Living up to your trashiest self, mantis shrimp, and a punk ass tax-collecting load shark. Join us for a conversation about a crabby "shucking" soulslike called Another Crab's Treasure.
Living up to your trashiest self, mantis shrimp, and a punk ass tax-collecting load shark. Join us for a conversation about a crabby "shucking" soulslike called Another Crab's Treasure.
In this episode, we explore the "cod damn" Sands Between with our trusty fork and face off against WAY too many crabs—including some not-so-clawsome snipers who just DON"T miss. As Kril, the hermit crab, you wear the trash around you as shells to withstand attacks and embark on an epic treasure hunt to buy back your repossessed shell. Surprisingly, this game has a lot going on—the combat is a little clumsy, but it's filled with original ideas and a unique and colorful take on a tried and true formula for soulslike games. In some aspects, this game is a complete "ship show," but we still think it's worth $30 if you don't have Game Pass. Give it a shot, at least, until the Shadow of the Erdtree comes out.
Here's the full transcript for this episode.
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00:00:00
[Alienated by ELFL plays in background]
Taylor: Well, and the AI is a little too smart for how [Joseph chuckles] buggy the game is. I, one thing that one death that I had that blew my fucking mind, it may seem simple to somebody who hasn't been playing games for 30 plus years, you know, but it was that I got stuck on a sponge and I was bouncing on the sponge.
And there was a crab, like one of the archer crabs down there, and he was like trying to hit me, trying to hit me, and he couldn't, so he walked up to the sponge, and he started bouncing on the sponge, and we were like passing each other, and he did his claw move, and fucking clawed me in mid air, and murdered me.
That was one of those moments that I thought, wow, I've never had anything like that ever happen to me in a game that I can think of. Especially a [Joseph chuckles] 3D like, you know, moving game like that, but just for the crab to come over, get on the same physics thing that I was on, and then murder me. Not just fall off the side or whatever it could have happened.
It blew my mind.
[Alienated by ELFL fades out]
[Intro theme plays - Tiger Tracks by Lexica]
Joseph: What's up everyone? Welcome to Berries and Blades. Thanks for tuning in for a casual conversation about video games. My name's Joseph and I'm here with my friends, Willie and Taylor. And we're just three guys wondering if Aubrey is gonna recover from Kenny's onslaught. But, I digress. What's up, y'all?
Taylor: I actually have never been a big Letterkenny fan. I know that the show exists, but I, um, I have never seen it, so no comment.
Willie: I don't even know what that is.
Joseph: I don't either.
Taylor: I don't either.
Willie: Uh, and the answer to your question is no, probably not. Probably not ever.
Joseph: Yeah, I don't think so. Maybe after years and years we'll forget about it. However, I think this is the start of the fall for Drake.
Taylor: Man.
Willie: I did see there was another record that got broken, which was that, uh, Not Like Us, like is the fastest rap song ever to surpass a hundred million streams on Spotify, I guess.
Taylor: Mm.
Willie: It breaks the record previously held by Drake's, uh...
Taylor: [chuckling] Oh, my gosh.
Willie: God... God's Plan.
Joseph: [laughs] Yeah, there's so many-
Taylor: Oh, ma...
Joseph: -there's so many [Taylor chuckles] small things happening like that, that are just like icing on, on the cake.
Taylor: I saw somebody asking on Twitter, um, when will the Boondocks version of this happen?
Joseph: Mm.
Taylor: And I immediately, I could basically see it in my head [laughs] already because-
[Willie chuckles]
Joseph: Nice.
Taylor: -it is perfect. They used to be so good at like portraying like current events, but without using the exact right people, sometimes they use the actual people, but miss that show.
Joseph: I would say from, from like a dissection of the music or them in general, battling against each other. I'd say Kendrick all fucking day. I think Drake is completely outclassed in a lot of different ways, but they also make different kinds of music.
Willie: Yeah. Yeah, that is interesting.
Joseph: One makes music I listen to and the other makes music I don't listen to. [chuckles]
Willie: [chuckles] I think in some cases I would, I would almost say it was closer than, than a lot of people say, but you can also never know if Drake is writing his own shit so I think it doesn't count either.
Joseph: Yeah. It's too hard to say.
Willie: Specifically, like the first track, I guess there was the main part of this when it first like really kicked off when he released Push Ups or whatever. Like that track if you look at the credits on that song he's not the only lyricist.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: So it's like does that really count if, if someone else is writing like your battle lyrics for you like that doesn't doesn't count, right?
Joseph: I mean it's not it's not a true battle. Like, it's like part of the reason I have issues with the way, just, the battle in general. Like, that's why I think Kendrick is just outclassing Drake, and that's one of the reasons.
The way he came to the battle, the way Drake came to the battle, I think he just got a fucking beatdown. Kendrick came out of it with a different mindset than Drake did, and I think when I consider it a battle of those two against each other, Kendrick wins that battle.
But it has really nothing to do with like their careers and most of the music they make. If I just like limit it to the battle itself, there's a very clear cut winner for me, and it's Kendrick because he just fucking showed up to wreck. And Drake's there playing games, and then trying to get serious after he's already been knocked down.
Taylor: Hmm.
Willie: It's interesting to see how much, uh, I feel like I've seen a lot of people just be completely split on it, so it's like, I don't, I don't know, I think ultimately it is gonna come down, like, It is a little bit of personal taste sort of thing, but also, I don't know. I think there is one that's just a better lyricist.
That's just true.
Joseph: Same.
Willie: That's like, it doesn't matter.
Joseph: Yeah.
Willie: Just will always be a better lyricist so...
Joseph: Yeah, that's kind of how I feel about it.
Taylor, do you, you know what we're talking about, right?
Taylor: Yep. Yep. Yeah. I've gleaned a lot of details about it from the internets.
Joseph: Word.
Taylor: Inadvertently. Yeah.
Joseph: Yeah.
Willie: That's the thing. It was just everywhere. It didn't matter.
Joseph: Like seriously, man.
Taylor: Yeah. R. I. P. to Drake's family. I assume that he's... didn't make it through all of this. So definitely shout outs and-
Joseph: He's limping along.
Taylor: -we're sorry. [chuckling] Yeah.
00:05:12
Joseph: Well, while we wait for the Elden Ring and Lies of P DLCs, we've been playing a new Shoals-like... I mean, a Shells-like. [Taylor laughs] Wait, a new Souls-like game called Shellden Ring.
I'm kidding.
Taylor: [quitely] Shellden Ring.
Joseph: [laughing] I'm kidding and lying. It's actually called Another Crab's Treasure.
Taylor: Mm-hmm.
Joseph: And it's a souls-like action-adventure game developed and published by an indie studio in Seattle called Agro Crab, which is an amazing fucking name, in my opinion.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: And Another Crab's Treasure. You play as Kril. It's also a sick ass name for a hermit crab.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: And the shell you call home gets repossessed by a loan shark because taxes. This sends Kril, who's armed with a fork, across the Sands Between on an epic adventure to retrieve their shell. I can't remember which one of y'all brought this game up after a previous recording, but I immediately wanted to try it out because you literally play as a hermit crab.
I definitely expected it to be a fun and colorful game with a low difficulty level, but this game has kind of surprised me and actually has a lot more going on than I thought it would. Uh, what about you, Taylor? How are you feeling about it?
Taylor: Same. When I first started it, uh, and it was Willie that brought that up, and yeah, same on that too, whenever he said, because I had already been looking at that game, I saw it on the, on the pass, and I thought, oh, that's pretty good graphics. But then I, I started the video, and I only watched like 10 seconds of it, and I thought, ah, it looks too much like a kid game.
It just has that look to it, if you only glance at it. But, um, yeah, it has a lot of depth and a lot of surprises. It's got a little bit of annoying stuff, but just the good definitely outweighed the bad for me. I like it.
Joseph: What about you, Willie?
Willie: I definitely have been enjoying it. There's something about it that it's not... I like the story, but it's also not really pulling me in as much, I think, as I want, or maybe I just don't want that right now.
Taylor: I don't know if they even want you to be into the story that much, because I wasn't, I wasn't either. Like, it was straight up peripheral for me, so it may not be a you thing.
Willie: I mean, I think there's, it's telling a story about obviously this loan shark taking this person's home and then there's pollution in the ocean that's causing these characters to go mad.
