Press B 281: Routine

ROUTINE, it's anything but! This brand new survival horror game caught Chard's eye and he's going to break it down for the rest of Press B.

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00:00 --> 00:14 Hey, so to paraphrase a quote I saw guys or read today, you'll never change your life until you change your routine, or in the case of today's game, your shorts. Today on.
00:34 --> 00:37 Don't wear pants over the intro to.
00:37 --> 00:40 Say, this is the most professional intro opening we've ever had.
00:40 --> 00:44 I was. I was preparing to say don't stay silent over the intro.
00:45 --> 00:45 No.
00:45 --> 00:46 Yeah. Nothing.
00:46 --> 00:47 It's not possible.
00:47 --> 00:51 We can't. We can't break our streak of interrupting the intro. It's been too.
00:51 --> 00:57 We're here to talk about the greatest. The greatest football game of this year. Right. That's what we're here to do.
00:57 --> 00:58 Sure.
00:58 --> 01:04 I love football. I'm so happy you said the. Was it. The Sonics won the football game. It's great.
01:04 --> 01:11 Yes. Yes. That was our last podcast, everybody. Thanks. Thanks for being here. Wow.
01:11 --> 01:15 No, we're going in a sports direction. We're a ball and gun podcast now.
01:16 --> 01:26 Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Press be to cancel your favorite podcast. Talking about sports. Ball. Sports ball.
01:27 --> 01:28 Sports balls.
01:29 --> 01:43 If you didn't get it from the opening line, today we are talking about the game routine. It is a. It is a survival horror puzzle.
01:43 --> 01:43 Horror.
01:44 --> 02:05 And just to. I mean, to total spoiler. Clever as hell. Absolutely clever as hell. But I'm not alone. I'm Sinistar. I'm not alone. Today I'm joined by a person that has played this game. Chard. Chard, how you doing today? Free.
02:05 --> 02:16 I'm free. I'm free for two weeks. Merry Christmas. It's a Christmas miracle. I am. I'm free. I'm free from work and happy to be not working overtime and actually doing a podcast with you guys.
02:16 --> 02:20 I picture Chard at work like, excuse me, sir.
02:22 --> 02:24 Yeah. May I clock out now, please, sir?
02:25 --> 02:27 Well, congratulations. Congratulations.
02:27 --> 02:28 Thank you.
02:28 --> 02:33 And then I am joined by somebody who's here to ask questions. Jake, how are you today?
02:33 --> 02:43 Yeah, first off, I had to ask you what genre this game was because I have no idea. We might have been pivoting this week on the episode. So it's good.
02:43 --> 02:45 But we're prepared. We are prepared.
02:45 --> 02:48 At least two of you are. That's great, because I'm not.
02:48 --> 02:48 That's fine.
02:48 --> 02:49 But I will.
02:49 --> 02:50 The only ones that needed to be.
02:51 --> 03:02 I will say I. I. When you first mentioned this game and you said how happy you were with it, I'm excited to hear why. And it looked really interesting and it looked like an indie game and I'm all for indie games, so I'm happy.
03:02 --> 03:03 To hear about this.
03:03 --> 03:05 One very much. Yeah, this is very much an indie game.
03:05 --> 03:21 That, that's a good, that's a good segue. It definitely feels indie, but it also feels really polished. Like this isn't something that somebody spent a year putting together. This seems like somebody has. Has been working on this for a while.
03:21 --> 03:43 This game was announced in 2012. This game is. This has been a long time coming with a lot of delays. It was initially slated to be released in the spring of 2013. And then things just happen and a bunch of other stuff I'm reading here. It looks like Mick Gordon who was originally the audio designer for the game left the project in 2024.
03:43 --> 03:44 Oh really?
03:44 --> 04:33 Okay. I didn't know anything about that. But this game has been a long like gestating game. This game has been around and we've been waiting for it for a long time now. I, I'm not the one. I wasn't obsessed with this game. Like when it was first announced I think I saw a gameplay of it probably on an Instagram clip or tick tock or something and I went this is really looks really cool because it's very alien isolation esque in its first person view and it's and environment that it creates. And I was like this sounds like a really, really cool thing. And my wife got it for me for our. They're called the 12 Week. We're doing the 12 Days of Christmas where you buy, you know, five, ten dollar gift.
04:33 --> 04:34 Yeah.
04:34 --> 04:49 And this thing on sale when it came out, she picked it up for me and I'm telling you Rhett, this thing was so good. It was way it was. I had no expectations going in and they were very pleasantly surprised. I absolutely adored this for sure.
04:50 --> 05:43 So I agree with you on the alien isolation thing where I think it diverges from alien isolation is alien isolation for good portions of at least. The beginning of the game is kind of on rails. Right. Like it directs you. You go here. This thing explodes. You can't go that direction anymore. You're going this way. And this game, the, the as I said it's. It's survival horror but it's also very puzzle horror in that there is little to no direction at the beginning of the game. Like you get manuals for like the hardware in the game and that's so that. That also feels a little tunic ish almost a little bit like okay, I could see that. Yeah. Like it's. You're reading manuals on the like the multi tool device that you. That you get in this game.
05:43 --> 06:17 That's Your main source. Yeah, it's your main thing to get you through the game. It's called a cat and it's you when you get it. There's nothing. There's no on screen hints. There's no, there's no hand holding in this game whatsoever. This game does not. There's no maps, there's no, you know anything. You. You have to remember where you came from. But it's not, it's. It's big, but it's not like it may like it. Like it's, it's not so big that I felt like I was getting lost a lot. I felt like I could cover a lot of ground, but I was always, always knew kind of where I was at.
06:17 --> 06:29 Well, and it did kind of enclose you. Each area was really kind of enclosed. Like you knew that you were working on puzzles and aspects in this area that you were in.
06:29 --> 06:30 Right.
06:30 --> 06:38 Even though you would take elevators and transition and stuff back and forth. It's like, oh, I went to this area and I'm doing the puzzle work in this area.
06:39 --> 06:39 So.
06:39 --> 06:39 Yeah.
