Robert J Dunbar: ⁓ Turn that off. ⁓ I'm ready when you're ready. Yeah, you wanna just hit that d Welcome to Co-op Chaos, a game life balance podcast. Here are your hosts, Bob and Aaron. You know, I'm never gonna get tired of Matthew reading that intro. He does such a good job every time. And I'm Bob. He is a professional and He's a legend. He is a legend, and no one can take that from I'm Aaron, by the way. This is gonna be a rocky one. We're doing this a late recording. This episode we got a can. We're putting it in a can. Well, okay, so we were gonna can it, but we didn't have the right equipment, so we're pickling it instead. So this'll be a pickled episode because We will not all be available the following week. So we're doing this, we're following this on the heels of our previous recording. So n there's not gonna be a a whole lot that's changed from the previous week for us in this time warp episode. Episode, you ask? Episode of what? What is this? Well, I'll tell you, friend, this is a podcast. Bob, tell us about this podcast. Well, if you haven't listened to us before, technically you did listen to us several hours ago. You just don't realize it because now it's a week later for you, the listener. But ⁓ this is Coop Chaos and it is a podcast about getting this riverside window out of the way of my notes. And if you haven't listened to us before, Coop Chaos is a podcast about gaming your way through gaming your way, gaming our way. Gaming everybody's way through the game of life while being busy, functioning adults. I mean, we're doing our best here, people. We're trying. And we also try to maintain our long distance friendships, both old and new, across this chaotic journey of life. Every week we play a new co-op game that's usually under ten dollars, share pieces of our lives with you, and talk about other games we continue to play that keep us in motivated and stimulated. So this week we are going to be playing, I've ⁓ definitely not forgotten the name of it. The fish one. ⁓ yeah, fish stick protocol. Let's go. Yeah, this episode is is gonna go amazing and it might be our best episode yet. So this is what I found out so far about this game. Think of it as like a cross between repo and Lort. Okay. Like repo, we're gonna go and we're gonna try and find goodies. Okay. Okay. And and but it's It's gonna the way it's gonna be is it's gonna be a little bit more like Lort where we're gonna get dumped into like kind of an open map. It's gonna be it's not gonna be a huge map like Lort, it's gonna be a little bit smaller. And we're basically we're gonna be running around. We're gonna have a bunch of things trying to kill us, and we're just gonna be trying to collect goodies and bringing them back here. And then when we bring them back here, we have we go up all these stairs. ⁓ if you follow me up these stairs. ⁓ yeah, I ran up here earlier and I took a swan dive off of it for fun. ⁓ no no, d are all the way up this way? ⁓ I did ⁓ there's more stairs? ⁓ yeah. ⁓ my goodness. Now we got a swan dive off of here. And then you come out to here and you put all your goodies on here for display. This is like a very luscious like seventies Love Layer lounge. Yeah, this is just the lobby. You as you get more valuables, the the valuables increase your you see how we have an approval rating in the upper left hand corner. The more goodies and the more, you know, rare goodies you get, obviously, it kind of increases the value of your love layer here. And then you unlock more rooms and then your lair gets bigger and bigger. And that's kind of how you progress in the game. And you kind of unlock your base by interest getting Collecting goodies by being a little tiny klepto clone. Alright, so we're basically gonna go steal a bunch of people's sh and hold it up for people to look at and think that we're cool and they're gonna give us money. Like kind of sorta sorta. Kinda like ⁓ like little thief influencer goblins. Kind of. The They the portal so far from what I've seen generally is just opening up onto this like field and we run around and kind of ⁓ collect artifacts, I believe they're called. Okay. So how's your week been, Bob? ⁓ well not a whole lot different than the last one, but I definitely have some ⁓ things that I've done since the last recording. Yeah, you ⁓ I mean, i if nothing else, you took one kiddo to go do a ⁓ extracurricular. Yeah, I took ⁓ my littlest to go to swimming. ⁓ she loves going to swimming. She's you know, she's getting there. And then So are you looking at this dimensional analyzer screen right now? I am. So ⁓ there it looks like all those little spinny swirlies, those are the different portals we can choose from. I believe right now there's only gonna be one that we can pick. ⁓ I see the other ones are locked. Yeah. Yeah yeah, or they have a cost to going to them. And there's there's like the w the f the first one, like the basic portal, like has no cost to it. Yeah. But obviously it has the crappiest loot. ⁓ I see. Ooh, now it's getting all juicy on us. Yeah. Sorry to cut you off there. ⁓ you're good. Yeah, so plop. I think it just face planted. That was great. So do we have a mini map? that blew up. We definitely do not. yeah, ev ev even these little rocks, valuable. And we can just d throw stuff onto the portals pad right here. So that way when ⁓ the level ends, everything that's on top of that portal pad will just get dumped back through. Okay. Good to know, good to know. What's all that? ⁓ yeah. This is a lot of what you find around is these little like stones things that you gotta kinda pop up on and there's a little bit of platforming involved. And once you get up there, there's usually like a little goody I don't know if I can help you or if I'm just I don't know if I can help myself. Yeah, no, usually a lot of these things just do a little bit of damage and then you get free from them and then ⁓ you move on. ⁓ interesting. Okay. ⁓ yeah, I see what you're saying. So we've got like a border of all these big boulders, so we can only go so far. Yeah, the map's not huge. I imagine once we get into later levels, like stuff will probably ⁓ expand more, but I mean that's okay. Let me go, you stinky plant. Yeah, so what is new? What is new? Littless went to swimming. We took the kids to this really cool playground in the afternoon and they had a ton of fun there. ⁓ nice. Yeah, it's like kinda like a new new playground. I don't know what this big