And it's, it's telling a story about that and like, what the fuck we're doing to our planet, right? Ultimately, I don't know where it's going by the end of it. Cause I'm not that far into it, but the world is really interesting and brightly colored, which is very different for like being in a souls-like game, I feel like.
Taylor: Mm-hmm.
Willie: The last one we played-
Joseph: Yeah.
Willie: -we all played was Lies of P pretty much, and that's a very dark world, just like in tone, in color palette. It's just dark.
Joseph: I mean, they all are honestly.
Willie: Right, exactly.
Taylor: Mm-hmm. That's part of a souls-like basically.
Willie: Except this one, like, and it's different. So that's interesting, but it's I don't know, there's something about it that is is not quite pulling me in. And maybe it's the, like, the level of difficulty in the game, for me, feels hit or miss.
Sometimes it's, like, super easy, and then every now and then you'll get to something that's, like, not even a boss, but just, like, a section where there might be too many enemies or, like, one that just, like, fucks you up for no reason at all, and you're like, why did that happen?
You know? Like, [Joseph chuckling] I don't, I don't understand how that happened.
Taylor: Are we all thinking about the bike lock crab? Because that thing- [Willie chuckles]
Joseph: Oh, yeah. That's super early, right?
Taylor: -is a nightmare. Yeah. And that thing, he uses it as a, [laughs] as a head chopper. If you've never had that happen-
Willie: Yeah, yeah. That one's cool.
Taylor: -or a shellcracker-
Joseph: Yeah.
Taylor: -oh my god.
Joseph: I like that a lot. There's a lot of great ideas in this game and just concept in general. And a lot of it feels original to me. Like, like that thing, right? Like taking these trash objects, putting them in the ocean, and then being able to use them as like, kind of jumping ahead here, but you know, you use them as a shell, which acts as a shield and it's a part of your like defense strategy, but the items that they've chosen-
Taylor: Mm-hmm.
Joseph: -to feature in the world, you know, like the fucking cereal box and-
Taylor: Yep.
Joseph: -you know, like cigarette boxes that say Mario instead of Marlboro.
Taylor: A CNS receipt-
Joseph: Yes.
Taylor: -is one I ran across and it looked like as soon as you see it, your brain says CVS [Willie laughs] when you see it because you know, and then there was a lot of stuff. The... one of the female characters on there. I don't know if y'all got to her yet, but she's wearing like a silica-
Joseph: Orange peel.
Taylor: Oh, is that, is that who that is? Where she's wearing like a silica packet as a dress?
Willie: Yeah, a silica packet.
Taylor: Little things like that.
Joseph: And her hair is like a twisted orange peel.
Taylor: Yeah. The... amazing. Like genius use of everyday items on this game-
Joseph: Yes.
Taylor: -to make you always feel, instead of a souls game, you almost always feel like you're in an alien or strange world, you know what I mean?
And in this is everything you see looks like a Captain Crunch box or a CVS receipt, or like these daily items that..
Willie: It's like, Oh no, this could, this, it could exist that we just don't know. We've never been down there. We didn't see this before.
Taylor: Yep.
Joseph: I love that it's super relatable, man. Cause it is-
Taylor: Mm-hmm.
Joseph: -it's less fantasy, you know, than like a Bloodborne world or Lies of P world or, you know, Demon Souls or anything, right?
Any of the other souls-like, it's so much more relatable because it has like those pop culture references, you know, like even, you know, like the shields and stuff. The shells you can get, like, there's a ton of references to other things that are super relatable because they're drawn from our real world pop culture.
And then infused in, I think, creative ways. So I think that definitely sets it apart from other souls-like, for me, for those reasons. But there's just so many of those good little details. Like, I don't know, if, when y'all were in the city, New Carcirina*. In one part of, like, the upper crust, there's a piece of signage, like, on the facade of a building, and it has, like, keys on it, and it says something.
I forgot what it says. But one of those keys you can like target and pull off and use it as a shield. And I was just like, that's such a cool-
Taylor: Huh.
Joseph: -little detail that it's like hidden up there in the actual like level design, but it's an interaction for you to enjoy, right?
And like-
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: -I just think those little details are really, really nice. And-
Taylor: Mm-hmm.
Joseph: -overall, I think it's a fun game. Uh, Willie, you're talking about the story. I think, um, I love the humor. I think that's another way it stands apart from other, uh, souls-like is that it's bright and colorful, but also paired with a lot of humor-
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: -and a lot of punny writing-
Taylor: Mm-hmm.
Joseph: -that sometimes is cheesy, but most of the time is like, okay. A few times I've like literally [Taylor chuckles] laughed out loud because it's just like, that's a ridiculous fucking thing to say. It's so down to earth ridiculous. Like I felt like if we were writing a fucking game, we would say some of the dumb shit that's in that game.
Taylor: Dude, I, speaking of puns, I literally just talked to a character where something, something either incredible happened or awful, and his response was, coddamn!
Joseph: Yeah. [Taylor and Joseph laugh]
Willie: That's what I was going to say. I think my favorite, my favorite pun that I've come across so far was, it's a coddamn shipshow. [Taylor laughs]
Joseph: Yeah, yeah.
Taylor: Okay, so it was before that. That's, oh man, there's some funny writing in there. Unexpectedly so. Like you, you see that at the beginning and I immediately thought of something like, Life, what was that, what was that game that came out not too long ago where the guns talk to you and it was like High On Life, I think it was the name of it.
Willie: I don't remember.
Joseph: That sounds wild.
Taylor: It was like too much. It was too much. Like it was the one that was done by Rick and Morty, by from-
Joseph: Oh dang.
Taylor: -and it was too much of that. This I thought they did a great job at keeping it bridled a little bit where it wasn't every single thing was a pun or every single thing was a Rick and Morty joke. They... they seem to do a good job of making it more like a cartoon, like Spongebob almost level of-
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: -silliness-
Joseph: Right, right, right.
Taylor: -and I really appreciated that, you know, but like Willie said, still encompassing like this overarching badass story about all these plastics and filth in the ocean and all that stuff, so that's... It is cool that they were able to pull that off and hit that balance nicely.
00:13:08
Joseph: I want to circle back to what Willie said earlier. He was talking about the story. So I also don't know where it's going. I've heard other people online talk about it going to a very serious place, which they, uh, it's kind of hinting at that pretty early with-
Taylor: Hmm.
Joseph: -like pollution and the way they consider trash to be their currency, and at the same time, it's also like gunking up the world and having an effect on their lives in the ocean and stuff like that.
Like obviously it can go very serious, quickly, and I feel like that's what people have said. So I wonder if we're not at the point where that transition really starts to happen because I don't feel like I'm there either with the actual story and the narrative that's being told.
But I have thought it's fun. And that the writing is pretty creative. Even though it's cheesy sometimes. But I think it's okay. Like, overall, I'm enjoying it, and I maybe feel like it's captured me a little bit more than Willie.
Willie: I think that's probably true, just because, like, I think it's good, but I also don't know if I'm gonna finish it, just because there are other games right now that I, like, wanna be playing.
Joseph: I'm lost in that too.
Willie: Like I started Tales of Kanzera and I haven't finished that, and that's a short game. I could probably just finish that, you know, tomorrow-
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: -if I sat down and just played it,
Taylor: Hmm.
Willie: But I haven't done it yet. And I haven't played it in the past, like two or three days because I've been playing this game a little bit-
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: -and I have been missing playing that. But also, you know, Barbara and I have been playing Stardew Valley again, but we haven't really been playing it the last few days because I've been playing this and it's like, there are other things right now that I, I want to spend my time playing and I'm not.
So it's like, do I want to dedicate another 10 hours to, to this right now-
Taylor: Mm-hmm.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: -is the thing that I'm just like, I don't know, I like it, but I don't know if I like it that much.
Joseph: I'm in the same boat, man, and the biggest problem for me or the reason I'm so torn on whether or not I should keep playing it is because I don't think the combat is great.
Like, it's okay, but like, there's too many things I'm frustrated with, like getting caught-
Taylor: Mm-hmm.
Joseph: -behind a fucking rock or getting caught-
Taylor: Mm-hmm.
Joseph: -in a little ditch.
Taylor: Yep.
Joseph: And then the boss is just fucking pounding me-
Taylor: Yep.
Joseph: -and I'm stuck in the world, or he like somehow smashes me so hard that I fly through the bottom of the stage-
Taylor: Mm-hmm.
Joseph: -that was happening with, uh, Tedoro or whatever, the...
