Hello, everyone, Welcome back to the fire Escape Cast. It is officially
twenty twenty three. Here on the Best show on God's Green Earth fire Escape
Cast. I'm Mike. That's Dan. Hi. I can't hear a thing
you're saying. It seems like you're internet's fucked up. What's going on there?
Yeah? Off the top, and that's Mary. I'll introduce you first
before I explain. Hello, I'm having some bum fuck email or internet problems.
I'm plug and plug it in quite a few times. Yeah, we
did you do a speed check? Yep? Yeah, streaming any Netflix on
another monitor there? What are you doing now? Troubleshoot on the other side
of the apartment. We're streaming. But that's about it. And we always
we usually always are during the recording. Um. But yeah, Big Storm,
he loves it when you trouble shootoots. Troubleshoot. God. My last
job constantly trying to record podcasts with wrestlers who have like five kids in the
house, all playing roadblocks and streaming stuff on different devices and having to tell
wrestlers to tell their kids to stop doing things like, oh boy, that's
a fun troubleshooting time. Yeah, Big Storm hit on the East Coast,
Midwest, pretty much everywhere, and uh bad up here. Really, no,
you're not too far from me. It was very cold and windy as
hell, like forty five mile prour winds, and uh, the whole East
coast, like eastern seaboard was bad. But we got an email from Verizon
telling us that our internet might suck shit for the next couple of weeks.
So if I'm being unusually quiet tonight, that's why I know. I'm always
very quiet and austere, but tonight that's why so mysterious like Batman. That's
why I like to think of myself as it's because I'm cool like Batman and
that many comic guys. But I'm trying to think of who Mike would be
if he was a coming. Oh do you ever see Peacemaker with John Cena?
Nope, Okay, I know an annoying friend. I'm the annoying friend.
Yeah. I think you'd be the punisher because you hold really long,
like crazy like maniac grudges. Yeah. No, I like go most of
my grudges. No, I think they're in there, and I think that
the punisher is all about like a real sincere one because it's like you know
his family and stuff, but yours are more like mcgruber grudges, where you're
like, listen, fuckoh a tax party and I've held a grudge for seven
years. I don't specific ones. I yeah, I don't name any of
them because I do have grudges, but like they're less grudges and more just
like I really fucking hate that person. Like I'm not seeking retribution for I
think there's like there's like three. Probably I'm not actively seeking revenge, but
I just don't have some time times that you, me and this person,
this unnamed person have been in the same physical space and this person has said
things and my instant thought is, oh my god, Mike's gonna hate that.
And I would turn to look at you and you would just have fury
in your eye to laugh in front of him. Yeah, there's I think
there's several people, but yeah, it's it's been a I've been letting go
a lot of my anger the last five years or so. Oh good for
you. I think it's still deep down inside him. It's like the light
in your eyes, you know, Like, yeah, it's like when somebody
finds love or when someone becomes a dad and they get this sparkle in their
eye. Mike gets that. But when he has an extreme rage inside for
someone that he hates, step down inside and they say something dumb from across
the room and he hears it. Yeah, it's dumb people that I don't
like, and I'm very intelligent, so I take dumb this as I'm like,
I'm like an affront to my personal insult. Yeah, I like your
Christmas vacation glass mug thing. I was really hoping someone would notice my Christmas
vacation moose mug it is. It is a vodka ginger. If you're not
watching the video version as a video patron, you're missing out, which also
brings us to our next point. If you're not a patron yet, or
if you are and you missed it, we have a bonus episode up.
A lot of you, if not all of you, probably know. We
did our twenty twenty two Game of the Year Extravaganza and Connecticut at Dan's studio
a couple of weeks ago as of this recording, and it was a blast,
What a rush. It was great still recovery cool. Yeah, me
too cool, dis exhausting cool. Judge Jake joined us. He's not here
to night unfortunately, um, but he's listening to the recording. Thanks a
lot, cool judge, Jake. He settled a lot of disputes very professionally
and with great acumen. Controversially, that's a lot of people disagreed with.
But you know it was good. No, I think universally he was beloved
and everyone agreed. It's one of those weird situations, you know, some
good decisions. It was like the Supreme Court, but like not evil.
Everyone's like, yeah, we agree, Yeah, he like actually was like
the will of the people some cases, yeah, and all cases. He
whisper. Yeah. Yeah. Our bonus episode's up. If you're not a
Patreon, go to firescapecast dot com or Patreon dot com slash fire Escape to
sign up. We just recorded our two hour ninety minute road trip from New
York to Connecticut. Just put up in organic and we don't really talk about
games. We talk about like stuff you would talk about on a road trip,
you know, like your favorite movies and I don't know, just other
like weird stuff that happens. Yeah, I don't think your life. It's
very just all we just yeah, it was a straight up pretty evergreen Uh
yeah, yeah, it was very very fun going to immediately bought a GoPro
afterwards because I was like, man, thing's pretty tiny and that looked pretty
good, so it is convenient, and also the case, like the fact
that it has that waterproofcase will make you feel way more gutsy, whereas like
I have a lot of nice cameras, but no way on hell would I
strap one to the hood of my car like on the outside, but a
GoPro Like, you're fine, you fucking section cup for putting on the outside
of your car and go Pro and I think it's We're not doing an ad
for GoPro. I just like it's pretty cool. You don't even need It's
just a yeah, hey GoPro. If you're listening, just the thing itself
is a waterproof now, so you can just take the whole damn thing underwater.
And I've done that. This is like I think they have like GoPro
nine or whatever. It's kind of like I got eleven block. See,
it's like, now that's what I call music. It's like there's like twenty
seven and it's like whatever. I had the original go Pro, which was
such a chunker, but it worked extremely well and it had a plastic case,
and I went scuba diving, and I took that shit scuba diving,
Like I took it deep underwater and took it on a huge underwater adventure and
like you know, took took video of all the clown fishes and stuff.
It was awesome, And I was like, I would never be able to
do this a goopro. I would never put like a nice camera in a
ziploc baggy and like bring it down there. But a GoPro, I was
like, it's like it's just it's it's not cheap, but it's just enough
where it's okay if it got dinged or like whatever. It feels like that's
the point of it. I just like the flexibility to like record, because
I like when I streamed and stuff. I like that, Like I've got
a document camera that looks straight down. I've got these cameras that are over
here in the corners, and like, I like having as many camera options
as possible. So seeing Jake be able to just like set that up there
and record as awesome. But by the way, we did do it in
person, like we said here in Connecticut, and we literally were able to
do that because of patrons, so like your your Patreon dollars immediately, like
directly got all of us out here, So we wanted to make that piece
of content just for you, the patrons, So that'll be up there.
There's an audio version and a video version, so check it out whichever you
like, if you're on the Patreon. Video versions better because it has us
trying to get the truck driver to hit his horn, succeeding first try,
first try. You get to get more nuances of the road trip with the
video, but yeah, both of them are available. Again, this is
not an ad for GoPro, but like the stabilization was almost too good because
there was one point where I had to break suddenly and the joke did not
translate to the recording as much because all of us were like thrown forward in
the car. But the GoPro was just calm, cool, collected. Yeah,
we're going to do like a social clip that. Then we watched it,
we're like, hey, it's not funny. Told yeah, you wouldn't
notice, you wouldn't notice. Um. I also thought the audio was really
good. It wasn't recorded on the GoPro, it was recorded separately on a
recorder, and I thought that turned out quite well, considering it was just
in the middle of the dash, hoping that it would capture all of us,
and it did. So. If anyone's ever driving with Mike, please
correct him and kind of backs you drive as much as possible. He's a
big fan of that. Yeah, I love it. Speaking of grudges,
I still you're getting that glint your eye. Yeah, there it is.
Who is God? There's the quint for the fakere on video. I think
the look I do when someone in the room says something really dumb or annoying
is more of like a like it's murder, don't have time for this,
or maybe it's murder. There's like violent intent behind your eyes for sure.
Punisher, the cats on this, everybody they were getting used to the company.
Did you find the Googles? I put Google eyes in your house.
I found two sets. I've found one. I found one pair, did
more than one. We had two earhouse. I did one in Mike's house.
I did three three. I found the two on Luna, which she
looks the same because she already has a cat. Lunas looks hilarious. You
should see it because Luna has ridiculous eyes. So putting Google Eyes on a
cat makes it just look like it's insane. I found and then I did
Mike's like personal like cute photo that was from Tim's wedding like Google that.
Wait, there's a third set, yeah, and they all came from Bonk's
Google Eye box. Now this is real fun because there was no context to
this at all, which is something I really like about Bonk. She came
right up to me with a plastic kit of Google Eyes. They were all
sorted from small to large, and said do you want some? And I
said, oh, yeah, I just questions each size and put them in
my pocket and I just started putting them around the houses and they're just She
didn't even bring it up. There was no like, wait a time,
it was, yeah, is that from the same wavelength? Okay, Mike's
looking for googly eyes? He's grabbing a picture. Uh where he doesn't have
a headphones on? Where did you put it? It's on his Christmas ornament.
I'd heard to hear that nod No. So the morning when so Jake
and Mary stayed at my place a couple more days near the airport after we
did the Game of the Year thing, So I was like getting I think
I was getting the breakout video and whatnot ready for the next day. In
like in this room, Mary's just kind of wandering around. Was like,
what are you doing? She's like, just snooping, And I was like,
Oh, that's what I love that. I love that snooping is a
good excuse to put Google eyes on because snooping is so much worse. But
I like, I would just rather you think that I'm a fucking gross person
than doing what I was doing, which is being a little scamp and putting
Google eyes on all your photos. But if you are snooping, how bad
can it be? If you're openly saying you're snooping? You know, were
fairly like reasonable decent people. I suspect I'd have to do some real digging.
I felt like every their house is extremely well manicured. It's clean,
they like keep up with everything, especially when they had three guests spending the
night. I feel like all the Skellies are really in there. Nothing.
I haven't stayed in Mike's plaze and gone to bed before like four am,
ever, which I guess as we record this, I've got a New Year's
Eve at his place coming up in a few days. Yeah, well,
yeah, that'll be an early night. I'm sure probably, I never I'll
probably go to bed at like ten. Yeah, oh, you can drink
thing we're going to you know. Something that was interesting about that, and
this is just like a personal anecdote because nobody really talked about this was like
afterwards we discussed in the road trip video that we wanted to do a little
fire pit and so after we did this very long recording, we were like,
let's sit at the fire and decompress. Let's like hang out, has
nothing to do with games. Let's just chill for a second. And so
we did. Jake went to bed because he was tie tie and smart.
Three thirty or four in the morning. Yeah, for another hour, Mike
and I and you sit at the fire and have a beer. I'd actually
think I had two more beers, which was such a fucking mistake, but
I digress. And then after that I was like, all right, I'm
going to bed, and Mike goes to bed, and in the morning,
Dan, you said you stayed up for another hour after that. Yeah.
I always kind of have that thing after a stream, even a really late
one, where it's like I can't It's like My mom was a waitress,
and she always used to tell me about like she would come home so late
and so exhausted, but her head would be going so fast that like she
just wasn't able to sleep or whatever. I'm kind of that way. After
a long stream where it's like, especially an exciting one like that Game of
the Year, like a really long stream I do on my own or something,
I can't just like all right, well, you know, time to
sleep. I can't do that. So I pretty much always either chugwater or
have like one more beer and just like, oh, okay, let's see
how people in the discord reacted to it. Let's see how people will here,
let's check Twitter. Let's just see bah bah. So just that's might
kind of like come down time, or I'll just play a little bit of
Fortnite or whatever. So yeah, I was up for yeah, maybe another
hour after that. Yeah, I think that's cool to decompress. I just
was so zonked. It's amazing for me to think that. It like five
in the morning. You were like, I need like another thirty I need
another thirty to just hang out and then I'll go to sleep. At five
thirty, and we all woke up at like eight thirty in the morning.
Well, I just need to not be on where it's like and even if
you're not on camera or microphone, like if you're talking people and you're being
social, you are like you're on in a certa. Maybe it's just me,
And so I just need that time where it's like I'm not fucking talking
because you know, especially if I've been talking for eight straight hours on something,
it's like I just need to shut the funk up and then you know,
decompressed for thirty minutes and go to bed. Yeah, that's cool.
It was pretty amazing. It was a really good trip. In the morning,
we all got brunch. One of my favorite things was that we went
to a brunch place that for whatever reason, and this is like after an
eight hour drinking and like sesh, there was just this like intense brunch required
menu that was like three rounds of drinks and bottomless mimosas and unanimous and we
were all like, whatever, I'd rather eat spaghetti, drink bottomless mimoas brunch
there because I've had their dinners and they're really good, and it's like,
oh, I wonder where the brunches are like, And then it's like you
only can order this like three course thing and you have to get bottomless mimosas.
And it's like we're all we're like driving and we just won't, like
we don't want to start drinking right now. So good salads and pasta and
so good for breakfast, it was good, I will think you. And
that's funny too, because I think in New York you had um, you
you had pasta for breakfast. Yeah, for breakfast. Oh yeah, like
meaty pasta fu. Yeah. I'm telling you. Food taste just as good
at eight am as it does at eight pm. People are fucking weirdos about
breakfast. You know, just ed burger and fries for breakfast and shut up.
Everyone's weird about it. I definitely am weird about it. Like we
explained weird. It's not about taste, it's about how heavy the food is.
How Like I have steak and eggs for breakfast, So I'm kind of
right there with you steak and eggs, though at least there's protein you're burning
throughout the rest of the day. But how's that different than now I having
a big plate of buffalo wings and ranch for breakfast, Like that's the same
thing I have, like burn INDs for breakfast, Like it's the same.
Yeah, don't you see all those marathon runners that eat an entire plate of
wings right before they run a marathon. You got a rancho load, man,
before you do a big marathon. You gotta worst parts of my upbringing
and growing up where when I would get up and i'd be so excited about
McDonald's and i'd go there and it'd be like ten o'clock and they're like,
we're not serving lunch until ten thirty, and it's like, oh great,
I gotta sit around here for thirty minutes before I get a fucking quarter pounder.
I think that's more just the process of McDonald's how they prepare food,
Like they probably just get breakfast food ready. I worked at McDonald's. Yes,
you get all that stuff ready to go. You want to have it,
like you want to have fries and burgers and chicken eggs. But I
have to wait all the time anyway, because all my stuff I order weird.
So it's like they don't have plain quarter pounders ready to go, so
like I'm used to waiting, I'll wait for you to put the fucking quarter
pounder at eight in the morning, but they just don't do it. A
quarter pounder eight in the morning is delicious. I just can't imagine feeling great
after that the rest of the day. I never feel great after I okay,
well that's okay, that's the difference about I think that's a different feel
great after that. Yeah, people, you guys have different goals. You
have different goals when you consume. I just want to shove cheese in my
face. Yeah, I don't care how I feel after. We're not discussing
future, dan, we're discussing Okay. Well, there you go. That's
probably why the food thing doesn't translate. You got to You ordered a salad
for the first time in a restaurant though at brunch. Yeah, I got
anecdote. But yeah, I never ordered a salad I think at a restaurant
before, unless I'm forgetting something. But I wonder why that is. I
mean a lot of times sometimes you get a salad with your meal. I
always turn it down. I always. I've never I'm not kidding. Anytime
it's like, oh, we start with a side salad, I just decline
it, and they're like, it comes with a meal, and I'm like,
I don't care. I don't want to take up precious stomach space that
I could be filling with macaroni and cheese, with some fucking lettuce and tomato.
That's why salads start the meal, because they don't take up any space.
