Speaker 1: Hello, everyone, Welcome back to the fire Escape Cast. It
is episode eighty nine. I think I'm your host as always,
Michael Maharty here once again with Mary kesh Hi and
returning to us after a long absence many travels around
the world. It was one episode. He's back at Stan Reichert.
Speaker 2: All the stars are here. We've all assembled again. Do
we only miss one where we all together two episodes ago?
Speaker 3: Uh?
Speaker 2: Cause we almost had to miss this one, but this
out I can't remember.
Speaker 4: They're a minute. I've been I've been active. I feel
like I've been present. I missed one episode, like in
early summer because I was at Twitch Con in Europe.
But I'm pretty good and I'm glad I was. We
almost missed this week because I have so much family
in town, but y'all moved your schedules around for me,
which I.
Speaker 1: We're doing the same was coming weekend. This is the
first time I'll be coming to Portland, not by myself
in the middle of the night to stare through your
window with a knife. It's gonna be really fun.
Speaker 4: I'm really excited you guys are both coming. It's a
really cool time to be in Portland and coming is
he We are gonna have Jake so to avoid him. Yeah.
Speaker 2: God, we were just talking about how much we don't
like him air. Yeah, we're trying to Decker.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Jake dot Org an organization for us to talk
about the sweetest boy in the whole world that we
don't like, Jake Decker. I've never done anything wrong in
his life.
Speaker 1: He killed that.
Speaker 4: We don't talk.
Speaker 1: About Jake cut that cut, that cut that proud boys.
Speaker 2: But he's a nice guy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's a he's a big conspiracy guy as well.
Speaker 2: Oh but like the like dangerous ones ye yeah, yeah,
not like the Cooper cut, the moon Land and stuff.
It's like he's like dangerous conspiracy theorist.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, So that's Jake. If you want to learn
more about him, gonna fuck Jake dot Org.
Speaker 4: We haven't bought it yet.
Speaker 2: We need to buy Jake dot.
Speaker 1: Org goes up. We need to get Fuckjake dot Org
and put a photoshop photo of him with a rocket
launcher pointed at a hospital a jo. Yeah. Yeah, we'll
be in Parland for a couple of nights. Gonna be
fun my first time.
Speaker 5: Really, it's lovely.
Speaker 4: You're gonna enjoy it. I'm gonna take you to some
iconic places and we can talk about them on the
next EPI. But I'm gonna take you, uh in theory,
provided like everybody's everything, everybody's on time, and everything goes well,
You're going to see some vistas and I'm going to
take you to some waterfalls too.
Speaker 5: Oh really, that's awesome, hell y, And we don't even
I love this.
Speaker 2: We can just show up and then you just take
us wherever and we don't have to worry about planning anything.
Speaker 4: That's I took care of it. I took care of
the boys because I feel like if you're getting your
butts here, especially you Dan, after all this travel internationally.
You just got back from packs, you are tired, So
you get here with vistas, I got you. Yeah, vistas
and drinkies open bar.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, yes, perfect. This is like kind of the
end of like my travel gauntlet. So honestly, the timing
is perfect because it's been every weekend the summer since
my surgery and this is the last one of the
consecutive weekends to just go hang out with you, have
some drinks and look at vistas.
Speaker 4: Yay, come hang out with me and vistas.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: You have jakes there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you takes there. I'm just tell him Dan that
it's the beginning of my travel gauntlets. So we're looking
forward to like being outdoors and relaxing and hanging out
with friends.
Speaker 2: You got it's going to be a crisp ninety degrees.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so fuck.
Speaker 4: I don't understand it. It's really weird, like a weird
hot hot pocket situation. The heat, Like I believe they're
called heat domes, but I like calling them hot pockets
hot pockets for fun.
Speaker 1: Left the hot pocket leapt straight from New York to Portland,
and I'm following it. I can't wait.
Speaker 4: I love the heat. But yeah, for Australians, it's not
bad at all. There's a bunch of Australians in town
and it's usually like one hundred and ten degrees in Australia. Australia,
their summers are brutal, Like is it like Vegas dry
heat or is it humid in one hundred and ten
It can be humid too.
