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Episode 112 - Quarantine Gaming

Eclectic Gamers Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 2m·analyzed·Apr 5, 2020
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TL;DR

Eclectic Gamers discuss COVID-19 impact on pinball and analyze Twippies award results with critical perspective.

Summary

Dennis and Tony discuss quarantine gaming during COVID-19 lockdowns, including pinball industry shutdowns, Dennis Nordman departure from Deep Root Pinball, and a detailed breakdown of the Twippies awards. They analyze voting patterns and express skepticism about certain award outcomes, particularly regarding Jersey Jack Wonka's consistent placements across multiple categories.

Key Claims

  • Dutch Pinball is the only manufacturer still manufacturing during COVID-19 lockdowns (Big Lebowski machine), operating with two people maintaining distance in a home setting

    medium confidence · Dennis notes hearing this but acknowledges uncertainty and doesn't claim to have verified the claim directly

  • Multimorphic would be capable of performing playfield construction from home if needed during extended lockdown scenarios

    medium confidence · Dennis cites This Week in Pinball as source; notes Multimorphic still has stock available

  • Dennis Nordman has left Deep Root Pinball as an employee

    high confidence · Confirmed via Pinball News and Pinball Magazine podcast March 2020 edition; Dennis previously heard this in February through unverified second/third-hand source

  • Dennis Nordman never relocated to Texas during his time with Deep Root Pinball

    medium confidence · Reported in Pinball News and Pinball Magazine podcast March 2020 edition

  • Jurassic Park won multiple Twippies categories with dominant vote percentages (57% for best rules, 53.6% for playfield gameplay/layout, ~50% for Game of the Year)

    high confidence · Dennis and Tony reviewed Twippies results; Jeff Patterson published vote breakdowns on Pinside

  • Willy Wonka consistently received approximately 16-21% of votes across multiple Twippies categories (rules, layout, game of year)

    high confidence · Dennis calculates and notes this pattern as potentially indicating a fixed Jersey Jack fanbase percentage (~20%)

  • Black Knight Sword of Rage won Twippies for best music and sound effects

    high confidence · Dennis and Tony both predicted this outcome; results confirmed

  • Elvira's House of Horrors won best callouts with less than 3% margin over Black Knight

    high confidence · Dennis references viewing detailed vote breakdowns posted by Jeff Patterson on Pinside

Notable Quotes

  • “The only manufacturer that I have heard that is still actually manufacturing is Dutch Pinball on the Big Lebowski. Isn't that like one guy in his mom's basement? I heard it might be two.”

    Dennis (host) @ ~15:00 — Highlights exceptional resilience of small-scale pinball manufacturer during pandemic; shows humor about startup-scale operations

  • “COVID's given every manufacturer a pass for missing any deadlines. So if that had not happened and there had been another delay, this would have been seen as a huge red flag.”

    Dennis @ ~22:00 — Notes how pandemic timing masks potential business issues at Deep Root; contextualizes industry-wide production paralysis

  • “I think if one is honest with oneself, you can tell when you've done something that you think is worthy of recognition and when you haven't, and I had not.”

    Dennis @ ~27:30 — Shows self-awareness about undeserved recognition; criticizes that his podcast name recognition inflated his publication vote standing

  • “I think that's the percentage of people who vote for Jersey Jack no matter what. So you think there's about a fifth of the twippy voting population that are fanboys? Yeah.”

    Tony (implied) / Dennis @ ~58:00 — Proposes theory that ~20% of Twippies voters are Jersey Jack-biased regardless of category; suggests voting bias rather than merit-based selection

  • “I don't think you can make one [argument that Wonka was better than Jurassic Park], not seriously.”

    Dennis @ ~47:00 — Expresses strong conviction about Jurassic Park's objective superiority in rule set; dismisses contrary positions as indefensible

  • “Wonka's got a good rule set, but it's like we're at levels where it's, again, it's like objectively speaking, Jurassic Park has got the best rule set.”

    Tony (implied) @ ~45:30 — Acknowledges Wonka quality while maintaining Jurassic Park is objectively superior; reflects measured but clear quality judgment

  • “I think Wonka is probably the second best set of rules that's ever come out of Jersey Jack.”

Entities

Dutch PinballcompanyDennis NordmanpersonDeep Root PinballcompanyMultimorphiccompanyTwippieseventThis Week in Pinballmedia

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Pandemic creates existential risk for smaller manufacturers; even companies with inventory face unknown timeline for return to production and revenue generation

    high · Dennis discusses survival scenarios: 'The biggest one is we don't know how long this will last. And that's obviously the largest thing that's going to be a factor' in company viability

  • ?

    business_signal: Dennis Nordman departure from Deep Root Pinball during peak pandemic uncertainty raises questions about company stability and design pipeline, though timing masks impact due to industry-wide shutdown

    high · Dennis notes 'COVID's given every manufacturer a pass for missing any deadlines' and that without pandemic this would be 'huge red flag'; however Deep Root has games designed by Nordman ready to release when ready

  • ?

    community_signal: Twippies voting shows strong engagement with prerecorded YouTube Premiere format, with hosts and community members using alternative tools (messenger party, watch parties) for real-time discussion

    medium · Hosts watched Twippies premiere and discussed adding Zoom/Skype watch parties in future; some community members organized watch parties, showing adaptation to virtual event format

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Significant skepticism about Twippies voting integrity, specifically theory that approximately 20% of voters consistently support Jersey Jack products regardless of category, suggesting bias rather than merit-based selection

    high · Dennis calculates Wonka appearing at 16-21% across multiple unrelated categories (rules 16.1%, layout 18%, game of year 21%) and proposes: 'that's the percentage of people who vote for Jersey Jack no matter what'

  • ?

