Passenger Seat Radio Episode 2019-11-01

Hello everybody this is Shane Armin row you’re in the passenger seat with me it’s passenger seat radio. It is Friday November 1 Halloween is officially over. We can start moving into the festive holiday seasons now. Little Thanksgiving coming up three day weekends four day weekends, holidays nights holidays weekends. I’m going to be with you till the end of time Yeah, so anyway yeah fired out of a cannon It’s Friday time for the weekend to begin. I actually wasn’t going to do another show cuz you guys got like three shows already this week. I spoil you guys like this. The next thing you know Travis is going to demand I do a show every day or something. Hey, Travis, Speak of the devil and he shall appear. But I thought you know, why not? I will. I’ll do another show. I had some stuff to talk about. And I have a feeling with a sneeze here in a minute. Sorry about that. Yeah, so how’s the figure? Hey Michael Hummers on I also figure that my trip. My trip home is gonna be fairly quick being a Friday afternoon. Kinda What’s going on? It’s nice. Again, good lord. me something in the car. Plus we had some stuff to talk about from Blizz con today. They had their public ceremonies this morning. And me and my chat room. Travis, Chris and Harvey and Alex and Justin and everybody. We were all there talking about what was going on with Blizz con because quite frankly, we were expecting a travesty to go down the table you have a sneeze again. We’re not Damn it. That was a that was a car t sneeze right there. didn’t come out at all. We may need some fresh air and here let me get some air flow. Here I don’t know maybe it’s Dustin here something good lord. Get all snotty now. Let’s talk about Blizz con going on. They went on today, I got a couple pieces of information to talk about that. I did get as God’s wrath. And I finally had an opportunity to put a few minutes in, give you my talk to you a little bit about that. And tonight is modern warfare night is the official night that my friends who have all recently picked up the game, myself, we’re going to get in and actually play like an old school Friday night Call of Duty session. I’m very excited Travis sir. He’s probably pretty excited too, because we don’t typically get around to doing that. And cross play means we can pick the choice of platforms and play wherever the hell we want. I don’t have to listen. Anybody complain about how crappy the Xbox One S is for modern warfare, because they can play it on PC all as well. Well, let’s start off with as God’s wrath, because that’s probably a shorter topic. Some low hanging fruit to pick on the way home, as God’s wrath is an Oculus studio virtual reality game. And I know these games come out like every week. So what’s the big deal about this one, as God’s wrath is arguably considered to be the first real triple A game for VR. I talked a little bit about this before, but I had a chance to take a take a quick run at it. And unfortunately, I only got through the sort of the tutorial the intro, and I just want to give you my first impressions. And then once I get a chance to actually put five or six hours in I’ll be able to give you more but let’s start off with so essentially now as God’s wrath is out for Rift, the rift platform Rift and rift s. It is not our request, but you know, I do have the ability to start stream via virtual desktop. So I tried that first with the quest, because let’s be honest, I haven’t dusted off that rift in a while. So I wanted to hang on a second trying to get in the right lane here. I wanted to at least take it out for a spin. And I don’t know what it is about my particular network, but people seem to think that virtual desktop works just so great and it’s totally acceptable. I just I do not get that I don’t get that level of of I get that level of performance out that a lot of other people seem to get so and this is a bigger game you know, this was 98 gigabytes or something to download big ass game. Probably some pretty decent PC requirements. But listen, you’re streaming across five 5g 5g should be totally able to handle you know, a video game streaming like that local for God’s sakes. Yeah, Google seems to think they can do it lag free over coffee. Cox communication and Comcast will say, but they don’t understand. I don’t think these speaking of stadia and Google and everybody who likes the streaming game ideas, you know, one of the reasons that everybody loved the idea of consoles is that everybody had the same thing. So if you’re a developer and you make a game for Xbox One S, right, you make a game, you test it, you optimize the shit out of it by hand. And when anybody anybody with an Xbox One S, gets the same exact experience with PCs, it was always a huge pain in the ass because that decode the various memory configurations and CPU configurations, video card, GPU configurations, video card memory versus, you know, bandwidth. Right, right. So one of the neat things about console’s is that you know, everybody’s playing on the same playing field. So you would think, you know, the concept is that, you know, it doesn’t matter what powerful piece you know, you don’t have to have a powerful PC to game stream off stadia. You don’t have to have an expert, you don’t have to have a powerful console. We’re just going to give you this little tiny box and you’re good to go. So yeah, okay, everybody has the same box. But guess what, everybody doesn’t have the same network connection. Not the same network provider. Not the same network packages. And God help us all not the same goddamn network infrastructure once it gets past the wall. Right. I don’t think