I love that we've reached a point where the most vicious form of criticism you can throw at a game is just... showing the gameplay and describing what's happening.

"I tried it (...) enthralling (...) literally (...) incredible, amazing, outstanding (...) Has all the quality hallmarks..." -Steph Sterling on Stray Souls

@lukaszzylik4437

8 ай бұрын

I knew it! You just gotta read between a lot of lines.

@blabik

7 ай бұрын

Truly, one of the games of all time

Stray Souls also almost certainly had its title picked solely to try to show up on the same page as searches for more popular games.

@Damian_1989

8 ай бұрын

The original title they considered using was "Stray Soulsborne: Breath of the Uncharted Kingdom"

@Ramsey276one

8 ай бұрын

Most definitely XD

@Ramsey276one

8 ай бұрын

​@@Damian_1989 O M G XD

It's entirely likely that Yamaoka didn't actually compose any music for Stray Souls. More likely, he sold peices he'd already composed and rejected, scraps from the "cutting room floor." It lets the composer make some money with minimal effort, and low-budget producers and developers get to attach a big name to their work and also get better-quality music than they normally would for that price point.

@goranisacson2502

7 ай бұрын

I did not know this was a practice in the composer business, but even if you made it all up I at least really WANT it to be true right now.

@Bacteriophagebs

7 ай бұрын

@@goranisacson2502 It is in the movie business, so I see no reason why video games can't do the same thing.

The best framing of AI art I've ever seen is - if you didn't think it was worth paying an artist to make your product, why should I consider it worth spending money to buy it?

@allengordon6929

8 ай бұрын

Da! AI art is basically fanart which cannot be credited unless you trained the machine yourself. And we all know the rules with fanart: no credit, no fair use.

@TheHMinnow

8 ай бұрын

I think AI art has value, especially for starting developers, just getting into the medium as a way to draw a directional inspiration. Thats where it has so much potential. As full concept art or assets, it's not there, and we don't want it to be there. It has its place, and imo, is a tool that can be misused, as any tool can be.

@PhoenixFireZero

8 ай бұрын

@@allengordon6929 fanart is something that can only come from passion, and AI art is utterly devoid of passion.

@BrianS1981

8 ай бұрын

Good summation, that.

@BladeTrain3r

8 ай бұрын

Just think of all the furry smut peddlers losing all that commission business to AI. The horror. Artists needing to reach into themselves and produce art that stands above the bare minimum of technically competent, instead of a production line of the same stuff for the same people over and over again.

That first boss approached you with all the hesitant awkwardness of an emotionally damaged bear trying to work up the nerve to ask if you are his grindr hookup with the Bigfoot fetish.

@iamjustkiwi

8 ай бұрын

Oh my god that is just the best description of its behavior ever! "Uhhh, umm, uh, excuse me i uh....sorry sorry...."

@SpoopySquid

8 ай бұрын

I am so glad I lived long enough to read this sentence

@stingerjohnny9951

8 ай бұрын

Bears need an emotional support system.

@Damian_1989

8 ай бұрын

That was weirdly and suspiciously specific

@Ramsey276one

8 ай бұрын

O M G XD

It’s genuinely tragic that the golden era of sitcoms ended long before civilians had any understanding of HRT because that opening story had me HOOTING on a public bus

@JimSterling

8 ай бұрын

There's a *lot* one could get for a sitcom. My experiences with learning to do wrestling training while getting steadily bigger boobs is an entire plot arc on its own.

@jacksonteller3973

8 ай бұрын

sitcoms are still good

@logangraham3689

8 ай бұрын

"Civilians" implies that trans people are braver that the troops. Because they are!

@thomaskrogh1244

8 ай бұрын

​@@JimSterling confirmed jeph likes bears😅

@jacksonteller3973

8 ай бұрын

to be fair to Ubisoft it's mainly the execs at the top that are shitty, the actual devs making the games are pretty good people.@@JimSterling

That “creepy” animation looks like they were going for the legendary hallway scene from Pulse. They swung. They missed. They missed to such a degree we need the Hubble to see how far they missed by.

@midori_the_eldritch

8 ай бұрын

The ark angle is at least 10°, but as it's still the closer object at 5 light-years away the math isn't done yet.

@MattwosRandomNonContent

7 ай бұрын

Hubble is currently struggling to see it. Oh wait right, it can't because it left the multiverse. It's currently somewhere outside of space and time. Where it belongs.