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.189

0:00
This episode of the Eclectic Gamers Podcast is brought to you by the Roanoke Pinball Museum in Roanoke, Virginia. In a world where there are museums, the Roanoke Pinball Museum becomes the one beacon, an interactive museum dedicated to the science and the history of pinball. Their mission is to cultivate curiosity in science, art, and history through pinball, while preserving and honoring its role in American culture. The museum is open when there are not quarantines, every day, except Monday, and it houses over 65 machines with models ranging from 1932 to 2018. Roanoke Pinball Museum. Coming soon. Rated X for Extreme. Welcome to the Eclectic Gamers Podcast. Today is Sunday, April 5th. This is episode 112, and we're only repeating a little bit of this thanks to computer issues. But we weren't very far along. No. I'm Dennis for everyone who doesn't know me. That's good. I guess let's get right into it because I think we've all been doing what everyone else has been doing, which is trying to stay at home and then still working where one can still work. Right. And with my job, the way my job classifies as essential, we're rotating people. They telecommute for two weeks and then they're in for two weeks and another group telecommutes for two weeks because a certain level of our job requires people to be there. This is, I'm halfway through my two weeks of telecommuting, and it's not the most horrible thing that has ever happened to me. But it's also not the least horrible. No.
1:55
There's a lot of my job that involves me actually physically going out and doing stuff, and when I'm sitting at home and I'm doing just paperwork and taking training classes, because it's not nearly as fulfilling as I'm used to.
2:13
Yeah, for me, even though a lot of meetings have moved to being virtual for obvious reasons, especially when you're getting a lot of stakeholders that reside in different cities together, it has been much more structured lately. I do like that almost all the meetings are virtual at this point because it was always, in some ways, I found it a little silly. The ones that we were getting together for, I felt, not necessarily accomplishing a lot. It really depended on the meeting, though, so that's not entirely fair. But the main thing is because I have not gone to the office to get anything since the stay-at-home order went into effect, I sometimes get people who will say things like, oh, well, I mailed you something. Okay, well, I don't know anything about that. Because, I mean, I put in a mail hold order with the post office and then it sounds like I didn't need to anyway because that whole building was locked down and so they weren't able to deliver the mail anyway. So they've just kind of been gathering it and there are, I think, four or five different entities that are in the same building. So it's all just in a bag, I guess. Could you have set up a forward to your mail? Well, I could have, but I didn't expect it to be enough to worry about. So in most of these cases, the only real thing that comes up is if, say, they mail the dues payment. And in theory, the dues payment should have already come in before the lockdowns, but they didn't all do that. And I've got non-member organizations that want to be members now because crisis.

Tony (implied) @ ~50:00 — Contextualizes Wonka's quality within Jersey Jack's historical output; establishes hierarchy of company achievements

  • “Objectively, it's just humorous that everywhere Wonka is sitting in the same, even stuff where Wonka shouldn't have even been in the ballpark, Wonka is sitting in the same percentage category.”

    Dennis @ ~56:00 — Crystallizes concern about voting bias; notes statistical improbability of Wonka appearing in similar vote percentages across unrelated categories

    • Jurassic Park
    game
    Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factorygame
    Black Knight Sword of Ragegame
    Elvira's House of Horrorsgame
    The Munstersgame
    Star Wars Home Editiongame
    Dennisperson
    Tonyperson
    David Dennisperson
    Jeff Pattersonperson
    Coin-Op Carnivalmedia
    Roanoke Pinball Museumorganization
    Silver Ball Chroniclesmedia
    Pinball News and Pinball Magazine podcastmedia

    competitive_signal: Jurassic Park established as dominant game with no serious counter-arguments about rule set quality; consensus that it objectively surpasses contemporaries including Jersey Jack Wonka

    high · Dennis: 'I don't think you can make one [argument that Wonka was better], not seriously.' Both hosts agree rules comparison is not debatable; 57% vote on best rules reflects community consensus

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Jersey Jack games (Wonka) consistently maintain well-executed but derivative design approaches; hosts acknowledge Wonka layout is 'really well-executed fan layout' but less innovative than competitors

    medium · Tony notes preferences shifting from Wonka to Elvira after more play: 'Elvira's layout as well. That's my thought. I really liked Elvira' and 'I probably would be leaning towards flipping it'

  • $

    market_signal: Pandemic creates indefinite production pause for entire pinball industry with unknown duration of impact; manufacturers unable to generate revenue during extended shutdown

    high · Dennis discusses with David Dennis on TPS episode: 'The question here is going to be more how long can those companies survive with no money coming in and no product being built and nothing being designed?'

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Dennis Nordman's departure from Deep Root represents continued job-hopping pattern; previously cycled through Highway Pinball and multiple Stern contracts without relocating to Texas

    medium · Dennis notes Nordman 'has hopped around quite a bit' and 'I don't think this is particularly unusual for Dennis' after cataloging prior roles; Pinball News confirmed he never moved to Texas

  • ?

    product_concern: Star Wars Comic Edition art package unexpectedly ranked fourth in Twippies artwork category despite hosts considering it objectively superior to third-place finisher; suggests voting bias or limited visibility

    medium · Tony: 'I'm actually a little, well, I'm not, objectively speaking on an art level, I'm surprised that Star Wars Comic Edition is fourth' and notes many haven't seen it in person

  • ?

    technology_signal: Twippies awards shift to publishing detailed vote percentages after previously not doing so, increasing transparency but potentially revealing voting bias patterns

    medium · Dennis notes Jeff Patterson changed policy: 'he did end up revealing the percentages of the votes on the favorites' and 'I'm not quite sure why he changed from that, because I think his past stance was that that might be more detrimental than positive'

