Episode 69: Castle Crashers | Still the best couch co-op beat 'em up?

DonaldPrevie: Yeah, there's like the big noises in the forest. The animals get gradually larger and there's like a big bear that pops out of the bushes. And you think that that's, that's the big rumbling noise with the big rumbling noise starts again. And the bear is like itself behind. Don't forget about shit rocket deer too. ⁓ yeah. Can't forget about him. And one of one person can actually get him right. If they're lucky. Literally cannot forget about that. I can't even like, no matter how hard I try. So it'll be one of those like core memories that you have forever? I like how the owl shoots itself to death. Yeah, falls off the branch. Like it just dies. I've been there, I've been there. On a branch in the woods. Falling to his death. We've all been there. Cable Club. We're a video gaming podcast where three guys will swing around just about anything and we're linking up to talk about the games you love and rank them. This is episode number 69. Giggity. Nice. We're your hosts. I'm Steve. I'm the pink knight Dan. I'm the clown princess Don. And today we're talking about the one the only Castle Crashers. So yeah, get ready to upload data from us to you. But first, listeners, let's set the mood. In the new millennia, Newgrounds felt like the wild west of the internet in the best possible way. It was a place where anyone with a copy of Flash and a weird idea could upload a game, cartoon, or song. You all know the ones I'm talking about. And instantly reach a massive audience. There was something electric about loading up your browser after school and seeing brand new submissions on the front page. Like peanut butter jelly time? Ring ring ring ring ring ring ring, banana phone. Not knowing if you were about to witness a masterpiece or just some total random chaos. The rating systems, reviews and daily features made it feel alive, like the constantly evolving arcade built by the community itself. It was also the birthplace of countless internet legends. I grew up on it. Yeah. I remember Stick Death Survivor. Go nuts and strife go nuts and strife grow nuts and strife When you want to when you don't have drugs yet and you want to go Wee There's like another website to that that we used to browse early on called funny junk comm tune It was just like a list of like stupid links to really dumb videos. It kind of reminds me of that too New grounds was always like the feel like it's like just next to the dark alley of the internet. That's because it was all like dark and black and orange and everything. So it felt kind of adult and risque. Well, it definitely had its fair share of risque content. Yeah, it did. I remember I played, I was probably in like the sixth grade and I played one of those like dating sim games and you got to have like a profession. And I always picked the drug dealer because you made the most money, even though you were most likely to go to prison for it. I I the same one. Dude, probably. And like you, you can choose whether to like bolster your looks or your, or your career or your, or like your, your interests and stuff like that. it like, Yeah. And they were like, I think there were a couple different girls and it was, it's just new grounds, man. It was crazy. Ridiculous. Really interesting. Really interesting. And then I'm sure those creators now build like crazy indie game Sims now. Or at least some of new, you know, that kind of was like the start of it. I mean, it was all free. Was, was Dinky Bomber Newgrounds? That doesn't sound familiar. I don't think so. Oh, you guys, you guys didn't actually play Dinky Bomber? I don't think so. It was, it was kind like a worms clone. I don't know. I very well could have made it up in my head. I don't know, but it had, it had like a chat feature and stuff and. Dinky bomb. Yeah. Dinky bomb. I don't think I've ever played this. No, it doesn't say anything on Newgrounds. Might have been something else. Newgrounds is still alive today. Don't know about well, but it is, it is still alive for sure. Nobody talks about it anymore. It's like 4chan. It's kind of just nobody talks about it anymore. Ooh, we're relegated to the 4chan tier, huh? Yeah. Thing of the past. I'm sorry, B. Like, like MySpace, you know, kind of, kind of takes me back there. It is, is a trip seeing the logo when you turn on, uh, when you turn on castle crashers though. Anyway, before we get into that, um, I don't have any announcements, but there is some news coming through lately. That's pretty good. I don't know. We're in like a news cycle, right? And one thing that caught my eye was Pokemon gen 10 and mostly to complain, but I want to play the bird. want the bird. Yeah. So this three new, three new starters, Brout, and Geckwa. I'm not impressed at all with the designs. I don't know if they're just getting worse and worse. Wait, I'm, I'm Gequa. Gequa, Gequa is like, didn't they already do that? No, no, no, no, no. The, the, the sword and shield one. Maybe. Because Greninja is a frog. Gequa is obviously a gecko, but. Yeah. And Talion. Yeah. Like what's the difference between that water starter and this one really? Like, I don't know. Fundamentally, very close. did that multiple times with the fire starter too, with like firefighting. Please. How many fire fightings do we need? No, no, no, no. It's not the type. It's Let the fire starter stay on four legs, please. But you know that Pom-Bom's going to turn into some furry bait right there. No, please. No, Charles, I mean, they've kind of been on that train for a while, right? 2.0. Standing arc-a-nye. Yikes. All right. So my feeling is that after gen nine, the reviews are going to need to be seriously good for me to even take a second look at buying this, but right now I'm definitely a no. And, ⁓ I just feel like Pokemon code just ain't got it anymore. haven't had it in a while. Right. opinion. The, reviews of ZA were so bad. It actually put, me off of buying it. I was very excited for it because Arceus legends was so good. But ⁓ yeah, the Legends ZA apparently was not. And after Gen 9, I was so soured on it that I was like, you know what? not, I'm not, cause like they have a Switch one version, but I was like, yeah, that can't possibly run, run well. So I'd have to want to buy a Switch two in order to play this game. And it's just not, it's just not there. I know that Gen 10 is Switch two exclusive and I think whatever they're showing isn't final like, final renders like I think the jury's still kind of out. We don't know yet. And I'm, I'm open because I'm kind of of the opinion that Pokemon has to do good this time. And so I think they're gonna push to do good because they have been getting some serious feedback from their fan base. it's winds and waves. So I'm worried it's another water generation, which South East Asia like Philippines inspired, ⁓ you know, ⁓ Taiwan, all that area. So yeah, there's going to be some water, but they showed some of the other regions in that little trailer. So there might be some kind of like connection where you can maybe go to some of the older. That'd be cool. ⁓ regions or maybe, you know, there's, there's something there. Hopefully. Because I want something really big. I'm tired of just 400, you know? And I just completed my decks in Violet, and I have a completed decks in Shield, and I'd really like to be able to trade over a bunch somehow and fill up a thousand Pokemon Pokedex. That'd be something I'd really like to do. Yeah. I just spun off Super Mario Mon again today, and that's still lit. Might be the best Pokemon game ever made. I have some news. For Zelda's 40th anniversary, they said nothing. No tweet, no reveal, no anything. Nothing. Zero. They just skipped it. Getting the sonic treatment, I see. big as Zelda is, that's kind of crazy. There was a point when Switch came out where they thought maybe Zelda was going to be the new face of Nintendo and it maybe was not going to be Mario. Yeah. So that's pretty wild. I would put Zelda at least in second place. I know. In those franchises. What is Nintendo doing lately? I don't understand it. The same thing that everybody else is doing, losing to Steam. Steam's coming out with a new console that is also a PC. And it's been the talk of all of the internet in the gaming sphere. You're going to be able to emulate all of your old games. You you're going be able to run Steam, including all of the libraries there. Xbox and Sony are going to be kind of, you know, behind, I think. I'm ready for it. I've been a Steam fan for a long time. Long, long time. There needs to be a centralized console that can just play everything, you know, and I think Nintendo is going to hold out the longest on on exclusives. But, you know, I think that eventually we're just going to get there. Right. You think so? I don't know. I just have a hard time seeing Mario on PlayStation or Xbox. That's going to Steam. Like, like, like I don't think that's actually going to exist. I think you're going to have consoles that are made, but I think those consoles are going to be capable of playing everything. Right. Or, or everything is going to be PC basically, and it will be compatible. Like Steam seems OS has the big picture mode that, that I'm sure you use too, when you, when you play your handheld, right? Like that is a very controller friendly console feel. Right. So, and in fact, I have mine set up to where every time I turn it on, it goes right into Steam big picture mode and I have every game. from every launcher loaded up into Steam because you can load up third party games too. You can even customize it with artwork and stuff to make it look premium. like, you know, even though I can do Windows stuff and I do on my my ROG, don't when I'm ready to game, like it just goes right into that mode and it feels like a handheld console. It's great. So I'm interested in that. And I think that's kind of the future of gaming from the couch. wonder what the steam console is going to cost. don't know if they've come up with a price point. Yeah, I don't know. It seems pretty magical in their, in their costs. I think it's going to be a little pricey. I've heard the 700 number being thrown around a lot, but again, it's all speculation. mean, if it can play like the high end steam games, you're talking about PlayStation 5 level power with, you know, compatibility across all platforms except Nintendo. And if you count emulation, then you're to get compatibility there too. And a library that you already own. Right. Like, like don't forget that, you know, if you buy a PS5 or PS6 comes out, you got to get some new games for it. Like this thing will play your Elden Ring. It'll play your, you know, cyberpunk, whatever it is that you're playing. I'm going to be honest with you. Ever since I've started using Steam a lot, like 10 plus years ago, I find it extremely hard for me to buy any kind of console except Nintendo because I don't need it. Like I literally play everything on Steam and the beauty part about it is there's cloud saving. it's like, I don't need all these like consoles to play. Everything's there on my Steam account. And I just, ever since I built up my library, I just, can't justify buying games for like a PS5 or