Speaker 1: Hello, everybody, Welcome back to the fire Escape Cast. I'm
Mike Maharty, your host as always here with Dan Riiker, Hello,
and Mary kesh Yay. I make an effort to sound
more excited. I announce you.
Speaker 2: I can correct men, I can fix them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there was like sixty five episodes where I sounded
pretty down really about it. Yeah, I don't know. Sixty
five might be exaggerating. But we're back, uh, first time
in a while. Well, I mean, I guess for listeners
it's not. But we recorded the last episode a bit
early before Mary went off on her another gallivant trip
across Europe. God knows what she's doing over there.
Speaker 3: It was twenty twenty one we recorded the last episode,
so we're a little more caught up now.
Speaker 1: Nothing's happened. Everything's fine in La.
Speaker 2: I hear no one got shot in the face with
a firework.
Speaker 1: Bye, h residents. Still, do you have all your teeth?
Speaker 2: Can I see them?
Speaker 4: I thought they were gone?
Speaker 3: I thought they I honestly, when I was on the ground,
I thought I was going to take my hand off
and see all my teeth on the ground. But they
all stayed in place and outside of just some bruising
throughout the inner lip and chin. I survived.
Speaker 1: Yeah for the audience that doesn't vent diagram with giant bomb.
Dan got quite literally hit in the face with a
confetti canon explosion and made pressed nitrogen age have Reddit.
I had friends like, didn't this guy was more than
one friend media saying, isn't this the guy that married you?
Speaker 4: Who is this idiot? You can't blame me for this.
I was the victim here right a firework.
Speaker 3: I didn't think my friend was about to turn a
howitzer of a confetti cannon into my fucking face.
Speaker 1: So there wasn't I guess there's like a walk me
through the science here? Is there a hard part in
the confetti?
Speaker 3: Well, a lot of people had a lot to say
about what happened. As a result, I learned how these work.
So it is a bunch of compressed nitrogen at the
bottom of a tube. And this is not one of
the tiny little party popper things that you buy at targets.
This was like a big ass tube and yeah, you
twisted and it like somehow, lets the compressed nitrogen do
something with the air. I don't know, chemistry happens and
then there is no physical projectile.
Speaker 4: But just a force like force.
Speaker 3: It is very just It's like a sniper shot of
crazy compressed air. And I was, I don't know, three
and a half feet away from the top of the tube.
And I have been elbowed in the teeth before so
bad that my teeth dented in I had to go
to the dentist to get my teeth fixed. This felt
worse than that. I've never felt anything. It blew my
lav mic off. It's just yeah, it bruised.
Speaker 5: Like.
Speaker 3: I was talking to Greg Miller the next night and
he's like, the inside of your lip is like black,
and I look at it and like, oh, yep, that's
not good.
Speaker 2: That's and that was the bruise.
Speaker 3: The inside of the lip was the where it hurt
kind of the most. And then like under my beard,
I think they kind of obscured a lot of it,
but like.
Speaker 2: Beard protected you by like ooh, a bit of baffling,
Like you know, just a bit of it.
Speaker 3: Could have right stop the air. It could have been Yeah, No,
I still felt every bit of it. I It's funny
because and I understand why people thought it might have
been a bit, because it seems like the type of
thing I would do like a little little wrestling silliness
or something.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 3: No, I would not have agreed to do that. That
sounds way too dangerous and it is extremely dangerous. But
I'm glad it happened because it's fucking funny.
Speaker 1: You have like a corporate umbrella to take care of
like any weeks.
Speaker 3: Oh, we're going through the HR insurance. I'm on insurance,
but not through Giant Palm, right.
Speaker 2: Because it is like the worst time to get shot
in the face.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, I am. I am legitimately going to reach
out to the People's Court. Uh and maybe Judge Judy
if anyone has a connection. I just think it would
be the funniest fucking thing in the world.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: If I try to sue Jeff Grubb for five thousand
dollars and then we have to watch that clip a
million times in court on TV.
Speaker 2: And she's like, what are you an idiot? Yes, ma'am.
Speaker 3: Yeah, if anyone has an exection, I'm not kidding. I
am like tomorrow looking up contacts and stuff, and I'm
trying to get a hold of TV court shows.
Speaker 4: I wish you the.
Speaker 2: Best of luck legally on suing Jeff Grub he's had.
Speaker 4: Thank you very much.
Speaker 2: Yes, it's very apologetic.
Speaker 4: He was.
Speaker 3: He was, and he said, if I would have gotten
actually hurt, he would have felt really really bad.
Speaker 2: But I guess he didn't, so he doesn't feel bad
at all.
Speaker 3: Well, I guess we're even now because he might have
saved my life. Like two nights ago, so me and
him were are our place was right next to a
seven eleven, like three houses down.
Speaker 4: Say what's that joking?
Speaker 3: Oh, I want up some beers and butterfinger ice cream,
and he wanted a slushy, and so, you know, like
ten o'clock at night on this would have been Sunday night.
I think we walked down to the seven eleven. I
get some beers in a bag. We're walking back and
again this is like three houses we have to walk down,
and you know, there La there's a bunch of people
sleeping in you know, parking lot and everything. And we're
just kind of walking and talking and stuff, and then
all of a sudden, we get like one house down
the street and we hear, hey, hey, like this isn't like, oh,
you're in downtown San Francisco. They're just on the street
yelling at everyone that passes by you. No, it's a
dark suburban street and we are the only people walking around,
and Greb just like just keep walking, just keep walking.
I'm like, okay, okay, okay, I'm just trying to like
get to the gate of the house. And then we
hear sprinting and it's getting closer and say, hey, hey, hi, motherfucker.
Like there's this absolute manic screaming. And we turn around
and it's a lady and she's like ready, like very
wild eyed, you know, shaved head, and she's like pissed
off and she's like, you stole my fucking back and
she's pointing out my bag of beers and I was like,
I didn't. I did not steal these. We just went
to seven eleven. She's just look, you're going to jail, motherfucker.
And I'm thinking, like, oh, please call it the cops.
Let's see how this goes. Turns out the cops for
busy doing other stuff that night in Los Angeles. But
she's like, you're gonna talk your means yeah, And so
she's like almost a kind of like lunging kind of
that group. We're like go like that type of thing,
and I am freaking out, I don't know what to
do here, and so Grub gave me some shit for
this because my legitimate thing that I did as defense
in this moment that I think I'm about to get
attacked is I reached into my back pocket and I
grabbed my receipt and I go, I have a receipts.
Speaker 1: Resort to logic in the face of.
Speaker 2: Someone like that lady who's obviously an eketamine fueled anger.
Speaker 6: Did you hear the line item for my medelos or
I did not steal these from you? Yeah, it did
kind of stop her for a second, like she was
just like completely screaming, and I said, like, I haven't
received I held it up and she did look at
it for a second like like I kind of like
stunlocked her for a second. And then she's like she's
like give me the bag, and Grubb just went like
no and like lunge at her a little bit, and
that kind of got her settled down, and oh my god,
it was just.
Speaker 1: She left after Grub like step to her.
Speaker 3: I think she was like turning around still. Oh she
started walking away and kept calling as the N word
after that, So yeah, yeah, and then we hurried back
to the house. Yeah, so Los Angeles was good, actually
was good.
Speaker 1: What uh what's what neighborhood was that.
Speaker 4: I think we were like it was near Hollywood.
Speaker 1: Oh oh, okay, that sticks out.
Speaker 2: It has so many different neighborhoods. But that's the scary story.
I Uh, I would be so nervous walking home, especially
by myself. Like, I'm glad you guys had a buddy
system so that Grub could save you in the event
that you would be attacked by a lady.
Speaker 4: Yes, an out of the uh.
Speaker 1: Another confetti can and ready to go.
Speaker 2: Yeah, probably proved that you purchased it legally.
Speaker 4: That is true.
Speaker 3: Yeah, out of the four other people sharing that B
and B with me, I think Grub is probably the
best one I could have had there, right out of
all the giant bomb guys.
Speaker 2: He's tall.
Speaker 3: He's tall, and I think he could like handle himself,
you know, Like I said, you know Manati, you know,
flashback to this time at the dojo.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Yeah, I think Jan. I don't know
what Jan would do. Baclar would absolutely be useless.
Speaker 3: Yeah, maybe with a hockey steak you could do something,
but yeah, throw a hat at her.
Speaker 2: It's a good question. I know that people have asked
us like, who would be the most safe amongst us?
I mean, I I do think that I could be
taken down, but I take I'd take out at least
a couple of eyeballs on my way. I snap like
a twig, but I would kill a bit.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and once you started scrapping with her Mary, I
would have had time to run back to the house,
so that would have been really helpful.
Speaker 2: So I would have saved your life before you taking
a couple syringes to the knee.
Speaker 4: Yes, I would have done the eulogy at your funeral
as a result.
Speaker 2: So no, I you had been barred.
Speaker 4: Funeral.
Speaker 2: My death is just getting uh an edible arrangement and
nothing else, and they're not allowed to come to my funeral.
Speaker 4: Yes, So it was good.
Speaker 3: Did the shows, Yeah, I had a bunch of guests.
It was very, very busy. But one of those things
we're at the end, you're at the airport and you're
just like that.
Speaker 4: That was good. We did a good thing there. That
was great. So yeah, I hope to do it again
next year.
Speaker 1: Congrats. Acts I was not there this year.
Speaker 2: It's kind of weird. Isn't it not going? I think
the first time because last year I went, even though
I don't think I had the best justification. But last
year I went. I took some streamers out for there's
some justification I can do if there's a lot of
streamers in the area, like for a video game conference
for example, Pack's East. I was able to justify by
like taking streamers out we were doing an event for
Twitch like that I can argue. But this year, there
really wasn't that many streamers that I knew going that
justified me traveling there. And I had just gotten back
from Europe because TwitchCon was in the Netherlands again and
I think it was the week before, and I just
the idea of me just getting back and I was
also severely jet lagged and like acclimating to the time
zone and going to Summer Games Fest. I was like
absolutely not, Like I just think you'd really have to
convince me under that situation to like want to go.
Speaker 4: I was on E Yeah, it was.
Speaker 3: It was a kind of lower profile one, just kind
of a more chilled out one.
Speaker 4: There wasn't like a huge frenzy for anything.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 3: I'd say, like Resident Evil, not like huge games announced anytime.
Speaker 2: But I felt the same way. I mean generally speaking,
I didn't hear anyone be like that was a waste
of time. Like it's still neat, and I'm grateful that
Summer Games Fest exists because it's I said this last year,
but like it's so wonderful that it brings all these
different people together to celebrate games. And I do love
seeing my developer friends or other people in games media
and just catching up with them. So happy that it exists.
But this was like kind of one of the main
years where I was like this, this is not really
worth the ticket price, Like I would have a hard
time justifying the flight and the hotels and all that stuff.
For like I love Resident Evil, like don't get me wrong,
but like you have to do a little bit more
than that to get to get me going. And I
just didn't feel like they had a huge lineup.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Like I honestly I'd barely played anything because we
were just putting the shows together. So to me, it
is just that social element of it of just like, hey,
the industry is all here, let's hang out. So that's
all it is to me. So and that end of
it was a success in my book.
Speaker 2: But you know, maybe that's what it is now. This
is just the time where we all get together and
eat terrible food and drink and avoid getting mugged.
Speaker 4: Yeah together, I'm playing with that.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I had a great time.
Speaker 1: So I fly to Ireland tomorrow. So there were Berts
was just like, I'm not gonna make you go to
la and then go to Ireland the next day. Basically
so and also Berts was there, so they didn't need
two of us.
Speaker 2: We're just such travel travel junkies. I leave for France
on Friday. I've been jet setting all over can uh uh,
I'm gonna butcher this. I think it's candle on, but
I'm gonna say Can's Lion, Can Leon.
Speaker 4: I think that's right, Can's Lion.
Speaker 2: Yeah, cans Lion is there.
Speaker 1: Like the film festival.
Speaker 2: I think it's connected, but it's you know, what what
happens at festivals is advertisers with money go and that's
a great place for companies and brands to go and
be like give me your money. And so I will
do that and hopefully I will be effective at it
because it's so cool to get the opportunity.
Speaker 1: I hope that it is a good gotch Can Okay,
yeah this I thought you were the.
Speaker 2: Same as the Can Film Festival, but it is like
they do other festivals.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm looking at now. I did not realize Can
was a city. I just know.
Speaker 1: It's on the riviera down your but it's like, uh,
it almost sounds like a south By Southwest.
Speaker 2: I think so, but I haven't been, so I'll have
to report back to me. What it sounds like is
some music, some entertainment and like panels and stuff like that, which, yes,
seems like south By Southwest And it's just a good
place to network and meet.
Speaker 1: Did you say you're going to Paris as well?
Speaker 2: I'm gonna fly into Paris because you flying into Can
is apparently like impossible unless you have like a private play.
Speaker 1: Do you look at Nice as well?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 1: And that was just expensive, yes, gotcha. Yeah, I guess
it's the time of year when that's when people literally
vacation down there.
Speaker 2: I love that you know more about this than I did.
I did what I was told I have. I'm so
grateful that in my ignorant life, I've always been able
to find a person who is also going, who is
smarter than me. Who is more travel savvy than me
and is also pickier with like hotels and Airbnbs and
travel arrangements in me and then I say, awesome, tell
me what to books and I'll do it. Her name
is Scully, and well that's her last name, but that's
what we call her. She's awesome, and she's the travel
person in the group that will take care of me,
and like will be like book this train, book this flight,
book this airbnb, and I did it, and like I
can do what someone tells me, but I don't want
to do all that research and like be wrong. So
somebody else is telling me. And then in previous years
it was a friend of mine. Like at Twitch, it's
always Alyssa. She always tells me like book this flight,
this train, this space, and like this is what we're
gonna do. We're gonna do with snorkeling this day, So
book this boat and I'll be like okay, and I
just I just do what I'm told and I spend
the money and like then I get to go. But
I'm not good at I'm not good at like researching
locations and being like, oh, we got to take the
four fifteen so that I can be there by this
time so we can get the other charter boat. Like,
I'm gonna die out there if that happened, there's no
way I'll make it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's I'm assuming you'll take the TGV. It's a
very very fast train that goes down.
Speaker 2: I don't even know what that is. I need it.
I need a travel buddy. They're the person that like
knows that stuff. There's a TikTok that makes the tv.
Speaker 1: TGV is a big catapult in Paris that you jump
that you climb into and then it just launches you
all the way down to the south of France. Sometimes
you miss and sometimes you miss and going and go
into the sea. Weirdly, it's not a tribut shaw. It
should be, though that would be more on theme.
Speaker 2: It seems more franch I don't think that I'm like
really meant to travel, but in this world, if someone's
going to send me to a cool location, I require
some kind of buddy that will at least guide me
from from completely dying out there. But I can function.
Every time I've ever gone to like a really cool
place like Japan, I'm always like, when are you going?
What flight are you taking? And then I will fly
to that person and then we will fly together so
that I'm not alone, because I don't want to die.
Speaker 3: Is there anything in France for me? I've never been
to France. They got cheese, they.
Speaker 1: Have a lot of cheese. Go to the Juro. That's
like all there is in the East.
Speaker 4: I'm not gonna go there just for cheese.
Speaker 2: Fred Meyer like, you'll be fine going to your local supermarket.
Speaker 1: Trying to aspects of like French culture. You would like lunches.
Lunch is a big deal in general. It's a very
lunch every day I know. But they that's what I'm saying.
They go really hard on lunch, and the lunch you
have is not going to be I didn't know if.
Speaker 2: You knew this, But in the Netherlands there's the city
of Guda, and it's Guda, and I thought, and I thought,
maybe it would be neat if you ever traveled to
the Netherlands. If I could convince you you could go.
Speaker 4: To Gouda, I would like.
Speaker 3: I like.
Speaker 4: I think Europe in their cheese situation seems pretty good.
Speaker 1: You just said you wouldn't travel to somewhere in Europe.
Speaker 4: I've been. I didn't go just for cheese. I went
for Hitman too.
Speaker 1: I can't send him to Guda just for cheese. You
need a secondary selling.
Speaker 4: The cheese is a bone, that's all you need.
Speaker 2: You don't know him at all.
Speaker 1: Fact, I would say France is mostly people are going
for food. If you're in the south of France, it's
like it's very bougie vacation area, which I don't think
would speak to you.
Speaker 4: I bet it would. I would find it beautiful and
be able to appreciate that right.
Speaker 2: Pretty Yeah, it is old, which I think is like
architecturally really nice. I don't know, I like I struggle
in France. I haven't been there very often, but I
have struggled because that people don't always like tourism, and
they don't like people who don't speak French.
Speaker 1: That's a very that's that's not at all but my
experience whatsoever, my experience, I know, but it's a generalization
that a lot of people espouse.
Speaker 2: Honest generalization.
Speaker 1: I don't. I think American people like foreigners less than
any other country in the world demonstrably.
Speaker 2: I think it's honest. That was my experience. They were
pretty tough.