    • 3:46
    So given that, it's just if they tell me they sent it, I said, don't worry about it. We're going to reactivate all your benefits and everything, and we'll deal with it later. Don't worry about it. If the check's lost, we'll figure it out. If the check's in quarantine, we'll figure it out. I don't need the money right now. I got cash to run for months. Right. I don't need to receive deposits. Other than that, it's just a question of most of the payments I can do online. There's only one that will probably come up more around mid-month that I might need to swing out there and pick up. And I think someone's picking up the mail twice a week. It's just with the building on lockdown, they want everyone to let it like I'm supposed to let the building owner know if I'm going to go in because they're trying to make sure that they don't have more than 10 people in the building at any one time. Wow. So, yeah, and it's a pretty large facility. I don't have to go anywhere that would cause me to interact with any of these five groups except one other that I because my space is actually a sublease within their office space. But other than that, I don't have to come close to anyone. But, yeah, we're trying to do the right thing is the point. Well, at least some people are. Because based upon looking out the windows, that's the minority.
    5:01
    Yeah. There were some kids that decided that the yellow tape around the playground equipment didn't apply to them. So I saw that. But that was days ago. Lately, it's just been – now, park activity has been pretty high. because I live across the street from a park. And I saw Google release their analytics and park use in Kansas is up 72% since the stay-at-home orders kicked in. And in Johnson County, it's, I think, more than doubled in usage because there's nothing else anyone is allowed to do. Right. But we do have a few things that we can talk about. Not going to be a particularly long episode because video games and pinball are basically holding off on doing much of anything because of these stay-at-home orders.
    5:46
    Which doesn't necessarily make the most sense for video games, but... Right, and I wonder if some of it is concern about sales and they're kind of thinking in a way like movies, where it's like, well, we don't want to launch a movie because no one can go to the theater, and you could say, well, but we can play a video game from home. Yeah, but now even GameStop, at least in some states, stopped saying they're essential because they've gotten so much heat for it. We're essential.
    6:16
    Now, if GameStop goes away, nobody's badly affected. Yeah, yeah. The argument that you have stuff, I'm not saying they don't have any items in their store that would not help someone work from home, but I think maybe at this point we just need to look at what's the business name? If the business name doesn't suggest anything that's essential, then perhaps you shouldn't get to count. So, like, Bob's Vape Shop doesn't get to call itself a convenience store because we clearly know from your name what your primary business is. And vape equipment in this state is not seen as essential. No, all they have to do is start selling guns. So as long as they have an employee who has their FFL, they can start selling guns and then they're essential. Yes. Yeah, some of our essential list in Kansas is politically driven. Maybe a lot of it. I was going to say. From the list I saw. Yeah, yeah. Well, it's like, okay, well, bearing arms and being able to sell them, those are not the same things. But, I mean, and I understand from a business standpoint, because there will be businesses that will be like, well, it's not fair. You're telling me I have to close, but you let Walmart be open and they're selling their ammo. well yeah but walmart's open because it provides a lot more than just yes guns and ammo if they were just but the issue is it's not fair it's not oh i didn't realize that's that's the problem as people got their fee fees hurt well i think that's you know part of it when it comes to the business survival i think that's in their head my my response would be when it comes to a pandemic much like when it comes to life it isn't fair so you just have to deal with that that said we could have done what I think Vermont did, which is in any of these stores that are open because they have essential stuff, anything that's non-essential, like the shoes section or whatever, they have to rope it off. They're not allowed to sell any of the non-essential stuff. Oh, interesting. Yeah. So that would have taught the Hobby Lobbies of the world, like, okay, well, sorry, your latch hook stuff is not going to be allowed to be sold during this time of crisis. I mean, it's been, let's see, other than me going to pay rent by pulling up in front of a drop box and dropping my rent check into a drop box, I have not left the house since last Saturday. So since the 28th, I think was the last time I left the house. And that was to go to the grocery store. and apparently a lot of people are just bored and randomly wander around the grocery store until they find other people they know and then they stand like face-to-face with them and chat for a while because, you know, they're special unique snowflakes and the rules don't apply to them. Yeah, I saw the, I don't know the orders out yet, but on the summary I had heard, the governor was revising her executive order to get rid of cruise night because that's been real big in the rural areas. is everyone's getting in their car and they're driving, they're cruising down Main Street. It reminds me of my teenage years. Yeah. You got to cruise down the main drag or how people go to Santa Fe back in the day and cruise Santa Fe. And so they'll cruise and then they roll down their windows and talk to each other in the middle of Main Street. Yeah. It's like, that's not the point. That doesn't count as going outside for exercise. The park stuff is because they want people to still get exercise. You're still supposed to distance. They don't.
    10:00
    It's all that stuff. It's been a mess. I saw that one of the app tracking things where it's using GPS units on phones to know where the phones have gone.
    10:10
    They gave Kansas a C-. I'm not too surprised. Now, some of that's going to be a little tricky because the essential workforce in the rural areas includes agriculture and they have to drive a lot for their jobs. So that's not going to be too surprising that the more rural counties are going to do worse than us in some regards, just innately, because things are further away. But on the flip side, they also tend to care less unless they've already got cases, which, as you know, is becoming more and more a problem here. so anyway speaking of problems uh covid 19 has shut down just about everything when it comes to pinball tony i know you're surprised i am so in shock a thing a hobby that requires you to be in close personal contact with people and everybody touching the same thing and and being shoulder to shoulder is a has a problem with a quarantine order that maintains six feet I never would have thought it. I'm in shock. In fact, the only manufacturer that I have heard that is still actually manufacturing is Dutch Pinball on the Big Lebowski.
    11:15
    Isn't that like one guy in his mom's basement? I heard it might be two. So but that within the Netherlands order that he's felt he's been able to be compliant because it's like two people in the building. They can maintain the distance and it's really close to his house or something. So I'm not. Who am I to judge? I'd have to read their order to go. So it is really, as we noted when we're talking about your essential function job and how they're doing the rotation thing in our order here in this state, it's very clear. Even if you're an essential worker, you're supposed to work remote as much as possible. It's not a carte blanche to do whatever you want. So and I think that confuses people. But anyway, that's the only one that I've heard is still doing anything in the line of manufacturing. though I do recall reading with This Week in Pinball that Multimorphic would be able to do playfield construction from a home setting if they need to, but they still have stuff in stock. So that would only be in an extended scenario that they would look at that.
    12:21
    And in relation to all this, I'm not going to rehash it all here, but I did have a pinball show episode that came out a few days ago. I have a link in the show notes. I did it with David Dennis, who co-hosts the Silver Ball Chronicles history podcast, but he's a financial advisor. So I asked him if he'd be willing to do a deep dive on COVID-19 and its impact on the hobby. And we spent like 90 minutes going through the various facets of pinball and what we think COVID-19 will do to that. So I'll just point people there rather than kind of regurgitate anything at this point. Plus, we've talked COVID so many times already. Right. I mean, it's been, again, it's something we started talking about back in January due to its effect on video games and stuff in China. And it's just a continuation.
    13:11
