfect game for people who, like, your friends, who like, you're trying to get like, hey, you should play Elden Ring. And they've always have that. I'm not a masochist. I'm not into masochism or I don't wanna. I don't think I'll be able to get into it or I don't know. This might be the perfect game. Like, hey, try this. This is like a bite sized version of Elden Ring. And you can play with me and play with some others. And if you like this type of feeling, once you feel comfortable enough, then maybe they'll go back and play Elden Ring or play, you know, whatever else, Souls or something like that. So that's like my 2 cents. I think it's. I think it's gonna be pretty good. I do think there's gonna be a segment of the community that is going to shun this game just because it's like a live service multiplayer focus game with like, not really. I don't think they really showed up, really a story or anything like that. But like, it's kind of just this, you know, Rush boss and kind of what you said, tbh, it's gonna depend. It's gonna live and die on the content. Like, if it. If it drops with a lot of content day one, then it'll be ultra successful. But if it ends up being like, this is just very like a small pie taste and then we're gonna add new stuff, then I don't know, it might be interpreted by the community a little bit harsher. So, yeah, that's my two cents.

[The Black Okagi]

The best way I describe this is this is Elden Ring or Souls games for iPad kids. They're kind of like what you said are too afraid to try the actual games because it. Although mechanically the combat is Elden Ring, it is much more sped up for like Zoomers. So, like, you run fast and there's unlimited stamina in this. You just. It's like you don't have a horse, but you have a horse. Like you're on foot, you're lit. Everybody. Yeah, everybody's Sonic the Hedgehog. And then there's parkour in the game. So, like, you can climb really fast. So it's literally a sped up iPad. IPad, iPad, iPad version of the. The base game. Which, you know, it works, it is fun, but it's kind of like what Etho said. My main concern is how much content is going to be there at launch because, like, I'm worried that I'm gonna boot the game up and after two to three sessions, I'm gonna see repeats of Boss, because we saw that in the beta. But then I try not to be too harsh on it because it is a beta, that there was probably limited content. So I'm just hoping there's a bunch there. I know that they're reusing assets from previous games, but I also hope that there's a good mix of like, new stuff in there and it would be nice if there's some element of story explaining what's going on. But I. I do think people who are afraid of trying Souls games, they're gonna like this. Not only because it is sped up and it's got the parkour, but also they simplified a lot of stuff. You don't have to build a class anymore. For some people that I know, for hardcore people, that's hard to believe, but for some people, that is intimidating. Building your own character that's optimized in this. There's eight different classes that are going to be there at launch. I think in the beta there were three or four. So they have presets. You can pick up different weapons and change the fighting style a little bit. But like the base, the, the special abilities are set and then leveling up is super easy. You just kill mobs and then whenever you find a gray site, you literally just press up on the, on the D pad and you level up your character. You don't have to think about do, oh, do I want to put it on my health or like my strength? Like it's super streamlined. So I think it is going to welcome a lot of people in and I thought it was fun. I'm just worried once again, what are we getting for 40 bucks? Is this going to be fun for a week or is it going to be something I want to play long term? And also is there plans for like post launch? What do you think though, Watts?

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

I had a good time with it. Yeah, I played mostly with randoms. I think I had one day where, well, you could only play with randoms for most of the network test because it wasn't working. But yeah, I played, I played all of the classes. I ended up playing recluse a lot. And the reason for that was this is the, the mage character or Alchemist is because there's a lot of depth to her gameplay and I found that really rewarding, especially when playing with other people. So if people don't know what the recluse does, that class, when someone puts like fire damage on an enemy, you can take that fire damage and you add it to your ability. So you have to collect three abilities and then it will create like a unique spell so you can grab a bunch of different combinations, you can heal your teammates, you can do crazy damage. You can put up like a thing that makes you your whole team not use any FP for a while. So I really enjoyed learning the different combinations of that character and the depths of that character. I found it like the gameplay wise, like you said it is Elden Ring. But here's just everything is super fast and I, I ended up having a good time with it because you're trying to make builds on the fly with the Elden Ring sandbox and I think that's really fun because you can carry up to six weapons. All of the weapons, the extra perks and stats that they have on them, you get to use all of those stats no matter which weapon you're using. So Just like when you're playing a roguelite and you're trying to put together a build out of things that you find you're doing that. But in the Elden Ring sandbox, so I found that to be pretty fun. I really liked also that they're adding a ton of different bosses in there because you're fighting like the Centipede and he's from Dark Souls and then you've got stuff from Elden Ring. You got things from everywhere. And I do. I do like that. Thinking about what kind of bosses they could put in there. I think the only thing would be replayability, right? Like, they're gonna have to add more things to the map or different maps. I know that when the game comes out, there are going to be events that happen. Like, there'll be a volcano that spawns and it'll be like a whole new area that you can go in that gives you different stu. So I know that's gonna switch it up. I just don't know how much it's gonna switch it up. And we, of course, we're only playing with like half the roster of characters as well. So I think there is enough replayability there for me personally, for $40, because I can level up all the characters, I can build them out to be doing all sorts of different stuff, and then the maps will be different. It's just. I hope it is the same for other people. And getting to play with each other is. Unfortunately, you can't just, like, group up with each other. You have to do the group password thing, which, you know, classic.

[Ethos]

I forgot about that.

[The Black Okagi]

It was. It was annoying. But once you set it up, it did work. Like, you didn't have to worry about.

[Ethos]

Like, yeah, get over and so annoying. But I just want to be able to click a button and invite people.

[Yakuza the Don]

Yeah, just invite your friends. Yeah, I know.

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

People also wanted to see, like, their friends in the roundtable hold. They're like, it would be nice if I could, like, have my friends in here while I'm doing stuff. But like a hub world. Yeah, it's not. It's not a huge deal. But yeah, I found it to be really fun and I definitely will be playing it when it's out. If you haven't played it with people, try and get like a friend group together. Because that changes it when you have communication because you. Especially playing as a recluse, right. I'd be like, oh, do you have fire? Okay, I'm going to grab Holy Damage. Okay, you have this. And I can try and Organize what people are using to maximize the spells that I'm using. But just in general, the communication is. Changes the game.

[Ethos]

Yeah, it's fun.

[The Black Okagi]

Yeah. Before I toss it to Jay, I was gonna say one of my favorite things coming out of this beta is my theory was correct when they first announced this game. What I will say is, and it kind of leans into what Watts was talking about, if you do pick it up, make sure you have people to play with or you got some people in the discord, like, somebody you can communicate with. Because the first few games that I played with, I had to play with randoms because nobody in GI was free. These randoms on this game suck. I could not get past day one because the other two randoms I was playing with were constantly down. So I was in the game. You can't just pick the enemies up. You have to hit them, like, several times while a boss is, like, attacking you. So, like, my theory before this game came out was, you know, a lot of people didn't beat Millennia, A lot of people didn't beat Mog before the dlc. And a lot of y'all use Mimic Tears and Summons, and you can't use it in this. And a lot of y'all got exposed during this beta. I was like, man, I'm getting off this. And then Ethos and JG pulled up, and we ended up being able to finish the beta, like, on the last one. It took us, like, three tries, I think, but what'd you think, though, Jay?

[Yakuza the Don]

Yeah, No, I share the same sentiment as everyone in here. Me being old, I got made fun of because I didn't know how to run at first. So I was wondering why it was so slow compared to everyone else. I thought it was because. And I picked a mage, and. Yeah. And once that happened, I said, oh, I have to turn my brain off because I don't know what I'm doing. Compared to Elderly, this is a totally different game. So once I turn my brain off and I understand the mechanics of what I'm, you know, what is being played before me in Night Rain, then, you know, it made sense and we were able to continue. But I was definitely struggling at first because I didn't. I just didn't understand the mechanics there. But I will say this. I like how the game forces you to play with the weapons that you've never played with before. You know, if you see a weapon that you were like, I would never touch this in a regular game because, like, this. Just this. Just like, I. I don't Play with lances, for example. But I picked up a lance, a fire lance. I was like, you know what? This is fire. It's actually melted people. So it was interesting. Like, it does teach you to. To play with those different weapons that you would normally never try if it had good stats, you know, at the time. And, and you know, that's probably all that you have at the. At that very point. So that. So that was cool. I did like that. I did like the different areas and, you know, it. Forcing you to. To go to, you know, the. Whatever the circle is in and, you know, forcing you to go to that specific area and seeing market for the first time. Oh, my God, we almost got slaughtered. Yeah, it's a different market, y'all.

[Ethos]

So it's the crap out of me.

[Yakuza the Don]

Yeah, no, he was teleporting and stuff. Like, it was. Yeah, it was insane. Like, how. How strong he was. So, like, getting. Getting past him. Like, he's actually very menacing in Night Rain. So. So that was. That was very cool. So I enjoyed every, every bit of it, but I definitely had some struggles. Obviously. It's a. It's a. Like I couldn't even get in the game at first. I kept coming over there is. And I had to restart my PS5. And then once I did and TV was like, oh, you got a PS4. I was like, I can't even get on the damn game. Why you have a PS4? I'm like, here you go with the jokes. I'm like, no, I don't have a PS4. So I had to, like, restart my PS5. And then after that, then I was able to get back in. But yeah, the whole thing about, like, still having to put in a code to. To get in with your friends, it's annoying, but whatever it. When it works, it works. So hopefully, you know, we don't continue to have those problems when the. When the retail game comes out. So, yeah, as long has the content and these. These extra four classes are fire. Because honestly, I didn't like the mage at first. I. I definitely, like, was running through my. My FP super fast and I was like, damn, I'm kind of useless here. Like, I don't even know what to do. Like, I want to be a mage, but, like, I had to literally pivot it and just get a. A regular melee weapon at times until I found some more. Some more ep. So it was. It was weird in those particular instances, but, you know, once you find the classic that you like and. And I'm sure I'll find something else. Once a retail game comes out, then I think it'll be a better time. Yeah, I enjoy myself once I learned the mechanics and you know, we ended up getting through it, so. So it was a fun. It was a fun time. Fun, stressful time. But it was. It was definitely fun.

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

It is stressful. It is like cuz everything moves so fast and you're trying to read everything that you're picking up and you're like, guys, we gotta go, we gotta go, we gotta go. It's a constant like screaming of like, gotta go, we gotta go here. So definitely is stressful. I don't normally play mages, but her like gameplay loop was really fun. And for fp, you have to. But every time you take a spell like off of an enemy, it restores your fp. So you kind of just have to balance like that in an interesting way. She's just got a lot more going on than all of the other characters. I actually hope that there is another character that has something like that because. Yeah, the others. The others are great. Like, I love Duchess. She's great. But the. The depth of the recluse is really cool to see more of them.

[The Black Okagi]

I'm sure Jake could give you some tips on how to play a mage. He was, you know.

[Yakuza the Don]

No, apparently. Why's got it. I didn't have time to learn. I wasn't like, man, I picked amazing a lot. And I was like, bro. I was like, I can't do anything. I'll be useless out here.

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

She is not just like a maid. Yeah. She's more like an alchemist, I think by mixing all of the different spells. And that's like such a huge part that.

[Ethos]

Yeah, yeah, I tried. I was like, I can't figure out this. But I kept running out of man.

[Yakuza the Don]

I was like, I can't do exactly. I was like, I can't even get to the point where I'm having fun, where I contributed to my team.

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

That skill doesn't use any. Any mana, which is really nice. But your regular spells do.

[Ethos]

That's my thought. I thought I had to spam my regular abilities. I was like spamming them and I was like, why not?

[Yakuza the Don]

Yeah. I didn't even get to the part of trying my actual abilities. I was just. I was just doing regular, regular attacks. And I was like, well, I'm out of meta. What am I doing here?

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

I think you'll. I think you'll like her if you like Mages Day. I think. I think you will enjoy her when you. When the game comes out and you're able to try.

[Yakuza the Don]

I still need the crack rock spell. If I got that, I'm good.

[Ethos]

All them are good except for the bird dude. I just did not like playing bird dude.

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

I've heard a lot of people not liking bird dude. I didn't really play it.

[Ethos]

Slow. He's the slowest character, so he runs slow. He, he has terrible like his damage, like when he dodges, he uses up so much. So you gotta rely on shielding almost everything. I didn't like it.

[The Black Okagi]

It's only, it's only gonna be 40 bucks. I mean it's a cop. Hopefully, you know, they deliver on the content and keep people interested. I think it's also cool because you can just hop on and run a, run a few sessions, then get off. It's not like an over commitment where you got to make this build and really dive into this world. So I think that's what it's got going for it, you know, hopefully it turns out to be good when it drops. I think in May. I believe it is May.

[Yakuza the Don]

Yep.

[The Black Okagi]

Elden Ring Night Reign. Look out for it. I'm about to give the floor to our resident Yakuza expert because next we're moving into like a Dragon Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii, which is the newest entry in the series of a million different Yakuza games. This game caught my attention because I saw him doing air combos as a pirate. The combat looked really fun. So I said, you know what? This is gonna be the first one. I try from my understanding from what the chat that sentiment, you can feel free to correct me because you played all 1,000 of them. This is basically a big ass side mission and a direct result of the last game. Something happened in the last game, so he ended up in Hawaii. And now you're on a big side quest until like the main game comes and you turn into a pirate. You have amnesia and you're basically trying to take over Hawaii doing pirate and trying to help a kid fulfill his dreams. The story is completely nonsensical. What's your, what's your take the good, bad and ugly on Pyro Yakuza.

