Press B 212: Gaming's Fear Of Missing Out

[00:00:00] Some of the games Chardonnay bought this year are hot garbage. Which ones? Well, if you don't listen to the episode, you might be missing out. Fear of missing out today on... Intro Don't foam over my intro, man.

[00:00:35] Welcome to another episode of Press B To Cancel, your favorite podcast or else. I don't know what we're doing. Chardonnay- I like that one. It's just me and you this week.

[00:00:47] And honestly, you and me, I think we just needed an excuse to talk about games we bought recently. Because again, we've said in the last few episodes, we have a problem.

[00:00:55] The problem, we keep buying freaking new games when we have a backlog of stuff to play. How are you doing this week? I'm doing alright. What do they say? Like, to conquer your fears, you have to face them head on?

[00:01:07] Well, I face them head on with my debit card. If there's a way to spend my way out of this backlog, I'll do it. That's true. Alright, so this week we do want to talk about FOMO or the fear of missing out.

[00:01:22] Which is a marketing tactic and it's a pretty effective one on some people. Not all of our crew, but definitely you two, us two for sure. So, I mean, this is the thing. Fear of missing out or FOMO tactics, every company does it.

[00:01:37] Not just in gaming, but we're going to obviously focus on gaming. But I want to start off with a couple company examples of how they use FOMO to get people to buy their shit.

[00:01:46] And that's what it is. We're sorry YouTube, it's been more than seven seconds, I hope. So the first one is Sony PlayStation actually. So I've avoided buying not just PlayStation, but PlayStation and Xbox for the last couple generations. Mostly because I'm a pretty hardcore PC gamer.

[00:02:02] Because it's Steam sales. It's cheap, they're available. Most everything I want to play is on PC. But Sony though for the last couple of years has definitely had some console exclusives I've been envious of until just recently when they started to release some of them for PC.

[00:02:19] Ghost of Jashima, Last of Us, a few others. Why did they do that though? It's a bit more sinister than you might imagine. In an interview last week GameSpot reported that one execs that Sony they spoke to said

[00:02:32] they're happy to release their previously console exclusives on to PC. At least the first one. What they're playing is what the idea of what they're doing is they release the first one on PC and then they hope that gamers are so enthralled or so into that game franchise

[00:02:49] that they won't wait for the sequel to come to PC. They'll jump at the chance to play it on console. Because Sony's playing much like other companies is release the game on console first and then a year or so after

[00:03:00] then release it on PC. They're not the only ones to do this but specifically Sony knows the franchise they have are quite good, they're critically acclaimed and they know they can hook players if they get that taste. They get that little taste.

[00:03:13] And then if you want that sequel you're going to go buy a PlayStation. At all mid I'm almost there. During the pandemic there's a few moments where I wanted to buy a console. I almost bought an Xbox and I almost bought a PS5 at two separate occasions.

[00:03:27] And I was thwarted because you couldn't find one right there in short supply. And that's the hang up, right? Like the argument about it is they're releasing all these exclusive games but they were making it for a console that was impossible to get your hands on.

[00:03:41] So it's not the consumer's fault that they can't get their hands on the items. They couldn't make them fast enough for people to purchase them. People got burnt out on waiting for them to come out. All these exclusives sat forever and we're just staring at our PCs

[00:03:56] still waiting for Bloodborne to come to our goddamn PCs. Well, and that's one of the notable ones where it's just... That's got to come to PC at some point. It's got to. But I mean, at this point if they did a Bloodborne remastered

[00:04:09] why not just do it for the PS5? You're going to hook people. Because now these consoles are fairly widely available. If I wanted to buy a PS5 or an Xbox I probably could tomorrow.

[00:04:20] Or just walk into store and pick one up. That wasn't the case even a year from now. But we're kind of so far deep into the generation of this console war that I don't, or even a war, this console generation that I don't...

[00:04:30] At this point it's almost too late to even bother investing in a console. I don't think I need to. I think at this point I could probably wait until the next generation of consoles. And by that point maybe I won't care.

[00:04:41] Because the thing I've noticed with this generation of consoles is there's a certain limit of fidelity you get in gaming graphics and it's kind of already peaked. Like I don't need 4K. I really don't. Like I have an ultra wide monitor

[00:04:54] and it's nice if a game supports it but I don't need it. So there's not much there over the PC. So I don't know. So I think at this point a lot of gamers are kind of just taking a pass in the console generation

[00:05:05] if they haven't already got into it already by this point. So Sony and Xbox kind of look for ways to get attention from PC gamers and bring them over to their side. And it's tough. The other example I wanted to bring up was Rockstar.

[00:05:18] And I forgot about this one but then when I realized what they're going to do it pissed me the hell off. Because I've been playing Grand Theft Auto 5 recently on the Steam Deck. Works great by the way. And what they did and what they always do,

[00:05:30] they did with Red Dead 2. They did with GTA IV from that wrong. And they did with GTA V famously. Rockstar will release Grand Theft Auto on the console first and then after a year maybe two then they'll release it on PC.

[00:05:45] And when they were asked recently in an interview well it's been multiple years since GTA V when you planned to release simultaneously Grand Theft Auto 6 next year on console and PC. And the executive was very coy in saying we haven't even announced our PC release

[00:06:01] as if they may not do a PC release because they damn well know they're going to but they don't have to do it at release because you're gonna buy, if you're a really die-hard fan and you can't wait you're gonna buy it on console.

[00:06:14] Two years later you're gonna see all your friends modding the hell out of it or playing at extra high-res graphics on PC and you'll buy it again, you'll double dip. And that's a huge problem. I see why they do it but it sucks. So I don't know.

[00:06:28] Like Char, you have at least, you have a PS5 right? You don't have an Xbox I don't believe right? You have the PS5 and PC. Yeah I have the older Xbox but I did not get the Xbox X that was released when the PS5 came out.

[00:06:40] I was gifted the PS5 so I didn't even go get it myself. It was a gift for a birthday present but I love it. I love having it but on the fidelity thing that you were talking about, I didn't want to interrupt you

[00:06:54] because you were on a good tie-rate. There's a lot of the times when I'm playing anything on the Xbox, or sorry, on the PlayStation 5 where on my PC I can change my video performance down to the pixel it feels like. You know you change the, I've got a 1440

[00:07:14] curved monitor that I use right here that I love and I got a 1080 that I use for streaming and things that, and for the podcast I've got. But I can tweak Alan Wake. I can tweak all the, I can tweak Horizon Forbidden West

[00:07:30] on here down to like the smallest minute detail where it still looks amazing but it doesn't have to run as much power, right? On my PlayStation 5 it feels like there is there's performance mode and graphic mode. And when you play on performance mode,

[00:07:47] and it could just because my monitor, I don't know because they have the HDR stuff, a bunch of things that may not be compatible with the current setup that I have but I noticed that when I run on performance or balance it's got the 60 frames it looks fantastic.

[00:08:02] But when you run it on like graphic mode it's like 30 frames but it looks beautiful. So it's like it's hogging itself if the game looks fantastic, it don't get me wrong even in balance or in frame rate mode it still looks good

[00:08:17] but it does, it cannot look as good as my 4070 can make the games on my PC with 60 frames on top of that. It just seems to be like you can take off like blooming, you can take off film grain or lens flares and all that stuff.

[00:08:32] But on my PC I can take out one of those things and still keep what I want to add to the ambiance of the game. So it seems like there's not as much to adjust on the PS5. And it sucks because on PC

[00:08:47] that can get you that little boomf of using your computer processing power. I mean I do that on the Steam Deck quite a bit for certain games, right? I love being able to change how much grass or foliage there is in a world

[00:08:57] because it saves me five frames if I want. And I'm not really hung up on frames per second so much. But we're at this point in gaming where 1080p60 should have been standard years ago. Like it's, that's why PC

[00:09:11] has been such a great value because it's so easy on most hardware these days to get 1080p60. And I'm not talking top-line video cards. I mean you and I are lucky to have decent video cards now. But I was on a 1650 Super for five years I think.

[00:09:25] And 1080p60 was never an issue. But then I look at the PS5 and the Xbox X and they struggle with that and they shouldn't be. Like I mean that's, the console should be able to do a certain base level of graphic fidelity with performance

[00:09:39] at this point in age. Like it's, I struggle to see what the difference there is between a PS4 and a PS5 a lot of the time. And same thing for where the hell Xbox calls their consoles. And that's kind of a shame.