Speaker 1: Also, didn't you also collapse a wall in Japan walking
into a restaurant like I think the problem Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: I went into Kuda and was like, where's my cheese, bitch,
and they were like, we hate you and I was like, oh,
you hate English speaking Americans and they're like, yeah.
Speaker 1: No, France can be I guess any country where they're
speaking different language can be tough because some people appreciate
you trying to speak a language. Others are like please
this and now he's in a child, let's do English. Yeah,
and it can be hard to navigate as cargo. I
love as cargo.
Speaker 4: Yes, I don't really know the deal with snails.
Speaker 3: I would try it, you know whoa whoa iventuring a
new era of being cool with food folks.
Speaker 4: Ay, this was a big part of my triplet. I
accidentally tried mustard.
Speaker 1: You had never tried mustard before? No?
Speaker 3: Well, I think like Bonk took me to like a
nice sausage hostage mixed up hot dog and sausage plays
in San Francisco because she's like, if you're ever gonna
try it, try it on this like nice hot dog
or whatever, And I think I try to bite. But
I wasn't as open minded as I am now, So
I accident I got a turkey and Swiss sandwich from
the media lounge in.
Speaker 4: At SGF Playdas.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they had a bunch of wrap things, and it's like,
here's a capacola, here's this thing, here's it's just a
turkey and Swiss. And I looked at the ingredients and
it said like lettuce and had tomatoes. So I already thought, like,
you know what, I'm gonna be adventurous. I'm gonna eat
a sandwich with a tomato on it, yeah, and which
I never do. But it didn't say mustard, and so
I foolishly just dove right in head first. I took
a bite and I turned to Jan and Backler and
I was like, what is this? Like, there's like a tang,
there's a tang going on here. And I opened it
up and they're like, that's mustard. It's just like normal
ass mustard. And I was like, but it's like tangy.
It's like it's got almost like a spice to it.
And that's the thing. No one's ever fucking told me
that mustard has like a spice factor to it, because
we don't.
Speaker 1: We don't. It's not the world's responsibility to explain everything
to you.
Speaker 4: Well, somebody to explain it to you at some point.
Speaker 1: No, I just just try it, like not a bitch, Yeah, yeah,
get them after forty years of being a bitch.
Speaker 4: It was not like, I'll be damned, show.
Speaker 2: Me that picture where you look like shit again.
Speaker 1: Mary had. Mary had a georgeka Stanza moment that she
shared with us where she thought of like an insult
like days after it and uh, it's pretty rough. I
don't even know it's it's it's lethal. But anyway, Dan,
you're saying you like mustard now, well yeah, And.
Speaker 3: I think I would have tried it a long time ago.
People like I think I just because it was yellow.
I was just like, I don't know what that flavor
could be because it's like what, it's not gonna be
like banana, and it's not gonna be like I'm fairing
to think of other yellow flavors, and I.
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 3: I thought it was gonna be like yellow mayonnaise or something,
and then it just had this cool tang to it.
And I haven't tried it again yet, but I'm waiting
for the right opportunity. I want to try it on
a hot dog. I want to try it on another sandwich.
I want to try different types. Yeah, I wanna try
honey mustard on nuggets.
Speaker 1: Can I suggest what could be the next evolution of this? Yes?
There are many many different types of mustard too. My
favorite setting for mustard is like at German beer gardens,
dipping soft pretzels into the and mustard.
Speaker 3: I want to try that because I love giant soft pretzels.
Speaker 4: If it's ever on a MANI my order.
Speaker 3: But a lot of times it'll be like you get
to pick three dips, and it's always like cheese and
a bunch of different mustard type spirits. And every single time,
I say, just give me three cheeses. And now I
want to mix and match because I already know I
love sat bread.
Speaker 2: Mustard and mustard and cheese go together really well, and
I'll grow up my favorite. I actually don't. I also,
I will admit I also don't put mustard on anything.
I just don't really like mustard that much. I only
when it comes to corn dogs, I only want mustard. Oh,
and I don't know why. I'm going to make an
argument to you, and then you can test it out
one day when you're having Mani corn dogs, which is
my favorite. Oh yeah, many corn dogs. The bread is
sweet and so the tang of like a traditional yellow
mustard makes the sweet bread of the corn bread so good.
And then you get the mommy of the hot dogs
the only way I could describe them. And I just
think you get all of the flavor profiles with a
corn dog dipped in mustards.
Speaker 4: I think it's I think I will try that.
Speaker 2: I think it's god tear. But I actually don't like
mustard on uh like burgers. I only put ketchup on burgers,
but for whatever reason, like corn dog, it's got to
be mustard.
Speaker 1: Dude, I'm not a fan of yellow mustard. I do
like spicy or brown ones with the seeds in it.
Speaker 3: So describe like the just the normal ass yellow mustard
see McDonald or something like what is that?
Speaker 1: That was my least favorite.
Speaker 4: Yeah, this was that kind of brown. This is kind
of brown.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that's like you actually get spicy seeds, and
the seeds are what makes it like really like it's
like horse radish kind of fills your mouth with a spice.
Speaker 4: I never tried that.
Speaker 1: Okay, I'm not saying that's similar. I'm just saying they
have similar Yeah. Whoa, whoa, whoa.
Speaker 4: I want to try everything now, this was a revelation.
Speaker 1: No, yeah, like I prefer brown mustards. I like those.
Speaker 3: Pickles, right, I've only like had like two or three
bites and pickles in my life because.
Speaker 2: I think pickles also give the tang.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, that's okay, a real shot.
Speaker 1: I believe mustard. I was just gonna say, I know, well,
the yellow yellow mustard does. I don't know if brown does.
Maybe it is involved somehow, but it does. Maybe. I
don't know. I like brown mustards.
Speaker 2: Maybe you're learning that acid is like a really good
food elevator, right, not a lot, right, If you have
too much of it, it's probably like sour, like tough
on your tongue, but a little bit enhances sweet, and
it enhances like meat and other flavors. So like to me,
it's always about the right ratio. Maybe like when you
were a child, you were like wrecked by having too
much mustard.
Speaker 4: I definitely never had as a child.
Speaker 2: I don't understand psychologically how you can be so opposed
to something that you've literally I.
Speaker 4: Don't either tried. It doesn't make sense and you know what.
Speaker 1: I thought, maybe he met his dad.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean they're they're all freaks. But I thought
maybe like some mustard god in his eye, or no,
some mustard like beat the ship out of his sister and.
Speaker 1: Are just off put Like some things have just been
off putting to me, but I still like tried them
at a certain point to back on mustard, even just
from spite, like to back on my dislike of it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that, like, yeah, yeah, there had to
be some traumatic.
Speaker 2: Thing your family member and now you hate yellow.
Speaker 3: Nope, no, there's no log or two whatsoever. And I
think maybe something, no, I think something that's maybe making
me more open to doing more drying things is I
see Mike Manatti and uh he is. He's worse than
me when it comes to weird oat food stuff. And
so he will say something like, oh, yeah, I've never
had this thing, but I can't, like I can't eat
a grape. And I will in my head be like,
that's insane. You've never had it. How do you know
what it's like? And I realized that's me, and I
was like, oh shit, okay, I need to I need
to try some stuff.
Speaker 1: So yeah, the like you asked, whates cargo is, like,
I don't know if do you like mushrooms?
Speaker 4: That's when I've started having and I don't hate.
Speaker 1: So us cargo. The few times I've had it, which
I like it, it had an almost mushroomy texture, like
kind of rubbery, which is never enticing when I say it,
but there is like married like it's got that mushroom
umami to it along with the texture.
Speaker 2: And can I sell it?
Speaker 1: But they can. They can cook it different different ways.
Speaker 2: Like usually they give you like a dish maybe like
a piece of wood or something like that, and imagine
you stuck your thumb in it and made holes in it. Okay,
you with me? It can wooden dish with thumb holes,
and in each hole is one piece of s cargo
And then they fill it to the brim with butter,
delicious butter.
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 2: And then they give you, well it's not alive, but yes,
and then give you a fork that's like really thin
and long so that you can stick it in the
thumb hole and get your little piece of his cargo.
And when you take it out, it's dripping in this butter.
So even if you're like I'm on the fence about
his cargo. It's it's a butter delivery service.
Speaker 3: Has anyone ever done like a kitchy like bowling theme, Well,
have they ever done like a bowling thing where it's
like you're eating escargo out of because I'm just picturing
finger holes in a bowling ball.
Speaker 4: Like in the bowling Yeah.
Speaker 3: That'd be like a kitchi like bowling high food place.
Speaker 1: You know, there have been a bowling ball that's in
like the holes are flesh light kind of things, so.
Speaker 3: You can fuck the bowling ball and eat cargo, eat
out of it first, and then fucking first of all.
Speaker 1: This is the kind of thing. See, this is why
we should be in business.
Speaker 2: Together, shape Dick. It's should be so wait.
Speaker 3: That cargoes, shape Dick. Let me see what s cargo
looks like a pig's tail. No, don't want that. You
got it, buddy, I'm keeping my dick. I'm not doing this.
Speaker 1: Not too late. You got to pigsail Dick. Nope, nope, No.
Speaker 2: You're one wish and it has been granted.
Speaker 1: No. But yeah, to your marriage point, Like, salad dressing
is acid adds, I mean salad dressing also is just
a lot of the flavor and some salads unfortunately, but
a lot of wine pairings are based around the acid
of the wine help playing well with the food.
Speaker 4: I bet my dad wishes he was on this episode.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he probably does.
Speaker 3: Actually, if you just said the word umami, he would
have freaked out and left the call.
Speaker 2: Describe a corn dog like some.
Speaker 4: Gra I guess, so, I guess you're a real human
to some degree.
Speaker 2: I think I use it to say savory, like I
think it's considered.
Speaker 4: A fifth Yeah, it's like a flavor profile, right, yeah, yeah, so.
Speaker 1: Did you know this? There are apparently, and I've learned
this from reading wine books, So umami is the sixth
there are apparently, so the country. Oh no, no, wait, no,
that's not that far offense, sweat, sweetness, sour, salt, bitter,
seeing dead people, seeing dead people. That was a good one.
Speaker 2: Nice one, you guys we talked about when it's currently.
Speaker 1: Uh umami and I'm probably missing one. But apparently Japan
is like leads food research in a lot of these ways,
or like how our tongues perceive flavor. Apparently there are
like two more that they're working on defining that they
are like apparently they're looking at how like taste buds
interact with nerves, synapses and how the brain interprets them.
And when they're examining these pathways, they're seeing that there
are like two more that do not fit into the
criteria of umami sweetness, sour, salt, bitter, what is the last?
I don't know, I feel like.
Speaker 2: Do that really easily? Like like how they invent new
colors by being like, you see, this is a little
bit of a mix between green and blue, and we
call it perry with sure yeah, like sure, yes, you
can do that. And you could be like this is
salt and savory, and so we're calling it.
Speaker 1: Licky loo Oh No, you're right, Mary, it's the fifth.
But they're they're finding a sixth and a seventh.
Speaker 2: But do you know what I mean, Like there's a
bit of like a pseudoscience to all of that unless
they're literally inventing a new flavor. But like when I know,
I'm a bit of a like realist of these types
of things, are like a purist maybe, where I'm just like,
we have a system, the system works sweet, salt, bitter, uh, savory,
and then apparently umami well.
Speaker 3: Is in every color just from the primaries, the three primaries. Yeah,
so it's like when I hear new color, I think, like,
this is zip zapp and it's not based on any
of the primary colors.
Speaker 4: You know, It's like eyes didn't like the giver.
Speaker 2: You know, well, unless it's a color that's in an
eyeshadow palette for women, and then it's called like or
gas Matron four thousand. It's always named something so sexual.
Speaker 1: Are all humans just a combination of like the same
DNA genes? Possible combinations? How many of the same person
you run into?
Speaker 2: Who's a philosophizer?
Speaker 1: Now it's not a philosophizer. I'm just applying the same logic.
I don't know anything about genealogy. I'm just saying I'm
pretty sure that like if you can mix and match
things and get new.
Speaker 2: Things, all start us.
Speaker 1: So you actually oooh like a joke, I met a
girl and I think we were next to each other
before the Big Bang because we read I've seen the
suck like such stupid fucking poems on Instagram. I used
to it'd be like we we must we must have
been near each other before the Big Bang.
Speaker 3: It is funny when it's like people do hallucinogenics and
stuff that so many people go to that and like
I have only tripped like three times, and I remember
fully having that feeling when I was like eighteen of
like whoa, it's all energy and like nature and me
it's all like why does everyone have that same weird
sensation and when they're tripping.
Speaker 1: Because I, yeah, like I don't know what, Yeah, what
is it like about our brains opening up that starts
being fascinated by the galaxy brain ship?
Speaker 2: Well, maybe because we're so far removed from our ancestors
where we actually had to give a shit about survival
and understanding the world. Like we're just so far from
the creatures that were us before, much like my dog
is so far from being a wolf that he no
longer is concerned.
Speaker 1: With like, oh, he's dead in an hour if he's
on his.
Speaker 2: Own, absolutely could not survive out in the wild. But
like there's there's elements of us that are still in there, right,
Like the same thing where like if you get really
upset or you get heated and you can feel your
blood pressure racing and you get really upset emotionally, that's
your fight or flight, right, Like that's the same thing
that happens if you were like a caveman.
Speaker 1: Mary always fights, Dan always flights.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's right, or shows shows receipts.
Speaker 2: That's a very classic move that used to do.
Speaker 4: Really, Grandpa used to do that in Korea. Who shows Dan's.
Speaker 1: Great great great great great great great great great great.
Grandpa was like a sabertooth that's coming up. But he's
got this stone tablating.
Speaker 3: Oh, I bought the spirit the cave down the street.
Speaker 1: He pulls out a fucking dead fish with some writing
on it. Uh, speaking of our ancestors and how we
evolved from it, I found out something cool recently.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 1: So have you heard the terms aperatif and digestif?
Speaker 4: Yes, yes, you know.
Speaker 2: The teeth is something you have after you eat dinner.
Speaker 4: Yes, I've only heard.
Speaker 1: You say them, but yes, I've heard the apparatif is before.
They're the same thing, it's just when you drink them. However,
they always a common thing they have like a NEGRONI
is a popular apparatif. Right now, they're all bitter. They
have bitters in them, which can be the shaky bitters
you have, or like in amara, which are actually like
a liqueur that you mix with other things. The reason, yes,
So the reason the reason we drink them is because
the apperatifs make us hungry. The dj just thiefs help
us digest. But they're the same thing. How could they
do the same thing. Apparently human body recognizes bitter flavors.
It associates them, whether we know it or not, with poison.
Because our ancestors when they would eat stuff they found
in the woods and they tasted something bitter, they're like,
this is poison. I want to get rid of it.
So our body still reacts similarly and say like, oh,
we got to move everything in your system out, so
it makes you hungry, it gets your digestive track work
and shit.
Speaker 2: I like to think of my stomach as like a bunch.
Speaker 4: Of people like shit, shit, coal. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And there's like one manager out there and he's got
like a notebook in a pen and he's like, it's shit,
we gotta move it out. It tastes bitter, get rid
of it. And everybody literally just starts pouring buckets of
water down the tube. And that's how you get tirea.
Speaker 1: And someone's like it's savory. It's like no, it's too.
Mommy's like I don't give a fuck.
Speaker 2: We gotta get rid of it's the ice yelling a
bit of a weirdo. But to this day I think
of like a bunch of men in the colon as
like workers keep figuring it out there.
Speaker 3: I want to talk about genes, genetics great, So I've
been thinking about this lately. I don't remember what got
me going on this, but you know, like a dog
from like the Wolf Days and stuff will like because
it's it's interesting, I'll see certain animals and stuff on TV.
I've done this for where I show like Gizmo, like
a dragon from Game of Thrones. He doesn't give a shit,
but if he sees a wolf or other dogs on TV, he.
Speaker 4: Freaks the fuck out.
Speaker 3: So like or like people we know that like oh
we're not going to eat these berries, like something just
in our genes or our knowledge through their generations, like
you know, stuck around. So is it literally like experiences
can be like imprinted onto your genetics.
Speaker 4: Like let's okay, weird hypothetical.
Speaker 3: Let's say I had everyone in my family dating back
ten generations lived in a nation of clowns and we
were at war with clowns. Would it be imprinted on
my genes to like, if I just saw a clown,
even without the knowledge of my family's history or what
a clown was, that I'd be like, oh no, like
or the same way we see spiders and stuff like that.
That is it just like knowledge can actually be imprinted
onto genetics.
Speaker 4: Is that the case?
Speaker 1: I don't know. I know some things can be passed down,
like like trauma can be passed down.
Speaker 3: The generational trauma things like that, Like yeah, like anxiety
and depression.
Speaker 2: And examples of that. I think that even though your
use case is incredibly just unbelievably stupid, I do think
that is possible. And there's like lots of examples of that,
like for example, uh, cats are instinctively known to be
afraid of snakes, and so if you there's like that
joke er, if you like put a cucumber, you know,
snake like behind a cat when they see it, they
usually jump and freak out because they're instincts. When they
see like a cylinder traumatized snake and it breaks them out.
