Press B 270: Flipping Out Over Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound

Really is the Year of the Ninja. This week we are flipping out over Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound. From the developers that brought you Blasphemous comes a surprisingly faithful reimagining of the original NES classic. We give our thoughts on this frantic platformer and whether it's worth your Steam wallet.

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00:00 --> 00:16 You know, fellas, when I am bound for rage, there's only one line that puts me equal. And that line is Go, ninja, Go ninja, go. Today.
00:36 --> 00:38 Don't ice tea over the intro.
00:39 --> 00:40 It's Ice Cube.
00:40 --> 00:40 That was.
00:40 --> 00:45 Sorry, no, Vanilla Ice. Jesus Christ. And you think I'm bad with band?
00:45 --> 00:47 Yeah, it was Cream soda.
00:47 --> 01:26 It is Cream soda. Guys, welcome one and all to us. Completely destroying some actually talented musicians names and mixing up Vanilla Ice's name with those guys. Hi, welcome. It's Friday. It's Friday nights. We've all had. We've all had weeks. Jake is sick and he is here. He's a trooper. But he and I are the only two people that have completed this game. So I needed him to be here, so I begged him to come in. So he's all night quilled out. We're ready to go. Now that I'm done talking about Jake, I'm also not only joined by Jake, I'm joined by both of our other friends. Sin Star. How are you today, sir? Happy Friday.
01:27 --> 01:30 I'm doing well. I think. You and I have had a great day.
01:30 --> 01:37 Oh, we definitely have. We've been eating good audibly today, that's for damn sure. We'll. We'll discuss that later in the episode since it has absolutely nothing.
01:40 --> 01:42 I love Slam Bamboo. They're my favorite band.
01:42 --> 01:43 Exotic.
01:43 --> 01:45 What about exotic birds? Those guys are also amazing.
01:45 --> 01:46 Great.
01:46 --> 01:54 Anyways. Yes. Little did you know. Anyways, Wolf, how are you today, sir? How's it going? How's. How's your Friday treating you?
01:54 --> 02:01 I am doing pretty good, actually. We set up a system for the kiddo to get his schoolwork done faster and more efficiently.
02:01 --> 02:02 Let's go.
02:02 --> 02:02 Rocking.
02:02 --> 02:41 You know, being a man that's in lean manufacturing, you know, I love systems that make things faster and more efficient. So I'm all about that life. That's cool. Now what else is fast and efficient? Ninja Guide and Rainbow Rage Bound. Holy cow. This way. This game. This game came out. It didn't come out of left field because it was part of the next fest and Jake and I had discussed it. We actually all of us discussed it in MPS's group. I. I proudly have the. The Retro Achievement badge for Ninja Gaiden 1. But I have not been able to repeat that for the other three or four. I have dabbled in the Xbox 360 version. Was it 360 or something?
02:41 --> 02:43 I remember there was one on the original Xbox.
02:43 --> 02:44 Yeah, I think that's the one.
02:44 --> 02:46 That's a hard. That's a hard game.
02:46 --> 02:48 Original 3D Ninja Gaiden. Yeah.
02:48 --> 03:16 That game is hard as hell, and I don't think I ever finished it. I got to the boss rush towards the end and my life just. I couldn't hang. I couldn't hang with it. So unfortunately, that one did get shelved. But there's been like a renaissance of. Of not only, like ninja games, but Ninja Gaiden has really come back out. I mean, we got a Ninja Gaiden 4 that's on the approach coming up through. We have a remaster or a remake, I think, of Ninja Gaiden Sigma or Ninja Gaiden Black, I believe is released. Yeah, I think it was two.
03:16 --> 03:21 I lose track of which, what the different versions are, but there's been a remaster, you're right. And Ninja Gaiden 4 is any. Any month now.
03:21 --> 03:30 Yeah. And then this one we talked about, Shinobi. Shinobi has Revenge or whatever, has another one that just came out not too long after, I think Ragebound was released.
03:30 --> 03:46 Which looks be Year of the Ninja. Yeah. Ragebound came out in July 31, and then Shobi came out mid August, I want to say. And I almost feel like maybe folks are maybe losing sight over Ninja Gain over Shinobi. I know Shinobi's reviewed just. Just as well, if not better than this one.
03:46 --> 03:47 Yeah. But.
03:47 --> 03:50 But I feel like the original, this Ninja Guide and Ragemon is pretty, Pretty awesome game.
03:51 --> 03:54 And this is coming from someone who played the demo and was like, I don't like it.
03:55 --> 04:38 Yeah. So, like, we played it during Steam Next Fest. Right. And like the graphics. I thought the first impressions of it were the graphics are great. Music was jamming. I like the concept of it. I love how it's a. It's going. It's a throwback to the NES style. Ninja Gaiden, which I never beat, but I got pretty deep into it. But when I played the demo, I felt the controls felt off. Didn't feel quite as tight. It didn't feel like as snappy. But when I saw the reviews for the full release come out and it was hitting, I think, 84 on Metacritic, which is quite high for something like this. Yeah, I had to give it a shot and when I played it instantly fell in love with the controls. So, like, I'm really surprised how much I enjoyed Rage Bound and I'm surprised I actually finished it. I haven't been really good with finishing games lately, but I actually beat this one.
04:38 --> 04:43 So you're on a roll. But we'll talk about the other game you Finished at a later date. But you know what?
04:43 --> 04:44 He's not on a roll with.
04:44 --> 04:47 He's not playing. But he is playing. Listen, I'll give him.
04:47 --> 04:53 I made progress, okay? I made progress. We got path to title screen release.
04:55 --> 06:05 He did say start, but that's besides the point. I did play this also in the demos for Next Fest after it was mentioned. I love the pixel art that they did. You know, we're retro inspired podcast, so Retro inspired game is always something that really kind of pulls us in. And. And for all the accidental wall grab that Sinistar had to struggle through with me streaming that on on Twitch. You know, I like Ninja Gaiden. I thought it, I thought it's a pretty great game. You know, it's not without its blemishes, as most of those retro games on the NES are. But this one, just like Jake said, super smooth controls. I thought a lot of the gimmicks in it were really neat and it was just, it was real straightforward and it didn't feel like there was a lot of thought that needed to be gone, need to be put into it. I think I beat this game in eight hours and I, I played it a lot on, on my Steam deck. Plays great on the Steam deck. I just played it downstairs, like in between, I don't know, watching my mother's murder documentaries because she happened to be in town at the time. You know, we. We'd figure out who murdered somebody 18 years ago and then I do a couple rounds of rage bound because that just seems like the perfect combination of things.
06:06 --> 06:21 It released on everything, right? Released on PS, not just PS5 and Xbox, whatever it is now, but also PS4. There's also a Switch version, although I heard the Switch version is not 60 frames per second for some reason. But yeah, it's released on pretty much every console and of course it's on Steam.
06:22 --> 06:36 So I'm here to play active audience because I have not played this and I did not play this during next festival. Now, I do want to point out my favorite Next Fest game just got released, Antivirus Protocol.
06:37 --> 06:39 Okay. Anyway.
06:40 --> 06:47 But my question is, is watching this footage, how does it feel compared to the Messenger?
06:48 --> 06:57 You know what, I'm going to lean to Wolf on this one because massive messenger fan and he has a different feeling than Jake and I do about.
06:57 --> 07:26 No, as far as the platforming, you know, moving through the levels and stuff, the. That mechanically, it feels quite a bit like the Messenger. Honestly, right off the bat, you're running around, you're knocking. I. I Love the fact that you can hit projectiles out of the air instead of just having to avoid them straight out. It makes you feel more badass and it makes you feel less vulnerable to everything. Right?
07:27 --> 07:27 Yeah.
07:27 --> 07:55 And they. They made use of it as a mechanic to where you need to use that sometimes to keep going. But, yeah, compared to the Messenger, I would say mechanically, it's pretty similar as far as movement goes. And I actually. I really liked that when I played the messenger. You know, everybody was like, it's like Ninja Gaiden. No, I don't like the original Ninja Gaiden.
07:55 --> 07:55 Right.
07:55 --> 08:04 The messenger does not move like Ninja Gaiden. It might give you, like, it might move like you remembered it moving if you last played it 35 years ago.
08:05 --> 08:13 Yeah, I was gonna say. I was gonna say I never. I never felt the pain of accidental wall grab in the messenger.
08:13 --> 08:39 Yeah. So I am not a fan of the original Ninja Gaiden. I understand. Like, it's a solid game for the nes. It has not aged well. This is a great update to that. And I wanna point out something that I just think is kind of funny. Cause I've always thought it was weird that it was called Ninja Gaiden, which translates to ninja. But it was the only game. Right. Like, it wasn't a spin off of something else.
08:39 --> 08:42 Maybe they were prepping for this, and.
08:42 --> 08:44 Then this is finally the actual side story.
08:45 --> 08:45 Okay.
08:45 --> 08:51 The original Ninja Gaiden. So this is going on in, like, in tandem.