Xbox. just, I just can't do it. for me, ⁓ I didn't have a PS4 when I bought my PS5. had gotten rid of it a while ago. And so the PS5 being available to play, ⁓ PS4 games was also a big seller. But I'll be honest, the main reason I bought the PS5 was FF16 because it was an exclusive and I really wanted to play it. So it's on Steam now. Yeah, I had a way. He had a way like two years. Yeah. No, not that one. I think it was a year. mean, I think FF seven remake was a year or two. So, but I think they're going away from that, right? Didn't like Square Enix say they're like kind of done with that because it's like the sales have been kind of poopy. I think they're not doing very well. Well, I think I think they're blaming it on the PlayStation exclusivity. Yeah. But yeah, for sure. Square was really quick to jump ship on that. And now Sony is like, yeah, we're just not going to do exclusives anymore. Like they're just, they're just not going to pay for it. But Square, I think was one of the first major devs in the door to be like, yeah, we're not doing exclusives anymore. This is not, is not helping, which good. Good. Yeah. I, never been a fan of exclusives ever. Like why? if I, if I don't know, I'm trying to equate this to like real life, but I suppose video games are, are real life now. Like if I, was making a game, right? And I wanted as many people to play that game as possible, which I would imagine is your goal when you make a game. Why, oh why would you ever like put it on one and only one console? that doesn't make any sense. you have people who who get one console or the other. Like this is just how it is. Like a lot of people don't have both. you know, the reality of it. it's like, some people just can't play it because they don't have the right console. indie studios have been launching games on everything, you know, for like what, like five, six, seven years. Like, I mean, there are tons of indie games on, on, on Switch and basically like everything that, launches now is, is everywhere. Right. So like, and, and, and they're doing it on shoestring budgets usually. Right. So like, why would you, as a giant studio like Square, put a blockbuster movie's worth of budget into a game ⁓ and commit to a series of such games, but only allow it to be available on one platform to roughly, I don't know what the market share is on PlayStation, but I'm assuming it's like a third, maybe. Probably reasonable. Well, probably a little bit more because I don't think nobody just has Xbox anymore. Yeah. But still, like you're saying, why would you shoehorn yourself into that situation? When like, think it's because the PS4 so many people had it that it was just available to almost everybody. Most people had a PS4 as opposed to just an Xbox or a plate. Like most people had a PlayStation. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. Get, get, get rid of not saying it was the right call, but saying that it probably felt like not a big deal to them. Yeah. I'm sure Sony was playing some bully tactics to being like, you know, we're just not going to allow you to. publish it on our system if we can't, you know, if we can't have exclusively we don't, we don't want it. don't like Sony. don't want to play nice with Spider-Man either. Well, Sony tried to do it with this new game coming out too called Crimson Desert, which is supposed to be like a massive open world game. a lot of people like are really looking forward to it. And Sony actually went up to them and asked if they wanted to make a deal, like making it, you know, PlayStation exclusive. And they said no, which is good. But it's just like this, still trying to do it. Like it's annoying. I don't know. I feel like they should move away from consoles. Yeah. I, like I said, I haven't been a console gamer in a long time. So, you know, if it's all goes to steam, I don't care. Eventually, mean, steam is so large in its marketplace that it sometimes, you know, comes across antitrust problems and like it, it can literally price devices. you know, under cost, like, like the steam deck individually does not make them a lot of money. ⁓ and the parts for it are such influx that like occasionally my understanding is that with sales and stuff, they price them below what they actually pay to make them. And they do it because you're going to go to the steam store and buy and buy a bunch of games and they're going to get, you know, they're, projecting the amount of kickback they'll get from each unit by somebody, you know. That's kind of smart though. buying games. Yeah, no, I mean, well, that's the business strategy, right? And that's why ROG Allies are more expensive than Steam decks. You know, while being a little bit disingenuous, I think some of the parts in ROG Allies are certainly premium over the Steam deck, but like, you know, the price should be more comparable than it is. ⁓ Yeah. You're not just buying the hardware with Steam. They're trying to get you into their ecosystem. So. They're running out of people to fish for. But honestly, I'm here for it. Like Valve is a big company. I've heard nothing bad about Valve. I mean, it's still a privately held corporation. Like it's not a public stock. Granted, I don't know who owns them, but they seem to be generally pretty okay and keep out of the news for most of the wrong reasons, at least relative to the other companies, right? Like you had Nintendo last year trying to, trying to copyright button inputs and, and, and, and creature capture as a concept. ⁓ my God. Right. Like, like probably trying to future-proof, you know, Pokemon designs that eventually are going to run up against other, ⁓ creature designs in other games. Right. So any hat with the letter ⁓ on it is going to be copywritten. Yeah. Like it's just, you know, you have Nintendo who's moving toward litigation over innovation, right? And I just, and I look at something like Valve and I'm sure their record is not squeaky clean, but again, I don't, you know, I don't hear that kind of backlash against them all that, all that much. I haven't heard anything either. Yeah. So for now I'm okay with supporting Valve. Yeah. I just wanted to talk a little bit about the news. The other thing I noted too, was kind of in the indie games sphere ⁓ coming up. ⁓ you guys know, I really did like parasite even often cite it as a game that needed a remake or a modernization. But, ⁓ there is a game coming out called parasite mutant. And it's the second time I've put it in our newsfeed over on discord because I saw the, I saw the original trailer and this does look like the updated parasite Eve that we had hoped for and discussed. that's actually really cool. Yeah. I'm, I'm pretty excited for it because. modern day indie games storytelling is really good. And I think the Parasite Eve story already is kind of pretty good. Like it's almost there. I'm looking at a video right now of it. Yeah. I could see myself getting this. Yeah. I had fun with the first Parasite Eve. Yeah. I do look back on it fondly and I think about playing it again sometimes and I actually own the second one too. So I think about spinning that up also. And I heard the second one is really good. I heard the third one wasn't that great. But again, it's probably worth a playthrough at least. I'm also excited for the Marvel Maximum collection. ⁓ is that another beat-em-up? ⁓ It's a group of beat-em-ups. So it's some of the arcade favorites that we might remember like the Avengers arcade cabinet. ⁓ nice. course, the X-Men one that we all used to play at the local Pizza Hut together. Yeah. So it was a Simpsons and then it changed into an X-Men. Upgrade. Yeah. That's a big upgrade. Barely an upgrade. Barely. Yeah. I very much like the Simpsons beat them up. I got so good at the Simpsons beat them up one that I could one quarter that thing. Wow. But it's a game that's fair. Like some of these beat them ups are just gross and like when the enemies decide to flinch. But I'll be mad if they took out Welcome to Die. ⁓ Magneto's muscly leg kick, but hey the biggest news of all that we were talking about before this show or at least in our in our worlds Right. We have a whole discord channel dedicated to slay the spire Steve. Come on, Talk to us about the slay this fire too. That's coming out by the time people hear this. It'll be this week Whoo So it's coming out on I think March 5th, which is Thursday next this week as of hearing this episode So you're only gonna have to wait like three or four days I'm gonna have jump on the bandwagon this time. Dude, five characters, augmented runs, augmented cards, two new characters, three returning characters. I don't know about Ascensions, but multiplayer up to four people at a time. That seems wild. It's gonna be so cool. We can all jump on the gaming couch and play a game of Slay Together instead of watching somebody and being like, this is kind of not great, but now I get to play. Yeah. All new enemies, all new bosses, all new events, like, it's gonna be exciting. What are the new characters? So you have two new characters. have the Necrobinder, who uses like a pet hand, a skeletal hand called Osty, and... Osty! Yeah. And then the other character is called the Regent, and he's like an alien or something, and he sits in a chair, and he commands the stars in the heavens with his cards. He kind of reminds me of the collector. Yeah, kind of the, the boss, the second act boss from the first game. Yeah, kind of. Cause that sits in a chair too. They made the defect beefier. Yeah, dude. He's, a big boy now. Dick boy. What did they give watcher the acts? Well, so the watcher is kind of a character that, ⁓ was added later and she doesn't have one of the three keys that it takes to get to the heart. So it's not one of the original. ⁓ characters. Maybe they will add her. Yeah. There'll enough backlash. She does slay the spire. Yeah. it looks like there's a lot of returning cards, but then also a bunch of new cards for each class and, ⁓ some new mechanics for everybody too. I mean, really it's five new classes, right? Like, yeah, they are returning characters, but you know, They're going to have different cards and different mechanics. I would assume some different play styles. So yeah, that's great. know, all bunch of new elites and relics and everything and including some older relics too. So if you're a returning player of slay the spire, it'll be a pretty easy transition. And if you're new, I'm sure it's just going to be super exciting and overwhelming, but fun. Yeah. The replay ability is probably going to be through the roof with this one. If everything goes great. I have like 13. hundred hours played on Slay the Spire. think I may have purchased Slay the Spire like three or four times and I would do it again. Me and my wife combined have purchased it four times. Well, I did buy it for my wife. So that is, that is one of the times that I'm, that I'm talking about. you've, you know, if my wife plays a game that it has some addictive tendencies. Yeah. Anywho, very, very excited for that. So I guess this is about the time we should probably jump into question of the week. Alrighty. Question of the week is what is one genre of video games that either bores you to death or you believe is too simple to be