    So a little bit different from COVID. I do have some news out of Deep Root. I was listening to the Pinball News and Pinball Magazine podcast, their March 2020 edition, which I do have a link to in the show notes. And there they discussed the news that Dennis Nordman has left Deep Root Pinball as an employee.
    13:31
    Well, I imagine this doesn't come as an incredible shock to you because I, if I remember correctly, I told you this in February. Yeah, I think so. But I couldn't say anything. And to pull back behind the curtain of the whole, why don't people, you know, why are you too close to the manufacturers? This was one of those scenarios where someone who was not employed with Deep Root just told me, oh, hey, Dennis, Dennis Nordman has left Deep Root Pinball, but don't say anything.
    14:02
    And it gets all said as one sentence. So it's like, okay, well, now I've heard this second or third hand. Again, I couldn't verify it. I chose not to try and verify it. but it doesn't sound like given that date that I heard about it, that it had anything to do with COVID-19, that it was just a decision. He's, he's hopped around quite a bit. He was with Highway Pinball for a while. He did contract work with Stern recently, of course, with Elvira. And of course he had done some stuff prior to that with Stern. And then there was a gap. So I don't think this is particularly unusual for Dennis. I just think that one of the things that I wanted to just find out was, what are your thoughts on this? Because I think if we weren't in a COVID lockdown right now, people would be a lot more concerned about this news than they are currently because I think Dennis Nordman got a lot of people on board with confidence that Deep Root knows what it's doing. And I imagine they have games from him just ready, you know, that they'll release when they're ready to release. But for a lot of people, Dennis, if it wasn't J-Pop, It was Dennis was the big name that they had. Right. So not having him moving forward will probably disappoint some people. That's what I think. I think you're right. I think it's going to be, I wouldn't say detrimental. I think it's going to be one of those things, though, that people will think about. A lot of people have proven so far in this hobby that they willing to give J a pass on his earlier endeavors so I don think it actually going to hurt Deep Root that much at this point I think they have a game or two or however many he designed for them in his stint with them. And they'll just keep moving forward as if there has been no real change. Right. And according to the podcast, the pinball news, pinball magazine podcast, he never moved down to Texas. So who knows how long he had planned to be with them? I would say that given the COVID-19 essentially sabotaged the entire Deep Root reveal, at this point, COVID's given every manufacturer a pass for missing any deadlines. So if that had not happened and there had been another delay, this would have been seen as a huge red flag. I don't think most people are going to note it just because there's no way to move forward no matter what anyway right now. Right. It's kind of stuck. Everything's just kind of stuck. The question here is going to be more how long can those companies survive with no money coming in and no product being built and nothing being designed? Yes. And that's something that David and I explored on that TPS episode. Right.
    16:52
    Because, yeah, there are a lot of variables to it. And the biggest one is we don't know how long this will last. And that's obviously the largest thing that's going to be a factor. Well, speaking of factors, I only had one more pinball thing that I wanted to go into, and that was the Twippies. The Twippies. Yeah, the yearly awards. We watched them live. We did. They were prerecorded, but they were aired on YouTube Premiere. Right. So it kind of counts as live. We watched them whenever first Premiere initialized a live. We chatted back and forth with each other. We did. We didn't have one of them Skype or Zoom things going on. Some people did. They had watch parties. That's not a bad idea. It wasn't, but we didn't have that idea. We had watch messenger party. We had messenger party. Right. I don't know. We had chitty chat text party. I hadn't thought about it, though. That's something we should probably look at at some point is putting together something like that, a Zoom watch party or a Skype party or something or another. well maybe if our podcast had been in as eligible for favorite podcast we're mixed gaming we were never going to be in there i know but but i'm saying what's the what's the motivation then because it's all about us right well yeah but it would just been about it has just been fun yeah that's true because we we did chat about through through a lot of the categories and i wasn't going to run through everything uh i do have a link in the show notes to the results over with Twip, so people can just click and read and it has the vote breakdowns. He ended up doing a, he being Jeff Patterson with This Week in Pinball, ended up doing a change up. It looks like on the, at least what I have linked, the favorites just say the top three, essentially say who won and then what the two other honorable mentions were. But over on Pinside, and I'm not including a link to this, he did end up revealing the percentages of the votes on the favorites. And I'm not quite sure why he changed from that, because I think his past stance was that that might be more detrimental than positive. But I guess he got convinced to do it. So if you are curious, there is a thread about the Twippies on Pennside that you can go and find if you want to know the breakdowns. But I was just going to run up through the games, because to me, the best of categories are the most interesting categories. Right, because pretty much every and we've already talked about so much of everything else we shouldn't exist. Yeah. So congratulations to all the winners, even of the categories that Tony and I don't really believe in. I will say, because it was the only huge shock to me of the evening, was favorite publication did not go to Coin-Op Carnival. Yeah, that was a shock and a theft of reality. But even in the acceptance speech, the actual winner's acceptance said it should have gone to Coin-Op. So I can at least respect that. Right. But, you know, it's people's choice and name recognition goes a long way. I think when I saw on the favorite publication, because they showed the, because Jeff posted the percentage breakdowns, I think I actually came in fourth and I only wrote two articles. That's entirely name recognition from podcasting. That's not, that's not legitimacy. That's not, I didn't deserve that. So again, it's like, I mean, I guess in a way it's, it's humbling, but in another way, it's like, come on guys, vote for the good stuff. I've already had more articles out this year than I did last year. That's how bad last year was for me. You had a lot of stuff going on last year. Well, I have plenty of excuses, but I'm just saying that nothing was – I think if one is honest with oneself, you can tell when you've done something that you think is worthy of recognition and when you haven't, and I had not. So not in writing. But what was worthy of best music and sound effects was what we both picked, which was Black Knight Sword of Rage. Yeah. I mean, I thought that was a given. Yep. Well, apparently the world agreed with us. So then there was Toys and Gimmicks, which went to Jurassic Park, and you and I both picked Black Knight on that. Yeah, and that was weird looking at the percentages because Black Knight was so much lower than I expected. yes and i i've heard some others talk about this and to me i i still stand by my black knight pick i think the fact that the knight toy is on all the models and is really cool and i just the jurassic park okay the dinosaur throwing the ball uh is a is a cool visual but it's only on the premium and le right when you go to what's on all of them it's just the jeep and it's okay but i don't love it. Yeah, it's nothing special. It's nothing as interesting or as interactive as The Black Knight is. Right. Now, best theme, and this is just theme alone, that ended up going to Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, which doesn't blow my mind that that's the case. I have said that of all the games that Jersey Jack has made, I do feel that Wonka is their strongest theme on theme alone that they've ever done. But you had Jurassic Park as a stronger theme, which I think objectively speaking, I would agree, just in terms of the money earned. Right. I ended up picking Star Wars Home Edition because I think as a theme alone, Star Wars is still the juggernaut concept. And so I feel my answer is even more objectively the right answer. I can understand that. I can see where you're coming from on that one. But, I mean, but Wonka would be third out of the three themes that are the three best, just in terms of fandom and everything. It's got to be third. But, okay. It is what it is. Yeah, it is. I disagree with that one, but let it be. But where we both agreed was what won Best Theme Integration, which was Jurassic Park. Right. Now, that one should have been a given with all the interactive and how everything worked together. Yeah, the exploring the island. It was a good way to use the theme. So it made sense. Animations and Display, that award ended up going to Willy Wonka. I'm not shocked at that. No. We both picked Black Knight.