When you said he liked racist tweets, I was expecting the sort of things a dishonest person could handwring about not really being racist or "just a joke." Holy fuck my jaw dropped when I saw that first one. That's something you'd hear at a Klan rally. The transphobic tweets were par for the course with what I expected.

@Damian_1989

8 ай бұрын

The one with people with different hair colors and Uncharted 5 actually are just jokes. The kind of lame-as-fuck "attack helicopter" tier jokes, but jokes nonetheless. The other two, jeez. Outrage bait at best, a thinly-veiled call for violence at worst.

Honestly, with the amount of subjectively good art made by objectively bad people out there, it's nice to have a piece of objectively bad art that's also made by objectively bad people that we can collectively piss on before setting alight (well, piss around anyway. Don't wanna get a water infection or parasites).

@zanec14

8 ай бұрын

That's just the world, bad people can do good things and good people can do bad things, through circumstance or on purpose both, granted both of those tend to be rarer than the vice-versa(usually, depending on person).

@maxpowr90

7 ай бұрын

The Wagner paradox.

You made today really frightening. Because I was afraid you were going to miss Monday. Thank god for James Stephanie Sterling.

@JimSterling

8 ай бұрын

Yeah, sorry about that. I did a final draft edit today and ended up adding a lot of stuff and the time got away from me.

@TiagoMorbusSa

8 ай бұрын

Thank you for your hard work, I'm enjoying this thoroughly :D@@JimSterling

@1IGG

8 ай бұрын

Same.

@alicehiess6508

8 ай бұрын

Oh ye of little faith steph never misses a monday. Just like we can count on the sun to rise from the east we can count on them to make a new episode every Monday.

@Ed_McArdle

8 ай бұрын

@@JimSterling (Psst... Just say it's because the clocks went back!)

Can we all just talk about how that boss fight was the combat equivalent of "no you hang up first", "no you hang up first"? Shipped.

Based on the title, I assume this is a game where you play as an alley cat and fight gigantic demon bosses, correct? How do you mess THAT up?

@Dr170

8 ай бұрын

Messing stuff up is what contemporary video game developers do best

@Agoraphoboy

8 ай бұрын

I need that game

@quantumblauthor7300

8 ай бұрын

​@@Dr170new people suck, old model better

@TCMcBiscuits

8 ай бұрын

I think you're confusing it with Catbourne.

@fusionspace175

8 ай бұрын

@@TCMcBiscuits No, that was the title of the indie RTS game I pitched, based around raising an army of armored cats to try and stop the spread of the Black Plague. It's because they actually killed the poor pets by mistake, so it's a correction of history, really, as those cats would have been their best hope to stop the rodents. But I had thus spelled it Catborne, as an illness is carried.

I saw a really funny article recently about a program called Nightshade that can be used to taint a picture such that it will corrupt AI models trained on it. Enough such images could result in the created model being completely useless, generating wildly out of context gibberish. You know, like how AI used to generate back when it was fun and not an attack on real artists. The researches estimated it would take 'thousands' to corrupt a large model like dall-e (which, given that that was trained on billions of images is a drop in the bucket), but smaller models take significantly fewer, showing noticeable artifacts after only a handful of poisoned images. And the best part is, there's no way to 'fix' a broken model, since they don't work in ways that you can debug like a traditional program. AI models are giant intricate black boxes that you can't really fine tune outside of providing further training. So once a model is poisoned, it's poisoned forever.

@Damian_1989

8 ай бұрын

Ah, the "putting sugar in concrete to prevent it from solidifying" approach to sabotaging AI

@Ramsey276one

8 ай бұрын

SF6 A.K.I. : Nightshade... You know your poisons... My Master would approve.

@Ramsey276one

8 ай бұрын

​@@Damian_1989excuse meWUT

@rubywest5166

7 ай бұрын

@@Ramsey276one Yup, for some reason regular table sugar is able to prevent cement and concrete from hardening. Usually it's a negative, but if, say, you need to stop an accidental release from hardening and making the area unusable, or keep some authoritarian/military compound from being built (Like, say, a dickhead neighbour's new garden shed foundation), pouring some sugar into it will keep it from hardening!

@Ramsey276one

7 ай бұрын

@@rubywest5166 the modern human society still has its quirky glitches, huh? Happy Nightshade sowing!

