Passenger Seat Radio Episode 2023-05-19

Hello everybody, this is Shane R. Monroe, you’re in the passenger seat with me. It’s passenger seat radio, it is May 19 2023. And as you can hear by the effervescent sound of bubbles around you, my hot tub is fixed. I am not in the car. And we are in fact in my backyard chilling for another episode of passenger seat radio. Yes, it is so nice to have my heart set back. Now, I’m not gonna give you a long show, I’m gonna give you like a 15 minute show. But I thought, you know, a little show better than no show, period. It’s funny lately, people at work have somehow ran across my podcast after 20 years of making it. And it’s funny to have like overlapping experiences with them. You know, I just ran into a guy were swapped some Navy stories. And I introduced him to the show because I of course, tell great navy stories, at least I did in the past. And so it’s kind of fun to see this show kind of grow outwards. I know, bless you all my regular listeners. All five or six of you. But it is nice to it’s nice to have some some fresh meat listening to the show. And it’s fun because some of the people who become very devoted fans of mine who are probably listening right now, on their lunch hour. They bring up interesting topics from my past. And it takes me a moment or two to connect with. It’s great. I love that. Anywho. So what did I want to talk about today? Let me think, oh, man, I got a couple of things we can talk about. First off, Lego 2k Drive has come out. And I’ve been waiting for this one for a while. That Starship Troopers game turned out to be a complete clusterfuck I’ve already refunded it. And if you’re really interested in hearing my review about and I’m sure I’ll do it on another show. I don’t want to waste time here. But I also posted a nice long one on Reddit and a short version on Steam. It’s really too bad. I don’t know. Hey, Brian holds up. What’s up, brother? Hey, is that a new picture? I remember that being your picture. Kind of nice, new fresh pictures at a trampoline back there. Man, you know, I can’t have a trampoline anymore. Because if you don’t have like, $9,000 of accessories, the fence, all that good stuff. My insurance company comes after me because they do the spot checks. They come by and and I get this nasty gram from who did I have at the time? I can’t remember who it was. I think it was State Farm at the time. And they’re like, Yeah, we noticed you have a we noticed you have a trampoline without a B, C and D. And you’ll either you have 30 days to either remove it or we’re going to cancel your policy. And I’m like you dirty some of the bits. We’re not with them anymore. But you know, it turned out I really didn’t need the trampoline. But anyway, interesting little side story there. So where was mostly talking about not just new people coming to the show? Oh, I notice 2k 2k Drive Lego 2k drive. So anyway, so late. Let me tell you a little bit about LEGO 2k drive. Take the lego city from the WiiU for the two people that are listening right now that have played it. Take that and then bolt on. Races many okay basically steal everything from every other racing game imaginable. transforming vehicles from Sonic and Racing Transformed. Everything from Mario Kart. Pretty much everything from any racing genre Burnout Paradise. Pick you choose. You choose the game, you choose the heart, you choose the game, the racing game, and there’s probably fizzy lifting, drink stolen and inserted into 2k drive. Now, that’s not a bad thing. I did some live streaming off the steam deck this morning at 6am. I realized for a lot of you that is a little bit too early or you were at work. I understand completely. It was sort of a an ad hoc thing. I decided like last night I was going to stream so I set up a streaming thing. Hey, now Alex J Lopez is here. One of the two people I told you to play Lego City. Here’s one of them right here. So anyway, um, so it’s got it all. It’s got everything. It’s got straight up racing. It’s got like destructive racing. It’s got multiple biomes it’s got tons and tracks, multiple you know, CC’s they call it class like Class A, B and C but it’s really like 5100 150 Listen, like I said, you can’t you can’t walk around in 2k drive without tripping over some, you know, fizzy lifting drink that was stolen. Hey flare, what’s up? Is this V flare? Like the OG flare or is this a flare want to be me cuz I wasn’t even sure that the OG flair was still alive. But you know, with that logo with the Monroe world Mastiff logo, I’m leaning towards the real guy. That’s crazy. That means there’s royalty in the house here, folks. Old school. Anyway, I won’t, I won’t continue jabbering on that. Let’s go back to the 2k stuff. So listen, it’s easy a 4040 game on on Steam deck. So, I mean, I played with a whole bunch of settings, I think around, I did whatever I could, it’s still a zero day game, right? Give it a week of patches, it’ll probably play better. But you know, 4040 on the deck is suitable for a lot of games. Racing, I tend to like to have 60. But I’m going to do some more play. We’re