06:39 --> 06:48 So is it stages or is it like more like a Resident Evil where there's different distinct areas and you backtrack or is it just you kind of moved through area to area and you don't really go back very much?
06:49 --> 07:20 There's chapters. There are chapters. But they're, but they're, but they're loose chapters. It's, it's. I, I had read a walkthrough earlier to see if I had missed anything because I was kind of curious if there was like some secrets or anything and I didn't find them. And the walkthrough takes me to a completely different location. It takes me to the second location that I went to first and, and then the location I went to next after that. So there is some. There is, there's. Once you finish that, then it goes to the next area and it says like chapter two.
07:20 --> 07:24 Yeah. And each chapter is named. Each chapter is named.
07:25 --> 07:35 Yeah. And it's just telling the story of what is kind of going on, which is you have no clue what's going on in this whole game. It's really neat.
07:35 --> 07:45 Basically. Like you're, you're, you. You kind of only really know at the beginning. You're on the moon and you're in kind of a base. On the moon.
07:46 --> 07:46 Yeah.
07:46 --> 07:55 And nobody else is, is there like nobody else exists. And so like that's basically where you start.
07:55 --> 07:57 Or is it like, like, did you care to have music?
07:57 --> 08:00 This place apparently used to Be like an Airbnb.
08:00 --> 08:01 Yeah.
08:01 --> 08:11 For people. They would come to the moon to, like, relax. So it's, It's. It's like the moon's location is based in like a very 1978, 19 early 80s.
08:12 --> 08:13 Yeah. Huh.
08:13 --> 08:20 Yeah. And. And it has that film over it that kind of gives it that 80s feel to it. Everything in there looks old.
08:20 --> 08:21 Yeah.
08:21 --> 08:27 And that's what gives it the. The Nostromo and the. The alien isolation kind of feel like.
08:27 --> 08:28 That film grain thing.
08:28 --> 08:38 Yeah, exactly. Your tool, Your cat tool is like boxy and beige and like gray and.
08:38 --> 08:42 Beige and like, looks like an old handheld camcorder. A little.
08:42 --> 08:43 Yeah.
08:43 --> 09:30 Okay. Like, it's. It's pretty cool, but I mean, it still looks like. It looks like a gun, but it's. It's not. It's. It's a multi tool that you use to. To traverse and unlock doors and scan for items. You get infrared so you can see like, fingerprint on things. And you could use it to. To cl. To log into the computer system and see what kind of errors there are so that you can figure out how to fix the computer that's broken. Yeah, it's. It's really clever, but it doesn't. Unless you read the manual that you see at the beginning of the game, you don't know what you're doing. Like, you don't know what any of the stuff does. There's no handholding. What's. Like. I cannot emphasize this enough. There's no hand holding in this game. And I still managed to navigate my way through the entire environment.
09:30 --> 09:31 It's.
09:31 --> 09:43 I don't want to say seamlessly because I got lost a few times, but there was never a start over. There was never a, fuck this, I don't know what I'm doing. But there were some times where I was like, where the hell do I go? Like, I. I don't know if I've been in the right spot.
09:43 --> 10:26 And. And it. It. Even though it was like the. It was a very puzzly aspect of like, I've got to figure out what the hell's going on. It also felt really like once. Once you kind of put things together, it was like, intuitive. Right? Like, it was like, oh, right. Okay, that makes sense. That does. Okay. Like. Like there's an area where, like, you get the ability to unlock doors and the. It doesn't tell you how to do that. You. You basically like, figure out it's this feature on this tool and you have to do this specific thing. And then the minute you do that you're like, oh, I get it now. And it just kind of like. Yeah.
10:26 --> 10:30 Like is it like a mini game to unlock doors or is it just a setting?
10:30 --> 11:42 Like. No, no, no, no. It's. There's a setting on your multi tool, but it has, there's literally you'll pull your gun up and you'll, your character will look at it. There's no HUD display, it's all normal view. You'll pull the hut, you'll pull the gun up and there's different things you can click on and it will change the modules inside of the gun that allow you to do different things and you can accidentally turn them all off and the gun is useless. Like, like you don't know that it's there. Or you can power down the entire cat device. You use it to save on games that you see in the, the playthrough that you got here. There's like, like a, a drop screen for displaying like an old school projector thing. Yeah, projector thing. And you, you click and your, your gun will connect and project to it and that tells you what your goals are like what you're trying to figure out or what you're assigned to. There's videos that you've seen that are recorded and saved on there. There's sometimes there's codes that you've picked up that if you don't have to remember, it'll be saved in the game. And then there's different updates that you can do on there and you save the game that way. It's really cool.
11:42 --> 12:22 So, so far we've been talking about really the puzzle aspect and I want to talk about how even though, even though you're alone, even though there is no humans that exist on this, on this, in this moon base. I kind of alluded to this when, when you were asking about putting the thumbnail together. There is a little robot called ic. There's a few robots but the first little robot that you, that you run into called ic it's this little four legged thing that like stomps around almost. It's a box with four little stumpy legs.
12:22 --> 12:26 Yeah. It looks like a Commodore and. Or like an all in one.
12:26 --> 12:26 Yeah.
12:26 --> 12:30 With a green screen monitor. It's fucking great.
12:30 --> 12:37 But the way that it talks to you, you are instantly, you're like, this is my buddy and he's awesome.
12:37 --> 12:38 My new best friend.
12:38 --> 13:08 Yeah, and he's my best friend. And it's, it is, it is like it is the minute that. So when I was watching Chard play This. There was a point where I was like, this is boring as hell. The first while. Boring as hell. And I'm sure Chard wasn't feeling that because he was doing the exploration. But the minute, the minute I saw I.C. i was like, I mean, let's go. Like, I just, I just want to watch everything now. I want, I want to watch.
13:08 --> 13:48 Yeah, it's. It's like a little tourist bot that you run into and asks you questions and tells you where to go and then takes you someplace to unlock some things. As, as boring as it might be to watch, to kind of pick it up, playing it, you're invested because, yeah, the, the. The environment is very immersive and I, and I like that about the game. I felt very sucked into it from the minute I, I started playing. It's that amazing sound in the background. The sound of isolation, the sound of walking around a tinny empty hall. It's. It's really, really involved. It's really.