08:51 --> 08:53 It's just super meta.
08:54 --> 09:06 It definitely is. It definitely lives in its own. Its own lineage, I guess you could call it. Because, I mean, you don't. You're not Ryu Hayabusa in this one. You see him, he comes in, you talk with him. You're part of the Hayabusa clan.
09:07 --> 09:07 Yeah.
09:07 --> 09:08 You're his younger brother, I think.
09:08 --> 09:10 I think so. And. But Kinji.
09:10 --> 09:11 Is that his name?
09:11 --> 09:57 Kinji? I think that's his name. And he dips out, I think. Honestly, I think it's. It's the start of the original game. At least that's what it feels like to me. Because he goes to the States to go deal with his father, which is what starts Ninja Gaiden 1. And you stay back here to protect the clan and. And deal with all the demons that are coming through this area. And, like, it just right out running. You start the game out, you're doing a little training. You're getting. You know, you got your tutorials. So you're learning the controls, you're jumping around, you're doing all kinds of cool. And then. And then you're just throwing in the thick of it. You just ru. Was like, peace out. I got to go to the United States. And then you go and do your thing, and you're running around doing your. And it's. It's fun. It's a lot. A lot of fun.
09:58 --> 10:07 So my question is, since Ninja Gaiden translates to Ninja side Story, was it called Ninja Gaiden or something? Gaiden in Japan?
10:08 --> 10:12 I thought it was, but I'm not sure. I don't know that one.
10:12 --> 10:14 Somebody want to check their mind palace?
10:14 --> 10:15 I'm doing that right now.
10:16 --> 10:16 Yeah.
10:16 --> 10:26 So while you're doing that, I liked how this one starts off with you do play Ryu's dad in the orange garb from the original NES game. The NES game was always iconic because the opener.
10:26 --> 10:26 Right.
10:26 --> 10:34 With the two ninjas running at each other, you actually start the game playing as the orange ninja, the character's father. And he only has a limited moon moveset.
10:34 --> 10:34 Right.
10:34 --> 10:57 That's the intro. And then you move into the tutorial where you play the younger brother Ryu or his clan mate. Yeah, Kenji. And it's. That opening was pretty awesome. I think this was made by. Was it the game Kitchen? The guys who did Blasphemous, and the pixel art is. Was so great in Blasphemous, and it's just. Same here. Like, it looks so good. They capture the opening just perfectly.
10:57 --> 11:05 Yeah, I wanted to say that they did. They did. Didn't the people that did this do the Ninja Turtle beat them up? The Shredder's Revenge, too?
11:06 --> 11:15 No, that's not Emu. So the publisher of this one is Emu as well. Yeah, but the developer of SH. Revenge was somebody else. I'd have to look it up.
11:15 --> 11:17 For some reason, I thought it was a similar thing, but okay.
11:18 --> 11:22 No, these folks did Blasphemous one and two. That's as far as I know, all they've done.
11:22 --> 11:24 I played Blasphemous. That's a fun game.
11:24 --> 11:38 We were curious. So Ninja Gaiden was the original Japanese working title, but when it was released, it was called Ninja Ryukenden, which translates to Legend of the Ninja Dragon Sword.
11:38 --> 11:39 Makes sense.
11:40 --> 11:42 So not a side story.
11:42 --> 11:43 No, no.
11:43 --> 11:46 I guess it was in America. Side story over here.
11:46 --> 11:56 I mean, to be fair, I think maybe when it came to America, like, guidance sounds cool. Ninja guidance sounds.
11:56 --> 12:16 It does. But what I love about this is the story that we're presented in this feels like it overshadows the original story. Like it feels. What I saw of it felt like the stakes were higher than what Ryu is dealing with in the original Ninja Gaiden. So now it actually makes that feel like it's the side story.
12:17 --> 12:19 Maybe that was the purpose. Again, they were just saving it up.
12:20 --> 12:21 They were just being real meta with it.
12:21 --> 12:27 Yeah, yeah, they were like. They were like in 30 years time, he was.
12:27 --> 12:34 They were like George Lucas planning out the first three Star Wars. Like, listen, we're gonna do these three first, but.
12:34 --> 12:35 But they're actually 3 or 5.
12:35 --> 12:43 20. 25. We're going to make the real story and the side story will make sense. Don't worry about it. It'll all just make sense.
12:43 --> 12:46 We're going to make the real story and it's going to suck.
12:47 --> 12:54 Does it tie it all into the 3D Ninja Gaiden games? I never played those. Is there besides having cameo of Ryu or.
12:54 --> 12:59 No, to be fair, I just thought they were like reimaginized versions of those.
12:59 --> 13:02 That's what I thought too. I assumed it was a reboot of the franchise.
13:02 --> 13:02 Yeah.
13:03 --> 13:10 Because the weird thing with Ninja Gaiden on the NES and also in this game as well is that there's a lot more demons and dealing with hell than I thought there would be.
13:10 --> 13:10 Right.
13:10 --> 13:26 This game is all about fighting an army of demons and crazy creatures. And like the NES version, the bosses were all demon like, but the. The in between characters you're fighting, the enemies you're fighting are more like humanoid. It's just the bosses that are weird. But this game, you're fighting demons from start to finish. It's. It's interesting.
13:27 --> 13:37 I mean, maybe they were trying to focus some of the demon stuff. It just. With eight bits, you can only depict so many men with large heads, you know, that look like, you know, chompers.
13:38 --> 13:41 The 3D series was a reimagining of the NES games.
13:42 --> 13:42 Yes.
13:43 --> 13:44 Interesting. Okay.
13:44 --> 13:46 And. And hard as hell.
13:46 --> 14:10 Oh, man. Yeah. No, there's. There's no joke on those ones. Those ones are difficult as rough time with those guys, but they were fun regardless. But towards the end, I think I want. I would like to think that the first Ninja Gaiden games, or at least the 3D ones later on, were my introduction into Soulsborne's games because that just beat the hell. Beat my head against the wall playing that one. I just never finished it. But so, yeah, man.
14:11 --> 14:13 Looks. The art looks so good in this.
14:13 --> 14:32 Oh, it's stellar. The artwork is stellar. It's smooth, it's clean. And. And a lot of the boss Fights are. There's a lot of cool mechanics and some fun stuff. But we could talk about the mechanics here, because you're not just playing as Kenji, you actually have a secondary person in a sense, that joins you later on. Someone check their mind palace. Because I cannot remember her name to save my life.
14:32 --> 14:34 I know it's the Black Spider Clan. It's a rival.
14:35 --> 14:47 I cannot remember her. Her actual name. But she essentially joins you. I'm trying to figure out how to say stuff without spoiling too much. So she joined your. She joined you.
14:47 --> 14:48 Kamori.
14:48 --> 15:47 Kamori. Thank you. And obviously, you know, for those who know, the Hayabusa Clan and the Black Spider Clan do not get along very, very well at all together. They kind of hate each other, but they are forced to work together to get out of a sticky situation. And they both have invested interest in dealing with these demons. So they work together to basically progress in the story. There's some really cool side stuff that. It's not side stuff. It's. There's puzzles that you have to solve in the game, using both characters to navigate certain aspects of the game, which I thought were really cool, because the original Ninja Gaidens that I remember don't have any of those kinds of cool jumping puzzle aspects that have this kind of feel to it. It's really hard to explain because there's a lot of Ninja Gaiden jumping puzzles. That's all Ninja Gaiden is freaking jumping puzzles into you. Your eyes bleed out of your head. But this one just added a really cool feature to it that I thought really made it more spicy and fun to play.
15:47 --> 16:20 So the. The original NES games, I mean, they're definitely platformers, right? A lot of flipping off of walls back and forth and. And dodging attacks. But you're right, this one has. Yeah, the birds. The birds are bad in this one too, which is faithful, I guess. But yeah, in this one, I guess the mechanic is once you. Once you. She joins you and you're. You're the dual characters, you can't switch at will. There's certain demon terminal things, and when you step on that, you switch to her and you have a time limit to do a. A plat. And some of those. Some of those are kind of a big fuck you.
16:20 --> 16:21 Yes, they can be, I'll say.
16:21 --> 16:47 Because the way the mechanic is, you can extend the timer if you hit the eyeballs to give yourself more time. But there's a few later on in the game where you kind of have to quickly run and drop, and then as you're falling, hit an eyeball to teleport to another platform. And some of those were quite challenging. This game is like we've said, is difficult, but pretty satisfying. Although I wish there's a hair more timer on her platforming segments. Some. Some of them were kind of rough.
16:47 --> 16:47 Right.
16:47 --> 16:48 But it was.
16:48 --> 16:50 There's definitely like skinnier teeth kind of finishes.
16:51 --> 16:58 So I gotta. I gotta ask. I only got to stage three. Four. How many chapters are there?
16:59 --> 16:59 Eight.
17:01 --> 17:05 Four. But then there's like 18 missions I think. I think it's. Chapter four is quite long.
