Speaker 1: Hello, everybody, Welcome back to the fire Escape cast.
Speaker 2: I don't have any fun brilliant rhymes tonight, just getting
right back in Austin.
Speaker 1: I was gone last episode. I've lost it.
Speaker 3: I'm really out of practice.
Speaker 1: I'm not anymore. I'm sophisticated. I go to wine camps.
Speaker 2: Who was the last time you farted fucking like twenty
minutes ago. Well, that was audibly in front of someone else.
It's like a tree fa stinky.
Speaker 1: No, I don't really get smelling one.
Speaker 3: No, even your fire stone stink anymore.
Speaker 4: Okay, if Mike farts in the forest and no one's
around to smell.
Speaker 3: It, I left.
Speaker 1: I was over coffee this morning.
Speaker 2: I laughed harder at a show that I was watching
by myself that I've laughed in a long time. I've
been telling you, guys checking if you have watched Detroiter's
I know I'm very late to it. Obviously, it blew
up more once it went to Netflix, and people obviously
are liking.
Speaker 1: I think you should leave.
Speaker 2: But I watched through the entirety of Detroit or it's
like two seasons, I want to say, twenty five minute episodes,
and oh my god, there's an episode that Mary, you
might know where and I don't want to spoil Beau Dan.
I can see you just losing your mind laughing at
some of these things. They get the car account. They're
admin in Detroit, like small time doing local business naepisodes.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Later in season two they get an account from a
guy who like has supposedly invented this the car of
the future, And there's a reveal bit that involves far
fart related material and I like had to pause it
and belly laugh at eight in the morning.
Speaker 1: By myself, it's the funniest.
Speaker 2: And then also there's a wine bit right before that
where they're going to this guy's fancy house and so
Sam Richardson brings brings wine. He hands it to this
billionaire and it zooms in. He looks at He's like
Zug Island Dog, Dick Cabernet. Sam's like it was the
funniest one they had in the shelf, and the guy's like,
that is funny.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 4: It's a funny show. And you can see the inklings
of I think you should leave in it. When you
watch it, you'll say to yourself, this is an I
think you should leave sketch. Yeah, but they've prefaced it
with like plot, it has a purpose, and it has
it has implications afterwards, which is why I think it's
funny that what they recognized, or at least maybe what
Tim recognized was the best bits were when he just
like went unhinged over something crazy in that show, and
they I think they basically focused on sketch comedy. But
the show is hilariously done because you care about these
characters surviving in the advertising world. It's it's very brilliantly done.
It's a little rough on the edges. I think there's
still they still kind of like are figuring out their
characters and maybe some acting chops, but it's still very good.
Speaker 2: Robertson, I don't need to tell you guys in him,
but oh my god, like Sam Richardson's Tim Robinson.
Speaker 3: Robins damn his favorite guy, and Mike said his name wrong.
I said Tim Robinson, you said Robertson.
Speaker 2: Robertson, Tim Robinson, Sam Richardson, Sorry, was a slexic thing. Uh.
Sam was in some really funny I think you should
leave sketches like the Baby Show. But seeing him over
the course of two seasons, he's so fucking funny. I
wish I like could see him in more. He's not unknown,
but I just I want to see him in everything now.
He's the funniest fucking person ever. But yeah, that show
is really good.
Speaker 1: But no, I farted not too long ago. Yeah, I
errated a fart. Yeah, to burn off some va open
up a bit. How was last episode?
Speaker 3: Was the last episode?
Speaker 1: What do we do? Jake?
Speaker 3: Jake? Yeah? It was like I remember at the end,
Mary said, uh it it felt hinged, which is a
thing that.
Speaker 4: Don't get to say very often. It was a hinged show.
We kept it together. No one like yelled at anyone else.
Speaker 3: It's nice like he's like an adult, you know, Jake is.
And it's like I think I told Bank afterwards. I
was like, yeah, I think normally the show is like,
you know, it's three cramers, you know, like, yeah, we
brought in like an adult kind of grounding character in there,
and I thought that was really good.
Speaker 4: Records, none of those characters are grounded. They're all insane.
Elaine is insane. They're all nuts.
Speaker 2: Right right, Yeah, I guess they are. Weel like politics
and everything.
Speaker 3: So it's personality dating industry. Yeah, just everything about the
man yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Well glad you had Jake to be the dad.
It's nice. Yeah, good.
Speaker 4: We had a good time.
Speaker 3: Mina was the big one. We talked about the big one.
Speaker 4: We'll talk about that a little bit later as well,
because but like to to allude to it for a second.
Jake had beat Mina on the last episode and had
rolled credits on it, and I I like it. I
like it very much, and so I was like, well,
I'm gonna play it and I'm going to beat it
as well and make sure that I roll credit so
I can talk about it. And so I have a
like a wooden bench on my front porch and I
laid down on that.
Speaker 3: Path. No pillow situation at all.
Speaker 4: There like a light thin pillow, not my best pillow.
It was a little little thin. I could feel the
wood armrest like against my neck right and I.
Speaker 3: Was likest that.
Speaker 1: Aast the arm rest middle ages.
Speaker 4: I think I'm leaning down. I'm playing Mina. I get
totally into it as you do. This game is still hard.
We'll discuss six hours later. It's time to go to
bed and I get up and my neck is like
all kinked up, like it doesn't feel good, and I
go oh, that's that's not good for it, And I
go to bed thinking it'll be fine, and I wake
up and my my neck is genuinely so painful. I
can't look left or right. I have to like continue
to look slightly at a downward angle. That's the only
place where it's comfortable. And I think to myself, oh,
that's not good. But I leave, you know, for twitch
Con Europe in three days. I'll just take it easy
all rest and it will go away as it always does.
Speaker 3: It's heat doing heat.
Speaker 4: I did tiger bomb? Have you heard of that?
Speaker 3: Is that a shot sounds like.
Speaker 4: It's like a cream that feels like icy hot bomb bomb?
Speaker 3: Okay that. I got a lot of.
Speaker 2: Messages of last episode that you were all pronouncing things oddly,
and I'm.
Speaker 3: Like, why I I did hold my tongue, Mary, I
gotta tell you telling me I say weird all No, no, Mary,
you were saying something repeatedly, and I was I was thinking,
like I said, well, I was saying, this doesn't sound
right at all, but maybe the maybe it's a nietzsche
Niche thing where you can do it either way. Technically.
I looked it up back forwards to know you were
just super wrong. So we were talking about, uh, the
Dirty's this movie and we're talking about I kept talking
about fully work. They're talking about doing fully work and
like getting like that's the one.
Speaker 4: I've been calling for years.
Speaker 3: And then you kept saying, you were like, I love Folly,
can't get enough Folly, And I'm like, can fully fully
work is like you know, like if you're in a
game studio and you gotta get the like shoes on leaves, you.
Speaker 2: Know, like that like rattling trash can stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, recording wheels of like a car or something like that.
You know, like yeah, sound effect stuff. So baby, it's
f O L E Y.
Speaker 4: And you can say, don't mean anything.
Speaker 3: That's not a common feeling? Is this wrapping anyone else?
That's like I knew it. I knew that was.
Speaker 4: I've been I've probably been calling it folly since I
was like a child and learned what it was. I
keep it in the inbox.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna look though, but yeah, sorry anyway, Mary, So
really quick question before we proceed. You were on a
wooden bench for six hours. Were you wearing a diaper?
Why did you not need to get up and do
some human stuff.
Speaker 4: So I intentionally don't drink a lot of water when
I'm in the gaming mode, so I don't have to
go to the bathroom. It's like a strategic thing, so
you have.
Speaker 2: The foresight for that, but not to not lay on
a wooden bench with your neck.
Speaker 4: You never fucked up my neck before. I mean, I've
obviously like shrimped in bad positions for hours and been
like ooh, my back, but then I just go to
bed and it's fine in the morning. This is the
first time it wasn't fine, And it wasn't fine three
days later, when I flew to Europe. My my neck
injury had made its way down to the left side
of my body scapula.
Speaker 3: Is it like start kind of the base of your
school and go down across your traps and body.
Speaker 4: Names? Okay, but it went into my shoulder blade, into
my arm pit, into my arm and into my elbow.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it traveled.
Speaker 2: Poison fucking plane. That's the last place I want to
be with that. I'm feeling good.
Speaker 4: I don't love that, But I would say the worst
part was dragging my fifty five pound suitcase against two
hundred year old cobblestone steps to my Airbnb, and I
thought to myself, I am not okay, and I got
worse and worse and worse, and I like functioned through
twitch con. I got back on a plane to go home.
A week later. This is now ten days that my
back has not been good. And I went from the
airport to a doctor and I said, give me drugs immediately,
and uh, this never happened before. I've never had this
issue before. So they were like, what happened? And I said,
I don't know. I think I just I think I
just kinked it while playing games. And they gave me
like muscle relaxers and steroids and like the good, the
good pain killers and stuff like that. And I'm a
little loopy guy.
Speaker 3: Is it helping the drugs?
Speaker 4: I am numb, Okay, I am numb. It's crazy though.
When the drugs wear off, it comes back, so I
know it's still in there.
Speaker 1: The camera's over here.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's bad. It's bad, guys. I've never I've never
experienced the need for pain, like medical grade pain killers
because I was so so, so so pain. It's extremely painful.
The only way I can describe it is it's like fire.
It feels like fire. Is going through my.
Speaker 3: Body and especially okay, just to try which shoulder.
Speaker 4: Is it my left one?
Speaker 3: So put your other hand like this, your right hand
over kind of like and hold down your your whatever,
your tendons, whatever, and then then tilt your head this
way and then look up. Is that you feeling that pole.
That's one of my physical therapist has taught me, because
I I have thrown this out many times, the elevator scapula.
I've gotten real fucked up. One time I was doing
the whack Off mini game in Mario Party and this
is this is on tape at Giant Bob. I'm going
to the we mote thing. We're going ah and it's uh,
you can see my next week and yep, that's two
weeks of this hurting like ship.
Speaker 4: You pulled your neck jacking off jacking.
Speaker 3: Off a Wei mote in the Mario Party mini game
where you got to shake up the soda can. Yeah,
that's what I said, stuff like I'm just yeah yea.
The solo Mario Party we Bomber Biotic is biopic as well.
H oh, I stand by that one. Yeah. Well.
Speaker 4: I have now also been severely injured playing Mien to
the Hollower for six hours. Uh. I did roll credits
and I am proud of it, but it has come
at great cost in my body.
Speaker 3: Yes, in the game section. That is when I want
to catch up with you on as well, because I
have continued to play it, so I have.
Speaker 4: When I am when I am drugged up. I am
also watching a show that I'm really excited to talk
to you guys about. And I asked, I didn't know. Yeah,
I Mike, you were able to watch an episode there
was our recommendations.
Speaker 1: I watched it this morning as well. Yeah, we were.
Speaker 4: Talking about recommendations. Yeah, remember how you said that you
like what I recommend you stuff because you trust me.
Speaker 3: Yes, who are telling me about this?
Speaker 4: I got one for you, Bud. It's called Widow's Bay.
This one, Okay, this is a banger.
Speaker 3: I think maybe it was Backlahror some but this came
up on another show I was on, because I remember
googling it and seeing these same pictures and it's like,
it's it's funny. Well, yeah, don't.
Speaker 4: Look up too much.
Speaker 1: Can I tell you who directed it?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 1: Do you know who? Hero? Mariahs?
Speaker 2: No, he got famous doing like really incredible music videos
for Earl sweatshirt, childish Gambino, chet Faker. Do you know
what episode of TV he directed? He directed several episodes
of the show, but he directed Ronnie Lilly from Barry Oh.
Speaker 1: He at least directed the pilot of Widow's Bay.
Speaker 3: Okay, I'm gonna I all load up the iPad with this.
Speaker 4: Mars, because similarly, I've been calling it like the life
real TV version of Courage the Cowardly Dog. It's scary,
but it's funny, and the characters are really good, and
you kind of root for these like weener people who
are so scared of things that are happening to them.
It's real, and there's lots of different versions of It's
almost like a Monster of the Week type situation. Every
episode there's something different that's happening that's scary, and there's
absolutely not one episode that's gone by or I haven't
been a little scared but then laughed because they made
it funny, dude, and that's really hard to do. Horror
comedy is a tough genre. I'm very impressed by the show.
Speaker 1: Sorry he did He did not do Ronnie Lily.
Speaker 2: He did four episodes of the show, but he helped
produce most of Barry and Station eleven.
Speaker 1: But yeah, the very cool. I watched the first episode.
I've been meaning to watch it.
Speaker 2: I love Matthew Reese because The Americans is one of
my favorite shows. I love Stephen king esque stuff. This
also has a lot of Jaws to it, like it's
the the Matthew Reece's Well now, Mary, you said you
don't want them to know much. I mean the premise
wise though, Like Matthew Reee is the mayor of a
New England island.
Speaker 4: That's yeah, New York Time is going on on this island.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the New York Times writer is visiting to potentially
write like a travelog feature for The Times about it.
So he's similar to the mayor, and Jaws is like,
this could be our tourism moment.
Speaker 1: We can't let them know that there's other ship going on.
Speaker 2: So yeah, that this island absolute quick Stephen roots in
it too.
Speaker 1: He's amazing. Yeah, well casted.
Speaker 4: But again, like that's just the first episode's plot. Every
episode changes a little bit of like what's going on.
It has a common theme, which is he's trying to
be mayor of this fucked up town. But every every
episode something bad happens. But again, yes, it borrows from
a lot of stuff. It borrows from it. It borrows
from like a lot of scary movies that you might
have like grown up with and thought about, like ooh,
that's I love the way they're doing this. They they
found a way to kind of put them into each
of these episodes and really scary of and yet make
you laugh all the time because these characters are ridiculous.
These characters are very funny and silly, and the main
mayor guy, he's constantly trying to convince everybody that this
town is normal, even though there's something very clearly wrong
going on. I think it's brilliantly written.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the humor, there's like existential humor, but there's also
just some really stupid slapstick funny like Monty Python wordplay
humor or, like Rodney Dangerfield kind of humor that okay,
fits weirdly within the whole thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I like you quite a bit.
Speaker 2: They made a I don't know, Amanda, being from New
England and like spending a lot of time at Cape
Cod growing up, they made they have that joke in
the first episode about a specific restaurant that we love
in Province Towns.
Speaker 1: Like, all right, I gotta wait.
Speaker 3: For Amanda to continue watching this because she'll probably love.
Speaker 1: It as well.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think you guys are gonna like it, Dan,
I'm I'm excited to see what you think about it,
because I don't usually recommend too much too often because
it's a you know, it's a weird, it's a it's
a show that like I want to make sure I'm
like feel really confident before I recommend.