They're just leaves and weeds that like here's physical form, there is mass
and calories involved, barely compared to I don't need crusts on pizza. I
prioritize the stuff I want in my stomach. I don't dislike crust. I
will eat crust if I'm still hungry if it's the only thing available, but
I don't eat the crust because I want all the good stuff first. Once
all the good stuff's gone, if all I have is the crust, let's
go downs. Ending salad would be better for you, I guess, but
I don't. I don't want salad generally ever, so I think I would
just decline it. In most circumstances, I'm supposed to just give you some
some good vibes. That way stomach, when it's got all this cheese in
it, it can be like this. Salad's with us, guys. Every
single time I've gone to like a Chinese place or got to take out or
something. If there's broccoli in there with my general's chicken and rice, just
get the broccoli the fuck out of here. I got serious stuff to get
to. Okay, chicken and I got real food. Sounds like you need
some athletic greens. It's no, it's not stop it. Yeah, I
eat. I eat salads fairly often. Yeah, it's my meal prep.
It's like how I like get through the week is I make salads in advance
for the week, and then I just have them in a little box and
then I can grab them on my very quick lunch break. My lunch breaks
aren't quick. But what happens is is I want to walk my dog.
I walk my dog three times a day, so in the morning, at
noon, and after like a thirty minute noon walk, I only have thirty
minutes to smash food before I need to be back at work, and that's
not enough time to like cook a meal. So a pre made salad is
like where it's at. Bonk used to do that when I was doing like
meal prep in San Francisco, where she would give me like one of those
little supper wor things with the dividers and she would like, oh, put
the sauce in one and then the salad and something the other salad that was
that was my go to for a while. That's adorable. I think it's
really fun to have like a designed curated lunch. If nothing else, it
just makes you feel good that someone thought about you that much, but they
were like, I have designed this aesthetically pleasing for you. If you look
closely, there's a smiley face in the olives. Ye. Well, New
Year's Eve is only salad, so deal with that. God damn it.
Really no, no way we're going. We're going to like a dive bar.
I'm so stupid. And all you can eat salads and all you can
eat salade cherry tomato my nose of my ass too cherry or olive gardens.
All you can eat salad is fucking paradise in one out the other olive gardens.
All you can eat bread sticks and that's a million bread sticks and salad,
all you can eat both. Never done that. I get Alfredo sauce.
Sara only dressing genuinely is like worth eating even if you don't like salads.
Their Italian dressing is so good that I would recommend. Yeah, it's
awesome. I've never had a salad there, but they're like just big bowls
of Alfreda that you can get breadsticks in all night. That's that's a good
Friday. I would just do the all you can eat soup and sell and
I'd get should go to Olive Garden Ministries next time you come to New York
City, Let's go to Olive Garden the Time Square one I've been wanting to.
Yeah, authentic, we do the thing Mary you I and Jake,
can't you? I and Jake whatever however said, we'll get one table,
we'll send Mike to another one, and we'll do the thing where he requests
them to sing Happy Birthday to him by himself. I'm thinking about that ever
since we talked about it, and I really want to see that happen.
That's Time Square. I would not actually be surprised if that's happened before at
the Times Square Olive Garden. Yeah. Like and ironically, I'm willing to
bet at least one person that's done it before at that location. Problem and
ironically, but I still would waiter waitress have I Oh yeah, yeah,
I would have to imagine there's tons of like stories when or somebody like has
that type of job. I think generally the main story is is that you're
really underappreciated. Customers are the worst, and you get really blitzed every night
after your shift because you have two hundred dollars worth of ones in your pocket.
That sounds about right. Yeah. I worked at Texas Roadhouse, which
is that like steak place where they boast that they make all of their ingredients
from scratch, including the rolls and the honey butter, and then you can
put the peanuts on the floor. Oh yeah, yeah, that's fun.
Spoiler alert. We fucking have to sweep up those peanuts every night. Why
don't they just have like a giant dyson like fucking floor like and then just
pushes it into a compact or thing. Why do that? You can have
a person who makes two dollars in fifty cents an hour do it? Oh
yeah, wow, that sucks. Yeah, that's that's my mom got paid.
She worked at Maccaroni Grille and Chilies and I was growing up. But
she would do her side hustles while she was on the clock, all incognito
like. She would paint these ties, like really like kind of lavish ties
of you know, hot glue and glitter guns and stuff where it's like,
oh, here's a Scooby Doo one, here's a Bart Simpson one, here's
whatever popular thing is. And she would wear them with the macaroni grill thing.
Because she was allowed to wear different ties, she had to wear the
uniform for the other stuff, and people would flare. Yeah. Yeah.
People would always ask like, oh, wow, where do you get that
tie because they were so loud and everything. She's like, oh, actually,
I make them, and I can do custom ones. And so she
would come back every shift with like several custom jobs and then she's like,
all right, and next time you come in, i'll have you Oh you're
coming in Friday, Okay, yeah, I'll ask for my table and I'll
give you your tie. So yeah, she was getting the extra money on
the side. There no dance flashes ties, oh no, none of those.
Yeah. I was just a hustler, right yeah. Copyright left for
sure, not at Texas Roadhouse. But I think right after that I got
a job at like a like a fancy steakhouse, and I just knew mathematically
what to convince people to order that would increase their bill a lot, because
I wanted them because twenty percent of a bigger bill is more money for me.
So I would always be like, you know, if you guys want
a recommendation, you definitely want a round of you know, Don Julio for
the table flay minion covered in gold flakes one hundred percent. I mean I
was I was starving artist. I was just trying to make it so you
were catching me at my most rambunctious. Also again a total degenerate once the
shift ended, because we had a bunch of ones in our pockets and it
was like, Okay, we're going out now, and we would do that.
We would go outuntil six in the morning and just get totally hammered.
I worked at a liquor store in college, and like after the shift was
over, like people would go in the back room and just be like,
all right, we're gonna bust open all this liquor and just get sucked up
after the thing. And like, even as a college student who loved getting
fucked up, I was still too much of a goods like, Nope,
nope, we're gonna get in trouble, gonna get in trouble. I didn't
see anything. I'm going home going No, didn't ark on anyone, but
I would not in the in the theft God, I thought you were cool.
I was never cool. Yeah, I think you're pretty cool. Now
you're cool. I'm happy with my situation. Yeah, I think that.
I think your self awareness is cool that you know. Yeah, you're you're,
You're who you are. One of my fun stories, one of my
good stories I was a waitress, was there was a guy and a girl
who were out to dinner on a date and um, she had a really
low top on Um, like really low there's does that mean the boob area
or the stomach area? If someone says, ad you see a lot of
boobs past stomach. It was crazy. It was confusing. They talked about
it with jeans too, like aren't there like high cut and low cut jeans?
And I don't know. I mean it's going down to the vagina situation
or low r but a low cut shirt means low cut top. Yeah,
and um, it wasn't my table, it was a friend of mine's table.
And then her uh boob slipped out and yeah, her nipple was like
out up at the table. She was just eating, but her shirt was
loose enough for her nipples kind of like just kind of, you know,
just slid out and she didn't know, and the guy she was eating with
didn't say anything, and the waiter didn't know what to say, and so
he went into the back and was like, her, boob's out. I
could see her nipple. I'm so afraid that her like boyfriend or whoever's gonna
get mad if I bring it up. So I don't know what to do.
We were all like debating whether or not he should say anything, and
then the dishwasher said, you should just say, ma'am, yo, titti
is out, and he didn't because he panicked, and so it just worked
itself out. It's still out. Does that thing happened in forty year old
Virgin or something? Yes, it does. I think boob slippages probably happened
more than we realized in society, like most women. I mean, I
think I've had one in my lifetime. Yeah, we all know. We
all got to go someday situation like I've seen it's happened in wrestling, But
like people are getting like pedigreed in wrestling, Like how does it happen when
you're just going about your day? I don't know. I mean, think
about all those like uh, college, you know, liquor store drinking nights.
You think at one point one one of the girls in that situation,
if you drinks of something, you're not not going to boom out of a
shirt. They're wiley, they have the mind of their own. Sometimes I
guess balls. I've never really had balls or dick come out. Um,
well yeah they're not. You're not wearing the ball in society. Well yeah,
I'm trying to think it is because of what dude pants are like,
like you're shorts, dick or balls to flop out. Your cross isn't doesn't
have a hole in it. Worry if you're wearing pajama pants, which I
do frequently, some of them don't have a fucking button and I hate those.
Sometimes you get some for Christmas and they don't have the button and it's
like, no, I can't just be walking around. They got underwear on,
right, Yeah, but underwear has holes too, like boxers have holes.
But it would have to make it through both holes. Yeah, But
I mean statistically there's a decent chance. Not really, I wouldn't say decent.
So if I was like Hulu, You're it's not understanding that you're wearing
two layers of clothing with holes, and you're saying that balls can absolutely pop
out, but you can't fathom a nip slip. Yeah. I was like
playing like a game on the wee balance board that requires you to do a
bunch of like hip stuff or whatever. I could like, I could see
situations where it could possibly happen, and that would be disastrous. Disastrous.
I think it could happen. So that's why you gotta have the butt.
But it was a disaster. His ball went through both layers of clothing.
We saw everything. I think then dick would be way more like common I
think, because that's dangly balls would like especially one. If I would notice
the difference, I would just be like, well, if it was popping
out through a double layer of pants, I would probably just be like,
that's genitals, it's just flesh. Well I'm not I'm not only getting down
in there. I'm just aware that there's steak happening. I got three balls.
It just looks like a fidget spinner down there. What's the center?
That's a hole and just a bunch of Yeah, it's an axle. One
do they do they do? They hit the dick every time it spins like
one of those wheels, like the wheel of forts and thing. I didn't
say I have a dick. I just have three balls. That's it.
Oh, you have no dick, you just have three balls. Okay.
He replaced the dick with an extra ball. It's like a wind I never
said I had a dick. What a twin had a penis? I assume
you have three balls. Donkey Hoote is charging at those things every day anyway,
I think I get that reference. Yeah, yeah, the dragons.
He was in the windmills, right, he had a windmill a thing for
him. Yeah. He thought they were dragons, he pretended. Yeah.
He was totally into dick and balls. No, only balls. I had
a day. Hated dicks, just loved dry balls. It was always searching
fidget balls. So how are your holiday? Oh? Well, Jesus is
gonna being the reason for the season. U. No, Uh, it
was good. I stayed here because I was traveling a lot earlier, earlier
this month, so I canceled my flights. I originally had flights that I
would have come back today, but I was booked on Southwest and so it's
a real good thing. I didn't wind up going home for Christmas because I
would have been fucked. Just a meltdowns, it's been called in the headlines.
Yeah yeah, and uh yeah. My dad mocks me incessantly if I
fly anything but Southwest, so I get bullied into taking Southwest on the time
and the reverse that opinion after this month. No, he won't. He
he just thinks if you fly United, their American, and he's, oh,
my fancy, I need, I need my fancies, Jack, and
I need my first quash treatment to me. He just mocks me so much
and thinks I take fancy airlines because I don't fly Southwest every time. Yeah,
Paul, go fly one United flight and tell me it's fancy. If
you're not the same, exact hit, exacterally the same. You are treated
like an animal on all of these flights. Unless you go spirit then God
help you. Yeah, your weary soul, you are just treated like cargo
at that point, not even animal, just like loose baggage with legs.
You have to you have no fucking foot space or leg leg space on any
flight. It's all the same in Southwest, as United as whatever, like
it's it all sucks. Yeah, I don't know what more now, or
we're just like bigger now, or I'm sure like there's studies on like I'm
sure seat size and the leg space and stuff have gone down dramatic they have,
at least based on all the movies TV shows I watch where they show
them from like the sixties when they're smoking cigarettes and had all the leg room
in the world. That's what I want to go back to. God,
I want to smoke a cigaret. I don't even smoke. I don't want
to smoke a cigarette and have a martini and like really kick up my legs
on a flight and just be like, you know, a nineteen thirties girl.
Yeah, I assume they didn't fly in nineteen thirties, but you know
that when it really kicked out, probably in the fifties. Yeah. It
was the thirty expensive to fly back then, though, so it was like
a high class thing. Was just a bunch of like guys in black and
white film, like running off cliffs with things and flew fairly often the fifties,
I believe. Yeah, yeah, fifties, but thirties I don't even
think it was a When When when did they start becoming for commercially I'm curious.
Now. That'd be bold to be among the first people to fly commercially,
right, Yeah, I'd be really scary, although I would probably do
the space thing as soon as that's available. I think I just watched We
just watched Sunshine today. I don't want to go into space anytime soon after
seeing that movie again? Is that Aaronovski or what was that? Danny Boyle
directed it, Alex Garland wrote it. He went on to direct Annihilation in
ex Machina No, Alex ARLs great. Yeah, he wrote it and Danny
Boyle, who did Twenty Days Later Millions, directed it. Okay, Oh,
I love later. I always heard that's good. I never saw it.
He Killian Murphy's in it. Keilly Murphy is one of the leads in
Sunshine with Chris Evans, Rose Byrne Michelle. Yo. It's stacked the cast,
but it's it's like that hard sci fi. I want to see it
now. Wait, did you are you looking up the first like commercial flights?
I'm looking up Sunshine the movie. Oh yeah, we watched that today.
We went on a movie. Speaking of my holidays, we were we
were the weather fucked with our flights too, and we were also I was
sick at first. Tested negative for COVID like three times, but I had
the symptoms. I couldn't taste anything, I had chest pain, my throat,
my back. Tested negative a shit ton, but like it just basically
ended up being a very bad head cold and Amanda got it, so we
ended up not doing anything, which it was. It was ultimately great because
it gave us an excuse to just stay inside during the arctic weather. Um.
But yeah, we watched a bunch of movies, caught up on twenty
twenty two movies. I finally finished The Northman. Um. I I like
it. I think Robert Eggers Aggers needs to chill out a bit. He's
always director. Yeah, he did The Witch and the Lighthouse horror movies.
This has some horror elements, but it's really good. I liked a lot.
I'm mainly joking about him. Um. We watched Tar with Cape Blanchett.
She's a composer and McConaughey as well. That's mud twenty twenty two movie.
She's a like artist composer. I don't think you'd like I liked it
a lot. I don't. I think this is like poison to boat.
Maybe both of you, I think would hate it. It could. It's
pretty pretentious, is it? Is it oscar bait? What do you say?
Well, it's definitely Oscar contender. But it's also like an art house
kind of movie in a lot of ways. But I like that. I
like art house movies. I think maybe more of a film snob than people.
It's not it's not the composition of the movie. The first major scene
is her doing an interview with a New Yorker writer, an actual real life
New Yorker writer named Adam Gopnick, And it's one of those in conversation with
at the met and it's the most up its own ass conversation ever, kind
of on purpose, like they refer back to it later and it's fascinating,
but it's so pretentious it's supposed to be. But again, like she's talking
about musical theory and different composers, and the main thrust of the movie is
like she starts slowly getting not slowly, but she starts to get canceled,
basically, And it's like an examination of how certain people react to it and
how people react it on both sides. It's not really like a soapboxy movie
in terms of what we should think about someone getting canceled, or whether they
deserved it, or or like who you should believe, et cetera. But
it is pretty pretentious because she is this composer who splits her time between her
Berlin apartment at her New York apartment, and she's conducted like a lot of
Maller and Beethoven, and it's I don't know shit about classical music, but
I like the movie a lot. It was good. Then we watched Babylon,
which the Danson movie with Margot Robbie Right, Yeah, her, Brad
pitt Um, Diego Calva. It's the same director as a First Man,
La La Land, Whiplash, Damien Chazelle Whiplash are great, like Whiplash a
lot. Yeah, all the movies are the same general theme of like do
you want to become famous and immortal or have friends and close family while you're
alive? Like, it's kind of the same thing. But it's about nineteen
twenties Hollywood transition from silent films to talkies. It's fun to watch, it's
pretty propulsive, but like, oh my god, the last ten minutes.