entertaining? I'm going to come out and say it and it's going to be a hot take. And I really don't care if I hurt anybody's feelings or offend them, but Animal Crossing is the most boring game. ⁓ my God, dude. That I ever tried. is my favorite game ever. So imagine, you got done doing all of your chores at home and your parents are like, okay, you can play some video games and you decide to play animal crossing where you guessed it. You do chores, you dig in your backyard, you fish, you catch butterflies, you do things around town. No, thank you. So, uh, uh, Sims is probably pretty up there too with for you. The Sims? Well, no, because the Sims you can build things, right? Yeah, but you could build a house in real life, too. No, the Sims you can like torture people by putting them in a room with no doors or putting them in the pool and taking the ladder out. Yeah, you could do all kinds of fun stuff. Animal Crossing, it's literally like collect 10 apples. I don't want to do this. Yeah, I don't know. I never I never really got into Animal Crossing, but I mean. It's Nintendo, you know, I haven't really been that big on Nintendo. to cozy games like that. just, don't really click with them. Yeah, that's fair enough. I don't know if cozy encompasses just that game, but yeah, no, I know what you're referring to. I, all of them, like Harvest Moon or like Terraria, whatever they are, you know, what's that one that everybody's playing? Minecraft. No, because that has action. You fight things in Minecraft. Yeah, but it's kind of a cozy game. On it, on adventure. Or what is it? Creative mode it is. But on survival mode it's not. And I only played survival. Yeah. No, there's one that everybody's playing. I'm trying to remember the name of it. But it's a cozy game. It's really popular. But I'm just not about it. I want to fight stuff. I don't know. trying to think. I don't know what you're talking about. I'll find it here. You guys can talk about your boring games. ⁓ I would say for me. I mean, a lot of the answers that we got in the audience pretty much hit the nail on the head for me, but I don't really care for Fortnite, like that kind of play style, the Battle Royale. I know I really don't care for that. This one is kind of a hot take for me, and this doesn't go across every game, but it's for the majority, is roguelikes. I'm not a huge fan of roguelikes. How many have you played? Not a lot, because I just, don't find it that fun. ⁓ my god, there's so much fun and it kind of reminds me of playing old games because first of all, they don't take that long to beat. Yeah, like you can see that. no, no, no, like I said, not all of them. Some of them are great. Like Hades is great. Dude, there's a stroke for every folk in the roguelike genre. Like they've turned everything into roguelike. Isn't there a roguelike that's kind of like Battle Network? Yeah, dude. It's called... I only care for the randomness of them. I've just never been that type of gamer. Fair enough, I guess. It's Stardew Valley, that one. Stardew Valley? We've all heard of it, but none of us have played it. Not to say, like I said, I don't swear off every roguelike. It's just it's not like a genre I jump to. It's just, I don't know. I'm more of like, know, RPGs, stuff like that. ⁓ You know. Action games are great, which I guess you could lump that into a roguelike, guess. Depending on what kind of... There's so many of them. Yeah, I don't know. What do you got, My answer comes from not a place of necessarily boring or simple, but because they stress me the fuck out. And it's MOBAs, for sure. That like, can't really get into them. ⁓ really? You didn't have fun with Heroes of the Storm with us? I had I had fun but like I know that I'll never be good enough or dedicate the time to like play against real people and Even when I do I feel like I have to be like playing sweaty and I'm just so fucking stressed out. Yeah, that's literally any competitive game and like we're like fighting each other No, no, cuz I've played I've played competitive games like like magic and Hearthstone and that's more like my speed and you know, and I've I've reached legend in both of those games so like I'm not like a top tier player, but I'm good enough. you know, but like, I, I just know I'll never get out of Bush league in a, in a, a MOBA without like tearing down every friendship I've ever had. Like, it's just like us berating each other and stuff. I just, I just don't like it. I don't, I don't like the environment. don't like That's not, that's not how I play. And like, and like everybody, like as soon as you pick up a character, like if you just join a random lobby, everybody has expectations of you and how you should be playing the character already. Cause everybody's- watch their favorite sweaty YouTuber play through all the, like all the characters optimally. And I don't even like the word optimally when we talk about playing a game. Like I just, you guys know me when we play like smash bros and like fighting games and stuff. Like I, I like to play the off odd weird ass, you know, sometimes lower tier characters cause it's more fun and I can mix it up. Right. But like that, that kind of environment, just keeps me away from those games. And I think, I think the game play itself is a little bit. Is a little bit samey if I'm being honest it is nothing like the adrenaline of like Playing a game and being right at the cusp of a victory that you have been trying so Hard to get and I don't know the adrenaline that I get from that is unlike any other Feeling that I obtain in a normal life. I don't jump in front of cars or anything like that You know what mean? I don't I don't get adrenaline often And, when I do, it's when I'm in a sweaty situation. So I do like MOBAs. enough. I don't mind hard PVP, ⁓ PVP, PVE content. Like stuff that really challenges you. Yeah. I mean, that can encompass it too, but MOBAs are harder because people are better. Well, yeah, but like you love like final fantasy 14. Dude. Dark souls. in that game. Yeah. Dark souls. That's what we want some hard PVE. Dark souls. Yeah. But you're not like out there doing PVP, FF14 for the most part, right? No, it's kind of dooky. Yeah. Yeah. So it's not, it's not that it's like, it's not that it's because it's hard. It's because it's like, it's like not the same game. You know what I mean? Yeah. And like, I don't know, this kind of extends to RTSs a little bit for me because I'm bad at them, but I still find them way more interesting and I could still see myself getting into them. ⁓ Just not, into MOBAs. RTS is though, ⁓ my God, like the skill ceiling for those is astronaut. Yeah, no, it's way in the stratosphere, but it is super fun though. ⁓ yeah. No, I love Starcraft and Starcraft too. Yeah. That's getting pretty good at Zerg. It's just like, you look at like the pros, they're APM and they're like in the 400s and you're just like, I don't, yeah, you can't even like process it. You're like, how? I also feel like the, crowd around those are better. Like it's just a better group of people. Like I feel like the MOBA is just like a toxic crowd. Like everyone from the days of Counter-Strike just went over from Counter-Strike to MOBA. No offense if you, if you love MOBA games, but they're like, they're like the soccer fans of the, of the, gaming world. Like, like, like the European soccer fans, the ones that beat each other up for wearing the wrong Jersey color. They take that shit seriously. Very seriously. Too serious for me. No thanks. I love watching professional Starcraft. I just do. Yeah, that's a good time. You're like three hours in on this like best of seven set and you're just like glued. You're like, oh my god, what's gonna happen? You know what's crazy to me too is like when they like, cause they know the game so well, it's like they scout immediately and they just see like one or two buildings and like, oh, they're going for this build and they're gonna build this many units and it's just like. What didn't know that he has a man here the secondary tucked in the corner of the His scout missed it. ⁓ he's going for six racks. He's got like two buildings. You're like what? It's awesome So what do we got for audience answers Dan? Alrighty, we're gonna start with Tom NASCAR games bore me to the point that the last time I played one I had to drive the wrong way and try to hit the other cars to find it fun Listen, Oh boy. I know a few guys in real life who have like the big sim setups at home and they're like the grand, the Gran Turismo guys and like, okay. But like, I don't know, like I drive and that's enough, I guess. If I'm not hurling shells or, or bullet set competition, you know, I just feel like it's not, it's not high fantasy enough for me. Yeah. Yeah. It's hard. It's one of those things you had to like grow up on I think let alone a NASCAR game. No, yeah NASCAR. No, but I do think it's fun to play like racing games. There was one ⁓ these first speed that came out like, I don't know, 15 years ago. It was need for speed rivals and you either played as the race car or like the street race car or the police car. That's awesome. It's cool. Like I like those kinds of games, but again, has a fictional element. to it, you know, and there's probably like RPG elements in there and stuff. Yeah. Wow. That sounds like it could be good competitively too. Yeah. You chase each other and that police car tries to stop the race car. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. That's definitely, you know, how to make a racing game interesting for sure. At least like NASCAR at least. Okay. We have Hux. OMG. Competitive FPS. Why do we want super realistic gun games, Call of Duty and shit like that? when you can just have sci-fi sick games like Halo or Luda shooters like Borderlands or hero shooters like Marvel Rivals or Overwatch. And to be good at those competitive shooters, they play at lowish resolution and settings, but at like 400 FPS. Like you absolutely cannot tell a difference between 120 FPS and 240 FPS. And 400 FPS dude? And so many people just play COD all the time. Instead of all the wonderful stories and beautiful worlds you can explore in AAA games. Nah, man. Competitive FPS is boring AF. 100 % agree. Yeah, I mean, there's something to be said for realistic games, but yeah, I understand. It's hard to get into because it's like, so I started playing Marvel Rivals like a year ago and it's actually, it's a lot of fun. But I guess Halo is kind of in the same vein-ish. The problem I have with like Call of Duty games and stuff like that in Battlefield is like literally like you get shot like one or two times and you're dead. So like you can't even like react. By the time you start getting shot at it, you're already dead. Yeah, it's realistic. Welcome to But like with Marvel rivals and like Halo to an extent like Halo you have like a shield. have like a shield in Halo. So like when you started getting shot at You had enough reaction to be okay. can hide behind something or, know, just to give you enough time to fight back. And the same with like Marvel. Set the energy sword. Yeah. But like you had to get up close. So there was like some, there was some risk involved trying to get up close. Well, there was a, there was a charge weapon and if you hit him with it, took out the gravity hammer. Yeah. No, no, no. It was a charging weapon. You'd hold it and it would charge. And if you hit him with a fully charged shot. It would deplete their shield. So you'd have like a pistol in one hand and the charge shot in the other and you'd kill their shield and then hit them once with the gun. die. Do do that. Yeah. See that's based in realism. You just have technology that blocks bullets. He just got caught. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's a good answer. thank Oh Misty sports or realistic FPS, Todd, Todd, Tom Clancy, et cetera for me. Also Battle Royales are mad for me. So yeah, she's not really into the shooters too. But she also lumped in like sports games in there. Promise happening I would not pick sports and I did not pick sports. You know what I think would be cool to play and I never played any of this like the splinter cell games I think it is where you're like, a spy or you're trying to break in. ones are actually cool. Like anything like Metal Gear. or like Splinter Cell where you actually get like stealth and like you get actually behind people and like knock them out or kill them or whatnot. Those ones are cool. I feel like the gameplay that is not this similar to like Resident Evil. Like I'm pretty cool with that over the shoulder gameplay. I think Gears of War is pretty sick. I love third person shooters much more than I like first person shooters in general. Something about it. I don't know. I don't know what it is. They just they feel more. Which is weird, but they just feel more immersive to me. Yeah, they feel like a movie, you know? Yeah. Like I know first person, you're supposed to feel immersed because it's first person, but I don't know. I feel more... It never feels right. Yeah, like I feel more immersed into the third person. It's weird. Except for Metroid Prime, I do like get into it when I play that one. But if that had like a third person mode too, I would not be mad. if you can toggle between... yet. I haven't even bought it. Because... Metroid Prime is a Metroidvania. Metroidvania. Which is its own addictive element. It's not a first-person shooter. It's a Metroidvania from first-person. Which is the same as an adventure game. Yes, Zelda is a Metroidvania. Yeah, far as... There's usually not different levels though. No. It's like slap. Just biomes. Yeah, I mean your dungeons have different levels, but your overworld doesn't. In the OG, I think they were actually called levels. Yeah. Level one through eight. I digress. Yeah. I digest. Yeah. I was just going to comment on like sport games a little bit because she mentioned it. I agree mostly because of like, if we're like talking like baseball or like football, my issue with them is they're kind of slow pace where like there's a lot of just sitting around waiting. Like say for example, baseball, like You have to wait for the pitch and stuff like that. Or like with football, when you're calling the plays, you know, it's just a lot of, you know, stoppage and play. One I can actually get really into is ⁓ hockey. As long as you know how to play hockey and you're not icing, if you're not like going off sides all the time. But if you know how to actually play hockey, it's, super fast paced and it can be really fun. of hockey, USA got the gold over Canada. Yeah. Canada is still salty over it. They just will not let it die, dude. They will not let it die. Playing the Yanks, dude. We gotta send our Bruins up there. That's not Bruins, dude. We got 20 minutes to the Beesdrop puck. Yeah, we had a couple Bruins on the USA team. We had Charlie McEvoy and stuff. It's good stuff. Heck yeah. All do we have any more audience answers? All right, let me see. All right, I'm gonna pick Lobaca here. Chore-based games like... Power wash simulator. It does. It does just feel like a digital chore to me. That's my favorite game actually of all time. The power wash simulator, which I haven't played. It's like one of those things where you're watching videos of people cleaning things and that can be therapeutic to some, but definitely not for me. Did you know that like they. They've done studies and polled people, given them a list of things that you could do daily and ask them which things give them the most satisfaction. And would you believe it that most of the time doing chores around the house wins? Really? Yes. Like over hobbies, over like long drives, over walks, like people feel the most relieved after they've done some cleaning around the house. So my feeling on this, on this cozy gaming chore simulator thing is just go do some real chores. Yeah. There was a game that my brother, he was actually on the show, Joe. ⁓ He was saying he, him and my, and our uncle really got into like this farming simulator game. And in the back of my head, I'm like, dude, what the fuck? Why? Like, but I'm like, ⁓ yeah, yeah, that's good. That's cool. Yeah. You can plant seeds and you know, use your tractor and. I don't know. I hope he watches this. First of all, what is going on in your head when you go onto the Steam store and you see Tractor Simulator and you go, spending my money on that. Windmill slam play. It's on sale. $15. ⁓ man. You know what I would want to play though is they have like Duck Goose Simulator or whatever. You run around town as a goose? Oh, okay, okay, okay. Stuff like that. Yeah, that looks pretty funny. Wasn't there like a horror game where you run around as a chicken? like all the other chickens are getting slaughtered? know, slaughtered, like chickens do get slaughtered, but like it was, you know, done very brutally and you are a chicken? Yeah. I there's one called Octodad where you're an octopus and you like move around in city. and his arms are flailing everywhere and knocking shit off shelves and everything. It's just so silly, but that's what those remind me of. do get silly. All right. I got, I got one more. One more. This is from Matt. Uno Mas. Video game versions of board games. I don't want to play Monopoly with real people. Why would I want to play against a CPU? I was about to ask, are people really into those though? And I think the answer is yes. But I think they're, they are geared towards like non-gamers, right? Like, like I think they're like the people that haven't played video games, generally older, download maybe a Monopoly app from the app store or something, and they fiddle around with it. I think it's a family thing. It's like a thing mom and dad can play with the kids and they, I think, I think the words, the words with friends crowd, there can't be like a competitive e-sports scene for, right? Well, mean, yeah, chess, but yeah. I was going to say chess was probably the only one that I would, if I was to get like serious with it, it would be definitely chess. But if you're that person that's playing online chess, do you call yourself a chess player or do you call yourself a video gamer? No, I would wager that you're calling yourself a chess player. Right. So I don't know. We can do both. Yeah, that's fair. They call this ⁓ a gamer move. Just put digital poker in that list too. I know that we've crashed through all those. You guys ready to talk about some castle crashers? Let's do it. I almost forgot the game we were talking about today. Castle Crashers is a 2008, 2008, yes. Yeah. It was an eight beat-em-up flash game style that was originally released on the Xbox 360. And I don't know how I owned it for the Xbox 360. I literally don't remember the story that got me to buy Castle Crashers, but Steve and I bought it when we were roommates back in college and we played the shit out of it back then. This week was definitely a mental callback to that. I'm going to guess that my friend Ben heard about it from somebody on Final Fantasy 11 and I played it with him and Dan first. And then when I went to your house, I was like, dude, we have to play this game. Yeah. Yeah. I remember. I remember playing this a bunch with Steve and Ben. It is, it is very fun. And it's like, ⁓ it's fast paced. It's a, you know, it's got some ARPG elements where like you get to see the damage you deal and you get to upgrade your stats as you, as you play. It's lighthearted. It's relatively non-committal. I think it auto saves every time you go back to the map. like, you know, you can pick up and put it down easily and, ⁓ and it's still being updated today, which is totally crazy. It just got an update last year in, ⁓ I think it was October. that's insane. Yeah, October of 2025, this flash game that was formerly Xbox 360 arcades still going today, labor of love by that team. And, uh, the painter boss paradise introduced a new character, a new weapon, but also the ability to literally create your own castle crasher character. Like you get a template and you can either draw on that template yourself with a drawing program, or you can use, you know, cut and paste. things and you can just make you can pick your magic and you can make whatever character your imagination desires. Yeah. Such a good such a good addition and you can like I don't know if you can do this on other platforms. I imagine you could maybe but like I know at least for steam you can you know upload it to the workshop and you can download any that people have made and you can have it for yourself like from like I have like ⁓ like zero for Mega Man X that I found, had like Batman, I downloaded a couple. find a zero or did you take mine? No, no, I found a zero. And to be honest, when you showed me yours, I was like, oh my God, that one actually looks good. Cause the one I have kind of looks not that good. Dude, Link would be perfect for that because you get bombs and arrows and boomerang and everything. You totally could make a link that actually makes a lot of sense. I found a Meta Knight where he has the spin tornado magic. ⁓ yeah. I get like the, the sand guys have. Yeah. I guess they maybe just didn't put a head on him when they designed him or something. I don't know. That's, that's pretty cool. Yeah. I also downloaded a couple extra colors too. Like I got like a yellow night and a brown night. Yeah. That's pee pee and poo poo night. Don't be offended by the toilet humor. This game is all. is all about it. it's just like the, most juvenile jokes that still, I don't know, kind of land in a, in a small part of my heart today. right in the beginning of the game, you have that one dude who's on the ground and there's a barbarian like on him just repeatedly punching him in the face and he's, he's just like already out. Stop. He's already dead. It's still punching him, but they, but even like before that, when they, when they steal the when they steal the four princesses, they're always dragging the one like by her legs or something and she's always face down. Yeah. Dragging across the entire world. So yeah, the story is pretty straightforward. This weird ⁓ wizard guy comes and steals a big fat crystal and all four princesses from your kingdom. And it turns out to be the wrong kingdom to have stolen from. Yeah. as the name of the game implies, you go crash every castle that exists from, you know, the east side of the world to the west side of the world. the princess's back. Ice castle, sand