Okay, go hey everyone, welcome back to the fire Escape Cast. It's
episode sixty seven. I haven't been here in well, Mary and I haven't
been here in a couple of weeks, three years since my last podcast,
my guide Mad I'm a husband. See yeah, how does it feel good?
I say my wife as much as I can. I haven't said it
out loud, actually, as much as I'd like to. I said it
for the first time at a i'd like even on the honeymoon. I didn't
really say it out loud to anybody. When we went to a cocktail place
before killers the flower moon the other night, I said, I think my
wife's already here at our table. Felt like a felt super adult. Makes
you feel very adult? That where's my wife? Is? The flower moon
with my wife on Saturday. So yes, me and my wife will be
saying that. No one told me how horny it would be all the time
once I got married, like all the time, Sure, it's all I
want to do. Well, you can have sex now, finally, I
know crazy, Yes, speaking permission in by the State of New York to
finally fornicade. You do need that this clip say, just completely hypothetically for
an exercise. Say we haven't yet. I'm not going to revoke it.
What's like the best? Give me like four positions I should fall back on
top, bottom, ceo side, other side, front, back. All
right, I'm learning a lot. Notebook middle, middle. The wedding was
fun, Yeah, yeah, there. It was such a beautiful wedding.
I know a lot of people say when they go to a wedding it was
beautiful, but they have to because, like, weddings are a lot of
money and there's a lot of planning involved, so you can't be a dick
about it. Your wedding was stunning. I know, it was so pretty,
and the fact that you got married with like New York behind you was
really awesome. We lucked out with the weather too. I think it rained
for like three days before that day and then four days after, but we
got like the nice upper sixties New York City sunset over the water is great,
perfect day, perfect suit weather. It was yeah. Temperature comfortable,
not too hot, not too cold, little Goldilocks moment with the with everything.
Honestly, it was true. It's true what people were telling us.
They're like, you're gonna we planned it all ourselves. Well, I mean
again, we had help from like the head of our venue and whatnot,
but planning wise, we did it ourselves, which looking back, if I
did it again, I think I'd still do it that way. But it
was definitely like a lot of free time that we just step over the last
year and a half. But people kept telling us like, you're gonna spend
a lot of time planning and it's gonna be great, but it's going to
go buy in a blur, and like the rehearsal dinner night the night before,
seeing everybody come to town the day of, and then like we got
back home the day after, We're like, well, what do we do
now? We went to down to Key West the day after that, but
I remember like ten moments vividly, and we got our photos back, which
were great because I was like, oh right, this happened in that.
And then like minor things like, uh, if you ever watched Caneval with
Mary and I, you know, a bit that I consistently do at the
beginning of an episode is like Mary will introduce me, like what do you
want, I'm busy right now. He does it every time, and he
also does it every time he calls me, which is really annoying, like
he will call me and I'll phone He'll go, what do you want?
That's funny. So for the ceremony, Dan was up there first to say
like, hey, please put your phones away, like you know, we
got a photographer. Then the music started. Then I was first up family
uh uh, bridal parties. A man that came up last, and I
did the bit when Mary he got up and passed me. I don't know
if you heard, like in the middle of the ceremony with you know,
the music playing and me standing up there all serena, when I was like,
what do you want them busy? I guess she walked by me.
It was funny. I was proud. I didn't I didn't want to tell
you and bother you at the wedding, but like right before everyone came out,
all of your brothers were very drunk and rowdy and I had to kick
all of their asses. That's what they told me. They're afraid of you
now they are, Yeah, all those military dudes, and I had to
take them all down. And you sit here and you don't cause a scene.
Brother's special day. I love you think more than one of them is
in the was in the military. I think there's one. I think there's
a stat bonus to anyone who's been in the military. With the people around
him were it's like, okay, they can all kick Yeah. Yeah,
he's like the bard because he's been in the military. Yeah yeah, brothers
within a three meter radius can kick ass. Now. Yeah, I'm basically
a seal because he was in the Marines. Yeah, that's how it works.
I have a purple heart. I want to apologize to people listening.
You probably already might have noticed. I'm pretty I have a cold. I
feel like fine energetically, but you know, as we've all been doing a
lot of traveling. But when we got back from the Mini Moon, it
was like on and off, just been sick. And then today I was
not going to miss my first episode back. So I'm uh brute forcing through.
It might be here's Dan Mary. You just cannot make me laugh the
entire episode because then I will just cough. Did you catch the sex flu?
Yeah? We won't say anything. I've been going some places God did
not intend me to be going. But don't make me laugh because then I
will got it. No, I don't. I don't want to trigger like
listeners. The most serious episode ever begins now four score seven years ago,
the Land of Lincoln, where the Shadows lie. We walked through the Valley
of the Shadow of Death. That's the ticket. Really keep it dry and
just try, said onto Abraham more monotone please, and low low, And
it was good. It's kind of funny. That's gonna make your voice scratchy.
It already is scratchy. Actually, no, it's gonna make it worse.
You're gonna start coughing. Oh are you trying to get me to cough?
No, I don't want to cough. There's no jokes, no joke.
The hobs of them will be good. That's just letting viewers. Now,
hard game analysis. How have you guys been, What have you been
up to? Blah? We're both at the wedding. And then since then,
the week after that, I went to Canada. Week after that,
I went to a place sits embargoed until I think a few days from now.
And I just got back in town last night or something. So basically
every weekend in the last month I've been traveling and somehow I'm not sick,
and I'm looking forward to just hanging out in November and having people over here
instead of me flying everywhere, so it'll be nice. I also traveled the
last three weeks. I went from New York immediately to Las Vegas for twitch
Con and then immediately to Palm Springs for my own personal break, and then
immediately back to uh Portland and I leave in like two days for New York
City again. Did come back to New York. I saw the Sphere?
How is it? In person? I love that thing. It's cool.
It's I think we were all kind of ragging on it when you saw the
little smiley face on the outside, and then when everybody saw what the inside
could do, You're like, all right, it's a little different. The
outside is rad. So this Microsoft and Xbox was doing all the ads on
the sphere and it was nuts, just like nuts, how vivid they are
on the sphere. Mike doesn't know what the spear is in Vegas. Yes,
okay, I sort of know what this is. Yeah, but I've
never seen the concert, so sort of know what the sphere is. Mike,
What the fuck is that? Oh? Yeah, I'm pretty sure I
kind of know what the I believe it's a circle shape. Jokes human eyeball
in the middle of the desert. You've seen it. You can't know what
this is. Stop riffing factual commentary. Only what's the funniest thing you can
put on the sphere? Just make a big nipple. It's like a goat
seat, like a nipple. Make it a boob. Yeah, get another
sphere in sphere because it's so bright that they can't sleep at night. Well,
look, they decided to live in Las Vegas, so if they're worried
about brands, that's kind of their problem. They're living there, though.
You can't be like it's your fault for living. If you're close enough to
the sphere for it to bother you, you picked the wrong fucking city to
move to. If there's gonna be a fucking baby about it, go to
the actual desert, not live inside the loudest city ever. Live inside the
sphere is an interesting I would do that solution. Yeah, it's really neat.
I even did an interview and the sphere was behind me and I was
like, oh, the little smiley face comes on like while I'm doing this
interview. It's like, why is just like last Veggas. There's a big
basketball, there's a big eyeball, there's big like like a sub zero ice
stuff, but like the yellow like it looks like a sunny side up egg.
Is kind of the iconic face that I don't feel like that. Just
a yellow sphere with it's got two why's and he's like looking around, he
like sticks his tongue out. He's katy. This was the sphere? Have
you been living under your wife's pussy for like the last two weeks? How
did you not know? Okay? First, yes, Second, I don't
go on social media more solf. People were like making jokes, but oh,
do you go to see the sphere is the thing in Vegas? We
gotta go see it? Oh fucking take tax Sofie do the prayer at the
these on and star and cuts to a post. It's not cool. I'll
go to this fair God's blue cells or whatever it's called. Worried about his
voice and this is the most like extended weird voice bits i've seen him do.
I don't do voices annoying. Oh my god, put it on X.
We'll get some, get some like X. This might get my blue
check mark. It's well known in social media discourse that the sphere is crazy
because you two played a concert in it. And the inside of the sphere
like completely changed visually, even looks like the ceiling is collapsing. It takes
you to other realms because it's the shape of the sphere, it looks like
it has no limit, and so it's just kind of instead of streaming,
it just looks like you're completely changing location. God damn it. Okay,
I definitely read about the you two thing. I just don't think i've ever
actually, like Google image searched all the different things it's they've done with it.
Oh, I've got in my way like a dozen times to just look
at what the sphere is doing. Crazy. Is there like a live feeder?
You could look at it right, It's no. But I'll just like
search Twitter and just be like Las Vegas spear and you'll see a bunch of
clips of like, oh, here's what it looks like from the highway.
Here's what it looks like from an airplane. Here's Okay, the NBA Sphere
NBA two K twenty four made it a giant basketball yep, yep, it
was a big up lantern. It's big tennis ball. What is this just
a big smiley? But Microsoft released like a bunch of Xbox ads on it,
and the Xbox ads are wild on the sphere and I bet you could
find those and they look really good. Those Oh it's the the like logo
that's Spider Man. It like opens the X like opens on the sphere,
so it looks like you're going in the sphere. It's really smart. I
don't know, like you know, in modern day advertising, right, we're
like humans. Most of us are getting absolutely disgustingly sick of ads, right
and we're doing our best to avoid them at any given moment. This sphere
has done such a great job at being this like incredible ad that we kind
of enjoy because it's a spectacle and it looks neat and it's a massive amount
of real estate. It's huge. It's a huge half a sphere. I'll
go to Vegas and I'll just stare at ads for as long as you want.
If I can be here with that sphere and look just right in my
veins, I capitalism. It is capitalism. We and we're talking about it
and it's winning. The other thing that I did that I have to talk
to you about is have you ever been to Area fifteen in Vegas? Is
that a non alien one. It is a joke because of area fifty one
flips. I would say, I actually don't know how to describe it.
I would say it's like a club, and then it has interactive environments.
So I have sex with an alien. Yeah, yeah, it's like one
of its options, and you know, and then like this thing for bike
around and stuff from the planet. This is important. It doesn't exist.
It's a joke. There's the easy joke. Yeah, it's too lazy,
though. We won't we will do it. We won't do it. We
can do better. Yeah. Also, no jokes, no jokes. I
just want to know which planet the aliens you're having sex with an area It
doesn't exist yet. It's the planet from Total Recall with the lady with three
boobs. Oh, Mars, wait, I thought that was a fake planet.
I forgot. You know that movie too? Well, all right,
ship okay, Mars, I forgot that it is a real planet. Is
there a woman with three boobs in Kunk Pow enter the fist as well,
not as notably as Total Recall? If she is total it's iconic and it's
got like eight and it's got like eight utters. I think it was Kunk
Power into the fist where there's a woman with three boobs and there's the guy
and in the l dub he's sneaking into the dojo and he's just singing like
no no no, no neo no no none no spoorin. It's the stupidest
bit I've ever seen in my life. I think she has one boob,
it's the opposite, fewer boobs and two. I think it's one in the
center. Oh that's hotter, but I can I think three is hotter.
One is hotter, three is hotter. I want, I want like a
boob cyclops staring at me. You guys are both freaks. I'm gonna move
on. I I understand that we've all agreed. Uh So, Area fifteen
has these interactive areas in it, and there's this one called Omega Mart and
you walk in it and it's basically a shopping grocery store, but it's slightly
off, so the eye will be really weird, where like it'll tell you
where the dairy aisle is and then the grocery goods, but then it'll say
like existential crisis. Sometimes the prices will be really absurd, so things are
just slightly weird about it. Like there's something off about this mart. And
then if you go to the frozen section, one of the doors of the
frozen section opens and it's a portal to like another world, and it starts
to kind of unravel into this very unique and different universe that's all been constructed
around the Omega Mart. And I actually don't want to spoil it because it's
so fascinating and so interesting. But this is probably one of the most wild
experiences I have ever had in my life, walking around this space and realizing
how big it is and how vast it is, and how you have to
like crawl in it and like climb up it, and you're just going into
a different world. All that is under the guise of like a shopping mark.
I'm looking at pictures and this looks really really cool to me. You
gotta go. I mean, I think it's worth going to Vegas alone.
That's I don't know how else to better sell it. Everyone should go to
Vegas and see it. I accidentally wind up in Vegas every once in a
while for something, and this is going to go to the top of my
list because like this looks like weird. Like I don't know if you ever
went to the Robot restaurant in Japan or anything. Yes, yeah, like
that type of weird, just like light Show, Black Lightscause, crazy shit
everywhere, Like, yeah, I want to go here. And as a
gamer, I think you will really appreciate that they've even kind of gamified it
a little bit where sometimes they will give you there's there's like actors walking around
that are in on it, and they'll give you like little hints and clues.
There's a total underlying story that's going on that you can solve and figure
out if you understand all the pieces of the puzzle, like sleep no More.
But yeah, And I think it looks like it's begging for people to
be very high and go to this. It's absolutely a drug taker's dream,
but you don't need to take drugs to really appreciate what they have done here.
I think it is the most creative space I have seen designed for people
to just explore and run around in. And so I just wanted to throw
that out there. I was not prepared. I had not heard a lot
about this. I encourage you to not google it or look it up.
You will probably be tempted. It is my advice that the next time you're
in Vegas, to go and just enjoy Omegabart at Area fifteen and then tell
other people to go, but don't tell them what happens. All right,
I'm incredibly intrigued in kay okay good. I could not believe it, how
amazing it was. I just I thought it was the greatest thing. Awesome.
So I've never been in Vegas. Vegas is interesting. I yeah,
no, wonder you haven't heard of the very weirdo Dice. Never been to
I've never been to Dice either. Maybe that's why, because that's usually and
twitch Con is never twitch Con has never been in Vegas. Yeah, you
had no reason to go, obviously. It's such a it's such a bucket
list place. I know it's not for everybody. There's a lot of people
who would not enjoy vacationing in Vegas, but I think it makes sense for
everyone to at least see it because it's a real spectacle. Yeah, all
the lights and the strip, it's wild. I'm sure i'd have some fun.
Like, I'm not itching to go. I also took elon Musk's loop.
Oh my god, wait that thing is like actively like is that La
Vegas? Oh? It's active. It's uh, it's I did the short
round. So I think he's made huge promises of where it will go.
