Weekly Update for Week of 5/19/2023

Welcome back to another weekly update from your favorite PlayStation Two podcasters. Disc read Error this is the weekly update for the week of May 19, 2023. I'm Derek Kicker.

I'm Ian Golding.

How's your week been, bud?

Good. Wife was out of town for the last, like, ten days and she's coming back and I'm excited. A little less time for playing games and shit, but still good to have her back.

So I'm excited.

Did you do any Risky Business stuff when she was gone? Did you slide in your underwear and so with sunglasses?

No, I did not take advantage like I thought I would. I was like, oh, I'm going to do all these fucking projects and I'm going to stay up late every night and play games. And I played a lot more games than I normally do, also because I've been off work. But I was like, falling asleep on the couch at eleven and then waking up at like three in the morning and having to take the dogs out and like, yeah, just doing shit. And I didn't even get to half the projects.

And I probably played about, I don't.

Know, 10%, 20% more games than I normally play. So it was an old man's weekend.

A week away from the wife.

Ain't that how it goes? You have these grand plans and then I'm just going to go to bed.

Get some fucking sleep.

All our younger listeners cherish it.

Just fucking enjoy it, man.

Oh, God. Well, what games have you been playing this week?

Well, in this spare time, I finally opened the first game I got with my Steam Deck, which was Marvel's Midnight Suns, which is an XCOM clone, right? Ish there's a little more to it? But also, I don't know, the element that makes it a little bit different than XCOM is you have cards, like ability cards, that's like there's a random aspect to each battle. So you have to draw cards and you have to draw the right one to use the right power. And if you get screwed, you're just kind of screwed. In XCOM, you get screwed because the fucking computer cheats on the percentages and it lies. You have 100% chance of shooting the fucking guy in the head. And somehow you miss your foot away with your gun pressed against your temple. And then it rolls and it's like you happen to miss in this. It's more like, why didn't I get any of the useful? Why do I have nothing but fucking healing cards for my team when I want the superpower for Captain Marvel? And it spends a lot of time in between missions just wandering around talking.

To people, which I don't know.

I like that. But I feel like the balance is just a bit low on action. It feels like it's a long time between battles and maybe because that's still pretty early game. But yeah, I'm definitely like my mind drifts during it. I'm like, when can I actually fucking fight? Do I need to do all this stuff?

But I don't know.

It's a good game.

I remember being a little excited for it because you can play as Blade, right?

Well, he's one of the first characters. Yeah. He's on the team. When you start, I think I just unlocked, like, Captain Marvel. I think she's the first one you unlock other than the main team. I haven't gotten Wolverine. I haven't gotten any of those people. I'm stuck with the B teamers of Blade. Fucking B team. Ghost Rider, not even, like, the classic one. And then I don't even remember people like Leather daddy.

Ghost Rider. Right?

Yeah. Young Boy leather daddy. Ghost Rider yeah. It's just yeah, I'll obviously finish it because I think I didn't pay full price. It was on the steam. It was 50% off when I got on the Steam sale when I first.

Got the Steam deck.

So good stuff. But yeah, it's not a game that I'm like, oh, I got to get back. Got to play some more fucking Midnight Suns. But it's fun. It's enjoyable.

I'll say that.

Well, I, of course, have been playing what I think most people have been playing. I'm sure I've been balls deep in Tears of the Kingdom.

Yeah.

And first thoughts?

I feel the exact same way I felt when I first started playing Breath of the Wild. I don't know. I feel like it captured everything Breath of the Wild did and maybe just did it a little bit better this time around. There are obviously massive changes in the gameplay, right? Because there's, like, the new abilities. There's the Ascend and the fuse and the Ultra hand stuff.

Right.

So the building stuff is, like, the biggest change, I think, largely, like, the ability to build stuff and then to fuse stuff together. And it's wild.

It's wild.

It's wild because you can just kind of build whatever the fuck you want.

That's kind of cool.

And it really shows. Like, I feel like it exposes you if you're not a super creative person. And I've been seeing a lot of this on Twitter and stuff that most people are solving all the building problems by just making, like, stupid long bridges. And I'm like, shit. That's my instinct, too, is just, what if I just made this, like, a big ass bridge?

Oh, my God.

Not a fucking hang glider or slash catapult.

Yeah. Or making, like, a fucking airplane or something like that. People have also been making, like, big Wicker mans with, like, amazing with fans as testicles and logs, with flamethrowers as a penis and just hilarious amazing that Nintendo would let people be this creative.

Yeah.

What's that show? That Mythic Quest show I watched the first couple of seasons. I don't think I watched the third one yet. But I remember one funny thing is they were, like, testing out some new thing and they're like, what's the TTP on this new skill?

The T. What's that?