Oh, its absolutely an asset flip. The Five armed thing is also a mummy in Forwarned, and the fat armless thing that vomits on you (?) was in another indie game I saw a few weeks back.

years ago when ai art meant "this person does not exist" I used to say that it had excellent horror potential and the folks that kept using the same damn five images from a google search result of "scary picture" in their games should just use slightly fucked up ai images instead. I was wrong as hell, I'll take yet another goddamn inexplicable framed painting of saturn eating his son any day over that

@zerodollarbird

8 ай бұрын

The painting of Saturn eating his son does go hard though.

@neoqwerty

7 ай бұрын

I thought it was Mr. Saturn and I was very confused that I missed an Earthbound creepypasta picture.

9:13 - Is... is the player character fucking yawning? A sasquatch the size of a house is in front of you, and you're open-mouth yawning? Fuck, even the game itself thinks it's boring. Edit: And a few seconds later, Steph confirms that he's yawning. Unbelievable.

@ejmc6378

8 ай бұрын

I know, I had the exact same reaction 🤣

@EliseArainai

3 ай бұрын

At least when the protagonist from Persona 3 Reload yawns, it’s one of a few idle animations that can trigger while dungeon-crawling, specifically outside of battle, I might add!

"it's fucking grim that we have to research games to make sure they're not made by abusers or people that wanna see ya murdered" This is what it's been like in the metal scene for a decade now. We feel your pain.

@Roadent1241

8 ай бұрын

Metal as in t'music genre?

@ConvincingPeople

8 ай бұрын

@@Roadent1241Yeah, unfortunately. A lot of very talented musicians out there who really suck as people in that field.

@ramonandrajo6348

8 ай бұрын

Drama. XD

@glitchedoom

8 ай бұрын

"Wow this black metal band is great! Let me search them up qui... Oh."

@MrFitzomega

8 ай бұрын

​@@glitchedoomI feel a lot of those are the opposite of Conservative and Rage against the Machine.

It feels like the marketing team heard the saying "there's no such thing as bad publicity" but they never could understand what it means.

@Ramsey276one

8 ай бұрын

They're not the only ones lately...

Loving the little flirty wink during "Thank God for me!" That should be a recurring thing in my opinion

Maybe it's just me since I have 115 hours and 30 full playthroughs of Resident Evil 2 Remake, but I could swear the protagonist of Stray Souls uses the exact same running animation while holding the pistol that Leon uses. Same step pacing, same pistol hold, and same torso twist while running.

@Roadent1241

8 ай бұрын

I mean if anyone was going to know, it's someone that's seen it for that long...

@sean8102

8 ай бұрын

I def wouldn't put it past them.

@Damian_1989

8 ай бұрын

30?? Jesus, i played the minimum of 8 runs that give a ranking and it still felt like i played just about enough lol

saw this title and thought "oh no, I thought that game looked nice" but I've now realized I was thinking of Stray Gods

@sean8102

8 ай бұрын

haha same. I saw it somewhere. Thought "hey this looks like it could be good" then looked into it and... oh boy.

"It's fucking grim" took a moment, but holy shit that visual gag was good. I know it's not an important part of the video, but I loved it.

@stingerjohnny9951

8 ай бұрын

Zmanzilla has been killing it with the visual gags lately 🤣

@tafua_a

8 ай бұрын

I hope Grimm consented

@gregoryvn3

8 ай бұрын

I almost sprayed breakfast cereal all over the screen at that one!

@richardhalls2605

7 ай бұрын

I came here just to praise it.

I started hrt about a month ago and felt better almost immediately. following your transition and seeing how much of a difference it made for you helped me build up the courage to make the step myself and I have never regretted it. So for that i thank god for you.

@ecos889

8 ай бұрын

As a more masc-leaning male enby who is just taking finasteride, because I don't like the masculizing effects DHT will start to have on my body as an enby, I agree that the euphoria of no longer having to worry about the effects of hormones will have on my own body as I age, but took me a while to figure out exactly how to minimize my age and masculinization, I agree it feels amazing. I know yours is likely to be more of a journey than mine as mine is more of a prevent stuff happening to my body that will cause dysphoria but I hope it goes well for you. :) Before Stephanie though I also never considered even having options as an Enby would have been thought as an impossibility for me but so glad they came out so I could consider what I could do to not have dysphoria and things can be done was the best and bravest thing they have done. :)

@Eon2641

7 ай бұрын

Same here, I'm 2 months in and I was super nervous that I might regret it beforehand but the moment I started I knew I made the right decision. I'm so much happier and my mental health has improved dramatically, I finally feel like me. People like Steph's visibility had a huge impact on me, without them I'm not sure I'd have ever taken the plunge.