[Yakuza the Don]

I mean it. Yeah, that's the beauty of it, man. Like again, once you get into these jacuzzi games, you realize like these stories are so wacky, like none of it makes any sense. But, but that's the, that's the, that's the beauty of it, you know, that's why, that's why it keeps the people coming back. So yeah, no The. The chat is 100 correct. This, this is a side mission. And we haven't played the Goromaji money a very long time. And he'd been one of the most annoying characters, especially, you know, with Kiru, because he always just like, even though he. He likes you and like you're in the same clan, he always wants to kill you. So. So, you know, it's very interesting to be able to, you know, play as him again because he one of the fastest characters in the game too. So. Yeah, no, you have amnesia. You get, you know, you get swept up on the island. This kid saves you, and he's like, yeah, I want to go to Hawaii. I want to be a pirate. And you're like, okay. You're like, all right, let's be a pirate. And then that's it. Like, it's really. It's. It's, you know, it doesn't take any. Any depth away. He's like, all right, let's be a pirate. Let's get out here. And he was like, pirates or thing. Yeah, cool. All right, I want to be a pirate. So, so. So you go out there, you get a crew, you get a ship, and. And, you know, the rest is history. So it's pretty much the same as. As Infinite Wealth. Like, you still have Hawaiian. And like I said, that's. That's kind of the beauty of. Of rgg. Like, they, they are like the king of reusing assets. But they always do it in a. In a very unique way that I wish that other companies would. Would kind of, you know, take heed. Was like, what is RGG doing over there? Like, people complain about using a reuse and asset, but you never hear about anybody complaining about Sega and RTT reusing assets. I mean, we complain about freaking Horizon, you know, animation of just coming down. Like, people complain about stupid stuff like that, but the MIC complains about, like, reusing maps and like, having the same things there when it comes to Yakuza. Because I think, like, we just have an understanding that it doesn't matter, you know, about that as long as the. The story is good and the gameplay is good. And none of that, none of that stuff really, really matters though, too. I mean, also, yeah, Yakuza is a very niche audience. And like I said, we. But we have this understanding that, you know, that's what, that's what they do and that's what they have been doing for, you know, all these times. Like, Hawaii. Hawaii is still new. Like, this is only like a. A couple years old at this point. So you know, it's not like the other places in Japan, Okinawa and stuff. So. So like I said, you know, there's some of the same stuff. If you play Infinite wealth, then you pretty much played this. But again you're playing as Goro and you have pirate combat now. So initially like I don't like pirates. Like I've never been a fan of pirates, but again with, with Goro and, and him becoming a pirate, like the actual pirate, you know, ship gameplay, it's actually pretty fun. You know, it doesn't take too much to it, but it does have enough depth into it that you know, it keeps you at least like, all right, cool, I can upgrade this. Like I can, I can do this. Like I can actually maneuver and stuff. And then you could do, you know, ship battles as well once you defeat the enemy ship. So. So I do enjoy that combat loop and you know, it's not, it's not boring or anything to me. So I can, you know, I could deal with the, with the whole pirate theme here because it is actually pretty fun and you get to explore the, you know, the seven seas and they have different areas that you can go to. So it's not just like one, one big map. There are different, different like sub world that you can go to when you're, when you're out there in the seeds as well. So it's very fun. The combat is very fun. It's pretty much what you, what you are aware of. But since you're a pirate, you, you know, you have different moves. You have, have your sword, you have your, your gun. We even have like some other elements. You know, once you get further in the game, you get different weapons and abilities as well. I'm not going to spoil that. So it's been pretty fun so far. I'm only in Chapter three, but I'm doing like all the combat right now. This big side mission currently. So it's been super fun for me. Pretty much what I am used to. And I would say you Yakuza and rtg, they have another banger on their hands. It's very fun.

[The Black Okagi]

Now coming from the true authority of the Yakuza franchise.

[Yakuza the Don]

Rule authority.

[The Black Okagi]

Oh, I've been a fan. No, as a newbie to the franchise, it's a lot of fun. I think the closest thing I played to this was Fist of the North Star because it's the same company that makes this series. So the combat is similar to Fence of the North Star. So I already know I was gonna like that. I think what impressed me about this game is I find it very rare that a video game is actually funny. I feel like there's a lot of games out there that try to be funny, but they rarely ever make me laugh. I don't know if it's because my standards are a little bit higher or something like that. I don't know. But this one genuinely did make me laugh out loud. I've got 20 hours on the game so far, and I've laughed at a couple different missions. Like. Like, to the point where I was like, all right. Made me set up myself. Like, what the is this goofy ass? Matter of fact, I'm a spoiled one, like, a little bit. It was a side quest. Like, I don't know if you played this one, jg, but there's a mission where you run into a professor in the park and he tries to sell you a headset. Did you do that one?

[Yakuza the Don]

No, but I. I am aware of the person who you are talking to or you referring.

[The Black Okagi]

You're running. You're walking through the park with your friends, and you have a pet tiger. This man pulls up to you, and he's like, hey, I'm working on a headset. He's like, you want to try it out? You're like, sure. So you put the headset on. The headset allows you to talk to animals. So then you proceed to have a conversation with your pet tiger. And the tiger, the conversation turns completely flirtatious. The cat is trying to date you. And right before it starts getting a little freaky, because I was like. It was making. I was like, where the is this game going? The camera cuts, and it turns out that you're not actually talking to the tiger. It's the dude who was selling you the headset. He's, like, hiding behind a tree, and he's talking in a walkie talkie talk. So this motherfucker's being freaky and pretending to be a cat or whatever. I was like, this game is stupid, bro. I was like, all right, this is pretty funny. And there's a bunch of missions like that that I've played. So I was like. It has, like, a certain charm to it that I think a lot of games don't have. Kind of like that Conker's Bad Fur day type. And then I also like that there's a wide variety of gameplay. It's not just. The combat's really fun as well. Like, the. The pirating is very intuitive. I think it's better than Skull, and I think they have, like, a Crazy taxi mode in there where you gotta deliver UberEats type. It was pretty fun. You get to do like tricks and stuff like that. Just a lot of content. If you want something that's like a silly RPG that you could dive into and you don't have to commit too much brain power. You just want to have fun. This is just an old school silly, fun rpg. Am I gonna go back and play every other goddamn Yakuza? No. But I will be more open minded in the future if I see one that genuinely interests me, maybe I'll try it. Because there's too many damn games in the franchise and we all old. I don't have time to go back and play every single one.

[Yakuza the Don]

Yeah, I still want you to play Judgment though. Like I said, I, you know, I got ethos on that. I want you to play Judgment very badly, bro. It's dubbed bro.

[The Black Okagi]

Remind me why I should play Judgment again.

[Yakuza the Don]

It's. It's great. It's a. It's an amazing. It's. I mean it's the same type of combat, same type of beat emote combat, but it's in. It's an investigator type of, type of, of situation. Like the stories in at a very deep like one and two, like. And I, I was like at the edge of my seat, you know, figuring out like what the, what the true crimes were of those games. So I think you enjoy if you like those, like those thriller type of situations because you're, you're really investing games like on some, on some Batman or, or La Noir type stuff. But you have like beat him up combat.

[The Black Okagi]

Okay, okay. Okay. I might have to get that. Is that on stand?

[Yakuza the Don]

I believe it is now. Yeah. I think one. I think just in a lot of our own scene now. Yeah.

[The Black Okagi]

Gotta add that to the Steam wish list to get it for 10 bucks on a Steam sale.

[Yakuza the Don]

Yeah. Before we go, you speaking of side missions, it was one side mission. I don't know if you got to it yet where you. You were trying to help one of your crewmates meet some girls. Some specific girls. The pop star one, The Monado girls.

[The Black Okagi]

Yeah, that one was funny too. That one was funny too.

[Yakuza the Don]

What the girl said. Who tried to. Who tried to set you up. Up. Yeah, she like looked at the camera. She was like, she was like. She was like. I don't like when she was like when the developers, when the developers puts all this time and you know, hard, hard sweating and tears into the game and then you just skip past the cutscenes and she looked directed at the camera. I said, oh, rtt.

[The Black Okagi]

Y'all are slick.

[Yakuza the Don]

Y'all do that in there. I was like. Because, you know, other people, like, tba love skipping. I'm like, no, you need. You need to look.

[The Black Okagi]

I don't be skipping through cut scenes. What?

[Ethos]

Roll the clip. Roll it.

[The Black Okagi]

That is boring. That is boring. We're not gonna take it from the guy who didn't watch the archangel cutscene in Mass Effect 2. Stand up, my Mass Effect brother.

[Ethos]

I mean, he do got a point there. Jg. You.

[The Black Okagi]

You.

[Ethos]

That was. That was such a.

[The Black Okagi]

When I'm. When I'm genuinely interested in a game, I sit there and I pay attention, but some of these games just be boring, right? And. But the gameplay is fire.

[Ethos]

I'm a gameplay.

[The Black Okagi]

You said.

[Ethos]

What was the last game? You sat there and paid attention.

[The Black Okagi]

I'm paying. I'm paying attention to this game. I just described a whole mission to you in Pirate Yakuza. Nice try, buddy. Nice.

[Ethos]

That's not you.

[The Black Okagi]

I'm paying attention to split fiction. I know what's going on in that story.

[Yakuza the Don]

That was hilarious. They just ain't podcast. We even got to go back.

[The Black Okagi]

Nice try, buddy. Nice. Nice try. Anyway, I found it.

[Yakuza the Don]

I found that to be absolutely hilarious. But I'm. I'm glad, though, you know, shout out to UTBH for actually giving this a try. I don't know why the one about butt pirates were the one that got you in here, but, you know, whatever. We're here, bro. At least you like it.

[Ethos]

He hates pirates.

[Yakuza the Don]

Exactly. I was like, why did you like.

[The Black Okagi]

Cuz I was trying to figure out what the. Is the Yakuza doing fighting.

[Ethos]

Just uploaded a bunch of tik toks and stuff. Talking about talking a bunch of pirates too. That was crazy.

[The Black Okagi]

Crazy. I was like, what is. What does the Yakuza have to do with the pirates? And now. Now I'm playing the game, I'm finding out absolutely nothing. I was like, how can be the game? The game has every jrpg.

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

They just wanted to make a pirate game.

[The Black Okagi]

You literally start off washing ashore with no memory. I'm like, I've played this game before. Like, okay, how convenient. You have no memory. All right. But it's cool. It's cool. I. I wouldn't be surprised. Like, I'm enjoying it enough to where, like, I think I'll. I don't know when I'm gonna finish it because, like, it's like my personal game I've been playing off stream. Like, I'll put an hour here and there when I Before I pass out before bed. But I wouldn't be surprised if it creeps into, like, the lower top 10 of my games. We gotta see what other games come out this year. But, like, I could see it being, like, in an eight or a nine spot. Like, it's good. I would recommend the game. I would recommend the game.

[Yakuza the Don]

That's what's up.

[The Black Okagi]

That's what's up. But yeah, that's Pirate Yakuza, guys. That is pirate Yakuza. What else? Moving on to the next topic before we get into the news, because I think I'm the. Am I the only one that plays Split Gate too? Yeah, yeah, it's fine. I, I, I wasn't even that interested in it. Somebody asked me to play, I was like, sure, why not talk about it on podcast? I didn't even think if anybody played it. But the split gate 2 beta came out. It's the follow up to Split Gate, which is Halo, but you can put portals in the wall and move around. It was a really good game until Halo and free to play and you guys decided to ditch it. But the sequel for the beta.

[Yakuza the Don]

You.

[The Black Okagi]

Guys switched up real quick. If you like the first game, you'll like this game. It's much smoother. The visuals are better. New weapons. I will say, I don't like the character designs. They're kind of a little too simple. Just like generic alien suits. I think they need to really work on that, especially in this economy where people like fancy skins and stuff like that. But the gameplay is smoother. It's faster than ever. If you like the first one, I feel like you're gonna like this one. I don't feel like it's doing that much different. It just feels, it's hard to explain. It just feels crisper. It feels smoother. And it's still very satisfying to make plays where you put a portal on a wall and then get behind the enemy, kill them, and then, like, dip out like it does. Reward people who, who think about their flanks and stuff like that. I think they said the game is supposed to come out later in 2025, so if you didn't get a chance to play the beta, you'll get a chance when the full game drops. But it was cool. I, I find as I get older, I'm enjoying more of these games where I could just hop on and play a couple matches and get off, because Lord knows I'd be tired all the goddamn time. I think there's space for it. I think people just got to be willing to Give it a chance. And don't. Don't pull a. Oh, Halo is free. Let me go try this out and ditch it.

[Ethos]

And I quote, halo is back, baby.

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

Yo, we're excited.

[The Black Okagi]

I remember when that. That announcement came out because, like, everybody was on Splitgate. I remember we were still working at G4, and I was literally standing right next boy. He was like, holy. He's like, what? Tbs? Check your phone. He damn near threw his phone. He's like, halo just dropped it. It's free to play. He had a video to shoot this, man. He said that I'm going to play Halo at my desk. He was so dramatic. Shout out to golden boy. He was so dramatic about. I don't even play Halo no more.

[Yakuza the Don]

Like, driving home from work.

[Ethos]

I said.

[Yakuza the Don]

I said, holy. I said, no. It came out right now. No, I ran.

[Ethos]

You tell me if you didn't randomly wake up one day and it was like, here's Mass Effect demo, you wouldn't just immediately be like, whatever the. I'm doing.

[The Black Okagi]

That was his game. Yeah, I feel like. You'll like it, though. You'll like it.

[Yakuza the Don]

Yeah, no, I. I. Like I said it. I mean, it's a good departure from Call of Duty. And, like, I don't know what happened with me and Halo Infinite. I think it was just the content, so. The lack of content thereof. So, yeah, I mean, when I looked at split K2, I, like, know what. This actually looks all right. Like, with the, you know, the classes are, you know, a little bit different from what we're used to, but I think I could, you know, get used to that. You know, that changed the gameplay. I'll try it out.

[The Black Okagi]

So that's my quick thoughts on it. Keep an eye on the game. Before we get into the news, I got some quickies just because, like, I don't know if there's really a lot to dig too deep into this. I'm just gonna bring this stuff up real quick, and y'all can chime in if you want to. New Tony Hawk remaster. Tony hawk Pro Skater 3 and 4 will be released. Do we care? Do we care? Anybody care?

[Yakuza the Don]

Apparently all everybody wants Thug. You know, nobody likes Tony Hawk. Thps. Everybody wants Thug. So, yeah, I mean, I'm cool with it. I. I like what they're doing, but I just don't know how many people are going to play. But I feel like it's more of a nostalgia hit for everyone at this point, so. But like I said, y'all. Y'all say y'all want Thugs So yeah, y'all really want the nostalgia. And y'all, you like that better.

[The Black Okagi]

I think my issue with Tony Hawk 3 and 4 is I wish they would have released 1, 2, 3 and 4 as a bundle just because like. And some people disagree. Me, when I said this on stream, it pissed them off. But I was like, I've literally played every Tony Hawk from one all the way up to project eight. I believe that was on the 360. I was a big Tony Hawk dude. And from one to four, the game doesn't change that much in my opinion. From the biggest change was from 1 to 2. But from 2 to 3 and 4, once they introduced the manual mechanic to continue your. Your combo, I didn't feel like the game evolved that much versus when thug and 1 and 2 came out and they implemented the story and all that wacky in that and being able to get off the board. So that's why me personally, I'm like, you know, if it was on sale maybe I'd try it, but I don't need it day one. But the good news is it's coming out on game pass. So I mean you could try it for free and it's dropping in July. Any, any thoughts, Ethos? Watts?

[Ethos]

I don't play it.

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

No, I don't play either.

[The Black Okagi]

Okay.

[Ethos]

I played it like over a friend's house, but not that crazy about it.

[The Black Okagi]

We got some positive news. Call of duty 2026 is ditching the PS4 in the last Xbox.

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

Yeah, finally.

[The Black Okagi]

Developers are finally giving up on the almost 15 year old consoles.

[Yakuza the Don]

I know you're happy about that.

[The Black Okagi]

Tired of the PS4 nation, man. I read 90. There's 97 million daily active users on the P. Get off that, man. I'm tired of y'all playing, I don't.

[Yakuza the Don]

Know, GTA still Minecraft, Fortnite, still these.

[The Black Okagi]

Be on social media talking about the games don't look different. You're on a 15 year old console. That's why it doesn't look any different. Jesus, man, it is annoying.

[Yakuza the Don]

Yeah, like I said, some people just don't have the authority to speak about things like just, just, just don't give us your opinion, please. And we're, we're past that, bro. We're. We're in a new generation. You're still in the past complaining about graphics and the way that something plays.