    23:19
    I don't think, and again, it's not comparing to the past games, but I don't think that J.P. DeWin's animations for Wonka are as good as what he did on some other games like Hobbit. Right. And Black Knight is a huge step up for Stern. It's better than anything else they've done animation-wise, in my opinion, ever.
    23:43
    Callouts surprised me just because I didn't think enough people would have played it to let it have a chance to win. But Elvira's House of Horrors won for best callouts. It's because she was actually doing the callouts. I have wondered. And I have had trouble hearing them when I've played it on location. But I agree, it's really good callouts. You went with what I thought was probably going to win, which was Black Knight, because Steve Ritchie was the original Black Knight and he did the call outs again. So kind of the same thing as Elvira is actually the Black Knight doing the call out. Right. So it seemed like the obvious obvious one there. I went with Munsters, which I knew wasn't going to win that one. But I just with the way that they did the I basically was kudos for like the Raven sounding so good. And to me, it just was like, oh, okay. For whatever reason, I went that route. On retrospect, I probably should have given it to Black Knight. But I was like, no, no, no. I think Monsters is a little bit of love. But on callouts, Elvira and Black Knight were really close. It was less than 3% split. Yeah, it was super close. And the top three were all Stern, which wasn't a surprise. Now, Jurassic Park, though, in third, I think Jurassic Park's call-outs suck.
    25:03
    You don't like Nedry talking? No, Nedry's the only good part, but all the other generic, like the generic Samuel L. Jackson and generic Hunter dude, they are not good.
    25:15
    Like, I like the approach that they had the voice actor take. I just, to me, it sounds cheesy. I just don't think it works. So I would have put Wonka above that. Of course, that was really, that was within a percent of each other. So I guess a lot of people were sort of torn on that. But Light Show. Now, here I agreed with the winner, which was Willy Wonka. You went Black Knight, though, for your Light Show support. Right. And that was just because I got screwed a couple times on Wonka when it does the whole blackout thing. And I don't like that stuff. Well, I don't like that Willy Wonka doesn't have any GI in it. But the visual effect of the light show itself is why I went ahead and gave it the vote. Now, Black Knight did come in second. Right, but it wasn't even close. They weren't even in the ballpark. No, no. Wonka had over 40% of the vote. Right. Though that wasn't the biggest shellacking that we saw on these things. So speaking of which, like best rules, we agreed with this, Jurassic Park, as did apparently everyone, because it had 57% of the vote. Yeah, that was a major, major slacking. The next one was Wonka at 16%. Yeah, and Wonka's got a good rule set, but it's like we're at levels where it's, again, it's like objectively speaking, Jurassic Park has got the best rule set. It's so hard to argue that it doesn't. I don't think there's an argument at all. I don't think you can make one, not seriously. So do you think like the 16% that voted for Wonka are basically people who bought it and just felt like there's an anti-stern sentiment that I hear from people? I've heard enough anti-stern sentiment from people that I would not be surprised if it was just I don't vote for stern people. Yeah, that's probably the case. It'll be interesting to – I'm not really – I can't think of yet hearing – I don't listen to all the pinball podcasts, but I don't think I've really heard anyone yet try and argue that Wonka was better than Jurassic Park. I've heard them argue that Wonka is really, really good. But I agree, the Wonka rule set is, Wonka deserves second place on the rules. For this year, yes. Yeah, well, yeah. I definitely think Wonka deserves second place. I think Wonka is probably the second best set of rules that's ever come out of Jersey Jack.
    27:35
    Yeah. Well, moving on to best artwork, I did get this one right, which was the Munsters, which had about a quarter of the vote. You went with another, I felt, very good art package, which was Star Wars Comic Edition. Right.
    27:50
    And I've heard a lot of people really praise that. I'm actually a little, well, I'm not, objectively speaking on an art level, I'm surprised that Star Wars Comic Edition is fourth. But a lot of people haven't actually seen it in person. So that, like, I would never put it below Elvira House of Horrors. In fact, my top three would be Munster's Cosmic Carnival, which is way too low for how good its art package from Dirty Donny is. And Star Wars Comic Edition. Those are the top three to me. What do you think of Wonka being second place at 17%, Tony? I think it's a travesty. I think it's beyond. Well, and here's the thing. Wonka was in at 17%. On best rules, Wonka was in at 16.1%. They're all in the same general place. At this point, I would just go ahead and make an estimate between this and on the next one. Wonka is all sitting in the same range. I think that's the percentage of people who vote for Jersey Jack no matter what. So you think there's about a fifth of the twippy voting population that are fanboys? Yeah. Yeah, that's actually a pretty decent analysis because the next that I'm sympathetic to because the next category is best play field gameplay and layout. And once again, Jurassic Park kicked everyone kicked everyone into the dirt with its fifty three point six percent of the vote. You and I both agreed that it had the best gameplay and layout of the year. Yeah, I felt it was not really up much for debate. Wonka came in second with 18%, so very close to the... And Wonka has a great layout. I would probably have put Wonka as my number two. Would you? I think. I don't know. Because I really do like Elvira's layout as well. That's my thought. I really liked Elvira. And so now that I played Elvira more than initially back... More since when I did my voting, I probably would be leaning towards flipping it. But I'm trying to remember, am I flipping it because of the layout? Because to me, at this point, Elvira's rules are better than Wonka's rules. So for where I would have originally said Wonka's rules are number two to Jurassic Park, now to me they're number three. I don't – the layout is a little more creative than Elvira's layout. Elvira's is like a really well-executed fan layout. But with the rules, it's so fun. Right. It's just – so I don't know. I'd have to think about that. But I can understand Wonka being number two on this, objectively. Objectively, it's just humorous that everywhere Wonka is sitting in the same, even stuff where Wonka shouldn't have even been in the ballpark, Wonka is sitting in the same percentage category is, I think, telling. I mean, Wonka had 13.5% for best call-outs, just enough to keep it from being in the top three.
    30:56
    But pretty much everywhere else, Wonka just hovered in the exact same spot everywhere. Well, I mean, we should go to the last quote-unquote best of category, which is Game of the Year, which we agreed. Jurassic Park won. Jurassic Park was just under 50% of the vote, and Wonka came in second with about 21%, So, which again is right around where the rules and layout and stuff. Now as a whole package yeah I can understand Wonka being number two Oh no definitely And it a very distant number two And Elvira is a very distant number three And then it starts to stay tighter after that obviously because with Elvira you just barely over 10 of the vote at that point
    31:39
    Yeah, I think overall, I would say I agreed with a lot of this, maybe half of this. And then there are a few things where I think both of us really broke in favor on the individual categories to Black Knight, but it tended to go either Wonka or Jurassic Park, no matter what, really. Other than the exceptions of Elvira getting that call-out award and Munsters getting art. That's just sort of how it was.
    32:10
    What are broadly seen as the two best games of the year kind of ended up winning in categories I don't think they deserved to win in. But most of the time they deserve to be in the top three of those. So I get it. Yeah, I don't have a huge problem with how any of these bests turned out. I disagree with a couple. And some of them, yeah, I don't have a real problem with many of them. I just think there's a few of them that are a bit hinky.
    32:44
    Yeah, yeah, let's go. Yeah, hinky. That's a good word. Speaking of hinky, let's go ahead and move over to video games. Video games are the thing that everybody's doing. They're playing video games. Yeah, so I thought, well, we could probably go through what video game news you've gathered up, and then maybe we can give some thoughts on games we've been playing, because I actually have been making progress in games. Yeah.
    33:07