golden dome thing is. I haven't seen that before. Maybe there's some juicy yum yums in there. I'm gonna try and get this one first before I go over there. If I can get up to it. I don't know if I can. Or maple syrup, I don't know which. Maple booze. Maple booze which? The best kind of sandwich in the entire world. Wait, so what is this? There was a bottle of booze on this pedestal. Why is this light dome just there and doesn't seem to have any real purpose? Yeah. Ooh, that looks shiny. Yeah, that looks really shiny. ⁓ yeah, we're going to take that. ⁓ it's making me run. I can't put it down. Or well, I mean I could I could put it down. ⁓ where's the ⁓ I'm just gonna throw it over at like extraction or wherever. Yeah, I should probably go throw some of my things over there. So I think I'm not certain, but you see in the upper right corner there's this thing that says dimensional turbulence. Mm-hmm. I think That'll eventually fill up and then we kind of run out of time. ⁓ okay. And I think the sky starts raining, fire and stuff, and it gets all crazy and I dunno I don't know exactly what what happens, what the mechanic is, but something happens. It's probably not good. Like some giant flying bug thing over here. I found another one. Another bug? Yeah. Yeah, so took the kiddos to The super cool playground. They had a ton of fun. A couple of them made some friends. A couple of them just kinda chilled. And yeah, it was nice. And then afterwards I had to do some stuff around the house. Mostly we have this screen door off of like, you know, like the front door. It's like the storm door or whatever. Mm-hmm. And I don't know how old it is. I'm sure the previous owner had installed it and Many things go in my house. Wasn't installed properly. Like the whole door isn't like quite framed properly, but I do not have the desire to fix it or whatever. So I'm like, you know what? I'm not gonna replace this door. I'm not gonna do much to it. I'm just going to repaint it. So I sanded the crap out of it and I got new hardware for it. Mm-hmm. And I put three coats of white paint on it and it looks nice and crisp. And then I'm gonna put the new hardware on tomorrow and boom. Nice. Yeah. And that was a belated Mother's Day request from my wife, and I think she will be very pleased. Very nice. ⁓ we might be nearing dimensional turbulence end here. ⁓ I just saw some giant green glob land on the ground over here. Yeah. ⁓ It might be a good idea to start heading towards the portal. Yeah, I'm at the portal now. ⁓ we probably have to kick it on, huh? I think we can, yeah. I think it might turn on automatically eventually, but I'm not certain. Bunk. Nice. And then we're just putting stuff on display up above? Yeah, but first, come over here. ⁓ decontamination. It just heals you and fixes you and cleans all your cuts and everything and Well that's fun. I kinda like that. So how has your week been? My week. Well ⁓ wink wink. We watched the Mando movie, The Mandalorian and Grogu. Yeah, how was that? It was decent. Not amazing, but it was good. It was a solid episode of a season opener. type thing, but like it was a good story, it just wasn't like a consequential story type of thing. Mm. Okay. They told a d a decent story. We didn't really get a whole lot of character change or development or consequences or outcome. Did it like wrap up the story at all? The story was already kind of wrapped up. Yeah. From the sh from the show. They they really didn't have anything to wrap up beyond like, you know, Mando getting his ride back. Right. Which, you know, people I feel like already kind of figured out from the marketing. Yeah. It didn't make make it a bad movie. It was still it's still a lot of fun. This wasn't quite as like pivotal as we might have expected. Yeah, no. Didn't tell anything new or anything. It was just Yeah. It was there. Okay. But it was fine. Yeah. ⁓ yeah, this is like a little thing of maple syrup. ⁓ yeah, it's definitely maple syrup. It's got a little Canadian leaf on it. ⁓ yeah. ⁓ I like how there's like a little microphone down here at the console, so if you have voice on you can yell at people. Mm-hmm. ⁓ see now see now if you come over here you've earned we Yeah, you can un you can unlock this now 'cause you've got two thousand reputation or whatever out of and this it only costs ten thousand. Then you take all these rocks that we have and you throw ⁓ in this little recycler. ⁓ I see. Nice. And that'll give you some more money. Yeah. Yeah. 'Cause these broken vases and stuff you could probably throw in there. Mm-hmm. Interesting, okay. Like how you just jumped in there. I had to find out. ⁓ no. ⁓ no, that thing's just chewing your body up. Your legs are all ground beef. ⁓ you just got like rubber banded away somewhere. Yeah, I picked ⁓ surrender and I just they spit out a new clone. ⁓ that's funny. Alright, so Mandalorian Grogu. Fun, not epic, but still fun. Yeah. It was a solid B plus. Okay. Like how we just like fall and land on our faces. Ooh, those look like plants that are gonna shoot fire at us. ⁓ hey there, friend. I don't think that's ⁓ no, did he just shoot ink at us? He shot something at us. I don't think we wanna know what it is. ⁓ there's a sleeping one over here. I'm not gonna bother him. I wonder if these guys are gonna attack us for stealing their goods. I think they're just like animals. This one injected me with some kind of air and I floated up like a balloon. ⁓ me too. ⁓ there you go. Like how we deflate like a balloon too. Got twenty health left. ⁓ Probably none after this. ⁓ you got it. Nice. I got it. Yeah, I think it like wanted us to land in there intentionally. We are on to Theme of the Month? Yes. At the time that this will air, it will be June. So we are on to a new theme. And our theme is Mischief and Music. Yeah. So I was gonna cheat for my question. ⁓ and I'm actually gonna ask you a question that I've already asked you before, just not for the show. Okay. Is a music question, and it is what are the three albums that had the biggest influence on your life? Not like, you know, your f three favorite, not you know, your three like things that you're jamming out to right now, like biggest influences on your life, pivotal moments in your life. Youth or whatever. Hmm. Three albums, huh? ⁓ I'm being attacked by some mosquitoe bugs. Ow, stop it. ⁓ no, there the trend coming to get me. ⁓ no. I don't think I'm gonna make it. ⁓ Alright. Now I see if