Damien Chazelle just in my opinion, does not know how to end a movie
Whiplash, I thought was a great ending, but the rest of his movies
just like you could have ended this six times. And there's a specific movie
clip shows up in it, Dan that I'm tempted to have you watched Babylon,
Justice mcgrouper sex scene. No, but it's among one of your favorite
I don't even want to spoil it because and I'm not going to see the
movie. Okay, Well, if you want to see Babylon, haven't seen
it yet, this like three hour long movie, tune out for the next
ten seconds I'll be concise the last ten seconds in the movie. And the
whole theme was like I want to be part of something bigger. I want
to contribute to Hollywood. It's this big mammoth thing that like, yes,
it causes abuse among a lot of the people that working in it destroys lives,
but like the last ten minutes are this like montage of movie history from
the nineteen twenties up until now. A clip of Avatar shows up, and
then the shot of Michael Bean's or not Michael Bean who plays the terminator,
Mister Bean who plays the two one thousand and Terminator two Robert Patrick Robert Patrick.
It's when his face is coming back together. They show that to the
soundtrack to Babylon's incredible, but like they show that that montage and movie,
so like Avatar comes in and then Terminator two comes in, Indiana Jones comes
in and the montage along to the Babylon soundtrack. It's weird and I need
to rewatch it at some point when I have three hours to spare. But
oh, you see movies that are three hours long, it sounds like movies
for babies, not centiphiles like me. I saw a movie that was almost
three and a half hours long. Wait which in the theaters. I saw
the Avatar, the new one. It's like three hours eighteen minutes or something.
Yeah, it's so obnoxious to have that. I'm telling you as someone
who doesn't even really remember anything from the first one and had no strong feelings
about Avatar. Either way, it was fucking fun. It was really fucking
good. Me and Bonk both were highly entertained, and it flew by like
no watch checking anything. We did the full on i Amax three D with
a high frame rate and all that shit, And my god, if that
wasn't just like a ride for for three and a half hours. It was
awesome. I mean, at two hundred and fifty million dollars to make,
that is the most expensive movie per minute you will ever watch. Well,
I mean it's like when James Cameron, like like Titanic was super over budget
and cost it was the most expensive movie ever at the time. It's like,
well, became the most highest grossing movie ever. Avatar did it again.
So it's like I think at a certain point, like he just keeps
making the biggest movies ever. I think he just has the ultimate blank check
in Hollywood, and it's like he fucking he makes the most out of that
money and all the time. I mean, they filmed it all like four
fucking years ago, and it's it's really really good. They filmed it four
years ago and it took it took four years to edit. Yeah, because
I saw Edie Falco was on the View or something recently and she said that
she recorded filmed it like four years ago, and she assumed since it was
so long ago, that it came out and flopped. And so all of
a sudden, like this year, people started asking Eadie Falco, like,
hey, Avatar is coming out, and she's like what didn't that come out
a couple of years ago. I forget she's in it's so weird. She's
briefly in it. Yeah, it's not a bit big role. But yeah,
like Avatar three is already completely filmed and that's coming out in twenty twenty
four, and then he's working on four and five right now, and I'm
suddenly like, I don't like give a shit about the story or anything.
It's just like I'm just excited for Like that is such a go to the
theater type of movie where it's like, all right, we're gonna go to
the big fucking screen, put on the dumb glasses and just have some metabals
and have a good fucking time. It was. It was great, really
really liked it. I thought that you were just saying a weird way to
eat popcorn. I did. Oh, I'm ah, and you have some
edibles, Oh, they'd feel like shit because no, we went to like
a cheesecake factory thing. Do you know about the Grand Luxe Cafe. No,
apparently cheesecake factory. It's like a fancy cheesecake factory that's just the same
thing, but they call it the Grand Luxe Cafe and it's supposed to be
like the upscale cheese factory. Cheesecake factory. Anyway, we went to that.
I ate a bunch, had some cocktails. We had some some weed
edibles and I ate those, and then I went in and an hour into
the movie, I'm like, I need to go buy a giant tub of
pop bye. I didn't do my brilliant trick because I'm an adult now.
Um, I bought a giant tub of popcorn for myself because I know box
not into like movie theater popern that much. I fucking load. I held
my hand full blast on that fucking awesome butter thing for felt like six and
a half minutes. But I was high and dry, so I don't know.
Yeah, yes, just dunked so much salt onto it. And I've
never I don't know if I ever sit down and eat a whole large popcorn
by myself. I did in that movie. I woke up in the middle
of the night that night just my stomach and everything just felt wrecked for our
on a Christmas Eves that is you. Yeah, I was just like,
why did I eat all of that right after your giant cheesecake factory meal.
It's surprised what you eat can make you feel bad later on. It shouldn't
be that way, though, because it feels good when it's in your mouth,
and then the rest of the time it's bad and it takes longer when
it's not in your mouth. Dude, the butter though, because that is
like liquid. I don't think it's real butter. Yeah, it tastes great,
tastes, it's the real deal. It's great. I just put your
head under this big and just go to town. It's just I literally have
drank courtesy cups of that. When I worked at AMC, we would fill
up courtesy cups and dare each other, just straight up and drink the butter
and the cup. That's to somebody, some cheap skake comes around asking for
water, like some high falute and customer. We can't give him a real
deal cup because that's too much and those costs money. So you give them
a little courtesy cup, a little white one, says courtesy cup on it.
Nowadays especially dangerous because you got the freestyle machines. If you don't have
a clearly yeah, yeah exactly how that the customers still up their own so
does you got to make sure you delineate that like, Okay, they paid
for this or they didn't pay for it. That's why it's a courtesy you
put butter in there. Yes, I also made a manager throw up ones
because we would dare each other to like make the most gross concoctions we could
out of the things in the concession stand, and I made one that was
so rancid. I gave it to my manager Alexis, and she was like,
I could do it, and she got halfway through it and then start
of running to the bathroom and then puked on the floor on the way to
the bathroom. It sounds like us when we were doing our Godie deliberations.
Yeah, that was you. Yeah, I was sick. I've learned that
I cannot have anything that tastes like blood. I just can't like something inside
my brain was like no, no, no, no, no, you
can't eat blood. Stupid and just started like making me get of it.
By the way, I uh, very very good reaction to the Game of
the Year stuff. I did see a couple of comments to be like,
I can't believe these grown adults are drinking to the point of vomiting on a
podcast. It was like, did you watch the We didn't drink so much
we puked. Mary ate a shitload of poopy, bloody jelly beans because of
it. I did mix three different alcohols. I had wine, I had
UH, we had whiskey, we had UH fancy drinks, we had scotch,
and I had beer. And when I mix, I will get sick.
But also, as a grown adult, it is my goddamn right to
drink to the point where I puke. So fuck you almost like bring much
to be right now and puke on my shoes and that's my Yeah, yeah,
sorry dad that I didn't drink, you know, professionally. What is
that the exact opposite of what we do on this we're drinking right now.
The whole podcast was kind of like when we would get games. Yeah,
I do not know rehditors. I mean drinking an accessible amount in my moosehead
guys, how is this too many mooseheads? I didn't know redditors could be
so judgmental. That's you were surprised. It's it's just certain subreddits. I
think. I think the rest of the Internet in general is just a Yeah,
it's just crazy that people judging other peoples and and and the worst part
is that they're forced to listen to podcasts that make them uncomfortable. Yeah,
why do we make our podcast mandatory? Why did we do that more money?
We should have thought that through party, like a fire Escape podcast party,
because those are mandatory. Yeah, by law, we can check that
box when you uploaded to like go to these people's houses, put a chair
outside their bedroom window and just watch them for a day and a night,
and then letters and put it through their mails. No, no, no,
no, too much. I'm gonna make a Reddit based on their real
name that I've gathered from the mail. He's getting that Glinton's eye again,
and I'm gonna go to town. I think they have undiagnosed depression for sure.
Um, the way that they curl their a's leads me to believe they
might have some borderline personality disorder. Also, they definitely eat too many bags
of chips around dude, So I don't know if he's going to see this,
but he should really know that this is Also they sold out when they
started doing Boner pill ads. Um, there's just a lot that could be
working on And I'm out for now, but I'll be back to comment on
the next episode two Because they clockwork orange my eyelids and I watch it.
Also, don't listen to any podcasts ever, if you can't handle boner pill
lads. Yeah, no, for sure, Um, yes I want to.
We also we watched a lot. Uh we have you see the glass
Onion? Oh? Yeah, we watched glass Onion. So I liked it.
We rewatched Knives Out as well, and I still like Knives Out a
lot more. Yeah, I agree. I loved Knives Out and this one.
I thought Glass Onion was funny and fun like. I don't regret watching
at all, but it felt a little too on the nose with all of
it's like eat the rich stuff. I'm like, all right, I get
it. That was also Knives Out, but a bit more subtle with a
lot of it, all the cameos and stuff, and it's just kind of
like, I don't know, it felt a little too cutesy and self aware.
Where is the first one? Was just like a really good movie,
you know. Yeah, but yeah, Mary fell asleep, he said,
I fell asleep. Yeah, it's not because it's bad, it's good.
I had an edible. Turns out those work well with movies, and I
was really comfy, and I think it was before I don't know, and
I'm gonna I can't spoil this film because I don't know, but I've just
been told it's got some turns in it, you know, like throughout it.
And I must have fallen asleep before any of these big moments happened,
because I was like, you know, did they find out who killed the
guy? And everyone's like, oh, girl, you have been gone for
a long time, and I was like, well, I'll try again.
I Yeah, he was my favorite. Actually, he's a good acting talked
about a good acting. Yeah. We talked about his Hollywood like second act
on last episode or whatever episode it was. I'm a fan. I like
don't think I really recognized him in things before that, but that to me,
and this is someone who like I grew up with like the Rock,
and like really rooted for The Rock in his Hollywood career. I think I'm
just a little burnt out on the Rock. Like I see him all the
time, I don't really care. I feel like he always plays the same
role. Batista really surprises me with his characters in his acting, and so
I'd like to see more of that guy. Yeah, and I feel like
he's had mostly like kind of smaller roles even like the Blade Runner stuff,
like, you know, they're typically smaller roles in the past, but this
one, he's definitely he's part of that ensemble for sure in this one.
Yeah, definitely, yeah, Yeah, it was good. I'd say,
I think I gave the first one like four and a half on letterbox.
I get this one like three. It's it's still good. It's just a
yeah, really hard to beat the hype of the first one because it's such
a phenomenal film and it's just so I don't know, it's just like perfectly
done. All the villains, all the guys. You just like really root
for everybody, and it's great. Yeah, we have the fable means something
else, we have the Fableman's on deck next new Spielberg. Oh well,
yeah, it's apparently pretty autobiographical. Kid in a big family learns to make
movies. Well Super eight was kind of that too, But this looks a
bit more Christmas films Die Hard, Christmas Story, Hold one one and two,
and The Grinch Jim Carrey, all of which are still very of course,
still very good. Dan, did you say you haven't seen Jim No.
I was working at the theater when it came out. I remember I
was like a cool teenager at that point. I couldn't be seeing kids movies
once. I like Jim Carrey, so no, I never saw it.
I can see how you would think that, but I think that, um
oh my god, I'm most knocked over my mic um uh. I think
that it's extremely important that you give it a whirle because it is like iconic
now, and the way that Carrie really pours himself into that role, like
his acting is full commitment, like one hundred percent, and I think he
really owns just the weirdness and the anger and the frustration of the Grinch where
you love him and laugh at him but also like root for him and despise
him. Altogether, He's great. He's It's a good movie, still very
fun him going really into it, Like has there ever been Can you guys
think of any Jim Carrey role where he wasn't fully invested. I'm trying to.
I think he's one a phenominal actor. I just think that this one
he's really able, kind of like the Mask where he was really able to
carry out you know what I'm talking about. The action cartoon, which is
basically what the Grinches. Well, I mean, he was just able to
fully commit to all of his wacky shenanigans one percent, and I think he
can't do that in every role, even though he can be silly, yeah
thing, It's like he's like maybe one of the most gifted physical comedians of
all time, but like you know, in a Liar Liar or something like
even other comedies or Truman Show, it's not like it. He can be
as outlandish as he could be in like The Mask was exactly that, and
I'm sure Grinch, you know, being based on a cartoon is similar.
So yeah, his facial expressions are so animated in every feature, but in
The Grinch, his whole body is walking around just like this evil, like
maniacal little being. It's ridiculous. And he has so many prosthetics on.
I mean, his ass is just outrageous. He is a pair they That
movie is still fucking hilarious. I laughed consistently throughout it, but apparently it's
funny. I don't think this is an urban legend. I think this is
true. He had like a Navy seal pain management psychologist on hand at the
set to help him deal with how uncomfortable and hot and scratchy and painful.
The suit was to put on and off. God the fact check me on
that, whoever's listening, or I'll do it myself. But I'm pretty sure
it was a nightmare for him to shoot. But he I still can suddenly
laugh throughout the whole thing today, Like half my sense of humor is based
on that character. Really just me causing mission. It's really really funny.
He's just a machie, mischievous little shit and it's a very it's a very
funny film, and it's not in a jokey child way. I think adults,
I think you should try it. I also watched Muppet Christmas Carol,
and I love that film very much, and I realized I don't think i've
actually, like, really committed to paying attention to it. But it's also
very good, mostly because Michael Caine, who's like the only well maybe one
of the main humans in it, plays that role extraordinarily seriously. And there's
always all these muppets in everyone, and he's like, show me no more
spirit, I don't want to know, and he's like not joking, like
he's playing it like he's on Broadway and he is like the most committed actor
of all time, and he's surrounded by by Kermit the Frog. Talk about
another guy, another actor that's just like always always on. I just feel
like anytime he pops up in a movie, I was like, Oh,
Michael into here. Okay, great, he's gonna even if a movie sucks,
like he's going to be amazing. He is perfect and he does such
a good job in that. That has always been a joy for me to
watch. So I loved seeing that again. I'm trying to think if there's
any I always watch Christmas Story, and I always I was one of those
families that watched it on repeat because they would play it for twenty four hours.
So when we watch a Christmas Story, we watch it and then we
watch it again, and then we watch it again. Yeah, Christmas day,
I can see a Christmas Story like four times and not complain. It's
just this thing I keep in the background. Okay, background, not full
attention. I'm watching it too. It's such a good it's so many good
lines. Like I think it's phenomenal. But yeah, like I just we
watch it consistently like crazy people and just don't nobody can comments on it.
We just watch it again. Not to get a super political. I saw
a tweet going around about how A Christmas Story is just one of our most
cherished movies and it's about getting your kid a gun for Christmas. I'm like,
well, hold on the whole movie. They're telling him that. It's
like everybody in his life except for his dad is telling him he'll shoot his
eye out and it's dangerous. And what is the first thing that happens when
he finally shoots it. He almost shoots his eyeu but glasses on. So
I think it's actually a bit of a caution I tell it. Yes,
it's like a fantasy. But like I I'm all for like deconstructing old movies
and be like, oh that was a product of its time. But this,
I'm like, do you have a Christmas started alone? You're not the
same movie the same the way that like it's being told to you. I
don't know. It was just funny to see that. What about the proper
ganda of the radio show that he listens to trying to sell kids oval team,
Why don't we ever talk about the commercialization of our youths? Yeah,
it's about capitalism, sure, yeah, yeah, that's the real problem with
that perfect film. Oh my god, that Darren McGavin, the dad in
that movie. The actor died a couple of years ago. That dude.