Speaker 3: Oh, I have to do my check and see if
I Yeah, it's several people now have told me about
this show, and it's I've forgotten everything that people have
told me, So I guess that's good. I'll go in
pretty blind, but I'll have to find out if I
have an Apple TV still. Yeah, we got it for
like severance and.
Speaker 4: Yeah, totally. I do the same thing I usually, like,
get them specifically for a show and then get rid
of them. This one is worth it, I think.
Speaker 3: Cool.
Speaker 2: I Also, I think I don't think I've talked about
this since last time I was on fire Escape. I
am the biggest Like I really really don't like Star
Wars anymore because I hate the whole Like you gotta
worship at the altar Star Wars, the mcuification of Star Wars.
I haven't seen solo, Like I kind of like out
of protest. I love Rogue one, but that after that,
I think they got mine. They got the wrong message
from Rogue one.
Speaker 3: I feel like where I fell off was around that
Rogue one solo, like the side movie things.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I all these people whose opinions I trust
and adore and align with were like you would probably
love and.
Speaker 3: Or And that's what people have told me too.
Speaker 1: Oh my god.
Speaker 2: Like I saw like New York magazine giving it best
Show of the Year last year, like I saw, yeah,
it's not that there ares of taste, but like it
was getting like high level awards and like really, so
I had watched the pilot like when it first came out,
Like Okay, I get it. They're just trying to do
down to Earth Star Wars. I finally went back to it.
I forget why. I think just because Aman and I
had been wanting to rewatch the main line entries and
Rogue one. So like, okay, apparently and Or does set
up Rogue one again. I hate like feeling like I
need to do homework to set up a movie. There's
episodes in that that are genuinely some of the best
episodes of TV I've ever seen. You like it, really,
I don't want to take away from it because I like,
I grew up loving Star Wars. I'm not inherently saying
I hate Star Wars. I just don't love what they've
done with it in recent years, Disney, what they've done.
There's episodes where I'm like, they this could be set
in any universe, this would still be fucking kick ass TV.
Speaker 1: There's incredible.
Speaker 2: The structure is really cool too, because they'll do three
episode arcs and then there will be a time jump,
and then they'll do another three episodes. But they're still
They're just seeing these characters. They're kind of expediting getting
from one to the next. Apparently they were supposed to
five seasons or something like that. They ended up having
to truncate it. It does not feel truncated. Some of these
characters are incredible. I thought and Or was the most
boring character in Rogue one. This show, I finished it.
We blew Amanda and I both blew through it in
like a week and a half.
Speaker 3: A character from there from Rogue one.
Speaker 2: Oge there's several characters that's it's like it leads up
right up until you know how Like the rogue one
is about them stealing the plans. This is how and
Or kind of became this roguish han solo type and
his background several other characters leading up to the discovery
that the Death Star was even a thing. Got okay,
Andy Serkis, isn't it? He has an amazing like little stretch.
There are a ton of people make that they don't feel
like cameos, but then Stellin Scarsguard. I love everything he does,
and this is one of my favorite roles he's played. Like.
The show is so good at setting up these what
you think are my your characters, and then all of
a sudden you're incredibly invested in them. It's it's really
really fucking good. It's a slow burn. It's got like
deadwood pacing, where you don't really realize they're setting up
something huge until all of a sudden it's happened and
you're like, oh my god, that's what's been going on
this whole time.
Speaker 4: I've never seen a show that uh, that helps portray
subtly but then obviously more literally what fascism looks and
feels like and how it's built. This is for entertainment sake, right,
But over time you're like, oh, I see why they're
making the decisions they're making. Oh, they're to paint themselves
publicly as good or vulnerable or you know, in danger,
so that they're allowed to do atrocities and everyone will
be like, well, they were doing self defense, Ye're in trouble,
and they did.
Speaker 1: They did.
Speaker 4: They do such a good job of playing the kind
of reminds me of The Wire, where they're like they're
playing the press, they're playing the public, yeah, very specifically,
and they do it very well.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: There's there's episodes of the show that were like they
were so on the nose that I was like, are
they're really going to try this right now? And then
it's so well written and directed that I was like,
they pull it off. The commentary it's it's There's also
there's several like sequences in the show that are orchestrated
in the sense that like they reminded me of that
long shot in True Detective Season.
Speaker 3: One when they go into the drug hideout.
Speaker 2: Yes, stuff along those lines, like we like we had
to like pause afterwards, we're like, holy shit, I didn't
realize I haven't been breathing for two minutes, Like, oh awesome,
it's incredible.
Speaker 1: I cannot recommend that show enough.
Speaker 2: And also I don't like origin stories anymore, but they
do it really well here, and I don't like they
also don't give a fuck about there.
Speaker 1: If you're paying attention.
Speaker 2: I'm sure there are many Easter eggs, but they do
not go out of their way to like say, oh
wink winking at the fans, like I was, like, it
feels like they're just first and foremost want to tell
like a killer story within this universe. It happens to
be a Star Wars story, and it just like is
the set dressing around it.
Speaker 1: It's really fucking good show. I love and or so much.
Speaker 3: Okay, that's shortless for me for sure, Like, yeah, I've
heard enough people say that, but I've worried it was
going to be a thing where it's like, even though
you don't like Marvel movies, this is the Marvel movie
you're gonna like. And I watch it and suck shit
just like the rest of them. So I was kind
of worried.
Speaker 4: Marvel. I consider this like a City. Yeah, like they
did a good job separating this from the animals. It's
very different than all of those megas, you know, Triple
A Action movies from Disney and all that crap. They've
they found a way. I don't know how they did it.
I don't know how they pulled it off. They made
magic on this song.
Speaker 2: Get They dig into like the office drama and politics
of the Empire, so like you forget that this is
the Empire, like like Stormtrooper office or not stormproper offters,
but like you know, like the Nazis of Star Wars.
Speaker 3: You're just kissing Krell playing Storm.
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly.
Speaker 2: But it's like it's got several vibes in the office politics,
it's got Americans vibes, and like these characters need to
lead double lives because they're spies.
Speaker 1: It's really cool. I'm very glad we watched that because
I almost did not give it a second chance.
Speaker 4: I'm the same usually when people say, like, you're gonna
really like the Star Wars thing, I'm like, I don't
know about that. This was the first time that I
gave it a try, because I did have a couple
of friends say like no, no, no, no, this one's genuinely different,
and it truly is. I think it's I think it
absolutely is worth watching all the way through. And it
also sticks the landing, which I think is very important
for me. Not everybody feels that way. I still get
people who are like, you gotta watch Lost, don't worry
about any of that stuff, just enjoy the ride.
Speaker 3: I don't.
Speaker 4: I kind of want to have that nice ending and
and or does that. But speaking of like the worst endings,
Euphoria just officially ended, and I think it got like
one of the worst reviewed endings of all time of
like any series. Yeah, everybody universally dislikes that show.
Speaker 1: Why.
Speaker 3: I don't know. I've heard some stuff in the words like
it seemed really rough at the beginning of the season,
but I've heard people talk about like coming around on
it a bit and what it was doing in season three.
I have not It's not the first season.
Speaker 4: So critically, I think it was panned as a move
over Game of Thrones, the worst oh last episode of
a season is has a new owner.
Speaker 1: Oh these headlines.
Speaker 4: Critics have really gone for it. I would say, like,
I think it panders to the audience a lot, although
people really like some of those actors, so like they're
probably like, listen, it's still amazing acting. And I think
that is true. But the writing of these characters have
never been more degrading and more abysmal. Like if there
is a girl on screen, she's either doing drugs, having sex,
she's naked, or she's being like physically assaulted. It's just
the worst writing of a season I've ever seen. Wow,
he's bad. It's a shame they had really cool I
liked the first season. I think the first season is brilliant.
It's it's stunningly shot and the audio is incredible. They
lost the guy who did all the music.
Speaker 1: Wasn't that like a huge Like did he just contract?
Speaker 4: Nobody truly knows, but he wrote he wrote a very
aggressive message saying fuck HBO and fuck ephor you. So
I don't think it ended in a positive way.
Speaker 1: Sorry, that's just I think.
Speaker 2: Maybe three days a week, I wake up in the
morning and I watched the I Found your son Norm
bit with It's one of my favorite bits I've ever seen.
Speaker 1: In my life. And Mary, are you saying he went
up to get cigarettes? Reminded me of that. If you
haven't seen it, just look up.
Speaker 2: It's like it's like a fifteen second clip. Just got
Bob Saget nor McDonald. I found your son that I
don't need to explain the joke.
Speaker 1: It won't be funny if I do it. Now.
Speaker 3: What was the because it was the icon? Was that
the show he did between seasons two and three?
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, we did tear That was also critically absolutely
abysmally panned and kind of just did not that one
was Poe casting as well. For the record, I don't
think that, Yeah, the Weekend is not built for acting
a role of a tough guy. I just don't think
that that was meant to be. But I think we're
starting to also just recognize there's some weird writing going
on that isn't selling these characters. Not even like the
best acting of this cast could save season three of Euphoria.
Like some of these scenes were just like embarrassing. I
actually gave up on it because it just started getting
so bad.
Speaker 2: Last entertainment thing on my end, have you guys? Did
did you ever watch The Zone of Interest?
Speaker 3: Yeah? The movie?
Speaker 1: What two years ago? I finally watched it.
Speaker 3: I saw that. Yeah, Yeah, Oh my god, it's a
tough one.
Speaker 2: What a tough That was a tough watch. And I
still and I watched it, I think a week and
a half ago. I still am not sure whether I
fucking loved it or hated it. Like it was an
incredibly made movie and it took some big swings.
Speaker 3: But I don't think anyone's gonna watch it and be
like that movie kicks ass.
Speaker 1: Like no, no, no, I I don't. I don't mean loved
it in that sense.
Speaker 2: I mean like part of me afterward was like, that
was one of the most incredible things I've seen in
a while. And then I sat on it for a longer.
I was like, maybe I kind of hated what they
did here at that point, but.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: It absolutely hit me hard regardless. There's some points in
that movie where again I was like very taking it back.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it's a It's not a movie you buy
on Blu ray and watch a bunch of times.
Speaker 2: No, if I'm gonna go that, I'm just gonna keep
watching Shindler's List every week.
Speaker 1: That's my that's my comfort movie.
Speaker 3: Right right, You've always said that, Yeah, nice, So I continue,
I continue with Sopranos, and I I won't go into
a bunch of stuff. But I'll just say uncle Paully
Bert young Thing is the actor's name. One of my
favorite guys to just show up in things always because
he's so fucking hilarious and rocky, just this drunk asshole uncle.
And like, I just realized I've seen him. I can
name three things he's been in, now, the Rocky series
in including Creed Or I guess he's not in No
Rock About Boa. He was in Russian Doll with Natasha Leone,
and now this episode of Sopranos. And he is always
from like nineteen seventy seven to like the pandemic. Basically,
he always just seems old and sickly and or drunk.
He's always just coughing into a rag or like half
dead or just being like Mike, do you know the
episode I'm talking about with him?
Speaker 2: Do I know the episode with Bobby Bacala's dad who Sally?
Speaker 3: I know the episode, Yes, I just watched that one.
I'm just laughing, unhappy the second he shows up on screen.
I remember if you did that.
Speaker 2: I texted you back when you said uncle PAULI at
first I was confused because that's oh, I see so
then now that you're talking about like, oh, Bobby Baccalaw's
dad Uncle Pauli from Rocky Yes.
Speaker 3: Yes, the second like, hell yeah, Uncle Poly's in this show.
And then everything that happens with them in that episode
is so fucking funny to me.
Speaker 2: That's the That is the people you're very ahead of
schedule because people say, like, you're not a true Sopranos
fan until you realize it's a comedy.
Speaker 3: And I've been laughing this entire fucking time. It's so
goddamn funny. Like even just the way Tony responds or
says certain lines that aren't jokes or meant me funny.
I'm just laughing this whole fucking show. I love it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the I can't wait for you to get to
Pine Barrens. I can't wait for you to get to
the Lake episode with Bobby and Janice and people. It's
it's we're rewatching mad Men again.
Speaker 1: We always do. But I just want to watch the
Sopranos soon.
Speaker 3: Were you where that Bobby Bacalas showed up in TNA
wrestling in the mid two thousands to imply that he
was one of the Deadly Boys, and he teamed up
with the Deadly Boys and like got in the ring
and helped them like a couple moves and stuff like that,
and he was like in character as Bobby Bacala. No,
it's really weird and stupid.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of weird promotional stuff with the Sopranos
between the video game they did and because you guys
did like a game and form.
Speaker 3: Of replay I respect. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I reviewed that
back in the day. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's if you look up like Sopranos promotional material,
there's a lot of stuff that they got James Gandelfini to.
Speaker 1: Do that was very surprising.
Speaker 3: My dad owns something incredibly gross. Stop. I know that'll
probably be very shocking to hear. He used to work
for Time Warner. Oh my god, I have a picture
this fucking thing. He used to work for Time Warner
and they would get like weird promotional stuff every once
in a while, and him being him, he always just
held on to stuff forever, thinking it's gonna be worse something,
I'm gonna sell it on eBay. And one of them
is this bottle of Sopranos balsamic vinaigrette from like fucking
like ancient ancient and now like this picture is probably
from ten years ago where it actually looks kind of normal,
but it is like super fucked up and got ship
growing in it and stuff now, and he's convinced that
this is going to wind up, like, you know, selling
for thousands of dollars or something like that.
Speaker 4: What does the backsay? Does it say anything? Like, uh,
you know, does it have any other connections to the.
Speaker 3: Sopranos Sopranos HBO? Yeah, creamy correte from like does it?
Speaker 4: It doesn't have like dairy in it, does it?
Speaker 2: Balsamic vinaigrette technically should be good for a long, long
long time. It's just it's basically it's it's like vineg
to something vinegar like vinegar eyed it's it's like acidified
and it's not gonna get worse at.
Speaker 1: A certain point.
Speaker 3: HBO brand Balsamic.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it seems concerning.
Speaker 2: I don't know if it's gonna pass Italian smell test
coming from Bologna.
Speaker 3: So like, next time you see my dad, if you
want him to bring it, just let let me know.
Speaker 1: I'll get I'll eat it ten dollars.
Speaker 3: But that show continues to be incredible.
Speaker 1: So I'm glad you're watching. It brings me joy.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: When you text me is like, what what do you mean?
What wencle Paul episode he's in like a quarter of them?
Speaker 3: Sure, sure, okay rock.
Speaker 1: No, but yeah, happy birthday PAULI that one?
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, hmm.