    The video game news has been the biggest thing is like it has been, has been delays, except for in one specific instance. And we'll start with that instance. The Final Fantasy VII remake started shipping early to Europe and Australia.
    33:25
    But everywhere else it's coming out at the normal time. And by early, I just mean they shipped physical stuff a little early.
    33:32
    But what was interesting about it shipping early is that Square actually put out a request for people who get them early to not spoil things from the game that is a remake of a game that came out in the 90s. Did they change stuff? Apparently. Resident Evil 2, which I will talk about later, its remake apparently did change a number of things from the original Resident Evil 2. And apparently Final Fantasy 7 has changed a bunch. They've added entire characters. and jewelry elements.
    34:16
    Tifa's going to die now. Oh, darn. I'm heartbroken. Tifa's going to die now. She was the best boxer we had.
    34:27
    So, I don't know. We'll see how much it changed and how that actually goes. I know people are getting their preloads where they can preload it onto their system and they just can't play it until the activation date. So we'll see how it turns out. I've not actually purchased it yet. I haven't decided if I'm going to make that run yet.
    34:51
    It's a long game. It is, and I already, you would think, with me being locked at home for a couple weeks and then two weeks at work and then two weeks home and all that, I would have, I'd be playing a ton of video games, but I'm not. I've actually been probably spending a larger chunk of my time reading than playing games. That's what happens. And to be fair, I have started burning through all of Community now that it's on Netflix because I've never seen it and everybody tells me I should watch it. And it's pretty good. Well, everyone tells me I should watch Tiger King, but I've been refusing. Yeah. I've heard I should watch that as well. We'll see.
    35:39
    Maybe someday. Maybe. You never know. I get stir-crazy enough. I did go and watch The Wire. That was before all this. Right. I kept hearing, oh, The Wire is great, so I finally watched it. And The Wire is great. It was. Yeah. They were right. But I don't know that they're right about Tiger King.
    35:57
    Now, the other ones are delays, but some of these delays are a little interesting. Sony has delayed the VR Iron Man game until further notice which I don't know I hadn't heard a whole lot about it but it was announced at the same time that they announced that they were delaying The Last of Us Part 2 until further notice yes I did hear about this I didn't hear about Iron Man though and what's really interesting about this one is this is the second delay for The Last of Us Part 2. The first delay was because the developers weren't ready. It wasn't as clean and bug-free as they wanted it to be. So they delayed it from February to May. And now, according to the developers, it's ready, but, and I'm going to read a direct quote here, however, even with us finishing the game, we were faced with the reality that due to logistics beyond our control, we couldn't launch The Last of Us Part 2 to our satisfaction, the developer said. We want to make sure everyone gets to play The Last of Us Part II around the same time, ensuring that we're doing everything possible to preserve the best experience for everyone. This meant delaying the game until such a time where we can solve these logistics issues. We were bummed about this decision, but ultimately understood it's what's best and fair to all of our players. We're hoping that this won't be a long delay, and we'll update you as soon as we have new information to share. my guess is that they don't have any physical discs yeah i would agree that they don't have enough they don't have enough to satisfy the the orders and and even if they do they may be concerned that since people can't go to the stores and buy them that this would actually hurt the overall sales if this game tried to long tail itself instead of being all available at once like they need their opening weekend and so right and that and and physical release is a critical part of their strategy on it. And I wonder if this is another one of those multitude of changes that we are going to see going forward due to these lock-ins is, are physical releases going to become even less important than they have been? In PCs, physical releases don't exist anymore, and they haven't in years. most of the games that you get for PC now where you get a physical disc, all the disc does is launch Steam or the Epic Games Store or something like that and install it there, you just bought a disc to install it digitally so we will see if that is a place that is going to become more common on consoles as well going forward, I already know a lot of people who buy a lot of their stuff digitally they only get certain key things on physical discs but I also know some people who if they can't get a physical disc they don't buy the game so I think it will be interesting to see how that change affects the console development and the video game studios. In addition to that delay Wastelands 3 has been delayed. Wasteland 3's delay though is due to they shifted to a work-from-home format, and they're having issues getting back on track. Yep. It's hard to enforce crunch time when the programmers are already home. Yeah. It's like, how do you tell them that they can't leave, eat, or do anything, and they have to work 20-hour days on salary if they're at home? Yeah. Aw. Poor Wasteland 3. Aw. We'll see how this goes. Now for the actual video games we have played We'll talk about that some Because that's been a big thing There have been a few I guess more for me than for you But you were reading and I was bleeding In the case of Crackdown 3 I bled out a lot That's why I mentioned that I finished it up I think on the last episode I mentioned that Okay so I don't know how I wanted to do this Well yeah I'm just going to give thoughts So it's like a review except not formal but I have played through the game. So I finished the whole main story. I did a bunch of the side missions, but not every single side mission. Yeah, this game is flawed. And I heard it was. The thing that I remember about Crackdown 3, and I played the first two that were on the Xbox 360,
    40:32
    and the first Crackdown game was a lot of fun. A lot of people played the first Crackdown because that was how you got in on the early access beta for Halo 3. So a lot of people ended up buying Crackdown just for that ability. Not me. I was like, Halo 3 was already out by the time I even got an Xbox 360. So, and I really liked the first Crackdown and the second Crackdown was stupid. So that's about all I remember. It was like they reused the same map and everything. So this one, it has some interesting ideas, but it was going to be the title. and I don't think it was originally meant to be, but it kind of ended up getting the reputation as Crackdown 3 was going to be the game that would show off the Xbox One X's capabilities.
    41:15
    And I don't think cell shading can do that. So it doesn't. It looks fine. Especially when you think about the prior two games, it looks good. But those prior two games were in a prior generation. I ran into bugs, like I would clear out an area and it wouldn't give me credit for clearing out the area. I had to leave, quit the game, come back, and then do the area again. I had issues like that. The platforming, I would say, was actually a little less frustrating than the original games. But there were just sections of stuff where you'd go around, you'd pick up the weapons, you'd manage some stuff, you'd get tools that didn't always work right. One of the things you could get, which would take your grenade slot, would be a thing to summon the militia. So friendly, you'd pop smoke, and the friendlies would come in. And an AI would help you out, except it seemed like three-fourths of the areas they couldn't get to or they thought they could, but they couldn't figure it out because they AI and they dumb. So it did have some pretty significant difficulty spikes if you didn't pay attention to your map well. And I don't think it was well explained how to exactly understand the map. So you get in and you'd have to really pan around a lot to figure out where you need to next go because you might be in one quadrant and you'd see stuff and you'd be like, your odds of winning here are 97%. And then there's a thing right next to it. Your odds of winning here are 12%. It's like, why are they next to each other? Why is it not like section by section in the original game, the various sectors of the city were all basically the same difficulty. They didn't do that this time. It was a really weird decision. Um, but the boss battles were pretty unique. They, they felt like decent set piece site type fights. Some of them I liked some of them and I didn't, but I can't complain that they felt vanilla. The, they did mix that up. Uh, but there's a lot of grind. There's a lot of repetitive, like to un properly unlock a boss. You have to do all of their side missions and all their side missions are the same. Like go and destroy these mining facilities, like all eight of them. and then you need to go and liberate the militia all 12 of them and it's just so that part was very grindy so overall i would rate crackdown 3 probably a c plus i think i think it's a it's above average okay that was higher than i was expecting from what you were just the way you were describing it well because i i don't want to sit here and talk about mechanics for anyone that hasn't played it, but the shooting is fun, the agent moves are fun, but it's much less creative than you would think after all the time. There was going to be all this cloud power that they were supposed to put behind things. And to me, it's like a nice B-tier game. I did not have to reset a whole lot in terms of bugs and stuff. Most of the time, I could get it fixed in-game. Most of the time, if something weird happened to my character, he could get out of it. The character model would shake free or whatever. Or I could fast travel and fix it.