But I did from the Hilton Hotel to the convention Center. The original promise
from Musk was that it would take you from hotels to the convention center really
quickly and efficiently. Well, I thought it was from La to Vegas was
the thing. That's his promise, But that's not where it happened. I
don't know. I will tell you, like, I'm not a huge fan
of that man, but the loop slaps really How quick is it from the
Hilton to the convention Center? So walking it can take easily an hour?
No, yeah, I five minutes, and unlike getting an uber, they're
just waiting for you. There's like six teslas and as soon as you scan
your little barcode, you just sit in a Tesla and it drives you in
these underground tunnels to the convention center. And because the tunnels are all one
way, there's no traffic, so you never stop. It's just a straight
shoot to the convention Center. I forgot it was car. I think I
thought it was like an underground mono rail. So yeah, would' that makes
more sense. It's not. It's Tesla cars, individual Tesla cars. Yeah.
The original thing was the air compressed train underground. Yes, he replaced
it with Tesla cars and it works. It works pretty well. I will
say, like, you are correct. I cannot argue with you. A
train or monorail system is much better for the environment. It's better for like
how many people you can get. He's doing it with Tesla's. But now
I'm sitting in a Tesla by myself, enjoying this ride completely by myself,
and it's are you in the back, yes, but if you have three
people, you can have someone sit in the front. It works like an
uber, right, But it's five minutes. It's so fast and easy.
That's pretty sure. If I hate to admit that, because I know I
said the same thing, I said the same thing I said, I don't
like this guy. Uh, five bucks for a whole day pass what I
told you. I'm gonna sell you on Omega mart and on Musk stupid loop
in the city where everyone's drunk all the time and you up into a thing
and like and they're digging it. They're digging it to the airport. So
if anyone has been to Vegas can tell you going to and from the airport
sucks. Balls. It just sucks. It's not a Gratis sucks. Yeah,
it does suck. This loop is supposed to go to the airport,
so then you can just immediately get your very fast tesla all the way to
your hotel. Five bucks. Dammit, that actually sounds pretty good. I
know. It's like the worst person you know just made a great loop.
He's tried a hundred things that I'll suck ass and don't work, and like
this one actually sounds pretty good. It's cool. It also is lit with
like Neon RGB lights, so it's kind of like a gamer's delight. When
you go into the tunnel, it feels like a really boring ride. Isn't
like you're inside a graphics card. It feels like you're, yeah, okay,
it's smooth. I took my parents on it and they were like,
oh, it's like we're riding a little roller coaster. It's really you know,
it's not slow, but it's like it's really smooth and you're just driving
in a car, but it makes you feel like you're in a ride.
God, I want to go there with my dad and make him get on
it. I remember the first time I got it, showed him uber and
I was showing him like the live thing, like that's where the car is
like, you can't do that, that's not true, and around the corner
and he's like, okay, whatever you used to do, that's some dumb
that's not really how it works. And then we got to the place and
I got out and he's like what are you doing? And I was like,
you just get out automatically it does the pang, so you can't do
that. I was like, Dad, you do that. He wouldn't leave
the car. He's like, Dad, it's we're good. And he's like
he talked to the drivers, are you okay? Can just he need to
like pay you. I'm sure he would love driverless cars going in a loop
underground, like and you're waiting for a driver, then it starts moving.
He's like, what are they doing? He's going to be so free.
Doubt as technology progresses with all like the driverless cars and all the stuff that's
going to happen really soon, just tap freaking out, you know when you
like he refuses me to, I will die on this hill. I will
not scan a QR code. I will not tap Mike like his card can
do it, but he just refuses to do it. Wait, I think
we talked about it, but what does he do At restaurants where they literally
don't have paper menus anymore? He will like ask, you know what,
has they ever not had paper menus? Now? They usually like have one
something or even like high of the pandemic, they would like bring something out
for him. You know, he orders chicken fingers because he knows they exist
on their menu. Yes, the old faithful. I mean I've literally seen
him order drinks at bars but I don't care. Just give me something that's
brown and I'm drinking it makes me go ah. The bartender has to decipher
okay, whiskey. I guess you walk absinthe, but with whiskey, I
don't know. Uh I have Yeah. I went to Key West for the
first time recently. Was it cool? Where is that panhandle? Is that
no way way? It's like ninety miles from Havana, so like it's the
chain of islands, like way off the Southwest tip. I see a lot
of people go to Miami and then dry but we just went right to Key
West. Someone at your wedding asked me where you were going for your honeymoon,
and I was like, Oh, they're doing like a baby moon because
they're doing like a bigger honeymoon next year when they can actually go to Europe
or something. And they were like, Oh, what are they doing for
their baby moon? And I was like, I'm pretty sure they're just like
staying in New York. And I told multiple family members of yours that you
were just hanging out and I was like, I'm pretty sure they're just like
staying in Hoboken and like you went to Key West and I was like,
Oh, I have no idea what I'm talking about. Yeah, we went
five minute around Hoboken looking for you because Mary said that's where you were.
I'm pretty sure. I told multiple people you were staying in New York.
No, we didn't. It was it was fun. Well, that's just
that we didn't plan like anything. It's a we got up every day.
We're at the hotel right like southernmost tip of the continental United States. We
got up, rented bikes from the hotel for the day, went up to
get Cuban coffee up in the marina on the north side of the island.
It's a big like breakfast town. Because get this, it's known for just
wild chickens that roam around the island and the hotel and they come in and
they're like you know how when you're in central park or like a an urban
park where the squirrels are not afraid of humans and they just kind of hang
out among them. That's how chickens are at Key West, And so they
would just come next to the hotel pool while we're hanging out or like on
the ocean or in restaurants, and chickens would kind of like strut through can
just like Zelda can they what swim? Yeah, they kind of avoided the
water. But there's also pelicans and I bet you their breasts float, you
know, Like chickens are really like puffy in the chest area. I bet
close. But they cock or crow at the doesn't when the sun's coming up
of a morning. So we would wake up pretty early and then go get
cub and coffee, breakfast, come back down, hang by the pool or
ocean for like five or six hours and not through shit and go there's three
bars here we could like swim up to. Basically, Uh, it's like
all inclusive, yeah, sort of because we didn't realize it wasn't really a
resort like you might go to in Mexico. It was more just like a
collection of hotels that shared these pools and bars. But then every night we
went out to new restaurant. It's a lot of good Cuban food around there,
because you can kind of, like I Amanda is something you can kind
of if you strain your eyes see Cuba. But it was fun. A
lot of good cigars from Cuba. They were there. It was great,
just hung out and then came back and uh was sick immediately when we got
back. Ah, too much, too much wedding and it's like, take
you like a ton of bricks. Yeah, social expenditure. I was like
I said, it was all. It was all a blast, but oh
my god, yeah, drain me for sure. I got that extroverted.
But it I was dead when I did, when I was done with twitch
Con. This is the true story. And I remember the streamers, so
I feel like they'll be cool about it. But I remember, like when
the con wrapped six pm on Sunday. This is a three day con,
and anyone who understands like E three no's three days is a long time to
be on and wake up at you know, six in the morning and go
to bed at midnight. You can only do that so many times before you
want to crack. And at six pm the con wraps and I'm walking over
to elon Musk's Loop to take my smooth ride back to my hotel, and
I see at the corner of my eye two streamers that I know quite well
coming over to the loop to take it back to their hotel, and I
went, God, damn it, I don't want to even run with anyone
because I'm done, Like I've my social meter was capped, and I felt
like I had had been done. And they're very sweet, and they came
up to me and they were like, hey, Mary, like so good
to see you. And I was like, I was gonna, like the
set the tone right now with you. They get the phone away from me.
I'm on vacation and I I am gonna ride this alone, and they
were like, okay, got in the car and I shut the door and
I went I think I was rude, but I also think I handled that
really well. And then I just like sat in the uber alone and went,
ah, they so nice. I can do whatever I want. I
can see whatever I want and nobody can say anything to me. I needed
it, Like I was done. I was like completely capped at that point.
What is your move? Because I've run into this a lot where it's
like, you know, you're up early or you're hungover something, and you've
got like an hour plus uber to the airport and you get in and they
are just you can immediately tell it's like full on chatty mode and it's just
like I feel so rude, just you know, be like, oh,
hey, I'm gonna like I've never been able to be. Hey, I'm
gonna close my eyes. I'm not gonna talk or anything. Like do you
have a line that you say that you don't feel like an asshole about?
I do? I do? I always say I'm gonna level with you.
I have completely used up all of my social energy and I do not want
to be rude to you, but I have nothing left to give you.
You like to the driver like right when you Yeah, I have nothing left.
I can't I can't even have this conversation. But I appreciate you,
and I'm gonna sit here in silence now. But I think if you start
this is like my experience if you start by saying I am socially drained and
I have nothing left. I have nothing left in the tank. Everybody knows
what it feels like to be mentally exhausted, and so if you can appeal
to them on the sense that like I am mentally exhausted and I don't have
any more, we empathy should kick in and they should be like, oh,
I get it, Like you're done. I think I do the worst
possible thing in those circumstances because I get in and instead of doing that,
I like it's my nature to like just be probably laugh and look at your
phone, like really friendly. I think I'm from Like my grandpa ran a
grocery mom and pop grocery store, and he was just like, oh hey,
like he knew everyone, Like every time somebody came in the door,
he's just like I have a whole conversation, super friendly and all that stuff.
And so like I get in a car and I was like, hey,
how's it going, Yeah, all right, thanks, you know,
thanks going to the airport, and like I'm really like social and happy,
and uh, I think they pick up on that and keep trying to talk
to me, and I should just shut up more just put your like you
put headphones in and say I'm so sorry, I'm gonna call and just like
you're on. But no, didn't they add an option recently to one of
them that you can say some of them they do and I just want Uber
comfort or something you can say, like conversation prepar I've seen that pop up.
It's not every time. It's so I think it's like a certain Uber
I think it's like the fancier one, like Uber Black and Uber Comfort.
You can say I want conversation or I don't want conversation. That has not
deterred people because I have ordered those and said no conversation, and I've had
a person continuously trying to start conversation with me. So it's like it's probably
like in their app, and who knows if they actually saw it. But
I just I mean, I think it's very nice of you, and I
think it's very dan of you to say I will muster the energy to do
this. But I also think self preservation is a universal thing that we all
understand and to express. And this is why I was really appreciative of those
streamers, because they could have been like that was pretty rude. Sure,
but they both were like at the same time, they were both like,
oh, we get it because a lot of especially streamers, know, when
you're on, you're on, and then you have to regain your energy back
if you're going to do that again. So everybody kind of gets it,
except for really lonely people. It is super important. Like you know,
for instance, like what I do during the day is a lot of this.
It's a lot of sitting here and talking and being on and so it's
a lot of times, like all my meetings and shows and everything ended at
like five point twenty five thirty today and we were going to start at seven,
and so it's just like I have to eat, but I also just
to walk around the neighborhood. Nothing in my ears. I'm not gonna listen
to podcast. I just need to walk around and just breathe and just be
off for thirty minutes, just as like it is literally like a stamina meter
has to recharge, you know. That's like it's funny that back in Seinfeld,
that was an episode where Elaine was like worried about getting a driver using
the company car because she knew he would talk to her, and she pretends
to be deaf and then he finds out she's not deaf, and that's that's
so much worse. Yeah, I consider myself really extroverted. I very rarely
have problems in social situations. I enjoy meeting people and putting myself out there.
Extroverts need recharge just the same. In fact, I go on like
heavy burnout when I have maxed out. Something that usually happens to me is
like if I'm on a stage, which is a very amount of like extrovert
energy. As soon as it's done, I go into like a private room,
or if I can't find one, a bathroom, I'll sit there for
twenty minutes. Yeah, and I'll just sit there alone for a long time,
just to take compriss. You don't have to talk to anyone, don't
have to make eye contact with anyone, just fucking recharge. Yes, the
bathroom is my safe space. And I feel really strongly about that. And
I don't think I think it is universal. I think we all get that
to a degree. But I think your honesty is your best policy in that
space. And I genuinely think Dan, you can do it in a way
that is not rude. And if someone thinks you're rude, for saying I
just don't have the energy to have this conversation right now. That's not a
really nice person anyway, That's true. I had a ride from the airport
this week where you know, I have a lot of flight anxiety, and
so I typically like drink before and during flights, and it leads to a
lot of like me being like you know, away from home and like hungover
and anxious. And it's like, okay, I can't just do this every
time I'm flying. So I did this last trip. It was three flights,
and I was like, all right, I'm just not going to drink.
So I didn't drink during it. So I was like higher anxiety than
usual just because you know, I'm just just there, you know, raw
dogging it up there. I guess I love that term phrase for random things.
I said, no joke, looking at Mike directly. You knew that
would make me. I was looking directly. You never would think to say
that. Turn to my wife the next time we're traveling. I'm gonna roll
dog this one. As the flight attendant hears me, and the kid in
front of me hears me, no whiskey. That went as I wanted the
two but yees. So I was more anxious than usual in that flight.
And I land and I just want to get back home. And as soon
as I get in, it's just like it was like late, it was
like midnight or something, and I'm like, I'm just so tired. I
just got to go to sleep. And the guy's like, how much the
lift charge you for this? And I was like I don't know, and
he was check check, I want to see how what your apps has it
charged you? And I was like forty dollars and he's like bullshit, and
he just starts going like and I understand it. It sounds like those coups
like lifting uber like fucking the drivers over. My dad's a driver, Like
I understand that. I'm sympathetic, but like he is just going into great
detail about like the local ordinance and the governor and the way the different cities
deal with it, and like it's like, dude, I feel for you,
this sucks, but like I don't know what I can give you here.
You know, I don't know what I give them. A good tip
and everything, but like it's just like the whole conversations, like I just
want to turn my brain off and just get home, you know. Yeah.
Plus, like the star system, if someone is talking to you and
you can get the sense that they would be a bit even if you are
honest with them, you get the sense that they'd be pissed if you did
say something or we're not talkative, then they could just like yeah, you
know yeah, And I don't feel comfortable giving someone like less stars because they're
talkative, right, like people are friend. Oh, I'm not saying you
would do that. I'm saying no, technically, rate you lower. I
get it. I'm just saying, like on both ends, like the rating
system adds a stress component because you don't want to be perceived as rude and
you don't want to like hurt them for not being rude and all these things.