gonna get some off. Off screen player. We’re going to do some of that. Rob. Oh, my God, what is going on? Is this the ultimate time Friday at 12:11pm. This is when I get everybody to come on the show. It’s it’s awesome. So yeah, so I mean, listen, it’s fine. I’m gonna play it on the PC, of course, and that way I can play it at like 144 hertz and, and really, really get to get to drive proper. But listen, if you’re if you’re on the fence, right now, it seems to be a pretty great game. I love it. It’s got the power ups, it’s got the secret track areas, it’s got jumps, boosts blah, blah, blah, it’s got it all. It’s got it all. You name it, it’s got it. The biomes aren’t locked up, right. So you don’t have to spend all of your life playing two tracks until you open the third track. And then the fourth track opens. And then if you if you get number one on this track or that track, you can open up another track now. They’re all there and they’re all open, which is great. Plus one for that. The open world piece is actually very cool. Think of it like a mini Burnout Paradise, which I’m sure is exactly what they were going for. Like I said, if you played Lagos city, it feels a lot like that. In fact, I almost guarantee that the engine is probably at least somewhat borrowed from that game. Anyway, so the open world game is great. They’ll they’ll send you this in story mode. So they’ll send you through various you know, tutorial type things teach you how to sharp turn teach you how to do this, teach how to do that. And then and then you’ll drive around and you’ll just explore and as you explore, you’ll find new things. New areas will open up new challenges will open up. It’s yeah, Rob haven’t had this much fun since excite truck. Yeah, literally, it’s, it’s that much fun. I mean, excited truck is really hard to beat. But let’s talk about the downsides. Right, so I’m limited on time here. The downsides. So far, our one you have to have a 2k account. And as I said, in my video, it’s really like the easiest account I’ve ever signed up for. They really made it easy to not leave the game, you whip out your phone, hit a QR code, bing, bang, boom, you’re back in the game, right? It’s really easy. And I am not a fan of having to log into another service. I am not. But they made it easy enough where I didn’t care as much. And that helps. So you got that. Next up, you’re going to immediately notice from any screenshot any video that you watch, there are multiple currencies. And that can only mean one thing, that there’s a fun job coming right that’s what multiple currencies are. If there was any, you know, there was any logic in our on our planet, multiple currencies would mean fuck job in some foreign language. So right now there are two types of currency. There’s brick box and there are coins. Both of them are earnable within the game, of course, you know how this works. The one you probably want the most is the one you’re gonna get less of. Right now. It’s a straight up currency conversion. three card monte, right. So you earn dollars during ULearn dollars for everything. bucks. I’ll just call them bucks your bucks for everything. Right? So you’ll get a nice quick stash of that in everything that’s currently available in the store costs bucks not coins. So maybe they’re keeping it simple for the kiddies, right. So everything is is is bucks payment. Now what if you don’t have enough bucks? Well, you can exchange coin for bucks or women Yeah, bucks for coin. That’s what it is. So if you have a coin, you can trade it in for X number of bucks, and then you spend the bucks. Now what’s missing here is at this moment in time as of today, there’s no way to buy coins, but there’s a big slot open for when you’ll be buying coins and I guarantee that’s where we’ll be money. Now, I did not spend a shitload of time in the store to see what might be there other than cosmetics, jerk off animations, that sort of thing, right because that’s typically what they fleece people on because for some reason, everybody needs to be seen everybody needs to have some outfit, or Jersey See, or frickin special color wheel, and they’re willing to spend frickin $99 In coin for it. These whale games are out of control. But this isn’t a whale game. So my guess is, this is a guest I’m putting, you know, I’m Johnny Carson, I’m, I’m holding the envelope up to my head. My guess is yes, there will be monetary purchases. But it’s not, it’s not going to be the basis of the game. Where I do believe that we’re going to see a little extra monetization is going to be in the Battle Pass, which of course it has to have, because all these games do whether you’re paying money, or it’s free to play as the end Oh, Legend of Zelda Nope, don’t care. didn’t care about the last one. Don’t care about this one. I played the last one for 10 hours. The game pissed me off. I hated it. I have no interest in getting into this one. So sorry, man. The good news is there 50 billion other people that are happily covering this game in great quantity, I can send you a link if you’re interested. God knows nobody wants me