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CC10: Shadow Tower | Retro Game of the Month · Cart Creeps

• Carter Creepington: Welcome back to Cart Creeps. ⁓ this episode we'll be talking about the game of the month for September, which is Shadow Tower for the PS1. Shadow Tower. If you want to get in on the action and discuss next month's game and play along, ⁓ join our Discord, link down below. I'm Ryan, and we also have Gabriel, the all-knowing fool. He said it. He said it, everybody. I'm sorry for you. He's back, baby. And here's Johnny. Johnny Johnny Tower. Johnny Tower. That's pretty good. And ⁓ here's Keith. It's me, I'm Keith. Yeah. It's not as good as Johnny Tower. I don't have any fucking super nicknames, I'm sorry. It's no all knowing fool or Johnny Tower. Johnny Tower. I didn't I didn't couldn't come up with a name. Brian or fearless leader. You just didn't. I I think yeah. What else didn't you do this month? Yeah. Yeah. Since we're on mint. Well, ⁓ Keith, what else have you been playing since you weren't playing Shadow Tower that much? ⁓ no, I've been playing plenty of Shadow Tower, but also Okay. Okay. We actually didn't know. I believe Keith right now. Yeah, I'm I'm always telling the truth, so ⁓ yeah, so I've been doing the usual playing fighting games, you know, fighting games are my thing. ⁓ and then the direct happened and then they showed off a trailer for Metroid Ravenous, and I'm like ⁓ yeah. I saw that everyone else that saw the trailer, I like, Man, I gotta replay Dread. So I've been playing Metroid Dread again on a nice non fucking ⁓ dread mode. Which is ⁓ death, right? It's one hit ⁓ kill. So if you get touched, you're dead. So ⁓ No permadeath though, but yeah, no permadeath. Yeah, it still like s puts you back like your neck point. It is. There's just like really the plainness mode really makes you think of like, wow, there's just a lot of annoying small monsters that just pop out of a hole in the ground C and then just run into it and that's it. Yeah, right. And it's like ⁓ fuck and like the the like and when you get to a boss, it's like you know, the bosses are fucking tough as shit. They are hard. It's a hard game. Yeah. So what's the robot? The horror bot? Horror bot. Horror bot. Yeah. The Emmy. Emmy. Yeah. That's legit scary. Like when you're in the Emmy sections and you have to avoid it. Gosh. And the way it moves too. That's a really And some of them are fucking like the there's the one that's like super fast and like chases you down and it's like fuck. And then there's one that freezes you, and I haven't gotten to this point yet, but once it freezes you, you take damage. So like if it freezes you from like half screen away where you can't see it. You're just dead. So I'm like, okay, I got a deal with that. Just like real life. Yeah, right, exactly. Thankfully you don't die instantly if you fall into like lava or go into a hot room or cold room if you don't have the right armor. So thankfully you can still just like there's still points like grabbing energy tanks, like beefing up your health so you can like dick around in ⁓ in areas you're not supposed to be at yet. So you can still like skip stuff. I've I've sequence breaks. I've already got the flash shift before I even fought crate and it's like super early. So I've I'm I'm jumping ahead. So But yeah, it's been great. It's ⁓ yeah, it's a fucking amazing game. Metroid's amazing series. Love how they still include the sequence breaks. Yep. And they even added in, like, for like the Craid Fight specifically, there's like a special like they plan for you to sequence break. Like if you get the morph bombs early, then you can kill him instantly. ⁓ sweet. So it's like and they actually have a special cutscene for doing it. So like they plan around people doing that, like ways to do it. It's It's really cool. Like the love they put into this game, it's amazing. I can't wait for Ravenous. unfortunately that means I'm gonna have to buy a Switch two. My current my Switch one is a ⁓ is a Metroid and Fire Emblem machine. So the Switch two is also gonna be that 'cause they just dropped Fire Emblem again. So I gotta so now I gotta do that. So So just like the first one. That's what's all that's what it's all gonna be for me with that. So but hey, it's Metroid, it's fucking amazing. So can't complain there. Yeah. So consistent. Always consistent. It's impressive. Very few franchises do that. Mm-hmm. Right. Yeah, I was checking the last time I like the fastest time I'd gotten and I was at two hours and thirteen minutes on on Grand. I'm bad at Metroid, but I still enjoy them. I I take my time. I I play leisurely. You did take the longest out of us for ⁓ zero mission. Yeah. I I like looking at the whole map. I got ⁓ it it scratches an itch in my brain. I g it's like coloring. Yeah. Yeah, you gotta fill in all the spaces, yeah. Ryan, what else have you been playing? ⁓ so on top of Shadow Tower, which I played on top of some. I actually played two there's two other games I played for more than just a little bit. ⁓ First, this is probably because I was started playing Shadow Tower and I was like, man, I don't want to play this right now. So I started trying to play something else. So I downloaded which I already own the game, ⁓ Stalker, Shadow of Chernobyl, the first one, but it's like the re whatever, the redone version that runs on the Steam Deck. Played that for a little while, for a few hours, up to the point where you get to like the the big town nearby. ⁓ if you guys I don't think any of you guys ever played stalker. It's weird game. It's a shooter's weird. You know, follow people around. No, yeah, it's a shooter game, and there's like anomalies and like mutated animals and other stalkers. And ⁓ yeah, it's kinda like spooky actually. A little bit. Yeah. ⁓ so played that a little bit, and then I'd seen ads for this game called ⁓ Lantern of the Laughless Saint. I saw an inst yeah, an Instagram ad. Yeah, you shared that. It definitely worked on me because it like a it was a yeah, it's a pretty funny one about like being a scrolls like game. So like it's near it's like an Elder Scrolls game inspired heavily by Marwind because Elder Scrolls six is taking too long, so they made their own game or whatever. That's wild. Yeah. It was like twenty bucks. ⁓ commercial is like we made our own game. Yeah. Yeah. And they're like, Fuck you, Todd Howard. I played I've been playing that a little bit. I haven't really done anything in it i it's in early access. I don't know how much there is to really do in it right now besides walk around in the environment and fight stuff, which I've done a little bit of that and I've gone to the certain like this abandoned like city and this game also has a tower in it. There's a big tower in the middle of it. Probably a better tower than ⁓ shadows. Is it shadow tower? I like this tower. So there's a big there's apparently a big tower. And ⁓ it's You can go to it and there's ⁓ it's like the dungeon of the game, I my is my assumption. I really haven't played it enough to get to that point yet because like the enemies in the in the wild are pretty tough. ⁓ but thankfully you quick save and stuff like an Elder Scrolls game. ⁓ it's got it's got it's but it feels a lot like an Elder Scrolls game. Like ⁓ I don't know if it's more like Marwind. It probably feels more like Marwind and Oblivion than it does Skyrim, but it feels like a modern game, you know, it doesn't feel old. So Yeah, mostly played that one and I played a like I said, a little bit of Stalker. Probably won't play any more Stalker. Maybe if I get the itched, but I'll probably play some more of ⁓ Lantern of the Laughless Saint. ⁓ What about you, Jay? So Shadow Tower did take a lot of the month. I I I did beat the only person I played. We all played it. But I guess after I beat it, I just kinda I don't know. I was free of my cash, so I went through my library and I decided to start playing Star Fox Adventures. It's a game I had as a kid, and I I was really I did not get it as a kid. ⁓ that's GameCube? It is GameCube, yeah. It's the dinosaur one. Yeah, it's the the Zelda clone of s they put Star Fox in the Zelda clone and threw dinosaurs in it and it's actually been pretty fun. It started as a dinosaur game and then Miyamoto said Throw Star Frox in there. Yeah. But L dinosaur content is r like you can still see the original game in there. And it is clearly just Star Fox thrown in Dino Planet, which is fine. It is fun being Fox in like an adventure game, but ⁓ I feel like I've been playing for three or four days now and I'm already further than I've ever been in my life 'cause I never got past like the first or second area as a kid just 'cause it was confusing and I didn't understand what to do. Well dumb Johnny couldn't beat it, huh? Adol Jay is thriving and having a lot of fun with it. ⁓ it looks it looks really good on the deck too. I've been playing it you you know via dolphin and the upscaling there. It looks really good. That's funny, they just dropped that on the ⁓ switch online. Really? Nice. Well this is this is yeah easier. I I like I like my save stating. Yeah. More configurable. Yeah. ⁓ that's what I've been it's been fun. I love the GameCube era. There's so many like good staples on that. I know we don't if I ever win again, I will make sure all three of the games that people have to pick from are all GameCube. So keep your fingers crossed for me winning, fellas. Yeah. What about you, ⁓ Gabe? What were you playing? I've been playing ⁓ take ⁓ stuff out of boxes. Really fun game. They have they actually have a game for that. It's called Unboxing. Yeah, what you do is you ⁓ you get a bunch of stuff put into your house and then you take that stuff and you put it to the place it's supposed to go. It's a lot of fun. That's pretty cool. Sounds it has a lot of replayability. ⁓ no, you do it once and hopefully that's ⁓ that's the last time you do it. From what I know about you've played this game plenty of times actually. I don't like it very much, but I keep doing it. How level are you? No, yeah, I mean when you know, we got all our stuff moved in to our house. We finally got a house, I guess. Clearly it looks like it's all moved in. Yeah. Well, I mean it's moved in to the house. It's not moved out inside the building. Yeah. The boxes are still ⁓ they've been moved in. They haven't been opened yet. Yeah. I've got ⁓ fragile. I mean this is I think it's Italian. This is gonna be