castle, stone castle. The forest, you go clean the entire forest out of all the bandits. And basically the Power Rangers. The Black Knight's castle. The church. The volcano. All of it. Just leave. Yeah. And it's like. I don't know the gameplay for me is super addictive. Yeah. And surprisingly it can be pretty deep. mean like on the surface it might not like seem like that, but like the amount of juggling that you can do and like bounce them on the ground to like pop them back up. Like that's actually really hard to do. Oh, this is a good time to talk about tips and tricks. Dan just triggered it. Yeah. We need a you've activated my trap card. Epson tricks. You triggered my trap card. So I guess since, since I kicked it off, I'll start it. ⁓ so my tip is that juggling mechanic. So I'm not very good at it, but there are three different juggles and they're based on the weights of the, of the enemies. So there's various enemies throughout the game. There's barbarians, thieves, not going to list them all, but later on there's heavier armored Knights, right? And they have different weight classes in the way that they. are manipulated around the map is dictated by how much they weigh. So that's a light juggle and a medium juggle and a heavy juggle. And they all require different button inputs while, while you're in the air. But basically nearly every enemy in the game can be infinitely juggled and also kind of allows you to fly. ⁓ so that you can avoid damage and stuff while you're just beating the snot out of, out of hordes, out of hordes of enemies. So my tip would be. to at some point during your run through Castle Crashers, all three hours of it, learn some juggling tricks. Because it will help you out when you get to insane mode. yeah, for sure. Like I said, it's a lot harder than it sounds to actually be a master at it. And the sooner you learn to do it, the more experience you can hog from your friends while you're playing co-op. Oh yeah, for sure. Is that based off of how much damage you do? How many hits? So you get one EXP per hit you land. Per hit, okay. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah, my tip is don't die. That's Shield. No, I'm just kidding. No, no, no. My real tip is like actually, yeah, the shield is actually really good in co-op. It's very underrated, I feel like. Like, I understand, like, you're not going to get experience points, but like, it's a team game. I remember when we were fighting the last boss and I was just having like my shield up and basically dragging the boss to the back. And I was just sitting there just taking all the punishment, not taking any damage, but I was literally taking the aggro off of my teammates, know, Dawn and Steve. even better was the necromancer fight that I watched you and Steve do. Like the shield is like very underrated when it comes to, ⁓ just like boss fights. But again, it's like, it's kind of a selfish gameplay loop because it's like, you want to be smacking enemies to get the EXP, but at the same time, it's like, That it's very strong if you're willing to forego the extra exp. we didn't talk about it yet, but in the game there is, there's gotta be like a hundred weapons. There's so many. ⁓ and you find them all throughout the world through, you know, discovery and bosses and all kinds of stuff. And my tip is that, ⁓ if you're playing multiplayer trade weapons with each other so that everybody gets it, the availability to use it. Especially if you spend gold. Cause like, Gold is so scarce. ⁓ That's a good tip. Yeah. Like if you're in a shop that sells a weapon, instead of you each buying that weapon, one person buys it, they will drop their old weapon. You can kind of do some shuffling around. Yeah. We did that in the insane store. This past play. And that's like 1300 gold. And that's like an entire playthroughs worth of gold. Like it's a lot. I was going to say the shield, but Dan took it. So I had to come up with another one. No, that's a really good thing because you can start doing it from the beginning of the game. You don't, you don't have to wait. No, it's good. think we had some audience tips. Lady sass hole says don't jump into bombs. Yep. It's a good, it's kind of like don't die. I think the bomb throwing enemies are the worst kind. Those bombs really break up the, the gameplay and they arc and in such a way that they'll hit you out of the air. If you're juggling. So I think bomb throwing enemies are especially disruptive. The other tip is unlocking characters is deep, like four levels or something. Prepare for a lot of replays to unlock every character. Yeah, that is one thing. So can you unlock characters in this game? Oh yeah, tons. were really, are you being sarcastic? No, I didn't know. Cause I knew you got all the knights and then you got like the, guy with the chest on his head. What else? there's alien hominid, white knight, there's... ⁓ why didn't I get any when we played? We unlocked alien hominid together with you on last Don't you remember? I don't know. You guys were blazing through the whole game for me, so was like... Well, it said it after we finished the game or in a level or something. ⁓ I think I, yeah, you know, I remember that. Yeah. Where do get the knight? That's from just finishing the game, I think. You can unlock shit tons of characters in for your information. If I put that game back up, might I might already have them. Thank you. I see. I'm for that tip. Yeah. I go stand here. Didn't even realize. We do things to carry things. So you're just being a shithead. I didn't I didn't ⁓ So the the old. Yeah, that is really funny. ⁓ The only ⁓ difference in characters are their magic. Really? Like every character has the same move set. This is one of the. most disappointing things about the game in my opinion, but ⁓ it behooves you to map out which knight you want to play the game with if you want a particular magic leader. Like if you like the machine magic, that generally speaking comes from the Blue Knights unlocks, right? So you would want to kind of know that going in. it's pretty good. The Blue Knights ice, isn't it? Yeah, but he for some reason unlocks the two machine characters. ⁓ he unlocks the characters. I see. Yeah. Yeah, I played the pink night when we went through the game. Pank night. I thought I thought he was pretty good. You're bragging on that pink night, but like even the corner, you almost killed him with the one do I did kill him? I got you both, dude. I buried you both with my under leveled character. No, it was caught with magic in the corner and a duel is it you. It felt very underwhelming in the beginning. Well, when I started getting like the magic upgrades, it started to feel a little better. It deals a lot of damage, especially against enemies, apparently that are pinned up against walls. Yeah. I mean, I didn't even know it went up the wall until it killed you. was like, ⁓ that's neat. This is so much fun. And it's like, but your characters will vary as you play through because you get to upgrade their stats. So there's four different stats you can upgrade. There's power. Pretty obvious. Your regular attacks deal more damage. I feel power is probably the best stat. don't always upgrade it first, but I think it's objectively the best stat. ⁓ There is defense, which makes, lets you take more hits. There's magic, which makes your magic more powerful, which I think is a stat you should upgrade because one, it unlocks new moves. And two, it's how your knight is differentiated from other knights. So I personally like upgrading magic. And then there's speed, which makes you run around faster. feel like that one's the king. The speed? Oh no, it's the power. No, it's the power for sure, dude. Once you get good at juggling. Yeah, but like if you're good at the game anyways, like with that speed and the power of the bow, like how fast that it shoots, you're not going to get hit anyways. It's a long time to get there though. You're underestimating, Don. The agility in multiplayer allowed me to gain the most experience every time because I was taking enemies away from your juggling. Yeah, see? And and when he was the only one standing being able to outrun the enemies to get to us to revive us I couldn't do that because I didn't run fast enough Yeah, I think you're under under valuing the agility. Yeah, that's fair Also, if you don't upgrade your power, you'll gain more experience because you have to hit more And the game lasts longer you get more padding A typical run of crack castle crashers. I think you could probably beat it in like two hours hours. Yeah It's not very long hours, but it's good. But there's a lot of levels and there's a lot of bosses in this, in this, in this game, which I appreciate. And I think all the bosses do a pretty good job at feeling different and testing you in different ways. Yeah. But that doesn't mean that all the bosses are great. Corn boss is not great. Yeah. He's nail hole, but you show me a game that doesn't have the one or two bosses that you're like, yeah, I don't want to fight that. They, that reminds me like the humor in this game too is like off the charts, like cause the bosses are like that, you know, with like, ⁓ the corn boss with like the stupid faces that he makes and stuff like that or like, yeah. Yeah. When he, when the, when the big barbarian comes down and he roars at you, but then the bigger barbarian knocks down the door and kills that one. Yeah. That's like, or the animals crapping in the beginning of the game. Yeah, there's like the big noises in the forest. The animals get gradually larger and there's like a big bear that pops out of the bushes. And you think that that's, that's the big rumbling noise with the big rumbling noise starts again. And the bear is, is like shitting itself behind. Don't forget about shit, shit rocket deer too. ⁓ yeah. Can't forget about him. And one of, one person can actually get him right. If they're lucky. Literally cannot forget about that. I can't even like, no matter how hard I try. It'll be one of those like core memories that you have forever. I like how the owl shits itself to death. Yeah, it falls off the branch. Like it just dies. I've been there, man. I've been there. On a branch shitting in the woods. Falling to his death. We've all been there. That was the old me. It just kind of reminds me of the, ⁓ the college humor internet troll under the bridge. ⁓ God. Did you, ⁓ did you guys have, have a favorite level and or boss? I actually liked the final boss a lot with all the, the, the, the reason why I say the final boss. And I don't know if I would get this feeling if I was playing solo, but like not only does it have a bunch of forms, which was cool, but like just the fact that like it came down to the wire so many times with us where I think like there was a point in that fight, the whole gauntlet of fights, one of us was like left alive and we had to revive the other two. think we all had that. like, there would be a time where Steve and I was dead and Dawn would have to get one of us up. And it would be like Steve and Dawn were dead and I was the only one alive and I had to get one of them up. And then the whole like using the shield to like, you know, to You know, basically take the aggro