@thelemon5069

7 ай бұрын

Fuck it made my chronic Illness worse but God I do feel better in my own body with the changes. It's becoming a hard choice of do I feel better without it or wait and see if I feel better later.

@jasonmullin3522

7 ай бұрын

Glad for you all. I'm a white straight male, so never had to deal with such major life and body changes. Hope things go smoothly as they can for anyone.

@TheLexikitty

7 ай бұрын

Congrats!

Can confirm, the forest troll boss or whatever it's supposed to be is definitely from the store. Source: saw it in a vid for a game called Zombie Girl, as a "Werewolf". Pity too, because I quite like the creature design (I also liked that head-spider thing that showed up in every shitty Greenlight asset flip too), and I actually like the monsters that were shown in this vid. If it were ONLY being a shitty game I'd consider it on sale or something, but this dev doesn't deserve the support.

@Ramsey276one

8 ай бұрын

As a WEREWO-- Did they not know what a werewolf IS?!

@DrakeBarrow

8 ай бұрын

@@Ramsey276one considering that it was being used in a pseudo porn game (boob physics & clothing damage, but no nudity), I think the better question is: Do they even CARE what a werewolf is?

@neoqwerty

7 ай бұрын

@@DrakeBarrow They would if they were actually in it for the monster loving, but as it is sounds like the typical tiddybabe asset flip dev who just wants to take horny 12 years olds' (parents') money.

Can't personally relate to the experience because I'm a-spec, but as someone who was struggling with a migraine and feeling nauseated to all heck this morning, OOF, I can empathise with how ROTTEN nausea feels. Hope you get the HRT sorted soon! EDIT: Speaking of nausea, OH GOD THE COMBAT ROLLS ARE NOT HELPING MINE. SOS. MAYDAY. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.

@bluester7177

8 ай бұрын

As someone using BC, hormone therapy sometimes suck a lot, parts of your body you never thought would be affected by these hormones are giving you hell for no reason.

@neoqwerty

7 ай бұрын

@@bluester7177 welcome to biochemistry and the living proof that evolution really is just squishy spaghetti coding from hell.

The Cousin It and Ben Grimm gag... There are no words... Whoever's editing these videos... You deserve all the praise, you beautiful bastard, you...

@ZMannZilla

8 ай бұрын

Heehee, thanks!

@AB-fh9zh

8 ай бұрын

bloody genius.

@tafua_a

8 ай бұрын

Did Itt ask Grimm for dinner first?@@ZMannZilla

"It's grim that I have to check if developers are fascist or bigots before buying a game." Oh Steph, sweet, naive Steph. I'm a black metal fan, vetting shit is now hard coded into me haha. (I do get your point though, it's a sad reflection of how much those pernicious ideologies have penetrated the mainstream)

@hazukichanx408

8 ай бұрын

I mean, you could start by going with a type of metal where the lyrics aren't _required_ to have the vocalist scream about how everyone should be un-alived, at least twelve times per minute. Slight exaggeration perhaps, but yeah... there's expressing one's frustration with a society and culture that does not value human beings, emotions, dignity, justice, nor most other things... and then there's just screaming furiously into the void until you grow hoarse. Well, whatever floats your boat.

@peterptchronic9696

8 ай бұрын

@@hazukichanx408 I make expressly anarchist & anti-racist black metal, and I'm aware of dozens of other artists who do similar, so I'm not really sure what point you're trying to make?

@Damian_1989

8 ай бұрын

That a lot of people in your genre have a reputation for screaming edginess for the sake of edginess, and that reputation turns into a generalized and accepted stereotype, i guess

@neruwu

7 ай бұрын

Is this a thing with black metal specifically? Because in other metal genres people seem to be mostly very welcoming and explicitly anti-fascist or am I just being ignorant?

@peterptchronic9696

7 ай бұрын

@@neruwu Black metal has a higher proportion of shitheads, partially because some of the most influential early artists were shitheads as well. There is a subgenre of black metal called NSBM that is expressly fascist. It's somewhat fringe, but there is a lot of tolerance of it, as well as a host of other bands that either use dogwhistles or share members or stages with them. Metal generally can have problems (lots of people committed to being "apolitical" making the problem fester), but black metal has a reputation. Thankfully there are a decent number of people in the genre who recognise the problem and try to make it a contested space.

"Shit's more rough than Elizabethan neck wear" got me right in my fashion history funny bone. Brilliant writing. Edit to add: Steph's looking cute as all get out in this vid!