13:49 --> 13:54 That is definitely alien isolation right there. Like the, the audio was like.
13:54 --> 14:05 Yeah, I was gonna say I dig the. I really dig the aesthetic. I like the 80s vibe with all the electronics. It really does feel like you. It's 1980s, but you're on the moon for whatever reason. But.
14:05 --> 14:05 Yep.
14:05 --> 14:22 Like the soft padding of the walls, the CRT displays, like the Macintosh style interface for the emails read. It's. I dig the whole atmosphere. It's really atmospheric. Is there, is it just puzzles? Because this is a horror game. Is there. Oh, is there bombs, like monsters?
14:26 --> 15:53 So there's. Once you meet ic this is great because the presentation of everything this game gives you is to me, flawless. It really is. The execution of everything they did in this game is so well done that it's absolutely mind blowing. And IC takes you in, you go to the mall, you're trying to get into the mall because there's a module that you want to use to upgrade your cat so that you can progress to shut down. Basically the premise is, is that the, the, the AI of the station has shut everybody up. The security system has shut everything down and you're just trying to stop it. You're trying to turn it back on or you're trying to kill it so you can unlock everything and get yourself out of there or whatever, free whoever's the people you think that are there. You're like an Isaac Clark. Like you've been sent up to the moon to fix, fix this problem. You don't know why, you don't know how. You just wake up in A room. And you're. All of a sudden, you're fixing shit. So icy takes you down this. This shaft. There's ic. You get him right there. He takes you down this shaft, and you climb down the stairs, and then you land into this room. And you're like, oh, okay, I'm in one of the mall places. Cool. I'm, like, in one of the shops. And you hear this very loud, very echoey. Stomping, walking towards you.
15:53 --> 15:53 Oh, it is.
15:53 --> 16:14 And then you hear something stop. And what sounds like a processor, like an old school processor kind of processing. And you see these lights, like, behind this grated door. And all of a sudden you hear what sounds like a torch cutting the door open. And I'm in immediately in full panic mode because I don't know what the hell's going on.
16:14 --> 16:24 Oh, and the storm, the stomp is. Is genuinely terrifying. Like, you are on pins and needles after that. Yeah, yeah. Anyway.
16:24 --> 16:37 Or flies open and there's a security robot licking you dead. Dead in the face and wants to kill you. Wants to hurt you real bad. So I panic with teeth. They have teeth. Yeah, they made them look as scary.
16:37 --> 16:39 As mechanical teeth or, like fleshy teeth.
16:39 --> 17:31 Yeah, they're like horse. No, they're. They're mechanical teeth, but they are teeth. Like, they. They definitely look like it would eat something. And then you spend the rest of your time. And you had. Your cat has the ability to disable them for a short time. So you can shoot them in the. In the. There's a. There's a ball, like an orb in their chest. And if you. Or their stomach. And if you shoot them, it'll disable them for a short time. But there's three of them, and they like to stomp around. And your cat only has so much ammunition in it. Yeah, lithium batteries, like, lying all over the place to reload your cat device to pop them, and then you can hide. That's like the best you can do. It is. It is. It's alien isolation with the hiding and not being able to. Yeah, you can defend yourself to an extent. That's it.
17:31 --> 18:17 There is. There is that kind of thing. There was one moment he's running around this mall, inside this. This base on the moon, and he's being chased by Stompy McStomperson, which is what I started calling him was Stompy McStomperston. And he goes careening into this shop in the mall, which, of course, is dark and closed and, like, the security gates halfway pulled down and the whole thing and he goes sliding around some boxes, and you hear this thing come stomping in. And then all of a sudden, like, I don't remember what noises it made, but it had this. This laser grid where it's scanning for you, and it just, like, hits the processing side. It hits the whole room, and you're just like.
18:19 --> 18:51 Yeah, fuck, time to dip. And you just hide. But he doesn't find me. Because you can hide behind boxes and under tables, and if you're out of range, they can't reach you, so they're. They just kind of off. It's kind of funny because we have a joke when we play Visage. It's safety chair. And when you pick up the safety chair, you can defend yourself from what she call it. Choke Daddy. What did she call it? And then this one was safety table. Because I could stand there and shift from what? You can't get me. I'm on the other side of the table.
18:52 --> 18:52 Yep.
18:53 --> 18:53 Okay.
18:53 --> 18:54 Yeah.
18:55 --> 19:02 So we've kind of avoided spoilers pretty well to this point. There's probably.
19:02 --> 19:15 There's a lot. Lot more to this game than just that. That's. That's. That's like the overall encompassing premise, but the story itself is very much more in depth and. And really well.
19:16 --> 19:30 And the robots, we didn't know that. So spoilers. Pause now, if you care, but spoilers. The robots are not the worst enemy. No, by far.
19:30 --> 19:32 So there's more than just robots.
19:32 --> 19:33 Oh, yeah.
19:33 --> 19:40 There's definitely other things that are kind of kicking around. Yeah, this. This little. This little Lunar.
19:40 --> 19:42 There's fucking Slender man at one point.
19:43 --> 19:44 Yeah, yeah.
19:44 --> 19:46 Oh, Flappy.
19:46 --> 19:47 Flappy McFlappers.
19:47 --> 19:50 Yeah. Oh, he's. He's terrifying.
19:51 --> 20:21 This game. This game induced distress in me that I had not felt in. In many moods many, many, many years. It. It felt good to be this scared again, like, playing these games, because, I mean, we've been playing a lot of horror games, and Visage and Madison will forever be, like, the top of the pile of some of the scariest things we've ever played, to the point where we were questioning our existence and why I had decided to do this to myself. But this one brought that back. Brought that feeling back. This mini.
20:21 --> 20:29 Yeah. Okay, so. So Jake has gotten to an area in the video which is Game of the Year. Not.
20:29 --> 20:30 It's the game of the year.
