Hope you enjoy/enjoyed Starstruck! And that Sims 4 tutorial, according to my brief research, only got added sometime last year, which is why I had no idea it even existed. It blows my mind, because that game is pretty easy to figure out... At least on PC it is, I cannot speak to the console version.
Ah! Yes the eye thing. They have gotten a bit better. Like light sensitivity used to be the killer for me when it came to reading and that has gotten a lot better since my first surgery. Occasionally my other eye still spazzes out though and it makes it hard to focus. The whole thing has been the longest process ever. I just got more stitches out of my eye the other day and that's supposedly the last step and now Im going to see the real inprovement... Enjoy that eyeball stitches image. (Its actually not as awful as it sounds)
We actually just got a Culver's where I live so I definitely will have to check that out soon. And Portillo's always sounds pretty good. It's a Chicago thing right?
Yea, that story sounds VERY similar to why I completely fell off of the 64. I forgot about the Earthbound thing myself, and I remember that being one of the reasons I wanted one in the first place as I was a fan of the original. And not being a huge 3D platformer guy I just grew to not like that console much.
Also I really wanna try that fast food place now. Give me all your regional fast food chains and I will try them all!
I think Tokyo Mirage Sessions has Fire Emblem characters show up more as summon spells? Like they're a characters Persona style... summon man? I think that's how that went. Either way... It's not a dating sim... I don't think. But yea, they do have FE guys show up... That game is weird and Im actually looking forward to playing it when it comes out for switch.
Oh! Or a fan theory that you like is also totally acceptable.
Its kind of an open ended thing. The above examples are actually really good from exrian. It can be something inside of a game, (Example being all the ways people used to try to ressurect Aerith back in the day) or you can go super nuts and make up your own! Something like maybe you think Nintendo is run by lizard people? Go nuts! I would also accept actual story beats within a game that are conspiracy theories. Again, its pretty open ended. Be as creative as you'd like.
Hahaha! For some reason I legitimately love bad video games. I do not understand this about myself, but it's proven to be true time and time again. I'm positive this won't be the last instance of this happening.
Yea, so your daughter has a beautiful name. I'm sorry people mistake it for game of thrones stuff. Not gonna lie, if I had a daughter I would make a push for that name myself.
Also I personally choose 8 over 9 in that Chrono Cross cage match. That actually sounds pretty great... Actually all of those matches sound pretty great.
Hey man... I hear you... And I understand your pain.
Sincerely,
The guy who got more mad with each vote for Mortal Kombat XL the episode before this.
Stage Select: My answer is Twisted Metal 2. Because what the world needs now is more games that are just completely ridculous. Why is there a man with his arms and legs trapped in wheels? Why is there a skeleton man driving around on a motorcycle and fully capable of absorbing missile blasts? Is that clown's head really on fire? I don't know, how about shut up about it and blow everything up. Twisted Metal 2 was my favorite from that series and I don't think I'm alone there. I think a decent amount of people would be into this. Also with the tech we have now, fully destructible environments would be pretty sweet in a car combat game. What's the story with this guy granting people wishes? Who cares!? That missile just blew up an entire neighborhood! Will they be mad about the loss of their homes? Probably! But maybe don't think about that too much! It's likely that I have a lot of misplaced nostalgia for this game, but I think we could remake it and really make it special again. The children of today's world deserve to blow things up in a weaponized ice cream truck.
Cage Match: You know where I stand. One of these games has Chun Li in it and one of these games does not. Do you know how many costumes you can buy for Chun Li in Street Fighter V? 15. And that's not counting all the colors. How many costumes can you buy Cassie Cage in Mortal Kombat XL? I don't know, and I don't care enough to google it right now. Oh what? Is this a weird argument? You wanna talk gameplay? Let's talk gameplay. Mortal Kombat XL's fighting is trash. And that's coming from someone who likes the game. The actual fighting just feels wrong. The single player is great, but Netherrealms fighting games usually just devolve into projectile wars. Street Fighter V isn't my favorite Street Fighter by any stretch, but at least you have to time button presses in combos rather than hit all the right buttons as fast as you can and let the combo play automatically. That's bad Netherrealms, and you should feel bad about it being in every game you make! Now, I will concede that Netherrealms can make some story modes. They make excellent single player content, and Street Fighter could learn a thing or two from them... But come on, you gotta make the fighting good in your fighting game!... Also stop spelling everything with K's instead of C's, it was cute for a while but I'm over it. Street Fighter V should win this match, and anyone who says differently doesn't know a fierce punch from a fuzzy guard.
Episode Comment: I'm just glad that Patrick knew what I was talking about on my Earthbound ramblings. Glad I researched it a bit more so I could flesh that out for anyone who didn't know that was a thing. Cage match is way too fun and I see myself turning full heel as I write every comment for it. It's pretty great.