    44:17
    It's quite playable, but I ain't winning no awards. Maybe that's the best way to describe it. There's nothing wrong with that. That basically is along the lines of everything I'd heard on the game's actual ranking from other people who have played it. Yeah, I think the problem for Crackdown was it was repeatedly like some of the titles you just went through. It was repeatedly delayed and what they put out is i feel feels like a finished product at least so those delays were probably good i kind of shudder though to think what it would have been like if they had released it on the original timetable but it basically fails on every broad-based promise that kind of reminds me of the fable series and uh when peter what's his name the french guy who did the fable stuff and he'd always promised the moon and the games never had. Molino or Molino. And it never lived up to the price. And those were good games, though. They were good games, but they weren't whatever he would. He always promised too much. He'd always no-man-sky it, but at least give you a good game without making you wait a year for a patch. Yeah, or multiple years. Anyway, that's fine. I guess if you like the original Crackdown games, this is not going to be Crackdown 1 for you, but it is way better than Crackdown 2. Let's put it that way. That's acceptable. yeah I love acceptable yay the one game I've been playing a lot besides the normal games that I always play that people are tired of hearing about is I did pick up Doom Eternal I've seen a lot of memes about that one who doesn't like playing a game where you are the boss so it's been really enjoyable I've not finished it yet I'm say 70, 75% of the way through it. But it has been, yeah, it's been just as enjoyable as Doom 2016 was with the sheer over-the-top fun, crazy insanity, not like any modern shooter's thing.
    46:32
    It's fun going, hey, here's a giant arena full of demons and I'm just going to sit here and hack and slash and tear everything up and vaporize everybody and everything. So I've been greatly enjoying it. I think compared to the first, well, not the first, but compared to Doom 2016, I'm more comfortable with the movement options that they have, the double jumps and dashing and your kind of in-air control stuff that lets you kind of parkour around I think it works a little better than it did before and it wasn bad before so it pretty enjoyable but it hasn gone to the same level of the parkouring that is in oh Titanfall the Titanfall games it doesn't have that level of jump up using a jetpack and run along a building type it's not like that but it's more controllable and more enjoyable than it was in Doom 16. Okay, that's good. Yeah, it's been a while since I've obviously played Doom 16. I did not get this game yet, so I've not played it, but I have been hearing positive things, so you're reinforcing the broad-based opinions that I've heard thus far on it. Yeah, no, it's been enjoyable. They've returned some of the, you occasionally see some monster, they brought some monsters back. There's only been like one, I had one fight that was, uh, what's the right phrase? I think the right phrase would be incredibly stupid hard. Uh, and I'm not playing it on like a super hard difficulty, but I'm not playing it on a super easy difficulty either. But there, there was one fight where I actually was considered turning it down. And it was just because there was a very small window of vulnerability on the target you were fighting and it was all distance based so you had to get a shot in at just the right time based upon you couldn't be too close you couldn't be too far away so that that was a little that's an awful lot of precision for doom man yeah that was a little annoying but otherwise the stories it's doom it's hilarious with just not taking itself seriously while still seeming to be really serious so well i uh did finally finish up wolfenstein youngblood and i remember with uh to me i often think about the doom games and the wolfenstein games together both because back in the 90s they were kind of coming out around the same time and even with like doom 2016 and then we had the wolfenstein reboots as well and the thing for me was doom has been the this is the constant you don't you're running around you're not reloading you've got a ton of weapons on you and you're as you noted you're the boss you're the boss they're locked in with you and it's not about the story it's just about this brutal single-player experience and then with the Wolfenstein games that have been out it's been about okay you're this guy you're pretty weak you're going around you're trying to kill all these Nazis and they really invested in a single-player story experience where you're going through and you're experiencing the story so young blood mechanically is a fun game but even though it is designed as a co-op or single player experience and i played it single player but you're going against enemy ai it's not a pvp game uh it's you and your sister are going through all the levels so i had an ai sister but you could have i could have done it with another player and i think i probably should have because this game was boring uh and that's why i start i was playing this while i was still playing assassin's creed origins and then i finally forced myself to finish it up after i wrapped up crackdown 3 and the weapons are fun the bosses are a bit annoying they very much fit in that bullet sponge feel so all the bosses to me felt like shoot this you know they have a weak spot. It doesn't really matter. Just shoot them. You want to shoot the weak spot for massive damage. Yes, but not all that massive. Most of the bosses I would run out of ammo for at least half the weapons. It just took forever just forever to bring them down. And you have levels in this. So to finish the story and stuff, you need to be, I think, at least level 25. So there are daily quests and there are these side quests. And you're grinding levels like it's an RPG.
    51:22
    And it just was so... The idea of upgrading your character over time, those RPG-lite elements, totally understand, totally agree with for a game like this. But because there was so much of this grinding and there are these areas in the city that you are going to, you're unlocking fast travel points, map points, so you can go around the city and you're having to revisit over and over these sections to do quests. So it's like, okay, well, you need to go and get this radio piece and you're the right level to do that. And you also need to go and assassinate this high-level Nazi leader, but you're 10 levels away from that, but you already have the quest and your logs, and it's in the same place, but you won't be able to survive, so don't do it. There was just a lot of, like, there is a story there. Going through and trying to mainline it, though, is almost impossible because you have to grind the levels. So it's slow in a way. It's just mechanically and all that, and the sisters, they're fine. it's got a it's different because it's got this humorous 80s vibe to it because they're basically kids of the 80s so you have these weird references and like in the load screens and the elevator scenes while they're loading your next area though they'll just do stupid stuff in it it's got a good sense of humor and when you can get to the story it's because they're trying to find their dad who is who you've been playing in the prior games that works it's just the way the game is it reminds me of when I played Gears of War Judgment, which mechanically was good and had some good ideas, but it wasn't the same story structure. It's just they really decided to emphasize this co-op thing, and that's not what I want from Wolfenstein. I just want a really good storytelling with FPS in between, and that's not how I felt they delivered it. That's too bad, because the Wolfenstein games, that's always been their strength is the storytelling and all of that. Now, if you like the mechanics of Wolfenstein a lot, this is definitely a good game to do. And I think I would have had a lot more fun if I had played it in co-op with another person. Like, it reminds me of Resident Evil 5, where you've got Chris Redfield and Sheva. And that was the game that someone talked me into getting an Xbox 360 to play that game. And I played through it three or four times with the same co-op person. And I did not, until I was like cleaning up achievements, go back and ever play it single player and understand all the complaints people had about Sheva and how she was working. They meant how her AI was working. In co-op, it's a great game. I loved Resident Evil 5. But as a single player game, I can definitely see why it disappointed people because so much was about these gimmicks of working in this partnership instead of being about this story.