Speaker 5: That that sounds terrible.
Speaker 1: Australia gets like every kind of weather. They're the size
the United States is. Oh, it's farther south, so it's
not just.
Speaker 4: Drop out of the sky.
Speaker 1: Its just Meltingeez travels in first time in Germany? Correct, yes, yes,
did you stick in Cologne? Did you get anywhere else?
Speaker 2: I flew into Dusseldorf and then went to Colone But yes, Spence,
yeah I think so, yeah, and spent like that was
the fastest uber right I've ever had from the airport.
I think it was technically the Autobahn and that guy
he was I tried to look at the knob thing
on the dash, but it was in crazy kilometers. Yeah yeah,
but it was in like kilometers, so I didn't know
what the fuck it meant. But it felt very fast.
But yeah, we just stuck in Cologne and drank a
lot of kolshes ate a lot of meat.
Speaker 5: Did take about the saga of dj ass Tits No.
Speaker 4: I saw a picture of dj ass Tits of game.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, okay. I think the video should be up
on Giant Bomb by the time this goes up. But
there's a whole saga with dj ass hits and give
us the tldry because.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to watch it. I just want to
know what happened.
Speaker 2: Basically, we saw a sign that said dj as watching
all that. I found her on Instagram a message her
being like, Hey, we're at a video game website. We
love your name. We're in Cologne. Do you want to
do a cameo in a video we're shooting about being
in games Com And she said yes. So we met
up with dj ass Tits. She was an absolute delight
and she did a little cameo for the end of
our Giant Bomb video.
Speaker 4: It was nice, lady.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, so big dj ass Tits fans over here. Now.
Speaker 1: I like that Giant Bomb is building up its own
like Channel five roster of characters. Oh yeah, that you
just find in the world.
Speaker 2: I love that. I love it. It's like, you know,
Letterman once found the guys at the bodega next door.
He MOODI burns Syergil and had them be his like
Olympics correspondence. Like I've always loved that. Like, let's just
find a random person, like bring them into the fold,
and you know, as long as they're interesting, nice people.
And dj assd Tits is interesting and nice. So yes,
friend of Giant Bomb for sure.
Speaker 4: Yes, a friend of Giant Bomb dj asss. It reminds
me this was ages ago, but I remember vividly me
and Rob handleary at an E three there was a
DJ with just really big boobies DJing with their little
MacBook and we were being a little bastards and we
were like, I wonder what her name is. We were like,
we bet it's DJ fun Bags. And then we came
up with a persona for DJ fun Bags and she
would always just be like, hi, everyone, put your hands
in the r and grab your decks. DJ fun Bags
is gotting. It started I'm about a hat's bass bar
and we would just say we would just like kind
of little bastards about it. But anyway, she took it
in good fun. She didn't know about it. We were just.
Speaker 2: You probably have not heard the Mike Manatti English story,
have you. I'll give you the TLDR on this as
well for anyone who may have heard this. But on
the first night that went, I was flying in but
Jane Bailey and Cologne. So Jan and Bailey had gone
out to get food with Manati and they're asking about recommendations.
The guys like, oh, you got to go to this bar.
This is the best bar. So they go to this
bar afterwards and it's very busy. They're doing trivia and
German as they walk in, and the lady behind the
bar is like trying to wave them over, like, hey,
you're drinks over here, not over there. But Manati for
some reason, thought she was asking if they spoke English
or German or Dutch, and so she's going, hey, stand
over here, stand over here in German, and Manati just
goes English in the middle. Everyone all the bar backs.
Everyone turned immediately and like their eyebrows went up. Jan
and Bailey just one eightied and walked out of the bar,
barked English at this woman speaking of German.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and from my experience in Cologne during games come
Cologne very nice people. However, bear in mind that like
once a year, gamers from all over Europe and the
world descend, so they can understandably be a bit touchy
when like you're just in posing your americanness on them
or English whatever.