20:31 --> 20:37 Not routine. Routine is not Game of the Year. Gun show is Game of the Year.
20:37 --> 20:41 Oh, this is the clip that you had me watch when I popped in your stream. The one time I see.
20:42 --> 21:08 I See, Yes, There. There is an arcade in this game. We said spoilers are from here at this point. So if. Yeah, if you're still listening. Sorry. There's an arcade in this game. And a couple of the games work in the arcade. They do, and they're both excellent. But one of them. Yes, one of them. Just perfection in a game.
21:10 --> 21:16 Yeah, it's essentially Dance Dance Revolution, but it's Bodybuilder.
21:17 --> 21:18 Bodybuilder.
21:18 --> 21:36 And he's posing, and you have to pose with the bodybuilder. So when he. When he poses, then you have to keystroke that direction that he's posing. So it's like left, right, up, down, whatever. And you see it flash on the screen. You press it and he does it, but he makes these goofy sounds.
21:37 --> 21:40 And then. And then the best is when he. When he does the butt flex.
21:41 --> 22:27 Yeah, when he does the butt flex is clearly in a thong. It is. It is. It is such a funny thing. I love these horror games that are very psychologically stressful and just take you for this horror trip and then they throw this stuff inside of just sheer humor and ridiculousness. And I. And I absolutely adore it. There's another one called Minotaur that's like a. It's a. It's a Simon. You remember some people that played Simon with the colored lights. And it basically is a memorization game where it gives you the path that you're supposed to walk, and then it's a dungeon crawler, and then you follow the path that the Simon told you to take and you make it out. And I think I got to, like, level six, something like that.
22:27 --> 22:27 Yeah, yeah.
22:28 --> 22:39 And then the last time, if you don't do it right, a Minotaur comes out and kills you. And then you start over from the beginning. So it's just these silly little mini games that are involved inside, you know, the game itself.
22:41 --> 22:44 They're not like. Not necessarily for beating the game. They're just games in a game.
22:44 --> 22:45 Yeah, yeah.
22:45 --> 23:04 I love that it is there to keep you calm during some very stressful stuff because nothing could get you in those rooms while you're playing. So you can just kind of take a breather, play some stupid. Some funny, stupid games, and then move on to the next thing. This game was fantastic. It's. It's.
23:04 --> 23:04 It.
23:04 --> 23:12 It's not. It's not long. It's not alien isolation long. It's not even. It's maybe more Madison long. Yeah, it's like six hours.
23:12 --> 23:17 I was gonna say, if you beat it, if you pressed hard. You could probably do it in five or six hours.
23:17 --> 24:19 Yeah. And I, yeah, I probably, I took a little extra time because I was very much hiding a lot and running away from things a lot and just trying to figure out where I'm going. But the length of the game really comes, comes forward from trying to figure out what the hell you're supposed to do and what you're supposed to solve. But it's not so bad to where you're like, dude, I can't. I don't know where to go. Like, there's, there was very rarely a point where it's like, I gotta stop playing this because I don't know what the hell I'm doing. I gotta look it up. And there may be like one or two things that were very kind of confusing. But then we solved it. Like, we, we figured it out, moved forward and, and I was really proud of, of being able to get this stuff done. But yeah, this game is worth every $25 it's worth or whatever. It might even be on sale right now because of the winter sale. And it's, it's, it's worth that. It was so fun. It was so good. I could not, could not believe how good this game was. When I finished this up, I was like, damn, man, this, this was fun. This brought back something that I, I missed in these kinds of games.
24:19 --> 24:31 Yeah, but it's on Windows, Steam, and also on Xbox S and Xbox X, which is pretty good. I got a 79 on Metacritic, which is pretty good for, for an indie title. And it's Lunar Softwares. I think it says here it's their first title.
24:32 --> 24:34 Debut title. Yep.
24:34 --> 24:44 I had to look up Mick Gordon because you had mentioned Mick Gordon was doing the audio, but he had left. And like, I had to see, like, well, why. Also, how the hell does an indie studio get Mick Gordon, right, to do their soundtrack?
24:44 --> 24:45 Right?
24:45 --> 24:55 So apparently he left 2004 because of a scheduling conflict, but they used a lot of the assets he had already created. So it's not like he left because of an issue or something. It was just scheduling. But he still made stuff for this game.
24:57 --> 25:01 The best Doom soundtrack was Mick Gordon. The best hands down soundtrack. Yeah.
25:01 --> 25:32 Hands down, yeah. If you wonder why this game's not on PS5, it's because this game was being worked on before the PS5 even existed. So. And the PS5 came out in 2020, so they didn't have, they didn't have a model for it. They only had it for Xbox and Microsoft and Steam. So they're. They're talking about making a version for PS5, I believe. But. So people like me that only have a PS5 and not an Xbox, if I didn't have the PC, I'd be pretty bummed because this game is very much worth the time run on the.
25:32 --> 25:33 Steam deck at all.
25:34 --> 25:42 I did not try it on the Steam deck, but I bet it will. I bet it will just fine. Even if you just do it through sunlight and moonlight, it'll work with. With controller pretty well.
25:42 --> 25:49 Yeah, it's not. It's not a, you know, hardware taxing environment like this. The.
25:49 --> 25:50 It's not overly complicated.
25:50 --> 25:59 It looks really good for what it is, but it also looks, you know, 80s, which isn't hard to try to emulate. Right, right, right. Like it's not Pixel.
25:59 --> 26:27 It's not so 80s that it's. Yeah, exactly. There's not pixels or anything crazy like that. It looks. It looks beautiful. But the film is enough like the graininess in the film is enough over it to maybe lower some of the. Some of the look to it. I played it with keyboard and mouse, but I'm sure it plays on controller just as well. But this is a game that needs to be played with headphones on because there's so much shit that is just. Just really. It really locks you in. Like a good pair of headphones would really make this game.
26:27 --> 26:43 It is really good. It is incredibly rare. It is incredibly rare that I am watching a stream and I have one of those like jump scare moments and I literally had one in this when I was watching Chard play it. I was like. That fucking got me like y.
