PAX Aus 2017 with Luke and Hannah

okay welcome to a very special episode of multiple nasm I'm here with my wife Hannah again hello and we're here to discuss packs we just got back and we are still exhausted yes all right I lie we didn't just get back this is the day after we got back because we were exhausted and just couldn't record when we got home and also because Luke made big promises to Jenna so as his tradition he instantly broke them that's what I do now so start off what did you think of packs um cuz you didn't go last year no I didn't okay so this is my first packs in two years my third packs overall and honestly I don't quite think I am the target market for packs I will be honest about that

okay so for those of you who may not know PX is the Penny Arcade Expo I think there's what three four a year in different locations and this one was Pax Australia so Pax focuses on games video games tabletop games game design game development and let's be honest of the two of us which one would you say is the bigger gamer okay yes it is me yet surprisingly which one of us dominated a tournament and is now a Medal winner yeah I thought we weren't going to bring that up yes I went into about four tabletop tournaments every day and got knocked out the first round of every single one but what happened with you on the very last day of facts in the dying hours I just rolled like a mother flipping champ and took out King of

Tokyo which the guy who looks after the tabletop area Spike or Patrick is his actual name that was actually his dream that we would be in the same tournament and you would win and I would lose yeah it's a little weird when someone you barely know comes up to and says I hope you beat your husband but you know who was I to dismiss the wishes of a well-meaning stranger now we didn't just played board games while we there we did try and do other things what's something that stands out for you as is tradition of packs there were certain highs and lows so first off I believe we really should say a big thank you to all the organizers of packs who are absolutely fantastic organizers and the enforcers they all do an amazing job special shout out too for the organizers who helped

clear the path for us a couple of times um we were traveling around packs with the wheelchair which does make things a little bit more challenging as you've seen on the Instagram only one of us got a superhero entrance to building that really slowed us down in the morning us down slow us slowed you down this is my normal speed yeah so thank you again to all the organizers of fact we did have a very good time as mentioned before I'm not the biggest games person but I did see some really exciting ideas there and you know as a not really a gamer game person if you're getting me excited about something you're doing something right I will turn you into a gamer one day I will get you to play games with me at least maybe not a gamer yeah maybe as is

Tradition at pack we started off by hitting the Indie floor and the Indie floor is absolutely amazing it's Australia has some great developers out here it's just a shame that there aren't more more of them and even maybe some bigger Studios like there used to be well what I love too is I've just noticed from the outside over the past few years there's been a real push with games where they're saying hey if there aren't games that you like if you don't feel you're being represented in the traditional game industry get into the game industry make your own and that's the real sense I took away from the Indie flaw this year was like people were making games they wanted to play and you really got that enthusiasm when they were talking to you and I think one

of the people Gil who's making working on odd Gods that's what he was also saying like he wanted to go back to the old '90s style isometric Fallout type of game but no one's going to make that anymore so he just decided he'll make it himself yeah I have to be honest you played a lot of games at packs while I was quietly observing SL quietly turning down some of the games makers seriously that was a bit odd guys anyway um and odg gods I think was one of the ones where you were the most excited I saw I got something uh the day before we left I got an email from them saying hey we're there come and have a look at our game and the first day were there they had been troubles in in the morning and then completely forgot about it until the last day now odd Gods okay

just as an observer I would kind of describe it as it's kind of like being in an episode of Buffy like you're in the '90s you get to pick which archetype you're going to be are you a goth a skater a Sona people interact with you in different ways depending on which character you've chosen and there are some really Nifty little elements to it as well so aside from being a goth you get to also pick say what favorite type of music is so if you're a goth that likes boy bands it can really help you on some of the quests because you can make this connection with other players well not other players because you know it's a one person but like other characters and off you go so yeah instead of like being like most RPGs where you pick off picking Like a

Warrior or spellcast or something like that you do go out and pick genres from the '90s and they've got things like the skateboarders the Goths the Slackers the grunt rockers the Nerds like all those things that most of us would remember the '90s for me slightly less so but as anyone who's heard Luke talk about his music taste before on the podcast knows I think Luke kind of thinks he's still in the '90s the '90s end of '90s beginning in 2000s was the best time for music and it should never do anything else after that okay old man bring back nany Vandal I don't think they've officially gone away so sorry Fox trky if you're listening but yeah so this just does remind me of now this is a while off so we're not expecting this game to come

out next week or anything but they've got some good experience working on this and I'm really looking forward to this coming out when it does now at the moment it's probably only going to be a PC steam game they're maybe probably waiting to see how it does go and then they might think about Xbox or consoles pretty much which this says how much I actually am looking forward to this game if it only comes out on PC I'm still going to play it I'm not going to say buy it because I buy everything even if I don't play it but this one is true like my steam L 600 games and I've played maybe five of them but this will be a game that I do play so yeah Gil from the odd Gods development team we're looking forward to it buddy send us an email when you've got a release date we

are Keen yes also Luke will do a cameo cover of any '90s song you choose provided it's by a band that played in Sydney in the late '90s he early 2000s it won't be good but I'll do it okay so speaking of Musical games not really it's an awkward segue let's just roll with it um another game that I really liked was spin Rhythm yes because it's everything you liked about DJ Hero but we're too afraid to admit to everyone who hated DJ Hero I don't know why everyone hated DJ Hero so much I really enjoyed it and I really wish they would make more more because I still got my my decks there waiting to go but this might let me do it again and it's actually probably a little bit more interesting and complex and then also I found it easier than DJ Hero it's weird