partially guest room, but it's mostly like my office, which is cool. I have like my own space. I don't have to worry about being loud and waking up my kids in here so I can scream I can't scream, but I don't have to worry about being loud like I did in my old house, which is nice. So I mean, funny thing is the boxes are the furniture. For our video listeners, there's no stuff in the boxes, that's just Gabe's room furniture. Yeah. Is the boxes themselves? Yeah. Yeah. He makes I I'm a box collector. Didn't one of you get didn't one of you guys use boxes as furniture in college, or was that someone else I'm thinking of? Well, I'll I'll look I mean like not in college, but when I would you know I was still moving it. When I was still moving around. ⁓ Not college. Before I got side tables at my new place, I was using my monitor box as like a stand to put my monitor on. Yeah, I do remember that. Yeah. So you know. We make we make do with what we have. Men will live like this and see nothing wrong with it. ⁓ this is full of furniture. It looks nice now. It looks like I actually lived in. Yeah, it's got a bunch of anime figurines and a toaster. Or a toaster oven. ⁓ yeah. It's a toaster. Four slaughter. ⁓ wow. It's a lot mm-hat's a lot of toast. And at least one cabinet. Four toasts. It's it's ⁓ the four's for ⁓ egg or waffles. That's what it's for. What is the thing with your name on it? ⁓ that's my ⁓ when my barbecue I know, but No I thought it was barbecue. ⁓ it's a sword? Yeah, hang on. I thought it was from a barbecue. What? What do you mean a barbecue? I thought it was just from like one of those audio content for audio listeners. I thought ⁓ just show without your name, so you don't dox yourself. Yeah, censor censor the censor this part. It's always in the background. I mean it's al it's already it's always been displayed. Anyone can go back if you're curious. Yeah doesn't doesn't mean anything. You only want to track heath down. Yeah, if you don't yeah, look for me. Okay. Well my info is out of date on all my social media, so it doesn't matter. ⁓ Ask one of us. Whoa, we can fill it in now. Yeah, so it's when my mom before she ⁓ separated from my dad ⁓ and she got this as a gift from her unit. So I just thought as a kid I was like, ⁓ it's a cool little wooden sword with my name on it. And so I was like, I'll take that. And you stole it from your I mean she's got she got divorced. She doesn't care. He was like, get that out of here. Can't wait for this episode to go live. It's not the unit, it's the name on the sword. She still got it from the unit, you send, right? Well yeah, she got it from the unit, but she's not open. I I don't understand for some reason. I forgot my mother is divorced, Gabe. I forgot her name anymore. I forgot the story was depressing. My name. Yes. Okay. Do you get it now? Keefe, Keefe, do you ever think they got divorced because she thinks he stole the sword, but it was you? Keith, do ever think you're the reason they got the voice? That's what I thought Jay was gonna ask. I can't say for sure if my presence No, I got it from her, so it's like she's yeah, she's she yeah. She was ⁓ Yeah, you know, they they had their they had their problems, but ⁓ you know. Don't we all do it? I gotta fucking put it back up. Yeah, we're waiting for you to stop talking and putting it up. I can't hear us right now. So everybody says something nice about Keith. Yeah, something real nice about Keith. I love the way he wears his mustache. Yeah. Me too. It's a good compliment. I'm a ditto. Thanks. Thanks for complimenting my compliment. Big fat stupid nose. Ooh. That's pretty good too. Don't worry about what we're talking about. ⁓ that's good. You have to watch to find out. I'll have to wait till wait till it waits for Ryan to finish what it puts it up. So, ⁓ to reiterate the concept of these videos, ⁓ every month we have a something we call the creep wheel and we spin it and whatever game comes up that's the game we play for the month. So this month or this past month we got ⁓ Shadow Tower, which was Gabe's choice. So Gabe Shadow Tower three games ⁓ to be voted on by our Discord members. and who whichever one won is when it's replacing it on the list. ⁓ we'll talk about that one later. But if you want to get in on this join the Discord or if you want to get your own game on the list, check out our Patreon and find in the details about that. But Let's start talking about Shadow Tower. Gabe, you wanna introduce us and why you ⁓ why you chose it? Why you dropped this fucking curse on us. I got a flat tire because of this game. My reason for choosing it was as simple as early from soft game. Like I wanted to see like I I could have gone with Demon Souls or Dark Souls or something like that, but I was like, you know what? Let's go even earlier. Let's see it it was And I was like, ⁓ there's a P PlayStation 1 from Soft game? Perfect. We'll do that. And I didn't look into it at all. I was just like, FromSoft, PlayStation, let's throw it on there. Perfect. And it was a disaster. ⁓ They released this bad boy in 1998. And They should have just not done it. I didn't it back then either, I don't think. Yeah, they didn't like it back then. You know, most of the scores are the it's average score of forty nine. I think average below fifty. Yeah. Two years after Iron Man and Exomana War, so you know, gaming had peaked by then, so it was all downhill from there. So that's why this game did very well. Liar No, ⁓ yeah, not not a particularly great game. People didn't really like it back then. We didn't really like it now, I don't think. ⁓ but ⁓ to be fair, most of us can't really I mean we can judge it because we all played it a little bit, but only Jay beat it. So Only Jay's opinion matters, really. Only according to how long to beat it, it says it took sixteen hours, but that is a gosh darn lie. Yeah. 'Cause it's it probably took me like it probably took me like thirty. It never seems with a guard. I feel like I think my understanding of how long to beat works is like there's the main plus story and there's like the completionist and then there's the other like just the how long to bleed, which it I think is an average. 'Cause it's all user, you know, submitted scores. Right. So I feel honestly feel like every time I look at it should I should assume completionist time for me for just beating it at all for any of the games we've 'cause it always takes But I'm The only reason I beat this game was because I started so early in the month. ⁓ I think I started before you, but I just couldn't do it. I can't play this game. That's how I felt. I was like, This kinda looks fun still. Like I don't know the concepts the concept is fun. What it is is ⁓ It's ⁓ like action oriented kind of RPG, but not really a traditional RPG. Unlike most RPGs, it doesn't really feature like an experience point system. ⁓ like an RPG dungeon crawler. Yeah, yeah. That's I mean so What are you guys' ex expectations going in around going into this game? My expectations going in were honestly for it to be more like Dark Souls or Demon Souls, maybe. But it was pretty far from that. I would say I mean you could definitely see the the bone or the beta version of what? Dark Souls and Diva Souls covered that was there. Yeah. Right. Like how it works. It's like you can see like, okay, they took like the health stamina, the Setting kind of setting like the vibe that they go for. Like, it was evil. Yeah, you can defin and Jay loves evil as we've established. So that's why he was the only one who completed it. You can definitely see like the prototyping of how their fur their other their later games would definitely see prototyping. Yeah, I I can definitely see how like Dark Souls and Demon Souls came out of this. I can I can see the bones there. Yeah. To clarify, this is not the first game from From Soft. Not even the first one in this like series is the fifth. Because I think Kingsfield one through f at least one through three, if not one through four, came out before this game. So they already have had established, you know the st the style their style. Yeah. And apparently Shadow Tower is exactly fucking like those games. Yeah. From what I've read. Like they're the same. It's the same like you play those games, it's the same bullshit we're getting here. Yeah. They've just been working on a version of this kind of game for years now, so that's why when they eventually had Demon Souls, it just turned out so well for them. Yeah, yeah, really yeah. But people love this game too. Like there are fans of this game. I think both. Really? I think there's like some dedicated Shadow Tower fanboys out there. Yeah. We might get one angry comment on YouTube on the Shadow Tower people. From Jay. I love this game. Every time you talk mad about it. My expectations, ⁓ before the end of last episode, I had no idea what this was. Besides Gabe, I think it mentioned it was a From Soft game, which I haven't played any FromSoft games at all. But then last time you guys were like, ⁓ the score the ratings are kind of bad. They're like you said forty nine. I don't know. But I was hopeful because I mean you can see it behind me right now, like and well there'll be visual, you'll see it. Like it looks yeah, it looks visually looks cool. Yeah. I was like Yeah, this game I was like, this looks pretty school actually. I might actually like this. And then we actually got to playing it. But we'll get into that in a minute. But my had un unrealistically high expectations for the game. I should have done it. I was pretty optimistic going in. The the concept is cool, like dungeon crawler, yeah. You know, go through. I mean, even PS1 beyond first person Beyond like the like I think Jay Jay used a like walk That's I think probably the only reason he was able to finish it is because he usually rocked a walk a walkthrough and they provided a map, but there's no map in this game. And like the idea I think at the time was to like map it out like on paper, like each world that you go through, which is a cool idea, but I mean I don't have time for that in this day and age. so like I don't know. Conceptually, it seems like it should have been Yeah, conceptually. Yeah. I mean, I thought it'd be good. I I did. And I like I like Elden Ring. I like Dark Souls. If I'm being I mean, we'll get we can get into it now after or we can do it after we talk about how we played it. And that's gonna also for Keefe especially gonna be but there's only one