26:43 --> 26:58 And it was like literally opening something. It wasn't even anything hunting you. It just. They make it. They. The sound design is so well put together that even just something processing behind you out of nowhere makes you. Makes you jump out of your chair.
26:58 --> 26:58 I've.
26:58 --> 27:02 I've got some really good clips on TikTok from this. They've got some really good jumps.
27:02 --> 27:17 Sinceris looked up compatibility store page says playable but not verified. Some game in text may be small and difficult to read. Oh, that's a pretty common. Yeah. Which is a common Steam deck, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
27:17 --> 27:22 There's even. There's a section on the Steam deck. You just use that. Honestly, I've done that before.
27:22 --> 27:22 Yeah.
27:22 --> 27:40 And a lot of the stuff when you're reading it in the game, you. You are reading it in first person mode. It doesn't like always pull up. You can like click a button to say Read more But when you're navigating through some of the computer screens, there' no like blow up. It's, it's what you're looking at. So that's one thing I benefited very much from my monitor.
27:40 --> 28:22 What I was going to say was like it can be very risky for a game to take the approach of like no ui. Right. And to be that totally immersive. What you see is what your character would see if it was real type of, of point of view. I've seen other games do that and, and just you just don't know what the hell you're doing. You get lost. You don't, you're not sure what the next thing the clue is. There's just not enough, not enough feedback on the screen to, to kind of tell you what's going on. But it sounds like this game did it. Right. Right. Even though there is no interface or map, the design of the stages kind of lead you where you need to go and you kind of figure out the gun or the cat. Sorry. By, by trial and error. But with the, the scenarios, the, the monsters when they attack that kind of funnels you where you need to go. Like that's a very well designed game. That's hard to do I guess is what I'm trying to say.
28:22 --> 28:22 Yeah.
28:22 --> 28:24 It's not, it's not easy to put.
28:24 --> 28:46 Together and there are some things that are pretty, pretty direct leading. Like there was when we, when we talked about that ability to open certain doors that you get with that addition to your to your CAT tool. There are some that'll be like you need level three. And so that's like pretty clear. Oh, I need to upgrade before I can go into this room. Right, Right.
28:46 --> 29:26 But it tells you where to go to go find it. It's like look around this area to find the upgrade module in this person's cabin. You're like, okay, I need to figure out where the dude's cabin is. And then to send a star's point it guide you slightly a little bit. I mean you could. I, I, I spent like five minutes in a pitch black room trying to figure out if there was anything bad. There's nothing back there. But you never know. I mean this is a horror game so it's gonna put you in some pretty, pretty spooky spots I would assume. And, and the cat has a feature where it does have a video screen on it. It's about this big and you can zoom in on it and just see like you can see it, but you can see stuff around. But it's all.
29:26 --> 29:28 It's all. It's all washed out.
29:28 --> 29:51 Yeah, exactly, because you're looking down the barrel. But of course there's a degauss on your cat gun, just like an 80s thing that if you get too close to a magnet, which there are apparently several magnets in the lunar base, you have to degauss it because it blurs the screen and it makes it all warped and deformed and it. It really makes it challenging to use that to navigate.
29:51 --> 30:00 We actually made this joke, Jake, while we were. Well, well, Chard was playing it that you're. You would. You would appreciate the frame rate of this. Of this device.
30:00 --> 30:01 You would. Absolutely.
30:01 --> 30:02 It's like six.
30:04 --> 30:04 Yeah.
30:05 --> 30:05 Yeah.
30:05 --> 30:09 You move it not per second. Six frames.
30:09 --> 30:10 No, just six frames.
30:10 --> 30:10 Yeah.
30:10 --> 30:13 Not the game, just the. The cat itself.
30:14 --> 30:18 Game is gorgeous, but the cat has basically like Star Fox frame rate.
30:18 --> 30:31 So. Yeah, if you're. If you're using it to try to see like what's in the room, you are also getting it at super low frame rate, which of course makes you not want to use the device to look, you know. Yeah, right. Yeah.
30:31 --> 30:39 But sometimes it's your only option because it does come with a flashlight module on certain aspects that allows you to see a little bit better, but it takes up your whole field of view.
30:39 --> 30:39 Yeah.
30:40 --> 30:46 So you could look down the tube. You look down the screen and it's still like, I can't make out what that is. And it's terrifying. And I don't want to go in there.
30:47 --> 30:47 Room.
30:47 --> 30:47 Yeah.
30:48 --> 30:48 Yeah.
30:48 --> 30:49 Something's going to get me in there.
30:49 --> 31:00 I don't want to spoil the game or anything, but is the story like. Does the story end well? Does it feel like it's a good ending like a standalone game? Or is this something that's. They're trying to do like a spin.
31:00 --> 31:02 Off or would argue that it is not.
31:03 --> 31:06 I will argue it was a better ending than Silent Hill.
31:06 --> 31:08 F. I mean, that's true.
31:08 --> 31:08 And.
31:08 --> 31:19 And it's the only ending you get that I'm aware of. I. I feel like it left. Upon completing this game. It left it open enough that they could actually do a routine too.
31:19 --> 31:22 There's. There's some unknowns that don't get explained.
31:22 --> 31:23 Okay.
31:23 --> 31:40 There's a lot of redacting. Yeah, a lot of redacting. And. And it's. It does open up a lot of. There is some. Oh. When you're reading like when the ending comes, you're like, oh, okay. But there's not a full. Like you Know what? I get it now.
31:40 --> 31:41 Yeah. There's no.
31:41 --> 31:42 It's very much like.
31:42 --> 31:43 I understand.
31:43 --> 31:44 I want to know more.
31:44 --> 31:48 There's no. I understand exactly what happened to this whole thing.
31:48 --> 31:48 Yeah.
31:48 --> 31:56 There's. There's. It's. It's a better ending than Silent Hill. F. It's a. It's a very horror game ending.
31:56 --> 32:14 It's very locational. But I think it's, it's definitely. It feels to me like it's designed to maybe continue in a DLC somewhere or, or a second version of the game, which I think would be spectacular. I'd play this game again. I'd play a second version of this game in a heartbeat. So when did it come out?