Speaker 2: Anything else new? It's been longer than a few weeks since,
so you guys. I think we did the last episode
early as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think we did spend a while. Yeah, God,
probably a ton. It seems like it's it's always whirlwined.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to Summer Games Fest.
Speaker 2: You guys are getting ready to go out to you
two and Jake are getting ready to go out tomorrow
as of this recording, I'm not gonna make it.
Speaker 1: I have a wedding in Seattle this weekend.
Speaker 3: Yeah, when this episode goes up, I will probably be
at Disneyland with Mike Manatti, which I guess that's the
way you do that, so nice. Yeah, I did it
once before, and we all talked shit on Disney here,
but I have to give it credit. Last time we
went with a bunch of friends from Giant Bomb, and
he had Mike Manatti being like the ultimate tour guide
and Jenny Nicholson, who also like really know Disney.
Speaker 4: So with a Disney person makes it a little bit
more palatable because they're like, we know which rides to ride,
we know which one's experiences are the best. They're like
really into it. I feed off of other people's enthusiasms.
So when I go with a Disney adult, I'm like
I can get excited because you're exciting. It's like going
it's like taking a child to the park, Like I
don't want to ride the slide, but it makes me
happy that the kid is laughing while it goes down.
I don't think like I will enjoy Disney, but watching
Mike like skip around and you know, get excited about
the way the rocks are formed very specifically to look
like cars, well, would make me happy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was insane because it wasn't just Mike leading us.
It was Mike and Jenny Nicholson, who they're both like
obsessive Disney fans, and they were I think they were
meeting the first time there, so hearing them kind of
compare notes and them kind of it's like they're hosting
their own little podcast about Disney. The while they're like
leading us very specifically through the park. They know exactly
when you get in the line or when the app
tells you to be where where we're gonna eat, and
never things. So it's like, okay, that's this is probably
an optimal way for me to kind of like understand
what the deal. Like I'm not understanding it on the
level obviously that they are, but it's like, Okay, this
was a very pleasant day and I would do it again.
So yeah, I'll probably be there when this episode goes
up on Monday, and all the SHEF stuff will be
over at that point. So yeah, that'll be nice to
not travel for a few weeks, I think.
Speaker 4: So yeah, I'm taking three I took three days off
of work actually, like while we're recording this, I'm off
of work because it was just such a long slog
to go to Europe for work. And I also I
also brought my mom.
Speaker 1: Nice.
Speaker 4: She went to Rotterdam, she went to Amsterdam. She went
to Delft, which is a very small town basically like
in between Rotterdam and Amsterdam, and then we went to
Rotterdam for TwitchCon. She had a good time. She's a
small town lady. She did not love Amsterdam because she
thought it was too crowded. There were too many people
who were in her you know way or in her space.
Speaker 1: And it runs in the family. You were probably she
was probably crossing the street when she shouldn't have been. People.
Speaker 4: Yeah, really she's yelling. She like, wouldn't yell at We
have very different personalities. She's very quiet, very sweet, very forgiving.
I hold a grudge for years. I am angry all
the time. I'm getting people out of the way, and
she's just like, they gave me the wrong drink. But
you know what, this one's really tasty too. I don't
mind at all. She won't complain, She won't complain about
anything to twitch.
Speaker 3: Con, like like properly she went to twitch Con. How
does she? I mean she must have some sense of
like what you do in what that world is. But
was this kind of like immersing her in a way?
Speaker 4: I don't think to this day she fully gets it,
because sometimes she'll be like, well, you know, we were
in the mind craft area and she was like, what
do you you know work on the Minecraft? And I said, well,
we don't work there. These guys, these guys are you know?
They bought a booth and she's like, so they pay
you to make Minecraft. I said, no, you know what,
just enjoy the show. Like she doesn't, it's going to
be too hard to explain things to her.
Speaker 2: I don't.
Speaker 4: I think she thinks I make games.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I think that's a lot of people when they
are not from games and they hear someone working in
that orbit and it's like, oh, they make games. We're
going to the elevator to Game Informer. The people on
the other floors would like have their kids in the
elevator and like, oh, he's getting off on the fourth floor.
That's where they make the toys. Yeah, that's what we're
doing here.
Speaker 1: Yep, yep, I entered the toy factory.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it mentally makes more sense than thinking that people
have a living playing something.
Speaker 3: If you always hear the same thing, if people watch that,
people watch that like that, I've heard that billion.
Speaker 4: I think it's it's still surreal and confusing for her.
And also it's a very big con right, Like there
was over ten thousand people there, and so she's kind
of at this this space with over ten thousand people
being like, so all these people make the games, and
I'm like, sure, that's gotten to the point where I
just say yes, I don't. I don't know, like it's
too confusing. I'm just glad that you know, she doesn't
she doesn't process information. I think at this age where
she's going to like correct herself, she's completely cooked. She's done,
she's setting her ways. I'm just glad that she's calling
Simon Simon and not Semen anymore.
Speaker 3: That's a start.
Speaker 1: That's good Simon.
Speaker 4: She still used to like she'd call me and she'd
be like, so, now, how is how is Semen?
Speaker 1: I wouldn't say on, how's your dog?
Speaker 4: Simon is good? She could not could not wrap her
head around this pronunciation.
Speaker 3: My wife is banaka to my grandma. So she spelled
it on a gift a few years ago and it
was b a. Oh god, it was like knock like
knock on a door as like knocka and little boy.
Speaker 1: I just heard that.
Speaker 2: Jim Carrey's voice from acevon Tura was that was that
when he's like, can I interest you in a minute?
Perhaps some banaka away? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: It was funny when you talked out of his ass.
I like that. It's really it's really funny.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that second movie, The Last time I watched
it was with You in the Sunset.
Speaker 3: It has not it was not remember man right got
you Tim and I and I.
Speaker 2: Was, I was, I was really high. So I thought
that might have had something to do with it. Like
maybe I'm not finding this thing funny because I'm not
on the planet at the moment.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I forgot.
Speaker 2: How many cringey things that were in that movie, aside
from the Rhino, which is classic.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I think the whole conceit of the
second movie is like, it's like, oh, that's probably not
gonna be great now.
Speaker 4: No, I forget what it holds up. But I feel
like the joke where he is putting shadows over the
guy's face into that's gotta that's gotta do well is.
Speaker 3: And he does the little shadow blows up thing. That's funny,
the Monopoly Man, the monster truck, like, uh.
Speaker 4: I think, like that's gotta live.
Speaker 3: Most of the Africa stuff not great, Noah.
Speaker 2: Except except for how he parks the suv at the Mansions,
just driving down the road and he rips the wheel
to barrel roll into the spot.
Speaker 1: Yea, which is very good.
Speaker 3: Well good thing. Nothing aged poorly about the first acepent.
Speaker 1: No, not at all, especially the whole twist.
Speaker 3: Yeaeah, the entire ending of the movie. Most poorly aged thing.
Speaker 4: Ever, we don't talk about the ending.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the cable cuts out near the end every time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, unlike HBO's Sopranos, creamy balsamic vinegar, a spent one
is not aged.
Speaker 3: Well, that's our sponsor this week, Mike tell him about.
Speaker 2: It was made in modern that the HBO execs had
to travel all the way to Bologna, take a quick
train up the northwest to the little town where they
make some of the most heavenly nectar on this planet.
It's been waiting in barrels for you up in these families, addicts.
And they pulled it out. They said, hey, we got
this show. It's called the Sopranos. No, it's not about
the opera. It's about a guy just like you from
the South. Though I know they frowned upon people in
the South. It was a weird script who wrote this.
So they said, we're gonna take some of your creamy balsamic.
We're gonna we're gonna take your cream. We're gonna bring
it home. We're gonna bring it. We're gonna market it.
Warner Brothers is gonna we're gonna re up it. We're
gonna sell it to people, just like Paul Reiker here,
and it's gonna be delicious fifty twenty five years out.
Try it, Put it on some put it on some salad,
maybe drizzle it over some garlic.
Speaker 1: Bread. Uh, it should be great in twenty five years.
Speaker 3: That's sound good. Some bread and vinegar, Like that's my man.
I just went to a town place like a week ago,
and yeah, I used to just eat the bread because
I wouldn't do the butter on it. And then I
never even looked at the it's vinegar or is it
all of oil?
Speaker 4: It depends on where you went.
Speaker 3: There's the olive looking one, then there's the darker one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, olive oil and vinegar.
Speaker 3: Oh then yeah, you do that and then you dip
the thing in there and like that is a super
good Like when I go to in timeplace now, that's
one of my favorite parts. And I just totally didn't
even look at it for forty years.
Speaker 1: It's crazy, like really like good balsomic vinegar. There's nothing
like it.
Speaker 4: I went to olive garden for the first time in
like years and hot damn those breadsticks still hit holds
up nice, yeah, And I got the I got the
breadstick dip trio. It's all you can eat, but they
say you have to order one at a time. And
I said to the waitress, I says, can I just
have all three at the same time? And she looked
left and right and she said absolutely, And she brought
me three bowls of the three different sauces them all
and then like, I'm gonna call it just a mix.
It felt it was like a lighter marin era and
had cheese. They called it cheesy marion era, like a
vodka sauce. It looked like a vodka sauce, like a
light like a like an orange, but not in a
grossweat pink because it was pink. It was like orange, okay,
because pink sauce ready, orange is also good. They called
it a cheesy, cheesy marion era, I think is what
they called it.
Speaker 3: Do you guys, Do you guys ever hear the thing
about Ben Hansen and his wife going to the Italian
restaurant a couple of years ago, and you talked about
this podcast about wanting the bread Does it sounds familiar?
He he wanted ice cream. He wanted ice cream, and
so they went to an Italian restaurant and they walked in.
They just sat down just to get ice cream, and
he was upset that they didn't get bread and vinegar
and olive oiled when they were just trying to get place.
Speaker 2: You're supposed to get this stuff that you're expecting them
to roll out the red carpet when you're ordering the
weirdest fucking thing.
Speaker 3: You can't go to.
Speaker 4: Olive Garden would have done it, would have given him soup, salad, breadsticks,
and one dessert. I think they would have done it.
I was blown away by the portion sizes at this place.
We had to take it to go.
Speaker 3: I wouldn't go there and just get the breadstick thing.
I feel like I could probably eat like thirty breadsticks
in alfredo sauce.
Speaker 4: Dan. I thought of you, I really think that if
you get the breadstick dip trio. But then you got
to ask, and you got to say, because this is
what they say. They say, when you finish the dip,
you just ask for another one. They said, you can
have as many as you want. They'll just keep bringing
you bowls. But I said, I want all three at
the same time. I don't want to finish my dip.
I want to have all three dips and then I
want to taste them and like discuss them, you know,
like something going to Washington's.
Speaker 2: When you mentioned it, you're like, oh, well, yeah, I
drop my dropped my mac Magnum Coonum and my Washington's
on the floor.
Speaker 4: She did not question it.
Speaker 1: I might, I might go to wine camps.
Speaker 2: But oh my god, if I wouldn't fuck up Olive Garden,
like any chance i'd get.
Speaker 3: Sorry, Mike, you brought up Franklin's I'd do one more
quick Soprano's reference that killed me. It's when Big Pussy
is talking. It was in fourmed and he was talking
about like he's trying to like get some money or whatever,
and he's just says something like, yeah, my my favorite
president's Franklin. Like it's like a hundred and they don't
make a deal out of it. No one talks about it.
It's like, oh, he was not a president.
Speaker 1: Oh it's a Big Pussy's to the FBI contact.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's trying to reference dollar Bill. He's like, I
love President Franklin.
Speaker 2: There's so many good one off lines that my friends
and I use. Like there's an email question today that
kind of references this. But like, I didn't realize how
often I'm quoting Sopranos on accident these days because it's
become such a part of my vernacular with the people
I grew up with.
Speaker 1: It's the most quotable show in the world.
Speaker 3: I absolutely love it. Oh, I want to get some
bread sticks soon. I've not had Olive Garden in uh
over ten years. I would say, Mary, youve inspired me.
I'm going to be thinking about this. I wonder if
I haven't been in La, that'd be a weird place
to go to Oliver Garden, wouldn't it be? No?
Speaker 4: No, I actually that's like I actually went tall of
Garden last time I was in La. Oh you're gonna, yeah,
you can absolutely go. I bet you. Naughty would love
to go with you. I bet you could get a
good crew to go to to go to all that.
Speaker 3: I bet you know what You're right, Naughty super would Yeah.
Speaker 4: I think so that place is great. Well, yeah, last
time I was there. It's funny. I yeah, I was
in La and I had just wrapped something and we
were like, let's it's family let's go. This will be
a good evening. That was great, all right?
Speaker 1: You want to talk about video games? All right?
Speaker 2: I think two of the three of us I've played
Double O seven First Light from Io Interactive of Hitman Fame.
Speaker 3: I beat it, Yes, see already.
Speaker 4: How many hours is.
Speaker 3: I would say fourteen to sixteen or so. I like
that time it is the game, yeah, but not not
too much, not unwieldy.
Speaker 2: There's a few areas that are more sandboxy that you
can take a lot of time exploring.
Speaker 1: But there's also more linear areas.
Speaker 2: There's car chases, there's plane chases, there's Naughty Dog sque
set pieces. There's little kind of mini game sort of
interrogation scenes that they play around with how you're kind
of manipulating a character in them. Io does a lot
here that I've never seen them do before. But Dan,
what are your I understand you like it. I'm curious
what your overall take on the game is.
Speaker 3: Oh, I love it. I think it's fantastic. I think
they super over delivered. And that's even after everyone saw
the license and saw the developer and was like, wow,
that makes all the sense in the world. That's probably
gonna be great. I think it's better than people could
have expected, especially when it comes to like the action parts,
because you know it's Bond's like there's a big difference
between forty seven and Bond, Like there's the similarities where, yeah,
they both would probably be sneaking around in a fancy party,
you know, following a bad guy and stuff like that,
but at a certain point, Bond's always going to get
in the car chase and a shootout and things like that,
where it's like forty seven, that's not exactly his thing.
So in the hit Man games, when it came down
to hand to hand combat or gunplay, it was not
like the engine wasn't built for that to be a
folk So I was kind of worried, like, Okay, is
that going to be Is that going to be a
weak point to the Double seven game? And no, they
clearly understood what they need to do with Bond, and
the hand to hand stuff is fantastic. Like it kept
reminding me of like the modern like kind of like
Fallout era Mission Impossibles where like specifically like that bathroom
fight with Henry Cavill where they're just like throwing each
other through stuff and into walls and through toilets and
all that stuff. It's just like the super kinetic you
know fighting system that like there's there's wine cabinets and
displays and windows and railings, and every time you would
hope them to like, oh, throw the bad guy over
the railing up I do this, or throw them into
this electric box and they electrocute the guy. It does that,
and then we'll also surprise you at times. And then
there's just like here's a bottle, here's an iron on there,
and you can just hit our te and just chuck
it in their face and fucking throwing them over thing.