I was sad when I heard about that. He's so fucking funny in that
movie. Still, his profanity when he goes into the furnace is incredible.
Yes, not a finger. And I also saw let's just say thinking about
like those dads I saw Elf. Elf is such a good classic and it
also has a really good dad character in that con right he died, Yeah,
and he passed this year. I think it was very recent and he
really played the heck out of that role as well, where he like,
I don't know, he's just got this like insane son, just processing how
to deal with it. He thinks he's an ELF and the I don't know.
Just like, there's so many iconic lines in that film, uh,
that are really really good, and I think that one is up there with
the current classics. Elf like became a coveted classic that came up recently.
I can't remember his bonk or someone brought up like, oh, what what
is like a recent what's the most recently classic? You know, there's like
you know, you have your Christmas stories and stuff like that, and Grant
janalad Elf was like, oh four. And I feel like that has definitely
especially with people that are like you know, and they're they're twenties and thirties
now and we're like young when it came out, you know, think of
ll very finally what is post? Oh yeah, yeah, Buk said Love
actually is probably up there. Um. Yeah, trying to think of other
ones that like are talked about in that league. You know. I guess
I don't really see a lot of Christmas fook, so I don't know,
you don't, nah, I don't think so. My friends were telling me
to watch something called Klaus on Netflix. It's a Christmas Clause is so good?
What is that about? Yeah? Um, it's kind of the origin
story of Santa Clause. I guess it's kind of more of its like Norwegian
background, the true story or I mean, uh, legend I suppose,
right, because um, before Clause was Clause, there was a person,
right, and that that became the legend of of Santa Clause and so it
kind of goes into that a little bit. It's very charming, and I
will say that the animation is shockingly good, especially for like stuff that you
see on Netflix. I always find the animations on like Netflix are so abysmally
bad sometimes or just like get it done, you know, just like make
it exist. But Klaus is phenomenally animated. It's it's it's kind of championing
and pioneering animation techniques that I think you'll see in future animation. So it's
a very very modern look at it. But it's it's a delicate and well
done film. Oh you know what I saw that just came out. I
saw a violent night. Oh that's what The Stranger Things got, right,
it is it's the guy do you have you heard of that, Mike.
It's like the concept is like Santa but he's killing people. Yeah, he
goes. He's like, legit Santa Claus. He's not spoilers like in the
trailer, he's actually Santa Claus. And he is in a house as it
gets taken over by I don't know, bad people and there's hostages and they
go after him because he's in the house even though he's just trying to deliver
packages, and he just starts killing everybody and it's really fucked up, and
it's extraordinarily violent. It's it's actually really funny. Is it played straight or
is it like played like a comedy. It is, it is a duel.
It is absolutely self aware. Um, it knows that what it's trying
to do is stupid, and so it is joking in several ways and it
has some really good laughy bits, especially uh, it's joking with everything in
this film is a Christmas like pun or joke. Um. Even like the
bad guys are like I'm you know, Rudolf, and like these are my
you know, these are my eight reindeer. And it's like all his like
backup guys with guns, They're all they're all being self aware. But the
violence is very raw and real. It earns it's r rating. Um.
And I will just say this, Fans of Home Alone will like absolutely lose
it at a couple scenes in this film, like there is there is a
very Home Alone inspired section of this film that I just I just lost it.
It's just like really really entertaining. I was delightfully surprised with how funny
Violent Night was at least entertaining. It's opening sequence is disgusting, but other
than that, I think it's very it's it's worth seeing. Nice you're disgusting
or bad. Disgusting opening sequence, it's like disgusting. I didn't like it,
but then it went up from there. Okay, it's like, Yeah,
I think it's trying to set the precedent of what type of level of
comedy this is. And it's visceral body humor, extreme gore and violent comedy
is what it is. So if you don't like that, you ain't gonna
like this film. And I think it tries to set that precedent right away.
It is not a smart movie. It is a dumb movie for dumb
dumbs. There's like people on jet skis like and Santa is like on the
jet ski, I'm like shooting at people. You're talking to two centophiles here
in me and much. I mean, it's not it's not three and a
half hours long, so I don't know if you'd appreciate it. I felt
I felt like a fool. I watched Face Off again and that was only
two and a half hours long, so I felt like a fool. Yeah,
we watched Wet Hot American Summer when you were here. We did this
week. It was really good. You're like a lot, it's speaking of
dumb movies, that that was a movie that just reveled and rolled around and
being a dumb dumb movie and dumb damna. Do I love that? Yeah,
yeah, it is a good dumb dumb movie. It's such an honest,
dumb dumb movie. I think we did talk about it a little bit
on the car ride. It was Yeah, yeah, that was very good
though. Yeah, I got I got a few more movies to catch up
on from twenty twenty two. Might see Avatar in theaters. If I don't
see in theaters, I probably won't. So yeah, I feel like if
I don't see in theaters, I'm not going to see it. But now
that you're saying that it's good, I do think that my local theater is
showing Avatar. So you kind of like, do imax three D and uh
if if it specifies to the high frame rate thing? Um, Because I
talked to Jan at Giant Bomb and he he saw it twice, like in
the same week, so at once and realized he didn't see like the high
frame rate version and went back and saw it again because he liked it so
much the first time. Yea, the frame rate stuff is actually really good.
It's it alternates between like twenty four frames a second and forty eight frame
a second for like action things like so if they're flying or they're underwater or
whatever, it switches to kind of that like, but it doesn't look like
shitty motion smoothing or anything. It actually works really well with a three D
H God, damn. I just yeah, it was so much goddamn fun.
I hhly recommend it. Cool. It's cool. You guys want to
talk about video games? Oh sure, all right. I don't think we
have talked about video games much in the last two weeks, so this might
be a very long section because we have a lot to catch up on.
No, I'm just kidding. We did our Game of the Year thing.
There's still there's still something has come out since then. Yeah, so I'm
playing Fire and woman Gage. Unfortunately, can't talk about it yet. I'll
have way more to say on the next episode for sure. When our next
episode look at fancy guy that's not a Nintendo jail. I'm it's when is
our next episode the sixteen? We could talk more about scheduling, but uh,
yeah, I'm playing. Talk about it after I start playing it.
On the twentieth or whenever it comes out. Yeah, I'll join you soon.
Cool. I'm looking forward to talking about it with Yeah. I am
Amanda and I did play some co op Super Mario Odyssey today. I we
have two switches in the house now, but we had some fucked up joy
Cons. I was getting joy Con drifts. So one of the Christmas gifts
I got hurt was the watermelon colored joy Cons. So now we both have
our own switch. So we had it out and she loved Mario sixty four.
She loves Sunshine, so I was like, oh, you know plays
Yeah, I love Sunshine. Yeah. Is she awake? She's gonna pop
in and say and I can tell her yeah at her and say that I'm
very she's on the right side of history with Mario Sunshine. Yeah, Amanda
Dan says, you're on the right side of history for liking Super Mario Sunshine.
She'll I think she heard me. But we played the co op of
Super Mario because she hadn't played a three D Mario. She I don't think
she played either. Galaxy Super Odyssey still really really really good game. It's
fucking I played through it again this year. It is just ridiculously good.
Yeah, I like it quite a bit the good I don't think the Cappy
controls are basically both players can control the camera if they want to, and
I kept forgetting that so like I would accidentally move the camera just that of
instinct, even though Amanda was playing as Mario. Um. Once I learned
to stop that, it was less annoying. But you're you're just a hat.
It's more involved in Galaxy, where you're just literally picking up starbits on
the screen shooting them. Yeah you are. You can shoot Cappy out and
then basically spin around as him and hit enemies. Um, but when you
are Cappy, you get to decide when you're leaving Mario's head or does the
Mario decide and then stuff. Both can but like we figured it out,
it's like, okay, I'll just press the Cappy button once you take something
over like the t Rex or the bean sprouts. Amanda controls it as well,
So it's definitely SuDS. The fucking steam Gardens music, the beach surf
Oh it's awesome, yes, yeah, oh my god, which is funny
because it's like the Woodlands planet. But then you get this beach butt surfer
rockets awesome. Whatever. I don't know what the reasoning is. It just
kicks. It's so good. It's not Mario. It's like every Mario track
is fucking amazing. And then here comes to surf Guitar out of nowhere at
a level that doesn't even make sense for it, believe it, and it's
like, oh, this is like the best track in the game, even
outside of Toasts raina town. Amanda saw the human with a crash tack.
She's like, what the fuck. I'm like, oh, yeah, there's
new Donk City in the game later on. Don't ask questions, don't ask
him yet. Everything will be explained wise for sure. But it's been fun.
Oh it all gets explained and scientifically it all checks out. Actually do
a pretty remarkable job with that. Yeah, it's hard sci fi, but
that's basically all I've been playing, and that's been a blast. It's a
good holiday, like play whatever we want and some other stuff for work,
but not much for work. It's been great. Nice What about you,
Mary, Um, I've been playing a lot, and I think it was
because I had the flight to you guys, which is I mean, that's
a long flight, it's six hours, and then the flight home and I
thank you I was grateful to go. I don't mean that to sound like
I had six hours there and another six hours homes for paying for it.
I should say more specifically, loved every minute of it, and I got
to catch up on my steam deck games that I've been playing a lot of
these were games that I was like, I don't know if they're going to
make it into our godie, but I do think it's fun. Like I
got these games, I should play them because they came out this year,
so I'll burn through a couple of them. Robot Resistors which is a clone
of Vampire Survivors, so very similar in vain. It is automatic weapon firing.
Your focus is on the upgrades, as you could imagine. Instead of
a vampire world, it is a robot world. You are upgrading your robot
and destroying everything around you. It has very different concepts on like AoE damage
and it's attack systems. There's like certain things in Vampire Survivors that are very
limiting on purpose, right like the whip hitting front and then back. This
game is really trying to get you to be a bit more mobile, I
think, and get you to try out different types of upgrade systems. It's
really more of a game that if you like Vampire Survivors, you could give
this to try and basically take a fresh spin on it. And yeah,
I was kind of told this week. I don't know the accuracy of this
that, like Vampire Survivors is also self admittedly like a clone. Right,
It's not like this original concept like this guy like saw a game and loved
it and wanted to make his own version of it. This is probably very
similar a love letter trying to update or come up with what they think is
the best and ultimate ways to take down thousands of them enemies and robot resistors.
Is this on Switch? I'm playing it on Steam Deck, so I
don't think so. I'm gonna make a note of this because like, I
haven't played any of the any of the clones or whatever Vampire Survivors, And
honestly, at this point I've played, I've done everything you can do in
that game twice, like I and I'm not tired of it. If there's
good clones out there, I would like to try it. I would especially
like one that's on the Switch. I mean, I haven't been as deep
into this, so, like, what's cool about Vampire Survivors is its depth.
So I can't speak to its depth because I haven't play. I haven't
put ten hours into this. I've played a couple hours on a plane.
It's a good clone so far. It gives me the same vibes as Vampire
Survivors. Okay, I played Islets and I beat it. Absolutely love Islets.
I think it's a really great Metroid Vania. You are a little dude.
I might hopefully, I know. I talked about it on a podcast.
I don't think I told you guys that I beat it. Um,
I have finished it. It's phenomenal. I love it. Um, Metroid
Vania upgrade. Your character beat really insane little bosses. But it looks like
a Ghibbli film. It's super cute. Hell Is. Others played this for
a couple hours. This is an interesting one, top down, very confusing
start. You are in a room and you are being told to go outside
and take care of some tasks. You all of a sudden are like,
it's not top down. When the game starts its side view, I think
your landlord is a bunny or something, and you're gifted a plant that needs
blood. You're very like mysterious story you're playing this on my couch here after
a game of the year, and you're like, oh, it's top down,
now, what the fuck is going on? It sounded like a very
interesting game. Just face on your reactions keeps mixing it up on you.
It is complicated a little. It's very talky. There was a lot of
talk in the beginning. I did spin past most of it, and then
you get your first gun and there's some enemies that kind of come out of
nowhere. Audio is quite interesting in that game. So your view is cone
vision, so you see like a own out from you. You do not
see what's behind you. That kind of makes it really spooky, especially in
dark. But you can hear, so you can hear someone that's coming out
of a door, and then you need to like make sure your cone can
see them so that you can shoot them or you're vulnerable for an attack.
I haven't gotten too much into this story yet, but you are able to
like loot the houses and get items out of the houses. I collected some
items for a person as a fetch quest returned back to my house. That
gave me blood for my plant, which fed my plant for the evening.
I am very intrigued by this game. It did hook me with its story
and concept, but I haven't been able to dive more into the world.
But a very interesting environment nonetheless of like looting, shooting, acquiring things for
your home, and then definitely a deep seedy underbelly of a town that I'm
still trying to investigate. Hell is others. It's the indie Lightning Round Melatonin.
M you guys heard about Melatonin. You were on Twitch screaming this and
I looked it up, and it's like a rhythm type thing, right.
It is a rhythm based indie game, which is surprisingly not calming because the
rhythm is very intense and you need to make sure that you're on beat.
Visually, the game is a dream. It's all pastel dreamlike sequences. You're
literally in a dream in the game. So the idea is like you're eating
pizza on the couch. You've fallen asleep in the dream. The game takes
place in your dream, and you will dream about things like playing baseball in
the clouds and like shooting baseballs that come out of the clouds, or going
shopping and like getting shoes and diamond earrings, and like swiping your credit card,
and so each of these moments, these like movements like hitting a ball
with your baseball bat in the clouds or swiping your credit card to pay for
goods, has to be done to the beat of the music. Is it
anything like never rebably rhythm Heaven, Yes, kind of like that. It's
it's I think it's This is what's interesting about this game is I think it's
intended to be like a really calm play before you go to sleep type game.
I personally did not find it calming because I was very adamant that I
wanted to get a better score, and it is not kind in the amount
of space it gives you to have the perfect click to make sure that you've
hit it on the beat. So it is, I found it stressful.
I was like struggling to get the cract scores, and I wanted to do
a good job. They had some really cool visuals, like a crane machine,
a guy playing a computer game that shoots at aliens. All of it's
just beat clicking on the beat. Um it's addictive, it's fun. I
think it's very whimsical. I just personally think you have to be very good
at rhythm based games to enjoy it because it's not easy. It's not like
it wasn't it wasn't giving me a break. It was like, no,
du it again and do it right now? Dumb, dumb. Yeah,
anything like timing based challenges are like inherently not calming to me at least,
like even if it is supposed to be, Like even if visually and the
theme of the game is very like oh and I sleepy, calm, cozy,
Like it comes down to you having to to press a button at the
right time, Like that is not a calming thing to do. No,
not for me, But I don't want to say that as a not recommend
I think people who like rhythm based games will enjoy this very much. I
could not enjoy it as much as I wanted to Others Paradise Marsh another Indie
darling. You are walking around, I would say collecting bugs Pokemon maybe style.
You have a net, you're grabbing them. The world doesn't explain shit.
There's monolifts in it. What do they do? I don't know.
You're grabbing bugs when you go up to the monolith. Stuff happens because the
bugs you collected. It speaks in poetry and rhymes. The bugs, and
the different characters like the Owls will like speak in rhymes to you. No
one explains your goal this entire game. This is a very explorative walk around
to Marsh. Enjoy the visuals. It's beautiful visually. It's just a stunning
game. It's uh oh. The music Mike is by that person that we
like hold on Disaster. Sorry, yes, yeah, we had him on
Dead Air, the podcast we used to do about home games and movies.
