Our 8-bit Lord, who art in the digital realm, hallowed be thy game—Join us for a conversation about the gaming sins we've committed since our last Controller Confession.
Our 8-bit Lord, who art in the digital realm, hallowed be thy game—Join us for a conversation about the gaming sins we've committed since our last Controller Confession.
In this episode, we head into the confessional booth and ask the 8-bit Lord to forgive us for our rage quits and deliver us from glitches. One of us finally admits our love for Techtonica, and another confesses to spreading ourselves too thin by playing too many games. We also chat about inverted vs. non-inverted controls and 2-D platform games and get side-tracked by news from Microsoft. The last of us doesn't think Skull and Bones is a game worth $70 and flexes their Yakuza street cred all over your face—forever and ever, respawn after respawn. Amen.
Here's the full transcript for this episode.
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The music you hear on the podcast is by ELFL, Lexica, Arvid Svenungsson, and Christian Nanzell.
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00:00:00
[Alienated by ELFL plays in background]
Willie: I don't know if I've mentioned this on here before. It's like kind of a two parter thing. And I don't know about both of y'all, actually. I, I think I know. So I play, uh, I play inverted on games when I'm using a controller.
Joseph: Oh yeah.
Willie: And you don't, right, Joey?
Joseph: I don't. I did at one point, back in the day I did, but I have not for a long time.
Willie: And Taylor, you do play inverted, right?
Taylor: Yeah, it's the only way I can play, and I, and I find that that actually goes over to when I choose the direction that my mouse scrolls on my Mac.
Joseph: Oh yeah. Sure, sure.
Taylor: Or a trackpad, same way.
Willie: Interesting.
Taylor: Yeah, and my girlfriend can't stand it. She has to have it where if you're pushing up, it goes up and down...
Willie: Yeah, yeah.
Taylor: Which also makes so much sense.
Joseph: Oh, dude.
Taylor: I don't know why I have to have it that way, but.
Joseph: I just checked my magic mouse and it's inverted.
Taylor: Yeah, see. It's like different ways that your brain interprets and thinks that that is right.
Willie: See, that's the, that's the thing. Like, I can't, I flip between those two things, right? Like if I'm using a mouse, I can't invert my mouse, that just doesn't work for me.
[Alienated by ELFL fades out]
[Intro theme plays - Tiger Tracks by Lexica]
00:01:20
Joseph: What is up? Welcome to Berries and Blades. Thanks for tuning in for a casual conversation about video games. My name is Joseph and I'm here with my friends, Willie and Taylor, and we're just three guys wondering if Skull and Bones is worth buying, but I digress. So what's up with y'all?
Taylor: Not a lot, man. Just chilling, enjoying a beautiful morning and, uh, also contemplating if Skull and Bones is worth buying. I can't answer that question yet. I'm actually hoping to hear a little bit more about it or see some more about it before I can make some sort of educated decision, some informed decision for whether or not I should pick that game up. Part of me hopes it's just gonna be a Game Pass game, but I guess, is it Ubisoft?
Joseph: Yeah, Ubisoft.
Taylor: Okay, so probably not.
Joseph: Yeah, pretty sure the price tag is 70 bucks.
Taylor: Woo.
Joseph: And a lot of people were basically saying it's not worth that entry price.
Taylor: I would probably agree with them because I think my biggest hold back on that game is that the movement and everything, they went a little more like the Sea of Thieves instead of the, the intricate movement like they had in Assassin's Creed.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: So you can't get off your ship and go assassinate people and live out some big, crazy story. Or if you do, it's not in a, in a way of like shooting and stabbing and action. It doesn't seem so I would agree with people. Maybe 40 bucks would be a better entry point for me if I were even considering it.
Joseph: We want to play it. Meg and I want to play it because we had fun playing it.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: But if we had to buy it twice at 70 bucks, that's fucking brutal.
Taylor: Yeah, that's true. And so you guys, well, y'all shouldn't have to buy anything twice. Or do you not have two boxes to play on?
Joseph: Yeah, well, we do have an Xbox One.
Taylor: Well, you can do the home xbox thing, right Willie? We did that for a while, I think where you... one person makes theirs the home Xbox and then you can...
Willie: Yeah, I think if you had two Xboxes, you still could, but like, uh, that game's not on-
Joseph: One.
Willie: - the One.
Taylor: Oh, gotcha.
Willie: It's only on Series, so I think you'd have to have two Series to do it. And I assume that still works, but I'm not sure. They started to-
Joseph: Crack down on some shit?
Willie: -they started to crack down on stuff when they made the family... they tried out the Family Pass or whatever.
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: But I think the home Xbox thing would still work, if you had two of the same.
Taylor: Yeah, that's what Rebecca and I do.
Joseph: What happened to that family thing, that family show they were testing?
Willie: They tried it out and then they canceled it after like three months of testing it or something here in the States. And I don't know if it actually ever started again. I never looked back into it.
Taylor: Huh.
Joseph: Mm-hmm. Damn.
Taylor: I know we talked about it. We talked about doing that at some point, especially now with the way the economy is at this present moment. I feel like if you present an option like that, like a path of least resistance financially, people are going to take it and try to take advantage of it as much as they can. So I wonder if that maybe it resulted in too much, too many losses of single memberships or something like that. And they just ended up nixing it or if there was just not a lot of interest.
