Hello everybody, what's going on? I'm EvilRabbit. So some a little difference today because you guys know recently I've been struggling with some flexing in my chassis from the direct drive wheelbase Definitely gonna take care of the Rad Nessa wiring, but it's an exciting day here on the channel because down here We have some new next level sim equipment down here that we're gonna be getting set up today Big thank you to next level for sending this stuff out and sponsoring and being a partner of mine So a big shout out to next level. So I think it's time to do a little bit of a Timelapse montage, I think the next level stuff, but you have the GT Elite direct mount monitor mount in The black edition, so we're gonna get that out of the way for right now because that's not what we're worried about It's this GT Elite wheel plate Box can't wait to get this out and assembled because you guys know I was struggling with some flexing issues with my old chassis, so This should alleviate that and at first off the roof. Of course, we have our instructions manual which We're definitely gonna need because this is going to take some time to install And put together, of course, we have some next level stickers always great to have next level stickers So we're gonna take a look at what everything we got initially in this box very well packed and that is What I like to see all of this beautiful next level Hardware and chassis. We got it here. Oh, hey a little next-level lanyard We have a Key lanyard and everything in the box as well. And of course we have every Single piece that we're gonna need to put this thing together Definitely can't wait to get this fully together with the nice Channeled pieces and all this nice aluminum. It's gonna look super sick So I feel like we need to possibly get this top box off Well, that's gonna be a lot harder than I thought let me see what's underneath and we do have more bits underneath bracket trees all kinds of mounts and everything and Some seat brackets with a nice L and R on there So we're definitely make sure hopefully those work perfectly how we need them to so I think it's a time Then we find the hardware and here is all the hardware bits and all the fun stuff so thanks time for another a Little time lapse and see if we can't get this thing together So with the initial chassis all set up with everything it looks amazing I do love all the fine-tuning details and all the adjustments and everything like that my maza base It's gonna be able to bolt with all four right on there. So we're gonna get into getting this Moner mount mounted on there and then we are going to get everything else mounted on the chassis So big times big fun. Let's do it All right, so we did go ahead and get the monitor mount installed as you can see we do have my MSI monitor on there We do have my HyperX mic put on top So one thing I would definitely recommend if you guys are doing this monitor mount setup Do it before you put this plate on because you do got to take this plate off in order to put the monitor Mount down there. So definitely super awesome very sturdy fully adjustable We did get my NRG seat mounted up very easily with the universal brackets got those bolted on and put on and It was very simple very easy got it mounted up Got to do some fine-new adjustments on how I want to do all my positioning and stuff once I get all of my Stuff mounted in so now it's time to get all the parameters and everything mounted up onto the rig And so that we can get the PC and everything turned on and get everything all set up and start adjusting it I did use my old monitor mount or my old keyboard mount as you can see from my other chassis with the You know channels and everything you can put that there and it works perfectly so that's on there for right now So we're gonna get all the parameters and everything put on this thing and trying to get this rig going so with everything finally set up and all my Mazda equipment and my shifters and everything hooked up onto the base this thing is So nice and so solid the GT elite base from next level definitely super Aggressive and very stable. So big. Thank you to next level for hooking me up and sending this out and partnering with me here on The channel so did get a chance to of course to mount my mic behind my monitor Super stable monitor mount and everything back there super aggressive and great with all the adjustability and everything one thing That I will have to get used to a little bit is the way I had to position my shifter now With that plug down there. It's a little bit angled back But you know after running a little bit testing with it getting everything set how I want to it feels awesome So we're gonna go into game and actually get some rips in it and see how stable this base is So we're gonna switch over to the game cam and get everything all situated So we're on the game cam and actually you can see we have a different camera view It's a little bit up higher for this video. We're gonna fine-tune where I want to put the camera stuff But overall this chassis. I'm trying to move it around. There's no movement as you can see at all in my wheelbase Nothing is shaking pulling the handbrake. There's no shaking in my shifter or anything like that Oh, let's pop my wheel in the gear. Oh, cool. So this is a super solid chassis and super very, you know Tough rigid and I can't express how much this is not flexing compared to my other chassis So like I said the parameter with the handbrake being a little bit a little bit back It's not actually as big of a deal as I thought it was gonna be I can adjust it move forward just the way I have to angle it for the plug on the bottom is this way So we're gonna go for a first rip here So we're gonna go full send here at the hot pit track for first initial testing of the chassis and the positioning So the wheel position feels great. It's a lot closer than it was on my other base, which is actually Correct how it should be and a tighter in is better for racing and things like that So it's just their ergonomics and the placement that I'm gonna have to get used to a little bit But overall it feels way more comfortable. I'm sitting more vertical how it should be So the seat feels quite comfortable on the base rails didn't have to worry about height or anything like that It's all there the pedals are right where they want where I want them to be where I can get full feel So the handbrake is just like I said, it's a little bit different placement. It's not here anymore It's back a little bit, but it's closer to the wheel now So it's very easy to get to the shifter is in a very decent position where it would be if it was a tall shifter Say in a real car with sequential. So we're gonna go full send here and see what we can do Drive us in third person. So you guys can see the whole car Little wall tap little wall tap there Come off the bank quick flick transition no handbrake needed there and overall a very Solid run and a very quite interesting run and the initial feel of the positioning of this base it's actually extremely nice and It's just more ergonomical and how it should be so it's a little more correct of a seating position And I'm not noticing any flex whatsoever. That's why I have this camera so set up high so you guys can see like my shifter Doesn't shake when I pull this Nothing I'm trying to move the base, but it will not as you can see it's not shaking around like nothing It's really moving. It's super solid which is making the wheel feel much nicer when I'm trucking the wheel back and forth It's not like flexing around and things like that So my new little things that you wouldn't think you have to get used to our things that make a huge difference in how the wheel feels reacts No wall taps there off the bank and through there Clutch in transition the car And myself is out there a little bit off on the bank there I kind of threw me offline, but overall Quite happy with how this chassis is feeling gonna be getting a little more into Full ergonomic settings and things like that in another video But for first run out definitely super happy with how this thing feels can't take next level enough for coming here And supporting me on the channel with this chassis Definitely something I was wanting after having so much flex switching to the Mazda base Opposite neutral. So with this Mazda base being able to mount directly down and angle this plate how I wanted it to it's Super nice to be able to put everything where you want it Like I said, this feels much more comfortable as a seating position and much more How it would be with real cars because my old S14 was kind of the same seating style position that I had So big thank you to the next level as always make sure you follow me on all social media I found the description box below this e46 got next level inside Boston, of course Mazda big club auto Hot pit autofest and 3d rap torque drift and coldest water. This is my ESTA pro car You guys gonna be seeing more of this when I do a full Build breakdown on this thing. So make sure you follow me on all social media on the description box below I'll see you guys on the track