Willie: Oh, I didn't fight that one. I don't remember what that one is.
Joseph: It's like the, it's the Spanish sounding character, but that fool was just like bashing me through the floor-
Taylor: Hmm.
Joseph: -and I was like, what the fuck? Like, this isn't even fair right now.
Taylor: Was he the mantis shrimp?
Joseph: Yeah. Yeah.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: Cause you get the mantis claw.
Taylor: Yep.
Joseph: Did you fight him, Taylor?
Taylor: Oh yeah. Yeah. I'm a long ways in.
Joseph: Okay, okay.
Taylor: I may be closer to the end of it.
Joseph: Okay. So I feel like I'm maybe like halfway. I don't know. Does that seem like it's halfway to you, Taylor?
Taylor: No. No, there's way more game under there.
Joseph: Oh, fuck.
Taylor: Like I, Okay. Willie saying, you know, another 10 hours. That's probably legitimate in there. Um, so I am going to tell you guys how I got so far. And that's because I, I started having the exact same thoughts where if that game were perfect, like the geometry were perfect, they had nailed the, the fighting a little bit more in some ways. I think I would have seen it through just the way they intend, like right when you start it up.
However, I started wavering a little bit. I was like, I've got other things I gotta do. I don't, like.... I... especially got me when you get to archers and snipers. If you haven't-
Joseph: Mm.
Taylor: -encountered them yet, they're super frustrating. A sniper, unless you roll at the right time, you will get hit. The classic running, sprinting sideways does not work against the snipers. They will hit you.
Joseph: Are you talking about the ones that have like the... that shoot the toothpick that has like a piece of cheese and an olive on it or something.
Taylor: Yes, yeah those guys are badass too.
Willie: And they actually have like a laser, right?
Joseph: Yes.
Taylor: Yeah, there's a-
Willie: Where you can see when they're aiming at you?
Taylor: Yeah, a sniper with a laser. Yes, yeah, that one. Exactly. The-
Joseph: Yeah.
Taylor: -cocktail olives. That was the point where I was like, okay, I don't have time. The game was, is good enough in the other ways that I was like, I don't want to just fall off this. I like it and I want to see it through. So I checked out that accessibilities menu and boy did they [chuckles] deliver on that shit because... [Joseph laughs]
Not only do you have, like, you can adjust the amount of damage you do, the damage you take, you can make it to where you don't lose energy, uh, whenever you fall off of the planet or fall through the ground or whatever, it just respawns you, but with the same amount of health.
Joseph: Mm.
Taylor: But the best of all, there was an option at the bottom that I said, what is this? It said, give Kril a gun. [laughs] And if you haven't seen that yet, you should look it up right now.
Joseph: I saw, I just saw it yesterday, dude. And I was like, what? [Taylor laughs]
Taylor: So, so when you say give Kril a gun, it turns his shell into like a .45 caliber, uh, semi automatic pistol, like a Colt or something, you know. And it size wise is really that big and it's just up on top of him and when you crutch down, when you go down in your shell, you are inside the clip of the gun and the gun can still shoot when you're down. It also has-
Joseph: Oh, damn.
Taylor: -it has a damage meter that's probably more than than half the size of the screen.
Joseph: Oh, wow.
Taylor: So it's an insane shell as well. And it's metal, so later when you get into magnetics, you can actually use it as a metal shell. But it also one shot kills everything. Even bosses, so I don't know if you saw the part where you go out into the sandy seas or something. It's like a big open area.
Joseph: Sands Between.
Willie: Sands Between.
Taylor: Yeah, Sands Between. There you go. Yeah, and the old guy is like, you know, don't go off the path, which I didn't the 1st time, I was scared shitless.
Joseph: That fucking crab comes out.
Taylor: Yeah. Once I got that, the gun, I just went anywhere I wanted all the time. And yeah, that crab came out and I one shot-ed him.
Joseph: Damn.
Taylor: Later on, it gets to the point where that old guy is like, okay, you, you knocked this out. Now it's time to go to the land... the Sands Between and, and, you know, meet your fears.
And I was like, oh yeah, that big dude, I already got him. [laughs] And he's like, wait, what now? [all laugh]
He's just, he's just blown away because I just got out there and one shot his ass-
Joseph: Dude, for real.
Taylor: So far, yeah. I think the most badass boss I've faced with the pistol, it took two shots. Like it took one and they had a teeny bit of health left and then the second.
Joseph: Wow.
00:19:29
Taylor: So I'm going to say it's the most enjoyable way I ever could have played this game because it's funny. Like, and the pistol shoots like one bullet per second. So you can really just start tapping the button and you're like auto locking on to different enemies-
Joseph: Oh, wow.
Taylor: -and popping them and. It's amazing.
Joseph: Get a...the rhythm going?
Taylor: It's amazing. Yeah. And I'd say if you're going to fall off of it, if you still want to kind of see the game through, but doing it a quick manner, you could do it like that. But the one thing I've run into is that there's way more game in there that I expected. And that means way more running and stuff.
Joseph: Mm.
Taylor: So even though I put maybe 10 or 15 hours into it. I don't know how much now. I still don't know how much more there is. And, and my biggest pet peeve so far is that it doesn't tell you where to go very well.
Joseph: I wish you could move, you could pan the map so much.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: I wish you could just pan around in the map.
Taylor: Yeah, you have to go to a new area or like to a new, just move a hundred yards to move the map a hundred yards and-
Joseph: Exactly.
Taylor: -super frustrating.
Joseph: I wish because there is a lot of space to cover. I wish they would let you pan around the map so you're not wasting time going off a hundred yards to the West, only get there to do that so you can see the map updated and then realize that's not the direction you want to go in.
Taylor: Exactly.
Joseph: Like it just seems like such a waste of time.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Did you guys get to the point where you could roll with your shell?
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Okay, that kind of help.
Joseph: Oh, yeah. Like you can Sonic the Hedgehog it or something.
Taylor: Yeah, it's still a lot, like if there's not a hill around then you can't. Yeah, you can't Sonic.
Joseph: Right.
Taylor: What were you saying, Willie?
Willie: Oh, yeah. There's, I think that's all, but that's just before the getting to the city, getting to what'd you call it? What's the name of it? New Carcirina or something like that, I forgot what the fuck it's called.
Joseph: Yeah. Something like that. Yeah.
Willie: Yeah. Cause the first time you get like a tennis ball to do that with-
Taylor: Mm-hmm.
Willie: -the tennis ball has a special ability... it's special ability is to like zoom you off in a special-
Taylor: Mm-hmm.
Willie: -way, at a direction.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: But with any shell you can just run and hit left bumper and then start rolling and it just, it's going to act a little bit differently.
Taylor: Not with a gun, sadly [chuckles] -
Willie: Mm.
Joseph: Right, right.
Taylor: -you're very slow with the gun, but it's always... it's cool cause you can drop the gun, grab something that's a ball. Roll where you need to go and then go back into the settings, and go to options and then just turn off, give him a gun and turn it back on, and you have a new one.
Joseph: Oh shit. I didn't think of that.
Taylor: Yeah. So that was, that was pretty nice.
Joseph: What's funny. I mentioned that, seeing that there was a gun in the accessibility options until yesterday. I had looked at the menu in the game and didn't even see that at the bottom, but I love how they presented it. I also love that it's even an option. Because like, that's such a-
Taylor: [laughing] Just give him a gun! I saw and laughed.
Joseph: It's such a Taylor thing.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: It's such a you thing.
Taylor: Yeah, it really is. I had to, I had to click it like, especially as soon as I started having doubts, I knew that I had already seen some funny looking stuff in the settings so I pop back there and yeah I said-
Joseph: Nice.
Taylor: -give him a gun. Let's do that and it was... the fact that it was everything that I wanted to be. It wasn't like a little machine gun or something like that that he holds, or it could have been a magical gun that swims around you or whatever but the fact that it's a giant fucking life size gun, that just fits on his back, slows him down, but you can pop everybody in the game.
Joseph: Mm hmm. It is pretty funny.
Taylor: Yeah, it was amazing. It turned it into Max Payne for me. You can even slow down the speed of the game, which I thought was impressive.
Joseph: Yeah.
Taylor: And the difficulty. So there's like, you can get real granular with your experience. And I appreciated that because that's something you do not get in any Souls games ever-
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: -is any, you know, maybe control options or something, but not, not the gameplay.