It's very people use it on YouTube videos all the time.
Pet them, they'll be fine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know, if I mean it must.
Speaker 2: Be the case. With humans too, like deep down inside.
Speaker 1: I know, like evolutionarily, I just in terms of like
the yeah, because to your point, it's like, okay, physical
traits you carry forward because at one point they were
a mutation that helped that person survive longer, which helped
them reproduce and more likely to pass on that gene.
I don't know enough to not you and me buddy, right,
I don't know them along. Yeah, yeah, I don't know.
I'm sure knowledge gonna passed on. I don't know enough
to refute it or support it. It sounds like a though.
I like to think it can work that way.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Like stuff like you know, what is the thing
that triptophobia or whatever where you see like a design
and it's supposed to be like a beehive or something
like we have a natural.
Speaker 4: Like oh ship?
Speaker 3: Like is that just because over generations and generations we've
seen people or known people like snakes or bees or
whatever we know.
Speaker 4: To avoid it? Like is that?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 3: I guess I never thought of that actual just like
knowledge and experience would be passed down through gene.
Speaker 2: Not just things that you're afraid of, but things that
you like too.
Speaker 1: So that's where their instincts. I think you're describing instinct
I don't know we're describing No, I don't know. I
don't know. But like your point though, I don't know
if it's like a gene thing or if it is
actually like a brain pathway that we all have now
because so many of our ancestors that survived had it,
I have no clue.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Like, let's say they were, uh on this one.
Speaker 3: If you came from a family of pilots, you know,
I guess that's a newer thing.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 3: Let's say it's a family of warriors or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Like if I didn't know anything about being a
pilot not long ago, Dan, Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 4: The pilot's a bad thing. I'm schilding my nation and
the fielder.
Speaker 2: Let's say that you're really good at splitting genomes.
Speaker 3: Riding horses, Like if ten generations of me and my
family just rode horses, but all of my relatives died
before I was three years old, and I didn't even
know anything about horse, would I be able to hop
on and kind of know how to do this, you know,
or come to it more naturally?
Speaker 2: You know, I'm born to ride.
Speaker 1: I don't think you would know how to do it
right away, but you might be like predisposed to like
develop the skills more early.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Like would you just come to it quicker, you know,
out of the.
Speaker 2: Room, like with a half split and you're just like, yeah,
I mean I suppose so that. I think we're also
kind of talking a little bit about like nature versus
nurture too, right, Sure, a lot of that too. If
you're in a family of people who are like I
was born a cowboy and I die a cowboy, and
my grandpappy was a cowboy and my grandpap before him,
then you probably like literally as a toddler, they were
probably putting you on horses.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm talking about like almost like that experiment, like
the twins thing where they got separated and like you
know like oh they both even though they've never met
each other and they didn't know the family or whatever,
they just still happened to be kind of the same person,
you know.
Speaker 2: I Mean that's like one case, right, That's like, well,
I'm sure there's several cases like that where it's like
very unique, but how many of them are are also
like where they meet each other and they're like we're
fucking totally different.
Speaker 4: Right, yeah, yeah, yeah, we talk about that.
Speaker 2: One because it's not as interesting.
Speaker 1: True top level stuff I'm reading suggests that a lot
of it's still being theorized, but it might not be genealogical.
It's more culturally transmitted, like we.
Speaker 4: Talk, not like in print.
Speaker 1: But there's like theories that you can have ancestral memories.
I think you just spent too much time at Kojima
Productions this year.
Speaker 3: Maybe that's it. Yeah, I'm thinking about Genome Soldiers.
Speaker 2: Maybe that's like the actual moment where Mustard entered your
mind and he accepted in you to like not be
so weird about food.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Kajima is the guy to make you not weird.
Speaker 1: I'm seeing a super up like I'm seeing like a
remedy game in which like you're all you think you're
playing des Straining two for a demo, but then you
zoom farther back out and there's like a one way
mirror and it's actually just a bunch of people pointing
laser Mustard beams at you through the wall.
Speaker 4: It's at the end of Men in Black, yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, or it's like a clockwork corne but they they
don't need the eye peel things anymore.
Speaker 3: Sure, I would do the clockworkcorne thing if they could
do like a fun thing. You know, what is the
benefit of it would be what would be like a
smart one? Because they did it to make him hate
violence and stuff. Yea, So how could you use the
clockwork orange room to like make it like.
Speaker 2: Oh, you can open up your mouth, not your eyes,
and we would just keep squirting mustard in there.
Speaker 4: I don't think that would make me like mustard immersion therapy.
Speaker 2: It's oh, I don't think it's starving and it's the
only sustenance we're giving you, and you're like, give me
my mustard. I'm hungry, and we're like squirting in your mouth, blobbing.
Speaker 4: It down your gob donuts and hell.
Speaker 2: Experience and be like mom, like that saved my life.
Speaker 4: I don't want to do that.
Speaker 2: I have to starve you long enough. I could fix you.
Dan give me three days in a fucking blank room.
Speaker 1: I don't need to the fact that the reason someone
else needed to clockwork orange him was against his will,
Like the claws kept his eyes open, they had to
keep Yeah, I think you can just clockwork orange yourself
in a positive way anytime. He was you give yourself
enough time?
Speaker 4: Could they give me?
Speaker 1: Like? Fun?
Speaker 3: Drugs and clockwork orange me into seeing a bunch of
mustard footage, and I associate mustard with fun and good.
Speaker 1: Point is you don't need a they You can do this.
Speaker 4: To yourself, CLOCKWORKRNS room.
Speaker 1: You don't need a clocker gorns room. Just stare at
mustard while you take drugs that you like. I don't,
they don't need us.
Speaker 4: Let's just make it simple. Why don't I just try
this stuff?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean.
Speaker 1: Creating a cell.
Speaker 2: Chinese water torture, where like we we you in a
room and we like lock your arms and legs you
can't move, and then we just constantly and slowly drip
mustard on your forehead and it prevents you from being
able to sleep.
Speaker 4: I think I tried on a quarter founder.
Speaker 1: If I told you my friends, I asked my friend
to waterboard me because I didn't see how it would
be stressful.
Speaker 4: Yeah's horrible. Yeah, we waterboarded Temptorary and Aruba, and a
lot of people have it.
Speaker 1: They're like, I don't. I didn't. It didn't make sense
to me how that was torturous. And then I did it.
It's like drowning in the water. You feel like you're drowning,
but you just don't die. Like a long time.
Speaker 3: Remember that during the controversy and uh Iraqi freedom and
Sean Hannity was boasting about like, it's not bad. I
would do it. I would give you waterboarded and then
I can't remember if something yeah, and then he.
Speaker 4: Just absolutely didn't do it.
Speaker 1: Okay, you didn't know it's you know, it's not good.
Speaker 2: I remember one time when I was learning how to wakeboard,
I kept calling it waterboarding because I think that logically
makes more sense.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah.
Speaker 2: Everyone kept being like, you can't say that, and I
was like, it's very similar. And what's a wake? You
know what I mean? When you what.
Speaker 1: Do you mean? What's a wake?
Speaker 2: Well, when you s your snow, you're boarding on water,
you're waterboarding.
Speaker 1: Right, but you wouldn't wouldn't work.
Speaker 2: You're boarding on snow.
Speaker 1: It wouldn't work unless you were in the wake of
a boat moving quickly enough to keep you upright.
Speaker 3: But you really need the water, the wake made out
of Michael, I know the water's important.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna take you down like a nineteen year old
did in my senior year of college. I swear to
fucking God, it makes sense to be a water boarder.
Speaker 4: Mary. I'm with you. I'm with you.
Speaker 3: Waterboarding removed from the actual horrible thing that just sounds
like a fun time.
Speaker 1: Why why is it called surfing and not waterboarding?
Speaker 2: I agree, I think it is.
Speaker 1: It's just a bunch that's like, oh, that's a was
that a Dmitri Martin bit when he's like, I wish
I could have been there when someone was naming fruits
and vegetables and they're like, they pick up an orange,
They're like, let's call this an orange, perfect, and then
they get to the carrot and they're like, fuck uh
that's uh yeah.
Speaker 3: Why do you run PR for waterboarding? Mary, Let's change it.
Make waterboarding fun.
Speaker 2: For PR for Montica, make waterboarding fun again. I can
teach you how to waterboard in like two days. I
just need a boat and some rope.
Speaker 1: Wake wakeboarding is fun. I wakeboarded a lot when I
was younger.
Speaker 2: It is fun, yeah.
Speaker 4: And get hurt. I tube sometimes, but even then I
worry about it.
Speaker 2: Tubing is fun. I really like water sports. I wish
I wish I was rich or knew a boat guy,
because I don't. It's it's so rare that I can
get in a boat and do. I usually rent a
boat once a year as like a treat, you know,
a sweet treat to me. But man, it's so cool
to have like a boat friend.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I'm spending some time at the lake at Ben Hanson's
lake lot this summer, like we always do. And last
time I was there, I think, is when they had
a brand new jet ski and it was their first
time out there and I had never driven one before
and went out there with Temptorry and Tempterorry was on
the tube and I was driving the thing and Tim
fell off and then I'm like, don't go, gotta reverse
or whatever. And I just reversed and caught all the
rope up and the thing and just we.
Speaker 1: Had to like shouldn't reverse in most.
Speaker 3: Year, but Dave had to canoe out to the middle
of the lake and like you know, tow us in
and then uh yeah, we had to like get up
in the guts and remove all the it was.
Speaker 4: It was a whole thing. I was prepared to have
to buy them a jet ski.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: They're fun though.
Speaker 1: It's fun trying to back up in a jet ski
unless you really need to, and there's nothing.
Speaker 2: These are the clowns of the sea. They like have
no harm. You can be such an idiot on them
and the worst thing that happens is you get flung
off and land in more water.
Speaker 1: Like would you drop your phone into the wilammet damn it.
I'm sorry, I'm gunning for you a lot. I don't
know why.
Speaker 2: It was such a sad moment.
Speaker 1: You guys. I tried calling it. Dan wasn't here when
Jake was subbing in. I tried and it rang. Yeah,
it was a bag. Later that day at the bottom
of the limb, it.
Speaker 2: Rang, and it's possible it's still ringing.
Speaker 1: We did a whole bit about how I could have
FaceTime with like a fish, but it was a you
can find that, guys.
Speaker 2: The boat home was so quiet.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah you did. You weren't busting Rick James or
blaring Rick James on your phone. That's why.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I wasn't like doing a real cool tiktoks out
there anymore.
Speaker 1: You Lamprey eels had a party though, at the bottom
of that river.
Speaker 3: I did a flip off a boat once into the ozarks,
and it was the first day of the trip in
my glasses.
Speaker 1: Wait, but into the Ozarks, like the hills, the leg
of the Ozarks. Oh gotcha.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: We were on a boat and I my glasses on
as I always do, and I just did a flip
and the thing and my glasses came up and I
couldn't see the rest of the trip.
Speaker 4: Great.
Speaker 2: I've definitely lost my sunglasses in the ocean before thinking
for whatever reason, thinking to myself, it'll be fine, just
keep an eye, you know, don't don't let a wave
splash right in the face. And of course a wave
splashes you right in the face, you lose your sunnies
and they're gone. They're gone sunglasses.
Speaker 1: We went to Key West right after our wedding, and
I got really paranoid that my ring would come off
in the ocean, and especially because I had I was
like putting sunscreen on, which made me even more, you know,
I was, Oh, I was looped up ready to go.
Uh a little pig yeah, like a like a little
piggy boy running around the beach and uh. And I
was really paranoid. And then I was vindicated when I
later found out that a friend's friend lost his wedding
ring on a similar honeymoon.
Speaker 3: Paranoid. But that's why I have one of those, like
just temperrings. Then you know they sell, and like I
get the real one in a safe just because I
feel really bad if I lost the real one.
Speaker 1: Gotcha this one?
Speaker 2: You could just get fatter fingers so that it can't
come off.
Speaker 3: My weight fluctuates, you know, up and down quite a bit,
so it's like, I don't want to get skinny and
then lose a wedding ring.
Speaker 1: No enough to know about fingers to know whether you
start losing much fat.
Speaker 2: Is the opposite. Whereas you gain weight and your fingers
get fatter and fatter, you like cut off the circulation
of your finger. Because I've seen people not be able
to take off their wedding ring and then they have
to get them like not surgically, but like you have
to go to a professional and have them like grilled
off because.
Speaker 1: Certain materials that you if you they're not careful with,
then you have to like I forget the phrases, but
you have to. Like jim Jimmy Fallon apparently had to
do that finger he got gloved.
Speaker 2: That was fucking gross.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he gloves do.
Speaker 2: You know what I'm talking about? He gloving is like
one of the worst things that can happen to you,
but his his I don't remember what happened. But the
point is is that de gloving is like essentially where
your ring is coming off, but it's getting stuck, and
so it just takes off your skin, like your skin
comes off with it. That's imagine a glove, but your
glove is you that's crosisted off like a section of you,
and it's really fucked because there's a lot of nerve
endings and shit like that. So even if they put
the glove back on, it's all flimsy and like not
everything's connected.
Speaker 3: I've seen face off. You can just put the face
back on and it'll heal back up.
Speaker 2: No, they didn't.
Speaker 4: They explain it.
Speaker 2: They did, they explained it. I forgot they did. Never
mind that all my concerns.
Speaker 3: I had it once when I was on my honeymoon
New Orleans, and I had the real ring still and uh,
if we're walking a ton, if you're walking, I don't
know if it's just for some of your your fingers
kind of puff up and like, yeah, I had that
kind of moment of panic and you just have to
kind of wait.
Speaker 4: But yeah, not a good feeling.
Speaker 1: I think it's in the cold they shrink.
Speaker 3: It's it's expanding and contracting, right, Like, that's how potholes happen.
Speaker 1: You both know potholes are from rank, Hey, potholes are.
Potholes are from ice getting into cracks and expanding and
then shrinking.
Speaker 2: If I'm not mistaken, I believe I read in a
scientific journal that cold shrinks append.
Speaker 4: I think I saw Seinfeld.
Speaker 2: Not me though, not me my blog, but to thank you.
Speaker 4: Yeah, no, absolutely, yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And that's why I keep the apartment really cold, because.
Speaker 4: Then you want a man inside.
Speaker 1: She just thinks it's the a C all the time.
It's freezing in here, Babe. We're in fucking Arizona. It's
cold out here, Babe, it's cold in the desert type babe.
Speaker 5: Talking like rock climber. There's no rush from bowling George.
He's a favorite character of mine in that show. All right,
you want to talk about video games?
Speaker 1: Yes? Sure, all right, start with the big item first, Dan,
how you been liking the switch.
Speaker 4: To I love it. It's really good.
Speaker 3: I thought I brought it right here, but no, it's
I got it while we're at SGF and obviously was
a lot going on, but we had some time to
do some multiplayer Mario Card, we tested out the camera.
We played a lot of Soul Calber two against each other,
which was great. But yeah, it's I'm not gonna act
like the hardware is, you know. I definitely don't agree
with all the people that are like though, this is
like a boring console launch, like, oh, I don't have
any hype for this or anything.
Speaker 4: I think that's crazy.
Speaker 3: But I can also see that like this isn't like
a huge generational leap feeling thing.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: It's like there are things that feel significantly improved, namely
like the joy cons connecting disconnecting is so so much better,
the screens better, but certainly in terms of like you know,
graphics and stuff, which was always the big leap. You know,
if you look like, oh, PlayStation one to two or
certain two D to three D, you know, it's like
you it was bigger leaps back then. And looking at
Mario Kart World, it's a beautiful looking game, but it's
not like insanely different than Mario Kart eight, you know,
So it's I'm a Nintendo guy. I always have been,
so you know, I'm kind of a mark for this stuff.
I'm loving it, even like the welcome tour thing that
you know people should on and I think understandably, like
if there was ever something that was supposed to be
a pack in, you know, the tutorial game as people
are saying it or whatever should have been, but there's
enough in there. It's it's not this deep game experience
or anything, but it's got that Nintendo charm and polish
to it, and it's fun running around this giant you know,
switch to when you skate, when you're on the screen,
and there's all these little mini games and stuff to
show you how the mouse works and everything. So I'm
liking that, I think more than most people. And the
Mario Kart World is fantastic. It's again doesn't feel like
this massive generational leap, just because eight was so fucking
good and had so much content by the end that
you know, the big additions tracks, yeah, ninety six tracks,
which is insane, and like all the retro ones and everything.
So it's like it's great seeing all the new tracks
and everything here, but like the big changes or upgrades
are not that like you know, the free Rome stuff
is a fun novelty. It's not like a game changer.
I would say the knockout mode that strings together a
bunch of courses. I think that's maybe the coolest. Like
actual new addition here is like doing this marathon race,
you know, with twenty four racers across six tracks with
no stopping in between. Like that shit's really cool. I
think the stuff with unlocking all the different characters is
super fun.
Speaker 1: Sorry, what do you mean? So it sounds like a
tournament almost.
