Hello everyone, and welcome back to the fire Escape cast. Dan finished,
poor on your wine. We're busy. I'm done. We could do this
at work kind of work. This is a it's a fremanu twenty one Sigman
Blanc a million from South Australia. Oh nice, you got a few Australian
wines in that first shipment, didn't you? I did, I did.
I enjoyed that first one a lot. We don't have a first leaf had
this week. I just like talking about wine. Guess what? Sorry what?
It's episode fifty. Yay, that's a big one, huge achievement,
fifty episode? Did this here podcast? How do you say fifty in French?
Send quint French quin? No, I don't. Someone got pissed at
me once, um when we were doing a GameSpot video Jake and I because
I did a fake Parisian accent and it like pissed off a French person.
Really Yeah, but you can. You can do a French accent and I
don't think it's offensive because what's the rule? Like, you can't understand the
rules, So I just don't do accents. I sure higher than us.
Yeah, you can punch up, so like it's cool. To make fun
of, like white you do like a Kennedy accent, like I'm drinking this
yeah wine. Yeah, like okay, as a good sovereign on Blanc there
because they're rich and powerful another yeah exactly, Yeah, yeah, they really
have it coming famous good Luck Family. Fifty episodes. Yeah, fifty episodes.
It took us fifty episodes to talk about the jfk assassination. We've talked
about Lincoln came up at some point, talk about Nixon. Dan brings up
Cosby and war and advertising all the time. Yeah, well, we tackle
the hard issues here. Yeah, that's why people come to us for the
policy. Yeah. Yeah, but yeah, holy shit, fifty episodes.
It's flown by. But also it feels like we've been doing this a very
long time. I don't I don't remember a time before fire Escape. I
this has become such a thing I look forward to every couple of weeks that,
yeah, let's do another fifty. I think Firescape lines up with Lockdown,
where it's tough to remember things before that. Oh yeah, we don't
talk about that. Yeah, there's a real dividing line, Yeah, for
sure. And I think somewhere in the sadness and came out good stuff.
We started this like a year after the lockdowns because like lockdowns were like what
March twenty twenty and then we started this in April twenty twenty one, so
we had about a year, although it was during Lockdown Lockdown stream and we
started. Yeah, but we did our streams, like our maybe year stream
in the Game of the Year stream during like Lockdown lock Well, the Goady
stream really solidified it for us. But I feel like, and we do
talk about this sometimes, we noodled on this concept for years. So the
inception of this podcast is actually probably well over five years old because down to
the name, yeah, like it's floating around that Petriot dish for years.
Yeah, We've been trying to escape for years and it only took a Pandemi
to make it happen. We basically were sitting around and it was the perfect
time to do something. Yeah. Yeah. Fifty episodes later and it's been
going well. We have we are doing a little fun thing as a celebratory
third segment. We'll see how long we go with video games and with just
shooting the breeze. But well, two things later on this episode, we're
going to do a sixteen bracket tournament. Do we want to tell them what
it is right now? Sixteen? Yeah, let's let's choose it. Here.
I'm holding a bracket. You can clearly see this. Yeah, oh
yeah, that's you can see high definition HDR four K version of the sixteen
bracket tournament for Dan. Tell them, well, with a Dead Space remake
having just come out, and are four remake just about to come out,
we got remakes on the brain. So we got sixteen entries here to determine
the greatest video game remake of all time, and we will be debating it
later on in this episode. Sure, we won't argue at all. No,
And I'm just excited about you made the the bracket, and the bracket
is half of the war because you decide which games are going to be pitted
against each other? Did you randomize that a loose seating? Now, listen,
this is the thing. This is the thing I used to do.
Seating. That's the most like it's a moky Listen at file this shady ass.
No explanation I've ever heard. There's no malarkey here. I did this
several times with the New Day podcast, where the New Day would determine the
best action movie of all time or the best TV show of all time.
And I'm a bracket master. I know all the brackets science. I used
to do this. I know how to make it fair. So I did
do seeds where it's like, okay, well we know for sure that like
Resideval remake is going to be one of the big ones. So that's the
number one seed. I at no point directly decided this will face this.
I just kind of made the seed list and then then the bracket science fell
where it fell. Well, it's yeah, based on a conversation we had
earlier today, I'm willing to bet you put a pretty beloved remake far down
in the seating. Well, I don't. I won't spoil it. We
shouldn't spoil it, but I think it's I'm skeptical, and I think that
that could be the first war is yeah, what dan pitted against each other?
And I also love that you like are so easy to say, Hey,
if you don't like it, it's because of bracket science. I don't
think I'm gonna blame bracket science for your Look, it's not my work that
the first matchup we're going to debate is the Resident Evil two remake against Final
Fantasy seven remake. Oh okay, so it's god, yeah, that's science.
That's because you seed in Final Fantasy seven remakes super low because you don't
like it. Who's to say, how the science? Do you have the
equations in front of you? No? You know? Do you You don't
have equations? You put them on only one. Okay, there's an algorithm.
I went to a website algorithm. Yes, there is. There's a
seating. I did not put them against each other. The seating did,
so you started get in front against Dan. You're talking to someone who has
covered sports professionally. I know how brackets and sports. The sixteen seed plays
the one seed in each bracket. So I think you rated Final Fantasy seven
remake extremely low. If matters number sixteen, I know rules you Okay,
I let's move on. We have another thing if you did not catch it
already, a if you're a patron and have not seen it, we have
a bonus episode up that went up last week. Dan, Mary, Jake
Decker and I played Sons the Forest, or rather Jake showed us how to
halfway respectfully play Sons of the Forest. It was super fun. That's only
for the Video Tier patrons. If you're not one yet, go sign up.
You'll get that bonus episode, and then if you already are and you
missed it, go watch it. We'll be putting up social clips. Well
I guess we will have already put up social clips. But it's pretty dumb.
It's very fun and dumb. And if you're just joining the Video Tier,
go back and check out some of the other stuff we did. We
did the road trip, we did the one at Mike's place, and Hoboken,
we did the Canady Tier ranking. So there's plenty of bonus video specific
episodes we've done in the past, so go back and check those out.
Yes, but in the meantime, Oh no, we don't talk about video
games yet. What you guys been up to. I feel like it's been
like, what two weeks since we last talk. That's usually how it goes.
Yes, okay, can I bring this up right away? Oh?
I want to say, yeah, no spoilers. I'm gonna because I want
people to be able to hear this without worry of Creed three spoilers. Maybe
it's people might not want any information. I want to give some information,
well information about the movie at all. Want. I want to get your
thoughts on something. She's got her steam ready to distract herself. No,
we really won't spoil anything because we should do a bonus episode or just wait
until like next episode because it just came out. Yeah, yeah, okay,
So here's what I wanted, Mike, you and I have seen it.
I watched like ninety rocky movies that we can, you know, preparing
for it. I am trying to figure out if I technically can say that
I've cried during a movie now. So I need to ask you guys this
because for the last half hour of the movie, my face was wet.
Yeah, that's cry, that's those are tears. But okay, so here's
the things d well. No, it's a little more confident is the salty
discharge. I want to unpack this because first of all, I was pretty
high, just come from the cheesecake factory and had an edible, So sounds
like a good night. It was a great night, yeah, and so
but it wasn't because I was associated tears and crying was madness. No,
and I was just for the last half hour dangerous levels of hyped up.
I was fucking energy coursing through my veins, wanting to just jump and yell
and pump my fist and stuff like that. And so I was just overwhelmed
with how cool everything was. And I did notice around the time that like
that's not spoiler, there's montages and a Rocky movie were a Creed movie.
I started getting so hyped up I didn't notice my start myself start to kind
of like well up, Like my eyes were getting wet and I went to
go rub my eyes and then they started kind of hurting because I had just
eaten buffalo wings. Oh my god, And so I had buffalo wing sauce
on my fingertips and I rubbed it into my eyes. So does that like
I wasn't like when I think of crying, I think of like you're like
breathing and like you're you're heaving a little bit to your body's moving, and
like I was just my face was getting wet and I was really excited.
Does that does that count? I think? So? Yeah, I cry
way more during movies when I'm overcome with Like it's not a sad thing,
it's more of a triumph thing or like this is emotional as hell, excited,
like when fucking Rohan charges in Return of the King. It's not a
sad thing. It's just more like one of those things where you like are
ashamed to cry? Are you like, you're like my face is ejaculated.
You can just say it. He's the boys don't cry guy that I always
heard growing up. I have no problem like, I think people should cry
openly. I think people should be open with their emotions and discuss them.
There is no shame whatsoever. If I was downright sobbing tears squirting out anime
style in the theater, I wouldn't be ashamed to say it. I'm just
saying because of the weird circumstances of being high and hyped up and buffalo wing
sauce my eyes, does that you might know? I mean, you might
have just been like crying from like being overcome with a lot of emotions,
and you didn't really notice it when it started to happen because you were high.
Okay, I don't, I don't know. I think I think I
did. I think I can say that I cried during Creed three. I
think I so fucking hyped up that I was tearing up several times. No
that, yeah, I did too, But it's no spoilers, but oh
boy, we can say I like that movie quite a bit. It's the
most I've ever felt emotion in a movie ever. I'll say that, Okay,
interesting, yeah, and I will say that that is a positive.
Like, I fucking like, I loved the shit out of this movie.
It was so fucking good. Yeah, Michael B. Jordan's first director credit.
Yeah, good work they gave They gave it to the right guy.
He's the right guy. I mean, becausetallone. It wasn't just acting,
it was he was directing and writing and stuff. It was his baby,
Like Michael B. Jordan clearly fucking gets it, like he's the guy to
carry the storch yep um and holy shit. No, okay, yes,
yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that's enough said for now because it
just came out, what a week ago at this point, yeah, two
weeks ago. Tremendous movie. We should figure out maybe just next episode.
We'll talk more about it once people get more of a chance. I watched
Creed one this weekend because I wanted to be a little in the loop so
I can talk about that week two. What do you think. I think
it's pretty good. I like am I allowed to spoil Creed one or should
I not do that? I like that there were two battles going on simultaneously,
and I thought that was really special and a nice way to like and
make it more modern, right, which is like in the very original Rockies
or whatever, it's basically all about Rocky and um, yeah, he's got
like a girlfriend or whatever, but it's like it's really about his own battle.
This one was a was a dual battle. This is about him.
This is also still about Rocky, like like coming to terms with the fact
that he can still fight. He's fighting a different battles, fighting like,
you know, sickness, And I thought that was actually extremely motivating for so
many people who've probably dealt with a very personal, very difficult battle like sickness
or even like you could consider it now algory for like so many different things,
right, like fighting depression or alcoholism. Like, there's so many internal
battles that we fight, And I thought it was very smart to have a
physical fight paired with an emotional mental fight. It's also physical because he's sick,
but what he was actually beating was the fact that he didn't want to
do it. He didn't want to deal with it, and I think that
shows both. I mean it shows like at the hospital, like Creed is
like running the stairs while you know, yes, that's one's going through chemo.
Yeah it's oh no, I freaked the fuck out when the bikes are
doing their thing when the music comes in. Oh my god, I could
run the fucking wall when that happens. Yeah, I thought that was cool.
I was very impressed with the way it was shot and acted. Um.
I thought some of the shots of Philly were a little like I think
they were trying to make it very serious, but I couldn't help but laugh,
Like the part where he's like running and then there's like eighty bikers next
to women. They're all doing wheelies and they were just like, this is
Philly, and I was like, oh my god, that's the coolest thing
I've ever seen in a movie. It's also, yeah, Wheelie's next to
him, like Sir days Hils. It's just a ridiculous scenario. But they
understand, though, is that Like Michael B. Jordan obviously cares about this
franchise in these movies, but he doesn't care enough to get in shape.
Like I think that's the fucked up thing. Yeah, he really needs to
get rid of that flab for what the fuck? It's really embarrassing. Jonathan
Majors, same thing. Jesus, guys, you're in a big movie.
Do hold on. Guy. If I could take both of them at once,
then they didn't get shredded enough. I would watch The Creed four if
it was both of them fighting. You what one plot would get us to
that point? Like what would have had to happen in the story for me,
or like me playing a character that they both fight at the same burned
down the gym they're training in and kill like twelve people. Yeah, and
then you go up and he just like pee on their shoes and it's lacking
the face. Yeah. See, Jonathan Major's I could take no he I've
never seen him in anything. He's fucking awesome like that is a nuanced villain
antagonist, like he was fucking great. Twenty twenty three is already a huge
year for him. So um. I think a lot of people would know
him from Lovecraft Country, the HBO show, which is not that great,
but he was good in it. From the two episodes I saw. Now
he's the villain in the New ant Man movie. So uh, and then
or sorry and then if you were more into like, um, if you
didn't watch Lovecraft Country. He was also in the Last Black Man in San
Francisco, and he's in like two more movies that he's already finished shooting that
are coming up. So he kind of got swallowed up by the Marvel hype
machine pretty early in his What What in his Hot streak, But now Creed
three is just like this showcase for him that's still like larger than life but
very good. Like he is an absolute critical part of the movie. He's
a primary antagonist, but his story is is different than pretty much any Rocky
antagonist in the entire Rocky Creed had an antagonists Pretty Ricky. Yeah. Really,
it's like kind of more legacy. He's kind of just kind of fighting
the expectations of his legacy. Rocky says it, He's like, look in
the mirror, that's your enemy right there. That's a guy you're fighting against.
Look in the miror, that's just a boxer. Yeah. After him
and his mom haven't talking, haven't spoken for a while, and then he
opens the gift box before the Pretty Ricky fight and it says Creed on one
side and Johnson and the other I was like, yeah, that's when I
started crying. All you cried then too, I cried Creed one? Is
I set this during dan stream? I'm convinced. Well, again, I
don't want to spoil thoughts in Creed three before, like leaving aside my ranking
of Creed three, which I haven't really given a ton of time to think
about yet, Creed one might be my favorite Rocky movie. I think it's
like the best interpretation of the whole series. And also, yeah, Michael
B. Jordan, Ryan Coogler clearly knew what they were doing when they took
this on. But yeah, yeah, anyway, goosie Creed three everybody,
so we could talk about it next episode. And so they keep making more
of these movies forever, Like yeah, have they said if there's like I
don't think anything's been said about it, but like, yeah, I think
it's doing pretty well, so getting these I forget the stat it was the
first sports movie since like X year to make one hundred million in its opening
weekend. Hell yeah, which I don't know the last year that happened,
But that's still a lot of money for sports movie and it's opening weekend.
Yeah, Yeah, yeah, I appreciate it. It's great. Um.
Outside of that, yeah, Dan you I joined your stream for the Frank
Stallone documentary Lucky Me fucking Jesus Christ Mary, do you see this? No,
I fucking did a thing where I made a wheel and I was going
to watch a bunch of great rocky movies on Friday night before I saw Creed
three and as a gage fucking section on the wheel. So one out of
sixteen chance was there is a documentary on Amazon Prime about Frank Stallone, Sylvester
Stallone's brother who had a shitty music career, And the first spin I did
was fucking Frank Stallone documentary, So we had to watch that, and uh
boy, but then we got a bunch of good rocky movies after that.
But boy, that was left was that like the whammy where it was last,
It was like the one thing that you didn't want it to land on
it, So whammy that lasts over an hour. Imagine like the pressure like
animation. It's just like a whammy, just shitting on the screen for fucking
You could have just done some of those being boozled, but you put a
fucking one hour documentary in there. Forever. I did not realize until watching
that, like I saw him in the documentaries, like he looks so familiar,
and well, yeah, now that I see it, But like ask
Amanda at some point or something, I have this weird talent for remembering like
nobody's in movies. And sometimes I'll meet C list actors in New York and
go up to them and be like, hey, I enjoyed you in this.
They're like, why the fuck do you know that's me? Like it's
I don't. But then again, I can't remember like huge people's names.
Um. Watching that documentary, I was like, I think he was in
Tombstone, the Kurt Russell Widert movie with Val Kilmer. You remembered that,
but I didn't bring it up because it would have been a weird thing to
bring up and be wrong about. While everybody's talking on the stream, and
all of a sudden they showed the clip. I was like, holy shit,
it was him. If you've seen Tombstone, he's like the dude that
accuses doc Holiday toward the beginning of cheating. And then now that you see
it, you'll be like, oh, right, he does kind of look
like Sly. I just knew him because Norma is to make fun of him
all the time. I didn't recognize him from any of those movies I've never
seen. I don't think I've seen norm make fun of him. Oh it's
like it was a recurring weekend up date, bid non secuit or rude constant
bring him up the bit where Norm is. He's pulling norm out of the
car crash. Oh, we're stallone hosted, and Norma's is bringing up all
the shitty movies Stallone's been and as he's getting stop stop stop her, my
mom will shoot was terrible. Yeah, it's super dumb, and then slogans
he gets emotional because it turned out of you saw VHS tape next to Norm
as he like dies in the car crash and it's like, oh it was
it was rambo. He was he he was written a rambo And he comes
He's like, no, no, it's a porno. It's rambone. Oh
yeah, yeah, I remember that. Now. I want to see,
like Jonathan Major's host, what's French for fifty sin quant? It was kind
of close chinqut big bay. You're just making noises Quin. It's our fiftieth
episode, so I said capitol sin Quinta. How do you say episode in
French? You know, episode like fiftieth episode sank con? What would episode?
Oh my god, if you do that in France, you're gonna get
bopped. Welcome to tw twans Quin. You sound like Cartman trying to do
it. Sounds like he knows that it's not the language, but it's trying
to get away with it to people who don't know the language and be like,
yeah, I know French that he get away with it. Have you
been to France, Dan h No, Mary, Mary, you have right,
No, I've never been to France. This will be my first year.
What is it's just episode? Is that a French word? Oh?
Apparently episode is just a French word? Episode? Is French? Or?
I don't know that's it's that sounds pronounced, it's a hominem and that okay,
that sounds good? Okay, Chase baby, she yeah, what what's
fiftieth episode of the best show ever created? How do you say that?
I'm just kidding foofoo ohop good night. Um yeah, we I fucking love
France. We talked about this, We've talked about this. Oh, I've
heard plenty of you. Of course, I've talked about Paris. You've You've
come back from France and numerous times since I've known you and telling me about
the wines and meats you eight or whatever over there. Hell yeah, boy,
it's a really good spot. We're I wanted something good to do all
the time. I got that tower. There is a tower from Twisted Metal.
Yeah, not Twisted Metal. It's from Twisted Metal. The Eiffel Towers
and Twisted Metal. Twist Metal two. You can blow it up and it
falls down and opens up a whole section of the rooftops. Yeah, forgot
theah it leans on the rooftops, right, Yeah it does. Yeah cool.