I can rescue you. ⁓ yeah. Nice. I am at forty health. ⁓ you're at forty health? Nice. Yeah. I think that's pretty good. I am at fifteen. Alright, well I I'm going. Grab some more things and I'm gonna think about this question for a moment. Seemingly inconsequential, but also a very deep question. Let's see. I know one of mine would have to be Turn the Radio Off by Real Big Fish. ⁓ yeah. I think another one would probably be Fear Everything by the Flaming Tsunamis. Mm-hmm. And then the third I think probably go to Dude Ranch. From Blink 182. Okay. Interesting. We are at 87 Dimensional Turbulence. Ooh, there's the bugs, they gotta get me. Now So I think my first one is going to be Understand This Is a Dream by the Juliana Theory. That was probably the album that really got me into emo music. Mm-hmm. And they are a second wave emo band. And yeah, they just had a lot of like really good lyrics, deep lyrics, also strategic screaming. So like unlike some of the more modern third and fourth and current wave emo bands you have that are very heavily screaming oriented, these guys were just like mostly singing, a little bit of screaming where it made sense for like the emotional depth of the lyrics or music. And yeah, it's just kinda like, I think this is where my musical heart lies. Okay. a good answer. Yeah, that was the start of the emo journey. I mean, I listened to like some other bands, you know, like Weezer's like Blue Album think is arguably like in that emo realm. Yeah, shoot. I think Blue Album probably ⁓ should have been on there for my list, but Yeah, I mean I think that was I think that could easily be like anyone in our generation's like top three list because Early to mid nineties, like they were just breaking out and doing a lot of interesting things. Mm-hmm. ⁓ you need by the way, you need to scrap about forty more points of whatever this B currency is. And then you can unlock the little shower that changes your character's color. Okay. All right. I've got my next one. Okay. So there's this ska band that I discovered. Many, many years ago. The Siren Six. Okay. They had an EP that came out in nineteen ninety-eight called Young and Professional. And that was like a transformative ska moment for me, where it's like I was already listening to Ska, you know, I think you would kind of got me into Real Big Fish and a couple other ones. And they were just like such a different sounding ska band, and they were more kind of like in that like what we now refer to as brass emo. Where like they were kind of like very like second wave Juliana theory emo sounding, but with like their ska sound. So they had some of that like screaming. The music and lyrics were a little bit more like downtrodden, but also weirdly upbeat because of the ska aspect. But they had some really good like social commentary in their lyrics. Very interesting band for sure. And I mean, like what a what a badass name, the Siren Six. I recall they were a pretty decent band. Yeah, they were good. They were good for sure. I don't think they were very long lived, but they were a good time. I spent your currencies, I unlocked a thing. I see like cereal boxes and stuff on the floor now. And a toaster. If you do more exploring, there's more stuff to find. ⁓ what'd you unlock? ⁓ so ⁓ you should be able to now wait, maybe go this way first? ⁓ Ooh. Secret room. ⁓ what's all this stuff? So first pick a color, then go into the go back into the shower. ⁓ it's coloring me. ⁓ my goodness. Look at that. I am a red poopsicle now. Ooh, we found the break room. Yeah, this this is where the cereal boxes and stuff s ⁓ was. I thought there's a smoke alarm on the table, which is blinking. It occasionally beeps. ⁓ that's funny. Album number three. So I had to like look at a couple albums just to confirm for the other ones to make sure that I knew which album I was referencing. But this one needs no looking up. This is a ⁓ incredibly solid album for me. And Armor for Sleep is the band. The album was like their second album, I think, and it's called What to Do When You Are Dead. Okay. And The album has this whole like overarching theme. So like back in the olden days when you would buy a CD, the CD came with this little booklet and it just said what to do when you're dead on it. And it had all of these rules listed out, like do not try to contact the living. Don't linger in the living world too long, you know, pass on to the afterlife and like all these things. And then because you're you're dead now and you have to follow the rules, right? So the first song on the album is Car Underwater and it's basically like you like careen off a bridge and you drown in your car and now you're dead and you're a ghost. Mm-hmm. And the whole album is just themed of going through like trying to like accept the fact that you're dead to like basically like no, like f the rules. I'm gonna keep trying to reach out to like this person that I'm in love with and try to let them know that I'm still here. And so you're trying to contact the living, you're lingering, you're like breaking every single rule that came in this little booklet. Mm-hmm. And I just thought as a concept that was so thought provoking about mortality and love and making you think about how what would you do? Like if that was your opportunity. Yeah. Plus I mean you don't see a lot of concept albums anymore. No. And it was so good. Mean I don't I don't know that you ever saw a lot of concept albums, but No, not a ton. But they ended up releasing like a bunch of B sides to this and they added some like new songs to it some years ago. So it just like went even further down the rabbit hole of like No, like for real, like you're dead and now you're trying to talk to like your girlfriend's mom. It's a very pivotal album. Yeah. Nice. So then going off of that, because I love coming up with a question in the moment Now let's say you do die and you get the list of rules. This is gonna be my question for you for I guess like rebellion. Like, how are you gonna rebel and say, like, no, I'm not going anywhere yet? What do you do? Hmm, I don't know. What abilities what what can I interact with? So for example, through some of the songs, there's ⁓ one song called Basement Go Singing, where he's basically like Hiding behind the stairs in the basement trying to like yell up through the floorboards to like get the girls' attention. ⁓ so like you can like have your voice heard. You can like