Yeah, oh oh, okay, nice, and it's um it's beautiful music.
Like it's just extremely dynamic, so the Marsh changes. I'm going to
avoid spoilers because I think don't look at a trailer for this game. In
my opinion, um, I think what's interesting about this game is about the
experience in walking and seeing things for the first time. So I don't recommend
watching gameplay. I think that would disturb the very limited experience. It's like
a two hour game, so if you watch it, you're spoiling of yourself.
But the Marsh, as you can imagine, changes and fluctuates, and
the music is dynamic with those fluctuations, so as you change your visuals,
the music changes along with it. Um as expected, disaster piece does a
phenomenal job. The music is really stunning, and it's just kind of a
delight to play. I found it very zen and relaxing, as like a
calming game for really a cozy game, a very cozy, chill game.
Um, finally, a little Gator. You're a little gators. Look out
to see the narrator look able six thirty five on a Thursday, and they
would gators down in those flows. Swam said, I said, hey Gator.
Then they said, yeah, yeah, Wick Gate isn't We're hungry?
Who's playing audio from the game? Mary? Is that? What's happening?
Is this from my name's Eagle Google. I'm a Gate of their own school.
I live in a live them down in the bio. I think the
red others angry Eagle Google. No, but that that that's what that's different.
That's that's like Daniel day Lewis caliber. You can't okay, yeah,
any do you think that it's like Mike was in this game, because the
little Gator waddles like Mike's baby walk and it's very funny. It's the same
one. Okay, Okay, Yeah, I love how you said that.
So that's no. We don't bring up I'm not talking about the abortion.
Sorry, Little Gator, No and realize I had a baby slash lepricon Walk.
You got a lot going on, and a lot of it comes out
when you've had a few drinks. So it's a lot. The Little Gator,
it's almost like it doesn't have knees. It walks on its heels.
It's so cute, like a little toddler. Um the game is very much
childlike Wonder. I do think it has um Zelda inspirations because there's pots everywhere
for you to smash. The ideas that you're running around. You'd like to
play with your big sister, but she's doing a college project and she's too
busy right now, so you are trying to gain skills to impress her with
your sick moves that she plays with you. Sick moves are things like being
able to climb walls. You need a bracelet to do that. You need
a I think it's like a T shirt so that you can have a glider.
They're very Zelda esque in their like output. It's adorable to play.
Oh, you get a sword and a shield and they added shield slide,
which I really respect. This game has a lot of bonuses. They didn't
skimp out like it looks cheesy and indie and like, you know, I
don't know it just they put the TLC into it. When you walk on
certain materials, the gator will go into a balancing animation and look super cute
trying to balance on these tight ropes and on different obstacles. You're you're just
gaining skills. Every time you gain a skill, you take a selfie and
send it to your sisters and you're like, man, you're really missing out
because like I got this skill and I'm super cool. You should play with
me. And she's like, I'm busy. Um, it's an adorable game
and um worth a couple hours of your time. I've not finished with it
yet and I'm going to go back to it. I just think it's a
sweet it's the sweetest pie game. Did you play all of these games in
your Steam deck? I played all of them on my Steam deck, would
you? And these were all, you know, indie games to play well
on there? Like I feel like that's kind of where like the Steam deck
and also the Switch Shine or like you know, not extremely graphically intensive,
but even like the Switch with stuff like Cult of the Lamb can like drag
It's crazy. It's what it can take care of. I've put I've pushed
it. I was playing, Um, Mike, you saw me playing a
Slime Rancher on there, and Slime Rancher is a labor intensive game because it
has a really far draw distance and it's like constantly absorbing, like lots of
AI characters. Second game not a problem, Yeah, yeah, no issues
at all. On my steam Deck. You know that meme where there's like
a guy looking at a girl at his girlfriend's like, how dare you?
That's me with my Nintendo Switch next to me looking at my brand new Steam
Deck. I fucking love my steam Deck and I'm like switch, who I
have family in town. I'm like, hey, you guys want to play
my play date or my like Nintendo Switch, don't fucking touch my steam Deck.
Don't fucking go near it. Do not look at her. Because it's
for me. It has all of my favorite games on it, and it's
cloud based what connects to my computer, so if I want to fucking stream
it later, then it's perfect. My Game of the Year is my stream
deck, and I love my steam deck so much. The cloud stuff works
really fucking well too, where it's like it just automn as soon as you
exit the game, you see I always I've been trained to look at the
thing, whether it's you know, the switch saved data cloud stuff, or
Steam just being like okay, wait it says uplood in the cloud says up
blood complete, because I hate it when there's like a sink error and it's
like, oh god, am I gonna lose anything? I swear on Steam
Deck it works every fucking time, and I have never had an issue with
it. It is It's a tremendous piece of hardware. I love it so
much. I don't know how I existed without it so far in my life.
I will take it with me everywhere. It will go on every work
trip next year. It does not leave my side. It's literally ten feet
away from me in the bedroom. As soon as like, you know what,
you were like, oh I need thirty minutes decompressed. That's my decompressed.
Now. If I've been like hanging out with people are socializing, I'm
like, I'll be in my room and I sit in my bed and I
play my Steam Deck. I love my Steam Deck. Everyone should get a
Steam Deck. I we should be sponsored by steam Deck. I just love
that. I love it so much. I think it's pretty beautanimous. On
this podcast, I think we're all pretty big fans of ours. Yeah it's
great. Yeah, yeah, it's great. Thanks my great like Steam Steamsome's
awesome. I'm sorry Steam does work on that. More like more like dam
Corporation. I'm sorry, Dan, what have you been playing? No,
I want to dive into what you want. Pun you were just trying to
corporation. Okay, yeah, so I've been playing. Um uh. It's
not a great title for a game, and it also didn't come out recently.
I guess came out this summer. Little Noah Scion of Paradise. Have
you heard of this? No rings a Bell. I had not heard of
this until Bonk said that she's listening to me Max and I guess Ben Hanson
got into it recently. It is, I guess, the closest thing I
can. It looks like that. It's more like a dead Cells. It's
definitely got like a JRPG looking thing going on there. The art style,
which is I actually like the art style. It is pretty sold. I've
been playing on switch. Um it is a dead cell type thing where you
are. The progression stuff is really good where everything you do, everything you
unlock throughout every run, it gets turned into mind which you can use to
like upgrade your airship between runs, kind of like Rogue Legacy. You're upgrading
the castle and stuff like that, and you're getting very good benefits to your
character as you go through each run. And it does something I've never seen
like a Metroidvane or a Rogue Light do in the past, where it's like
all of these areas. Anytime you check your map, you can just warp
to any room you've been to at anytime. You don't have to go to
a specific place. You can just be like, oh, I left that
thing back, I left that health pickup back in the other room, and
I need it now. You can just warp there, pick it up,
go wherever. It's like super user friendly. It's kind of like it's kind
of breezy in a way. It's not easy, you know, but it's
not as like punishing as the Dead Cells. The I think the hook to
the combat is almost I don't know if you guys played the Arif Sorrow the
Castlevania game, but and that one you would kill enemies, and like if
you killed a bone archer, you would suddenly be able to start throwing bone
arches or whatever. So you get these things called kin. Yeah, you're
kind of getting the powers of the things you kill, and you're unlocking these
liliputs up to five, and like your your standard lineup where let's say you
get granted three at the beginning of each run, and so it's like,
all right, I got if I hit attack, attack, Attack, I
got this one little dude that comes out and attacks with the sword, and
I got one dude that comes out and shoots a little thing. And then
I got a big guy that comes up with the club and does a thing.
And you can change your lineup at any time time, so you're kind
of like collecting these creatures as you go. Like every run, you're gonna
start with those three, and you will keep getting more and you can get
up to five. And there's different types. There's fire, there's wind,
there's ice and all that stuff, and you'll get these accessories. They give
you bonuses, like okay, if you've got all ice things, then every
time you shoot, it's gonna do this bonus thing or do this stat boost
and then you can do like other ones, you can slot into these skill
things that that do bigger kind of like more screen clearing stuff. It's really
customizable in terms of like setting up your lineup the way you want to,
and it's it gets kind of busy on screen because like as you're attacking,
you're seeing like the spirits of your Liliput's come out and do their attacks,
so it can that's my one main complaint about it is that there's a lot
happening on screen and every time, but tons of variety. Like most rooms
you go into will have a like subobjective words like well, obviously you want
to kill every enemy, but this one it's you know, here's a time
limit, here's a do this much damage thing, here's this, and then
you'll get extra treasure chest stuff every time, so you've got the gold every
run that basically you can buy you know, like like a lot of rogue
lights. You can go to the shop and buy upgrades for your current run,
but then the mana is the stuff that you buy persistent upgrades with carry
on to all your runs. And uh, it's been a lot of fun
so far. I've spent a few hours with it, I've heard it's not
a super long game, but it's kind of scratching an itche that I realized
that there haven't been a lot of like Dead Cell likes since it came out,
And even though it's got a lot of differences esthetically and even like kind
of gameplaying combat wise, it's kind of scratching that same che for me right
now. So that one's been really good. I want to check that out.
Dead Cells is a game that was mimicking other games in a really cool,
unique way, and I wish people would build on Dead Cells. So
I'm hoping I want to try that out. Yeah, it's not the like
super fast paced, like kind of roll and Perry, you know type stuff
in Dead Cells. It's it is very fast paced. It's just the look
of it is very very different, and the vibe of it is really different.
But in terms of just that kind of like one more run type quality
that I definitely had with Dead Cells, and like each run not knowing like
Okay, what am I what's it gonna be? Like, I'm starting from
a clean slate. Oh shit, the first accessory I got is a fire
one, so let me try to get all fired Liliputs, and then I'll
focus on getting fire accessories and try to boost that. And that's another thing
is the accessories. You get a ton of them every run, and they
stack and there's no limit, or if there is a limit, i haven't
seen it yet, So you don't have to be choosy. Like even if
you're doing like a fire build for one run, you can still be like,
oh, here's a nice one. Great, let's take that. Oh
wind one, let's take that. Okay, this is a general one.
And so you can have you know, twenty thirty accessories on at the same
time and feel powerful as fuck. And just like all five year Lilliputs are
kind of like high level ones. And then you get these gifts in between
when you go to the airship between runs, you can like bond with all
the individual Liliputs where it's like, Okay, I love this one, so
I'm gonna give them gifts to increase my bond so they can do you know,
plus whatever damage and plus minus whatever cool down. So it's it's scratching
all the or checking all the boxes as far as like a rogue light for
me and Bonk and I are both playing a ton of it right now,
but on Switch playing on a Switch, and as of this recording, it
was on sale for like ten dollars or you can get like the Deluxe Edition
for like thirteen. We got the Deluxe and it comes with some extra like
skins and avatars that have in game bonuses where it's like, oh, you
pick this avatar and the first three in your lineup have a thirty percent damage
boost, but if you pick this character the last three or this one in
the middle three, you'll have a damage bonus. So there's a lot of
strategy and like how you you have your lineup of liliputs. So cool.
Yeah, it's it's been a lot of fun. We'll check that out.
Did you say, did you ever end up playing Monster Train? No,
I've as much as I like Slay the Spire. Every time I bring it
up, I feel everyone tells me like, you gotta try it, Like
you know, our friend Dave likes it a lot, Bonk likes it a
lot. I have not played Monster Train specifically. Yeah, okay, it's
nothing like um, this other game you're talking about, but I remember that's
all. Monster Train is also on Switch and it works well, but it's
also similar in terms of character building. That's say a faction building. I
should say I think I think I could get into that, because I wasn't
expecting to get into Slay the Spire or the way I did. But it's
very good. The other I'm taking them a lot of time right now,
as I expected after every fucking outlet on the planet, including us, and
gave Game of the Year to Elden Ring, I jump back in the Elden
Ring and it's still extremely good. I would say it's it feels very different
the second time, because I think the star of at least the first half
of the game the first time is that that exploration and discovery. You're like,
oh my god, there's a map under the map, and there's this,
and there's that, and like, oh, there's stars in the sky,
but I'm underground, like all those moments of discovery that you didn't expect.
Now I expect everything because I did. Yeah, I'd say I did
eighty five to nine percent of what's end that game the first time. But
it's fun because now I'm not worried about spoilers and I'm looking stuff up now,
which I couldn't do it all because most of the time before I played
before released, so like I couldn't look up anything. I just kind of
guessed and probably made a bunch of fuck ups in terms of my build and
stuff like that. This time, Jake Cool Judge Jake was telling me that
I think faith and dexterity build is pretty fun, and I never did either
of those, so it's a great that sounds like a totally different play through
this time. And so I'm doing faith in decks and so now I've got
these like lightning bolts, I'm thrown like zeus, I've got all these cool
faith spells, and it's like black magic shit. I'm thrown around, and
I'm wearing like instead of like just this big chunky night wearing all this heavy
armor like last time, I'm wearing like cool like you know, robes and
like priest robes and shit and rolling around fast. And it's feeling very different
and going through to the second time, you know, the first time around,
I summoned a decent amount and I would get frustrated and just like all
right, i gotta have somebody come help me with us or whatever. I'm
trying to like really get get good at this and work on like the periries
and work on the right way to play, and it's been extremely rewarding to
come at it from a gameplay perspective and a build perspective rather than just the
kind of like discovery and first time aspect of it. So yeah, I'm
I'm pretty deep into it. I'm heading to the academy at this point.
I'd be god wreck and all that stuff, and god damn, it's been
fun. Are you doing? Are you using like Katana's a lot one handed
swords, et cetera. So yeah, So I've got the seal in the
left hand, I'm doing like a god slayer sealed thing. And then on
the right I did the what was the moon bullshit? Katana? What was
that one? Yeah, the moon when everyone used that shot the shit?
I used that in the last one. So I'm trying to do different stuff
for this one. So I got the like thing. It's the winged scythe
that I'm using. It's like a one handed scythe, and I can do
the school like jumping slash deal. And I've got this spell now where I
can like whatever weapon I have, I can imbue with electricity, so I
can just turn any sword or anything into like an electric sword. Yeah,
and oh man, it just feels cool as hell and so different than the
first time through. And I'm just in awe of that game again. I
was when it first came out. Then I kind of like I didn't forget
about it, but it wasn't front of mine until Game of the Year time,
and then like with every Game of the Year discussion and every you know,
it's just like, oh fuck, I did love that game. I'm
jumping back in its Yeah, it's it's easily one of the best of all
time. So yeah, are you doing anything like majorly different in terms of
order of progression and expiration? Are you just going right to market then Godrick
and then to the Academy, etc. Or minor things like the first time,
I think by accident, I went from god Rick to Kryam. Is
it carriam manor where it's the far like on the northwest? Uh? The
one that's where like Rna is up past that? No? No, no,
no, it's up past the Leera under the lakes. Oh when that
when the artillery is hitting you on the way to the gate, I think
you're thinking more in center. This is like far northwest, it's where all
the fucking hands are coming out of the uh maner, like the Ring of
the Witch spires and all that stuff. So I went their second um the
first time I played, and so this time I'm going straight from god Rick
to the Academy and then I'm gonna do the Manner stuff and then move east,
I think, and do Kald and all that shit. So yeah,
yeah, it's it's just great. It's just having a great time, and
it's a great Winter Break game. Keep working on that, and uh noah
a couple other things. Briefly, Um, Mike Tyson's punch out. You
might heard of that and know that I liked that a lot. Um No,
I've started to dive deep into that in a way that like Basketball Player
in the yeah, yeah, that's right, it's NBAJM sequel, in the
way that I dove deep into the actual Tyson fight for a long time after
I realized I could finally beat him as an adult, I'm now looking at
the rest of the game and realizing that there is so much depth to that
fucking game that I didn't realize. Now that I've got the Mister and the
Analog pocket and all this stuff, that I can play without lag. I'm
like really like diving deep. I got a book that I'm reading about it.