off you guys. There's just, I, awesome boss fight. I have a least favorite boss fight. It's not the corn boss either. Dude, that's a good one for me. stupid catfish and having to stay on a floating piece of debris or something is so annoying. My favorite pick is going to be really frustrating for you then. I can't believe you're going to pick the catfish. I actually really love the catfish. Oh my God. He is castle crashers. There's so much to him. There's the there's there's the damage reduction thing when he's standing up There's the break break the hairball. So so it doesn't it's so it you break the hairball. So it can reload Yeah, cuz if the hairball hits hits the ship the guys drop the cannon and then it's annoying because you can't fight him when he knocks you off the thing you have to wait for another piece of debris Not about it. You can like make him You can make him run into the boat too for for extra damage. just like so much in that fight. I really love that fight. Yeah, I don't. Yeah, the corn boss takes it for me. Yeah, he's annoying too. I mean, I guess the only redeeming quality is like hailing a bunch, they're my favorite. My favorite is the dragon thing that has the sock puppet. Good fight too. There's a lot going on in that fight. I can't tell if he's like the dragon. Or if he's supposed to be like Satan from Leo and Satan. I don't know. Because doesn't, doesn't Satan in that little like flash cartoon have like a little sock puppet? Yeah, but he doesn't look like the Satan in Leo and Satan. No, I don't think he can look exactly like him, but you remember in like, doesn't he turn into like a big demon sometimes when he makes his scary voice? He kind of looks a little like that. I can't remember. Anyway, yeah, lots, lots of bosses. and the, and the final boss that Dan mentioned has a staggering six health bars. Yeah. Buckle up. Buttercup. But, ⁓ honestly, I like the painter boss too. That's probably another one of my favorites. He comes out and he paints those different things. chase you around. So silly. Yeah, it was like the, the doodles, like it looks like, like a, ⁓ like a three year old drew them or something, but it's funny. It's good. Yeah. Was he was he always in the game? I really cannot remember. Like I feel like I remember the doodles, but I don't I feel like he was he was in vanilla. don't know, because he's like the front and centerpiece for the DLC. So it makes me wonder if he was in the base game or not. ⁓ No, he became a boss fight specifically with the painter boss Paradise DLC. Really? Which came out August last year. Wow, that is cool. Interesting. Okay, cool. The other boss I thought was actually kind of cool. is the, ⁓ the, that other King or I don't know what his name is, but the purple guy, he's got the machines where he's got, you know, one machine that shoots gas at you. has the, the machine that's two fingers. comes over and flips you and that fights pretty cool. It reminds me a lot of like of classic beat him ups because they feel like classic beat him ups have that like big larger than life machine boss that you have to fight. Yeah. also like the black night. Even though he's a very unassuming looking boss, he like comes out and fights you, but then he has like the, the organ. Yeah. The thing about that boss though, is if you get him in the corner, you can repeatedly stomp on him until he's pretty much dead and he won't be able to get back to the piano. Well, he's in fact you might just die. That's funny. He can juggle you too, which is, I mean, solo he's actually kind of ⁓ a little bit of a challenge. Yeah. know, who's a challenge solo is that getaway caravan and trying to stop the, the big black monster. No. Chasing the caravan. like you can jump off the caravan and you can juggle on his eye and the other guys can't reach you. Interesting. Yeah. You just stay in the air. Yeah. You just, you just keep swinging and occasionally throw the, throw a heavy attack, which pops you up a little bit. And then you just keep, just keep attacking. feel like this game would be a lot harder solo. Cause certain parts are, cause it's like, don't get the luxury of getting revived. Well, you get potions though. Yeah. Potions. But it's like the bat really helped us, you know, in our playthrough when, ⁓ when you guys went and helped me beat the game, like it was so many revives going on. Well, so when, when you play, ⁓ multiplayer, they multiply the enemies. Like that one level we near the end with the stove faces that, that, that full moon. There's like that one fight when you're scaling up the cliff with the two ladders and there's like 20 of those guys on you. That's not the way it is in single player. I think there's like six or seven total, there's like 20 when there was three. that's fair. I actually didn't even think about scaling, like, yeah, I got, Cause yeah, I was thinking of like how our game was. So yeah, it definitely makes sense that it would get toned down. But the necromancer fight is hard as hell with. with one person, he revives all those guys and like four beefy guys, like four big guys. ⁓ Yeah, that's really hard to do by yourself. Just those waves. The Necromancer himself, I think is actually a pretty easy fight, the fighting those waves is really hard. Yeah, for sure. Did you guys have a favorite night? I mean, I know we probably didn't play all of them, I played a couple. Zero. But the red knight, the red knight was the one that I probably played the most with this week. I got to around like level 45. Yeah. I like the red and the blue night. Yeah. I was going to say ⁓ I played the pink night with you guys, but I was messing around with all the other ones. I was like messing with their magic and stuff. And I really liked the blue one too. Like just that freeze is broken. Like the ice wall that you can throw or like just the one you start off with. Like you can just chain enemies, like fro, like you can just keep freezing them over and over until they die. And like they get fro, they get frozen enough to where like, you know, your, your, ⁓ magic can replenish in time. It's really good. know, what's kind of surprising to me too, is that beat them ups, feel like suffer from the saminess problem if they're too long, but this game is probably by far the longest beat them up I can think of. Unless you count like. Yakuza or something, but like, you know, if you play like streets of rage or something like that, that stuff takes you like an hour. Really? That's it? Like I felt like this game didn't even take that long. Like I guess two or three hours is kind of long for a beat them up. Yeah. I guess. Well, plus you have insane mode too, if you really, if you really want to go there, but like where, where I was getting with it, I'm really surprised at what a difference like just enemy weights and sometimes behaviors make. Like the enemy's collectibles. Yeah, yeah, yeah, the collectibles are huge too. want to talk about the... and weapons. Yeah, that's cool. I will say that that's a nice feature because like, you know, for like Streets of Rage or whatever, or it's like you like pick a weapon off the ground and it's only good for, you know, how many hits and then it's done. ⁓ The weapons in here are permanent. Once you grab it, it's like in your toolkit. can like, there's like a main hub area you can go back to and like see all the weapons that you collected and stuff and... All the animals you collected, which that's cool too. Like the animals that you can collect all have different like augments where it's like one can grab items for you or ones can raise like your speed or one can attack for you or stuff like that. So I'm kind of curious if, weapons and pets. never looked if they raise you beyond the cap of level. Okay. They do. Yeah. So you can get insane like with the new pencil. weapon, gives you like plus seven magic and the beholder, gives you plus four magic. You can get like a plus 11 magic additional to what the max stat magic is. And I think the max stats like that's like what, like 25 or 30. So what you're saying is upgrade all of your power, your defense and your agility, and then your magic with those two combinations and you'll be fully leveled up sooner. Yeah. I think you reach your max. Level up like ⁓ your, your level ups work in a couple, a couple different ways in this game. So every 10 levels, you get a natural bonus to, to all of your stats. You get a little bit more HP, you get a little bit faster, you get, you deal a little bit more damage. Right. ⁓ and then obviously you have the stat points, right? So at level 78, you max out on stat points. You want, you literally won't have any place to put additional stat points, but if you level up to 90. Technically you're at max stats, although you can go all the way up to 99. I think one feature I would have liked from this game was some form of, I don't know if you guys are familiar with Diablo paragon levels or like, just like a way to increase your strength further, but maybe make it optional. Like the reason why I'm saying paragon levels. So in, in Diablo, um, once you reach max level, you get these things called paragon. And they're basically just like stat points. can respect whenever you feel like it. Right. So you can, in theory, shut them all off. So I think for the purist players who want to go through insane mode and feel how difficult it was and just grind out the 10 times health on every single enemy. Those people can still do that. I think it would be nice to be able to become like completely broken. ⁓ this game doesn't have that completely broken state the way that some other games might. Yeah. I mean, I could definitely see that with like insane mode. Cause I feel like, ⁓ obviously if you had like kinda max stats in the beginning of insane mode, you know, that'd probably pretty easy, but like as soon as you start getting like near the end of the game, those stats are not going to matter near as much. Enemies do just start to, to show you with like max max armor. Yeah. Paragon would have been cool. ⁓ but the thing with that is like, I feel like. I mean, I guess like they could have dumbed it down in this game where it just give you more health or more damage or more magic or whatnot. think the paragon having the ability to shut it off is nice. So that way they're not boxing out those players that like that kind of thing. I just think it would be nice sometimes to, know, if you want to make that super strong character, even on insane mode, you can still do it. I don't understand why like a lot of games don't like really do that. I feel like that's a really fun gameplay loop where you can get your character stupidly strong. Like that's actually like, you know, Like for people that that's a fun gameplay loop that like just being like stupid overpowered because like really quick like say Morrowind for example, I know it's an old game, but like you start off like incredibly weak in the beginning, but you can get to a point where like your God himself, like you just you can fly. You can like cast like nukes for spells and stuff. And it and it's so fun because it's like you get to cause Cause you remember back then it's like, I was just like this lowly peasant and now I'm a God. And it's just