It is. The hand to hand stuff's great. And then
when it goes into action mode, it's very clear. It
says like license to kill, and so it's like, all right,
this is going to be a shootout. This is not
a We're done with the pretensive sneaking around or anything
like that. We are on a runway. We have to
catch this plane that's taking off. There's exploding barrels everywhere,
and we're getting in a car chase to get to
this area. So like when it goes action, it goes
super bond like major action and they pull it off
incredibly well for a developer that hasn't done that nearly
as much with like the Hitman games. So and even
just as a Bond story, I think it's fantastic. I
like Bond. Like I know, Mike, you've watched all the
Bonds before. I I've seen the Bros and Ones. I've
seen like half the Craig Ones. That's pretty much. Yet
Bond for me is Gold and I it's everything or Nothing.
It's like these games. I think the Bond license works
so well for games. The gadgets, the cars, the action
and all those things, and I think, yeah, Gold and
Eye Everything or Nothing in this now are like the
holy trinity of like incredible Bond video games, and it's
hard to argue that this one doesn't do it the best.
You know, Golden I was based on the movie. They
did a good job of that. It was nineteen ninety
six seven feels ancient point. Everything or Nothing was a
really cool, ambitious thing from that PS two era where
it's like we're gonna hire, we're gonna get the actors,
we're gonna write a new story. We're gonna bring in
William de Foe and Heidi Klum and you know, actual
actors and like very ambitious for Simon, I think it
knocked it out of the park. But this one, I mean,
my god, just the direction of this game and the
way if this was a Bond movie, it would be
one of my favorite Bond movies. I think the the
actor that plays him is fantastic.
Speaker 1: Like I honestly haven't played this game.
Speaker 2: I'm like, I kind of I want Patrick Gibson to
be the next Bond in the movies.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: He's that good.
Speaker 2: He grows on you throughout the game, and I was like,
oh man, I like this guy a lot.
Speaker 3: And I thought I was gonna hate it because it's
doing the thing. It's I don't like prequels that much.
I don't like having to see the same Like, Okay,
this iconic character, I gotta watch. They did a prequel
and we got to watch the guy become Batman and
wait until okay, when does he get the fucking bat exactly?
And like the way they do it, like Mike the
fucking training montage, the way they do the training in
this is the coolest tutorial shit I've ever seen. If
it was and it was effective, it was and just style.
It was like Okay, we're not gonna waste time. We're
not gonna just put you through the same tutorial of
here's the hand to hand part. Here's where you go
down to the shooting gallery and do it with this,
and then do the ear's I eat throw grenades. It
is just quick cut and by the time you're done
with this montage, you know how to kind of parkore
over stuff, you know, I to sneak around, you know,
I to shoot, you know, like.
Speaker 2: When the guns dry, you can whip it at someone's face. Yeah,
it's it's It reminds me of like the Last of Us.
I thought the Last of His Combat was really good
with that too. It's like improvisation in like a very
small space, Like what, oh, there's a brick. I'm gonna
throw that quick just to get him off balance. Now
I've got a two by four, I'm gonna smash more
of the head.
Speaker 1: He's stunned.
Speaker 2: Now I can get the kick to his face, like
first Light's great to your point, like I do. I
I felt as if they almost they introduced so much
early on that I wish they did a bit better
of a job of resurfacing some stuff later on.
Speaker 1: But it's not stuff that's essential.
Speaker 2: It's just like fun stuff that I forgot you could do,
Like you could still you're still totally fine to beat
the game and beat like certain sections without it, but
like specifically there's actually I know I want to I
want to get to more like locale specific stuff because
Io is so good at that. But like I do
wish they could resurface stuff later on in the game
in a way, but like I don't know how they
do that without being super artificial about it. Maybe it's
just a matter of like load screen stuff like tallis
all this time like saying like hey, remember you can
you could throw people into this kind of thing. But
like to your point, it's so good at the improv
aspect that you don't need that stuff to get through fights.
Speaker 1: It's more just like flavor to the whole thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, It's like you're walking through this laundry room and
if you want to just sneak up on everyone and
do the occasional distraction and turn on a vacuum cleaner,
you can. But then you can realize like, oh, this
guy's leaning against this giant like shelving thing, and then
highlights it and say, oh what can I do there?
Oh fuck, I can push this whole thing over, or
all the ways your your your gadgets can interact with things.
And it's not just oh I turned the radio on,
I turned the printer on or whatever. There's so many
like scaffolds and exploding things and sabotage a laptop so
it electrocute someone, like really clever ways you can kind
of like even though it's not as open as a Hitman,
it's not this giant open sandbox like Hitman is, it
does in these moments give you, like like the chess
meat early on in the game. There's a lot of
stuff you can do. There's a lot of rooms filled
with guards, and I had times where it just came
down to a hand a hand fight and had to
knock them all out. Then I had times right to
really improvise and find funny ways of distracting everyone, and
it pulls everything off so so well.
Speaker 2: It's super impressive that Io, who is so known for
sandboxes in replayability, Like there's certain points where you can
kind of feel them restraining themselves because they know it's
the Bond license, and they do a very very admirable
job of straddling the line between mainstream Bond fans who
are going to come play this and like find an
awesome action adventure and iofans who do want more of
the emergent gameplay, and they're going to go to that
chess match area, They're going to be in the Mauritania area,
and I think they're going to find a bit more
to like there. I personally, I do feel like there's
a stretch in the middle of this game where it
gets comparatively weak to the rest. I don't I don't
love the ship graveyard, the Africa section, yea, the.
Speaker 3: Back half of Mauritania, when you're just kind of doing
uncharted stuff, that is maybe the weakest part of the
game to me.
Speaker 2: They try, agreed, they try to get like, they try
to do actual traditional third person's stealth in a way
they're not good with, and the guard patterns and the
patrol roots just it doesn't feel like a developer that
knows what they're doing yet in that regard, like they're good,
they're better when that's like social clockwork. This feels more
like it's actually militaristic guards patrolling, and it does not
feel super organic, and it feels.
Speaker 3: Like old Metal year, like you know, late nineties, early
two thousand, ye guard Ai sometimes yeah yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but like but then you know, you get to
I love the resort in Vietnam. That's that section's fun.
You're just that's very hit man. The humor too, It's
like there's that douchebag where you're just trying to get
in the fridge key for the bar so him and
his tech bros can party. It's like this is IO
doing their thing, just mocking everybody they can. But yeah,
Patrick Gibson's amazing. And the game, like pacing wise, it
jumps back and forth between so many cool little like
I mean, I don't mean gimmick in a bad way,
but there are some gimmicks in this game. Like the
plane sequence. I was like, oh, it just reminds me
of Uncharted three. But then I don't even I don't.
I don't want to spoil it. If you played it,
you know, and Dan, you probably know what I'm talking about.
When you're a hand had, when you're hand to hand
fighting on the plane, there's an added wrinkle with that.
They the controller allows you to do that is really
fucking cool. I've not seen a game do that before,
and it's again playing into the Bond gadget aspect and
it's like, oh you can also that's very like Daniel
Craig era Bond, where it's like he just kind of
brute forces people, combined with the outsmarting of the Pierce
Brasen era Bond, which is like he uses the gadgets
and kind of plans things ahead a bit more than
Daniel Craig does, which I think they do a good
job of like paying homage to all the chapters of
Bond's history, like the humor of Roger Moore, the like
borderline like rage of Timothy Dalton, the like they even
get like some of the campiness of George Lazenby in here,
Like it feels like, no matter who your favorite Bond is,
there something going on here that you'll like. So it
does feel like Io really did do their homework with Bond,
rather than just getting really into the recent ones.
Speaker 1: I think it's a great Bond adventure period.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that part on the plane you're talking about where
you realize there's extra wrinkle you can do. I was
watching Minati to the stream for Giant Bomb that it
came out, and he got to that point, and I
love the moment he realizes what you can do on
the plane there. He just like kind of laughed and
he's like, Oh, this game just lets you have fun,
doesn't it. And like that's that's a great way of
putting Where's like, oh, that's fun. It's a gimmick, but
it's a fun one that totally works for this.
Speaker 4: Yeah, tell me more about the gadgets. What's like some
of the gadgets that you get to. When I think
of a you know, a Bond game, I think I'm
gonna get to play with some fun stuff.
Speaker 3: Yes, so that's a thing that us really well where
you know, in most Bond movies, I feel like there's
a scene where it's like, oh, you go into Q's
lab and Q is like, no bon So this has
got a thing. You can do this and be careful
with the Bond while Bond's like pressing buttons and causing
fires and stuff like that.
Speaker 4: You know, it's shooting gum is a bomb.
Speaker 2: Exactly, Yeah, checks watch laser.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, So like they have that here where it's
like you can walk around several times throughout the game
and Q's lab and like you can interact with stuff
and it's just causing trouble and setting fires and shit
like that. But the main thing is based around your watch.
So if you get a Q watch, and that's how
you hack things. So if you hold an LB that's
kind of the Bond vision thing. You know, it's kind
of like the Batman vision and the Arkham game stuff
like that, but it's explained as like you've got lenses
in your eyes and you can kind of see what's hackable.
You can see how things can interact with other parts
of your gadgets, which is like a watch laser, so
you can use that to like blind a guard temporarily.
So if a guy's guarding a safe, you can oh shit,
and you can like run behind him or whatever.
Speaker 4: Like a laser.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like a little like laser that shoots out
of his watch, and that can also knock down scaffolding
above a guard and knock them out. You can get
like air pods, like a little air pod case that
doubles as a flash mine, and so that'll like stick
on walls and act as a proximity mind so guards
walk by it knocks out one or two of them.
You've got a pin like a pin that shoots tiny
little missiles out and that's something again later on. But
that's super fun. Oh the poisoned darts are right, it
comes out of your phone heat man.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you just shoot someone and he gets nauseous and
he has to go find a bathroom in a trash
can so you can kind of maneuver around.
Speaker 4: Straight from the movie. That's a good one, the nauseous Yeah,
the one that makes you have to go to the bathroom.
Speaker 1: That's good.
Speaker 4: Or yeah, those are good.
Speaker 3: They all feel very shockwave camera, which that is so funny.
It's a camera, yeah that when you press the button,
it shoots out a shockwa so like if there's a
guard like standing next to a railing or whatever, just
like force pushes them off the railing to their decks.
Speaker 4: Pretending to use it like you're like cheese.
Speaker 3: I mean, he doesn't like say anything, but it does,
like you know, like that that works.
Speaker 1: Yeahcause I also love that the little.
Speaker 2: Like particle effect they used to show the shockwave is
the most ratchet and clank ass like wavy cylinder that
goes at them.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I used I started.
Speaker 2: Using that too when I just wanted to like again,
there's a there's a cool section two with an art
gallery down in a basement, like an art storage gallery
under a museum, where I was.
Speaker 1: Like, fuck this, I've been stealthy all day.
Speaker 2: I just want to go, like use this shockwave camera
and you can knock shit over left and right and
like pull stuff off the ceiling with it and just
crashed on to people. But yeah, the there's I Still
the game sometimes feels disjointed, especially in the Mauritania area,
starts to feel a bit formulaic, where they're like, Okay,
you got to go make this amount of money in
order to bribe this dude, and it feels a bit
too much like early two thousands role playing games, where
it's like, okay, well I'm gonna go talk to this guy,
and oh, conveniently, the money I just made from these
three side quest amounted to exactly what I needed to
pay this guy. You start to see through the artifice
of it. But still, the pacing of the rest of
the game is so good it's hard to care during
there those slugs. Even though those do kind of halt
the momentum, it just hurts that they're right in the
middle of the game. So I think the center can
the Mauritania area can get a bit.
Speaker 1: Sluggish for me.
Speaker 3: And it comes directly after maybe the most like holy shit,
like as far as like the chess meat is this
great big stealth sandbox. Then it goes into the car chase,
into the runway thing, into the plane stuff we were
talking about, So it's like bang bang bang, like some
of the best shit in the entire game. And then
Mauritania is like, yeah, you're kind of walking around like
it's kind of clever, like the making the money thing.
I like how there's like, oh, here's like maybe six
different activities you can do, and that's where it's like, oh,
I did it one way and I asked bank, like
how did you make the money physical? Oh, you didn't
do the fight pit, but you did this. You know.
It's like there's not a lot of replayability in this
the way there is a Hitman, but like there are
things like this where my experience might be slightly different
than yours. But it's all to say that part's a
little slow paced. And then it goes into that kind
of long ship graveyard stuff that is again probably the
biggest like lull in the game. And there's a couple
more that are you know, not the most exciting. There's
things that could have trimmed up at the end where
it's like, Okay, I'm just kind of walking around, just
kind of hacking stuff with my watch, trying to move
forward for you know, a half hour or so.
Speaker 2: What did you think about the I forget the name
of the corporation, the office web web what did you
think of web HQ the office building.
Speaker 3: There's some clever stuff there, like trying to figure out
how to get into rooms and get around alarms and
stuff like that, but ultimately there is just a lot
of like, all right, what window can I see through?
What thing can I jump across? Okay, there's a blue tarp,
I can go that way. You know. It's not the
most I think it's a cool location. It's like super
you know, like high end like uh tech HQ and
that you're breaking into kind of at night, Like I think,
I think that's a cool idea. I just don't think
what you're doing moment moment. There is like among the
stronger parts of the game.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there was like there was a puzzle sequence there
as well, when you're trying to figure out like a
code to a safe and I was like, this is
the most like elder scrolls ass, Like, who the fuck
would write this in a journal?
Speaker 1: It's like, sure, remember this memory and this number that
came up.
Speaker 2: It was like, all right, yeah, I think this, uh,
this ultra text genius CEO might be better than that,
but maybe not.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Maybe that's what they're trying to say.
Speaker 3: There's a huge security gap with their fucking vacuum cleaners.
Speaker 2: That reminded me of Perfect Dark because you do it.
There's a in the campaign for Perfect Ark. You have
a very similar solution to puzzle. But yeah, it's super
fun to see Io like a developer. I know, all
three of us respect the hell out of just knocking
out of the park with such a one of the
biggest licenses, especially a license with so many questions surrounding
it now that Amazon bought it, and who's gonna be
the next Bond and what's like the future of the movies.
Them doing such a good job here is super heartening
for them and for the franchise because I don't know
what's coming next for it. But yeah, they very very
glad they they got handed the reins to this. It
makes a lot of sense, and they proved it.