Oh, time to penis. How long until someone uses this to make a dick? And it's like, oh, this one's going to be really quick. It was like the shovel or something. I wonder if they had a time to fire log penis on this game.

Well, it was immediate. I saw it on IGN's page the day the game came out. Wow, so that's quick. Yeah, it was immediate.

Wow.

Which is very funny.

There's just people out there that they are just like, I want to just make a dick. That's their immediate thing with every game they play is like, I got to make a dick with this.

It's crazy. And honestly, I can respect them. Of course, I respect the hustle you got to have immediately make something crude out of this game.

Yeah, of course.

But I think the game is a lot of fun. I tried to play a little bit of Breath of the Wild recently to get my chops back up in preparation. And it reminded me how there is like, a pretty steep curve when getting the controls right for this.

Yes.

Same as same as Breath of the Wild.

Okay.

Some of it is a little rough. The selecting of your abilities and stuff can be a little wonky, and it's not as fast as some games as, like, to where you I would say it's a few hours in before you feel super comfortable with the controls. But I don't think that's necessarily a big problem. I still think it's I was convinced I convinced myself to thinking, okay, Resident Evil Four remake is going to be.

Game of the Year.

But then, like, Resident Evil Two is going to get screwed by just happening to come out the same year as something like this, right?

Exactly.

I can't imagine a world where this doesn't win Game of the Year. It's just like everything people, especially games journalists want.

Right.

But it is a lot of fun. I've also been playing Resident Evil One on my Saturn.

Okay.

The OG.

OG?

It's the only version I haven't played was the Saturn port.

Okay.

I recently got a wireless controller for my Saturn. So to test it out, I was like, this is how I'm going to test it out.

Fuck yeah.

You play Resident Evil.

How's it feel?

It feels like PlayStation Resident Evil. The big difference. I mean, there's a difference in the character sprites. You can tell they're a little, I guess, less defined, but they look like shit in the PlayStation One. The thing that I've noticed the most, though, is that the door loading. Like, you go through a door, the loading screens between rooms is like two or three times as long, really, as the PlayStation version.

It's got to be a memory thing, right?

Yeah, I suppose it's a port of, like, the long box PlayStation version.

Yeah, that's the one I had.

Yeah. Which is, I mean, the reason they came out with Director's Cut so quickly after that is because the original is so fucking hard.

It is hard.

So difficult. So the Director's Cut came out and they gave you a little extra ammo, made the enemies hit for a little less. This version was very weird. It's also very weird to play on a Saturn controller.

I was just going to say that felt very particular to the PlayStation controller when I remember.

Yeah. It feels very much like it was designed for the PlayStation controller. Which, I mean, it was, of course, but the Saturn controller, because the Saturn controller is basically just a six button Genesis controller.

It absolutely is.

Does it even have shoulder buttons?

Yeah, it does. It's a little bit more, I guess I would say, even like it feels a little more symmetrical than a Genesis controller. Okay, but it's basically a six button Genesis controller with shoulder buttons, but just the two. Right. It doesn't have an R one, R two. It has one shoulder button on each side. The PlayStation controller feels so much more modern than that controller.

Of course.

Yeah.

So playing a game that still kind of feels I guess modern ish even though it's not with that controller, feels very odd.

Right.

But I wouldn't say it feels bad.

Okay.

And in fact, I would say, like I mean, I'm really good with tank controls anyway, just after decades of playing Resident Evil, of course, but the tank controls don't feel pretty good on the Saturn, to be honest.

Okay.

The weirdest thing, I think, is that the action button isn't A, it's B, so you aim. But I think the reason they did that is because B is like the center of the three button layout, so it feels more natural for your thumb to hit there.

Yeah.

So I think that's why they did it. It's more about a feel than like but a holding a will make you run and stuff like that. But it is pretty interesting. I want to play it because, like I said, I've played every version of that game a ton, except for this one. And I'd like to play the Battle Mode.

Oh, shit. Yeah.

I'd like to play the Battle Mode. I'd also like to see the extra boss fight that's in the Saturn version. And the gold tyrant, of course.

Of course, yeah.

I also had no idea that the Saturn had internal memory.

Really?

I had no idea. I have an action replay for it, so I thought I was going to have to save to that. Right, but it saves internally. I mean, there's not a lot of space internally.

It's just for game saves.

Yeah, well, it can't even hold that many game saves. But I guess a lot of Saturns have a problem where the battery for the internal memory has died.

Of course.

Luckily, I think I had my Saturn completely recapped. All the capacitors are placed on it and batteries, so it works like a charm. But I'm having fun with it.

Saturn is still like, I don't want to go too deep in the rabbit hole, but such a bad luck fucking break. They start developing the greatest 2D fucking console of all time. Absolutely do not see 3D coming. And then Sony is just like, well, Nintendo said, fuck off, and we still have this hardware, we worked with them and it does this 3D stuff, so let's lean into that. And Saturn just got boned.