like getting from there to then it's just such a good feeling and more games need to do that. level ups definitely keep you hooked. You heard it here first folks. Dan has a God complex. So, I mean, I don't know if there's more we want to talk about with this game. There's not that much meat on the bone at its core, but it's a very fun time. it's like the perfect. I don't drink, but it's like the perfect drinking game. You just go and you drink with your friends and beat up castles and stuff. It seems like a great time. Something to beat. Take a shot every time you die and get revived. It's really no nonsense, right? Like it's not packed with a lot of filler, at least in the initial play through. So you pick your character and you go and you're suddenly all together crashing castles. There's plenty of nonsense. But there's no like, hold on a minute. Let me tool around with my inventory and let me respec all of that. It's not ⁓ like your whole entire first session of D &D is building the character. Like, okay, what D &D do I follow? What's my backstory? What traits am I taking? My feats? You gotta roll my stats. I gotta do all my points. It's not that. It's just... Select your character beat the shit out everything you say. Yeah. ⁓ it's good. Before we get over to the host review, I do just want to talk a little bit about my experience building a character. like how this works is, ⁓ the menu is half built into the game itself until you get to the point where you browse the folder for the template. Then it's going to like take over your file explorer and make that pop up. And then you get to open the JPEG, which is the template for the Knight character. And then, ⁓ you can open it into any kind of video, ⁓ any, any kind of software that would let you edit the PNG file, which basically anything, right. And then you can either like paste images over the different sprites. think there's like seven heads and like five bodies and a sword and a shield. And that's kind of like the minimum you have to do to have a seat at the table. But then there's also like the beefy sprites for when your guys eat a sandwich and they get giant. ⁓ so you can edit those, ⁓ to, to complete your character. can edit the profile pic and the selection pic for the character. And like, I did that and it took me a while. It probably took me like, and granted I'm not that good. Like my skills extend to like the GIMP photo editor and that's like it, but, ⁓ it's like, It probably took me like a good hour and a half or so with experimenting to get the character that I did. And like, was able to go back and iterate on him. So I made zero from Mega Man X and at first I did, he didn't have shoulder pads, but like I went back and I like shrank his head a little bit and moved it up so could see more of his body. And I put shoulder pads on him that moved with him and stuff like that. So it's kind of neat. Like anytime the inspiration strikes you, you can make like. little tweaks or improvements to your character. And you can even make custom weapons. So like I had him wielding the Z saber and the Z saber doesn't have any stats, but it's like a paint overlay for any weapon. So if I go pick up another weapon, ⁓ I can go back to the blacksmith and paint it over to look like the Z saber if I like that weapon. So it looks like zero is always wielding a Z saber, matter what the weapon actually is. So I thought that was pretty neat. Yeah, it was a good addition for sure. And, and like Dan said, there's just like, I don't know, there's an infinite number of ones that you can go just download if you're not that creative or don't have that kind of patience. But how cool is it that you can just make your own individual Castle Crasher? Like I've seen some people just make photos of themselves. Yeah, I've seen that too. Yeah, if you think of a character, it's probably in Castle Crasher's already made. Yeah, now it is. I don't know, it's just so neat. ⁓ Very, very cool DLC. And it also came with a facelift graphically for the whole game. Not that it needed it, but you know, like you can now play the fresh version and it's just got like sprites that move around a little bit better and just cleaned up visuals as opposed to its 2008 counterpart. So you get a lot of bang for your buck. think the, I think this expansion was only like 299 or something like that. You know, how much fun can you have for $3 these days? Yeah, I know. Right. Pretty good amount, I guess. All right, so you guys ready to get into the host review? Yeah, let's get in there. All right, let's do it. going to get our plugs in. if you like hearing us three dads ⁓ up late at night talking about video games, and if they're worth your time, especially if you're a dad or a mom out there trying to get your gaming addiction in while being a functional adult, then consider subscribing to us on the channel that you find podcasts or even on YouTube. We're on YouTube. Dan puts a lot of effort into the visual aspects of this show. So check that out. Check us out on the Cable Club podcast or just the cableclub.com. ⁓ ⁓ And we also have merch you can find some merch at our store that you can reach from that website It's got our cool logo on it cool sprite from JJ squawkers last year the cable club league and ⁓ You if you're so inclined you can join the discord and pal around with us Every couple of weeks as we play a new game and we play them on our gaming couches So check us out on the socials and stuff Come hang out be friends We don't bite Not much when I play cast. All right. So I'm going to kick this over to Steve because Steve hosts this portion of the show better than I do. So this is our host review portion where we're going to review the game in five different categories. have presentation, gameplay, pacing, replayability, and, or just playability. And then we have the choice specs, which is. something maybe unique to you and something that you think is worthy of scoring the game on. So who would like to kick it off for presentation? think the game, like the yard style visually looks absolutely stunning. like looks absolutely stunning. Dude, it looks so clean. Okay. No, does. I actually think like the visuals in this game look great. Like it's everything. I don't know what it is, but like The graphics just look super clear. I don't know if that, if you guys get that, but like I just, it's just like everything's so nice and crisp. ⁓ I just like how they munchkinize everything. Yeah. Without, without fail, no matter what it is, whether it's a barbarian, a black knight or an, and ice gmo or the, or the main bad guy of the whole game, they're all munchkinized into the same. castle crashers frame. Yeah. Yeah. Or about like that, ⁓ that intro music as soon as you fire the game up. ⁓ my god. It does have a few banger tracks, yeah. Yeah, no, like the intro music, in my opinion, is the best in the whole game. Yeah, same, I love it. It's so good. Gets me excited to play Castle Crashers. Yeah. Yeah, I know, it's good fun. I think the game looks super crisp. The graphics I mean, it's got the charm, right? It's like the Flash charm from the 2000s. And you know, it just ages well like cell shading. it's like, doesn't get worse. Like it just looks good forever. Exactly. Ages beautifully. I think at the time this came out, this type of animation was a dime a dozen and now it's something unique and sort of a period piece. And the fact that it's lasted this long and still getting updates is like, yeah, really wild. I feel like that update was so out of left field, but like we'll take it. The pink knight ⁓ update wasn't that long ago. ⁓ it wasn't lumped in with the, ⁓ with the fresh. ⁓ I don't. Okay. Yeah. I don't know. Like I think for me, this is a five. Like I just, I think everything about the game, like visually looks great. Like the music's there's like a ton of music that are all bangers. they're just this. Like visually, like, I don't know. I can't really hate on this game. So yeah, presentation wise for me, I also want to give it a five. Like. It does the comedy so well. doesn't need to speak to tell a story. You know, it, the visuals look good and the audio is great. ⁓ you get nice thwacking sounds when you hit things and different noises for different combos and all the magic has different sound effects and visuals. And I think they did a great job. Presentation wise, it's all spot on. that's a five for you too, Steve. Yeah. I said that in the beginning. You weren't listening. If, if, if this were out of 10, I'd probably give it a nine for this one. ⁓ thing, is that sometimes it's hard to tell the plane that, that, that you're on, moving. No, that's a beat them up problem. is not all of them. This one, this one, can be pretty bad, but honestly, it's not enough to push it down. I, I, I'm actually going to give this a five too, just because of, it just works so well for what it is. Yeah. All right. guess my problem is more of a gameplay one anyway, take it out on them here. All right. Next category is gameplay. So. Yeah. How does it feel and do you have fun playing it? You can put me down as a four for this one, for what I just mentioned, but also that I think the late game of this is not super satisfying. Like, I don't think Insane Mode is a very satisfying post-game experience. It just ends up being a time sink. Yeah. I mean, I don't really have like crazy expensive knowledge when it comes to beat-em-ups. I don't know. what there is in other beat ⁓ up for post game. Like for example, ⁓ what does Streets of Rage 4 have? anything. Streets of Rage 4 has harder modes, which make enemies hit harder and have more HP, but also they are faster or different in different parts of the stages. So I like difficulty increases like that. Yeah. Okay. They do hit harder on insane mode and they do. ⁓ They, they do have more HP on insane mode. just think they way overdid it in castle crashers as like a new game plus. Cause once that 10 times HP on the barbarian level is not that bad. But once you get to levels like full moon, like Steve and I were spending like a half an hour on a single level sometimes when we were beating. It's just like enemies just don't die. You're just beating on them and you never get a damage upgrade after you've maxed out attack. And it's just, it's a, it's a, it's a problem. That's why it's 10 times the XP because it's 10 times HP Yes, yeah, I mean The boss like the ice boss your first run through has like 5,000 HP and then at at the at the end of the game on insane mode like normal enemies have like 8,000 HP Yeah, geez. Yeah, like it's it's monumental That's when that's when power is the most important step Even with max power, don't like how hard are you hitting if things have like 8,000 HP? And famously, they know that's disgusting. They nerfed the the the Ice King boss on insane mode because he had a staggering 50,000 HP previously on the on the insane mode and just his fight is not fun and nobody liked doing it for 10 times the HP. Yeah, that's a little outrageous. He just teleports around and makes all the icicles rain on you. It's just like, yeah. I'm probably in the same boat. mean, it is a lot of fun, ⁓ but it can feel samey a fair amount of time. So I'm going to also give it a four on the