Joseph: I think it's perfect for this game because it's obviously targeting people who are new to the genre-
Taylor: Mm-hmm.
Joseph: In general so like if you might have heard of souls-like games before and like, you know, it's not for you because they're just too difficult for a game that you want to play and enjoy. This is like a perfect blend of like it's light hearted. There's a lot of humor. It's very colorful game, but also, the accessibility options really can make the game much easier, and I don't think the game is that difficult, but I'm also struggling in this fucking game in certain spots.
Like Willie said, like, when you show up to that Curdled Village-
Taylor: Oh, yeah.
Joseph: -and there's that first sniper that you interact with, and there's a billion fucking crabs on the surface, and then you have the sniper at the same time, which you cannot dodge, which I don't fucking understand that.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: If I am running, why am I 100 percent hit all the time?
Taylor: He's leading you.
Joseph: Dude.
Taylor: He's just [Willie laughs] a good sniper.
Joseph: Yeah, he's a fucking sh...
Taylor: He's leading you.
Joseph: Yeah, that is a sharpshooter.
Taylor: I noticed that they were leading and then I was like, okay, well, I got a roll everywhere. And, and they do the perfect souls thing though, of putting enemies everywhere, like in this milk carton and right behind this thing.
And then there's three of them buried. And if you haven't seen a sandworm yet, those are terrifying. There's an X on the ground and you accidentally run over it because it's super subtle. It's those eels or whatever that kind of come up out of-
Joseph: Fucking tremors down there.
Taylor: Oh, it's awful. It's terrifying and it will eat your shell.
Joseph: I wanted to mention this episode is definitely a ship show. For sure, not really structured in any way because I kind of just want to talk about everything like-
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: I have a lot of problems with this game, but I also have a lot of fun with it.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: But back to the enemy thing, Taylor, you were talking about there... Yeah, they strategically place enemies like any souls-like. I don't feel like they did a great job of balancing it. And that's a good example in the village when you have that fucking expert sharpshooter sniper-
Taylor: Mm-hmm.
Joseph: -that can fuck you up fast.
Taylor: Yep.
Joseph: And then you have like seven crabs there. It's sort of... there's a lot of cover though. So that's, that's what they're doing in that scene, right. Is they're providing a lot of milk cartons and shit that-
Taylor: Exactly.
Joseph: -you can pick them by, you know, pick them off one by one. But like-
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: -that's really the only way to play that, unless you want to try to run all the way through and like somehow fucking D-day your way past the sniper, is that you have to like very strategically try to use the cover and pick them apart.
So there's not really a lot of flexibility in how you play some of those scenes because they're like way overpowered enemies or you're going to get overwhelmed way too quickly. And then also at the same time, you're going to have trouble healing because that button input isn't very responsive when you want to press up on the D pad and heal.
Taylor: Yeah, and I feel like they could have had a little more healing kelp in general. Like, there were a lot of-
Joseph: Yeah, in the world.
Taylor: -sections that it wasn't, yeah-
Joseph: I agree.
Taylor: -there was a lot of places that they could have just added a little bit more to.
Joseph: But, Willie, you were talking about this earlier, like, sometimes it's super easy. And then-
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: -other times, yeah, you just get fucked by the little tiniest crab ever that has like a stupid fucking toothpick or something. And you're just like, how did you just like slice and dice me?
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: That's wild. But also the, some of the boss fights do, I don't know, they seem there's something about this game, unlike Elden Ring, which is an extremely difficult game, obviously one of the best souls like to ever be created.
And there's something about that game, when I got wrecked, it inspired this passion to want to get good. You know, like it never really pushed me away in that sense. Like I was always just like, fuck, I'm going to keep at this until I do it. And Lies of P did that for me too, right? I'm just going to fucking keep doing it, doing it, doing it.
Like, I don't want to stop. I'm kind of addicted to get my fucking brains bashed in because I want to like eventually get past this. This game is, like, pushing me away from, like, with the bugs and stuff.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: I'm, like, getting destroyed because the game is fucking up.
Taylor: Oof.
Joseph: Or I'm getting stuck on, like, a little piece of cardboard that's, like, one inch off of the surface, you know? And then it, like, stops me in my roll or I can't roll because I'm, like, next to that thing.
Taylor: Yep.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: And then I'm getting destroyed by things because the game is a little too glitchy, a little too buggy.
00:26:58
Taylor: Well, and the AI is a little too smart for how [Joseph chuckles] buggy the game is. I, one thing that one death that I had that blew my fucking mind, it may seem simple to somebody who hasn't been playing games for 30 plus years, you know, but it was that I got stuck on a sponge and I was bouncing on the sponge.
And there was a crab, like one of the archer crabs down there, and he was like trying to hit me, trying to hit me, and he couldn't, so he walked up to the sponge, and he started bouncing on the sponge, and we were like passing each other, and he did his claw move, and fucking clawed me in mid air, and murdered me.
That was one of those moments that I thought, wow, I've never had anything like that ever happen to me in a game that I can think of. Especially a [Joseph chuckles] 3D like, you know, moving game like that, but just for the crab to come over, get on the same physics thing that I was on, and then murder me. Not just fall off the side or whatever it could have happened.
It blew my mind but also that is what got me too. That's why I chose the gun was because. I started having situations where the archers would be there, but I'm going between an area that it slows the frame rate down to less than one frame [Joseph laughs] per second. And that's not even sarcasm.
Joseph: I know dude.
Taylor: That is less than one. And then suddenly it comes back and I'm either falling off some shit, getting shot by some shit. That was where I was like, no more, no mas. Give me the gun. I'll take the way because you deserve it. So I agree with you.
Joseph: What platform did you play on Taylor?
Taylor: What's that?
Joseph: What platform are you playing on?
Taylor: Okay. I was on the Xbox. So series.
Joseph: What about you, Willie?
Willie: I'm playing on PC.
Joseph: Okay. I definitely hit performance issues on the Series X where same thing, like the stutter was so fucking bad that I just completely ran off the ledge, right?
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: It was long enough and stuttered so bad that I had walked like 50 more feet and just fell off and died. And then there was some areas-
Taylor: Yes.
Joseph: -where it was happening consistently. Like you would die and then you would go right back through that area and the same exact spot, you would hit those, the lag issues and I was like, Oh my gosh, like this is something that's like-
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: -it's not an isolated thing. Like this is happening in a pattern over and over and over again. So it's like more of a, just like a game play...
Taylor: Is one of those things where it's like you should have either fixed that or you should have made it a load screen. Like one or the other, because that shit is horrible, to have that happen.
Joseph: What the shitty thing is, is it happened right coming out of a load screen that's the shitty part about it i just-
Taylor: That's right.
Joseph: -came out of a load screen and then i'm like boom hitting the stuttering like immediately.
Willie: I've had a couple of instances of that like coming out of a load screen. I would say out of like a death screen and then coming into the game to like try to walk forward and have it definitely slow down for a moment and then catch up to itself and then it's fine.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: Though I have, I think in the text thread you mentioned one of the most frustrating things is when you're just trying to walk over some netting that you're not trying to like grab onto, but you do anyway.
And not only do you grab onto it, but you're like, the character model just sort of sinks into the ground a little bit.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: And then you're sort of stuck there for a second.
Joseph: What was confusing to me is that I, I still don't have a good understanding of what things you can walk over seamlessly and other things that you can't. Cause I feel like there's some stairs that you can actually go up and you're not fucking like having to, like you're not getting blocked by each, the next step.
Taylor: Oh yeah.
Joseph: But then there are some steps that you can't walk up. You have to like hop yourself up.
Willie: Interesting.
Joseph: And then there's the cardboard and there's the nets. And like, I just feel like you get stuck on these little fucking corners all the time, but I don't know which ones to avoid and which ones are not going to get stuck on. Like there's nothing that really makes sense to me.
Taylor: A lot of the cardboard geometry wasn't solid, which could get real annoying. Like a lot of times you'd be on the right side or the left side of the cardboard and you would just actually go straight through it.
You'd just drop through and then be stuck in another piece of geometry. There's a lot of that shit that could be smoothed out. One of the bugs I ran into that was really perplexing to me was, if it was a bug or not. So usually when I hit the pause button, I feel like the game actually pauses.
Joseph: It does.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Okay. So-
Joseph: Yeah, I tested it last night.
Taylor: What doesn't happen is, if your controller dies, it does not pause.
Joseph: Aww, fuck.