32:14 --> 32:15 Just recently, Right.
32:15 --> 32:17 This year, Like a month ago, like.
32:17 --> 32:22 Two or three weeks ago. Yeah, yeah. Not too long ago. It's very, very new.
32:22 --> 32:26 December 3rd or something like that.
32:26 --> 32:30 And let me, let me look at my mind. Fourth. I was close.
32:30 --> 32:44 Yeah. I don't know how well it sold it. It peaked on SteamDB, which is not the be all end all, but it peaked at 16 at release. But it's still got about 300 people right now playing. So that's for a single player game. That's short. That's actually not bad.
32:44 --> 32:45 Yeah.
32:45 --> 32:46 I'm curious.
32:46 --> 32:51 The biggest complaint that I've heard about this game is that it is not very long. That's. That's like the one thing, you know.
32:51 --> 33:13 Like I'm at the point where that's kind of what I want. Like, especially if it's 20, 25 bucks. I don't mind if it's under 10 hours. Like I, I paid what, almost 40 for that marvel beat em up game and I'm fine with it that I beat it in three hours because it was fun. I'll play it again someday and just, you know, it's just, it's fine. I don't need, I don't need everything to be 100 hour game. I only have so much time left.
33:13 --> 33:14 Right.
33:14 --> 33:24 I completed Warhammer Space Marine 2. Right. And right, right, right. And that I think took me just, just about nine hours.
33:25 --> 33:25 Yeah.
33:26 --> 33:42 And I don't feel bad about it now. There's a lot of content that I can go do that will enhance that as well. And we'll talk about that in another episode sometime. But like it was a good enough. It was a good enough game that I felt like my time was honored.
33:43 --> 34:31 Yep. And, and to be fair, when you're playing games that stress. Stress you out as much as this one does, and I'm not saying like, this was like, holy crap. Like, alien isolation probably changed me as a person, like, emotionally, spiritually. More like, more than likely. Which is probably why I'm kind of dark and messed up. Because that game really, really jacked me up. This one, it. It's not. It. It's enough. It's enough that when I was done and the final jump scare that got me almost out of my chair was like, that's what I needed to end it. That's all I needed. Like, I'm good. I. I'm glad this is over. I'm glad we're walking away from it. That's. That's exactly what I needed. Because I don't know if I could hand of these things chasing me around this goddamn place without me being.
34:31 --> 34:35 I kept. I kept asking charred, how's your blood pressure, dude?
34:36 --> 34:40 I. This game made me want to get the. The heart rate monitor.
34:40 --> 34:46 I was gonna say you should get the heart rate monitor. I know Wolf used to do that back in the day. Because that's. That's funny.
34:46 --> 34:52 I did it for. I did it for Madison. I had it on for Madison. So I still have the app. I still have all that stuff. I just need to dig it.
34:52 --> 34:58 This was a better game than that because. Because of that. Because of that statue. That statue.
34:59 --> 34:59 I still know.
34:59 --> 35:06 You should do chart. You should have a list, like a ranking of horror games. And you just. You just rank them as you go. That's what you should do. Because you played a bunch.
35:06 --> 35:07 I would do that.
35:07 --> 36:26 That actually be a lot of fun. Yeah, we're up. We're up on quite a few. And. And like I said, we're. I mean, we're. We're knee deep into a lot of the Silent Hill stuff. And the first three Silent Hills are spectacular. Of course, Silent Hill 2 is amazing. You've told me. You've heard me preach that all the time. But I got into four and I'm kind of like, I'm waiting. I'm waiting for it to grab me. I feel like it's going to grab me at some point, and if it doesn't, I'm going to be really disappointed because it's. It's kind of bonkers wonky, but it gets a lot of love. So I was like, I need something else. And she got me this game and I was like, all right, this. This is a fresh meat. Everybody's talking good things. It's got, you know, positive reviews, people waiting for it forever to come out. Let's give it a shot. The Worst thing is that it's too short. So we'll, we'll kind of determine how we feel about that after that. And this felt good. This felt like finding a new roller coaster. Like it really, it felt like it's, it's the thrill seeking thing, like kind of like Wolf said. It's. Yeah, it's really, it's fun. It's. I don't know, it gets my adrenaline pumping more so than, than most things. And it, and it sucks because it's, it does affect other games that I've played or that I'm in the middle of playing. You know what I mean? Like, yeah, they don't get me. Like, like, like Silent Hill 2 did. Like this, this is just the forest just. It's kind of falling short to me and it makes me sad. So I'm. Well, I'm digging for something worse.
36:28 --> 36:41 Franchise though. Like Silent Hill. That franchise was pretty much dead in the water until that remake. Right. I feel like it kind of tanked off. So you're hitting. I don't know how many, how many Silent Hill games were there? There's like five, six.
36:41 --> 36:48 A lot. There's a lot. There's, there's, there's six main kind of main lines and then there are a couple offshoots. Yeah.
36:48 --> 36:48 So like that are.
36:48 --> 36:49 There's like three or four offshoots.
36:49 --> 36:54 You might be hitting a point. Started losing, losing the enthusiasm for Silent.
36:54 --> 36:55 I can see that.
36:55 --> 36:55 Right. And that's the thing.
36:55 --> 38:16 I can honestly. Three was good. I liked three a lot. But four is definitely. I'm like, what is H? Like there's not. And I'm not talking about like, like Dark Souls lore. I'm talking like there's not a lot of information that's making me go, I want to know more about what's going on. Like routine. Since it's the episode we're talking about n s hill 4. There may not be a lot of explanation as to what's going on, but I, I get it. I've stepped out the door of my room that I woke up into. This place is scary as fuck. Let's go explore it. Silent hill. Silent Hill 4 is like I wake up in my apartment. There's a giant hole in my wall, and I can look at my neighbor through a peephole and there's chains on my front door, but I can't. I don't know why. And now I'm in a subway getting attacked by somebody with a dog that has a very long tongue. Why? Like there's not that doesn't always have to be explained, but I'd like to have a little bit of context as to what the hell's going on. So. And, and I, I don't know. That's the way, the way that this game was designed. Routine was designed and how, how it came out is, is just, it's a good, it's a great, stressful score, scary game. And I was, I was really impressed about how, how many jump scares it got out of me. Yeah, it felt good to feel that, that frightened about something again.