I haven't played in Twisted Metal. Is that new one still happening?
I believe? So that was pretty far along last I heard. Yeah,
yeah, I'd like I'd like a new Vigilante eight? Yeahant of that?
Do you ever play that? In sixty four? Well? I had the
PlayStation person your Dreamcast one too. That'd be fun. M A remake of
that. We should we should rank remakes. We should do that. That'd
be good. Perhaps later. Hell yeah, I just saw something funny.
I don't know why I did this. Um Google English to French translation fifty
nineteen. I googled how to say fifty in French and it came up,
and then click on the like auto speaker fifteen nineteen fifty nineteen French to English
to French, and then listen to the French translation suck on these nets?
Su Wait? What is that? What it sounds like when you say suck
on d nuts? Well, we gotta come back with that because I already
did. Yeah, we're back. Wait, so hold on, explain this
to me. You googled fifty to nineteen. No, just fifty nine fifty
nineteen, like spell out fifty nineteen fifty nineteen French or English to French,
English to French and have it say it out loud. Okay, fifty to
nineteen quanta It does sound like suck on these nuts a little bit nuts.
Yeah, you can take that to France. Dan Secondi's nuts. What would
you like for your order? Serious? Wait? Hold see if I can
tell me if you guys can ye, Mary, did you find that on?
I did? I did so. In the previous segment where you were
kept trying to get um Amanda to say fifty in French, I was like,
I would like to know how to say fifty in French. So I
googled how to say fifty English to French, and then this video came up
and I was like, it's kind of it's kind of interesting. I gotta
click on it sounds like stuck on these nuts. Yeah, it does.
Google really came through for me. I'm not trying to do this as a
purposely clean segue. Do you guys remember an Octopath Traveler one? There was
a squirrel who's a nuts squirrels catphrase my character that talked in the game.
I had been playing Octopath Traveler during the review period and then at embargo I
put a video up and there's an squirrel, a flying squirrel in the first
game who had an attack called D's nuts. Do you remember that? Yeah,
it's officially what it says. Yeah, I mean the translation. It's
not d e Z right, Yes it is. Do they do nuts to
the Z? No? Okay, well it's not real. I don't know
what the actual colloquialism would be for how they spelled that one, but yeah,
I just remember the translators. They must have just took that and ran
with it. I doubt with the Japanese version, maybe it did. Does
the D's Nuts thing pre date. I assume all of our high school careers
and beyond we've heard the D'SE Nuts jokes, right, yeah, so I'm
the oldest, so it dates back at least to like the late nineties.
I wonder if, like my dad heard these nuts jokes in the seventies.
You know, I thought it was like a result of the internet. Man,
when I was in high school, the Internet wasn't really that type of
Oh it was happening in high school for you. Yeah, and junior high.
So we're talking like ninety six ninety seven, I was probably hearing d
nets. Yeah, that was a couple of years before. Um, yeah,
I don't know, I didn't hear. I think by the time I
started hearing it was dated. Oh okay, do the kids? Are the
kids into the these nuts jokes? I have? These days? Gen Z
listeners, we got a bunch of them apparently, are you guys in the
D's Nuts? We blocked them from the podcast. No we love them,
No we don't. We're one, which I've I love. They don't know
how to work. I'm one. I've heard like everybody who emailed in telling
us they were gen Z like signed off with like tech CEO Now, I
don't know making that text CEOs nowadays. Um no, we've got age twenty
four. You've got a contingent of gen Z listeners. Yeah, I'm one
of them, but you are no cap No, you're not. No,
I'm not your millennial. We're all millennials. I'm thirty one years old.
I'm not gen Z. I think we're all millennials. I'm an old millennial
gen Zer getting close to the point where they can they're going to be looking
at the generation below them and saying they don't like them. Soon maybe they
can finally get a job. I think boomers say that about us. No
generation likes the one below them, Oh never, absolutely not. Yeah,
yeah, because every generation has it easier the one after, and so we
have to be bitter about they didn't have to deal with what we had to
deal with. Aren't trying ideally ideally? Right? Like? Why do you
forge a path to make it easier for the people to come out harder for
these punk kids. You don't forge a path, you die. I don't
think baby boomers made things that much. I'm pretty sure baby boomers made things
pretty bad in a lot of ways. That's My understanding is that they made
it much harder for everyone. Yeah, thanks Paul. Yeah, he's gonna
go ninety three. That's that's like the tail end of baby boomers. The
war ended in nineteen forty five, people were writing eighteen years. Generations don't
last for one year. He oh he's born sixty. Ah, okay,
I guess not so what what would he be? What a piece of shit?
Sorry? Generation the world? I don't think we're in the video game
section anyway, So I'm gonna vamp on this. He's done nothing wrong.
I don't know what. He's pure. He's pure, perfect person. Ye,
And we're just we're just getting him for doing nothing, and he's been
perfect his whole life. He's making a harder for the kids today to buy
baseball cards because he hoards them all I would have assumed. And he litters
with cigarettes because because I'm like, wait, I think I'm not talent but
close to talent of millennial, like lower millennial. But then my oldest sibling
is the one above that. Jen, Why why I think why he's younger
than millennial? Really we've tried to figure this out several times, and X
was like the nineties, Jen X my brothers jen X Okay, he's ten
years older than me, and I believe the brother writer under him is jen
X as well. And then the next brother and my sister and I are
millennials, okay, jen X were like coming to age in the nineties.
It's based on when you you start growing pubes, right, like, because
I started sprouting around two thousand from the while that was a gross thing to
say. I don't even like. And I was not getting pubes when I
was nine sprouting. I was getting some hormones when I was nine years old,
for sure. That's no, that's third grade, not at all.
Wow, I was like fifth grade. I was like eleven twelve normal age.
Nine is too young a cook for longer. Yeah, go back in
the video in fifth grade, I was in the back. Still have never
seen it, and I am glad to have never seen it. Oh dude,
it's so hot. I was in the back of the room, just
jay in it furiously. I got suspended. It'd be weird. Yeah.
And then when they like got pissed and he was like, what, it's
hormones. I'm going through puberty. Watch the video, teach, I bet
it looks like weird. CG. What I'm sprouting over here really a grotesque
term that I said on accident. It's it's dude, I dreaded it.
I was such a like ball hair. No the video and like getting ready
to go on this because they told us the date we're gonna watch it so
parents would know when to give the talk before it. And my dad gave
me the talk the night before and like he's a great dude, he's very
but like so the way he framed at all was like it's really, it's
just really this just like beautiful process. And I was like, Dad,
nothing about this is beautiful. Don't bullshit me right now. Tell me straight,
tell me I'm always going to have a boner for the next six years
straight, and tell me I'm not gonna be able to get rid of it
unless everyone's like it's so beautiful. Yeah, it's super beautiful. Just do
what my dad didn't wait like four years after your kid learned all this stuff
and was masturbating copiously before telling him kind of and then just laughing because sex
stuff makes him laugh. And then am I told you this? Yeah something
okay, Yeah, basically talking about the penis getting bigger, and I pretended
to be surprised, and he was like ha, and then he just drove
off and fucking never told me anything about wall he was did he peel out?
Were Kansas? I remember the loved this camaro. I'm like fucking sixteen
years old than masturbating for four years. And he's like, so when you
lay down with a woman, uh, you know, if you're attracted to
her, your penis gets bigger. And I was like bigger and he uh
bigger. I just started He just started laughing and then that was the end
of the conversation. He didn't elaborate. He just was laughing at my reaction
to a penis getting bigger. Who needs more than that? Um, that's
all that you need to know, all the major beats. When I was
twelve, I was like, I hope my get smaller. Get getting tired
of lugging this hog around every day? Is a workout when you're holding a
twenty pound python. Anyway, that's what it was. The bell it was
ringing. Manna Silla has not seen mc gruber. And I'm married. I'm
marrying for the wedding or what I'm officiating. I get to decide what happens
up there. Yeah, I guess, please be silent for an hour and
a half play do it? Kind of like if Catholics, if you marry
you have to like convert to Catholicism before you can get married. Or it's
like she just official she has to convert to Mcgruberism before you'll officially marry her.
Yeah, it's god, it's like, what fucking seven months away and
she still hasn't seen it. Please promise me that's going to be fixed before
then, I promise. Yes. Okay, I don't know, but we
watch recently Join you too in marriage without that, we watched what were we
holding off on for a while, and we finally watched it. I don't
remember. I showed her, Um, forgive me if we talked about this.
I showed her her ghost Dad Ghost Dad. Yeah, the Cosby movie.
I didn't even know there was a Cosby movie. I don't like his
joke. It's not fun for me. Mary seems to like it that I'm
having a good time. Majority rules literally never heard of that movie before in
my life. He's had that in his pocket, waiting for the perfect momently
Cosby movie. Yeah, I don't know. I actually truly don't know.
He's a dad who's a ghost. That's the premise. Yeah, he liked
dies and then he come What else could the premise be if that's the title
of it. Yeah, a good point. A ghost dad, Yeah,
the revolutionary words a period. There's a difference between a ghost dad and a
dad ghost. You ever see All's Quiet on the Western Front. It's nothing
like that. It's about a dad who's a ghost who was also Bill Cosby.
Have you guys seen a pocluse? Now this movie is nowhere near a
pocluse, now that it is not even on the same plane movie Deer Hunter.
You know the movie Deer Hunter where all these these uh these American men
are like reeling from the horrors of the Vietnam War and the pointlessness off a
green mile. I mean, this is like all the other end. Yeah,
I thought you would have learned that you how to have sex in the
woods, And that's what I would assume kind of sparked out for you.
You think I learned how to have sex in the woods. Yeah, I
figured that your love of trees, oh like worn thing where you found woods
born and then thought I'll try that right now, Like that's weird. Developmental
cycle physiological thing that happened, because that's a puberty in the woods. I
was in the woods a lot as a pubescent kid. Uh huh, I
was in a puberty state in the woods certainly as well. Yeah, I
think we were all in a puberty state in the woods. That's not like
a very unique experience anyway. If that wasn't attempt at a transition because we
all played no no, no, no, we're not in video games yet
we redoubled that. Now I'm curious. Now I'm curious. Did you guys
have like one? Yeah? They say like sometimes you get one transition.
I knew where you were going with it the whole time. You get one
really bad? Uh? Was I guess symptom whatever of puberty? Did you
guys get a bad one? Some people get like the body out or some
people get We talked about my acne. I mean, the only thing I
had was the morning wood thing all the time, because it was always frustrating
because the PlayStation was in my room and my step dad was always playing Command
and Conquer on my PlayStation, So every fucking time I woke up, I
had to wait for my bone or to subside. I still get wood.
Yeah, yeah, but not like yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I we talked about it on the Beast Cast a while ago, because they
used I sent them the photo of me with it. I had it.
I'm not what I'm gonna say. I had incredibly bad acne. I remember
this photo and what I said, what you heard was I had pretty bad
acne. What I told you was, I had the worst acne I've I
don't know that I've seen no one I know has had worse acne than I
had. It was bad. I didn't act and everything, and it's like
a miracle like that. I'm I don't know how I don't have more like
scarring from it. How removed from that were you when I met? It
would have started to actually finally go away in tenth grade? Okay, I
would have been sixteen, So five years I met you, like twenty one
or something, last four or five years away from that? Yeah, Why
did I seem like an acne kid when you met me? No, not
at all. I was just wondering, like how close it was, because
I forget about how like young you were when I met that probably wasn't that
far away from that, Yeah, because I remember Hanson was twenty five.
I think he was the closest staffer in age to me. Yeah, we
were all pretty much like mid twenties when we got hired. Yeah, I
was the opposite. I wanted more puberty. I was. I was a
bean, and I had no curves, and I had no boobs, and
I had nothing. And I I mean, if you looked at me,
you would have been like, she's she's still got a cook. But I
was sixteen and I was doing my best. God damn hits between boys and
girls because like boys get like well, I guess girls get to act me
too. But like I guess some girls want the curves and stuff like you
did. Like guys don't really have that like good positive Chames thing where it's
like deeper voice. Some people have well like a low percent. Yeah,
you don't have anything that's really uncomfortable that happens to you during um puberty.
That's like you know, monthly and for the rest of year. Oh that
thing too, Yeah, you really get it uneasy. It sounds like,
God, women have it so easy. It's just so easy. That's what
you both took away. It's talking about how easy it is to be a
woman at all. We all had it hard during puberty, so random boners
and it's so tiring being a man. Sometimes I'm exhausted on your behalf.
Thank you, thank you for empathizing. No, but seriously, girls on
average go through puberty way sooner as well. Right, So even the girls
that do get like curves, I think I feel like a lot of them
get them before like they want them. That's what skyrockets puberty. Like,
oh my god, everything's different. Ouga, I gotta go see some Bond
movies. Yeah, instead of my voice dropping my face just like pooped out
acne everywhere. I guess I didn't really have much of anything really, Like,
I didn't have any weird I didn't have any physical things like this.
Yeah. I was never stinky out of the womb, bearded and trying to
eat as much taco bell as possible. Yeah, I don't think, Like
I didn't get like a ton of hair like I gotta I'm a hairy dude
now except for where the hair should be. But you know, like I
didn't really have that. It wasn't all of a sudden I woke up and
it was like, oh, what's all this? Yeah, I didn't rather
broken, It didn't have the broken voice stuff. Really, oh, broken
voice. My voice still cracks sometimes on this show. Yeah, it just
they never stopped. I can't replicate it, but it'll happen at some point.
He's trying to but the noise gates, no gates getting him. Don't
have two voices. No, that's an animal sound. That's fine. But
I'm glad. I'm glad you guys made it through puberty. You're here now.
We we did just fine. We all. I think for the best,
because if I grew up smoke and cool and hot, maybe I would
have been a more of a pain in the butt to deal with. But
because I was a skinny little bean that nobody was very interested in, I
found other things to occupy my brain, and that maybe made me a bit
more like reasonable to deal with later on in life. So I have no
regrets about being a weirdo in my teen years. And I also think it's
interesting to think that sometimes people say that your teen years are like your glory
years, and that you'll look back on them very fondly and that you'll,
like, you know, wish that you looked the way you did when you
were a teen. I have no desire to look like I did when I
was a teen. I actually think that I lived my life in constant excellence
and my thirties have been really good to me, and I just look better
every decade, and much like the sun, I will just get hotter until
I dietes have been my best decade and I'm only one year into them,
almost supod free, almost nine, and it's easily been the best. Yeah.
But like even though I didn't have like the physical weirdness in the acting
and all that stuff with puberty eat like I was, I'm gonna make clear
I was deeply uncomfortable socially. It was not a fun time just because I
wasn't like breaking down an acting and stuff. That was the most like I'm
just getting punched in gym every day, you know. Like that was like
I don't know who my friends are, I don't know how to talk to
people. I don't know how to talk to girls. Know that that's being
deeply uncomfortable socially. I think that's getting punched. This guy's fucking annoying.
Get him like you're like, why am I so unattractive? And it's just
like that's not why you're getting the ship beating out of you. You're probably
like annoying people. Know. Everyone else is talking about goddamn football and stuff,
and I'm like, what about metal gear and Monday night raw stuff?
Get him guy? Yes, we're all babes now though, take that bullies
all right, Mary, now for real, transition us and then we'll go
to break and then we'll come back. All right. You know what wasn't
hot at all? What my character and Sons of the Forest. We were
all a bunch of old men, and I was the oldest old man.
I don't even know what I looked like. You were definitely the oldest of
the crew. Wait, hold on, shut up for a second, so
we can put some ads in right now. Okay, we're back. Let
me get that. You can tell we've been doing this for fifty episodes.
Wait, shut up for a second. Add it's probably some pizza hut ad
or something unbelievable. Okay, So, uh, Sons of the Forest.
We all played it. We decided to invest some time into it, make
it a little exclusive video. But also I would say what really inspired this
was that Jake had played it and was willing to kind of take us on
a bit of a tour um and so we all got to run around and
make camp, make fire, we all got to make tools, and I'll
just kind of curious, like now that that experience has happened, because we
actually not at one point during this video do we say do we like this
game? We never reflected it, But I mean that could have just has
easily been because just hanging out doing bullshit with you guys about That's the thing
about multiplayer games is that you get the leg up of the game being fun
automatically because you're playing with people that you like. Gus, I'm playing with
you guys, I'm already going to have fun. It could have been a
really shitty game, and as long as we're connected and we're able to interact
with each other, it's probably gonna work out. I like the ability of
making camp and knowing that at any point in time, like a weird,
creepy crawley naked guy could come around the camp. That kept me on my
toes and I was just like very actively trying to build the fort because I
didn't want any naked men to come up to our camp. I was I
was protecting in the camp. And also the three legged woman that popped up
woman we were trying to protect. No, I think Mike, Oh yeah,
I didn't know we were such a protector. We just thought she was
creepy. And I think Mike and I killed her with X oh, I
annihilated her. She okay, Jake was telling us when you're in the helicopter
at the very beginning, you are looking through these like missing personnel files and
you could see her. I didn't make the connection until we had massacred her
that that was her, Like, I still don't know whether that is plot
driven or a bug. And she wasn't supposed to have three arms. I
think that's supposed to be the case. Oh really, okay, I thought
we just killed an innocent person. No, I think that's part of the
mystery. And then we just ended the mystery by just killing her. The
mystery would you would she have followed us? Maybe if we didn't you rip
one off? Yeah, and then you have an extra hand. That was
fun at the end, chasing you with a leg. But that the thing
is that game would be genuinely creepy playing by yourself. Yeah. But also
I think when you add all the different people and there's the like building element,
like there's such a fun like I don't know, Like Jake's back there,
like being diligent and building a cabin and stuff. Well, Mike and
I are like killing a three legged woman with an axe, and Mary's like
chasing squirrels around, like content squirrel like creepy thing is happening around you.
But then everyone's kind of trying to do their own thing. Yeah, I'm
trying to survive together, right, But yeah, playing that alone by yourself,
I can imagine that would be scary. If you're trying to make the
shelter and it's quiet and there's a babbling brook nearby, it's sort of peaceful,
but then all of a sudden, this like humanoid thing crawls out of
nowhere and jumps on you. I don't know, I want to. I
kind of am curious. I want to, Well, we have resume before
remake now, but I want to play more Sons of the Forest and see
if it's scary by myself. I think it's a nice experience, Like I
like the idea of like running around building stuff and everybody gets to do their
own thing. And I remember when I played a similar game, not similar
because you're on a boat, but you're trying to live on a boat and
like avoid sharks from eating you and stuff like that. You just focus on
a task and typically, yes, yes, exactly right. I love raft.