Speaker 3: Oh, so, it's like it's like you're played like a
burnout or other race in games where there's like an
eliminator mode where it's like, oh, after the last few
people blow up or whatever, you know, it's that version here.
But it's like there's Mario Kart World, which imagine like
the Fort's Horizon island or whatever it's that. And so
instead of just like these disparate, you know, disconnected you know,
four races or whatever, it'll put together like six races
that are actually connected on the overworld map, and so
you will start with twenty four people at the starting line,
and every time you get to the next area, it'll
be like Okay, we're gonna kill the last four people,
and so yeah, you're playing this online, it's like, you know,
if you get first place there, it's almost like a
battle Royale type thing of like you know, you're outlasting
all these other players. So it's it's also just fun
happening like that much of a like marathon thing. It's
not a two minute, you know, three or four lap thing.
It is a long drag and it's super fun. Some
people didn't like that, like a lot of the courses
are really wide now and that there's almost like too
much chaos, But the chaos is part of what I
love about Mario Kart. And I feel like with the
wide courses and all the cards, it's like Fury Road.
It's just like a shit ton of cars going and
everything's blowing up and it's just chaos everywhere, like in
a way like more than Mario Kart is typically bent,
and I think it's super duper fun in that way.
And all the usual bullshits there. You're gonna get blueshelled,
you're gonna get all that stuff and go from first
to ten out of no means not your fault at all,
but that's part of Mario Karts, so overall, love love,
love Mario Kart World. Switch to Welcome to where I
like more than I expected to. The hardware itself, I think,
feels really great.
Speaker 4: It doesn't.
Speaker 3: It feels less like a plastic toy, like especially the
joy cons you know, on the on the old one
kind of felt like flimsy. I always felt like I
was going to break that plastic off when I was
disconnecting them. This one, they feel like more of a
premium modern product, you know, cool.
Speaker 1: Steam deck, like in terms of comfort.
Speaker 3: I actually like the feel of this more than the
steam Deck. I love my steam Deck and I use
it all the time, but like this is thinner. The
steam deck is bulky, and it does like it doesn't
feel like a toy by any means, but it does
have a lot of so much more.
Speaker 2: Power it can't be contained within the thinness of a
little phone.
Speaker 3: I mean, there's definitely more you can do with the
steam Deck, for sure, like and I think going forward,
I'll probably use them about equally depending on what games
I'm playing. But I think I do like the feel
of the this which two a bit better and I
got like Ganky made a bunch of accessories for like
the little attachments and stuff that you can put on
there if you want more of a grip and things
like that. So I've got that option if I fund
like land in Bed and want to have a little
more support there. But I'm very happy with that, very
excited to see like Donkey Kong certainly see what their
big holiday games are. You have Metroid things like that.
So it's yeah, I'm just happy to have a new
Nintendo console.
Speaker 1: What about you? You were talking about the camera, but
I interrupted you. What do you like? What functionality does
the camera have?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 3: So it's really interesting because just like you set it
at the front of the room and for instance, we
were playing with Mike Manatti's brother and so we were
several of us were in the same room and Mike
Manatti's brother was in Ohio, and it has your face
there and it imposes it over your cart so you can.
Speaker 4: See like across the bottom.
Speaker 3: It's like a discord call, so you can see you know,
their their gameplay screen, you know, really shitty frame rate
and stuff like that, but you can see it and
you can see their face. But then also in Mario Kart, yeah,
it's just like a little like thing over your cart,
and if I was playing with YouTube, I would see
both of your faces.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: I hit Mike with a blue shell and I live
am seeing Mike's face react to it, and it like
spins around when it gets hit by a shell or
wipes out or something.
Speaker 2: Face genuinely is like your face in real time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like it's just a live camera feed and
with one crazy yeah, well, with one camera you can
have like four people's faces. It just detects them. Like
at the beginning, you just like put a circle over
your faces and you'll see everyone's heads over their carts,
and it's like it's pretty awesome.
Speaker 4: I think I'll wait and see.
Speaker 3: You know, last time I was excited about this it
was Xbox Live Vision camera for the three sixty and
pretty much just worked for Uno on Xbox Live Arcade
and I saw a guy in a Spiderman suit whacking off.
So that was my last memory of a console camera really.
But yeah, I'm curious how many people use it online.
I still haven't been able to like dive in as
much as I want to since I've been traveling, but
like this week and weekend, I definitely want to spend
a lot of time with it, and I'll do the
camera stuff.
Speaker 4: Oh.
Speaker 3: Also the microphone on the switch itself is kind of
crazy because we were playing with CJ. Minati and it
was right next to the TV or the switch was
and we could hear each other clear as day. It
does a really good job. It filters out the game sound,
it filters out you know, things like air conditioners and
vacuums and things like that. And you don't have to
have a headset, you don't have to like, it's just
it really works well. We were all very surprised by that.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think it's great. Those are really small, minor,
unique niche things.
Speaker 1: It sounds like.
Speaker 2: I haven't seen heard anything where I'm like I got
to get what. I do have one, by the way,
because I'm also that person. So I mine came in
the mail this week and I'm looking forward to testing
it out. But yeah, like I haven't heard anyone say
anything where it's like thank God I got it because
I have to have this item right now. It's like,
of course I'm going to get it. I I don't
want to not have one. I'm gonna get one. Got
to have I got to be the person who has
this item in case a game that I do want
comes out on it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's and even as the Nintendo mark I am,
I'm I'm going to be realistic and say that right now,
it's kind of just gonna be the Mario Kart machine,
except for some of the updates to do to switch
one games are significant. I'm not a Pokemon guy, but
Pokemon people have told me that those games have have
done a lot better.
Speaker 4: But mainly Zelda.
Speaker 3: I loaded up Tiers the Kingdom on it, and that
is way more of an improvement than I expected, mainly
like frame rate, because that game was you know, thirty
at best most of the time. Now running at sixty,
it looks fucking sharp on there. The load times are
a lot better. I'm going to go back and play
through Breath the Whild for the first time since launch
because of this thing. And I've actually heard the like
the way it works, like the Zelda notes thing on
the app now where you can like basically use it
like a GPS and mark things you want to go
to in points of interest on your phone. People have
said that actually works really well. So I'm totally ready
to go back to Breath the Wild after I'm done
with Best Stranding and some of these huge games, you know.
But yeah, it's that's been very cool cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll pick one up eventually, I think, uh, Mary,
have we talked about claiup Scary yet?
Speaker 2: So I just played it is time I'm playing it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I like that game quite a bit. How far
would you say you're into a few hours or so?
Speaker 2: Mm eight hours?
Speaker 1: Ten? Okay, so you're in like how many characters you have? Four? Okay? Gotcha?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I had to replay a bunch because
I'm not very good at turn based RPGs and I
usually don't play them. This is really out of my wheelhouse.
And I would just like to say, much like Dan,
I am growing this is my mustard. I just do
not like turn based RPGs. I don't really understand them,
and I didn't grow up with them, and I find
them like a little off pudding. And and this was
the first time I was at Kojimas and he was like,
you gotta China. I'm joking about mustard. I had the
opportunity to try this. Everyone says the story is really good,
and I do like a good story, so I loaded
it up, and the opening sequence is really good. It's
got a great hook. Quite I did not understand the premise,
but the premise is so cool. Something like every year,
this lady the Paintress like basically just pops a bunch
of people into flowers because they've hit a certain age,
everyone to be baby faced youngies. I think she's a
total sick.
Speaker 5: Oh.
Speaker 1: But yeah, she's like this god like demon goddess living
across this like ocean that they could see, and she
paints a new number every year, and everybody who is
that age just like starts to like vanish from like
the like in the Avengers.
Speaker 2: But but it goes down right like it started at
count four and this year's thirty three, and everybody has
thirty got bonked.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but this yes, And then basically they organize an
ex exposition every year once the number first changes, to
go to kill her.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so, and it's super unsuccessful.
Speaker 1: The thing that confuses me is that a couple there's
a couple of gripes. I have this game. I like
it quite a bit, and I want to go back
to the combat because there are pretty cool things in
the combat that I think caters well to people who
don't love turn based save points in this game are flags.
That's how they're depicted, and when you save at them,
it tells you which expedition to put the flag there.
Speaker 2: Like you'll see a flag that says forty four, which
means it was the expedition forty four.
Speaker 1: I think it's cool, and my confusion is and I
think a part of the game I'm missing is I
think the expedition is always relatively young people. I don't
think the expeditions are ever like you don't have to
be a certain age. One of your main characters is
like sixteen, so she doesn't have to go on this
thirty three.
Speaker 2: I think they made her eighteen for safety purposes, but
for whatever reason, she looks like she's about fourteen, and
it does. It does.
Speaker 1: Trust me, she's because you have to find like parents
die so they have to appoint guardians for the next
So she's I thought they said she was younger than eighteen.
Speaker 2: I think I don't think so. I actually I'm gonna
look it up. I'm gonna look it up right now
because we have the power of Internet.
Speaker 1: I think she's younger.
Speaker 2: You're ubscure character age.
Speaker 1: She's males six? Is she sixteen?
Speaker 2: Hold on mal right?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's weird.
Speaker 2: How easy I found this. A lot of people are
looking for her age mm hmm. I think it's sixteen.
Speaker 1: Yeah so she yeah anyway, so yeah, they got these physicians.
Speaker 2: You're not catching me.
Speaker 1: She's not in the game. She's treated like an Ellie character,
and about it. She's treated like a child. Like I
don't think they sexualize her that much in this game
at all, Like form.
Speaker 2: Is so young and so petite, and I just think it's.
Speaker 3: Kids in video games. It's like airports. What are they
doing here?
Speaker 2: How old do you think Princess Peaches like thirty four,
let's google it.
Speaker 1: Prince Mario's thirty babies and death stranding.
Speaker 2: Early to mid twenties.
Speaker 4: Well, that's a plot device.
Speaker 1: What about all the games you like are animated?
Speaker 4: Like a kid?
Speaker 1: Ever made?
Speaker 3: Was a kid?
Speaker 4: Ever made a game? Better?
Speaker 1: La was pretty integral to the last of us.
Speaker 4: I guess, oh, baby Mario, Yeah, I think.
Speaker 2: Says baby, and I think like.
Speaker 4: Baby Mario, baby yourself. Yeah, all right, all right, but airports,
get him out of there.
Speaker 1: Wasn't link like fucking fourteen and win Waker.
Speaker 4: He's twenty six.
Speaker 1: He's living with his grandma. You're just shouting numbers twenty anyway. Okay,
my l aside, I don't think in so far as
I'm twelve hours in the game, she's not sexualized in
my mind at all.
Speaker 2: I don't think she's sexualized. I'm not saying that. I
just think she's very petite, and they've made her look
very young and petit in the game.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, sure, I will say I like that the
so the combat is cool for those who haven't seen it.
It's turn based. However, there's a lot of timing based
things you can do to fight way above your level.
I missed. What you're laughing at.
Speaker 2: Dan, is like trying to avoid any potential situation.
Speaker 3: I'm just disapproving because I feel like I have some
people playing this game, a lot of motherfuckers on Twitter
that are doing the like, oh, I'm so in love
with it, like posting pictures of like their clare obscure
characters and now knowing that they might be like sixteen
or something like, oh you fucking I'm blocking all you.
Speaker 1: I don't, I Dan, your favorite form of entertainment has
oiled up men wrestling.
Speaker 4: Who never heard that one before. Are kids, We're not caring?
Speaker 2: Are the adults? Yeah? Are they?
Speaker 4: There's a grown man?
Speaker 1: Okay, sure, My point being that, like, I don't think
just the inclusion of someone who's under eighteen in a
video game is inherently bad.
Speaker 3: This is now just weird, knows I'm Blue Sky and
shut the.
Speaker 1: Fuck up while me and Mary talking about this game.
Shut the fuck up. You're not adding anything. You're just
shaking your head and being like, go eat mustard, be
open minded in a different room right now. Mind it,
because this game is really fucking cool.
Speaker 4: And I believe it.
Speaker 2: Try and get Dan gets the game.
Speaker 4: The game sounds great.
Speaker 1: A weird job of describing it too, because my alls, no, no,
you know what, No, I don't want to talk this
game anymore. I'm done. No you didn't.
Speaker 2: It's not on there's a list, and I'm just saying
she's young.
Speaker 1: No. Continue.
Speaker 2: It's like thirty two and they're on an expedition to
kill the Paintress, and the second day land like the
majority of their group gets annihilated, absolutely demolished by like
some old guy, very strange behavior, and so now they're
looking for the rest of their crew to go kill
the paintress, and it's a uh, that's the story. That's
that's it. That's as far as the story is really.
I mean, like you're meeting other characters. I was worried
my Ale died, but we did find her. She's fine.
And there's more characters. Now there's like a guy that
doesn't talk. That's kind of weird and creepy.
Speaker 1: But my point, Okay, going back to the combat there.
Speaker 2: Doing a good job again.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, no, there's just like I think, like,
like I don't I also don't want to spoil much
of the plot, like I have to be.
Speaker 2: Careful with the story.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I think. I think it's cool that if
you're not super into Turn Base, they still give you enough.
You can counter attacks, you can dodge attacks. At a
certain point, they start adding layers to that where you're
actually jumping over certain attacks and then responding mid air
to those attacks. They if you can get those mechanics down,
you can treat this game almost like a very high
difficulty action RPG, in which you're beating a boss because
you're just good at the game, not because you grind
it out many levels. You can do that, and you
can still definitely stay commensurate or like with the scaling
by defeating enough enemies where.
Speaker 2: You're still kind of quick timey. Though.
Speaker 1: Yeah they're they're quick time events for sure, but they're
like they're not They're they're not represented as just like
a button popping up on the screen. It's an actual
uh what's the word I'm looking for, diegetic animation in
the fight right the boss. The boss like a square
is not popping up from what I remember.
Speaker 2: Like, I mean, I like this game just like.
Speaker 1: I'm just saying, it's like a full way to integrate it.
Speaker 2: I'm not like a usual turn based RPG player. When
I did a battle and they were like, when you
see a yellow diamond, if you don't jump, you're gonna
take damage, and I was like, that's just a quick
time event, baby, like, but what's cool about it is
it doesn't have to be that. It could also just
be an attack and you have to memorize attack patterns
so that you can dodge or perry and the perry
windows really thin, but it feels awesome when a boss
is attacking one of my characters to dodge dodge perry,
or when the yellow icon comes up, you can jump
and perry, and you do a lot of damage with
your perry, So that feels like I'm in combat, not
a turn base when that happens.
Speaker 1: Yes, I will also say I think some of the
characters combat design is pretty nuanced. It reminds me of
Final Fantasy seven remake, where once you get Tifa, she
fights in a completely different style to Cloud. Similarly, here,
when you have Mile, she's all about stances, kind of
like like I don't know, like the Neo games or whatever.
When you get your second character, he's very much you're
trying to build up a certain number of colored gems
based on the element that you're attacking with in order
to then spend those. And then the main character is
just like do enough attacks and then you do a
crazy fucking arm attack.
Speaker 2: With your weird yeah arm. Yeah, he does like lightning.
They all do different types of moves, like his big
one for me is lightning. The little girl does physical damage,
and the floating girl I call her floating because I
think she floats most of the time.
Speaker 1: In the overworld. Yeah, you can travel around with her.
I stick to her.
Speaker 2: I gave her an AOI move, and so they all
have different purposes. One is AOI, one is physical, one
is electric. That way, I always have something based on
what somebody's weakness is, which I have enjoyed. There's also
just things you need to know about different enemies. There
were these underwater enemies that have this mine above their head,
and if you don't shoot the mine, you're in deep shit.
But as long as you shoot the mine, then it's
a cakewalk baby. In fact, they die like immediately, So
a lot of us just figuring out, yeah.
Speaker 1: There's three of them, you can chain it.
Speaker 2: It's crazy. Yeah. And yeah, a lot of them have
like a face hole, and if you shoot them right
in their hole, it takes out like thirty percent of
their health. So I'm learning pretty quickly, like secrets of
how to get through it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I will say like I do have some gripes
I get. On the one hand, I respect that they
don't give you a mini map because you literally you're
on an expedition to map this world out the continent
they call it. It still gets pretty obnoxious to not
have a minimap, and some of these areas are pretty
labyrinthine and it's a bit annoying to not have a minimap.
Tracking where I'm going.
Speaker 2: I have side areas with like secrets, lots.
Speaker 1: Of snaking like metrovens, but collectibles and shit.
Speaker 4: Like.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're pretty intricate worlds, especially the farther you go into.
And I will say some of these areas are really cool,
like the uh one of the earlier like regions you're
in is like underwater coral reef, but you're not really underwater.
It's just like there's a coral reef around you. Later
on you go and you start fighting or you start
fighting and befriending. Like they're made of like burlap and wood.
They're like animated. They kind of remind me of the
from What's Breath of the Wild kind of cook ish,
but like with burlap involved, like they took stuff from
around the woods. But yeah, I like it a bunch.