try to like write things and Okay, so basic ghost stuff. Yeah, you can interact with things that are in the living world. You just maybe can't like manifest immediately and directly speak with someone. Alright. So let's see. What am I doing as a ghost here? Can you jump on my head? You stand like on top of me? ⁓ maybe. ⁓ yeah. I got it. ⁓ and this monster got me. I threw a rock at it. ⁓ nice. That's how we get each other free. Yeah, but that's how we can like kill things. Help! Help, it's eating me. Throw a rock at it. I can't stop running. So it's just I ha have to either steer or Ugh. There we go. ⁓ yes. Thank you. ⁓ you're good. It's coming after me again. ⁓ no. ⁓ he's almost he's trying to suck you up. ⁓ no. Did he get you? Yeah, he's on me again. ⁓ nice. No no no no no. ⁓ we killed it. Ooh. He I think he might have dropped something. ⁓ wait, what was the question again? ⁓ what are you gonna do when you're dead? What am I How are you gonna break the rules to rebel? ⁓ yeah, what I gonna I'm gonna haunt some ⁓ I'm gonna haunt some politicians or something. ⁓ there you go. And just mess with ⁓ like a lot. And we're gonna like, you know find find out who their mistresses are, you know, find out all their little dirty secrets and like then I'm gonna haunt like a news reporter or something and just be a menace to like people of power. ⁓ yeah. And like anybody else who needs to be like just taking down a peg. You wanna just call this portal in here? ⁓ my head is full of holes, I think. Yeah, you're in trouble. ⁓ I ⁓ yeah, it looks like one of my eyeballs is falling out. Well maybe you can just use the mosquito eyeball. ⁓ yeah. I wonder if it'll fit. Alright, so I like that. You're just gonna go like mess with a bunch of like turd politicians and make them suffer. Yeah, any ⁓ uppity ⁓ well to do somebody who just, you know, needs a good comeuppance or whatever. Yeah. ⁓ is this an ocarina? It is an ocarina. Fancy. Alright, what am I gonna do? What are you gonna do as a ghost? I think I'm gonna do some good and then I'm gonna cause some mischief. You gotta go and like try to like tell your loved ones. I'm okay. Go be happy because you're rebelling by not moving on in the afterlife, which I think is the best thing you can do. Mm-hmm. Rebel. No prisoners. I don't know what to do with this oc arena. Yeah, just stick it anywhere. You can always rearrange later. Yeah. And then the next thing I'm gonna do is I'm gonna go cause some chaos because this is co-op chaos after all. So I'm going to go and basically spend my ghostly hood finding all of the people that commit heinous acts on other people and haunt them by trying to insert myself into places to give them a taste of their own medicine, but they can't really do much because I'm a ghost. So Mm-hmm. Enjoy your suffering and ghostly violations. Trying to kick these boxes over the portal, because you it won't let you pick them up. ⁓ yeah. So I'm curious if I just kick them into the portal, will they go through? ⁓ yeah, maybe. This box doesn't want to move. Come on, box, get up there. If I said that once, I've said it a million times. Box, don't listen. What I tell you. Yeah, that'd be one thing I would change already. Let me pick up these boxes so I can organize them. Why are we able to like move them around if we can't actually just like pick them up and interact with them? That seems kind of silly. Life co op? ⁓ man, do I have a life co op this week? The boxes came through. You know what? I'm gonna be super cheesy because why not the box did come through? Alright, the box is like my side life co op, because that was great. Mm-hmm. But I am going to say that you are my life co-op because we have been besties for ⁓ I just got geysered up the butt. Whoa that was amazing. I just got grabbed by a weed and I'm about to get eaten by a elephant thing. I don't know where that is. Alright, well I'm not gonna let the moment pass. ⁓ you're my life co op. We're the best of the besties. We are doing this amazing podcast together. Listeners or not, I don't care. This has been fun. I'm looking forward to continuing doing this and being super amazing. So cheers to you for being along this incredible journey of life with me. Thank y'all. ⁓ I would say you back in return, but that feels like a canned response and it would be. ⁓ because that's not who I had planned. Follow your heart. I was just gonna say my wife for putting up with my bullsh all the time. And ⁓ also I'm dead. ⁓ no. And bleeding out. ⁓ where do I find you? ⁓ I see. ⁓ I I I don't know. I don't think you're gonna get to me in time. I should have said something sooner. Ugh. You just getting flipping through the air. Yep. ⁓ yeah, I think you're dead dead. Whom womp womp womp. Hmm. And I'm not doing so great. No, you are not. And I am right near ⁓ he set me on fire. Ooh. You're on fire. And you you're on fire and you got stabbed. I'm rocketing up into the atmosphere. And ⁓ my gosh. I got it. I got it. ⁓ yeah. It got me again. ⁓ just land on the portal. Yeah. You got at least one item. Like I think your character's intestines are hanging out the front. ⁓ yeah. You know what? We're just gonna call it. Because this is ⁓ some risky business. This was a rough start. My intestines! ⁓ you landed on my head. ⁓ can I walk around with you? ⁓ yeah, look at that. Yeah, you can. And like your feet are kicking around on my head while I'm running. That's hilarious. That's hilarious. I'm gonna take you in the shower with me. ⁓ yeah. If I had a nickel for every time somebody said that to me. I'd have a sh load of nickels. ⁓ I'd be so poor. Nobody loves me. ⁓ no. Was ⁓ that basketball? I think that was basketball. I don't have a sh load of nickel. That's good movie. ⁓ look at this. I think you unlocked ⁓ this. Put the key in. Put it in. Put it in. Ooh, now we can put more things in here. Now we have a big grand main hall with like big staircase and lots of stained window. Disco orange. Like that disco burnt orange everywhere. At least we don't get fall damage in here. That'd be dumb if we didn't. We had to go to the shower every time. ⁓ you can unlock the shop too, which doesn't give us a lot, but it does give us some stuff. We can buy like little health recoveries and stuff. But it uses those buck things, which we don't have a ton of yet. Early game. ⁓ we can unlock an elevator at some point, that's nice. ⁓ can we? ⁓ yeah. ⁓ and then the ⁓ character customization is over here. ⁓ you can