Before starting the video, I need to state that back for Blood's release date is October 12th, 2021. I made this video after playing the open beta that lasted from August 12th to August 16th, but even with the game just being in its beta phase, a lot of my critiques and issues hold true and most likely will continue to hold true up to the game's release. If not, this video is pointless. Hello, I'm Dr. Skipper, your unreliable narrator and silly boy with a big and growing up, I wasn't a PC gamer. I didn't start playing PC games until I was 13 when I learned to crack the admin code on my school laptop where I played TF2 with all my classmates instead of doing actual schoolwork because screw that I was too busy racking up backstabs as the spy. But I did grow up with an Xbox 360, that magical little beauty, and the most mainstream Valve game on console was Left 4 Dead 2. I'm going to assume most of you are sweaty little gamers, but for those who aren't Left 4 Dead 2 is one of the best zombie games ever made.  While other kids had parents that only allowed them to play E for everyone games like Sonic or Super Mario, I was bashing in zombie brains while drowning in spit or goo. Nothing's wrong with that of course, I occasionally play Samario Kart, but I hate to break it to some of you. Your parents were squares. But being a kid I was also naive. I had a ton of fun playing the game, but I didn't know why. I just knew that I was having fun, but when I grew older and played it on my crappy little PC rig with my friends, I grew to love it even more. That was because I realized it wasn't just kid nostalgia, it's a good freaking game. By now you could tell this video isn't just about Back 4 Blood, it's also about Left 4 Dead 2, since Back 4 Blood is attempting to fill in its shoes. And for those out the loop, Back 4 Blood is a spiritual successor to the Left 4 Dead games made by Valve. Back 4 Blood is made by Turtle Rock Studios. And that name might sound a bit familiar because the people who founded Turtle Rock Studios worked at Valve and both of the Left 4 Dead games. In 1999, Kersh Ashton made a half-life mod named Counter-Strike. You might have heard it because it soon became one of the most successful competitive franchises ever. But for the kids who's brains aren't fully there, it's the franchise to the funny surf game. Yeah, that one. But when Valve bought the mod, they offered Ashton a job and he accepted it, joining the Valve family. Later down the line, Ashton, another co-worker named Phil Robb, stepped down from the company to co-launch Turtle Rock Studios. Valve asked Turtle Rock to continue their contribution to the development of Counter-Strike, and Turtle Rock continued to do so. Eventually, the devs got bored one day and made a modding Counter-Strike, which had the counter-terrorists defend themselves against hordes of enemy terrorists who used only melee weapons, which inspired them to think of the Left 4 Dead concept. Rob and Ashton showed Valve the mod, and Valve decided to fund the project and purchased Turtle Rock Studios to help alongside development. However, both companies struggled to work with one another, so in 2010 they split, with Valve maintaining the rights to both Left 4 Dead games, but gave the rights and logos of Turtle Rock Studios back to Ashton and Rob. Gone from Valve in full of optimism with the reputation as the geniuses who made both Left 4 Deads, they began working on their next project, and it was a train wreck. After four years of development, Evolve released, and it was Turtle Rock Studios' solo debut, riding the hype of their past accomplishments. Evolve, from the creators of Left 4 Dead. Evolve showed a lot of glaring issues with Turtle Rock Studios that might have seemed to fly past people's heads at the time, and those same glaring issues are starting to show again. Evolve's a great concept, I admit it, and when looking at the hype, praise and marketing, it looked badass, but when people got to play the game, it was revealed to be tedious, repetitive, and had a serious lack of content. And worse of all, the game was greedy, with an expensive amount of paid DLC and micro transactions, which made no sense when you look at Evolve's past encounters. Valve had a controversy with Microsoft back in 2009 in regards to paid DLC and Left 4 Dead. At the time, PC players received the Crash Course expansion completely free, where Xbox 360 players had to pay 560 Microsoft points. If you remember Microsoft points, then hello dinosaur, it's nice to meet you. We've come a long way. Valve didn't want consumers to pay for DLC, but were forced to put it up for purchase because Microsoft called the shots at the time, since they were on top of the console war. They've since been humbled greatly. Life or Dead had no micro transactions and no paid DLC on PC, and the DLC would have been free on Xbox if it was their choice. I say this because with the failure of Evolve and the glaring problems of Back for Blood in terms of game design and monetization, I started to question, is Left 4 Dead seen as a classic because of Turtle Rock Studios or Valve Corporation? I, Dr. Skipper, am making this video because I believe that Turtle Rock Studios are amazing at coming up with game concepts and ideas, but are bad at making actual video games. I believe that Left 4 Dead is the game it is today because of Valve and not Turtle Rock Studios, and that Back for Blood is going to crash and burn like Evolve unless they fix the issues that are hurting their game now, and it might already be too late. But first I need to go back and explain why Left 4 Dead 2 is an amazing game, and may I dare even say a classic? I will, because it is, yeah. Zombie games in the mid 2000s were equivalent to today's battle royale, and a lot of games tackled the zombie idea in different ways. Resident Evil 4 was a third person horror game with a beautiful art style that also had great mechanics, and Call of Duty World at War had a mode that was a first person wave based survival where the only goal was to see how long you could live for. Two very different games that share the same concept of infected enemies, and since then you've had a ton more. Parkour, movement, arena combat, the list just goes on. But what Left 4 Dead did was take the concept of infected enemies and base it around teamwork and cooperation. And after playing Back for Blood I wanted to see how it compared to the Left 4 Dead games, so I decided to get some friends and replay both campaigns to see how it held up 12 years later. And after replaying them, I was shocked and surprised. They sucked. Nah, I'm joking. Left 4 Dead 2 might be one of the greatest co-op games ever made, and is truly a masterpiece. Also from now I'm going to merge Left 4 Dead 1 and 2 to not cause any confusion. In most games today, co-op modes aren't centered around cooperation necessarily. A set of a lot of games are more centered around collaboration toward common interest. You might be playing a battle royale with a group of friends, but at the end of the day there isn't that much incentive for the team to work as a whole. It's 4 people who are looking out for themselves, and this is because everybody values themselves and their stats more than the overall goal of winning. Nothing belongs to the team besides the shared victory. It's your kills, your damage, and your loot, surrounded by three others who could help assist those goals. But at the end of the day, if one falls dead, it's not that big of a deal, and doesn't really change the outcome. This isn't just exclusive to Battle Royale House, of course. A lot of games today are competitive, encouraging you to be independent and not solely rely on one another. While you all might be pushing toward that common goal, there's still a leaderboard encouraging you to be competitive with your own teammates to see who's the best. Now you're not just fighting for the common goal of victory, you're instead fighting each other for gold limbs, most kills, top frag positions, or any other leaderboard stats that could also cause division. Even looters shooters don't care about cooperation. A destiny raid is just everybody running around looking out for themselves searching for their own loot. Fighting a Borderlands boss is just 4 people shooting a hitbox for the enemy to die faster, so the real fight can begin and that's to see who gets the gold weapon. Cooperation isn't required and the job could be done solo. It would just be a bit harder, but nonetheless it could be done.  Valorant, Overwatch, Counter Strike, and any other competitive shooter don't solely focus on cooperation. I'm a very egotistical player who strives to be MVP if I can. If a player is putting me in Jeopardy, I rather them just die so I could carry the extra weight. This leads to fun game situations like clutches and 1v3s, but to say it's engraved cooperation is just not true. Left 4 Dead 2 is solely focused on cooperation because of how the game is designed and because players have nothing to gain. The game gives you stats in the safehouse but it doesn't matter, there's no XP for your levels or stars for your battle pass. It's just fun bragging rights and even those don't matter if nobody gets to the safehouse. And Left 4 Dead, you don't have a range, you don't have progression, and you don't have a battle pass. You don't even have a level, you have nothing. The main goal is just to beat the campaign and have fun. And like I was saying earlier, Left 4 Dead's game design is not meant to be played solo. Of course you have the sweaty people who do speedruns beating the game solo, but it's not how you're objectively supposed to play the game. And Left 4 Dead you have to play as a team with full cooperation. There's no debate on play style or preference, that's literally how the game is designed. You could be a selfish gun blazing Rambo pushing ahead everybody else only wanting kills, or you could be the limp runt falling behind by not sticking with the team to then be pinned by a special infected, making you incapacitated. And the only way to be saved is by your teammates, making you completely dependent on one another. There's no MVP or star player, everyone is equal and just as vulnerable as each other. The special infected and game director make sure of this. Sticking together is vital to assist your teammates from jockies, hunters, and smokers, but being clumped together also makes you vulnerable to certain infected like the Charger, Spitter, and Boomer. Splitting up makes you vulnerable and sticking together makes you just as vulnerable, adding variety and unpredictability, keeping you on your toes, and also have you sharp between the ears. Back 4 Blood is mostly on par with Left 4 Dead in terms of co-op but has some glaring issues. Back 4 Blood has a currency system for the shops called Copper and that could be spent in each safe house with team upgrades being optional. You could buy ammo for yourself, health for yourself, and equipment for that little special pumpkin that is yourself. Also you could buy high tier guns and attachments. I am not a fan of this. Players are selfish when they have the choice to be and will buy items that fit them and their needs only and rarely, almost never, the team due to upgrades being so expensive. You could buy meds, tools, or upgrades that support the team, or you could buy a cool purple shotgun, a scope, and extra ammo for moi. In some situations you could compromise with other players and all buy a pipe bomb to get past something, but most of the time you are going to be buying for yourself only. Let's be honest, the shop is obnoxious. Items and weapons in Left 4 Dead were always free and disposable so no one would become attached to them. They were also never ranked because if they were people would choose one gun over another for objective value over subjective enjoyment. Now you have items that carry sentiment because they either cost money or have attachments that cost money or have high stats. If you hate a certain gun you now feel forced to use it because it has higher stats than other weapons that might suit your play style.  