Stage Select: Ya know what, I want a Supergirl game. Yea yea, I know, that's just a Superman game Justin. That's a lame answer. But damn it, I just want a Supergirl game. Supergirl is probably my number 2 all time fictional character crush after Chun Li, and I just want to live in a world where she's more popular than Superman is... But a Wonder Woman game would be pretty sweet too actually. You could deflect all the bullets with the bracelets and Lasso of Truth motherfuckers. Plus you get all the cool Amazon fighting stuff. It would be like Assassin's Creed Odyssey but with superheros and in modern day... Okay I actually want that game. Someone make that.
Cage Match: Okay, I may be the outlyer here, but I think Earthbound wins. Now hear me out., Earthbound had a part where you battled a cult that was obsessed with painting everything blue. You are contacted by a bee sent from the future who sends you on your journey to save the world. And also wombs. Let's talk about em. To defeat the final boss of the game you have to travel back in time to when you can fight the boss in a much weaker state. So the final dungeon is composed of weird flesh colored tubes and then you reach "The Devil's Machine" which is said to look like the female reproductive organs... Yep. Oh and the boss sort of looks like a fetus... Yep. It's unconfirmed whether or not that's what you're actually doing, BUT what is confirmed is that the final boss is based on a childhood trauma the creator had when he stumbled into a movie depicting what he thought to be a rape scene... What did Kingdom Hearts do that was this fucked up? I don't know, probably Donald and Goofy talked nonsensically about hearts and darkness for 20 minutes. Also Earthbound is a turn based RPG and Kingdom Hearts has a boring button mashy battle system. So also that. Earthbound should win this match, but I understand if the referees were all paid off by Disney nostalgia how it would lose. I forgive them.
Episode comment: I just hope people thought it was okay. As I was there saying things on it.
You'll love it then man. I just hated how they handled the wrap up section. If you can handle that then its a cool game. That aspect just really turned me off. Actually glad to hear you're interested as it means I wasn't too harsh on it.
Stage Select:
So I had more time to think about this than most, and I have to say it wasn't easy... But I think I got somethin.
So I've said for a long time I want somebody to bring back the Mendel Palace game, because I loved that game as a kid. So my idea for this is to make a game called "Justin Hamm Presents Mendel Palace." Now I know what you're thinking, "Justin, it would just be Mendel Palace," and that's where you're very wrong. You see in Justin Hamm Presents Mendel Palace you play as the character Legally Distinct Chun Li, (That is the full name of the character) And she looks a lot like Chun Li but just different enough to not be sued by Capcom. What's the story you ask? I don't know yet, but there'll be a lot going on... At least that's what I'll tell the people kickstarting it, because I need money. For five hundred dollars we'll render a room to look like your cat or whatever. There will be zero fucks given on the dev team of Justin Hamm Presents Mendel Palace.
Now Mendel Palace was a game where you flipped tiles and knocked enemies into walls to kill them. Justin Hamm Presents Mendel Palace will do something similar, but instead of tiles, you'll pull rugs out from under enemies. Every stage is just a room with a bunch of rugs (Which the story may or may not explain) and you have to pull the rugs that the enemies are on. Some enemies will be tricky because they jump and such, so you gotta have good timing when you pull those rugs. And then when you pull a rug, there will be another rug under it you can pull. Some rugs will be magic and do cool things that I havent fully thought out yet when you pull them. Also there will definitely be a coop mode so your friend can play as pink Legally Distinct Chun Li, and you can pull all the rugs together. Your friend may complain about having to be pink Legally Distinct Chun Li, but just tell them to shut up about it, and if they want more colors they should pay us like 500 dollars on kickstarter and send us a picture of their cat. Then they'll have more colors and a level based on their cat in the game. Everyone wins!... Probably.
Now how do we get people to play this? I don't know man. We'll get like the Bakugan license or something. They're not doing anything and I assume it's a cheap tie in to get. Why wouldn't they want to be a part of Justin Hamm Presents Mendel Palace? Then the kids can play as... whatever a Bakugan is. All I know is Bakugan Brawl, standing tall, they're the awesome ones and that sounds like a perfect tie in for Justin Hamm Presents Mendel Palace, because it's a game about standing and not falling on the rugs... So yea. It works.
Episode comment: I just hope people liked it okay. I had a good time rambling about my favorite games of the year. My list was super weird compared to a lot of other people's I;ve heard, but hey, I'm a weird guy. So it fits. Sorry if my stage select was long. Look forward to hearing other people's ideas because this is a cool stage select!
Just wanna say. hey, I'm just glad people think I'm doing an okay job when I'm on the show. This seriously made my day when I read it... Like you have no idea. I'm really just happy to be there. So... thank you guys a whole bunch.
Hahahahaha! ...Yea I caught that too.