Like the rating system is kind of like our gaming rating system, where
it just seems like rude to not give the full amount. And when you
even get matt like when the last time you gave an uber driver three stars,
it's either like five or it's this person screamed at me and pooped on
the floor so they're getting one, you know, like it has it's such
an extreme I've given five every time just because it's just you know, folks
trying to do a job and make some money. So I always just do
the five even if it wasn't the best experience. The only time I didn't
was I had to go from San Francisco to San Jose for WrestleMania in twenty
fifteen, and I'm going with me and two friends and our luggage because we're
gonna be down there the whole weekend. We get in and the uber driver
had a camera, was a girl or guy, but had their mother in
the passenger seat. You're not supposed to do weekend? No, Yeah,
well she's alive, hopefully, I believe she was alive. Didn't say anything,
but she was just like in the passenger seat. So us three grown
ass men are it's a very tiny car and we are shoulder to shoulder and
they won't turn the AC on. And this is like April and California.
It's like it it's a crammed car and we are just sweating back there and
it's like what an hour plus drive or something like that. That's long.
Hey, can you it's possible? Can we get some air back here?
And the driver's like, no, my mom doesn't want the AC on because
she thinks it's gonna make her get a cold, like it was gonna make
her sick if he told you, like, hey, listen, like I
I don't know, Like I can see a circumstance where like he just has
no choice in his like their family situation, like no one could be like
the AC is weird. Yeah, and also that's not how you get sick.
You don't actually get sick from it being like an AC car. You
should have debated her. You can't get sick from AC. Man preserves older
people. I think it's nursing homes always freezing. Yeah, And she's like,
excuse me, but my social A battery is really low and I cannot
talk to you. She puts on full coverage earphones. Dan's like, if
this isn't weekend at Bernie's now, it's about to be old woman. That
was the one time I contacted Uber and I complained about it, and they
gave us a full refund, which to San Jose was like one hundred and
fifty dollars or something, So it was like hindsight, that was kind of
worth it. I'll ride with an old lady in the front seat and be
really hot. I don't think I've ever rated anybody lower than five stars.
I was tempted recently, I did not. I'd still give him five stars.
Basically, I was going from the west side, like the village,
back to Hoboken, which anybody who's around here is like, oh, just
go through the Holland Tunnel. You're in Jersey City. Go to Arth that's
quick. Or go Lincoln Tunnel. You'll get there. Holland Tunnel has been
construction after ten pm most nights recently, so he had to go up to
the Lincoln Tunnel, which is more midtown and the because one of the two
main tunnels in the Jersey was closed, the other one was backed up.
Understandably, I knew that he must have known that. So we were in
line basically waiting to get into Lincoln Tunnel, which is shitty traffic. But
rather than wait what I in my experience has been like an extra ten minutes
in traffic to get into link In Tunnel. Don't stuff on that. Don't
do it again, I'll do it u E. He's like, hey,
would you mind if I take the bridge, and I'm like the George Washington
Bridge as in twenty minute bridge, twenty minutes north of here. I was
like, no, no, no, no, don't take that. That
would be like an hour and a half to get home. He's like,
all right, this is just gonna take for ever to get in the tunnel.
I's like, I get that, but like you know we're getting say
yeah, and then he asked me again. He's like, I really think
it'd be quicker. I' was like, I promise you. I knew he
was it from around there because he like knew it as a potential option.
But I'm like, no, dude, look at the map. The bridge
is like in the one hundred and eighties or whatever. We're not going up
that high. Then we have to come back down from it, which you've
driven that with me when we went to Connecticut. Yeah, he did it
anyway, basically as I was like fading off to a nap because it was
late at night, and then I wake up and we're just driving up the
Hudson River Parkway. I'm like, are you taking the bridge? He's like
yeah, man, it was taking way too long. It's like fucking an
hour later. We get home, and it was an extra like eighty dollars
on the ride that it didn't predict. So I still gave him like I
didn't rate him low, I still tipped him. I was like, all
right, he still meant well even I told him. I was like,
hey, he asked three times if he could do this route, which I
and he both knew would be super long, way more money. I told
him no three times and they responded there like we'll refund you, but in
the future, please feel free to tell the driver not to take a certain
route. It was like I told him, did I said in the complete
three times? But I still like, I, yeah, I still rated
him five stars and like gave him tip because he was still trying to get
me home, and it, you know, suckered him because yeah, he
was doing his best. Yeah, it still was a shitty ride for him
too. But I was like, dude, you should have listened to me.
I'm like, I this is yeah, I don't know. That's not
a good experience either. Yeah, I very you know what happens when I
have a bad experience to the driver. I don't rate them at all because
I have anxiety giving them not five stars. But I'm not going to add
to I don't know you could, Yeah, I just you can skip?
Yeah, ah, I skip it. I had a person who yelled at
me for slamming the door when I just shut it normally, and I was
like, this is the way your door shuts. Sorry, and then he
was just kind of like really rude the whole time, and he kind of
like sat in the car and he goes, are you going to be like
this the whole time? And I was like, are you kidding? Do
you want me to get out? And he goes, no, I don't
want you to get out. He drives me home and I get out and
you guys know like when I'm heated, I'm rude too, Yeah, everybody
around you. So I got out and I as I like got all my
luggage, I said, just do you know I'm about to shut your door,
So it might sound like I'm slamming it, but I'm just shutting it
like a normal person shuts the door. Thanks bye, and like shut it.
And then you elbow the window to shatter it. And then I just
take one of the shards and you walk up to him and put it in.
You're like, yeah, let's check all of our uber ratings right now.
Okay, who do you think has the worst? I'm I'm based on
that. I think Mary might have the worst. I have the worst because
I have been a little people before. I was probably an idiot when I
was younger, but I am mine. I'm a sweetie pie most of the
time. I can add a tip for Samuel right now and rate him Friday
to two hundred dred. Oh, I remember that he was good. Where's
okay? I got it all right? I have mine, all right,
So you do it. I've got if you just go to your account button
on Uber. Yeah, oh I am four point eight three four sho.
I showed it to my dad since he's an Uber driver and he's pretty low,
and I was like, yeah, you know how many motherfucking times I've
called an Uber because his ass needs to go home? And he was yellow,
go to Taco Bell, Go to Taco Bell, and he's like screaming
Taco Bell orders at the driver and something like the driver. I've been in
so many ubers where the Uber driver will ask my dad like, what do
you want? And he'll be like, I don't know, just pointed something
on the menu and give me something cheesy and spicy and whatever some bullshit.
It's all good in the driver. What do you want to just point at
the day. It's something brown you have. Definitely because of my dad,
the rating's lower than your That's an really convenient excuse that you can blame your
farty, loud mouthed asshole dad for your rating. It's probably because somebody wanted
to talk to you and you were like, I will forcibly have this bad
conversation, and they were like, this guy sucks it. Conversing four stars.
That's my dad. Yeah, Mary, you know what we have to
do now? Talk about video games? No fight to the death, because
we can also talk about you about I got that transition way wrong and then
one of us is dead. Do you know what we have to do?
Talk about video games? Yeah, let's talk abot video games. Mary and
Jan picture this. You're sitting at your Thanksgiving dinner in a few short weeks
and you surprise your family by starting an argument, I mean discussion in a
new language. Imagine their shock. Imagine how much you would throw them off.
If you start today and get ready to say pardon my French at Thanksgiving
dinner, then you could know some conversational French by Thanksgiving. Because of Babel,
you start speaking a new language in just three weeks, Mary, I
know you've been traveling this year a lot. Has it helped you out?
Yeah? I think the three weeks piece is really important because a lot of
the times I'm traveling and then I forget that I should be learning a new
language, Like when I went to Paris and I was like, I don't
know any French at all. Three weeks is a good amount of time for
me to be able to ask where the bathroom is, where I can get
a good cross all as they say, and just have conversational language. Just
to have that behind me made me feel a lot more comfortable in my travel
this year, Dan, what do they gotta do? Well? We have
a special limited time deal for our listeners to get you started right now.
You get fifty five percent off your Babbel subscription, but only for our listeners.
That's at babbel dot com. Slash Fire get fifty five percent off at
babbel dot com. Slash Fire spelled b A bb e L dot com.
Slash Fire Rules and restrictions may apply. Wiener Central over there, Wiener Central
City, Wiener Central dot com. You know what I mean? Uh?
Huh? Yeah, did you hear that in this card? Huh? Did
my the mic pick up my fart. No, we should did. Yeah,
we didn't hear anything. You didn't hear anything. Nobody heard anything.
M m m mmmmm mm hmmmm. Have we all played Ellen Wake two.
Let's get into it, Jesus, here we go. All right, Uh,
we're back after the part where I fart in the mic. Yeah,
cut that out. If you can normalize it, cand of kind of bump
it up a little bit, that'd be great. Yeah, isolate it.
Let's do a quick hour count here where we think we're at. I'm probably
six hours in. Yeah, I know where I'm at based on Okay,
I'll subtract a few hours based on idle time. Okay, let's say I'm
twenty four I'm in what I know to be the last, the end,
twenty four hours. I've collected everything I possibly can. Oh my okay,
Mary, I think I have played six or seven hours. And I bet
you I am way behind you, Dan, because I can't fucking figure out
this game. Oh, Rock Rock Tree. I was on for a fucking
hour. Dan. You got out a roll that night and you asked me
that, and I was like, yeah, it took me a bit.
Just go across the stream and it's on the rock facing the puzzle, but
what's a rock? Rock tree? Was the one in the forest where Okay,
by the way, everyone, this is a spoiler e game. We're
not going to give super spoilery story details, nothing story, but we'll be
talking about things about the game that if you're worried about it, just skip
this. Well, well really quick before we into it. Let me say,
I fucking adore this game with like so fucking much. It's very recent.
I don't want recncy bias to creep into this. Definitely one of my
favorite games of the year, though feels like it was. It's just like
control like most of their games. At Remedy, feels like it was designed
to obsess you, and it's atmosphere the Twin Peaks meets True Detective Season one
meets Resnuval four meets Resuval two remake vibes of Saga's half and then the dreamlike
surreal horror New York City subway hotel, hard boiled Detective shit of Alan's side,
just like you think they would clash, but then they mesh really well.
They're doing like three pretty daring design things with the whole structure of the
game. I think it's incredible, not at all perfect, It's still they're
updating it pretty freakingly. I we got code like four days before. In
five days before embargo, they delayed it a couple of times. There are
definitely some bugs, regardless, I'm and not all the puzzles are super intuitive,
but I still think by and large the puzzles are still great. I
think there are there are definitely numerous problems. There are whole mechanics that I
wasn't super hot on, like the light switching thing, if you know what
that is. With Alan that I was found more annoying than fun. But
I was not a super big fan of the first one. I loved the
tone, I loved the whole twin Peaks thing, the very lynchy vibes and
all that stuff, But like a lot of remedy games, I didn't really
like playing it, you know, I didn't. I thought Control was the
best yet, but I was I didn't love playing allan Wake one. You
know, the action did not do it for me. But yeah, this
does seem to take some cues from Risen Evil too, and the boldness,
which with how they approached the story is what got me and you know,
I'm not a story guy in games, and I didn't even really care about
the story of the first one, so I kind of expected to, like,
you know, fall off this or not. You know, he played
for an hour two so I could talk about it and be done. I'm
all the way in on the story. I think part of it is the
way they tell it. Where every other game ever, and I'm talking about
like Kajima too, you know, who's the most cinematic you know, game
maker ever blah blah blah or whatever. He has been trying to make games
feel like movies. I feel like, you know, from the first meddle
of your solid it's like, oh, it's like I'm playing an action movie.
Alan Wake two is the first time I've played a game where it's like,
oh, this isn't a game trying to be a prestige drama, you
know, Last of Us type situation. It is telling its story in a
way that could only be told via an interactive medium, and it's making it
work in the way that the whole like mind place gimmick with saga for if
you don't know, you can go into basically like a corkboard type you know,
putting the case together, that visual element of it and being able to
go back and forth immediately from any location, and then they introduce stuff later
on with Alan, with how he interacts with the story and everything. It
is so video gaming, but it gets me so much more invested in the
story than a game where I'm just watching a cut or listening to a conversation
or something like that. Like I am, I am blown away with how
well they present the story. Yeah, I'm obsessing over every dialogue, every
journal entry, every audio diary. I'm I'm getting very into those. If
you've played anything by Remedy, you can probably imagine there's some cool, funny
live action stuff. Have either of you if I mentioned the chapter name we
sing on Allen's side, no, go, oh my god. I've heard
a lot of alluding to like a fifteen minute stretch the game. I wrote
a thing on Polygon about how it's probably my favorite fifteen minute stretch since the
Ashtray Mays in. I wouldn't say it's on the same level as the Ashray
may specifically because the ash Ray Mays is toward the end of control, like
it builds up to that you keep going back to, how the fuck this
happens maybe a third of the way into Allen's storyline. I got to be
real close to it. I think you've Yeah, okay, have you.
I don't think it'll be a spoiler if I asked, have you? You
know you can switch back and forth between the characters. I have not gotten
to the point where you can do that. I'm but you know, you
know that you can. I know that you can. I'm at the point
where they are in the same space now in talking to each other, so
I'm expecting that to happen. Any okay, gotcha. You know it's like,
imagine if instead of doing like a leon A scenario Claire B, you're
playing them kind of jumping back and forth between them, except they're in They're
not both in the police station and Raccoon City. They're in completely literally they
they phrase it as different realities, and they're two completely different vibes. Like
they share similar like the Last of Us Part two Resunual four kind of mechanics,
but they also both have their own, like puzzle conceits and level design
tricks. Yeah. I'm absolutely excuse me, obsessed with this game. When
you switch to one once you get to that point and you switch from Alan
Tosaga. Is time effectively like if you're an in the middle of a fight,
can you do it? And does time keep moving for the other character?
No action swapping aloud? No, it's it's specific. It's in save
rooms. You have to go to a save room to do it. To
go to the others. Oh okay, what about quick save rooms when it's
the coffee cup, that's where they put it's you. I won't spoil how
like what you interact with, but it's kind of a cool callback to control.
It was other callbacks to control, like the the cleaning guy. A
lot of documents from the FBC and there's there's a lot Yeah what remember in
God No that man, we should do a spoiler casts game when you guys
finish it. I don't think I'm ever going to finish it. I'm too
stupid. It took me so long to get through the witches teat area.
I could not solve that space, which is La whatever, Like what's it's
like, what the is the Kojima Silent Hills thing o PT. It's kind
of PT like looping, not that complicated, but you definitely need to like
just go the other direction. Something maybe to you. I got so stuck.