[00:09:51] So you have both a console and a PC. You definitely have a great PC and a PS5 is also a great console. Don't get me wrong. Have you ever felt the need to buy a game twice? Have you ever bought a game on the PS5

[00:10:03] and bought a PC game? Yes I have. Which one? Final Fantasy Remake 7 was purchased many moons ago on my Xbox. By plus, sorry, my PlayStation 4 when it was first released. I bought it on that and then I got the PS5 and you can get the upgraded. Now the

[00:10:23] benefit to PS5, the whole backwards compatibility whatever but there's forward compatibility with the PS5 at least with Sony where if you purchase a game that has both been updated for PS5 graphics and you bought it for the PS4, you drop 10 bucks. Ghost of Tsushima

[00:10:39] is a perfect example. You drop 10 bucks on that. You get the PS5 version with the upgraded graphics and all the upgraded stuff that comes with it. And I got the director's cut of Ghost of Tsushima 450 for an extra $10 to run it on there. So I can

[00:10:53] play the upgraded version of the game on the PS5. But I did buy the Final Fantasy 7 remake and I wanted to play it on my Steam Deck. So I got it on my Steam Deck. A lot of the times when I double dip on something

[00:11:09] it's so I can play it on my Steam Deck. Though it is the greatest invention to man in my personal opinion for people like you and I who are avid gamers but also have full-time jobs and families and it's difficult to come into your office

[00:11:23] and just blow out the world for a little while and run around and do some shooting or whatever or some puzzle solving when you can just sit on your couch and fire that thing up you know, it's available it's there I'm on my couch

[00:11:37] and it's also the window and the FOMO doesn't help to bring it back around for the FOMO discussion when you can get the thing on your Steam Deck while you're sitting down on the couch and it doesn't help. That's not helpful at all. I mean it is

[00:11:51] but not for my want. No, and that's the beauty of what Valve made in the Steam Deck I mean they've done a few choices of that that have made it very clever. One is they've kind of said this is a device to get don't worry about next year's

[00:12:05] Steam Deck 2 or not, they're not playing that hardware game, they never do they may release one you know several years from now but they're pretty happy with the hardware they've created so what they've given you is a hardware that is price, it's expensive

[00:12:17] but for what it is pretty affordable and it's directly tied into the Steam Store and that means every goddamn sale is front and center at the start of the when you boot it up and you can see all the sales like right now I mean they have

[00:12:29] Steam Next Fest which thankfully is free demos of stuff but I'm just scrolling through the store and saying yep want that want that yes this please that they made it so seamless to buy things it's dangerous. But at least Steam is like we've said before

[00:12:43] a lot of the games we purchased this year were on sale so my example of something like this where is um like years ago I put off buying I put up buying the Steam Deck when you guys did

[00:12:53] one of the reasons why is I was heavily using my Switch. I love the Nintendo Switch it was a great console and it was particularly good for indie games there's tons of indie stuff for small studio games on there and they were not full price, they're always

[00:13:05] cheap, it was fantastic but they're always a little bit cheaper on Steam and that's the problem and so when I got the Steam Deck I realized a lot of the games I love I love playing my Switch, the battery life wasn't as good over there and I didn't

[00:13:19] want to keep buying stuff on that system it doesn't help that my daughter has a Switch as well and you can't play at the same time on both Switches without some headaches. So there's a few games where I kind of repurchased them

[00:13:31] for the Steam Deck. I don't pay full price I try not to but I might have bought the entire Shantae franchise on Steam Deck this week because it was like half off, they go half off once a year and it's worth picking those games up

[00:13:43] I love them but I have them on Switch as well so I feel like I double dipped there but I really try not to do that I think the only time I double dipped outside of that was Skyrim where I bought the original years ago

[00:13:55] and then I bought the Remastered and then I bought the stupid VR version when that was out so I do try and avoid the double dipping for sure. I did the Fallout Double Dip but I did the Fallout TV show bump that everybody did. I have beaten Fallout 3

[00:14:13] I have 4 and I have 76. I have 76 still in the cellophane on my shelf here for my PlayStation 4 that my wife bought me for Christmas and after I was done with the show and I saw all the updates that they had done and it was

[00:14:29] how much for all three? 20 bucks for all three of them? Right. Yeah. And that's the I mean that's not FOMO that's a deal problem is when am I going to play it Jake? When am I going to play it? We were joking about it the other day

[00:14:49] that I purchased Stellar Blade not too long ago it's a Souls Board slash Nier style fighting game that's only on PS5 it is a PS5 exclusive right now it's a total Wii Fu simulator game but it's cool great graphics the combat's dope

[00:15:05] it's a lot of fun and it's got a pretty good story from what I got into so far so I just purchased that you were giving me shit about it like we do because that's what Jake and I do and you're not wrong you're not wrong but

[00:15:17] it was a belated birthday gift for myself because I wanted to buy it on my birthday because it came out the day after my birthday and I just never got around to doing it but what was I playing instead Jake? Dark Souls 3 which is a game you've beaten

[00:15:33] you've beaten it already to be fair you're doing the DLC which I think you never did that before and that makes sense but now what am I playing? I'm playing Eldenry but that's because the DLC is coming out so I'm getting ready for that

[00:15:47] so it's new stuff so it's not like I'm going hey you know what I'm going to buy this really cool game and now I'm going to play Middle Earth Shadow of War for no reason you know what I mean? Even though I also bought that

[00:16:01] sometime this year for $5 but my point well like it's it's been weird so last year was pretty packed with new releases that are all fantastic right you had Alan Wake 2 and Bollowsgate 3 of course we talked a lot about that one

[00:16:17] and just there's a lot of great games last year and there's a lot that I never got around to buying or playing so I've been kind of picking them up this year when I can there's a few that I've been putting off

[00:16:27] for a while and I'm really curious about them like there's a Yakuza the Yakuza sequel Infinite Wealth I don't want to pay $90 Canadian for it for that game I'm sure it's great but I just for an RPG that's going to take me 60-70 hours

[00:16:39] I don't need it right now especially when I just beat Remake as well so I'm trying to put off some purchases but then there's some where I just buy I don't know I bought Dragon's Dog my 2 and I'm trying to figure out why I bought it

[00:16:53] maybe because the first one was so well liked in hindsight it's almost like a cult classic especially with the DLC when that one came out so when they announced the second one and I saw people playing online social media is a big problem with FOMO I have

[00:17:05] too where it's like you see other people playing this game and it feels like in the moment this game is going to be the next big thing right game of the year even though it's not and I saw a scene where a guy was playing the

[00:17:17] Dragon's Dog my 2 and he was attacking a Gryphon and then he climbs the side of the Gryphon onto its back and it takes off and starts flying out to the ocean and he's just wailing with a sword on the back of the Gryphon and eventually the Gryphon

[00:17:31] knocks him off and he starts falling and when he falls he lands in the village on a house and he lands on his henchman and manages to survive like a 10 story fall that moment was hilarious to me and I'm like I gotta play this game

[00:17:43] I have to play it it's probably all full of moments like that and it's gonna be fantastic so I bought Dragon's Dog my 2 and it's not bad it's not a bad game I don't think it's a $70 good game though

[00:17:57] or it's not a game I should have bought for $70 or $90 Canadian my problem with Dragon's Dog my 2 is kind of what gameplay there is is cool but there's a very much lack of enemy variety types like once you've climbed one ogre

[00:18:11] you've climbed 20 of them and it doesn't feel the same it doesn't feel as engaging or as magical the 20th time you do that and that's a problem with that game there's also like no dungeons in Dragon's Dog my 2 it's just caves and they all look the same

[00:18:23] it's not like Elden Ring I thought maybe like Elden Ring where you have a huge map of things to explore when you're exploring Elden Ring there's different biomes different areas look very distinct from one another and like the dungeons and stuff

[00:18:35] maybe you might see the same tileset and stuff but the bosses are all unique and there's different setups it's a very unique and varied game in that in Elden Ring it's not like that in Dragon's Dog my 2 at all combat is great but it's very repetitive