Speaker 3: They're they're gonna kill it with more of these. I'm sure, Mary,
do you think you're gonna play it?
Speaker 4: I'm absolutely gonna play it. I was traveling, so every
game I've played is on steam Deck. This because I
was I was traveling, but I got it. Can you
play it on steam Deck? Probably not.
Speaker 2: This is like such a like a classic three third
person action adventure. Sit on your couch, just bust it
out over a weekend game. I wouldn't even would try
to steam deck.
Speaker 4: Yeah, like, did you guys play it on PC? Or
did you play it on console?
Speaker 3: PC?
Speaker 4: Okay, cool?
Speaker 1: We perform?
Speaker 3: Well great, I ran off my laptop. It was perfect.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah no, this is just like I sit.
Speaker 2: This is like poor a drink, sit with it for
like four or five hours at a time, kind of
old school game.
Speaker 4: Yep, sounds great. I mean, you guys are talking super
positively of it. Besides, like some minor details. Do you
guys mind fusing it.
Speaker 3: On a ten point scale? I would give this a
nine point five. I guess that's a twenty point scale.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, we know, Yeah, yeah, I like the point
we know that it's not the scale or how it works,
but that's very high.
Speaker 3: We've done nine my number two of the year, I
would say, behind Rerekwuim And it's not even it's kind
of close.
Speaker 1: I'm probably closer to an eight.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Still, like I still think it's the best Bond game
ever made, but like just that's just because I I
that's just because they haven't all aged well. But obviously
this one's brand new, so it hasn't aged yet. Yeah,
maybe a little bit higher than eight, but eight eight
point five range for sure. The momentum in the middle
of the game, and like there's certain parts in the
game where I really I could have done with all
the the six Headquarters interstitial chapters where you're just kind
of like, I appreciate that there lulls, but like, honest
honestly looking at like how Black Ops six handled that
at the rook that Headquarters, like I found that to
be much more sure, like compelling than going back to
I six every time those Also, I was like, I
just want to get to the next mission because so
much of this is so well paced.
Speaker 3: Yeah, maybe it's a nine, but I do like doing
the point five So just in spirit thinks that there's
a point five there, maybe it's a nine, but.
Speaker 1: Really like great game overall.
Speaker 2: Also some characters early on that I'm like, I fucking
hate these people, and then all of a sudden, like the.
Speaker 3: Villain Monroe, a villain Monroe.
Speaker 2: Yes you're one of your I six classmates. I was like,
I don't like this guy at all.
Speaker 1: He sucks.
Speaker 2: But like they knew what they were doing because then
later on that story stuff I won't get into.
Speaker 3: They do a great job with all those characters.
Speaker 2: But like only the other thing I'll say about the villain,
similar thing, I'm like, I don't know if I know,
Like I don't know if Io is writing Chops is
up to snuff for a Bond villain, Like Bond villains
are the cheesiest characters ever. But like, again, similar to
what they do with Bond here, they bridge the gap
between the cheesy side of Bond villains and the believable
side and the like, fuck this guy, he's so gonna
be in a douchebag. He's like they picked the perfect
actor to moke happ and voice him. Like I actually
came away really liking what they did with the villain here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and there's a few villains of a very well
you got the acting toward the forest of Lenny Kravitz
of course.
Speaker 2: Oh fuck, I forgot about Lenny. Yeah, and he's just
playing Lenny Kravitz really well.
Speaker 4: I know there's a but he's just like YouTuber and
streamer Twitch streamer cameos in the game as well.
Speaker 3: Oh I didn't know that, I think.
Speaker 4: So did I make that up to.
Speaker 1: Queen of Twitch?
Speaker 3: You're probably right, Yeah, I just wouldn't have recognized him.
Speaker 1: No, Lenny Kravitz was a sore spot for sure.
Speaker 2: It is like he's just playing himself now, Like why
they it's so odd.
Speaker 3: He's not believable at all. It's like you.
Speaker 1: Don't need more star power than like but like, look.
Speaker 3: They've done that like Madonna and Die Another Day, Like
they've done gimmick stuff like that, and even like iow
they do the elusive targets of like Gary Busey and
celebrity cameos, so like it didn't feel it didn't feel that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I just.
Speaker 4: Can't crowd is in it and Jack Sceptic guy, like
there's there's like.
Speaker 2: I wouldn't think I saw them Jack Sceptic, I I
would recognize, but I didn't see him. If he was
in it, Jack, you did not leave a lasting in print.
Speaker 1: I'm just joking. I don't know.
Speaker 4: That's I mean, I think it's interesting because, like when
you see stuff like that, my instant, my instinct is
to be like, uh oh, like that's probably not great. Yeah, no,
that it sounds like they found a way to do
it naturally.
Speaker 3: I think it's great because they wrote in me and
Jeff Butckler as mcgroob feud into hit Man three, So
I think they do a great job with this stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Dan, it's been blinding the final cut.
Speaker 3: Yes, it's in the game hit Man three. Right, Yeah,
it's two guards talking like, hey, we'll give me back
my blu Ray, Like, what the hell is the.
Speaker 1: Chron King mission?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 1: The China?
Speaker 3: I can't remember, but I'm pretty sure it's chron King.
Speaker 1: I remember that.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was Double seven first Light. Good for Io,
that's so cool. Yeah, it just needs to keep that
momentum going with the next movie.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 3: Amazon would never screw something.
Speaker 2: Up, I know, say the perfect that's that spaceship was
fine the other day, wasn't it.
Speaker 3: That's fine?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, what's mean of the hollower, and now I
know what it is. I haven't played it, but you
guys were talked about it. Last episode.
Speaker 4: We finished me and I finished. You finished roll credits.
Speaker 3: I have finished four. I'm on the fifth of six
towers now, and unlike you, I think I'm going directly
in the path that the newspapers have told me to do,
and you did crazy merry stuff.
Speaker 2: I do have one suggestion, Dan, I've not played the game.
If you're going to finish it, so try not to
be lying on a wooden bench when you do it.
Speaker 1: Because I have heard but that that could The.
Speaker 3: Guy that I was reading said that actually kind of
helps it. Wrong.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you guy's wrong. Don't listen to him.
Speaker 3: Mary. A good angle for that good angle for steam Deck. Yeah,
I know it.
Speaker 2: Sounds super comfortable, but don't fall. It does sound to
the wooden bench.
Speaker 4: I'm enough pain killers. Take down a horse. I feel
completely numb.
Speaker 3: Because your spine has a changed shape to fit that. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, like I'm a fucking ninety degree angle.
Speaker 3: It is like it is a game that is not
just great for steam Deck. It is like I don't
like playing it on a larger screen steam Deck. Just
something about the pixels in the way the art style is.
It's like I tried playing on this monitor one, so
it's like, no, this this, this is a game that
is meant to be played on a handheld platform for sure.
Speaker 2: Oracle of Seasons in Ages, I had the same thing
when I played a bigger screen of like Nope, Game
Boy Color go Back.
Speaker 4: I think it should be on a smaller screen. I
think it looks good, and they're they're explaining everything that
you need to see on that tiny screen very well.
So yeah, I've I feel better now that I've finished it,
saying that they really did put the mean in Mina.
It is a mean game to me. It's really difficult
for me to get through it.
Speaker 3: It did okay hard and like not in the fun ways.
Like here's the thing, Like there's games that are hard,
like an Elden Ring or a Secero or something, but
it's like, Okay, this is like expertly crafted. This is
the way it's supposed to be hard for a reason.
This is just we talked about a little bit last time,
but like just the amount of times I was walking
around in a circle forever trying to figure out the
next place to go. It's like, this is not fun hard,
This is like, oh, how I there's a fucking bush
there on the edge of the screen that if I
cut that, that's the one way I can get to
this area. Yeah, it feels just kind of random.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's some brutal parts to it. Yeah, I think
I think it expects you to be smart. There was
a part where I was getting stuck. I could not
figure out how to get to the bone uh beach.
Speaker 3: Right, Oh yeah, yeah, I struggled with that too.
Speaker 1: To get there.
Speaker 4: I could not figure out how to get to bone Beach.
And even when they had explained to me that there's
a thing that you need to jump on in order
to get more fight, I still couldn't figure it out.
And when I found it, when I saw it and
I realized you just needed to do it on a
very specific ledge that could get you through, I was
not at myself that I couldn't figure that out.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, it's I I think the thing is like
I mentioned last week that like I have several times
put this down and been like, I think I'm too
frustrated with this game. I get what it's doing. I
respect it, but I'm not enjoying it enough. I have
come around on it and that it's out now, So
so when I do get frustrated, they're like, I don't
want to walk around for another half hour to figure
out how to get the bone beach. I can pull
up a long play and I can just kind of like, oh, fuck, okay,
so I was supposed to cut that stupid thing, or
I can jump over that. Didn't realize that, so I
have no I will absolutely go to a guide or
something if I'm just hitting one of those walls. But
when we were playing in pre released, like he didn't
have that option at all. So I am like you, now,
I've crossed the threshold now to where I do think
I admire the game and enjoy the game more than
I'm frustrated by it. But all of the things that
I complained about last week still hold true. Like I
think there's I don't love a lot of the decisions
they made about the design of this game, but I
am liking it quite a bit still, Like as you
get more trinket slots and things like that, you can
kind of gets you go.
Speaker 4: To boss it's a game changer totally.
Speaker 3: You go to boss fight, it's like, all right, I'm
gonna get the one that's attack. I'm gonna get the
one that's defense. I'm gonna get the one that makes
the explosion when I come out of the ground, like
you'll you'll speck for that. And then when it's just
like okay, I'm just gonna be in between dungeons exploring
the overworld, I'll get a bunch of stuff that makes
it easier to traverse and kind of float down and
walk faster, and like it's I have like six trinket
slots or something now, and it's just like so much
better than it was before.
Speaker 4: So yeah, that makes a hell of a big difference
to get your trink Oh, every time you finish a boss,
you get your health maxed out a little bit more.
That's been a game changer for me. I did have
to look up a guide I think three times because
I was so fucking stuck, and then I thought to myself,
why am I so miserable? You can just look it
up and continue on. I'm glad I did that. The
other thing that I did, I don't know if I
talked about this in the last one, but I do
think it's worth I think it's I think it's the
honest thing to do, which is I went into the settings.
There's a lot of different mods that you can do
in the settings to make the game just slightly more
convenient for the player. I think that the heel is
really long, and you can get killed while you're healing
really easily because it's five seconds long, and if you're
doing a boss, you're not going to make it. I
found a mod in the settings that makes your heel
take half as much time, and I put that on
and that was a game changer for me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I have not I'm kind of a stickler with
like I like that all those are in there. I
think those accessibility things are really cool and they're pretty
like crazy, Like you don't typically see games that you
mod it that much basically.
Speaker 4: On the fly, very intricate. There's so many different ones
that you can do.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, and I haven't done that yet. I haven't
pulled the trigger on that. I think I'm far enough
now to where it's like, all right, I have a
trinket that makes me drink those things twice as fast,
so it's like, okay, I'll try to do it within
the tools it's given me without but like, I don't
know if someone needs to use that or whatever. I
totally get it.
Speaker 4: This is what I will say to you. I respect
you very much for choosing to play the game Natchy
and not altering it in any capacity. I have found
that when I altered it ever so slightly, I enjoyed
the game so much more. And they put them in
there for me to be able to alter it so
that it could be more functional and more enjoyable. And
like you, now that I've rolled credits on it, I
can look back on it and be like, that was
a great game. It was a fantastic game. I did
enjoy it. I was just getting so goddamn frustrated at
a couple bosses. And there's there's areas Dan where they
just they just keep throwing enemies at you in these
really aggressive spaces. There's like this area with glass where
you have to touch the glass to turn it into dirt,
and then you have to go under to like be
able to go under that area would have been so
fucking hard without my without my heel mod I needed
to heal in these some of these spaces, like even
faster even with even with the trinket, I was like,
I'm dying, so I will just say although I like
wrestled with it. And I also was like, oh, I
have all these I'm not going to turn them on
because I'm going to play this game all the way.
I think three fourths the way through this game, somewhere
in the mirror section, and fuck that. That mirror section
is also really brutal. I was like, I need the help.
I'm okay asking for directions. I need this, and I'm
really glad that I did.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's just a personal preference thing, like
I'm trying to do it without tweaking it, but like
it sounds like it made it a more enjoyable experience
for you, and.
Speaker 4: Like I've never better, I'm happier.
Speaker 3: I've never understood people that like get mad about like
they had in an easy mode. For It's like, fuck off,
don't use it. If you don't want to use it,
doesn't affect the way you have to play the game,
you know. So, But then again, it's like it's that's
always an interesting conversation to me because like something like
a secero, I think about that and it's like so
much of what I loved about that was like being
forced to fucking learn and get better and like, so
with that one, if they did have a Meana style
accessibility thing with like fifty different toggles to make it easier,
I can kind of see myself with that one being like, mmm,
that is kind of like changing the whole thing of
this game, you know where Mina though it feels to
me like, okay, no, this just seems like it's just
gonna help you enjoy it, you know.
Speaker 4: Well maybe, I mean I would say there's mods that
make like you do ten times the damage or make
you know, enemies do one tenth the damage to you,
I would agree with you at some point if you're
adding all those mods, then you're probably not going through
the experience of these fights. I tried a lot of
different methods, and this was the one where I was like,
I want a challenging game. I do want to suffer
a little bit. I want I want to have to
go to the bosses like a bunch of times. I
think for me, the heal was the one deal breaker
for me where I was like, if I can't heal,
I'm going to be angry. I'm angry that I can't heal,
And so that was like the one that I gave myself.
But I am with you in the sense that, like,
this game is meant to be hard, this game is
not meant to be easy. I don't want this game
to be easy. I wanted it to be managable, and
for me, that was the mod that made it manageable
but still difficult.
Speaker 3: Yeah it makes sense.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but yeah, I think it's to each their own.
And I also I fully agree with your your stance
of in general, which is like, if you really want
hard games, then leave it alone and play it exactly
as it is. This game you absolutely could get through
without altering it. I just think it's a real It's
a real fucking brutal game. To the bitter end, to
the to the last boss fight. I was like, you,
son of a bitch, this is a game that pushes
you to your absolute limits. I think it's fantastic. I
enjoyed it so so much. But I am grateful that
I made a couple I made that I made that
alteration to make myself be able to get through it.
God damn it. Uh yeah, there's a real fun area
at the end too. If you continue to play it, Dan,
I'll be curious what you think. Uh, the game has
a really interesting ending. Uh that reflects upon the way
you played the game.
Speaker 3: Interesting. Okay, I like something that.