17:05 --> 17:07 Yeah. Oh yeah.
17:07 --> 17:07 So I.
17:07 --> 17:08 But it's not a long game.
17:08 --> 17:09 Quite a bit of the game.
17:09 --> 17:22 Yeah. It's not long. I mean there's no brag on saying I beat it in eight hours. It's just not that long. It really isn't. Yeah. I just spent four hours on the damn boss. So technically I beat it in five hours. Just.
17:22 --> 17:29 Yeah. I mean six hours for me. But I didn't do any of the optional stuff really. I think I did one of. Because there's unlockable challenge missions. I think I did one of those.
17:29 --> 17:31 But I. I kept doing all those as they came along.
17:31 --> 17:33 Yeah, I just did one.
17:33 --> 17:36 So how come you didn't finish it? What made you bounce off it?
17:36 --> 17:39 It sounds like you went into side quest hell. Sorry.
17:40 --> 18:11 The platforming stages I really enjoy, some of them are a little long and drawn out and I understand why they did that. The introduction stage for Komori was pretty long and a little drawn out and felt like it was dragging by the end of it. But I get why. Because they're introducing you to a second character at that point and her moveset and so it's treated as get you up to speed with this moveset as well. So that way you're ready for it once you're there paired.
18:11 --> 18:11 Right.
18:11 --> 18:38 But there were other stages that I felt just went on a little long. There's a bit much to each stage. I. It's a weird complaint, I know. But if a stage takes longer than like 15, 20 minutes, that's a little long for my liking. When it's a level based game. Because it's not a Metroidvania game. It's not just wander, find shit and do things and then save at your leisure. You're done.
18:38 --> 18:41 Start here, in here. Start here, in here.
18:41 --> 19:05 Yeah. So you have to have a window of time to be able to do stuff. And I mean it's only 15, 20 minutes for some stages are only 5, 10. But when you're faced with a stage that's like 20 minutes long. And then the boss fight takes you like two dozen attempts to beat. You're looking at 40 minute set down for one stage. That's a bit much.
19:05 --> 19:31 Yeah, I totally feel that. I've been reading some books where it's like some chapters are like 5, 6, 7 pages and like you're like, okay, I can sit down for 10 minutes and read a chapter. Right? And so like, I've gotten used to like, I'm going to sit down and read a chapter. Well, some of them are like 30 page chapters. And you're like, well, I guess I'm just gonna like walk away in the middle of this.
19:31 --> 19:33 This isn't what I thought I was signing up for.
19:33 --> 19:34 Yeah.
19:34 --> 19:35 Yay. No resolution.
19:37 --> 20:20 Honestly, I almost didn't beat that last boss that I was fighting because I was like, I just don't want to be doing this anymore. I would rather save and walk away, but I can't save here. It's. I quit and have to do it all again. And I didn't want to do that. So I and beat that boss, which I felt relied a little too much on the rng aspects. And which one I just came down. It's the boss on three, four. The dude that like jumps around and shoots the needles at the wall and the floor and you have to weaken him.
20:20 --> 20:48 Yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah, he was tough. I think there's a few bosses that took me more than honestly, more than a dozen attempts to kind of get through. And I totally hear you on. You're already doing a 10 to 15 minute long level. And then if you want to bail in a boss, you have to start all the way from the beginning again if you come back to it. And I did that a few times where I gave up on a boss and I came back and I start all the way from the beginning. And some of those stages are a pain. Yeah, there's one, there's. Go ahead.
20:48 --> 21:01 I'm not going to complain about having a boss at the end of a stage. That's fine. But when the stage is long and the boss is long, that's, you know, it's coming at you from both sides and it's a little rough.
21:05 --> 21:28 Yeah. I'm bringing up one boss I had a trouble with. Initially it's a demon lady and she was just hectic. Like, the first phase is fine. But then by the second phase, she's dropping these ice spikes in into the ground, three of them. And then if you don't knock about fast enough they do lightning strikes and ball lightning hits the floor and you have to hop over it. And it's just. That was my big complaint when I played the demo is the game is very frantic, very busy.
21:28 --> 21:29 Yes.
21:29 --> 22:36 And I guess we didn't really mention it. But once you get merged with the Spider Clan lady, you end up having almost. You have two forms of energy you can harness. Right. There's certain enemies on the screen that flash blue and then there's certain ones that flash pink. And the idea is while you're playing the game there's. There's certain enemies that are super strong. But you can one shot them if you can match the correct type of energy to hit them. So usually there'll be a enemy with a giant shield and a spike ball or something and he's blue. So you. If you hit a weaker enemy that's flashing blue, you gain the blue energy which you can. One shot the big baddie. And that's the whole loop of the game is as you're like speeding through the levels very quickly. You're looking for those big, big baddies. Find the matching color on a minion and then trying to do it all in one even flow. But the bouncing between the pink and the blue energy types. Because pink is your subweapon. Right. Like throwing stars. Whatever. And blue is the regular attack. Yeah. And trying to balance that out became very hectic. Especially towards some of the bosses that use both. I felt was. Was kind of. It took a lot to get used to. I guess.
22:36 --> 22:37 Yeah.
22:37 --> 22:55 But once you get into the groove it's really fun. Like we didn't really mention the. When you're talking about the messenger before wolf and the controls. The thing about the messenger that I liked the most was the. The cloud step where you. You hit enemy. You can do a second jump. We don't have that here. But we do have the. I think it's the Reaper hit where you basically bounce off enemies as you go.
22:55 --> 22:56 Yeah.
22:56 --> 22:57 And it doesn't do a whole lot of damage.
22:58 --> 22:58 But.
22:58 --> 23:12 But it's just fun bouncing through the enemies and projectiles with the Reaper hit. And I was doing that. A lot of that. And the bosses. And I find that's for the boss you got stuck on. I was doing a lot of that bounce to avoid projectiles or to avoid ground attacks. I just wish it did more damage, I guess. Yeah.
23:14 --> 24:01 I think the. There's a turtle. The cybernetic turbo turtle boss was kind of a pain in the ass. Looks like he's wearing a VR headset and He's a little bit later. And then the final boss. The final boss had me this close to like, I'm gonna put this thing down. This is some like there's. There's a one shot move that the final boss can do to you. And I could not figure out the timing for it and it was just driving me crazy. I did everything else almost flawlessly. And I'd get to that section and he would, he would do his build up thing and I didn't realize that you had to time it at a certain way or do like a certain thing to time it. And he'd just kill me every time. And I was like, I'm gonna throw this Steam deck across my room, I swear to God.
24:01 --> 24:23 Yeah, can we talk to developers right now? Developer. We have such a big following. Developers all the time, but developers, please. Single shot kills after you have built up over time all of your abilities, all of your. That it's. I'm gonna say it, it's fucking stupid.
24:23 --> 24:44 It's. It's rough. It's a rough. It's definitely a hockey stick because you can get him down to like a quarter of your life and that's when it happens. Or a quarter of his life and that's when it happens. And you're like, what do I do? Like I was screaming, my mom's sit next to me because they're visiting from out of town. Like, what am I supposed to do? She's like, what's wrong? Let's take a walk.
24:44 --> 24:46 You're like, I'm trying to solve this murder.
24:46 --> 24:49 Trying to kill people. Mom trying to get on your show.
24:50 --> 25:15 What got me was you do have a special attack. Like you have a special meter you can build up through the stage and it does a massive amount of damage. But trying and you going to. Usually you only do it once, maybe twice in a stage. And I always try and save for the boss and I always like to do it as the final attack on a boss because as the boss's health bar gets whittled down after it hits a halfway point, it has a second phase which is even more harder than a turtle. Turtle.
25:16 --> 25:18 No, it's not. It's not. It's not Buckethead. It's.
25:21 --> 25:50 But yeah, the second phase of bosses is pretty challenging. So I try and use the Uber attack then. But like sometimes you just got to use it early. But trying to pick your your battles is, is interesting. But some of those bosses are. Are nuts. I'm glad it was only six hours to. To get through this game. I don't think I would have the, the patience to kind of go through a much longer game. No. And like I still feel like it's still get your money's worth out of this title. Like it's still, still a fair amount of game. Like what was this game? Is it $30, $25?
25:50 --> 27:18 Yeah, I think, yeah, I think it was about $29.99 on Steam American USD. I, I think it was worth every penny to be honest with you. So yeah, here. Yep. No, it's $24.99 on, on Steam here in the states. So it, and, and in like Jake said, like even after, I mean it, it plays what you would think like a side scrolling retro NES game would play for that amount of time. And there's definitely some hockey sticks in there. But I didn't think the hockey stick was so bad to the point where I was like this. I'm deleting it, never playing it again. It was. But if I felt very successful towards the end of it, I, I don't know. I, it felt, it felt really good. It was real smooth throughout it. I, I really like the boss battles for most. The aspect of the boss battles were cool once you figured it out because it's all about the patterns, right? It's all about like Jake said, it's finding the pinks, switching to the pinks, switching to the blues, getting them knocked out, hitting them a couple times and then learning their patterns of the whole thing. And you know, me and my stupid souls born brain sees those patterns and I'm like, oh yeah, okay, here's a pattern here that's working. It's the, it's the one shots where there's not really a pattern. Like once I've done the pattern stuff and now I have to you know, beat on this one section of this dude to get to the weak spot to make it work or whatever. Then that just drives me because there's no pattern to it. There's nothing that I can mitigate to make that.