My task was fishing and then cooking meals out of the fish, and
the more intricate the dish. So if you like, sure, you can
like cook a fish on the fire, but eventually you get like a kitchen
and you can make like stew with mushrooms and fish and stuff, and that
gives everybody way more boosts. That's my jam. I love being that person.
So once I realized how I could stab a squirrel and I cooked it
for you guys, I was like trying. I was slipping squirrel meat in
your pockets, and then I was like, man, I gotta find some
I was like foraging mushrooms. I wanted to be like Zelda, where I
would go to the pot and I would be like, I got mushrooms,
I got these like weird sticks that smell good, and I have squirrel meat
and I'm making like a little dish and I want it. I wanted to
like make a fancy dish, you guys, and I couldn't. I do
think that that type of game does shine when people can have rolls like that,
because I've tried a couple of the ones that like blew Up Steam Overnight
and like Valheim and v Rising and stuff, and like, you know,
I've played enough of those too understand what the appeal is. But I did
them solo for the most part. And when it's all on you, when
like okay doing the combat stuff and building the cabin or whatever and all the
survivals on you, Yeah, it's kind of a lot versus Like if I'm
with a group like we work for that video, I can kind of just
be this like add agent of chaos and just run around and it's like,
I don't know, I hear I killed the cow. Do you want this?
So I chopped down a bunch of treats. I can just run around
and just do whatever shiny thing I see while Jake is like doing the work
and fucking building the thing and other people are like working and doing their job
exactly, I'm just fucking up and occasionally helping. You know, if you
want to, if you have not seen him on some other content, if
you want to go watch the video. You can see how patient and kind
Jake is to Dan got so excited about this fish trap he made. Dan,
It's like, oh, okay, you were figuring out how to use
the crafting notebook, which tells you the ingredients you need for specific things,
and you really excited about this fish trap that you fashioned and you put it
down and you just I was watching you and Jake and you finally just PLoP
it down and you're staring at it. You're like, why isn't catching any
fish? Jake's like, oh, you gotta put it in the water,
and the water no, you have this backwards, you have this, Jake.
I was the one who was like, shouldn't it be in the water?
Check the tape, Jake that I tried to make a stick thing to
carry sticks, but then I didn't actually build it. I just put it
was a stick storage. When we're in the the woods is stick story?
Kelvin, that NPC guy that I just kept tell him to go off into
the forest and collect sticks or whatever because I didn't want to see him like,
yeah, it seemed like that type of game is rife for goofy multiplayer
bullshit. Well, yeah, we went the way I would want to play
it. We went into that one cave and there was this like the security
guards or um I don't know, retrieval squad with kevlar and whatnot, just
speared in the water like on spears, all like some like foreboding tribal warning,
and all of us except for Dan comment even maybe Dan commented on it
on the way in and we went and explored the cave and Dan through a
time bomb and killed Mary. But then on the way back out, Dan
was leading the way back out and we hear whoa, and then we hear
you throw another time bomb an explosion and you're like, it didn't kill them,
like, and then we came out. It was like, Dan,
those are the guys on the spears and the way in, You're like,
were they always guys? Scary silhouettes there? They were going to attack us?
Yeah, the Goldfish memory. Yeah, that game's fun though, I
well, I like, I don't really take to survival games, but it
as a social thing, it was very fun. I'm gonna go back.
I actually I was telling the Giant Bomb folks about it, and I think
I think I'll be the one who's played it. I'll be the jake that
has people suppose see how that goes. Yeah, I'm sure that'll that is
not what's going to happen. You're just gonna be like, so here's where
we made a shelter, and then they'll be like, okay, do we
do that, and you'll be like, I don't know. I didn't do
any of it because I was I was killing this three legged woman. I
know better now I wouldn't kill her. Yeah, I want to see what
happens with her. Maybe she'll follow you. Maybe she was like raising her
hands and walking backwards, like backstepping when she saw us. We were brandishing
metal sharp things though she shouldn't have been there in the first place. Yeah,
three legs, it's her fault. Really, I mean it was only
a matter of time. And it's one of those funny things too. People
were saying this about like um oh, like the Witch game. It's just
like every time something fucked up is happening. We immediately we were like,
oh my god, this game is glitch. She has too many arms,
and it's like, oh, you know, this is intentional. This is
a game mechanic where we couldn't you like, immediately your assumption is is that
something's wrong and that it's like a glitch with the game. But it turns
out. It's all intentional. Oh my god, there's a glitch. There's
babies in this cave, and it's just like, no, it's a hard
That was no good. Yeah, that was fun. That was fun.
Yeah. Check out the video. It's a couple of hours of us playing.
It's figuring the game out as we play and getting mad at each other
for how to survive. Some of us are better at it than others.
Oh my god, that lost it. I don't think I died like twice
total. I was I was helping Jake. I lost it pretty hard.
When we came up. We were trying to go to this specific cave based
that our GPS was pointing us toward, and we came to the top of
waterfall leading down to a small pond at the beginning as they often at the
bottom. As they often do, Jake leapt off, landing the water,
hurt himself really badly, but survived. And both of you were like that
looks fun. Let's go, and the Mary's like hell yeah, one,
two, three, yeah, and then leapt and you could not have landed
farther from the water at the bottom. Look, have you seen the fugitive?
It works out fine. Yeah, it was yeah, care, I've
jumped from sixty feet up before. It was horrifying into a jumper into water.
That doesn't sound just like a thing I would want to do. Yeah,
water, just the skuyyah bumping. It was bad. We talked about
this. I think I don't like deep water like that. It kind of
freaks me out. I always assume the worst. I always get really worried
about, um, you know, gaiters and sharks. Have you seen the
Abyss? Yeah? Yes, yeah, I read it too. Oh nice,
nice scary. We were read Sphere together, right, Yes, yes,
I had some deep water horror shit. Yeah. What was the one
that was the thing that she kept writing on all the notebooks? It was
like sphere circle circle three D is sphear eggs are spheres, it's all connected,
and it was it was just like one of those like not like a
montage, but in the movie Sphere, they're trying to show how this girl's
been like working on a problem for a really long time and they show her
notebook and it's just like spear circles, spheares round, yeah, round,
no corners, and it is like your thoughts like really dumb. It's scientist
character. Yeah, you see, it's kind of a joke now in a
quiet place that like the board where he's like writing down all the secrets on
the board you guys see in a quiet place or yeah yeah, oh yeah,
it's like no no ears or but he like, yeah, what it
says on the bottom weakness question mark, question mark question mark because they haven't
solved the weakness environmental storytelling. No sight here good too in the area that
we've seen. It's just like it's explaining like his thought prob. But it's
all like in dumb, dumb language that like, yeah, weakness. It
was the same. Yeah, that's when we talked about it for the Dead
Space remaker, Mary, you brought up the left for Dead one in the
safe where it's like an art argument, like these people were just standing next
to each other arguing via written word instead of talking. Funny though, yeah,
like I hope you die. It's just like fuck you buddy, Like
I think that's a better way to do it. But yeah, anyway,
I just think that written down stuff like that is always a very funny thing
to see because it doesn't typically transfer well, it's it typically like leaves something
to be desired. Yeah, so few video games do it well. Um,
but I've been playing more Octopath Traveler too. Yeah, talked about it
last episode. Man, I like that game a lot good things. I've
heard really good things, so I mentioned last time. I really I like
the first game. I absolutely agree with everybody who says by the time you
do like the second chapter of every character's quest. It's repetitive as hell.
You go into a town, there's some mystery, there's a cave nearby where
some weird HiT's been going on. You go and you fight the boss.
Great battle system. They lean on that way too heavily, but it becomes
formulaic. I liked that because that's what I wanted out of a game where
you're just walking in circles around a continent and going chapter by chapter through eight
characters. Two does that, but it's way better with variety. Like the
thieves quests are largely about infiltrating some crime family kind of shit, whereas the
the Scholar is the Count of Monte Cristo. Basically he breaks out. He's
on a revenge quest. You know. A lot of his stuff is about
like reading people and trying to surmise what's going on. The Tomatos the cleric.
His stuff is all basically dark souls. There's a sacred flame that they're
trying to rekindle, and there were eight odds that fell to this dark demon
god. And there's new incarnations and then popping up, and there's a serial
killer who's killing according to that stuff. That's like seven So but more importantly,
you're not going like character finish their quest, character finish their quests.
They designed the world a bit more intricately, where I still don't even have
all eight characters. I have five characters or no. Sorry, I'm now
recruiting Hikari the Warrior, who's is a Samurai honor based story, but it
doesn't feel as formulaic because I'm on the sixth character. But I've done chapter
two for several other characters, just because they laid out the world in a
bit more thoughtful way, and the battle system is still just as good.
They've added a bit to it with a day night cycle where you get different
bonuses based on the time of day, which is the game is still ultimately
dumb as fuck, Like you can walk up to a dude guarding a lighthouse
door in Canal Brine, the seaside town and you can't get through the door,
but you want to because in a previous town you found a lighthouse that
had a broken reflector that could repair another lighthouse's light, and you put two
and two together, like, I want to get into this lighthouse and fix
this for the side quest and the money and the potential new acts. But
it's daytime, so you can't knock him unconscious. So you press R two
and your whole party, your party leader pulls out a lantern and the sun
goes down in the span of a second, and then you can knock him
unconscious with the thieves ability because it's nighttime now. So the game is like
it's got a really good balance between taking itself seriously and telling pretty compelling stories
with these characters, but also like realizing many of you are just here because
it's a really good looking Square Enix two point five D sprite game. The
combat's awesome, you're enjoying Explorance world. If you don't want to take it
too seriously, you don't have to. I'm liking it a ton Like Lon
Contion, she's been doing the thing where it's like she'll encounter a new playable
character and a bit do you want to start this character story now, and
she'd be like, no, I want to keep going with my current thing.
Yes, And then like later on, she said, you can pick
it up out of tavern and be like, Okay, now we'll start this
thing and get the whole prologue in this character. I've been to do that
every time. I try to explore an area fully and get to know it
before I do that, so you'll meet the character. And again in those
cases, it's like, oh, you guys are traveling, I have this
mission. I'm on to find my three former allies. Can I come with
you? You're like, sure, you're the warrior, you're the Samurai.
I want you my party. That's it. But I almost always declined playing
their chapter immediately because I want to explore the rest of the town, get
a lay of the land, and then I'll go to the tavern and say
like, do you want to hear chapter one of Hikari's story, Like,
yes, let's do it now, and just the sheer variety of storytelling genres
before them. Again, I talked about this last time, But now I've
seen the Samurai epic, I've seen the Ghost Dad a call back, which
I've seen Cassie the Apothecary. That's like, okay, come back from that.
You got him we're talking about. That's the craziest part of that whole
game is the ghost Dad. I don't like that. It's a good I
like Octopeth Travel. Yeah, it's ghost Dead. If you get time and
you just want to play a really good like late a really good late nineties
era JRPG, check it out. I mean, you know, I'm not
a big JRPG guy at all, and like that first Octopath I thought that
was really cool. So yeah, it's once I'm done with some stuff that's
currently in my plate, I could potentially see myself going too that. It
seems like a great switch game too, like Bonk Switch and it there.
Yeah, I like it a lot um. I always like the stuff you
could do in the first one, and I hear you can do even more
of that now where NPCs like in towns each character. I was like,
Okay, so the thief can steal from this person, this character can read
the mind of NPCs and things like that. I think that's a clever mechanic.
That's how you you ambush someone quote unquote at night with the thief and
that's how you knock him unconscious. Um. But then yeah, during the
day, the can just steal items off them. There's a percentage chance to
steal, which is also funny because this dude will give you this sob story
about how his wife left him and he's just like eking by a living and
then you steal like three loaves of bread from his pocket. I mean,
I didn't do that, but you can. I helped him. But yeah,
god, I'm not. I'm I don't get that hung up on like
visuals and video games, but holy shit. I don't know if you remember
from the first game, but obviously you'll see these little like chrono trigger looking
sprites for the overworld. Then you go into a battle against the bosses,
and the bosses are massive, towering characters. Some of them are just fucking
gorgeous. Like there's one you fight in the Samurai storyline that I was just
even. I was like, Okay, this is arresting. It's crazy.
I can't tell you anytimes I like run at the kitchen to get a soda
or something, and I walked through the living room. Bank will be playing
and I just like stop and look at the TV and be like God damn,
this is a good looking game Square Nix is getting, or the Square
the Square Nix published games in the studios they work. They're getting so much
better by the release with that two point five D style. It's really good.
Play it for your time. It's definitely a good like comfort food game.
You're not gonna You're not gonna come away from it thinking, oh,
that just evolved video game storytelling. It's a good comfort food sit play like
three hours, grind a little bit the battle. The battle system is good
enough where grinding doesn't feel like grinding. It's rewarding, or it is very
snappy in the first one. Oh, or liking the battle system of the
boost system was really cool. It's great the way they've designed certain characters abilities
to synergize with others. And then you get the secondary jobs that you just
stumble across and those are less Hey, rank up five levels and you'll get
a new ability. It's actually the new abilities you get are based off of
objectives in a whole side quest, at least the one I found so far.
Yeah, that game's great. I wanted just the first game again with
new characters in a new world, and I got that and more some.
I'm really enjoying it. Cool, very nice, Dan, you've been playing
anything new. I'll do a quick update on Kayla and I beat Resonable five
and by the end, I think I was kind of like, Okay,
I think when I thought about this game before, I was just remembering like
the fun stuff and kind of like the Village, like the big like the
Village equivalent, you know, like, man, it's crazy action, but
it's go up. This time we're dropping electric things on people, floating barrels,
and this ship's awesome. I forgot a lot about the later stuff,
and I was excited to like because it sounded cool because I love Wesker and
Jill as characters. But once they're like involved and you're on the ship and
all that stuff, Like there's this fucking boss fight. There's this back to
back bullshit where he just survives seven minutes while Wesker and Jill are like matrix
dodging around the fucking ship. Literally says like if you can survive, which
he suddenly has a British accent. He's like, if you can survive seven
minutes, then something will happen. So it's like, great, I guess
we're just running around like assholes for seven minutes while he Matrix dodges every fucking
thing we do, and then you survive time and Westker fucking gets out of
there, and then Jill you have to fight, but you can't actually kill
her because Jill's good, so you have to like she's got like an evil
thing, so you have to like bracked her and the other person has to
run up and like just jam the button, like you have do this like
twenty fucking times to rip this thing off her chest, or you can risk
shooting it and killing her and failing that sucked. And uh yeah, the
whole back outside of the volcano stuff and killing Westker by shooting two rockets into
his eyeballs and a volcano, which is objectively amazing, and the boulder punching
that's great too. Everything kind of between that early volley of that kind of
village equivalent stuff and like all the stuff going around on the like swamp boat
to the villages or whatever that sucks, ye, And then all the stuff
of the Western Jill sucks. It's uh, there's a lot more bad in
that game than I remember, so I believe that has been knocked down a
bit on my rankings. God, Kayla's favorite. So Kayla officially kay Resideval
five is the best Resident Evil and Resident Evil two remake is the worst.
According to my sister Kayla, who's listening right now. Reminder, Kayla,
you're insane and wrong, Kayla. Yes, that's why we don't like gen
Z. That there it is. I think that's why I don't like millennials.
That's right. Yeah, they ruined America with their Resident Evil takes.
Yes, God, it's not that good. Although we both got six now,
so we about to jump into six, so maybe five will be a
fucking revelation compared to it when Mike and I played six. And this is
still true to this day. The original plan obviously was to play through all
of the games in order, and we played through story one of six and
we were like, okay, whatever, we quit. Yeah, because we
did that game, I don't get a lot of pushback, you know,
we didn't get a la a lot of people who were like die hard fans
of the game being like, you didn't finish as an Evil six because I
think they were like, oh shit, that game sucks. Part parts of
it were like fun just to play with you and make fun of. But
yeah, we did Leon and Helena's campaign, and then oh the draft getting
the blowjob. Yeah, I have a sealed copy of Real sixth ruined,
and then we did Chris and Aiden's but then we still technically one of the
lost chapters of Resident kin Evil is uh Jake Wesker and I forget the woman's
name, it's forgettable. But you're fighting like giant behemoth bio mutants with cannons
and tanks in Eastern Europe. I believe, I don't know, God looks
very stupid that that game, at least residual five on a certain level,
feels good. Initially, there are good times like that. It's it's weird,
twitchy when you shoot enemies there there's no reaction to where you shoot them,
Like the bullets are just this little splash in their skin. It doesn't
feel well thought out mechanically. No, that's the thing. It's like you
always felt like when you shot something reson Evil from the very first one.
You shoot a fucking shotgun at a zombie, you that connected it, and
you know it. In four five you know they are reacting to it,
they're selling that. And then six it's just like it feels like every gun
feels like a pea shooter. Yeah, yeah, which I feel like,
uh, in a very near future, I think we're gonna have a lot
more talk about Reson Evil. I already said we have for a remake.
Okay, yeah, we can't talk about it, Nope, but we will.
Yeah. I feel like, well, I'll have some thoughts later this
month it releases. It's happening soon, Yes, it's yeah. That's also,
like you mentioned, that's another time peg slash excuse for us to talk
about remakes later on this episode, I'm trying. What else did I say?
I played Sons of the Forest, Doctor Path Traveler too, oh,
Dead Cells return to Castlevania of Yeah, did you guys? I also have
two things I'll go over well now dead Cells before we get to Dead Cells.
I also played the first couple hours of Have a Nice Death. This
Ring, a Belle new roguelike, or rather Sorry, entered early access last
year basically a year ago from today, almost um Magic Design Studios. It's
former like Ubisoft devs um. It's a roguelike where you play as the Grim
Reaper and you're fighting through areas of death incorporated quote unquote the Greek Reaper is
basically just verging on burnout, and he is going through this like corporate satire
maccabre humor kind of like it's like control environment if it were dark humor um,
but it's They consulted with the lead designer of Dead Cells for most of
it, so premise wise and like, what do you want to call it?
Caliber of developers. I was really excited for it. I played a
few hours of it, a few runs right off the bat. It feels
tight and slick as hell. You can. It feels better I would actually
say than Dead Cells. You can actually like juggle between enemies. You can
air dash. It resets an air dash when you hit them a certain way.
You're swapping out. You always have the scythe because you are Death,
but you can swap out your two other face button weapons. There's hammers,
there's spears, there's a bazooka. Again, this game like it does not
take itself that seriously, however, just like real death. Yeah, but
however, the first two areas were just kind of super easy, and then
all of a sudden you hit a really tough boss. Maybe I'm just not
building my character in a Maybe I'm not synergizing abilities correctly or anything. But
it also I don't think conveys how the long term progression works all that well.