Okay so to give people the full rundown spin rhythm is very much your classic rhythm game so you've played guitar hero you've played band band hero band guitars guitar band whatever um similar concept screen you've got the little colors coming towards you tap in the same sequence you're good to go but what made this a little bit different was that they had modified a DJ deck like an actual DJ deck that you could then use as a controller with this game and I just picked it up really quickly and it just was doing quite well didn't quite get up to hard while I was there but I I think that impressed the guys that did not stop Luke from trying I did try a few times it did not go well but I did it's this is one that this is also not out I'm not sure when they're looking

coming out but this one I'm actually looking to buy DJ deck so I can play it I believe they said March or April next year um what the team is trying to do though is at the moment their Tunes are a little bit limited so they want to widen that up a little bit more obviously if you're not a fan of EDM or other Electronica this may not be the best game for you but let's be honest if you love a good rhythm game and you love like a novelty controller definitely worth a look now you also don't need the controller to play it that is true that's another thing like you can I think they even had it set up on a phone and mouse this is pretty much designed to play with a mouse but I will admit like the tactile nature of actually having a spin wheel it it really made you get

more into the game y so yeah this will be one that I'm definitely picking up I think we're still a while off away from the release theyve only been working on it a few months but then they're still trying to work out maybe to see if they can try and get some big what's the word I'm looking for people who play music artists to maybe come on board and maybe play some stuff with them although for them creators of spin Rhythm not going to tell you how to run your business but this would actually be a really really cool game to team up like you guys are in Indie Studio why not team up with some indie musicians I think they have yeah they have but you know they should take this idea and run with it yeah yeah but I think to if they can get sort of that big name on there to attach to the

project that will sort of give them a b boost dead mouse we know that you're a keen listener of multiple nerdgasm so you know send us an email podcast at n multiple nerdgasm tocom and we'll put you in touch God I do love Rhythm music games I really do but as we found out in the blush boox Arena you also love a game with a novelty controller I was okay so I know what game you're talking about now and this is just everyone's seen and heard of this game I think genal jousting yeah sorry sorry just one more time that is genital jousting not genital jousting that's a different game it's what I said sort of Matt if you're editing this week's episode would love a remix of that the general Jousting is the one where you play a penis that's trying to get into a butt that's pretty

much the okay that makes it sound like your opponent is a penis we should make it clear that in this game everyone is a penis and everyone has a butt yeah um for anyone who's having difficulty visualizing this just jump on our Instagram page I think we posted a pick of Luke playing this game and thoroughly enjoying himself explaining the controller to people yeah the the controller that they'd set up was a custom controller it was a giant black dildo yeah there were a few guys in the blush boox area who I think had a bit of an Awakening of sorts they were they were a bit tentative at first but people got really into it it just felt really natural to me and I it was fun cuz I was I was there for a few games and got to teach people

how to play and I think a few people when they initially got there were a bit hesitant to jump on and stop playing but that was mostly because a slightly Tipsy redhead was yelling at them just grab it just grab it they'll give you a fresh condom if you need that was nice they actually did have condoms on the dildos for health and safety reasons and a lot of hand sanitizer do you think that were used used for what the dildos they would have been clean right they're just for the controller right oh god I didn't even think about that I'm happy mine had a condom be safe out there people they all do oh yeah pax's PA is quite interesting in that way because the big message of paxes really is that games are for everyone mhm and that there is a game for everyone yes now late night Pax is

traditionally in the tabletop tney area yep where you can do things like late night werewolf Cards Against amenities and essentially play the kinds of games that you don't want the kids who are on the floor during the day to sort of see but that's what I found quite interesting was the upstairs area where the blush boox area was was a whole area of adult games and this adult not necessarily in the sense of nudity it could also been adult themes and I just found it really kind of cool in a way that they were willing to open it up to those kinds of games as well I did get a bit of a shock when we did walk in there and went wow that have now it wasn't 18 only room so yeah there were different wristbands for the weekend so there was for black was 18 red was 15 and I think

if you didn't have one you just we don't care about you yeah pretty much wrist pen system was of course incredibly important because of the South Park fractured butthole exhibit that took up a surprising portion of the floor actually but sort of hidden away is at the same time so no one could see what was happening very clever use of florid to ceiling screening now I didn't actually play that while I was there the reason for that and I was actually talking to one of the guys who worked at Ubisoft about it cuz he gone have you given a try and but no cuz I've completed the game 100% already I actually enjoyed that game though so yeah it took you what three four days of play three days yeah and I all I could hear was just you laughing from the

landr so just like watching an episode of South Park it really is let's see I'm just having a look cuz I did drop down a whole bunch of things that we thought were pretty cool we can talk about my girlfriend yeah that's true I I picked up while I was there I'm very proud of this actually I'm not proud of it I am she was gorgeous on the very first day I ran into this gorgeous gorgeous actually I have to stop you for a second PS one of their really strict rules is no Booth babes is I think Booth bab is a gender neutral term yeah yeah yeah yeah so one of P's strictest rules is no Booth babes and I will be honest I think they flew a little too close to the son with this one she just had gorgeous blue eyes sort of a bit darker skin and uh four legs and big floppy ears yeah I'm talking about a