for a second, the Google and Nvidia and Microsoft and everybody else who’s pushing all this digital game streaming bullshit, have taken into account people lazy people have shitty infrastructures. People don’t know how to improve their infrastructure. And companies like Cox and Comcast and Time Warner. They support your ass up until it hits the wall. And then they’re like that’s on you bitch. rent one of our modems and we’ll at least support the modem, right? rent one of our our routers and will support the router. Right? But then you got every other goddamn possibility. Fucking microwave ovens, you know, any sorts of there’s so many possible things that destroy Wi Fi. Hey, I didn’t want to get on the whole anti streaming thing. But that’s the sort of thing that you know, my experience with virtual desktop streaming to my quest is vastly obviously vastly different to all the other assholes on Reddit who are talking about how great as God’s wrath is streaming to their quest. When in reality, it was not Not very good. I’m on five G’s close. I’m moving like five feet of the router for Christ’s sake. But I digress I wanted to talk about the cool parts of it not the pain in the ass part. So I dusted off the Rift. And remember I said a while ago that I hate dusting off the rift because I’m guaranteed it’s going to be 30 to 40 minutes of me having to fucking troubleshoot something or set something up or or facilitate some problem. That’s exactly what happened last night. So I try as guards, right, so this was about 930. Right? I like to go to bed by 1030 because I’m up at 445. So I said, You know what, I’ve got like an hour, this would be a good time to throw on the quest and give this as God’s wrath. The quick run I can play for about, you know, 3540 minutes at least, that she gave me a good impression and then I can but I can talk about it on the show. So it took me 15 or 20 minutes to kind of decide and that that the quest wasn’t going to take care of business so I dusted off the rift well black screen on the rift but the flux going on so I go back to my computer now the Rift, the rift is in the living room, my computer’s in my office. The for those of you don’t know my setup, I have a hole drilled through the living room wall that drills right into my office. So I have all of my rift cables, my sensor cables, all that shit running right through a little hole in the wall and my my VR PC is literally right against that wall. So it sounds funny that my, my VR PC is in my office, but my rift is in the living room. It’s like nine inches apart. So anyway, so I go so I’m like What the fuck? So I go back and I open up the Oculus app and it’s like, ah Kant’s can’t see your headset, HDMI not functioning and I’m like, hell man. Every single second so then I go back and I unplug and plug it back in the HDMI comes back in can’t see it you might have a USB problem and so now I’m like for God’s sakes The last time I had this was a USB problem. So I’m unplugging the the riffs USB port exists or its own plug to power the goddamn thing. It has to be in a certain port it has to be in a USB two or something. So I’m like 35 minutes into trying to get the rift back online. I finally get it to where it’s stable and I’m moving shit around. I got I got I got USB stuff moved all over the place. God only knows. Hold the wall like Porky’s. That’s right. It’s like a glory hole for VR. That’s exactly right. Michael hammer hit it right on the on the on the nail right on the head there. So anyway, so finally I get the rift up and running. And I’ll tell you what, I gotta tell you the rift is a shitload more comfortable than the quest I mean, putting that on Like putting on a nice well fitting glove where the quest is kind of like, you know, borrowing a glove that’s, you know, not quite the right fit and putting it on. It’s like yeah, this will keep my hand warm. But now, I’d rather have my own gloves. So I put it on and then when I finally realized you know how much better feeling the rift is and how much better the controllers are on the riff, they just feel better. So I finally get into the game. So you get in there, and the first thing that you do is, you you you pick a character, a male or female and the female doesn’t look much like a female it looks more like a dude. But you grab so you use your controller to grab the this little It looks like a little Mahjong tile, and then it shows you what that character looks like. And you say, Okay, I’ll use that character. They then put you into this, like, I don’t even know what you call it. It’s some sort of a palace or a temple type thing. And so now they’re going to kind of teach you the basics of what to do, right? So they tell you to use your right stick to Look right twice look left wise, blah, blah, blah. And then they open up this port, you know, this this porthole in front of you, and they have you walk. And you know, you also get to pick what your sensitivity level is to virtual reality, right? So I chose the sometimes VR kind of makes me queasy. And then they have one that’s like, I’m good to go all the time. And then there’s another one where it’s like, you know, hurt me plenty. So I chose the I chose the one where I’m where I occasionally I get squeamish. So this is full locomotion. So I’m pushing forward on the stick, and I’m actually walking in real time. And wherever you look is where you sort of walk. So you’re not you’re not not like tank style, where you’re walking forward with one stick and moving right and left with the other stick. It’s kind of like where you look is where you walk. So kind of an oddball control system. I’m not used to that, but I do right. So as