Like Hades, it's immediately clear, Oh I just died. Oh I
still only have this one weapon to use, the sword, but I just
had a new conversation unlock with that character, so I'm going to go talk
to them. Oh I have this money. That's what this does. In
my bedroom, I see what I should be saving up for. And then
on the next turn you get like athena shield and you start. It's just
so good with this visual language, with its totorialization. Same with Dead Cells.
Dead Cells is a bit more complicated because it wasn't immediately clear that you
were unlocking the chance to get a weapon later on. But once you figured
that out, it was pretty like you eventually can figure it out or at
least what the game is going for. I mean that that's not a new
concept. But also you can't assume that everyone's played Roguelides before. The first
time I encounter that was like binding him Isaac, and I was like,
what the fuck? Like I actually unlocked this weapon. Like, but Dead
Cells does a good job by showing like a billion different hanging you know,
the pots or whatever, the class jars. Yeah, and then you start
with the random thing and it's like, oh, okay, so it's picking
from this pool here, this is what can pop up. Yeah, have
a nice death. Is the it feels like they are assuming you've played a
lot of these games before. So even I was trying to figure out,
I was like, oh, right, okay, so I'm picking the next
floor. It's again it's kind of like Hades. It's more like Hades in
the sense that you pick the next floor to go to and they tell you
what sort of rewards to expect, which I appreciate. That's what Hades did.
It's like, oh, this will give you a heart, or you'll
get a new weapon, or a boon or gold or gold or yeah.
Yeah. So I was like, okay, I see what they're doing there.
But then you get to like the one of the safe levels where there's
like four different shops and there's a vending machine that swaps this currency for that,
but then there's another thing that you can spend the currency you've just got,
and sometimes the vending machine itself just blows up and hurts you, so
you don't know what's going to happen. It just on a purely kinetic level,
the game feels awesome and I want to keep playing it almost just because
of that. But be the animation is slit. It looks like Hollow Night
in a sense, like visually at a glance, but it looks gorgeous.
It's a good visual style. I'm curious what you guys think you should try
it? Um, I'm very interested. And I thought it was this.
I thought it was a Switch game because you said Switch. But it's on
Steam too. It's on I've been playing on Steam, but it's going on
Switch. This is like one hundred percent game that's under up my alley.
Yeah, just got the things I like about games. It's got so many
things that I want to like. But I just the humor. I really
can't stand. Um what what breed of humor we're talking about? It ranges
from Internet humor cut like, Hey, I don't need you to tell me
this tutorial. I'm death. I know what's going on. He's like,
Oh, just in case you didn't know, He's like, I know,
I'm death. Like but they still told you that storial. But then there's
another one where you come up against this miniboss whose name is w Hung like
William Idols. So I'm pretty sure they want you to think it's well hung
because then when you find him, it's an office worker dangling from a noose
who you then fight, and you fight him, and then you're like,
oh, it's a pung on hung because he hung himself purportedly. But then
you read then married the journal entry after and it's like, actually, the
boss named w Hung was the rope, not the office worker, and he
is frequently offended when people confuse the two. I was like, all right,
it just wasn't landing with me. But also I just don't I don't
think the game adequately conveys what the long term progression loop will be like up
front. And I've played like two hours and I'm still like again Hades Dead
Cells. After several runs, I'm like, all right, I see what
the long term investment in this game will be, like, I still haven't
gotten that in have a nice death and I'm trying to meet it halfway.
And I'm going to keep playing it because again, it feels great to play.
I just I don't know that I'm going to stick around unless they can
really hook me with that long term progression loop. Now, this doesn't have
any connection to Death Junior, does it? And the old like they made
a couple of PSP games and like the are like like a little like almost
cheb Death character, but that was a platformer. There is very light platforming
in this. Now this is like these I think these devs would have still
been working on like ray Man and stuff at that point. Okay, gotcha
or Ubisoft titles. Um, yeah, I don't know. Check it out.
I'm not sure whether it's going to game Pass or anything, but yeah,
it'll have been in early access for about a year. It's it's just
one of those things also where it's less like organic. Oh I'm stumbling across
enemies and oh I come into a room, they lock the doors and I
have to fight a certain amount of people and it's pretty easy. Yeah.
I don't know, try it out, see what you think. That sounds
super up my alley. I think the next time we record, I'll have
played this game, because this is like, this is my jam. I'm
like watching this gameplay and I can't believe I haven't played this game yet.
But it comes out on the eighth, So as of this recording. It
hasn't come out yet. No, it came out on the eighth last year
early access. It comes on the twenty second this year. I didn't look
at the year, just wait for it to come to game Pass and then
buy it. Oh my god. If it does come to game Pass,
I'll be pissed because I want to play it. Yeah, but I can't
speak to how it runs on the Switch. I've been playing them and I
can only technically write now talk about the first two areas, which I did.
But the full review embargo will be up in a few days from this
episode publishing. Yeah, I don't know. Check it out. I'm curious
what you think because I wrote a preview for it for Polygon, and like
in writing it, I had to figure out why the game wasn't hooking me,
and it really I just don't think it's conveying that long progression loop like
so many other fucking roguelikes are a dime a dozen nowadays, you need to
really stand out to be a memorable roguelike, and I the humor in this
game the art style are not enough to hook me. I'm gonna keep playing
see if it does happen, though, because I want to like this game,
but yeah, Dead Cells return to Castlevania. You guys played that.
Yeah, and you're talking about, you know, with so many rogue lights
now and you have to do a lot to stand out. I do feel
like Dead Cells is in that very elite group of like what Dead Cells hades
and said returnal rogue legacy in the top of the top. I think of
the genre and goddamn it. Going back to Dead Cells, I have not
played it since it was originally out. I played a little bit in early
access, but then when it came out came out, I played the shit
out of it. Have not touched any of the DLCs since then until now,
which I got all the dalcas now too, So it's like, holy
shit, I might as well be playing a sequel, Like there's so much
new stuff here. And it immediately came back to me, how fucking good
this game feels like it's like riding a bike, just that dodge, the
stomp down like everything them. Yeah, yeah, all that, And like
Mary, I know you were a faying originally, and are you feeling the
same thing where you're right back into it. Yeah, it's funny that you
say that this is like way back in the day when I first got pretty
obsessed with Rogue Lights, and shockingly, I did not get super into Dead
Cells. It was like it wasn't on my top ten. It just wasn't
something that gripped me. And I think I got frustrated early on. So
this is what back when I was working at game Spot. It's like back
in the day when Den said Dead Cells came out and I wanted to I
think so, and I wanted to love this game. I wanted to love
this game so much, but it did not grip me. Um. I
think I kept dying at like silly space, like silly areas where like,
I don't know it's the problem was me, Hi, it was me,
and I knew it, but I didn't want to admit it, and so
I kind of like fell off the game early. This game reignited what should
have been in my love for Dead Cells. I have put more time and
more hours into Dead Cells the original game because of this DLC than I originally
have ever played of Dead Cells. I'm obsessed with this fucking game. I
can't put it down. I keep my Steam deck with me everywhere I go.
Before I go to bed at night, I play some Dead Cells.
When I wake up in the morning, I played Dead Cells and then I
have to hurry up and go to work before I'm late. If I have
like extra time on my lunch break, I fucking played Dead Cells. I
can't put this game down. It's so good. I am obsessed with this
game. I'm writing or wrong here. This game was always brilliant. I
just didn't understand it. Now I just can't stop playing it. The DLC
is a part of like what five dalcs at this game has had. And
I'm discovering all these clcs similar like simultaneously because I found this like I don't
know. They're like what do you call them. They're like they look like
flowers that eat people. You can jump on them in their bouncy that takes
you to the arbitorium, and I was like, arbor arium, the arboretum,
the arbor aries and I I went there and I was like, this
is a fucking massive, very interesting, cool space. And I find out
later I didn't know it at the time. I just thought it was in
the game, and I was like, what a crazy thing to put in
this game. It's DLC. All there's all these like extraordinarily like unique spaces.
They have their own bosses, they come with their own weapon types.
It's very fascinating too, like Secrets out the Wazoo Man and like all these
different spaces. So like, I've been playing this game and getting really addicted,
and then I was like, shit, I forgot to play the DLC
Castlevania. So I didn't understand for a really long time because I was just
playing the game like a regular person that if you follow the bats, they
take you to the castle, to to Dracula's Castle, and so I finally
get there for the first time. The music all bangers so good. The
music's phenomenal. The entire time you're playing this, you don't I actually want
to get through the level because the music is so good. It's a very
like well constructed map. You start at the outsides of Dracula's Castle, so
you're like fighting your way in. You have to pull down the drawbridge.
Is really fun because once you do that, then it's open forever, which
is really nice. It's like a cute little touch that you've like the first
time you open the drawbridge, you're fighting through all these like creatures to get
there, and then once you get through that space, you're in the castle,
and that's really fun. There's secrets everywhere. Did you guys see the
couple dancing the ghost dance? Yeah, and that's the thing. It's like
that is like Castlevania issue, and like, yeah, it's easy to think
about castlevaniaone playing Dead Cells because it's got that perspective and everything. But when
you were fucking like that is the most castle of anything, like approaching a
drawbridge going into castle with that music playing. Then you go in and there
are mermaids and there are fucking skeletons thrown bones at you, and I hate
the bones. The blueprints shit you're unlocking are like here's the whip shore,
here's the holy water, here's like reflecting thing here, it's all the things
you remember and loves the cross boomeranging thing, Like, it's just secrets out
the wazoo. Oh. It's so as both a huge fan of Dead Cells
and of Castlevania, it's like this is just an absolute match made in heaven.
It works. It really is a match made in heaven. Like sometimes
like these DLCs feel a little shoehorned and it's just like whatever, Like it's
a new space and it's a really good ip that they get to capitalize on.
That's not this. This is really well done and it's genuinely, like
I think, in homage to Castlevania love like lovers, you know, I
think I consider myself a Castlevania lover, and I love this experience of like
going through and seeing all these secrets and then um interacting with characters that you
probably know and enjoy from the game. They're all there. I think that
was really cool too. And the boss fights are pretty fucking crazy. Well
yea, yeah, you're fighting death you know Castlevania staple, You're meeting al
Ghard Richter, or you're unlocking costumes of these people. You're it's it's all
the stars are there, all the Castlevania stars. It's I feel like Mary,
like he said, it could have been a shoehorned and especially in modern
day economy, sounds like they might be doing some new stuff actually for the
first time forever, but like I could totally see them just being like,
yeah, I don't know, here's some Castlevania shit. But like the Dead
Cells developers are clearly fans and they knew how to treat it right, and
it's just so nice to see a Castlevania thing in twenty twenty three that feels
good and feels like Castlevania. It's been a fucking while. Even the last
couple actual Castlevania games, Lord's Shadow Too and the three DS one like not
great. So it's been a decade since we've had good Castlevania shit. And
you mix that with giving me a reason to come back to Dead Cells,
and I am fully on board of this whole thing. I agree. This
is a game that people should play. If you haven't played Dead Cells,
good news not really me either. You get to enjoy Dead Cells and have
this DLC. If you were into Dead Cells like Dan, good news.
Now you get to play Dead Cells again, and you're in like a really
wonderful, awesome castle that's like well thought out. It's difficult as hell,
it's super fun to play. I'm loving it. I can't put it down.
I'm addicted to this game. I'm envious of anyone who is just now
coming to Dead Cells and seeing how fucking good of this because you are getting
this version of Dead Cells that is so robust with the DALC and everything quality
of life things like now you can check the map and go to the map,
biomes thing and say like, Okay, if I want to get to
the clock tower, I'll go here, then I'll go to the ramparts,
then I go here and fight this boss. Like a lot of quality life
stuff that wasn't even there originally, the weird customization stuff that wasn't there before.
It's really coming back to something that I really loved five years ago.
But if you haven't played it at all, it holds up extremely well and
there's so much to enjoy now. We also have four paid dalcs and several
minor ones worth of weapons and items to use against like the first boss if
you unlock them early enough. So yeah, you could be using like the
Holy Water grenades super early on when those were never or a thing in twenty
eighteen or whatever. I think they're a little lop two. There's a couple
of things I did want to mention that were broken for me. I don't
know if like this has happened to anyone else, because I have not played
the original game that much. I was gaining skills that you earn over time
in that game. I'm trying to think of like a good example of that.
Oh um, the vine that shoots up that's a skill that you earn
over playing that game and uncovering space. Right, So the wall jump or
wall run, that's another one. In the Castlevania DLC, I got a
map spun up that required a wall run to get to the next area,
and I had to restart my game. That's interesting you say that, because
I had never I've done hundreds of runs and dead cells sens came out.
I've never come into a thing that like locked me out of progressing until the
quick look that went up on a giant bomb. We got to any level
and I literally couldn't. Like forty five minutes into this quick look, I
could not progress and I had to like fucking like do some weird glitch thing
to get up. That's crazy. That's exactly what happened to me. I
had restart my save. I was pissed. I like lost. I lost
like a fifty minute level like character build that I like to run and everything
you got, Yeah, it was the same deal. I still don't have
the like wall run thing. I haven't found that yet in this I started
the new save I played on PlayStation before. I'm on PC now, But
yeah, I can't run up the walls, can't do any of that shit
right now. So it's like I got locked out. That's crazy. Okay,
So that same thing happened to me, and then I don't know if
this is a I don't know if this is a mistake or if this is
entirely intentional. But at the end of each area, this is just a
dead cells knowledge. You get typically two paths, not all the time,
but usually like at the end of an area, it'll be like, now,
do you want to go to the arbor Arium or do you want to
go to Still Village? Yeah? Yeah, So I have like a really
good build going again, and I beat Death, which I thought was a
huge achievement because it's a very difficult boss fight. And then the next two
levels weren't Castlevania levels. It gave me the option and sucked me out.
That's the progression. Did it do the thing where you were going to a
place and then you got pulled down by like a chain into another thing or
that might have been before the death thing. Basically there happened early on in
Castlevania. For me, that is a story based thing that happens like that
is by design. I went to the regular game and got to a boss
in the regular game and then died to like a like a like just a
regular boss. And I was mad because I was like, this was a
really good build. I would have liked to see the next Castlevania area,
and I couldn't. There is a certain thing you have to do before you
can start getting to like the Dracula's Castle and push forward to those boss fight
things like that. That's by design, doesn't necessarily mean it's you know,
yeah, so yeah, you can do like a Castlevania run up to a
certain point, but then until you do certain what I need. I was
really curious about that, and it felt it felt like frustrating to have a
really good Castlevania run and then not and beat death, which again is a
very difficult thing to do in that game, and then be like, well,
now you can't play anymore Castlevania. I think what you need to do
is beat the boss after the clock tower. If I'm thinking about I didn't
do that. I think the Timekeeper, Yeah, okay, beat him and
then talk to el Herd. I think, I think that's the path to
unlock future stuff. But yeah, there are other Castlevania byrons past that I'll
keep. I'll keep, I'll keep nipping at it because I'm really enjoying the
experience of going through that DLC space. And what's really fun, as you
said earlier, is like once I beat the Castlevania DLC, I basically have
like Carte Blanche to be like I guess I'll do the Arboretam or like I'll
do like the other DLC. Like there's like so many DLCs that I get
to like kind of go at and they're I don't know if they're bite size,
but they feel like they're more specific, like I have a reason to
go because they know what I'm looking for. And then opening space just gives
me like heavy motivation to keep playing. See, I like doing the thing
where it's like at the beginning, I'll decide this is gonna be a Castlevania
run, and I'm gonna follow those levels, but then on another one,
I'll be like, maybe I'll go to the southern area here, and what's
this infested ship right here, Let's go check that out. Like so I
like to mix it up, so like you could either you know, you
could totally drill down into Castlevania or if you're coming back to it or you're
coming to it for the first time, just really spread out because you're going
to be unlocking stuff no matter what, Like you're gonna be getting cells and
getting shit unlocked. So yeah, just play it the way you went to
m Yeah. Yeah, it's like a it's just as the Castlevania DEALC is
great in its own right, but it's just like a testament to the staying
power of Dead Cells itself. Even though the game is six years old at
this point eighteen, it came out five years old, still so fresh.
You play it and it's like this could have come out today and we would
have been talking about it very lovingly. It would have been a like a
Goadie contender, Like it's crazy. It's a really fucking solid experience. I
don't know why I slept on it six years ago. I'm writing that wrong.
I'm thrilled for myself. Go me, uh play this game. I'm
looking back at my best of twenty eighteen list, my top ten, and
I looking back in terms of just aging, I feel like three for Dead
Cells was too low. Can you guess my two games of twenty eighteen that
I ranked above Dead Cells got a four? Yep, that was my number
one. Boom you suck you fucking win for the kind of classic one was
good? Was Born? The first one you didn't like? Red Dead Detraspect,
Oh yeah, that's a good. Yeah. I've replayed that recently with
PSBR two and it's still really good. It's really good. Yeah. Detrospect,
Oh fuck, that's a good game. But you don't play in it
anymore yet. No dead Cells. Well but yeah, but they could have,
but they didn't because they're bitches. That's the whole testament of time.
Yeah. So, Like, there's lots of different things that go in your
brain to justify a purchase, right, but my favorite one is the testament
of time. In three years from now, well, I still be so
glad that I bought that thingy. And three years later I like to think
back and be like, was I really glad that I am? Right now?
Am I'm so glad that I bought that thingy? And like, dead
cells is passing that testament of time. It's paying off in dividends. You
should invest in dead cells. Forget the stock market that dead cells just keeps
on giving. I do you think of dead cells a lot more than I
think about Tetris or God of War. Even before this deal, Dame.
Yeah. Yeah, ot SUC Siege was on twenty eighteen. I had a
number seven, Hell yeah, should be What the hell is? It was
on yours tooke guy loved the Siege okay, I'm aster rot rescuation. Oh
you love that shit? You weren't you doing speed runs? That was the
one the Astros playroom? Yeah? Oh right, and that was a big
deal for you, yea. I wrote I'm looking at our Personal Favorites eighteen,
and every game Spot editor wrote about one. I wrote about State of
Decay two, which checks out right right. Hit Me two was that year?