dog um it was actually quite good uh Destiny 2 doing some advertised they actually teamed up with the Shane working dog rescue they had working dogs there that were available for adoption I believe okay I also need to make this really clear because like most of the listeners right now I'm guessing you're thinking okay how the the heck does that work because you've got working dogs in a huge convention and to be honest when I read the press release that they sent us in advance I was a bit hesitant I was thinking oh do I forward this to rspca Victoria um but when we got there what they' done was they'd set the dogs up in the thoroughfare outside the convention hall so the dogs had heaps of space um they had handlers with them at all times and they were rotated constantly so

don't worry everyone the dogs were well looked after yeah they didn't spend like 15 hours out on the floor with lots of people around but they were there sort of also of raise money and raise awareness and I will be honest I may have made out with Nimble for anyone who would like to see some of these photos please email podcast multipl nerdgasm docomo you can't tell if it's Luke or the dog's tongue whose do you think it is I didn't ask at the time and I think marriages need a little bit of mystery that was one of the Charities that was really well represented at packs the other one of course being child play now I actually really like child play and I actually ended up buying two tows from them I know I could have probably spent more but I didn't

actually have enough money I'd already spent lots of money on the weekend but Child's Play is a really great initiative it's to sort of help sick kids sick kids and also kids who have mental health issues I don't think we really need to give them too much of a boost because they do fantastic work one of the things I actually quite like the adult advertising one of the ways that they help kids and it's actually something that I use in my everyday and that's for pain therapy now what it is is with pain therapy it's you play games to take your mind off the pain so you'll play a game that distracts you from what's actually happening and it really works so that's what I quite like that they do and if anyone would like to contribute to Luke's ongoing pain relief

therapy and help him explore alternative therapies please become a patreon sponsor you can do this by visiting patreon.com and searching for multiple nerdgasm as little as $1 an episode will really help Luke all you know is save up your pennies donate them to Child's Play Yeah the more games I play the less I take painkillers and alcohol yeah but I also get to hear a lot of winging and whining about the game so you know actually speaking of games Luke's gameplay I think it's time we address the elephant in the room of what else happened during packs okay as a lot of you may know I've had a really good achievement streak going so for 97 days I had an Xbox achievement every day at least one I'd like to point out that

during this time we got married we went on honeymoons we traveled overseas he was working full-time y this like yeah this included like two trips to America Japan weddings like it it was a lot and then on the first day of packs I just forgot it's gone 97 days and now I'm back down to 2 days and it's got to start again so depressing I know it means nothing and I don't get anything for it but it really felt good I was going for that thousand days and yeah so um see I'll see you again in a th days and I'll see we'll see if I've made it wait you're going to see me again in a thousand days no we're going to see the I'm going to lissus will hear us in another thousand days and they'll find out if I made it okay so listeners if you hear me on the podcast before a

thousand days has gone past something happen to Luke I actually forgot that happened I keep forgetting about it and then it comes back to me and it's really sad and while we're on the sad note we should mention the other great disappointment of packs which was the oysters now this was not the fault of packs the pxs organizers any of the enforcers any of the fine folks we met anywhere at packs including the wonderful people in the diversity Lounge forgot to give you a shout out before but diversity Lounge I love you but still have a small bone to pick with you someone in the diversity Lounge made these amazing biscuits that you were selling to help support Child's Play I purchased let's not say how many let's just let's just say I was hungry or how

much you donated to get them hey hey hey I was told to coin a donation I had no coins I only had notes what do you want me to do anyway so there I was trying to be a big roller didn't go well similar to when I participated in the charity auction towards the end of packs and realized when someone bid $450 for diece set I was like oh I'm a bit outmatched here I do not have $750 for an Xbox One onesie my bone I my bone I need to pick is you made some delicious biscuits but there was no recipe card so if anyone from the diversity lounge or any Bakers want to get in touch and send me their recipes for how one makes raspberry double chock biscuits podcast at multip nerdgasm tocom I know I keep saying the email address but I'm just hoping

someone will respond with that recipe but sorry back to the oysters this has been a tradition that started at the very second packs in Australia because the first one wasn't actually at the entertainment center but the second year we went and next to packs is the Melbourne public and every year they have had Dollar oyers on the Friday for lunch bucka shock bucka shock as it is colloquially known and started off with Matt and Jenner and then it's extended and it's gone with my new friends that we've come along the way Eric and Chris no they only went this year they never got to experience bucker Shar but anyway it's continued and I would get there on the at lunch and I'll go give me a dozen oysters I'll sit down have a drink and then buy probably a

couple dozen more and again I'd like to make it clear that like many other things Luke does this was a solo effort just a man an oyster and a shock I did share with you yeah one year I was granted three oysters then told if I wanted more I should buy my own dozen which Luke then at half of yes I like oysters and they're a great price but no this year we went there and there's no bucker shock anymore there is also an international oyster shortage and severe issues with I don't care about any of that oyster farming I want my cheap oysters that's yeah I don't care about the shortage just give me my oysters some places we're charging like four bucks for an oyster that's ridiculous I don't even want anything fancy like kill Patrick just give me a natural oyster

why don't you just I don't know catch the train out to the oyster farm and dive into the ocean with your own shocking knife I want it to come to me I'm not going to do effort and this was clear when we played a game called party crashers where somehow I was better at it than you once I figured out which character I was on the screen y so yeah that took a little while to work out yeah also um Indie developers of packs your games are good fun I love that you let everyone have a go but maybe tell people which one they are because it gets really confusing uh and to be fair everyone else had an Xbox controller at this booth ball I had a PlayStation 4 One yep and I would I don't know how to use them they're terrible yeah um I'm a everyone knows