Joseph: I bet it did have to do with them losing revenue.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: Willie, you mentioned to me recently, like all the sharing, Game Pass sharing stuff or kind of like sharing originally exclusive titles because of revenue reasons and stuff like that. So I wouldn't be surprised at all if it's somehow connected to what they feel like they might lose or have to give up for that type of program.
Willie: So while we're looking at this, I found like a quick quote, and I don't, I don't know how true this fucking is, but it's from purexbox. com. I've never seen this website. [Taylor laughs] Who knows if AI is writing this shit.
Taylor: Yeah, that sounds...
Willie: But the beginning of December, there was an update that someone said that Phil Spencer had said something like, uh, this is a quote, the team just needs to come up with a quote value proposition for creators and for players that makes it work for both parties. So kind of, yeah, in line with what you're saying, that they're just trying to figure out how the fuck to make money off of doing something like that.
Taylor: If I'm remembering correctly this week, literally this week is supposed to be a big announcement from them.
Willie: Oh shit, there is. I forgot about that.
Taylor: They're supposed to be talking about the next evolution of their business or something.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Because people have been speculating they're gonna go multi platform or something like that.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Like publish multi platform.
Joseph: What you said Willie is connected to all of this, right?
Willie: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Joseph: Like were there any details about it?
Willie: I don't have any real details, but people are speculating what Taylor just said, that a lot of their Xbox titles will go, be released to be on multi platforms, PlayStation to be specific. So like, Starfield, which is an Xbox exclusive right now, and Indiana Jones, which is going to be an Xbox exclusive, won't be an exclusive anymore, and would also be on PlayStation, which makes sense if they're just like trying to make more money, you know?
Having their games on more consoles available to more people-
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: -because they probably do lose a lot of money on... like they make, they have a locked in amount for, you know, what people getting Xbox Game Passes, but like, none of those people are buying the games. They're just paying the, you know, whatever per month.
Taylor: Yep.
Willie: So if they can get instantly more customers from having PlayStation releases too. The other big sort of wild speculation that was out there a long time ago, which could be tied to all this, is that someone was talking about them trying to make the Game Pass available on PlayStation as well. That was the other big thing, and I like... I don't even know what that looks like.
Joseph: That sounds huge.
Taylor: They want to put it everywhere. I want to say Phil Spencer has said that or things like that, where-
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: -they want it everywhere. Like they want it as built in as Roku or something into TVs.
Willie: Yeah, yeah. Exactly.
Taylor: And that makes sense from where they're at right now, because they're losing the console war. Like if you were just considering it a one to one war, well they're losing out to PlayStation and Nintendo. So it makes sense that they would probably want to do a pivot like that or start putting Game Pass everywhere they possibly can. And Apple just made that easier if I'm not mistaken. Like in the last couple weeks they made a change where now you can put multiple games on the same app.
Like that was the reason that Game Pass wasn't working and services like that, was because through the Apple rules and terms, you had to each individual game had to be its own app. You couldn't just have them all available through one app like Game Pass.
Willie: That's interesting.
Taylor: Yeah. And I think the EU stuff just basically made them or it was part of it. Uh, resulted in them making it now where you can collaborate, like you can have a collective of different games under one app.
Willie: That's super interesting, because that's what I was going to say. My piece of speculation would be that they do something tied to everything you just said. I think there is an Xbox app on Samsung TVs already, I think. I think it's Samsung-
Taylor: Something like that.
Willie: -that you can, uh, you can just stream games from. Maybe it's coming to more TVs, which would be pretty sick.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: Yeah, it would.
Willie: I mean, that would be huge as far as like big announcements go. They're just like, oh, there's just an app you can download. If you've got the Game Pass-
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: -all you got to do is put this app on your TV and you're good to go.
Taylor: I think the one concern would be that right now from what... I try to log into it and play a streaming game like once every two or three weeks and every time I get on, there's at least a five minute wait to even join up on it.
Willie: Mm.
Taylor: So I wonder if, if they were going to do that, they would, it would have to also be parallel with like, we're also spinning up a shit ton of new GPUs out there, servers out there. 'Cause it sounds like they're having a lot of trouble. Like a lot of complaints have been that it's taken 10 minutes or more even to get in there. And so that becomes problematic.
Joseph: Maybe their big announcement is a fucking TV, the Microsoft game television. And it's like, you don't even need a console anymore. You just plug a controller, not even plug it in, but just connect it wirelessly to a fucking TV. And then it's all fucking built in.
Taylor: That would be crazy.
Willie: What's their, uh, clever title for their TV?
Joseph: Oh, Xbox Series TV.
Taylor: No, no. [Joseph and Taylor laugh] XTV. I'm going with XTV-
Joseph: XTV?
Taylor: -if that doesn't already exist. Yeah.
Willie: XTV Series One. That's what it is.
Joseph: Yeah, yeah. That's pretty good.
Taylor: [chuckles] XTV Series One or S.
Joseph: That kind of sounds too close to Twitter now. XTV.
Taylor: Oh, right. And nobody wants to touch that with a 10 foot pole, uh, from a business standpoint.
Joseph: Yeah. I wonder if that would push them in another direction, but yeah. What'd you say? Xbox uh, Xbox TV Series One.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: That's pretty good. [Taylor and Willie laugh] I wouldn't be surprised.