Oh right, yeah, because hit Me was twenty sixteen. These were
big merry games. Trying to think if I wrote a I don't think I
wrote a top ten that year. Um, have you guys played anything else
besides that? Ye yeah? Oh I got a really quick one. Okay,
go ahead. Mine is just um City Skylines. Basically, when I
did a psv R two and I was checking everything out, I played a
little bit of the City's VR and I was like, oh man, right,
the city builders are really fun. I love these things. I've really
got to know him since Some City two thousand and then I was like I'm
gonna play a lot of this. Wait a minute, why would I do
this? In VR, there's a whole real ass game. I can just
play my fucking lazy boy with a mouse and a keyboard. And uh so
I got city skylines, I got a bunch of the DLC. I started
it up. I got Crispytown is my town, and uh I went to
Bonk and I said, like, Bunk, name a town. I didn't
give her any context, and he said, Crispy Town. It's great.
What's the motto of the town? And she said where people are? So
it's Crispytown. Where people are is booming. Right now. We got Dorito's
Beach. It's a real nice part of town. Um, smoking cigarettes is
illegal throughout Crispytown. But we'd go to town. You can set policies and
stuff. Great. Yeah, it's fun as hell. It's great. Yeah,
her like architecture, city planning background. I think she'd love it.
Um. Oh yeah, because that game that was like a real rough launch
at first, that was like a catastrophic launch. City skyline in sim City
because I thought it was like the city. Yeah, I think I think
of it as sim City twenty thirteen or whatever y was a nightmare launch that
it never recovered from. And I remember Cities launched around the same time and
people were like, fuck, sim City, go to this, that's what
they want, and Cities always had a great vibe around it. And I'm
just now getting into it, ironically right as they announced City Skyline too,
yeah, which is coming out this year, so I might just keep going
with this one, get used to it, and then just jump into the
City Skyline two when it comes out. And I'm kind of like reignited this
this love of this genre that I haven't felt since fucking nineteen ninety four or
roller Coaster Tycoon. I you know, I never got to play too much
of that. I was straight up the original sim City and sim City two
thousand. Those are mine once you got to three thousand and four thousand stuff
like I didn't have the computer to run it. But Sim City two thousand,
I've probably spent hundreds of hours playing Love that ship But they must have
added a ship ton to City Skyline since oh there's like one hundred DLC packs.
It's crazy. Yeah, yeah, so I can't wait for two,
but just say that I'm coming late to the game like a decade late.
But City Skylines is fantastic, loving it cool? Mary? What about you?
Um? I played a game, a little game called Shadow Warrior three.
Um. I have to preface that I've never played a Shadow Warrior before.
Have you guys either played a Shadow Warrior not? Okay, I just
don't know a lot about this, but I loved Evolver, so I was
like, I'll probably like it. Also, it looks incredible, like it's
visually stunning, pretty game. Uh yeah, I think I played it because
it's on game Pass or something like. I played it because it was it
was I think it was a game pass option. I think that's why I
collected it, and that makes it more relevant because I bet a lot of
people are getting wind of it because of game pass. Um. This game
is so again, I I have to come at this from the perspective that
I don't know what Shadow Warrior one in two was. Like I read the
reviews before I downloaded it, and a lot of people do not like the
fact that is very different from Shadow Warrior one in two. I do not
give a shit about whether or not it's like the first or second one.
So I got to come in with a clean slate. And judge this game
solely based on whether or not I think it's interesting. My reaction to this
game is that the people who made this game really like Doom Maternal. There's
some serious Doom esque elements to this, and it almost feels like it's a
love letter to Doom, which is really odd. It's about kind of facing
enemies, very visual, visceral gutting of things. You get a kill,
you build up this meter, and if you have it up at the top,
you automatically kill an enemy in a very violent way. So if it's
like a skeleton, you like squeeze their head off and like pop it off,
or if it's a a drill enemy, you take the drill, which
I would assume is like their head and you just pull their neck off of
their head with their whole backbone attached, and like very vivid death's animations.
Very it is. It feels like I'm playing an older game when I play
it. The writing is also very kind of old school jokester where the lead
character, uh he is I'm trying to like, what's his name? I
mean, I know his last name is Wang because there's a lot of Whang
jokes in it. Um So like the mean character is always like oh yeah,
I know, you can't get enough of this Wang, Like he'll say
stuff that's right and so like, I know, I think like the writers
had fun with it, and obviously we're making a tongue in cheek. I
don't. I didn't think it was very funny, and like it got old
pretty quickly to me that he was constantly like making jokes about his name or
making dick jokes, or like making like very childish jokes or off the whole
game. One of the characters that you end up meeting is a raccoon,
which they like call a trash panda. The entire time. I think the
first time you hear the word trash panda, I think kids would be like
that's hilarious because they look like pandas but they're in the trash. But like
the twentieth time hearing the phrase trash panda, I was like, all right,
just call a raccoon. That's what it is. I get it.
Lots of heavy, heavy jokes, often sexual or just like kind of odd
shock value or like trying like childish humor. I think for what the game
is, it didn't grab me personally, but I could see like a younger
audience gravitating towards this for sure. Which shocked me though was in this audio
it's so heavily joke. Everything is a joke. Everything is a fucking joke
in this game. Nothing is serious. And then in the middle of a
of a fight sequence, like a legit fight sequence, I'm trying to like
kill this boss as hard as I can, the main character says, this
is gonna like give me like mental health issues, and if you have mental
health issues, there's nothing wrong with seeking help and getting the help you need.
The character says that, yes, looks at the camera. No,
he doesn't look at the camera, but he it's like his voice over because
you're playing through his eyes. I wonder like, but I was, like,
what I remember when this was coming out. I feel like the marketing
I feel like I remember I've never played it, but I remember the marketing
being very like, hey remember nineties FPS, Like it's like a very Duke
Newcomb type thing. I feel like it wasn't the original Shadow Warrior like of
that era. So I wonder if this was like, hey, we're going
to do our dumbass you know, nineties FPS humor, but also like here's
our wink wink that like, hey, get help for your mental health?
Did dues or whatever? Like why why? Then? Yeah, I'm not
saying it's a good joke, but I'm saying, like, I think that's
probably what they were going. Was it a joke? Right? That was
like my reaction to it was like, you guys have been joking with me.
You've been fucking with me as a player this entire game, and then
you bring some heavy ass shit on me in the middle of a playing I'm
in the middle of a fight. This is not a cut scene. I
am. I'm fighting for my life right now, and you're making a very
serious comment, but a very serious issue. I couldn't. I literally out
loud. I was streaming this game, and I literally went, what the
fuck? Am I supposed to be emotionally moved from this? Am I supposed
to laugh? What was the action that you wanted me to take? Should
I have called my mental health provider and gotten the help that I so sorely
needed? What did you want from me? Shadow Warrior? I think that
that, like any attempt to bring that nineties vibe of FPS and to the
modern day, typically has not worked. Look like Duke Nukem Forever. Like
Duke Nukem Forever was like a more modern released game basically very nineties property.
And it's like, even if you're trying to like turn an eye too and
like wink at it or whatever, it just I can't think of circumstances of
where it's really worked that well, you know, because Shadow Worry three is
the same studio that did Evil West last years. Yeah, but like you
could see the correlation between humors sort of, we're also like going to this
like older style of game where it's like if if Shadow Word from Ape like
ninetiess and Evil West was like three sixty B game era, Like they obviously
have a reverence for like older action games. But yeah, it's like the
humor stuff canna be hit or miss. So that it was a strange experience
to say the least. I will also say an addition, like there were
some things I liked. There were some enemies that I thought were really interesting.
There is this one enemy, lots of varied enemy types and lots of
guns, and you get just like doom right, Like it's like, all
right, I'm going to use my big BFG in this space. That's not
what they're called. They have their own names, but who cares, and
you get to like shoot at these crazy looking wild enemies. One of my
favorite enemies where just these like men that had dynamite in their hands and they
just screamed while they ran towards you and the flood. That sounds like straight
up serious, Sam, have you ever played that where they have the bombs?
And yes, I wonder if it's heavily inspired from other places Like I
I remember playing like this sequence and being chased by these men running at me
with dynamites ticks and being like this is crazy, like get away from me,
and we just shoot them before they get to you. This sounds like
the fucking like shitty parody movies that like Meet the Spartans or Not Another Date
Movie or Another Team was like not another nineties FPS, like it sounds like
remember this, remember the guys that run and scream with the dynamite And He's
just like, oh, I'm not just like any protagonist, I'm sexist and
it's just like completely worthless. It has like no reason, It's just they're
just joking. The whole thing is a joke, which to a degree,
like I get it. I can escape as well and enjoy the joke.
I can enjoy the silly humor. I was absolutely thrown by the times where
they were all of a suddenly, no, no, it's serious, or
like now it's like a legit game. I couldn't put it together. I
think, as well, I'm just gonna throw this last little poke at it.
Some of the enemies are just fucking bad. There's an enemy that is
a drill, and so it drills underground. You cannot attack it, you
cannot do anything. You have to wait for it to come up. When
it comes out of the ground, you both shoot at each other. And
so it's just a battle of attrition for me to like run around like a
dingdong waiting for it to come out of the ground so that we can both
shoot each other. It's like really shitty, just a really shitty boss.
It's not a boss, it's an enemy. It's a really shitty enemy.
And every time I got one of these drill enemies, I was like,
God, damn it, it's gonna take ages. It's gonna take me five
minutes to kill this stupid drill because there's no other way to kill it besides
for us to shoot at each other. I hated that fucking enemy. I
didn't really like this game obviously. I I don't know, maybe someone else
can explain it to me. I probably will not play this again. I
feel like I can be a sucker for something that is very openly trying to
like ape an old style of game. But the way I like that to
be done is more like I don't know if you guys played Proteus, but
yeah, that was. It's just like straightforward where it's like this is this
looks and feels like a game that could have been made in nineteen ninety seven.
It's not one that's, oh we're trying to take some stuff from ninety
nine seven. We're also being really winky and we're talking about oh hey this
is just like I'm a protagonist. I bla, like no, no,
just make it like it seems like it actually was made back then, you
know, Like I don't need jokes and meta stuff about, like just make
it like one of those games I mean with like, don't do a thing
where it's like the original I had, like racist jokes stuff. Don't do
that. But it's like, make the fucking like gameplay and vibe of it
I'm down for silliness, right, Like I think I like it. That's
like forst spoken, Like I if I'm going to this fantasy world where you
can sprint around like you're an infamous and you know, I'm escaping to this
medieval, weird world where certain things don't exist, others do, don't continuously
comment on it. I want to escape there I brought up it must have
been the thing that we brought up, the Austin Walker thing, right,
yeah, but how we wrote about how it's like, yeah, if the
character, if the protagonist doesn't give a shit about this and it's mocking it,
like why should we give a shit? Like like the developers. It
feels like the developers are ashamed that they're making a nineties game homage. It's
like, no, embrace it. That's why I'm here. Yeah, own
it, lean into it, you know, do it right, or like
the Messenger did that really well? That platform the Messenger did a phenomenal jobs
was great. Yeah. Yeah, Shovel Night, Shovel Nights, a great
shovel Night, which like that's just like a fucking old MegaMan game, you
know, yep, um anything else game wise that you played. I want
to bring up many Tyson updates. No, I'm actually like fucking like literally
hurt now, like fucking ic my hand a bunch and I need to give
it a little bit of a break, although I'm still practicing. But well,
you got a new Creed soundtrack to play while you're training. I'm just
pissed because, like, I recorded all this video and wrote this fucking like
seventeen page script for this like long video. I want to make about like
the starters guide to do this, but I don't want to put it out
until I like record a run or I actually beat Tyson round one and I
can't do it and my hands hurt, and so it's like, ah,
I'm ready to go on this thing, and it's gonna take forever if I
ever get it done. So we'll see I start feeling better. I'll take
him down, and yeah, move on to the next thing with the punch
out. But still the same place. Gotcha you're at, You're at the
there's always like that moment of stasis and a Creed or Rocky movie where they
the plateau for a bit. M it's got to happen. I'm just marinating
where I'm at right now, and then comes the drastic fall from Grace,
so expect that any moment now, and then the rising trying to spill something
on my CRT. It's a lot less dramatic when it's the video game than
if you're actually like Creed that much. You've really earned it. You've really
earned this, like, you know, power for you to like climb out
of, you know, the recesses of the trash dump that you were at
and achieve success. This is your rock bottom down. Wow, it's not
I'm sitting easy boy, We're talking about video games. Yeah, it's okay,
this is the rock bottom. I'm fine. Craig's house, oh boy,
Donna's Creed's house as cool as shit in that movie I don't know.
Yeah, in the hills, Oh with all the trophy cases in the recording
studio. Yeah man, yeah, the full bar with Knyak ready to go
or Hennessey ready to go. Donna's Creed is really cool. Yeah yeah.
Um, do you guys want to get to our remake tournament? Let's do
it? Yes, I do? Okay, as promised, we have a
special tournament set for our fiftieth episode of the fire Escape Cast. No emails
tonight, don't wait fight. We probably won't get the emails because we expect
this to to be a bit argumentative, but maybe also just to be gushing
about some good remakes or both. Dan set up for us. Oh boy,
well, I didn't have to do much setting up, because you know,
we've pulled tens of thousands of Academy, the ai AS, the GDC,
the Dice, Price, Waterhouse, Anderson Cooper, all that Sabbatta was
consulted. Alex b probably Polygon. All of Polygon agreed on this. Yes,
we have done the bracket science, and we have the sixteen agreed upon
contenders for the Greatest video Game Remake of All Time tournament. Yes, and
here we go. Here's I'm gonna give us a rundown of the sixteen entries
here in order, so this will be from top to bottom on the bracket.
It's not one to sixteen. There's a seating process, but this is
I'm gonna read sixteen games. Here we go, Resident Evil to Remake,
Final Fantasy seven Remake, The Last of Us Part one, Demons Souls,
Tony Hawks, pro Skater one plus two, Master Chief Collection, Metroid Sammus
Returns, Zelda the wind Waker, HD Metal Year, Solid Twin Snakes,
Spiro the Reignited Trilogy, Ratchett and Clank, the twenty sixteen To Believe One,
Majora's Mask, three D Dead Space from this year, Links Awakening on
Switch, Shadow of the Colossus, and Resident Evil one remake, the sixteen
greatest remakes of all time pitted against each other. Shall we begin? Yes,
first one, Resident Evil two remake versus Final Fantasy seven remake. Okay,
are two? You're gonna go ahead and move that forward. I mean
it's absolutely going to in this group of people. But that's two, then
I guess that's majority. So okay, Resident Like, okay, I'm not
going to shut up. I'm not gonna shut up. Part one kind of
graphically not going to shut up. At least let me say people pay for
Final Fantasy seven remake. Is Resident two remake of course is better. I
will it's going forward. But Final Fantasy seven remake is like absolutely astounding for
how they updated. I didn't even like the first game, and then playing
the new one, I thought the combat was fantastic. I thought the world
itself was engrossing. I think the story, the melodrama. Final Fantasy doesn't
always work for me. Even though I like metal Gear for whatever reason,
I just want at least put it in a good word for it, because
we just lost like eighty percent of our listeners. But I will give it
a real talk here because as someone who I played Dan, you don't get
to say anything. You tried to skip it like six times. It was
a bit I was k famed. Now we're shoo seven to remake. I
appreciate Final Fantasy seven for what it was. I never beat it. I
got like a disc and a half into it. I got to like the
Golden Saucer and fell off or whatever, but like there's some good stuff,
good music. I understand the reverence people have for Final Fantasy seven. That
said, the remake, I feel like is just for the markiest Final Fantasy
marks, the Ben Hanson's of the crew, where it's just the ones that
are just like desperate, just thirsting after every fucking music remake and every story
beat, and like, for someone who's not obsessed with Final Fantasy or Final
Fantasy seven it I played fifty hours of that game the remake, and I
asked Bonk, like how much is left here? And she said five hours,
and that was too much for me. Because I was like, I
can the story is not going to have an end that matters, which part
one of who knows and if this thing ever gets finished or whatever, like,
yeah, it's not. And at that point I knew that, like
my progressions, I was loving the fighting system. Originally, I was loving
the progression everything, but then it just kind of stalled out at a certain
point and it became very, very boring, and I feel like everything it
was just doing was just stuff to satisfy the marks like the big the Ben
Hanson's and as someone who doesn't have that reverence towards Final Fantasy, it just
became a boring game to me. So I do not feel like f F
seven remake is anywhere near the other ones on this list. Yeah no,
I mean I like that game purely for its world. I mean I like
the combat too, but ar I that the world, or at least what
they did with it in the remake compared to the first game. I like
how much like Jazzy Er it got almost in certain aspects. It was good.
But yeah, no, Resuva Too remake is far superior, which wouldn't
We don't even have to talk about that yet because I'm sure, we'll talk
about it next Well, we now are talking about it next round, so
I'll save it. Yeah, we'll have plenty of time talking about Okay,
Qary Mary thoughts on Resonabal versus Final Fantasy. I don't have a horse in
this race. You guys know I'm gonna go with Resident Evil. I mean
context, I don't have a horse in this race. Do you know we
all think Final Fantasy seven remakes? Yeahs not how the phrase works. I
think it is race. You guys know, I care a lot about this
one. It doesn't matter. It's unnecessary for me to put the horse in
the race because I already won. Yeah, is that how it works?
Agreed? Two horses in the bush, one in the hand. I don't
need it. I got those horses and two horses My goodness, I don't
even know what that means. All right? Next up the Resonable two for
the record, uh goes above a Pinal Hands seven remake? Next up,
Last of Us Part two, Part one, Part two does never remake it?
Versus Doesn't Happen? Part one versus Demons Souls the PS five Long Lunch
Game. Can I can I give my opinion? Yeah? That's why you're
here, no, like I mean first time Souls. Yeah, yeah,
that's where I think. I think the last of Us part one is.
It's still a phenomenal game, but they didn't really change all that much.
In fact, that actually graphical it feels like it's it's undeniably better looking,
but it doesn't feel like a different game Demon Souls. They actually ironed out
a lot. I don't know the last time anybody went and played the original
Demon Souls. I haven't since two them fifteen. I think I finally tried
it, and oh my god, even as someone who was obsessed with blood
Borne and going back through the Dark Souls games, I hadn't played at that
point, Demon Souls was rough. Demon Souls a new one is like the
first real feeling PS five game. But is that how we're judging this and
whether or not the game went from a real fucking plunker is something that you
enjoy. But I think that's like there's the graphical element. I'm like,
Okay, this looks a lot better, but then also major quality life and
betakes. Yeah yeah, Demon Souls itself on PS five is just a phenomenal
game in its own right, but I think it actually did more for the
source material than The Last of Us did, and I like it more than
the Last of Us. I just went on here is for the most part,
nothing on here is just like a remaster where it's like we up rested.