Speaker 2: An accident, So that makes it even funnier.
Speaker 1: Also, I like, I could just hear it in Mike
Manatti's voice and I would be.
Speaker 4: Like what.
Speaker 2: And he thought they were gonna stay in order beers,
but Janna Bailey would not be seen in that bar
after that.
Speaker 4: I would be out of there so fast. That's so embarrassing.
I would have uh yeah, I would have anxiety passively Manati.
Speaker 2: That happens a lot when you're around Manati. But it's
all in good fun. He's a nice boy.
Speaker 4: Did what happened?
Speaker 2: No, he just turned around. You didn't see. Janna Bailey's like, oh,
I guess we're not getting beers here.
Speaker 1: Like a man walked in during trivia shouted English, yeah, and.
Speaker 2: Some got pissed him and then they all left. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, oh that was so sad. But I was embarrassed.
I knew what I had done. Did Manatt even know?
Speaker 2: No, he's he's very unaware of a lot of the
stuff he does again in a very very nice way.
But but yeah, I've heard I can be like that too.
I feel like seeing Manati in a lot of circumstances,
I am understanding more what people have experienced being out
with me and things like that of me just being
oblivious two things. Yeah, yeah, but no, he's he's a
great guy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you and Manati out by yourselves, that's like you
need a straight man there for that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, jan and Bailey were the adults for sure, with
me a Minati, but the actual show flower and everything. Yes,
the show floor was just like, you know, I've done
a million eight threes, but this was very different. I
don't know what I expected. I always heard about how
it was packed and everything, but like there were like
eleven plus halls and a lot of them are like,
you know, four point one is the lower floor and
four point two is the upper floor, and it's just
the sea of humanity on the public days where it's
just fucking impossible to get around, like it was. It
was a lot of fun, but it was staggeringly big.
I was. I was not expecting how how big this
convention was.
Speaker 1: What's the most surprising thing about like everyday German life
that you noticed?
Speaker 2: You know, it was fairly easy to like, you know,
everyone kind of spoke English, so there weren't Oh, the
fucking public transportation was the easiest thing in the world.
Speaker 5: It just takes you everywhere.
Speaker 2: It was confusingly, it seemed free, like we were trying
to pay and didn't even see places to pay. Somebody
told me it was free, but then it was very confusing.
They gave us tickets from games Colm to like, I
don't understand it works, but.
Speaker 1: It seems to be a good system. Games comp ticket
like comps a certain number of rides. Okay, very served
at least when I went, Oh.
Speaker 2: Here's the thing that surprised me the most. So I
was looking forward to having a bunch of pretzels and
cheese there because that seemed like a thing in England
or Germany. And they have cheese pretzels, but they're all
this weird style where they're hanging on hooks and it's
like it's like they melted a bunch of cheese over
it and just let it dry and then they stick
it up. I wanted the biggest pretzel with the biggest
thing a beer cheese dip or something. It was still good,
but it was like we're just having like flat cold
cheese all over the pretzel, you know.
Speaker 1: Huh. I wonder if that's a uh just a like
German wide thing or a cologne thing.
Speaker 4: You might have been in like a more of a
like an authentic orza because I did a pizza from
a sorry pizza. I did a pretzel from a vendor
and it came with dunker.
Speaker 2: Oh dunker cheese.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so I think you just you got it in
a different way.
Speaker 2: But four places that had the cheese thing, yeah, flat one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was imagining dan as actually just at a
dry cleaner's eat pulling eating suits off the rack as.
Speaker 2: That might have been my problem. Yeah, and he's.
Speaker 4: Running up to people going I need dunkers. Yeah, don't
you have any dunkers. There was a couple of things
that surprised me about did you see anybody wearing they
had Like there's like a thing where people wear like
a giant cookie in a heart on their neck. No,
and you're not supposed to eat it.
Speaker 5: It's like a decorative but it's like a real cookie.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but I think it's meant to be decorative.
Speaker 2: Don't like flies eat it and stuff. I don't know, huh.