I'm watching all these YouTube videos and like it's so old that you will
see, like here's the definitive guide to how to beat every Mike Tyson's character
in the fastest way, the best way. But then it won't mention all
these things that another YouTube video says, just because like there's so many different
approaches and shit that I did not know you could do until like literally today,
I've been playing punch Out a good chunk of today. It's like,
holy fuck, I can beat the second Piston Hunt Piston Honda in one minute
flat in the first round. I had no idea that was possible, just
using all these like techniques and stuff like buffering punches and shit that I didn't
even realize. There's the thing like speed run type shit where I would see
people do these things like the blindfold speed runs of Mike Tysons punch Out before
and I'd be like, I don't understand how this is even possible. And
now that I'm learning these strategies, I am realizing like, oh fuck,
okay, some of the stuff, if you do it at if you practice
it enough and I'm doing safe states and stuff on the mister, and like
loading up and doing it again and again and again and again until I can
like do it almost every time. It's like I can actually see how that's
possible. And it is so fucking rewarding to read about some like super Advanced
Strategy and it seemed impossible the first time you try it, and then you
try it fifty times and you're like, I can do this every time.
Now, It's oh, I just I can't believe. I've been playing that
game since I was like five years old and I'm, you know, thirty
eight now, and I'm still finding things that are blowing my mind, like
every time i'm looking into it. So that's been extremely rewarding. In fact,
after we recording, I might even like load up a stream and just
like, you know, practice some more stuff because it's it's fascinating to me.
So that game is still just a perfect video game. So you give
it number one of all I uh, there's a there's a real argument to
it as far as my own personal like yeah, yeah, I you know,
play Link to the pastor Maria World and it's still perfect. But I'm
not playing it completely differently, and I'm not learning new things about it every
time I play. Punch Out is still fascinating and new to me all the
time. And finally a question here, should I try Dwarf Fortress? Yeah,
I would blank it yes to anybody who asked that. Honestly, it's
that important. But what is the deal with that? Because I keep hearing
people talk about it and know it just came out like for real, I'll
say, I know you historically have tried to get into civilization but couldn't like
menu heavy stuff where you really bounce off of Dowarf Fortress is basically all menus.
The elevator pitch is that you're trying to build and optimize a Dwarf colony
and economy, and but the amount of depth, the depth in that game
in terms of each Dwarf's personality, certain quirks, certain traits, certain skills,
talents that will be like written out in these scripts that you basically kind
of refer to to see why they might be depressed. And then, oh,
this Dwarf is not feeling fulfilled because they're a blacksmith at heart, but
they're not in the They're not there. They're like they're a janitor in my
economy, so I have to go and change that. But then also a
lot of my cats are dying, the pets, so people are less happy.
But why are the cats dying? Oh turns out they were licking up
the puke puddles on the ground after dwarves drank a lot of alcohol. So
they're dying now. So I can't get the dwarfs to drink less because it
just made them really happy that I built this new bar tavern for them.
But I did that because they were depressed, because a lot of people were
dying in the minds because these monsters were eating them. It's like, it's
not a victory condition game. It's like losing is the fun, but sure
it's it will take you as long as you get into it understanding you're you're
not going to really know everything that's going on. Ever, unless it's like
the only game that you play for the rest your life, you're never gonna
fully grasp it. If you can have fun with that and like the emergent
stuff that comes out of you, like holy fuck, I can't believe I
still play that game. I'm like really like three hundred hours in which is
fucking nothing for this game, Like and this is over. I've only played
like ten hours of the new updated Steam version with the more approachable visual esthetic.
It's redundant, Like I still have no idea what's going on. Half
the time. I'm just reveling in the chaos. But it's it's fun.
That's the appealed to me, is like the chaos, and like anything that's
like deeply emergent on that level is really fascinating to me, like ever since.
I remember, like Mala Knew when he was describing Fable, the first
one, and he was like, well, yeah, you might. Let's
say you get in a fight as a kid, and you beat a kid
up and you leave a scar on his face, he might come back,
you know, twenty years later and pick a fight with you. Or because
you were here or when you were young, when you come back twenty years
later, everyone will have a haircut style like you because you became here.
Like that type of emergent non scripted stuff is like really fascinating to me,
And I feel like not a lot of games have actually like even like made
good on that promise of like what he was talking about, and including Fable,
So like the idea like the stories that I hear come out of Dwarf
Fortress of just like all these crazy things that we're not scripted. They weren't
like some set piece moment or something. It's just like, oh shit,
this is just like kind of a one of a kind thing that happened in
my game. Like that type of stuff is fascinating to me. But I
also whenever that game is brought up, it's always with a certain tone of
just like, oh god, it's gonna like it's a lot, and so
like, if it's gonna take me twenty hours of like reading stuff to understand
even what's going, then you can still but dabble in it and get some
some reward out of just like parsing through the menus and looking at different characters
and being like, oh, this character sounds cool, I'm gonna follow them
for a bit. There. I definitely say read like gonna I'm gonna promote
our own stuff. Polygon's got some like, hey, like ten things to
know before you dive into one of the most complex games ever, Like,
here are some general goals to try to pursue with your first few colonies,
Like, um, you want to all ways try to be thinking about how
to be set up for an invasion from creatures that might be coming into the
base, like just some basic stuff to look up. But outside of that,
it's also just a very like to for your interest. It's it's a
really streamable game because you never really know what's going to happen over the course
of eight to twelve hours in each run. At eight there's been times I
don't get anywhere near like eight hours. But it's just endlessly fascinating. It's
definitely one of the most important games of all time, I'd say, but
it's just so complex, and the Steam version helps it's more approachable. I
would still never describe this game as approachable. So yeah, get into if
you're if you're gonna try to dabble in it, you can just to get
a gist of what it's about. But if you really want to get a
lot out of it, I'd say, like read like a beginner's guide or
two. And then after that, if there's some huge thing that you can't
like if you see like ten year characters don't have sleeping quarters and you can't
figure out how to build something like that, maybe google that, but don't
go out of your way to google each and every like, don't minimax stuff,
don't optimize save that for like, if you really wanted to get into
the game for now, just kind of enjoy the fact, like follow one
character and be like, oh, but they're the bartender, but they're deeply
unhappy. They're not satisfied with their work at all. Do they like other
stuff where their talents? Oh, I see, Okay, they're super into
like foraging, but a lot of people just died out in the fields,
so that might not work. It's just like that's the kind of like passing
through the endless cascade of cause and effect in that game is just the joy
of it in itself. But it can be complex, and it's it's just
all it's basically all menus. Not to say you don't zoom out and just
see your little like sure economy and miniature unfolding, but it'll take a while
before you feel like you've optimized anything, if you even want to do that.
But it's it's endlessly fascinating and I'm not incapable of like even if something
is a lot of menus or management and stuff like that, Like I know,
it's a very different type of game, but like you know, sim
City I used to absolutely adore, and yeah, I know it's not a
city builder, but it's that's still a game about like the emergent gameplay and
the stories that develop, and then wanting to be curious enough to investigate why
things are happening to characters because of decisions that you didn't realize, what have
the consequences that they have? And so if you're trying to gamify it,
you might get frustrated because you might be like, my character died, and
they died because of something that I had no idea I was doing that was
wrong, and that's frustrating to me. This game might not be for you.
This game is about enjoying the idea that people died because you accidentally made
a decision that caused a lot of people to die. And that's what I
want. I want to come to terms with. Yeah. Yeah, it's
like it's like taking a part of machine to sort of see how it works,
and maybe you fix a couple things in it that feed into Actually don't
know how the machine works. You don't even know what the machine is supposed
to be doing. You don't know what its function is, and it's a
different machine every time. It's like, yeah, when you can, I
understand what's going on, but at the same time you absolutely do not.
Friends said that game is like cathartic for him because his day job is chasing
down and fixing bugs. This is chasing down, fixing one bug and then
seeing a lot of I think I've heard several people say as programmers, they're
like, I really really hate it because it reminds me too much my day
job. Other people have said it is like cathartic because it's just convincing me
I'll never find all the bugs. Like I don't know if you guys saw
my basement, I had like a kind of a workshop area. Yeah,
and there's an Xbox Elite controller that I bought off Facebook marketplace, and I
realized it was broken, and so I was like, all right, you
know what, this is a good opportunity. I got to space down there,
have a little bench. I'm gonna go down there and like take the
stay apart and see if I can get it working. And I took it
apart and got to a certain point where I had it all displayed out on
the desk and I got my little static free things and my screwdrivers and all
that, and I looked at it. I was like, oh, this
is a lot. I don't know what's going on. Yeah, it's it's
sore fortresses like that. It's like, Okay, this paddle is working as
it should. That button is going like clearly like it's you know, the
right input. Oh my god, there's a whole like computer chip thing here.
What the fuck. I don't know what it's even supposed to do.
I'm going to ignore that for a bit and then go do something. Oh
shit, turns out that was important because everything else is on fire. That's
dooor fortress. And I say it's streamable, don't stream it right away that
there will be people in the chat who, through good intentions, will be
like, oh no, you gotta be doing this. I'm like, don't
go to the games where it's like yeah, people that are into it,
like cannot help a backseat drive. Yeah, And I would like to watch
you try to figure it out. But I would definitely say, like,
don't be referring to chat to like shot optimize stuff right away. Okay,
Yeah, well I remain curious. I think, you know, I got
a couple of things I'm working on now, but maybe you know, if
I don't have something I'm actively working on, and I could see myself poking
around there a little bit. Yeah, it's one of those things I try
to find comparisons, like what other game has made me feel like that there's
really nothing and I play and I'm saying that someone who plays a shit ton
of strategy games menu heavy games like Crusader King's Three comes close in the sense
that you're not really playing to win, You're just playing to see, like
how marrying this daughter off to that royal family affects. Oh shit, now
I have this old rivalry that's like generations old that I forgot about games like
that where it's like, I think the most mainstream boiled down Triple A version
is probably Middle Earth Shadow of Mordor. It's like, that's the okay third
person action. I can see how this one specific boss I killed or maimed
came back and has the eyepatch and the peg lag, etc. That's like
the most boiled down thing. Door Fortress is just like if I was looking
at a human body like and seeing how trying to figure out how the human
body works and then figuring this one thing out and solving this one character's problem
just leads to twelve more. And it's not always problems, it's not always
stressful. A lot of times will be like, oh, things are going
well. Why are they going well? And it's I don't know, it's
it is. It's just voyeuristic watching this thing unfold and playing, like doing
a little dasx mochin a kind of hand of God shit to like change this
one thing and then see how that happens. It's it's it's incredible. Okay,
it's curious before, and I think I'm more curious coming out of this
though. The Steam version helps a lot because it's not like that old school
dos like representation of dwarves. They actually are animated and have characters and pixels
and whatnot. Okay, Yeah for Fortress rules. Cool, that's all I
get. That might be our games if you missed it, like we said
I if you couldn't make it, if you were traveling for the holidays earlier
we've talked about every game. Yeah, Dan's it's on our Patreon. You
don't have to pay to unlock it. It's just there if you want to
go to our patrens available to everybody if you missed any of our Game of
the Year twenty twenty two extravaganza and then our bonus episode, you have to
be an AD free or video tier. Remember if you want to go see
that. Just like ninety minutes of us driving the car, bullshitting about Paul
Thomas Anderson movies and what hot American summer and getting track your trailer drivers to
pull their horn. This is really recommended. I feel like the podcast because
it's pretty much just us bullshitting for like it's over an hour, all right,
it's like ninety minutes. Yeah, yeah, in a car, interesting
scenario, Like I came away from that really enjoying that conversation. So yeah,
that's good time. So go check this out. And again, thank
you infinitely to the patrons who have been with us since the beginning and also
the new ones. That's what flew Jake and Mary out to the East Coast
for the Game of the Year stuff. It's what got us set up at
Dan's. Thanks, and yeah, if that keeps up and everything, then
um, you know, we have no specific plans yet, but god damn
it. If being in person wasn't the way to go for a Game of
the Year, I want to sho you guys to Portland. I think you
should come. I think Dan, we can be so many wacky adventures in
Portland. I would love to play out to Portland next year and came out
out there. That would be a blast. So patrons, thank you,
thank you. All right, you guys want to do emails, yes,
all right, as usual, you can write it through firescapecast at gmail dot
com with questions, comments, concerns, recommendations. We got kind of all
those tonight. We also have a quiz tonight our first name. Very long
time. We had a long streak of doing them back in like spring summer.
I think people were getting tired of them. Yeah, we don't enough
time now. We don't remember who was the reigning we were doing the Jeopardy
rules. I don't think it was. I think Mary. I didn't ever
lose, so it's still me. But we have a fun one that's a
kind of fire Escape twenty twenty two in review. But I do also have
a it's kind of a double dip because they said the emailed the bomb cast
with something similar. But it's a recommendation and then a question and then a
quiz. Actually, let me make sure that I got this correctly. I'm
gonna I should pull that out of the I don't know why I put them
the run of show because I don't want you guys seeing those. Don't look,
don't look, don't hurry. All right, I got it? Uh
quiz, there we go. Okay, I got to pulled up fire Escape
Cast at gmail dot com again. Thank you all the questions that people have
sent in over the couple of years. We've been a year and a half,
two years we've been doing this. Yeah. Um, we did our
Game of the Year, Dan, did you say we did on the exact
day a year later? We did? Yes? Yes, there was like
December seventeenth, I think both years. Yeah, okay, this first one
is actually more for Dan. So Dan, because you read this first one
from Justin from San Marcos. I can it says give us five stars on
Spotify? Oh yeah, do that first, Dan? What can people do
on Spotify? You can give us five stars if you enjoy the podcast.
Here, there's all sorts of ways you can support the show if you like
it. Just listening is a sport. That's we want to get in your
ears there. That's good, And we also got the five stars on Spotify
that also doesn't cost you dive and then we got the patret stuff if you
want to throw some bucks our ways. You got all sorts of ways the
spectrum of how you can support us, and we appreciate it all, so
thank you very much. But yes, give us the five stars on Spotify.
That helps us as all the Yeah yeah, that Spotify algorithm shit.
So anyway, Mary, what should they do if they want to give us
lesson fewer than five stars? Um, you should go to Spotify and search
the best ease. That's also us in Cereal, we also post heard things
under Cereal. Yeah. Yeah, you go to Apple uh podcasts kind of
funny, yes, and knock yourselves out. A lot of it is also
us. Just a line of a lot of pseudonyms we use for you know,
alias is in case you want to give us different ratings. It's a
it's a complicated algorithm thing. I'm justin mcaroon into it. Dan is Chris
Plant, Mary is Chris Plant. I'm for Caampa City. Yes, Mary
is rust fresh stick and Griffin. It's complicated the whole thing. Yeah,
yeah, anyway, Dan, Yeah, this first one from San Marcos.
We're brothers. I emailed the bomb cast with us as well. Since Jeff
Grubb and Dan really cottoned to, how does it really cotton to? That's
a fun sounding first. Anyway, Uh to super Kywe sixty four this month,
but I thought I should service it for fire Escape as well. I
was just pointed towards a truly amazing three D platform er made by a single
guy. It's called Trips Voyage, and I never would have stumbled across it
on my own since it was creative entirely in Dreams, which I've shamefully dropped
off of surfing for gems. It's an extremely solid four hour collect a Thon
and easily the best creation I've seen within Dreams. I know less about Mike
or Mary's enjoyment levels for this kind of game, but I can say confidently
that Dan should dig it. I sure did. Okay. I did like
Super que a lot, I do like Collectithons. I like anything that harkens
back to that era. The only thing that maybe gives me pause here is
it being in Dreams, because Dreams is one of those things that is incredibly,
incredibly impressive in terms of its creation tools and everything. I love meeting
Molecule level with a little big planet, Dreams was way too much to deal
with. And the only person I hear talk about it these days is been
Hansen. And here's the thing. We've been handsome. There's a lot of
things that've been handsome. He is really good. I've learned about Ben Hanson.