covering this game because all I’m going to do is shit on it. And Alex can attest to that. Hey, Michael Caine, the great British actor is here too. So probably no Zelda sorry. If anything, I would make a video showing you how to install Zelda on the Steam deck. But one I don’t want Nintendo crawling up my ass. And two, I just don’t believe in switch emulation. I just don’t, I think unless you’re you own a switch. You buy games for it. You’ve dumped them yourselves. You’ve dumped your own product key and you’re using it for your own personal enjoyment of which nobody out there is actually doing. I consider it. gauche remember that word from the 80s gauche. It’s just not right? intend to listen, if you want to play on the 3ds games you like play all the two DS games you like play on the GameCube play on the NES games you want. These are dead systems. The switch is out there making money for its primary IP holder and I am protected even of Nintendo about something like that. So enough of my nonsense on that so yeah, I believe that the that the hand is going to open soon. And what really bothers me is the game ships with its incomplete in its fiscal fisting. Fiscal fisting that I’m gonna trademark that immediately fiscal fisting, because that’s exactly what’s going to happen. Do you remember? Do you remember, every single call of duty that’s come out, you buy the game for sick 50 6070 bucks, right? And it’s actually fun to play. In about a month they backload the store, they backload in the Battle Pass, they backload in the jerk off animations, they back in this they back in that. And then all of a sudden the game becomes a clusterfuck Well, that’s what’s gonna happen to this game too. They’re gonna back in all the monetization. And listen, as long as it doesn’t. One I don’t have to participate to everything’s unlockable without paying a dime, right? And, you know, there’s no pay to win stuff going on. Then listen back in all the shit you want. I do pay for the Battle Pass on Overwatch, right? I used to I bought Overwatch, two or three different times. Overwatch two is now free to play. And I do buy the Battle Pass. Because you know what? I’m playing Overwatch to like 20 hours a week, 20 hours a week for I think ends up being like $2.50 a week. That to me is value add. So I’m okay with that. Does the Battle Pass give me anything I want. Now. Occasionally I’ll get a skin or voiceline or something for somebody I’m interested in. But rarely is that the case. So I’m buying I’m using the Battle Pass to pay my call it a subscription, if you will, I don’t care. But it’s going to take a really long time for all those battle passes to come up to a retail price that I would pay for a game. So you got to you gotta look at it from whatever point of view makes you happy and comfortable with how you’re burning out cash, but to K to K drive. Right now I’m recommending it unless they truly fuck it up. If you’ve got it on deck, manage your expectations plan on 4040. At least for now. Don’t buy it based on what it could be buy it based on what it is. And I think you’ll be happy. Let’s see how much time do I have? Not much time. Gotta go back to work. So I did a live stream this morning before work and a show here in my lunch hour. And then after work, I’m going to sit and probably play Overwatch in 2k drive. Let’s see. So I had a great little skirmish on Reddit. I basically said I would rather pay money for a Steam game and to get it free on Epic. And somebody who loves epic, a developer who releases their games on Epic, who apparently has an epic tattoo branded on their ass, decided to call me out and try to put on me talking about basically how retarded I was. And essentially, let me see if I can quote this close enough, nobody cares about your $8 or your shitty reviews. That’s, that’s what he quoted me. And then so I wrote back and said, First thank you for, you know, strengthening my belief on the ecosystem. And second, if I’ll take my $8, elsewhere, and if you give me a list of the games you’re working on or have done, I will be sure to leverage my shitty reviews. And make sure I include a post a link to this post with every single review. As well, all he said after that was buy. Gotta love it. I’ve got other stuff to talk about, I just don’t have time. So we’re gonna, I’ll see if I can get another show this weekend. Because there goes my group goes my jets, that’s my timer to tell me to get the hell off out of the tub and go get a shower. So I’ll probably do another show this weekend. Later on today, I believe at 4pm I am releasing my Dension impact installer video for the steam deck. Some interesting stuff in there not because the game is particularly interesting, you know, free to play stuff doesn’t rub right with me anyway. But I got a request on Reddit, somebody was saying, you know, I can’t get the x D, I hate the English language. English language tracks the voiceovers. And I really want to have Japanese or Chinese or something. But I can’t install it. It says, you know, basically, we had this big conversation, it turns out that he’s stretching into some