[00:18:47] with what you find so I kind of wish I didn't fall for the hype on Dragon's Dog my 2 because nobody's talked about that game now nobody like even if they release a DLC which maybe coming

[00:18:59] I don't think it's going to be taking off like the first one did yeah Dev Sinistar he got Dragon's Dog my 1 for him and I and I played a few minutes of it on my steam deck but I wasn't like totally torn

[00:19:13] I wasn't like I really want to play this right now it was more or less he and I were like hey we're going to play open world games here's an open world game and the new ones coming out here pretty soon let's check it out

[00:19:21] so we checked it out we played it and then 2 came out and I was like I barely touched one I played maybe 15 minutes of 1 but the way you were talking about it was like I'm going to go buy this god damn game

[00:19:33] Jake stopped talking about it so much but he would say the same thing every time you do all this cool stuff you get to climb on these and you get to ride these things but don't buy it don't buy it

[00:19:43] but then you get to do these really cool fights and you're climbing up the back of ogres and you're stabbing me in the head but don't buy it I'm like but you keep giving me reasons to buy it stop giving me reasons to buy it

[00:19:55] don't tell me all this cool shit and you say don't buy it I'm going to tell you another one that's like that for me so in 1 week span we had like 3 really amazingly well critiqued and reviewed indie games came out Animal well was one of them

[00:20:13] which I spoke about in previous podcast and I don't regret buying animal well at all great game the other one I bought was Crip Master? Crip Master I think it was Crip Keeper or Crip Master I want to say Crip Master it's a dungeon crawling game

[00:20:27] first person dungeon crawl it's all black and white which is a weird aesthetic and you have the I don't want to call it dungeon master but it feels like that because he's narrating everything as you go he's constantly talking to you and speaking for whatever you do

[00:20:43] as you're exploring the dungeon and you basically type to talk to him and the word list like I thought it was AI like chat gbt at first but it's not the creators confirm it's just a large database of words and they had a guy

[00:20:57] record a ton of voiceover for every possible combination but to give you an example there's these there's these statues which recover your health when you find them but when you first find them you have to desecrate them so you have to type in how you desecrate a statue

[00:21:11] and the world's your oyster of your imagination when it comes to these statues you want to piss on them you did piss you want to bleed I did bleed the first time you want to bleed on it and it gives you a response unique to what you typed

[00:21:21] for almost everything and it's pretty wild like there's treasure chests in the game and when you go to the chest you can get it but he plays a word game with you where you have to guess what's in the chest

[00:21:33] so you can ask you have to ask him for clues you know touch it what's it feel like, what's it sound like, what's it taste like what does it look like, would you remember any question you can think of

[00:21:43] you're just asking them these one word questions about this item and they have to type in the answer it is cool as shit it's probably one of the most unique games I've played in a long time but I'm going to tell you don't buy it don't buy it

[00:21:57] don't buy it because the black and white aesthetic is not the greatest I mean it's not it's neat but after several hours it becomes kind of straining on the eyes but also I feel like it's a game where there's no replay value

[00:22:09] I think once you beat Cripp Keeper or Cripp Master I got to look it up whenever you beat this game I don't feel like there's a reason to go back and play because you know the answers to all the chests they're not random

[00:22:19] you know the layers of the mazes because they're not random it's all fixed handcrafted and like there's a place for that kind of game but without the replay value that mechanic of just talking to the computer is so cool but if it's not different every time

[00:22:35] I feel like it loses a lot of its magic so that's the game I originally it's like novel the one time kind of thing it's a cool novel thing but by the time you're done looking at graves and telling them what to do just let me in there

[00:22:47] I don't care anymore tell me what it is it's easy to spoil it for yourself too I watched a streamer playing it, Mel plays games I watched her play a few minutes of it I watched her stream off because I'm like this is cool as shit

[00:23:01] I want to play this but now I know the answer to this one chest puzzle and sure enough when I got to it I'm like yeah I know what it is and that was kind of off-putting for me so but I mean I bought it because of FOMO

[00:23:13] there's all this hype all this critical claim for it was like the indie darling week man everybody was releasing an indie game we got Hades 2 out of nowhere early access but still well reviewed Animal Well and then Crypt Keeper

[00:23:27] and then I think there's a couple other ones as well too like there's been a real rise of indie titles that have just been stealing a show and whenever I see an indie title that's like 90 plus on Open Critic or Metacritic I'm like

[00:23:39] I should play it, I should get it but for every one of those I get I usually get one that's maybe a stinker so what about you is there any games you bought that you kind of regret do I regret maybe so I have these a lot, okay

[00:23:57] I'm gonna, I'm premising it with this this is less of a FOMO more of a I'm trying to find something to play on my Steam Deck that's not Lysope or Atomic Hearts or something because those games look beautiful on my PC

[00:24:11] and there's just certain games that need to be played on your PC because the aesthetics are so nice that it almost, it's almost criminal to not play it at the highest possible you can versus just me screwing around on my chair

[00:24:27] also I want to point out that when I'm playing stuff on my Steam Deck downstairs I'm really not paying attention to anything I'm not, I don't have to sound up because my wife's usually watching something or she's on TikTok or she's talking to me

[00:24:39] and I want to be able to listen and pay attention to what she's saying so I'm not totally ignoring her so I like to play kind of mindless bullshit while I'm on there so a lot of the games that I've looked at recently

[00:24:51] are retro inspired kind of games and I was really excited about these two because they were both kind of like a package purchase one of them is called Vengeful Guardian Moon Rider which is almost kind of a Shinobi type S game it's recent

[00:25:07] it's an indie game, it's recent and you play like a cybernetic it's like Cyber Shadow but more Shinobi than Ninja Gaiden, that makes sense there's a motorcycle scene where it's a backshot and you're riding a motorcycle and you're shooting shit and I saw that in the clips

[00:25:25] and they got the cool rock music while you're watching you know because I watch clips right I don't just, eh, that looks cool I almost did that with Civ 6 and I've never played a civilization game in my life and Civ 6 was $2 and I was like, haha, Sinistar talks

[00:25:41] very positively about civilization maybe, oh yeah maybe it's my thing but I didn't get proud of me on that one, that and Resonations which is a great RTS Resonations good, but yeah so I picked this up and I was playing with it and I was kind of like

[00:25:57] this has some difficulty elements that I wasn't expecting and I wanted something kind of mindless and kind of just I'm just gonna whatever and it came with another game called Blazing Chrome which is Contra, it's Contra it is Contra just under a different name and a different guys

[00:26:13] and I started playing that one after and I was kind of upset about Moon Rider and then that one was kind of like now I spent 16 bucks on both of them so it's not like I broke the bank to get these two games

[00:26:23] but I was just kind of like eh, but it was too late for me to like refine and I feel bad refunding things, you know what I mean these people are making yeah, they're making it, this is their work

[00:26:37] and if I don't like it, I shouldn't punish them because I was like, well, I chose poorly they sold it to me very well so they should keep what they sold for me because they did a good job on selling it they got you

[00:26:49] but there's another one that I got that's Neota, which I've seen Neota, Neota, I don't even want to pronounce it and I was hoping that was just going to get, and everybody says in the reviews I hate myself simulator, that's basically what this game is like

[00:27:05] it's BDSM but for you know, for gamers or whatever and it is, this game kicks your ass and you're blown up by acid barrels and fireballs and but it's fun it's fun to just go out there and die and then try and figure something out

[00:27:21] but it is a math problem if you really want to succeed in the game you really have to like really understand what's going on and every review was like, I sucked at this game until I didn't anymore and it was just understanding

[00:27:37] what was going on, I've watched videos on it I've watched people tell me what to do there's like a two hour one building two hour one building video that I was like what have I done you watched that?