This came out real good! I miss Angelo's music talks a lot, but it was good to hear from him. Hope people liked this! I know theres already a few things I need in my life from it. (What was that last track Angelo played from a Japanese Vania? That track is fire)
State of the Generation
It seems we keep having some really good years for video games as of late, and I'm not sure if I see that slowing down. Which is great... for the most part. See I'm sort of wondering with all these great games if there's room for small, underdog B tier games anymore. There's so much good now, that if your game isn't at least a 9/10 it's possible nobody will ever play it. And that's kind of sad to me, as a lot of those "lesser" games have some really fun ideas in them. But why sink your money into those when you have 80 plus hours still to play on the new hotness. It seems a lot of games now want themselves to be the only game you play.
Also this year, brought about a lot of talk about unionization in the gaming industry. With the shut down of Telltale and Rockstar's "100 hour work week" mishap, I've heard a lot of different angles on it. I'm pro unionization in gaming myself, and from personal experience I can tell you it won't fix everything, but it would definitely help move things in the right direction. But that's my personal opinion, curious as to what you guys think. (Feel free to skip that if you don't feel like going here. I wouldn't blame you)
I think this generation still has another good year or two before we actually get the next gen in our hands. I think Xbox is doing a lot of things right at the moment, and Sony has been in a weird bubble. Sony has great exclusives, but I think some of their business decisions have been odd. Suddenly they're censoring their store, and they're one of the few holdouts on crossplay at the moment. I suppose you can do that when you're ahead in sales. Not sure if I should be worried or excited that they're skipping E3 this year. And Nintendo is Nintendo still. I think the Switch didn't have a particularly great year, but I'm sure it's fine. My Switch has been mainly an indie handheld device so far, but a lot of those indies don't play particulatly great on the Switch. Also Smash Bros. does nothing for me. I keep trying it and I can still confirm, I hate Smash Bros. But other people like it so... what the hell do I know?
...Also what's the deal with game streaming? Does anyone else think that's going to be a really big deal once the tech gets there?
Episode comment
Sorry for taking so long to get back to this. Kind of slipped my mind there for a bit. I echo you Julian on Spiderman. I enjoyed that game a lot but I didn't think it was amazing. Had a few issues with the combat personally (like the dodge not meaning shit against the brute enemies was infuriating) and I just felt the game did a lot of by the numbers open world stuff. Its good, it just didnt blow me away. Also fuck those stealth missions.
I think Pokemon was actually the reason I stopped collectathons in any game. Once I see I need however many of a thing, just to say I did a thing I'm out now. I've missed many a platinum trophy for this reason and I sleep like a baby at night.
That's all I got. Keep up the good work guys!
Stage Select: I admit to not being much of an achievement hunter when it comes to games, but I do have some things that come to mind here...
3. That time I beat Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Arcade Game when I was like... five years old. Yea sure, maybe I went to a theatre during their grand opening and they were giving out free arcade games to people, and sure maybe I was the weakest link among all the teenage kids who I was teaming up with at the time, but damn it I beat that game and nobody else I knew had. I remember going to friends houses and describing the end levels to them when we would die on the third stage. Did that make me an asshole? Possibly. But I thought I was pretty cool.
2. I caught all 151 of the original Pokemon before it was a cool thing to do. I got Pokemon Blue and Red, a link cable and a brand new Gameboy Color for my birthday one year, and proceeded to play both games until I had caught them all. This was a little before Pokemon really blew up in the states, which basically made me a video game hipster at the time. And yes I realize I said 151 pokemon, I eventually convinced somebody to buy me a Gameshark so that I could have Mew as well. After that, I hung up my Pokemon hat for good, because it got too cool. And as the video game hipster that I was, I was not about that life anymore.
1. So I talked a bit on the show about how I think the new WWE games are bad, and they are, but I'm part of the problem and I still buy them every year. Mainly because I love the Create a Character stuff on those games. Years ago I started uploading some of the things I had put together out of boredom and people randomly downloaded some of them. I even started to develope kind of a cult fanbase for some of my stuff. Turns out I'm really good at making female wrestlers... Crazy right? I mean who'd have thunk a guy who idolizes Chun Li could understand some of the finer points of women's wrestling fashion? Last year I had over 25,000 people download one of my creations and that was pretty wild. There's a Youtube video of a Youtube man asking his audience who my made up wrestler is because he's never heard of them on the indy scene. So if anyone asks, Roxanne Rolston definitely came to your town and put on a great match okay?
Episode Comment: I enjoyed listening to this back a whole lot. Hope other people dig it as well. Hope to do it again!... Sorry I don't have more than that as I was there. Also I'm glad I was on the episode with the Queen music... Because Queen is good.
Oh! And I knew there was science behind the voice thing! I just only remember half of the facts a lot of times.
...I don't know how I didn't put that together. Sometimes me no think so well.