I don't. It's also super French, like they swear in French,
they like mutter stuff under their breath in French. I however,
I don't know if it's like a translation thing. I
think some of the dialogue falls flat for me. It's
also does throw me off a lot. Not only does
the main dude look like Robert Pattinson, the guy there's
an older guy pretty early in the game who I
swear they use Pierce Brosnan's face for and that threw
me and I could. I was like, I can't be
the only one I looked it up. I was not,
but yeah, I don't know. It's it's cool that like this.
Obviously it's a reductive term, but like this Double a
studio that hadn't really made an RPG like this before,
I can kind of, you know, make waves with it.
I don't know how successful it was monetarily, but I
just would like to see more games fill that gap
between indie and Mega Quadruple A. Yeah, so that's good.
Speaker 2: I'm saying it's perfect, like it gets it's getting such high.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I was like, I guess I gotta try it because
it's probably gonna come up for Gody, which is why
I like gave it such a try. Even though this
isn't usually my jam, I will say the audio is
fucking fantastic. This is one of the best soundtracks I
have ever heard from a game. I have let these
songs play. I've been in Boss bites where I was
like about to die and I was like, oh, yeah,
I'm about to die.
Speaker 1: I was the battle shaking my head.
Speaker 2: I was loving it and even though they were gonna
absolutely annihilate me.
Speaker 1: The music is Yeah, there's certain like there's certain parts
in like the uh in the woods where you're where
you're fight those burlapped monsters, the Ska Patats they call them, sorry,
they're they're like these mechs they put together through like potatoes,
like canvas and tents and poles. They made like these
mechs to defend the woods. And I believe it's just
sack of potatoes and French. But like these Korok things
I'm I'm usually really adverse to or averse to. What
were those animals they made for the Force Awake or
Last Jedi? That clearly works, Yeah, just to sell merch there, Yeah,
wish I get it. I feel like I was expecting
that to be these critters in first, but they're kind
of funny because they're just this these little French dudes
running around the woods like making these mechs and like
the Soka Pats are supposed to be invincible and then
like they have a megaphone, like in the woods, they're like,
release our biggest weapon, and it's it's just a giant
socapatat with like a shield that comes up with spikes
on it. I don't know's there's like a lot of
character to this game, and the sense of humor is
pretty funny at certain times, like I just wish I
just want a minimap and I I'm not as taken
with the storytelling. The premise is super cool, Like the
game so far has just ridden the wave of that
initial premise really well. I some of the character relationships
are just not hidden for me, but I like it
quite a bit. The combat is I don't know that
I like it as much as like Metaphor Say, which
I always think. I also think was a really innovative
turn based How long.
Speaker 2: Eating Daniel play this game for before he quits?
Speaker 3: I think no, I think I might like it is
Bonks played a lot of it, and I've watched a
lot of it, and and honestly, if I was going
to get into a turn based RPG, it needs to
be something that has some sort of gaming element during
the fights and like you know, like a timing thing
like That's why I like Paper Mario, That's why I
like In Luigi because it's crona trigger because there's timing
based things that like makes me feel like I'm playing
a game during the fights, and that's what I've seen
from this, and I love the look of it.
Speaker 4: You're right about the music.
Speaker 3: It has been like so many times I've walked through
the room and seeing her doing something, I'm like, what's
going on here? And like it seems to have some
like whimsy between it, like weird mini games and things
like that, and like the personality of it seems pretty evident,
and I am curious about it again after destranding in
a bunch of these other bigger ones and stuff like,
I would like to have played a significant amount by
the end of the year.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's been bosses where I'm like, oh man, I'm
under leveled. They really wanted me to explore more of
this area, but because I figured out the attack patterns,
I very much got through it. And it feels great
because some of them have like five attack combos that
you really need to like oh he he kind of
stutters on this one before he smashes the ground, And
they really do not have a big window for the
dodge or the perry, especially the peril.
Speaker 2: It's pretty cruel, but I think what's cool about it
is is you can change the uh, you can change
the rate of like how difficult the game is in
the settings at any time, which I really appreciate. And
because I was scared at the beginning of this game,
the very first enemy I came across, for whatever reason,
so difficult and so impossible for me. I had to
change it to easy mode because I was like, obviously
I'm bad at these games and I'm going to suffer
through this. But then the rest of the boss fights
or not boss fights, the rest of the enemy fights
were so easy. I changed it back to regular, And
I think what happened was somehow on my very first expedition,
I just came across a side street with a very
difficult boss that was too difficult for me.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Like there are little mini secret mini bosses,
like did you fight that Pinocchio? Dude, Yes, he's the
Minster or the the I don't know, he's a puppet.
But you get really cool powerful you get items.
Speaker 2: Really good loot behind them. But I didn't know that,
and I just thought maybe the game was insanely hard
and I didn't know what I was doing. It turns
out you absolutely can play this on medium or even hard.
I've tried all three modes just to test them out
and see how hard it is. And like you said, Mike,
as long as you're willing to really read the attack patterns,
this isn't so much in my opinion, about min maxing
my damage. It was about not taking damage as long
as I could figure it out. Eventually you can win
once you learn their attack patterns. So that's been fun
for me, and I have enjoyed. I actually think, now
that I've played enough of it, easy is too easy.
I still think hard is a bit too hard for me.
Speaker 1: And yeah, regular margin changes. It's crazy. It's like it's
the dodge.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the dodge is like the window and hard is
just like if.
Speaker 1: You blink, it's gone. I didn't. I didn't know that.
I thought the the damage you take increases on higher difficulties.
I don't know the window.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, I think because when I was on easy,
it was giving me like ten damage for every time
I took a hint, very forgiving. Yeah, but I felt
like it was easier to dodge on easy mode.
Speaker 1: So huh. That a balance though, because like you get
used to easy and you go up to medium and
then you're like muscle memory just completely.
Speaker 2: Maybe I'm wrong. I definitely know damage you take goes
up and down, but I thought it was easier to
dodge on regular than it was on hard mode.
Speaker 1: Gotcha. Yeah, No, overall I like it. I again just
like Navigationally, I wish they just like threw you know,
immersion to the wind and let me have a mini
map because there are a lot of branching pathways in
this world and almost like you forget you're playing an
RPG when you don't get into combat for a while,
it feels more like a three D platform or collectithon
because you're exploring so many pathways. On the side, I
left for four days to travel for work. I came back.
The game is also not great, like the journal does
not tell you much about what you're supposed to be
doing at parts. I also didn't have a mini map
pointing me anywhere. I got turned around easily. Uh, pretty
old school in that regard. I will just say, maybe
try to play through it in one stretch of a
few weeks or whatever it takes you. But yeah, overall,
it's it's wrong. Is it not super long? I think
thirty hours oh, I think thirty.
Speaker 2: That's my other reason why I usually don't play turn
based RPGs is because like the idea of like dumping
sixty to eighty hours in a game is like very
overwhelming for how much I'm working and traveling this summer,
and so like That's why I really like these shorter
experiences that make me feel like I've achieved something in
a smaller amount of time. But thirty hours is so reasonable.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, it's it's uh, like I said, I would
love to see more RPGs of this size keep coming out.
It's almost like the turn based version of like Outer Worlds.
When that came out, I was like, oh, this is nice.
It's like twenty eight hours. You could beat it in.
I think a vowed is around there as well. You
guys I think have beaten it. I haven't.
Speaker 4: I think that was like fifty to Oh, I can't remember.
Maybe fifty. No, it was like fifty sixty.
Speaker 2: I think I didn't finish avout. I would like to.
Speaker 1: I would like to go back to it.
Speaker 2: I have been overwhelmed by other things, speaking of which.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you two. You two have both been playing pip
Ostrello and the Cursed Yo Yo.
Speaker 2: Possible contender for Worst Game name of the Year.
Speaker 4: It's not good. It is not good.
Speaker 1: Want to play it?
Speaker 2: I almost overlooked this game because graphically it is uh No,
it's actually really cool graphically, but like if you look
at the cover art, it looks bad because it's like
a mouse weird thing with huge eyes. The colors are
super saturated. I think it's almost garish, Like at your
first look at it, it looks.
Speaker 3: Like like almost Pennies Big Breakaway if like, yeah, it's
just it's an uglier look.
Speaker 2: I think it's an ugly like the aesthetic is so saturated.
The blues are like a vivid blue and a vivid red,
which I think is hard on the eyes. I'll tell
you what did get me though. It said it was
a Yo Yo Vania. It said the first Yo Yo Vania,
and I was like, I like Metroidvania. I feel like
I can deal with this. To check it out, Dan,
I'm really curious what you think. But like my instinct was, I,
I've actually really freaking enjoyed this game. I've really liked
it so far.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm really impressed too, because, like I don't know,
I love Zelda and specifically top down Zelda with like
Links to the Past being my favorite ever. And so
I've played so many like link to the Past likes,
you know, and even like one that's like decent, I
will enjoy just because it's like, oh, this reminds you
of Linked in the past. This one actually has some
interesting ideas of its own, Like even just like the
yo yo thing is its own deal, and like you know,
it's got these things where you're ricocheting it off like
angled walls to hit things and collect things, and it's
almost a mix of like you know, the hook shots
and Boomerang and Zelda. Yeah, but good puzzles with that,
but like also smart ideas that are kind of like
the way that upgrades work when you were taking out
a contract, So you're basically like leasing your upgrade. So
it's like, okay, you're gonna have you're gonna do one
more pip of damage, but in the meantime, until you
pay this off, you were gonna take more damage or
something like that, or until you pay it off, like yeah, yeah,
And so it's like, as you're collecting money by defeating things,
a certain percentage will be going to your pockets and
a certain potent will be going towards paying it off,
which I think that's a really fun way to do it.
Instead of like, oh, I got a haul, you know,
three hundred coins to this guy to buy it. It's like, well,
you've had it now, but you're gonna have a little
bit of a handicap until you pay it off.
Speaker 4: Like, I think that's pretty cool.
Speaker 2: I love that system. I think it's so neat and
I've never heard of anything like this before, a debt
collection system. Every time I get coined, it does change
the way I play the game, because now, yeah, when
I'm fighting things, the coins disappear very quickly, and so
I'm killing something and like and like sucking all the
coins up because I owe a five hundred dollars debt
and until I pay this debt, I have two hearts.
Too hard it is to survive a giant area full
of things trying to kill you when you can only
take one hit or and then you die. And when
you take a hit it costs you money that's in
a portion of your total dollars, which is so fucking rude.
By the way, So I have five hundred dollars I'm
getting hit with like an eighty dollars fee every time
I die. Money is precious in this game, so that
I find that the system stresses me out makes me
take it very seriously because I got to pay off
my debt.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it is smart and it is doing unique
things that Like I think Link Between Worlds had that
system where you would like rent items, like so like
you rent the hook shot and I can't remember how
like if you found it in the world then it
would be permanent, or if you paid a much bigger
fee or something, then you could own it. But I
think this is kind of a smarter, cooler way of
doing something like that instead of just like here's the
dungeon where you get the boomerang, you know. Yeah, so
it's in the look of it, like the key art,
like you said, Mary, is pretty gnarly, but in game,
I think it looks pretty sharp. I think it's a
good looking game. It's one it'd be perfect for like
a Steam deck. Actually, now that I'm gonna be carrying
Switch around more kind of want to get the Switch
version because I'm only maybe an hour in something like that,
maybe a little more so i'd restarted on the Switch.
Speaker 4: But yeah, I really enjoyed when I played so far.
Speaker 2: It's it's got some really fun moves coming up as well.
I almost got like almost animal weld when I was
playing it, because I, you know, just like any metrodveining,
you'll come across the space You'll be like, well, I
don't know what to do here, you know, because you
can only jump two squares and the game is very
block shaped intentionally so that you know how far you
can jump or how far you can throw your yo yo.
I think you can throw your yo yo three, but
you can only jump too. And I came across these
spaces where I was like, I don't know what I
can do here. I guess nothing, And then I finally
got a new yo yo move, and now it's opening
up a whole world for me. It's essentially like a
travel system, so now I can like get to areas
I couldn't get to before it. It was so fun
because it's all yoyo based, so like I've always had
the yoyo, but now I have like this really fun,
new cool way to use it that's like altering my
play style and every way. I also got a really
fun You probably saw this even if you've only played
an hour. But do you know when you start the game,
it says you can walk anywhere. So the way this
game is built, unlike a Zelda where it's like you
have to get this move first, in this game, you
can walk anywhere you want and just figure it out.
And I went into like a mall and I got
this really cool dash move that essentially allows me to
travel past water. And now I also got a what's
it called, like a not a dash we were just
talking about it, where you basically a parry thank you,
and you can shoot bullets back at people. And there's
all these be cops and I was these be cops
are so stressful. They can really totally kill you. Once
you learn the perry, it's it's so smooth, dude. So
like I'm in classic Metroidvania style, which is the thing
I love about these games. There are places that you
don't understand what to do, or there's people that you're
afraid of because they're very different cult but once you
obtain the correct skills, it's like you're God. You're just
walking around there and like, absolutely I can traverse that water.
Absolutely I can kill all these be cops. And it's
just like no problem at all. The fast travel system
is also pretty convenient. There's phone booths everywhere. There's a
whole sewer system that's essentially the same map but underground,
which is really fun to navigate. They put a lot
at work into this game.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the fast Travel is like you're just basically spending
money to unlock it permanently, right, like the fast Travel.
Speaker 4: I like that.
Speaker 3: I think that's fun. Like they do make money matter
in this game more than I think like rupees and
a Zelda would. So you definitely are, you know, encouraged
to get everything you can.
Speaker 2: Well, not only do you have to spend them on
paying off your contracts like Dan was saying, but you
also need them to enhance your badge system. So just
like Hollow Night, you'll come across these badges that will
enhance your gameplay. So maybe you'll get a badge that
gives you an extra heart, or they'll give you a
badge that will drop more money. But you have so
many badge slots, and uh, you can use money to
enhance your badges, so that costs less slots. So I
have a badge that gives me an extra heart, and
I have a badge that drops more hearts, and I
find that I take a lot of damage in this game.
So I enhanced both of those badges to cost less
slots so that they can both fit even though I
only have three slots. So all that stuff has been
like intricate and fun to play with. It sounds complicated,
but man, when I was, when I was like messing
with it, I was like, this is all fairly intuitive.
I can understand the systems, and ultimately, even if like
I didn't want to deal with all this shit, you
can just kill everything if you've just figure it out,
like you can just burn through this game. You can
just raw dog it if you really want to. But
I encourage you to do the systems because I think
you will make your gameplay a hell of a lot easier.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I think I think I'm gona keep playing it
to have on the go.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm installing it on my Steam deck. I'm taking
it on my trip. One percent probably gonna be the
game that I play during my travels the most. I mean,
I'm I'm super into it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's great.
Speaker 1: Speaking of, I picked up a game I've been meaning
to play for a while. Dan, I texted you about it,
but I didn't say anything else. Deep Rock Survivor. For
those who don't know, it's just a I don't We
must have talked about Deeprockalactic on fire Escape at some point.
I love that game. It's one of my favorite, like
live service games, if you can call it that, I
think they that is a game more developers should be
trying to mimic. But speaking of mimicking, Coffee Stain whatever
they call the publishing company they started, now they released
Deep Rock Survivor. It's a you know, Vampire Survivors clone.
I don't mean that derogatorily. It's well, Vampire Survivors wasn't
the first game of that sort either. The auto shooter,
but it's an auto shooter, and if you play Deep Rockalactic,
they are using the same classes of characters, the same
weapons you can get in Deeprochylactic, and it's an auto shooter,
and that you start off with the assault rifle, and
then you're every you're collecting those experienced orbs to upgrade
either the assault rifle or to upgrade your movement speed,
or to upgrade. The biggest mechanical difference right off the
bat is the mining. When you're going around these areas,
you have these sections of dirt or rock or or
that you can actually pick ax your way through automatically.
It's one of those things where it's like, oh, different
classes benefit more from different upgrades in that I didn't
realize how important the mining speed could be because usually
it takes like two swings to get through one block.
You can upgrade it to where you're just like chewing
through them and you're getting side objectives. This is also
another place where it kind of parts ways from Vampire Survivors.
But Vampire Survivors had little like secrets around every map
that you could unlock and whatnot. This one actually says,
go collect like sixteen of these bulow mushroom caps, so
that becomes this thing that you doing so will get
you extra goal to spend after you extract. Because these
these missions are all like four or five part missions.
You'll complete the objective, lure out the boss, kill it,
and then extract out to the next level. Between them,
you can then spend money on upgrades or spend different
resources you've gathered in the mining or in like the
actual rock formations, you could spend that on different upgrades.
It works extremely well. I would say it's pretty tough.
I still have not i've completed the first mission. It's
sort of set up to be a linear thing at first,
where As opposed to Vampire Survivors, where it's like, oh,
I'm gonna play the first map with like five different
characters of it i've unlocked. This is very much like oh,
I've been playing the first class for a while before
I even unlocked the gunner. But once you unlock the gunner,
it's like, all right, I'm gonna put all my points
into tankiness and fire rate because the reload is going
to take a long time no matter what or sorry
clip size, so I might as well expand the magazine size,
so I don't know if I have more bullets between reloads.