[00:27:51] I didn't watch the two hours, no I watched maybe the 30 minutes and went oh geez okay, that's done but a perfect example of FOMO for me right now is Katana Zero which I purchased I believe two days ago I was looking up something else that Lord Optic

[00:28:09] and I were talking about and I thought he called it Katana Zero so I pulled it up on my Steam Deck like you do was not Katana Zero, it was a completely different game but Katana Zero had overwhelmingly positive reviews it was $15 and it looked cool

[00:28:27] and to be honest with you it is a really cool game but this game was not on my list I just bought it, I just bought it on a whim because it looked neat and it turned out to be really good my wife, whatever if anything is over $25

[00:28:43] that's when I usually go to the wife and say hey, I would like to purchase this game just so you know if it shows up on the big account I'm planning on buying this most of the time I'll be like hey babe this thing's on sale, it's usually $50

[00:28:55] I want to get it I've been waiting for this to go on sale for a while and she goes you've literally never mentioned that game me once in my life it's true because I'm always either talking to you about it or I have been

[00:29:07] had it on my wish list for two or three years and I've just been sitting there watching the price drop and I'd forget to tell her hey, this has been on my wish list for like three years she goes yeah, you never mentioned that so no

[00:29:21] like if you talked about it more than just this one time then yeah but you have a problem you have all these games you've always been waiting for to come out Tom McCart's was a very big example of that

[00:29:31] because I've been watching that once since it was released and it's cool I need to get into a little bit more but it's cool but that's another game I want to play here I don't want to play in my Steam Deck because it is gorgeous

[00:29:43] and it looks really good on this Curve Monitor really good yeah, when you said you bought Atomic Hearts I was trying to give you a shit for because who am I to call shit for buying stuff you don't need because I'm awful too with it

[00:29:55] but that's the game where when that came out I almost bought it but I'm like no you're gonna look at the reviews you're gonna read the reviews and you're gonna see what they say and if it's less than 80 not that less than 80 is a bad game

[00:30:09] but you have a lot on your plate and if it's less than 80 you're gonna pass and I think it didn't do even that I think it got 60 something high 60s not bad I'm sure it's a great game but certainly not the narrative game of the year or whatever

[00:30:23] I'm trying to remember who made that one I think is it Ken Levine who did that one he's a well-known studio that did it and I know there's a lot of hype for it when it came out but the reviews were not kind

[00:30:33] so I told myself I would wait until I have free time if ever and I would wait for a drastic sale so unless it was drastically on sale I do I wanted to pass but definitely looks nice I'm with you on the graphics too like

[00:30:47] I spend forever on my computers Mundfish is a developer and the old reviews were very positive and the recent reviews were mostly positive because the DLC is getting dumped on but the base game has been getting great great reviews and with such great reviews like

[00:31:05] can't have sex with robot ladies how can you say no to that sorry YouTube Sex sells, I mean, Steam certainly knows that lesson with me from what half the shit it puts on on my screen it's embarrassing but I'm with you on the graphics

[00:31:21] being a thing because I spend I spend forever on my computer every day I work in IT, I'm always on a computer the last thing I want to do is just turn around my desk to my gaming computer and play games, I want to go upstairs

[00:31:33] so I'm also with you on using the Steam Deck for games so I'll play most anything on the Steam Deck like I'm playing Elven Ring online right now on the Steam Deck it has been quirks but it's been really great five hours of battery life

[00:31:47] it looks fine, I mean it's a 10 year old MMO it better look fine I've been playing a lot of that I'm loving it wait you've said Elven Ring online I think you mean Elder Scrolls Elder Scrolls online I mean they both have such deep lore excuse me

[00:32:05] I don't think it's that old Elder Scrolls you're right, thank you no there's no Elder Ring online but Elder Scrolls online I've been playing a ton of and there's a lot of chapter DLC that's been released over the last few years since I last played

[00:32:17] and it's been great story wise so I've been playing that and because it's an MMO it has a certain mindless quality to it that's perfect for the Steam Deck but there's one game I bought which is Ghost of the Seema which like you said looks beautiful

[00:32:31] like it's a stunning immersive looking game it technically runs on the Steam Deck but I don't want to play it on the Steam Deck because it runs like shit I mean it runs really low res it looks amazing on my widescreen monitor

[00:32:43] and I really won't play it on a big screen so I was trying to because one thing you can do with the Steam Deck is you can stream from your gaming PC to your Steam Deck it's I mean it depends on the wifi in your house

[00:32:55] and my wifi is usually okay but there's certain spots in my house where I can't get a signal so when I had to hook it to the TV I couldn't get the damn thing to load and it was really frustrating so I have not even touched that game

[00:33:07] I bought it, I have every intention of playing it but I will play it when I can have it look good whenever that is I don't know what it's about I did want to touch on indie games I'm with you, there are so many indie games

[00:33:23] and a lot of them are 15 bucks I usually don't think twice because I want to support indie game creators especially the ones that are brand new or very promising to see in shows like games like TUNIQ I think are fantastic whatever Fingy releases in the future

[00:33:39] I'll buy, I don't care how bad it is because I want to reward that dude I've enjoyed a TUNIQ and it was like 15-20 bucks at the most I feel like I ripped him off, it's so funny I hate refunding indie games because they are so cheap

[00:33:55] the last thing I want to see is a review on Steam where somebody has played a game beaten it but because it's a shorter game it's under the two hours they beat it and then refunded it I find that so vile Summer of 58

[00:34:09] there was a big thing about people would buy because it's like a two hour game you can stream it in a set we streamed it in one sitting and got the whole thing done but it was so good if I buy something I'm committed to it

[00:34:21] even if I'm like this is trash I'm going to commit, unless it's like a triple A like if it was Skull and Crossbones that motherfucker would be on the broken ass boat that it came on back to that studio but

[00:34:35] it was a short game but we had fun playing it and it's great and people refunded the dude that he went fucking bankrupt like it's bullshit let the guy have if you enjoyed it keep your cash don't be a dick about it but

[00:34:51] I'm with you so there's some games where and there's some indie games where they're just not games for me the one that I've thought I would really be behind was Turbo Kid which runs great on the Steam Deck on PC it's like a post-apocalyptic

[00:35:05] Metroidvania it's based off of a really campy cheesy movie of the same name on paper it hits all those boxes me and Wolf bought it I swear I would have loved this game I just can't get into it you ride around the apocalypse on a bicycle

[00:35:21] the gameplay on the bicycle is rad it feels awesome but the shooting and the constant combat is just not my jam it's not bad, it's just not for me and I feel awful that I bought it I wish I didn't buy that one

[00:35:35] it's stupid but it's a game where I bought it because you know on paper all the hype on social media Wolf bought it said it looked great like you know what I'm all about these indie games I've been on a really good run of good indie games lately

[00:35:47] so I picked it up and I kind of regret it but there's that in Noida, I bought Noida as well and Noida is neat but I don't know if it's for me it makes me sad it's a lot to get into it's so much deeper

[00:36:03] than what the surface is and I'm constantly looking for a Balattro's deep tube let's not split hairs here Balattro is super deep but it's a quicker pickup okay I understand this I'm getting this, this makes sense to me now okay you're good to go Noida takes several

[00:36:23] it just sounds like Balattro's easier than Noida it's not, it's just different you know you take a couple runs you're not gonna get a card deck but you're done pretty quick Noida is like I've got spell casting time I've gotta worry about

[00:36:39] I've got recharge time I gotta worry about I've got all these extra shit that I'm pulling off of this one to put on this one to make the ultimate one but if I don't put this on here the one will explode and kill me

[00:36:49] if I put this on here there's just a lot to it that's a lot more than should I get this Joker or that Joker so I'm just trying to find something that I can embed before I go to sleep to make my brain kind of wind down

[00:37:03] and I could pass out and there's a few that I got but I can't, you know Power Wash Simulator is the perfect example of a game that I just I'm just gonna play to kill some time I'm gonna watch the time machine from back to the future and

[00:37:19] and then go to bed it's good to go but I don't wanna play like Quantum Break and be totally invested in a story and then have to try to sleep after that because as soon as I lie down I'll be like what does that character do

[00:37:33] then the lore starts spinning in my head I'm trying to match people up on who they are and what they're doing so Elden Ring is also a poor game to play before you go to sleep so you said Power Wash Simulator

[00:37:43] that's a good example of a certain type of game that's been on the rise the last couple years it's the meme games right the meme games that the I don't know what else to call them, they're meme games right I mean for a while I mean

[00:37:55] I don't know if that was a meme game but Power Wash Simulator it's less of a meme game but it's a meme now like when it came out yeah right exactly yeah like the one that I think we all fell for

[00:38:11] I mean I got my money's worth as far as I'm concerned which is Pal World which is basically Pokemon with guns I mean how can you not love that as a concept and I think for a hot minute everybody was playing that game