gameplay. Yeah. Four for me as well. Like I don't think gameplay wise, like ⁓ just having different magic is enough. to like differentiate like every night. I wish there was a little more that you could do with them. But like everything else is solid. Like, you know, I love the juggling. The spells that they do get are nice and all that. And the boss fights are fun. But yeah, I'll give it a four. our next category is pacing. And I guess I'll start on pacing. I think the pacing in this game is pretty good. They throw a lot of things in it to make you not feel like you're doing the same thing. But at the end of the day, you kind of are. So definitely are it like, mean, like the jokes that they throw in and you know, the bosses all have different kinds of intros and things like that. But I think it's probably the weakest out of all of the categories we rate this game. I think pacing is probably the weakest. Yeah, probably. And I was going to give a three. So You look like you have something to say, Don. I'm going to give it a five. Well, let's hear it. I don't know. mean, it gives you what you expect, at least on a first time play through. How many times do you have to jump and hit something? I never feel like that's a, that's a problem. That's like saying that's because you love beat em ups. when you play final fantasy like, or fire emblem or anything, you know, like all games have their same in this elm. Yes, but Final Fantasy and Fire Emblem have dialogue to consume. Yeah, but you don't need dialogue to tell the story. You just said it. like, this game does enough with like stage hazards and different biomes and different enemy behaviors and different boss mechanics. And they do a lot to try to mix up that fact. And even your characters' move kits are pretty deep. It's a beat-em-up and pacing for me on those just isn't the greatest. Yeah. I mean, that's, that's, I mean, that's, that's your score and this is mine. Like, know I just, they just, they just didn't, you know, I don't feel like they, they sold you anything that they, that you didn't ask for, you know, if you, you. right now we're kind of battling for Dan's soul. So I'm going to meet you guys in the middle with a, you're, you're such a, you're a wimp. No, I like, don't really play a lot of beat them ups too, but like for, you know, the beat them ups I had played, this is definitely like a top tier of that genre. Like I had, I had a lot of fun playing with you guys. I do agree with this statement. Yeah. Like I had a lot of fun, like especially like the, I feel like the revive thing, like I don't really see that a lot in beat them ups, but I feel like that, that is so like, that is awesome. Like the fact that like, you can just save a whole run, like by not wiping by like, you know, saving your teammates is just great. then like, but it's like just deep enough pacing wise to make you want to keep playing with like all the level ups and the, and the item finds and stuff like that. But it's not so deep that you sit there watching your friend try to spec themselves out before you get back in the game. Yeah. But like, if you're like, ⁓ I'm building magic and your friends like, Oh, I'm building speed. Like your characters are going to feel different. And like, there's like a certain addictive elements being like, Oh, I'm going to see if I can outpace him with, with magic or speed. Right. And you're kind of like battling that neck and neck, you know, I don't know. There's just like a whole thing. It's just perfect. really like it. And like I said, I can't stress enough about the reviving too, where it's like, especially on a boss fight, like where like one of your teammates dies and now it's like the teammate that dies has to sit there and watch. You're, you know, your teammates, not in this game. can revive your teammates. So you're always on that catfish boss. do, but you can, you know, you're, just sitting there yelling at your teammate to revive you instead of sitting there quietly waiting and waiting for them to die. know, it's just good, but you know, it doesn't feel bad to die in like, just not being able to play. There's always a chance for you to get up and, know, be back in the fray, which I, just, I don't know. It's good. I really like. You know, this type of beat them up. Yeah, me too. It's great. Well, are you actually giving it ⁓ a four? I'm going to stay a four. know, like I'm with Steve. Like I don't, don't really play beat them up. So they're not my favorite genre, but like, but for what this game is definitely top tier for sure. Alrighty. Don, you want to start on playability. Is this game playable? is very playable. It's very fun in 2026, just got an update in 2025 and you can even enjoy it with brandy new crisp clear graphics that don't change the gameplay whatsoever. And if you don't like that, you can go back to the 2008 graphics if you're crotchety and it's all natively built in. It's cheap. It's a good time. It's multiplayer. It's single player. Very highly playable, recommendable in 2026. It's a five. How could it not be? Dan. Yeah, I think I was bouncing between a four and a five myself, but yeah, I think I'm going to give it a five as well. There's just so much going on in this game where it's like, there's so many different characters you can play. And then with the DLC that just came out last year, like there's so much stuff you can do with that. You know, it's like you have all these characters with different abilities that you can customize. Like there's just so much you can do in this game. Like If you really wanted to, you could probably sink like, you know, 80 hours into this game of like, if you really wanted just to like mess around with every character, explore all the different modes. I didn't even explore all the modes. There's like an arena mode. There was like another mode that I saw that I didn't even play. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's a PVP mode, which is PVP mode. Yeah. There was a game mode too, that I saw that I went into like, yeah. I mean, I could see if someone who really loved this game could probably easily sink 80 plus hours into this. There's just a lot of stuff to do. lot of characters, a lot of spells, all the weapons to collect. It's a deep modding community too for super hard levels and stuff like that also. I give Playability a five too because it like, I don't know, it's just a good fun. You can play four players and you can carry your characters over. like, you know, My characters level up separately and I can play with Dan at any point and my character will level up and then I can go play with Don my care of same character will level up and then I can bring him in a group of different friends even then still have my character and You know it up to four players at a time like I mean, you're just gonna have fun it's like playing smash the replayability just to log on and Hit things is just fun. The castle crashes for smash for sure. I know yeah Why isn't this a thing already? choice specs category. Here's where I'm going to be a little bit tough on it. Oh, to Steve's point, it's a little bit samey sometimes due to the beat them up nature, but also I think you're actively killing brain cells to play Castle Crashers a little bit now in 2026. Like there's nothing in this game that's going to be groundbreaking. That's going to show you anything that's like super amazing or life changing, you know, except the friends you make along the way. maybe this is like a three for me. I got to give it a few bonus points for being able to literally very easily design your own character for whatever you want it to be. So I'm definitely going to give it some bonus points there, but I don't think this game is super deep enough or unique enough to give it like a super high score and choice specs. Yeah, I was going to say the same thing. I was actually kind of mentioned like the character creation to myself. ⁓ I think I'm going to give it a three as well. Like it for like the genre of the beat them up. It's not doing anything crazy, but like I said, it's a very solid top tier choice and it does it well. But like I said, it's not like inventing anything really. It's just like a beat them up. That's really good. So I give it a three. righty. And that means I'm the last person to score on choice specs. I am going to give it a four. Just for the humor. ⁓ It's funny, man. we have played this game multiple times and we're still finding ourselves laughing. Yeah. Yeah. So like, you know, if you... How many games do we play, honestly, that make us laugh a lot? Not that many. Like, we have inside jokes that make us laugh at games. But a game that actively makes me laugh because I had forgotten something that happens and it is hilarious. This game is... ⁓ is quite a gem for that. Yeah. For sure. Yeah. That was a good, good answer for that. Good answer. All right. So it's tallying up the final scores here. Let's see what we get. Oh, I gave it a little higher than, than you guys. I'm 22 out of, out of 25. So that's what? 64? What did I get? mean, I, thought I rated this pretty high myself. Right. That gives. Castle Crashers, a 64 out of 75 possible points in our, on our rating scales that we are rating this a solid 85%. That's good. Definitely deserve that stack up to the actual reviews. I feel like we might be a little low. Honestly, if we're going with like, uh, reviews from other sources, those give out nineties and 99s and a hundred. easy now. Yeah. the wild perfect game 10 out of 10, 10 out of 10, 10 out 10. It's not. It's good. It's good, but not that good. Yeah. I definitely would recommend Castle Crashers to anybody who will listen. So if you haven't played it, get out there. That being said, we're going to set it aside at least for now. I think it'll be back sometime in our life for sure. And we are going to spin the wheel for our last game of the cozy winter backlog for 2026. Go. Hey boys, what's it gonna be? G Kingdom Hearts We had a couple people actually submit that one, right? Yeah. Yeah, I think that one is on there a couple times. So you gotta be honest. That's a backlog one for me. Because I really don't. Yeah, you've never played it. It's so good. Hang on just a moment. I know it was like really popular in our high school. We had nicknames for a couple people. I remember Sora and Riku. Remember those days? Where did Steve go? We have an episode here to finish. My copy's right here. I got 1.5 and 2.5 remakes on the PS3. Oh yeah? Yep. Ready to go. I actually played this not that long ago. This, yeah, I have a huge chip on my shoulder about this game, so I... Do you? Yep. Yep. I feel like we'll talk about it in two weeks, so come and join us in two weeks when we talk about Kingdom Hearts. But before we go, I'd like to say that our theme music is done by Cubby. Go check him out on his band camp, See Whore Streams. And this show is edited and produced by us three with three talented guys we are. And I'd like to thank our listeners and of course like to thank especially the folks that hang out with us on Discord every week. So thank you guys for always hanging around and sticking with us through all this. It's been, it's been a lot of fun. So yeah, for now, game over fellas. Game over. Game over.