For the love of god man, don't risk your sanity by playing The Quiet Man. It's just not worth the risk. And you're not wrong about punk rock. I will fully agree with you on that. But really all artist's songs in any genre sound the same, (Cough AC/DC) it's just whether you prefer that sound or not. Punk rock is fairly repetitive though, but I would say the key difference would be whomever is on vocals usually has their own style. (Mind you not all of them) Country has a very similar vocal style which makes it somewhat hard to distinguish artists from each other, but that could just be because I don't listen to enough of it. Congratulations on making it through that episode, sorry I am long winded at times, but hey, we had fun!
Dearest Julian,
We have only just begun to scratch the surface of Samm's hot takes on everything. Stay tuned.
Sincerely,
Justin
Also this was quite possibly the funniest episode of the show ever. At least that I can remember. Although I did feel sorry for Patrick and plan to console him soon.
You pretty much nailed it. I find it very hard to push the narrative forward when I'm in control of the character. I used to watch a friend of mine play through Resident Evil games as a kid, and we had a ton of fun. I used to be kind of the guide for him and help him figure out puzzles and what not. But if you hand me the controller I won't do anything, because I'll be scared I'll cause something to trigger in thr game. Now, here's a weird thing, I can easily watch the older Resident Evil and Silent Hill games no problem and it's mainly because of the camera in them. Third person perspective does t bother me so much, but as soon as it's changed to first I can't even make it more than a few minutes at best. RE7 and PT are an absolute no go for me. Believe me, I tried to watch them once and my anxiety went nuts in no time. Horror movies I dont prefer but I can make it through them usually. Most of the scares I can see coming and I just kind of look away. Not exactly noble, but its what I do if I have to. I can also usually employ that tactic in a let's play too, so that helps. I HAVE to look at the screen if I'm controlling the character, so it forces that guard down. Hope that makes sense.
Stage Select: Let me just say up front, that I'm probably the last person we should ask this question... With that being said...
3. Okay we drop 100 kids on an island and have a battle royale style scenario. Kids like the Fortnite right? Well now they can have a real one. Then they can learn about how real life guns work and how to hide in the bathroom for hours on end. It worked in that one Japanese movie I saw... Oh wait...
2. Okay... We hire a sorcerer right? And then he like, opens up a realm to another dimension. Then all the bad stuff comes out of the portal, and the sorcerer holds a fighting tournament for some reason and we make the school kids do it. Maybe they'll learn martial arts this way or they'll learn how to trash talk using math. Because normally in a fight you have a fifty fifty chance of winning that fight, but if you're an expert martial artist, like myself, you only got a 25 percent chance at best of winning against me... (Cue this Scott Steiner promo)
1. Fuck man, I don't know, just make Chun Li a teacher. I'd go back to school to see that. Hell get the whole cast of Street Fighter involved in teaching. There's somebody there for everyone... Probably... Again I should not be asked questions like this.
My Episode Comment: Yea this stage select is really hard. I really got nothin, but hey I tried. Hopefully Julian and Patrick got something bettter than what I do. Anyways, THANKS SO MUCH FOR THE SHOUT OUT!!!! I appreciate that sooooo much! And you were definitely right to wait, I made sure we were going to be in it for a while before I even released an episode, but we're both havin a blast recording it so I think we'll be around for a while. Hopefully the review (For NWP) that I wrote just now actually goes though this time, because last time, it didn't. ITunes is a fickle mistress and confuses me in many ways.
Anyways, I laughed super hard at that Bethesda joke. THEY DO ALWAYS MAKE THE MOST BROKEN ASS GAMES, but for some reason I still love em. I think it's because I'm a big fan of modding games, and there is no crazier modding community than the Skyrim/Fallout games. I usually wait a good year before I play a game they release, just so the mods can catch up and get good. I've never been big on the way combat is in those games either, but my Skyrim feels like Dark Souls because of all the crazy combat mods I have going. Bethesda may kill that community themselves with their creation club nonsense, but I really hope they give up on that. It's really the only reason I love those games.
Oh! And I'm glad I'm actually not the only one who got scared by that Bioshock part. The girl I mentioned in that story was actually super impressed by Bioshock, and immediately demanded I buy and play the sequel... And that was pretty underwhelming so I showed her Mass Effect and she came back around.
I haven't watched a playthrough of the Resident Evil remake yet, maybe I'll do that after I get done playing Red Dead and Soul Calibur. I can't play horror games myself because I find it hard to push the narrative, but I love watching them for some reason. Binge watched Silent Hill 1,2, and 3 over the summer at some point for some reason. Looking forward to watching RE2 remake when that happens. (Although I can't handle horror games that are in first person. Something about those really messes with me)
Anyways, great episode as always! Hope this finds you well. Thanks once again for the shout out, it really helped! Keep it real dudes!