[00:38:23] and I think it hit 50,000 concurrent on Steam like 50,000 players for Pokemon with guns it has since Nosedive and the number of players but it still has fans Summer Games Fest was this past week and they got announced that they're doing DLC a whole brand new map

[00:38:41] which for that kind of game is what you want right so but Pal World is a game I think we all bought I think we all played it a bit some more than others and I think we've all kind of given up on it I

[00:38:51] Pal World takes a time investment that I am not able to commit to Pal World is a great game and it's great with friends and it's a lot of fun but I can't it's like arc I can't offer the amount of time that is required to make it

[00:39:07] I'm not a good teammate let's just say it that way I don't have enough time to be a good teammate to go and farm resources and build parts of the base so I feel guilty when I play it because I'm like I can't do this

[00:39:23] I don't have time and there's other things that I want to play and want to do as fun as that game is it still is I feel like I can't commit to it as much as I'd like to with other people that are playing it

[00:39:35] you know what I mean so it's that whole it's the meme where the dudes walk down the street with his girlfriend and he turns around and he's looking at a girl passing him kind of thing and it's like the girlfriend is Pal World like I'm looking at Erdtree

[00:39:49] because that's how I feel I want to play Liza P instead of this something like that so Pal World is a great game I would gladly get into it if I did not have literally 80,000 other games that are on my list that I want to at least accomplish

[00:40:05] I mean Alan Wake just got its new DLC for Night Springs which is freaking amazing and I can't wait to get into that but that means I need to play Alan Wake too character coordination and Night Springs I have to play control and Quantum Break

[00:40:19] I mean there's a lot that I don't have to but you know they're part of the whole thing and if I want to do it right and understand where all these people from Jake I've been listening to lore videos on YouTube and Spotify for Elden Ring

[00:40:35] and Alan Wake and all these other things because sometimes you just want to listen to podcasts but the podcast I want to listen to aren't podcasts there are videos on YouTube you know it's just there's a lot there's so much goodness out there is so much fun stuff

[00:40:55] I got RimWorld for the same reason as I just wanted something to just sit down and just not think about and that game is so much bigger than it is that I can't give it time to make it be what it should be instead of just

[00:41:09] oh my people are surviving Bridget our friend Bridget has a sprawling kingdom that she's created as a gun runner on a planet and an organ harvester and all this all these terrible things that you can do to it and I'm just like I can't

[00:41:29] I don't have the time to commit to that kind of stuff you know so what do I do I go hide in my Soulborns game I go hide in Elden Ring and go hide in Dark Souls because I can commit my time to that

[00:41:39] because I'm good at it I'm not to pat my own back but I'm good at them and I can get places in them and it's fun to talk about because I understand this other stuff I'm like I need a tutorial I need someone

[00:41:51] I need like Sinistras literally sitting next to me holding my hands pointing where everything is because I'm like oh there's a lot going on here so but yeah that's so RimWorld that's one I've avoided I almost picked up a few times I'm glad I don't because

[00:42:09] that is also a game that gets a DLC or an expansion like every year and that the price racks up and they always add something really cool really awesome and I feel like if I buy RimWorld I'm gonna want to buy the entire package

[00:42:21] and I'm gonna hate myself if I do the one game that's also like that was Talaris which came out I think 10 years ago and it was okay when it first came out at launch but they definitely added a lot to it in patches

[00:42:33] but now it's become a game where it's almost like games as a service they add a new expansion like every six to nine months and it's the cost yeah kind of a good they charge for it like there was definitely

[00:42:45] free updates but they also charge for the DLC and their reviews on the DLC if you look at Talaris DLC it's sometimes it's great and a lot of the time it's negative because people are tired of paying for this

[00:42:55] this stuff especially for what you get in some of these expansion packs it got to the point where I think you can pay for a monthly fee just to play everything at once and just not worry about buying stuff but it's a 4x game right it's like civilization

[00:43:09] it's like these epic world simulation games where you're building a whole empire and space it's kind of weird playing that and paying a monthly fee I don't know it doesn't really jive with me but that's the game where I've put it off because to buy everything

[00:43:21] I think it's like $300 if you buy everything which is stupid right? like nobody's gonna want to do that but I mean if you are a Talaris fan and you love 4x games and space like this is your thing and they're just feeding you

[00:43:33] every year something new to add to it but games that get frequent updates can be really off-putting to me if it's too much right? like we were playing Hell Divers 2 beginning when that came out like everybody everybody was playing Hell Divers 2 for a while until

[00:43:45] Sony fucked with the momentum but I stopped playing it not because of Sony's bullshit I play in PC I stopped playing Hell Divers because I was tired of of all the war bonds that release they're they cost money or you can use in game currency to buy them

[00:43:59] and they're basically small battle passes that's what they do it's done in the fairest way possible when it comes to a game like this where you can pay the money to unlock the battle pass if you want or you can find in game currency

[00:44:13] fairly quickly if you play regularly and unlock it the problem is they were releasing new war bond like every three weeks it feels like at least it was at least once a month if not faster and there's so many of them do you need them? no

[00:44:25] like the weapons and some of them are better than others they tend to nerf it and patches anyway afterwards so nothing is really critical like you can enjoy that game with the very base weapons if you really want

[00:44:35] but they're there and they're neat and the fomal kicks in and you're like well maybe I should just play a little more and unlock it but it was going to be like my forever game I don't want another forever game I have too many games to play

[00:44:47] I don't want to play Hell Divers 2 every goddamn day to unlock these war bonds and I think that's the problem a lot of folks have had with that game but I mean it's still hugely popular on Steam right and it's a great game too

[00:44:57] but it's the same you know my issue is you know nerfing the stuff so that people want to they want them to try other things and that's fine but my argument of like why are you nerfing a weapon that's for PvE like if you're

[00:45:15] fighting other people then that's fine I don't know I didn't burn out on Hell Divers as much as I just wanted to do something else you know it's that same meme where I'm like oh but this is coming out I want to play that instead

[00:45:31] or you know I don't want to commit just like you I don't want to commit to a forever game when there's other things that I want to finish because if I wanted to commit to a forever game I just go buy Final Fantasy 14 again

[00:45:43] and start playing that shit again because that's a forever game and a phenomenal MMO super fun and I know people that already know it so I already got a crew that I can run with but I don't want to commit to anything that doesn't have

[00:45:57] an ending I have so many games that I have read about or seen about or been excited about Alan Wake 2 being one of the top ones that I've waited for on release that is just going to just blow my mind and then I have Robocop, Rogue City

[00:46:11] because I wanted to be Robocop you had that did you buy that or was it gifted to you you bought that one right it's not for me but I'll tell you what it's so slow it's so fun it's Robocop, what do you want man? it's repetitive it gets

[00:46:29] really repetitive and I need to play it a little bit more so we can get a little further in and see how things get different but I'm like you can only blow away so many punks before you're like okay

[00:46:39] can I at least eat the apple with the baby food or something different where's the feeding simulator is there crafting in this one you said Final Fantasy XIV that's the perfect example of a forever game and a game where

[00:46:53] you play it and if you don't keep up in the patches and all the content and you're keeping your gear score high you can't do all the new raids whatever they call the big boss battles it's a game that's deceptive because I never got into wow

[00:47:05] because of the rating they had to commit to but Final Fantasy XIV has those where you summon a monster and you have to fight it in an arena type battles and they're really cool but you do need to keep up on your gear to go through those

[00:47:19] and I just could not spend the hours to do it and like you said the story goes on and on it's great but it never ends that's why I liked ESO like Elden Ring Online Elder Scrolls Online to be fair it's releasing in like two weeks

[00:47:35] and I've been filling your head with Elden Ring I apologize for that by fault but Elder Scrolls Online at least the chapter DLC for the most part are fairly standalone although there's small arcs so like the one that came out now

[00:47:47] is Gold Road and it's a sequel to Neocrom which is last year's expansion I went through Neocrom in like 12 hours great story self-contained you can start the brand new character there if you want you can bring an existing character every scales it was very easy to get into

[00:48:01] play the story and now I'm doing Gold Road I'll probably be done with Gold Road in a week and I feel satisfied I don't feel like I need to go back and play everything right it's not like I need to it's not like Final Fantasy 14 where you