Taylor: 360, somewhere in there. And it comes with Microsoft 360 as well. Fully AI powered.
00:09:51
Willie: I'll bring it back to Skull and Bones for a second cause I played a little bit of that demo. Um, I didn't get to play it as much as I wanted to, cause I was hoping to play with y'all and then no one said anything.
So we didn't actually get to play together. Uh, from what I played and what I watched, I saw other people describe it this way too, and it kind of makes sense to me that it feels like a first person shooter, but you're a boat instead of a person. In a normal first person shooter, you run around shooting your gun and have special powers or abilities that you activate with some other button, right?
You can crouch or you can like, you know, go prone, I guess. And it feels like in that game, you're just a, you're just a boat, you're a ship.
And you've [Taylor chuckles] got your cannons you can fire from first person view. You don't have to control it like Sea of Thieves, right? You don't have to run over to the cannon to like shoot the cannon.
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: You just click a button or you hit another button for your special ability to like throw your ropes at a, a boat that's coming near you or whatever to board-
Taylor: Oh, that's cool.
Willie: Or, you know... Instead of going prone, you just drop your sails, right? It's all just a click of a button and you do the thing. And it feels like a, it just feels like a first person shooter, except instead of a human being or a humanoid creature, you're just a boat.
Taylor: I guess the dependence of, or what would depend on me playing more or not would be how much is there to do out there? Because the combat was pretty fun rolling with your homies and their ships is interesting. I was, I was initially hoping that you would be on your friend's ship and you would be able to control some of the guns or something, but it makes sense the way that their ocean combat action is made, the way that engine works.
It does make sense for everybody to be on their own-
Joseph: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Taylor: -but I will be very curious to see what kind of game that is, if that's a 10 hour game or an infinite game, because I think back to Sea of Thieves and I think there was a decent amount of stuff to do, but a lot of it got very samey and an event would be, okay, here's a new sea monster.
And once you've seen that sea monster once or you battled it five times or whatever you have to do to beat it, what's beyond that?
00:11:57
Joseph: Alright, well, today we're continuing the miniseries we introduced in episode 9 called Controller Confessions.
[Last Chapter by Arvid Svenungsson begins to fade in]
The format of these episodes is still evolving, but they're basically a chance for us to follow up on things that we promised ourselves that we would do.
Or, give us time to admit any gaming sins we've committed since our last Controller Confession. But, before we start, please bow your heads and join me for the 8-bit Lord's Prayer.
Our 8-bit Lord, who art in the digital realm, Hallowed be thy game. Thy kingdom come, thy levels be won, On earth as they are in pixelated heaven.
Give us this day our daily loot, And forgive us our rage quits, as we forgive those who camp against us. Lead us not into lag, but deliver us from glitches. For thine is the power-up, the boss battle, and the high score, Forever and ever, respawn after respawn. Amen. Now Willie, come forward my child. Is there anything you need to be forgiven for since your last Controller Confession?
Willie: That definitely got me thinking about some stuff that's not on my list, actually. [Joseph and Willie laugh] I was thinking about, damn, have I ever truly like rage quitted a game to the point that I was just like, nah fuck this, and just never played it again?
Joseph: Mmm, that's permanent rage quit.
Willie: Mm-hmm. I don't think I have. I don't think there's anything that's been that serious. I definitely don't like rage quit in the middle of games, you know, just because I do, I will say THE FINALS had us at some points just quitting so we could join up with other teams and I don't feel good about that either.
Joseph: Mm.
Willie: Just leaving people out [Taylor chuckles] there to dry, that's always terrible.
[Last Chapter by Arvid Svenungsson begins to fade out]
Joseph: Oh shit, like in the middle of a match?
Willie: Yeah, in the middle of a match, just being like,
[Last Chapter by Arvid Svenungsson stops]
Oh no, my friends are here, I'm gonna go now.
Joseph: Oh yeah, I think I did that once too.
Willie: Yeah, it doesn't feel good. Just because it sucks when it happens to you. But I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go with something else. We, uh, [chuckles] we talked in the, in the Game of the Year episode, I think I was talking about, I've been watching people play Techtonica a lot.
And you were like, Oh, you should just, you should really just play Baldur's Gate-
Joseph: [laughs] Oh. Yeah, yeah*.*
Willie: *-*instead of fucking around like that. [Taylor chuckles] I have done both of those things, though. I have started playing Baldur's Gate, just so y'all know.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: I'm like, 38 hours or so into my playthrough, I think-
Taylor: Wow.
Willie: -I looked at the time on Steam. Like 38 hours. And I'm still in Act 1. I still got some stuff I want to do. I'm going to be in it for a while now. When we're done here today, probably going to go right back to it.
Joseph: That's quite a bit, man. That's a good chunk.
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: I've been on that game for sure. And I think eight hours of that probably is me dying and having to redo shit.
Joseph: Oh, damn.
Taylor: Huh.
Willie: 'Cause I, my game file says it's like right at 30 hours for the save time. So I feel like there's been multiple times where I guess that I've had to like start over or something. I've been trying not to like do any sort of save scumming or anything in that game. If I make a decision, I just go with it.
There have been some decisions where there have... not been decisions, but times where I just misclicked and like fucking set my own person on fire or some shit-
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: -where I'm like, okay, I'm going to reload that because this going into this fight, one person handicapped is not a good idea.