I've learned about a lot of great games. They're Ben Hanson. I
was the main game I'm enjoying right now, that little little Nemo Scions invent
or whatever. But whenever he's like way too into a game and way too
hyperbolic about it, because that's the mode he goes into. He gets super
hyperbolic, it tends to be not good, or at least definitely not like.
I remember literally there's an iOS game called Tripletown. It was a little
little puzzler and he introduced it to me by saying like, Dan, do
you want to see the face of God? And I was like, uh
okay, and he handed me this iOS puzzle game and it was like a
fine little puzz Like. So basically, the more Ben Hanson hype something up,
the less likely I am to enjoy it. Um And I feel like
Dreams he is like a full on like cult of Dreams guy, um,
and I played it enough to be like, all right, some cool stuff
here, But I don't know the idea of like a four hour platformer in
Dreams. Hey, if that's if that's correct, I would I would love
to try that out. I think I owned Dreams, Um, I just
searched for it. I'm sure I can figure it out. I played video
games before, but I would give that a shot. Cool. We had
tiny Kin in our top ten. Which kind of platform or collective on?
Absolutely a guy? Get them all. I love those types of games,
and I do get into them. Something I also think is interesting is when
a game allows users to make games right, like the Roadblocks method. And
I find this fascinating. So I'm quite curious. But I don't have Dreams.
I don't think I ever bought it. So now I feel like that's
something where I have to like acquire a game to play the games within it.
Yeah, and there is a fine line with collected thons too. I
was just watching Donkey. He's been doing a bunch of Donkey Kong videos this
month, and he did one on Donkey Kong sixty four and I think that
is the most famous. Like this is a collected th on, but it
is too much as much as like Banjo Kazooi and Marie sixty four to a
different extent, is like kind of collected on type stuff. Those were like
within the realm of reason, and then Donkey Kong sixty four was like,
let's see how far we can push this and pushed it way too fucking far.
I wonder, I wonder if this is like contained enough, you know,
super Key we was on the low end. Tiny Kin, I think
it had it just right. There's just enough stuff to collecting, tiny Kan,
I believe so. So it's it's a fine line. For sure,
you can overdo it. I agree. It's about making it feel achievable.
The carrocks where like there was like a moment there where I was like,
all right, you gonna make me fucking travel across every piece of this world
to get these, but uh, you know, having the reward be what
it was, it's just kind of like a silly benefit exactly. That's the
reason why that's acceptable to me is because though it's such a self aware like,
oh, you're literally getting a piece of golden shit for like spending one
hundred hours of your life collecting these fucking seeds. That makes it okay to
me. But yeah, as long as they running around it is good enough,
like it isn't tiny Kan, then uh yeah I can. I can
do a lot of that. Cool. Thank you justin Uh, Mary,
do you want to do the second one from Oh it's from John? Yes,
Hey, fire Escape Crew. I was talking with a friend recently about
our favorite retro inspired games of the year, his being Shredder's Revenge that makes
sense and mine being Signaledged that's also a really great Yeah. This got me
thinking about contradictions in my personal tastes. See. I don't generally care for
two D brawlers, finding them too repetitive, but I like three D character
action games like Devil May Cry. On the other hand, I love classic
survival horror, but I'm not a fan of point click adventure games, even
though they share a lot of the same DNA. One just has direct control
and a little action. So my question to you all is do you have
any similar examples of slight tweaks in a genre determining whether or not it's for
you? Thanks and keep up the great podcasting, John. Thanks John.
Speaking of survival horror, I like horror games a lot, but I tend
to I've gotten tired of just pure horror games. I feel like they usually
kind of jumped the shark toward the beginning and you see what they're going to
be doing the rest of the game. It's the survival. This isn't a
slight tweak, so I'm kind of cheating, but the addition of the survival
element, the way it ties into the horror and the tension, really does
it for me. Like nowadays, I see horror game like okay, but
if it's survival horror, I'm like, okay, interesting. Which again,
I know it's not a slight tweak, but still I think I got a
good one for this, which is I don't play the sports games. I
don't play FIFA, I don't play football, I don't play any sports games
at all. But then a little game came out where you hit a soccer
ball with a car, and I was like, I'm in and I play
to this day a competitive sports game with my friends consistently because it shook it
up, just it off, and I think it also adds such a ridiculous
element to it that if I have a bad game, I'm not like bad
at the game. Game. It's just that the cars weren't on my side
that time. But you can have phenomenal plays in Rocket League, which is
the game I'm discussing. Oh case you didn't know by what my description that
make you feel like you are a genius. You are the greatest gift to
all of sports. Dum when you pop that ball up and it goes right
into the goal, just right. And so that for me was that tweak
where it was like, I get it. I understand why people watch sports,
not just not just play sports game. After Rocket League, I was
like, I understand why people wear football jerseys. I get it now,
Like I like something clicked in my brain why I understood why you would get
so stoked about a match like that. So, man, Rocket League was
like that for me. Were you ever into like, you know, like
more arcade sports games like you know, Mario Tennis or anything like that,
or was Rocket League kind of the first one for you? I don't think
so. I think even Smash was really intimidating for me, which I'm not
sure is an arcade game, But I guess the point is is like a
competitive, like group based sports game I always found really competitive. I still
find like Street Fighter and a lot of like fighting games to be really intimidating,
my fear being obviously like if I'm just constantly the first person out that
I look like a ding dong, so I want to get really good before
I can play publicly. Rocket League didn't give me that anxiety. It felt
like it was allowed because there's teams of three for me to be less good
and I could learn and hide amongst my peers. I felt the same way
playing Counterstrike. So Counterstrike is very intimidating, but if you play with a
group of people, you can lean on them and be like, okay,
where can I like hide or how can I help you? How can I
help you achieve your goals? And it would allow me to learn graciously and
get better at the game. So that is like a learning curve I'm willing
to do. Whereas like fighting games, it's essentially like do you suck or
not? And I suck, So it's just to say out. Rocket League
is a great answer for that, because it's like I have like actively hated
everything related to soccer, and like part of that is probably my dad's indoctrination
of his like burning passion hatred of soccer my entire life. But playing Rocket
League I was kind of like, oh, okay, I mean, this
is literally just the rules of soccer to an extent. I mean, but
it's like I completely see why this would be pretty exciting, even if I
still don't find soccer exciting. It's like, I conceptually, I can see
how people would enjoy soccer. For me, it's I hate RP or JRPGs.
I grew up like really not understanding the appeal at all, but I
love leveling up and I love skill trees and growing up. Like you know,
there's not a lot of like leveling up and skill trees and XP and
stuff outside of like JRPGs on any s and Superintendo and Genesis and all that.
Final Fantasy ten or X was the first one I played that I was
like, oh shit, the sphere grid. I fucking love this thing.
But it wasn't until action games started incorporating way like way more frequently. I'm
sure they're exceptions from prior years, but like, like you know, Borderlands
having like a full on leveling up skill tree situation and a mass effect,
even though Masfect is still pretty much an RPG and everything like that, there
was action elements there along with the RPG stuff, even like something as recently
Vampire Survivors. It's all about collecting XP and making yourself stronger, Like if
I always loved that leveling up, collecting XP skill tree stuff, and I
feel like now you can get that at a million different game experiences. But
growing up, it's like that was the realm of JRPGs, and I just
didn't want to go through the jirpgenus of it all. So yeah, a
gateway. My last answer would be I tend to shy away from point and
click adventure games or even like Disco Lisium isn't technically point and click, and
it's got some cool things going on there, but just adventure talkie RPGs in
general. I tend to shy away with from but pentiment. As you know,
if you've listened to our Game of the Year chats, I fucking love
a few of us did, but I really did, even though that shouldn't
on paper be my kind of game. The slight tweak that that game does
that even New Vegas, which Obsidian also worked on, and a lot of
Fallout games and a lot of other games, I like the thing that Pentiment
did is it's not a thing where you're exhausting every conversation option. You pick
one and you move forward with the conversation. You're not going back to do
every So it's like feels less like this checklist and more like, oh,
it's a real conversation where I could say the wrong thing and the conversation just
might go off the hinges from there. And I think that's a big part
of why I like Pentiment's dialogue, because it's not this matter of crossing things
off this list to make sure I ask them everything. It's say something,
and like a person, they will respond, and then I'll respond to that
and it'll move forward. There's four momentum in the conversations, and that game
just keeps moving. That game's really good. It's always fun when you have
these assumptions that you won't like a game because it's not your jam, and
it subverts those expectations. And I think with the amount of games that we
all play, it probably happens to us more then we're gonna remember and say
in this moment. But there's a lot of times that I can think about
where I would be like, there's probably not that's not a game for me,
and it turns out that it was or the opposite, right. I
was like super convinced I was going to love a game, and it turns
out it just like didn't click for me. But I do love when that
happens, and I find out that a game reaches me in like some unique
way and kind of expands my my repertoire of like the types of games that
I would typically play. I think Divinity Original Sin is not a game I
would thought I would like and I fell in love with it, And I
think it's because it's point and it's like, what's it called. It's a
yeah, son RPG, it's turn base. It's very complicated. There's like
shit tons of backstory and character development, and usually when a game is like
that, I'm like, I'm not getting into all that. Just tell me
to jump to a place and I'll do it. Divinity just became a game
that I could eat snacks and veg out and play for days, and I
became obsessed with it. And now I'm grateful for that experience because if there's
another game that boasts that it's Divinity, like that piques my interest now,
whereas before I would be like, no, no, no, I do
not like complicated games like that, but now I do. That is a
good feeling when something does just kind of challenge your preconceptions in a way that
is positive. Where I remember when Outer Wilds came out, it was one
of those games where it's like all the intellectual you know, games media type,
which was just like, let me tell you about ah, here's my
thing. Basically, there's like a direct correlation between the amount of think pieces
there are about a game and my enjoyment of it, Like the more there
are, the less likely I am like, all right, this is a
my flute and bullshit. That's like you know, the intellectuals you know,
like or whatever. And I saw that a lot with Outer Wilds, and
I saw a lot of people are saying some very heavy stuff about it,
and I was like, all right, that sounds like some bullshit to me.
And then Mike and I went and got some dinner after work one time
when I was back at the Giant Bomb East office, and Mike understand I've
talked found the forward. Like Mike understands like how to get me into a
game. He also understands when something is a losing battle where it's like,
listen, you're not going to get into it. It's not your type of
thing. Like, so when he gives me the hard pitch on something,
I listen, and he gave me the hard pitch on Out or Wild,
and I was like, all right, I'm gonna give it a shot.
And it became my game of the year and so like, but that that
feels so good where it's like something that I initially wrote off because like,
oh, you know, these people that I normally don't agree with like it
or whatever. I was wrong and I played it and it was fucking awesome,
and I'm glad to have been wrong, because you know, it's one
of my favorite games of all time. So yeah, yeah. I think
two years ago it was time Loops that got a lot of people like attaching
time Loops to a different genre. I got a lot of people into him.
That was like the thing of the year. I feel like twenty twenty
two, a lot of different genres got attached to management sims in a way
that worked really well. Call to the Lamb, baron Breakfast, what other
stuff there was, Arcade, Paradise, and none of these were blockbusters.
Call to the Lamb probably came closest, but we had a whole best Star
of the Year category. Yeah. Yeah, it's like I think that was
kind of the indie trend of last year, but not quite as big as
the time loop thing or like rogue Lights a couple of years ago. But
it's it's always fun when that can bring you into a new genre. But
but yeah, thank you, John, appreciate the question. All Right,
you guys ready for a quiz. This shouldn't be too long, always pretty
simple, so I'm always ready. Of course, I'm excited to maintain my
winning streak, which is amazing that that can happen, in addition to the
fact that Tan's never been defeating Cut it out, cut that cut that cut.
All right, I'm gonna read this. This is from Mario or Mario,
depending on where you live. He's famous. Um, I'll read this
off and then I'll be the quizmaster because I saw a few of these,
so basically you're just guessing who said what quote on this podcast. Hey,
y'all, I that's funny. I have compile a list of memorable slash absurd
quotes from episodes throughout twenty twenty two, specifically, and I figured you guys
can make a quiz out of it, quiz rules. Someone to be the
quiz master. That'll be me and just pick random quotes. So right now
I'm looking at it's compiled under each person, but I'm gonna go randomly through
them while the other two guests who said it and I could choose whatever.
We are we taking turns? Are we just shouting out our names and then
answering m do we want to write it on paper like we did the last
couple times? Do you think it's that tricky or do you think we should
just say it? Um? The question? How there are some I mean,
there's one that's quite mathematically completely me which how about it's not spoiling anything.
How About how about we each get a guess. We don't do the
paper thing, We'll just in case there are some better. Okay. The
only problem with that is one of you is inefortably going to get a lot
of easy ones, like there's one that could not be forget everything we talk
about every recording. No, these are pretty let's go okay, somebody getting
hard ones is funny? Okay, okay, okay, um, let me
start with I'm gonna I'm gonna copy Pascis into a different doc so I can
strike through the ones I've already used. Give me vamp for like five seconds,
Mary, say something hilarious right now? Nope? Done? Okay,
Um, all right, I'm gonna start with I'm so glad I'm with this
one. Um, all right, I'm gonna start with this one because technically
it's not even this person's quote. They were quoting something else. All right,
Mary, I'm gonna start with you. Who said, Okay, quote,
I'm just going around a funerals watching cold flesh flop out of rotten wood.
Unquote. Oh that sounds like something you would say, Mikey. Is
that your final answer? Yeah? Yeah, it was me's I was quoting
from. I think you should leave, but I think you're the only person.
It's yes, it's very like a violent and visceral and it just sounds
like something you would say in a threatening era. It totally is. All
right, Mary, I'm gonna you got one point Yay, I'm right,
dan Um going there's some I can't believe we said some of this, all
right, Um, okay, quote nobody wants to be Nobody wants to buy
your fake sonic The Hedgehog weed you bought at sex World unquote. Well,
it's definitely not me because I was the one who bought the weed at sex
World. Um fake weed. Uh. Mary said that correct? That was
that was recent. That such a classic Dan thing to resell weed. I
didn't successfully resell it. I tried to. Okay, it was not purchased
Mary. This one's you or it's for you, okay. Quote I'm a
dollar. Do whatever you are with me, Toss me around, roll me
up, snort some coke with me. Unquote. I mean again, sounds
like a very I think to say, what about that sounds like a mean
thing to say. I mean, you're right, the fact that I oh,
okay, yes, you're correct, all right. I just think it's
funny. You always have like drug jokes. Okay, I'm not okay,
Dan, this is yours because Dan is straight edge and I'm you know,
I'm just adorable. You're the I'm the link one that had marijuana and saw
avatar fucking you criminal? All right, Dan, this one's you. Yeah.
Quote I've never masturbade it to Tim Allen for the record, that sounds
like me. Correct, okay, and it is accurate. That statement is
accurate. I've never masturbated or Tim Taylor. All right, for the record,
Okay, okay, Mary, this one's for you. Quote does hot
dog have salt? Unquote? Damn it, I mean off just off the
cuff. It's that's a very Dan question. It sounds off the coff.