38:17 --> 38:23 Well, because, like, you've played a few, like, indie games over the last couple years. You've talked about. Was it Callisto Protocol?
38:23 --> 38:31 Callisto Protocol. That, that's not close to protocol. It would probably be more like a triple H game. Triple H, is it okay. AAA game.
38:31 --> 38:37 And then you. Sorry, last year, I think, what the hell was that game? I watched you play some of that one.
38:37 --> 38:40 That's a Bio horror game. Oh, I have to think about that.
38:40 --> 38:43 I made a corn joke with it. I just, I don't remember. But I know you. I've known you.
38:43 --> 38:45 Oh, scorn. Scorn scoring.
38:45 --> 38:45 Yeah, that's the one.
38:45 --> 39:05 Yeah, that's, that's. I would also that. That's more indie than Clista. Protocol was definitely a flop for a. AAA studio, which, which sucks because it, it was, it wasn't bad, but it could have, could have been better. And then the Dark. So the Dark Space, a Dead Space remake came out around that same time, which was epic.
39:05 --> 39:06 Absolutely fantastic.
39:07 --> 39:07 Yeah.
39:07 --> 39:10 But it's pissed at Microsoft for being pieces of about that.
39:10 --> 39:12 Yay, ea. Not Microsoft.
39:12 --> 39:13 Ea, not Microsoft.
39:13 --> 39:31 EA pretty much doesn't know what the hell they want. It's just. I hate that they make something great and then it doesn't hit whatever arbitrary metric they decided and they're like, oh, well, I guess people don't want Dead Space games. Like, no, they do. They just don't want maybe this that you want or they don't want your microtransactions or they don't want, you know.
39:31 --> 39:31 Yeah.
39:31 --> 39:34 This kind of nonsense I hear, I.
39:34 --> 40:00 Hear rumor since we're talking about it. The guy, the, the main dude that did dead space is pitching to the new owners that bought, I guess whoever EA or whoever that they bought out, he's pitching a Dead Space 4, like with everything. He has to be like, let's do this. Like, let's do Dead Space 4. Here's the reasons why you should do it, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, please listen to this. Man, give me another dead space.
40:02 --> 40:55 So much the industry is kind of messed up right now, right? Like you have a lot of the companies like EA getting bought out by the Saudi investment fund, which is a whole other freaking episode. But like a lot of the big companies are being bought out or merging together like the Embracer Group of studios. But then a lot of folks who make the games that we like from the last 10 years have kind of either been laid off or leaving their big studios and they're forming indie studios and they're doing stuff right. Like the guys who made Titanfall 2 and I think it's Apex, Apex Legends. Some of those folks are spotting in their own studio and they're, they're making their own online game called High Guard. I mean hopefully it's good. Yeah. But like that's like one example. Like the guys I play through Dispatch, which is from a studio called Ad Hoc. It's a brand new studio. It's made up of guys who left Telltale, right. So a lot of the people that made the games we really love 10 years ago are now making a lot of cool now indie or very small studio size. And I hope, I hope it works.
40:55 --> 41:15 Expedition 33, that's movie soft. He wasn't laid off, but he said peace out, I'm out and made the game of the year. You know, so it's these. I love finding these things and it's. And it's almost, it's like to your point, Jake, because I know how much you love indie titles and indie studios. It's fun to like play something from someone you don't know.
41:15 --> 41:16 Right.
41:16 --> 43:09 Who it's by. I don't know this company. Who the is Lunar Software. I don't know who this guy is. They made a great game. Don't care. So it's almost more fun to find. And, and with, and with the horror genre in general, you get a lot more indie developers because they piggyback on one another. I mean how many phasmophobia clones floating around out there? But they're still great. Like I the Other side and Demonologist and all those games, they're the same, you know, it's the same thing but different. So it adds another kind of scale to it. So finding things like, like routine for, you know, for this episode was a breath of fresh air. Like Ill's coming out pretty soon. That game looks wicked as. I don't know, it's not. It's got to be an indie studio. They've been working out for any forever Tenebris Sombria, that eight bit looking game that came out with the live action cutscenes in it, looks absolutely stellar. And we played that for the demo on one of my streams. Absolutely. I can't first that as a first day purchase for me when it hits the store sales and it's so simplistic. I mean it looks old school. King's Quest. Yeah, with liveaction cutcenes. Like it's, it's so perfect. And I was actually like, I did not think this game was going to get to me and it scared the piss out of me. I was like, this is great. So you know, just wait, like we need more stuff like routine. We mean we need more stuff like Tanner, Sombria and Ill and, and all these really great survivor horror games that. And, and listen, Resident Evil King, King of the King of the fucking mountain. They have, they have, they started to dip and then they climbed back up with seven and eight nines coming out. Looks spectacular. I can't wait to play nine. Of course all the remakes that they've made. But we need more Somas, we need more signal. This is layers of Fear, you know, Blooper Blooper's coming out.
43:09 --> 43:16 I mean let's, with their, let's throw out stuff. Let's throw out. We need, we need the next visage. Like when is visage going to get surpassed?
43:16 --> 43:33 We need right od. I mean listen, if Kojima is going to do something weird, I bet OD could, could truly be something absolutely terrifying. Because if PT still has the following. It has and it's sure one of.
43:33 --> 43:36 The worst cases was a direct response.
43:37 --> 43:47 Direct response. So it's, it's cool. We need more Madison's, we need more visages, we need more amnesia bunkers, like things like that. That's some good out.
43:47 --> 43:59 With the cost of like this push to 70 AAA games, it really is, it really hit hard this year with how many, how many of the big studios are saying our game is worth 70 bucks now or $70 plus because there's always DLC and Deluxe and all that shit.
43:59 --> 44:01 Yeah, Nintendo went 80.