real problem I have with this game. Yeah. Yeah. And Keith, you can you can go ahead and tell us how you played it and explain what the big biggest problem with the game is. I think the rest of us played it on Steam Deck if we want to just yeah. How Keith played this game is ⁓ luckily, ⁓ it's actually on the PlayStation 3 store. Luckily he's ⁓ boy, luckily Yeah. it was a real fucking adventure finding this damn game on the PS3 store because Sony, they're like they're two consoles b ahead of the PS3, so they are putting in the bare minimum in keeping this fucking thing up. They're closing it down next year in July. So they're like doing like, man, we don't give any shits about this. The search function doesn't work. You have to just try and f you can't like you can't find games. Like you have to Link scroll. All you have to like look through all games and then sort it by PlayStation Classics. Like it's it's so Keith worked very hard to pay money for this game. Yeah. And then they're being like six bucks, 'cause it's five ninety nine, so like six twenty something. And then it's like, ⁓ you can't even though my wallet and like my info is in my PlayStation account, ⁓ the PlayStation 3 store doesn't fucking have that anymore. So you can only use it from a wallet. So I have to go through a separate app on my phone or online or something to add money into this fucking wallet, then then go back into this and it takes forever to load. I fucking hated this. I I was hard to talk to that sort of fucking game. And keep keep's not even talking about playing the game yet. And we'll get to that second to second. So just buy the game with a pain in the ass. Then I get it. And it does look nice. And then you know it's it I'll give it that. You know, and then just like Yeah, it looks cool. Like it does. Here's the thing. ⁓ you know, naturally when you're this is this is like the purest form you can play this game, unless you're a freak like Jay and have a still have a PlayStation and buy it for like five hundred bucks or how much seven hundred dollars actually like natural way to play this game and playing it naturally is a f is a fool's f you're fucking stupid if you play this naturally. Don't do it I I'll tell you stupid but you're special type of person be able to sitting through the cutscenes and going through well yeah you can skip the cutscenes. So like skipping through all that and then you know it's a PlayStation so you know it still loads it's known like fast forward through loading screens if you're on the whatever. So you know but you get to hear that sweet, sweet PlayStation noise. Yeah, that's true. I'll give it that. And then so like okay, it's like you're so you're loading in, you're walking in. ⁓ yeah, and then when the first enemy kills you, could because it will kill you. ⁓ there's no getting around that. It just will kill you. The spider. Or the very or no the fucking no, not even the spider. The fucking goo on the ground. No, not even the kids, the biggest enemy of this game. The controls. That too. That's fuck I'll get into that. That's fucking that's yeah. So like when you f when you die immediately, guess what? It kicks you all the way back to the main fucking menu. Some of us no saves. Some of us literally immediately You go forever without finding a goddamn safe spot in this fucking game. So like every time you die, it just kicks you back. So for context, this is a PS1 game. It's a first person PS1 game and it was made without joystick controls. So L one is strafe left, R one is strafe right, L two is look down, and R two is look up. And then you get to use the directional path to go directions. And that that's the movement controls. Yeah, and your face buttons are for your hands. So square is left hand, circle is right hand, and it's like or you know, if you and you could have magic as well. There is some Isn't it like tank controls? Technical because ⁓ I mean No, because because the left and right directional pads turn you and then you have to go No, it's first person. It's first personally. I don't know if that's considered tank controls or not. ⁓ really this ⁓ this was a really frustrating experience. Jay found a magical ⁓ configuration for his controls, ⁓ for everyone else on the fancy little Steam Decks for to use. ⁓ I like to have the opportunity. I had to button swap. I ended up putting right hand on R1 and L1 on ⁓ had left hand. I just felt figured that worked better for me. ⁓ it didn't. I still didn't like this game mode. ⁓ but yeah, you know, it's sure felt like it would have. It's a real pain in the dick just playing this fucking game. And again, I you know. Yeah, yeah. This is ⁓ really frustrating because like, yeah, the fucking controls is that you can't really switch around and then also The loading because you will die, which is the whole point of these games. But like, you know Just getting to the first save point is a pain in the ass right off the bat. I Yeah, exactly. It's like it took me forever. And like the first thing I run into we're getting into like how this game plays right now. We're kind of skipping ahead here. But like w the first thing I do is run into this goo and have a sword. Like, okay, I try and swing. You miss because you have to be fucking looking at the fucking thing. You have to aim down perfectly perfectly spaced at well as well. It's like you're whiffing. Then the fucking goop poisons you and make sure. Yeah, you also get damage. Yeah, you have to h build wait for your stamina to go. It's like and then it poisons you and then you're just stuck with the flashing green screen. And guess what? There's no antidote near you. So like you just fucking stuck Yeah, you just started. So like yeah, you didn't like you started anything. So you shouldn't have run up to the first pile of goo you saw. I died like three times this fucking goo before I realized I guess I'll just run past it. I guess that's what we're supposed to do. I'd I'd like to talk about starting the game myself. I think B J did the same thing. Yeah, they put you in the tower. I was like, okay, I'm starting the game. Let me figure these controls out. I press L one, I sidestep once off the tower. Same thing. And I die. Literally game over. I you said L, so you went left. I went right. ⁓ yeah. So that's the only difference there. But they put you on a bridge. You gotta figure out if you fuck up. It's like a one spacewide bridge for like your character. So you're like Okay, ⁓ go forward or backwards. You can't go left or right. I guess I guess L1 and R1 are probably and so I hit R1, walk right off the bridge, die. Gotta start the whole screen. I didn't even I didn't even play the game to get to the second room until I did configure my controls to be traditional dual joystick. I think I did R2 ⁓ right hand, L two left hand. That's what I did. The like setup and I got like through the first room with the enemies and I was like, This is miserable. I cannot do this. And so I like went and I looked at what Jay did 'cause he shared it. And I was like, okay, perfect. Must be nice. And it was yeah. Only then could I actually play the game. Yeah, it was bearable. You say that, Keith, but ⁓ it's still not. It's still not it still sucks. 'Cause Yeah, it's not good. I may I may be able to find it in Discord 'cause when I first started talking about it, 'cause I think I started the game first. And I was like, what the fuck is this? Like horrific. I remember you I was like, this is impossible. We didn't know about the stamina at first and you were hitting an enemy and I was hitting zero, zero, zero. See now, this is the only thing for me. I don't know if you like were just hitting really fast, but like I didn't have to have the stamina bar all the way up to get damage. Well the stamina bar obviously relates to how much you do. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. But you were just different weapons at different yeah different weapons at different speeds too. Yeah. And that was a stat you could increase. So you're stamina could by the end of the game for me like I wasn't even having to wait. 'Cause like it was just the entire game. There's like forty d I'm getting ahead too, so there's like twenty to thirty different stats that you could level up. I put all of my stats in strength and speed the whole game. And that did me pretty good. So yeah, I'll rest like we said the rest of us played on Steam Deck. I ⁓ I did my ⁓ controls remapping through Duck Station, the emulator, instead of ⁓ Steam Deck input Steam overlay thing, but I don't know if that made a difference. I thought it sucked. These guys act like it wasn't that bad. I thought it's I still felt like I was like drop flying walking around drunk because it like it's still floating left and it like continues slightly after you like release. Like why why? But ⁓ I think it's just the game. Yeah. I think this just the game sucks. The controls suck. It was poorly put together. The controls are obviously like I said, the controls are the worst part. The rest of the game, there's lots of there's a lot of features and interesting things that I thought were fine and cool. There's cool ideas in it. ⁓ when I read the manual, I was like, ⁓ you can do that. You can do that because the pinch is the manual you can look up. It's like ⁓ that's cool. Playing this game and saving in the way Keith was doing it. Like God. Impossible. Yeah, because obviously I use save states. Like so you guys talked about how long it took to reach the first save point. I'm like I remember reaching the first save point. I remember thinking, God, if I didn't have save states, yeah, like I I would have put the game down. I would have been like having I've tried like the fifth time to ⁓ the skeleton that's in the secret room, secret wall that you walk past. Man. Yeah. You don't even have to fight ⁓ there either. I was yeah, right. Yeah. You know, apparently you're supposed to run past shit, I guess. I don't know. But like so I was like, okay, I wanna look up the manual just to see what it shows me and then we'll see what what happens here. And then look it up and then like a lot of nice stuff in the manual. And you see, ⁓ hey, here's what a save point looks like. It's like a little golden little fucking tombstone thing in the ground. Tombstone, yeah. Yeah. So I'm like, okay, I I'll be on the lookout for that. And then ⁓ hey, here's one. ⁓ it's not a save point, it teleports me to somewhere fucking else. And then a skelet