Joseph: Yeah, that's different though. [Willie chuckles] That's different.
Willie: [Taylor chuckles] Yeah, but tying that to Techtonica, I was looking at my play time for that and Barbara and I picked up that game like a month ago and started playing. We haven't played in a little bit, but I have played like 77 hours of that game with Barbara.
Joseph: You said y'all finish like the main kind of storyline, right?
Willie: Yeah, we finished everything that's available in the story we finished so far. And I have to say, man, I'm like eagerly awaiting the next update.
Joseph: Mm.
Willie: And as soon as that shit hits, I will be playing more Techtonica. I noticed that my overall play time is like 102 hours. Everything that we played together and shit I played on my own-
Joseph: Dang.
Willie: -plus what Barbara and I played.
Taylor: Wow.
Joseph: Shit.
Willie: So I think that, that all goes into my confession. I think I'm actually-
Joseph: You actually love Techblonica. [Joseph and Taylor laughing]
Willie: Yeah, I might actually really like that game. [chuckles]
Taylor: You are the gamer that they were looking for. That's interesting.
Joseph: Shit. Well, when you play 75 hours of anything, man, I think you're, you're now a fan.
Taylor: True.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: Well, shit. You got to like it enough to keep playing it that long.
Willie: It has its issues for sure. But I'm interested to see where it goes and I think as they make updates to it, it's getting to be a better automation game too.
Joseph: Mm.
Willie: The stuff that they're adding in the next one is a lot more tech that just makes it easier to do some of the things you're trying to do.
Joseph: Nice. Word. Well I guess that's the both, the best of both worlds if you're playing both of those games.
Willie: Yeah.
00:16:18
Joseph: I'll confess next. This first confession is definitely something I've been thinking about for the last couple weeks. I have spread myself way too thin with the number of games that I'm currently playing, which is interesting because it's the exact opposite of the way I usually play games.
I usually start something, play the whole fucking game, see it all the way through, and then start something new. If we did something like this, like more confession based in the first Controller Confessions episode, I probably would have said the opposite. I would have said, I want to break out of playing one game at a time and try to play multiple games at the same time.
Which I did, and this shit ain't working out. I'm in too... In the middle of way too many games and I don't even know what to fucking play. [Taylor chuckles] But here's a list of what I have going that I've been enjoying but I haven't finished. Cyberpunk 2077, somewhere like halfway through that. The Last of Us, maybe like 10 hours into that.
God of War, probably about 10 hours into that. Alan Wake 2, also 10 hours into that. Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, Sekiro, I'm pretty deep into Sekiro but I haven't played in like months. Cocoon, which I could probably finish that game in like fucking one hour if I just played it. Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty, somewhere in like the 50 percent range of that game, and then just camped out waiting, purchased, and just chilling is Sifu, which I haven't started but I was planning to get to that game after I finished Sekiro, but Sekiro's hard as fuck.
So it's not an easy game to finish and then I started playing other stuff, but I definitely feel like I'm stretched way too thin and, uh, need to start chipping away at this stuff, but I've been distracting myself with other other stuff and projects.
Taylor: That's about where I was last year. Same kind of stuff. I got real ambitious about multiple games and said I was going to buy them and that'll be the one I play. And sure enough. I drop off for a month or two and just forget all about it.
Joseph: You've rolled through games though, like it's way more of your style to jump into the newest thing on Game Pass. That's something I've never really done.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: So I like, I feel like I don't even, I don't have any fucking practice doing it.
Taylor: One that I looked at on Game Pass recently and downloaded and started was Wild Hearts. I think we saw something about that during the game awards or something-
Joseph: Hmm.
Taylor: -something that we watched trailers for.
Willie: That game is very similar to Monster Hunter, right?
Taylor: Yes.
Willie: That's the one I'm... you're thinking of.
Taylor: Yeah. It's like Monster Hunter meets samurai.
Willie: Yeah. I, I watched someone play that and really wanted to play that. And then I just never did for some reason.
Joseph: Oh.
Taylor: I totally forgot about it and then I guess I downloaded it whenever we saw the trailer for it because it did that early download option and then suddenly I had it on my box and clicked on it thinking what is this and why is it taking up 60 gigs and sure enough it was pretty cool.
Joseph: This is interesting because the typography on the game art looks just like uh, Monster Hunter.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: It feels a lot like it. It has that... that was actually why I stopped playing it for the moment was because I just didn't, if it was like Monster Hunter, is that what it's called? Yeah, that's, uh, that's such an investment.
You can't just kind of half ass it and get in there and play it for one hour and have a good time.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: You got to really dedicate some time to it and learn a ton about stuff. There's a bunch of reading, but it looks good.
Willie: What's the title of that game again?
Taylor: Wild Hearts.
Joseph: Wild Hearts.
Willie: Okay. Yeah.
Taylor: It's got a compelling intro story and all that and...
00:19:48
Joseph: Well, while we're here with you, Taylor, what do you, what do you have going on that, is of note.
Taylor: Well, whenever we mentioned Dead Cells, not long ago.
Joseph: Mmm.
Taylor: I ended up playing another 20 or 25 [chuckles] hours of that just to get back into it. And a lot has changed and that really had me interested. I don't even know how to access the Castlevania stuff, or I just basically hopped in and started checking out all the new enemies and everything.