Speaker 4: We had very different German experiences because I got dunkers
and I saw people wearing cookies and you had a
dry pretzel and no dunkers.
Speaker 1: It was good.
Speaker 2: I'm not complaining, like you know, the meat and everything
was good overall. I think I like the food in
England more what.
Speaker 4: Nobody ever fucking says that nobody's ever said that the
food in England is better than the food in Germany.
Out of your mind.
Speaker 2: I pared the reputation with England, but like the stuff
I had. They're the best meal I had and all
these trips he eup I've had in the last few weeks.
Was me and Manati went to a little pub in
Brentford and had fish and chips and guinness. The most
stereotypical British shit ever, but it was easily the best
fish and chips I've ever had.
Speaker 1: It was okay amazing, So yeah, fish and chips is
definitely really good at England, Did you have anything else?
Speaker 2: I went to Nando's because I always heard about that
being like a good chain, like Perry Perry Chicken thing,
and it was very good I had. You know, I'm
not a huge coffee guy. I just kind of have
like an espresso little pods in the morning. But this
was like the first time I've had coffee at something
Queen's Mayfair and England where it's like holy shit, Like
like the taste of the coffee was like, oh, this
is not a utilitarian I'm waking up in the morning thing.
This is like this tastes amazing.
Speaker 1: So in America we have like known for a coffee
obsession in America.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I don't really know where to like I
go to Cariboo if I'm going out, I don't know
if that's nation that's.
Speaker 1: A big fairly I know, but it's.
Speaker 2: It's all good like Caribou, Starbucks all that, so you
can get good stuff, but like this is this is
strikingly good yet Caribou.
Speaker 1: You're just naming the American chains. But we also have,
like we have boutique coffee spots. I guarantee you Minneapolis
has many of them, like around every corner.
Speaker 5: We probably do. I guess I've never looked for a
coffee place.
Speaker 1: But that's good that you like English food, because I
will say England like has great restaurants, but most of
the ones I've been to are not like English style food.
It's like I don't know any number of different restaurant
styles that are they're doing.
Speaker 5: There the best ice cream've ever what kind of what was?
Speaker 1: What was good about it?
Speaker 2: Just it was it was a bit bisc off and
honeycomb was one of the flavors. So every night I
went there and I got a biscoff and honeycomb scoop
and one other scoop that was incredible. Also Europe in general,
I found this in Germany, England and Iceland. Fucking Maum.
Do you know Maum m ao a m No. It's
this candy that comes in all sorts of different forms.
There's like fun sticks, there's like little like uh the
little pads. There's a pinballs that come in pinball form,
and they all it's like Starbars is my favorite candy ever.
And this is like if Starbars had a bunch more
flavors and came in different fund shapes and they were better.
Speaker 1: We brought these back from France. The wild red berries,
the chewy. We have some of these in our jar
right now because we're saving them. They're like they look
like gum drops, but they're those might oh okay ym
red fruit berries and they're covered in like a like
sugary kind of substance.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Oh they're awesome. I agree.
Speaker 2: Yes, all of the other the joysticks, the stripes, the
party mix, the mix. Uh, this is the this is
like my favorite candy period now. So like I just
load up my bag with Maum when I'm coming home
from Europe now.
Speaker 1: But yeah, god, it's not like one candy. That's the
company that owns a bunch of different candies.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but all their shit is awesome and it's all
that kind of like fruity Starburst style. Can I get
this on Amazon?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 2: Yeah, anyone?
Speaker 1: And doesn't Harrobo own it? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Maybe? Okay, Europe people listening to this, it's just send
me a ship ton of maum.
Speaker 1: Maw wait wait I like saying it, like, yeah so.
Maum is a brand of sweets produced by the German
confectionery company Harribo.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, Well that's the thing is, I don't love
Harrobo because it's all like gummy stuff and I'm not
a big gummy bear guy. I don't like the textra
gummy beers. I like that Starburst.
Speaker 1: I think like the gummy Bears have become synonymous with Haribo,
at least in America. Yeah. Yeah, it's a big company.
It's like, don't.