I'm an Xbox person that's why I'm used to those controllers I just don't get Sony controllers well it was weird because when I hold a Nintendo switch I feel like I've got giant hands which possibly I do people have always been polite though but the ex sorry the PlayStation controllers I don't know I think either my hands are too big or too small it's just not a good fit I think it's also the fact that because you when we you normally do play here it's with an Xbox controller so you do get used to the Sticks being slightly different Luke let's be honest when I play here it's with a computer mouse and keyboard okay yes party Crushers now this is from the guys who made party golf who actually um had a chat with last year if you

remember they've made a new game uh party crashers so it's in much that same style with that bright colors and everything and super customizable it's only sort of relatively new so they're still just stting to work on it going really well so far and I'm looking forward to getting my hands on a copy when it does come out now at the moment it is only going to be a PC game and I think they were telling us they're going to go into Early Access soon and sort of Build It Up with the community to be honest I'm a little surprised that they're going with PC first I understand like you know distribution and platform issues and all that kind of thing this strikes me as a kind of well like it says it's it's a fun party game I want three friends in a room everyone

with a controller ideally matching controllers knowing who they are yeah maybe get the old split screen happening yeah it's all for that couch Co-op play which they did great with party Golf and this will work and now I can tell you why they're going PC first cheap uh pretty much it's cost a lot of money to get past sort of the certification on on Sony and Xbox where so it is sort of just cheaper to get your game out into steam so it's a great place to sort of especially when you're going to Early Access so you don't have a full game to release yet that's the place you want to build it you want to sort of get it on Steam build it up then and then once it's ready to go get it onto other platforms and I think what they'll do is they will probably do what they've done

with party Golf and they'll probably start off with steam and then follow off onto they on to PlayStation um Nintendo and it's coming out in the Xbox one soon so once that comes out in the Xbox one I will be buying it and we will be playing it I need there achievements we'll see so yeah with party crashers one of the game types that we played was just you're driving along a course and you got to just try and not be last otherwise cuz if you fall behind too much you die and it's just the last man standing wins other great thing about this game is the fact that it's not the same game every time that's true um and there were a few indie game developers playing with this kind of format where it would be a similar gaming concept like objective remain the same but they

really switched it up when it came to how different levels felt and things like that and a game that I actually I liked way more than I thought I would that did something similar was brief battles ah yes so in this one you're like a little nubby character and it's your classic kind of Mario Smash Brothers kind of thing where you're trying to do duke it out you don't want to fall off the platforms but you put on different kinds of magical underwear that give you different abilities and what I really liked with this one is that they had fun with that kind of format and there were just little things like your little nby characters could actually climb walls and could stick to

Ste ceilings and things like that which straight away opened up a whole lot more of the maps cuz I was having a chat with someone they've gone you got to go check this game out and they've gone it's like Super Smash Brothers the second I've said that I've sort of tuned out I'm not a fan of Super Smash Brothers yeah your exact words were why do I want to play more of that I didn't I don't like it and then when I actually when I found what he was talking about cuz I found out that I actually spoke to these guys last year and I actually did enjoy it and this game's come a long way in a year they're actually at the stage where they're starting to think about releasing um in so much that they've actually got a Kickstarter going so we'll have a link in the show notes to

this I've been told I'm not allowed to Kickstart anything anymore is that still the case or can I please Kickstart this we can discuss this one off a okay um this is mainly because you buy stupid things yes I brought many stupid things on Kickstarter but this isn't stupid and the great thing about this one is they're aiming for Windows steam SL steam release and also Xbox one so that means achievements yep they know their market and their Market is Luke also I would like to do a shout out um to to the lovely gentleman who sat behind me while I was having a go at brief battles trying to yell out advice as mentioned before I'm not the biggest gamer gamy person I do know how to hold the controller though but you know thanks man at as point he realized

that him yelling advice wasn't leading to me actually doing any better at all so he just started cheerleading which I appreciate it that's all you need so once we discuss this off air I'll probably be chucking them $20 so I can get the windows or Xbox version wait so before we discuss it Luke has already come to his conclusion well I'm not going to go the $14 version because that want to give me the steam one whereas I need no no the one this is exactly what you did at hand of Fate 2 as well before you even played it you just turned me you're like it's going to be good it's going to be amazing I'm so excited it's going to be the best game ever and then what happened it was uh great game again um I played through the I didn't play through the first one I played the first