Acapella Skeleton Warriors? What a lovely treat! Thank you, James Stephanie!

*Former employee of Bloober*. My hopes of the SH2 remake being good were already low...

The difference between AI Art and NFTs is that the general population understands neither of them but finds AI Art hilarious. Its going to be significantly harder to get rid of AI Art because it can have a practical use to people.

@BigHenFor

8 ай бұрын

Not with the Nightshade program.

@mattjk5299

7 ай бұрын

AI art is too useful when state actors literally use it to justify war goals and military operations now. Fucking madness.

just because you bagged an OG team silent member who's probably struggling for work anyway does not make your shitty game any more legitimate. akira yamaoka oversaw the release of the worst silent hill games to date and dude didn't care. dude wants that 💰

@empanada223

8 ай бұрын

I find this whole situation absurdly comical. A Silent Hill ripoff with AI-generated "art" ironically ended up with its only shred of legitimacy because of an ACTUAL artist lmao!

“Shit more ruff than Elizabethan neckwear” I LOVE YOU 😂❤

I see bashing of so-called "AI art", I immediately click thumbs up! Simple!

I don't understand queer hate at all. I'm a straight cis man and I don't think I've ever played a straight cis man in any game that I've ever played where there was a choice. I play games to escape the real world, not simulate it.

People who buy things out of spite are just incomprehensible to me, I would never buy anything to piss off someone else, much less a game which only I will actually experience. I really don't understand, you can be a bigot for free, doing this just proves to some people they can sell bad products by just doing the bare minimum but generating enough controversy.

@Tamaki742

8 ай бұрын

My only solace is knowing those people who bought this out of spite now lost money and got an objectively bad game in their library. It's a lose - lose for them.

@GuerillaBunny

8 ай бұрын

I think money is a fundamental part of those people's identity, and so, expenditure is a form of expression. It's very dumb, of course, because nobody's gonna know, unless they present the turds they paid for... It's like... "I'm screaming and I paid for it! Why isn't anybody listening? I PAID FOR IT!"

@peterclarke7240

8 ай бұрын

Ah. I think I can see the problem. You're trying to apply rationality to people who are practically the very definition of irrational. Once you stop doing that, and approach the issue from the perspective that they're all thin-skinned, insecure, barely literate, hate-filled, thick-as-mince bigots, you'll find everything much easier.

@timothy8428

8 ай бұрын

They are also the same people who smash up their own stuff out of spite.

@Damian_1989

8 ай бұрын

Spite is powerful, so powerful that it elects presidents

As an illustrator (whose work is in the databases) I very much appreciated that AI segment, made that October day a little brighter. Thank god for you!

I can get not wanting to use the abused "Spooktacular," but you missed a golden opportunity to call it your "Halloween Spunktacular."

@fritzthelibrarygoblin

8 ай бұрын

"Spunktacular" would have been too good for this game though...😔

@androidk18

7 ай бұрын

@@fritzthelibrarygoblin I mean... it DOES have the equivalent creative value of a wad of discarded jizz. I feel its appropriate.

As an artist we see a lot of peoples loving AI images one way or another, governments doing nothing about it, peoples making money from it, to the point it's already a lost battle. But it is always nice to hear someone calling it out in public for what it is. They definitely got a double "Go fuck yourself" from me, for both the Tweets and AI stuff. I can excuse a bad game, but not those two.

@sean8102

8 ай бұрын

Yeah things are going to get very interesting regarding AI generated art and other stuff. We are still in the early days of it and it's advancing rapidly.

@arturoaguilar6002

8 ай бұрын

At least they can't copyright AI generated art; but that's just stopping them from adding insult to injury.

"backing up into the house"... c'mon! "went cottaging arse-first" was right there!

WOW. I did not know that HRT could do that. I mean... I guess congratulations??? Also HELL YES Thank you for showcasing "Sorry We're Closed". Saw a bit of it on IndieLand this weekend and WOW what a game.

Don't care who you are. Steph rocks a corset in the best way possible.

@rainymeadows3447

8 ай бұрын

I am DESPERATE to know how their corsets are acquired. I desperately want one, especially that purple and black one with the chains

@Roadent1241

8 ай бұрын

I was thinking they were looking simple but swanky today. Melikey.

as nice as it is to imagine fascists losing money on hot garbage, i don't believe for a second that anyone who says "gonna buy this now" (or similar) in response to bigotry *actually* buys the game in question. they're just assholes trying to hurt people.