Like some of them are lower lift, like you know, Resonable to
Remake is a full overhaul of that game. Some of these, you know,
a wind Waker and shadow classes are like, Okay, it looks a
lot sharper, but they also do add some things and quality lifestuff. None
of them are just straight up like this is the HD rerelease of this thing,
Like, yeah, these have all added things, which makes a great
read. But if we get too stringent with the criteria, that's not going
to be fun. Like Game of the Year stuff wouldn't be fun if we
only had one criteria for judging games. So I'm just saying the the changes
that Demon Souls itself went from a real rough game to something just I find
to be phenomenal, even if it wasn't based on something from two thousand nine.
Oh yeah, the Last of Us. I still love the first the
Last of Us, So like those games, have you been playing it?
Because I've been playing the new the Last of Us remake recently for this argument
specifically, and they did make a lot of quality of life improvements to the
game that I think are worth discussing. First of all, like Ellie's bow
just bow. Uh. Fighting in general has been hella improved in the remake,
and that's my favorite weapon, most notably because it's like it's quiet,
and it's very effective when you're trying to be sneaky because it's quiet. I've
actually played the game completely differently than I originally played the game. In the
original game, everything became a shootout or like a fight to the death.
In the new remake, you can play stealth, you can like choose actively,
you can try origins, but it's very difficult. I think that you'll
appreciate the first game and have played it a lot. I played the first
game once. I prefer the remake so much because I get so many quality
of life updates, Plus it looks phenomenal. Um, there's just a better
upgrade to the point where like, you want to be able to play the
way you want to play, whereas in the first game, I think it
kind of shoehorned it. Shoehorned me because no matter how sneaky I wanted to
be. I would always run out of arrows and I ended up having to
like fight to the death. In this game, I feel like I'm allowed
to be the sneaky person I wanted to You're talking about playing as Ellie.
That doesn't happen until Super far In, Like, is the game allowing you
to play stealthily as Joel for the first twelve hours before you become Ellie?
Yes, but you didn't. You don't get an error, you don't get
the arrow until like maybe like a third in or something like that. So,
like it takes time to build, but um, they just better.
There's like better qualities to each of the weapons. Plus the haptic controller makes
a massive change to how you can feel the gun is ready or the bow
is ready to shoot. That really helps with your immersion and just makes the
game like ultimately a better experience. If I were to play Demon Souls,
if you were to give me remake of Demon Souls the remake of the Last
of Us, I would be like, absolutely, without question, I would
play the Last of Us remake. There's just no question to me if that
is a better game. It is a phenomenal experience and it is better because
of the remake. I just do feel like the original Last of Us is
so solid on its own that like the remake, the big question was like
is this necessary, Like if you remember all the hubbub was like is this
necessary? Is this worth seventy dollars? Like this is still like it was
recent enough to where like this game still was It's still very good to play
the original one, and we already did have the remaster, which was just
kind of the uppress. Well yeah, they remastered it several times now,
yeah, and I just feel like it didn't have the impact. I think
I played several hours of part one the remake, and it's just like,
yeah, I don't know, Like I feel like the stealth as Joel was
still kind of the same type feel. I didn't get to like the bow
stuff with Elie or anything, but like it just seemed like a much prettier
version of that first game versus Demon Souls, which the thing I always heard
about the first Demon Souls on PS three was how almost aggressively unfriendly it was
towards the player, and then this PS five version was, you know,
it's still a very tough game and everything, but not only looking a million
times better, but has a lot of quality life improvements and things like that.
Like I would have said, as far as remakes go, I'm not
saying Demon Souls is a better game than the Last of Us Part one,
but as a remake, I feel like that Demon Souls remake is better than
I think that you guys have like rose colored glasses of the Last of Us
because the Last of Us original is so goddamn good, and we all know
that Demon and Souls was very fucking difficult to play, so when it comes
to crawling up from the gutter, then yeah, the Demon Soul's remake is
better because it took a game that's like practically unplayable by today's standards. It's
still a very like an important game. I played it once. The last
time I played it tough to play. I played it when it came out,
and nine I played fifteen. I still found it to be like difficult
to play. Dude, I could not play through Demon Souls. It was
such a mess. I don't know. It's a tough matchup because weird fucking
blame Dan and Science apparently blame the bracket science. Then I everyone loved the
Last of Us in Part one is impressed was hell? And I played when
it for when it released went several months ago? Was it? They updated
the AI for both, like for not just um the people who are like
your assistance, but they also updated the AI for all the enemies, so
they're way more reactive to like take you down and listen to you. And
they also updated the audio. So I think you're associating like the fact that
it looks better, but it was already a good game. Yes, it
does look better, there's no question. But they also like added a ton
of like visceral audio to make you really feel that you are in the environments
that you're in when you already have an immersive game like the Last of Us.
Adding updated audio, updated visuals, better aim, haptic controller feedback like
all that stuff basically makes it the ultimate game. I would not play The
Last of Us any other way besides playing part one. Now, I wouldn't
play Demon Souls two thousand and nine without playing it's because that game sucks without
the update. I still just prefer my vote is still for Demon Souls.
Like, I don't disagree with anything you're saying. The sweeping changes across the
Last of Us from the several hours I played whenever it came out. Yeah,
I was like, I've made my case to the Last of Us.
It makes me want to play the Last of Us right now. I love
that game. It's so good. Part two I don't love, but part
one is still phenomenal. Of part two, I'm I'm voting Demon Souls.
I think it's up to you, Dan, I will vote for Demon Souls.
All we've science the matchups so far have I feel like like in the
third round things are just gonna get demolished because all the good ones are moving
up against good other good ones. Well, it's it's the science. So
all we can do is just be you know, humans and discuss. Okay,
anyway, Next up, Tony Hawks pro Skater one plus two versus The
Master Chief Collection is Tony Hawks pro Skater one plus two two years twenty twenty
three years ago, twenty twenty Yeah. Yeah, by god, you talk
about a game that fucking feels every bit as sharp as it did back then
as age like the finest of wine. Tony Hawks pro Skater Loo Look Halos
great too. I love the old Halos. Those of Age well two not
so. Some of the campaign objective and pacing and things like that, and
you know certain levels and things like that. Tony Hawks pro Skater pretty much
perfect games one and two, and they still feel that way. They feel
better than ever. They have taken the best levels of them. You've taken
things like the manual and all that, and even the revert. You take
the revert from three, you throw it into one and two. This is
the ultimate Tony Hawk package. I as much as I love Halo, some
of those games, especially the early ones, have shown their age. I
love the fact that they do the thing where you can press a button and
see like flashback and forth between the old graphics and new graphics. Like in
terms of remake, that is a thing I fucking love where it's like you
can just with a button press be like, holy shit, look how much
better it looks now? Like that's awesome. But as far as a gameplay
experience in the modern day, I think Tony Hawks pro Skater beats Master two
collection. I actually did not play that much of the Tony Hawk one plus
two remake. I played it for like an hour. It felt phenomenal in
that hour, But I might have to like leave myself out of this one
because master Chief Collection as a package is just one of like the best video
game packages out there. But I don't think that makes it a remake necessarily
a fantastic remake. Yeah, let's talk about it though, But Halo two,
that remake is really good. The Halo two, Halo the master Chief
Collection is the ultimate way to play Halo, and you would never want to
go back to the previous versions. This is like the ultimate version. So
whether you were playing it for the first time, which is amazing, this
is exactly what I would give, like my nieces or my nephews to experience
Halo for the first time, or if I were to play Halo again.
That is so much content and it's extremely well done. It's fucking Halo like
it's one of the best franchises of all time, one of the best stories
of all time, and then they update it and modernized it. I get
way more gameplay quality gameplay out of Halo than I would out of Tony Hot.
But in terms of like a remake, like I feel like it didn't
take like I think a great remake like Okrano Time three D, which is
not even on this list, or at least by I explained my reasoning for
not telling you asking you to put it on there anyway. Sorry. Yeah,
So like Okrano Time three D does something where it's like, okay,
let's look at the Water Temple, something that was maligned and people hated how
it was kind of direction less, hard to get around, hard to get
a sense of where you're at. They added certain lines, colored lines where
you could tell like, oh, the water level will go up to hear
down to here, So they improved that thing greatly. Matter Chief Collection didn't
do that. It's pretty direct as far as like how those were, like
the library, the level where the flood attacks and everything. Like everyone always
complained about the library because it's just like a bunch of sami looking hallways.
Same way Water Temple could get a little comp kid and everything. But nothing
was done to rectify that on the Master Chief Collection. So I think as
a technical remake, I think there's a lot of things Master Chief Collection as
going forward, like having it all in that same launcher, that same download,
the same purchase, but also making the graphics much better and you can
switch back and forth. Like technically all that stuff is great. I don't
think it did much to improve upon the original gameplay experience, like even something
as small as like just taking this maligned level and making it a little more
clear, asking purely out of curiosity, not leading question. Did Tony Hawk
wanted to improve a lot? I think by bringing mechanics in, by bringing
in stuff like the manual and the revert and quality life type stuff like that,
Like I do think that fundamentally changes the experience of going through the warehouse
or the first school level or things like what we consider makes a good remake
because to me, it's what the final product is, not that it came
from the ashes to no, it's not from the ashes, like like remakes
are typically from getting the original Hawks for the best games of all time,
I'm saying ones that bring it to modern consoles and modern audiences, but improve
upon things that were flawed originally wild maintaining the original field. When I fucking
go down that ramp beginning a warehouse and Tony I first Gator one plus two,
I feel like that muscle memory that controls everything feels like Tony Hawk,
but you can side steps some of the bullshit stuff, Like I think it
needs to improve upon the original experience and modernize it, but also feel close
enough to it to be nostalgic for fans of the original. It's like maintaining
the DNA. But I don't know, like because yeah, I mean,
I know what you're saying, Mary, It's there. It feels like there
are like several different criteria you can use, Like I don't think a game
should get an edge because its original source materials sucked. But I don't think
any of these games original source materials sucked. Hence the company's rereleased. That's
why they're here, is because the original source material is so good. But
it seems like we're skewing towards the fact that like such gigantic improvements were made
that that is like more valuable than the fact that, like the final product
of Halo is just like untouchable. Well, yeah, I mean, I
think it's a combination. Like, for the record, I think Demon Souls
remake is better than the Last of Us Part one remake and by like an
inch, not much, but by an inch. So I think it's a
combination of like how they updated the DNA of the original thing and modernized it,
but also like, at the end of the day, what is the
game you'd rather play right now? Of these two, But again I barely
touched to let you put it this way, So I don't think with Tony
hot with this matchup Tony Hawk and Master Chief. Both of these originals were
fucking impactable, just incredible fucking gaming experiences. I think in terms of the
remake, though, Tony Hoppers Getter one plus two kind of brings you the
best of these games and presents them all in this kind of type package with
improved controls and visuals and all that stuff, and it gives you the best
of the best, whereas Master Chief Collection is more of a like unabridged collection
of everything warts and all, which means you're getting the levels that aren't that
great. You're getting stuff like the library and some kind of directionalists early,
you get the warts. With Halo two, ward Hog is there. It's
well. It's also worth noting that not every game in I don't care about
half the games the Masterchiefs Collection are ports. Halo three didn't really get that
big of an update, right, It's not just a port that's maligning it.
I love Mass Chief Collection. It's one of like I go back to
it still, but yeah, I don't know. I feel like Tony opper
wentfless too, is just shoving all of the best of Tony Hawk into one
incredible package, where Master Chief Collection is like, here's all of it.
Curation. I'm not great. You know, it's unabridged and yeah that's good
and bad, whereas I think it's it's a much tighter product to have Tony
barks first Getter one and two. It is, uh, everything you're playing
in one plus two is very very good, bless you, versus a master
Chief Collection, which is like, Okay, this is like here's the full
the full thing, which is good. I'm gonna abstain unless you need me.
You can't abstain because I'm gonna plus Okay, Well, in that case,
I feel like Dan's been talking more, but I feel like he has.
But I maybe that's why I feel like, give me one Mary,
give me a closing argument, and then I'll make a make the call.
Okay, Um, keep in mind, I have played your game more so
you you have. I'm I'm on at a foundational level leaning toward master Chief,
but I haven't played Tony Hawk. So the closing argument is in your
favor. The Halo master Chief Collection and remake completely validates why people were so
in love with Halo in the first place. It had everything going for it,
but it needed a fresh coat of paint, and it also needed quality
of life updates, which it did get. In addition to better visuals,
the cars drive better, the shooting was improved, and the AI is improved.
So you're not just talking about like, oh yeah, we like updated
the graphics. They thought about it, and they made it a more perfect
game to play. It is the ultimate way to play Halo. You should
not be playing any other version of Halo, and it gives me the best
excuse in the world to play it again with friends and family, which I
do all the time. I actually play that game all the time, whereas
like I don't go back to Tony Hawk very much. Um So that's my
argument Halo. I've a sure closing argument here, and that Mike, you're
an Apocalypse Now fan? Correct? Yeah? Where are you going with this?
Oh? What's happening? Okay, you're going to watch Apocalypse Now tonight?
You feel like you get the edge? Are you watching? Yeah,
the theatrical cut? Are you watching the super long reducts with the French plantation?
The theatrical cut? Why? Because it's a tighter overall experience, and
it doesn't. Yeah, I see what you're doing. Huh huh, Okay,
that actually spoke to me. I'm sorry, Mary, he brought like
one of the best movies. That's a good example. Yes, oh man,
that felt good. Okay, Tony Hawk Advance sober Halo. Mary.
I was literally gonna go with you until he did that. I'm not You're
right, I shouldn't patronize you. Master Chief Collections, Great, it's awesome.
You could have said the same exact thing for Mary. Could have come
back and said the same exact thing for Blade Runner and pushed it back toward
master Chief with Yeah, I would have said the final cut for that.
So it's like you picked the exact right movie for that. But Tony Hawk
pro Skater, Yeah, all right, it's locked in. Tony Hawk pro
Skater beats master Chief Collection. Next up Metroid Sama's returns for the three DS
versus Zelda. Windwaker HD released on the Wii U. Remind me what Windwaker
it did some stuff. So here's here's the big things wind Waker HD did,
which I think largely there aren't a lot of things, but the things
it did were very significant. So obviously the visuals that cell shading looks incredible
in HD. But if you remember one of the main complaints, two of
the main complaints about Windwaker was sailing took a long time. People were annoyed
by having to play a little song every time, and then the slow sailing
and all that stuff. Well, you get the swift sale very early on
in wind Waker HD, so it makes it way faster. You can do
the songs way faster and everything. It just makes the whole getting from island
island thing a lot better. And that's a big part of the fucking game.
And so you were like eliminating a lot of bullshit from that game.
And speaking of eliminating a lot of bullshit, remember at the end, you
had to go to all these different places and you had to get these Tingled
maps or these maps for these parts of the Triforce. But not only did
you have to go and get all these parts and I feel like there's six
seven, eight, like there's a lot of them, you also have to
take them all to Tingle and pay a bunch of rupees to get them deciphered
before you can actually like go hunt them and everything so it is like the
most bullshit fetch quest of all time in a game that's otherwise just beloved.
So win Waker HD is like, all right, here's the swift sale makes
that a lot better. Also, they eliminated like over half of that bullshit
you had to do with the maps and the deciphering everything. So it's just
it is such a tighter experience. And win Waker is such a good game
that was kind of marred by that stuff and the original release, and now
it is so much better. It is the way to play that game.
And then Sami's Returns though, was way more like systemic overhaul. Yes,
Dan's competing with himself right now. Yeah, oh, let's talk about all
these are awesome as are here. I played Sama's Returns, and again going
back to what Mary said, as a game in itself, the remake,
I loved it, but I never played the original that it remade, so
I don't have the context. So there's no nostalgia really with Sama's Returns,
because, like you said, it feels like kind of a new game.
It's like, I think Mercury's team, you know, they added a bunch
of like the not three sixty, but the all the aiming stuff was very
different thing. Yeah that dread um. They had the Perry counter, they
had the Perry thing where you'd like hit X or whatever. Nowhere do the
slow mode that Sama's Returns. Yeah, oh yeah, that's great. That
felt like a newer game, weird enough, the one that I I don't
think it was eligible for this list. But AM two R came out the
same year as sam As Returns, which was way more of like in nostalgic,
like, this looks like Super Metroid with the Metroid to map and everything
did a better job. Yeah, if Nintendo had made AM two R,
I think there's a better argument for AM two R winning this. But Sam's
Returns is kind of its own thing. It's like a spiritual successor almost with
the same name. Yeah, like, I like it a lot. It's
a great fucking game, and it's much better than playing the original SAM or
Metro two with the super close up game Boy visuals and all that stuff.
So it's it is a great remake. But um, I really wind Waker
here. I'm up for Winwaker as well. Personally. This is all just
reminding me. I think we might have missed the game for this list like
a dragon Eshan is technically a remake of the two eleven game, which I
didn't play the original, but I know you've been Yeah it might be.
I didn't know. Like these are all pretty heavy hitters here, Like,
yeah, I didn't add it tactfully because I couldn't speak to it. Um,
I would like to lose three in a row, Metroid. I'm kidding.
I think Zelda has this in the bag. There's something else that specifically,
my first experience of wind Wicker was the update for not the Switch the
WI You that completely altered my ability to play the game because you could look
down and see what was in your pouch in your hand, and that is
a genuine quality of life improvement to that game. When I was looking at
gameplay of other people playing it, there's just is just such a better experience
to be able to look down and see your pack and see the direction that
you're going. It's like it's like you're actually an explorer and you physically look
down in your living room and you see your compass, and you see what's
in your bag, and you see all these items. I mean, it's
just like it's just a great, great update, and I think to that
alone, I have to go with it. Yeah, that carries over to
all of the three DS remakes they did, because like with Ocarina with MAJORA,
you had the bottom screen. You're not physically like looking out to a
different thing, but it's like, oh, I can equip and unequipped the
hover boots or the metal boots and stuff like that. Like that helps so
much more having a second screen during a Zelda for Inventorium map purposes. And
yeah, certainly with the game pad. Like you said, Mary, it
was an excellent here. I feel like wind Waker HD was what Nintendo wanted
the WEIU to be in terms of the dual screen functionality, and then we
got the switch. I feel like wind Waker was the first real good incarnation
of that, or yeah, manifestation of that. I agree with wind Waker.
Were you an animous here? Yeah? Waker HD advances, do you
an animous? Excellent? Okay, we're moving into the bottom half, and
also sets a precedent for one later on that I'm going to have thoughts out.
Oh yeah, all right, oh boy, okay, well next one
might not be that hard, all right? Metal here solid the Twin Snakes
versus Spiro Reignited trilogy. I'll build Twin Snakes me too. Should we save
the bigger Twin Snakes argument for when it matters more? Yeah, Spiro.