one and I struggled a bit I loved the G idea of the game I loved the game but it was just too hard and the achievements were a bit insane so I actually stopped playing it before I could finish it would Rage Quit be an appropriate verb yeah but for hand Effect 2 it's almost as if they reached into your brain read your feedback completely ignored it and just made a great game this is what they've done they've actually listened to the community because the community for gamers is really good at giving feedback unfortunately they're quite toxic at giving feedback some at a time and guys you need to stop doing that it's great to make your opinion heard but you got to do it in a nice way uh yeah we had a chat with a few Indie designers about this and by guys we we

mean people generally it's not a gender thing there is like it's just about being able to give feedback about the product not necessarily the person who created it at the same time in other words please stop writing such hurtful things about Dan to the inbox he does read them with hand of Fate it's it's like a it's a tabletop game and they actually are releasing a tabletop version of this game but it's a deck building game so you collect cards as you go and this is sort of how you play the game you by turning over cards your guy goes there and the cards will give you things like locations special events weapons Shields Powers build up and increase as you go along and then once you do get into the battle thing it's

like a normal hack and slash so you're controlling your character running around trying to kill the enemies that are there it's like Yu-Gi-Oh meat squint it is not in any way but hand of fade if you hand of Fate two if you wish to use that tagline let me know I'm here yeah the second one they've just taken Tak on a lot of feedback that they had from the first and they've just made they've just improved upon what was already a great idea so the game's not doesn't ramp up in difficulty quite as much as hand of Fate did which is good because a lot of people didn't finish it because of those last few missions that actually quite got hard the other thing is achievements and this is what they actually said like they've listened to the achievement community and they didn't know how

strong the achievement Community was yeah achievements achievements that are surprisingly big deal that isn't a big deal I think it's just adding that extra layer of motivation to be honest because let's face it most of the time when you're playing like those kinds of games it's really more of a solo effort no one's there to go yay you finished that thing or you you managed to unlock that level and all this kind of stuff but achievements are kind of like a nice publish kind of way of saying yes I did this thing they have ruined gaming for for me cuz now I won't play games unless there are achievements but I still love them although you were saying the other day that now that the streaks being broken you're thinking that maybe you'll have more time for essentially World

exploration in new games yeah cuz I I do play everything still and I do spend hours completing games but there are some achievements now that I just or even games that I sort of stopped playing just because it was going to be too hard and too grindy to get achievements like um Borderlands and things which I sort of finished the game there's still a lot more to do but too hard to get an achievement so I don't go back to it but now the achievement streak is gone I can maybe look at that yeah except the achievment streaks back I'm back at two days is it is it a streak though like if you're at two days honestly I think we need to throw this open to the people the people of the nation Any Nation your nation how long does something need to be going to get a

streak cuz Pokémon go tells me when I spin a poké stop for the first time in a couple days it says yay you've got a one day streak and I'm like well no I've done something once no I think you got to do it at least two times yeah see for a streak like if it's a streak of Victories or something like that I'm thinking 4 five at a minimum otherwise you know you've got a win a couple of wins a hattick then we're sort of heading into streak area like you've shown that it's a repeated activity well give me three more days and I'll be up to five now with Hanah fate 2 de is an actual release date for this one and it's next week it comes out November 7th yes so it may not be next week by the time you listen to this but if it's November 7 congratulations you can play

it right now so I've just dated the episode which is okay I sort of dat dated it when we I said we came back from packs the other thing too is if you're interested in the hand of Fate board game I believe you can actually play that right now and no oh not yet that's not relased no that's why I actually wanted to try and give that go that was uh a Kickstarter oh and it made a lot of money yeah cuz there was a bit of confusion about that on the FL packs because some people thought it was just a computer well not computer but you know like just an electronic game or just a board game so a couple of people actually had them say things like oh man it's such a total rip like they just took the name and I'm

like May no they actually working together on that and I have heard great things about that Bard game though one of our friends NY gave it AO and he says it was really good so I do want it but that was Kickstarter and I'm not allowed to give money to Kickstarter and for me I'm not a big fan of the deck building board game so I think it's going to be a pass for me I don't actually think see that's just it we haven't played it but don't know I can't talk about it yeah from what we understand I've heard that yeah people are enjoying it though now um now oh one other thing we saw which I actually did buy some of this and Matt and Jenner you have a present coming once it's arrived look surprised yes even though I'm about to just talk about it now tabletop tokens these things are

an amazing idea and I think o h can I can I do the little Spiel I prepared in my head for this yes you can does this sound familiar you're playing Dungeons and Dragons but you can't keep track of all your conditions are you blind are you paraly realized are you Charmed who knows now the answer will be you now these tabletop tokens are such a simple idea honestly I'm surprised no one has thought of it before someone might have but we've never seen it before at least okay so a tabletop token kind of looks like teeny tiny little half Globes of essentially a very high quality kind of button and they're beautifully printed with you can get them with conditions on it health markers power up markers you can even get them customized with your character's face on them so if you're

playing a game such as Dungeons and Dragons or Arkham Horror was another one where they showed it for something where you're juggling a lot of conditions and it can get very tricky maybe you don't want to mess around with Miniatures or even if you just you got a game that does use like cardboard tokens and you want to upgrade to make them a little bit nicer yeah these things were fantastic and also a really really good price they are a fantastic price so what we've brought um Matt and Jenna and we actually brought a couple other people this we brought the adventure players status condition set so this has got all the things like um petrified blinded grappled like Charmed like all the type of things that you'll come across in a role playing game or Dungeons and