Speaker 2: Dislike gummy bears, but it's like I don't ever seek
them out, whereas like Maum and Starburst, I seek out
and I've just been going ape shit on those since
I got back.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the RedBerry things are awesome and we had a
lot of You have ever had these?
Speaker 5: You gotta get some molm You're always in Europe.
Speaker 4: I got to have my mouth.
Speaker 2: Get yourself. It's got a mouth sponsorship.
Speaker 1: Dan's gonna wake up in the middle of the night tonight.
You're just walking to a German bar one day and
shout mouth and then leave without ordering anything. Man.
Speaker 2: I got a bunch of like artisanal, awesome cheese in Germany,
brought it home. It was fucking great. Like I loved
some good ass cheese and bought a big block of it.
Travels fine.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Europe's cool.
Speaker 2: I like it. I'm into it.
Speaker 1: Well, how is this cheese wrapped? Like? Was it like
plat wheel?
Speaker 2: It was like a wedge and then it was like
vacuum field.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I had like a label on it.
Speaker 1: Okay, that makes sense. I still like the I just
like the idea of you traveling with cheese.
Speaker 2: Well, I bought some in England, but they just wrapped
it up in paper that wasn't airtight, and so I
didn't think it would travel without stinking up all my clothes.
So I just ate like a block of cheese in
my hotel room at like two in the morning when
I couldn't sleep.
Speaker 4: Cheese too much cheese before a big flight.
Speaker 2: About my body's used to cheese. It's it's like a block.
Before I got on that flight, when I.
Speaker 1: Was about the people near you, not you, Oh, farting
style anything.
Speaker 2: Oh, I didn't fart on the plane, that's when you
got fire.
Speaker 4: Never would ever believe anyone who says that, ever, I
didn't fart on that plane.
Speaker 2: I fart plenty, but I have some decorum in my
old age, and I will not fart on a plane.
I didn't. Maybe maybe if it's feeling a little dicey,
I might let one go in the bathroom. Oh, I
fart in the bathroom, that's fair game in theres in
the bathroom. Yeah, I'll fart up that bathroom, but I'm
not doing it. Sit in my seat. What if you're
in the window, in the window.
Speaker 4: The window off the window seats.
Speaker 2: In person all. I haven't had a window seat in
fifteen years. But I no, At no point in the
cabin would I fart.
Speaker 1: Uh Wait, have I told you my fart on a
plane story? I must have. This is probably like episode
twelve material. I did the thing, you know, when I
didn't have a pillow or anything, and I had fallen asleep,
and you know how when your head falls, your bodies
like goes into shock, where I like jolted awake and
it wasn't just that, like my whole upper body kind
of went upright, like I it scared me so much
that like my legs came off the floor. So I
farted not And it was a red eye, so pitch black,
which makes it relatively better. I would say, like see
to fart, but I'm trying to just figure out how
to describe the It wasn't loud, but it was crystal.
Speaker 5: Clear of a fart cut through the air.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So of course I start like looking around subtly
to see who noticed. And there's a lot of people
were asleep, but there was someone watching con air across
across the aisle and like on the in the middle
seat who was like leaning past the person the aisle
to look at me. And they weren't smiling. They didn't.
It wasn't a knowing look. I don't. I truly have
never seen a more neutral face. And then I went
back to I forgot what I was watching. But yeah,
that's I need a pillow so I don't fart again.
Because it was also like twenty fifteen or something.
Speaker 2: Nice.
Speaker 1: Well, that's cool, glad your European travels were fruitful.
Speaker 2: Yes, they're quite good. I might be going to be
going to another continent here in the near future, but
working that Nice Yeah this month, so we'll see.
Speaker 1: Yeah where We'll be be Portland this weekend and then
I think I'm doing a quick la leg late September,
and then Hawaii for the first time, also around Australians.
Speaker 2: Nice.
Speaker 1: We're gonna go to Kawhi for a destination wedding for
a couple of our good friends and he's Australian and Hawaii.