27:18 --> 27:19 Yeah.
27:19 --> 27:50 Better there's. With the patterns you'd be like, okay, he's gonna do this. I got 1, 2, 3, 1. Okay, 1, 2, 3, 4. It's just easier to do that. But some of these one shots were, were ridiculous. But Jake's got on the screen for those, for audio listeners, he's showing off one of the, the demon puzzles where you, you use the girl to, to jump around, using your kunais to, to attack the eyes and teleport all over the place. This game is fast And I think that's. That's one of the things I really enjoyed about was the speed of the game. It did not. There was no lulls in this game whatsoever.
27:52 --> 27:56 There's. There's no point where I thought I had to slow down. I was constantly moving to the right. Constantly moving.
27:57 --> 27:59 Yeah. For me, the Kamori sections were my.
27:59 --> 28:02 Favorite because the platforming. Right?
28:02 --> 28:09 Yeah, yeah. You feel pretty cool when you're falling, shooting, teleporting. Falling, teleporting, Falling, teleporting.
28:09 --> 28:11 And then you platform.
28:11 --> 28:28 You're like, yeah, I'm badass. Like, makes you feel really cool when you. When you finally nail it. But of course, you know, it takes. Takes me twenty hundred times because I'm not real great at platforming at all. You can give me a boss all day. I'll beat the. Out of the bosses. You give me three platforms I need to teleport to. I'm gonna be there for a couple hours.
28:28 --> 28:31 You realize twenty hundred is two thousand.
28:31 --> 28:32 Yeah, I know.
28:32 --> 28:33 Okay.
28:34 --> 28:34 Math is fun.
28:35 --> 28:36 Charred math.
28:36 --> 28:40 I really like people to think when they come to our episodes, I.
28:40 --> 28:55 One of the things about this game too, is that there is. There is sub weapons. Kind of like the original Ninja Gaiden, right? Where in that game you pick them up and constantly change throughout the stage. And this one, you actually unlock them and equip them. Did you guys use any of those? I really only used the Kunais. I tried the other ones. I didn't really care for them.
28:55 --> 29:07 Yeah, I. I tested them, but it was. I think I was playing with them for so long that I was used to what they did. That when I changed it, I was like, no, this does not have flow that I'm used to. I'm used to this flow. It was a cool healing one.
29:09 --> 29:10 Yeah, I use the healing one.
29:10 --> 29:17 I. Boop. I kicked that thing out because it's like, I can't do that. I was like, jake, I can't do the extra damage at the end.
29:19 --> 29:19 Because.
29:19 --> 29:35 You could time it. You're like, okay, I know it will take out this much of his health if I just get it down to that far. I fire that thing off, we're good. We're golden. We're moving on. But I had the healing thing and forgot. So it's like, yes, he's going to go down. And I no, I'm healing. No, this is not what I meant to do.
29:36 --> 29:38 And then, you know, one thing led to another.
29:39 --> 29:52 Okay, so I'm looking at what's. What's on the screen right now. So if you're listening to the audio podcast, there's a. There's a scene where you apparently hang from a helicopter and fight enemies and, you know what?
29:53 --> 29:54 On a train.
29:55 --> 29:55 Sold.
29:56 --> 30:29 Yeah. Like, no, this. This game is really good. It really, really isn't. And it's. It's fun. It's. It's got the challenges that you would expect a Ninja Gaiden game to have, but it's not. It's not challenges in the jank. Like. Like, Ninja Gaiden might have been challenging because, like, you said, so much wall grab, accidental wall grab every 10 seconds. There's not a lot of. There's not a lot of invincibility frames in this either, but you don't really need them. And. And the knockback doesn't seem like as punishing as it does in the original. And you recover.
30:29 --> 30:30 That's why.
30:30 --> 30:30 Right.
30:30 --> 30:31 Yeah.
30:31 --> 31:04 And you could also attack projectiles coming at you, and you can use that reaper move to. To. To, like, fling you forward or to get you out of a tight spot. It's. It's really cool. The mechanics feel awesome. And I was very much kind of like, nah, this might be fun for, like, a couple hours to play. Like, just to kill some time when I'm not scaring myself with Kronos or, you know, playing a stupid soulsborne game. Let's. Let's do this. And I really took to it. I took to it a lot faster than I thought I was going to. I was really impressed with. And the price. You can't beat the price point on something like this.
31:06 --> 31:29 I don't know if you guys felt like this, but I thought in the early stages before your meetup with Komori, I felt like those were retraining people who love Ninja Gaiden to these mechanics because they put you up against circumstances that you experience in the original game. But it's like. But this is how the mechanics work here. Get used to it, because that's what you need to know this time.
31:30 --> 31:30 Right.
31:30 --> 31:31 Which I thought was really cool.
31:31 --> 31:33 Yep. There's definitely.
31:33 --> 32:27 Definitely leads you into it over time. Right. Like, where you're all. When you're crawling across the ceiling, or whether you're dodging beams or dodging tripwires. Like, it definitely gradually brings you into mechanics. Like, even the beginning, when you're not even playing the blue guy, you're playing the father character, the grandfather character, or in the orange ninja, where you only have half the moveset, and then you have the tutorials that definitely hold your hand if the first Few stages, but once you unlock all the abilities, there's just so much happening on the screen and you have to enter this zen like state as you move through the stages. But like the iframes, yes, you do get hit and get knocked back, but there's a. If you hit the attack button, you recover. Yeah. So even when I'm like flying through the levels, even if you take damage and get hit, I'm instantly hitting attack to recover and backflip and then get right back into the flow. I never felt like I was. There's downtime at all in this game and you just fly at the stages. The only downtime is when you die in a boss.
32:27 --> 32:27 Right.
32:27 --> 32:44 But you made a good point. Like, you never feel like it's jank if you die because you missed a platform. You know why you fell off that platform? Yeah, you fucked it up. You know why you died to a boss? Because you didn't learn the pattern and you fucked it up. Or you got greedy. You got greedy and you tried hitting more than you should have, which is a problem.
32:44 --> 32:45 You're down, big rig.
32:46 --> 32:47 That's right.
32:48 --> 32:59 Yeah. No, I. I got angry at the bosses. The gameplay itself I thought was really solid and I think they did a great job. I just. I couldn't hang with the bosses. They were pissing me off.
33:00 --> 33:03 Yeah, there are some ones that are. They're really, really shitty.
33:04 --> 33:17 For anybody who's like thinking like, oh, you know, 25 bucks, it's six hour game. I know Silksong just came out as well, and that's 20 bucks. And that's a much longer game. But to give this game some credit, first off, it's gorgeous. Like, the pixel art is amazing.
33:17 --> 33:17 Yes.
33:17 --> 33:43 And gameplay is very fun. But there is multiple endings you can unlock. There's multiple costumes you can unlock if you're into that. There's. Every stage has challenges you can do. I only got a handful of them as I played through the game. Like, things like don't take damage, killing the boss with a special attack, killing a certain number of enemies. Like, there's challenges to get a ninja ranking for everything. There's also a hard mode. I don't know. Did you guys try the hard mode at all? I probably didn't.
33:43 --> 33:46 This game's hard enough on its own. I'm good.
33:46 --> 34:01 I dipped in. I dipped into it a little bit. It's neat in that it's. It's a real hard mode in that it adds more enemies and more obstacles to the screen, to the game, and the stages to the point where the tutorial area in the hard mode is just covered in spikes.
34:01 --> 34:01 Jesus.
34:02 --> 34:02 Wow.
34:02 --> 34:20 So I would like to try it to see if I could do it because that seems to be even, even more frantic, but it seems interest. So there's, there is a lot of game there to go through and there's unlockable stuff. I didn't do many of the challenge stages. I did, I think one or two and that's what lets you unlock passives you can equip. I think. I think. Well, you probably unlocked more than I did with those.
34:21 --> 34:45 Yeah, I. Because I kept doing the extra stages. So I unlocked a bunch of different stuff. I think I had like four or five of the pink abilities that I could swap out, like instead of healing, but I preferred the healing. I tried a few of them and some of the other passives, a lot of them were like, just make the game harder. And I was like, no, yeah, I'm not interested.
34:45 --> 34:52 Yeah, there are a few that are like, take away your life or make it a one hit kill or something stupid where you're like, man.
34:53 --> 34:59 But it's, it's neat because that gives you a higher ninja rank. So if you're trying to challenge yourself, you can customize the difficulty. Right.