I don't think it's better than Vampire Survivors, but I
think it's a really solid, like a really good steam
deck auto shooter that you don't have to have played
Deep Rochalactic to enjoy. Having played a lot of Deep Rochalactic,
I enjoy seeing how all these weapons and weapon classes
transition into a different genre. But yeah, I like that
game quite a bit. I'm probably going to be playing
that mainly on the flight tomorrow, so check it out
for sure.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've tried to add a couple of Vampire Survivors
likes since I got obsessed with that, and yeah, I'm
always going to look out for a good one of those.
I think I did download it after you mentioned it
to me a while ago, but I just haven't tried
it yet.
Speaker 4: But it sounds good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's great. It's there's also like cool little mechanics,
like similar to hell divers. If you call in Ammo
drops at the right time, it'll crush a bunch of
bugs at the same time. So it does enough to
break away from Vampire Survivors. But like, I'm all for
that genre getting as bigger, more people taking a swing
at it. Like I'd love to see different properties, try
to do the auto shooter, bullet heaven genre, whatever you
want to call it. But yeah, it's great if people.
I don't think it's too expensive on Steam. I think
it's well worth whatever I paid for it. I'd have
to double check that, but yeah, it's great. Nice Mary,
what's or Dan? You're playing the Lego party as well.
Speaker 4: Played a game of that at Summer Games Fest. It's
very good.
Speaker 3: I've you know, obviously being a big old Mario Party guy,
I've played other, you know, party game type things, and
I feel like most of them try to do like
a weird twist on it. Like I remember Sonic Shuffle
back in the day. It was our like card based
and sucked, and it's there's like an anime when we
did recently that It's obviously the Mario ip goes far
with me, but I also do really like just the
idea of this bullshit party game. So I've always been
open to other party games, and Lego Party is the
one that I think on first glance has kind of
hit the Mario Party notes the best and actually improves
on a lot of it. It's just a lot snappier.
Like you know, I don't know if you two have
played a lot of Mario Party, but it's just like
there's just so much you're just like, okay, we're slowly
going across the board. Now, this fucking turtle is explaining
the shop to me for the twentieth time. Things like that,
This one it moves, it moves, but everything it's doing
is straight out of Mario Party. There are chance time squares,
and instead of coins and stars, you are getting studs
and golden bricks. You know, it is unapologetically Mario Party.
Speaker 1: It's still the same like dichotomy between the board game
layer and minigames.
Speaker 3: Yeah, totally. So you do the four turns and then
you do a minigame. But like all the mini games
I did were a lot of fun and they do
some unique things too, where it's like, okay, you're driving
these little like remote control cars and each face button
makes a wheel accelerate, so you have to like navigate
through this, you know course with a bunch of holes
and things like that by controlling individual wheels almost in
like a Quop like way.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 3: So yeah, really solid, many games great look to it.
It's just silly stuff. Like the level we did had
a volcano and if you get to the top of it,
there's like a big turkey on a spit roast and
it'll like heat up and explode up and land on
one of your enemies and steal either studs or a brick.
It works the lego stuff in in a smart way
to where it's like you get on certain squares and
it'll like build another part of the level. So you know,
it was like a bay is where I was the
game was happening, and then you land on a thing
and it builds a pirate ship in the bay and
you can suddenly go across it and kind of shortcut
to a different area. So a lot of charm, a
lot of really good mini games, and just there was
I gotta admit it was pretty nice, just having it
move at a faster clip than Mario Party. So I
will definitely get this, play a lot of it. It
turns out it's not just the Mario IP that makes
me like that stuff.
Speaker 1: What were you playing it on?
Speaker 3: It was an SGF demo, so I believe we had
pissed I think we had pissed five controllers.
Speaker 4: But uh yeah, I think it's probably gonna be on everything. Yeah,
very good looking forward to stuff like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I like I played, Uh, correct me if I'm wrong.
There were three Switch Mario parties.
Speaker 4: Uh yes, Super Mario Parties, Superstars, and Jamborey.
Speaker 1: I played. I played the one that was like retro
maps boards Superstars, that's the best way pay that. I
liked it. And I played the first one on Switch
and I thought it was fine. I don't know, I
don't have the same lens to like critique it in
the context of the franchise, but was the last one
on Switch the one people didn't like or was the
first one?
Speaker 5: No?
Speaker 3: I actually I was on the low end of the
review scores on that one, but I still like it.
I just, you know, I think I'm maybe like critic
like Jamboree. Yeah, I think I just I kind of
dissected a lot. Being a big Mario Party head, and
there were elements I didn't love about it, but still
it's a fun game. I'm just going to go to
Superstars if I'm playing on the Switch, it's okay.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'd be down to try Lego Party. That sounds fun.
Could be a bonus episode when it comes out. Yeah,
yah yah, Maren, what's some midnight walk?
Speaker 2: Okay? So this one thing I feel like, I feel
like more people should be talking about this. I can't
believe no one is playing this. This is a really
cool game. This is a clay mation, handmade stop motion
horror game. I'm gonna say horror, but I don't know
if it's like that. I'm going to classify it as horror,
but I think it's more of an adventure with scary elements.
If you look at the trailer, it will give you
an extraordinarily good example of like some of the creepy
scary stuff. It reminds me a bit of Nightmare before
Christmas and a bit of Pans Labyrinth. The way that
this world is con you are, I want to say,
you're called like a burnt or something, or a chart
or something. Your hands are like so burnt and crispy,
and it looks like your ash or something, and the
world has there's no fire in the world left. But
luckily you come across a cute little guy. He's such
a cute little character. I forget his name. I want
to say, it's like potty or like you know, pothead
or something. And he has fire in his head and
your job is to escort him to the end of
this mountain. But there's so many terrifying things in this
world that want to snuff out the flame and kill
you along the way. I actually think this is an
incredibly well constructed and charming experience. It's very thoughtful. You
come across this town of nobody's but they are genuinely
their heads. They have no bodies, which I think is
a really fun play on words. And there's a monster
that's killing them. It's like eating them, and so they're like,
you have to take out this monster. It's it's dangerous,
it's killing us. And so you're you're killing these that
you're trying to like take down this monster. And then
you find out like there's a lot of depth to
these characters. There's a reason the monster is doing what
it's doing, and it's actually like the Nobody's are kind
of dickheads, and so like it's really fun that you,
as the player get to kind of see the depth
and the thoughtfulness of the of the villains and the
people that you come across on your way on your journey.
Speaker 3: Did Mike disapprove of the Nobody's pun because I saw
him burious head.
Speaker 4: In his hands.
Speaker 1: I shouldn't have reacted that way. No, I liked it.
It reminded me, for you, It reminded me of a
very very deep cut video that my friends and I
used to watch called, Uh, there's a this just man
on the street that someone like struck a jackpot with.
She's trying to ask him what he thought about like
some Sydney ordnance, and he started going off. It's Canadian
Steve Spiro's easy going.
Speaker 4: Oh oh the vampires.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Waterloo. And at one point he says, because
you can't kill a nobody with nobody. That's what I'm
just thinking about him. How he starts going off.
Speaker 3: And Glenn, howardon did that speech in the BlackBerry movie?
I don't really Yeah, yeah, Mary that this game is
one of them that, like, you know, Bonk is always
playing games, and you know, there are just certain ones
where I walked through the room and you know, didn't
really grab me or anything, and then this one I
saw her playing it and I was like, wow, that
is a striking art style, Like that is righting.
Speaker 2: Eventually, the gameplay is also quite interesting. So a lot
of the times you're hiding from a creature, they're always
giving you a closet or a tunnel or something to hide.
They have like interesting not too difficult, but there's always
like some kind of thoughtfulness to a puzzle to help
you get through a space. So like, let's say there's
a monster and there's no places to hide, but there's
a candle nearby. You can tell your little pot boy
to light the flame of this candle. The monster will
go to blow it out because they hate fire. And
then it'll help you run across behind their backs when
they're not looking, and so there's a lot of sneakiness,
a lot of maneuvering to get by. When you do
get caught, I have like literally yelped and been like
it's kind of breaky when these things try and eat you,
and they're just kind of gross. They these gangly teeth
and big eyes. It's really stressful and so like, this
game is not for the fainthearted. But I am just
I think I am disappointed that I haven't heard more
people covering this game. I think it is so unique
and as we talk about how important it is to
support art as games, this is art. This is obviously
hand constructed. This took someone a lot of time. This
is not a short game development cycle. This was a
very long experience, probably to hand make all of these
clay animations. It looks awesome. It is so stunning. It's
got cool gameplay if you can get past how scary
it is. It is scary, but I love that shit.
You got to pick this up like, this is a
really unique experience. I loved it.
Speaker 4: Nice. What are you planning on?
Speaker 2: I'm playing it on Steam and I am going to
download it on steam Deck and hope that it also
works on my steam Deck. I assume it will, and
I stream deck.
Speaker 3: It feels like a game i'd like to like, I
would want to turn off the lights and turn up
the surround sound and you know kind of sink in.
Speaker 2: Is it on game Pass?
Speaker 1: No, I'm just kidding.
Speaker 4: Oh, it's funny.
Speaker 1: It is a very good looking game.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is a game to like immerse yourself in.
This is a game like turn off the lights, like
Dan said, and like, just.
Speaker 1: So, how do you like? That's fucking crazy though, that
Like it's supposedly what do they mean? It's it's handcraft
with real clay and animated as stop motion style, But like,
I don't fully understand, Like that's crazy. I don't fully
understand how you could hand make all of this clay
to account for every animation that could happen in a
video game.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a really good question. My assumption is that
a lot of the animations were done in clay, but
they probably like some of the backgrounds and stuff like
that were probably done in a three D renderer. But
I think your main characters are all done in clay,
and the hands you'll definitely see it, Like if you
ever see a lot of this game has to do
with fires. You're constantly like getting matches and lighting them.
But when you see your hand animations, you can like
kind of tell this was like a constructed hand and like,
I don't know, it's interesting, Like you can see the
divots in it, you know what I'm talking about, Like
when you see clay mation and you're like, yeah, it's
not perfect, but I love it. It's charming, Like this
game has that.
Speaker 1: It's cool. Dan, you've been playing Hell as Us as well.
Speaker 4: I played it.
Speaker 3: It's coming out in September and I was in Montreal.
I played about three hours a bit and so obviously
you know, limited time, but enough to see that it's
really going for something and that something is not holding
your hand. It is all about it just like you.
There are very very limited HUT elements. There are no
quest markers there. It's the opposite of like that Ubisoft
Matt Barf thing where there's just a million checklist things.
You go into this nation to try to figure out
what happened to your family and the town you grew
up in. You've been like exiled or you left early.
It's kind of this like Hermit Nation, like kind a
North Korea type thing, but it's fictionalized. And you just
have like a data pad with an investigation tab on it,
and it just starts with like find out what happened
to your family, find out what happened to the town,
and you just go in and you just go into
houses and towns and you talk to characters and ask
them questions and as they fill things in, it's almost
that kind of corkboard like you know, like okay, so
this happened here, and okay, so someone said they saw
your dad go to this town and this thing much more,
much more. I don't know if it opens the word
that I'm looking for here, but.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it is.
Speaker 3: It feels like you could people could have vastly different
experiences playing this game, you know, whereas at Alan Wake
was a little bit like okay, now here's the part
where you go to the amusement park, this is like,
I don't know, go where you're going to go and
see what order you learn things in and where it
takes you. But like any maps you get are going
to be like hand drawn things that a character hands
you of like oh, here's this depot here, here's this
tunnel on the highway, and it's just like a scribbled
you know, map that someone drew.
Speaker 4: It's really cool. It is interesting in that, like it
does give you the option.
Speaker 3: With like there's combat with these like weird other worldly
like creatures that you can change perry timing and enemy
aggressiveness and like that type of stuff, but you cannot
choose to make the like, hey, give me an objective arrow,
give me a mini map. It's you know, like a
red Dead Redemption two. You could do the thing where
you could turn off all the many maps and stuff
and just rely on like signs in the world and
you know, people telling you things, and this is like
that if it was your only way to do it,
and so like there are some diegetic hints where it's
just like there's wind chimes that you can follow, there's
you know, markings on trees things like that, but it's
it's pretty hardcore about just like you finding your own
way through it through talking to people and learning about
the world. And like when in like I saw the
trailer a while ago and I was like, Okay, I
don't know if this is like a soul's like thing.
It almost looks kind of like destrianting me. But no,
it's very much its own thing. And I'm now really
intrigued by whatever this game is doing.
Speaker 1: Do you have a lightsaber esque esque thingber?
Speaker 3: What weapon I have? You have like a drone that
you can unlock a bunch of upgrades for and everything?
I can't remember, like what weapons there is? Definitely Melee.
Melee is like your main like.
Speaker 1: A bunch of blowing swords and stuff.
Speaker 3: It's kind of a hell of a look to it,
and like the enemies look really wild, just these like
husks with like these holes in them in their faces
and very spooky and weird, and I'm into it. Great
sound design. It reminds me a lot of Annihilation, And
I asked the developers and they're like, yeah, that was
like a that was a primary influence.
Speaker 1: I what other game were we talking about about? Also
has Annihilation vibes. I'm like, I feel like that format
of movie. Even Stalker has it too. I mean Annihilation
was kind of inspired by Stalker, the movie, which the
games were playing from the same source material. I want
more games to do exactly what it sounds like this
is doing, where you're going into this weird altered landscape
just to figure out what happened, and then you're finding
weird fauna on flora and shit like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, it's like there's a huge, like I
guess this game's version of like a high royal field
in this area where it's a kind of a hub
that connected a bunch of towns and stuff. And in
the middle of it, from far away, you see this
weird just pulsating orb of just this kind of evil
looking orb of this like like in the middle of
a field, and there's just a bunch of these like
husks like walking around it, and so you just see
it in the distance, You're like, what the fuck is that?
And just in talking to people in the cities and stuff,
they'll start mentioning it, and it kind of fills out
your data on what this thing is. And it's very
very cool how you learned things in that game.
Speaker 4: I think. I think, Mike, it's it seems like a
mic game for sure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this looks rad I had seen this announced. I
don't know if it was a Game Awards or an SGF.
I'm like, all right, this looks looks kind of cool.
But the more I you talk about this, the more
i'm I would be into this coming out September.
Speaker 4: Yes, yes, I think it's people from my dis X
working on it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, from IDOS back in the day.
Speaker 4: Oh sure, Yeah, it's I think you're gonna like it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this looks cool. Last game I'll talk about quick.
I also traveling. I went back to Rogue Legacy two
on Steam deck anybody who didn't play that, because I
believe it came out in early access for a bit
and then went full That game is still really good.
The first one was twenty fourteen. I want to say
one of the earlier roguelikes to kind of blow up.
Speaker 2: Get why people didn't get is into Rogue Legacy two
is Rogue Legacy one. Because Rogue Legacy one like had
a whole bunch of fair and I thought Rogue Legacy
too was like we're gonna do the same thing but
on crack and give you like way more ways to
play the game and weird, weird stupid ways, like everything's
upside down and gravity sucks.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 3: I mean from my experience, like I loved Rogue Legacy
one so much. I beat it on like three different
consoles and I love it.
Speaker 2: I beat it a couple of times. I really liked
Rogue Legacy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was one of the first Rogue lights I
really really got into. So I was super excited for this,
and like, I think my experience with it is why
I don't really do a lot of early Access. It's
why I haven't touched Hades too, despite loving Haites. One
is because I played it right away when it went
out in early access and like part of the pandemic.
I didn't want to say. It was like June July
twenty twenty or something like that, and I was like, Okay, cool, cool,
this is fun. But it was like had like one
area or whatever, and then you get to a screen
that's like we're working on it. Here's our roadmap, and
it just kind of takes the wind out of the
sales because it's like you get excited to play it.
Speaker 4: But then it's like, well, you don't really get the
whole thing. This is just a me thing.
Speaker 3: Maybe I'm sure there are others that feel this way,
but like when it came out, I just didn't really
I think I played a couple of runs and then
I didn't continue because I would rather just wait until
something is at a one point zero and then I
feel like I have a beginning to end experience with
the game, rather than staggering it like that.
Speaker 1: You know, Yeah, No, I'm the exact same way. I
have not touched Hades too. I think that could potentially
ruin it for me. I also did the same thing
with Darkest Dungeon two. I don't think I should have
done that. I played that early access, but I think
the way that we play even fully released games is
so often bite size just to see what it's doing
that when I play games in early access, I'm like,
all right, I see what they're going for, and then
I don't go back. Even though I admit that's not fair,
And like you see a lot of success stories in
early access, and like I'm a huge proponent for early access.
I think it's a great idea. I think, when done right,
like you're getting good feedback from the people who care
the most about your game, you should be doing that
if you can. I totally agree. I did not touch
Rogue Legacy too until I came Now. I will say
I think it does a lot of really cool stuff.
It just goes crazy with the character classes. You get
a gun slinger who has a literal gun that shoots.