Sega did, yeah.

And ironically enough, it ended up having one of what I think is one of the best 3D games of that generation, which is Nights Into Dreams.

Yeah, of course. Yeah.

That's a great game, though, which is like it's amazing how good that game still feels on a Saturn. And just, I mean, Sega is just the worst ran company in all of video games, other than maybe Konami.

Oh, yeah. Well, of course, yeah. Let's make Planko machines. All of their decisions seem like the thing that a twelve year old does on Madden. Like, oh, he'll never think, I'm going to do this, let's put out the Dreamcast off fucking right when everyone is starting to enjoy the last gen consoles. And, yeah, it was fucking three D. And I still say some of the stuff I was looking at on Dreamcast was so fucking next level, but no developer wanted to get going on the next fucking thing in the middle of just getting good with fucking PlayStation and what you might call it. What was it at Nintendo?

N 64.

N 64. At that point, no one did. It just was never going to fucking happen. They got some people on board, but.

It was a terrible, terrible idea.

Yeah, it's funny because I think they kept thinking they were going to be like the disruptor.

Right.

But I think after the Genesis, basically nobody actually saw them as any sort of competition.

No, I think they had a good off. Like, Sonic was really what kept the Genesis. Without Sonic, I don't think the Genesis is shit. I think Super Nintendo just steamrolls them.

Absolutely. Yeah. I think all four of Sega's home consoles are pretty good. I think the Master system, I think capability wise, kind of shits on the NES.

Right?

But it just doesn't have good games. I mean, there's a few, but it's very few and far between. And the Genesis, I think is great. And I think the Genesis, honestly, I think the Genesis is the reason why Nintendo I don't think Nintendo has ever really recovered from the fight with the Genesis. Because Super Nintendo era was the last time Nintendo was like number one.

Yeah, that's true.

But I think Genesis is sick. I think the Genesis might actually be their worst console.

Of course it is.

Yeah.

And I think the Saturn is awesome.

It's a great console.

I think it's super underrated. I think it's just it feels like an awkward place in time.

It is. Yeah.

But especially, like, fighting games on the Saturn. A great virtual Fighter two on the Saturn, amazing. Street Fighter alpha One on the Saturn. Amazing nights in the dream. Amazing. And I still think the Dreamcast the Dreamcast was a victim of the wrong timing. It was bad timing. But Resident Evil Code Veronica looks better on the dreamcast than on the PlayStation Two, in my opinion. It looks incredible. I think up until fairly recently, I think people were still playing Fantasy Star online. Like using makeshift, like, Dreamcast servers to play Fantasy Star online. I think they were like the first console to really be like, we're going to play online. I have a network adapter for my Saturn.

Wow.

Which is very funny. It's like a cartridge that goes in the back and then you plug a phone line into it, which is super.

Dial into their weird servers.

Yeah.

I think it's just a bad timing and just bad decisions. And unfortunately, I guess there really ever can only be two. It's like now it's like Nintendo and no, I guess fucking Microsoft stepped in there for now. This felt like Sega just got squeezed out by there's too many big mistakes at once.

But I think after the Super Nintendo, nintendo kind of gave up on being, like, the number one thing.

They just wanted it different. They just wanted to be different, which.

I think they've nailed. I think the Switch is incredible.

Yeah.

I like the N 64 a lot. I can see a lot of people's problems with it. Of course. I think the closest they probably got to being back in that position was the Wii. But that's such a hit or miss console. Yeah, but again, that wasn't about outperforming the PlayStation Three or the Xbox 360. It was about just being a different kind of thing. I can appreciate that.

Yeah.

It's like they were about showing what's fucking possible. Like we're trying to change the paradigm of what a video game is by making every game feel like bowling in tennis.

Yeah.

And if you were to ask me a year ago who I thought won, like, the what would that be? Like the generation of the PS Three and the 360? I would absolutely say the Xbox 360.

Oh, yeah.

But it was the PlayStation Three. The PlayStation Three outsold the Xbox 360, which seems insane.

That seems impossible to me.

It does. But apparently, like, at the last minute with the last revision of the PS Three, because the last revision of the PS Three, I feel like people remember, right? The slide top.

Yes.

Nobody fucking remembers the Xbox 360.

E. I don't even know what that is.

Yeah, it was the last revision of the Xbox 360. Just piece of trash.

You know why I think I personally because of Xbox Live. I never used the Sony, mostly because it was shut down for like a year and a half because they had that big hack. Yeah, I got mine. Have I ever told you the story of how I got my PS Three?

I didn't have a PS three. I had an Xbox 360. And that was it.