[00:48:13] kind of want to play through everything and you're kind of forced to play through everything to kind of get to the new stuff Elder Scrolls doesn't do that so I'm trying to avoid the MMO stuff but I don't know

[00:48:25] and the drawback for me on some of the MMO especially 14 is there's stuff way back when in earlier DLCs or earlier patches that I'm like like the Kefka fight like I would play Kefka day in and day out and do God Kefka

[00:48:41] and do all that stuff because that's my jam that's my thing I love that but nobody wants to do it because it's 5 years old and there's new stuff to go and do and you're like I'm not interested in fighting Final Fantasy 8 people

[00:48:53] I want to go back and fight the cool stuff that I found earlier on so you sit in a queue forever just waiting for anybody that's like you that just wants to whet their whistle against Kefka you know and the slog in between the DLCs where it's like

[00:49:09] unlike ESO yeah like ESO like you said they give you a game you go at it it's 12 hours and you're good you've had a nice meal you've had a four course meal you had a little dessert and you're not too full

[00:49:23] and you're happy and you're good and you don't need to have that for a while this one is just like gorging on long winded quests where it's it wants you to get ready for the release I get the intention of all of it but it's like

[00:49:35] now that the release is two years old and I got to do this slog to get to that part it's like fuck I shouldn't have stopped I should have just kept playing this new game somebody on Twitter said Final Fantasy 14 online is the game

[00:49:49] where it gets good after 200 hours and that's so true and it sucks that you can't skip anything really opens up well cause that's the thing right cause the original game release that came out is fine but yeah once you

[00:50:03] beat the original content and you have the patch quest before Heaven's Ward it is such a slog I almost quit a few times but then I'm like well you've come this far you're missing out you're missing out on that really great Heaven's Ward story

[00:50:15] and I go alright and when I got I eventually got there it was good then you beat Heaven's Ward and then you realize that the next expansion is a year away and they filled you with months full of patch content that's boring as shit fetch quests

[00:50:27] and you're like what the hell am I doing with my life that's why I stopped flying mount let me get that flying mount unless you get to new zone then you have to grind the points to be a Leisure flying mount in that zone so you're like

[00:50:39] well I'm missing out if I don't get to unlock my flying mount in every zone so I'm gonna do that you gotta find all the easier points in each zone yeah it sucks yeah so does it so much better it's not as good gameplay wise

[00:50:51] but I mean the story at least is good right well we're almost on the hour I did want to touch really quickly or briefly on hardware I'm gonna go back to my phone because I've had a case of that I'll start with you Charity hardware you bought

[00:51:07] where you feel like you didn't need it but you're missing out if you didn't buy it so you bought it anyway so I'm gonna lean on Jake here because we joke about Jake's microphone and his microphone thing which he'll probably talk about in detail

[00:51:21] where Jake is the way he is with his microphone I am about my camera you know we're we've got a good mic I love my mic I've had it for years it's a razor mic so me and my obsession with razor fits perfectly for the motif

[00:51:35] and I've got a razor cam that I like but it's not it's not Jake's cam it's not Jake's got a really nice camera but it's a camera it's actual camera yeah that you know they cost those cameras cost a lot of money not you know whatever

[00:51:49] but I don't have 7k to drop on a camera for streaming oh dude you know what I mean like so I know you're saying yeah fine some kind of camera that is just gonna be good enough for it and when

[00:52:03] I look at myself on here I'm like I could see all the grain I can see this that the other it's hard to adjust but it's not bad it's good it's a great camera works great for green screen it's got 60 frames it's not a problem but

[00:52:15] I also had us 2070 Super card that video card that I've been using since I bought well no it's been 4 years since I got the new card and it works great for everything I have but it it's not the best thing out there's better stuff

[00:52:33] out there that I could be using to upgrade my stuff and as a streamer I want to constantly keep my PC up to snuff so that I can stream and play the high end games so that they're not fight with each other because I noticed as more

[00:52:45] better games were coming out my PC was chugging a little bit doing VR with anything with this and streaming it very difficult to do so my wife now has the 2070 and she's playing her games on it they look spectacular and she loves it she's super

[00:53:01] happy I got a 4070 Ti Super that I'm absolutely in love with but didn't actually really really needed to get but because it was new or to the to the world and it it pumps out amazing graphical content and Sinistar gives me the shit all the time

[00:53:21] because I'm like I want my stream to look like it looks like on my PC and I can't do that because of transcoding just stop possibly you can't see what I see so but as long as I'm looking at it and it's

[00:53:33] that whole ignorance is bliss right looks good on my channel so it must go down there until you review the stream and you're like oh god it's all pixelated but you know that's transcoding I can't do anything about that so my

[00:53:45] video camera has always been a hang up whenever a new one comes out that promises all this shit I will impulse buy a video camera to put on there just because I want it to look good and I use a green screen so there's no reason to have

[00:54:03] Jake's camera when I the background the only time you see my background typically is during the podcast and nine times out of ten the podcast is listen to not watched right well we're front and center is an audio podcast but we started

[00:54:17] doing YouTube over a year ago and I'm glad we did because we have an audience in YouTube as well as audio and yeah the video component is good first off with my camera dude it is not a seven thousand dollar camera I'm not saying it is I'm just

[00:54:29] the ones that I'm looking at are like oh no I know like there's a few times where even I've looked at cameras with my wife she went to college for photojournalism and she's all into cameras her and her dad were huge into buying lenses

[00:54:41] when she tells me what her dad spent on lenses back in his heyday I'm like fucking die my wallet is killing me and I didn't pay for anything cameras are expensive especially solid DSLR cameras are so expensive and the lenses are even more so

[00:54:55] the camera I got her I got a camera a couple years ago for her it's an icon D5600 it's it's like a entry level DSLR although I didn't know that at the time but it's not a full frame camera

[00:55:07] so it actually doesn't work with a lot of lenses that she already had and that's that's kind of a headache so I bought her a camera it's not a bad camera but it's not as good as the high-end camera that was a hand me down

[00:55:17] she got from her dad from like 10 years ago because the Fuji that she had before which is probably ancient nowadays but when it comes to pictures it's a full frame looks fantastic it works with live or lenses and it looks amazing the camera I bought it for Christmas

[00:55:31] doesn't use the same lenses or it does but they're not as good quality or it doesn't take it doesn't focus right right and it's not full frame so it doesn't take the advantage of the nice lenses so it's a camera that she doesn't really need

[00:55:43] unfortunately but I didn't know that I did my best you know best intentions well it's getting used now well I mean it was collecting dust nobody was using it so I'm like do you mind if I use it for this and she's like you're taking pictures

[00:55:55] no I found it's not even it's a camera that's not even meant to take video like a lot of DSLRs and I found this out a couple years ago a lot of DSLR cameras in order to avoid being taxed as video camcorders

[00:56:09] have an auto shut off when it comes to the video functions so a lot of DSLRs you get can't record or can't record video for more than 30 minutes but with this particular camera I found that you can hack it a bit originally using a rubber band

[00:56:23] now I'm using actually using a switch but you keep the shutter open and the shutter keeps it the thing from auto shutting off so it's great for a podcast but if I try and stream with this more than three hours I'm probably going to break it

[00:56:35] so I don't but it's a hacky way of getting this to work but it looks great because it's a DSLR and has a nice lens right but like I had that same issue with webcams I was the same thing dude I had a Logitech C920 like fuck

[00:56:49] and everybody when they first started streaming everyone when they started streaming got a C920 and they usually got a Blue Getty or an AT2020 I got a C920 right here yeah guaranteed and it's not like they're bad right but I'm getting more audio a lot more

[00:57:05] and I'm kind of, I'm not a snob but I really appreciate different microphones and I'm listening to different categories of price ranges of microphones same thing with webcams I realize with webcams you get $100 web camera or you get $300 web cam yes there's a quality improvement

[00:57:21] but it's almost worth it just to spend the $600 $700 bucks and get a DSLR and go from there like instead of spending $300 on a 4K web cam spend an extra $300 and it's the same thing with microphones right like I had the AT2020

[00:57:35] which I still love the sound of that microphone but it's a condenser and it picks up background noise and echo like you would not fucking believe and when I moved a couple years ago for those who listened to the podcast there was a peer where I had echo