Little bit of changes here and there and that is still a solid ass game. I really like it.
Joseph: I liked what I played.
Taylor: Did you enjoy checking it out? How long did you play it?
Joseph: Just the one night. It was probably an hour, hour and a half.
Taylor: Yeah, that's cool. They do a good job of keeping it fresh for every playthrough. Like you'll find different dungeons or rooms, things like that, that have different elements of story on different playthroughs. And all that stuff is randomized as well.
Joseph: It's definitely my type of game, for sure.
Taylor: I thought so. They do a good job of putting something like a hundred plus weapons in there, so there's-
Joseph: Oh, damn.
Taylor: Yeah, I might misspeak on that, but it seems like a ton whenever I look at my menagerie of jars, there's a ton of them. And then I think they added a new room that has even more.
Joseph: That's pretty cool because it's not the game format, the game type that I would expect like that much variety and weapons that you can use.
Taylor: I think that's where they blow people away. And the fact that the, the diversity in the weapons is so... there's such a big spectrum there-
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: -where some things are stabby. Some things, I mean, some weapons will straight up teleport you to other places. Some weapons might shoot out a giant black hole ball that just destroys and sucks things in. There's, yeah, there seems to be almost an infinite number of combinations that you can do with all that.
Joseph: Willie, you know that game, right? Have you played it?
Willie: No, I haven't. I haven't really played any of it.
Joseph: Yeah, it's pretty fun.
Taylor: It's really good.
Willie: I guess I had seen people play and then saw the like Castlevania announcement whenever that happened or I... like it was months after that I was like, oh shit. I didn't realize that existed. I was wanting to go back and play Castlevania of some sort, like I was considering like going to play Symphony of The Night or something 'cause I just...
Taylor: That's the most recent one, right? I was just about to bring that up.
Willie: That's what they remade in Dead Cells for sure. I'm pretty sure.
Taylor: Okay, okay. 'Cause I played a recent Castlevania, I want to say in the last year or two. There was like a newer one that came to the Game Pass. I don't know if it was actual Castlevania or just a Castlevania like. Yeah, Dead Cells, I don't usually get hooked on 2D side scrollers like that, but they just had too many options.
And they kept adding stuff. Every two months I would log in and there was, there was a ton of new content or new levels entirely, new bosses. It's just hard to deny when they're working that hard, putting that much content out on something. And there's probably half the weapons on there I don't even use or like to use because they're not my preferred play style.
But even then, the half that I do like or choose most of the time are fantastic. Good enough to keep me coming back and trying again, trying different combos. Did you have any fun combos when you did play? Do you remember any, any weapons or anything?
Joseph: No, I didn't even play long enough to realize that's how the game worked. And that there-
Taylor: Oh, okay.
Joseph: -were even like that many different weapon options. I didn't even play long enough to figure that out.
Taylor: Yeah. There's a ton. And then when you get your little skill upgrades along the way on a play through, you really have to put some thought into, at least eventually you have to put some thought into which color you're doing green, purple, or red.
Joseph: Mm.
Taylor: Those are the three colors, but it makes a big difference.
Joseph: Yeah. That's kind of cool.
Taylor: Yeah. It's, it's amazing. I would definitely like to watch you. You did a little bit of recording-
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: -last time you played it and that was great. I would like to see you play some more and see your take on it. At five or 10 hours in or something that ever, if it ever gets its hooks in there.
Joseph: Mm-hmm. Surprisingly, maybe unsurprisingly, but also I just talked through a big fucking list of games I haven't finished playing. One game I did finish playing was Metroid Dread and Dead Cells, Tales of Kenzara, Prince of Persia, playing all these like cool new 2D platform games makes me want to play Metroid Dread just because that game is fucking amazing.
Willie: I was gonna say, did you, did you go back and play it recently or are you just saying that was a game you liked?
Joseph: I haven't, I haven't played it recently.
Willie: When we talked about it before, I don't remember what I was doing. I think I was complaining about Nintendo graphics on my TV. [Joseph laughs] How they don't look good, you know?
Joseph: Oh, the way they scale up?
Willie: The way they scale up and then it looks like shit. I had been playing, I had started up Dread because of that and I didn't realize that there was like a boss rush in that game now.
Joseph: Oh shit.
Willie: I hadn't even played it since they added like a, a boss rush mode where you just like are competing against yourself and others with times to see how quickly you can go through all the bosses.
Joseph: Oh, wow. Yeah, that did not exist when I finished the game.
Willie: Yeah, me neither. And I was like, holy shit. I didn't even know they added this whole other, like this mode.
Joseph: Hmm.
Willie: There was some other challenges and stuff in there. But, um, I was curious about that, but like, there's no way I could go from not playing at all-
Joseph: Aw...yeah.
Willie: -to go back in to like play all the bosses. No fucking way.
Joseph: Yeah, you need a little bit of fucking ramp up time.
Willie: Yeah.
00:25:09
Joseph: Uh, what do you have next, Willie?
Willie: I don't know if I've mentioned this on here before. It's like kind of a two parter thing. And I don't know about both of y'all, actually. I, I think I know. So I play, uh, I play inverted on games when I'm using a controller.
Joseph: Oh yeah.
Willie: And you don't, right, Joey?
Joseph: I don't. I did at one point, back in the day I did, but I have not for a long time.