@EzraM5

8 ай бұрын

They never do, yeah.

12:44 A clear sign a boss encounter is crap when the player character's attention starts to wander away. What is he looking at??

Your makeuo skills have gotten really legit

@JimSterling

8 ай бұрын

Thank you! I only started doing it myself a few months ago. Really proud of how far along I've gotten.

@RedSpade37

8 ай бұрын

​@@JimSterling Reading this made me smile. I'm so happy about your journey and your success!

@DodgaOfficial

8 ай бұрын

@JimSterling it's not easy, good makeup is like a painting on the face, I dabbled in drag for awhile and I don't think the average guy knows how much skill and money it takes. Makeup is damned expensive.

@Roadent1241

8 ай бұрын

@@JimSterling Genuine question as a lass who understands makeup is horribly smelly and wierd to have stuck on the face, how smelly is it, or do you become noseblind to it? Or am I just oversensitive to smells and sensations and things touching my skin?

@NukkuiskoHyvinVaiPois

8 ай бұрын

​@@Roadent1241 It depends a lot on what kind of make-up it is. Like, I get used to eyeshadow so much so that I forget it's there and then get it everywhere when scrathing my eyes, while the lip glosses I have feel weird and sticky and smell so strongly I don't want to use them. For me the less "wet" it is the easier it is to get used to it. Where you put it and how much also affects, powder on cheeks feels like nothing to me while heavy eyeshadow takes a bit to get used to. As for the smell, I don't think make-up smell strongly. Unless you get something that's scented, those suck. Eye powders and eyeliners smell like nothing on skin. Lipsticks have a waxy smell that does take some time to get used to.

Ah, watching a Monday Halloween video while living ahead in time on Tuesday here in Middle Earth so that it actually is Halloween when this video drops. Thank you so much for this, James Stephanie Sterling.

@antney7745

8 ай бұрын

Ditto, fellow Kiwi.

i know this is two months ahead but also the developer is currently trying to sue someone for digging into this stuff while he works on a very lengthy review about The Medium and just stumbled on this and that an old game this dude made of equal quality did the very morally upstanding thing to do of including an actual 911 call of a woman calling for help and then getting assaulted to try and give his shitty cop horror game some legitimacy

Not me thinking that Stray Souls would be a Souls like where to play a cat lol.

@Roadent1241

8 ай бұрын

I'd pay 30 quid for that.

That story about Steph throwing up all over their crush's bathroom because they had literal morning sickness is hilarious, grotesque and oddly beautiful. Which I suppose is the whole Commander Sterling brand.

@UnjustifiedRecs

8 ай бұрын

They didn't have morning sickness, Jim cannot physically be pregnant. It was simply nausea from taking chemicals

@kenirainseeker539

8 ай бұрын

@@UnjustifiedRecs They didn't say they were actually pregnant. Hormones are what signal to your body that you're pregnant, so when you take certain hormones, it can trick your body into thinking its pregnant. That's how birth control works too. And "chemicals" are in everyone's body, friend.

@Roadent1241

8 ай бұрын

@@UnjustifiedRecs Correct. But the exact words were "My body thinks it's pregnant". So blame the brain for sending them signals XD I'm just glad they're happier nowadays despite that.

@fartface8918

8 ай бұрын

​@@UnjustifiedRecswhat do you think morning sickness is?

@iamjustkiwi

8 ай бұрын

Iconic tbh

"Silent hill would be better if it was worse." This line made me laugh more than it had any right to. Good delivery. Thank you.

It's at least cool to get a preview of Bloober's "Silent Hill 2."

Tear lord that "creepy" witch thing at the top of the stairs looks like me standing up when I've had a bit too much to drink lol. Are they sure they were going for scary and not relatable?

As an artist and animator, I find myself saying “Ai ArT” (and “LiVe AcTiOn ReMaKe”) in the same voice you say “tRiPLe A gAmE”

Cowardice is an inherent trait of fascism.

Between Shadows of the Damned, The Medium, and now this, i think Yamaoka REALLY needs to get himself a better agent. I think you also put the issue with AI art perfectly. As I was just discussing with a friend a couple days ago, even if it's "placeholders", even if it's an solo dev who "can't afford" otherwise, even if the art is good and "passes" as real art, it's still all something created using stolen work from real artists. The issue isn't quality, and it isn't a matter of how it's being used, it's fundamentally being created through plagiarism and exploitation by using the work of others as data without their consent. In other words, regardless of the quality of the art or the context in which it's being used, AI art as it stands now is universally theft. Also, gold star for the villain tweets, I'd watch an entire video of those.