[00:57:49] and it was driving me nuts and I needed a dynamic microphone because they're better at background rejections so I bought a short MV7 it's the same microphone that CineStar uses less than $300 Canadian it's great I should have been happy but then I listened to YouTube videos

[00:58:07] and there's a guy named Bandru on podcastage on YouTube and I love his channel and all he does is review microphones dozens of microphones and I keep hearing people like Joe Rogan is on this fucking SM7B which is like the podcast microphone

[00:58:21] so for a hot minute I'm like how much is that going to cost me wow it's only like $600 Canadian and listen to the quality difference I could hear a difference and I really wanted a nice end game microphone where I'm never going to want for anything else

[00:58:39] and I looked at it I settled on the RE20 sorry, electro voice RE20 which is like a broadcast microphone and I fucking love it it cost me $600 it's not cheap but podcasting is like the hobby I take seriously and I've seen people in their hobbies

[00:58:57] like my wife she does a dragon boat racing she has a $400 paddle it's a carbon fiber fucking paddle but that's her hobby and she takes it seriously so fine if it's your hobby and it's serious then I don't care so much for me it's the things like

[00:59:11] games where if I'm buying games games and hardware that I regret so is there any hardware that you regret because of video card you use my Logitech 922C camera that I have did you buy one of those? I did I bought it a while back

[00:59:33] and then for my birthday there's a razor store that opened up in Seattle and I was so freaking excited about it because me, razor is my jam so I was like oh we're going to go to the razor store my wife took me for my birthday

[00:59:45] and I stumbled upon this I can't remember the name of this particular cam that I have now but it's a razor cam and it had 60 frames so 60 frames works absolutely wonderfully it doesn't clear up the background as much as I'd like

[01:00:01] and there's some things about it that I don't love but it's a good camera and it was like $170 like it wasn't breaking the bank or anything so I picked it up and at first I was like this is alright I think my 922C is probably better

[01:00:19] because it was a gift so I'm going to try and figure this thing out and the more I tweaked it and the more I adjust it and run on the green screen and I look back at it and I was like damn this is a really good camera

[01:00:29] for what I'm trying to use it for this is fantastic so I just used the 922C to either loan it to her or goes traveling with me in other places and this one sits on my camera arm on my tripod

[01:00:43] with the extended camera arm that I just purchased my hodgepodge of my desk and I'm trying to do you and I take our streaming and our podcasting I think exceptionally seriously this is my hobby this is what I like to do

[01:00:59] and I want to have top of the line gear like you said in game gear I don't want to look at my microphone and be like might be time to upgrade this is the one microphone like yours, this is the one microphone that I've had forever

[01:01:15] and I've had great filters on it that I think work good and then you do your magic afterwards like running my fan in the background the last time we did it when you and I did that episode together

[01:01:27] I didn't hear it at all and I was literally stressing that you were going to hear that buzz every time I talk because my gate will shut it out but when I'm talking it opens up and you can hear everything going on in the background so

[01:01:39] there's different things I can do to make my mic better that doesn't involve buying a 300 to 600 dollar mic for me which is fine but I got to do desk, I mean I got three monitors here I'm trying to make it so everything flows and it's easier to be

[01:01:57] a streamer in this space and I feel like one when I do it so shit I'm upgrading the background I'm trying to add new gaming consoles and new things there to make me look more legit

[01:02:07] but you don't see it when I stream because I got a green screen green screen it's silly all this is for podcasts like everything you see behind me my Final Fantasy 6 collage my Funkos my games and stuff this is just for the podcast and for myself

[01:02:23] 9 times out of 10 when I'm playing in here and I'm not streaming lights are out maybe some lights, maybe some of my LED's are on but this is for you guys all of this is for you guys unless you're an audio listener in which case you don't care

[01:02:39] yeah, like there's definitely a point of what you call it where it doesn't matter anymore like a plateaus in terms of audio quality and I have no issue with your guys mics your mics are all fucking amazing you don't need to buy a 600-bit microphone I'm just stupid

[01:02:57] you're passionate about your hobby and what you want to do and it makes you happy that's not stupid, that's drive that's good I'm just messing with like duct tape and it's just looks like a 90s music video but yeah, I'm fine with the microphone purchase

[01:03:15] but I also bought an Elgato Facecam there's a couple of YouTubers I'm not going to name them but they really rate it with the Elgato Facecam I'm pretty sure after the fact they got a fucking paycheck because when I got the Elgato Facecam it's trash

[01:03:31] I'd rather my old C920 because at least with the C920 and the right lighting it's just a nice piece in the background whereas the Facecam no matter what I do it's fuzzy it comes bundled with a software that has a filter for sharpness

[01:03:47] but it dumbs it down so it blurs it so it avoids the fuzzies but if you don't have the sharpness on you look like shit it's the worst thing I bought in years I'll never recommend an Elgato Facecam ever to anybody they make other good stuff

[01:04:03] I'd rather recommend their fucking cameras sitting with some of their microphones there's a few other companies that make audio hardware where it's less hardware and more software which if you're going to spend $300 on a microphone I want good hardware that's why I like the Shuremb7 so much

[01:04:19] that CineStar and I were using it has software but you don't need it it sounds fucking amazing as a microphone it's great out of the box the software just helps you with certain tweaking I'm not doing that but the one hardware I kind of regret buying now

[01:04:37] and it's for my use case is I have a mister, it runs on the arcade machine behind me or that way cameras are hard I love the mister, fucking love it it's up there with my top 5 devices of all time like I've joked before

[01:04:51] the devices I bought in my top 3 last 15 years that I can't do without and I love mister, frickin' the steam deck and my CPAP machine those are the 3 things that are amazing for me but I did recently buy and it's a definitely it's the King of FOMO

[01:05:07] and it's the Anlunk Pocket oh Jesus, so let me premise this first when Jake asked if he should get it all of us said no every single one of us was like no dude don't do it so you know why I wanted this this fucking thing

[01:05:27] it's not a bad device, it's not it looks like a game boy, it's cool and the screen is fucking amazing and it sucks that I'm having to convince people the screen is amazing the screen is amazing but you know what's also got amazing screen the steam deck

[01:05:43] the steam deck I got which is the OLED screen it looks so good the OLED screen looks so good color wise and it's also 7 inches it's huge compared to the Anlunk Pocket screen is super high resolution but it's tiny by design and I get it

[01:06:01] the reason that it's a good device is that it's an FBGA device which means it runs emulated games so fucking accurately very minimal input lag, it's like the mister but it's in your pocket and I do use it

[01:06:13] I do like it when I'm going out of the house for example it fits my pocket so I'll take it with me and play games the steam deck does not leave my house some of the device I'm worried it's gonna break if I drop it, it's very big

[01:06:25] it's in the house where there's down here or upstairs it travels within my house but the Anlunk Pocket does not give me what you say yes pretty much my kids like can I play the steam deck on the TV yes can I bring in my bedroom fuck no

[01:06:41] absolutely not it does not undock for you you can take the Nintendo Switch drop the Switch I don't give a fuck anymore Nintendo has already got my money I bought it in part because the screen was very cool when I first saw it two fucking years ago

[01:06:57] because Anlunk is a company they like to announce hardware and they hype the shit out of it they're very good at hyping things up the quality is pretty decent for what it is they definitely know to source their parts they use 8-bit dough for their controllers

[01:07:11] they're always solid controllers but they only manufacture X number of units and that's impossible to get them for the time of the day when the website is going to be live you have to put up with the website being DDoS by fans

[01:07:25] rapidly trying to click refresh to buy a god damn unit and you can never get one and for the Pocket was especially it's their only handheld device they made a bunch of home consoles which I've passed on for the most part but the handheld is the first one

[01:07:39] nothing else like it out there that's FPGA and it was reasonably priced at I think it was like $2 $2.99 when I first came out it's reasonable their shipping is another thing but I couldn't get one, I tried multiple rounds

[01:07:53] and it's like the finally got to the point where I could have gotten one but the wait time to get it would have been like 2 years so I'm going to give them $300 of my fucking money for them to sit on for 2 years before they ship me device

[01:08:03] fuck no so I ignored it, I actually blocked them on Twitter I was so angry at them so angry I was and then I saw they announced that they were doing a new release of them I'm like what? they're still releasing that thing okay