Willie: And Taylor, you do play inverted, right?
Taylor: Yeah, it's the only way I can play, and I, and I find that that actually goes over to when I choose the direction that my mouse scrolls on my Mac.
Joseph: Oh yeah. Sure, sure.
Taylor: Or a trackpad, same way.
Willie: Interesting.
Taylor: Yeah, and my girlfriend can't stand it. She has to have it where if you're pushing up, it goes up and down...
Willie: Yeah, yeah.
Taylor: Which also makes so much sense.
Joseph: Oh, dude.
Taylor: I don't know why I have to have it that way, but.
Joseph: I just checked my magic mouse and it's inverted.
Taylor: Yeah, see. It's like different ways that your brain interprets and thinks that that is right.
Willie: See, that's the, that's the thing. Like, I can't, I flip between those two things, right? Like if I'm using a mouse, I can't invert my mouse, that just doesn't work for me. Maybe I would be better, and maybe that ties into what I'm about to say, is that if I'm playing a first person shooter, I am shit on mouse and keyboard.
There are games I like playing on mouse and keyboard, but if I'm playing a first person shooter, I 100 percent prefer controller over mouse and keyboard. I guarantee you, my KDR is way better. If I'm playing on a controller against people who are playing on mouse and keyboard-
Joseph: Mm.
Willie: -I know that that's like convoluted to be like, I'm better than people who are playing on mouse and keyboard, but no, I am. Like, I can play way better.
I'm definitely going to be able to keep up with people who are higher skill level if I'm playing on a controller. But, um, I think the other part of that confession is that if I'm playing with a controller, I pretty much always play with my sensitivity down at like 30%.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: With a controller?
Willie: Yeah, with a controller.
Joseph: That's what I think is the biggest difference between playing with a controller and playing with mouse and keyboard is that the quickness and the sensitivity of like the, the left to right horizontal sensitivity.
Willie: Sure, I think so. I think there's some benefit to being able to do that, but I can't ever control that shit whenever I'm playing on a mouse.
Joseph: I know dude. It's insane.
Willie: It just doesn't work. There's a benefit to being able to turn around faster, for sure. But you should never put yourself in situations like that anyway, where you have to turn around like that. So I feel like, yeah, it's just, uh If I'm using a controller, I got to have the sensitivity down. And if there's settings to do like camera sensitivity versus aim sensitivity, even better.
I do prefer my camera sensitivity pretty low, but my aim sensitivity will stay around the same. And sometimes it goes lower if the game calls for it, right? I like dialing in if I'm like hitting a trigger to like scope in, I don't want it to be so slow that I can't like move to the person.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: But you should already be locked in if you're scoping in like you should already be like right on someone's head anyway and not need to move.
Joseph: Mm-hmm. Surprisingly in the last couple games including Skull and Bones and also Palworld, I increased the horizontal camera sensitivity in both of those games because it was just like moving a little too slow. Not that in either of those games you have, like, you really need the sensitivity, but there was something about it being a little slower as default that I had to speed it up a little bit.
But I normally don't do that. Like, I normally won't adjust the camera defaults. Like, it's only just until, like, recent that I've actually played around with some of those.
Taylor: I also find that both of those games are a little less like fine tune-y-
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: -you know what I mean? Like if you're playing a game that is a first person shooter or a third person, typically they have that dialed in pretty well.
Joseph: Yeah, like out of the gate.
Taylor: Yeah, exactly.
Joseph: Usually the most customizable too.
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: Since you said Palworld, I had to look up my play time on that because I've been playing that.
Taylor: Oh, yeah. Yeah, confess that shit.
Willie: I haven't played in weeks now, or like a week or so, but I looked at my play time and I've got a 69. 9 hours in on that.
Taylor: Nice. Never play again. [Willie chuckles] Never touch it again. I don't know if [Joseph chuckles] you guys saw, I put it in the chat. We have a breaking update.
Willie: Yeah, I saw that before and I just didn't [Taylor laughs] bring it up yet.
Taylor: It's a breaking news story in Xbox's evolution. I think we know what they're doing as a company and where they're moving forward to. It's floating controllers. [Willie chuckles]
Joseph: What the f...
Taylor: The world's [laughing] first floating game controller.
Joseph: Dude.
Willie: Is that the actual, um, trailer? Cause I saw the trailer drop a little while ago.
Taylor: Oh, I don't know. I don't know if there's, uh, a trailer for it.
Willie: Oh, there is. Yeah. Yeah. Here.
Taylor: I do want to see that. I see people touching on it, trying to kick it like they do these robots.
Willie: Here. Yeah. Let me send this. I have it open on my computer. It's been open for like 30 minutes now. [chuckles]
Joseph: This is f...this is a real thing.
Taylor: Yeah, sorry to interrupt. I just wanted, I had to see, I had to see that because we're so, we were just talking about, they're going to make an announcement today of where they're going and is this it? So this is the Flight Simulator Dune.
Joseph: Xbox and Microsoft Flight Simulator unveil Dune expansion and floating controller.
Taylor: I don't see the controller on here. I see the Dune expansion, but the floating controller is what I want.
Joseph: Oh, there's even like a new box too, like a skin for the, for the Xbox.
Willie: Are they just, uh, bullshitting about this controller and the way it's like floating in this picture?
Taylor: I do not know, but I need to know.