That's why I'm curious about rock Rock Tree or whatever, because I,
okay, you know the area where uh in, which is Ladle. There's
like a shining light and the game prompts you to shine your flashlight. Oh
the focused like RB thing. I didn't get a prompt or I can't read
because I didn't know what to do, and I kept going up to that
shining light and nothing happened, and I ended up like walking around for forty
five minutes trying to know what I was supposed to do. And I got
so frustrated and looked up a guide and figured out that I was supposed to
do something in my thought palace before I was allowed to get that prompt.
Honestly, it wouldn't shock me if you didn't get the prompt, because I
have had prompt based weirdness between like some titles have been weird and like jumping
all over each other. I've had some that won't go away, like anytime
I go to a new area, I'll get the same, Like points of
interest on the map can bla like it's I. There's been some weirdness with
that UI stuff. So wouldn't it might not be on you there. I
want it. I really want to like this game. I think there's really
cool stuff going on, but it makes me feel like a freaking idiot when
I'm running around going what am I supposed to do? And it turns out
I have a new polaroid in my thought palace that needs to be like connected
to the heart with the text on it so that a scene happens, and
I don't know all of those pieces. So when I'm doing something out of
order, which happens all the time, I cannot tell you how many times
I've seen something but I wasn't supposed to see it yet. I am confused
because I've already been that to that place, and I'll be like, I've
already covered that area. I've already been to the Witch's house. But it
turns out you have to go to the witch's house again because you need to
get turned the light on and you need to have a fuse. And it's
just like I ran around for you guys. I ran around for over an
hour, like not understanding what I was supposed to do. I got so
frustrated. I looked up a guide and did it. Like by the guide,
I did end up doing it, but it doesn't feel good to use
a guide for that game. The whole point of that game is that,
like it's it's teasing you these story plot points piece by piece, but I
missed one and then everything was out of order? What are you playing?
PC? And I did? I will say I started with a game pad
and then I was like this sucks, and I switched to mouse and keyboard.
It's way easier on a mouse keyboard. Yeah, it sounds like PC
is having the most issues right now. Unfortunately I had a lot of issues.
I played on PS five and I'm playing it like late at night with
just me with headphones, so like it's I definitely had a few issues which
definitely hindered me where I had to like reload a save what's annoying? And
that definitely I could see absolutely how that would fuck with Like if you don't
hear saga say the right thing, or if the little logo at the bottom
left with the yellows and like the folder doesn't pop up to tell you,
hey, you should go to your mind place and fuck around with the case
board or the profiling or weapon upgrades, et cetera. That would mess me
up. I think I had like one of the best experiences of anybody I've
heard. I just got lucky with one of those things, and jealous I
want that experience. I kept getting lost. I've been lost more than I
have been found. I spent a whole night or like maybe two hours texting
Mike as we're playing pre release, so I couldn't look up a guide.
What the punt is rock rock Tree? Where's I get the concept? But
where's the third fucking thing? Like a lot of them, why can't I
do this? I put these pieces down on the polaroids and this popped up
and nothing changed, and so it's not clear sometimes, and honestly, some
of that gets worse. I really don't like the Allen stuff, with some
of his like navigation stuff. But that first couple hours as Saga, going
through like rainy woods at night as a naked there's a naked dude. My
first feel playing Bunks out of Town. I'm just here with the dogs.
I turn off all the lights. I'm in this room. This window right
here to my right just looks out to the woods and like a pond and
stuff. And it was dark and it was raining as I was playing it.
So it was like the most just forty I don't know how you want
to call it, but like I felt like I was like in this game
and it was spooky, and I was the only one in the house,
and those first few days were incredible. I did fall off a little bit
with the Allen stuff, his gimmick, with the way the story goes.
It's different than the like mind Place, polaroids stuff and all that. I'm
fairly early on in that, Mike, I know you're past this. I'm
curious to see if that kind of holds water, if that stays as interesting
the Saga stuff. I don't think it's a spoiler to talk about how his
writer's room works. It's his mind Place equivalent palace, Like well, no,
it's like, what's it isn't that disco Elysium calls it the mind pa,
it's the game. We have to read too much. Yeah, I
didn't play that too much. Talky. So Alan Sagas they have two like
different, very different structural conceits. Hers is more traditional survival horror. However,
she also has this like once she kind of into it, something about
a person. You go to her profiling table and she like they talk about
without spoiling it. Basically you're like, oh, she has like some sort
of supernatural power of intuition to like read in on one thing. They said,
like, oh shit, they're hiding something in their pocket right now.
She's like a mentalist Alan, and she also has way more collectible to find,
like the cult stashes, but she's doing like the Charlie Kelly Yarnborn board
to connect the dots. In certain cases, Alan basically gets an item that
his is very much about light and darkness and manipulating the environment through that.
However, there's a different there's a second layer where he goes into an environment
where it's like a dead end. Say, there are also these things called
echoes, which are basically echoes of a thing that he supposedly wrote that he
doesn't remember, and then you kind of see them play out in these live
action overlays. He'll get an idea from that, and then you go back
to his writer's room to change the plot on his like chalkboard, which actually
changes the level design you're standing in. Yeah, like an element of like,
okay, he learned about like a like a cult or whatever. It's
like, oh, what if I went back to this area here, and
I wrote the cult into this area. Yeah, and it changes the things
that he's getting in the world. It's cool conceptually, I would say eighty
percent of the time, I thought it was pretty intuitive how they used it.
However, there were definitely a couple spots today, literally this morning,
toward the very end of his story, there was one. Once I solved
it and like, okay, I see how remedy was kind of signposting what
I was supposed to do. I will say the puzzle in this game,
by and large are actually I think they are smarter than I was thinking they
would be. Like certain puzzles I was like, Dan, the lottery one
you did, for instance, I'm gonna I'm not gonna spoil it, so
I'll just say generalization, like, Okay, I see that there's a several
codes that this person wrote down to try to like throw someone off the scent.
But you can kind of see something else that's on the desk at this
gift shop that's like, no, the game, they wouldn't like expect me
to be that smart. It makes you feel like a genius, I think
in some certain situations. But I will say I played this game once fairly
drunk and I couldn't get anywhere. I Yeah, I was, I wasn't,
So I mean that's my problem. Maybe I've been fucked up because I
do drink when I play it. Maybe, Yeah, I mean I'm too
drunk to like crime solve. No, I was sober every time and I
was constantly getting it. Yeah, that makes me, honestly, You're solving
makes me feel better because I Mike texted me. This is not super common
that Mike is like, you gotta play x y Z. You do it
a couple times a year. When it happens, I'm like, I have
to play this because Mike knows me. I put this game in, and
I'm like, am I a moron? Am I dumb? I don't understand
why I can't solve these problems that should be so obvious. Like the fact
that you went through some of these things just make me feel like I'm not
a complete ding dong. No, I don't think they're obvious, And especially
if you're not getting the right prompts, then that sucks. And there's a
pretty wide variety of like a lot of those things are very very smart,
the side puzzles and things like that, and a lot of them lead to
very like, oh there's a whole nother case of these lunch boxes or whatever.
Like just a lot of them really matter, and a lot of them
are really smart. But every once in a while, like the rock Rocktory
one that was just one where it's like I could tell immediately when I saw
the first clue, like, oh, I see what I'm gonna have to
do here, and I just could not fucking find the third thing. I
know that two rocks in a tree, and I could not fucking find that
second rock. And I've actually had other people message me like yeah, second
rock. So it's like I think they just put the rock in a weird
spot that you don't naturally look at. It's like not a particularly smart puzzle.
It's not anything super important or anything. But then there are some that
are smart and important. There are some later on. But yeah, the
rock rock tree thing, we saw for a fact, it was trending on
Google Search, so like a lot of people were having trouble with that.
There are some later on that I was again I solved it kind of either
on accident or because I was like, let me try this. See if
they were actually thinking along those lines like this won't spoil anything. There's one
where you come upon an area where it's clear that like there's a kid's playground,
like there was kids and families vacationing here, and you find a sheet
with clues on it that's drawn like a fairy tale. You can kind of
sort just into it, like and it's like a path like over a mountain
and through woods and over a bridge, like but there's no bridge nearby.
You have you have to basically into it that like, oh, a kid
did this, and this is his imagination. So in the real world,
what would the kid have imagined would be the bridge and the castle and stuff,
And then you have to travel that path and like, okay, that's
pretty smart. But again that's tough, and I don't know that I would
have solved that. I think in general, the game is good at like
queueing you in on its logic much of the time. I definitely, even
in control, sometimes remedy is not great at like signposting what you're supposed to
be doing. Even in the first Allen Wake, which was a pretty linear
action game, there were a couple times where I'm like, what is going
on? Oh, okay, I must have missed something that, like Saga
said out loud, which again I appreciate that they're not saying like, oh,
I need to probably climb that ladder and go over there. Yeah constantly,
Yeah, yeah, but I would. I think this game is incredible.
I'm right at the end. I don't know how it concludes yet.
I know I'm in the last chapter because you can once you get to a
certain spot, you can start switching between the characters, but at a certain
point, way later in the game, you need to get them both to
a certain threshold before you continue with both of them. Right, I'm past
that. I am so not there yet. I'm at the light bulb section.
I'll tell you, Like another time I got stuck and this was embarrassing
because I was like streaming it. So I think, Dan, have you
ever done this thing where you're streaming a game and you like you can tell
that your chat knows what to do, and they're just very delicately entire life,
very delicately be like, have you considered this? And it's just like,
maybe you missed this thing back there. Maybe you look at this room
again. Yeah, so like there's this light puzzle where turning and I don't.
I'm not going to spoil the solutionary anything, but there's this light puzzle
where you you acquire light and you give it and it changes the environment around
you, and it's it must have been so obvious to everyone else, but
I just didn't understand that there was the possibility of obtaining more than one light.
And the UI tells you, but I didn't know, and I didn't
know to look for the fact that I was supposed to have two lights.
So I was just walking around with a solved solution in my pocket and I
didn't know because I didn't know I was supposed to look for that, So
I just walked around for like another forty five minutes. It tells you,
but it doesn't tell you. I mean, there is an indicator on screen,
but it never like and again I don't want it to be explicit all
the time, but like they could have made it a little more clear that,
like, hey, you can actually store you know, one of these
things, you know, like it's I'm right there with you that entire section.
I thought the environment visually was very, very cool in that area,
but I was just like, ah, this light swapping thing, I'm not
into it all it's difficult for me to process, like I wish, and
I got past it, and I've done more now I've done I've done more
than that. But man, this game tests my brain. And I will
say it's gorgeous and it feels good, and I do love the thought Palace
and I think it looks cool. I just wish that I could navigate it
better, and I wish that the design that they had put so much energy
into worked with me. Most of the time, I'm doing it out of
order, and then I'm spending most of my time being like I am frustrated,
but I respect this game a lot. I actually kind of felt that
way about Control, which is like, I really like this game. I
wonder if I'm just not smart enough or not concentrated enough to enjoy it.
Yeah. Control, I love the vibes and the action that was really solid,
but I definitely understand how much action talk was going on. No,
not as much, but like I do, I think it's intentionally remedy.
Games tend to be very complex, uh and self referential and stuff in a
way that like Control by the end is like I have no fucking idea,
Like not the slightest idea what's going on here? It's like, I think
I'm confused at times, but in a way I'm supposed to be where it's
like it's supposed to be very surreal and you're supposed to be questioning what's reality
and what's you know in his book or in his head? Or is this
real? You know? Like I think one of the things I have really
liked though, is never knowing where I'm going to wind up next. And
I find that all those areas are so detailed, like even just the town
that you know it is in the first game, but look, the level
of detail is insane walking around to Saga and then they're the first area that
you control Alan in. I think it's the first area you control them in.
Is a it's an area or it's an environment that I feel very very
strongly about. But I've never really seen depicted in a video game like this.
Wait, oh, this is awesome, wait until we sing it's uh,
I will say. I was going to ask if you were streaming at
Mary, I can't imagine streaming this game. I think that might be my
mistake. It reminds me of when I stream any puzzle game and my chat
is like we know what to do, and I'm like, do you know
to shut up? Because I'm embarrassed and I feel silly. I think maybe
I will say I only streamed the second three to four hours. The first
three hours I did by myself, and I still struggled. I still struggled
in which is ladel even without chat. I just I missed the flashlight prompt
or whatever. I had no idea that I was supposed to hit a flashlight
at that light, and I walked around for like an hour. Yeah,
I will say, like some of those visual cues, like of things you
can disperse with your flashlight, you start to learn and get used to,
like as a muscle memory kind of thing or visual recognition. Yeah, but
again it's like, I fucking I'm obsessed with this game. But even sometimes
I'm like, ah, man, they I don't they needed to do more
to signpost that because I sort of caught it by a happenstance or I had
to like just like beat my head against something like just today it was a
it was a combination plot board light puzzle later on, and once I solved
it, like, oh again, there was more logic to this than I
was letting giving the game credit for right, but they didn't. But again
it's like I don't Yeah, okay, I get it now, but I'm
like, all right, I really just needed to be more observant. But
it's like it's because the survival horror aspect. You get in such a flow
in that kind of game, and you're scavenging for items and just picking up
things and like reloading all your weapons and checking your flashlight batteries, et cetera.
It's definitely easy to like lose sight of either lose sight or run up
against a point where the developers really lost sight of like kind of guiding you
through things effectively. It's still freaking cool. And I think what I'd love
people to leave with is I think you should play this game. I think
it's brilliant and again gorgeous to look at, especially if you have like an
updated system and you have a good graphics card. Like this is a really
stunning achievement in video games. But if you struggle through the first puzzle,
you're not alone. I'm also not smart, and I'm with you, and
I agree with you that, like this is a tough game, and it's
also like keep in mind if you're bumping up against a non essential story puzzle.