The shop causes division makes players think more about money than survival or finishing the mission. If someone on the team dies that's just one less hand to steal loot and guns. And if you have money and see items that are best fit for you, you're gonna buy them. Money! The currency you find is also not shared with your teammates.  This behavior also translates to random crate scattered around the map with guns and attachments that can only be taken by one player causing more selfish behavior. And they're rarely punished for it due to the special effect of being an absolute joke.  In Left 4 Dead the game director was fair and challenging when necessary and this caused a lot of focus, fun, and exhilaration when I was playing with my friends. When someone was pinned by a jockey the first reaction wasn't to get mad about the health bar declining but instead to be shocked and act urgently. Because the game's fun you should be having fun. It's a video game. The common infected are also dangerous and can overwhelm you. But if you have basic communication and common sense it doesn't become that aggravating and still remains an enjoyable experience. And the same applies to the special infected.  That is lazy and uninspired. The hunter is easy to kill but his strength is that he pounces and pins you down. And if you don't attempt him quickly he's extremely dangerous and this applies to every special infected besides the tank. But that's the tank's intentional design. He's just a huge bullet sponge but it's an event to fight him. But the zombies. On normal difficulty and back for blood the ridden are not threatening and are extremely easy to maneuver. The mobility options are partially at fault for this since it's easy to increase the distance by simply running away due to the game having a sprint mechanic.  You can make builds that make melee viable but the cost of having melee being your only strong suit because of the card system. But overall melee is impractical and unnecessary due to how powerful the firearms are and how gracious ammo is. Which is disappointing in comparison to Left 4 Dead where melee was practical and fun. A lot of the time I was running and gunning with no urgency. The guns are extremely powerful and I'll admit they're fun to shoot but I never had a really worry. And the moments that required more of my effort and attention were more annoying instead of being thrilling and action oriented.  The ogre is a laughing stock when it comes to filling in the shoes of the tank. And that's because he isn't fun to combat at all.  I don't know if the ogre is going to be a common special infected or if he was just only used for that campaign mission but I just hope to never see him again.  The snitch is annoying and poorly designed. Embarrassing actually especially when compared to their inspiration. The charm of the boomer was that if he gets too close he throws up on you learning the horde which also impairs your vision.  It's fair and balanced. It also punishes the player if they aren't vigilant.  But the snitch isn't just annoying and uninspired it's poor game design. No matter what you have to alert the snitch so there's no charm or fairness.   Giving options to the player without screwing them over is good game design.   The blood bruiser is arguably the worst out of all the special infected.  The game director is so poor that you might even have to deal with two of these goddamn headaches at once. So I just had to re-record this real quick you could hear the fan you know but yeah but there's there's not two there's three of them. Three. Three. In the same place. Three. They really are the worst to deal with. They're boring, tedious and unfair. I don't feel thrilled and rushed to combat them like I do with a tank. I just roll my eyes and load four clips into it. Also that hit point is so hidden that they might as well just remove it. I really can't stand this guy.   It's attempting to be a spitter by spewing goo but it's just unpredictable due to its suicide charging. The reaction time is too high and the bland audio design gives you no way to predict them. The charger also had a short reaction time but it was easy to detect and hear them when they were charging. In worst-case scenario he pins you down your team could just give assistance and deal with him quickly. The hawkers are okay actually.   Overall these special infected are a joke when compared to the fantastic roster of Left 4 Dead and it makes no sense how the creators are so toned deaf if they were the sole heads behind these games. Ah so now we have to talk about game design. The reason Left 4 Dead is so cherished is because it's simple. Simplicity and complexity is Valve's strong suit. The game is easy to pick up and understand. You have a primary, a secondary, health, and utility. And all you have to do is follow the objectives to get to each safe house without dying. This creates a fun game loop out of simple foundations. Back4Blood also has the same objective-based design but not the simplicity. I like innovation and gaming. Running, stamina, and ADS are additions that are necessary for the modern audience and they fit well in Back4Blood. Some of you Halo fans might be shocked by the idea of praising innovation due to how that community bitches about sprinting an ADS. But in modern gaming there's some stuff that you might call innovation that I call unnecessary. And that's the card system. The corruption cards are annoying. It's a cool gimmick but should be optional or tied to specific game mode. Having it in the base game ruins simplicity, adds confusion, and taints some of the art style. Trust me, we'll be talking about that art style in a bit. But when it comes to player cards, you should 100% assume bad faith. Like I said, this isn't a Valve game and I can smell microtransactions from a mile away. The cards offer buffs and bonuses to the player while also having some restrictions.   I like it simple.  And when you introduce cards, you introduce metas and overpower builds that abolish the game. Battlefront 2 is an example of a poorly designed card system. It's a fun game but you pretty much have no options because of how strong certain cards are while others aren't, making them not viable at all. Also, I'm not sure if the cards in the back of the blood are gonna be for purchase, but if they are, we're gonna have a pay-to-win situation on our hands. And speaking of paying, I hate weapon skins.  I think cosmetic customization is a good innovation, but also adds problems with developers not understanding player worth and getting overly greedy. We'll just have to see how it goes at launch, I guess, but the odds are definitely not in their favor.  The game director and AI are horrible.  I stated this earlier, but I'm gonna elaborate. Anything above normal difficulty is unplayable unless you have a team stack. This is because of the Brain Dead AI and the Brain Dead Game Director. Left 4 Dead's Game Director is amazing, adding fun, fast-paced game situations, like random but fair hordes, weapon and health spawns, and game variety with the special infected. And this is because Valve worked on it. In Back for Blood, I had trouble playing with a friend when we didn't have a four-stack team, due to how poor the friendly AI was.  Quick note on that. The trauma and three strike system are the worst part of this game. The game punishes you when you take damage by giving your player trauma, which adds this annoying red bar at the end of your base health bar, which prevents you from healing that area. And if by the grace of God you find a trauma station, you have to pay the same currency you use in the shops to decrease that trauma. I lost a survivor run because the Game Director didn't give my team a trauma station after we got to a safe house.  If they weren't scattered, just put them in the safe room, let the player actually have fun. This should be a corruption card at worst. Why is it a game mechanic? It doesn't add tension, it just pisses the player off.  You have three attempts to finish a campaign.  You aren't going to the last safe house, you just lose the game. And since the game AI and the Game Director are bullshit, the pressure of three attempts doesn't make the game fun and makes it dreadful. Look, I'm a gamer. I like to goof around with friends, and this three strike system just adds unnecessary pressure and limitations and doesn't let me express and goof off.   Like the cards, this should be optional or a gimmick mode. Take it out of the base game and get it out of there. A game's identity determines its legacy in the future. Hey look, another assassin's creed. Oh, a Far Cry? Oh my god, a Call of Duty. All games that are fun when playing in the moment, but will be forgotten with time, leaving no legacy to be cherished. But it's been 12 years since Left 4 Dead 2 launched and we're still talking about it. And that's because the game nails its identity. The game has aged greatly for how long it's been released, and I'm surprised it isn't even at all gross to look at. And that's because the amazing simplistic art style. But let's not jump the gun, alright? I have to talk about the game's marketing before I dive into the art style because the trailers ooze with personality and pitch the game so well. The first Left 4 Dead trailer is fantastic. Might I say even revolutionary. It does everything that establishes the game's identity in just four minutes and 24 seconds. It sells the tone while showing you the game's mechanics and zombies. Everything that happens in the trailer can happen in-game. It also displays other iconic additions like the amazing sound effects, character callouts, special infected, and diverse cast and voice acting. You have these interesting characters being displayed for people to remember.   They added polar opposite personalities who are now adored today. Takeo, Nikolai, Dempsey, Richtofen. You know these people. They're iconic. And Left 4 Dead has that as well. It has the same exact thing. Bill's this grizzled Viennamban is also the team leader.  Lewis is a naive but optimistic sales worker with no combat experience at all. And Zoey who is a college student for films living her fantasy of a cool zombie movie and holds down her own. All different people unite under shitty circumstances and they nail the chemistry between everyone. The dialogue, campaign events, and character development has made this group iconic and memorable. Then there's Left 4 Dead 2's trailer. In the modern age of gaming, sequels are hugely worse and uninspired, attempting to ride the coattail of the original. This is not the case of the game or the trailer. Left 4 Dead 2 has a great trailer and it might be one of the best pieces of video game marketing of all time. Where Left 4 Dead 1 had scary vibes with a horror-like atmosphere, Left 4 Dead 2 does the complete opposite.  