you’re walking through this, you walk through this big door. way and then they do that bit like from x men where they start all those metal planks come up so you get to you can get to Meg ninos little chamber in the middle, they do this sort of thing where the Florida sort of flies up in front of you and you’re walking along the floor you go through this portal and the next thing you find so this is sort of the intro get a feel for the VR type thing. You You show up in an ocean like literally an ocean so you’re this big fucking god right so I don’t know how big you are, but let’s just go with fucking big you’re huge. And you’re in the water you’re standing there in the water of like this ocean. They’re like Norse or Viking ships all around you floating in the water. It looks like there’s some sort of war going on. The boats are all messed up and everything. And then Loki, the Norse god Loki shows up and starts beating the shit out of this giant cracking or this big giant squid or something look like an octopus. was sort of a mutated octopus in front of you. Anyway, Loki is beating his ass while you’re just kind of you kind of sitting back watching the show, and Loki is kicking his ass and then the octopus kicks his ass for a little bit. And all the while you’re standing you know, waist deep in this big fucking ocean ships and stuff floating all around you. It looks great. I mean, it’s like wow, this is this virtual reality tends to be you know, a half a step back in terms of visual fidelity, right? Because they had to put like 16 screens I mean they have to render 16 things at the same time so no matter where you look you’re you’re seeing this stuff. But this looks good. This looks great. So then Loki, something happens and Loki says something like, you know, take over for me and he throws you his big giant fucking sword right? So now the octopus is going to come kick your ass. So the octopus has a handful and again, this wasn’t like real battle. This was like getting used to the system battle. So you got this big giant sword in your hand. And the octopus starts off by picking up these Viking boats and throwing them at you. And so you’re like chopping them up before they hit you. And then he picks up a big rock out of the water and chunks it out. He slashed the rock and half. Then he like, reaches up with his big giant tongue in grabs your arm and you got to hack his tongue, hack his tongue off to get him off your arm. And you do this a couple of times to kind of get the feel of hacking and slashing and kind of you know, oh, and they also send like these big fucking shrieking eels that you like, right at a Princess Bride. And so you pluck them up with your hand, right? So you grab them like you would grab anything in VR. And then you can either squeeze the trigger finger of that hand and squashing your hand or you can chop them up with your sword I elected to chop them up with my sword because just kind of guy that I just squish a couple just to see what it was like but I felt much better chopping those little bastards up. Anyway, so at some point, you know, You do this a few times, you’re beating the squids ass. And then Loki shows back up. And he I think he got pulled away for something, you know, the Father God called him or whatever and he had to disappear for a little while then he comes back talks to you about how great you did, but you know, he could have done it better blah, blah, blah, real asshole. But anyway, and so that that’s your preliminary mission. Now, as I mentioned before, the idea of the game itself, apparently is is that you’re this God, and you, you go through this like 30 to 40 hour quest by doing godly stuff, but also by inhabiting the bodies of your followers on these different worlds. to to to, to win the game to do whatever your end goal is, which I still don’t know what the hell my end goal is. So I got through the squid, or the octopus wherever the hell it was. And got to this first kind of world where I landed and I started walking around just to see if the controls can It changed it all. But they didn’t seem to change. But that was it then it was 1030 at that point I had to get my ass to bed. But I figured at least that was a safe spot. Right? Does anyone have to go through that tutorial again? So that was that but I gotta tell you, you listen if the rest of the game I mean, this was just the intro if the rest of the game holds true, which apparently it does, the game is getting rave reviews. We’re going to be that’s going to be that’s going to be a great game and that’s one of the most expensive VR games I’ve ever purchased that was 40 bucks $40 the going rate for top notch VR stuff is $30 right beat saber and and Robo Recall MOS all those games they max out of 30 bucks 2999 This is the very first game I think that cost 40 bucks. So it better be good. It sounds like it’s a buck an hour which that’s that’s that’s quality entertainment right there. So I’ll let you guys know I want to play like through that first kind of world. get a feeling for the combat. Apparently there’s a there’s a variation in terms of the combat styles depending on your difficulty level. Like, if you’re playing like the second or third tier, like I’m basically playing beginner, I guess, right? If you’re going to look at it like that, that’s not what they call it. But they say that with the subscription to VR, then you be want to spend less time preparing your opponents. Apparently, the higher up you go, you pretty much don’t get to do any damage unless you’re pairing simultaneously. I don’t know. I just just want to skim from article so. So that’s as God’s wrath. I’m excited for that. And of