The ones you were talking about were essential. That's different if you're bumping
against up against a cult stash or one of the nursery rhymes with the chalk
and you can't solve it, don't worry. The game tells you way later,
Hey, do everything you want to do, because you are going to
a point in no return, So like, if you haven't hit that point,
you can go back and do that puzzle whenever you want with both characters,
which is comforting to know. I wish I had known that, because
I was like, Marry, like you my resident evil Bonafides kicking in and
like, I need to scour this entire forest, this map for everything,
and you can. I got to a point where my inventory was overflowing,
and I like, I clearly, to its credit, the game let me
get my inventory fucking stacked. But right, yeah, but then I was
leathling it up. I was like, I should have just like kind of
went with the flow a bit more. It's frustrating for me because like that
first area was Saga, that whole like Witch's little area. I scoured everything,
did all the sides stuff, got the lunch boxes and the puzzles and
all that stuff, and I was like, Okay, I'm gonna do this
with this entire game. And then I got to that Allen part with the
first like light switching area, and I was getting so turned around and so
like, what the fuck do I even do here? That I whenever I
did see a way forward, I was like, all right, I'm just
going straightforward, blinders on. I'm not gonna look anywhere else because I don't
want to get doubled back. So like I fear that I missed stuff like
I'm getting shotgun AMMO and stuff for like a flare launcher and stuff that I
did not get these weapons, And I'm like, yeah, did I miss
stuff that I missed the weapons? Like I missed these important things. I'm
thankful for the guide because I saw, uh the shotgun I shot. I
saw a shotgun and yeah, and it was in a like a locked space
and I was like, I'm never going to figure this out. I'll leave,
but I already had the guide open, so I was like, I'll
just peep the guide and see and the solution is literally right there. I
just I needed a push. I needed like a little bit more of a
push to understand what to do again, Like, I don't know if this
is the game's fault. This might be me as a gamer. I might
have been I might have been coddled so much of like here's where you go,
and like here's what you do. Resident Evil is like Kinder I think
of like getting you there. This game will be like I don't know,
she really goes to the bathroom a lot, doesn't she, Joe, And
it's like, shit, the fucking solution is in the bathroom. They just
told you. But you have to pay attention. You have to be that's
not a real I made that up thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
you have to pay attention to all the dialogue and all these because they're giving
you hints everywhere. Yeah. And it doesn't do a lot of the mercy
stuff where it's like I've had a lot of times where I'm just bumble fucking
around for like ten minutes. I'm like, please give me anything. Like
a lot of games will be like all right, dmn, dumb, here's
a little ratical go that way, you know, and like or somebody some
character will be like hey dad, I mean, god of warr it was
you'd walk into the room and trace and be like that floor is cracked.
Jump on that. You know, it's like this is the opposite of that
where it's like you're not giving me shit. You know, yeah, it's
uh, that happened to me too. And again as like a obsessive completionist
in survival horror games who never ends up using any of my Magnum Ammo or
the rocket launchers and resume wal when I have them, because I save them
until the end credits. I was getting shot on Ammo and FLAIRGUNA was like,
oh my god, did I miss something? To put your mind in
these you did not. They're all pretty obvious. Honestly, if you found
the sowd Off shotgun with Saga, that's the easiest. No, she's got
another weapon that you could miss, but it's not essential. Everything else is
pretty signposted. I like, you know, we were talking about Reid and
Evil and like I never struggled too much with those puzzles, and I love
logic puzzles. That's always what my thing. Like that specific shotgun thing.
You know, there was a thing on a counter and with a bunch of
numbers, and I was even doing this stuff where it's like, all right,
let's see how many numbers are between each of these. So maybe it's
like these two or two apart, these are four APARTI these are six apart,
and the next one's eight or whatever. Like I was thinking about all
the usual logic puzzle type tricks and everything, and it was like, I
don't know if it's just doing things differently or less clear, and that's why
I'm like struggling with these a bit more. Yeah, they're not all perfect.
It's some of them are. Some of them are remedied and design them
super well. Like they're like rock rock Tree is not a difficult puzzle.
I will say that, Like it's not like the Witness for instance, Like
most of those puzzles, when you stumble on a solution, you're like,
oh, I get what they wanted me to see. The Rock Rock Tree
puzzles like no, I just didn't like exhaustively scour the area enough, which
that's fun, and it just couldn't see the thing. Like that's not not
a puzzle. Yeah, when you reach the solution long before you can actually
get the necessary info, that's not a fun puzzle. There are a few
of those in this game. Yeah, Yeah, I do feel like We've
been a bit, you know, understandably critical of a lot of these puzzles
and the way they're laid out. But I want to make it clear how
I feel about this game. And then I do think it is like this
is Remedy's masterpiece. This is done the impossible and getting me super invested in
a video game story. It's a sequel to a game that I was not
super into. The story. I think it does things so well even if
you never played the first one. The fact that you start as Saga and
she's learning this like oh yeah, this guy just appeared in twenty ten,
and like they explained like oh this naked guy at the beginning that like if
you don't really know the first one, you don't really understand his significance.
But it's like you learn as she learns, and she's a great character.
I think the Sam Lake stuff, like the inclusion of him in the like
his stuff is great. The game is funny as hell. The live action
stuff has always been a strength of Remedies, and I think this one,
like I'm laughing out loud watching these beer commercials and stuff. The one where
there's a yeah, a TV trailer where they're like, how do we be
able to go take you all these places when the government says we're not allowed
to be there? Very funny and very charming. I love how all the
ads are real humans. Yeah, I just think that's so neat and so
immersive. That's another glitch I've been having is that as you ever do like
editing in premiere, and like as a timeline goes forward, the lip sync
gets more and more off. I've never seen that in the game before.
But it's also weird because like there is live action and you know, video
game stuff. So I got to like a really kind of important, interesting
spot where you were watching a video testimonial of a character and you're seeing her
talk on screen, and like it's really getting more and more out of sync,
and like to the point where it's like I caught myself having to like
look away because it was like I want to hear what she's saying. This
is all important stuff, but it's like it's kind of fucking me up.
So like it's it's got some technical stuff going on here, but like none
of this stuff, you know, the puzzle stuff or any technical issues has
diminished how much I'm loving this game and how much. I really think this
is like all of Remedy's strengths put into one game, in the most total
package I've ever seen them do. Yeah, and it's funny too. It's
like, uh, well two things. So to be clear, I'm not
like stone cold Sober when I play this game. However, I'm not streaming
it, and I'm playing it like in the dark at night. I think
it's easier for me to key in to like little minor things that I think
they were hoping I would have noticed. It's not at all me being like
smart enough to solve the puzzles. I'm just definitely in the zone in a
way where I'm like, Okay, I see what they're doing there. But
again, even then I was running up against someone, I'm like, ah,
that was not your best Greenmity. That was like Control at its worst.
I would backtrack across the oldest house and be like, well, fuck,
this map wasn't even like the stairs weren't in the right place. Like
now I have to go all the way back down to containment and then I
have to go back to the boiler room. The Remedy like they're still at
the end of the day, even though like with they're much bigger budget with
Epic, which I'm glad they have because again, this is I think their
magnum opus. Like they're still kind of a scrappy developer. You kind of
see those rough edges, which almost makes it more endearing to me. But
again I shouldn't like give them a pass for it. But secondly, weirdly
enough, I told Dan the other night when he was texting me, I
was like, uh, yeah, just wait till you see where like both
of their storylines go. Like the game is again, I'm like, twenty
four hours in, it is way bigger than I think people realize in their
first chapters. Like, I am so excited. I'm glad I talked to
you about it. Like I I'm not similarly to what Dan was saying,
I feel like we're talking about all the little itches we've had with this game.
It's a really fantastically made game, and I'm excited to play it and
I'm enjoying it very much. I've just had a couple I've just had a
couple of stumbles and I didn't want to be alone. If you, I
will say not just trying to self promote sort of. I think Polygon's guide
writers are very good at not just giving you the solution up top and then
explaining it. We usually will say like he did use the guide. I
think I did because I was really really stuck. Yeah, polygon By and
Lars will be like, all right, so here's what the game wants you
to do, and then the solution will be the bottom. Like other sites
I'm not gonna name names will be like in the fucking like deck of the
story, like the solution is one two seven, like all right, well,
at least the ones where you google it and they click the link and
it's like this article is a stub. It's not. Actually, yeah,
it has nothing here for you. It's great, why are you here?
Then? Why is Google? Baldersgate Xbox Series X release The top fourteen stories
are like coming soon and then you click into it, they're like new rumors
are still swirling about when exactly what happened? Like I hate They're just like
yeah, yep, but yeah, god allen Wick too, Like, you
know, not a perfect game. If you can get through, if you
need to use guides, like fuck it whatever, just to see more of
this game, keep going. I personally marry knowing your taste in horror games.
I think there's a lot here you'll love. There's so much to unpack.
It's just, yeah, I think I need a little bit more time
with it. Oh god. But there's there's some like live action shit they
do. There's an entire short film later if you want to watch it.
You don't have to. There's crazy awesome musical numbers in general music in between
chapters and stuff like streamer friendly. Oh yeah interesting, yeah yeah, yeah,
proprietary. Well, like all the lyrics and everything are extremely like just
explicitly talking about I heard, yeah, I heard that the songs are actually
secrets, like they're they're like hints. Oh, they're foreshadowing stuff like the
manuscript pages do. Yeah. I feel like it's always just like I was
in a lake and it was dark and you were on the other side,
and what's real and what's this? Very as the code to get the SOT
off shotgun rock rock tree, the shotgun is three eight three rock rock rock
rock rock, but good the other rock is across the street. But oh
my god, the chapter we sing you will know it once it starts,
and it is just all right, oh my god, I've been sold.
I think we should what else have we been playing? Yeah, this is
once we beat it, at some point we should do some sort of spoiler
casts or just like more in depth conversation about it, because it's got it?
Can we Dan? I know you and Ben talked about Super Mario Broos
Wonder did last episode played at that point? I think we're really talking about
I think I think not Nintendo Jail people had put out their reviews and everything,
but talking. Let us never forget then? Cool, Oh, I
never will as long as I fucking live. I was gone to play it
and then I got I have it downloaded. I've had it downloaded for two
weeks and then I got sucked into Ellen Wake. So I have not touched
it yet. I hundred percent of it. And I tell you, I
came out the day before I flew to Canada, and so I'm playing it
both flights out to Canada and then just I had to check out in the
morning, but my flight wasn't until like that evening. So I spent six
or seven hours in an airport lounge with an open bar with I sat down
in a company your doing it? I raw dog? Well, no,
no, that was that was the last trip. That was I did not
run. I don't demanded that term on like during our break between the Intron
video games, She's like, I'm saying that all the time from now on.
No, I was quite drunk for the Canada flights, but so I
was in the lounge. I just prop up my switch there. I take
out the super Nintendo switch controller, which is perfect for this game if anyone
has that, and I just played every level, got every single thing.
It just made the time fly by. It's look, it's it's more.
I mean, I don't have to tell you about all the charm and everything
it's got. But even for like Nintendo Mario standards, the amount of just
joy and wonder and uh just creativity in every square inch of this game is
unmatched. I think even like it's up there with like Odyssey. I would
say, as far as it's like, god damn, you put a lot
of ideas into this game. But the two D series specifically, I don't
think has ever seen this much. And I keep meaning the no pun intended
wonder, but like that is such an apt word for this. It's it's
just a delight. It's great. It is a Mario game and has all
the nostalgia and stuff that every Mario game has, but it is also the
most willing to introduce new things in terms of like I don't know how many
fucking new Super Mario Brothers games I played where it's just like, all right,
here's another coop I, here's another goomba, here's you know, these
elements I've seen a million times. There are so many new enemies in this
game, and they're all so clever and do cool things I haven't seen before
in Mario. So it's it really does feel like a kind of a new
new day for Mario and in a lot of ways, like you can just
swap between characters on the fly. It's it's, uh, it's really going
to be a contender for me high up on on my Game of the Year
stuff. But it is a Mario game, if if you know, like
like I was, I was raving about it to Bianca and she's just never
been a big platformer fan or like a you know, Nintendo or fan or
anything, and I was like, you got to check it out just to
see like the amount of ideas here. And it's still I mean, it's
a Mario game. So if it's not your genre, it's not your thing.
You know, this isn't going to turn you into one. But for
someone like me who has literally grown up playing every one of these games and
feeling very attached to them, this is uh just delightful. Thatch separates it
from all the other marios that you've have been playing. What makes it distinct?
You're telling me why it's really good, but like, what's different?
I think, uh, the amount of new ideas, Like when I when
I think about like that when they went back to two D with the new
Super Mario Brothers series, it was great and that like, ah, yeah
it's Mario like it used to be on the nes in Super Mario World,
but like it was a very safe art style. It was just very kind
of predictable, boring level design, and the suits and stuff weren't too crazy
or interesting, like every level, like having these wonder seeds and you never
know what the effects are going to do in this one. That's a very
unique thing. One thing that has definitely never been seen like this, and
not just Mario. What I would say Nintendo to this degree is the multiplayer
implementation. The fact that you can just you're playing multiplayer with other people.
You do with friends. If us three all like partied up or whatever,
we could go in there and play and we could race through the same levels
if we went to or I could be trying one hundred percent this level while
you guys are playing your own levels, or for example, I felt like
I was playing multiplayer with strangers in a meaningful way when I was in that
airport lounge and I connected to the Wi Fi and there are some really hard
levels where it's like you got to ride these things through like a lava platforms
and stuff, and you can see the other player's ghost like struggle and if
they touch you can revive them. So it's like I felt like we were
in this together, like we're going through this hard lava level and everything,
and we keep helping each other out and if you put these signs down it
lets them respawn and everything. And so I was having this like meaningful multiplayer
experience with live players without it being a thing where I had to specifically party
up and we all have to play this level. It's just like, hey,
we're all here at the same time, let's help each other out.
Nintendo is not known for doing that stuff well, and this is completely seamless
whether you're playing with strangers or friends or solo. So I think that is
a major thing that I've never seen them get right to this degree. Then
the I think, correct me if I'm wrong. I think the major gameplay
twist here is that every level has a Wonderflower. Wonder Yeah they're wonder Well
you get the under seeds, but yeah, you collect the wonderflower. It
has an effect and you never know what it's going to do, so and
it like does it change the entire level or just a section of it.