and I'm walking through, okay, here's a skeleton in front of I try to kill the skeleton, kill the skeleton. ⁓ there's one behind me. ⁓ surprise, fuck you. And it kills me. And then I'm back at the beginning because it wasn't a fucking save point. I fucking hate this game game. Yeah. Have you tried getting good? ⁓ I was just gonna say how much I save stayed spammed, like so I actually like the first night I played this, I didn't look anything up. ⁓ I ended up beating it with a guide 'cause I feel like that's the only way you can beat this game. It just it's the most obtuse game I've ever played in my life. It's the only way you can beat this game and not take a really long time to be playing it. And not want to call Yeah, 'cause like I said, you could like map it out and that seems kind of cool conceptually in a way, but Like nobody has time for that this day and age. Yeah. Even doing that, they you see the silly cut scene, whatever, they put you in the tower, they tell you nothing, and they're just like, Yeah, good luck. Like best of luck. Hope you can find the bottom of this like you do just kind of like four tower. As you yeah, as you like do different worlds and stuff, it kind of just tell or like the different regions within the world. It doesn't explain much beyond like You enter the It doesn't explain anything about it. And you're like, okay, the young ⁓ hero entering the tower to slay the evil and then. Fun fact too. Like on one of the many intro deaths as I was playing this game, like I tried to turn around and leave and see what would happen. And if you turn around to try to leave the the entrance that you can't crumbles. Yeah. I I did like that. That's a cool touch. Yeah, the first night I I played blind, no you know, no guide just to see what the game was like and I was so confused and lost. Like I had to start over the next day with the guy just so I could like get a grasp on what I was doing, what I'm supposed to be doing, 'cause they really don't tell you a thing. Yeah, and also the rooms they're so like they're not that big, but rooms that are big, you have a you run out of vision. You can't see to the other side of the room either, so you actually don't know what all the shadow and half the game is tower. It really didn't lie in the title. We can ⁓ get in the deep dive now. There apparently is a there is a story, can you see Gabe, tell us about the story. The game is set on the continent of Eclipse in the Holy Land of Zeptor. The player takes a role of mercenary named Russ Hardy, returning home to Zephar. He's got the Wikipedia page up right now. He doesn't know that. The entire city, as well as the Central's Tower, have been sucked into the underworld. He meets an old man who gives him the Dark One's sword, the only weapon which can injure the demon's response. Swearing to rescue the old woman who raised him, as well as the rest of Septar. Res Rus descends into the underworld. ⁓ opening scroll and I do not remember. You know what's crazy? I didn't even read the opening scroll and I was like, I am trusting that somebody is not lying to me here on Wikipedia right now because it was like in part of in part of that description you mentioned him getting a sword, the only sword that could defeat this demon. And then you go in the tower with your sword and a sword's fucking weapon in the game. W okay this was supposed to be fucking hate that. That's a f hate fucking that. That's you know, we did it. We will make a video on fucking worst game mechanics. Weapon durability is right up the top of my fucking list. I love weapon durability. I don't hate weapon durability as a concept. I like it. I think that should have lasted a little longer in this game. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well I think I think if you like the more you level your strength up, the more durable your things get perhaps one of those random skills affects it. at the same time the only way to like increase your stats outside of finding the soul pods, which are just like free stat increases, are to defeat the enemies. So you're encouraged to defeat every enemy to be as good as you possibly can. To be strong to get through the game. And they don't that fights the durability so badly and s it's so poorly. ⁓ they don't respawn, right? Or someone once they're dead, they're dead the whole game. ⁓ so you can clear a floor and like be you can backtrack later. Like I had to backtrack to certain vendors because you know, like there's many types of vendors and yeah, some vendors will only be in one plane while some will be in like two worlds over, so I'll have to backtrack through like fucking four realms so I can, you know, get all my durability back up. And then go all the way back and then continue the game from there. J there was tell me if there was a few times of that. Tell me if you experienced this. This says a common issue for new players is that stat names don't refer to what they might used to be from other RPGs. For example, the strength stat doesn't affect the character's attack power but their hit points instead. Did you get kind of confused there? I a lot or I think that is untrue. Okay. The strength increases your carry weight, your HP, your MP, and your like the weight Yeah, the weight that your armor is and your weapon damage. It's wicked page. It's like your strength is like your it's like a little bit of it's like a little bit of everything. Mm-hmm. And then I think the s I think strength auto does increase your stamina a little bit, but then speed is you that fully That's what it does mean. The plot section on this isn't even true. No fucking guy named Russ. Russ already's not real, he's a fucking fantasy. No one would name a hero Russ. Sorry for all the Russes listening out there. Yeah, if they're a hero if they are. Russ from Retro Game Corps, the biggest guy in this entire like subset of, you know, emulating games. Yeah, but it's his name Russ with Yeah. That would be I'm sorry if you're listening. I guess maybe it's Roosardy. Roos? Roos, yeah. Roos Rooske. I can't read. So talk about the art and the sound atmosphere a little bit. Well we'll talk the art first. ⁓ artistically I like it. Yeah, I like the art. I like the cover's cool. Yeah, yeah, the covers awesome. Interesting. ⁓ it looks like it's old 3D, you know, dungeon game. It looks cool. It's the same metal album. That's what I thought at first. Visually Visually, it kind of reminds me of like Daggerfall, but Daggerfall's two and a half D. ⁓ it's not obviously it's it's like early it's an early three D game. But artistically, like the monsters are really Weird looking, which is cool. Like they're all really cool looking. There's so many monsters too. Yeah. That I can speak to more than you guys. ⁓ there's the monster saw looked great. And you know, classics like skeleton, you know, are also in there. Things like flower that shoots laser beams at you and like evil tree. And like weird the back comes up in this sometimes. It's like a big monster that's got like Claw hands or something. I don't know. It's really weird. You know what I'm you'll s you'll see. There's some real fucked up shit in the later levels. There's a maybe that is. It's a floating cross with a baby head in the center of the cross and it shoots lasers at you. That's all very from that's all very from soft. Yeah. Yeah. So like yeah, the arts the art's really cool, and that's kind of like looking through the pictures and stuff. I was like, ⁓ this game looks neat. The manual looked cool too. That thing. behind me right now that guy. You know how in ⁓ Doom there's the wall of faces? Yeah. Mm-hmm. So this game has rotting face sphere. It's just a mini faced sphere and that is it it curses you, I think. And which is one of the worst the worst status conditions in the game. Cursed. Yeah. I don't know if y'all got far enough to get cursed. Nope. But basically you're cursed forever. Until unl until you have the antidote for the curse, which luckily like you get the drops, but like if you don't have it and what a curse does is it just slowly drains your health and MP constantly. Forever. Until you find the antidote. Does it die or it doesn't bring you down to zero? I I never got that far 'cause I always had like the cures, so maybe it's not a big deal but I mean Is it a rapid drain or is it just kind of annoying like And you have to consistently be aware of Yeah. And I mean Pokemon poison every like two three steps go down. It's more time more like second base. Like you can stand still and it'll still drain. ⁓ and it makes your screen all pink. Like the whole view of the screen is pink and it's it's really annoying. ⁓ no, I'm cursed. You don't want to be cursed, fellas. Like MP is such a giant part of your HUD. Obviously, so the HUD is just giant numbers on the top of the screen. Yeah. I didn't give even get far enough to use magic. Yeah. I didn't learn about magic 'til like many levels into it. So there's like I guess realms and then levels are the but do they all look visually distinct? They do, right? I mean I think they're a couple. They all had their own little theme. That's cool. So you had our human world, which I guess was As normal like there was nothing human about it, really. First thing you see is a skeleton and like a goo monster. That's not human and spider. And then you have Earthworld, which is more like the evil trees and plants and spooky forest stuff. And then Fireworld, self explanatory. And after Fireworld is Waterworld, and that's a lie, Gabe Say Liar. Gabe Say Liar. Cause it's not actually water, it's acid. So like the whole the whole floor of water world is not the whole and some in a lot of the areas it's like acid covered. So the guide told me thank God for the guide too, right? Because the acid corrodes your your boots really, really fast if you walk through. So the guide was like, Take your boots off when you get to this world. So I did the whole world without my boots on. Just like taking acid damage. Wow. ⁓ Then you get to illusion world, which is just more spooky. Attention to the detail, the acid world thing. Yeah. Yeah. It helps your boots. ⁓ yeah. Very, very mean to the player. This whole game it loves being mean to the player. And then there's Beast World. I'm just gonna go through the rest of them real quick so so the listeners can understand. Yeah. Yeah. ⁓ Beast World's only two areas. Understand the grind Jay went through. Yeah, in order to beat the second area, there's