course, the good news is, is that later on here in November, the quest link will come out, which will allow me if I’m going to be hooked up to a cable anyway, I might as well use my quest as the linked up tethered VR headset and yeah, so I’ll be able to play on my quest without hopefully a 30 minutes La every single time I turn that damn thing on so oh alrighty then so that’s that so let’s talk about bliss con so last last year I I’m going to pretend that you know none of my audience knows what goes on at bliss con but blues con is like a three but only for Blizzard right I would say and I’ve never been but you know from what I gather blues con is like almost the same size as the three but it’s for one company and only their games how’s that for some fat shit crazy stuff right? So you people pay to go to this like II three is like a press things you have to have press credentials, you have to know somebody to get in. bliss con you just have to pay to get in. Right? And so people from all over the world this is like going to Graceland or going to the Wailing Wall or going to Jerusalem for some of these people. This is the holy quest is to go to bliss calm and they sell out quick and they even sell a virtual pass this is how ballsy they are they actually sell a YouTube subscription essentially for 50 bucks. So you so you got the opening ceremonies but if you want to see anything else it’s going to cost you 50 bucks and they give you some app bullshit cosmetic things that go along with it. But you have to be a real Blizzard fan to get any use out of that I mean it comes with a couple of you know beats here you know Overwatch skins but the rest of its you know from Hearthstone or World of Warcraft stuff on a play. So if you if you looked at that $50 as being an in app purchase you know you gotta have you got to be using all their playing all their games. So last year, everybody was was waiting with bated breath to hear about Diablo for Now for those of you really want to understand what happened go to meet dot com slash at dark uni and search for my article about this I did this last year and I talked about because everybody was pissed off so the getting ahead of myself so the fans are all they’re rabid for Diablo for I mean this is the signature frickin This is what everybody’s waiting for Diablo for Diablo for Diablo four, right? So instead of showing Diablo four last year, which apparently wasn’t as far along as everybody had hoped they showed Diablo immortal, a mobile phone Diablo game. And let’s say for those of you who have already forgotten the internet like imploded, Blizzard fans started abusing the developers on social media. It was this terrible behavior by the fans. The blizzards are good when we do everyone’s go to phone We thought you’d like being able to play Diablo on your phone in the doctor’s office Why are you so bad and meanwhile the the fans are lining up to you know bliss calm with pitchforks and daggers and boiling pitch and everything I mean they were pissed I mean this this lasted a good month normally is 21 days for anybody to forget something right but the internet did not forget and again they were assholes these fans that were you know threatening the lives of Blizzard staff members of some game dude come on come down. But these guys will just lost their minds. So you had Blizzard trying to somehow you know, fight back is like we don’t know what we did wrong, right? Hey Jeffrey up the fans are like you fucking assholes. And then you’ve got another faction. You know the war of three armies instead of five. The the Third Army were the non fans of Blizzard lashing out against the asshole fans of Blizzard that were pissed off that these people were basically equating to Diablo immortal as the coming of Lucifer on the planet Earth, you know what I’m saying? So everybody was at war with everybody. It was a terrible thing. In fact, you know, they were taking you know, they took some some guys comment from the audience and the guys like, Is this like, Is this like an April Fool’s joke or something? You know, we came here to see Diablo four and you’re showing us a goddamn cell phone game, which let’s be honest, should have been a blog blurb at best. So that was that nonsense, right? So so you know there was already some bad blood stuff going on. And of course, you know, like I said, Time heals all and people start to forgive. And Blizzard did some nice things like release Overwatch for switch right? So there’s a little bit of goodwill being banked did I mentioned Jeffrey dollars and I signed pop in So then just a couple of weeks ago, right you guys probably already on this because it was only a couple weeks and another week everyone would have forgotten about it. But the Hearthstone eSports event that you know these people get paid money to like compete. And so apparently, this guy made some comment about agreeing with Hong Kong some political statement and, and Blizzard lost their fucking minds and they stripped him of his prize, they kicked him out of the league, whatever, they did the wrong thing. Really. They did. And so the Internet has been losing their fucking minds saying that essentially. Oh, there was some other stuff. I found that too. They announced that they’re going to basically nerf a bunch of Hearthstone cards that have depictions of violence and nudity and stuff. And of course, the reason that everybody thinks is the case is they believe wizard is canoodling with China right? That this is all this grand scheme that blizzards in bed with China which is why they the whole Diablo immortal thing happened and this is why they’re These cards are getting altered and listen