Is that your final answer? Yeah, you're correct, because, like sometimes
you or I could say something like silly like that, but when it's food
related, I have to assume that it's Dan. That's kind that can get
me into trouble one day, but I feel like that's possible. Okay,
Dan, Yes, this one's for you. Mama Candleope, give me the
candle Ope. That sounds like Mike mahrdy. That was you. I've never
I don't know if I've ever said cantleope. I think that was dirty,
said Mamma Candle. I think it was Dirtay, maybe I thought about cantalope.
I was find Yoshi story. That was the word you beat me on
in the spelling Bee. Oh well, okay, without context. I've never
thought about camels in my life, but Lupe Mario did at the beginning to
say in a parent ses in a fairy wow, in a feral Comma oddly
sexual voice colon. So I was trying to mimic that without sounding too much
like Dan. Okay, Mary's up three to two. That's so funny.
Also, it goes with my note that if it's food related, it's probably
Dan. Maybe. All right, you're ready, Mary, this one's for
you is wine food? Yeah, okay, Mary, put that in the
next one, Marry. This one's for you. Quote I'm gonna shit in
a toilet and I want you to drink it. Unquote. Oh that's me.
I said that too, Dan. Yeah, I remember that like it
was yesterday. It was about the water straw that apparently makes all water fresh
as the day that it came from a cloud. And then I drink a
drink out of my toilet, though I'm not going to I don't trust it.
Okay, I can get water much easier way. This one is for
you. I got numerous spotsts in my house. Dan. This one's for
you. It's a bit of a softball, and you'll see why. But
it's just it's you, and you're behind two anyway, so I'll give you
one, all right. Quote. I can't even wipe my own ass correctly,
and I'm nearly thirty years old. It could be anyone. That could
be any of us. Wait, nearly it should have been probably nearly thirty
one. Well, in that case, it's got to be just because the
numbers. Mike, yep, Okay, I might have said. I might
have accidentally said that. I don't know. Maybe that's why it's to day.
So I'm my wiping situation better than ever. Okay, Mary, four
to three, But Mary, it's your turn again. Mary, I'll give
you a softball as well. Quote my favorite place to poop is a Walmart
unquote a shoemaker. I think that could be anyone, but I do recall
a pooping conversation with Dan Reiker. Yes, you are correct, true,
okay Dan. And there are three more, so one of them will be
I don't know. I guess I should have said one of the obvious ones.
For whatever. We'll figure this out, all right, Dan. Quote
oh no, he got his Penissee hands all over your shredded cheese. Unquote
say it again, Oh no, he got his Penissee hands all over your
shredded cheese. Now the story is about my dad being mad about me.
He thinks that I've scrabbed my penis and then grabbed his shredded cheese. But
the context of the quote, please say one more time. Oh no,
he got his penisee hands all over your shredded cheese. Us he refers to
me, I wouldn't say he referring to me. So it's gonna be one
of YouTube I'm only who can prevent us the correct answer. What was your
final answer? You said you were Fred's. That's one of my favorite fucking
jokes. I'm gonna say it's Mary correct. Okay, good job, all
right, Mary, this one is for you. Quote. Yes, you
want the world's best minds on your anal dot dot dot cysts. I'll reread
that without the elipsis, yes, you want the world's best minds on your
anal cysts. End quote. Um, I can't no for sure. This
is We talk about but stuff a lot on this show, and I think
there's been discussion of sis before. This is very gross and because again it's
your sis, I'm gonna say it's Mike. You would be correct. Thing
is about my hamrhoid. I think so, Yeah, I believe so.
I believe it was like referring you referring to you, Dan, So you
wouldn't have said it all right, Well, Dan, you physically it's an
impossibility for you to win, but this last one is for you and keep
me from thinking I did. Yeah, I know this last one for you.
Quote? Right, so not everything that lays eggs is a fish end
quote that sounds like me. Yeah, okay, that's true. I think
that for future shows a quote it's mathematically impossible for you to win, it
won't keep me from think. And that is a pretty good There's been a
few on this episode. True. I don't like you're pretty consistent. You
guys pretty consistently make me laugh, which is hard. I'm a tough crap.
No, I'm not. I laugh at everything. I laugh at everything.
But I think that you're both extraordinarily funny. And I did a couple
spit takes at some of those quotes. They're very funny. I also have
to say, I'm a hard critic of myself, so to hear a quote
and being like he I said that is funny because I typically don't consider myself
very funny. It's fun trying to remember the context, and so it's like,
oh, analsis okay, that was the hamorrhoid that I remember talking about
hamorrhoids down here. Yeah, yeah, I'm drinking moose water here. I've
never masturbated to Tim Allen. For the record, it's pretty fucking funny.
I don't know why I said that, because it is true. You.
I think you jokingly said something and then I called out the fact that it
would sound very weird as a sound bite. So you're like, Jake,
Jake, Jake, Jake, I've never masturbated to Tim Allen. For the
record, I definitely haven't that. I've watched a lot of Home Improvement and
I played the superintendent. While either was happening. We were probably talking about
someone you've like jaded to on a VHS cover and it was a movie he
was in, and you were clarifying that it wasn't him. You were jading
it too, jaded too, that would be in a Tim Allen Santa Claus
Tom I mean just I mean Jungle Toyster. I don't know, uh,
I know, definitely know CGI characters, No wild Hogs, who's in it?
Everyone I've seen wilds you have? Oh yeah, it's terrible. Just
google Hot Jayable people in Tim Allen movies. Are you not googling Hot Jayable
characters? I don't. In in my teenage years, I subscribed to Entertainment
Weekly and there was definite some jang to uh Hollywood celebrity ladies and uh,
I'm sure there has to be a crossover with Tim Allen films. Google.
Google's like, are you sure you didn't mean hot playable characters and Tim Allen
movies. He's trying to give you an out, Google request. I don't
think I've masturbated. Speak for yourself. What else is the end? Oh,
Wendy Crusen, she was in I kind of want to figure this out
now, toy story, Big Trouble in Little China, Oh big? Oh
that? Oh I haven't. I don't know if I've seen that. Let
me see big Gene Russo's in it and she's hot row Renee Russo. It
Tomas Crown affair, Renee Russo. That might be the answer there, I
think that might have happened. Yeah, Oh, hang on, I'm looking
at the cast of Big Trouble, U Sophie of our guyers and there,
yes, certainly at some point, yes, without question. I mean,
well, she has been around that long. I feel like most of my
j Into celebrities were like in the late nineties, and I don't know she
was a common vernacular that I really do think Thomas Crown affair. Renee Russo
is the answer. Why do I Why I know Renee russ So? Why
am I not? Can I not picture her? Oh right, yeah,
let's see raising the aunt says it's Coney Weaver. Now I don't think so.
Christmas of the Cranks, who is in that Christmas with the Cranks?
Oh Christmas Cranks been wild hogs. Now we're just googling Tim Allen. Oh
no, I stumbled ato like fan porn of Renee Russo and the Thomas Cross
Okay, oh okay, hang on, hang on, wild Hogs, Marissa
domas in it? Oh yeah, okay, game over. No question,
it's the most that's the most Jewish Gastanza thing about you is obsession with Marissa
to May No I ever goodness, yes you say good goodness, goodness.
I got a little plus honey. Oh boy, okay, I'm at midnight,
all right. Question answered, We're like Marissa toes May no Jay cut
that it's not my best cut. That Jay cut that Jake timestamp three hours,
forty five minutes. I'd make a dumb pound about Marissa's toes. Oh
thanks anyway, Thank you everybody who wrote in. Remember Mario, thank you
very much for the quiz he put together. We say some real, real
intelligent things in this podcast. Uh, it's been a fun year. We
technically closed out last week, but it's now twenty twenty three. Looking forward
to some video games here, looking forward to already looking forward to next December
when we do our Game of the Year, talk about I don't know,
unless it sucks, we'll be talking about Tears of the Kingdom. We'll we
have resume before remake. Imagine it sucks, happened, resume before remake?
Maybe Starfield Dead Space remake? What else is? What else? Next year?
Next year's got a lot of stuff, right pretty much? Think about
three Fighter six six Yeah that's that was too close to the Yeah, it's
right in there. I don't like that. Um yeah, there they'll be
some big stuff. I'm looking forward to it. But it'll be a fun
year. I'm sure. I'll try to argue Dwarf Fortress on your Top of
the Year. It's eligible for polygons, so as Marvel's Midnight Suns there they
came out out for our cutoff. Anyways, I think that we should make
a category for our favorite updated piece of entertainment. And it could be like
I don't care when it came out, it's it's been dated, and now
it's up for like a new discussion, Like let's get it updated. If
I learned some new shit about punch Out, Uh, you know that's best.
We already have a category for that, and that's best game that you
played this year that didn't come out game. Did we not do a best
updated game? I thought, yeah we did. We thought no, it
was one of ours that we cut. I think we had like a best
live or updated game on the earlier we did, and we cut music as
well. And you know it's interesting, is like I fought to keep it.
At first, I was like, no, we're not cutting that because
like I really wanted to give like a couple of music games they're due.
And then I saw that we had I think I wanted like Metal Health Singer
to like get some get like to you know, get some coverage because it's
such a good audio game. But I saw that we had like twenty one
categories, and right as we're going live, I was like, oh,
cut that shit, like I'm gonna be here in the morning. Banger Game
of the Year, we could best banger. Yes, that was fun.
Yeah, we got a bunch of them, um and we had the best
old game, We had the best live We like Fortnite and Fall Guys and
some older games and stuff. So yeah, we kind of a bunch of
categories. But anything can come back. Well, we'll see, but that's
the beauty Game of the Year. It's always fun putting together. It was
categories. You know who I'm looking forward to seeing next year? Who's that
cool Judge Jake Cool coming back? That motherfucker. I think I think people
would riot if Judge Cool Judge Jake was not a Game of the Year twenty
twenty three. J Jake Decker absolutely should be there with that Judge. I
don't know about that. I think Judge Cool Cool Judge Jake made the show.
Cool Judge Jake, Oh my god, literally came together as an accident
like two hours. Yeah, that's cool, man, that's groovy. We
do we do we tell that story? Should we? I think we did?
Did we well? The short version is I bought a fucking Judge outfit
and the picture on Amazon showed it with a Judge wig the old timey wig
and it didn't come with that, and the only other wig I had it
was up a grouper wig. And then we just threw sunglasses on him.
We're like, I don't know, you're cool. Really all came out of
like an accident. We just didn't have a wig and he looked so actually
just didn't look like a judge. He just looks like a fucking crazy like
a Harry Potter character with a mullet. Yeah, he didn't look had in
the house, just from a mcgrouper. So once we had the mcgrouper hair,
it was like, well, now he needs like something to like really
solidify that he's cool, which was the sunglasses, and that really sealed before
I went back to listen to him interrupting an argument to ask for a beer
with the like the music and everything in the gavel's gonna have a beer,
clunk. I don't agree with the jestice system of this podcast, but that
guy is pretty fucking cool. Yeah, he's so cool. He's pretty cool.
But anyway, yeah, I'll be next year. In the meantime,
as we mentioned, thank you so much to patrons who supported us throughout twenty
twenty two. Whether you're just treating as a tip jar because you love what
we're doing, or you're doing the ad free level, or you're doing the
videos, or you're just signing on for a bonus episode before jumping off.
Whatever you're doing, it helps helps us do the in person stuff, get
Jake and Mary out to the East Coast. Hopefully next year we can go
out to the West Coast, switch things up a bit um every you know,
scent helps and it's very much a side project, but we're very passionate
about it and it's very fun. The Game of the Year extravaganzas kind of
the dissolation of what I think I could speak for all three of us.
That's what we always envisioned this being, and that's what we strive for.
And it was a blast to put it on. Dan. The amount of
pre production work you put in was pretty c It's honestly just so much goddamn
fun, Like the old time was. Setting it up was like, oh
man, this is gonna be good. Like everything just worked. We had
the space for it, we had the cameras for it. It was ah,
it was so much fun. Look for that shit. Bringing Jake on.
I don't We brought Jake on twenty twenty one, I believe, but
he's been a huge help with post production specifically. Oh yeah, all of
us just love doing this and it's been a blast. But yeah, as
always, you can go to our patreon, Patreon dot com, slash Firescape,
or just go to firescapecast dot com. Um, we've gotten merch that's
still running, I believe. If you want to get some mouse pads,
if you want to get some mugs, some crop tops, some hoodies,
some crew necks, a bunch of different colors, bunch of different styles,
go to that actually might be fire Escape cast dot com. Now I got
to look into this before I start going another spield, but just look up
fourth go to fourth Wall and look up fire Escape Cast and get some merch.
Um we've got Actually, I think we're tweeting something tonight about a cool
story about some merch. Oh yeah, yeah, we got We got a
lot of people who got some stuff for the holidays. We love seeing those
everywhere. Minus the author of bio I hate that, so please don't buy
that one. Um yeah tomorrow at a very sweet tweeters. Yeah, um
yeah always that stuff's great too. We will be back in a couple of
weeks. It is January second, twenty twenty three today, looking at the
future, we'll be back on the sixteenth. Um. Actually, I want
to talk to you guys about that, maybe potentially delay that episode for in
embargo we could talk about and so maybe expect a day late that week.
We've done a top to me in twenty twenty three. I don't know you
shit until next year. Correct, So we'll be back the week of Monday,
the sixteenth. Fuh So, keep an eye out for any news in
our socials about it maybe being like twenty four hours later than usual. But
anyway, it's been a blast, been a good yearn Yeah, it has
been a good year. I've enjoyed been exciting. I've enjoyed having it with
you. I think this has been really fun. I look forward to another
year of fire Escape. Thanks first with me official full year of fire Escape
we started. We started it in April, Yeah, the first official calendar
year. I moved during that time, got engaged. Our lives unfold,
which is crazy, and we keep a lot I'd say we keep a lot
of private life stuff out of the public realm, but there's also a lot
that what we're doing. Yeah, Yeah, it's been a blast. People
got to hear me ask you guys to be in my wedding. So far
you're still in the wedding. I don't know though, Okay you sometimes you
scar, you scate finally, I'm just kidding. Um, it's been a
very It's been a good year, all in Jared, as Jared Harris says
in Mad Men. All in all, it's been a very good year.
But it's been a last Dan. What are you up to the next couple
of weeks? Buck getting back to work? Uh yeah, I'm enjoying the
rest of the break and then getting back to it. I want to launch
some new shows on Giant Bomb, want to do some fun streams. Want
to chat with you folks? Is the weeks go on? And uh yeah,
doing doing the games and the internet stuff. We're on Twitch, Dan
Record R Y c K E r T. That's where you can find me.
Mary, what about you. I'm also on Twitch. I've been streaming
more indies on Mondays, some of the games that I talked about today,
and no work discussion until twenty twenty three. I'm totally off the clock.
I've deleted Twitter off my phone, it's dead to me for at least another
week. Cool sounds good. I'll be back at Polygon. I'm back at
Polygon soon. I got a review going up a couple of weeks. I
don't get to write reviews as much just because I'm kind of overseeing that section.
So it's nice to get back into the trenches, so to speak.
So that'll be fun, right, we're doing that. Yeah, yeah,
so that'll be up. I'm over at Polygon and fire Escape here. Those
are my two things. M anyway, Welcome to twenty twenty three. Thank
you to everybody who joined. You could have been anywhere in the world tonight,
but you chose to hang out with us. And we'll be back in
a couple of weeks. Stay tuned for the week of Monday, January sixteenth,
twenty twenty three. We'll see everybody then. Goodbye. Ye sick,
I got cat hair in my nose.