It also has an amazing soundtrack in the background and I'll talk about that in a second. Ellis is this gun-crazy southerner but is also a clumsy young kid. Nick the mobster, the cheapskate, has come way too far to die now. Coach who is Rick Ross if you never took on rapping and Rochelle who's a reporter but also supports her team being the most positive person and is the least enjoyed by the fandom. Both trailers are amazing to show the fear, fun, action, and thrill of both games and a single trailer for each game. A single trailer each. That's insane. Then you have Back 4 Blood. The reason Left 4 Dead trailers work so well is because I was trying to pitch the game as a zombie movie. Every mission has a kick-ass poster. The ending of the missions have credits and the trailers were cinematic. Simplicity and complexity. Something valve nails. Turtle Rock's trailer is typical, boring, and disappointing. Making it look like any other shit-generic zombie game that's came out in the last five years. Looking at you stated decay too. Which makes no sense. This is the same dev team that made both of these old trailers.  Adding no soul or heart. No one from the main squad even stands out. LeBron James? How do these people even relate to each other? Are they held by circumstance? Why are they fighting? What's the dynamic between the characters?  You'll find out in the main game. Left 4 Dead's trailers did that. The helicopter made of chocolate is a great moment. Ellis and Rochelle's elevator scene. Louis asking Bill to run or shoot. Bill and Francis, Bill and Zoe. And these are just from each's own trailer. One trailer per game. There is no excuse. The dev team is literally riding the hype that they made both previous games. So why is it so poor? You literally made them. You have no excuse.  None of them have the charm of each Left 4 Dead cast members and are overly complicated. Hot, we said.  Well, at least you still got a paddle. Would you have the paddle, right? This place feels like pineapple on pizza. Just... What did she say? Oh my god! This would be a thing is too much attention. Oh, shut up, man.  I don't respect you. Just what I needed to be.  You are right, Darren. I need to tell you, I need to hear myself say it. When the collapse came, I saw it happen and I did nothing. I was scared. No, you don't understand. It was my family, my parents.   Simplicity Turtle Rock. We should have four, four people to get attached to. When you give us too many options, it creates too much complexity and doesn't work. While Payday 2 is a great game, the only way to get attached to those characters is by researching them on your own, not in game.  You have a roster of people that come off obnoxious and forgettable because the dialogue is annoying and generic. And the subpar voice acting doesn't help us either. Except for this guy. His voice by Rigby.  The actor put there all no screams and stood out from the rest of the crew.  Coach and Rick Ross, God, I hear you from a mile away. You're a beautiful hunk of a man. But in Back for Blood, I get annoying Deadpool-esque deliveries over a ham radio to robots. I feel that in it. Don't feel good. The cast isn't likeable. And it's going to taint the game's legacy. But now the art style. The Ridden might be the most ugliest infected I've ever played against. They are on par with Sunset Overdrives infected in Fortnite Save the World. When playing Left 4 Dead, the thing I loved most was how fun it was to see and kill all the zombies. They all had unique clothing, depending on the settings of the map and they had personality. You guys remember those cool-ass clowns in Dark Carnival? Are the hazmat zombies? Or the mudcrawlers?  The regular comic infected told a story. They looked like normal people in an infested world. Not these biohazard knockoffs. The Ridden are cheap and generic. And while we're at it, the Ridden is a stupid-ass name. Also, something else that made the Left 4 Dead zombies memorable was the dismemberment. Because it was so detailed and awesome. Limbs blown off with shotgun shots, shooting out blood, squirting out blood, intestines falling out depending on the caliber of the weapon, spine shelling with people's backs blown out, blood splattering, that's cool.  There's effort put into the gore. Back 4 Blood doesn't have this. Like I said, the blood looks like jelly.  I want that. If zombies were equivalent to food, this is a dried-out steak. Look at the comparison of gameplay. In Left 4 Dead, it feels like every shot has an impact. The animation and design of the infected come off as not just copy-paste. It is copy-paste, but it doesn't feel like it. In the moment, it feels real, giving you immersion.    Having the appearance of real people who are once not infected and they stand out from the crowd. Look at this guy.  It's ugly, bland, and uninteresting. None of the special infected match the world's setting. They just look like alien abominations. That would be in some Resident Evil game. The Hunter's jogging gear, the jockey's weird body, the boomer's fat appearance, charges overall, smokers tongue, and the tank's muscled nature. And all the other characteristics of some of the other special infected make them stand out. Look at the trailer. This is the spitter equivalent.   Playing this today is awesome. It still looks awesome. And I don't get that from Back 4 Blood.  It's embarrassing. What's the tone of the game? It's so bipolar. Do you want tension and realistic themes or do you want a wacky unrealistic game like Sunset Overdrive? Left 4 Dead was wacky but still grounded. So disappointing. But now we have to talk about the thing that is most important to why Back 4 Blood doesn't live up to Left 4 Dead. And that's the sound design and the soundtrack. Left 4 Dead's gunshots, medicine noises, character dialogue, zombie sound effects, and zombie cues are magnificent. The infected are oozing with personality, making unpredictable noises that still ring in my head 12 years later. Nick Shrieks give me nostalgia. Ellis telling me they're spit or goo. That jockey on me. All this has given me nostalgia. The crisp reload animations and the melee noises. Oh, I love those melee noises. And the special infected cues is what makes them stand out. The hunters screamed. Jockey's laugh, boomer groan, and the yelling of the tank. It adds personality. Back 4 Blood doesn't have this.  What did you call me? What did that zombie say? And that got removed quickly. Back 4 Blood's audio design is generic and subpar.  Like, listen to the shotgun. It sounds like a pistol. But now to the soundtrack. I don't know how Left 4 Dead did it, but when I hear a car alarm go off to then hear that shriek with a text that says you'll learn of the horde, I feel panic and excitement at the same time. The music when a horde is about to come is some of the most thrilling sounds and music combinations that you will ever hear in a video game.  And a good movie always has a fire-ass soundtrack.   When the evac is here and I'm the last man standing, I feel like the protagonist and it's my movie. It's fun, man. It's so much fun. And Valve knew this. They knew that the music would bring the highs and the lows of the game play out, giving a rollercoaster of emotions, which gives you these champion moments that feel victorious. And when those credits roll, ugh, I still get chills. Even when you die, that somber music that kicks in and everything muffles around you is so impactful. These little details start to add up. This is your movie, and you could be the main character, the side character, you could be who you want, you could be the sacrifice, you could do anything. I never felt this when playing Back for Blood.   There could have been, because there's some fun moments in Back for Blood, but a piece always felt missing. When someone dies, there's no sad music with an X mark splattered with blood. There wasn't that tank music, or the charger screams, or the witch music. It felt incomplete. That's my biggest issue with Back for Blood. I get the concept, it's a fun concept, but it feels like a zombie. Like, it grabbed the face of Left 4 Dead and skinned it off, now trying to wear and pass off as it. There's so much potential.  And with everyone growing up and sweating their asses off in battle royales, you rarely get that anymore. I got to have fun with friends and live in a movie. I want Back for Blood to be that. I want to have those screaming moments of highs and lows. I want them to have that comeback where they prove that they were the minds behind Left 4 Dead, and that evolve was a mistake and will never happen again. But that isn't going to happen. This game will probably be another evolve. It's going to have micro transactions, sell bad skins, and I've come to the realization that they didn't make Left 4 Dead the game that it is today. That was Valve. Like I said, Turtle Rock are good at coming up with ideas, but this game has proven that they can't execute it properly. And to be honest with you, I'm tired of a comeback story. It's getting old.  It's cool that Battlefront did it and other people did it, but let's not have this be a standard. The comeback shouldn't be a standard. Games should be what they are day one.  Those games are amazing and they remind me today why I love gaming and Back 4 Blood did not fill in those shoes. Nonetheless, I'm happy I made this video. Playing Left 4 Dead again was a blast from the past. Games need to be fun like this again and I'm happy you made it this far to the video. You might be getting a bit scared. Oh no, he's going to beg me to subscribe over and over. Nah, it's your choice. I had a lot of fun making this video. I had fun coming up with the concept and getting the band back together to play these games for this video. And if you appreciate it, it's your choice to tag along for future projects I do. This isn't a one-off thing.   Or uh, you might. Who knows? If you have any opinions or have anything to say about this video, talk about your memories. Let me know in the comments down below so I'm not talking to a brick wall. Thank you to the channel members, you guys are the real winners and allow me to do stuff like this. I really, really appreciate you sticking with me. Thank you. Also thanks for 55k. With that, I'm Dr. Skipper and I'll catch you in the next video. Goodbye.