Taylor: So my controller died in the middle of a big boss battle and it didn't pause. It just, it actually opened the pause menu, the map or whatever is the default that opens to, but it didn't pause the game. So I got murdered-
Willie: Interesting.
Taylor: -and I thought that was really... interesting. And like a strange thing to forget about. And how does that make it through testing? How do you, how does anybody beta test that? Did nobody's controller die-
Joseph: Yeah. Yeah, I don't know.
Taylor: -throughout that? That seems... there's some, definitely some weird kinks in it.
Joseph: Yeah, at least there's an easy solution to that, you know, just keep your shit fucking charged. At least-
Taylor: Uh-
Joseph: -like, we can take control of that situation, just not let it happen.
Taylor: -some of us don't see a cable within a five foot [Joseph chuckles] radius from ourselves, and-
Joseph: Gotta get that fucking wireless charging stand, dude.
Taylor: I've had multiples-
Joseph: Make it easy.
Taylor: -it's just that I keep having to buy them every time they change something, and I can't afford that.
00:32:08
Willie: Like I said, it is, it is fun. There's a lot of really cheesy and funny things in the game. I, uh, I feel like they've done a really good job of like creating this world that is fun to inhabit. It is different in that, you know, you can pause during the, the thing they've, they've taken a lot of things from souls-like, and then just sort of done the opposite or like added on to it.
The pausing feature is like kind of cool because that's not anything you can do. And there was another thing that I was going to say that I like, I can't even remember now that's like, Oh, they very clearly are doing the opposite of what you would do in a game like Elden Ring. And it's, it's funny cause it's just like making it more, you know, it is making it more accessible, like all the settings, but, and I can't remember what it was, it was just something like, it's very simple.
Yeah, I don't know. I just don't know while it is good. I don't know if I'm going to finish it. And maybe if I do, it's going to be with that gun.
Joseph: Yeah. Yeah, I could see myself maybe doing that too.
Taylor: I say give it a try and see how it feels because it doesn't you still get achievements and everything. So maybe give it a little shot. Maybe put it in, on your, put your butt in it. And I had to think of the anatomy of what was [Willie chuckles] going on there.
Willie: It's funny. One of the funny things is that, uh, part of this, I think Joey mentioned this earlier that you go around, you can change different shells, right? You're changing your shells is basically adding a different armor type.
So it can be small, medium, or large. It'll make you faster or slower depending on the shell. But each one also has an ability that you can use. Like earlier I said, the tennis ball, you can like charge it up like a little sonic charge and then shoot yourself off. I like, uh, the, I just like the bottle cap. I like the bottle cap because it's the, the special for that.
It's just called pop off. And it's like a cool upwards, like spinning-
Taylor: Yeah. Ken and Ryu.
Willie: -move with your, uh, with your fork.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: That is a good one.
Joseph: I like the way that's set up.
Willie: It's ridiculous that... well, my question to y'all was going to be like, and I think the answer is yes, but like, do you think they made the number of shells 69 on purpose?
Joseph: Hell yeah. For sure.
Taylor: [chuckling] Oh yeah. Yeah, come on.
Joseph: No question.
Taylor: I bet their roadmap says they have 420 of them total with all [Willie chuckles] the DLCs and everything. [Taylor laughing]
Willie: I, you know, I was thinking about that and I was like, well, if they're trying to get the number to 69, what was the last one that they added? What was the one-
Joseph: Mm.
Willie: -that they were like, they were just like at 68 and they're like, fuck, we need one more.
What's it going to be?
Taylor: The Velveeta shell or whatever. [laughs]
Willie: Do you have one of those? Is that a... pasta shell one?
Taylor: Yeah, that's the one, that's the one I have insurance on. And [Joseph and Willie laugh] that's so like, if I ever have to, [laughing] if I ever have to roll down some hills-
Joseph: Oh, man.
Taylor: -I can pull out my pasta shell that I can pop into them.
Joseph: Yeah, yeah.
Taylor: There are some ridiculous shells in there though. I, I will give them props on how many and... both shells and the nature, I think we should touch on both those things with just how many creatures they have from the ocean, like things that-
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: -are even rare, like they have the, um, what are they called? The shrimp that can, pistol shrimp, they have those, and they're of course...
Willie: Have they had a pistol shrimp? I s... I think the one you are talking about was the-
Taylor: That was the mantis shrimp.
Willie: -was a mantis shrimp, right?.
Joseph: Yeah.
Taylor: And he was a spear mantis. Yeah. Which I also love that. Cause I, I love the mantis shrimps. Like I've been into those things since I found out they exist, but the pistol shrimps, the fact that they're like little cowboys-
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: -and shoot at you with six shooters. And man, I, you know I really like it.
Joseph: I hate those assholes.
Willie: I did see that somewhere. I do remember seeing that.
Joseph: I would say maybe the most hated enemy for me right now is that little puffer fish that has like a chain.
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: Some type of-
Willie: Sack of something tied to it.
Joseph: Yeah.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: I can't stand that thing, man. I just don't understand its moveset. And like, I don't know how to, how to perfect parry it.
Taylor: Pistol from about-
Joseph: [chuckles] Right.
Taylor: -30 feet away [Willie laughs] is the perfect-
Joseph: That'll do it.
Taylor: -way to parry. [laughs]
You'll find that, uh-
Joseph: Yeah.
Taylor: -he doesn't bother you anymore.
Joseph: Some other things like real quick, Willie was talking about the shells and how you can use them throughout the world and how they all have different powers connected to them, which adds an incredible amount of variety to like, just combat and funness.
The game also has a skill tree, which is pretty cool. It's a lot like, um, Sekiro and the way that you like purchase things from the skill tree and like the way it enhances combat and not even combat, but also defense and stuff like that. This game is also like Sekiro in the sense that you don't really have weapon options.
Like you just have, you have a fork and like, it's the one weapon used throughout the entire game, unlike other souls-likes, you know, or like a Lies of P or an Elden Ring, like you're stuck with that one weapon. You can upgrade it, but there's, there's no messing around with different weapon types, which is a lot like Sekiro.
Taylor: Did either, either of you get that perk yet where you can, you can do a strong attack on a shell and it'll-
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: - add it to the fork? That helped a lot.
Joseph: Yeah, it actually does a lot more damage. I figured that out last night cause I was-
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: -I was sitting on 150 fricking shard points or whatever they are-
Taylor: Oh, yep.
Joseph: -because I forgot you had to go back to like the moon snail-
Taylor: Mm-hmm.
Joseph: -to actually purchase skills from the tree. So I finally did that and I got six. I got six all at one time, and then-
Taylor: Nice.
Joseph: -I was like, now I was like, okay, now I'm doing some damage with these weapons.
Taylor: Yeah, it gives you some powers in there, and, um, I think I've got all but a few. I've been pretty impressed. Like, it seemed like a small skill tree from the moment that I saw it, and I was, it, Immediately you think, oh man, there's not much to this, but the diversity between the three branches was, it was really nice.
It really added some stuff. It added the classic, you just tap B on the controller and you, and you bounce backwards like that kind of dodge.
Joseph: Yeah. I don't have that, but I feel like I want that.
Taylor: It's a good one, and then you can augment it so that if you do it successfully, the hit you do after that I think is more damage or something.
Joseph: Yeah, I need that.
Taylor: They had some really thoughtful things in there, and that's just another reason that I wanted to keep playing it to see it through at least as far as I can. Now I'm getting a little bit lost because of the, you start to find out that the shells take on even more mechanic when it, later on it becomes more platformer. Even more-
Joseph: Mm.
Taylor: -platformer. I should say.
00:38:22
Willie: That's what I was going to say earlier. I'm glad you said that.
Taylor: Oh, okay.
Willie: It's the one other thing that this game does more than like a game like Elden Ring or any of the souls is-
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: -that it is a platformer too.
Taylor: Mm-hmm.
Willie: It's very much a platformer, which is...
Taylor: For better for worse.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: There's moments-
Joseph: [chuckling] Yeah.
Taylor: -that you will be up in the sky and you've been running for 10 minutes doing shit and getting higher and higher. And you will fall and you won't fall into a thing that kills you.
Willie: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: And so you just fall on the ground and start again because it's water and there's no fall damage. [Willie chuckles] So it's one of those moments that in a fucked up way, I'm like, man, I wish there was fall damage here because-
Joseph: It could respawn-
Taylor: -Yeah. I want to-
Joseph: -up top.