Dragons and so that way when a person's playing you can actually you can actually put the token on that player so you know what they they' got so everyone could see what's happening similar to the strategy I employed in King of Tokyo to take out that medal yeah so in the interests of disclosure I want to make it really really clear that we are not sponsored by tabletop tokens we just honestly saw this product loved it if you're interested we will post a link up yeah but it's just tabletop token.com and yeah believe me go there have a look we got all these tokens for the condition for $15 and honestly the quality of these they look like they should be worth more they are also water resistant and durable so if you play with that idiot who keep spilling water on your board I did it

once and it wasn't water that and to be honest that's probably how your cardboard tokens got wrecked to begin with finally finally there's a solution out there okay well I'm also thinking of solutions and by Solutions I just mean interesting ideas Microsoft this was another example of something so simple but so clever that I absolutely loved it Microsoft were promoting their new game sea of Thieves I'm looking forward to playing this now now the Melbourne Convention Center for those who do not really know much about it is in an area called the docklands and they just so happened to have an old timey sailing ship so what Microsoft did was they said you want to try a new game of called sea of Thieves

where you're a pirate and an oldtime sing ship what if you played that on a mother flipping sailing ship so we lined up for this and then we got to sit out on the deck for a little while enjoying the sun washing the boat Rock the Boat does not rock very much it is in a harbor it has not sailed in many years and then we finally got our hands on see if these what I played you watched now with this one now I've probably spoken about this on the podcast before or if not you probably do understand that this probably normally wouldn't be my type of game cuz it is an online only game and it is something that you really need to play with people yeah so it's those things Luke doesn't like in that he has to cooperate with others and I think there's a great photo of me being

Captain when we were playing and me yelling at my other teammates okay I'd like to make it clear again as the Microsoft people told him multiple times there is no Captain you cannot run on the deck well run you cannot just climb on the deck of the old sailing ship and yell I call Captain hey everyone said okay everyone just went with it because we were first ones on there and we were wearing our matching podcast shirts I think everyone thought we were you know staff or something at the event um this confusion actually continued while Luke was playing actually it was really funny cuz the way Microsoft set it up was you start off on the deck of this sailing Shir you get a quick intro of like Hey we're releasing this game soon Ahoy off we go kind of thing then everyone climbs

below deck and they set up 12 different stations so four people in each team so there were three teams and with all 12 people were in the same world together but they were crewing three different ships so while Luke was playing and shouting instructions and things like that other people on Luke's team kept turning around to me and they were just like uh Excuse Me Miss are we doing this right why can't I kill him and so I was just like oh they've turned friendly fire off for this demonstration but your ship's doing really well so we actually do I think we're the only ones to get the treasure actually that's true due to my great leadership I might add so this really is a true Co-op game where just for example to get underway on the ocean you've got well in this

case you had four people MH so you had to raise the anchor yep set the sails yep trim them yep angle them yep off you go with someone steering and the other fun thing is if you were steering the boat which by the way does not mean you were captaining Luke we've got serious issues with your knowledge is sailing so that way like the person who is steering the boat which was me as Captain cannot actually see which way the boat's going so you really need to communicate with those other players and similarly like the more people who were raising or lowering a sale or working the anchor the faster you got underway and maybe it was the yelling maybe it was the threats of abuse or maybe it was because they mistakenly thought Luke was someone but Luke's team actually got under way

really quickly yep we got the sails up the anchor up and we're just on our way there's no guide marks on the screen so most of the time in these adventure games like Witcher 3 even when you get lost there's usually something that hints where you meant to go not with this it was really that open world feel like there will you have a map a compass and you can go to any Island out there you want we could have we could have just not done the quest we could have just gone searching for the other characters to try and kill them yeah so it I really have to again applaud Microsoft's Ingenuity about this because the Sea of Thieves experience they didn't really advertise that that heavily in packs and at first I was like why like you kind of knew it was

happening but there were very few clear signs but then I figured it out it's because it is such a big Lush open world I timed it they gave everyone playing 30 minutes now that that probably doesn't sound like much cuz we've all been there you've spent four hours playing a single game but at a convention where your goals to try and get as many people through as you can 30 minutes is very luxurious yeah 30 minutes and then you can only do 12 at a time yeah now SE of Thieves it is something where there hasn't really been a lot about it in the years it's been being developed and now you always see it in their promos and stuff but there's no to be honest I did think it was going to be the next Assassin's Creed I just get confused all the posters look very similar but

thankfully it's not the new Assassin's Creed readed it's actually a new game in its own right and I wasn't going to get this but after playing it I'm really hoping that once it does come out and they are looking early next year so they're saying first half they won't give a date or a month but they're saying it's definitely not going to be like June or anything no Microsoft man gave me the wink and he was like April o so we'll see so if we're looking at an April release I do want to get it and I want Dan and Matt to get it and then I want us to find a time once a fortnite to sit down and play it for a couple of hours however depending how open world it is listeners if you encounter Luke in this game remember he called Captain I am captain you do what I say Luke also