35:01 --> 35:01 I want to finish.
35:01 --> 35:06 I appreciate that. They let the player tweak the difficulty to their heart's content.
35:06 --> 35:12 Yes. Like two extremes. Like. Yeah, like a 90 degree hockey stick. Like it's.
35:13 --> 35:15 It also has accessibility settings. Right?
35:15 --> 35:16 Yes, yes.
35:16 --> 35:17 So, I mean, and those are great.
35:18 --> 35:22 Tune it to however you feel like and enjoy the game the way you want to enjoy it.
35:23 --> 35:23 Right.
35:23 --> 35:36 And I know some people complain about, oh, that should be tuned how the developers want it to be played. Yeah. Leave it at normal. If you want it harder or easier, tweak it to your heart's content. It's got something for everybody.
35:37 --> 35:44 No, I think we need to have at some point. We've talked about having our gatekeeping episode. Yeah, right.
35:44 --> 35:56 Well, we had one not too long ago with the, with the erdtree. But I mean, it's a similar vein where it's like make it just. I like accessibility as much as the next guy, but I also like things to be a little challenging as well.
35:56 --> 35:59 But some people like to play for the story first.
35:59 --> 35:59 Yeah.
35:59 --> 36:01 And. And the difficulty second.
36:01 --> 36:12 Honestly, the story is the only thing I wanted to play this game for. When I was frustrated out of the game, I was like, I still want to know the story, but I don't want to deal with those boss fights anymore.
36:12 --> 36:42 I want. I Want to have discussions about these games that are difficult because their stories are usually generally pretty damn good. But if nobody wants to play them because it's too hard and you can't adjust to make it so that somebody else can finish it, then I just sit here by myself to be like, hey guys, you play that, play that herd tree game? And you're like, no, because it's fucking hard and I don't want to play that shit. I'm like, but it's so, its story is so good. You're like, I don't care.
36:43 --> 36:54 Yeah, a bunch of you guys in the Discord have been playing the crap out of Silk Song yesterday. I haven't played it since a day or two after we recorded that episode.
36:54 --> 36:56 Well, and I, I shared.
36:56 --> 36:59 I went to a different Metroidvania entirely and beat it.
36:59 --> 37:10 Yeah, I, I shared that article that basically said Silk songs put the first first area in because they realized people were gonna just hit a wall.
37:10 --> 37:13 Yeah, yeah, fucking morwing, get fucked, nerd.
37:13 --> 37:14 That's ridiculous.
37:14 --> 37:40 Well, and that's like a tough ass game. I'm. To be honest with you, I'm surprised I beat it. I'm really surprised because I'm not. I don't consider myself to be that great at video games. But Silksong, much like Ninja Gaia, it's all about the patterns, right? Memorize the boss patterns and then it kind of fits into place. And I do like the platforming sections and it feels similar to this but much harder game. But it's just the, it's not like in Silksong when you get hit, you take two damage half the time.
37:40 --> 37:41 Right?
37:41 --> 37:53 Which is ass. Right. And like especially if you're not great at these kind of games or if you're trying to play with a wireless controller and lag is an issue with Silksong, it's so frustrating. Or at least on this, if I wanted to, I could knock the damage down 50%.
37:53 --> 37:54 Right.
37:54 --> 38:11 And, and that's great if to give people that option and I dig games that do that accessibility menu. I wish every game did it like Silksong. I get what the developers are coming out from that, but if they added an accessibility menu, I think that that game would have even I'd go back finish it.
38:11 --> 38:46 And I don't know why it's the same thing. It's just like you said, like Ragebound, it's the same thing with the patterns and the bosses, but for some reason maybe Ragebound is faster and the fastness makes my brain match its speed. Or something. But. But I'm playing Silksong and the thing and the goddamn bosses are doing the same shit and I cannot beat them. I cannot figure it out. And I'm watching it and I'm. But I feel so frantic and I don't know if it's because it feels slower that my brain is working slower. I don't. I don't understand why Silksong is a challenge. But this was not. I don't. I don't understand that.
38:47 --> 39:05 I think for me, Silksong, while it's a lot faster than Hollow Knight, it's still a little slower than I prefer my games in Hornets Movement. And so that messes with me. I. I think I died on more wing like 20 times and walked away from the game.
39:05 --> 39:22 And maybe I haven't. That's what happened because I was. I've been playing it on my Steam deck through moonlight and sunlight and it feels. It felt pretty good. I have not played it outside of that app. So I don't know if maybe I'm running a small latency or whatever but. And I played. I played Ninja Gaiden straight off of the deck because it was.
39:22 --> 39:23 Yeah.
39:23 --> 39:24 Already unlocked and compatible.
39:24 --> 39:40 So I don't know is more forgiving. It's. When you get hit Ninja Gaiden it's not like you can still keep going. There's enough health pickups as you play that it doesn't matter so much. And there's one passive I equipped almost immediately which was refills your health fully when you hit a checkpoint.
39:40 --> 39:40 Yep.
39:40 --> 39:47 That was a game changer for the game. I never would have beaten this game without that passive. Because like when you hit a checkpoint and you have half your health left, it's almost like why.
39:47 --> 39:48 Yeah.
39:48 --> 39:54 Song doesn't have that. There's healing. Yeah. But it's not as often as Ninja Gaiden difference.
39:54 --> 40:00 I think the biggest difference is probably what you've mentioned is the corpse running in in like Sil Song games like.
40:00 --> 40:06 Because it is a Metrovania. Right. It's not. It's Ninja Gun is not a Metrovania stages much more digestible.
40:07 --> 40:24 That's probably. That's probably why it's better because I'm actually progressing. I can feel myself progressing. But games like Silk Song that are the Metroidvanians where I die and I have to start way the hell back wherever I was. I get frustrated because I'm like I gotta go all the way back over there. But at least Ninja Guy. And it's like, oh, I'm at the checkpoint. Okay, cool. I'll just.
40:24 --> 40:25 You read the boss?
40:25 --> 40:26 Yeah, I'll go right back.
40:26 --> 40:30 You can bang your head against that wall of the Boss for. For 30 minutes if you want to.
40:30 --> 40:42 And I was. I was camping outside of the final boss's house for a while. They were gonna call the cops on me and tell me get off his yard. Because I could. I would not leave until I got that guy down. It's.
40:42 --> 40:45 It is funny. So you beat Ninja Gaiden on the nes. Have you played it recently?
40:45 --> 40:49 No, no, I haven't played in a couple. Probably a year or two now. Yeah.
40:49 --> 40:55 Because, like, I cannot beat the NES game. I've tried so many times. I get to sage 63 or 64 right at the end.
40:55 --> 40:56 I can't everybody.
40:56 --> 40:57 This game.
40:57 --> 41:11 I beat everybody's problem. That's everybody's wall grab was with me when we. When we beat it. I think it took me like 15 days straight of four to six hours of gameplay. Like, it was not like, I'm just going to walk through this and get it done.
41:14 --> 41:16 In YouTube. So much wa Grab.
41:16 --> 41:18 Lots of Walgrab.
41:18 --> 41:18 Yeah.
41:18 --> 41:27 And seriously, I know Sint and I, this was at our old house. We would be watching on the couch, sitting next to each other, and we're like, jesus, why doesn't he just give this game up?
41:27 --> 41:30 Nope. Because I'm chard headed and I can't do it.
41:30 --> 41:31 Chard headed.
41:31 --> 41:32 I won't do it.
41:32 --> 41:55 It's. It's on my short list of games I. I feel like I should beat because I get so far in it. But. And it's. It kills me In. In the NES game, it forces you to walk away because it's infinite. Continues. Right. This game is similar. You. It forces you to walk away. You can continue as much as you want at the checkpoint and you can bang your head against that boss, but when you walk away, you're starting the beginning of the stage again. Yeah, but it's just.
41:55 --> 41:58 My gambling problem isn't money. It's Ninja Gaiden.
41:58 --> 42:03 No, your gambling problem is this boss keeps beating me.
42:03 --> 42:07 I'm gonna. I'm. Figure it out. I'm gonna figure it out, guys. That's. That's all you hear? I'm figure it out.
42:07 --> 42:08 Yeah.
42:08 --> 42:08 Yeah.
42:08 --> 42:09 My mom's like.
42:09 --> 42:17 And the worst part is if you're trying to find the secrets on those long stages with a boss that kicks your ass. Oh, boy.
42:17 --> 42:17 Yeah.
42:18 --> 42:20 You better hope you got it all the first time because.
42:20 --> 42:21 Yep. Yep.
42:22 --> 42:28 Yeah. I don't think I ever wanted to go back into a stage once I beat it. Like, I'm curious about the hard mode, but I don't think I'd want to repeat it, you know?
42:28 --> 42:29 Yeah.
42:29 --> 42:39 And I liked the. The hidden stages. I don't know what they were, what they referred to them as, but the unlockable stages that were like side B's kind of things.