change your dive position, that's great. Mm-hmm. Into the hole. Into the portal of love. What? I found a rock. Ooh. I just saw like four rocks fly through the air. Amazing. Oop, I got flamed. At least it lets you run fast. I kinda like that. What when you're on fire? Yeah. That's funny. It's kind of useful, you know, like you get damage but helps you like expedite your process. So this is the game of the moment. We are playing fish stick protocol. I do not know why it's called that. Yeah, there are no fish sticks. I wonder if we get fish sticks and it's like a big deal. ⁓ maybe. Maybe that's like our like ultimate reward for like doing the things. Yeah, maybe they pay us in fish sticks. ⁓ go away, Buck. ⁓ he's still chasing me. ⁓ I'm on fire. I'm on fire now too. ⁓ fish stick protocol, this what would you call this game? ⁓ death 'cause I'm dying. So it's an extractor. Yeah. A gremlin thiefy extractor. Yeah. Thieving all the things. Yeah, you're definitely thefting a lot of the things. Wait, ⁓ stand my head. There we go. Got it. So we are playing an extractor. This is number of players. What was the max number? It's probably gotta be four. Think it's four, but I do not know for sure. I can confirm that. ⁓ it's up to eight players actually. That's good. Interesting. Okay, so that that gives it a pretty strong little how do you do? Yeah, a little bump in its favor. Yeah. And then cost was I think this is about the same as ⁓ the other one, 'cause we got both of them in a bundle, right? For like sixteen bucks. Yeah, this was bundled. It was sixteen eighteen. I think the original price for this is nine ninety nine, so you can argue that it's at least a dollar off. In the bundle or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not gonna bother looking up the ⁓ lowest price history, but yeah. It's ⁓ it's under ten bucks. And then let's see Objective and Story. You are a thievan little clone thing. That's about it. Yeah, you're just like this little space clone guy running around stealing things like a turd. That are just out in a field and there's just all this dangerous flora and fauna that ⁓ wants to eat you. Right. ⁓ crud. We should head back to the portal. I am running back. I was trying to figure out where to go and I'm like all turned around. I'm almost there. And then art style. It looks looks similar to I would say like kind of Deep Rock Galactic. Along those same veins of kind of chunky objects, but Yeah. Kind of a cartoony looking vibe. Yeah, cartoony, it's nothing like super crazy in the graphics department, but I mean it looks good. Yeah, it's stylized. Yeah, very stylized. I like it. And I am running around with my intestines hanging out, so that is how this game kinda goes. ⁓ yeah, me too. But I gotta go put my trophies up here first, and then I'll go get my intestines put back in. What do you like? What don't you like so far about this game, Bub? I like that it wasn't hard to figure out, easy to jump into. I like that it feels similar to some of the other games that we've laid recently, so it's not relearning like a whole new game over again. ⁓ I brought up two more things for you. Here you go. Ooh, fancy. I just dropped in there on the or I'll just I'll just find a ⁓ Yeah, just throw ⁓ wherever. I like the aesthetic. I like that the map isn't overly big, I think sometimes when we do these extractor games, 'cause again there's no mini map in this. So that would be a thing that I don't like. But because the map is so small, it's not hard. It's manageable. Yeah, but sometimes it is I did get turned around on that last map, so it would be nice to have a mini map still. Mm-hmm. But But the fact that even still though, the fact that the map is so small where it's like, okay, like yes, I got turned around, but it wasn't like completely debilitating and frustrating thing that you had to struggle with throughout the entire game episode. It was just like in a moment of panic, you were like, You got turned around. Yeah, like Yap Yap was hard the first time we played it because that was just really difficult to navigate those areas. Yeah, everything looked the same. Yeah. I don't know. It's a fun game. I like that it's up to eight players. I think that's that's a huge bonus. Yeah. I I would agree. I would say like so far from what we've experienced, it seems like there's a lot of progression, but it doesn't seem like there's actually a lot to the game. Right. Like it seems like so far, like everything's been rinse and repeat and like okay, so is this all we're doing? Is we just go into a new level and just run around Steal more things. That's cool and that's fun, but that's it. Right. I like that we come back to the s this base and there's so much that it looks like there's to unlock. Mm-hmm. And there are there are some other things. Like if you come over here, Bob, like come this way. ⁓ another little hidden thing. Yeah, there's like little hidden rooms in here. And you can unlock a soundboard back here. ⁓ I like the propaganda posters. ⁓ what does it say? Huh, there's never an excuse not to work and it's like got a dude who's like cut in half on the ground. Yeah, I I like that there's clearly a bunch of progression to this game. Yeah. And I like that. I like progression. Yeah, I think that's important. But it does seem very grindy. Yeah. Which I don't love. But I don't know. Yeah. Like it doesn't seem like there's a lot to it. So again, like like the last game, I don't know that this would be like a game where I'm like, ⁓ like let me this'll be my first pick, but so few games have eight players as an option that that's such a huge thing in its favor that the fact that if we ever get on and we have, ⁓ man, we have eight pl people on tonight, I could easily be like, ⁓ I got a game for us. Right. Yeah. It's kinda like, Well, we found this one. Yeah. Like this is eight players. This is new, it's fun, it's silly, yeah. And and it's not overly difficult or like, you know, the learning curve is accessible. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know in terms of what I'd change, maybe I don't know. There seems to be there needs to be a little bit more meat to this game. Like they they've got the base lobby part of it down really cool, but terms of the missions, I don't know. Like we've only done the basic mission so far, but so far it's just been like the same thing every time. But yeah, it'd be nice to have more variety with the missions earlier on. You know, I think I've mentioned that before in games. Like I hate having to go back in to do the same mission over and over again and grind it just to get to like the next one. Like more variety up front is always good. Yeah, especially for early game. Like later game I can kind of understand that a little bit. But this is really good. Absolutely. Like, don't don't we shouldn't have to grind. We should be like doing new thing, new thing, new thing, new thing, new thing. Right. ⁓ I think I could probably play this with the kids. Like there is some of that ⁓ no, you like your arm fell off or your art testins are hanging out, but it's all very cartoony. Yeah, I think my kids would think it's funny. Like my third oldest would be like, like, are those his guts? That's nasty. And then she would just like keep playing it. That kid loves the games that we play. Most of them, the ones that I'm okay with them playing. Like she loves Goat Simulator. ⁓ yeah. She she has played that game so much. My two have been playing that recently. My two youngest. Yeah. ⁓ come on. I went from one vine trap and then I walked a step and I hit another vine trap. ⁓ man. Can I get up there? I don't even think I can get up. ⁓ but I'm on fire. ⁓ found another vine trap. Be cool if my fire set the vine trap on fire. Yeah, that'd be kinda nice. I think I've got an object that's like making me constantly run in one direction. ⁓ yeah, some of ⁓ will do that. It's annoying. But that's okay. Yeah. I don't know that I have anything else to say about this game. Hm. We popped out of the fridge with me on your head. If I had a nickel for every time that s happens. ⁓ god dang it. I'd have at least two nickels. ⁓ we found we got something. ⁓ that's something I like about this game is like you die, you don't it like it's not totally ro roguelite, you don't lose everything. Yeah, like we didn't extract and we still got the one thing that I put on the portal pad. That's cool. I like that. Yeah. It doesn't like feel like a punishment. Right. Final thoughts. ⁓ I'd say it's ⁓ it's a decent enough game. ⁓ not overly amazing, but the fact that it's got a high player count gives it some extra points, I think. Yeah, I agree. And then what of what's been sustaining me? ⁓ you know you know, t you know, the usual. Yeah. Probably some other things, maybe. Who knows? Stuff and things. ⁓ no. ⁓ I'm I'm probably I mean, I would imagine that I'm probably still playing the same things in this past week. I might I might have I might play this the more. But obviously th as we said, this is our pickled episode, so we didn't ⁓ didn't get a full week to play between our last episode here. Yeah. But you know what? That's okay. We ⁓ sometimes we have Really good long episodes, sometimes we have really good short episodes. And this one w like this game will just be kinda mid. Yeah. ⁓ you know, the this episode will be better than the game, that's for sure. And now we're gonna jump into this meat grinder. Woo! Ooh, you're getting ground up, but I'm standing on your head, so I'm not getting ground up. At least not yet. ⁓ nope, now I am. ⁓ I can save you. ⁓ no I now I can't. As always, we find some way to make the game dumber by doing things to harm each other or ourselves. In the law. Games that have been sustaining me, you know, since this is a week for the listeners, but I don't know, like not even twelve hours, maybe. Probably around twelve hours. ⁓ since we recorded last. I went to go play dispatch while the Little list was in her swim class and my switch was dead and I was annoyed because I had just charged it last night and it must not have been plugged in all the way. Yeah. It's like how dare you? So I charged it when I got back and now it's ready for when I go up to bed. Hmm. Or maybe it won't be and I'll just cry myself to sleep. You haven't played it yet, have you? No. ⁓ I was looking at for solo games. What was I pla ⁓ that's right. I did play a little bit. That's right, I forgot to mention this. What is the name of that game that Eldest Kiddo asked me to play? ⁓ Claire Obscure Expedition Thirty Three. yeah. What'd you think? ⁓ I mean I I don't think I've played much of it. The one so far what I like about it is it's it's turn based, like a turn based strategy type. type of game. Okay. What I don't like about it is ⁓ my gosh. Everything's trying to be so dramatic at every moment. It is just so into itself. It's just like constantly just like, ⁓ is there gonna be another cutscene after I like walked five feet where I have to watch somebody like stare into the distance for like The next like two minutes, go get over yourself. It's just like and every and everything's like high fantasy silly words, so I can't remember anybody's names, so so far the main characters are Sword Guy and Dirty Feet Girl. ⁓ I haven't gotten any other characters yet. I mean those are funny names. Yeah, I I don't know what their names are. Some some you know, fantasy male character archetype and fantasy female character archetype. Dirty feet girl. Yeah, she she's like some wizard pastor type or whatever, so she doesn't like wear shoes because of that for some reason. I don't know. That makes sense in a for reasons. And then, you know, your main character, which I think you are the generic protagonist character, your cloud or whoever he's supposed to be ⁓ rip a rip off of. Set sad emotional character who can't Talk to girls but so many emotions. Wants to tell this one girl that he really likes her, but then like waited too long or something and now he has to I don't know. I I've been playing this game for at least a couple hours and I do not understand the story. So it's very like in the realm of Final Fantasy, you know, like there's a story there, but you don't know what it is. Yeah. Because why would why would they explain anything to you? You have to figure it out like after you've been playing it for like five weeks. ⁓ that's what the story is. That sounds a little painful. I mean, like, I I will say dispatch, like you are doing a lot of like watching like the story play out and kind of making these like little decisions throughout. And sometimes they amp up and you're kinda like trying to move quickly and sometimes you're just kinda like it's a little bit of like a lull feeling in like terms of like gameplay, but The story is just so captivating and interesting. Okay, but let me let me ask you this. In w in the first hour of playing