knows nothing about sailing go that way but then again neither did Luke's team because at one point the Microsoft man next to me was like yeah guys if you just head toward like if you head port and they were like we need to go to a port I'm not drinking oh okay I go drink for alcohol but another Co-op game that we also took a bit of a look at that Luke is already a Die Hard fan of were our favorite friends at Death Squad um I just the guys at SMG Studios we just love them I don't know why and this is even Matt and Jenner even their single player phone games like one more jumping things they're just they're great games I really love what they do um so we ran into them again and death squared we still need to sit there and play that I

still want to play that now having a chat them they they are working on something new but I could not get out of them what they're playing I tried to yeah they were really Cy which is interesting cuz a lot of the Indie people we spoke to couldn't wait to tell like some of them I'll be blun people you haven't finished the game you're working on now but some of them were already starting to say like oh yeah once this is done we're going to get started on this and then we're going to do this and I'm like wa a lot of energy lot of enthusiasm perhaps a little too much energy and enthusiasm but by that stage of packs at least 50% of your blood is caffeine and sugar anyway so you know yeah so yeah I if you haven't checked out death Square definitely give

that a try or check out one of their mobile games I'm going to have to find out this guy's name I'm really bad I should know it CU I know him he remembers me when Matt and Jenner ran into him at P when they went to pack East he remembered me over there and it's just he's a nice guy makes some great games and that's why I always just want to give them a plug he also gave lcas a set of stickers that he could put on the chair so yeah I now have new stickers on my wheelchair they're pretty they're death cubes cuz Hannah thinks that he's named wrong and it shouldn't be squared and this is an example of being able to criticize an issue not a person um the no the people at death Square okay I've played your game it is really really fun it is a puzzle game I

think most people have probably already had a bit of a play of it if you haven't do check check it out um it does slightly annoy me because it is 3D you do move in all three dimensions but it's called squared I feel it should be death Cube but now that I think about it the death Cube sounds kind of like an octagon or some sort of fight Arena so you know what maybe it's time to admit that death squar know a little bit more about games marketing than I do with my complete experience of zero yeah I do yeah we are going to sit down we are going to play that so so I need to get achievement so and I don't want to play it without you it's going to test the relationship that's for sure there is one more thing I want to give a little bit of a plug to that I

came across in the diversity so like we were saying before one of the big things when it comes to games is diversity mhm people want why did audiences of people want a wider variety of games people feel that they're not being represented or they want to play more games with stuff that looks like them or just games that are cool for them mhm and so I just wanted to give a bit of a shout out to the Go Geek Group okay so we met these wonderful people in the diversity Lounge were telling us about this initiative and it is not just for girls it's for everyone really but essentially if you want to learn how to code in a happy supportive environment where everyone just has a bit of a crack get in touch with them give them a Google great people I believe they also run some

programming camps and things like that too but it's not just limited to programming languages it is also game design Y and also in the diversity Lounge I was very pleased to see that there are some designers out there again working on that accessibility issue yep we got to experience a game designed for people with hearing impairments I I couldn't work out what I was doing in that game okay so it wasn't it wasn't designed for luks but I had a bit of a chat with the people who'd been working on it and said it was essentially a little bit of a system overlay they put in to help people with games such as The Witcher for example where if you hear a rustling that can actually give you big hints about what's happening in the game but obviously if you're hearing ined and

you're not looking that way in screen you're going to miss it yep and similar to those wonderful people who do great stuff with color blindness for example in games o while I'm thinking that of accessibility in games Lenova thank you very much for allowing us to very briefly join the Star Wars Jedi Academy now this one was actually kind of interesting because first of all they were pretty open about the fact you were the first wheelchair user they' had who actually tried using their VR headset yeah now I don't quite know much about how VR works but I figure you're sort of calibrated to the space you're in and also on the game yeah this one was a little bit different than the normal typical VR this one was actually augmented so you can still see stuff

behind you so you can still see the room and everything around you and then overlaid the lightsaber fight while fighting color in it laid that over the top of things yeah so I watched a few people play this and I also had a go myself but I'm going to talk about that just shortly so when I was watching other people play it I noticed a lot of them were like stepping forward to block hits from kylo Ren and things like that obviously you were in a chair did did it make much of a difference for you no not at all cuz this the way this game was set up it was just a kylo ren was coming at you so it was just about getting the light Saab in the right position to block it yeah cuz we've you've Spen about VR a few times on the podcast before cuz I know it's something you're

quite keen on but one of the issues with a lot of VR games is it's almost like it kind of wants to be you know that little Xbox thing you have where it finds you in the room like the dance games and things like that yes the connect yes it's kind of like it wants to be the connect with a headset if that makes sense like it still wants you to move through space in order to do stuff and this is stuff I've said in the past I need to get a away from that that's going to kill VR before it really gets started if cuz people don't have the room to stand up and walk around like any typical landro you got your coffee table mhm and also for some of the sheer computing power you might need you do kind of want VR to be able to hook up to your PC yep and who who are you with

your fancy office where you can go wandering around with a VR headset this is where I think VR is going to be great for racing games simulations um I still think it can can be good with other things like Fallout vrs coming out soon if not already out um I think it could be great for a game like that but they need to get away from the you need to stand or the moving its teleportation just we're fine have a controller in our hand and just play it and look around yeah and I think for something like a racing game especially if you're in your racing chair setup M VR mix with that would be incredible however I do have one issue with VR as we discovered at the lover desk V gives me incredible motion sickness yes it was really embarrassing yeah like you were