I mean personally, I always found Spiro to be that thing that I played
at a friend's house when I went over, and I love Insomniacs later work,
but Spiro was never like my I purely think of Spiro from a nostalgic
standpoint. I looked at Spiro as a thing that Kala played and I was
like, Oh, there's some kid game or whatever, and I never took
it seriously. And then I played it for the first time with the Reignited
trilogy and like platinum to all of them because I was having so much fun
and it's like, oh shit, it turns out these games are actually incredibly
well designed, and they did such a good job with the trilogy all in
one package looking amazing like it was. But I think it is in that
camp of remake where it's like mostly visual, you know. I can't speak
as much to quality of life type stuff for that, but like it was
very effect of getting me, someone who had never played the games, into
a thing I always ignored. Yeah, Mary Dog on the fight. Um,
I'm gonna probably agree with the Horde on this one. Um, I
did not. I played a lot of Spiro as a child. Uh,
was not stoked to play it as an adult. I had moved on mentally.
All Right, we are cool adults who play metal year self. We
learn about the Cold War and stuff because we're smart adults. Yeah, my
childhood had really gone at that point, and I was past dragons and into
war. Okay, yes, hell yeah snaph and next yeah, hell yeah,
Medal Years solid awesome. Isn't that my gimmick? All right? Next
up Ratchet and Clank, the twenty sixteen one that came out around the movie,
and Majora's Mask three D. That's a tough one. Okay, Ratchet
and Clank. Okay, Hm, the Ratchet and Clank remake is fuck?
Where do I even start here? I'm start with the Major's Mask. Majority's
Mask took a fucking all time classic and added like the way you can move
around to the Bomber's notebook and warped at different times a day, the bottom
screens stuff. The Marry was talking about it earlier, like all that stuff,
taking like one of the all time best games and just making it so
much more user friends. It took. It took what I considered already in
two thousand and one, two thousand, two thousand a genius game with many
flaws, and just remove those flaws so you could experience them in with way
less barrier to entry. They updated you could save the game and keep playing.
You didn't have to save the game and then revert. You could fast
forward to a specific time of day, so if you wanted to do Cafe's
quest and go to the canyon at a certain time, you didn't have to.
It wouldn't have to be flash forwarding six hours or double timing. I've
said this many times for Major's Mass my favorite game of all time. I
will every single time take the three DS version over and sixty four, And
also like Retching Clank is one of my favorite series as well. Twenty sixteens
Regen Clank was phenomenal, and that Retching Clank remake was like they went above
and beyond remaking that game they made. But they also modernized the controls because
previously that original game was compure third person without any radical or targeting. You
just shot the bullets in whatever direction he was facing, regardless of where you
were looking and they took they They removed that and then added the more modernized
actual third person shooting controls, and it looked great. Automatic weapon upgrades felt
as good as ever. The levels were gorgeous, packed to the brim with
secret but like it's still does not approach what I consider the most brilliant game
ever made, which again with this version is this isn't about the most brilliant
game that was ever dream, which the remake removed any scars that hadn't because
like buffing buffing a diamond, I feel like you're changing it because before the
last of us it's the same exact argument. Yea, but this time I
have an edge, is it? Ratchet Clank has way more quality life improvements
in the upgrade? No way, not at all. Majora's Mass three DS
is like the quality of life improvement Paragon. Yeah, but you still it's
a change time to get shit done, which is the most annoying part parts
about that game. They didn't fix the thing that made it annoying. That's
like saying the wild except for the part where it resets. Yeah, it's
like that stops, that's the thing. Yeah, Ratching Clank is just like
fun. It's super fun and like ratching playing twenty sixteen, it feels like
a modernized version. If you don't, if you don't like mass I'm not
going to convince you that it's a good game. Like I'm not going to
convince you to like it. I'm just saying I think that that three D
S remake, like I could finally tell people to play one the best game
ever made my opinion, without with like so many fewer caveats and the things
that make it harder to play nowadays. Yeah, it's like, well we
fix that. Yeah, no, we don't. You fucker just move it
along. Wait, no vote, you guys have this entire experience together,
just holding hands the whole way. No. Dan brought Apocalypse Now and then
I was about the side of you, so you know how like it Apocalypse
Now. But I actually do want to hear this. Go on, I
haven't informed my thigh. Take your time. Um, I really want to
hear this. I don't know if I can do it. Okay, if
you can, if you can actually find a good metaphor to connect the Ratchet
Client twenty sixteen and Apocalypse Now, I will give it to you because I've
made I've made my case with three more jars. I don't I don't need
it. I will actually give it to you. Are you googling don't Apocalypse
now? Don't google Apocalypse now Slash Ratchet client connections. I don't need to.
I know that game like the back of my butt. It's it's a
phenomenal game. I love I love the original, I love the remaing.
Yeah, so you know, like an Apocalypse now, how to get the
acting just right? The guy like literally had a mental breakdown and punched the
mirror and broke the shit out of his hand and was bleeding all over the
plays. Are you confusing this with Leo DiCaprio from No Really Happened? Yeah,
he like freaks out, gotcha? Okay? He was fucked up when
they were shooting. Yeah yeah, yeah, he genuinely hurt himself, also
had a heart attack. He just had a terrible time on the set.
Yes, sure, Um, and they like, uh it's notorious in that
film that um the director was asking to get like really aggressive acting out of
everybody because he felt like it would make a better product. Yeah. The
developers, Ratchett and Clank really had a bad time and they were abused terribly
throughout that entire experience. I think that they did that to get a better
performance out of Are you arguing for Crunch? Now? Where's this gone?
Yeah? I don't know about this one. I think that sometimes abusing developers
and voice actors gets a better product, and in this case, Ratchett and
Clank is just a phenomenal experience that came out of like a really bad you
know day. I rest my case. Okay, I'm still going majorous maskt
a noble effort. I don't know if it was noble A shot. Next
up Dead Space of this year versus the GB little Links Awakening switch remake,
that's a pretty cool Uh are very different games? Dichotomy? Yeah, they're
very different. Look, I'm a zeldamark, but I feel like Dead Space
was the way more active remake. I'll give it to Lenks Awakening. Links
Awakening is one of my least favorite Zelda games on the Game Boy, and
the switch version made it more palatable to me. A lot of the things
that I hated about the game Boy version. I don't like the way game
Boy games look. I don't like that there's only two fucking buttons you can
use A lot of that was remedied by the Switch. I mean, obviously
it's got the score to start style. It's you know, I wasn't too
bothered by the frame rate stuff, the fact that you can map more than
just two fucking things. It's a much better lengths Awakening experience. But I
do feel like Dead Space Man Dead Space Age really well as a game,
and the stuff they added and doing more of the log stuff and everything,
and the smart kind of weapon upgrades and all that. It's it feels like
a very modern game, even though it came out fucking fifteen years ago or
whatever. I would have to go towards Dead Space out of these two.
Did you guys know that if you take the first letter out of every like
area, um, its spells better than links Awakening. O my goodness,
I know there were that many chapters. Yeah. I don't disagree links Awakening
remake actively. I used to say links Awakening was one of my favorite Zelda's
and then I played the Switch remake. I was like, oh, I
don't really like this game now it's one of the worst. Wow, it
went downhill because of the remake. I just I also don't like that art
style. It looks like Fisher Price toys, and I appreciate it's very unique.
It's it's got a distinct art style. I don't like it. It's
not my favorite art style, but I'm glad it's different at least because like
Zelda typically doesn't have that, you get kind of associated the realistic, you
got the kind of in the middle. This was completely different, and I
appreciate that they did a bold choice with it. Yes, um, oh
yeah, I gotta go dead Space here, Mary, Yeah, I'm with
you. I think that I loved The updates to the gravity changes were a
big deal. Um. That's genuinely taking a pretty big part of that game
where they were like, it's cool you can be anti gravity, and they
improved upon it and made it way more playable. Um. They make the
boss fights funner. Um, the weapon upgrades are more fun. It's just
a better version of the game, hands down. So I think it's just
got that quality of life improvement. I would be interested in seeing a Chibi
dead Space. I think if they did that, I would go dead What
is the didn't dead Space? Which dead Space? Was it that when you
beat it you unlocked that like retro mode? Was that that Space one or
two or three. There was one where you would unlock like a foam finger
thing and when you shot it would, you know, like the whole retro
mode in one of them. I thought three maybe I think it was three.
Yeah, anyway, I really played or hear about I'll go Dead Space
Overhammy, all right, cool? Yeah, we got a unanimous on one,
the unanimous one Dead Space advances now unanimous Sky matchup of round one.
Shadow of the Colossus versus Resident Evil one remake. Well, let's let's give
it. Let's give Shadow it's credit or credit it's due. Yeah, it's
uh. Look, it's good that there's a nice new way to play on
modern consoles. Shadow it's one of the best games of all time. Some
people had complaints about it, get rid of the like ethereal kind of blurry
look of the original one. I still think it's I think it's an improvement
on the original and it still holds up. I love Shadow of the Classes.
But when you put that up to Resideval remake, we're talking two thousand
and two. This was four fucking years or no, I guess this would
have been six years after the first one. I always forget Resonaval one was
set in ninety eight. We came out ninety six. Yeah, yeah,
so yeah it was. It was six years after it came out. And
I'll never forget seeing the fucking screenshots and in game informer of the candles and
in the way like you know, Jill looked and everything. It was so
head and shoulders over that like very early three D and still holds up like,
yeah, have you see on like if you download on PlayStation five today,
like that's still going off of that old remake. Yeah, they've upbreasted
it and everything, and they've like done the thing where you can not do
tank controls and all that. But it is a gorgeous fucking game, and
I'm kind of glad that it maintained that tank control, very survival horror feel
of the first Resume eval. As much as I love the RI two remake
approach of like making it a totally different game and over the shoulder and all
that stuff, I kind of love that the first one is just like the
roots, you know, So to me, it definitely goes to the Resonaval
remake. M Yeah, Resume one remake is incredible. I don't have anything
to add. It's the perfect argument. Resident Evil one remake advances, and
now we have Speaking of Shadow class though that was a blue point, right,
the Demon Souls and a couple Metal Gear games, That's what I'm hearing.
Yeah, well they did the HD collection stuff, right collection? Yeah
right, but the rumor of Free and Snake Eater or and everything, Yeah,
that would be great. Yeah, all right, we have eight.
Now run down the class of eight here, Resident Evil two, Demon Souls,
Tony Hawk, pro Skater one plus two, Windwaker, HD, Metal
Gear, Solid, Twin Snakes, Madura's Mask three, d oh fuck dead
Space, and Resident Evil. Oh man, we got some matchups here.
Okay, Resident Evil two remake versus Demon Souls remake? Ill, when do
you start? I'm I'm I know I heard your Demons Souls last time.
I'm going resivel to remake? Yeah yeah, ok three Waste Breath, Yeah
exactly. I think I think we gave Demon Soul it's credit in the last
series. But like, okay, yeah, look, where's all your fight,
Dan? Why don't you lose gracefully like a graceful loser does like me?
These are all the ones that I fight. I don't want to Resonaval
two is a much better It's objectively way better. Mary doesn't know how to
function of someone's not arguing, so apocalypse. Now I've been fighting and losing
for forty minutes. Somebody else fucking fight and lose. No, we are
in full agreement. He Resonable two is a much better way. I hate
it. Okay, here's I think the next three might get a little more
interesting here. Okay, Tony Hawks pro Skater one plus By the way,
Resonaval two advances Tony appro Skater one plus two versus wind Waker HD. I'm
going to win Waker HD for the Waker I think I am too. Yeah,
Like, I fucking love Tony Hawk. But the stuff we talked about
earlier, the tingle map stuff and all that, it's just like that is
major upgrade to a Zelda story. Yep. Is there anything else we need
to say on that. No, it's just like the ultimate version of the
game. That's like, not just better, it's like the way I wish
it always was. I wish we could have played it like that when we
were kids. And I love that game. So yeah, it was great
to begin with, and then we fixed the couple things that we're painting the
ass about it? So how do you argue that? Yep? Well all
right, oh man, this one's gonna kill me. All right? Next
up Metal Your Solid The Twin Snakes versus Majora's Mask three D Fight, Okay,
fight? Remind me what in twin Stakes? So twin Stakes? Okay?
Yeah? Please, I'll I know both of these up and down.
I've played what's your question? Like, what's your question? Twin Snakes?
How expansive? Were like the changes? Oh whoa? Okay? So Heyo
Kajima saw the works of Japanese director rio he Kindamura and a director of movies
like Versus and Things. First of all, I loved the cut scenes and
the way Twin Snakes works so much that I bought a bunch of Kidamura movies
like Versus who Kadima has a cameo in because it is the most I think.
This is before I understood that I liked anime, because the stuff that
they did to the cut scenes and Twin Snakes is just straight up anime.
Before it came out, and oh four, there was a trailer that they
released which was twenty seven minutes long, and I can't tell you how many
times I fucking win two thousand and four, Dorm Internet Bullshit. On my
shitty computer, my e machines, I downloaded this twenty seven minute trailer and
the amount of times I watched it because like, oh my god, the
fucking the first time you encounter Gray Fox and he does a fucking backflip over
the thing, cuts the ceiling down and Soccer kicks it into Snake's face,
or Snake famously backflipping the torp and jumping off and shooting the stinger and all
that shit. It was the anime style that they added to Metal Year,
which was already extremely anime. I came to learn was incredible. But then
also you add the sons of liberty, like first person shooting and those mechanics
to mental ear Solid one, which broke some things like the Oslat fight.
The Oslat fight originally you're kind of running around in circles and stuff, and
you just gotta kind of take these pod shots. Once you can do first
person, it becomes a little trivial. You can shoot like the pipes and
like shoot steam in his face, and you can just pop up up and
just kind of kill them. But it just Metal Yoursel two has the better
mechanics for sure, Metal your Solid one. I think most people will say
it has the better story and bosses, and so this was the perfect merging
of both of those things, and the actual like extremely anime cutscenes and all
that stuff, were divisive. I personally loved it because Metal Year always had
those anime qualities, even if I didn't know it back then, and so
it just took an over the top crazy story, leaned all the way into
it, gave you much better fucking mechanics. And I'm not gonna say it's
better than the original Meliar Solid, but I'm going to say it is as
far as a remake goes, it is bold and memorable and makes extremely clear
improvements over the original in a way that almost nothing else on this list does.
Yeah, and I remembered most of that. The thing. The reason
I asked is because this is a tough matchup where it's very very different styles
of remake. Twin Snakes was like a complete director's cut weird fever dream.
But also, like I agree, it did make the first game mechanically better.
I don't think directors Scott, directors Scout would imply that, like it's
a bunch of stuff. Kajima had on the cutting room floor, which like,
this is like what if we gave it to a different director? Oh
right, Twin Snakes was right, okay, yeah, maybe it's like what
if we gave Apocalypse now yeah, guess at it or something? Yeah,
yes, Whereas again MAJORA is like, if I'm going which game is better,
I'm still going to go MAJORA three DS, but as make I know
that's what I'm saying, And I would say, I honestly Major's Mass three
D is better than Twins Majora's Mask at the game, I would say Majorg's
Mass three D is a better game, but I think you just inherently have
more ammunition for Twin Snakes over Majora's Mass three D as a remake, So
like, oh because because three D only had a cut like, it's more,
it's more directed. It's more they were just getting rid of the stuff
stopping, like getting rid of the barrier's entry on your way to playing this
brilliant game, whereas Twin Snakes was like similar things but also just doing so
much more. Um yeah, I don't know. I I'm not going to
argue for Majora's Mass three D over that. Why aren't you guys fighting or
diplomatically assessing the situation, and as experts you're solid quite a bit. It's
just I'm not as much as Dan, but I love it. But Zella,
you don't do Zelda's part of my holy Trinity. No, I know
it's right up there. Yeah, what is the third of your oh,
Mario, Mario, Yeah, mineus Warhammer War Frame, Total War, Zelda
Siege Total, Zelda Total War and uh, it would have been a Halo
Retchen Clank and Zelda, but not anymore. Mary, do you have any
thoughts. I'm I'm conceding Majora's mask in this case, but unless you have
thoughts, um, I think that it would be difficult to go against that
argument, especially for Majora's mask, which I didn't want to win the last
Yeah, that's fine, Yeah, twin snakes do it all right. And
we're at the point in the tournament where all of these are incredible remakes.
Obviously from the beginning, they've all been amazing. Yeah. Yeah, And
that's what we're doing where the science, the brackets science, the beautiful brackets
science is playing out in front of our eyes. Here we all right,
the final of round two. Oh, that's a classic dead space versus Resident
Evil. One shit, I'm going to be in Camp Resident Evil here.
Why Because while Dead Space did things like it added deals where it's like,
okay, you can depart the electricity and make the lights turn out here,
and like, you know, it did do some very clever things that made
it more than just like oh HD Remaster or whatever. Resident Evil added things
that played on what you knew of the original and the way the mansion was
set up, because like you really got to know the mansion and reson eval
and so by them adding things by like oh, I can go behind this
thing now, and there's a whole thing behind the stairs here, and like
what the is there's all this lore about this, like the Spencer Girl or
something like out in the woods like ship that did not even exist in the
original. You know, like it added really interesting things to resonaval lore that
reverberated, you know, throughout the series. On top of the obvious visual
upgrades and things like that, and but also mechanical things like the knife stuff
with it. The crimson heads. They're they're they're they're breaking the rules of
resonaval. They're breaking through doors that didn't happen for holy shit, like it.