sort of a proton limitation. And he can’t install the audio packs. And so I was essentially shooting video, showing me installing the thing. So I could get to the get to a part where I could show him how to avoid the proton limitations, and then showing the packet in the install. Listen, I’m going to tell you right now a little a little teaser for the video. That is the shittiest install I’ve ever had to do of any game. You know, they they force you not to use steam so they don’t have to pay steam anything you know. So you have to use their launcher, you have to use their shitty digital distribution system. Trust me what you just have to watch this video for a 62 gigabyte game which is listen it’s at that’s not small. I’ll talk about LLC next time I haven’t done it yet, but I’ve done all the research that I need to do I just need to I just need to do it. LLC definitely has to be coming in my future for sure. I actually found a source at my job. Somebody who knows the ins and outs knows the ropes and is willing to help me through it. So I’m excited so there’s that what else I was couple other things. So yeah, check out that video. You’d be surprised that game to two hours to install. I’m going to ruin I’m going to ruin the punch line for you two hours. That’s the money shot two hours from start to finish to to install that game before you could you know actually start playing it. That’s crazy stuff. For those of you don’t know I did preorder and a Seuss ally listen I’m not I’m I’m a fanboy. You have to be sure I’m gonna steam that fanboy. But hey, I’m always looking for the bigger better deal. And you know listen, steam deck has been very good to me in my in my YouTube channel. I’m enjoying myself for the most part on Reddit talking about it. But the airline offers a they call it the steam deck killer. But it’s it’s the steam deck killer like the deck is the switch killer. There’s it’s a different market share. And so I’m going to be focusing my coverage of the ally as sort of a not a comparison, there will be the inevitable comparison video but there’s going to be the full blown review there’s going to be love it hate it, there’s going to be five reasons to get a five reasons not to get it, you know, all standard YouTube fair. But for the most part I want to talk about I’m going to be talking about the audiences that it serves not the audience it doesn’t serve. Because one of the things I found out on with the steam deck is it is not it is not for everybody. It is not the handheld device that everybody should have. It’s the handheld device a lot of people should have. But in the end, it turns out there’s definitely an anti market for Steam Daniels, and the anti market just happens to be oddly enough, everything that Well, not everything but some of the things that the ally brings to the table. So I want to I want to bring a counter view. I’m not going to do the same old, shitty videos that other people have done, whose dream big killers are really a killer. Let’s find out. Let’s plug it into a $900 Doc and see what’s better than your home PC. The Asus device has a next generation processor. Yes. So the the ally is an it’s an upgrade. Listen. It’s been it’s been what over a year since the steam deck came out. Yeah, there’s newer hardware in there. There’s faster memory in there. There’s a better screen in there. So there are there’s obviously hardware advantages. Hey, you hear me in my shower? It’s echoing. But yeah, so there’s advantages. The question is, will the advantages override the shittiness? That is Windows, because Windows is literally the biggest turnoff about that device. Just like when not having Windows was one of the major bullet points that I had, with the steam deck, it’s not running Windows, I don’t have to maintain windows, I don’t have to get updates, I don’t have to sign in with my Microsoft account. I don’t have to worry about ads getting injected into my operating system. You know, there’s all sorts of things that Windows sucks at doing. And the only reason it’s good at gaming is because there’s so many people that run Windows, if not everybody was running Windows, it would not be the choice for gaming, you know what I’m saying? So, what I’m really curious about and I guarantee in six months or less, the steam OS will be 100% poured into the ally and we will literally have a steam deck to point out, you’ll get all the benefits of the extra power, the turbo mode, all of that stuff, you’re gonna get all of it and you’re going to get the all the extra upgraded hardware and stuff that comes along with it. So alright, I’ve given you an extra five minutes my shower should be worn by now. I will try to have another show this weekend. Keep your ears open, download the Spreaker app and get notified if this show kicks online so you can join the live. Thank you so much, everybody. This is great. This is more people I’ve had in here then forever. Nice to see you again. Flair. Hope life’s treating you good. We’ll catch up. Yeah, keep it retro, my friends, and this is Shane R Monroe. We’ll see you next time. Take care everybody.