actually like didn't finish the demo off and then you will still I may need to go throw up now so three VR is not for everyone so it's still one of those things if you are going to dip your toe into it try hands on with it first yeah and I've been having a bit of a think about it I'm trying to work out what caused that kind of reaction because I don't get seasick M and so I was having to think about it and I realized it's the same issue I have with 3D glasses now most of the time if I'm seeing a 3D movie I will layer the 3D glasses over my regular glasses and I'm prepared that by the end I'm not going to feel 100% it's just that Distortion of where your brain's telling you you are versus The Thing and I think that's kind of what the VR headset did to me just absolutely

magnified because I couldn't look around the VR if that makes sense to reorient myself yeah this one was yeah it is going to be a good way for people to get their hands on VR for cheap price now this isn't one that you plug into your your computer or console or anything like that this one's actually for your phone it runs off your phone so it's just connects up to your phone and Away you go and I think the the set comes out with the headset and a lightsaber which is pretty cool for like $3.99 um it's not out yet but it's coming out soon which oh that was another thing absolutely sorry to distract another thing I loved on the sales for ARA pack is the way people set their prices yes because okay I may not always be the brightest purple on the beach but if

you're telling me something's going to cost me 39 or 3999 um I can kind of figure out you're telling me a monitor is going to be 4 grand 4,000 smacko yeah it's it's happened a few time when we were looking at some places selling like highend PCS and stuff and a reason why I think they were doing like the 39 and the this PC will cost like we're looking at 8999 when it comes out reason why they're saying that is I even think they're embarrassed telling the price I think they are a little we met a lot of people who are very keen to impress on I was like all the great graphics and all the things you could do with these machines and the Rainbow Lights seriously rainbow lights are the New Black when it comes to gaming consoles

and customizable PC setups like I've got color like mine's All Bright and I can change the colors on it it's all fun but I just can't bring myself to spend that much money on a PC yeah and a lot of the people were saying like oh your 7 tri9 is going to Future proof you and I'm like yes but in the mean time is it possibly going to bankrupt me yes yeah no that's yeah those and I don't think for the price would be sort of four times as much as what we paid for this computer I don't think it's four times as better yeah I'll be honest I don't know enough about PCS but I just know enough to have a little bit of sticker shock when but yeah when we're not going to be buying a $9,000 computer soon but they are nice things I do want to get a $4,000 monitor

but I'm not going to because I don't think a monitor should cost a car no wait where are you buying cars for $4,000 I've spent less money on cars oh I like second hand yes 15th hand no that's they're they're not for me I do need a 4k monitor though I am going to have to get one 4K as in $4,000 worth or 4K as as in resolution okay I do need a 4k monitor I think I want to replace that monitor over there cuz that's the smaller one just don't just stare at me it's a need how about you save your pennies buy yourself a VR headset and then you've got Limitless monitor well first of all I've got to pay for my Xbox One X that's true which comes out next week listeners if you would like to contribute to Luke's ongoing pain well I think that about wraps up

our packs Roundup yeah so all in all packs Australia is over for another year if you are if you've got the P bug you're Keen to go I believe the next one is in PAX East which is in Boston in March early next year mhm again I'm not a gamer game person I'd still had a really good time though Y and I'm a little disappointed I didn't get a chance to go to some of the panels there were some really interesting looking ones this year yeah that's the thing I I'd love to go to some of those panels but they also just on the wrong times for the ones I want to see yeah they really cut into your tournament time I'm going to win a medal one you which is ironic because you don't actually play for that long in the tournaments no but I have to be there for the start and you

never know I could make it through and win it one year you did make it through to the semi finals of carcassone that is true yep and then I just lost that one yep whereas I now have two PX medals I have one medal and it was a medal that I got a couple of years ago and Spike who runs the went I should never have given you that pity medal I did win a competition but it was pretty much a Pity medal now most of the tournaments app packs just for anyone who's not familiar with them are games that actually I don't know if leagues is the right word but they are games you can compete at not professionally but like people take them seriously enough that if you wanted to enter a comp you could but with when you if you play with me you can sit down not knowing the game

and I would teach you how to play and as what happened with the very last game I will Coach you to victory against one of Australia's best players at it yeah well some of us just focused on our own strategy which kind of makes me sound very cold but you know was the very last day of packs I wanted a medal yeah while I really want a medal I'm also there just to have fun and if someone else gets to sit down and play a game that they've never learn played before learn it and have fun and find a new game they want to play I'm all for that so with this in mind next year I might try playing Splendor a game I've played once and then Rage Quit because I didn't understand the tokens and this is the kind of professionalism I would like to bring into the tournament I could teach

you how to play I really enjoy Splender Yeah we'll save it for the tournament all right so thank you for listening and tune in to our next special which will probably won't be in a year we'll probably come up with something else I think RTX is in February which we might go to and by we Luke means himself because as you heard earlier I'm not allowed to appear to appear for the next 1,000 days no that's just to disuss the days which is two and years and don't talk about how long away it is all right bye bye everyone