Willie: Talking shit about this marketing picture that's like the controller not sitting on the ground.
Taylor: It looks ridiculous. It almost looks like an April Fool's, uh, story.
Joseph: [chuckles] Yeah, it does. But I guess the base, I mean, I guess it's probably just magnetic in there-
Willie: Oh.
Taylor: Yeah, yeah. Totally.
Joseph: -is like... Something in that base. That's keeping it floating like that.
Willie: Is that what's going on? 'Cause they're actually touching it and stuff. So I guess it really is supposed to just be like that.
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: Weird.
Joseph: All the pictures I see are definitely over that sand looking base.
Willie: Yeah, yeah.
Joseph: The spice fields, I guess. That's pretty wild.
Taylor: That is wild, but yeah, that's not what they're... false alarm. That's not the big news.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: Right, right. I'm thinking the same thing, like, oh, this, this floating controller, right?
Taylor: That was the first thing that crossed my mind whenever I [laughing] saw it. It was, [Willie chuckles] hopefully this isn't. what their big announcement was going to be.
Joseph: Nah.
Taylor: No. They were going to announce that Halo show is great, baby.
Joseph: Willie, is there anything else you want to say about inverted versus not inverted?
Willie: No, no, no. I'm good. Just that inverted. It's definitely better because it's like...
Taylor: Yeah, inverted is yeah. [Willie chuckles] Anybody who doesn't play inverted is a sick freak.
Joseph: I'm a sick freak.
Taylor: Yeah. [laughs]
Willie: I mean, I guess because I grew up playing games like Rogue Squadron and other first person shooters like Descent, where you're in a flying vehicle, and I used a joystick to play, like a flight stick, to play those games.
Taylor: Yup.
Willie: I just got used to playing inverted.
Taylor: Yes, same here. That's probably where I get it from.
Joseph: If I were to jump into a game where it was like, there was no option to reverse that, I feel like I could probably get back into the swing of things, in a short amount of time, if I was really trying to, to get back into it and not just kind of like bail immediately or go straight to the controller settings.
Taylor: Yeah, that's what usually happens to me. If I ever try it another way. In some games and depending on when I'm playing, if it released at night and I'm playing, I may very well try for five minutes to play with it non inverted. And I always get upset and end up having [Joseph laughs] to change it. So, [laughs] it's stupid.
00:32:38
Joseph: Okay, my next confession is something that I've been thinking about, I think, since the Game Awards, maybe within, like, the last couple months, but I don't feel like I play enough non AAA games or enough indie games, and I fucking love a lot of indie games.
But I just don't play enough of them, so one thing I want to do a little differently this year is just play smaller titles. Or play more smaller titles, so that I'm not always playing, like, the best of the best. Just because there are some really great smaller games out there, like, uh Kena: Bridge of Spirits.
That's one that I fucking love, that's from a small studio. It's independent. Great game, I think Tales of Kenzera is gonna be another one of those. But yeah, it's just that. I think just playing some smaller games and playing more of those smaller games so that there's a little bit more variety in my gaming life.
Taylor: I feel that. I play nothing but AAA titles for the most part. I do play a little Goat Sim 3 [Joseph laughs] every once in a while.
Willie: I mean, you're always getting stuff on Game Pass, though, that I don't know if, you know, they're not what you might typically call an indie title, might not be what you think, but I feel like there's a lot of stuff on there that you wouldn't, you wouldn't necessarily find if it wasn't on Game Pass.
Taylor: Yeah, that's true.
Joseph: Taylor, you're playing something like every week that I've never fucking heard of.
00:33:54
Taylor: Yeah, man, I'm, I'm stuck on Yakuza once again, [Joseph and Taylor chuckle] that's, that's what I put my probably a hundred hours into over the past, I don't know, month or two months or so.
Joseph: Is that Game Pass game?
Taylor: Well, the Man with No Name, I believe it is Game Pass, but Infinite Wealth was, that one I had to purchase.
Joseph: Okay. Okay.
Taylor: Yakuza is one of the very, very, very few games that I would spend 70 on so, had to cash in my Microsoft points for using Bing every day. [laughs]
Joseph: Oh, snap.
Taylor: And it took off, it took off, I think, 20 bucks is what [Willie chuckles] I had saved up so...that was nice.
Joseph: That was like a billion Bing points. [Joseph and Willie laugh]
Taylor: Yeah, 20,000 or something, 24,000 I think was the total, so I've been saving those for a while. But it was well worth it. That game is incredible. I'm gonna play more of both of them, and I would like to beat at least The Man With No Name and then get quite a ways into Infinite Wealth, and then I will definitely talk about them on a, on a future podcast because they're incredible. And I want to say the, the original, what was it, Into the Dragon was the original Yakuza with Ichiban and that one got a 10 out of 10.
Quite a few people's reviews. That was what I looked at before I got it was, you know, is it still getting good reviews?
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: And that was just seems critically acclaimed. So I went ahead and pulled the trigger and had zero regrets so far. Like I'm walking around town with a crawfish on my shoulder. [Joseph laughs] That is my friend. [Willie laughs]
Joseph: Everything you've said-
Taylor: People keep...
Joseph: -everything you've [Taylor laughs] said about these games sounds right up your alley, man. Like the, the bizarreness.