I had Xbox 360 for the longest time. And then I heard that they were going to reopen PlayStation Network. It was first of all, I think it was going to be free. And you got like three free games even if you weren't affected. So I got mine at Dave and Busters with tickets, 75,000 tickets. I was going there with some friends. Like we would go like every Friday night for a couple of months. And I found a game I was good at and I don't think was rigged enough. So I would win 2000, 3000, sometimes 8000 tickets. And we'd go into the thing and I saw PlayStation 375 thousand tickets.

And I was like, really?

I asked the guy for my balance. He's like, you're at like 21,000. So then I was on a mission. So we'd go and it stopped being like and yes, before we get there, I know I could have just bought one with this money. And I did spend much, much more than the retail price.

I'm more interested in how old were you when this was happening?

Dude, I was like in my thirty s. Like I said I don't even want to say, like, maybe 2000, I don't know, maybe 2006 or something. I don't know. So we would go every week and I eventually I'd get more tickets. One time I got 12,000 tickets, so I hit 75 and I was like, this is it. But we're not going to do it this time. We're going to go next time we come. So next time I walk in, blah, blah, blah, we eat fucking terrible chicken fingers at Dave and Busters. I march in, play some games. I march up, put my card down. He scans it and I go, I want that PS three. And the guy said, wait, really? And I said, yes. He said, I don't think we have it. I don't think we have one here.

I'm like, what?

He's like, no one's ever, ever tried to actually get one. And I'm like, well, you have to do it. And he's like, I got to call my manager. Manager comes over, says the same thing. He's like, all right, here's fucking I don't know. Go to the bar, get a beer. I'm going to send a guy out to fucking Best Buy because it was in a mall, this Dave and Busters. And like half an hour later his manager waves me over and he hands me a Best Buy bag that has a fucking PlayStation Three in it.

And I was like, there you go.

Thank you, Dave. And Busters.

Goddamn goddamn.

It was a stupid thing to do. But at a certain point when I had, like, 30,000, I wasn't like, I'm not going to get a fucking stuffed animal. I'm like, I'm going to go for it. At this point, I've already spent too much money on this shit.

Yeah, the Sunk sunken cost fallacy.

Exactly. I was a big victim of that. But like I said, I still played the Xbox.

361St of all.

The voice chat wasn't very good on the PS Three.

That's true.

It just didn't have the infrastructure. So for single player games, it was probably a much better console. And I was late to the uncharted. I was fucking late to Last of US. I didn't play that till PS four. I am shocked. Getting back to the point that that outsold the Xbox, because everyone I knew was an Xbox person.

Yeah.

I mean, you almost couldn't escape it, right? Because it was Halo Three.

Yeah.

Halo reach ODST. Everyone was playing games online.

Yeah.

Call of duty. The Call of Duty. Fucking war was online. That was an Xbox exclusive.

Yeah. It was insane to me when I found out that the PS Three outsold the Xbox 360.

Shocking.

Right now, in my house, I have one PS Three. I have a second gen PS three. A slim. But I have three Xbox.

Three hundred and sixty s. Yeah, makes sense. Yeah.

I have the Gears of War One. I have the Resident Evil five one. And I have a regular Matte black one.

Yeah.

The white one. My first one that died.

No, I got rid of all those the ones that were susceptible to the red ring.

Yeah.

And the game that killed Mine and I killed a couple of other people I know was fucking Dead Rising. Something about that fucking game.

It ran like ass.

It ran like ass. It heated up whatever it did to red Ring, the game. That was the game that I played. That enough. And then I remember one time playing it, I was like, oh, this is slowing down. It's acting weird.

And then I just saw the pink.

And the red ring. I was like, oh, fuck. And then I tried the tower trick and the towel trick. Did not fucking work.

It was bullshit.

Yeah. Gun killed mine.

Gun.

Oh, fuck.

Yeah, gun. Red dead.

Before red Dead, you could ride a horse so hard it died. And you just go flying off of it. My favorite thing in video games.

Classic.

Yeah.

That's what killed mine. Killed my horse and killed my Xbox.

See, you rode your Xbox just like a horse.

Yeah.

Well, that was our weeks.

Yeah. That was our week. Some fun games. You're going to be playing Zelda Breath of the Wild Two, or what is it called? Tiered Kingdom.

Breath of the wild two. Electric Booglu.

Electric Booglu. You'll probably plan that for a couple more weeks.

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

I don't think midnight Stunt is going to be much in rotation much longer.

Yeah, but make sure you give us a follow on social media. You can find us on Instagram at discreedairpod. You can find me at funeral. Casual games.

I'm at Ian Golden Games.

You can also find us on whatnot shooting the shit at Funeral Casual.

Do it. And don't forget to, like, subscribe follow and vote in our poll on the spotify.

Bye. Later.