[The Black Okagi]

How did BG3 beat Spider Man 2? How would you know? You're on PS4. Like what are we talking about, man? These numbers. That's why I constantly bringing these Numbers up. And I'm gonna keep doing that to expose y'all. Last but not least, Fable was delayed till 2026, so anybody was looking forward to it. It was supposed to come out this year. The reboot of the franchise. They also released some gameplay. It got released. I don't personally care, because at the end of 2024, and this is before, I think Xbox had announced, like, a bunch of different games. There was, like, 40 games that I wanted to play coming out. So really it's like 45. I think maybe 50 in 2025. I've got enough games to play. I. I don't care. I'm already overwhelmed. And we're only in March. What y'all think, though?

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

The gameplay looked good, though. Like, the. The delay. I'm like, sure. Because as long as you need to take, I don't mind. But the gameplay did actually look good. I. I think the game looked really good, and I think the animation work looked good and combat looked like it's gonna be fun because that's kind of my big thing with Fable. I never really got super into Fable, but the way that this one is looking, looks like I could have fun with this one.

[Ethos]

I'm a super Fable head, so I'm excited. It looks cool.

[The Black Okagi]

I'd never played Fable. This would be my first one, so I'm excited about it.

[Ethos]

What?

[Yakuza the Don]

Me neither.

[The Black Okagi]

Hold on.

[Ethos]

I thought you played Fable 2 back in the day. You didn't play one Fable?

[The Black Okagi]

I've never played Fable. I was a Gears head.

[Ethos]

Oh, you were a shooter, bro. Okay, I understand.

[The Black Okagi]

Yeah, I had. I. I still have my original copies of mass effect on 360. Don't play me.

[Ethos]

I'll pull them out right now.

[The Black Okagi]

They're in the closet. They're in the closet somewhere. I got Blue Dragon. I got Deep Cuts. I got games that you don't have.

[Ethos]

I don't know about that. I don't know. I can pull out some PS2 games, right?

[The Black Okagi]

I think that's the go band for band. We could. I think that is the one hardcore 360 game I just missed out on. I just never got around to playing favor. I'm not saying it was bad or nothing. Like, I just. For some reason I never got around to playing was.

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

It's one of those games.

[Ethos]

It was cool.

[Yakuza the Don]

It was cool.

[Ethos]

It was like a cool rpg. It wasn't nothing too crazy. Nothing like. Like a Fallout or. I'm trying to think what RPG RPGs were, like, crazy back then. I wouldn't say it's like crazy. Like, Mass Effect was like, from an RPG perspective, but it was cool. I like the story. I really like Fable 2. Fable 3 was. Well, we don't talk about Fable 3.

[The Black Okagi]

You think it'll be. You think Fable 2026 will be a day one on PS5?

[Yakuza the Don]

Day one on PS5?

[Ethos]

I don't think day one. I think it'll be on PS5. I don't.

[The Black Okagi]

I don't.

[Ethos]

I don't know right now.

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

I don't know anymore because they kind of seems like Xbox really is just like, yeah.

[Yakuza the Don]

Anything that's PS5.

[The Black Okagi]

Anything. Anything is possible.

[Ethos]

Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. Maybe they're just gonna do the whole Sony thing where they wait like a couple. Like a couple months, I guess.

[Yakuza the Don]

Yeah.

[Ethos]

Maybe we wait on for like six months or a year on Xbox and then we should put it to PS5. I'll.

[The Black Okagi]

I could see it happening. I don't think it'll be their day one, but I could see it within like a year being on PS5.

[Yakuza the Don]

Yeah, actually, no, I'm gonna say no. I'm gonna say no because they. They still need to have some value for the game Pass. So, no, I don't think they're going to do that. It'll be delayed.

[The Black Okagi]

Okay, well, that's the quick joints I got for you. Let's move into the meat and potatoes of the news. Since the last podcast, we had a Sony state of the play. And you know, the surprising thing about this February, this late February 2025 State of the play was I've seen a lot of people on social media say that it was ass. And I kind of disagree. But I wanna. I see JG making a face. I want to get everybody's take on it. I got the link to the article with everything that was shown off. Why. Why do you disagree with the statement that a lot of people are saying on social media? That was asked, Jay, what are people.

[Yakuza the Don]

Looking for at this point? Like, I don't. I totally don't understand, like, this. This goes back to what we've been saying. Like, people truly do not play games. Because I think that this ain't. The play was actually really good. I mean, I got only musha. That's all I really cared about. But it was. It was some other stuff. Love here. Like, did I. Did I actually enjoyed. I was like, what are y'all. What are y'all saying that I'm not here? Like, I.

[The Black Okagi]

Again, I don't.

[Yakuza the Don]

I think people are just wanting, like, the. The Jude, bro. Ips. Like, I don't know what it are. People waiting on another Last of Us. People waiting on Uncharted. Are people waiting on another spider Man? I know. People waiting on Wolverine and. And Captain America. But I'm like, if you're. If you're not gonna get that, I don't understand why, like, you're just gonna say it's ass. Again. People just waiting on one game. Actually movie. I think I know what it is. You know what it is? People are still waiting on bloodborne. And if they don't get it, they're going to say that the state of play is ass. That. That's it right there. I'm sorry. I. I just had to think about it. If they're not getting bloodborne, they're going to say his ass.

[The Black Okagi]

So.

[Yakuza the Don]

So we could just disregard everybody's opinions. Who. Who just say it's ass. It's not. It wasn't. It was really good, actually.

[The Black Okagi]

Yeah, you might be right. It might be just them pushing an agenda because I didn't watch it live. But then I looked on Twitter and the whole timeline was just like. Like, that was ass. So then later in the day, when I booted up the stream, I was expecting to just rag on Sony. But when I put up the article, some articles summarizing everything that they showed, I was like, maybe I'm bugging. But I was like, this was like a solid seven, eight to me. I was like, I saw. I saw several, like, maybe five games that I wanted to play, and multiple of them were original ips. So then I said, I was like, yo, chat. Y'all complain about the lack of original ips. They showed. Really cool. Y'all don't want to play them? I'm starting to think, like, do you just want. Want to play Grand Theft? I mean, look, we got Borderlands 4. This Sorrows game. What?

[Yakuza the Don]

No. I don't know about Land 4. Maybe not.

[The Black Okagi]

I don't like Borderlands, but people do. But people do. People do. So I'm gonna count.

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

Franchise sells a lot.

[Yakuza the Don]

I'm going to count.

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

They always sell crazy.

[Ethos]

I'll stand on it. I'll stand on that hill. That last one was booty.

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

I like, I'm not a huge Borderlands fan, but, yeah, that franchise is huge.

[Yakuza the Don]

It's.

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

It's kind of.

[Ethos]

I don't know why, bro. I'll even go further. Not. Yeah, Sonic. Borderlands 2 is overrated.

[The Black Okagi]

Oh, I agree. I agree.

[Ethos]

Well, I don't think that story. That game's writing is as good as people try to make it out to be. I don't think that game's funny. I don't think that game even is remotely. The only thing that did was it innovated looting. That's the only thing I give that game credit for. That's it. But everything else everyone tries to praise that game for. No, I don't. I don't agree with it. I think it's. It is aged like spoiled milk as time has gone on. And if you still think that shit's funny, you're probably 15.

[The Black Okagi]

Well, I was just counting it because I know a lot of people are going to buy it. That's all I was saying.

[Ethos]

But okay, okay.

[The Black Okagi]

If you want to know my personal opinion, I'll take that one out then. I was just giving that.

[Ethos]

Borderland 3 didn't sell that well because it was like an epic exclusive.

[The Black Okagi]

I don't know. I'm just gonna go back to what I like. I like this Sorrows game. Sonic racing, Cross world Split fiction. The Lies of PDLC looked fire. Hell of us looked fire. Some people might disagree, but I like this goofy platformer that Darwin's Paradox. This the Squid game. I liked it. The camera angles is really unique and cool. Tides of Annihilation Bad in combat. I love it. Lost Soul aside, looked good. Oni Musha and the Oni Musha. First of all, there's a new onimusha. It looked fire. Then they had to remaster. JG was wet about that. Freaking. They showed so many cool games. I'm like, did. Did we watch the same thing? I was like, I enjoyed it. So like, what did you do?

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

I was having a blast with this one. Like House Mark having their next game that is essentially Returnal 2 with a new character, a new setting and everything. Like, that's super exciting. Return. It was a banger. Lies of P I've been waiting to hear about Lies of P dlc. Liza P is incredible. And the DLC is a really cool concept of going.

[The Black Okagi]

The art design was fire in the trailer, so good.

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

Art sign was incredible. The bosses look really cool. The new weapons looked really cool. And we're going back in time to when the Puppet Frenzy before it happened. So you're gonna actually see what happened. I think that's pretty cool. Ties of Annihilation everyone's. It's kind of crazy because everyone's been talking about how good this game looks. So to hear people didn't like the state of play is weird because everyone was like the pies of Annihilation. Did you See it? It's so good.

[Ethos]

That's the one with the women. The women were fighting it. Oh yeah, that one was good.

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

Lost soul aside, made by one dude, looks great.

[The Black Okagi]

About Superman, they have a brand new game.

[Ethos]

That one has me excited. The horror game was a directive 80 20. And it's got a homegirl in it. What's her name? The actress. The Black actress choosing 007. I blink on her name.

[The Black Okagi]

I always blink on her name.

[Ethos]

She's very good. I don't know. All you gotta know is she's a good actress. I keep blinking.

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

All right. Dave the diver is doing a collab with Yakuza.

[The Black Okagi]

Yeah, I'm watching this trailer back for Tides of Annihilation. The visuals are. This looks like it's pushing PS4 hardware to like limits. Thank God, because I'm tired of these PS4 games.

[Ethos]

On this article I go to the comments and the top thing I see immediately is Sony is falling from grace.

[The Black Okagi]

And I told you. You think I'm making this up.

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

I saw it. I saw it on Twitter.

[Yakuza the Don]

This is rage. Rage.

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

What are you talking about?

[Ethos]

40 plus minutes I've seen in a long time. There's no need for a state of play. I'm genuinely.

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

That was so.

[Ethos]

What a way to end it on a non gameplay trailer. I'm disappointed in Sony. I feel like since Xbox become third party, they're gonna care less and less of doing stuff.

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

Too. I'm excited for Hell is Us as well.

[Yakuza the Don]

A lot of original IP people don't like original ip. They just want the same stuff over and over. Regurgitated. And it's a shame.

[The Black Okagi]

Me, I'll give you. I'll give you another example. Frag punk. Maybe we'll talk about it next stream if everybody can find time to play it. It's a new free to play shooter from published by NetEase. Me and Siggy been bigging this game up because we got to play the beta. A tick tock had came across my for you page last night and the the content creator was like, yo, this game wasn't on my radar but I recently started playing it. He's like, this is gas. The whole comment section is just like, nah, this shit's trash. Don't nobody want to play this Another hero shooter. And like I can't help but wonder, has this tide of new content creators who have who just basically bash everything, call everything woke everything's trash. Has it seeped into the everyday person? And now we've reached this point where like it seems like everybody's Just hoping everything fails versus just criticizing does seem like that. Yeah.

[Ethos]

I think it's just a society thing, too. I think it's like, as a society, I think a lot of things have changed in the past, like, 20 years. Like, I think people are just overall, because of the Internet age. I think these people have just gotten way more negative about everything, just in general.

[Yakuza the Don]

Yeah.

[Ethos]

Not much you can do about it.

[Yakuza the Don]

You know, the only things I didn't like about this was I. I could have done without the days going remaster. I've already played the game. It wasn't. It was. It was only hard drive.

[Ethos]

I get that. Because, like, that maybe that's what maybe makes you think this. It's trash. It's like, you dare. Like, that's like a spit in the face. It's like, you know, the number one thing that people are asking about is bloodborne. Like, they wanted something for it. Right. And you got the nerve to go out there with arguably, I'd say one of the most. I wouldn't say, like, terrible PlayStation exclusives, but the one that's like, kind of like, was kind of like, it was all right. And be like, we're gonna remaster this because we already did it. We already brought it to PS5, but now we're gonna remaster that. And it's just, I guess, like, and that, like, of all of. It's like, I guess that's what feels like a smack to the face. But it feels like, you know, they're gonna do that. That, and then probably next year they're gonna announce God of War is gonna get a remasters or God of War 2 is gonna get remastered. Like, yeah, I don't know.

[Yakuza the Don]

It's uneated. It's unneeded. And I had some people when I was like, days ago remaster, like, pass. And then some people comments, and they were like, oh, no, you should try it out. You should try it out. I was like, you must not know me. I was like, I already played the game. First of all, I streamed the game, and it wasn't anything to talk about. Like, I only beat it because I was already into it. Like, I was already, like, halfway in. So, like, all right, I might as well beat the game. But it. It was nothing exciting at all. I was like, damn, is there. Is it, like a little group of Days Gone fans out here that I.

[The Black Okagi]

Don'T know, like, y.

[Yakuza the Don]

The shadows? I don't understand. This is. I don't like that. If this a game that y'all really enjoy, then I. I'M probably going to be questioning your video game taste, because this is. This is interesting, but I was like, you already beat the game. I was like, I don't need this.

[The Black Okagi]

I've noticed the. The narrative around that game has shifted since it first came out. Like, remember how. Remember how everybody was like, anthem is trash? And then, like, five years later, we're seeing those YouTube videos. Was Anthem really that bad? It's kind of the same thing with Days Gone. And I think the reason being is the people who are playing it now. And this is why I gotta remaster the people who are playing it now versus when it first came out. It's a different game because they patched it and they fixed it. I. I have a. That game gave me a bad taste in my mouth because not only did I think it was a generic zombie shooter with an uninteresting protagonist, but within the first hour, I fell through the map three times. So I honestly, I was like, I'm not playing this game. And a lot of people had those same issues. So I think because they fixed the game, some people have a more fond memory of the game who've more recently played it.

[Yakuza the Don]

And that's why that still doesn't change the story. It still doesn't change the overall gameplay. Like I said, it wasn't a bad game. It just wasn't inspiring. It did not push the needle. You know, it was an original ip, but again, you had some of the same element. Yeah, like, it's. It just wasn't. Like I said, it's okay. I'm not gonna be mad at people liking it. But like I said, it's just. I already played in Beat it, so why do I need a remaster? That's all I was saying.

[The Black Okagi]

But seeing that one thing you didn't like is still not enough for me to be like, yo, this was trash. Like, I saw. Exactly.

[Yakuza the Don]

Oh, I liked it. And the other thing. Oh, my God. WWE 2K25, right?

[Ethos]

I just checked the fantasy draft. It got 85 review score.

[The Black Okagi]

They don't. WWE fans, y'all don't know what y'all in for. Please do not indulge in that.

[Ethos]

They're gonna ruin it.

[The Black Okagi]

You guys are gonna ruin your franchise if you buy that vc, man.

[Yakuza the Don]

Oh, man. I was like, two K games. Y'all were out of y'all minds. Like, really? Y'all had the. You had the nerve to put this into WWE after the 2K fans have been dealing with this for years, man. GG's, bro, y'all are cooked.

[The Black Okagi]

So. So they like it. I might around and buy 2k stocks. If y'all gonna keep spending money on this VC, I might as well get some money off y'all, dumbass.