Okay, so what does it even mean to be the best theme or the best plugin? I mean, obviously it's gonna be subjective, obviously, but what we can do is see how many people like something more than something else and we can kind of take an average of that. And that's what we usually do when we do voting. So what we are going to do today to identify these best themes and plugins as much as we can, obviously is check how many votes did each plugin get and see the best rated. Thankfully, the store has a functionality to do that so we can just sort by the best one. So that's what we're going to do. Let's see what the KD community think is the best themes and widgets. And we'll do that for each category. So let's start off with application style. And of course, on top is lightly, which I've talked about at least three times already because it's a really good theme. I mean, nobody is surprised about that. So it is a C++ theme that is a fork of breeze and implements a lot of new options and looks very good. As an example, you do have the ability to make sidebars transparent and blurry, which personally I love. And also the heather bar that part at the top can also be transparent and blurry, which I also love. And in general, the look is very good with a lot of very nice shadows and such. Also there's a lot of animations, which in my opinion is something that breeze really lacks. In second place, instead, we have class C, which is a C++ theme. I think that I've not seen enough of. And it also looks like it's a fork of breeze. However, it has so many options like you do also have the ability to make the heather bar transparent. But you also have the ability to change a lot of how things look, even for some reason, decoration. So if you're into customizations that you should totally check out the class C application theme as well. Switching to cursors because we are going alphabetically, of course. There's a slight winner, which is the Oreo, I guess it's pronounced, which is a bit of a drop like look with for some reason a circle animation inside of it, which makes me feel like it's always loading. It seems like people really like that animation. And to be fully honest, I do not understand why I would be worried that it would like distract me just to have an animation always there. But you know what? I'll try out the cursor theme and see if I'm just plain wrong. It also, and this is super important, comes with a variety of colors, which is something that I love and that allows you to pick the one that's gonna fit better with the rest of your style. So 10 out of 10 on that. The second place is called Bebata, and it's a bit more traditional, like it's not always spinning, but it's also very rounded, which is a very nice look, and it manages through the roundness to look very modern. So I can understand why it got there. Now let's talk about global themes, which basically are big packages that set up all the other stuff. So Plasma theme, application style theme or everything else is controlled by the global theme. So in this case, we have like the styles that managed to bring some sort of visual coherence throughout all the other categories. And in first place, we have a sweet Mars, which looks like this. And honestly, I'm not surprised. First is quite original and innovative. It manages to have a sweet version of pretty much everything in every other category. So it's very visually coherent, as we'll see. And it comes with a Plasma theme, decorations, color scheme, icons, wallpaper and logging theme and more. And it has this colorful, but mixed with dark kind of vibe that I can really understand why people would like that. So great job. Second place, we have the Chrome OS global theme, which makes everything look like Chrome OS. OK, that one I didn't expect to be fully honest, but nonetheless, it looks pretty good. Let's switch to applets. So what's up with that? In the first place, we have the advanced radio applet, which allows you to listen to the radio, but also it has an editable list of stations. It displays album art and info for the current track. And it allows to search for radio stations. And the design follows exactly what I intended for Plasma applets because it uses the plasmoid heading, which I've introduced. So I'm I'm very happy. Thank you. Thank you, developer. I think this is actually a great example on how we just should look like and be developed from third parties. So 10 out of 10, you deserve first place. In second place, though, we also have a very nice applet, which is translator. It uses the translate shell package to, you know, translate between languages. And it even has text to speech. If you have QT multimedia installed, which you should have. This is another very simple, yet super useful applet that I can understand why people would put in second place. So thumbs up. Next up is wallpaper plugins. And the first place goes to a plugin that I've already talked about, which is inactive blur, which is also my favorite plugin because it has blur in the name. Everything that has blur in the name is my favorite. So basically what it does is whenever you open an application, it makes the wallpaper blurry. And that's it. And to me, that gives some sense of depth to the desktop that is just perfect. So I actually use it daily. In second place, we also have a wallpaper, wallpaper, I guess that's how it's pronounced, which allows you to set a different wallpaper for each virtual desktop, which is something that users ask for a lot. So I'm happy to say that apparently this widget does it. I have no idea how and I would very much be interested in discovering it. So maybe I'll give us Nick to the code, but it's it's here. You can use it. Apparently it works. It was last updated three years ago, but apparently, according to the comment, it still works. So I didn't know we had that. Next up is a Coventum theme. So as always, to use Coventum theme, you first have to install Coventum, and then you have to use the Coventum manager to select the Coventum theme. And then you have to go into system settings and say to use Coventum as an application theme. So there's a bit of things to set up. But once you do that, you can finally use it. And what's the highest rated Coventum theme, you might ask? It's a suite again. I mean, just look at the screenshots. Come on, it's it's great. So thumbs up for suite. They are doing a amazing job. The second place goes to Leyan, which also looks like quite modern. It has like gradient buttons and is slightly transparent with blur behind it. So I'm happy. And I mean, it looks pretty good. Again, I can see why it's second place. Now, let's start talking about window managing, starting off with K-Win effects. So the first one is called the TV glitch. And it's actually the same effect that GNOME has through the Burn My Window extension, which is also called the TV glitch. And it has just been ported as is to KDE Plasma. And in fact, the second and third and fifth and sixth places as well are all Burn My Windows extension GNOME effects both to KDE as is. So it looks like people really like these third party effects, which I can understand. However, the fourth one is not at least one is not a Burn My Window effect, but rather is the grayscale effect that makes the whole desktop grayscale, which is actually useful as an example. There are a lot of website and apps that use bright, saturated colors to make you kind of addicted to them. So I actually used to have grayscale both on my computer and on my phone as well. Now I just live with my addiction. Now let's talk about K-Win scripts and first blur gets the first place. So what's that? It's actually really simple. You