Taylor: -go back to where I was. Exactly. So, some of the shells, um, become metal. Like there's a spring shell that allows you to, to jump real high.
Joseph: Hmm.
Taylor: And then there'll be magnets that are going overhead that can pick you up using metal objects on your back. So probably the soda top would do it too.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: That adds a little more complexity to it. It's not too crazy, but it's more running. More moving all the time. You start to see switches where you have to get a, like a light bulb bottom as your shell. And then you go up to the switches and hit-
Joseph: Ohh.
Taylor: -that so that you can control whatever the thing is. It becomes like 60 percent more of a platformer when you-
Joseph: Oh wow.
Taylor: -get to this kind of dump area. It's like a corporate area where there's just fields of giant trash mounds and cranes everywhere doing stuff. And...
Joseph: That might be just where I've gotten to. Is that The Flotsam?
Taylor: Yeah. The Flotsam. There you go.
Willie: Someone had mentioned that there's a crab or something. Maybe a shrimp stuck in a bong. [Joseph and Taylor laugh]
Is that where that is? chuckles]
Taylor: Yep. That is where, that is.
Joseph: Nice.
Taylor: And the, I love the, the visuals of that, the crab stuck in the bong because I don't know if it was the way my camera was angled or what, but it was, it was really cool to see that effect where he was inside the bong and I was slightly looking through the open hole of it.
And so you, you know, it was doing the thing where he is. You could see both. Versions of him-
Joseph: Mm.
Taylor: -and it looked really fucking good.
Joseph: Nice.
Taylor: It was just one of those things that was really selling the, the realism of the graphics on this game for me.
Joseph: The entrance to that area is where I stopped Taylor. It's like you, cause you go through the pipe and then there's like an immediate boss fight.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: Feels like it, once I get past that, I'm in that area you're talking about.
Taylor: Yes. And that one I think is probably the biggest area of all of them-
Joseph: Oh, dang.
Taylor: -that I would be curious. Yeah. Well, in that way as well, but also that I'd be curious of, uh, how many people fall off, at this area.
Joseph: Oh, right. Cause it's a lot of platforming.
Taylor: Yeah. A little bit of pun intended because of all the platforming, but it really is brutal about, you're up there. Oh shit. I fell all the way down. Now I'm back where I started, except I don't even remember where any of the shells are around here-
Joseph: Right.
Taylor: -because they're not on the map. And I, the map doesn't work anyways.
So it, [Willie chuckles] there does become a level of frustration where I, started seeing why they had the kill, kill yourself now or whatever-
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: -die now, in the, in the menu. Hopefully it doesn't say kill yourself now. That would be a bad choice of wording for-
Joseph and Willie: I think it says die instantly.
Taylor: [chuckling] Die instantly, that sounds way better [Joseph chuckling] wording wise. Yeah, don't let me name menu items. But, um, I found myself using that quite a bit. Like when you fall in one of those instances-
Joseph: Mm.
Taylor: You just have to-
Joseph: I have not used that.
Taylor: -to go back, you will find yourself either. I mean, if you get through it all, a big problem for me is that I go through it in sections, have to put it down, come back to it either hours or a day later, or in the middle of the night or whatever.
And I don't remember where I'm going.
Joseph: Right.
Taylor: I don't remember where I went. And if I go back to the old man, he's not helping. He's like the dude took the thing [Joseph chuckling] somewhere that, that he said at the very beginning of it. But I've already beaten three bosses, sub bosses, all this other stuff. Suddenly I'm like, where do I go?
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: It puts little indicators when you go to shelleport so that you can teleport. It puts little indicators on there that say like an exclamation point or this, the snail guy, but it doesn't actually work because it's not showing you where your mission is most of the time.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: It may be a person you need to talk to, but also it may be, for whatever reason, the insurance guy has one on him and won't go away.
Willie: That's the interesting thing, because like, Elden Ring doesn't do that either, right? Like, it doesn't, it doesn't tell you-
Joseph: no, but it does have the Sites of Grace
Willie: -who to go... right.
Joseph: That point in a direction.
Taylor: Yeah. This doesn't have those. Or maybe I don't know that.
Willie: But those Sites of grace that point in a direction are pointing in a direction for like the main quest.
Joseph: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Mm-hmm.
Taylor: That's right. Yeah.
Willie: But they're not showing you any-
Taylor: I would take that.
Willie: -side quest or anything. Right.
Taylor: Does that exist?
Willie: And at the same time. The map is obviously just better [Joseph laughs] because you can like move it and zoom in and zoom out.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: But it's interesting, like how many things they did, I don't want to say better, but did differently in a way that like make the game like more accessible and just more generally just fun instead of like grindy.
But then what you're describing Taylor, that's like the complete opposite and just not being able to move the map, which is like a very simple thing.
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: It seems like it should be a simple thing, to make you like frustrated with the game.
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: It's just such a weird combination in the same way that like sometimes it's really fucking easy, and then sometimes you just get fucked up randomly and you're like, I don't know what the fuck just happened.
Taylor: Yep.
Willie: Why is there no middle ground? Why? What happened to the middle?
Taylor: I would love to have an option like that. That just at least shows you the main things. And-
Joseph: That, that'd be cool.
Taylor: -now I'm searching for it because I, I remember not knowing what the Sites of Grace did either at first. And then once you find out, you're like, oh, okay. At least that tells me what direction to head to finish this thing, if I need to, because I've been running around-
Joseph: Oh, shit.
Taylor: -in these-
Willie: He froze.
Taylor: -in these...oh
Joseph: You don't hear him.
Willie: No.
Taylor: Huh?
Joseph: Oh, he's back.
Taylor: Oh, okay.
Willie: You froze, but now you're back. [Simultanously: Taylor: You do? Okay? Joseph: you back]
00:44:13
Taylor: Yeah. So I'm running around in these, in these trash fields and I've been doing that for like 45 minutes now, [ Willie chuckles] I'm not sure where to go because the thing happened where. I beat a boss that was way up and it dropped me down at a place that I was at the beginning.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: And so now I'm like, okay, so I went back to town, uh, the old guy didn't have anything else to say. Okay. So not helpful. I went back and like, now I'm really considering, do I want to continue playing this? Like now I have to-
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: -potentially look up on where to go after I beat this boss and if it's worth doing that.
Willie: The point that I was, I like lost that I was trying to get to is that like, I think a game like Elden Ring does everything else so much better that doesn't have all the little hiccups and all the little glitches-
Taylor: Mm-hmm.
Willie: -that like, we won't complain about not knowing where to go because like, part of the fun is just running around until you like, get somewhere new and see more cool stuff. And it feels like in this particular moment in this game, it's outweighed.
Running around finding cool stuff is outweighed by the fact that like, while you're running around, you're gonna get caught on some shit or you're gonna fucking fall off a thing because there is platforming, but you're not going to die so you have to like, just start over.
Or like, there's enough other smaller frustrations that this one thing that like, wouldn't bother us in a different game is like, bothersome. It is frustrating.
Joseph: Yeah, that's exactly how I feel.
Taylor: Yep.
Joseph: And it's like, yeah, it's just all those things together aren't, I don't know if they're great enough, good enough to keep me through the end of the game and yeah, it's the same thing right like now all of a sudden I do have more of a problem with not being able to move the map and not knowing exactly where to go to to continue on the main storyline because all those other things are happening on top of that-
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: -which is making a difference.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: But I still... yeah, no, I'm torn. I want to play a little bit more. I don't know if I'll finish it.
Willie: Yeah, I do want to play a little more just to see, just to see more enemy types, I think. You know, like Taylor was saying, like there's like some cool stuff that they've included. So I just want to see like where it goes and what, what kind of interesting innovations they have with that.
Cause like, you know, even though like lobster royal guards or whatever. The way that they walk, they're like, look like they're mounted on horseback, but they're just-
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: -you know, lobsters running around or whatever.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: Character modeling is on point in this.
Joseph: Yeah, it's fun.
Taylor: Absolutely.
Joseph: It's fun. And there's variety. And I also think they did a great job of giving the characters personalities. So like that, that little shithead Firth, [Willie chuckles] you know, like little douche bag guy, like those personalities. And then even when you listen in on conversations that are happening with like groups of people-
Taylor: Mm-hmm.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: -they just say interesting stuff and it's like different and they seem to have personality and attitude. And I think they did a great job of infusing that into the story.