an item in the first area of Beast World that you have to find. It's easy to miss, and if you do miss it and enter the second area of Beast World, every enemy in this area is invisible. And it's like by this point all the areas are like long mazes, so you're gonna want that item. What's the name of that world or that way? Screeching area. It's a screeching area. Yeah, screeching area. Which is funny again because the g the game has no soundtrack. It's it's it's silent tower, it's footsteps and monster noises and sword clanks. That's all I want. Yeah. That's all I want in my dumb down crawls. Music ⁓ takes me out of the experience. But you know, you know, all that said, each each world had its own atmosphere that I thought and its own like mix of monsters, different monsters, ⁓ then all of that was the strength of the game, just like what I was looking at both through the world and like with the enemies, but ⁓ the actual gameplay was less fun than what I was looking at. I went to hell. ⁓ This is off topic topic, but it's about You talk talking about the no music thing, ⁓ and like the realism of playing with ⁓ their no ⁓ dungeon music going on while you're just clanking around. Yeah. ⁓ I think I'm one of the r really unusual people that play Fallout games with the radio turned off. Because it's Well, even even with the radio off, there's still like a score. Like there's still like little music playing. But like with the radio on, enemies can hear you. Yeah, which is a really cool attention to detail thing. Yeah. So let's go to the radio. And a game with much better features than Shadow Tower. I can't remember who, but I got an argument with someone about that. They were saying, like, no, they can't hear the radio. I was like, I think they can. Like But probably. You can. You can hear other radios. Yeah, yeah. I can hear them. So there's a couple like other little mechanics. Like, one thing I thought was really cool about Shadow Tower is you find the first vendor and you can sell your hit points that you still have to buy is it buying items or repairing your repairing that's what it for the hit points. Yeah. The first vendor I ran into was a Coon vendor. Coon is the ⁓ is that Kuhn? There's it's spelled C-U-N-E. Like I don't know. I don't know how you say that. Coon. But I didn't have any and I talked to the vendor and he was like you have no business here Go away. And I was like, what the fuck is that? All those vendors were freaks too. They're what they were really weird looking and had they were voiced. They had voice lines. Yeah. Like actually. Cat currency is so hard to find on the ground too. Yeah. They're just like they're like little they look like I don't know, oval coins. Mm-hmm. But they're golden, they just camouflage in the ground really bad. Some enemies will drop them sometimes, but it's like you might find less than You may you might find between fifty and seventy five through the whole game. You know what? I don't know. Jay, I'm just curious if you notice because the enemies the way you get equipment is the enemies drop it, right? Yeah. ⁓ you can there's some random drops on grounds, but like drops right up from their dead body. Yeah, and even that's right up. Make sure you're looking down. It's just completely random. Okay. A spider dropped shield, so he wasn't using it? He's got eight legs. He can't use one shield. There are some enemies that will that are like coded to drop a specific weapon at certain points. But other than those, it's it's just random. Nice. Which was really cool. But like probably really useful, right? Yeah, I mean at that point I actually did feel strong. So like the you would fight towards the end of the game you'd fight the same skeletons that Keith got wrecked by in the first level. And you would just you would one two hit them. And like they would hit you and you could just sit there with like Sauron smacking people aside and like the beginning of the You could just sit there with like your twelve thousand HP and it'd be doing like seventy damage. But then there are enemies that scale that will destroy you even then. It's just crazy. It doesn't get easy. You go to pick up the items and like you've said you have to look down at it and then you click on it and then it f goes up in front of your face like this. Yeah. And then you press the button again and then you take it. It's like, ⁓ okay. Yeah. It's like I could have just picked it up. Yeah. Yeah, towards the beginning of game two or like I might have had one or two weapons and they're like getting undurable. And yeah, like I'll have be in a room with three enemies, an enemy will drop a weapon and I'm like, ⁓ fuck, fuck, fuck. So I'll be like looking at the ground, running bucket back and forth over the sword, trying to pick it up like praying that I'm not getting hit in the back 'cause that'll probably kill me. Yeah. Plus if like if you're ⁓ more talk the skeletons, like At the ear that early, when you grab the shield, it's like a shitty wooden buckler or whatever. Sometimes like you'll pick a weapon up and it'll have like two durability out of forty and you're like, ⁓ cool, so this is useless. Completely useless. And like you take one hit from a fucking skeleton and it just like then the fucking thing pops up on your on your HUD. ⁓ shield's useless now. It's like, okay, well, Great Yeah. Fuck this game so useless. Early on. I was like, Why am I getting hit for so much more? And it's like, ⁓ my fucking chest plates gone. Armor's dead, yeah. Yeah. Okay, cool. And the the other shitty thing too, this is something else the guy taught me. ⁓ you're not supposed to let your stuff get to zero because when it does it costs like triple the amount to buy it back. So I know I would always let my stuff get to one and then switch to the next item. And that saved a lot of health. From durability healing. I noticed that 'cause one of my items was zeroed and I tried to get it and I didn't have enough hit points yet to even get it fixed. Sorry, traveler, I would kill you. Please. They do. Let's just give it a shot. Yeah, like ⁓ your Helmet, you know, all pieces. Yeah. Then you had for your weapons, you had left hand, right hand. And it also had like reserve, so you like two weapons and I I tested that and it didn't work for me. So I had a No, it didn't work for me either. I had a sword break and then I swung again and there was no weapon. So I don't know what I don't know what you're supposed to do. Yeah, I don't either. Painstakingly pause, wait, open up the menu, wait, switch it over, wait, and then go back and then so the UI also isn't. Super great on this game either. A lot of button clicking. Very many. A lot of menu traversing and like I'm gonna say it as as I've said it many times before, it's a Japanese game. It's Japanese UI. That's what I was talking about. That is true. I I will back that. It's got I like the sound effects of the minions. It's like I don't You don't need to And I like the going back to the presentation, like you never get to see your full character. But you get to see each sword and each piece of armor. And like those looked cool. And there's a bunch of cool different shields, so you can use your imagination on what your guy looks like, kinda. Yeah. Yeah. I like to imagine Roos is a tall, blonde, mustached. The fighting's pretty repetitive. Run out hit, back up, charge. Yeah, you're basically I mean, I wasn't even using the so The game for me, I thought it ran really, really slow and like you know, just the normal speed of the game felt unbearable to me. So I played the entire game on times two. I probably should have tried that. That felt unbearable. You might had more fun. Yeah. I I actually had more fun that way. I didn't even think 'cause I couldn't turn up my looking speed enough to to make it seem like not like I mean that made it feel more it kind of made it feel more Elder Scrolls speed. Yeah. ⁓ more normal. And not like you're walking through sludge. But the core of the game is like very like Yeah. So like you have you have hit and then you have block with shield, but anytime you block with your shield, you're still taking damage and you're still eroding your durability. So my goal was just like to hit back up, hit back up. hit back up and then when I get magic I would like hit back up shoot magic go hit again back up shoot like every enemy in the game, bosses included. That said, there w the boss of the water world was a wizard. And you had to exclusively it would it would just teleport to like four corners of the room and shoot projectiles at you. So you had to shoot projectiles back at that. So there was a time after the wizard where like all my rings were drained and I had no magic and I had to go and repair ⁓ all. But ⁓ other than that it was more of the same, just like, you know, swing, back up, wait, swing, back up, wait. And then some of the late world bosses had these like area effect attacks where it would it was just it was like they'd go Super Saiyan. Like it would just be like a field of color around them and if you touch that color at all, like your health would go pfft like really, really, really bad. So you would have to wait even longer. Just for that to go down, and then it was just more of like the, you know, go forward hit back up magic, go forward hit, back up magic. I mean nothing too special about the bosses. They were just cooler looking and bigger, but like some of the core enemies in the game I thought were harder by a mile than any of the bosses. ⁓ Goo is the hardest enemy I think of There's an enemy in Fireworld that I I don't know what it's called. But it's based. I think it's like it might be called like a gladiator or something like that. But it's basically it is what it sounds like. It's just a really fast, like robot kind of guy. And it'll hit you. I mean it kinda it kinda reminded me of like the dwarves in Elder Scrolls. Let's bring that up again. ⁓ okay. Okay. I get what you're saying. ⁓ kind of like that. But like they would They'd be really fast and they would like they had an attack where they would hit the ground with their sword. And it was another area of effect and they would just like fuck you up really fast. Mm-hmm. ⁓ and then they would like charge at you and like do multiple swings. And like they were I don't know, it it was far world to me was probably the hardest world because of that enemy alone. But the bosses were like it was just another enemy at that point. Visually like