should never use it out of the box, but if you're doing a customization that uses other themes that are transparent, but do not blur behind, you can use this effect to make sure that those themes are also blurred behind, which you should totally do. Everything that is transparent should always, always be blurred behind, that is advice from the best K-Ditioner. In second place, we have sticky windows snapping, which basically means that whenever you put two windows together and then resize one, the other one resizes as well, so that it's very useful. And actually in the very latest version of KDPlasma, so 5.27, it is included out of the box at least for split-screen applications. And I think I also tested with some more. I'm not sure if all the use cases from this effect that this script, sorry, are covered by KDPlasma 5.27, but a lot of them are, so now this script is useless. Bye-bye, I'm not just kidding. Then we have LatteDoc layouts, because LatteDoc still exists, and you can use it, especially if you use the Gitmaster version, which should, in theory, work flawlessly, and there has been like backfixes to the master version if even after it got unmaintained. So it's not completely that. We can still use LatteDoc. So what's the most common LatteDoc layout is the Macintosh Big Sur style layout, which looks exactly like Macintosh Big Sur, and it looks really good because the designers at Apple know what they're doing, and also the person that did this layout with LatteDoc knew what they were doing as well. So everything looks pretty great, and if you like Macintosh, then you should totally go for this one. LatteDoc allows a lot more than Plasma panels. And by the way, I would totally love for Plasma panels to have some kind of system settings page with layouts for the Plasma panel, but nobody has managed to implement that yet, sadly. So one day I can hope that we'll have that, but not today. In second place, we have the Moewe layout, which is much more original and interesting, my opinion. You still get the bottom dock, but on the top you have a segmented panel. So you have a top left panel, top center and top right ones. So it's basically one single panel, but split in three. And you also have an on-demand sidebar because LatteDoc also does that. You can have sidebars as well. I forgot how good LatteDoc was, to be honest. I would totally love for sidebars to be in Plasma panels as well, but that's not gonna happen. Color schemes. So apparently people like looks that are very easy on their eyes, which means that the very first place goes to optimal eliminate A-strain, which is a grayish color scheme, which looks, I wouldn't say like super good, but I guess it does what it's supposed to be, which is to be easy on the eyes. And even the second place, which goes to marble, marble is also meant according to the description to be easy on the eyes, even though this time it's a light theme. So yes, the highest rated color scheme is a dark color scheme. A big mistake for humanity, light themes are significantly better than dark ones. You should always use bright light instead of bright dark, but sometimes big mistakes are done in history. Anyway, Plasma themes. So the first place goes to rounded in big caps, much to my surprise, I didn't actually expect that. It's a very rounded theme, which is slightly transparent. In my opinion, they should use a little bit of contrast effect because it looks like the things are for my personal tastes, for my personal tastes. I've tried to admit that whenever I have to do a Plasma theme with big rounded corners, I always give a sneak look to the rounded SVGs. So I have used them for inspiration. I just didn't know that they were the very highest rated Plasma theme on the K store. So that's quite an achievement. The second place goes unsurprisingly to sweet.  Like you got the idea, you know how sweet looks like by now. Then we have window decorations. So the first place is Forma N, which for the very first time in this video, I had never heard of. So what is Forma N? So apparently looks a bit transparent blurry, which makes me very happy. And it has this cubomorphic windows XP style, except this one is actually much better than Windows XP. Looks good. I mean, it's not exactly my style, but I would use it, why not? The second place goes to Ember, which is also slightly blurry and transparent, but interestingly enough, they actually use just a colorful scores, which is a pretty interesting design decision, design decision. So then we have a splash screens. So in the first place, we have Quarks Splash Dark rightfully, because it shows a super nice animation whenever you're logging into KD Plasma with all the dots flying around. That looks really good actually. I actually contacted the author and asked, hey, can I upstream this to KD? And they were like, yes, but believe me, nobody's gonna accept it. And they were right. I never managed to convince other KD developer that it was a good idea to upstream this, but I still think that we should just go with this, but whatever, I can understand that. Instead, in second place, we have a very pretty Fractal 3, that is, that's how I see Fractal 3s with my hands, okay? So that's very pretty as well. Then we have login themes, and we have sugar candy in a well-deserved first place, because it's beautiful. So you have this sidebar, which is blurred, and the sidebar is blurred. And then there's of course the login information on top of that, and it just looks gorgeous. And even the author has managed to find some specific setups that look even better, even without blur. So this is the login theme. And if it was up to me, we should just use that. It's not quite in line with the design of KD Plasma, but it just looks so good. So KD developers, please allow me to switch the KD Plasma login theme to sugar candy, please. Second place goes to the chili theme, which is a bit more like what KD is doing. So blurring everything and giving the login info right at the center. And it's also a bit more like, I don't know, Macintosh, but it looks good. So what can I say? Finally, last one, we have wallpapers, because yes, we are allowed to vote on wallpapers as well. And the highest rated wallpaper of all times on the KD store is Space Plasma, which looks like this. And to be clear, it's good. It's really good. However, KD Plasma wallpapers included by default on KD Plasma are just too perfect to make me think, yeah, I should use this one because KD Plasma has the best wallpapers. That's, I think, objective through. The second one is a very nice butterfly. So if you like butterflies, this is a very nice butterfly. But yet again, KD Plasma wallpapers included by default are just perfect, so you should never switch to any other. And by the way, I wanted to thank everybody that is currently sponsoring the channel because it's a lot of people and sometimes looking at the number of people contributing to my channel makes me go, whoa, that's a lot of responsibilities. So I'm trying my best and I hope that you're liking these videos that I'm doing. And hopefully to make even more videos and even more KD contributions if I'm able to, then you can ship in something like I've got Pattern, Libera, PeikoFi, YouTube memberships, anything, people. Everything is fine if you're able to do a donation that would be awesome. I've got a 700 goal for each month. Right now we're 460 if I remember correctly. So if we manage to get to 700, then all expenses are surely covered. That would be awesome. If we do not get to 700, I'll just stop doing videos forever or not just kidding, just kidding. So thanks for following and see you in a couple of days with a new video.