He's exactly halfway between New York and Sydney where most
of them are from. Nice and that's also our anniversary week,
so we're going a few days early because we're at
a super nice resort. We're gonna do some hiking. Kawhai
is supposedly like the more rustic island, like, not as
active as other ones, not as to receive from what
we've heard, but there's a lot of good hiking. I
think the uh. I got to look up the name
of the famous trail that I'm forgetting but looking forward
to that Oregon, yes, and then the week after that
we're down to DC. And then that's not counting two
europe two European trips and a Canadian trip for me
for work boy.
Speaker 2: It's a good thing we decided on this podcast being
every other week. That would have been pretty fucking hard.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think it would be almost impossible with our schedules.
I'll be in San Diego in two weeks for twitch
con so and then I think I just have a
couple like more more basic trips, maybe like to suf
or something like that, but you never know, like things
pop up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we should also probably give the disclaimer since we
did just mention that, like all the fire escape is
going to be in Portland, if you were worried about
hearing like about a meetup or in person stuff. Just
want to make sure we're setting expectations. It's not a
content fire escape thing we're doing. It's a it's for
a personal thing, So I don't expect we love doing
it personal stuff in person stuff, but we personally we.
Speaker 1: Really enjoy impersonal bars for meetups and then just nag
them the whole time.
Speaker 4: Yeah, from us, we will probably will definitely do a
selfie though. But my favorite was when we got together
last year for Mike's big wedding. MiG was like, let's
do the thing where we photoshop Marion and I was like,
but it's your wedding, and you were like, get over
there and we'll take a photo together. And I was like, no,
I like made shots in the photo because I was like,
no matter how funny this gag is, I'll be pissed
if I'm not in this photo.
Speaker 1: Yeah, especially when everybody's like dressed up.
Speaker 2: Next in person. Actual like fire escape thing would probably
be the game of the year. We're doing that here.
Speaker 4: We haven't decided I'm up.
Speaker 2: To host again, but we can talk about it. But
I'm up for whatever.
Speaker 4: It's fun at your house, but about it.
Speaker 2: I got some new places I could show you guys too.
Speaker 4: So what do you mean it's the same fucking house.
Speaker 2: In the city. You found some weird Yeah, I've got
like an upside down Castlevania castle that I added on.
Speaker 1: The shadow world of his house.
Speaker 4: Bathroom.
Speaker 2: Yeah, pull on this statue head and the wall will rotating.
Speaker 1: It's just a house of leaves happening inside his house.
Speaker 4: And there's like a closet with a gimp in it.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: That will be ready by the time you guys are.
Speaker 1: He finished Janitor next to a huge tree. Yeah. So
it's busy, busy fall but looking forward to kicking it
off in Portland, Mary I saw Alien Romulus. We both
did so damn Yeah. When you were gone, Mary was
talking it up.
Speaker 5: Oh really, really so did.
Speaker 4: I did talk this movie up.
Speaker 1: That That also did spark me rewatching several alien movies
and replaying a few alien related games, which I'll talk
about down the episode. But I if I had to
place this movie in the franchise, including all the directors
like ranking Wise, and bear in mind, I'm a sicco
who actually really liked Alien Covenant, so take this, I
would put Romulus at like a firm middle or right
above middle, considering, you know, like there's some stinkers there.
I liked it. I thought it was entertaining. I thought
it was once things started going, I was like, all right, now,
it's like it feels like there's some good movie making happening.
And I also started to like several of the characters
much more. I also felt like it spent way too
much time calling back to the first movie, which I
get chronologically it takes place right after the first movie
that's going to happen, But there are certain things that
weren't really like organic callbacks. They were like, hey, knowing
winks to the audience, and I was like, I didn't
know that.
Speaker 2: Game overman when they were playing the video game.
Speaker 1: That was.
Speaker 2: Much.
Speaker 1: There's the there the most famous line from the first
movie or is it alien? Sorry? Get away from her?
You bitch that? Yeah? Yeah, spot where it didn't really
make sense, but a.