Speaker 4: I like it too. It I like when games, uh
get a bit cheeky and reminisce about your.
Speaker 3: Experience, the Undertail type stuff.
Speaker 4: It did. It did remind me of Undertail. It's funny
that you mentioned that very specific game. I think it.
I think it did.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, yeah, I like that stuff.
Speaker 2: There's an email question that will pertain to this game,
and it made me look up the Witness reminds me
of this as well. Like reviewing that game. Not being
able to look up guides was.
Speaker 3: God, oh my god.
Speaker 2: I was just looking at my review and oh my god,
I can't stand my writing from that.
Speaker 1: Then it's not it's not like pretentious.
Speaker 2: It's just bad, badly written. You can look it up
if you want to go for it.
Speaker 1: It's not. It's not. It's no masterpiece like my Uh fucking.
Speaker 3: About the author? Yeah, yeah, about the author?
Speaker 1: Mary. What is Dungeon Claller.
Speaker 4: Dungeon Claller is a new game that I was playing. Well,
I think I played the demo back in the day,
but now the full game has come out. I love
a claw game, but this also is a deck builder
rogue like, so every time you play it's kind of
a It has a brutal first spot, which is like
you're a rabbit and they cut off your paw to
make a Lucky's rabbits paw, and then so you attach
a claw to it so that you can go through
this dungeon and get your I don't know, get your
paw back. It's kind of it's kind of mean, but anyway,
so you're claw. You're using the claw to grab knives
or hammers. If you do that, you attack the enemy
that's with you, or you could get shields that gives
you defense. And then there's lots of interactives that I
think are really fun. I'll give you an example of
one that I think is particularly interesting. They have a
water gun that you can put in the machine. If
you fill the machine with water water, certain items will float,
and certain items will sink. So the swords, because they're
made of metal, will sink to the bottom, making it
really difficult for you to pick them up. And so
enemies will fill the machine with water just to fuck
with you. And then things that are made of wood,
like a wooden shield will float because wood floats, and
so then you can you can heal. But the water
gun if you change what's in the water, If you
add a lava bomb to the water, all of a sudden,
now the water's lava. And so if you have a
water gun, it'll shoot lava at your enemies and turn them,
you know, get them on fire. You can do the
same thing with poisons. You can make the water poison,
you can make the the water freeze the characters with
the water gun. So I think it's really neat how
much you can play with the different elements that's in
this tank and build your character. You build your deck
based on how you want to attack. Is it you
want to go with a poison build, you want to
have like a crit build where you're just like getting
lots of krits. One of the things that I really
got addicted to doing was I got a shrink ray.
Every time you pull a shrink ray, it shrinks three
items in the thing. So I was able to grab
like ten fucking swords because they're so small and they
fit inside your claw. It's quite delightful and playful, and
especially if you like claw games, I really, I truly
did like this. It starts easy, but it gets difficult
towards the end.
Speaker 3: It reminds me of like rack Cooin doing a thing
where it's like in this post Blattro world where it's like, okay,
what are things that we can like blattroify here, And
it's like, okay, so coin pushers, claw machines, like everything
is ripe for it.
Speaker 4: I like, literally have another one that's going to come
up later in this episode that's exactly the same. I
think this one is better. I think there's a lot
that are trying to do the Rogue Light deck builder style,
like you said, and not all of them are doing
it for me. But the Claw game is and silly
and interesting enough that I am enjoying playing it. I
find that the poison build is the best for me
right now. You can also upgrade your items, delete items
in your deck, lots of different types of boss fights
that challenge you in different ways, poison bosses or bosses
that have little miniature versions of themselves that come after
you at the end. It's a cute little game that
I've really enjoyed. I think I've put a decent amount
of time on this when I was on my trip,
because I could play this every night, and what I
found myself doing was before I went to sleep at night,
I would play one round of Dungeon Caller every night
before I went to bed. They take like forty five
minutes to burn through unless you die, and just to
see if I could get lucky and get through it nice.
Speaker 3: Yeah, do you like it more than something like coin?
Speaker 4: I think that wreck coin might be polished more. When
it comes to what game I would play more, I'd
probably play Dungeon Claller more because I would rather play
a claw machine game than a coin pusher. Sure, I
don't go to coin put If I hit an arcade,
I r L. I am going to the claw machine.
Speaker 3: Yep, I just.
Speaker 4: Got this in a claw machine.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was huge.
Speaker 4: It was too It was like three dollars to play
once and I got I got them very close, and
then I put another street Bucks in and and got them.
Speaker 1: Like.
Speaker 4: I love claw machines, So I don't think everybody feels
probably that connected to car machines. But there's so much
fun and you can get fucked over in this game,
so like you'll maybe you'll see like a bunch of
really good stuff in your machine, and so you'll be like,
I'm gonna grab six uh swords. But if you get
too greedy, sometimes the claw will try and pick up
too much and pick up nothing. You have to be
particular with the claw machine to get what you want.
There's also chance games that I thought were pretty fun.
So like there's money. You need money to upgrade your
items or delete items, things like that, and so they'll
have a machine that has a bunch of items in it,
like a bunch of coins, but then also spike traps,
and so when you're digging with your claw to get
all the money, if you get a bunch of spikes,
you can take like fifty damage. You could like lose
half your health if you do it incorrectly, which I
think is kind of cheeky and funny. There's different they
alter the machine in different ways to kind of mess
with you. Sometimes, like I said, like they'll fill it
with water or they'll add a bunch of fluff, which
doesn't help you, and it can fill your claw in
ways you didn't want, so you can get nothing and
get absolutely obliterated in an you know, in a turn
if you're not paying attention. So, like I said, it
starts easy and it gets quite difficult towards the end.
If you have a bad claw, you're you're done, though,
you gotta pay attention.
Speaker 2: Was Rude Dice the game the other game you mentioned,
because this all also reminds me of Bilatro. They're taking
this classic format of a game and then just adding
like roguelike and kind of game breaking elements to it.
Speaker 4: Yep, Rude Dice is the same vibe. Yeah, I called it.
I said rude Dice.
Speaker 1: And it was supposed to be rude Dice.
Speaker 4: Rude Rude Dice was a typo.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: We were joking on the break that it's like dice
that when you roll it, it's like eat shit loser,
just like all right, U une dice, Okay, okay, game
take it down a notch. Also deck Builder, but you
have dice. You throw a dice, If it meets another
dice with the same number, then that's an attack. But
also your dice keeps rolling to hit other dice of
the of the new number. So I'll give you an example.
You have dice in there that are one, two, three, four.
Your dice has one. If you throw it and it
hits a one, your dice is now two, and if
it finds a two dice as it's bopping around, it
becomes a three dice, and then it becomes a four dice,
and then you're doing You're doing a one attack, a
two attack, a three attack, and a four attack if
you can get that far. As you build your deck,
the numbers will now have fancy things on it, like fire.
So if you hit a three dice that has fire
on it, now you're doing three damage with a fire attack.
Same thing with ice or any elemental. There's heel dice
that you'll need as you get sick. There's poison dice,
of course, and there's ways for you to heal or
like protect yourself from poison, et cetera. I think that
this game is also a little rough on the edges.
Some of these feel not as not as fine tuned
as rack Coin, but they're still enjoyable as a simple mechanic.
And I do love seeing dice explode when you hurl
a dice into like a giant thing of dice, and
then you get to you get to watch like a
bunch of action happen. So I think it's fine for
like a nice simple game, little action action romp. I've won.
I find it a little easy. I've I've burned through
two areas now, whereas a Dungeon Caller took a long
time for me to be able to win that game.
It was it was harder, but nevertheless, I think if
you're really looking for deck building, rogue lights and you
like Dice, I think that's kind of a nice caveat there.
It's an easy game to enjoy and learn and kind
of burn through overtime.
Speaker 1: You seem to have a trend going lately with.
Speaker 2: Classic find classic simple games with rug leg elements.
Speaker 4: I find these cathartic. These are again, these are I'm
going to play round because the plane is starting to
land and I have about maybe forty minutes on the
you know, on this plane left before we get off
the tarmac. So I'm gonna I'm going to do one
round and see where it takes me. I don't think
they're going to be for everybody, but I I do
like the random chance and odds based games. I still
play Rackcoin, and I will play I will gladly play
Dungeon Caller and run Dice like when I'm bored and
I just want to do something for about forty minutes.
Speaker 3: I mean it's great just to have like an option
on the Steam deck that's you know, relatively mindless, not
to be reductive or anything, which like I can just
kind of turn my brain up. It's not a story.
It's not a thing where it's like, oh god, am
I going to get wrapped into a fifteen minute cut
scene or dialogue sequence as the plane is landing, Like
I totally know what you're talking about. Like I love
having those.
Speaker 1: Still playing on planes.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I play Megabank too. I recommend Megabank for like
friends who are like I want to play something, but
I don't want to think too much and I think
I'm gonna smoke weed tonight, and I'm like.
Speaker 1: Perfect, I have a game for you.
Speaker 4: Yeah, if you're gonna like get hopped up on a
couple of drugs, I recommend megabonk. You don't have to
do ship in that game. And when you if you again,
like so like going back to Dungeon Caller, like it's
just you're not going to be upset, You're not going
to be stressed out, like if the enemy is really
tough and you die, it's just like, oh, well, now,
I guess I'll just start again. There's just nothing stressful
about these games. I've been playing them a lot, and
I've been enjoying them. I think they are plentiful, but
good news, I like them well.
Speaker 2: Speaking of planes, Marry, you also said you wanted to
talk briefly because you played a smidgeon of Fortsa on
steam Deck.
Speaker 1: What is that like? Because that is also a game.
I'm like, I'm playing that on a big screen. If
I'm playing forts.
Speaker 3: That, I've got a steering wheel and pedals.
Speaker 2: Is a wall that's like a wall TV, which I
would also love to play forts A.
Speaker 4: Can you believe that they even have the ability to
play forts on a steam Deck? I was shocked when
I installed it. I was like, this game is gonna
play like butt and it is functional on a steam Deck.
You absolutely can play it. I think the graphics, as
you might expect, will not be very good, the people
look ridiculous, but you can play it on a steam Deck.
My biggest problem that I've had is that, uh, what's
it called? When like a graphic is really far away?
The draw the distance the draw distance is not very far.
So every once in a while I'll be like going
one hundred and twenty miles an hour, and then a
car will appear right in and I'll hit it because
I it wasn't in my purview until I got too
close to it. But you're going one hundred and twenty
miles an hour. That's fucking annoying. But the game still
plays as it should Outside of that. I was able
to play three hours of Fortsa so far, and I
think it's a fantastic car game, especially for people who
are into car enthusiasts. In a Steam deck, I probably
wouldn't recommend it. I think you should probably play that
on a TV and enjoy how beautiful it looks and
how it feels on a Steam deck, I felt like
I was playing an iPhone version of this game. I
will just say, though, I think it's a marvel that
they could get it to run on a Steam deck.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, definitely yeah. I mean if you just want to,
like I could see like on a plane, just like
I'm gonna drive around and just get some you know,
bonus collectibles and stuff like that. It's not one where
you're gonna do like the biggest, you know, most climactic
race on the Steam deck.
Speaker 4: Probably, Please do not play this on a steam deck
unless you are you are going out of your way
to try and complete it or something like that. However,
isn't it amazing that they were able to shove all
those cars in a fucking Steam deck and it runs?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Have you been playing?
Speaker 4: He's crazy?
Speaker 3: I mean I'm several hours into it, i'd say, but
like you know, a bunch of other stuff like forts
is one that's always going to be there. If I'm
in between games, I will pick it up. I don't
need to remember, like where was I at in the
story or what was my objective here? I will pick
it up. Three months Sortza does not matter, Nope, I'll
pick it up. I'm just gonna drive, hit some signs,
go to the nearest thing and have fun, you know
like that that's a year round when I'm in the
mood type of game.
Speaker 2: You know, I do want to see Japan in this game,
like what they go with it? Because what five was Mexico,
four was UK, the UK.
Speaker 3: There was Australia.
Speaker 1: It was one of them, Australia. Yeah, yeah, what I.
Speaker 4: Want to see it's beautiful and they do like you know,
you'll you'll drive past Tokyo Tower on one of your
first road trips, and they kind of call out the
visual spectacles of what makes Tokyo and these different areas
so beautiful to drive around in, and you're in like
gorgeous cars as usual, running around like a little menace.
So I think it captures the joy of all these games.
It's probably earned the positive reviews that it's gotten, So
I'd like to play it on a bigger screen and
give it a better go and not play it on
my Steam deck anymore.
Speaker 2: Dan am I pronouncing it correctly? Picnico Pictonico Nico.
Speaker 3: It is another Nintendo for a it's Nintendo making a
phone game again. And it's just straight up warrior ware
using your photo album and uh, it's hilarious in the
way that warriorware is, but it's got the extra wrinkle
of like, well, when it boots up, it's like, okay,
looking at twenty six thousand of your photos and you
had to be like, well, who slow down, buddy, and
like you point it towards maybe an album, and it's like,
how about you just use these here? So I don't
you're not scanning every boarding pass screenshot. I have receipts,
you know whatever, but it's very good at finding ones
with like faces. And so okay, that warriorware thing pops
up and it's Mike's face and it says eight, and
it'll be like a kebab and I have to like
grab your jaw and may go and you eat all
this stuff. Or a picture of Mary pops up and
your eyebrows are pinball flippers and I tap them to
like try to like hit pinball stuff. So it's just
although like ludicrous, you know, very fast action of a
warriorwear with the funny X factor of like, oh what
goofy picture from.
Speaker 4: My real pictures?
Speaker 3: Yeah, from your phone's photo album. So that's why like
this needs to be a.
Speaker 4: Phone capturing your phone data.
Speaker 3: Uh it is. I mean they do a bunch of
stuff of like hey, just heads up, we're not doing
evil stuff. We're Nintendo. Don't worry about it, you know,
so hopefully they're not. But I would recommend making like
a photo album basically and saying hey, like I just
loaded up here.
Speaker 4: You can have access to one album, not everything.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I just loaded it up, and it's like photo
access is restricted. You should go, you know, allow access
to everything's like, no, that's okay, we'll just do this,
thank you. Yeah, it's it's very funny though. It's uh,
I got a lot of charm if you like warriorwere
or like those old like game Boy camera mini games
and stuff where you could take pictures and play around
with them. It's it's fantastic for that. Cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this looks pretty fun. I could see this being
a good party game. People are just hanging out at
the house totally.
Speaker 4: Yeah, absolutely, but only on the phone. Can you can't
put it on the TV?
Speaker 3: No, no, I meant or whatever? You know?
Speaker 1: Yeah, sure, I guess it's not a party game.