42:40 --> 42:44 You'd collect the. The. The file or something in an unlock.
42:44 --> 42:47 Yeah, the map pieces. Yeah, yeah.
42:47 --> 42:58 You find the map scroll and then you get a new stage. And I always went for those map scrolls and always went for those stages because I really like those stages. They were more challenging platforming stages.
42:58 --> 42:59 Not the boss.
42:59 --> 43:05 It didn't come with a boss. They were just harder than the. The A side version of the stage, you know?
43:05 --> 43:08 Right. The deep cuts, the B sides.
43:09 --> 43:15 Yeah. Well, I don't know what else to call them because the map dark and kind of goes like. It's a B side.
43:15 --> 43:16 Yeah, that's what.
43:17 --> 43:20 What's it called? Celeste called them. Yeah.
43:20 --> 43:20 B sides.
43:20 --> 43:22 Yeah, B sides. Yeah.
43:22 --> 43:22 Nice.
43:23 --> 43:25 Yeah, it's a. It's a great game.
43:25 --> 43:26 I just.
43:26 --> 43:35 I like when I finished it. There's two things I did when I. When I beat Ninja Gaiden. I reinstalled the messenger, which I always do whenever I play ninja game. I go back to messenger and compare it.
43:35 --> 43:38 We're never going to get Half Life done. Jesus.
43:38 --> 43:59 No, I. Fuck. The message is so good, though. So good. But then I. But then I also installed Blasphemous because I. Blasphemous was on my list of games I wanted to try. So I checked it out because it's the same developer, but, man, these games, they could not be more different than Ninja Gaiden. The Blasphemous combat versus Ninja Gaiden one is slow, methodical, and then Ninja Gaiden is just chaos. Sonic speed.
43:59 --> 44:00 Yeah.
44:00 --> 44:02 I could not get into Blasphemous after playing Ninja.
44:02 --> 44:05 Blasphemous is very much a slow grind and it is a pain.
44:05 --> 44:08 Jake, you forgot the third thing you do when you beat a game.
44:08 --> 44:09 You install.
44:09 --> 44:12 You actually start with. You start with a fist pump.
44:13 --> 44:13 Okay.
44:14 --> 44:15 Was that what we do?
44:15 --> 44:16 Yeah. Is that what we do?
44:17 --> 44:19 Well, it's retro, right? It's the 80s.
44:19 --> 44:21 That's right, the 80s.
44:21 --> 44:22 I just thought freeze frame.
44:23 --> 44:24 Yeah, freeze frame.
44:26 --> 44:29 Like at the. It's the end of. It's the end of Breakfast Club all over again.
44:32 --> 44:36 Jesus Christ. I just assume he uninstalled Street Fighter again, but.
44:37 --> 44:39 All right. One of these days I'll Beat it.
44:40 --> 44:40 Diamond rings.
44:40 --> 44:52 Diamond rank. Diamond rank diamond hands. Next year, my goal is beating one stage of Dr. Mario. That's my goal. Next. Next year. Keep it nice and simple. Bring it down.
44:53 --> 44:57 Next year, my Sisyphean goal is to uninstall six games.
44:59 --> 44:59 Throughout the year.
44:59 --> 45:00 You know what the joke is?
45:00 --> 45:00 I've played.
45:00 --> 45:04 I've beaten nine games this year so far. That's the most I've beaten in forever.
45:04 --> 45:07 But none of the ones you pick for the homework. No, I know.
45:07 --> 45:09 Because Half Life 2 sucks.
45:09 --> 45:11 No, it doesn't. It's what I mean, whatever.
45:11 --> 45:20 He hasn't even given it the moment and he's like, it sucks. I played. I played through the intro credits. I played through the intro credits.
45:21 --> 45:22 I was not wowed by the intro.
45:22 --> 45:26 What can I say, Star? And I probably could have beaten that game three times by the time.
45:26 --> 45:31 Well, I made it. I made it a quarter, three through in like four hours when I was.
45:31 --> 45:33 Yeah, yeah, ridiculous.
45:35 --> 45:41 The orange box on the 360 back in the day and played that for an hour. And I was like, this is not good.
45:41 --> 45:47 Because you played on 360. That's why, man. I waited in. Portal was great.
45:48 --> 45:50 Portal was amazing. I'm talking about Half Life 2.
45:50 --> 45:50 I know.
45:51 --> 45:51 Not so much.
45:53 --> 45:54 You both are wrong.
45:54 --> 45:59 It's fine. Yeah, sinister. You and I'll just sit here by ourselves, enjoying what is.
45:59 --> 46:04 Yeah, I got time to beat it. Don't worry. It's fine. I. I got beat like a soccer.
46:04 --> 46:08 You're gonna beat it. You're not gonna enjoy it. It's like talking about the Tron contract that dropped today.
46:09 --> 46:14 It's not the first guy that I don't like, remember Final Fantasy or whatever the it was. It's integrated.
46:15 --> 46:18 The one that you keep telling me to buy, even though you won't finish it.
46:18 --> 46:26 I did. Okay, so I finished. I finished the first one, but then the. The part two, which I don't even what the. The name is. I should install it again.
46:26 --> 46:31 You need to buy. You need to buy this so we can. We can be in misery together. I'm not playing Game Rebirth.
46:31 --> 46:37 You. But you want to, because you want to know the story. You're like me. You're sick in the head. You want to know where the story's going to go and how they fuck with it.
46:37 --> 46:40 That FOMO has not attached itself to me, Jake.
46:41 --> 46:44 I know where the story to Final Fantasy 7 goes.
46:44 --> 46:45 Yes.
46:45 --> 46:48 I've beaten like 1993.
46:49 --> 46:53 No, see, if GP was here, he'd tell you how wrong you are. Because they change things.
46:53 --> 46:53 They do.
46:53 --> 46:55 In the start of Rebirth is better than the original.
46:55 --> 47:06 You know, I could paint this room from the nice navy blue that it is and make it, I don't know, peppermint stripes. Does that make it better? Absolutely not.
47:06 --> 47:07 But it sounds better.
47:08 --> 47:13 Aren't they changing it in a way that, like, Aerith can see what happened in the original?
47:13 --> 47:19 They're changing it in a way square. More money. That's all they're doing. They're just so.
47:19 --> 47:20 I don't. That's the thing.
47:20 --> 47:20 I don't.
47:21 --> 47:42 Because I haven't beaten Rebirth. And when I finished the first part, I was so confused. GP tried to explain it to us on the episode and I was so fucking confused. I still don't understand it. And the way they started Rebirth and I'm not going to spoil it, but the way they started Rebirth was so not like the first game, the original game, and then it's open world a bit more and then that's where it kind of lost me. But I feel like if I don't.
47:42 --> 47:43 Play Matters from the.
47:43 --> 47:44 I'm going to start over.
47:45 --> 47:45 Yeah.
47:45 --> 47:49 Literally nothing matters. Like, it's like, I didn't need to play it.
47:49 --> 47:54 It's like James Song, specifically because of this. These two games together.
47:54 --> 48:00 I was gonna say it's now a Metallica song. It's now a Metallica song anyway.
48:00 --> 48:05 But you should play Rebirth chart. You know you want to. You want to check out the story.
48:05 --> 48:07 Jake is just killing it with his sales pitches this week.
48:07 --> 48:08 Yeah.
48:08 --> 48:11 Nothing matters. But you should buy it and play it. It's a lot of fun.
48:13 --> 48:18 Jesus. Well, we've. We've. We're. We're obviously still talking about Rage Bound.
48:18 --> 48:20 Yeah, we're totally on target today.
48:20 --> 48:20 Yeah.
48:20 --> 48:21 But it's fine.
48:21 --> 48:27 I. I will beat. I would go back and beat Ragebound before I pick up a Final Fantasy 7 remake again.
48:30 --> 48:33 I. I know that's a low bar, but I would.
48:34 --> 48:34 That's where I'm at.
48:35 --> 48:46 I would spend the 4 hours that it would take me to beat Ragebound instead of go play the remakes of Final Fantasy.
48:46 --> 48:48 Final Fantasy 7 the Search for More.
48:48 --> 48:55 You know what? Fuck it. I would go and I would play the original Final Fantasy 720 times.
48:55 --> 48:56 But that's good.
48:56 --> 48:57 That's fine.
48:57 --> 49:00 I can't do that one anymore either. Last time I tried, I fell asleep.
49:01 --> 49:02 I just like the music.
49:02 --> 49:19 It's not aged well at all. At all. But like, some games. Yeah, some games look like I'm. This is why I'm Surprised? I beat Silksong because that was like almost 40 hours to get to the end of Act 2. And that's a long game. I like games that are under 10 hours because that means I can bang it out and talk about it.
49:19 --> 49:20 Oh, sure.
49:20 --> 49:37 That's why I liked a Ninja Gaiden so much. Like, it's, it's short, but it's fun. I felt accomplished. The music is great, the game plays really fun. It's fun to play. And I could see myself reinstalling it a couple years from now to try it again or to do hard mode or something. Like, I think there's enough replay value. It's worth it for 25 bucks. Like, why not?