Speaker 2: Few of them are kind of forced. Like I want
to say, I did overall like it. I gave it
three out of five on the letterbox. I thought it
was good. That's a good three is a good score.
Three as I liked The Twisters got three and a half.
This got three.
Speaker 4: This is way better than Twister Twister.
Speaker 3: They're good.
Speaker 5: They're both good. No, I'm pro Alien Romulus.
Speaker 2: Uh too.
Speaker 5: One thing that did actually bug me? How spoilery?
Speaker 2: Can we get here? Bug me?
Speaker 4: Not too?
Speaker 2: Okay, then I'll just say this generally. I think you'll
know what I'm talking about. There was a recurring CGI
thing that felt unnecessary and weird in a movie where
everything looked really good. I left the vibe of it. Yeah,
there was, yeah, but then there was one thing that
stood out like a sore thumb, and I thought it
was very avoidable. I think you didn't even necessarily need
to do that. I don't think the way they did
it added to any part of the story. It didn't
have to be this way. I'm trying not spoil anything,
but like you know what I'm talking about. It it's
an effect that is distracting and repeated throughout you.
Speaker 1: I mean, you can say, like they have to call
back to a movie, that's how what year was Alien
seventy seven?
Speaker 2: Yeah, but they're trying to call back, calling back to
the appearance of a character when it wasn't necessary because
the thing we're looking at in this movie is not
even supposed to be the same thing we looked at
in the old one.
Speaker 5: So it was like it didn't even need to look
like that person.
Speaker 4: You know, it's unnecessary, That's what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: It look completely completely avoidable, and I did find it
weird and distracting, but I mean, look that alone wouldn't
have like ruined a movie or anything. I thought this
is solid. I think the end I thought was really cool,
Like the last like twenty twenty five minutes, I thought
there's some.
Speaker 4: Really cool twenty minutes. I've freaked out.
Speaker 2: It's cool. Yeah, and then there's like a really cool like,
for lack of a better term, like a set piece
where there there's certain things in play that I thought
were really unique and cool. Yeah. No, I liked it.
Speaker 1: I've really enjoyed how it It reminded me of The
Force Awakens in the sense that there was some really
cool mirroring stuff it was doing with the movies that
it's really you know, paying homage to or I guess
like really strongly calling back to. I could have done
with like a few fewer of the Winks, but it
was very entertaining. And again I placed that like right
above the middle of the quality of the series.
Speaker 2: For me, I put one, two, and maybe three over it,
But I think this, I put this above Resurrection, put
it above prometheas you put it about Alien fors preada
there certainly. Yeah, so yeah, I'd say high middle for
me too.
Speaker 1: I put those over. I don't know about three, but
I'd put Covenant over it. Prometheus is like my least favorite.
Speaker 2: I've been meaning to rewatch three Bonk and I watched
one and two in recent years but then never got
around a three. But I remember thinking it was like
bold in a way, like you know, Fincher making some
real decisions, especially with the end that pissed off a
lot of people. I remember thinking that was kind of
a cool, bold thing back when I saw it, but
I was a kid.
Speaker 1: I like, maybe yearly rewatch one, and every time I
watch it, it is one of the few movies that
I it genuinely gets better. Every time I watched that.
I realized that almost inevitably's gonna sound like hyperbole, but
it really does, Like no, because you're right between those watches,
you're watching so many other movies that, like the first
ten minutes of Alien are just it's quiet shots of
hallways and like really good set design and such natural
conversation building up to this horrific fucking thing that happens
that half the actors didn't even know was gonna happen.
It's just one of the more like every time I
rewatch it, I'm like, I don't think I've seen a
movie in the last year. Since I rewatched Alien last
year that has nowed a sense of place and a
set of characters and believable human reactions yep to horrific
shit in the last year. Like it's become my metric
of what a good movie is, and only a few
movies between each rewatch are like, oh right, this, yeah,
this was really good, and.