    54:03
    And, you know, they had to forego all that survival horror in order to really emphasize the action elements that working together would need to do in order to be entertaining. and this has to emphasize in the same way because it's designed for you and your buddy to be working together as these sisters they have complementary powers for each other they don't work exactly the same way you know you get to specialize your weapon focus and everything and it's just like uh the but the enemies are very rock paper scissors like oh well this type of enemy you want to use shotguns on and this type you want to use machine guns on and it's like that's just not what I wanted. Right. But it's what I got, Tony. It's what they gave you. You can't just wail away with whatever you want. You have to, it's the old weakness, you've got the weakness levels. I know it's gotten real popular to do on the what is it, the match, not the match three games, but the where you've got mobile games a lot of times anymore have the wheel of weapons where, oh, this is strong against that and that's strong against this and this is strong against that to force you to balance and change out as you go along i kind of prefer being able to just hold the trigger down and when it runs out of ammo you change weapons you just keep going well i mean and that's sort of what i ended up doing in this game was i like initially i put all my investments in the shotgun so ultimately i powered it i op'd it enough that i would just tear through most enemy types that weren't bosses even it was the wrong weapon just because it was so heavily upgraded and then after i had that upgrade i started to upgrade another different type of weapon so that i would have some diversity and make things and it did make things easier but it was i mean it was okay it's okay i just i i knew it wasn't going to be like the other wolfensteins uh i had hoped the story was going to be stronger though because that's what just this is not a lot to it a lot to the story. Now, I did mention Resident Evil 5 as a comparison, and so my final game, which I just won the Leon story, the main story, a few days ago, and that is the remake of Resident Evil 2. Now, I never played the original Resident Evil 2. My very first Resident Evil game was 5, actually. So I have played Resident Evil 4, 5, 6, Revelations 1 and 2, Operation Raccoon City, which is terrible, by the way, and sub it. The only classic one I have played, and I did not finish it, was one of the remasters of Code Veronica, but I didn't get all the way through it.
    56:45
    So this game is good. They have basically taken the Resident Evil 4 approach and given you that style of gameplay. So it's not the fixed cameras, it's the over-the-shoulder third-person view, But unlike Resident Evil 4 and 5, it's more in the modern vein of you can actually aim the gun and walk at the same time. So you're not a tank turret. You can actually go around and move while shooting. Not that you want to because your accuracy is terrible at that point.
    57:15
    It gives you options. Yeah, yeah. So because I haven't played the original Resident Evil 2, I can't tell you where exactly it's different. but I did read that they did change a number of things up for it, and obviously the gameplay is quite different, but it had what I wanted, which was its survival horror. Ammo management as Leon was very tight. It's extremely atmospheric. You want to avoid fights where possible because you're not going to have enough supplies to get through it.
    57:47
    One of the interesting things that I guess was not the case in the original was you have to find knives, and they wear out. You will break them. Or you can lose them. Like if a zombie jumps you, you will have an option to basically like quick time button your knife into them to get them off of you really quickly. They did not do quick time events, though. Other than that, there's not like a – that was something Resident Evil started doing as of Resident Evil 4. That could be really annoying. You'd be like, oh, I'm at a neat cut scene. And then you set your controller down and then you're dead because you had to push something. They didn't do that on this one. But so it looks great too. just visually it was great. The story was fun. The voice acting was good. I really enjoyed it a lot. I started doing a second playthrough as Claire, and I went ahead and looked at my achievement set and saw that it wasn't going to be like a whole new story. I went through for a while on it, and I was basically doing the same areas I had done as Leon, so I decided to move on to a new game instead, but rather than win it again as another character. But my understanding is she has different boss fights and stuff as well. So there are things that if you want to really experience it, it does have more meat on the bone there than you might think. But I wouldn't rate it as high as Resident Evil 7, which was the survival horror first person approach that they did really recently, which I absolutely loved. It's one of my top five survival horror games I've ever played. It's not to that level. This is good. in fact uh i would argue it's probably a better game than resident evil 4 was for and a lot of people rank resident evil 4 at the very top that's debatable i've seen this one on other lists usually ending up in the top three though so uh i think it's very strong if you like uh if you like survival horror but you didn't like the old resident evil fixed camera uh waddle around approach and you just really need modernized mechanics this this will satisfy you yeah that's why I never liked Resident Evil 1. I started it several times. I don't know that I ever actually finished it. I might have finished it once, but I didn't really like the mechanics of it. Yeah, no, I always, I didn't play those other than Code Veronica, and the camera angle stuff just irked me. That over everything else irked me. This has the inventory management frustrations and all the puzzles you could want. It's still got all those challenges. I played on the middle difficulty, the normal difficulty. You can put it up to the hardcore mode where you have to find the ink ribbons to use the typewriters. I did not do that. So I could use the typewriters as much as I wanted to save my progress. So that, in a way, makes it easier. The easy mode, apparently, from what I read in the settings, would put on aim assist. So I wasted a lot of bullets because I had no aim assist. And those zombies are coming at you and their head is bobbing and you're trying to land a headshot and you're upset because you're me and you're down to four bullets left and you know you're going to need three of them to win. And you wasted two and you're like, I guess I can try and run. But you got a knife unless you broke your knife. If you don't have a knife, he's going to get to bite you. Or a grenade. You can stick grenades in their mouths too.
    60:59
    So, yeah. No, it was – so I really enjoyed that one quite a bit. The game I've been working on as of yesterday is I started the 2015 version of King's Quest, the old Sierra series. Oh.
    61:12
    So, and that is very much a, you know, it's a point-and-click adventure style, so it's extremely puzzle-oriented. I actually, just before we went on, finished Chapter 1, and I might switch to another game before. I think there are five chapters. I believe it was released sort of episodic, but I got it. Yeah, that sounds about right for 2015, about everything that's super episodic. Yeah, that's like when Hitman was doing it, too. Yeah. But because it's so puzzle-heavy, and I just came off of Resident Evil 2's puzzles, I might need to switch to something like Outer Worlds or something to mix it up a little bit, just because I'm getting a little puzzle-fatigued. Yeah. I always liked the King's Quest games. I only played a couple of them, historically. I played more of the Space Quest games, but I played several of the King's Quest games also. Yeah, I really liked Space Quest. I did, too. I did the Space Quests. I did the Leisure Suit Larrys. I did one of the Police Quests, I think. Did you ever play the newest Leisure Suit Larry that came out last year? No. It's pretty good. Okay. Huh.
    62:21
    Well, we made it to the end of the show, Tony. We quarantined ourselves successfully. Those that want to reach out to us, you can email us, eclecticgamerspodcast at gmail.com or go to facebook.com slash eclecticgamerspodcast. We're available on Twitch, Twitter, and Instagram as eclectic underscore gamers. And we'll plan to be back in two weeks where there'll probably still not be any news whatsoever, but we'll do our best to talk about something anyway. We'll play some games and make it at least halfway worthwhile. Yeah, that's the spirit. So anyway, until then, I am Dennis. I am Tony. Goodbye. Bye. Thank you.