Dispatch, did you have to question the meaning of the title? Because I still don't know the meaning of the title to this game. ⁓ no, you ⁓ you learned the meaning of the title of dispatch in like the first three to five minutes of the game. I would say that's a point against this game, Fishtick Protocol, because we don't we haven't figured out the meaning of that title. Yeah, what what is the point of the name fish stick? I don't understand. Fish stick protocol. What I don't see any fish sticks. Like, are we fish people or something? And we can't see because we're wearing like little like hazmat suits with Maybe they just cloned fish sticks and turned us into little fish stick people. Yeah, maybe. ⁓ maybe because we k they keep getting us out of the freezer. look at that. Like fish sticks. I th I feel like that took us a little too long to figure out, and I don't know if that's an us problem or a them problem. Yeah, that might be a us problem. We I don't think we can count that on them. Yeah, I get it now. So Anyways. We're smart. We are smart sometimes. But Expedition thirty three. Okay, I know there's like s it has something to do with expeditions, and you are a character who is on the thirty third one, and that is about as much information as I know. For some reason, the girl that you're pining over turned into rose petals along with half the other the other people in the town. I'm not really sure why that happened. Everybody seemed to know it was gonna happen, and everybody was just kind of like emo about it and I was like, what the f is happening? Like why? I don't understand. Yeah, I don't and I f I find it frustrating. I'm not a big fan of games like that. I just I need to know things right away. Like I don't have a ton of patience for games that have poorly drawn out storyline. It's like, ⁓ well you're gonna find out later. It's like, or you could just Find a narrative way to explain the story to me now. ⁓ because that's how stories work, is you tell people things and then people listen to the things because the things are interesting, not the things are puzzling for like days on end and just like infuriating. Right. My kids have some fun games that they play. You know what we're turning this into a we're gonna talk about games that our kids are playing. the moment. It's a new ⁓ new on the fly segment. What are the kids playing? So my oldest plays this game called Hearts of Iron Four. And it's like one of those like strategy, like World War Two war type games. Like I don't think you're actually like a player, you're just kind of like controlling events and you can like pick like what country you are, kind of thing. And like he's like really obsessed with like being Luxembourg. And making like everyone like a communist country and just like doing all these like strange things with it because he's like you can like make like the US like a communist nation and you can like build stuff to like wage war on other countries and like annex other countries. So he's just doing all this stuff and like sometimes I'm just like, should I be worried about you? You're really, really obsessed with communism right now. Like what's happening here? He's such a goof. And then my ⁓ second and third oldest, they so the three oldest have like the Oculus or like MetaQuest things or whatever they are. And the two middles will play this game called I Am Cat together. And it's like and it's just like a sandbox type game where you're just like a cat and you're just like roaming around causing mischief. So I mean this, you know, kinda like speaks to how like my Third oldest loves goat simulator three because like she's like, Yeah, like you know, the old lady that's taking care of me, like I scratched her again. She's mad at me, but I'm gonna do it again. And I'm like, What are you doing? And like, because they have like the little controls, like she's just making like little pawing motions with her hands like this, and then she like turns and looks, and then she's pawing in another direction. I'm like, This is ridiculous. I scratched her, I'm gonna do it again. Yeah, she's like, ⁓ she's mad at me. She's like, the neighbor guy's mad. I'm gonna go claw him too. Like, why are you hurting people? It's just like you're not gonna turn into a serial killer, are you? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm sure it'd be fine. Yeah. It's it's all fine. It's fine. ⁓ we got a lot of boxes on this. ⁓ yeah, we're clearing this place out. It's it's a complete mess. We've got a full blowout sale going here. All protocol boxes must go. I can't wait for my littlest to get into video games because I think she's gonna be very into some of like the spooky games that we've played. She's my spooky child. Nice. Yeah, she loves that kind of stuff. There was like like a year or two ago, she I think it was last year, she had drawn like a picture in like you know, effectively like preschool level class of like like a vampire and there was like blood and her teacher asked her about it and she was like she was like the vampire killed everyone and drank their blood. And then the teacher was like, I'm a little concerned and we're like, nah, this is this is fine. This is normal for her. She she doesn't mean anything by it. It's like those parents. That's that's what vampires do. They kill people and drink their blood. I mean, come on, she was telling a story. Yeah, well apparent apparently some of her friends were upset and I'm like, It's not like she was like, like, this is me and this is a butcher knife and I'm killing my friends, you know? She was like, It's a vampire and it's drinking blood. The girl just she's into the spooky stuff. Let her be a spooky girl. Yeah. There's nothing wrong with that. Nothing wrong with that. Let her be. Yeah, let her live her life. Her spooky life. Yeah. Gotta get these boxes in. I got two left. Yeah, you know, this episode's gonna be great if for no other fact than we've just been spending the last like five minutes keeping kicking all of these boxes onto the portal thing. Gonna get rid of ⁓ all. There's so many of them. I wonder if there's fish sticks in the boxes. ⁓ Management told us to clean up all the boxes. Mm-hmm. We're just doing our job. Problem solved. Yeah, there we go. Yeah. Bazoobs. I don't think a transition was supposed to go there. Anyways, outro. email suggestion sh ⁓ wait a second. Before we do that, we we did we had a couple of things we were