44:02 --> 44:05 Yeah, yeah, like Nintendo even is on that board. I'm not trained now.
44:05 --> 44:10 So like Grand Theft Auto is threatening over 100 bucks for their game. You know, be very curious to see.
44:10 --> 44:11 What they charge next year for Grand Theft Auto 6.
44:12 --> 44:12 Right.
44:12 --> 44:15 But like I'm so sick of the like I don't have money for all these triple A titles.
44:15 --> 44:16 I just don't.
44:16 --> 44:37 So that's why I'm like so happy that there's Indie studios. Like just this year alone, we've seen a few where they're like not 70 bucks. They're like $20. 30, maybe $50. Definitely not 70 bucks. Definitely not a hundred dollar deluxe edition that you feel like you need to get. They're just smaller games are still awesome to play and memorable and that's. I'm hoping we just keep getting stuff like this.
44:38 --> 44:40 Look at, look at what Silksong did.
44:40 --> 44:41 Yeah.
44:43 --> 44:47 They came in with like the most hyped game for like years.
44:48 --> 44:48 20 bucks.
44:48 --> 44:50 And they're like 20 bucks.
44:51 --> 44:52 Yeah, yeah. Here.
44:52 --> 44:58 I guarantee that they made so much more money because they went $20.
44:58 --> 44:58 Yeah.
44:58 --> 45:01 Than if they'd gone 40. Right. Like, yes.
45:01 --> 45:23 Because I bounced off Hollow Knight. If I told myself if this game was $30, I probably would just say, no, I'm good. But it was 20 bucks. It was hard to say no to our platform game. That's 20 bucks. I had to try. And you're right. Absolutely. That's what it was. If it's any more than that, I would have bounced. And it's like that with a few other games I played over the years where if it's a certain price point, I'll pass, but otherwise, like, I'll give it a shot. So.
45:23 --> 45:26 Yeah, yeah, it's. It's good stuff.
45:27 --> 45:28 So.
45:28 --> 45:29 Yeah. Routine.
45:31 --> 45:41 I think we've pretty well covered most of the aspects that. That we should talk about now. What? Yeah. Really? People should go play this. You should go play this.
45:41 --> 45:47 Yeah. And that's the basis of it. We're. We're selling you on going to try and pick this game up and play it.
45:47 --> 45:47 It's.
45:47 --> 45:52 If you have any interest, if you liked alien isolation, you like first person kind of survival horrors.
45:53 --> 45:54 If you like puzzlers.
45:55 --> 46:00 Yeah, if you like puzzlers. This is. This is definitely. This was a sleeper it for me.
46:00 --> 46:07 I'll say if you have an Xbox because there's been a lack of Xbox games lately, then this is on Xbox. You should check it out.
46:07 --> 46:21 Yeah, I think it's on Game pass too. I think it's actually because I don't have anymore, but worth a try. It's worth the playthrough. It's worth. It's definitely worth giving money to the studio so they can make.
46:21 --> 46:25 Yeah, I was gonna say let's. Let's support the studio so that they can continue making games.
46:27 --> 46:30 Get me routine too. Get me routine the next day.
46:30 --> 46:36 Like routine Visage or you know, I mean something, right? Yeah.
46:36 --> 46:43 No, Visage is the scale. It is. It is the The. The bar you have to cross. I have yet to play anything worse.
46:43 --> 46:46 How many visages would you rank this game? 3.
46:48 --> 46:52 This is. This is. This is a. This is 3/5 of a visage.
46:52 --> 46:53 3/5 of a message.
46:54 --> 47:01 You really should make a tier list of horror games as you go, dude. Like, you play enough of them now, you are like the authority for sure on horror games.
47:02 --> 47:03 I love it.
47:03 --> 47:51 Okay, well, really quick. We have a Patreon, folks. We're not shilling for your dollars. It's out there in case you feel like supporting us. We have a number of tiers that get you different bonuses. One of those or a couple of those tiers, you'll get a shout out. So for that, Vaughn, Beardley and Cathusiast Jeff, thank you for being Patreon members. Thank you. If you can support us, awesome. If not, no worries. Enjoy the podcast. Although tell your friends like and subscribe. That helps us a ton. We are a member of the Superpod Network. Superpod.com others network.com super network. I got it last week. I had it last week.
47:51 --> 47:55 Terrible. Ah, we're so terrible in a family.
47:55 --> 48:05 There's a number of other amazing podcasts there. Super Ghost 3 do experience. 3 do with.
48:05 --> 48:09 Yeah, experience Bar Silence has a great art music theme show.
48:09 --> 48:33 Yeah, I know Thrac is doing his own right now where he's going through, like, Call of Duty stuff, which is pretty awesome. So superpod network dot com. We also have our own website. Press b2cancel.com or press b dot org. We have a discord. Come tell us what we said wrong. Tell us. Yell at us for spoilers. Something anyway.
48:34 --> 48:39 Otherwise, tell us why you don't like why you played routine and didn't like it. Why you think Visage is not the scariest game you've ever played.
48:39 --> 48:43 Right, Right. Tell us why it's only 2/5 of.
48:43 --> 48:44 The visage instead of 3.
48:45 --> 48:47 That's right. That's right.
48:48 --> 48:51 It's 1/8 of a visage. Really? On the sliding scale of horror games.
48:52 --> 48:55 You guys are way too generous with your slide scale of visage.
48:57 --> 49:02 Yeah, I'm sorry. It's 3/27 of a visage. I apologize.
49:03 --> 49:06 I feel like I'm at work getting wrenches. Yeah.
49:07 --> 49:16 Anyway, we appreciate all of you. I think our next episode will be after Christmas, so if you.
49:16 --> 49:17 Well, the day after.
49:17 --> 49:26 Yeah, if you celebrate. If you celebrate. Merry Christmas. Otherwise, happy holidays. And yeah, this has been Press B.
49:26 --> 49:28 To cancel Go Hawks.
49:30 --> 49:32 How does that tie to the episode?
49:33 --> 49:34 It's a routine.
49:57 --> 50:18 Sam.