Taylor: Oh man, it is exactly, it's as close as I've gotten to a game feeling like it came out of a chaos generator, [Joseph chuckles] like an RPG, that somebody was just like, I want everything to be as crazy as, and unhinged as you can possibly make it. To cover them I would want to have a ton of notes and things [chuckles] like that ready so that I can blow your mind with some of the details of what occurs.
Joseph: I love that I haven't seen much footage, so it just sounds ridiculous when you talk about, like, I don't know, baby summons and fucking crab pads and...
Taylor: That's man babies.
Joseph: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Taylor: Like they're fully grown [Willie chuckles] men in diapers.
Joseph: Crab pads. That sounds, that sounds weird. But I meant to say like crab shoulder pads, but crab pads, probably not the best combination.
Taylor: The summons, that's, that is one thing that I would, I could probably burn 20 minutes on is just talking about summons [Willie chuckles] from both of the games.
I'll have to just compile a list or maybe send you guys a video and you can watch through it before we talk about that. And that'd be a lot of fun. But yes, that's my main confession is I am burning a ton of time playing, playing both of these games.
Joseph: Oh, that's it. Yeah. I was about to ask you, if you had one final confession, but it's, it's that playing Yakuza.
Taylor: That's it.
Joseph: Back to it.
Taylor: Yeah, man. Yep. I basically am a Yakuza now.
Joseph: Oh yeah.
Taylor: If I ever meet someone in the Yakuza, I'll definitely have to represent.
Joseph: That'd be great. You're like, what are your credit? What are your street cred? [Taylor laughs] Look, man, I played this whole fucking series.
Taylor: Yeah, my level is heroic. What's yours, man? [laughs]
Joseph: That's a series slash franchise that you will probably play every single game in, right?
Taylor: Yes. Yeah. If they went back to super serious, I would have to have a real good reason. You know, it would have to be in VR or something to be compelling enough to play that. But anything that's any type of ridiculousness like they've done in these games with Kiryu and Ichiban, I'm in without a doubt.
Joseph: Nice. Yeah, I have fucking zero experience with that entire franchise.
Taylor: I recommend it, but I would recommend either Like A Dragon or probably Like A Dragon, but Infinite Wealth... any of them, that's the beauty of them is that I don't remember or know any story [Joseph laughs] from the last four of them that I've played.
And it does not matter. It does not matter. I still hop in. I have a great time. It's a ton of... because the main story is what stays pretty serious. And then the all of the side shit is absolutely bonkers. So it's a nice contrast of, okay, I'm going to play through some story, there's some serious life shit and real kind of gang territory war and stuff like that happening.
Also, I'm going to go over and talk to this guy about his new, you know, massager or something [Willie chuckles] that he's talking about.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: It's incredible and it's just well done. The cinematography that's done in all of it is bar none.
Willie: Yeah, that's a game I do want to play at some point and just haven't got around to because like Joey, my list of games is... list of games I've started and never finished is too long. At some point, need to start working through all of those things.
Taylor: Dude, it might be a good cleanser after Baldur's Gate.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: You know, because Baldur's Gate is kind of a different direction. I'm sure there's some silliness here and there in there, but this would be polar opposite, but also RPG.
Willie: Yeah, I'm definitely going to be playing Baldur's Gate for a while now, I think, and switching off. And I think, you know, we just need to make, I'd like for us to make some more time to, uh, play some co op shit. There's some things we need to check out together.
Taylor: Agreed.
Joseph: I'm down, I just don't fucking like Taylor. [chuckles]
Taylor: Yeah, that's my main issue too. Just don't like Taylor.
Joseph: Nah, we had a little bit of fun in Skull and Bones though.
Taylor: Yeah, we did. Yeah.
Joseph: Went straight into fucking battle. [Joseph and Taylor laugh]
Taylor: With, um, a ship that was 5 levels above us and boy did we pay for it.
Joseph: Yeah, because it let us ride into a fucking fleet of other level 10 ships.
Taylor: Yeah, we'll have to continue that someday, hopefully.
[Outro theme begins to fade in - Caribbean Arcade by Christian Nanzell]
Willie: Yeah, and I think, uh, until then, we'll, uh, see what kind of, uh, more confessions we rack up between now and the next one of these. Maybe the next one won't be so long, or maybe it'll be some more updates on all the things we did play. But, uh, I think that's it for today.
Appreciate y'all listening, hanging out with us. Hopefully be doing some more streaming soon, again.
Joseph: Mm.
Willie: I want to get back to that.
Joseph: That'd be awesome.
Taylor: Yeah. It'd be a lot of fun.
Joseph: But yeah, thanks everybody. God bless you.
[Outro theme continues - Caribbean Arcade by Christian Nanzell]
00:40:13
Joseph: Berries and Blades is an independent podcast created by Joseph Bullard, Willie Garza and Taylor Garratt. Thanks for tuning in, and consider subscribing if you enjoyed listening to this episode. You can also support us by telling your friends about the show, and we hope to see you in the next episode of Berries and Blades. Until then, thanks again.
[Outro theme fades out - Caribbean Arcade by Christian Nanzell]
Forever and ever. Respawn after respawn. Amen.
Taylor: There was a part of me that while you were saying that I was, I was going to end it with GAmen.
Joseph: Oh god. [all laughing]
Taylor: [laughing] But then I was like, wait a second. That also sounds like, that also sounds like something else.