@sean8102

8 ай бұрын

Huh I didn't know Yamaoka was involved with this (just started the vid, IDK if it's mentioned). But yea def. Didn't play shadows of the damned (honestly haven't heard of it) but did play the medium. I remember liking it, nothing amazing by any means but just alright. I do remember it ran like shit.

@coolsenjoyer

8 ай бұрын

At this point any big name of the industry being attached to an indie project should be a red flag. They're pretty much always used as a selling point to a mediocre or bad game

Hair's on point today, Steph.

Christ, this game (Stray Souls) is painful to look at. I Often roll my eyes at people complaining about frame rates, but....good GOD. Glad to hear the director is a piece of shit, because normally I'd feel bad for developers who failed this hard.

@quantumblauthor7300

8 ай бұрын

Ah, fellow "shut up about the fps" acolyte

@MadMadNomad

8 ай бұрын

@@quantumblauthor7300 Exactly! Unless its as bad as this trash, or Blighttown on PS3 Dark Souls, I don't wanna hear about it.

@Venomous9

8 ай бұрын

yeahhh, there's a fundamental difference between consistent low fps as a thing that you can get used to and jerky shit that looks atrocious and gives you motion sickness. I can deal with the low fps on most N64 games, but I would not be able to deal with jerky shit like Stray Souls.

Fun Fact: the majority of this game is, in fact, a massive asset flip! Most of the locations and monsters, including the dad character, are all store bought assets. They really barely cared!

Holy 30 buckeroos? Damn, what an expensive waste of shite.

Ngl, that initial story made me feel so seen

Its been too long since we got another glorious review like this. Praise James-Stephanie-Fucking-Sterling-Son!!

@DrZaius3141

8 ай бұрын

Son/Daughter

A capella skeleton warriors? My, how you SPOIL us.

Meanwhile Alan Wake 2 is one of the most beautifully mind fuckingly amazing games to come out all year, and its made by a guy and studio who very much wants the LGBTQ+ community to live and be happy.

If anything, I respect Stephanie Sterling's sick more than Stray Souls. At least you can say the former was the product of an actual person.

@sean8102

8 ай бұрын

lol that's pretty good

Are the rumors true that Commander Sterling will dethrone Roman Reigns at next year's WrestleMania? I certainly hope so!

Man why didnt I find your channel before girl?? I loved your video, every little bit of it. Im brazilian and we are suffering a lot of this fascist sh*t here as well. Cant get anymore of it so thanks for your critics!

I KNEW Monday was coming! And Jesus Christ this turned out to be worse than I thought. Y'know, I "joked" that the dev of Stray Souls sounded like it could have done with an old-fashioned fixin', but the miserable little creature has already tucked its tail and fled. Which is kinda disappointing, and frustrating. After all, if some transphobic brute was stomping and snarling openly, they'd be a lot easier to bag than some scurrying, cowardly, verminous little plague-bringer. If there's anything we need most in this war, it's an easy target.

The possessed boglin on top of the pinball machine, wiggling it's thumb. It truly is Halloween.

Wonder if you heard about the statement then "apology" by the devs on Warhammer 3 with a statement of "“The right to discuss is a privilege-it is not an entitlement you earn by playing the game" while talking about people coming into forums and wanting to stop boycotts among other things. it happened recently though lol

@arturoaguilar6002

8 ай бұрын

I mean, they aren't wrong; one definitely has the privilege to discuss without having to play the game.

@gozzilla177

8 ай бұрын

@@arturoaguilar6002 I think you misunderstand this was part of a larger statement but the intent was not to allow more discussion, they were saying you don't merely get to discuss freely because you own this game, or thats how it came off to the community, as they have bin review bombed to hell and they released an apology they pinned on steam for their remarks. Also the freedom to discuss the game wether you own it or not isn't a provlivge, discussion of any topic is a basic right we should all have lol

This game is broken in ways that I've never even knew were possible. I've NEVER seen a game that appears to literally just have a design document describing the story in more depth than ever shows up elsewhere in the game. Also the giant gold gun the protagonist uses is canonically the gun used to assassinate Abraham Lincoln that's been infused with mystical power.

When you said the game was made to be Silent Hill but bad I find it very telling it looks like a game made by someone who was aspiring to reach the "heights" of SH Homecoming and Downpour.