[Yakuza the Don]

And I say people saying the same stuff. They're like, well, you don't have to play the island. I'm like, again, that's not the point. But if you. You can go ahead, bro. You just do whatever you want. You know, I. I get this only wrestling game out besides that Aw game, which it kind of came and went, but I like wwe, the only thing that y'all got. So go for it. It's the same thing. Yeah. Like, 2K is just monopolizing the sports market. The only basketball game, the only. The only wrestling game. So y'all are just doing this crap. Crap. And y'all are just. Y'all just finessing the system and people are just gonna keep buying it. And then they're gonna eventually start playing those other modes and they're going to be spending a vc. So it's going to be the same cycle. Now they're going to be getting double the profit. The 2K and now the wrestling. Go for it.

[The Black Okagi]

I am genuinely curious for people who are watching the video version on YouTube, I want to see some feedback in the comment section if you felt like this state of play was not good at all. I'm curious to see, like. Like, why? Like, because, like, I did see a lot of people, like, say, just this is ass. Like, I want people to explain, like, what exactly are you looking from? From PlayStation? Do you just want more God of War and maybe like, bloodborne, like JG said? Because for me, I. When you. When new consoles drop, I'm excited about new IPS and new legacies being created. But maybe that's not, you know, maybe we're not in tune with what people want. I don't know.

[Yakuza the Don]

I wish that people can articulate this out. Please prove me wrong comment section. If you answer that question. Question. Prove me wrong. Because people cannot articulate themselves. Like I said, we're still in this. In this age where people are just saying anything that they don't like is ass and they cannot explain themselves.

[Ethos]

But I'll say I did. Pogger out when they showed Digimon, I was excited for that.

[Yakuza the Don]

I knew it. I knew.

[Ethos]

I was so excited. If you guys haven't played the. The Digimon story, like, if you guys, like, like RPGs, JRPGs, or like Persona or, you know, Refantazio, actually, like, like, I think it's a Very niche game. I think a lot of people have slept on, but it's actually really good. The series that they've done so far for it. The new one looks cool.

[The Black Okagi]

So that was the Sony state of the play. Give us some feedback in the comments section. Another major what's the name event that happened since last pod was the Pokemon. Was it the they call the Pokemon director Pokemon Presents. We got new info on all things Pokemon and there were two major takeaways from this. There was a new game that was announced called Pokemon Champions and then we got some new game. Well, not his new game but some new gameplay for Pokemon. ZA It's Z A but we calling it ZA because that's what we're smoking. Pokemon Champions is a game that's coming to the switch in mobile, I believe it looks like from the trailer it's what was the game on 64? Pokemon Coliseum or stadium? Stadium. Stadium. It looks like stadium but it's also going to be on mobile. And when I saw that I was a little concerned because I'm like, like might be in some microtransactions out the woo. But how we feeling about this one? As, as Pokemon fans we like this, this Pokemon Champions.

[Yakuza the Don]

Really Anybody probably the only one who still played Pokemon. So a little bit I was different.

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

To Pokemon as a kid but. And I, I just haven't kept up with it man. Haven't kept up with it after what was it?

[Yakuza the Don]

Sapphire and Ruby, I was kind of checked out.

[The Black Okagi]

Well, water beats fire.

[Ethos]

I only played sword and shield because Siggy and Steve and we bladed during the, because there's nothing to do with the pandemic so we, we had to play some but I, I kind of like, I kind of clocked out after like Gen 4. I, I, I know that the championship's probably not for me because it's, it's from what I've seen from like some content creators talking about it and Pokemon people, they seem to be, it seems to be focused on targeting the competitive audience. So the ones who play like the Pokemon competitively, it's about giving them their own platform where that's all it's about. It's just grinding stuff. Just, just grinding competitive like fighting game type of vibe of playing Pokemon, you know, PvP competitively. So that's not at all my wheelhouse. I don't like doing that. I've never looked at Pokemon as competitive so I, I just don't care about that game at all. But yeah, it does. I feel like it will be, it'll be massive to Pokemon because there's definitely a big community for that and it'll be probably on par with when Yu Gi oh got. When they got their Master Duel, you know, game like digital version and how that massively moved a lot of their competitive people to play on that. It's probably the similar thing.

[The Black Okagi]

Yeah, I'm personally not interested in it because yeah, I'm not into competitive Pokemon either. But I predict if the gameplay is solid, Game Freak is going to print money because it's gonna. It's gonna be on the switch in iOS and Android. But I feel like their focus is going to be iOS and, and they're gonna print money because there's gonna be. Especially if it lets you create your own like Battler. If they just put up make a store where you can buy different types of clothes and trinkets and stuff like that, people are gonna eat that up to be able to customize and you know, self express yourself online while you battle. But I'm not really interested in that game. They did show off Pokemon Za. This one was a little bit more interesting to me. I'm kind of like with Ethos. I, I checked out like four games ago because like I've been playing Pokemon since Red and Blue and in my opinion it just didn't evolve enough for me to keep being engaged with the franchise, especially for the amount of output that they had. So like I always kind of kept my eye on it. But RCS was the first one that kind of caught my attention, but I still didn't dive back in. But this one might get me back just because I think, I think the whole Paris thing that they're doing, going to. Going to Europe with this one. But like the combat is different. Being able to move around and having more control over the battle. It looks like it's going to have more depth to the combat that. But it's kind of hard to gauge from the footage how much control you have over things. I see. I hear you saying something. What did you think, Watts?

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

No, I think this one is definitely doing something different, which is good to see because like you said, I think the formula and the formula has been, has been real solid for a long time, but the formula has stayed the same. So there hasn't been. Unless you're a big Pokemon fan, it feels like there hasn't been a reason to hop in and see what's going on. But seeing the, the fact that you can move around and they are trying something different definitely makes me want to give it a try and see how that feels.

[The Black Okagi]

I will say, watching this trailer back a second time, that I didn't spot the first time. I don't know if it's because we're on the IGN website, but this frame rate is dropping. I hope.

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

I mean, I would not be surprised.

[The Black Okagi]

If a Pokemon game is mad. I didn't notice that before. It's dropping pretty bad.

[Ethos]

Like, those last two games ran like, doo doo.

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

Yeah, real bad.

[Ethos]

Their last game got like. I think Pokemon usually scores pretty good. That game review scores sunk, like, really harsh because the performance was abysmal on a Switch. Like, Pokemon is the thing where it's like a lot of it that people feel like it's dev. It's a lot of, like, dev. I don't want to call it laziness, but a lot of people feel that, like, the series in general has been very lazy, easy. And like, issues that happen in Pokemon using as a code structure, they've been keeping it. And so the same bugs that happen in Pokemon Go are still found in games 2 years in the future. It almost feels like 2k at this point where it's like. Except it's longer. It's taking them longer to make it. It's not like yearly releases, but it feels like that. The same effect where it's like, I feel like I'm playing a new coat of paint on what I already played the last time you guys dropped.

[Yakuza the Don]

So, yeah, you remember the last game that came out and like, the meme started when it was when people started playing on the Steam deck. Now the Steam deck, it was like, oh, I could play this game better. Yeah.

[Ethos]

That's why Nintendo went after. That's why Nintendo went after that emulator fast.

[The Black Okagi]

They were mad.

[Yakuza the Don]

Yeah, they were pissed.

[Ethos]

We're mad about that. But I. I think it's gonna be based on what they're showing. I feel like it's. It's a launch title for the Switch too. Performance wise, they probably are gonna be like, hey, it's probably gonna run like dog crap on the Switch. But they're probably gonna be making this.

[The Black Okagi]

Article saying, Nintendo Switch late 2025. I hope it is a Switch. I don't want to play this on the Sweet. I'd rather wait for the Switch 2.

[Ethos]

Version, which is coming out this fall. I'm pretty sure.

[Yakuza the Don]

I'm pretty sure they haven't announced a day yet.

[Ethos]

But yeah, so it's probably coming out holiday 2025, which means that game will be ready for it. And God help us all, because we know them boys about to be 700, 800 a pop.

[The Black Okagi]

Yep. They already said terrors, baby. They making plans for the terrorists. They said it will affect things, so that'll be fun. Is. Is this Pokemon TCG Pocket? Is this the game you be playing.

[Ethos]

Ethos on my phone? Yeah. Sometimes I don't play as much, but Steve plays it a lot.

[The Black Okagi]

I. I didn't know that they had this digital. What are these? NFTs or some. What is this?

[Ethos]

No, it's just the feeling of like, Pokemon, like, card game, where it's like card game. Just open free packs, you get cool cars and you can battle people. That's. That's Larry. It's just. It's very fast. It's simple. It's like one of those things where it's like, oh, I gotta burn 10 minutes waiting for something. I'll pull it out and just, you know, pull some packs and get some cool shiny Pokemon cards. That's about it.

[The Black Okagi]

Get off that. They already wiling in real life with the cards. I see they out there scalping and stuff now. Y'all doing it digitally.

[Yakuza the Don]

Yeah, yeah, right. Going to Costco. And they're like, oh, you could only get so many packs per customer. I was like, ready? Wait. Now it's crazy.

[The Black Okagi]

They also announced some Pokemon, more Pokemon Unite content. I didn't know people were still playing that game. But hey, more power to y'all. But I think the big takeaways from that was the Champions and the. The Za. Those look like decent entries into Pokemon. Freaking. Let's move over to some. That was some exciting news. Let's move over to some depressing news. Warner Bros. Wonder Woman. It's been canceled.

[Yakuza the Don]

Yep.

[The Black Okagi]

Warner Bros. Has been strapped for cash because for those unaware, they've released dud after dud. In terms of games outside of Hogwarts legacy, most of their games have been failures in the last five years. A lot of their movies are flopping as well because it's not just games. And the president of Warner Bro Games actually stepped down because of it. And now they are cutting studios. And one of the studios that got up was Monolith and Wonder Woman got shut down. And I think a lot of people are hurt because we never got to see this game. I think a lot of us were looking, looking forward to it because there's never actually been a proper Wonder Woman game. But I think more so a lot of us are hurt too is because they said that they are not releasing, they are not leasing that Nemesis system. And I checked, that patent does not expire for 2036.

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

Oh, my Lord.

[The Black Okagi]

Which is funny in itself, because Warner Bros. Is hurting for cash. I'm like, maybe you guys should lease out the Nemesis system so we can re up on the money. They said, no, we holding that joint, bruh.

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

Or make a game using the system you guys made and not just, like, canceling things and doing Suicide Squad.

[Yakuza the Don]

These guys stink.

[The Black Okagi]

Yeah.

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

Yeah, they do stink. I hate them.

[The Black Okagi]

Not just Suicide Squad. Multiverses. Gotham Knights. I feel like, oh, Mortal Kombat 1. I don't care what nobody says that was a flop. They have fat flop after flop. Boy. How are we feeling about this, Jay? No, Wonder Woman, I saw you roll your eyes.

[Yakuza the Don]

I mean, like I said, I remember when Wonder Woman first got announced. I was like, it's cool because it's Monolith, but I don't think anybody was necessarily asking for it. This game has been like. Like in development, out of development. We have no clue what's going on. All of a sudden, they come back, say that, oh, like, we literally just saw the news, like, a. Like a month or so before this news got announced. They're like, oh, they're working on it again. We were like, what? Like, we haven't heard. I think we talked about it, too. Like, we haven't heard about anything about this game in forever. Then all of a sudden you say, oh, y'all are still working on it. And. And then this news comes out that not only y'all are shutting down the entire studio Monolith. Not just. Not just canceling this video. Video game, but then play a player first game, which y'all just came back with. Multiverses. Now that's getting canned again. Now y'all have a. A closing. A sunsetting date for that. And WB San Diego, bro. I have been commenting and talking about Warner brothers All of 2024, it felt like. And none of the news was positive. Literally, none of the news was positive last year. And now 2025 comes. And now we get to this point where you're shutting down Warner Brothers Games Studios. Warner Brothers. What the hell are y'all doing over there? Like, please, when is it going to get to a point where the CEOs and the execs are the ones that should be held accountable? Because you cannot tell me that all of these studios, you know, whether it's in the video game area or the movie area, max, and all of that, that all of these studios are just making terrible projects that are not making y'all any problems, profit. You cannot tell me that Warner Brothers, y'all Have a lot of IPS on the y'all belt. Make something shake. This is kind of ridiculous that, like, whatever the execs are doing, David Zaslav, like, he is just a terrible CEO. One of, like, literally one of the worst CEOs I've ever seen at any company. Like, it's been. It's been really, really bad. So when you get to a point where it's like, bro, you are terrible at your job and you should go, like, do that before the entire WB franchise goals goes down the crapper. Because y'all are at this point now, y'all cancel so many movies now. Y'all canceling not only Game, but you're canceling Studios now with awb. This is. This is absolutely ridiculous. Like, I don't want it to get to this point, but at Some point, the CEOs and the execs have to be held accountable because this is just. This is absolutely insane.

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

It's awful. Yeah. And, like, every time one of these studios closes especially, or like, a ton of people let go. So you're getting rid of a team who has been working together for a while. They know how the system works. They know how all of the engines work. They know how the workflow works. And as you keep just, like, getting rid of people, you're spreading the talent out and they have to start all over again. Learning something new, probably. I mean, that's why everyone's going over to Unreal Engine 5, because it's like, we can't keep people in our company long enough to teach them how to use our engine. So let's just do Unreal Engine 5 so that we can hire people who know how to work that engine. And yeah, totally. What, what JG said, it's the whole point of being a CEO. Like, the reason you make millions of dollars is because it is supposed to be you putting yourself on the line. If something goes wrong, you're the one that it falls down to. And it has not been like that this entire time. With all of this, it's always just some dude who's working in the art department or something who ends up losing his job. And you're also going to be losing a lot of talent in the gaming industry in general because they're not going to see it as a job that's stable for them. And the way that they get treated by these companies a lot of the time is they don't even know that they've lost a job until they go into the building and their card doesn't work. Or their email login doesn't work. So it's going to be a lot of talented people who also just leave the industry in general. And it makes me really sad. And I especially with Warner Bros. With the Nemesis system. It is such a cool system and they are doing absolutely nothing with it at all. And I do not get it. Like you said, why don't they license it out? Like so many games want to use that system. Why would you not do that? It doesn't make any sense. I hate it.

[The Black Okagi]

I think this is the classic case of CEO suits not understanding art. The classic clash between art and business. Because. What do you mean? I think what happened is they probably just assumed because I mean, if you think about it, all their games outside of Mortal Kombat were licensed titles. They're all like DC superhero stuff and they all flopped besides Hogwarts Legacy. So it's like they probably just assumed, oh, we got the Flash, we got Wonder Woman, Superman. Like, oh, this is about to cook. Not realizing you need the right team behind those ideas and you have to execute it correctly. And ended up being a show. And like, like on top of that, a lot of their movies aren't doing good. They are praying and hoping. James Gunn is their savior. And until he drops that movie, seeing his believing. For me. What you think, though, Ethos.