visually speaking, if you didn't if I didn't know that Elder Scrolls 2 Daggerfall was a two and a half D game and I knew ⁓ but I needed to know what Marrowind was. Like the visuals in this game I could be like, okay, I could see how that like is a previous Elder Schools game. It looks really similar like in the just an earlier three D style, you know? And even with the weird creatures and stuff like that. But I'm sure it'd be better if it was an Elder Schools game. Yeah. I will say the times two speed made it feel way more fun to me. Yeah, I wish I might have made it easier even just because like Musta I mean everything's going times two, but like it just felt more natural. I was about to say you never felt like the monsters were moving too fast to like deal with, right? So nothing. That just kind of yeah, that kind of like kind of leads to the point that like this game was like designed too slow in its I mean, I don't know, maybe that's a hardware thing. Yeah, and I think like You know, it it's a From Soft game, so I think the enemies were designed to be fought in that way, like Yeah. They well always put an emphasis on like dodging and you know not getting I was about to say to go back to your point though, it's not like there's like a dodge mechanic or like a pair even a parry mechanic. Yeah, yeah. I think like mixing up the combat in that way is what makes later From Soft games better, but yeah, I mean There is still the same like yeah, just waiting out enemy, you know, moves. Like they enemies have patterns and you learn those patterns and when you fight those same enemies over and over and over again, like you you just learn them and it gets easier. Yeah. And I I'll think of that game this game is a lot of that, but at the end of the day it's just like hitting and waiting, hitting and waiting. Yeah. That said it's fun using all the weapons. Like there's a pretty good variety. Yeah, there's a lot of different magics. Yeah. R even in the weapons I got, which isn't a ton, there's a pretty good variety of types. No, yeah. Yeah. Are there bows in this game? There there are bows and crossbows. Yeah. Within like the first few rooms of the game, I I got like a mace, ⁓ I mean you get stuff pretty quick. I got like a a mace, a sword. I think I got Yeah. I mean And then like I got like few armor items like in the first few rooms, shield. So like it was Yeah. I mean a few yeah yeah. ⁓ I f I think like ninety percent of the drops are random because like I was reading through my guide going level by level, like reading the entire guide and it would be like you're approaching this area, here's an enemy that's weak to poison magic. So you're gonna want to equip that and I'm like I there's poison magic I'm following your guide so tell me what the fuck did I miss. Now you're saying there's poison magic throwing me for a loop here. And I can't prove you wrong either, because I've never played this before. That's not reading this. I got to this point because of you. Why didn't you take me to the poison? ⁓ Make sure you mean ever you can just kill every enemy with a sword. Like the word can. Like the story. So as we mentioned earlier, I'm the only one that finished this game, but we haven't really talked about how far the three of you got. I'm just curious how far you guys actually got in the game. If you guys So let me look I gotta look at the list again. I looked at the list. I got to the Earth world, which means I got through the human world. I made it to Earthworld. Yeah. I made it to we got to Earthworld at least. Yeah, that's where I got to Earthworld. It's like a SpongeBob amusement park joke or something. Ew, Earth flavored. Yeah, I'm pretty certain I did not get to Fireworld. Earthworld, I think I got pretty far. I got to False Pit. ⁓ yeah. I think. I bounced off this game pretty hard. I'm normally like sticking out. Unless it's like Pokemon, which I didn't really I didn't care to continue. I would have stuck this out. I'd like to stuff. I would have stuck this out if I wasn't moving my fingers. I mean that it's absolutely I Gabe got too busy playing the boxing game. It's a really fun game. I've played it before too. I hated, hated, hated Iron Man, and I still got pretty far into that game. ⁓ That's a great game. Your your your point is mute because that's a ac moot, sorry. It's actually that's an incredible gaming experience. He said he corrected him he corrected himself. ⁓ Iron Man's a much shorter game though. Yeah, better. And you know what you're doing in Iron Man. Yeah. And th this game just felt again, without the guide it would I'm saying I would have beaten it, but I would have possibly wandering. A harder try than I did, you know, with everything else. Percent could ⁓ I one thousand percent couldn't have beaten this without a guide. Yeah, yeah. Especially in a month. Like this is one of those games that I would have bought when I was like I mean, I wouldn't have gotten it when I was seven, 'cause it's probably rated ⁓ but let's say I got it when I was seven. This is one of those games that I would have played. It's one of those games I would have played for fifteen years and maybe gotten to like Fireworld, like without a guide. Just like Being a dumb brainless kid just and I might have not have even gotten that far in this hypothetical situation. I won't give hypothetical kid Jay a lot of credit. Yeah. I wouldn't either. I believe in hypothetical kid Jay. He could have done it. If I when it came out, I would only have been six, so I wouldn't have owned it probably. But if I even if I was like ten or eleven or twelve, but then it would have been too old. ⁓ it would have felt too dated because I would definitely have like thrown him away. That would have felt day one touching this three day one. I would have been three five. In ninety-eight? Ninety s ninety eight, sorry, I thought it was ninety six. I was thinking of Iron Man, sorry. My fault. No, I was talking about North America. You gotta get off the Iron Man, Keith. It's been my never. Never. It's ever gonna happen. If you don't know what we're talking about, folks, hop on over to our Iron Man episode. Listen to a lot of yellow. We hate it. We all hate it. ⁓ no, we We all hate it. It was universally hated. I guess you're gonna have to go check that episode out and find out which one of us is lying. It's been five. I I wasn't I I definitely wasn't I wouldn't have touched this. I wouldn't touch this again. No. So I'll be I'll make me play this game I put on this list. Finishing this game. I ⁓ I think I started it first and I had I Don't know if I had the worst experience with it. Keith definitely did. ⁓ the best experience. I mean still was like so I was tet if I want if I want to make up an excuse like Gabe is doing. I'm not making an excuse. It's true. I've all been I've worked out of town for the three of the last four weeks of the last month, like as in I wasn't at home for the nighttime ⁓ for that last like month. So I would I could have played that played it at the hotel. But I like, I definitely don't want to do this. This isn't this isn't a good hotel game, actually. No, I absolutely not. So I just didn't want to play it. Like I got to the point, I got to that like false bit level and I went thro I walked through my first ⁓ poison section, like Jay was talking about earlier, and was like, I I don't want to try this anymore. Like I don't I give up. I know at this point where I stopped, it can't get any better than this. It can only get harder and worse. Like I won't have more fun. I already if like I've experienced enough of the game to know what the rest of it's like. I think you guys probably that's what you felt too, Gabe and ⁓ Keith. and ⁓ yeah, I have a final thesis on it. But I can we can we can wait. I will say for me as you get as you get more powerful, does it get more enjoyable at all, Jay? I thought the game the difficulty of the game peaked at fireworld. ⁓ Okay. Just it I I feel like Fireworld had enemies that were the toughest for me at that point in the game to face compared to anything in the w the latter parts of the game. But really like it's not even the most difficult part is just how obtuse this game is. I'll give another really good example. ⁓ in the Death World area, there's something you need to get before you can even fight not the final boss, but the boss to get the final orb to fight the final boss. So you you go from undead lair straight to Gate of the Dead, ⁓ which is where the final boss is, but you can't fight ⁓ unless you find the lingering curse layer. So the way you get to this area, you gotta go back out to the tower. And at this point there's like four different directions. You can drop down. There's stairs going up. So I'll try and illustrate this the best I can. You you walk out into the tower and then you turn left and there's stairs going up the left side wall. So you go up these stairs and there's a doorway to your left, but you don't go down that doorway. You turn right and there's a dead end. And what you're supposed to do is fucking make a blind fall. And you make the blind fall and you land on a platform and turn around and that's where the lingering curse layer is. There's no fucking way at all to know that that area is there other than just like, ⁓ I'm supposed to fall off here. Brian, you're right. I'm just making excuses. I don't want to deal with that shit. But aga again, I only knew that because To be fair, that that's also a promise off thing. That's only also, I feel like, a souls like thing. Like That's so terrible. Exploring false walls and stuff like that. Exploring But they also players also like give you hints to like, ⁓ there's a false wall here. And some of them may be fuck fucking with but like there's still stuff there. The part B to that is you somehow like you have to backtrack back to that world to get to another part of the Gate of the Dead through the portals that we mentioned earlier. There's a lot of portals towards the end. It's it's it's really fun and organized, guys. ⁓ But you have to go back and do that same, you know, fall of you know, that trust fall onto the platform, but on your way back out, like You know, stuff has happened in the story and the tower is even darker. So you don't even know if you're like in the same drop down area as you were before. So I had the save state before I dropped and then luckily I guessed right and it was the same spot. But like This is advanced shadow tower. It felt