Okay wow, first time a game's bad animation has actually made me physically ill. After like a minute in to that boss fight I've got a splitting headache out of nowhere and had to stop watching because I was genuinely starting to feel nauseous. Did manage to notice that, on top of seeing under the map when you roll, both your character's weapon and the boss kept randomly blinking out of existence for a split-second.

@empanada223

8 ай бұрын

Seeing the character dodging alone was disorienting and that is just a clip!

The cryptocurrency to NFT to AI pipeline seems to share significant overlap with the pipeline that leads to fascism. Probably just a coincidence though, right?

@RedSpade37

8 ай бұрын

But of course! Nothing to see here! Pay no attention to the fascists behind the curtain!

If youtube doesnt stop turning off my notifications to you i swear i am going to frown and shake my head but will continue watching things on youtube because youre here.

Ok I saw that the title said "Stray Souls", but my brain processed it as "Stray Gods" and I was about to be mad

This video is nice to see because I played their demo and gave them some lengthy feedback on their server, and I was the only person they never responded to. THIS IS VENGEANCE!!!!!!!!!!

Did they really release the game in this state? It looks like more than half the animation frames are dropping. It's godawful!

I was getting worried there, wondering where your Monday vid was. Have a good halloween.

Just hope these developers keep in mind that A.I. generated content can not be copywritten.

I love it when steph puts on the wresling glows an delivers a smack down.

Hmm, Steam are very strict on their no AI generated content policy, with many small indie devs I've seen posting about their games being rejected for AI art (sometimes correctly, sometimes claimed in error). I see that Stray Souls is on Steam, there must be some where we can bring to Valve's attention they are using banned AI art in the game..?

Looks like Gollum and Rise of Kong have a contender for worst game of 2023

Speaking of people who gloated about spite-buying a broken game, you forgot the part about hoping they didn't also just sneakily refund the game 😁

Phew, the episode is out! I was worried this might be the first Monday ever that Steph misses…

Friendly advice: If you want to play some good Horror games, look no further then the Indie Horror scene. There have been some really good ones this year like: My Friendly Neighberhood, Bunny Graveyard and Amanda the Adventurer. That last one just got it's sequel announced last week, so it's worth looking into. They're all better then this. Edit: And Slay the Princess is also a great one. And not Indie, but Alan Wake 2 too.

@gryffbirb

8 ай бұрын

A great more storybook style horror game from what I have seen, Slay the Princes, is also very good.

@GamingG4276

8 ай бұрын

@@gryffbirb Yeah, that too.

@coolsenjoyer

8 ай бұрын

Not indie, but Alan Wake 2 just came out too and its great

Gilson B. Pontes is taking copious notes.

What on earth is that shooting animation! Edit: I thought my computer was acting up, but that's just the frame rate. Wow. Edit 2: !!! That DND cartoon! That's the cartoon I saw as a kid!! That's where the unicorn is from! I thought I dreamed that!!

Almost thought you skipped a week! Great video, as always!

Pretty nice that Sea of Stars was the game that knew how to be a good game first and THEN get a high quality composer on board too.

@noahbossier1131

8 ай бұрын

Agreed. It’s makes sense

I don't know if I ever heard of Stray Souls. I know there's the cat game Stray, the comedy movie with Will Ferrell as a dog called Strays, then there's the Souls-like sub-genre, but never Stray Souls. I'm genuinely curious on how so many hack developers can get Akira Yamaoka to make music for them and not by bigger publishers for games like Tekken or Resident Evil. He did music for Konami's Tekken clone Kensei: Sacred Fist.

Thank you for using the standard-issue creepypasta narration piano solo in the intro.

Oh man I was starting to worry wasn’t gonna get my weekly fix of James Stefanie sterling

The real crime here is that Stray Souls is also the title of a pretty good urban fantasy book. Kate Griffin should sue lol

Is "Big hairy bloke in the forest" a euphemism?

Its a miracle you played this without getting sick. The way the camera swings wildly, the frame stuttering, and the atrocious motion blur make me feel a little unwell

Steph giving the man(boy) permission to call her a slur is just too funny.

Alternatitive? It’s a perfectly Cromulent word! (Couldn’t resist)

@Venomous9

8 ай бұрын

don't apologise, 'cromulent' is in itself a perfectly cromulent word

Where is that Astrofunk song from?!

Love the use of Richard O'Brien stills posting a video the day before Halloween. Thanks for the giggle!