[Ethos]

It'S World War, World War wb, them, the executives, the CEO, all the people that had to make those calls to that decided that you were gonna get rid of Monolith. You. And I pray to God that all those developers make it into some brand new studio or they. They're able to hopefully boot up a new studio and work together. Still, Monolith has a history of dropping some of the greatest games ever. They literally innovated the industry multiple times in a row. They've dropped consistent bangers. They were on the forefront of everything from, I think creating like one of the first ever, like games that had a woman as the lead in like a video game. They've done like with what is it? No One Lives Forever, something like that on Back in the day, like a shooter. Like, they've done so much stuff and it's. It's disappointing to me that on top of this, which is crazy, they were working on another game that we don't even know what it was. That game got canceled before they were on Wonder Woman. So they haven't just been sitting around diddling around doing nothing since they finished Shadow War. They were working on a new IP and the CEO told them, no, I want you to work on a license. A license game. So now you're gonna work on Wonder Woman. And even with that, like I saw. I think you saw the leak of like what Wonder Woman was potentially gonna have. The devs leaked and we're like, we. They had like a nemesis system and she was gonna. But it was reversed. Like you would gain allies.

[The Black Okagi]

I seen developers tweeting about it open world.

[Ethos]

Like, yeah, they said like we had some really like don't believe what you know. Some people were trying to tell them that like we didn't have anything or everything was lost.

[The Black Okagi]

They said no, it was actually good.

[Ethos]

It was good. It was. They said the CEOs were the, the executive branch was basically C branch suites where they, they need to make cuts basically higher. The people high up in WB said you got to make cuts to the gameplay, the video game division. And just on paper, not the actual reality of things just physically. When you look at just the numbers, Monolith looks like a money sink because they canceled. One of the first games got canceled by the CEO and then they got them into Wonder Woman. Wonder Woman wasn't ready. So it's like. And they rebooted it so they're like, okay, well there's nothing coming out of this studio. Can them. So that's why they got. That's why they got got. Which I think is terrible. I, I hate that a lot of these CEOs, they base all their decisions off of just seeing a bunch of numbers. They don't think of like what Watts saying, the talent, the people involved, the, the, the people behind the games, they just see a bunch of ones and zeros. And every single time when they look at the one zeros, they make the most stupid fucking decisions ever. That's just about a short term and they end up screwing their long end. So yeah, them. I'm glad the CEO got fired. I hope they put a CEO in there that actually knows what the they're doing. And I really feel sorry for all the developers. They don't deserve that. Especially after all the contributions they've done to gaming.

[The Black Okagi]

So yeah, a part of me is hoping that a rogue dev just leaks a build online. You know, I'm pretty sure they got like a level or something done like just.

[Yakuza the Don]

Yeah.

[Ethos]

Just. Just mysteriously ends up on YouTube.

[Yakuza the Don]

Yeah, man, let's go even further. I hope that the former Monolith devs like find a way to keep the code like at that because I don't know, you know, what agreements were in place, but I just want them to Just all band together, make whatever game that they want to make and use the Nemesis System. Wb, what are they going to do? They don't have any money anyways. I just wanted to use the Nemesis System. Yeah, just do it.

[Ethos]

I just want a bunch of developers, indie developers to say, oh, go yourself. It's just like we just all just like simultaneously just add it to a bunch of different games and just say, yeah, sue us all. Sue us all.

[Yakuza the Don]

Yeah.

[Ethos]

Yeah, just. And just play Whoopi Doo in courts with them the entire time being like, oh no, this isn't the Nemesis System. This is my couple system.

[The Black Okagi]

The only problem with that is they do that, they take the code, go make a game with the Nemesis System and then within six months later, James Gunn drops his Superman and it goes crazy in the box office. It gives good reviews, crazy ticket sales. And Warner Bros. Says, wait a minute, we're not broke anymore. You're gonna pay us. We're coming to sue you. James Gunn, make some more movies.

[Yakuza the Don]

At this point, they're not even going to have a gaming division anymore. Like at this point, are you just gonna harp on Harry Potter? Is Harry Potter going to be the only thing that you're gonna make now?

[Ethos]

Wasn't it around a little bit before Harry Potter came out? Wasn't there like a rumor going around that they were were shopping around selling like NetherRealm and like a couple of other like studios to other people? Yeah, that means that they were trying to, you know, reduce their gaming division.

[The Black Okagi]

You know, it's funny too, like, because they said they're working on Hogwarts Legacy too. I don't even feel like that's a guaranteed money print the second game just because like I've. When that game was first coming out, a lot of people were excited because there's a lot of super Harry Potter fans out there. But as time has gone on, I remember I was getting a lot of hate. But more people have come around in my opinion, opinion where I'm not a Harry Potter fan, but the first half of that game was fire. It was very immersive. You were learning things, learning new abilities and stuff like that. But by the time you got to the second half of the game, it was very repetitive. The story fell off. The best mission was a side quest, that Slytherin mission. So like, I've seen a lot of people come around to that same opinion. I don't know if Hogwarts Legacy 2 is a guaranteed hit. If people were kind of feeling like it was okay. I don't know if I need to be there.

[Ethos]

I. I don't think the generic Harry Potter fans who are, like, grew up on it are like, nostalgia wise or, like, I don't think they really care. I think. I think as long as they make for Harry Potter, yeah, they're gonna. They're gonna play it. It's a massive franchise that just. Just like Star wars, right? Like, Battlefront 2 came out to very terrible scores, but it still sold a ton of copies.

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

Right.

[Ethos]

Throughout its lifetime. Yeah. Because it's Star Wars. Like, I think the only Star wars game which I was shocked didn't do it was the Ubisoft one. Because I even. I said on the podcast, I was like, oh, this game's gonna sell regardless.

[Yakuza the Don]

Outlaws.

[Ethos]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

But I thought the game looked okay. Like, when they were in the town and walking through the town and stuff, I was like, that's actually really cool. That looks pretty. Pretty.

[Ethos]

I played. I was like, it's a solid game. It's nothing like crazy blow your mind.

[The Black Okagi]

But I was like, always.

[Ethos]

I was like, you got the job done. And I was just shocked to see that, like, it just underperformed.

[The Black Okagi]

She wasn't cute.

[Yakuza the Don]

I would also. I would also. Going back to Harry Potter thing, I don't. I also don't think that it will have the same. Same backlash that it had, you know, prior to release. I. I know that there may be a small subset that are still on J.K. rollins head, but.

[Ethos]

Oh, no, no, JG, it's it. They revved it back up, man.

[Yakuza the Don]

Did you? Did they? What'd she do now?

[Ethos]

Okay, no, it's not about her. Yeah, it's not her crazy ass. It's all. So you know how they basically announced that they're rebooting the franchise? Right? I think it's like, oh, yeah.

[Yakuza the Don]

What would you put in the chat about Snape?

[The Black Okagi]

Uh, the.

[Yakuza the Don]

The cast.

[Ethos]

Yes, it's named Black.

[Yakuza the Don]

I did see that.

[Ethos]

They are going, it's a crusade, bro. They are going to light that up. Which is crazy to me because it's like, J.K. worley is notoriously terrible at running, writing black people. And like, the black people, they're like, she. She has a terrible track record of that. So obviously she's not the one making these cast calls. I guarant, like, she's probably the one that says, yeah, that's fine, I approve. So she's obviously giving her a thumbs.

[The Black Okagi]

Up of, like, a character that's black.

[Ethos]

They're racist too, because. Oh, no. So you gotta understand, you haven't watched.

[The Black Okagi]

Black people can do magic. They don't know Haitians.

[Ethos]

No, no, no, no. Arguably, I think out of all the characters in this. In the. In the franchise, he's arguably one of the most beloved.

[The Black Okagi]

Because he has a wrong character to turn black.

[Ethos]

Yes, out of all the characters, all the writing. Because it's very easy to. On J.K. rowling's writing, it's very easy. But I will give credit. The one character she did do a very good job with was. Was Severus. Like her, Sever Safe is the most beloved character because he goes through a very cool character arc and there's a really cool plot twist with him. So, like, he's very beloved. And when I saw that he had a black guy do it, I was like, oh, man, this is gonna be. Oh, this is gonna go with the race swappers. Everything. Like, they're gonna lose their minds. Now, granted, J.K. rowling would have approved this cast. And on top of that, at least from my memory, when I read the books as a kid, I don't think even reading as a kid, there's nothing distinctly in the. There's not a lot of stuff in the book that distinctly says, like, oh, this is a white person, or this is like. Like, outside of, like, some of the people were, like. She just describes, like, skin tones. But some of the ways you could interpret Severus is it's plausible. You could. Someone could, like, read it and maybe in their mind, maybe thought while reading it without any context of the movies that maybe, oh, this person could have been black. It could have been a black person. The thing is, it's just like the argument we always say about, like, if a character turns white or if they're black or whatever, is, does their racial identity matter for the backstory? And the answer for Severus is, no, it does not. It. It's gonna be crazy when Harry's father's bullying him for being black and poor. I'm not gonna lie. I'm excited to watch that go off. But it's gonna be a TV show. Apparently, HBO ordered. I think it's. They. I can't remember, but I'm almost positive memory, if it's right, it was that they ordered a season of it around the time that Hogwarts Legacy was about to come out or something like that. And I guess because of the sales number, they're like, we need to reboot this thing. There's a huge untapped market because, you know, all of the people who grew up on it, like millennials, were all in their 30s and now there's like two generations, Gen Z, and there's like that new generation, the little kids growing, like, starting right now.

[Yakuza the Don]

Yeah, like, we all read. We all read the books and then we. We grew up watching the movies as well. Yeah, they all missed that.

[Ethos]

Yeah, that missed that entire, like, growing up with like, Harry Potter and stuff like that that they think they can.

[Yakuza the Don]

Easily tap into, which is money. That's a money decision. But hey, whatever.

[Ethos]

Well, yeah, we'll see how it goes. But yeah, to answer JG's question, it's still gonna be a show for a while, Both the left side and the right.

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

You're just gonna get everybody. Everyone's pissed now.

[Ethos]

Everybody's pissed. No one's happy.

[The Black Okagi]

Hate every time.

[Ethos]

Yeah.

[The Black Okagi]

So.

[Ethos]

I'm here for the chaos.

[The Black Okagi]

It'll be.

[Ethos]

It'll be funny to watch.

[The Black Okagi]

Okay. Okay, well, since you're here for the chaos, let me know what your thoughts are on this recently announced new Rainbow Six Siege X game. The full reveal will be on March 13th. We're recording March 8th, so next podcast we'll talk about it. But Ubisoft did reveal that the rumors are true. They're working on some type of new Rainbow Six Siege game. And they dropped a 40 second trailer. Want to be honest, this 40 second trailer was just walking and random flashes of military men. But what'd that do for you? Ethos X with a trailer at the end.

[Ethos]

I saw a wall running that might get me back.

[The Black Okagi]

That's gonna be in the game. Actually, you know what? It is possible because Rainbow six Siege is not the rainbow we used to play. It's all type of Madden that game now, bro.

[Ethos]

Have you peeped like, even like three or four of the latest people they threw in the game?

[The Black Okagi]

Nah. But the last time I did look at it, I was like, this is not the same game we played in 2015. 2015.

[Yakuza the Don]

Like, I remember I tried Fortnite now, man. Like, we just totally different.

[Ethos]

That it's just like, like during the pandemic, like DX was trying to help me get back into it. It's just they've added. It's like League where they've. They're added so many operators, there's so many characters. I think they touch like almost 50 characters combined. I think they have almost 50 characters in this damn game. And it's just like there's so much new gadgets and stuff that like the characters do now and like different ways. And obviously some characters just aren't good anymore because, like, they've now power crept them with newer characters that have a similar ability. But like you remember how. You remember how back in the day, in our good old days, remember how when we saw a barricade on door, we'd have to walk up in and put up a thing and then explode it? Right now they got drones that can go off and do the job for you or explode the ceilings for you so you don't even have to harm yourself. It's just there's so much stuff now.

[The Black Okagi]

We used to storm the beaches, we used to run up with our riders rifles.

[Ethos]

But now the drones do it.

[The Black Okagi]

It's just not. War's not the same, man.

[Ethos]

They said war doesn't change. They lied.

[The Black Okagi]

I wouldn't be able to fight that. I. I think the most interesting thing about this announcement, kind of disappointing because like the original rumors was it was supposed to be Rainbow Six Siege 2. And I was like, okay, let me see what's going on. But the way Ubisoft worded this, it sounds like an expansion. I looked up so far, this is all we know about it. It will have enhanced graphics and audio. It'll have a new 6v6 game mode called Dual Front. And they said that it's not just another update, but a major evolution of gameplay and mechanics. But that still doesn't really sound like a sequel to me. Sounds like an expansion. And if it's an expansion, I'm not playing this, bro. I don't.

[Yakuza the Don]

Is this Overwatch too? Is this Overwatch?

[The Black Okagi]

That's the job I'm getting. Yeah, that's the vibe I'm getting, unfortunately.

[Yakuza the Don]

Or Smite two because it means my two used another. They use Unreal five. I know. Yes.

[The Black Okagi]

My. Yes.

[Yakuza the Don]

My two is going down the drain. What engine are they using? Do you know? Ethos for. For scene.

[Ethos]

I think they said either it's the Anvil. Like they updated Anvil, which I think.

[The Black Okagi]

It looks like the same game. If you look at the trailer, it looks like the same game as the last one. Just like slightly high res but the vision, like the textures look exactly the same. I'm like, like I think so.

[Yakuza the Don]

If they're not using the updated engine, then this. Yeah. Situation.

[Ethos]

I mean with the engine, it doesn't always have to be visual. Like maybe there's like a lot of back end stuff they do that like limited them. Because remember, you gotta remember this game was developed like 20. What was like 2010, 2011.

[The Black Okagi]

They started 60s Patriots is what it was used to.

[Ethos]

It was Patriots and they rebooted it and then it became Siege. And then that thing about that they developed this game on like hardware and software. Software that was like built in like the early 2000 and tens. And it's like you had this game barely survive for a decade. Like, you remember how bad it got where the game was so broken they had to spend an entire like update strictly on just patching and fixing the game. And even still, like, I. I'd argue it's probably held together with just like bandages.

[The Black Okagi]

I think the part you're missing ethos is Ubisoft is poor. They don't have no money. And Blizzard. Blizzard put out that fake ass Overwatch too. You don't think these poor people won't do the same? They have no money, bro.

[Ethos]

What?

[The Black Okagi]

Dude, that sounds like you said it. You might be on to something, bro. These people are poor.

[Ethos]

Let's hope the God Assassin crew Shadows is good because they. They needed everything.

[The Black Okagi]

We need that w. If that other.

[Yakuza the Don]

People, man, that's it. That's gonna be it for them, man.

[Ethos]

Yeah, that. If that goes down the drain, if that game gets like sixes or like barely sevens it, that might be gg. That might be it for them. I don't think they'll have another chance.

[The Black Okagi]

The good news is every preview I've seen, I don't think that's gonna happen. Happen from every previous.

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

Gonna be like eight.

[The Black Okagi]

Yeah.

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

To be honest.

[Ethos]

Yeah, it looks like it's the. The tide is shifted. Like, it seems like people are excited. They're like, oh, I can't wait to play it now.

[The Black Okagi]

Yeah, I see a lot of that on Twitter. Like a lot of people have been saying they're pre ordering, they're trying it out. I'm like, okay, we're getting away from the. The angry stuff.