You have a shinobi who like has to stop to attack,
but you can angle the sword and if you get
at the very tip of the katana, then you do
critical damage. There's a lot of cool stuff going on.
They also not that long ago released their final update,
so it's it's not only complete, it's they're done working
on it.
Speaker 4: Okay, So I do want to get into this great.
Speaker 1: Great Steam deck game. I'm there's six bosses to the
base game. Oh it's been a at lunch, like I
don't know, two thousand nineteen.
Speaker 2: Oh so early access just like put a little bad
taste in our mouths.
Speaker 1: Or I played a lot of it before. I just
went back recently on Steamck. I went back recently. I've
never played it on steam Neck, which I have been playing,
and it's a phenomenal Steam deck game, and now anybody
who may have forgotten about it, which I get. It's
a really good game. The first one is still more
focused and tight. This one. It feels like they clearly
were just trying a lot of different ideas that I
don't always think mesh well. But there are really cool
character traits, really cool magical spell kind of things. The
map design. I think this game's cool because the first
game was very much like the whole game felt like
a Castlevania. Sure, the aesthetic could change. It would be like, oh,
I'm in dungeons, now I'm in the woods. This When
you go between major areas, it actually kind of changes
how you're moving around it. The first section is very
much Castlevania, straight platforms, spike floors, flame barriers, et cetera.
Then you go to the next one, it's very much like, Oh,
you're leaping across these like houses on stilts and like
jumping up and falling down the sides to find secrets.
Then you get to another area where it's like, oh,
it's a snowy area. I get that. But then all
of a sudden, it's more like hills, escapes, zombies come
up out of the ground. So it's actually kind of
changing the overall flow of the game. Yeah, I don't
know it. They also have some cool overall stuff where
it's like the first game had the architect where you
could lock the castle layout if you liked it, just
pay extra to say, oh, I know where this boss is,
I want to go right there. I don't want to
deal with RNG, so lock the castle for me. I
know he's up here in this part of the map.
They do a lot of cool stuff like that. They
have quality of life things where you can pay to
unlock a warp portal permanently. It won't always be in
the same place unless you also combine that with the architects,
but you will be able to warp to the snowy
area right away because if you play the first game,
you know, at a certain point the gold that the
enemies are dropping in the first area just does not
become worth it to farm. So they do a lot
of cool stuff to keep the game moving along. Breezily.
I don't know. It's really good And now I don't know.
It wasn't yesterday, but it wasn't that long ago. They
released the final update. All the character classes are in
it all like they've moved on their work. Cellar Door
Games is working on Rogue Legacy three, Rogue Legacy three
or whatever the hell they're doing next. So this game
is like set in Stone. It still kind of can
look like a flash game sometimes that art style not
a flash game, but like, uh, what is it?
Speaker 2: I'm immune to that criticism. Yeah, No, it's that's just
something terrible. People say.
Speaker 1: There's a game like two years ago that I kind
of liked. There's like a little indie Pokemon ripoff, but
it just looks like they're they're literally cut out of paper.
And I think it worked for the first game because
it was kind of novel, but now it's like it's
not the best looking game at all times.
Speaker 2: I don't like any of the art styles where things
look like they're cut out of paper.
Speaker 1: I don't know, take a look at it. It's it's it's.
Speaker 2: Also make your ship look a little bit more three D.
I just don't like the thick outline to like, I
don't know, hide stuff.
Speaker 4: I feel like paper Mario.
Speaker 2: I've never liked it. Yeah, art style, I think the
game is cool. I don't like the art style.
Speaker 1: Play Rogue is a really good game. War Chief war
Group is the game I was thinking of it was.
That's not the Pokemon thing. Is the term How good.
Speaker 2: Paper Mario would be if it didn't look like that.
Speaker 4: It's called didn't play Mario and Luigi.
Speaker 1: How could you slip behind two new surfaces if it
wasn't paper.
Speaker 3: Yes, it's a gimmick. He slides underneath the blankets because
he's a piece of paper. My goodness, fat shaming Mario,
paper Mario.
Speaker 1: But uh yeah, Rogue Legsy two. Check it out, Mary, wait, Mary,
save this joke. I want to champion this game one
more time. Go play Rogue Legsy two. Continue hit. It's
not gonna be that funny. It's not gonna be worth it.
Speaker 2: Where's Mario? Don't even have a waste? Mario? So thin?
Mario light as a feather, Mario looking amazing? Mario?
Speaker 1: Is this a reference to? It is like a miscongeniality thing? Mario?
Speaker 4: Thigh gap?
Speaker 1: What look for a guy at a castle? I did?
Speaker 2: Everybody wants it. Imagine Mario in the thy gap.
Speaker 1: Looking for a guy in high roll six.
Speaker 2: Die gap. Nobody looks for a man with a thigh
gap anymore. But I want to make it happen.
Speaker 4: I don't think we can have it because we've got
balls there.
Speaker 1: You can tape them up. I'm looking for our guy
in high roll five.
Speaker 4: The balls dangle right where the thigh gap would be, right,
so just.
Speaker 1: You can you can?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I guess so, I guess if you like folded
him up, you can see if you have.
Speaker 1: Daddy says, I got that good gap.
Speaker 4: Stop that.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about email, Okay, as always, you can right
into I just almost gave my email. It's been a while.
Fire Escape cast at gmail dot com for questions, comments, concerns.
We got a bunch since last episode. Thank you for
filling up that inbox again. Dan and Mike Manatti and
Jeff Grubb love to do like eight emails when Mary
and I are away, so we've refilled. It's been great. Mary,
do you want to read this? This is definitely up
your ally. This first one from Hillary from Virginia.
Speaker 2: Sure, Hey, Escapees. This question has been floating around the
cozy gamer sphere online and I would love to get
your takes on it, especially Mary.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 2: If you made your own cozy bundle of five games,
what would they be? Feel free to leave this off
the pod if you read this question. Mine would be
Graveyard Keeper, Starduo, Valley, Animal Crossing, Powerwash, Stimulator, and Dragon
Age origins not classified as cozy, but Thetis is my
favorite place. Oh that's so cute. Much love Hillary. Thanks Hillary.
Speaker 1: It's a good question for any genre, like what is
the what is the ideal? Like the bundle pack bundle
of five games. But yeah, cozy games, I guess to
kick it off off, these are good I have. These
are good ones. Animal Crossing I think is up there. Well, no, Mary,
you can go first year the cozy Game Expert.
Speaker 5: But like.
Speaker 1: Stardoo Valley has to be there for sure.
Speaker 2: I think, unfortunately, I mean, it's not unfortunate. Stardu Valley
is kind of the mecca of cozy now, like, I
don't think you could have a bundle without Stardoo. I'm
gonna name a couple more that I think should be
contend ees, and then what I think we should do
is make fire Escapes cozy bundle, right, Like, with the
five of us and our powers combined, I'm sure we
can think of what we consider a cozy bundle.
Speaker 3: My boss, Boss Boss, Yeah, joined the cat World.
Speaker 2: Boss is like very.
Speaker 4: He loves me. Yeah, we're buds like a Wolve's eyes.
Speaker 2: I know, I can't, I can't look away. It's like
a Medusa quality started interrupting. Okay, so other ones that
I think we should be heavily considering for the fire
Escape cozy Bundle. I think Slime Rancher is one of
the cozyest games. I've played in the last decade. I
have lost myself in this game.
Speaker 1: Specifically one two did not do it for me really
at all. They like, I mean, Mary, correct me if
my memory is wrong, or rather share a different opinion
if I'm you disagree, But they'd like overcomplicated everything in
a way that, like the gameplay loop, was not nearly
as satisfying and drawn out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think slim Rancher, the original is
the one that I poured hours into. I did not
pour as many hours in a slime Ancher too. Maybe
it was like two fine tuned, but the original Slime
Rancher just the concept of like, yeah, you suck slims
up into your little tube and then you get them
to mate with each other. You gotta feed them, so
you gotta have chickens, and you gotta have like fruits
and vegetables to feed them. I mean you can really,
you can really spend a lot of time in that game,
and it all feels very comfortable and warm and inviting.
Moving on, one of the most cozy games I've played
in recent years is a Short Hike, which is almost
like I don't think it's even like a full it
is a full game, but it's it almost feels like
a demo. It's it's short, but it's so thoughtful and sweet,
and you're just going on a hike so cute that
one's got to be on it. Some other ones that
I think are a bit more niche but probably worth
talking about potion Craft Alchemist Simulator Mike. You and I
played this game and really liked it. You are solving crimes,
which might not be cozy in the sense, but like
it's fun being like, oh my gosh, this person's cat
is sick and I know exactly the right potion to craft,
or like this person is like devious and might have
committed amurder and I can solve it using potions and like, uh,
you know, grinding the right leaves and shit into a
pot that felt really good and cozy. I loved pretending
to be an alchemist. So those are ones I would
really recommend I.
Speaker 1: Have two more. Yeah, it's more it's I think it
leans more heavily puzzle than cozy game. But Strange Horticulture
I think also kind of scratches similar itches, and.
Speaker 2: Strange Horticulture might even be even better than Potion Craft.
They're both That's what Strange Culture. I think it is
the one I meant, Oh no, I think I really
liked Strange.
Speaker 1: Hort The Potion thing was similar, it's just with the animals, but.
Speaker 2: Strange Horticulture is the one where they think somebody's dying
and you got to like figure out who's the liar.
That's Strange Horticulture. Okay, gosh, that game is so good
and it has a cozy cat on a windowsill. I
changed my mind. It's it's it's Strange Horticulture.
Speaker 1: I will also say another game I would kind of
classify as cozy. It's also sort of just like meditative
as unpacking. Oh yeah, totally five years ago that was
like that was the most yeah, meditative or like just
flow state, like not doing much like almost Powerwatch stimulatory,
but like a little bit more involved.
Speaker 3: It was so smart with like, you know, a lot
of it is just like okay, where am I going
to put this stuff? And every once in a while
it'll hit you with something like the diploma thing and
there's no place to put it, and it's.
Speaker 4: Like, oh, that's such a smart narrative. Like the thing.
Speaker 3: As much as I I don't love story when it's
just like now I'm watching this cut scene now, it's
this dialogue. That thing was just like Wow, what an
interesting way to tell a story with just like using
the mechanics of the game, and it came out of nowhere.
Speaker 4: It's like, that's so fucking smart.
Speaker 1: Like a photo of the character and their ex from
like years ago that they forgot about that they're not
well obviously they're not dating their excenymorning. You're like, ah, shit,
that's kind of sad, like that they just found this
in a box and now it's like where do I
put it? You slip it under the bed somewhere.
Speaker 4: Still, it's a great game.
Speaker 2: Environmental storytelling is very well done in the DAN. What
would you add to our bundle?
Speaker 4: I just want to call out a Powerwash simulator. Hillary.
Speaker 3: That's a great call because like that is I guess
I don't do a ton of cozy games. Well, I
mean that's on Hillary's bundle here. I love Stardu, we
love Animal Crossing, and then Powerwash. That that was my
go to wheres like sometimes there's nights where it's like
I just don't want to have to think about anything
or you know, be challenged or anything.
Speaker 4: I just want to zone out.
Speaker 3: Maybe listen to a podcast or something, and I can't
think of a game that made time just fly by
like Powerwash Simulator, but like while remaining intensely satisfying every
step of the way. So I just want to shout
out Hillary's call there. Yeah, my own personal ones, Like
I feel like between Stardoo, Animal Crossing, and Powerwash, those
are like that might be my top three right there.
Speaker 2: I mean those are all classics. A couple others that
I don't think would make the list, but I still
have to say their names because they're really good. Is
Later Alligator, which is just like such a cute little
game that you can play as an alligator frog detective,
so cozy and funny and silly, and you're just a
little frog solving silly crime. Macnarium that is a point
and click adventure where you're like a little machine in
a big world and it's I find it very cozy,
and the music is you could fall asleep to it.
It's so zen and comforting. And then the last one
I actually would put this on my list Little Inferno.
Do you guys remember a little inferno? Right And you're
in a fireplace and you just light shit on fire? Yeah, yeah,
so cozy. I mean like the definition of being. Like
I wonder what would happen if I put popcorn and
uh marshmallows in the fire and light them up, and
like something different happens because you've combined these two items
and lit them on fire. I could play that all day.
Speaker 4: Mary, did you see the trailer for There Are No
Ghosts at the Grand at SGF?
Speaker 2: No I missed it.
Speaker 3: Okay, Mary, you need to watch this right after this
podcast because like it was definitely one of the top,
maybe like after a ship right now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, inherit a crumbling English hotel and restore it by
day while battling ghosts at night with a sardonic cat,
a talking power tool, and a twisting natural plot. This
is a musical mystery musical unlike any other. Will you
be able to hold it together while everything around you
falls apart?
Speaker 1: Oh wait, this sounds off my ally too. Definitely.
Speaker 4: You just see the trailer.
Speaker 3: It looks like it's like a house flipper thing where
you have a magic gun where you're cleaning up this
spooky mansion. But then there's like musical numbers and stuff,
and it's like blueprints house flipper like spooky.
Speaker 4: Like it looks fucking awesome.
Speaker 1: Whoa, this is coming soon too? Yeah, this looks red.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, shoot, paint off the wall.
Speaker 1: Why is there a priest degree?
Speaker 4: Yeah, and it's what's the cat's name is, like mister
Bones the Bastard or something.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is Mary. I'll tell you now. This will
be game pass, so God, thank you. Yes, yes, I
really loved it when I saw this.
Speaker 1: This looks awesome. Pickman's almost a co game kind of
except like you can dying until they all get.
Speaker 4: Scream.
Speaker 1: You have a Pickman's up there. And then what was
that game pass game that we all dan you played
and then recommended and we all yes, tiny.
Speaker 3: Is awesome, like low risk. Oh yeah, it's a great one. Yeah,
that's maybe if I were to add.
Speaker 2: One to all sorts of things can be cozy, even
if they have like some stress to them, right, because
it's it's like what you consider something.
Speaker 4: That like city City, do you count that?
Speaker 2: I would? I think it can be cozy. I don't
think there's any rules, right, Like Dredge can be cozy
and that kind of stressful. But like I like the
idea of escaping into the world where like I'm a
fisherman looking for stuff, and I gotta be careful at night,
like I I don't know. I mean, I don't think
there's like official hard set rules to it, but yeah,
I find a lot of those types of games like
very cozy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, thank you, Hillary. We should do that another
episode with different genres.
Speaker 4: That's fun.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, Dan, do you want to read this one
from Matthew in Greenville?
Speaker 4: Do you eat the drink garnish?
Speaker 3: Obviously, I'm talking about the edible, practical stuff like an
orange slice and a blue moon or a cherry and
a cocktail. Do I look weird when I eat it?
Is it meant to be eaten? That's Matthew and Greenville.
I always eat it like I like it. It's like
a tree at the end, or it's like, all right,
I drank.
Speaker 4: This my tie.
Speaker 3: And I know not all my ties have like pineapple
wedges in it, but like sometimes I do, and like
at the end it's like this is pineapple wedge. It
has been sitting in delicious my tie for a while.
I'll bite it and it's like, okay, that tastes good
and to yourself that it's it's healthy, you know, because
it's fruit, and it's and it's soaked in rum.
Speaker 4: Yeah it's great.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it depends on my garnish, for sure.
Speaker 2: It depends, right, Like, I think there's some that might
be a little bit more strange than others. If you
get a dirty martini with olives, eat them, olives, You've
earned them. If you get a old fashioned or whatever
that comes with the Maraschino cherry, I don't think that's
old fashioned. Y Manhattan, Manhattan's about the Marichino cherry. I
would eat that Maraschino cherry.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I personally think that if you get a lime with
your beer and you and you eat your lime, I
think squeeze that. I think you're a weird.
Speaker 4: The rule of thumb is if it's a food you
would eat.
Speaker 2: The question is this, do you eat it? And I'm
saying no, you don't eat that lime.
Speaker 3: I think the rule of thumb is if it's a
food you would eat outside of a cocktail context. Yes,
but I'm not like chowing down on a handful of
mint or cinnamon sticks when I'm done with something, you know, like,
but I'll eat a cherry or a pineapple wedge.
Speaker 1: You know, I have a weird one, okay, and Amanda
thought it was weird. So have you guys had a
Gibson before? Probably it's a martini, but it's basically martini,
but instead of olives, it's a cocktail onion, a little
like small pearl onion. Yeah, are you guys not onion
fans or do you?
Speaker 4: I've come around onions, but I'm not just gonna chow
down on.
Speaker 2: Like, onions are weird to me. They're so small. Why
are they so small? I don't know about that?
Speaker 4: Yeah, what are they to?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Be bigger?
Speaker 1: I'm so big. Gibson is one of my and my
wife's like go to cocktails that that's definitely my martini
of choice. I sometimes eat those at the end and you're,
I don't you. I really don't think you're supposed to
eat those because they're not as like trowelble as olives.
The first time I did, She's like, I don't think
you're supposed to eat it. We had to like look
up what was etiquette? Not that I was going to
stop me if it wasn't, but like that, that was
definitely a weird one because that's a garnish.