Some of them have stronger effects than others, where it's like, oh,
this is going to make the whole level warp and do a bunch of weird
shit, or this is going to turn you into a giant enemy that has
these abilities that you get to learn like on the fly. Or everything's fucking
stretchy and silhouetted. So here's like a twenty foot tall goomba silhouette, but
you're a big stretchy Mario. It's you never know when you hit the thing
what it's going to cause, Like oh, this like buffalo stampede that goes
through the level and you run across, or it's it's no one effect I
think it was just like a power up where they're like, here's the one
where just some bullshit's gonna happen. And I think just that a known factor
is very fun. Each level has one, uh yeah, I mean there
are some that are just like Badge challenges where you can kind of test out
like these new Badge abilities, which that's a whole cool new thing on its
own. So I don't want to say every single level, but most of
the main levels will have a wonder seats or a Wonderflower somewhere. Gotcha,
It's next on my list after I finished Ellen Wake. It's fantastic. It's
really really it sounds like a good Christmas break game, to be honest with
you, I could see that. Yeah. I wonder how it would be
local, like if you're playing with family members and stuff. Because the online
is so good, I wonder if that carries over to local. I've heard
the local has an annoying thing with a camera. If you yeah, whoever
finishes the previous level first, the camera will focus on center on them for
the next course because they have the crown, which then turns it into a
race by default, almost just so you have the camera or yeah, which
is like a rare thing where it's like playing online is actually kind of easier
because then it's like, you know, when you could run ahead of me
and like I have to go catch up or whatever. It's not going to
like drag the camera or push me forward, you know, like a man
and I are attempted to buy her a second copy. Oh, we just
play on you know, separately, but instead of the same screen. I
don't know. Other people have said like if one characters Yoshi, then the
other can ride the Yoshi, so it centers on both of them no matter
what. Oh wow, yeah, I really to play it. I've seen
some footage. I'm like, God, damn, this just looks like the
pinnacle of that Mario. Those that kind of design ethos they've had since the
fucking eighties with like established kind of the rule and then twist the rule and
then test the rule h that they've taught. Yeah, I think it's up
there. Like if somebody argued it being the best two D Mario, I
I would not push back. I don't know if I'd say, like Mario
World is what I would consider a perfect video game, But if somebody told
me they like this more, I mean i'd be like, yeah, I
could see it totally. I don't think it's quite like. I think Odyssey
raised the bar so much for that series and platforming in general that that is
still the pinnacle for me. But yeah, this is like, if not
the best, it's right up there with the best of the two d's wonderful.
Is obdesstly your favorite three D or just like the most impactful? So
I think so unmatched. Yeah, we replayed it earlier this year. Yeah,
I replayed it about a year ago, and it's it's just fucking perfect.
Mary. What have you been playing aside from a lot besides Alan Wakembake
too, I've been playing Mineko's Night Market. Might be Minico, but I
think it's Mineko's night Market. That's my assumption. It's super cute indie game
where you play as Mineko, a cute new person in a town, and
you pick flowers or maybe you chop wood or you cut paper from trees.
You basically like acquire items from local spaces and then you craft them into delightful
little pieces. Maybe it's maybe it's a cat flower vase, or maybe it's
a journal, or maybe you make a piece of art and then every Saturday
you go to the night market and you sell it at the local night market.
It has some serious stardew Valley vibes. That's about to ask that.
Yeah, I remember how like the best part, not the best, but
for me, one of the best parts. To start, you was like
they would be like this month, we're doing the festival, and we expect
you to sell your best vegetables. And I was like, I'm going to
give you the fucking best goddamn fruit you've ever seen. I'm gonna blow your
freaking minds. Mineko takes that to the nine. So you were essentially making
these crafts, and there are two versions of the craft, just like starting
there's a regular version and then there's a perfect version. You can make perfect
versions of these crafts and take them to the night market, and then you
haggle with local buyers. Then they want to buy your crafts and they'll pay
you like six hundred bucks for a sleeping bag or uh, you know,
a just a beautiful pinwheel, or there's so many different things. Flower boxes,
a lot of things I say are based because the original craft you can
only make is because you've picked flowers, and so then you've made flower crafts.
But this game opens up eventually. Not only are you getting wood and
paper, but you are getting minerals, you are getting gemstones, you are
smelting metal to make really cool types of crafts. And also you'll see you
make several comparisons to start you, because it's obvious, but similar to start
you, you'll also meet townspeople who'll be like, I wish I had this
really special type of ramen, and it turns out you can buy that from
the night market. So you'll sell a bunch of crafts. You'll buy a
very special type of ramen. You'll give it to that person in the town.
Not only will that increase your friendship meter with them where you'll get a
heart, but also they'll be like, thanks for giving me this ramen.
I will now give you two recipes for new crafts, and now you can
make new things and kind of excel your crafting regiment I have. I must
have over one hundred crafts at this point, I am going all over this
town. Also, similar started, there's kind of a what would you call
this, like a like a micro plot where there's something going on. There's
all the check story. Yeah, yes, that's exactly right, there's these
what are they They're just little. There are men in suits with sunglasses that
are spying or like observing things, agents I guess, and you are dealing
with them. They're investigating. They think that there's something sneaky going on the
town, and it turns out that that sneaky thing that's happening is very close
to home, and so you're kind of hiding this secret in your house while
you're selling your wares and you're trying to solve the larger puzzle of a missing
girl, which I think is pretty neat. It's very alluring. It has
a great core mechanic of making crafts and selling them. I will admit I
found sometimes it was repetitive and I didn't want to go shave more paper so
that I could make more paper based crafts. But you can easily run out
of one element, which you need for all your crafts. So it's forcing
you to go to various areas to get the elements that you need to make
your crafts. But I still think for a cozy game, it ticks all
my boxes. I've spent way too much time in this game. I think
I'm twenty plus hours in, which is crazy, and I'm not done with
it, and I think it's great. You spent way too much time.
Did you spend any money on it? I did not. I've been really
good. I just looked it up. I have spent no money, but
I got a code, so that's different. Right, you bought it.
I can't say whether or not I would have accidentally kished something. I think
that's unfair to assume. Oh no, I don't know why I would ever
assume that would happen. I think it seems implausible at best. It's the
majority of the time. At this point, I've been really good. I
received this game and I have enjoyed it thoroughly. There's been a couple bugs.
I will admit. One time I had a game breaking bug and the
game, like Stardoo, saves every morning, and because the game crashed in
the afternoon, I lost all my morning, which pissed me off because that
was actually like twenty minutes of work, right, and I just redo the
exact same game, like I'd picked the same flowers and do the exact same
stuff. I think it's extremely sweet and very thoughtful. It also has really
good emotional touch points through it. You're new to town. Your dad's taken
you new, new new space. Every once while, you'll have some really
cute dialogue options where he's explaining why he's changed your life and that he hopes
you're doing okay. You meet townspeople that are fighting with their dad or having
emotional troubles, and you solve them either by giving them an item or by
being the communicator between two parties and neutralizing the problem. I think it's actually
quite sweet. I can definitely see this start two comparisons like new in town,
old family member, you know, talking to you, so problems with
items like yeah, I mean, but I love Stardoo, so I know
I do. I haven't spent a time of time with one of those really
since, so I wonder when the next time I will hop into one of
those. Cult of the Lamb is the last one. I sort of like
that I got into. Yeah, cult is not as like cozy because you
are killing and there's a huge element of combat this game has. Yeah,
there's also the cult. This game has no combat. This game is picking
items and crafting, so it's very cozy. I think it will satisfy cozy
game enthusiasts. So that is how I recommend it with the caveat that it's
got some bugs. It's definitely an indie game. It had a couple weird
plot points for me where I didn't really understand why it was asking me to
do something that felt so repetitive. You can get over those hurdles, I
think for this game, it's it's it's quite good. A wait for Haunted
Chocolate tear. I he every time he posts on Twitter, my heart skips
a beat. He posted just the other day and I was like, Yeah,
I saw that. Where is this game? Everyone's freaking out? Where
is it? I feel like I've not seen anything since that, like initial
reveal years ago. It felt like, I know it's been ages, but
that's what hunting Solo game dev banding the game fucking library. I can't wait.
Briefly, I also say I finally played Texas Chainsaw Masacre. I know
we talked once about playing that as a group, and I finally played it
with some friendos this week. It is complicated. I was surprised, as
someone who plays a lot of Dead by Daylight, that's actually not an easy
game to pick up. You need lots of different devices in order to do
different things. I will never forget the way that I laughed when Grandpa reached
level two and the game says Grandpa has reached level twoated Grandpa. Oh shit,
Grandpa's activity. Grandpa's such a huge element of the game. But it's
so funny to try and kill Grandpa and know that Grandpa is absolutely trying to
kill you. Yeah, yeah, and just like ringing a towel of blood
into his mouth or whatever to I never played as a killer. I always
played as a victim. Oh, okay, did you play as a victim?
Ever? We just played for like a UPF for something once, and
I think we try both. We tried both, and but just enough of
both to be confused by both of them. But we did kind of have
a good time. It's a good time. I do think it's a bit
overly complicated with the amount of mechanics that they have in it. Obviously,
I'm just getting started, so I'm probably gonna die more than I live.
But I found as a victim, I only lived once in the entire time
that I played. It was very difficult to survive. The cards are stacked
against you as a victim. Everything you do makes noise. The Grandpa's constantly
gaining levels and can scream your location apparently, Like I think if you get
touched by the chainsaw guy, you're done. Like there's no you've been chainsawed
a little bit. You're either not chainsawed or you're dead and chainsaw and have
pretty bad but you're not allowed to talk and say that because you're dead.
Having played both from now, I do like the I appreciate that more simple.
I don't know if simple as the word, but focused approach of Dead
by Daylight where it's like, all right, you got one killer. There's
a few things to do here. Get these things down and get the fuck
out, like Texas tain saws like once we're activating Grandpa, and it's a
neat gag. And I think it's cool that they were able to make it
so balanced. I do think it is like if you look at the general
player base, it's doing quite well and people are enjoying it. I personally
found that Dead by Daylight is you need to turn on these four machines so
that you can leave, and if you don't turn on these machines, you
will die. Yeah, and there's one dude running around he's going to kill
you, so just don't let them kill you, like a simplicity there.
Then there's a simplicity that works for Dead by Daylight for me, So that
was how I feel about it. But I think for Dead by Daylight fans,
they probably already play Texas Chainsaw Masacre. But as a game pass game
that I totally did not kish, I thought it was a decent game pass
game that I game passed. You came passed for no money. Yeah,
okay, Dan, you've you've been playing David the Diver. That was my
raw Dog flight game. Yeah, I played that while I was raw Dog
And yeah, I said, no one ever oh yeah, yeah, yea
ye, Yeah, it's a it's been talked about before. I just want
to throw my hat at the ring saying I played it, uh every second
of all my flights uh in the last like two days. And it is
a great Steam deck game. I know it's on Switch now too, so
I assume it's a great Switch game. Yeah. I think I think you
you guys talked about how satisfying the loop was, like gonna hunt these fish,
gonna get more upgrades that let me go deeper and hunt better and stuff,
and then you like, I love the parts where that's done. I
did my morning, my afternoon dives, and then it's like, let's go
to the bar and like, I got all those fish, let's level up
all my sushi and oh there's a VIP year that wants a special like mushroom
dish, and I'm hiring staff now and that's super satisfying wants. They're like,
oh, now they can fill drinks for me and I can. I
can work on the masabi and do all these like. It is so fun.
It is so unique in the loop that it has. And goddamn if
it's if it's not just the perfect like Airplane raw Dog game, if you're
looking for one the mike mute, he thinks so on accident, Uh,
speaking of raw Dog games, if you needed another one once you finished,
David Diver, I mean we've talked about it before, but uh, I
the more I played Pickmin four, the more I'm just obsessed with it as
well. Yes, Pickman is really good and darts of Dan Dori. Just
to close it, Dave, the Diver is fantastic. I'm glad you really
liked it, Dan, But let's let's talk about the on rival joy that
is Pickman. For well, it's just like it's I keep calling it meditative,
but it is. It does really capture the satisfaction of multitasking efficient and
like just hyper if efficions making how do you even say it? Like,
uh, just going all out on making your crew of Pickman and Awatchee as
efficient as possible is so rewarding and satisfying and just the game never gets hard.
There are a couple of bosses where I had to like think a little
bit about how to fight, or like bigger wild animals, I had to
think about how to fight them. But all the puzzles are mainly just like
it's kind of like a simple RTS level. It's like, all right,
you go do that, and then you you guys go you fight that monster,
and then you go get to work on this supply pile. Keep bringing
that back. Oh right, I'll quick move the base for a second while
we're doing all this. It's the most relaxing game ever. Like I'm just
smiling and yeah, so happy. Yeah, great playing game, which I'm
I'm looking at our game of the year categories right now. We should have
the best playing I mean pickming foward, Dave the Diver Cocoon. I feel
like there's some some good contenders here for good good playing games this year.
Like I feel like Vampire Survivors would have been won last year. I did?
Did that win last year? Maybe I'm looking at the last year's categories
got pretty high up? Did we do a playing game one last year?
Best playing with Buds, Best West of the Year, grapple thing of the
year is so good? Best game that seems like an old game, dumb
thing of the year, bad, dumb thing of the year. Good,
we'll do those again, most up its own ass of the year. Oh,
that was one. That was Mike Marharty's twenty twenty one review of dest
s Randing. That was that won? That thing we forgot came out this
year? Do we do playing game? Maybe we didn't. If you do
playing game? We had Cozies Best year playing Game? Yes, Vampire Survivors
won, with the follow ups being Rogue Legacy two and Door Romantic Deserved.
Yeah, yeah that's right. Oh, Kisten of the Year. We should
have had that too, No, because I don't have that many this year.
I've been really good. Have you don't have a last over five?
I put it in the document. Yeah, that's it. It's locked in
it. It's it's blocked this year. What the plan is? Should we
say what the change? Does it matter? Or should we just there's not
too much of a change, is it. I'm still the same format.
It's basically just where we're at. Yeah, we're going to Minneapolis. We
were gonna go to Portland, but we all agreed that Dan is a really
cool new place and it's already set up to do this awesome stream, so
it makes it central to us, and it's central. I think that's important
too. Yep, yep. So we will be here at my place again,
and I bought a big ground table and I'll put some microphones on.
Yay. I'm at your bar the whole night. Yes, yes, I'm
drunk or I can scream, but I'm sitting at that bar the whole night.
Excellent. I'm gonna get like obnoxiously drunk and like break stuff in your
house. There's a billion bottles of wine and other stuff at that bar.
So I don't know, let's ruin that nice house. Sounds good. It's
going to be very happy to see you again. Mary. Oh my god,
I think about Giz all the time. He thinks about you a lot
too. We don't have a day yet, but it'll probably be mid December
post Game Awards, post Post Game Awards, then Giant Bomb's gonna do their
Game of the Year, and then we will do ours, you know,
before Christmas, so look in the like teens area of December, probably,
so we'll we'll let you know and be obnoxious about it once we know for
sure. Sounds good. I have one more because I took a week off
like Mike did, so before we move on, I also want to talk
about Wizard with a Gun. Good title. Yeah, are you sold?
Oh? W wag? Yeah. Wizard with a Gun is very similar to
Don't Starve meets Bastion. Okay, it's good looking, has great soundtrack.