[Ethos]

Yeah. Away from the woke.

[The Black Okagi]

So, you know, the crazy part too about the live service too is with the Rainbow six announcement, Ubisoft also revealed that they want to continue to make more live service games games. They also said open world. But the first word to come out they mouth in this interview from the CEO was they want to focus on.

[Ethos]

Two things people are in love with. Yes, another open world game and another live service game.

[The Black Okagi]

So this actually makes me think what JG was saying has even more merit because they said they're focused on live server. I don't think this is going to be Rainbow Six Siege 2. It's just going to be some type of expansion for the first game. And there's. We could potentially just be getting more Assassin's Creed and far Cry because they said that's what they're focusing. Focuses. Do you guys think this is the right direction for Ubisoft?

[Yakuza the Don]

What a. What a surprise. So they're basically doing the same thing that they're already doing and they're announcing that they are doubling tripling quadruple. I only know what number that we're at right now. They're doing the exact same thing. This does not sound any different than what they've been doing for, for the last 10 years, this thing.

[Ethos]

Did they say that Siege is going to carry over all your progression? So, like all the skins and stuff they bought and Siege goes over.

[The Black Okagi]

We won't know to the 13th. It wasn't a full. It wasn't a full review. It was just a teaser.

[Ethos]

Yeah, they better. Because if it don't. Oh my God, that will be. They will Scorch.

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

It's probably not going to. If it's a new game, it's probably not going to. And the community is going to get really mad and then that'll be another.

[The Black Okagi]

I'm just soft. You think they're going to have those? Yeah, exactly.

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

Ubisoft don't do anything. Right. And it's like very obvious things that they shouldn't be doing. So.

[The Black Okagi]

Yeah. And if you're wondering, if you're wondering, if you're wondering why Ubisoft wants to double, triple down on live service games, because I recently came across this article that states live service games continue to dominate, accounting for 40 of play time on PS5 and Xbox.

[Yakuza the Don]

But it's still three games. It's three or four games. It's Minecraft Fortnite. Yeah, it's the same. Yeah.

[The Black Okagi]

Last I, I saw the chart for Avowed in the top five, it was Grand Theft Avowed came in at number four, but it was Minecraft, Roblox, GTA Avowed and like Madden or 2K or something like that. But Avowed was the only like new game that was there and that shit's on Game Pass. And it, it was only at number four.

[Yakuza the Don]

So if it's been years, it's been like over 10 years that some of these games have been, been, have been around and for them to still dominate the top 10, it's ridiculous. Yeah. If you're looking at those, those Giants there, then yeah, you'll say that they still dominate, you know. No, but those aren't new things. That still doesn't mean that you're going to be able to do like what Rivals has done and come through and take some people share. But Mainly Overwatch's audience. But you're not gonna be able to do that with every single game to come out and your Ubisoft off. So you just have a track record of taking a lot of Ls.

[The Black Okagi]

I'm sorry, you talking about it from the corporation standpoint. I'm talking about it from the consumer standpoint. For the people who keep bitching and complaining about, oh, why aren't there. Y'all said the state of the play was trash. Y'all playing Roblox. This is. You're wondering why. You're wondering why Ubisoft keeps doing this dumb. It's because y'all are playing it. Yeah. You guys are liars.

[Ethos]

You guys are people in Twitch chat.

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

That are like, yeah, yeah, I know all about this. You go here, then you go there, you go there. And they haven't played the game themselves. They've just watched.

[The Black Okagi]

Right?

[Yakuza the Don]

This is so funny because this is not the first time that Watson said this. Like, I don't know what be going on to your chat, but people be.

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

Trying because I know there's like, there's people that I see in my friends chats as well, and they do the same thing and I'm like, With different games and I'm like, there is no way that this person is putting like 400 hours in every game that comes out. There is no way. So you can just tell they're like the same. The same people. Every game that comes out, no matter what it is, they're like, oh, yeah, yeah, I totally know about that. This like two hours after the game came out. I know everything.

[Yakuza the Don]

Actually, you're not going to get any cool points for saying that. Trust me.

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

They are. They're trying to. Yeah, they are trying to be like, I know everything. You can come to me. I'll help you. I'll carry you.

[The Black Okagi]

You're just annoying. Let me get on your stream. Like, nah. What are you doing? So that is that.

[Yakuza the Don]

Man. Okay.

[Ethos]

They're liars. Everyone likes live service games. The stats don't lie. I don't care how y'all get mad and lie to me in the comments and tell me gaming is dead. You. No one likes life service games. And then you guys keep playing it. I don't want to hear this, bro. I'm done.

[The Black Okagi]

That's why I'm gonna keep making that joke. What? How BG3 be Spider Man 2 because you on PS4 playing Fortnite. That's why.

[Ethos]

That is why y'all are playing it.

[The Black Okagi]

Freaking everyone likes them.

[Ethos]

You say you don't like them, but the stats are saying that's. That is a lie.

[The Black Okagi]

Like we gonna keep bringing the numbers up. It's okay, just admit you like it. I got an update on Gears of War. Forza Horizon 5 got announced to be coming to PS5 and a bunch of other Xbox games like Grounded and czs. And the latest rumor is that Gears of War is supposed to be coming to PS5. And we got an update on that. According to this article, the Gears of War collection is set to release on PS5 this year. And then E Day is getting pushed back to 2026 with a small chance of it potentially coming out in 2025. But it's most likely chart targeting 2026. That was the first piece of news. And then literally like two days later, another article came out that just rubbed me the wrong way. Which by the way, all this is rumors at the time of this recording. Another rumor came out that this Gears of War collection that's supposed to come out on PC, Xbox and PS5 will only feature the first three games and it will have the co op but no multiplayer. If this. What if this happened?

[Yakuza the Don]

Cool with that? You cool with that?

[Ethos]

I'll be honest, that was my expectation. I thought when they were making the collection, I thought the expectation, My expectation was was that because I was thinking of it as, oh, they're probably making a collection to get people excited for the next Gears story wise. So you get a whole collection and you play it. I wasn't expecting. Think about that. I want you to remember. Do you remember the last time they did that? How bad it was was they made the Master Chief collection from your mistakes.

[The Black Okagi]

Microsoft got money.

[Ethos]

No, you have to go through three different. Hold on. No, no, you got. You're telling them to bake a game that had three different games built at three drastic different time. Like, what was it? The first one was 2006. The second one was 2010. The third one was like 2012. This. This is a massive gap in defining all those files. And you want the multiplayer, you want.

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

The multiplayer to all work for just one of them. Them to be like, hey, here's how Gears multip.

[The Black Okagi]

You have to. I want to hear this.

[Ethos]

No, don't play Gears 5. I don't want to hear this. Y be playing Gears 5 right now. That's what makes this collection even worse.

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

Ethos.

[The Black Okagi]

Nobody, nobody is playing Gears of War, the new trilogy. Nobody's playing that for the story. So why would you focus on the story for the collection?

[Ethos]

For it already Exist. This if you cared about the OG gameplay, it is already active. This is multiplayer's time.

[The Black Okagi]

Playing it on PlayStation most likely. These are people grow up with it. And now you don't get to play the multiplayer.

[Ethos]

And this about y'all. Y'all will always say this. You'll be like, oh, why is my multiplayer in that game? If you cared so much about it, you'd be playing Gears. Gears got remastered, Gears got updated, remade. It's on PC right now. You could play the literal old school multiplayer right now on that and Xbox and their complex, their connected. You can play that. You can play Gears 4. You can play Gears 5. They brought Gears 2 and Gears 3. You play all of them on Xbox. And none of y'all. I haven't heard one of y'all say I'm booting up Gears. I've heard none of y'all say right now with the. Y'all don't care about that. Only for you to hold on. I want you to remember this too. You're gonna try to tell Microsoft or tell a developer to waste development time when obviously they're working on Gear six right now with a whole brand new multiplayer suite. You want them to waste time on getting an old system set up that you are gonna leave to go play Gear six.

[The Black Okagi]

You're talking.

[Yakuza the Don]

Don't come out with the dead.

[The Black Okagi]

Don't come out. You're talking about us from our personal experience. I'm talking about the people who grew up on PlayStation. You know them Sony ponies go crazy, never played Gears of War. They've heard about how amazing this game is, is it comes to the PS5 and it's not the full thing. That's going to leave a bad impression. I'd argue it might hurt the sales of the next multiplayer.

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

Huh?

[Ethos]

Mass Effect Legendary Transition didn't have its multiplayer.

[The Black Okagi]

People didn't play Mass Effect for multiplayer ethos. That is a disingenuous argument.

[Yakuza the Don]

It was only Mass Effect.

[Ethos]

It was cool.

[The Black Okagi]

You're gonna make that argument. You played Matt.

[Ethos]

I will make that argument it if you ask any multip my fraud button for you. You are a fraud. You are a fraud. Cuz I don't know what you are doing, but I know as a fact that a lot of players, a lot of master players actually ended up really loving Mass Effect 3's multiplayer. And it's bad. We're all updates for that.

[The Black Okagi]

That was very well too. I'm not saying it's bad, but to sit up here and say we played it for the multiplayer. No we played to finish the multiplayer.

[Ethos]

I'm saying that it's very good. What I'm trying to say is the collection has a main goal, which is to get PlayStation people into the universe of Gears. I'm not doing that by playing multiplayer with Gears people. In that when I have to.

[The Black Okagi]

You want them to get cross play with PlayStation, Xbox. I wanted to talk.

[Ethos]

You've lost the plot. The whole point of the collection was called the Phoenix Collection is just to.

[The Black Okagi]

Say this is his bank statement. See if Phil Spencer sent him something.

[Ethos]

No, all I'm saying is it's very simple. My brain. I never had the expectation if. If they had multiple, I'd be like, oh, awesome.

[The Black Okagi]

But I'm not.

[Ethos]

I'm like. When they said that when we were talking about it, I'm gonna tell you right now, this is why I know this is Cap. Pull back the. The footage. When they first sub. When we talked about the rumors of this being announced, I didn't hear. Not one of y'all talk about the multiplayer. All of you talked about the. The train Ram. Y'all didn't want to bring up multiplayer.

[The Black Okagi]

Nobody's saying. Nobody's saying it's. We wanted cross play.

[Ethos]

Multiplayer is important. I get the multiplayer is important. I. I played. I played Gears with the same thing. I played Gears 1 like a crackhead with my brother. I didn't play Gears too that much, but I played a lot of Gears 3 multiplayer. I played through a lot of it, all right, But I think genuinely one of the best experiences of Gears is playing the co op campaign. I think that's like, one of the most unique gaming experiences. The multiplayer was. Was fire. But let's be real here. The multiplayer has been falling off from a popularity standpoint, just like Halo for the past seven years. People don't like playing that. I hate to say it. People don't like playing that. They don't. Wrong. And I'm a person that. I'll give you another example. On the PlayStation side, last of Us multiplayer. Who was the main person yelling and screaming about that?

[The Black Okagi]

Me.

[Ethos]

When they announced all the replays. Me. I wanted that. And when they didn't do it, I was pissed. I was like, I play this. But what did everybody say? The same thing I'm saying now. The truth is, people don't really care about that.

[The Black Okagi]

That's a fair argument, I don't think. Let me get my point off. People liked the Last of Us multiplayer, including me. But when The Last of Us 1 came out and they announced the remaster, people Mainly had fond memories of that amazing story and how it ended. The multiplayer was just a bonus. Gears of wars multiplayer is a. It's. The multiplayer is just as important of a component as the story. They're equally important. So I'll say this much. If it turns out this rumor is true, it better not be 70. If it's like 40, 50 bucks, whatever.

[Ethos]

Okay, I give you that. I give you that. If it is $70, that's. But it's on game pass, so I don't give a.

[Yakuza the Don]

I'm gonna be playing.

[Ethos]

That on my gamepad.

[Yakuza the Don]

All right, all right, all right.

[Ethos]

So that's only on so many people.

[Yakuza the Don]

That's not only. It might be a little bit disappointing. I just want the p. I want this. Only people to experience it, like, in this full. Yeah, you know, it's full. It's full ability. So.

[Ethos]

And I'm gonna remember this in my brain, this conversation we have, because when Gear six happens, you don't remember all.

[The Black Okagi]

The lobbies we used to run. You have a very selective memory.

[Ethos]

We played it for, like, two months, and then we were done with Gears 5. I remember at this age, for two.

[The Black Okagi]

Months.

[Ethos]

We'Re leaving for two. We played for, like, a month, and it was just a Nomad and Ace killer. That was the biggest moment we had. And then I didn't see no y. I'm telling you, it's the same thing. Like Halo, bro. Don't get me wrong, we was all on that, like, crack for the first month. And then what happened? One month later, we all got off of it. I'm now falling.

[The Black Okagi]

I played Gears 5's multiplayer longer than Halo. Halo liked a lot of content, didn't have nothing.

[Ethos]

I get it. Halo 5, I mean, not Halo. Gears 5 had more content than Halo multiplayer. Infinite multiplayer. But I didn't stop. The truth. I think the truth is, I hate to say it, those games have fallen out of love when it comes to the multiplayer community. These are only playing Marvel Rivals and Battle Royale and Call of Duty. You can't get a Call of Duty head to even play Gears of War because it's too fucking hard for them. You think you're gonna convince new players, I want to try that game, too? When they look at it, you think Gears looks like an easy game to pick up. No, it's not. I'm saying right now, you're gonna show footage of you bouncing back and forth off the wall, doing crab walking and shooting people in the head, and that's gonna turn half of the off from everyone.

[Yakuza the Don]

I Mean not lying about that. You're not lying.

[The Black Okagi]

You have to keep in mind. Did you see the article? The Black Op 6 player base is dropped by 90%. These guys need something to play and it's on game pass article.

[Ethos]

Where's that? Show that to me.

[The Black Okagi]

Find that joint.

[Ethos]

That seems to me. I wasn't aware of that.

[The Black Okagi]

The game is pretty much dead.

[Ethos]

I thought Marvel Rivals probably killed it, but yeah, I'm sure.

[Yakuza the Don]

Yeah, a lot of Call of Duty people went over the Rivals to Marvel Rivals.

[The Black Okagi]

Yeah.

[Ethos]

And also are we talking about multiplayer? Are we talking about like the, even the free to play? Like War Zone?

[The Black Okagi]

I don't think that War Zone going to last much longer. There was another article that came out. They said they might not put War Zone in the next one because that is dead right now.

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

Damn.

[Ethos]

Damn. He got article for everything, huh?

[The Black Okagi]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Let me see. News. But I, I, I, I, I just hope they price it right. That's. That would be my main thing.

[Ethos]

I will give you that. I, I hope hope if they, if it doesn't have multiplayer, I do not think it should be 70. That I don't think you'll ever get me to disagree. It should be 49.99 because that is. It is three games.

[The Black Okagi]

I'll take that back. It wasn't 90. It's 80. It's 80. My bad. That's still a high. That's still a high number. But there was another article that followed up because it dropped 80. They said that I can show it on the screen too. They said that they, they're considering maybe leaving War Zone alone. Which, I mean, come on guys. It's been like a decade. Let it go. We move on to something else. Something else. But it is what it is. We're gonna see what this gear stuff. Keep in mind though, it's all a rumor. Creates for fun conversation. Another rumor too is there's a chance that Scalebound can come back. The director, you know, he wants it. You know anybody wants to go about anybody.