Speaker 3: Then you can kind of pass it around, like I mean,
one round of it takes you know, a couple of minutes,
so you could like hand to someone be like hey
check this out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, fair enough, all right, You guys want to talk
about emails? Yeah, yeah, okay.
Speaker 2: As always, you can run into fire Escape cast at
gmail dot com get questions read on the show. We
got some regular tonight. I think we have a new
email er, but that is fire Escape cast at gmail
dot com. Third and final section of every episode we
read through these. Uh, Dan, Mary, do you want to
read this first one from Ryan.
Speaker 4: Sure, at what point? Oh wait is there?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 4: Okay, that's how it starts. There was no like hello,
no fire escapees. It just gets right to it. I
kind of respect that.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 4: Two just starts with at what point do you throw
in the towel and look up the solution to a
puzzle or challenge in a video game. I have very
little tolerance for wasting my time anymore, and I'm always
amazed to hear how much time you all spend trying
to solve things on your own. Thanks Ryan from Chicago.
Speaker 1: I did put.
Speaker 2: I did select this email before we talked about Mina from.
Speaker 4: That's so funny. It's a perfect example. It is my
answer to this. It's not a specific game, but Mina
is a good example. Is when I say to myself
out loud, I'm not having fun anymore.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I feel like I've seen all these areas. I
don't know where I'm fucking going.
Speaker 4: I'm doing my best. I wish to move on. I
want to move I want to have progress in a game.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and with that game, like, once you learn what
it is, it's not like you know, I think in
a game that does this better if you do look
up the solution. Sometimes you'll feel like, oh man, I
rob myself. That would have been fun to figure out
on my own. I have not felt that with Mina.
I have felt every time like I'm glad I look
that up. This would have pissed me off, you know.
Speaker 2: Barometer like like there's time in like Froumsoft games where
I especially in elden Ring and what was it. I
think it was Dark Soul's three. There was a couple
bosses where Dark Soul's Three I reviewed, so I didn't
have the luxury, but I remember thinking, okay, I'm doing
my best, and I'm pretty good at these games. I
feel like there's something I'm missing, and I finally looked
it up. I'm like, okay, well, I would not have
ever known that unless I talked to this one NPC
across the world. But like other times, I've looked it
up and be like, oh fuck, I just wasn't like
listening to the game in the right way during this
boss fight, and that's disappointing.
Speaker 1: The first one though, I'm like, no, I don't.
Speaker 2: I wish I had the time to do that, but
there are too many games coming out these days like
I want to have fun and I want to see
the entirety of the game, But like there's also times
like again I would mention earlier during the game segment,
I was like I was reviewing The Witness. If I
was to play The Witness today, I would absolutely look
up solutions to some of those mazes, having reviewed that
game and gotten through all of it, but I think
twelve of the panels just brute forcing it. I'm glad
I did that because I also had that big Eureka
moment that that game has that some people have finished
it and not even know.
Speaker 3: I never saw it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I'm Drew Scanler. I remember was walking by
my desk. He's like, what the fuck are you doing?
I was like, oh, yeah, this is like a whole
thing the game doesn't.
Speaker 1: Really tell you about. But like, I'm glad I did that.
Speaker 2: But I also that was a time when I was
just literally being paid to focus on one game for
a while and make sure I could review it adequately.
But I I also I stopped feeling shame when I
had to look things up.
Speaker 1: But like I I also am the.
Speaker 2: Like there are still puzzle games or like challenges where
I'm like I get through it, I'm like, oh, that
was really really satisfying to get through. Like Dan, I
was watching a couple of your clips from seki Row
and that's not the same thing, but like you you
were like, wow, that was incredible.
Speaker 3: Well, second, Roard was like two different things where it's
like I would never want to know how to beat
a boss necessarily unless I don't know. Most of time,
it's like I'm going to do this in all, learn
the patterns, and I'll have that moment of satisfaction when
you put it all together. But then it's like there
are parts where it's like I don't know how to
progress the quote unquote story of Securo, And I told
the chat when I was streaming that, like you can
just tell me because like I'm just that's always just
so annoying to me, where the chat will just be
like oh yeah, I mean it's yeah, you just gotta
talk to that dog and put some rice in your
ass and then you go to the next area. Don't
know that. Yeah, it's like the frum stuff where it's like, Okay,
I don't get any satisfaction out.
Speaker 2: Of it, Like it was, it was fun to do.
Like again, like my favorite game of all time. I
frequently say, is Majora's Mask if I was to play
that game. Well, obviously, if I was going to play
that game today, wouldn't be my favorite game because it's
not aged extremely well. But like back when I first
played that, that was one of like three games that
whole year that not we all played a lot of games,
but like, there are just too many games these days,
and I want to get to the next thing, and
I don't mean.
Speaker 1: To like be fleeting with the current one.
Speaker 2: But Majora's Mask like was something I could just ensconce
myself in, and I didn't mind that this Zora on
the other side of the map gave me a hint
as to what to do in the Decu Swamp. Like
that made sense to me because I all my focus
was on this one game world in the universe. But
like nowadays it's like, well, i'd love to dive into
for it's a horizon, which I would hope I don't
need a strategy guide for unless it's one of the
barn Finds, if they still have those. Like it's it's
so saturated these days, which is a great thing. Like
there's an embarrassment of riches for us to play. But
it's also I always feel like I could be I
could be seeing more of this game and getting on
to uh mina like in Double seven, if there's a
thing where I didn't know what to do which didn't happen,
and just using that as hypothetical, it's like, I have
a harder time now just really beating my head against
the wall until I get that AHA moment sometimes so
they can.
Speaker 4: Be powerful, Like Dan was saying, sometimes there's like the
aha feels really valuable, and sometimes you're like a fucking idiot,
and I just wish that the game, like I wish
that I could just look up a guide and know
so I can stop being mad at myself.
Speaker 1: I have like I.
Speaker 4: Thought of like another one. When I played wind Waker
the first time ever, I got pretty lost during a
boss fight and I couldn't figure out why I was
going in the wrong door and I had to redo
the boss fight and I was dying from the boss
and I finally looked it up and it's I guess,
the way the sword falls is the door you're supposed
to go through.
Speaker 3: Oh, I know that.
Speaker 4: It did not click for me. I did not understand
and as soon as I looked it up and they
were like, go through the door the sword points at
and I was like, you know what, fuck it. I'm
glad I looked it up. I'm not dealing with this shit.
Tell me what to do. Same thing with the water
temple in Links Awakening.
Speaker 3: Is that the one arena?
Speaker 4: Whatever, tell me where to go. I'm not dealing with
all this shit. You gotta put on the heavy boots,
you gotta find a hidden door. It's like upside down
and under something I would never have thought of that
I need. I bet it felt really cool for the
nine year old that discovered that on their own. I
bet that felt like a million.
Speaker 3: Dollars no dollars, Yeah, yeah, it was.
Speaker 2: That's what I was interest. That's such an interesting thing.
It's like, I don't even know how to phrase this.
Speaker 3: I do.
Speaker 2: Like again, I say, Majora's Mask and Akarina are my
number one and two favorite games of all time, But like,
there's some things that have aged so poorly that by
today's standards, and like God games have gotten so much
better at being intuitive in a way that older games
were not. You literally just had to be lost and
kind of sometimes accidentally hit a certain patch of wall
with your sword in order to get through, and then
it becomes like a word of mouth thing like urban legend,
like that's how you get through and it spreads and
that was really cool and of its time, but now
I'm just like I unfortunately my patience for that has
worn thin. And to your point, yeah, it's like I
play games ninety five percent of the time to have fun.
Speaker 1: They can convey other emotions.
Speaker 4: You know, to like them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they can convey other emotions, but generally speaking and
playing video games to have fun. But I'm not having fun.
I'm like, well, why am I doing this? I'm going
to google this. Oh that was stupid. But yeah, every
once in a while, to your point, it like it does,
I do kind of have a pang of guilt. I'm like, oh,
I really didn't meet the developers halfway with that one.
I really got impatient when I could have probably paid
more attention to what was happening.
Speaker 4: I thought of one more. Do you guys remember PT? Yeah,
the playabilities are from could.
Speaker 1: I love that they did that, but yeah, that's the worst.
Speaker 2: Like, oh, I had to answer the phone three times
and then look at that window four times.
Speaker 1: And then answer the phone three more times.
Speaker 4: I was playing that demo live on game Spot when
it came out, and I think I played it for
like seven hours because we couldn't figure out how to
get the goddamn phone to ring. And I think you
had to whisper something into the mic.
Speaker 3: Of your Jiffy or something. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Fuck that. I we just ended up looking it up.
But I actually think it was kind of more interesting
and maybe it was his intention for us to look
it up.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think the word to share on the internet, which
is like it was a good gorilla marketing kind of thing. Yeah. No,
I don't know how anybody figured that shit out. I
was a angry person in the world.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I was angry that I couldn't figure it out,
But it ended up becoming a funny moment because we
had to look it up.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you Ryan from Chicago.
Speaker 2: Uh, Dan, do you want to read this one from
my old friend Wes from Baltimore?
Speaker 3: Sure? What's up? Bill crud up? What's a reference you
make that nobody gets? I find myself occasionally quoting Michael
Keaton from the film The Other Guys, where he says,
I don't even understand the reference. It is an ironic
quote given this question, but nobody has seen that movie
and it never gets picked up on. Thanks Chuds Wes
from Baltimore. No, that movie's great. I just watched it
again fairly recently, and that recurring bit with Michael Keaton
unintentionally referencing TLC songs is fucking hilarious.
Speaker 1: I did. I just watched it like a week ago.
Speaker 2: Two.
Speaker 3: Hey, guys, don't go chas some waterfalls, guys, come on.
Should be doing this on purpose.
Speaker 1: That's really good.
Speaker 3: The ongoing Will Ferrell being married to Eva Mendez and
just keep talking about his ugly, ugly wife.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and she's just super subservient and he's a dick
to her.
Speaker 1: The marcle is like, what the fuck is this movie's good?
Speaker 2: Ship. I watched it, yeah, like late night a week
ago and it still holds up.
Speaker 3: Really it does. Yeah, I've done too. Whenever there's like
a super gory thing, I did it today on the
State of Play watch along on Giant Bomb, Like Wolverine
is just eviscerating, like gore and blood everywhere, and like
someone call nine one one tug you guys.
Speaker 2: Michael Keaton reminded me that I quote the his first
Batman movie.
Speaker 1: Fairly often he when he like.
Speaker 2: His version of Bruce Wayne is so weird, he would
just be, uh, he had to get in a fight
at like a bar, restaurant or something, and I would
routinely say, like you want to get nuts, Let's get nuts,
or like you ever tank with the Devil by the
pale mood light. Yeah, he just says the weirdest shit,
Like his Bruce Wayne is weirder than his Batman.
Speaker 3: They throw some of that into Lego Batman, Like that
dance to the Devil thing, I think is.
Speaker 1: Over really Yeah, that's a really good line.
Speaker 2: But I also, like I said this before, when someone
is talking about it's ironic that I do this, But
like if I if I'm talking to someone who's just
getting way too waxing poetic about like wine or video
games or something, and they'll be like, yeah, so this
game's kind of like an examination of the American sublime,
and I'll be like, yeah, saw's a toilet from Cool Runnings.
Speaker 1: There's a there's a scene in Cool Runnings.
Speaker 2: I've talked about this in the show for where he's
like giving a presentation to this crowd and he's like
Bob flat gentleman, it's a sophisticated and there's this random
extra in the back is like.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so's a toilet, and then they just.
Speaker 3: Move on with the scene.
Speaker 2: So anybody, anytime anybody's making way too big of a
deal out of something that shouldn't be I was like, Yeah,
this is a toilet.
Speaker 4: That's a good one. I like when they're like so obscure.
Most people are like, what are you talking about? I
think I think this one's maybe a lot of people
know it, but I know that, like my family doesn't
know it. But anytime you find out about something that
it doesn't really matter, I can use it in a
million different ways. But the line is the whole time,
the whole time, the whole time, the whole time, and
you just say that four different ways. That's from missus doubtfire.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: When Sally Fields finds out that her ex is the
kids uh yeah, babysitter in drag and every the way
she says it, she's such a good actress. God, I
love Sally Field's but her being like the whole time,
the whole time, the whole time, the whole time, I
do that a lot. Nobody really, I think it's rarely
do people like connect that that is, missus doubtfire, But fuck,
that's good. That in almost every line from The Simpsons
that I probably ever used a billion times.
Speaker 3: I feel like all the stars are here. I say
that's so much because it applies to so many fucking things.
But like most people know, Like I think that most
people that know me know what that's from, right, Yeah, yeah, yeah,
for sure the norm thing. Yeah yeah, yeah, I.
Speaker 1: Literally just quoted the most obscure norm but earlier.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Oh dude, Mike, I remember when we were doing
burgle my Bananas and I kept trying to make you
crack When there's the part of mcgruber when he's like
pretending to hold Kristen Wig hostage at the Vegas Club
and he's like, my name is mccruber. Who am I
you ask? That's what I've been doing the shop And
I was like, what is this too? I just look directly,
you ask.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just waiting for like waiting it up.
Speaker 3: You just blew our cover.
Speaker 1: It was a huge advantage. He gets on stage and
just immediately ruins the entire mission.
Speaker 3: Lady. When later Colonel faces, oh it's okay, he thinks
you're dad.
Speaker 2: Yes, I still like I I knew I loved my
wife more than like anything in the world. But like
I showed her mcgroober for the first time, and this
was like six months ago or something, and I have
not heard her laugh as hard as she has laughed
when they cut to the first sex scene, and I
somehow she laughed even harder when they did the same
exact bit three minutes later with the ghost.
Speaker 3: Of his death.
Speaker 2: That's when he proposed, Mary, you and I we have
really obscure or rather, what's the word I'm looking for,
like really.
Speaker 4: Super inside gee side like it's b side.
Speaker 2: Quotes from Home Alone that somehow became part of canieval vernacular.
Speaker 1: Like my favorite.
Speaker 2: Line in Home Alone is when they're chasing Kevin, like
the gloves are off, They're chasing Kevin through the house.
Speaker 1: He's clearly got this plan.
Speaker 2: He had a repeat across from the attic to the
tree house and Marv and Harry were giving chase after
the whole tarantula scene, and Harry beat the shit out
of him with a crowbar, and uh, Marv's like, Marv's like, we.
Speaker 1: Gotta get after him. He's gonna call the cops. And
then Harry's like but from a tree house.
Speaker 2: And then on their way, they're like like pulling themselves
along the rope and they see him with the garden chairs,
like what's up.
Speaker 1: Your horse's ass?