It is all about finding things in a world that is procedurally generated and dies
when you leave it because the concept is that the world is ending, so
when you leave the world, it dies and you don't get to see it
again, and then you rewind time to go back to the world to get
more resources. So every time you're playing it, it's a bit different hind
the way that like a MAJORA does it or it's the same world, or
is it like procedurally generating like every time proscedurally generated, so the world is
totally different every time, but it has the same stuff, right Similarly to
don't starve, what you end up kind of doing is acquiring resources to build
machines, and then the machines really help you to have much more nuance with
your load out the type of guns that you carry right now. For example,
I have five different guns. One of them shoots freezing bullets that travel
really slowly, and the other it's the same gun the other trigger shoots explosive
bullets that have a massive arc, so that I can do like huge aoi
and so I can freeze people until they're frozen and then shoot an AOI at
them and kill them. So that's pretty fun. But there's that much nuance
to every gun. There's poison, there's stuff that slows down. Oh,
there's like anti gravity, you can move items, you can grow ground,
if that even makes sense. It is an extra Yes, there's an extraordinary
amount of types of gun, bullet and bullet modifiers. So every gun is
extraordinarily unique to you. And when you come across one in the world,
or you can eventually build them with the machine that you're growing you're getting.
The customization of your loadout will be very uniquely yours, which I quite enjoy.
But it takes a lot of materials to be able to build these machines
and then make your custom gun and load out. Looking at these images here,
you're not kidding about Bastian like that perspective is just like actually, yeah,
definitely. It also has a Bastion sound. So the music, you
know, how like AMBASTIONI there was always like this kind of like singer songwriter
person in the world. Okay, in Wizard with a Gun, there's literally
a guy playing the banjo in the world that's dying, and so you'll hear
him and he'll be like telling you a little ditty, and you can come
across him and he'll talk to you and stuff like that. You'll come across
all sorts of various people who will teach you different types of things, how
to make potions so that you can heal, or how to have a different
type of load out that you didn't have before, and modifiers and things like
that. You'll also come across people who are like, I'm trapped and I
need you to help me, but you need to solve with your resources.
How you will get them off that island, or how you will kill this
huge boss that's actually quite difficult to kill. If you die in the world,
you lose your entire load out, which is pretty gutting, Like you
lose all of your good guns and all of your bullets, which take a
lot of resources to acquire. So it's kind of devastating to die in that
world. It persistent when you die. What is persistent everything that is in
your home world. So you can keep all of your machines, all of
your You can have drawers filled with your stuff, your resources, and you
can save all that stuff for you know if you die and then you'll still
have it all. So I still have all of my machine. I have
a lot of really good resources. Every time you kill something, I forget
what it's called, but you get like a little card, and I save
all of my cards because that's those are my kill cards. Those are that
took me. That took me eighty enemies to get those eighty cards, So
I keep all of those in a lock box. I never go into the
world with my cards. But if I die in the world, I lose
that load out, and then I have to rebuild all that stuff the big
thing for me, and I haven't done it yet because I play this on
an airplane and I've gone pretty sucked in. I think it's I think it's
a neat idea and concept. It has a really good loop. It's co
op, and I really want to play this with another person and see how
far we can get with two people, because, similarly to Don't Starve,
the game is very intimidating by yourself, but once you have another person,
you can get pretty far in it. So I think playing Wizard with a
gun with another FRIENDO will make that game quite fun. And I haven't even
had that experience yet. And I think this game is neat nice. You
mentioned it being a good playing game. Should I put it down as a
nominee for Best Playing Game of twenty twenty three. I don't think it's going
to hold a card to like Cocoon or anything like that, but I think
that if you're like, it's empty, we only have three contendees, I
think it could be, but it's not gonna Is there a word for that?
When it's like, it's such a good nomination but there's no way it's
gonna win. You just want to put it on there get taken off or
something. It's like, he's so perfect, you got to nominate him.
But he's not gonna win. You know what. Alex Navarro was notorious for
doing that during Giant Bomb Game of the Years, where he's like, I
know this isn't gonna win, but I just got to say my piece.
I'm gonna put it on just to take it off. So we're gonna call
that a Navarro Navarro, you want to put it on as a Navarro,
we can do that. I think it's a good Navarro. It'd be an
audible mention, but Navarro's snappy. I just want to say my piece about
it. I think the game is great. It's hang. It's not gonna
hang, but he'd always say so, it's not gonna hang. But I
think it's worth mentioning. And I think that if people are looking for imagine
all these people out there going to bed at night and then waking up and
going I just wish there was a Bastion Slash don't Starve co op experience for
me. Boy, howdy do I have the answer for you? But yeah,
it's it's it's cool, cool, all right? So Allen Wake two
game of the Year. Do you guys want to do emails? I want
to say it's gonna be so fucking interesting, because it's going to be.
But there's also weird shit too, where it's like there's a lot of games
that, like, you know, one of us is crazy hot on the
other two like a lot or two of us really love or one of us
doesn't like, and then there's just like dark horse shit like Pickman four where
we all love it. So like there's the weird consensus threat of like a
weird game that you wouldn't expect me like, I have no fucking idea what
our game of the Year is going to be, and that is very exciting
to me because I can, like I can kind of assume what Jake's might
be, I can kind of assume what Dan's might be to Mary's. And
I'm sure you guys have a read on like certain games I've liked, but
yeah, I'm going I'm gonna fight for cocoons so hard. I think that
game's fucking brilliant, very cool, good playing game, raw Dog or no,
damn it, let's you guys, Yes, yeah, okay. As
usually, you can run into fire skate Cast at gmail dot com, questions,
comments, concerns, corrections a ladder of which I throw in the trash
fire skate cast at gmail dot com. I'm kidding. I've actually read a
few corrections in the last few episodes. The rare time I get anything wrong,
We've got a couple tonight, wess are uh often time our frequent writer
has another one tonight, Mary? Do you want to read this one from
Wes from Baltimore? Sure? Hello. So when I was younger, I
was playing Red Alert to and there's a mission where you have to capture the
Twin Towers or something. I was playing this and my mom came in the
room and saw the Twin Towers on my screen with planes flying around and said,
when did this game come out? I wonder if that's where they got
the idea? Is dark? What's one of the most absurd commons somebody has
made about a game you were playing? Thanks Wes from Baltimore. Well,
I mean they did have to take that game off the shelves and switch the
box art because the original box arto the Twin Towers on fire behind the guy
with the Soviet eyepatch thing. Yeah, they swapped it out and changed the
Boxer, Yeah, mine would be. I was reviewing Okami when it first
came out, and I remember playing it. I was in college, and
I was just like in awe of the visuals. I was like, this
is the most beautiful, like this watercolor painting that I'm playing, Like just
visually graphically, this is incredible. And my upstairs neighbor, who you may
have heard the story before, and this is the guy that broke into my
apartment with a knife and tried to stab me and I had to send him
to jail and everything. Anyway, very broy ass dude comes down, who
stands He's looking at the screen for a little bit and he goes like,
God, what are you gonna give this game for graphics? It's got to
be like a zero out of ten, right, And I was like what
And he goes like, look, this looks like a cartoon. This doesn't
look real at all. It is Oh my god, it's gotta look real.
He was the most like Madden GTA guy ever, which you good games,
but like just equated good graphics with realistic graphics. And I was like,
in the middle of in awe of this game, He's like, what
are you good? Bar this game looks like shit. Yeah. I had
a few of those moments when I was younger. I think more people have
moved past the realism is good looking uh criteria in terms of most bizarre comment.
I yeah, my dad, I love the shit out of him.
Came down. I'm not a fan. I figured I would care for him
careful. Was that the first time you guys met him? No, I've
met a long time ago, like San Franceno in Minnesota. I think we
got juicy lo. I met your brother who went to game Spot and apparently
I don't remember this, but your brother was like, you gave me ship
about not knowing how to play Rocket League. And I was like, I
don't remember this, but that does sound like something I would say. It
does sound like I would say to a stranger, to a family member of
my friend and coworker, this bitch does not play Rocket League. I don't
even like him. I took the day off, I remember, and then
we stopped it. At the end of the day when everybody was drinking and
playing Rocket League. He's like, this is your office, Like yeah,
stopping into work. He's like, He's like, should we be We've been
drinking a lot today. Should we go into your place at work. I'm
like, trust me, it'll be fine. And I'm drunk. I'm the
bridge just showering. That was like that something tells me we'll be fine.
No. My dad came down into the basement once. What was I playing?
I was playing Robin Hood Defender of the Crown. We talked about this
the last episode I was on. I know you guys have not heard it.
If you want to google it, that'll help convey how uh uh like
bizarre this was. My dad came down and saw me playing Robin Hood Defender
the Crown. It was like, was this a PS two? Like,
yep, been playing at PS It's on Xbox and uh, it's on Xbox
as well, and that got me in the mood to watch. I think
it was the Kevin Costner Robin Hood. Sure. And he came back downstairs
like the next day and I was watching the Kevin Costner Robin Hood. He's
like, did you did you like upgrade your graphics card or something like just
dead serious like thought that was the game I was playing, and actual Kevin
Costner. I don't know that Kevin Costner's in the scene, but you could
he could tell it was a Robin Hood movie, and he just thought that
I was still playing the game and it was melting his mind, and that
like the p S two could put out that kind of those kind of graphics.
And I was like, no, Dad, this is the Movie's like,
this is the Was that the movie yesterday? I was like, no,
that was the PS two game. He's like, oh, so there's
yeah, you're watching the movie and playing the game. Was like, yeah,
the game got me into a Robin Hood mood. And I was like,
I wonder I'd never seen Robinhood. Dad. Then on my Robinhood face,
Dad, go upstairs, get out of my room, Dad, I
really, you're also dressed as Robin Hood. Yeah, I mean he made
Marion framed pictures all around your bed. Oh god, from men and tights.
That made Marian with the chastity belt. Oh yeah, that's like eight
wigs of hair pulled a lot to her quite a bit. I remember that
song shot some bloads in my toilet thinking about herd If you know what I
mean, you're speaking code. I jacked off until I came with her.
I printed off a collage of her fan art of what it looked like under
the gen Chastity Bell. That's gross. I remember when I played the original
Gears of War in my house. These are there are a lot of parents
ones. My mom came in and was like, what's this game about?
And I was like, well, you see, I'm from I'm a human
from Sarah and there's a Locus war because the Locust Horde came up in Emergence
Day and started fighting us. And I'm like in the middle of the battle,
and my mom's like, but have you tried anything else besides fighting them?
And I was like, you mean, like diplomacy gious? Yeah,
the dialogue system drilled deep in gear. She's like, yeah, you guys
like tied talking about it or working it out. I was like, this
game is really more about sawing chainsawing people's faces. I don't think there is
any opportunity for me to like discuss options for us sharing the land. I
don't know, it's just never came up. But I love the idea that
my mom's like thought was like, actually, that's quite sweet that my mom
was original thought was like maybe we can work it out. It's very pure.
Yes, I may have told the one of my stepdad ex stepdad,
I guess when I was playing Twist Metal two with him and we would go
through the co op campaign all the time, and I learned about a new
code in a magazine called sell your Soul. Yeah, yeah, all your
weapons and you'd sell it me. He was like, gotten super cud.
Yeah, I've told it. So he got very religious about it. Yeah,
he paused it and he's like, don't you ever say that again?
Yeah, yeah, I'm sure there's probably some religious stuff my parents are,
like family members said at some point, but I don't think I would like
there's definitely like games I've played that I feel like my mom would not approve
of if she knew all that was going on. But most of the time
I feel like she just kind of like observed and left alone. I got
in very big trouble once, it's for something related, like I only ever
got my parents didn't ground us, like they found my dad made me write
essays about what I heard. Your dad told me about that at the wedding.
He told you that he told me about your essays and he's like,
I left. I Mike Wrights now like yeah, because you made me like
write twelve hundred words about like what how I shouldn't have like called my neighbor
a dildo or something like he took credit for prowess. Yeah, he writing
on the board. Yeah, well, I'd like to take some credit for
that. I will not call my neighbor a dildo. Yeah and he Yeah.
But anyway, one time, my parents, I think, had several
of us watch the Passion of the Christ, and I was getting bored and
like, like during like the most intense part, like during the I'm sorry,
don't spoil it. During the crucifixion, I said out loud, they
should make a video game about this, And my parents got pissed and like
I was in my room for the rest of the night, and then I
was not allowed to like play PS two games the rest of the week,
grounded. But I also couldn't play an again. Somebody as well, don't
think that this is a sick video game. Probably would be a good video
game. Yeah, that was my senuous sacrifice could be as praised as it
was. Imagine Jesus's sacrifice. Yeah, it's like fucking just like you you're
you know, turning water into wine and yeah, press as minigame. Yeah,
turn the water into wine. That's good. I would play the Jesus
version of Warriorwere which is a bunch of Bible stories, but it's Warriorware style.
You just have to hop across water. Yeah, I gotta part of
the sea. You gotta cure of the tablets town. Pardon, the sea
was not Jesus. I know what I'm saying. Jesus is adjacent. Be
pedantic about it. The idea is it's like Smite the game, just like
Smite. You guys have played Spike. Yeah, oh yeah, I believe
that's based off of Jesus. Yes, yep, definitely, but yes,
thank you Wes for writing in. I'll read this one. This is from
my wife. Uh, she has a question too, which I have a
pretty funny recent answer for. Hello fire skip cast. I wanted to take
the opportunity to thank each of you for attending and being essential parts are fantastic
wedding two weeks ago, Mary, I've never seen anyone so definitely handle a
clothing steamer while sporting a chic Reformation gown and red lip that Queen Taylor herself
will be proud of. It's true, Jake, though you're part of our
introvert collective. I was delighted by your thoughtful and witty best man speech,
including your stealthy mention of a certain devious leprechaun. Wink wink, nudge nudge.
I thought Jake was gonna mentioned the abortion leprechaun bit during the best man
speech, but he rightfully it was a common joke amongst us that something we've
all met him, the abortion leper con didn't bring well. When I come
at you with corkscrew, Dan, you are an outstandingly articulate and jovial efficient.
There's no one who could have pulled off telling our love story complete with
gratuitous obscure meat and winerrift, is quite like you. And to Michael,
my handsome, generous, kind Hilario's husband, I can finally say congratulations on
losing your virginity. You did it. I'm so proud you did it.