[Yakuza the Don]

Oh boy. Here's. Here's another one that we've been talking about for years. And I'm like, man, yes.

[Ethos]

Bring it back, baby.

[Yakuza the Don]

Let's not go there. Don't give a hopes of.

[The Black Okagi]

I just hope the frame rate is bad as what they showed.

[Ethos]

We all learned a lot working together on Scalebound. Okay. We had expectations dashed. We had systems. We had consoles that were trash that couldn't handle it. But, but it's a new day. We got, you know, PC now. We got the Xbox, we got the PlayStation 5.

[The Black Okagi]

You know, people gonna play cuz game pass. You don't have to worry about it.

[Ethos]

Being a new IP ends up being trash. Platinum, go ahead.

[The Black Okagi]

Xbox needs new ips. You guys keep making Gears, Halo and Forza. Like come on, you guys just made.

[Ethos]

A deal with Ninja, I guess to help with the marketing for, for Ninja Gaiden and Platinum's helping Looms and is that like.

[The Black Okagi]

I don't know.

[Ethos]

I just think they have marketing rights to it or something.

[Yakuza the Don]

Yeah.

[Ethos]

Did Black end up on.

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

It's on PC. I don't know if it's on PlayStation though.

[Ethos]

Oh, okay. I don't know about that one. But yeah, I don't think.

[Yakuza the Don]

Yeah, this is very interesting when, when it comes to games that died because I'm assuming Microsoft still own technically owns the IP to scale down. Right? Like they can't, like nobody could take it, take it and go anywhere else. But I'm like after so long, if you say a game is dead, just let like the original developers do whatever the hell they want to do with it. So like I, I, I, I dislike this article. It's like, well, I want to ask Phil Spencer to, to bring it back. Like man. Yeah, it's like, please, like, it's like, is he really gonna do it? Who knows? But it, I hate that it kind of has to be in, in Phil Spencer's hands, you know, in this particular case to potentially bring it back.

[The Black Okagi]

My only question is, would people even be excited if Scalebound did get resurrected for the simple reason like we were talking about earlier with the state of the play, they showed multiple new ips and people called that trash. I'm like, would they call that people? We like, had times have changed, would you be excited about it? We would.

[Yakuza the Don]

But yeah, that's a, that's a good question because I'm like, I mean at least we saw something here and, and again, this is one of those titles that people have been screaming about for a long time. So I think yes. I think overall, yeah, people would be excited if there was a chance.

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

People like dragons.

[The Black Okagi]

Yep.

[Ethos]

And it's like definitely cry vibes. So yeah, yeah.

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

Devil May Cry with Dragons. Yeah. Also like that genre is making a resurgence again. Obviously. I don't know if it's going to be the case when the game comes out, but a lot of there was the big souls push for games and now games are coming out being more like dmc Bayonetta, kind of Ninja Gaiden.

[Ethos]

So we love that.

[The Black Okagi]

Power Fantasies.

[Ethos]

Give me Astral Chain back. I'd make me a very happy person.

[The Black Okagi]

We just gotta, we just gotta get the platformers, more platformers and we back, baby. The PS2 GameCube type era. Yeah, freaking. Speaking of consoles though, I know it's been five years since, since the PS5 came out. A lot of you guys still refuse to get 1. 97 million people. How long five came out in 2020. Yeah.

[Yakuza the Don]

Remember we got the dinner pandemic.

[The Black Okagi]

Wake up, Ethos, wake up. You're in the middle. It has been five years. I was talking about this on stream the other day. I said, hey guys, you know, in my old age, when we were younger, five years used to be the lifespan of a console. The N64 to the gatecube. Like that's how long a console used to last. We are now five years into the PS5 and there are 97 million concurrent average daily players on the goddamn PS4. But I'm not gonna make fun of you guys. I, I don't think you guys want to upgrade. You just wanna, you just want them to support the PS4. I think a lot of you guys are full of at this point because the whole money thing is not a. It's not an excuse. You've had five years to save if you really wanted one. But let's hypothetically entertain it. There's now a solution, at least for the people in the UK. Maybe it'll come to the US. Sony is offering a rent a PS5 program. You can do 12, 24 or 36 months on a lease and they also have one for the PS5 Pro. The Pro would be 35amonth and then the, the regular one will be 30. So you know, anybody want to run.

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

Like this is just a way to take advantage of poor people as all of these like payment program kind of stuff normally is. It's like, yeah, you can get this thing that you really want, but you have to pay a lot more money than it would take to just buy the thing. And you don't even own it. And you're not renting to buy.

[The Black Okagi]

Right?

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

Unless it is a rent provider.

[The Black Okagi]

No, you're lease, just leasing.

[Yakuza the Don]

No, it's not, it's not that. That's why you are scamming if it's not rent to own. Hello. Like what, what are we doing here?

[Ethos]

So if I pay the full amount of what it would cost, I. I don't get to keep it?

[The Black Okagi]

No. All my UK bros out there don't fall for this. This is. I'm trying to teach some financial literacy this is just to lease it. After that 36 months that you did it, you actually probably paid more for the damn PS5, and you don't even own it. And then you wonder why you can't afford a PS5. Okay, guys, just save your money.

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

Don't do it.

[The Black Okagi]

It's gonna be okay. Find a side hustle. Also, keep in mind, gaming is not a priority.

[Yakuza the Don]

This is a scam amongst scams. Oh, boy.

[The Black Okagi]

What are y'all doing, man? The NZXT Flex program.

[Yakuza the Don]

Oh, my goodness. Oh, man. Oh, my.

[The Black Okagi]

Oh. Moving on to the social justice warrior section of the. Well, do we call it the DEI Woke section now?

[Ethos]

Yeah, yeah.

[The Black Okagi]

Moving on to the woke section of the podcast. This one was funny, dude. So the CEO of GameStop, during their earnings call, he got into a shouting match and blamed wokeness on in DEI on the failures of GameStop. He also announced they're closing 500 stores. The ones in France. And then in some. In Canada. In France, it's not called GameStop. It's called a different name. I forgot what they call it, but in Canada, it is. Yeah. And he blamed it on DEI and Woke in a blaze of fury rant.

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

Is there, like, a context for it, or was he just doing the classic, like, woke di and hoping that people cheer?

[Yakuza the Don]

He just popped out of nowhere. Just. Just tweet it. Just tweeted it.

[The Black Okagi]

Yep, Just tweeted it. Just randomly because, like, how does that.

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

Even make sense that. That would be why Brain Ride.

[Yakuza the Don]

That's.

[Ethos]

That's liberalism, socialism, progressivism, wokeness and DE everything, including @ no additional cost if you buy today.

[Yakuza the Don]

He hit all the check marks, and none of it. None of it pertains to GameStop at all. None of it.

[Ethos]

Consumer blaming. He's blaming Wokeness and liberalism for why he. Why GameStop is, like, why they're selling and closing their stores.

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

The fact that I can go on my console and buy it right away.

[Ethos]

Yeah, you're mad at the wrong people.

[The Black Okagi]

This quote is especially funny to me because half those stores are the ones in France. So he's blaming DEI and Woke, which we all know is a dog whistle for black people. And you're closing all these stores in France now? Correct me if I'm wrong, but, you know, I know they have some immigrants over there, but it's mostly French people. So. Jay Z, Kanye in Paris. They haven't been in Paris since 2011. What are you talking about? How is it our fault? What the are you talking about, dude?

[Yakuza the Don]

We. We only recently came to Paris for the Olympics, and That's it.

[The Black Okagi]

We came to get them gold medals and leave. What the are you.

[Yakuza the Don]

We got the up out of there. This is brain rod to the highest degree. Like, what, what would. What would possess you to say all this? Like, I totally don't understand.

[Ethos]

Too long.

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

Be like, oh, we love GameStop.

[Ethos]

And then, bro might need some DEI. Look at. Look what happened to government. They got rid of all the DI and PlayStar crashing. Maybe you need to get some DEI in your GameStop. Maybe that's why you. Maybe I keep your stores open.

[The Black Okagi]

That's the problem that we've been doing like, we've been yelling for like 20 years that, hey, if I bring in a game that I bought the same day for $70 and you try to give me $66 back, that's a problem. And they don't see that. And like, what else are we supposed to do? We've been giving you the feedback, guys. Like, you're not listening.

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

It's the classic thing of like, you fall over that. The meme of falling over and you're holding your knee and you're like, damn DEI.

[Ethos]

Yeah, damn liberals.

[The Black Okagi]

Gave me 35, 40 bucks for the game. You still make 20 off of it. Like, if you just sell more volume, you'd make a lot of money.

[Ethos]

The moment they wasted their time investing in Funko Pops and putting that all in their stores, that's when everything went to hell. Moment the Funko started showing up, bro, the stores started going to hell, man.

[The Black Okagi]

Collectible cars.

[Yakuza the Don]

And I, I haven't been to a GameStop in forever. But, like, are people walking into the GameStops in Canada and in France are like. And they. And they get introduced to a, to a video game. Hey, would you like to pre order this video game? And our people responses are, well, is the game woke or not? Is it woke? If it, if it's woke, then I don't want it. You know? Like, I don't. I don't understand. Like, is that what people are doing these days? I have no clue.

[Ethos]

Going to GameStop is the equivalent of having a Jehovah witness knock on your door. That is the best way I can explain it. You walk in and you get barraged. Hey, how you doing? Oh, I'm good. Oh, can I help you? Anything? No, I'm good. Oh, you trying to look for any new games? Like, like, I don't know what the I'm doing. I'm in here. I know. It's just like Best Buy. You walk into Best Buy. You know how they always try to Walk up to you. Oh, do you need help?

[The Black Okagi]

You need help figuring out what.

[Ethos]

No, know I know what I'm doing.

[The Black Okagi]

Unless you're a little kid. Like, adults don't browse in GameStop. You know what you're there.

[Ethos]

You know what you're there for.

[Yakuza the Don]

I know what I'm there for. A specific purpose.

[Ethos]

Yeah, I used to browse when I was a young kid, when I was under 18.

[The Black Okagi]

Because you couldn't afford it.

[Yakuza the Don]

Yeah, exactly.

[Ethos]

I'm gonna walk in there. I know I'm gonna walk up. I'll tell you. I need this game. Do you have it? That's it. Or I need to get this thing. I need to get these. Carter. Or this gift. Or I need to get these cards.

[The Black Okagi]

I would ask the CEO, like, hey, have you been in any of your stores recently? Because it's an awful experience.

[Yakuza the Don]

You already know.

[Ethos]

Undercover Boss, they used to do. Yeah, that's what they need to do with him. Throw him into one of those GameStop, you'll see.

[The Black Okagi]

Why asking me to pre order Madden 3005, knowing damn year, y'all. Y'all not gonna be around that year. Like, what are you talking about? No one else is not going to be around either, too. Well, potentially. But these tariffs, man, they're affecting physical games. We talked about on a previous stream, we're talking about how it could potentially raise the price of games, but now they're talking about box games or might be hard to find, which would, in theory, would actually raise the price of them as well for people who like to collect physical copies. Because a lot of the disc in the box are actually made in Mexico, in another country, I believe. So when the tariffs come into place, not sure when it's supposed to because, you know, Monday we wake up, there's a tariff. Tuesday there's not. I don't know what's going on with this guy's brain.

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

Every day it's like tariff in, like, oh, well, actually, we're not gonna have Paris for this person and this. Okay.

[Yakuza the Don]

It's hard to keep up now. I don't even know.

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

It's every day.

[The Black Okagi]

It spells disaster, too, for game preservation. Because if it's harder to find hard copies, you know, people who want to collect, if it's only digital, they can pull that stuff off your hard drive at any point. So for people who care about this stuff, just know in the near future it might be hard to find actual physical copies of your game, which would potentially be crazy with the Switch 2 coming around the corner. Imagine that dropping and you can't find things that you want to collect that would piss. Pissed me off.

[Yakuza the Don]

They're, like one of the only ones that you kind of gotta have digital. I mean, physical copies.

[The Black Okagi]

Yeah, I've never really had a. My. I've. My switch always messes up when I get, like, the digital copy. That's why I like buying the physical for some reason, like, it doesn't load correctly on the side memory card. Like, it glitches out. So I always got to uninstall and reinstall. So, like, I always like buying the actual cartridge. But that might be hard to do, just making y'all aware of it. I mean, you're our SJW dude here. Jay, any hot takes on this? What you got to say, Mr. Trump?

[Yakuza the Don]

I mean, Trump was a idiot, so, I mean, he just. He playing a dangerous game. I just hope that again, all these countries who he's imposing these tariffs or trying to impose these tariffs on actually have some cojones and it fights back, you know? That's all I want to say. Like, so shout out to Canada. You know, they fold in. Then they said, oh, we're not folding. So, you know, sorry, ethos. If you end up, you know, getting your in, your power shut off. But, you know, it's a necessary evil.

[The Black Okagi]

Necessary evil got suffered.

[Ethos]

Why does it have to be me? I didn't vote for this orange.

[The Black Okagi]

Well, you live in fake Canada, so it doesn't surprise me. Why am I electricity from there, bro?

[Ethos]

I watch that of Trudell and. And that. That man Ford go on the news and basically mock this man Trump, and be like, look at me. And I ain't never looked at the screen, like, ready to cry. Be like, yo, this man is straight up saying, yo, I'm sorry, dog. You're a victim. You're a victim of circumstance. Yeah, I. I know you probably didn't vote for him, but I'm sorry, bro. We gonna hurt you however way we can. We don't want to hurt you. You blame him. I was like, I'm already blaming him for everything. Don't do this to me. Turn his power off. Turn. Get Trump towers. Turn his power off. Leave me alone.

[The Black Okagi]

If gets really bad, you can come to my house, Ethos, because I know it's cold over there right now. We don't want you to freeze.

[Ethos]

Oh, it is, bro. Don't say that. I might actually. I might actually, actually take my ass over there.

[The Black Okagi]

It's nice and warm over here in LA.

[Ethos]

Yeah, I know.

[The Black Okagi]

$20 eggs.

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

You can drive the Tesla ethos.

[The Black Okagi]

Somebody go keep my car with these goddamn protesters.

[Ethos]

I'll do the whole. I'll do the hand sign and everything too. Well, man, so t. Just so I know, with a Tesla, do you. Do you actually have to, like, seek. Hell, do you have to actually, like, do the whole hand sign when, like, to make the door open or like.

[Yakuza the Don]

How does that work?

[The Black Okagi]

I gotta get that. I gotta get that sticker. I bought my car before he went crazy. Like, this is a book.

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

You know, people are. Are getting rid of the. The Tesla logo and they're replacing it.

[The Black Okagi]

With other things that they're putting it like Honda on there and stuff like that. I've seen that on YouTube. That should be cracking up. BMW.

[Yakuza the Don]

We know what the bottles look like, though. Like, we know what the body look like.

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

Maybe the people who are blowing them up don't know.

[Ethos]

To be fair, to be fair, to.