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They finally allowed him to be aggressive, to show some anger, to talk his trash, to come back verbally against the rock in Roman Reigns but mostly towards the rock and I loved every second of this promo. If we're gonna get this version of Cody he needs to start wearing nothing but black all the time. Cody was out there and he meant business. This is what I wanted to make this video to talk about. Overall, I enjoyed it. A lot of propos and segments cooked tonight. I definitely think they heard the criticisms about the rock being the only one to kind of get away with some of the stuff he says on the microphone and on social media. Well, today or tonight they allowed them to get a little bit more edgier. They didn't bleep out anything Cody said and it was fantastic and even other people's promos with Seth Rollins and Drew McIntyre and everybody else that had to talk tonight. They let them be a little bit more free and I appreciate that so shout out to the USA Network for not really putting too many constraints on what Cody had to say tonight. But boy oh boy, this was great. I enjoyed this. Hey man, this is what I wanted from Cody. So he had tweeted right before he was about to go out there. He had tweeted, I apologize for what I'm about to say. Now when he tweeted that I was like, all right Cody, you can't be coming out here talking that goody two shoe stuff. If you're saying you're apologizing for what you're about to say, it gotta be some fire. And honestly, I wouldn't apologize for what I'm about to say. I would have said what I'm about to say has been on my mind for a while now. I need to get some stuff off my chest. I'm frustrated. I'm pissed. That's what I would have said. But nevertheless that's what he tweeted.   He's out there. He basically addressed the future segment between Roman Reigns and him. They're going to have a face to face segment. I'm looking forward to that on Smackdown. Very interesting to see what Roman has to say. Because Roman's been kind of in the background of all of this. And what I wanted from Cody in his promo is what I talked about earlier today. Him being the guy to start firing back in and start trying to build up some type of dissension between the rock and Roman. Some of the noticeable things he said in his promo. He made it very clear that rock likes to call himself the heel. You know, he's like a heel now. The best one of the best heels. He even went after the Rocks rider. The Rock has a rider. He went after him, calling the Rock the final boss. And he wanted to mention like, oh, he went down a list of some of the great heels in WWE or, you know, just in wrestling in general. And he said, Rock, you're not a heel. You're not a heel to be honest with you. No, no, I don't see that.   You're not a heel. But then he wanted to talk about how Cody was making fun of him crying and being emotional or whatnot. So he said, okay, you want to talk about crying. Let's talk about crying. If you coming at me for quote unquote crying and being emotional about my family. Let's talk about how you sat up there and cried to the board of directors when you saw things weren't going your way. You saw the hashtag we want Cody and things weren't going in your direction. Originally you went and cried to them to switch things up to make it seem as if you wanted to save WrestleMania. I was like, okay, now we're now we're cooking. Let's let's start pulling pulling that veil back on what's real and what's a word. Let's go. I'm here now. So he also made mention that a lot of people on the board members, they they tend to kiss up to them.  Like, yes, you can pull out the Gucci vest again. Yes, you can do this. Yes, you can do that. You can say whatever you want to say. And I kind of like him kind of blending once again, truth on what's what's real and what's a word trying to blend those together because we've heard the reports that the Rock gets a lot of leeway on what he can say compared to everyone else in the back. And he also mentioned that, you know, this notion that the Rock, you know, WWE needs to rock. No, WWE doesn't need to rock. Look at the house. The house. This house is already sold out. It doesn't need to rock. You know, WWE doesn't need you. The people in the back. We don't need you, you know, that notion. And I love because he started getting real passionate.  And I was like, oh, I'm like, yeah. Then he brought up the moms. He said, you want to bring up moms? Let's do this. Fair play. I talked about my mom in an interview last week, you know, talking to Michael Cole. But if you want to bring up moms, let's let's really dive into that.  I was like, yes, I'm like, thank you. Please bring this up. I didn't know which way he was going to go.  Your mother's lovely. She helped me chop Kevin Owens in a dark match.  You know, so I would hope you would keep the same respect. You know, for my mother as I keep the same respect for yours. But let's talk about my mom.  You're going to whoop me and put blood on your weight belt and give it to my mom. My mom's going to be trembling.  My mama's not scared of nobody.  I was like, there we go. I talked that talk for your mom to like, I'm ain't worried about you. Rocky. Another point Cody brought up, which I was glad that he did. He talked about the rock being essentially ring ready. He's like, I don't know, you know, what's going to happen at this year's WrestleMania, but rock, are you really prepared?  Because there's been a minute since you've had a true match, a true match where it went the distance. It's been a while and I don't know if you're ring ready.  I was like, okay, now he is really cooking. I like that. He's questioning, can the rock go in the ring anymore?   So I love that he did that. You got an LDS champ.  You're in that bag and I appreciate that.  He said, at WrestleMania, I don't think you're going to be the final boss. No, no, no, no. At WrestleMania, I think you're going to be Roman's side chick. And that is what I liked because right there, this is what I've been wanting. I want him to continuously, I guess you can say, try to pit these guys against each other because at the end of the day, Roman sees himself at the top, but Roman considers himself as the final boss. And I liked how he said, you're really just Roman side chick. Play that up. And I hope he continues that Friday.  Start playing the field. Like you, you know, you're really going to rent the rock, considering himself the final boss. If that's the case, then technically the rock is your boss. You work for the rock, essentially do that. Play that up. So Paul Heyman comes out there and he wants to kind of offer a situation on behalf of the bloodline and on behalf of Roman Reigns, a kind of an offering of sorts. He said, on Friday, he will show up alone to smack down to have their one on one interaction as long as Cody shows up to smack down alone. And if he agrees to it, there'll be no bloodline members. That's his word. That's what he sent Paul Heyman to say. No one will show up. And Cody said, you know what? Okay, I agree. But it's one of those things where it's like, if I'm Cody, I still have Seth. I still have Jay on standby because you can never really trust the bloodline. It definitely sounds like a setup. It sounds like a setup. I'm going to come alone if you come alone. It sounds like a setup for sure. And throughout the show, Seth and Jay was like, hey, I got your back if you need it. And I hope on camera is like, no, I'm good. But I hope he sends them a text. Just come by just in case. Just in case. So I hope that's the case. But either way, this is what we've been needing from Cody. And I loved it. I loved every second of this because he started talking somewhat of what may be going on behind the scenes. And I love the fact that he wasn't smiling. He didn't. He wasn't out there just joyful. No, he was letting it be known that rock. You've been talking all this noise.  You don't really know if you can even go like that in the ring. And if you can't, then all this was for nothing. You know, all this talk was for nothing. And you really Romans side piece, bro. So what are we talking about? I like that. Keep that energy for the rest of WrestleMania season. This is the Cody I need. That's it. This was great. This was a great, great response. Finally, he looked like he belongs in that situation. So what he says to Roman, that will solidify even more of his momentum could character wise. I need him to do the same thing to Roman.   So we'll see how this, how this plays out. Comment down below. Let me know if you guys enjoyed this promo second segment from Cody. I know I did. This is exactly what I wanted. And they just need to continue this. This is the Cody we need. But I appreciate all love and support. I'll see you in the next one. Peace. Peace.


Hello everyone, thank you for sticking with us that late in the day So my name is Niels. I'm a security researcher at Kudalski security I focus on privacy and I like to process Large data sets and I'm a huge Linux fan and today. I'm also here with my colleague Marco Hello Marco Macchetti. I work as a cryptographer for Kudalski security and my background is hardware design cryptanalysis and applied cryptography in general So what are we going to talk about today? This is a new attack that we devised against an algorithm to generate digital signatures, which is called ECDSA It's well known for being the digital signature algorithm beyond the Bitcoin blockchain This attack is called PolyNOS and we will give you some details of the attack and the things we tried to put it in Practice how we did it and what we learned in the process and there will be a brief demo and then we will give also some results and takeaways Let's head over to the introduction What is a digital signature? Basically digital signature is just a proof of knowledge of a private key, right? Everyone can verify your signatures with your public key, but only you can generate signatures with the private key So in a real world Your signature on a piece of paper is a proof of identity in the digital world The knowledge of your private key is a proof of identity and on blockchains the private key means ownership of the coins So everyone will try to steal your key If it's on backups paper nodes brain wallets and sometimes it's it's a strong key But it's protected with a weak password Digital signatures are mildly complex objects Signature algorithm is actually a set of three arguments. You have key generation, signature generation and verification Is there randomness inside all of this? Well, yes essentially key generation is a throw in the dice to obtain your key pair and randomness is also Present in the signature generation process along with your private key and a message you throw the dice again And you obtain a signature and verification is just a deterministic algorithm Well, if everyone wants your private key, is it possible to obtain your private key just by looking at the signatures? Well in general no, but under some assumption Yes, for example, if you generated the key with low entropy or with short seeds or using a brain wallet Maybe it's easy to guess But provided that the key is properly generated. Is it possible to obtain it? From your signatures. Well, remember there is randomness in the signature generation So there is more attack surface that we can explore In this paper we target the ECDSA algorithm This is probably the mostly deployed algorithm for digital signatures EC is for elliptic curve and elliptic curve is just a curve on a finite field with some parameters You all know the Bitcoin curve and the curve is also a set of points You can perform operation with the points you can add the points or multiply a point times a scalar This is called scalar point multiplication And why it is so useful because the scalar point multiplication It's easy to do in one direction, but it's hard to invert and this is called the discreet logarithic problem And this is the basis of the security for ECDSA So what is in detail? The set of algorithms for ECDSA. Well