My question is has following Have you ever had a glitch in the matrix moment
where you watch something before your eyes and it spirals into deja vu? The
TV show Succession had an intense episode this past season where a boat in New
York Harbor was prominently featured. This boat departed from the exact same doc in
our real life wedding venue water taxi departed from. Thankfully. Uh, if
you haven't finished that season, skip ahead for like five seconds. Brian Cox
is still with us. But I came to think of our wedding as the
succession wedding for some months after. Love you all, Thank you for making
our special day the most magical event we could ever dreamt off. Amanda,
wife of Michael, keeper of his virginity. Ah. So funnily enough,
the morning after our wedding, when several of the groomsmen and people had to
come back, we got me and the guys and some of my siblings and
some of their wives and whatnot hung out in May and Amanda's suite before we
went to the venue earlier that day. So there were naturally a huge cooler
full of beers. There was a bunch of like the groomsman gifts I had
got them. I got them like personalized Swiss army knives with their initials on
it, and like ties and pocket squares and whatnot. So a lot of
that stuff was still in our suite. I was like, just worry about
it tomorrow before we check out. So the first person to knock on the
door, I knew it to be Nico, my childhood best friend, who
has seen me naked countless times, but not in a while. So,
getting out of bed in the hotel the morning after my wedding, I was
naked because I had lost my v so I was like, oh, I
gotta put clothes on and go answer the door and let him in it like,
no, fuck it, I'm just gonna go naked. And as I'm
walking to the door. As I'm walking to the door, the dejevu.
You know how dejevu when it's intense enough, you feel clairvoyant for what's about
to happen. Have you ever had that? No? Have you guys not
gotten that I've gotten such I sometimes it comes in waves, like for months
at a time. I'll get it and then I won't get it. I've
gotten such intense deja vu where it's like, oh my god, this is
happening for holy shit. And then I said that holy shit, and then
I looked over there where it starts to feel like you can predict what you're
gonna do next, like knowing, like WHOA, I don't think anything like
that's ever happened. There's like a science behind it. It's not clearly I'm
not actually predicting what I'm gonna do next. It's just the feedback loop kind
of reverses in your brain where you're doing what you think would happen or whatever.
And as I'm walking across the room to the door completely naked, I'm
like, oh shit, this is Djevu. I remember specifically at some other
point in time doing this exact same thing and worrying that it might actually be
my like in law. And I'm just opening the door, spread equal basically
naked as a get and then I remember when I got there, I'm like,
no, it's happened before, and it was Nico. And then I
ope swung the door wide and it was Nico, thankfully, but he was
not prepared for it, so he like let out this belly laugh and then
I slammed the door again in his face to go get his stuff, brought
it back with clothes on. But I remember that hole. It got so
vivid that I was like, oh, I'm safe. I know for a
fact it's Nico. It was the weirdest thing, and like it's funny because
dejevu comes in like waves for me, I'll get it a lot like weeks
in a row and then I won't get it. I get it specifically with
like dreams that I didn't remember, Like like just the other day, I
was out of town and I went to a place and there was a bunch
of candy laid out for Halloween, and I didn't remember having a dream about
atomic warheads, you know, this hour Canada, And I saw them laid
out in a bowl. And then it just like all hit me, like,
oh my god, I had this long dream last night about me having
to argue that I could draw the atomic warhead's logo from memory a guy with
his head Like again, like a specific dream about atomic warheads, and then
the next day I saw them laying on a counter or like, oh fuck
right, all dream about that, Yeah, the premonition. It's funny too,
Like I'll wake up, you know how they like you tend to forget
most dreams, like five minutes after you wake up certain dreams I'm having,
and like I'll have certain recurring dreams. But I didn't realize until like a
few years ago that I dream of like the same house. Anytime I'm dreaming
of like that, I'm a kid again with my family. It's always in
the same house that we never lived in. Something in my mind builds this
same exact house I've never seen in my life every time, not every time,
but often enough for me to remember. I'm like, we've never lived
in that house. I've never lived on a house that itself was like in
the middle of a lake. But it's always like the same layout. Like
I know where I'm going in these new dreams. This Cauldron lake, yeah,
the Culture Lake. Yes. When I was younger, definitely, what
like middle school or something, Titanic came out and I remember watching it and
then post watching it for whatever reason, probably like most middle school girls,
being like I hope one day I can find love where a guy will give
me the door and die, and like I am the most important thing.
And uh. I definitely didn't watch Titanic ever again after that. And then
the other day was on I don't know Amazon or Netflix or something I can't
remember, but I saw it and I thought, I haven't seen this in
decades. Is it still good? And I watched all of Titanic heads up
It's still actually is quite good. Yeah, Games Cameron's it's still really good.
A lot of people pay to see because because it starts with like an
interesting romance and like maybe that's your bag, maybe it's not. But the
point is that it ends with like a shit ton of people dying and like
clamoring over themselves and it's a class war and all the rich people are like
why can't I live? And it's so good. I like remember like finishing
and being like, damn, Titanic is still a great film and going to
bed. And as I was going to sleep, I thought to myself,
I hope one day I can find a guy that would give me the door
and let me live. And I went, oh my god. I thought
about that when I was fifteen or like thirteen or something, and there I
am, like thinking about a dude giving the door up for me. And
it's still like the most like romantic concept is like a dude being like you
you take the door, honey, I'll just die. I'll just die in
this cold fucking water looking at you. And then he's floating down to the
seafloor and a man in a scuba suit swims up to you. If you
think you've been saved, and it's me with a chainsaw, and I start
this throwing the door. I sunk the ship just so I can you made
an iceberg mm hmm and the Titanic. Wow, blew up that submersible so
he could get more people to watch Titanic on streaming. Again. I love
that that movie is like one of the most successful movies of all time.
It's like three hours long, and yet I feel like every woman I've ever
talked to about that movie is about the like the breadth of the love story
and the stuff you were just talking about, the door at the end of
the love and everything. Every guy I've ever talked about Titanic also loves that
movie. We remember Kate Winslet's boobs and when that guy fell off and dinked
his head on the propeller. Yeah, every guy remember, Oh yeah,
I remember the band continuing to play there that guy dick in his head and
getting real fucked up. Oh that dude was dead before he hit the water.
That's always on the trail way more fun. I mean, I do
that movie as fucked up. It's a tragedy. What happened, right,
Yeah, you don't make light of the Titanic. I was joking about the
titan submersible like the day it happened, before we even got the News.
We beeped it out on an episode, but it was pretty obvious. I
uh that they were playing that movie at a wine bar and Tribeca called another
room. If you get the chance to go, you should go. They
were projecting on the wall with no sound on the back, and I was
kind of a man and I were kind of like half watching it. I
forgot how fucked up A lot of that movie is, like I knew parts
of it fucked up with like the part with the when the what's the little
girl's name? And her parents their cabin floods and you kind of see her
start to drown and she had that doll with her, and then later on
they show the shot the doll just floating away. That was fucked up.
There's a dog thing in the movie, I think, which I forgot about
a lot of messed up stuff in that movie. A lot of people died.
I guess, yeah, yeah, women, children, men, the
coal workers waited a Havtar game this year. It sounds like a far Cry
game with an Avatar skin, but like a fast traveler. The traveling is
fun, like you just jump off anything and then the thing catches you.
I might like that. Yeah, thank you Amanda for writing in am Uh,
We're gonna stick with two emails tonight. You can't tell I'm deteriorating quickly.
Oh you're sicky. You're sick. I'm so sick. I'm going to
go be a baby in bed. It takes some who, but Twissen coff
his own stupid voice. I'm drinking a hot toddy, which is like my
medicine. If you're a mixed soda water cough medicine and vodka. No,
isn't that what leena is? Purple drink? Oh? Is that what that
is? I thought you were making a flaming Homer. Oh did it depends
on how you perceive it, because most the cough syrup. Right, yeah,
but it's a flame being Homer most stole it. You need to know
your Simpson's history to play MO did so? I recognized the flame in mo
Codine coughs are up in soda? Is lean purple drink? Also purple drank
or scissorp scissorp Simpsons did it first to scisser my wife? You know what
I mean? No, I don't know. I'm sick. Sorry, sorry,
wife, No scissoring until I'm healthy. You can sits me I'm gonna
be falling asleep from receiving as long as you got permish the exorcist got to
get permish scissor sleep well. Thank you, Wes, thank you Manda.
Uh, it's a good episode. Good to be back. And one gang.
We'll uh, we'll talk more about Game of the Year stuff. Mid
December in Minneapolis, Minneapolis winter. Yes, I've done it once. I've
done a few times. Not the where I met you? You been here?
No, all right? You have you been in Minneapolis or just not
in the winter. Uh, I don't think ever. Oh, it's it's
fun. It's awesome. I love making you know. We'll see Get some
juicy loocies, get some summit beer. I got the triple bump. You
two and the judge. Are we doing? Louis was stacking us. Yes,
I'm on top Xbox. You'll never play, all right? Mary has
on the top ship. No, it's it's two and then one. There's
only one top and Mary's got it. I'm gonna I'm gonna fashion a ve
uh an outline of a velcrow pad in the shape of my body on the
ceiling and then put velcrow along the back of my body, and then cling
to the ceiling right above Mary and stare at her as she sleeps the whole
night. You're too sick to discuss and come up with murder plot points,
right, that's just to throw you off bunk and I were trying to decide
what the weirdest thing would be, because like the top bunk is right below
the ceiling, so there is actually have triple bunks. Yeah, yeah,
that's not a joke. Yeah, that's I don't want to sleep in triple
bunk beds. You have like a mansion two it's two at the bottom and
then it's like one above that. So yeah, that's the one above bunk
bed. It's a triple bunk bed. Yeah, but there we could put
a giant life size poster above, Like there's the person on top has to
stare at the whole time. Yeah, what's the weirdest thing you stare at?
If you want to bring if you want to make a life sized poster
yourself, I will put it above the bunk that Mary has to tear and
then she tears it down. It's just me doing goatsy on a poster beneath
it. It's just the worst face. And then she tears that down.
This is the worst day ja vous in my life. That she tears that
and it's a hole into the attic and I'm up there giving gotzy like straddling
the hole. She just then she rolls over and then the comforters have jpeggs
of me doing goats on the pillowcase. The worst daye of it? What
is the weirdest thing you put on the ceiling, like a poster of like
Philip Seymour Hoffman, that's pretty weird, like William William H. Macy with
braces from Magnolia. Well we got space. If you want to bring anything,
we can put it up there. Okay, sick all right? Uh
well, as usually you can write in for next episode. Firescape past at
gmail dot com. Thank you Wes, Thank you Amanda Dan. Tell people
what they can do on Spotify and iTunes, et cetera. Five stars wherever
you get your podcasts, you got your podcast addict, you got your overcast,
you got your Spotify, wherever you do it. Just the five stars.
That helps us out a lot. Now that four point eight seven star
bullshit, This isn't uber uber yah find you none of those four point eight
three which is so low Yeah, that's embarrassing. Mary, tell them where
they can get some threads. So we have some new six shirts and you
can get them by going from our patreon. But you can also go to
fire Escape cast dot com for a whole limited amount of items which would be
great for your Christmas wish lists. Yeah, Firescape merch will bring you to
bonfire and that's a fourth wall. That's a bunch of like thermoses and mouse
pads and hats and sweatshirts. But then if you go to fire escapecast dot
com, it's our Patreon, you'll see a link. You can also go
to our instagram if you want to get fire Escape in Space. We did
extend that run because a bunch of people got it so in time for the
holidays. If you want to gift someone one your firescap listener in your life.
I want to thank Ben Hanson for last week for filling in you.
Folks were out traveling and stuff and Hanson came over and we sat down for
like three and a half hours and just shot the shit. Had a really
good time. So if you didn't hear that this episode, but thank you
to Ben. I know he's listening because this is a podcast go listen to
min Max. Wait did you not watch Gremlins two? First? No?
That was the most confusing socia. Hanson texted me because he saw the fire
escape thing, like they talk about everything the Goonies too, and we're like,
wait, what, first of all, the Goonies two is not a
movie. It doesn't exist, and we didn't watch or talk about. So
I'm keeping it. I'm not editing it. Just like that almost sounded like
something we didn't talk about. Why Why did you just not have time for
Gremlins too? No? He had a baby or something, so yeah,
boring. Well, thank you, Ben Hanson. Go listen to mid Max.
Subscribe, go to the Patreon if you don't already there, Dan,
What do you have going on in your free time or not free timers in
general? Jesus uh? Extra life coming up. That'll be November eighteenth.
I've got Jeff Grebb, Mike Manatti, and the Wind bad Get coming to
stay with me for a weekend in Minneapolis, and we are going to do
an eight hour ish stream, lots of local multiplayer stuff raising money for good
cause. My sister coming to town. Also, we'll probably do some stream
stuff. Fucking Giant Bomb Game of the Year. We'll be in December,
so just lots of stuff. Just stay tuned. You'll see it if you
if you want to find it. Sweet Mary, what about you twitch stuff?
I usually stream on Mondays and excited for the Game Awards, which is
coming up in about four weeks. It's coming. I'll see you there.
I will not be there this year, not going to LA. I liked
when we did our pictures together. We actually had you in the picture for
real at the wedding. We almost I know the thing, you almost did
the thing where I was not in it, and I was like, this
is a wedding. God, damn it. I want to be in it
or in the Hamptons when you were actually in the background, but we still
photoshopped you in between us in the people don't they don't they don't notice when
we do that. Oh well yeah, yeah, I'm over at Polygon go
rid our stuff. I saw that. That was episode sixty seven. Thank
you everybody for joining kind of Men anywhere in the world tonight, But you
spend it here with us. Listen to me cough and sneeze and sniffle and
destroy my voice. I'm gonna sleep like a like a limp dick. I'm
gonna no scissor in tonight. Somebody laugh. Don't make me keep going.
We're not supposed to because it's not good for you. Yeah, something now
I have to say something legitimately funny. Pressure's on. Now? What did
uh? What did? Abraham Lincoln walks into a theater says, says,
uh, what's the play? Tonight? Mary's laughing already. I didn't get
through the punchline, nor Mary ruined it. I can't you. I've never
seen someone raw dog a joke that badly in my life. I had to
do to get Dan to chuckles make a park boys, I'm just so easy.
I'm usually like the funniest person I know. But tonight I'm just tired.
I've never seen it. Yeah you have. Well anyway, thanks everybody
for coming. Been great at sixty seven. Go play Ellen Wake two,
Pickman four Day, The Diver, Minico's Night Market, Uh, super Mario
Boros, wonder I still have to play the latter. I'm excited to go
check it out tomorrow hopefully. All right, see everybody, in a couple
of weeks. Will that be before things? Will that be past things?
No, that'll be right before Thanks before in the US, so we'll uh,
we'll have a long we'll have a long weekend after that to catch up
on the episode if they miss it. Thanks everybody. We'll see you in
a couple of weeks. Bye bye bye