talking about, right? Like we ⁓ do we mention the the server? Yeah, we mentioned that on last week's episode. Which obviously we haven't made any more progress on. Right. ⁓ did we have something else going on that we were talking about trying to do? I have no idea. I have no idea. Another Invader Zim reference, people go watch it if you haven't. ⁓ the original series was so good. It was good. I had no idea. More organs means more human. It will work. Dark Harvest. Great episode. Such a good episode. No, what was it? We were do I feel I feel like we've been kicking around some ideas for like new stuff. trying to remember what they were. ⁓ we yeah one thing we kind of talked about, you know, maybe maybe some of our faithful listeners can chime in on this. We talked about like potentially doing like this like like s like no op episodes on occasion. Like, you know, obviously it's co-op chaos, so we don't want to do like single player games a lot. But I kind of threw out the idea of if Aaron ever plays dispatch, we can have an episode where it's like, you know, no op because it's not co op, but if we both have played it, we could talk about our experiences and just kind of do like a little like mini episode talking about really good single player games that we're enjoying. So if people are like, Yeah, I love co op games too, but like I kinda want some me time. What do you recommend? That could be like a realm for that. Yeah, that's right. I see. I see. So th so more of like a ⁓ post review or something. Yeah, and I mean like w we don't play a ton of solo games typically, and I don't know that we play the same solo games that much when we do, so but like, you know, if we found some or people were like, ⁓ I really want to hear your thoughts on this game, guys, even though it's this, like let me know. And we could be like, Yeah, we'll play it and You know, spend like thirty minutes talking about a solo game. Mm-hmm. Well yeah, and we were we were looking at potentially like going back and ⁓ reviewing some of the the games that we were what kind of lukewarm on and 'cause most of ⁓ a lot of these are like early access and seeing if ⁓ anything's changed and if if we still feel the same way on ⁓ Yeah. And you know, we've actually had a few people like mention that too. Like you guys should like, you know, revisit. And I'm like, Yeah, we've been talking about doing that. Since like early on we just, you know, wanted to like wait and have some breathing room 'cause like I don't want to like review a game like this and then a week later we're doing like a second playthrough of it. I wanna go back to like, you know, like a handful of the games that we played in like the first like few episodes or whatever. Yeah, I don't I don't think we're quite there yet, but I think we are getting close. Yeah. Absolutely. I think, you know, especially if like if we had any candid opinions about any games and people are feeling like, hey, like I don't think you gave that one a fair shake. I played it and I really liked it and here's why. Like tell us, let us know and we can just like listen to the listeners and be like, okay, like we'll give it another shot and see if we feel differently now. Mm-hmm. For sure. All right. ⁓ I don't actually want to do another mission, but I do want to open a portal and see all these boxes go through. Yeah, I do too. We can just go right back through the portal. Yes. Alright, let's do that because And then we can close the episode out. Yeah. It's it's late, people. It's late. Yeah, it is one thirty for you. It's twelve thirty for me. It was me. That's right. Go through. I was the turkey the whole time. On the end some of ⁓ are still stuck on the corner. And then I'm gonna kick this one in. I fell down. And then I gotta k and then I kick this one in. There, now I got all of them in. Now I go through. We I could see them all falling out of the sky. ⁓ I'm gonna try and catch you. ⁓ That would have been better if you had killed me on impact. That would've been hilarious. I like that would have been a change. Now we now we got rid of all this trash. Look at that. We're littering this planet. For space justice. And now we can just go home. Woo! ⁓ some of the boxes came back with us. ⁓ that's funny. They're like, keep your trash. They must have landed on the platform. ⁓ yeah, there's still a bunch of them in here. I I was kind of surprised. I kind of figured they'd just respawn, that they're just kind of like environment. It since it doesn't let you pick them up. So I I don't know if it actually tracks those as items. Yeah. But it does seem to track all the other items. In the game, which I imagine is probably a lot for it to deal with eventually. Probably not early game, but I wanna see those boxes fall. Come on. Send more boxes down. ⁓ yeah, you were standing on it, you didn't get to see them fall. Stop loading and let me see the boxes fall. Whee! Ooh, a lot of them fell down. ⁓ there you are. Yeah, I was trying to kick a box in and I slipped ⁓ in with it. ⁓ I like that we can just kind of go to a random little level and then just go right back. Yeah. And it's like you get nothing. You did why did you even do that? You get no points. No KO in hostility level one. I got a ticket thing. I I got a money for doing nothing. You you did get a ⁓ that's awesome. So thank you to Matthew for our intro. Thank you to Afterlife Boy for our show music, our transition, and thank you to you, the listener, for listening. Because if you didn't, then there would be nobody listening. I mean, we'd still probably do this, but you know, it'd be less fun. So There's that Yeah. Yeah, take that society. Which makes no sense. Yeah, take that listeners for listening. And being wonderful. And you can help keep this going by engaging in all of our things. Go to coop chaos dot com or coop chaos dot com if you will. You can find us on Instagram, you can join our Discord, engage with us there, see some food pics, share all the fun stuff that we talk about there. ⁓ you can email us. You can also send us one of these boxes that you wrote on through a portal and we'll get your message. All game audio and sounds featured on co-op case are the exclusive rights of their respective developers. We love you. Continue to be wonderful. We love you so much. Yeah, you're ⁓ see my my fiery plume. Mm-hmm. It's like a It's like the most explosive diarrhea I've ever had. You're like a it's like a smoke signal.