49:37 --> 50:18 It's definitely, definitely a smooth game and, and a good something that might, you know, quench that appetite later on down the line after you've already finished it. It's funny because as I get older, you know, doing the RPGs for so long and playing these 80 plus hour games and, and it was just like, that's my life now. That's what I'm doing. And then I couldn't even get past all that stuff. And, and I treat these games like I treat my orders from Taco Bell where I'm like, listen, you only need two burritos. That's it. You only need two. And then I get there and I order five things and I'm like, I only needed two. I really only needed two. These are going to go to waste. And when I play these games that are eight hours long all together, I'm.
50:18 --> 50:19 Like, you know, it would be really.
50:19 --> 50:33 Good if you add an extra 10 hours to that thing. No, it wouldn't. It would absolutely not be. You don't need 10 more hours. This is perfect just the way it is. So, you know, this is why I'm a fat fuck and why I never finish any of my games. Because I want it to be longer.
50:33 --> 50:46 That's interesting. Like, the longer a game is, the, honestly, the more interested I am in the potential of playing it, right? But the more likely I am to fall off of it, right?
50:47 --> 51:37 It's because there's more time, right? There's more time to be like, this is horseshit. I mean, I keep talking about it, but it's a game I've been playing a lot recently. This is Kronos games. And it feels real good. It's long, it's drawn out. It's not long, but it feels really drawn out. But it's engaging. It's engaging enough that I'm Interested as what happens next. And it's the same thing with Silent Hill 2, remaster or remake, where I wanted to know what happened. Like I would sit at work thinking about, oh, I wonder what's going to happen. Like I would fight, force myself to not go and watch or read or see anything. Right. Like watch a version of a game that I've already played just so I can like get that feeling. And I feel like Ragebound can have that same kind of thing, even though, you know, we've already beaten it. But, you know, I got to scratch that itch. I kind of want to play a high speed ninja fighting game.
51:38 --> 51:38 Let's.
51:38 --> 51:39 Let's fire that up again.
51:40 --> 51:45 Well, I mean, think about Chrono Trigger. Like to me, Chrono Trigger.
51:45 --> 51:45 Yeah.
51:45 --> 51:50 Is like a perfect length RPG. 20 something hours. 20 ish hours.
51:50 --> 51:50 Yeah.
51:50 --> 51:51 14 if you know what you're doing.
51:52 --> 52:07 Right. But I think the average, I think the. I just looked it up. The average is 23, 23 hours Average or Earthbound. Earthbound's about the same, right? I mean these are, you know, I dare I say, bite size RPGs. Right.
52:07 --> 52:10 Clare obscure did the same thing this year.
52:10 --> 52:10 30 hours.
52:10 --> 52:19 Same thing, 30 hours. It was the perfect amount. When I was done, I could keep going and do a bunch of side stuff or I could say, you know what, this is all I need to do.
52:20 --> 52:41 To Wolf's point. Sorry, To Wolf's point. The, like, the Persona games I have like. The idea of playing a Persona game is extremely entertaining to me. The idea, the idea of playing it. And I've never bought a Persona game. Do you know why? Because it really opens up after 180 hours.
52:41 --> 52:44 Yeah, that's. Sadly, that's what it is. That's.
52:44 --> 53:03 I, I can't do the boss fights last a half hour. I can't do the. And I'll come back to that sort of conversation later when we get to our Sisyphean games. But yeah, like it. Final Fantasy 12 made me realize some things about the games I choose to play.
53:04 --> 53:32 Yeah, it's. It's a tough haul. That one's a. That was a. But that's a, that's a Final fantasy thing because 16 was the same way. I got to the final boss at 16 and it, it felt like a two hour fight. And I'm not even. And it was. This is an action arpg. So it's not turn based. You are moving around, you are slashing, you are casting spells. Everything is happening there. And I swear to God, I was late to Work the next day because I stayed up too late because I thought, oh, this should be 45 minutes at the absolute latest.
53:33 --> 53:44 No, here I thought it's late to work because he's got like the Steam deck in one hand and he's driving to work in the other. Still doing the boss fight from the night before.
53:44 --> 54:03 Yeah, I was like, how long was that game? It was long. Great game, Fantastic game, really cool cinematics, A lot of fun. But God damn, I'm getting. I'm getting to the age, guys, where I could die before I finish one of these games. You know what I mean? Like, that's the risk.
54:03 --> 54:08 George R.R. martin the game playthrough there is closer.
54:08 --> 54:20 To me than possibly the ending to any new Final Fantasy game. This is how bad. These are the things I think of. It's either the beatus or I'm going to finish this game. One of these games is going to kill me.
54:21 --> 54:24 I can't play a Persona game. I may die.
54:24 --> 54:31 I may die. I'll end up in a home by the time it's finished. Like, that's how long. I don't have that much time, guys. I got to live life to its fullest.
54:31 --> 54:35 That's feels like a whole second topic for this episode, right?
54:35 --> 54:38 Yeah. No, to be fair, I mean, Ninja.
54:38 --> 54:40 Gaiden brought in that.
54:40 --> 55:22 I'm. No, no, I'm just saying Ninja Gaiden was so, like, the fact that it doesn't drag on, it's got a lot of extra content that you can choose to skip, I'm assuming, because it sounds like you guys didn't really do it. I did a ton of it. Honestly, had I not done a ton of it, I don't know if I even would have gotten as far as I did because I unlocked the healing thing and some other stuff. But yeah, like, I don't know if I would have been able to get as far as I did, or maybe I would have gotten further, I don't know. In the same amount of time. It's hard to say. But the fact that you guys are saying it's like six hours, that's awesome. If you can have it finished in six hours and then you can do more stuff if you want.
55:22 --> 55:23 Right, right, right.
55:23 --> 55:24 There's definitely some repeatable stuff.
55:24 --> 55:31 Give me the hard mode or the puzzles or whatever, you know, after I've completed the. The main story. Yeah.
55:33 --> 55:46 Yeah. I think the bosses, as tough as they are, they are. They. They're fine. I think they're. They're beatable. You just memorize the patterns, and I think it's worth the playthrough that again. It's not a very long game, and I felt very satisfied beating the game.
55:46 --> 55:46 Yep.
55:46 --> 55:54 And especially if you've beaten the side stuff, Wolf, I think you should try the game again and go through it like it's. It's not that long. It sounds like you're almost there.
55:54 --> 56:02 Yeah. If I was like, I think I had two or three stages left in chapter three when I stopped, so sounds.
56:02 --> 56:14 Like the last boss could. Could cause you to be like, I'm never looking at this again. It is possible. There are some moments where even I was like, this is horseshit. I. Yeah, but it's the last.
56:14 --> 56:24 Want to turn on any of the accessibility settings, even though I know they're there because I'm playing on normal. But I don't know. We. I might revisit that for boss fights.
56:25 --> 56:30 Couldn't hurt. Yeah. I mean, we all played Tunic differently, and that was a lot of fun and we all enjoyed.
56:30 --> 56:36 I would have finished that without the accessibility because I think that arena fight, I just couldn't do.
56:36 --> 56:36 Yep.
56:36 --> 56:42 And then, like, I lost another 35 hours to that damn game after that. So.
56:42 --> 56:52 Well. And. And I played the, like, I don't know, the last three quarters of the game. I played essentially damageless. I turned on essentially damage.
56:52 --> 56:53 Same.
56:53 --> 56:53 Yep.
56:53 --> 57:06 And you know what? I never felt like, I like the challenge to me, like, the difficulty challenge to me was not a primary in Tunic.
57:06 --> 57:07 The.
57:07 --> 57:23 The amazing story and finding the puzzles and figuring out the crazy magic that everything joins together in that game. The sauce that was like. I mean, that. That gave me, like, chills, you know?
57:23 --> 57:24 Yeah.
57:25 --> 57:28 Not to gatekeep, but I'm a better gamer than all of you guys.
57:28 --> 57:35 I was so into that game that we were watching a video the other day, and the wife noticed the little Tunic fox on the shelf.
57:36 --> 57:36 Yeah.
57:37 --> 57:37 Nice.
57:38 --> 57:40 In the video, she was like, hey, it's tunic.
57:40 --> 57:42 Yeah, we got our. Got our.
57:42 --> 57:44 Yeah. Right above. Right above Wolf's head.
57:45 --> 57:45 Yeah.
57:47 --> 57:48 Mine. I have mine too.
57:48 --> 57:48 Thanks.
57:48 --> 57:55 I literally pulled mine out of the box. I pulled mine out of the box from moving two days ago.
57:55 --> 57:56 Perfect.
57:56 --> 57:57 It's on my shelf. Yep.
57:57 --> 57:57 Wow.
57:58 --> 58:01 He may not be my brother, but I always had this out, so.
58:01 --> 58:02 Yeah.