Speaker 2: And they see him not to cut it, and Harry
turns around to go back towards go back, go back.
Speaker 1: We use that a lot and Residentavi.
Speaker 4: Oh, we do say go back a lot.
Speaker 3: I love that.
Speaker 1: That's what it's from.
Speaker 2: It's because he knows he's about to cut the rope
they're on and they slam into the house.
Speaker 4: So good.
Speaker 1: Those are mine.
Speaker 4: Those are classics. They're really good. And I like that
we invented some uh to this day sometimes like I'll
upload a video and some will be like shot gun
shells in the Morgue and that's like one we invented
because it was like, don't forget shotgun shells in the morgue,
which we did. I think we did end up forgetting that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it started because it like we we had gotten
to a tough part of I think it was Resident
Evil zero and no, no, no, it was resume will remake
the first one we played, and uh, we had hit
a checkpoint where we just could not get past it.
But it was several episodes worth, and I kept reminding
you that there were shotgun shells in the morgue that
you go back to, but you just kept forgetting to
go back, so it became a thing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, shotgun shells in the morgue.
Speaker 2: Well, thank you, Wes, thank you, Chud. I will bring
this one also, Darien from Toronto.
Speaker 4: Wes, he calls you a Chud.
Speaker 1: I know, I'm just calling him one back.
Speaker 4: Oh okay.
Speaker 2: Darien also emails often, Hey, homies, because you said you
liked unsolicited recommendations so much, you should watch The Kid Detective,
a mid budget genre parody that takes a really memorable turn.
Speaker 1: At the end.
Speaker 2: Do you guys have any movies you like that drastically
shift tone as they go and do you think something
like that could work for a video game? Cheers Darien
from Toronto. Dan and I both yeah, yeah, you you go.
Speaker 3: I got four that came to mind immediately. Full Metal,
Full Metal Jacket.
Speaker 1: That's a good one.
Speaker 4: That's a good example.
Speaker 3: That's that's a one and two. There's two movies in there,
basically from Desk till Dawn. Oh, that's a similar situation.
Speaker 4: It's way through right, maybe even before that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, both of those movies are I feel like, are
like two different movies once things change. You know, Barbarian
which Mary told me about, and Barbarian's got some shifts
and audition. I don't know if anyone's heard of this.
Speaker 4: It's the Japanese what's your fucking problem recommending that?
Speaker 3: The Bak clubs that movie. She was the one who
recommended it to me, and it's like, Oh, that's unbelievably
fucked up. Yeah, sios, it's a lot.
Speaker 4: Shtill mourning about audition yet.
Speaker 3: That one's a lot. Yeah. She she told me just
like we're gonna go in blind on this and I
watched it. I was like, oh, I see why we
went and blind.
Speaker 4: You have all been warned. That is a tough watch.
Speaker 3: I do.
Speaker 4: I think it. I think it fits what you've been
asked for, so I will allow it, but please please
don't watch that if you guys are squeamish.
Speaker 3: It goes it gets pretty extreme by the end. Good yes, God, yes, yes.
Speaker 2: I would say Cabin in the Woods definitely does that
as well.
Speaker 4: Oh that's a good example.
Speaker 2: Every single sketch from I Think You Should Leave does
that like halfway through. But Dan, you and I both
thought of Search Party, And I've talked about this show
several times in the last few episodes, but I haven't
checked in the last week. There's still no way to
watch it without getting that annoying, like specifically the HBO
plus Hulu subscription that show.
Speaker 1: The less I say about it, the better.
Speaker 2: But like each time you finish a season, get ready
for quite a different show. And then I would also
probably put.
Speaker 1: Just thinking horror movies now.
Speaker 2: Get Out has a similar tonal shift, like, oh, yeah,
this is not what I thought this movie was about
at all, and a man and I watched that again recently.
Speaker 1: Get Out still so fucking good.
Speaker 2: Yeah I nope as well, but like nope kind of
builds to it more, whereas get Out is like, oh,
that's what this, that's the horror of the movie. Okay,
I get it. Well, I don't get it, but you
know what I mean. But yeah, those are mine.
Speaker 4: There's a couple horror movies that fit this pretty good.
Mandy is a good tone shift. I think it starts
kind of sad and it feels like it might be
like an action movie and it just goes out all
out wacky music based horror. It's hard to describe that one,
but it's like it's very music oriented for the second half,
and I think that's a crazy tone shift. And I
also think The Substance has a crazy tone shift, yes,
for its last act. The majority of that it's surreal,
but you can you're the train is on the tracks
most of this film, and then at the end they
were like, get rid of that, We're just gonna go crazy.
And I think that's really cool, and it really kind
of flipped the script on what anyone was expecting. I
think that's a great tone shift towards the end.
Speaker 2: You mentioning Mandy also reminded me it's not a horror movie,
but in terms of movies where a ton of people
were recommending it to me and I had no idea
what it would be about. I was like, oh, okay,
I'll watch Pig, which I think is about a guy
whose pig gets kidnapped, which it is.
Speaker 1: Exactly.
Speaker 4: Think it's gonna be john what it's like.
Speaker 2: And then like Dan, You're like, Mike, there's one specific
scene I think you're gonna love, and I'm like, okay, well,
I'll check it out and It's like, oh, I didn't.
I didn't even know they would ever try to do
this weird underground service industry chef battle bunker thing. Color
Out of Space did something similar, but I kind of
knew what that was going forwards because it was Lovecraft story.
Speaker 1: Basically anything with Nicholas Cage. Now that I say out.
Speaker 3: Loud, well, face off as the tone will change once
they take their faces off.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess face off consider it changes the tone.
Speaker 4: I think the tone is the same.
Speaker 3: Mary. That's the new VHS. I just got at a
toy fair over the weekend. They got a face off
right there?
Speaker 4: You did? I have face off too?
Speaker 3: Nice? Nice?
Speaker 4: We can both watch face off on our selective uh
VHS players and then maybe play them at the same time.
Speaker 3: That sounds great, Let's do it.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I love collecting VHS's.
Speaker 3: It's at a bunch of this weekend. I got like
a bunch of the mask.
Speaker 4: If you can find the.
Speaker 3: Mask, me have the mask. I can take a look.
Speaker 4: I want the mass. I found an old run and
Stimpy that's been pretty fun to play. Yeah, and it's
it's the VHS bright Orange just like Nickelodeon back in
the day.
Speaker 3: You know talking about Oh yeah, I had some of those. Yeah, totally, Yeah,
it's cool.
Speaker 2: Oh what was the movie with Lakeith Stanfield?
Speaker 3: Oh? That definitely has a shift, Yeah for sure.
Speaker 2: And then, weirdly enough, one of my favorite songs of
all time.
Speaker 1: Do you guys listen to Dan?
Speaker 2: I would assume you might be more into Roxy music, Mary,
maybe you are classic rock, not classic rock, but like.
Speaker 1: Like almost like Talking Heads era.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they have a song called Mother of Pearl which
literally completely shifts halfway through. It starts off as this
more fast driving classic rock ACBC esque song, but then
it literally hits a piano note and then it shifts
into a different key, and then it becomes more like
this like Tom Bowie Ballad, one of my favorite Tom
songs of all times. You get like five minutes listen
to Mother of Pearl by Roxy Music.
Speaker 1: It's incredible.
Speaker 2: I heard it at a bar that I now live
basically above, so it's got a full circle moment. But yeah,
Search Party, I really want to rewatch that show, but
they're not making it easy because I don't have the
specific subscription. Plus this one another subscription service, which is
annoying as hell, because that show deserves.
Speaker 3: Better it's one of the biggest chasms and how good
the show is and how few people I've ever heard
mention it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, it's incredible.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Bonk and I were talking about it today. It's
so good.
Speaker 2: Not to be a broken record. But and Or, like
I mentioned, there's it'll be three episodes and you're like, Okay,
I get the tone they're going for, I get what
they're doing, and then all of a sudden, they'll do
a time jump and it's three episode chunk, and it's like,
holy fucking shit, it feels like a mini movie in
three episode form. All of a sudden, they go into
a very very pacific genre in the second or first
season midway through the first season, where I'm like, are
they really gonna do this kind of show for three episodes?
And they do it, and it's absolutely fucking kick ass,
And there's certain conceits to it that feel like a
video game, almost like in the space they're using.
Speaker 1: It's I maybe people know what I'm talking about.
Speaker 2: Maybe I'm being too vague, but like if I name
the planet, people might know what I'm talking about. The
water planet with the labor. I don't know that's enough
for people hopefully it's enough for people who've seen the show.
But like, I can't say enough about how that show
just like shifts gears so well, and each of them
is just incredible, most of them.
Speaker 4: I will say, Yeah, I love things that shift tone,
and I think maybe it's just like the unexpectedness of
it that I think makes it so enjoyable to watch.
But we've seen, you know, there's a lot of movies
out there, right, So it's like when you can flip
the script and make people second guess why something happening,
it makes the movie so memorable. And I feel that
way about television shows as well, when it's just like
you probably thought this was a comedy, but we're about
to get real serious, real quick. And I like when
when any media does that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was gonna say, it's answered Darien's second part,
the question do you think a video game could do this?
Speaker 1: I do think there are some that have.
Speaker 2: I guess Melgar Soliditud sort of did this, but that
was more like how the marketing interacted with it.
Speaker 3: It does it a couple of times. There's the big
one at the beginning, and then there's a big one
couplefore the end.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely.
Speaker 4: And until Don is a good Tonal Shift has a.
Speaker 2: Video game, Yeah, until Don near Portal two. Once you
figure out what's going on with both portal games, you're like,
oh fuck, this is very different.
Speaker 3: Like I mean, the Uncharted games regularly did a thing
where it's like it would take a turn for the
supernatural kind of near the end.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, same with what was the game?
Speaker 2: I was just thinking, uh no, I thought I was
gonna say Alan Wake, but that's pretty horror centric the
whole time. Yeah, yeah, no, I think like I actually,
now that we talk about it, that's a very specific
format that I really enjoy, whether it's in movies or
TV or games like it a lot.
Speaker 4: Yeah, anytime you can actually pull it off, it's so memorable.
Speaker 1: All right.
Speaker 2: Well, thank you Darien, Yeah, Chud, Well, thank you everybody
for writing in. That's far SCA cast at gmail dot com.
Get your questions on the next episode. This is episode
one thirty four, run one thirty five. Next episode we
should start talking about, uh episode one fifty maybe one
do something special that'll be like a few months out
where we're gonna be busy. Mary.
Speaker 4: Think about it.
Speaker 2: You're traveling coming up I'm traveling as well, but we
might have some subs coming up, but will It was
nice to get all three of us together again.
Speaker 4: Four things get always. Yeah, it's the summer. Is always
a crazy travel time, but it's worth it, and we'll
hopefully have some opportunities to see each other as well.
Speaker 1: I'm my next test two of six next week recording.
Speaker 4: Do you have the results from your test one?
Speaker 1: Nope, I'm sitting.
Speaker 2: I'm not only sitting test two before I get the
results of test one. I'm writing my dissertation before I
get the results of I think either. I'm pretty sure
I passed the first one, but you know, we'll see.
So that's going well be done in like twenty twenty eight. Well,
thank you everybody for joining Dan. What do you have
going on in the meantime until next episode?
Speaker 3: Boy, if you're listening to this episode, there's probably a
whole bunch of summer games. Best watch a longs and
couch segments. Believe I will be on a couch with
Mary and some guests. I don't want to case anything
you gets funky with scheduling. I'll say me and Mary
for sure, and then some other friends will be on
a couch, so watch those archives. Those night shows are
always fun when I'm not getting killed with confetti canons.
Speaker 1: Mary, what about you.
Speaker 2: Same?
Speaker 4: I am excited to do some summer games fest couch stuff,
and then I will be continuing to stream. I'm going
to go back to streaming. I'd take two weeks off
because of work. I was just so busy, but I'll
be going back to streaming soon, so please join me
for some streams on Monday. I usually play those like
little indie games there. Oh I finished Forbidden Solitaire too.
Speaker 3: Oh nice?
Speaker 4: You just play more Solitaire and Solitaire?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I really really have been on a streak of
like classic games with this modern twist on them.
Speaker 4: The twist on modern or forbidden Solitaire is that you're
playing against someone, so it's like you're playing Solitaire to
attack somebody. It's the same. They're all the same, but
I think that one's pretty good. Mike, what are you
up to?
Speaker 2: Uh? Just do my consulting thing during the day, working
on a lot of cool stuff, some that has come
out since I've joined, some that still hasn't, so that's fun.
Speaker 1: Uh. And then I'm studying a lot for D two.
And then I we're getting ready to.
Speaker 2: I just find I fully booked our first trip to
Italy in October so that I can't wait for that.
Speaker 1: It's gonna be uh, it's gonna be fun.
Speaker 2: We're going from Venice to Florence to Rada to Rome
with some winery visits in between and some little countryside
stuff in between those, so that'll be good. I'm sure
I'll have a lot to say come November when I'm back.
Speaker 1: Looking forward to that.
Speaker 2: Other than that, not much gonna I still have not
played Resident Evil Requiem. Oh geez, I've successfully held off
until we got a remedy that. Yeah, I know, we
gotta requiem it for sure, because I I really want
to play it.
Speaker 1: It's funny here and you guys talk about Dan that
you said.
Speaker 4: It's a it's a Gody contender, so you have to play.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna play it regardless, and like, I hope you
understand how much it pains me to not play at
any time. I think, oh, I should play Resue Requiem
this weekend, because I've had a few weekends recently where
I'm like, oh, I'm I can actually play games recently
because I have a little bit of a lull in
studying and I've held off on requiem.
Speaker 1: That is a sacrifice for you, Mary, so you should
be grateful.
Speaker 4: And the audience we know why.
Speaker 1: Well yeah we'll figure that out what we want to
do there.
Speaker 2: But yeah, outside of that, Fire skate Merch is officially
back up. Fire skatecast dot Com is also I mean
double check those, but they should be good if you
want to get some merch for the summer. We got
banana hammocks, we got trunks, we got t shirts, we
got tank tops, we got crop tops. I think we
got a lot of stuff that could suit you for
the warm weather months if you're in the northern hemisphere here.
If you're down in Australia or New Zealand, then I
don't know, get some of the warmer weather sweaters, et cetera.
Fire skate Cast if you want to get at free episodes,
if you want to get video version, we are done
with the show technically, Vinnie and I for the Mike
and Vinnie save the World. But you can get all
the episodes if you are a video subscriber, and if
you're not a subscriber to next Lander, they are awesome,
incredible guys over there go subscribe there and we'll be
back in two weeks with episode one thirty five. Thank
you everybody for joining me.
Speaker 4: See then bye,