Taylor: The anemone that wanted a hug.
Joseph: Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Taylor: I thought that was a, that was a cute little side character that you find.
Joseph: And was like super surprised, you know, that-
Taylor: Yeah
Joseph: -that it was even an option.
Taylor: Yeah, [chuckles] they had some great characters.
Joseph: I think the main reason I would want to finish it is just to see how the story unfolds. I think most of all, and then secondly, to see the rest of the bosses.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: You know, even just to see the boss designs-
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: -and then the move sets and I like the way that they are imagining these bosses and the way that they fight and the move says that they have. So that's like the 2nd reason I really want to finish it.
And then the 3rd reason is just because. I want to finish the fucking game, [Willie chuckles] you know, and I'm too hard headed to bust the gun out-
Taylor: Oh, don't be hard. Okay.
Joseph: -to make it faster. Like I'm too hard headed to do it because I'm like, this game shouldn't be hard. Like this game isn't hard, but I'm still getting my ass kicked.
Like I'm still trying to figure that out. So then I'm always battling, like, am I just not fucking good enough at this? Like, is that-
Taylor: Naw.
Joseph: -the answer? Like-
Taylor: It's...
Joseph: -is that the conclusion is that this game is too hard for me? [chuckles] Like now I need to beat it and find out.
Taylor: Yeah. Well, maybe that'll keep you in. That's true.
Willie: I think that the general consensus is that this game is easier compared to other souls-likes. But it is some of the hang ups with the, like, camera, too-
Joseph: Yeah.
Willie: -that will just fuck you up and get you, like-
Joseph: Killed.
Willie: -You'll do a special move and then get stuck in the wall and you don't know, like, what the fuck's going on outside of the wall and you have to like, move the camera to like-
Taylor: Yep.
Willie: -just watch yourself die.
Joseph: Yeah, you lose sight of the enemy completely because like a box is in your fucking way all of a sudden. [Taylor chuckles] In that sense, it's clumsy. It's easy, but it's clumsy. And I think because it's clumsy, it's harder than it is meant to be.
Willie: Yeah. For me early on, I would have said exactly what I said earlier, that like, there's a lot of enemies that are super easy. You just like can just slash through them and you don't have to stop to like dodge anything. But there's that, and then there's other enemies that are just for whatever reason can move or block or something will happen that you just get fucked up with like one hit and you just didn't know that it was going to happen for some reason. With no middle ground, like I said, and then in between that, there's a lot of running around exploring that there's nothing going on to in some like in early on in the game.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: And it's just like, I don't know. I do think getting to that, that city though, for the first time, New Carcinia is like kind of one of the first highlights that's just like, oh, this is a very interesting place and seeing all the different designs of all the characters and all that stuff. And something you said reminded me of one of the characters there that I don't think you can talk to because I was trying, but there's that, the car that's driving around down there.
Taylor: [chuckling] Oh yeah. Yep.
Joseph: That shithead. [Taylor and Willie chuckle] Vrrrrrr.
Willie: Yeah, he's just cruising around. [Taylor and Joseph laugh]
Joseph: Nonstop.
Willie: Did you look at the license plate on it?
Joseph: Uh-uh.
Willie: I don't remember exactly the letters, but it's F... F L F C H S R. Like FILF Chaser or something. [chuckles]
Joseph: Wow.
Taylor: Oh yeah, cause FILF is a recurring joke in there that, uh, the old man talks about it at some point. He's like, don't even get me started on whatever a FILF is.
Willie: [chuckles] I hadn't heard anybody say it. I just saw it on the license plate. I was like, what the fuck?
Joseph: I didn't see that detail, but this, this dude roaming around nonstop. The only vehicle there.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: It's also down in the slums, you know, it's in the Lower Crust instead of the Upper Crust. I got run over twice by that asshole.
Taylor: Mm-hmm.
Joseph: The first time [Willie chuckles] because I was like, can it happen? So I just stepped right in front of it and got pancaked.
Taylor: Yep, it can.
Joseph: And then the second time was like a genuine got run over because I couldn't see where this dude was.
Willie: I was just trying to chase it around, trying to see if I could stop him or like talk-
Taylor: Mm-hmm.
Willie: -to him.
Joseph: I was trying to jump on it.
Willie: Yeah. Yeah.
Joseph: And just like ride it.
Taylor: Yeah. I thought that was the case.
Joseph: That's a funny little character, even though it plays like no role in anything other than just zooming around.
Willie: Yeah. As far as I can tell.
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: Nothing happens. It's just, that's just what he does down there.
00:50:47
Joseph: Before we kind of like close out, I'm curious of what y'all think about if this game is worth 30 dollars. If we had to purchase it, I mean, we pay for Game Pass, so like, you know, in a way, we're not playing it completely free. There's no such thing as a free game. But if you didn't have Game Pass, is it worth paying 30 to play this game?
Taylor: I might if I was younger and like had more time to play these and maybe I was more attracted to one of these than like the the kind of gritty scary world of Souls.
I'd probably be okay with paying 30 for this.
Willie: I think yeah, in that instance, as I would exactly what you described. But right now, this particular moment in time. I don't think I would, because I don't have a lot of extra money for games. So like, I'm not going to spend that money on that. Like I almost, I literally like two weeks ago was thinking about buying Elden Ring again for my PC instead of-
Joseph: Oh gosh.
Willie: -on Xbox, because I was like, maybe I'm going to play through it again on my PC so when the DLC comes, I will have, I will do that. But I also realized that since y'all don't play on PC, we couldn't play together. So I was like, so I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to repurchase the game.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: But I probably will play Elden Ring before I finish this game, is probably what's going to happen.
Joseph: Right, right, right.
Willie: That's like what I want to do.
Taylor: Damn.
Willie: I think what I would do-
Joseph: I mean, yeah we got shit on the horizon
Willie: -is I would just watch someone else play this game.
Joseph: Mm.
Willie: Like, I enjoy it that much because I, there is a person I have been watching play it, which is how I knew that it existed anyway in the first place. And then I noticed it on Game Pass like the next day, you know, and I was like, oh, that does seem like worth playing.
But, uh, I think I would just watch someone else play it. For the fun of it, because I think the enemies are interesting and the person I was watching is pretty funny when they're playing and like watching someone else overcome some of the obstacles, which are not always just the enemy, but like the game itself is-
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: -like fun and interesting anyway.
Joseph: Yeah. I might do that too. Like if I don't finish it, I could see myself maybe watching someone play through the second half of the game that I didn't get to just to kind of see like how story unfolds and the other things I wanted to see. I think it's worth 30 bucks. However, I don't think I ever would have purchased it.
If it wasn't on Game Pass, I don't think I ever would have bought it. I don't think I ever would have played it because I would have had to pay 30 for it. But I do think it's worth 30.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: If they fix some of those things, like, sure-
Taylor: Mm-hmm.
Joseph: -I'd be happy to pay 30 for this game. It's a small studio and I think they've made a great game. I think it could be better, but I think they've made a really, really fucking good game as an indie studio.
Willie: I would agree with that.
Taylor: You could always wait for bugs to get fixed as well. Never a bad idea.
Joseph: I was also struggling with the idea of whether or not this is a good entry souls-like game for people that have never played any games in that genre.
And I think it's like a yes and no answer. Like, in a lot of ways, it definitely is. And some other ways, specifically the combat and the execution of those mechanics, I don't think it's the best souls-like game to start with because it's fucking pretty clumsy.
Taylor: Yeah. And...
Joseph: Everything else, it's like a great entry level souls-like game because of how lighthearted, how humorous it is. How colorful it is, how different it is.
Taylor: And souls-likes are very smooth and polished-
Joseph: Yeah.
Taylor: -experiences that you can tell, a ton of super talented people combed over, but these guys did a good job. I mean, even down to the sand, the small effects like that, when you land, sand pops up and they use a really cool system, whatever's happening there.
It could just be straight up Unreal or the state of things that you can make sand look that good.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: I'm not a hundred percent certain if they changed this, but I saw that this game was made in Unity. In Unity
Taylor: Ah.
Willie: Because they were talking about, before it came out, hey, we're this... we're finishing this game but like, because of Unity's like changes to their policies or whatever had happened last year-
Taylor: Oh, right.
Willie: -that I don't really remember the details of anymore. They were like, I don't think that we're going to, to be using it anymore. It was-
Taylor: Yes.