[01:08:17] and they've released it in multiple colors and different shells and anyway if you want a pocket you can go out and buy one and you'll probably get it right away which is like good on them I guess 2.5 years later I mean everybody who wants one's got one

[01:08:31] but I think 2 years ago I would have liked it a lot more now, not so much so I kind of regret, I'm almost on the verge of selling it but I don't want to do that because I might take a loss on it I don't know

[01:08:45] the only other thing I want to talk to you about was VR, do you feel any foam with VR? because you went all in on the vibe right? I did I love my VR I wish I had more time to use it again, it has nothing to do

[01:08:59] with not wanting to use it because it works fantastic and I just got for free there's a Half-Life 2 VR mod that I picked up that I have not had an opportunity to play with yet but it's on here whenever I strap the VR on

[01:09:13] and I do something on it I always have so much fun playing it so I don't look at it and go, damn man what a waste I go, man I wish I just had some more time because it takes a while to set it up

[01:09:25] you got to put it on, you got to clear your room you got to make sure it's not too hot so don't pass out because it gets warm there's a lot that goes into just doing VR you got to pick a game you want to play

[01:09:37] and then you got to be committed to it there's nothing worse than when your wife comes in and needs your help with something and you're like, what? okay I'll be there in a minute and then you put it back on and then you hear the tip tapping again

[01:09:51] you're like, what? what do you want? and you know, you said you were going to help me 30 minutes ago it's been 3 hours oh shit, okay yeah you're right and then you take it off and you got to turn everything off so my only regret is

[01:10:03] not having the time to play it or to invest into it as much as I'd like to because there's some awesome shit on there and I do not regret buying that one iota yeah I was big on VR in the beginning when Oculus first had

[01:10:17] the Kickstarter for the dev kit I bought one of those, did not regret that because it was really cool, one of a kind as far as I'm concerned with gaming history I still have it, it's on a shelf

[01:10:27] I did buy the CV1 which is their first consumer unit that when I bought that, I enjoyed it even though the screen was basically looking through a screen door that's that kind of effect but I was fine with it, I was happy with it

[01:10:41] but there wasn't a lot of games and that was my disappointing thing with it I did recently buy, well not recently two years ago I bought the Quest 2 or a year and a half ago I bought the Quest 2 I do like that quite a bit

[01:10:53] the screen is fantastic, the controls are great it's a great device but I'm only disappointed and I only regret it because there isn't that many VR games really it's mostly exercise titles which hey, I probably could use a few but there isn't much

[01:11:07] in the way of games, like I feel like Sony and the PSVR got a lot of the games that I wish were on on the Quest some of them eventually come out for Steam and I can use the Quest with Steam which is fantastic

[01:11:19] but I feel like there's just not a market for VR games like I was hoping to be 10 years after it came out it's just not where I thought it was I thought it would be like revolutionary but it really hasn't done anything

[01:11:31] Half-Life Alyx is like putting you into another world but the problem is that Half-Life Alyx is so well done that it makes all the other VR games look like you know, and it's you can't... and that's what everybody starts with because that's what you see

[01:11:45] and when you buy the Steam, the Valve Index that's the first game you get for free with it so of course you're going to pop on and it's Half-Life, most people love Half-Life maybe not present company included but I mean it's a good series, it's fun

[01:11:59] putting that in VR and your climbing and shooting and you're there's nothing cooler than ducking behind something like physically actually ducking behind something with your body and then pretending to cock your gun and put the clip in and doing all the motions like you're doing it

[01:12:15] and then taking someone out, you feel awesome you know so it's a lot of fun it's just so time consuming to set up and trying to stream do a podcast it's just difficult to find any kind of time in there to wiggle that

[01:12:31] in because if I take a week off to do me stuff, that me stuff is usually house stuff or hanging out with my wife which is not make that perfectly clear I love hanging out with my wife we have a great time everywhere we go

[01:12:45] but there are times where she wants to go play Hogwarts Legacy or something and I want to come in here and do whatever and we've got two puppies we're still raising so it's like having children it's just life it's hard to keep under control to VR sometimes

[01:12:59] yeah I have a serious lack of free time I mean I have three kids thankfully a couple of them are older now and they can help raise the younger one but still I have very limited free time in the day I get maybe 40 minutes to myself some days

[01:13:15] so my thing is the podcast all I do free time is podcast stuff and if it's not podcast adjacent I don't end up doing it like how I'm playing Alan Wake because we're going to do an episode on it and I'm loving Alan Wake

[01:13:25] I should have played it years ago it is great but I mean I'd always passed on it because I'm like well I got other stuff to play right so anyway I think that's probably an episode Char is there anything else you want to talk about

[01:13:37] no I think we covered on that vein of because it's podcast adjacent this podcast has kept me more on course for a lot of games that I've wanted to finish so I have to thank you guys for that I actually as much as we joke with you

[01:13:55] about the Sisyphean thing and all that stuff I actually look forward to it because I commit myself to getting things done and as a want to be completionist I'm like hey if I do it for Sisyphean not only do I get to talk about it in an episode

[01:14:09] but it gives me an excuse to finish it because it's like homework that's fun so that's kind of the reason why I've been doing the Sisyphean stretch goal all year is because hey I'm going to use this opportunity to have a job at the end of the year

[01:14:21] and my job is doing I'm not going to be playing stuff that I want to finish so for sure getting the ability to talk about the game as fun like I loved talking about Balazsier 3 but I knew when we did that episode which was great

[01:14:39] but I knew once we got to that episode if I hadn't beaten Balazsier 3 it wasn't going to because once you've talked about it

[01:14:47] Creation but learning to enjoy games for being games has been hard when you have a lack of free time the steam deck definitely helps because there's no Streaming that and I can play that with my wife upstairs or with my kids

[01:14:58] But it's it's been it's been interesting, but I mean this is being goals. I mean my last two-year goals have not been great Although I did be found by seven remakes mostly because of the stream or whether the podcast

[01:15:10] I wouldn't have played it otherwise because you guys could talked about it a lot So there's always that too But I don't know for those who are listening this episode you got to the end I want to know what

[01:15:21] What games or systems or consoles or controllers or hardware did you buy? That you kind of regret that maybe you bought for FOMO. Maybe we influenced you and we made you we talked to you to buy a game

[01:15:33] I hope that's not the case. It's a game you regret But I'm sure there's a game that you've purchased with on steam or on switch and you just never play it I think it's a common problem right the backlog right especially in today's day and age

[01:15:44] So I want to hear make sure you put the comments below or join us on our discord If you want links to everything we do go to press be to cancel comm or press be to work at least for this year

[01:15:54] You check us out an audio and all your favorite podcast platforms We can of course check us out on YouTube at press be to cancel. We have a new episode live on YouTube every Friday at 8 30 Eastern

[01:16:06] 530 Pacific or you can check us the audio episode out on the following Monday Charged you want to tell folks where they can find you you still scream right? Yeah, I just dream actually we've been getting back into the groove

[01:16:17] Jake mentioned it. We finished Dark Souls 3 all DLC and all bosses a couple couple weekends ago Whenever this was there as it be probably a month or so ago So that was pretty neat and we're here. We're jumping back into Elden Ring because DLC

[01:16:33] So FOMO auditors soon as they talked about it. So you'll be seeing me playing that at some point and then yeah, Jake and I have been trying to come up with episodes to talk about amongst the team and he and I have

[01:16:47] Been chasing down near Automata and Alan wakes and in all kinds of stuff So pretty much anything that we talked about on here. You're gonna start seeing me play live throughout the rest of the year So yeah, you have that to look forward to so

[01:17:01] Yeah, tell us about the Almost but the DLC almost don't worry He'll watch me play the first couple minutes of it or has watched me play the first couple minutes of it They might it might convince him it should be a good time

[01:17:14] But yeah, tell us about the the woo the woo longs or the You know the bad ports that you purchase that you were waiting for ps5 to give to you And you went and bought last of us remake and it was

[01:17:25] It was unplayable for some reason or or the 8-bit duo controller That's the power glove like tell us about the things that you were like I had to have it when it came out and you were like, I wish I didn't have to have it Yeah

[01:17:39] Awesome. All right folks. Well, I think that's been another week in another episode. Thanks everybody for watching