impossibly hard, like without help the entire way. I mean, yeah, for sure. I could tell like I I would not have not used a walkthrough on this. Like you gotta. Have to. Absolutely have to. I mean again, or take like years and years to be what's fun though, I don't think this was mentioned like the whole time. The guide I was using was an old Geosides ⁓ Neosities website. ⁓ so it's old internet looking. Yeah. You know, no just like HTML, yeah, no special coding. Someone hand wrote the whole thing and like there was a lot of Even the maps like it you should take a screenshot of one of the maps because maps that they provide are simple too. Yeah. And it's like it tells you where all the drops are. It I mean, really you just need to know where you're going. It actually looks like a map you would get in like a old RPG. Yeah, it looks like it ⁓ would be like a mini map hood too, like what you would get in any game that you would have today. Like you could throw grid lines on this and a better game you've got like a you've got a D D map. Yeah. But I I remember like Playing through the game, I would turn the display timer off on my phone and just have the map on my phone screen like permanently. And then just like playing on my Steam Deck, traversing, looking out at the game and then looking at the map. All right, I'm in this room now. A lot of secret rooms too. Do you know that there's a accessory for the Steam Deck, especially for the D brand case that I have, the kill switch, where you can get a thing, it's called mechanism. And it holds your phone. It's a phone mount. You can put your phone above your guide on it or YouTube videos or whatever time. Yeah. I'll just mirror this video of Shadow Tower that I'm watching while I play it, and that's how I think the game. I think we mentioned this in passing, but I think we should talk about it again. Is how much it costs to actually it would cost to physically own this game. And it's like seven hundred bucks. Yeah. I think there just wasn't there must not have been very many. Not a big release. Yeah. Sorry for Metal Wars too. I can't find any like a I like expensive there's no data. Yeah, there's no like sales data on how many were released in the US. So it must not have been for well at least like Metal Warriors was a very late game for that system. So that's why they didn't produce as much. And then it turned out to be really good. Like who would have feared ⁓ yeah we're in the Life life. Ninety eight's pretty middle. Pretty late. Yeah. Yeah. When did PSG come out? That was like two thousand. Yeah. Still a couple years in the life. Ninety five north. Back third. Yeah. Near the end. Yeah. Well, PlayStation was ninety five, PS one was two thousand. What is that? PS1's like the round station PlayStation mini. Well yeah, I know what it is, but I didn't know I th I just assumed it was like a little white one. Yeah. Like a couple years from the second release. No, yeah, it was ⁓ basically one. ⁓ okay. I have one, but the top doesn't stay sharp. Yeah, it was like Gi gimme one, I'll work on it. No, I actually looked up how to do it. It's it's much more difficult than I realized. What's wrong with them? I think it's the video ⁓ capacitor, which is like a surface mount component, which is like pretty tough to take off. Yeah. ⁓ it's a good thing I was able to get this digitally because ⁓ my PS3 doesn't read disc anymore, so I can't school anymore on there. Yeah. And that's ⁓ breakup. So I would say ⁓ fix that as as far as the collect it or play it or skip it. Part we have here. Don't collect it. I mean maybe it might be worth it might be val if you just have money to spend, it might be a valuable and seven hundred dollars to spend on a release. No. No. No one hardly knows what this game is unless you're like a FromSoft like disciple or something. And that might be why it's expensive because like Friendly, yeah. Yeah, it it's just FromSoft, you know, like now After their rain the price spikes. Mm-hmm. So my thoughts are for should you play it or skip it? I think you should just skip it because I think you guys all think the same thing. But my thing is the only reason anyone should ever try to play it 'cause their stupid friend did no research and put it on the wheel. I also want to be fair, I had this ⁓ never mind, sorry. Let me you go. I'm gonna kill you. I said sorry. If you ever ⁓ now you got me I don't fucking lost my place now. If you're the only reason you'd ever play this game is if you're a super huge FromSoft fan and you're like, I gotta play all the From Soft games. I like I'm I'm a huge Souls fan. I gotta see what the old games were like. I mean, that's the only reason I could ever conceive of you even considering playing this game. Yeah and even then I would maybe think about not doing it, you know? Maybe play one of the King's old games and then skip all the skip this game and skip all the other ones 'cause like it's just not worth it. This was my first FromSoft game. Same. I've never played one at all ever. Now I've And for some reason, this was my first one, but I beat it. So I'm one hundred percent on from soft. Yeah, that's what I was saying. Yeah. Can only go up from there. I was gonna say ⁓ I'm gonna throw dark one. ⁓ I'm gonna throw dark. Maybe Demon Souls. I've they never appealed to me much. 'Cause all it's ever been is like game, but hard. It's like it's just like slow, patient combat too, and I I don't like patience. Think what is a better version of Shadow Tower, and that'll get you going. I'm sure whatever we play would be fine. With the bells and whistles. Anything will be funner than this probably. I mean I had fun playing it, but that was after I fixed all the controls and I knew what I was doing with the help of a guide and maps. But with all of that assistance from outside resources, I had some fun with this game. I don't think Dirk's gonna And the times too speed. And the times two speed. Yeah, playing it naturally fucking sucks. Demon Souls as unnatural as I could. Demon Souls isn't old enough, you know. How old is how old is Demon Souls? Two thousand nine. So like Yeah, I was gonna say those games are fairly yeah modern still. ⁓ wasn't that PS two original wasn't the was it PS three? Dang. I thought there was a Souls game on Play. I thought it was PS two as well. But ⁓ yeah, it's PS three. ⁓ yeah, I think we can all agree. Interesting. Don't play this game. Yeah, I mean this is a Shadow Tower Abyss on PS2. Yeah. Yeah, there's just two games. Maybe that's a game. Maybe that game. Shadow Tower Abyss. We'll give it another shot. Also Kingsfield four. Yeah. Maybe that's what it was. They were focusing on Kingsfield. And then they were like, okay, let's do Dark Souls and Demon Souls. Two thousand three for Shadow Tower Abyss. ⁓ is an image of a Japan only. Yeah, okay. You know what? That kind of is what it is. The l the last the last Hatesfield game so there's an image of a guy holding a gun, and then I was like, okay, that must be a meme from like a YouTube. And then there's a screenshot. A couple screenshots of guy holding a gun. You know what? So maybe there are guns in Shadow Tower Abyss. Interesting. Yeah, no, definitely are. There are multiple players. ⁓ wow. Nice. Maybe we should try that game. It's all in Japanese. Imagine how bad the gun durability is though. Probably real shitty gun. I wouldn't trust that. Yeah, it's a as a sequel acting as a sequel nineteen ninety eight Shadow Tower and a spiritual successor to the Kingsfield series. The game is a dark atmospheric cult classic known for combining traditional medieval style dungeon crawling with modern firearm. What's the sequel? I already I got to go to the tower. I'm sold. You're telling me there's a second tower? Yeah. How what's the ⁓ what's the ending like? How's that work? ⁓ yeah, Jay. Yeah. You get a rock. Yeah. Yeah. I I I honestly didn't pay too much attention to ⁓ Do you at least get to see your the old woman who raised you? I don't remember, man. I beat the final boss and I put the scene. I didn't watch the final cutscene. I figured I like Yeah. I just waited it out for the credits so I could take my picture. Like a tractual obligation in the net. I mean I'll put down this game. There was no story the entire game. Why should I care now? That's completely fair. Yeah. So I I don't want to misspeak. Skip it, right? Yeah. Well yeah, skip it. I played everyone. But now I can skip it f forever. Yeah. And never think about it again. Yeah. I might think about it, but I'll forever look at it when I turn on my PS3 because it's gonna sit in my fucking library forever. Garbage controls. It did feel really good to be saying that I feel achievement from that. That's good. Alright, so that's enough about this bad game. Let's put it behind us. So, Gabe, do you wanna tell us what got What's replacing this game on the creep wheel? This should be a popular one and what fucking super difficult game are you putting on the wheel next? It's funny because this a this is actually a difficult game and I think ⁓ Of course. It's not difficult, but it's it's harder than like probably most of its it's it's also obtuse. Yeah, yeah. That's the thing is you pro Well, our friend Tyler mentioned you probably want to guide ⁓ if you're gonna beat this game in time. ⁓ I'm trying to see what it's what is it's ⁓ this guy doesn't even know his own game. How long took out the name How long's beat has the main story without side quests is twenty one hours. ⁓ that's good. The game I'm talking about about Zelda Legend of Zelda Majora's Mask. ⁓ Woo Tower. At least two of us are pretty excited about if it were to get picked. ⁓ I don't know how Ryan feels about it. ⁓ I don't wanna play it. Keep is never yeah, Keefe's never played his health a game and my friend was like our friend Tyler was like, You please don't start him on ⁓ Majora's Mask, he'll never play another one again and I was like, Majora's Mask is awesome. But He has plenty of time to beat another one before Majora's Mask wins, I hope. Yeah, it's gonna win right now, baby. Because I wanna win a game. But yeah, I played Majora's Mask because it was a Zelda game. I played Majora's I chose Majora well, I you know, I picked three. Majora's Mask was one of them, and our viewers voted on it. ⁓ and Majora's Mask won. And I chose Majora's Mask because it's a Zelda game that only me and Jay I think have played. Ryan hasn't played. ⁓ I was gonna choose Ocarina of Time, but three of us have already played it, and I was like Everyone deal with let's go with Majora's Mask. Got the new one coming out. ⁓ could have been a good material. It's it's relevant, which is why I was gonna chew it. I I was gonna choose it, but ⁓ I was like whatever, Majora's Mask. Maybe we'll just do stray Zelda clicks from Majora's Mask. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We're only a matter of time before that remix, so maybe three years down the road, yeah we finally blow up when the Majora's Mask remake comes out. There you go. But anyway, so that's why it's on the wheel. ⁓ Spin it. Alright, well I'll go through what's on there now. We have ⁓ Shantae, Castlevania Symphony of the Night, WWF, SmackDown two, Know Your Roll, Final Fight, Demon's Crest, Medieval, Psychonauts, Legend of Zelda Majora's Mask, Tomb Raider, Diablo, Star Wars Shadow of the Empire, Super Star Wars, Return of the Jedi, IQ, Intelligent Cube, and Act Razor. Gotta shout out a couple of those are ⁓ Ultra Creep games, so Some of those are OG games too. Yeah. Yeah. Only one of mine is an OG. Yeah, keep shipping. I got one. Final fight. Yeah. Final fight is still on there. Man. Two of my no, sorry. Yeah, those two of those are my OGs because my one that won got picked. Like that was the replacement. ⁓ yeah. Mm-hmm. So been on there for almost a year. It's getting cl coming close to a year. All right, let's spin this thing. Ready? Spin this thing. Spin that thing. Wheel. Wheel. No, I'm gonna shuffle this first. Music's back, yeah. Always come back on the video. What? What is it? What's it gonna be? ⁓ yes! Hey. This is gonna be awesome. Another month without a win, but I will play Castlevania Sympathy. A game of the night excited about. Yeah. Sympathies. Sympathy of the night. Awesome. PlayStation 1. I haven't played it. This is my game. I've heard it's awesome. I haven't played it. This is my choice. I have played we've talked we've played Metroid, we've talked about Metroid a couple ti a lot on this. ⁓ it's the Metroid it's the Vania part of Metroidvania, obviously. So we'll see how it ⁓ pairs to those. It's also our second Castlevania game. So that's cool. Yes, it is. We love Castlevania, but it's our first ⁓ you know Metroidvania class Castlevania game. The other one was a classic Vania. Yeah. Yeah. So this is a very popular ⁓ game like I mean, I don't know if every like your average non gaming person knows what Castlevania is. I don't think they do. I feel like that's Castlevania's less known than like Zelda or Pokemon. Or Metroid but Yeah, even Metroid. But Castlevania Symphony of the Night is like known as the probably the best or at least the most popular, most well known one of the series and it's ⁓ so I'm I'm looking forward to playing this one. ⁓ Yeah, yeah, me too. Now I gotta decide if I wanna play it on what I want to play it on because it's PS one, but It might t take a while. I don't know how long it is. I'll probably play it on my Steam Deck, but Yeah, that's that's my what I'm imagining right now. It's on it's on PlayStation as well. They it's no seven hundred dollars, but it's a pretty steep physical price. Really? What is that? It's it's a hundred plus at least. Jeez. It is I do want to get it eventually, but ⁓ I haven't yet. Is it on Steam? Eleven and a half in on how long to beat. I can do it. Can't wait get can't wait to get back to good gaming. Yeah. Yeah, I have to I have to beat this one. You have to. Steam Deck seems like a good choice because if I wanna play it on my T V I could easily do that. Yeah. Yeah. Or save state. It's on both the PS three as a PS one classic and on the there's a re release on PS four. So but it would be pretty fun to like play it on one of these and take it with me, you know. Yeah. Anytime it'd be little tough. I'll I'll probably play it on the PS3 version because I want to play the classic original version. Yeah, have that go this month. ⁓ well if the game was better, it would have gone better. You could play on your RP five. What are you gonna do? RP you have a five, right? Or a six. Yeah, to be fair, Castlevania is simply it's what five, yeah. This should be fun for all of us, I think. Easy. Yeah, this will be a good time. I'm like Gabe's dumb game. Hey. Yeah, Gabe. I've had two bangs. Some all knowing fool you are. You're a no knowing fool. Yeah. Get his ass. Get his ass. It's actually you're you're not incorrect because ⁓ I knew nothing about this game again. Wow, what a waste of a month of gaming. All the game. Especially me. I ⁓ I I'm I'm fine with it because you know, I'm glad I missed it this month when like I probably would have because he picked the game. I was like, ⁓ we gotta go. It's true. Yeah. I was like perfect. Actually Just as a side note, I swore we were all gonna take our list of games that we had put down by one. That was a discussion I thought at one point, and Shadow Tower was the one I wanted to take off. I was like, I don't know enough about this game and then we're be ratings. You know, we talked about it, but then we didn't do it. We talked about it and it could still happen in the future. It was the idea was that with there being us all having three and every all the ⁓ ultra creeps only having one slot. Wheel like on the wheel, we have three slots. That's like the day would get a lot less likely. And we could still do that. Maybe we'll wait until the end of the year and sort of season two to start doing that. So only f a few more months. Maybe we'll maybe we'll change that to a real where we only have two games or maybe it's the college season. Yeah. Our sophomore ⁓ yeah album release. ⁓ Car Creeps two. but it is is a tenth month, ⁓ tenth episode. So far, ⁓ which is pretty crazy. It means we've only got two more to be a full year, even though it's September, so it doesn't really math doesn't really work out. But our first ep first episode is our game we're playing. Wait, guys, we made a podcast. The first episode we played a game the game we played was in dis over December and then we started playing start at released it in January. So the last game of the year will be played in ⁓ December. No, November. Yeah. Yeah. That even work now. Well, we'll probably have some special like I did that workout. It's just because we we took forever to get together to record, so it ended up in the first effect. Yeah. Now it's the first time. But ⁓ now we also have our ⁓ check out our second videos that we put out. We put out video every other week. We have ⁓ probably have some best of kind of video near the end of the year about the ones we played this past year and looking at All the games that were good and now we have a new game to talk about in contention for the worst. ⁓ yeah, Iron Man, we got this. So who knows? Space station, let's not let Jay out the hook. Space Station was better than both better than both of those. Okay. I definitely station pushed up. So off this hook you listen, two and each your hardware Your hardware issues do not like magically make the game bad. Yeah. But it makes you bad. I only pick games if it's good. So you guys already know this game's gonna be good. Yeah. We don't know that for sure. You'd never even It's gonna be funny. I might know. I might not like it, it'll be me. He's but he's ⁓ for one on liking Castlevania. Castlevania, yeah. You played Rondo's lead or something? I played ⁓ Bloodlines, okay. That's another classic Vania and I like that one more. That one was good. I like It was fun to look at. It had a bunch of cool backwards. I didn't like I wouldn't say I loved it, but I liked it a lot more than like four. I like it was it was fine. ⁓ This one I'm really interested in being a Metroidvania because that's I mean I do like that genre of games. That's Dracula backwards. What? Whoa! ⁓ that's a keeps bit What? Keith, did you know that's that's Dracula backwards? I just said that. Yeah, you're supposed to say what? Yeah, but I said it, so it doesn't make sense for you. Never mind. That's the bit. But I then I did the obvious bit I said the obvious thing. You can just cut the stuff out, so you don't ⁓ I'll get my bit I'll get my bit going next time, don't you worry. Wait, we're doing bits? Ga Gabe said he was gonna do a bit and he never ever ever did it the entire time. Yeah, I was gonna go right at the end here. Nope, I'm cutting it. Don't forget. Drink Sun Quest. I'm just just cutting this part. Editor, editor. Hey editor. I'm just gonna start saying editor ⁓ instead of Yeah, the people think it's not me, you know? Yeah. Wow, I pay for We're we're big time now. We have Yeah. ⁓ you guys have any final thoughts on Shadow Tower for the end? Don't play it. I am glad to be able to put this game behind me. I said I was For some psycho reason if you do play it, then if for some weird ass reason you play it again, play it on a device that you can cheat through it, like Jay did. Yeah. Yeah, I didn't cheat. I altered save state. Falls fast forward, just do everything you can to not play this game naturally. Yeah. If you are such a a FromSoft purist and a souls guy that you are such insistent on playing this on ⁓ like original hardware and with original saves and everything, like you're a masochist for sure, but like I would respect that. But I think that you're insane if you would do that. Like that'd be an insane thing to do and spend your time doing. Someone surely has done it. Yeah, right? I mean it but you're people did it back then. When it came out they had to do it. Yeah. But even I mean now in the modern day, someone has done it, I'm sure. Probably that's game that no one's ever been. And if you did that, like and subscribe. That's a time. If you haven't done that, you should also tell us about your first Rumsoft game and how that how that went for you. Yeah. Yeah. Also, ⁓ follow us, obviously on you know just in life. Check us out on Spotify, check it out on Apple Podcasts. We're also on Instagram, cart creeps. ⁓ TikTok Cart Creeps. ⁓ thanks for listening and we'll send that in. No. Thanks for listening. Sun drop. Zero actually. I have Cart Creeps bottle. But I'm not endorsing it. I'm just saying that that's what I Is that on our community store? Drink it or not, I don't care. ⁓ community store with the talking. We don't have merch. We have stickers that were free to Patreon subscribers. Yeah, subscribe for your some stickers. See what we get merch. For now. All right. Thanks for watching and listening. Play the music. Play us out. Play the music. I don't hear it. Bye.