Willie: -their post was like, Today, Unity, the engine we use to make our games announced that they they'll soon be taking a fee from developers for every copy of the game installed over a certain threshold-
Joseph: Mm.
Willie: -regardless of how that copy was obtained.
Taylor: And evidently they...
Willie: Guess what, who has a, guess who has a game coming into Game Pass in 2024?
Taylor: [laughing] Shit.
Willie: And they were like, you know, worried that that means like if a bunch of people install for free on Game Pass, then like, that's going to be detrimental to them.
Taylor: Right. Suddenly they're having to pay full price for, for each one. Yeah, that's a, or I mean pay, from what I remember about that was they made it just a whole slew of bad decisions for Unity. Hopefully they're turning that whole thing around, but who knows?
Willie: Yeah, and I don't even know what came of that later. I know that Unity was like, you know, obviously very, people were very pissed at them.
I don't know if they changed anything since then because I never kept up with it. But I think, you know, to Joey's point, people put some work in on this game. It's pretty good.
Taylor: Mm-hmm.
Willie: I think it's a good entry point, in that, like those accessibility options let you tailor the game to-
Joseph: Yes.
Willie: -your experience. So like, if you aren't sure you could make it easier for yourself, you could do something a little different to, to change up the gameplay.
Taylor: Yeah. Even the pistol, like the, if you would have just told me, like if we were having this conversation and I hadn't played the game at all, or maybe just a few minutes, if you would have laid the pistol idea on me, I don't know that I even would have cared to try it or would have done that, but doing it myself out of, you know, sheer just like, I don't know if I'm going to stay with this.
Things like that. They, they made it really, um, they did a good job of not making it feel so much like cheating. Like it feels-
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: -really, um, satisfying when you're firing the pistol and having to like line up the enemies and shit. So definitely don't make it harder on yourself than you want to, especially if you're, if it's Game Pass, like you guys were saying, just play it however you want to. It's nice to have those settings in one of these types of games, so don't be afraid to use them.
Joseph: I heard somebody, somebody that 100 percented the game talking about the gun and in a way it's, they encourage using it because I think it's one of the achievements or like one-
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: -or two achievements. Like you-
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: -have to, you have to give Kril a gun so that you can get those two achievements if you wanted to 100 percent the game, which is kind of cool. You know, like there's a little bit of incentive to, to dive into some part of the accessibility options.
Taylor: Well, and the fact that they're not only not punishing you for doing that kind of stuff-
Joseph: Right.
Taylor: -which most games do. They're encouraging it. That's pretty cool.
I'm with you on the... I love the development side of this thing, like the people behind it, that created it. Like I really, I would love to see another game from them, you know, like if this isn't my thing or my game or whatever, that's cool. But I would definitely play whatever the next thing that they created was just because of how much good went into this one, even though there are some, you know, glaring things that can be fixed, but man, it's just so much good.
Willie: I think the world building alone is just like, yeah, I want to see like what this group of creative people can do again.
Joseph: Exactly.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: Yeah, the creative direction and the approach. I was like-
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: -okay, I'm in for another one. If that's how you approach this game, then I would look forward to the approach for a future game.
Taylor: Yeah.
00:57:55
Joseph: And they have one other game that released before this that I know of that I don't remember the name of or know anything about, but I know they at least have two.
Willie: Uh, Going Under is the other one that I think people know.
Taylor: I remember the name.
Willie: It came out in 2020.
Taylor: Oh.
Joseph: It seemed like the way this game is going and like the reception of it, it seems like people were not surprised that it was going to be this kind of game. Like they were going to like it for those reasons. But I don't know anything about that other game.
Taylor: Hmm.
Joseph: My kind of final thought is just that, if you have Game Pass, I think it is definitely worth trying. If you don't have Game Pass, but you like Souls-likes, then I would maybe pull up some gameplay footage or watch somebody play it on Twitch just to try to get a better idea of if you're going to want to spend 30 on it.
But, I think this game is definitely worth 30. And cleaned up and a little bit more polished. I think it could be a great game.
Taylor: Agree with that.
Willie: Oh, there are other two games, I guess, that are worth pointing out, because they already did come out this year. There's a game called Harold Halibut, which is a stop motion style narrative game, which I actually have seen some of that. I didn't realize that was them.
Taylor: The trailer for that one is beautiful.
Willie: Something-
Taylor: Really compelling.
Willie: -called Penny's Big Breakaway.
Taylor: Hmm.
Willie: Is a platformer.
Joseph: Hmm. Interesting.
Willie: That came out in February of this year.
Taylor: Do we know when we're getting the DLC for Elden Ring? Do they, have they announced the date?
Willie: June 20th or something. 20th, 26th, something like that.
Taylor: Oh my god.
Joseph: A month dude.
Taylor: That's close to now.
Willie: [laughs] Yeah.
Taylor: Wow.
Joseph: I wanted to play, man. I wanted to play and I don't see that happening before. I don't know how to make that happen. That was like one of the freaking goals.
Willie: I'm definitely, definitely going to be.
Taylor: Hmm. I guess if you do, if, if you can bring me in- [laughs]
Willie: Oh, sure. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah.
Taylor: -please send them invites because I want to take my flame sword back out on the road.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: Man. I don't know, man this is like... thinking about Elden Ring and playing that game again
Taylor: A little triggering.
Joseph: -reconnecting with like a thing you love so much in the past. But it still exists, if you want it to.
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: I don't know, I just get, I'm getting fucking psyched up about it right now, just-
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: -even thinking about the idea of playing again.
Willie: I've been watching a streamer play New Game Plus 7-
Joseph: Sheesh.
Willie: -as a level 1 character. [Taylor laughs]
Joseph: Oh my.
Taylor: How do you even make that happen?
Willie: They played level one through, I think they played through all of the new game pluses and got to new game plus seven.
[Joseph whistles]
I think, I don't think they like messed with their saves or anything. Maybe they did and then like reset their character.
Taylor: If they didn't do it with a rock band drum kit, then are they anything?
Willie: I think she's one of the same people who has done that.
Taylor: Oh my god. How?
Willie: It's MissMikkaa. I'm pretty sure she's the same person who does some of that-
Joseph: Oh, I know her.
Willie: -stuff sometimes. Yeah, yeah. She's playing, yeah, New Game Plus 7 right now. Level 1, beating all the bosses. Like, there's like 164 bosses, I think, or something like that.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: And she's been level 1-ing all of them on New Game Plus 7.
Taylor: Oh, yeah. There's her first video. How I beat Elden Ring Malenia using dance pad.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: Yeah, she's great, man. Like-
Taylor: Amazing.
Joseph: -she's, she's a fucking great gamer.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: Like skilled, and-
Taylor: That's crazy.
Joseph: -especially this genre
Taylor: Oh, on a dance pad. Oh my God.
Willie: She did like on a dance pad and a controller at the same time.
Joseph: Oh my gosh. Yeah. I remember that.
Willie: Two different screens, same time beating Melania or some other boss-
Taylor: That's epic.
Willie: -but anyway...
Joseph: That's...it's ridiculous dude.
Taylor: And staying super fit, man, that's genius. [Joseph and Willie laugh] Imagine the fitness you would have, the cardio just from like playing that game like that, that's oh man, that's cool. Wow.
Willie: I do have one last final thought. We won't have time to like go on, but like this game came out, Another Crab's Treasure came out April 25th and so far the current any percent speedrun is at 38 minutes 11 seconds.
Joseph: Hmm. I heard like 45, I think the other day so.
Willie: Yeah-
Taylor: Wow.
Willie: -it's been going down.
Joseph: Trimming it down.
Willie: Two days ago it went down to 38.
Joseph: Nice.
[Outro theme begins to fade in - Caribbean Arcade by Christian Nanzell]
Willie: But yeah anyway we appreciate you listening to us we're going to take off and maybe not go play this game some more but [Taylor chuckles] maybe play some more. Who knows?
Taylor: No promises.
Willie: Definitely go watch a little more gameplay, but, uh, thank you for listening. And, uh, we'll see you again real soon.
Joseph: Yeah. Peace y'all.
Taylor: Peace out. This episode brought to you by Jim's Crab Cakes. Eat them or die.
[Outro theme continues - Caribbean Arcade by Christian Nanzell]
01:02:14
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]
Taylor: So anyways, [Joseph and Willie laughing] the A.I. took my fucking voice man. So now I gotta talk like this. You fucks!