key generation is quite simple You just pick an integer D in a certain range And this is your private key and the public key you just obtain it through scalar point multiplication To generate a signature you ask the message first and then again you have to pick an integer in the same range Again uniformly at random and this is called the nonce and you have to have a different nonce for each signature Then the signature is just two numbers r and s and r is just the x coordinate of the point Which correspond to your nonce and s is obtained with the expression that is in the slide And verification is just a deterministic argument We are not very interested. So the takeaway is that you also performing key generation for every signature basically and if the nonces Can be predicted or some bits are known then you can use lattice attacks and You can also use a side channel attacks in combination with lattice attacks to retrieve the key So what you have to choose to to generate this the randomness is to choose your dice There are good dice like those RNGs based on cryptographic algorithms like H mark and a yes These are the good ones and then you have bad ones like algebraic generators LFSRs And then they are the awful ones like a fixed secret constant the run functions and these kind of things And once you choose the dice you also have to seed it with entropy Let's pick one of these bad RNGs the linear congruential generator This is that's been known for decades. I mean, it's it's a generator that is implemented basically everywhere It's in GMP of our libraries and it was also Referenced from the NIST documentation basically An SCG works in this way you generate a random number and then you apply a linear Relation to obtain new numbers with known coefficients a and b There is no bias in this so it's good But in fact it has been shown by by previous projects that you can use lettuce attacks To retrieve the private key So if your SCG is not full state, but it's 128 bit for example for the Bitcoin curve then with as low as 22 signatures You can get the private key, but here we want to go beyond What if you use a full state? SCG There are no results published so far on this and what if you increase the degree to quadratic or even cubic then? Lattice attacks are not possible and what if you keep the coefficients unknown secret then you you may think you are safe Right, but in fact no we show that we've pollinons We can retrieve the private key in a fraction of a second So how does it work? Basically, we don't care about the air part of the signature But we just look at the S part of the signature and we rewrite the expression of S To be a linear relationship between the nonce and the private key. What does it mean? It means that there is only one secret behind all your signatures You can think that it's the private key or you can think that is one of the nonces or maybe some partial information on more nonces and And so we want to exploit this this additional information that is in the S part of the signatures. How can we do it? Basically suppose that you are you are generating your nonces with an SCG So you generate a first nonce k0 and then you generate k1 k2 k3 in this way and Suppose that the attacker doesn't know a1 and a0 these are the secret coefficients But basically what we can do you can subtract the second equation from the first and the third from the second and we get this pair of equations here and Then we can solve for a1 in both and we can just equate the results and we get this expression here And we got a completely rid of the unknown secret coefficients and then This is the trick we can replace every nonce in this polynomial with the expression in D The static private key. So basically we get a polynomial which were the only unknown is D We find the roots of the polynomial. It's easy to do and we get the private key and We extended this to all n-degree polynomial relationships So we we are able to attack quadratic and cubic and higher degrees and this is a recursive algorithm It's a fast generic. It's not using lattice and if you want to take a look there is an e-print paper on this And then I add over to nice will explain how we put this into practice Thank You Marco So with all of that, how can we actually attack things in practice? Well to run the pollinance attack what you will need is at least four signatures But that's for the linear case if you want to target a higher degree relation Then you'll need more than four signatures in any case You'll need to make sure that these signatures are sorted by the time in which they have been generated on top of that You'll need to also have associated with each signature the message and the public key if you have all of that and The nonces were indeed generated in a biased way then you can retrieve the private key So where can we find the cdsa signatures in practice? Well one good source of that is Bitcoin In Bitcoin you have blocks and inside blocks you have transactions and these transactions They contain inputs and outputs and good for us these inputs are signed with e-cdsa So how do we get what we need? Well the public key and the signature They are contained in that input the message. However, you have to compute it and Computing that message is a very error-prone and under documented process You will need to use Fields from the current transaction, but also fields from previous transactions So you will need to keep track of all of that to compute the message So to actually get the data what you'll need is to let your Bitcoin client sync and download the whole chain and We did that it took about a day and we got all of the blocks until September last year and When it was synced we dumped all of the signatures the popkeys the messages by just reading the block files from disk and We with that we dumped about 700 million signatures We only covered the most common type of Bitcoin signature which is pay-to-public key hash Signatures, but that covers more than half of the the Bitcoin transactions Another good source is ethereum because transactions in ethereum are also signed with e-cdsa and In that case the signature is directly in the transaction the public key Not directly But there is actually a lesser known feature of e-cdsa called e-cdsa recover that you can use to compute the public key Based on the signature and the message plus a third value that I won't discuss but which is in the transaction The message also must be computed to compute the message the main challenge here is that ethereum has multiple protocol versions and These versions Change based on the block number meaning if you want to compute the message for a specific transaction Depending on what block this is the way you compute the message changes So if you want to dump all of the signatures for the whole chain You basically have to implement all of these ethereum versions of the protocol. So we did that If you want to have a look at the details, please check out our code. It's on github To actually get the data you'll need two things an execution client first such as gith and a consensus client Such as lighthouse you let these two sync so that it downloads the whole chain for us That took about three weeks and a ton of disk space But then we got all of the blocks until October last year when we did that We used the Jason RPC API of the execution client to get the blocks directly parsed in Jason and dumped the signatures popkeys and messages to a file and We dumped 1.7 billion signatures that way We also had a look at two more Signature sorry two more sources that are not blockchain related The first is a sample of TLS servers So why TLS servers well if you make a TLS handshake with a server It's gonna send you a signature and if the key is an ACDS a key you get an ACDS a signature So that's what we collected The second one is actually a set of data sets from the Minerva attack These are publicly available and these are ecdss signatures that were generated from TPMs smart cards and a bunch of software libraries So a few stats Here at the top you see that about 97% of Bitcoin wallets only generated Three signatures or less and at the bottom for Ethereum This is a bit less extreme, but only 77% of wallets generated Well 77% of wallets generated less than four signatures The rest however so those that have at least four signatures We can try to attack and that means there's at least a few million Wallets we can try to break with that attack So we implemented the attack in Sage and it's a multi-threaded implementation the code is out there on on github So just a quick demo So here we We start TLS server which is vulnerable. It's it's gonna generate biased nonces We capture the network traffic dump it to a pcap file Then we make TLS handshakes to that vulnerable server We stop the capture stop the server Then we read the traffic from that pcap file and Dump the signatures messages and public keys to a CSV file And finally we run the attack against the signatures in that file And that's it. We got the private key here So how did it go? Well, no, we didn't drive in in a new Ferrari today Well for Bitcoin and Ethereum we use the big machine with lots of cores and for Bitcoin the attack run for about two days and We were able to get the private key of about 700 wallets, but None of these had any money on them. So it looks like someone else had drained them before us For Ethereum we processed about 20% of the input file in two days and we only got two private keys so We stopped it because we thought the cost time ratio was not really worth it These two also had a zero balance here It turns out that all of the signatures that we used that that were generated by these vulnerable wallets Actually had repeated nonces and of course the pollinance attack is also going to Find repeated nonces because that's just a particular case of an LCG where the last Unknown coefficient is the only one which is non-zero and it's equal to that repeated nonce value But this could also have been found with a simpler attack For the two others TLS and Minerva This was actually pretty quick. So just a few seconds for the TLS set we had and for Minerva a few Hours so you could just run this on a laptop We did a n equals four five and six signatures because it was quick, but we got no successful successful attacks there so we wanted to see what happened to those stolen Bitcoin and We tracked that and we found that about a hundred and forty bitcoins were stolen in total So that's about 10 million USD at Bitcoin speak price We also saw that some of the addresses that received that stolen money Had readable names in them like one hack one gift something like this and there is one One idiot address that sent the money It's stole to another address called one Andreas and This address is owned by a guy who made significant Contributions to the Bitcoin ecosystem and when people found out about this in 2017 They decided to make a ton of donations to that guy So it looks like the one idiot guy stole Bitcoin to give it back to this guy as a donation for charity and We also saw on some public forums that people had been saying like how many Bitcoin they stole Due to repeated attacks repeated nonsense attack just publicly on the forum like oh, I have collected seven bitcoins so far so few takeaways Make sure you don't generate Signatures with the biased months and to make sure you don't do that You should use something that does deterministic nonce generation such as deterministic ECDSA or EDDSA We just barely scratch the surface here So there's plenty of other areas that we didn't touch and that you could apply this attack on And it's very easy for you to check your own wallet You don't need to have the whole chain if you just have the signatures for your wallet the pub key and the message You can run this on your laptop basically So for more research from our team, please visit our blog we have more exciting research on this topic and We hope that people get more secure by releasing our code. It's public. It's on github. Please check it out And thank you. Do you have any questions?