[The Black Okagi]

Be fair, the Model 3, the Y& the X, they do look like regular, like kind of Honda ish cars. So from a distance, people can fall. That's why. That's why I think the cyber truck is getting targeted so much. That's so obviously.

[Yakuza the Don]

Yeah, it stands out also.

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

You definitely bought that after you knew he's crazy.

[The Black Okagi]

Yeah. So it is what it is, man. It's funny, though. And then last but not least, I got for you guys, everybody's favorite race. Residential Go well, go broke troll Grums. He responded to an Assassin's Creed tweet. They tweeted, for justice is a powerful samurai and his deadly ninja in the breathtaking feudal Japan. They're just promoting the upcoming release of Assassin's Creed. I think it's like March 20th or something. Supposed to drop. And then Grums replied and said, March 20th is when Assassin's Creed Shadow ships. They are so confident, they locked replies to this, implying that they're scared to basically have a conversation with anybody who disagrees with them. And then he said, remember to identify this game as non binary. Which, I'm not gonna lie, it's fucking corny, but kind of clever. People are miserable, which is a double entendre. Non binary. And then he said, we get Ubisoft to change. The other top publishers will notice. So then Ubisoft responds and says, thank you for considering us as a top publisher. While our media ads typically don't allow comments, our regular posts do. So they said whenever they're advertising, they don't ever allow comments, but thanks for giving us a compliment and get off our dick. How are we feeling about this?

[Ethos]

Ratio is crazy.

[The Black Okagi]

Yeah, they're 49, 000 likes to his 4, 000 likes. How we feeling about this ethos?

[Ethos]

I love it. I feel like every game developer, publisher should do this. It is time to silence these idiots and make them look like idiots and ratio these is. Stop letting these people set narratives for you. You set the narrative where you're gonna let these losers set it for you. That's how so many of these games. I think this has been a mistake for community managers. I think a lot of community managers have been giving. I'm not gonna say the wrong advice because they, they've been in the trenches, but I will say they've been. They've kind of been looking at the wrong way of how you handle these things where they think, okay, well, don't enter, don't fuel the fire for it. And I think that has just caused it where if you let them do what they want, they literally shift the narrative. And then you're wondering why you're having these meetings, these, these triage meetings where you're trying to figure out why this outrage is happening with your game, like out of nowhere. And there's, you know, more veteran community managers that know how to defuse it and. But a lot of them, you know, they don't know how to diffuse it correctly. So I think getting in front of it and like making it nice and hearty with a good little joke there and, and just being like, hey, like, you know, you're a bozo without actually saying it, but doing it in a clever way, it works. It clearly works here. I think it's really nice to use the whole get the little side eye gif. It's pretty good. So, yeah, I mean, I can't believe I'm cheering for Ubisoft right now, but yeah, I'm hoping this game's good. I. I hope it gets like, at least eights because just like they did Monster Hunter, we did not forget, they tried that with Monster Hunter and then all of suddenly became successful. They just.180 and then they try to act like it was an east versus west thing. Like, oh, Western developers could never do something as good as this shoe. Slandering this last year, the.

[The Black Okagi]

Are you.

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

Oh, yeah. The community is not letting them forget either. They keep saying, don't forget, don't forget. Don't forget what they were saying about this.

[Ethos]

Me, I know your games. Yeah. So good job, Ubisoft.

[The Black Okagi]

I'll take it.

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

Yeah, I like it.

[The Black Okagi]

I'll take it a step further. Not only do they need to Control the message. I'd argue this is a good time to be hiring deis because if you are going to take the route where you control the message, you know who's best at clapping back at people? Black folks.

[Ethos]

Black women.

[The Black Okagi]

Less of black folks. Run your social media. We'll shut that down real quick.

[Ethos]

What happened with Wendy's? They hired a black community. What happened? It literally blew up Wendy's.

[The Black Okagi]

I think Burger King did the same thing too. They were all like at war. We were all like laughing at that.

[Ethos]

Wendy started it and they all were like, wait, well how. They're like, oh, just hire button. Then they got a lot of black.

[The Black Okagi]

Person on the account. We can tell.

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

Yeah, I like it. I. I want more companies to. And I know it's not seen as professional and like you can't do it, but I just want them to just be like, you're weird.

[The Black Okagi]

Shut up.

[Yakuza the Don]

Up.

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

You know, like just because when the Ubisoft started doing the thing of like, well, you know, you don't have to play as him and defending like their decision for what they were doing. Don't do that. Do this and be like, this is what we're saying and we like it.

[The Black Okagi]

And you're weird because they're allowed to dislike it. Like, I'm not against that. I think where it gets weird and where I agree with you, Watts is like, they're dragging. Yo, you guys have been dragging this game for like two years now. If you're not interested, just don't buy it. What are you interested in? That is the conversation we need to have. Like, what game do you guys like to play? That's what we need playing.

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

Any of them clip from any of those dudes.

[Ethos]

That reaction that Joe Joseph Faris had for Split Fiction, where the. The thing about this type of reaction, the are you talking about like. Like that's the type of like. You see how he just. He master. Masterful. I would show that in classes for like amazing pr. Just the are you talking about? You're like. He literally just like without saying you're weird. He basically said you're weird. Like, like, what are you talking about? Like, even. He even broke it down. Like the first game we had, it was two guys. The second game we had was two guys. The third game was a guy and a girl. Now this one is both girl and girl. What the are you talking about?

[The Black Okagi]

Also he said the girls are based off his daughter. So. Yo Chat. Is it. Is. Is it woke to have a daughter? Yeah.

[Ethos]

Is it woke to make a game about Your daughters, like.

[Yakuza the Don]

Yeah.

[Ethos]

No.

[The Black Okagi]

What are we talking about?

[Ethos]

Nailed it. No notes. Yeah.

[The Black Okagi]

Oh, that's all I got on the show. Notes. Do y got anything else y'all want to add to the conversation before we wrap it? Up? Up.

[Ethos]

What y'all think about that Battlefield, that.

[The Black Okagi]

Alleged gameplay that leaked?

[Ethos]

Yeah. What you think about alleged gameplay?

[The Black Okagi]

First of all, if y'all don't know what ethos is talking about, I'm not going to show it on the screen for legal reasons. But feel free to look it up. It's all over the social media. It looked like Battlefield. It didn't blow me away, to be honest.

[Ethos]

I ain't going to lie. I closed my eyes and, like, if you told me that was BF4, I would have believed you.

[The Black Okagi]

I honestly, it like BF3. BF4.

[Ethos]

Yeah. Yeah. So we'll see. We'll see if it's good. Apparently VIN is gonna save it.

[The Black Okagi]

That's a good thing, though, because I have been monitoring the feedback and people seem to be excited. That's what they want. My issue is, like, if you just make Battlefield 4 again, people are going to get off within a week or two, so there has to be. Yeah, exactly.

[Ethos]

I was like, you can go back to the roots, but it's like, you got to do kind of like what Modern Warfare did back, like, a while, like back in 2019. Like, you gotta. Gotta spruce it up a little bit. But, I mean, I'm not gonna lie.

[Yakuza the Don]

I.

[Ethos]

We all played. I think that was like, the game we all first, like, met each other and played with was bf3 and bf4. So it's got memories, it's got good memories. But, you know, I'm gonna watch from Titanfall.

[The Black Okagi]

That's.

[Ethos]

That. That's old. That's Old Town, man.

[The Black Okagi]

Yes. I remember bringing that back. The first podcast I think we had you on, the title was Titanfall, the game that divided a community or something. I think that's the way.

[Ethos]

Yeah, it was.

[The Black Okagi]

Yeah. Make Titanfall.

[Yakuza the Don]

Go back and watch that man.

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

Please do.

[Ethos]

Right? We were right.

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

The children thirst for tiny.

[Ethos]

We were. We were prophetic. We said it.

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

We said it.

[The Black Okagi]

And it's funny because I didn't put it on the notes, but y'all saw they canceled another Apex Universe game this week.

[Ethos]

Yes, them. It should all flop. I'm not gonna lie. I don't wish displeasure upon developers, but specifically for respawn, I have. I. I will. I got some voodoo magic level of.

[The Black Okagi]

Like, every game you make.

[Ethos]

If it's not Apex X, I don't want it to fail.

[The Black Okagi]

Let's let them finish the. The Jedi series first, and then afterwards, you can voodoo them.

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

We don't like their shooters. We wish ill upon their shooters.

[The Black Okagi]

I need to know what happens to my man Cal. Kestis is cool.

[Ethos]

He's cool with the homies. Yes. He's invited. He's cool. Respawn's doing a good job with Star Wars. That's one of the few good Star wars games we got right now. They're cool, but. But this shooter, this Apex, it's gotta die, bro. We gotta let that go. We gotta play new games. New Titanfall, New.

[The Black Okagi]

I don't know, part of it, honestly.

[Yakuza the Don]

Think it's about to be done. I was watching. Oh, my God. I was watching Bey play Apex, right?

[Ethos]

That's the fattest in the world.

[Yakuza the Don]

You know, they made. You know, they made some changes. I was, like, asking. I was like. I was like, what has changed in this game? He was like, oh, well, now we have these. These centers that you can go to. You can basically get any gun, and you can get all the ammo you can get. I was like, okay, so it's not. They're trying to, I guess, make it easier for the BR. Now. He was like, yeah, but. And then, like. But he just wasn't having fun playing it. But, like, he's so locked in exactly what you were talking about, Ethos. He's so locked in that he cannot compel himself to stop playing Apex.

[Ethos]

Let it go, man. Let it go.

[Yakuza the Don]

I was like, you still asking me to play it? No, I'm not redownloading this.

[Ethos]

I'm playing that.

[Yakuza the Don]

I, like, get on Rivals, bro. Get on Rivals or something.

[Ethos]

Better learn Rivals or something.

[The Black Okagi]

Now we getting off that, too. The community. I'm starting to see Community switching up on it. The agenda is getting pushed, bro. I'm seeing a lot. I've had a lot of videos in my algorithm talking about that matchmaking in the game. People getting sick of that.

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

Oh, yeah, I've heard about that.

[Yakuza the Don]

A lot more and more people, you.

[The Black Okagi]

Know say, yeah, it is what it is, but you are the lady in the group, so. Ladies first. Watts, what's your closing statement on episode 163?

[Ethos]

Go.

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

Go play Wilds. Play it. It's really good. The next game, I'm gonna be looking forward to A's first. Berserker Kazan. Definitely gonna be playing that game. Go play new games. New games are very fun and very cool.

[Yakuza the Don]

Thank you.

[The Black Okagi]

JG, what's your closing state for episode 163? Go.

[Yakuza the Don]

I just want to say, unlike DC and whatever the hell is going on WB, I think I can confidently say now that. That Marvel is back, baby. Marvel is back with back, bro. Daredevil is fire. If you haven't seen the first two episodes, oh, my God. Daredevil. Born again is so far. And. And like I said, Captain America, you know, DEI Captain App. It was good. I don't care. Anybody said that. That movie was good. That movie was good, man.

[The Black Okagi]

So I think I enjoyed it.

[Yakuza the Don]

I think maybe. And then we got some news about. About the thunderbolt. They said the early screens positive. I was like, okay, it might be going 3 for 3, baby. So we might have a good 20, 25 for MCU fan. I'm just saying I'm jealous.

[The Black Okagi]

I want to watch the. I want to watch Daredevil, but somebody wants to watch Love is Blind.

[Yakuza the Don]

When you.

[The Black Okagi]

And this season is so boring because it's in Minnesota. It's nothing but mayonnaise, bro. And they all look the same. They all act the same. Like, I need some villains for my reality tv.

[Yakuza the Don]

My wife has actually been like, kind of not into it, but, like, we're gonna watch, so.

[The Black Okagi]

So it's not me. It is kind of.

[Ethos]

Is that. Is that guy. There's a guy on Tick Tock that I've been like. It's been spamming my feet. Aaron or Edward from the Plumber. The black dude who says, like, he always wants to fight everybody.

[The Black Okagi]

Like, that's. That's okay. Show. I think I know what you're talking about. The one that had his shirt off.

[Ethos]

Yeah, he's just always like, on, like, I'm just gonna fight everybody. If you look at me wrong, I'm just gonna fight you or something.

[Yakuza the Don]

Yeah, no, it's. This is another reality show. So many, so many dating and love reality shows. But no, this is. This is what the tba.

[The Black Okagi]

I think vlog too flocking.

[Yakuza the Don]

This girl be watching it.

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

Severance. Jesus Christ.

[Ethos]

Matter of fact, for my closing statement, trump. I'll say it again. And second thing, watch Paradise. Watch paradise, jt. Watch Paradise. I'm telling you, I need to.

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

I'm gonna watch that.

[Ethos]

Watch it. I highly recommend it. It's best thing is also don't Google it. Don't try to look for a synopsis. Just go into it blind. It's the best experience ever. Just don't even try to Google what it's about. Just watch it first episode and I promise you, it's like a perfect pilot. It'll immediately grab you and you're Just gonna be watching the whole thing through.

[The Black Okagi]

Yeah. Well, since Everybody's talking about TV, my closing statement for episode. Episode 163 is watch season three of Invincible. It's still fire.

[Ethos]

True.

[The Black Okagi]

Keep up. Keep up.

[Ethos]

Yep. And an anime. Watch RE0.

[The Black Okagi]

I haven't watched an anime in a long time.

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

I feel like watching Cherry Diaries actually watch Orb on the. What is it? Orb on the surface of the orb. The orb one. It's on Netflix. It's about heliocentrism. And heliocentrism is in this world. So heliocentrum is. Is like the way that the world actually works, where the. You know, the Earth spins around the. This. Yeah. So it's because in. Yeah. In this world, they believe that, like, God created the world and the world is like, the most important thing, the Earth. So they think that everything goes around the Earth. And so it is highly illegal. And you will be burnt to death if you do not. If you're trying to study other things.

[Yakuza the Don]

Yeah.

[Ethos]

Is he like the main character or something?

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

It's kind of similar. It's following that similar stuff. It's really good. It's on Netflix. It's like a genuinely good show.

[Ethos]

What a fitting show for the days we live in where science.

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

You're not allowed to look at heliocentrism.

[The Black Okagi]

I just seen a video people talking about, we're gonna go take vitamin A for our meat. There's a measles outbreak going on, brother. We're taking vitamins told. I said, oh, my God.

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

I'm not going outside.

[Ethos]

I heard it's like 10 states have been infected.

[The Black Okagi]

We might be another pandemic chat. That's my closing statement. Please watch.

[Ethos]

It's not at the end of the four years. It's at the beginning.

[The Black Okagi]

35 uptick in measles and is injecting vitamin C and vitamin A. Because JFK Jr. We are living in wild times.

[Yakuza the Don]

Yeah.

[Ms. 5000 Watts]

If you're not in the U.S. please pray for us.

[Yakuza the Don]

We're terrible. Bro.

[Ethos]

I'm hitting my cousins up in Africa, bro. I'm coming home. I can't do this, Brad.

[The Black Okagi]

That's. That's what we got for y'all in episode 163 of the game of Illuminati podcast. You've been enlightened.

[Ethos]

You been enlightened.