58:02 --> 58:02 Yeah.
58:03 --> 58:10 So, Mr. God tier gamer or Chard, you gonna finish that Silksong game like I did? You know, I beat that silk song in 38 hours.
58:11 --> 58:14 What accessibilities did you turn on that one there, bud?
58:14 --> 58:15 Surprisingly, none.
58:15 --> 58:16 Nearly godless.
58:17 --> 58:18 No.
58:18 --> 58:25 Did all the way through Maybe I will challenge it. Maybe I'll. That'll be my Sisyphean next year. Wait till December.
58:27 --> 58:30 You'll uninstall it at least 17 times.
58:30 --> 58:35 Times. I'm gonna be like Sinistar. And wait until December 29th. Yep, December 30th.
58:35 --> 58:36 Yeah.
58:36 --> 58:37 Beat at 11:59.
58:38 --> 58:41 I'll start playing it on Christmas. I'll start playing it on Christmas.
58:42 --> 58:42 Plenty of time.
58:42 --> 58:47 I'll treat it. I'll treat it like a Christmas present. I'll put it under the tree and open it up.
58:49 --> 58:56 You know, besides Christmas, you know, Christmas has a lot of trains. And you know what else has a lot of trains? This podcast. Because we just went right off the goddamn.
58:56 --> 58:57 Yes, we did. Yeah.
58:57 --> 59:43 So, but Ninja on. Back to Ninja Gun. Great game. It's a lot of fun. It's. Again, it's a nice little snippet. It's worth the 24 bucks to pick it up on Steam or wherever you get it from. You can play it on all sorts of different consoles and whatnot. It's. It's good and challenging, and then it's got a lot of side stuff after you beat it. So it's definitely worth a revisit. And we even might have convinced Wolf to maybe take another peek at it. And it's possible that even Sinstar was like, maybe I'll take a peek at it too. And that was all Jake and I wanted to do, was to tell you guys to get good and play games, because that's what we're here for. But, yes. So does anybody else have anything they want to add to this very off the rails episode about Ninja Guy and Rage Bound?
59:45 --> 59:59 No, I think it's pretty solid. Even though it pissed me off. Like, I feel that, like, the title was accurate. I was bound for Rage constantly. But solid game. I would still recommend it even though I didn't finish it.
01:00:01 --> 01:00:01 Beautiful.
01:00:01 --> 01:00:05 Okay, I have something. If we're done talking about Ragebound, though.
01:00:06 --> 01:00:09 I mean, we probably have been done talking about Rage Bound for the last hour and a half.
01:00:10 --> 01:00:15 All right, well, I'm gonna throw out the reminder again. We have a Patreon. We're not.
01:00:16 --> 01:00:17 We're not.
01:00:17 --> 01:00:41 If you're. If you're. Able to cool if you want to cool if you're not able to or don't want to, please don't. But we have some tiers that, you know, give you certain unlocks, including some behind, behind the scenes info, stuff like that. Patreon. Press me to cancel Patreon if you do. We appreciate you if you don't. We still appreciate you.
01:00:42 --> 01:00:58 Truth absolute. All right, well, I guess that's our episode for this one. Is there anything anybody's got coming up? Round Robin? Jake, you got anything that you wanna. That you're doing side projects?
01:00:58 --> 01:01:18 No, There's a few podcasts I'm doing guest spots on coming up in the next couple months, but I don't know when they release their episodes, so I have to find out. I think I owe. I think I owe one for Retro wars with Danny, so I'll be doing one of those again in the next little while, but nothing in the next little while, so. And I'm still getting rid of my stupid cold. Like, this flu is kicking my ass.
01:01:18 --> 01:01:28 And everybody's got it. Even. Even my wife's downstairs got it right now, so it's beating her up. So, yeah, get that NyQuil, baby. Drink that stuff like it's juice. Sinistar.
01:01:28 --> 01:01:29 Smush my apple juice.
01:01:30 --> 01:01:59 If you're listening. Today or tomorrow. Today being September 19th, which is Talk Like a Pirate Day. Yar Yar or Tomorrow soularchaic and I will be participating in a retro rumpus. It's going to be anything pre 2000. Yeah, there's a couple of. There's a couple of DJs. I think it's going to start with Mix Oread. M X O R E A D. But, yeah, we'll be. As part of that. We'll be part of that.
01:02:00 --> 01:02:04 Nice. Nice Wolf. What about you, sir? What do you got coming up on these days?
01:02:05 --> 01:02:23 Nothing right now. I have just been. No, I'm. I'm hoping to put together something for the end of the year with all the games I've played this year and have, like, a little rundown of them and stuff like that. But that's why I've been taking, like, I. I keep track of the games I beat, and I take notes on what I thought of them.
01:02:23 --> 01:02:27 Beautiful. I should probably start doing that. When we do podcasts.
01:02:28 --> 01:02:31 It's also like, hey, look what I did this year.
01:02:32 --> 01:02:33 I did by doing Blue Sky.
01:02:33 --> 01:02:35 I did it on Blue sky.
01:02:35 --> 01:02:40 It's like 128 characters on each game I beat throughout the year. I'm glad I'm doing it. What was motivation?
01:02:41 --> 01:02:43 What was the bid at the end of the television shows? I made this.
01:02:44 --> 01:02:46 I did this. Oh, yeah, I made this.
01:02:46 --> 01:02:47 I made that.
01:02:47 --> 01:02:48 That's true.
01:02:48 --> 01:02:50 Followed by Sit. Ubu. Sit. Good dog.
01:02:50 --> 01:04:22 Good dog, Good dog. There you go. All right. Well, as this. This is the end of our episode. You can find me over At Twitch, playing scary games again, I'm playing a lot of Kronos. I'm kind of hoping that I can button this up this weekend. I'll be taking next weekend off, but then when I get back, we're going to start up the Medium, which is another blooper game. And then next week, Silent Hill F hits the shelves and I'm very pumped to play that. However, I am holding off on playing that because the SINS are going to be very busy and I want them to be there because they were nice enough to gift it for me. So we're going to wait on that. We're going to play another blooper game called the Medium, which has some really cool gameplay aspects in it that I'm eager and excited to show off. And then when everybody is geared up and good to go, we will be playing Silent Hill F. But first I got to get through this awesome, awesome game, Kronos. That blooper put out new IP from them. Fantastic game storage. Really cool. Really great jump scares in it. Really cool concept. It's Dead Space meets Silent Hill. What else could you ask for with some Chrono trigger in there? So, but also, let's go through all the minutia, right, guys, we don't forget we are part of the Superpod Network. We get together with a bunch of other podcasters on there. You can come and talk to us on Superpod Network over there. You can come and talk to us on our Discord as well. You can find us at press B to cancel or press b dot org. I think that thing is still live, even though that was a joke that still continues to be here. Jake, you got something you want to say?
01:04:22 --> 01:04:23 We're still paying for it.
01:04:25 --> 01:04:27 My joke is you can listen to.
01:04:27 --> 01:05:12 Such fine shows as Find Time, where they're talking about surprise, surprise. Also talking about Silksong, which is great. You can find Thrac. He's got Thrack Ops. He's been doing a miniseries of podcasts on the Call of Duty games. I think he's up to Call of Duty 2. Yes. Call of Duty 2 from Treyarch. That's a fun one. Well, I mean, there's so many Call of Duty games, but Ninja Guy, he's like four into the series. That's the whole thing, anyway. Or there's Bill and his and Alex. They're talking about the gaming and collecting podcasts, and they're looking at games that shaped them. We did an episode like that in the past, too. I gotta catch up my podcast. But anyway, superpodnetwork.com lots of great gaming podcasts like ours, both retro and also modern stuff too.
01:05:12 --> 01:05:36 That's cool stuff. All right. Yeah, I don't think there's anything else that needs to be added. Again, we do have a Patreon. Go check out the Patreon if you're interested in joining. And again, as Sinister said, not a requirement. But it would certainly be lovely for the podcast. But regardless, love having you here in any form or facet. And go check out the Neutron soundtrack. It's amazing. I don't care. It's amazing.
01:05:36 --> 01:05:37 Is it?
01:05:37 --> 01:05:37 It is.
01:05:37 --> 01:05:38 Is it though?
01:05:38 --> 01:05:39 You know Jake's a hater.
01:05:39 --> 01:05:40 Yeah.
01:05:40 --> 01:05:42 And that's fine. That's perfectly fine.
01:05:42 --> 01:05:45 No slam bamboo is all it is not.
01:05:45 --> 01:05:47 It is not any or exotic or exotic birds.
01:05:47 --> 01:05:47 Yeah.
01:05:47 --> 01:05:53 But it'll, you know, it's still some of that Cleveland magic that came the 80s.
01:05:53 --> 01:05:53 Not my trend.
01:05:55 --> 01:05:56 Wow.
01:05:56 --> 01:05:57 On that note.
01:05:57 --> 01:06:16 On that note, this has been press B to cancel it.