Speaker 2: It's like it adds the etiquette.
Speaker 1: I don't, I think. I mean, it's your drink, do
whatever you want, but like, I don't.
Speaker 2: You said you looked it up.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I know, I And then I said, etiquette,
you're not supposed.
Speaker 2: To You're okay, you're not supposed to eat my onion.
Speaker 1: I don't think so, like because most it's not a
that's a very that can be an offensive taste to
get at.
Speaker 4: It's a lot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like it's like holes when he climbs the
mountain and finds those sweet onions on the tree.
Speaker 4: Like holes.
Speaker 2: Oh god. I think the question, though, has some that
are questionable or like some that might be more on
the fence. For example, an orange slice in a blue moon.
I don't think you should eat the orange slice in
the blue moon.
Speaker 4: I'll do that.
Speaker 1: Blue Moon is not a classy like beer to begin with.
You might as well just make the most of it.
Speaker 2: But I think it flavors the blue Moon. And then
I'm done with the drink.
Speaker 1: Yeah Moon, but the dance point. Then you drink the beer,
and then the orange is soaked in beer. It's like rumham.
Speaker 2: I can see it. But you don't agree on eating
the lime?
Speaker 4: No, I agree on the lime, I agree, what context
are you're just eating a lime.
Speaker 1: Unless you're doing the tequila shot in salt and lime.
Speaker 4: Okay, but that's you suck in the juice.
Speaker 1: That's for the acid to neutralize the Yeah, I know.
Speaker 2: Like same. Similarly, if you were going to have a
martini with a twist of lemon, you wouldn't eat the no.
Speaker 4: No, And I love limes and lemons and I'm not
just gonna go to town.
Speaker 1: On that, of course I wouldn't. I'm kidding.
Speaker 3: I want to hear your thoughts on like it's a
big gimmick in some places now where it's like you
get a Bloody Mary or Bloody Mary brunch and it's
got like a bone steak yeah yeah, and the celery
stock and like eight pieces of bacon some skills, you know.
Speaker 2: Very gimmicky and I don't care for it.
Speaker 4: I don't love it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think it depends on the context. If you're
just doing it just to do it, then no. If
you're doing it at like a place like there's a
place on the Upper West Side that is very much
like it's about Southern comfort brunch with fucking biscuits overloaded
with fried chicken and heavy sauces. It makes sense in
that regard. And also there's a barbecue place in Brooklyn
that does it and they put like some of their
bacon in it. I was like, it makes sense in
that context. But if you're just like a place that's
got like that run of the mill menu that does
like everything from nacho's to fried chicken, yes, then that
becomes a bit like this just feels like an Instagram
trap exactly.
Speaker 3: That's I was just gonna say, like, ever since Instagram,
I feel like you also see that with like milkshakes
and Sundays and stuff where it's like, isn't it crazy
that we covered the entire glass and sprinkles and it's
got a full Snickers bar and a cake piece and
stuff like times like this is just because it looks crazy.
It's not that this is actually like flavors that like
work well together necessarily. It's just like shoved in there,
you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And there's also kinds of garden you do have
to eat them in that case it'd be weird. Yeah
you did it, Oh yeah, the tea bone steak.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And there's different kinds of garnishes too. There's there's stuff
that's meant to actually flavor the liquid itself. There's others
that's meant for the old factory. When you drink it,
it's like my tie has been in your nose to
add to taste. Is just gonna old factory at a
certain point anyway, But like those, I usually don't eat
because I'm not I love mint like freshman, but I'm
not chomping on them fresh minute.
Speaker 2: Just eat a whole sprig of mint.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it seems like you'd be going feral, like eating
leaves like that. I I think.
Speaker 5: So.
Speaker 2: It sounds like we're in agreement that if you would
eat it on its own without the drink, that it
is reasonable and socially acceptable, and if you would not
eat that item without the drink, then it might be
considered a faux pas.
Speaker 3: They were just weird, like anyone, just like eating a
lime and'd be like, the hell are you doing?
Speaker 4: You know?
Speaker 1: That's why the onion is weird for me.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't know, like that, like an apple, not
in that form.
Speaker 2: Yeah, not tiny, not twenty tiny? Onions get bigger, Like
what's up with that? Do they make them that big
or did they come into the ground that small.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're meant to they're meant for, Like I use
pearl onions usually in like slow cooked stuff.
Speaker 2: Like do they use a tiny wheelbarrel when they get them.
Speaker 1: It's tiny people harvesting normal size onions. Then they give
it to us.
Speaker 4: That makes sense.
Speaker 2: Hi guy, Hi, my family for a whole week. They
climb up, take my drink and I throw it away
because it's a faux pot.
Speaker 1: They climb up to the top of their little ziggurattes
among their bush jungles and like it's an offering to
the dos. Here's your onion for your drink, and then
we don't even eat it. Uh cool, Thank you, Matthew.
Last one, Hello Escapees. I'm currently listening to your most
recent episode with Mary dropping her Ponty Bowling team names
and it's splitting me up. Pun intended. I happen to
be currently driving from Regina back to thunder Bay. I
think those are Canadian things. After competing in a national
five pin pin bowling tournament and I was wondering what
niche sport slash activity would you all spend decades of
your life training in to win a national gold medal.
Love you all and thoroughly enjoy all the work y'all
do Cheers David from Ontario.
Speaker 4: Thanks speed running for me. Speed speed running like game
stuff like.
Speaker 1: Speed no video of it.
Speaker 2: You just sound like a psychopath.
Speaker 4: Oh I'm not winning any medals for running.
Speaker 1: For fastest for speed. I could beat that, Noah, dude.
Speaker 3: Uh No, speed running is something that's like requires like
actual crazy skill to do, and especially the idea of
doing it for a dumb game like getting on the
ET leaderboard and stuff like that. Like that's something I
always am interested to hear more about and try.
Speaker 4: I got.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know how. It's not as niche
as that, I don't think, but like I am working
on like blind tasting wines. But there's no Olympic tournament
you doing.
Speaker 2: There was, I would win.
Speaker 4: Be so boring.
Speaker 6: Oh god, it be so boring to watch that tasting targlings.
Speaker 1: Do we think he's gonna go cap froncissant? Sarah? This
is the where the juncture? This could mean? Oh I
just said something really dumb. The one was a red,
one was a white. I'm embarrassed.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we thought you were a idiot for a second. Yeah.
Speaker 1: No, I'm trying to like, Uh, we've got a question
similar where it's like, what is one very niche thing
that you're better at you think you're you're better at
than anyone in the world. This is kind of like
I think the question is more what is something niche
you want to be good at enough to win in
gold medals? Like I would love to play a mandolin
with my dick. Would be pretty interesting.
Speaker 4: Be funny, that's super obscure.
Speaker 1: That's what the question asked.
Speaker 4: I could be like that le I could be the
guy who like ate the most legos.
Speaker 1: Yeah, now we're cooking. I'd love to like I'd love
to have.
Speaker 2: Guinness World Records that you might die from.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'd love to like burn the most nursing homes
to the ground.
Speaker 2: They got the gold. There they go in the back
of the paddy.
Speaker 1: Wagon silver, silver, and tied at one nursing home. I
got gold because I did it to like fourteen of them.
I go, I left. Uh. There's those people that can
recite like how many numbers from pie? Oh, yeah, that's
that's not that's that's that's more impressive.
Speaker 2: That's really impressive. This one would be like a person
who can uh construct a screen door the fastest.
Speaker 1: Or like, I've seen more shooting stars than anybody, and
the only metric you have is my own word. Yeah,
I've seen three hundred and five thousand.
Speaker 2: The most iPhones screens broken by dropping them.
Speaker 3: That's my sister Kate. Yeah, I've never broken one. I'd
never understand how people are constantly doing that.
Speaker 1: I've broken a couple.
Speaker 2: I've cracked a screen in my time. Yeah, I wish
hard these days, say I to have it. Well, the
screen protector has saved my buns. I have cracked so
many screen protectors, but I just get a new screen protector.
Have you guys ever seen A Long Way Down? It's
a documentary. I think it's got Ewan McGregor, who's like
an actor but he actually really likes motorcycles and he
motorbikes down like a long stretch of road with his
best friend and it's just a it's just documents how
they do it. He's done it four times now, which
is so crazy. But I've watched them because I find
them really fascinating. It's just two bros, two dudes trying
to get down a long distance with motorcycles and if
they break down, they have to fix them if they
fall over and get hurt, they have to figure it out.
They camp on the side of the road and then
they just go down like lots of countries for like
months to get to their final destination. But they're doing
another one and I'm watching it right now. I think
it's called the Long Way Home. And they're going to
their local areas near them because they live in like
you know, Uh, they just live in the areas where
like you know, Ireland and just in Europe essentially, so
they're going through a lot of europe places. And they
went to a place in uh. I think it's is
it the Netherlands, Uh, it's Dutch and they it's a
Dutch sport called flear lipin and it's Dutch canal vaulting.
I know you've probably seen this before, but this is
the thing where somebody runs, grabs a pole, scurries up
it as fast as possible to get across the canal
and if they can get to the top, they win
and then they just like crash on the other side
of the water.
Speaker 1: There's that like there's that that brings two things to mine.
There's a thing I think it's in Britain somewhere where
they roll a wheel of cheese down a very steep.
Speaker 4: Hill and then kester cheese thing or something.
Speaker 2: Totally totally biffs it when they go down, Like I
think people at.
Speaker 4: Oh my god, like end over and like yeah, eating shit.
Speaker 1: But then there's the Alaska truck thing on fourth of July.
There's that one town in Alaska that like celebrates by
driving trucks over this huge cliff. Like people aren't in
the trucks, to be clear, they're just like people that
wanted to get rid of cars. Will you know, put
put a brick on the gas of these trucks. Just
look it up like Alaska Fourth of July truck crash.
Oh wow, that's super great. And then they just watch
it crash down the hill and cheer and drink beers.
Speaker 2: I like stuff like that. That's like not very serious.
I like the Red Bull ones where they're like fly
a plane the longest, but the planes like look like, uh,
it doesn't really matter, but they don't look like planes
and they're not going to make it. They look like
cars with like these tiny little wings and they just
immediately fall into the water and like that would be
fun to win to like actually like do good at I.
Speaker 3: Don't know if this is just a weird rural Midwestern thing,
but I feel like growing up there was always these
things at ponds and lakes where it's a competition to
like people have to make a boat out of cardboard
and see if they can like get across the lake.
Is this sound familiar to anyone, Yeah, I feel like
I've run into this like a dozen times in my
life at different lakes and ponds and stuff, and it's
just like, yeah, get across in this bullshit thing you made,
and that's always fun.
Speaker 1: That's like what they did for like a couple of
seasons of a top Gear World Tour. They did challenges
like that. They're like, you have to make a completely
self sustaining biodegradable car. So like one made a car
out of exclusively bricks and now they're made one out
of mud and he got like ten feet before it
started melting because it was a vehicle. It was really fun.
Jake showed me that show, and it's really good.
Speaker 2: I like stuff like that where like, yeah, you're maybe
you're the best, but it's so obscure and weird. It's
probably not worth anything, but it's fun. That's the good good.
Speaker 1: I there's there's one other thing. This is kind of
in line with the email question, but it's also top
here they are. They find out that there's this convention
in this small town and these guys are English, so
I'm assuming it's somewhere in the UK. They find out
there's a very very small convention of people that get
together every year to celebrate this one car that's been discontinued.
And I don't know how else to describe it besides
like it looks like one of those bicycle taxis that
they built a car around and there's two wheels in
the back and one in the front, and it's notorious
for tipping, like tipping over violently. So this convention and
people like take care of theirs that they own, like
really good care. They're not tipping it. So the guys
in the show find out about it, and they locate
where the convention's going to be, and it's just this
parking lot in the middle of nowhere, and they they
arrive at the convention by peeling into the parking lot
and purpose like flipping their car in the everybody looks
over the cut, the cut from the camera to these
guys just barreling on the side of the car back
to the people that like are looking back at the
entrance to see this one that just toppled in is
really good. I gotta find that episode. It was really funny.
But yeah, I would like to uh to be the
person who ate the most cocktail onions.
Speaker 3: I bet I've got to be close to the person
who's seen the mcgroover the most. I gotta be close, right,
Like I know people that come around to that movie
finally it took them long enough, but like it's well
over fifty times for me.
Speaker 2: That's such a small number for a record, like someone
someone could be so quickly if they wanted to. Oh yeah,
people can't. It would be like tough. They'd have to
work for.
Speaker 1: It, right.
Speaker 3: I'm sure something like you know The Godfather or Lord
of the Rings, there are people who watch them like
thousand times or whatever. But like mcgroober, you know, it's
got to Bele's supported now album.
Speaker 2: There's no one who's seen mcgoover more than fifty times.
Speaker 3: I doubt there's ten people on the planet that I
have seen mcgroover more than me, including like Will Forte
and the Lowly Island.
Speaker 1: Guys, you've been sitting in the editing booth for days
on end. Yeah, all right, well, thank you David from Ontario.
That's our show and if you want to send more
questions at it's Firescape cast at gmail dot com. Uh.
We've got some other stuff going on as usual. You
can go if you're not a patron, you can go
unlock ad free episodes or our video tier which gets
you our bonus episodes when they go up. Right now,
we have a series that's been going up on our
off weeks where an episode doesn't publish. We have Mike
and Vinnie Save the World. Me and Vinnie Caravella from
Next Lander have been playing a co op campaign in
Total War war Hammer three. Uh, the one we're doing
for fire Escape. We're playing two good factions fighting evil factions,
and then in the off weeks of that where doing
evil factions for Next Lander. You do have to be
a patron for either or in order to get that
campaign ours is going. We're trying to stabilize the fire
Escape one. It's been Vinnie's been having a rough go
of certain things, but he's he's loving the game and
he's getting a hang of a lot of the mechanics.
I'm having to guide him less and less as the
shows go on. But that game's complicated, so there's still
questions every time. But it's been fun. But yeah, you
can go be a video patron to unlock ours. We
do have Merch fire Escape, merch dot com or Deep
Dish Pussy dot com. Just follow us on socials. You
can get there via one of those. We also are
I think that's it. Actually, I think that's everything right now, Dan,
what do you have going on?
Speaker 4: Giant Bomb? I got that stuff going on.
Speaker 3: Just finished a bunch of great SGF couch segments and
watch alongs and all that. And to check Giant bombs
YouTube and giant bomb dot com. Slash join to support
independent games media. That is what is keeping us going.
So thank you to everyone.
Speaker 1: Mary, what about you?
Speaker 5: You?
Speaker 2: Whate else is independent games media? Fire Escape I'm often
streaming the games that I talk about here first on Twitch.
You can check me there. I played a couple of
the games, like The Midnight Walk and Bionic Bay before
I talked about them on fire Escape, and it's kind
of fun to get my first thoughts literally live. So
that's where you can find me and usually on Instagram
is where I post about my little puppy, my nine
year old daughter.
Speaker 4: You're a good post with yeah, great.
Speaker 2: Parting it up. Yeah, my sweet, my sweet summer.
Speaker 4: Child, trotting along on trails and by lakes and stuff.
It's great.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean my goal is to serve to take
him to the finest places with the most exquisite views
and the most delicious dog food. I got him. I
fucking got him a pop cup. That is it's like
whip cream for dogs, you know, like when you go
to like Stopps and you get a pup cup. I
bought a canister specifically for dogs, and it's peanut butter flavored.
And every day, at like around three pm, I call
it pup cup Hour, and he's like, and he gets
really excited. I give him a big sploosh of pup
cup I don't know, whipped cream, and on the jar
it says very clearly not for human consumption, so it's
definitely a dog, right, yeah, peanut butter.
Speaker 1: If people are ever in New York and wanna go
to a visit a good wine bar, I'm summley there.
I'm not gonna like point out the it's not that
hard to find. I just don't I'm not going to
call it out right now, but yeah, look it up,
look me up on socials and there on the weekends.
That stuff's in full swing. Yeah, we'll be back in
a couple of weeks. I think we might have a sub.
We're figuring out some scheduling, and we might have figured
out a good No, then we figured it out, okay, cool.
Then I think.
Speaker 2: Assuming all flights land on time, we're all good.
Speaker 3: Baby.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think I've got a lot of travel coming
up in the summer, but uh, I think I'm sure
we all always do usually, so we'll obviously try to
be here together as much as possible. I got a
bunch of games I gotta catch up on in the interim.
Speaker 4: Oh, I wonder if you'll talk about this stranding next time.
Get ready for that?
Speaker 1: Have you been playing it?
Speaker 4: Yes? Oh my, I.
Speaker 2: Don't even know how to react to that could be anything.
Speaker 1: Oh you play it, No, I'm going to it's gonna
be game of the year. Shut the fuck up, all right.
Speaker 3: Well, zimbargoed, I don't know with that noise, that could
mean any thing, could mean anything.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you everybody for joining we'll be back in
two weeks fire Escape see you then bye B.