Every single thing about the first Resonaval you could not take for granted and
assume it would be the same way, because they added so many different wrinkles
in twists on that, on top of unbelievable technical advances in just you know,
six years. So I think in every fucking way, Resonable one remake
is like a model of how you're remaking game. And that's not to be
smirched dead Space, which is a fucking killer remake, but it doesn't go
as far as Ari One. I also just think Ari one remake is still
even paired up, even by today's standards, a more interesting game than Dead
Space remake. That's basically remakes phenomenal, but it is still this like third
person action survival horror adventure kind of thing, whereas Resuvabal one is this like
confined haunted house setting with puzzles but also inventory management and also this atmosphere like
that game. What were we talking about recently in terms of atmosphere a game
that we replayed, it'll come Metri primary mastered. Yes, you would ask,
like what other games have any an atmosphere anywhere near that? And I
forgot to say Resuvabal one remake. I just think it's a much more like
still even pairing them up today, I think it's a bolder game. If
you were to make something like resumea one remake today, I would say the
same thing. All right, Yeah, I think Resident Evil is just a
just an incredible powerhouse remake. It is a game changer. It's so unbelievably
innovative, and the remake kept all of the innovativeness of the original but fine
tuned to everything else to make it playable for modern audiences. All right,
greed, I think we're unanimous. Ye, Resident Evil advances and we are
down to the final four. I need to urinate. Do you guys want
to vamp for a minute and a half or do you want I can play
a break. We can take a break and then come back for the final
four. Sure, take a little break back, Let's do that. Okay,
we'll be back folks. All right, then we're back with the final
four. Dan hit people with the lineup. It's a hell of a final
four here. All the stars are here. We've got Resident Evil two,
Win Waker, HD, Metal Gear, Solid, the Twin Snakes, and
Resident Evil one reroof Heavy Hitters. All let's start with the top of the
bracket. We have Resident Evil two and wind Waker HD, who wants to
start. I feel like this. I'm gonna go Resonval to remake. It's
yeah, trying to think of what we haven't said yet. Um, it's
the overhaul, right, It's it's an overwhe HD smoothed out issues. Yeah,
but it's at a deeper level, like they still maintained the the atmosphere,
the horror of that police station. They maybe appreciate the police station more
because I can move around it more freely. But also the fucking mister X
expanded mister X mechanic is horrifying, which is the thing. They took a
kernel of something that was the present and one scenario of reson Eval two and
then turn it into a massive part of that experience for the first time.
You know, it's it. I think it's it. It's a real contender
for the winner of this whole fucking thing. Yeah, I mean that game
also, just even in its own if you did not know it was a
remake, even though it's in the name, it just feels incredible. They
smooth out so many rough ages As a third person survival horror game, it
feels amazing. I would I think that feels better than The Evil Within.
I think it feels better than Alan Wake, Dead Space, etc. I
think it's just the phenomenal game. But without demming it down, you still
have inventory management, you still have this kind of like claustrophobic area that you
were like revisiting areas and it's like surprising you with things, Yeah, exacibating
whether it's even worth going back for one specific item or is that one night
zombies I left alive back there? Yeah, yeah, yeah, all this
shit that was great about resonable to the first time around. Make it look
better, make it feel better, add shit to it, enhance spawn stuff,
Like as much as I love Windwaker HD, and it is the way
to play that great game. Like, I don't think there's any contest here,
Mary, um no, I think you're in the right. I think
Resident Evil two is the top contender on this board, and it's quality of
life improvements make it an all time great, and it was already an all
time great. So sometimes in these conversations we're talking about a game that was
difficult to play and then they made it in a really good game. This
is a phenomenal game, and then they just made it an incredibly phenomenal game,
and that is worth so much, not just that they didn't ruin it,
They just absolutely made a very very good game. Shine. So yeah,
Reside Evil two, I think Windwaker is extremely good remake, and I
don't change any of the things that I say said about it before that got
to this point. But Resion Evil two no losers in this bracket, but
there are winners, and its Evil two has won this battle. Going to
the final two. Next up is Metal Year Solid the Twin Snakes versus the
first Resident Evil remake. Who that's a tougher one. They both Okay,
I'll say Twin Snakes was way bolder, you know. Resid Eval. Residueval
remake is not an R two remake situation where we change the entire perspective.
It is more direct. It is ten controls, it is the fixed camera
angles. It does do bold things, especially in a time when remakes were
not as common. Two thousand and two, they changed a lot of things
about this beloved game. It made bold choices and they worked. It is
a much better game than the ninety six game. Looks better, plays better,
every part of It's better. Twin Snakes, which came out just two
years after that Reside Eval remake, is much bolder. It changed everything.
It changes the perspectives you can shoot from an act from It changes not so
much the story as much. They did rerecord all the dialogue, but the
whole style, and and that can be for better or for worse based on
how you feel about it. I see it as neither. I see it
as for it's different. Twin Snakes is a is the anime version of Metal
the more anime version of Metal Gear Solid, and I love it. It
gives us those ridiculous fucking moments that even as crazy as the Metal Ear Solid
Proper series goes, you don't see Snake backflipping onto a missile and jumping thirty
feet in the air and shooting a rocket as a brother like it goes crazier
than Metal Gear. It is super anime metal Gear, but also adds these
things that make it better to play. So I think across the board it
is the Metal Ear Solid experience. You're going to shadow Moses, You're fighting
these same bosses, you're having the Liquid Snake monologues, all that stuff,
but with this sheen of anime in the adition of the first person perspective,
in different ways to play it and everything. I think it's bold. I
think it's weird, and I I think I give it the edge over Residon
Evil. Reson Evil, I think is just a massive upgrade over the original
experience, but it still feels largely the same, even if they've added different
things. Twin Snakes is just a bold reimagining of what Metal your Solid is.
It's not what I want to ever Metal your Solid to be, But
as a standalone remake, I fucking love it. Nor do you want to
go first? Yeah, you go first. I one first, the last
like six times. Okay. I think that Resident Evil remake took I unbelievably
phenomen game that was broken to modern players and made it unbroken. And so
we're not just talking about quality of life. People won't play the first one
because it's fucking annoying, and they made it functional well, and hang on,
I want to elaborate on that sort of interrupt But so when you say
made it functional, because it still does have the ten controls, it still
does have like it controls the same way. So in terms of like making
it functional, like it isn't like an OR two remake where it's like we've
changed the you know, I'm glad you brought that up, Dan. I
think that to stay true to the original game, they wanted to keep that
authenticity of the ten controls. And I think that it allows us to have
respect and pay homage to the original game that started it all. And I
think that unlike RI two, it makes sense for the original to have that
increase that is still, in my opinion, like not everybody's into tank controls.
I think that is still frustrating, but ungodly better for the modern players
to be able to accept it. I'm trying to think of like how you
could compare that, But like we're talking really really old schooled games. It's
a very old game that changed gaming entirely, and they found a way to
say, both, let's make it playable and let's make it functional, but
let's hold true to like the design and what it was meant to be.
And I think they did that and they achieved something quite great in that in
between. But I feel like when you say make it playable, make it
functional, I don't really see that with the first remake. More I saw
it with two because two does the over the shoulder, it feels more modernized.
But considering it keeps the time controls and everything, like the actual act
of controlling Jill or Chris and the first one, like, it doesn't feel
that different. I mean you're still confined to the same like straightforward down up,
like it feels, say, the foundational controls are the same, but
I think the remake feels much smoother. The hit boxes on Zombies also allows
you to deck juke a way more because it's not like two rectangle rectangular things
bumping up against each other. Sure, it's still tank controls. I don't
think it's anywhere near as stiff as the original. Someone who's the record,
we're not talking about the later ones where they remade the remake and you can
talk about the game two and two game yeah, um, And that's that's
the only thing I can keep coming back to is there's an even better version
of this remake down the road, but that's not where. But you know
what, I stuck with tank controls though I wouldn't. When that remake came
out, I was like, I tried it. I was like, this
feels weird, like I'm used to I don't really mind the tank controls.
I'm still going to go with Reside Evil. I think Twin Snakes to me,
as I mentioned last time, it's bold as fuck. It's this new,
weird thing, and I love big swings in video games. I love
when people are not afraid to just like completely throughout the playbook. To me,
Twin Snakes feels like an almost completely different take on something which is awesome
in its own right. But again to what Mary said, Resume One feels
like the not perfection, but like on the road to perfection of this great
idea that you can make this whole new generation, not even a whole new
generation, because it was people had played the original version for two years before
well no, no, no, six years before, Like I think Resume
One remake actually took. It didn't just perfect or it didn't just um improve
the original experience, like mechanically like I mentioned, but also just the detail
in the mansion, the things they add in the mansion to like help you
appreciate the laura around it more. The puzzles they added were it's still the
puzzles, and all resonuval games are dumb as fun, but they were still
great. Um yeah, I don't know. I still I think Resonua remake
is just still to this day, I would rather play that than ninety five
percent of video games. It's just it's phenomenal, um and all credit where
it's due to Twin Snakes for just being like, what if we had a
completely reinterpreted version of this thing? More bad shit Metal Year Yeah, yeah,
which is which I agree is like in in in a certain sense kind
of what metal gear is all about. But yeah, Resonual remake as as
a remake, I think it is a much better thing. Yeah, there's
a part of me that just feels that, like, well it's metal Gear.
I have to, you know, go to bad for it. But
it's like, at the end of the day, I'll love it. Yeah,
I love I love I love Twins Snakes more than most people that have
played Twin Snakes. But I feel like until the last like five or six
years, the Resonaval two thousand and two remake was like the model of like,
holy fucking shit, that is how you remake, Like that was untouched.
So I love Metal Year and I love Twin Snakes, but I'm I'll
throw in with Resonaval as well, all Right, cool, do we do
we res Evil one versus two for the finals? We do, and then
we can talk about resume before we can pit the winner of this against Resident
eval Force. Well yeah, so if unless it sucks, Oh yeah,
unless yeah, yeah, if it sucks, and I guess we won't even
talk about it. But yeah, okay, let's yeah. So, Dan,
what's the final matchup for the championship of the best remake ever made?
Fucking Resident Evil two remake versus Resident Evil one? So or the Caleb version
the two worst Resident Evils against it? Oh my gosh, she's not allowed
in the room. Yeah, got that all right. I think we've we've
already worked our way into making it impossible to decide. I think we should.
But now this is about finding the way. These are two different approaches
to a remakeer, that's what I'm saying. No, that's my point.
I think we've made such good cases for both of these as their own version
of remakes. Now it's a matter of like, what do we appreciate more?
Two one is my favorite game, um of the series, and I
think it's because it it got me into the series. Um. I think
as a remake two is better because it adds an unbelievable element of mister x
Um. It's kind of creates these like extra ordinary iconic sequences that are so
unforgettable. In Apocalypse Now, there's this part we're in a mode of American
helicopters bomb of Vietnamese village and it's all set to Ride of the Valkyries and
you can't whatever you can No, I think I think it's right of the
Valkyries. Actually is an a Flight of the Valkyries? Take it? Yes,
I think. Okay, it's a common misconception that's a Flight of the
Valkyries. Okay, Well, I know that's because there's Danna Brands theme music
for a while and people miss more cultured. Now you're a pretentious one.
Congratulations, thank you, Okay, sorry, And I think you can't think
of that without that scene, right, it's kind of like buried into our
brains. I don't know if I have an iconic scene of Resident Evil remake
that is buried in my brain, probably the part where the guy is like
a zombie and like, looks up, you got the dogs through the windows.
There's iconic scenes for sure, appearing the Scarlet two remake when you see
mister X coming out of the helicopter. It's so iconic yet pushing the helicopter
aside if he's coming out of the helicopter because he was vipum flown in sorry
crash. Yeah, hello, I'm here to kill you. I mean,
it's this an iconic scene, and it's it makes its own iconic scenes because
that wasn't in the first. So when we're talking about like the best game
ever, I would probably say Resident Evil remake because holy shit, they do
so much with it. But Resident Evil two builds upon which the original Resident
Evil was so phenomenal and makes it its own better experience, and that's why
I think it's the best remake. Yeah. Yeah. My argument would be
that, like one, remake works extremely well, especially if you are a
fan of the original Resonaval, Like there is a nostalgia element for sure.
There. I still think it holds up. I think it's if you were
coming to it for the first time. Now, it's still a really good
game and you could appreciate it. But Resonaval to remake feels so modern in
a way that like, yeah, I've got a nostalgia Resonaval too, but
it is so fucking just redone and overhauled from the ground up. That if
you had never heard the words Resonaval together before until today. I'm not saying
twenty eighteen or whenever it came out. I'm saying twenty twenty three, and
you play this game for the first time, this feels modern and terrifying.
You don't need to know shit about Leon or Claire or the T virus or
anything. You don't need to even know it was a remake. If you
call this a different title and you this, here's a new game, twenty
twenty three, play this. I think anyone who enjoys like tense horror action
games like could appreciate that, Like, this feels modern, This feels awesome,
And like, I don't know what better thing you can say about a
remake than even if you just removed everything about its past and where it comes
from and it's still a fucking incredible game, Like you've got it right there,
which first Resonval remake it feels dated you handed someone today and granted,
yeah, even the remake was O two versus twenty eighteen or whatever, but
my god, not feeling good? No, I mean, who knows what's
gonna happen? In the next twenty years a game design, but still I
can't. Yeah. The last point I'll make is it was super impressive that
Resoneval remake could maintain the DNA of the original but also bridge a gap,
a six year gap in game design, and make that new one feel modern.
Resuval two did the same thing, but it was a twenty one year
gap, which to me is way more ppressive. Yes, a lot more
had to go into that. I'm not actually like, you know, are
we one remake was just like, oh not that the time between alone.
I'm just saying the fact that two also maintain the DNA and the atmosphere and
the spirit of the original setting, but also brought it period, brought it
to people who weren't even fucking alive when the first one came out, and
they're like, oh shit, And I'm sure they all some a lot of
them might have gone back to the original and hated it. But yeah,
I mean, it's anything's extremely clear here. It's that I think Capcom are
just the pinnacle of fucking taking their classic series and modernize them. Well,
maybe not so much Mega Man, but finding the right teams to do it.
Yeah. Oh God, the way they've handled Resonable throughout the years is
really something the marvel over all? Right, are we is this unanimous?
Are we putting no resume with three analysts? I don't think any of us
really know that much. And I don't think anyone particularly loved that first game
the way they loved one and two and four, and you know, um
yeah, I think it was his favorite for a while. Three Yeah,
when I was working with my game spot, at least he might have changed
his tune. Talked him about that. Um yeah, all right, I'm
not disappointed by this at all. No, No, that I love.
That came down to Resonaval versus Resonaval two. Um so, yes, your
winner of the greatest video game remake of all time as of this recording March
eight, twenty twenty three is Resident Evil two. We reserve the right to
re examine Resonaval two versus Resonaval four when we can talk about that, but
for right now, Resonaval two is the greatest gaming remake of all time.
Yeah, according to again a panel of many objective it's objective. No,
we got we got judges from like what you listed, like twenty three hours.
Oh oh yeah, yeah, I talked all the fat oscars got in
on Coppola. Yeah yeah, okay. John Carpenter was talking about it.
Yeah, okay, yeah, kubrick Is came back. He was in his
will. It was a yeah, yeah, well sweet that. I love
where that tournament went. That seemed Yeah, that's exactly where that should have
went. I had fun. Um, well, that was fifty episodes.
Happy. Yeah. If we do more like that, it might be a
bonus episode. And again just a reminder, if you have not signed up
in the span of the last three hours of this episode, then go sign
up for the video to your Patreon if you want to see some bonus episodes.
There's one where we're just shooting the ship in my apartment while we're all
in town for the meet up. There's uh, there's the drive to Game
of the Year stuff last year. There's the ranking of candies. There's also
the most the new one sons the forest up. Yeah, we we we
should check before this episode goes up. And maybe, like you know,
when you go to patreon feed and there's the tags there, hopefully we just
have like a bonus tag that you can click and the Neils see any of
the like straight up bonuses that only exist on the page. Yeah, so
you can. It's a good bonus. Yeah, if you missed it,
I watch it now. And if you are not signed up, go do
that because it's the those those patient dollars that help us do the fun bonus
stuff and the in person stuff at the end of the year, which we're
hoping to keep the street going in we want to go to Portland this year.
We want to do a Game of the Year at Mary's Place this year.
We give me going. That's how we were able to do it last
time. And god damn it if that wasn't one of my favorite streams or
shows that ever done. That was an absolute blast. So let's keep that
train going for sure. And also we will more than likely be back to
emails for next episode for that third section, So right into Fireskipecasts at gmail
dot com for questions, comments, concerns, stuff you want us to talk
about, debate. If there's corrections, send them in. I won't read
them. I throw them in the trash. But it's fun satisfying for me.
So if you have corrections, send them in. Dan. What do
you have going on in the meantime? Usual stuff? You got your Twitch.
You got your Giant Bomb. That's pretty much it. Number one game
around camp. Oh, find me on Cameo yellow my phone for money.
Yeah, well I love doing came I got the cut promos for money.
It's fun. So yeah, that's pretty much my business there, Mary.
What about you? Um streaming on mondays on Twitch and other than that,
I'm just on Twitter probably like complaining about something. That's what we use it
for now. I think, well, sweet, I'm doing stuff with Polygon.
I think, well, I'm trying to think. The most recent thing
I would have had up is I wrote about have a nice death. Oh,
I guess actually more aptly for what we've been talking about tonight. We're
doing a year of Zelda stories just to celebrate Here's the Kingdom. We've had
a bunch go up so far. We've gotten a lot of positive feedback.
Speaking candidly, a shit ton of people have been reading all these stories because
it turns out people really like Zelda. Yeah. So we've got a lot
of stuff up. We've got some deep dives into links, links awakening storytelling,
We've got some revisits of Zelda one and two. Well, I'm gonna
be reading about linked to the past. Soon I'm gonna play on this nest
classic. Um, We've got We've got a lot, We've got some more
about the Zelda music, we got the Zelda timeline stuff, all that fun
stuff. Go go to Zelda thon at Polygon search that well. I was
just thinking, I was picturing if we did like a sixteen Zelda game bracket,
Jesus, that would become much more content yep. That or if we
just straight up resident evils. I'm sure. I don't know that's all easier.
I think I think they are more clear winners and losers there. Zelda.
There's actually there's a couple there. There's one or two I would put
above re Pevile to remake. But again, who knows that might change after
the next couple of weeks. Who knows. Yeah, I don't know.
Um, but anyway, Yes, and then lastly, if you go to
Fireskate merch dot com, Mary tell them some of the stuff they can get
their hands on. There's so many cool pieces of merch on our new merch
store. We have UM mugs, we have beanies, we have shirts including
banana yellow UM. And I have heard that if you tweeted our Twitter account
with your banana yellow shirt. We will retweet that because we love banana yello.
Yes you've heard, yes, I'm sure you've heard of it. You've
heard, yes, yes, but the rumors are true. We will retweet
banana yellow. You've inside information that you'll read. Tell your friends. It's
like fight club. You know. Don't talk about banana yellow, but has
it? Go on, Mike, I get a delish. When I'm tired
it, well, reweet your bananas. Sorry you were you were saying he
said you don't do voices. It's not I'm saying. I love yours.
Isn't a voice out of yellow? Give us some David Byrne. Oh uh
run run run run run run run away. Oh yeah yeah yeah, all
right, Jake, tell us out. See you guys next ten. For
episode fifty one, I don't do voices. Go to another show. Go
to the Best Sis they do voices. Go to kind of Funny they do
voices, go to Mid Max voices No no, no, no yellow as
well to be picked me up and turn me roun. Jake, play us
out looking over another hour. All right, episode fifty one. We'll see
you then, Bye bye. Google