you know they might be on to something I don’t know I haven’t dug deep enough to know if this is actually true or not. But the whole thing stinks on ice so we’re we were waiting with bated breath today wondering how crazy this Blizzard con was going to get right? We expected people to be lining up in Winnie the Pooh costumes. Listen, it was a no it could have been a no holds barred scenario. Unfortunately it wasn’t so the guy comes out the president of of Blizzard which by the way. Okay, couple things I’m just going to comment. First off, why don’t you dress like a fucking professional. I mean, I’m not talking about being in a three piece suit. But the guy comes out he’s got some You know Gay Pride pin on which is fine whatever he’s got like this black v neck t v neck t shirt on underneath his his shirt and he’s got that long ass hair. And you know he looks like he looks like Ken Hudson who played the the fat guy from there was on Herman’s head he was also the the fat guy on the cook on down Periscope. He was in Armageddon is the big guy that was on the drilling rig. Yeah, he looks just like him. I was like, holy shit, that could be him. But he got that real, that real thin hair that goes down to his ass. It’s like, yeah, so that’s the person to blizzard. You think maybe the guy could you know, dress up and put on a clean shirt. So he comes out I swear to God, he he was going to start crying. You know, we made a mistake and going forward. We’re going to try harder. And you’re sitting there going, Wow. You’re looking at the audience going are you guys going to Let this slide are you guys just going to accept this at face value and just move on? Right? And so you’re wondering when the you know, when the shoes going to drop right the other shoe is going to drop. And then of course he’s like let’s start the countdown and they put this countdown thing up on the screen and then they show you a completely useless like eight minute trailer cinematic trailer for Diablo four and of course all the sudden all is forgotten nobody’s mad anymore everyone’s like showing me an actual gameplay. They brought this other guy out, you know, covered in tattoos looks like you know, it just it’s one of those things. It’s like, you know, like you’re, you’re in a convention, right? I mean, I’m not saying dress above your peers, but you don’t have to look like you live in your mom’s basement for crying out loud. So he comes down he’s like, you want to see some gameplay footage? We’ll show you some gameplay footage here. And so they started showing this this video and it’s like there’s no gameplay footage. So great. Let’s see the gameplay trailer. You’re saying you’re watching this and you’re like, Where’s the game? Play because there isn’t any. And then at the end of course they showed you they did finally show you some gameplay. It’s Diablo I mean, you’re looking at it going Okay, next What else you got an overwatch tues coming out can we have something about that? No me while I’m sitting here trying to think of you know where the Luigi is mansion three cartridges I’m like maybe I should go and play that because I’m certainly not in the mood to play Diablo now but anyway so I ended up checking out I had to it was my lunch hour I had to go and walk and pick up something to eat and so I missed the rest of the conference so that the public conference but I’m not I don’t think I really missed a ton but Overwatch to was announced finally of course it had been pretty much totally leaked already in the press. You can’t keep anything secret anymore. Let’s be honest. So I don’t know much about that because I missed the presser itself. I only got bits and pieces. The important part is it is coming to switch it it has PV. So there’s going to be a, an actual story mode to actually play through. Along with that there’s sort of a, like a co op, type scenario, sort of a zombies or extinction if you’re a if you’re a big fan of Call of Duty. And of course, some new maps some new characters. So new powers. Well, I see I might be screwed here. All right, well, we’re just hanging a Louis here. So I cannot get out from there. I think I might have just fucked up. All right. We’ll do what we can. Alright, well, that didn’t work out. They’re doing construction right on my intersection. Hey, Ron. Jay, what’s up, man? Let’s see. Yes, I can hear me get to that. Let me get off the road. I only had a minute or two left here before I get within my Wi Fi. So any So Overwatch to I’m in, they added a couple more modes like escort the robot type thing. What else is in there some level progression so character progression so you can actually like level up your characters more a little more RPG ish style where you’re kind of unlocking new abilities as you go. Blah blah blah. So yeah, listen I meant and the fact that it’s coming out for switch to is also very cool so Diablo four apparently is like years out I love that bit they knew they had no choice if they didn’t show Diablo for this year that there’d be hell to pay pardon the pun, but yeah but you know now we’re talking about we’ll see in a few years or something like that so I don’t know. All I know is is that it’s not coming out anytime soon. And I can’t wait for the backlash is to start because that’s how I get my entertainment is watching the Five Armies make war on Twitter and Social Media gives me something to do. Alright guys You guys have a fantastic weekend. I am going to go home it’s date night and take my wife out to a nice dinner. And I guess that’s it. Hope you guys had a great week enjoyed the shows. This is Shane Armin row passenger seat radio. We’ll see you next time. Take care, everybody.