Speaker 2: You put it in the context of nineteen seventy seven
and what other movies are doing at the time, and
there's just nothing like this. It's a yeah, I'm right
there with the Mike Bunk and I watched it again
like within the last year, and it's kind of think,
this is my face watching of this, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I watched Aliens like three nights ago. That
movie still kicks ass. It's awesome, Like the energy of
that movie, like velocity once things that that movie takes
like fifteen minutes and then all of a sudden, the
rest of the movie is just like propulsive toward the end,
it's awesome. Not to say it's there's not like good
pacing and some quiet moments and good characters, but like,
I mean, all due respect to Aliens, that's I'm definitely
more of an alien one person, but it's it's apples
and oranges at a certain point, just a great action movie.
Anything else, I feel like it's.
Speaker 2: I mean obviously a ton but you know, can't can't
catch up on a month's worth of stuff in a
few minutes. But I'm glad we all got on this.
Speaker 1: It was a weekend. Well, yeah, weekend if you're listening now,
we are back from Portland, but as of the recording,
it's this coming weekend. We'll get to catch up. I'm sure. Yeah,
Jake will be there. We'll talk about him.
Speaker 2: Oh no, keep keep it on the website.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Fuckjake dot Org. Oh Todd, I.
Speaker 4: Haven't bought it yet.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, Well we'll expense it. No, I shouldn't
pretend that's what Patroon money is going to. It's gonna
be really funny, just like a little bit of a
little bit of how the sausage is made for anybody
who doesn't know. Like basically, when we do actual our
ad reads, when we submit them to sponsors, they get
like a ten second or fifteen second bookends of the
ad so they can hear the context that went into
the ad. So I just like the idea of being like,
so go to Fuckjake dot Org. Hey, guys, do you
like wine? Do you want to go? It's always funny
to listen to ten seconds before and like every once
in a while I shave it to like five because
out of context, we have some weird conversations. Well it
was as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I like we we didn't even ease into this
bit at all. We always just talk glowingly object Decker,
and then we just decided it's a bit where we
all hate him.
Speaker 1: Is it funnier if we don't explain it.
Speaker 2: I don't even know there's much of an explanation.
Speaker 4: It's too late. We already explained it.
Speaker 5: Fucked that guy.
Speaker 1: Okay, do you guys want to talk about video games?
Speaker 4: Yes, it's party season, boys, you're gonna get your party
on always.
Speaker 1: Oh good.
Speaker 4: Well, when I'm partying, I'm glad that I have First
Leaf because it has fantastic personalized wines just for me.
But it's also my secret weapon for holiday season, which
is coming up. Mike, what are you doing for your
all your fancy parties?
Speaker 1: Well, First Leaf's great because even if you don't really
know much about wine, it can help you kind of
get into it. It'll ask you, like, what kind of
foods do you like? Do you like these bitter things?
You like these buttery things, And it'll kind of extrapolate
from there, and then you can customize your box. Throughout
the years, I've gotten some great stuff from First Leaf
but recently been having a lot of like chilled lighter
reds like Pino Noire bougelt to wave goodbye to the summer.
But definitely getting ready for holiday season and planning on
putting some some heavier stuff like some coast zinfandel in there,
maybe even go go Italian with a few of their options.
I'm looking forward to it. Dan, tell people how they
can prep with the holiday season.
Speaker 2: Well, those folks can bring a great bottle to their
next gathering. With first Leaf. You can go to try
first leaf dot com slash fire Escape to sign up
and you'll get your first six hand pick bottles for
just forty four dollars and ninety five cents. That's t
R y F I R S t l e a
f dot com slash fire Escape. Try first leaf dot
com slash fire Escape.
Speaker 1: All right, it looks like we've all been dabbling in
a bunch of games, diving deeper into a few others
since we last spoke as a group. Uh, Dan, I
know you have a long history with Astrobot, since you
had the was it was it was this the game
that it turned out Grub was better than you at.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Origin, Well, I actually I was better than him
at that on the speed running thing, but this is
a new for This one won't be up until Changer.
Speaker 4: Because I think we have it in our notes that
Grub was well.
Speaker 1: Wikipedia says that too, I was there.
Speaker 2: I was there. No, No, we'll see when the speed
run mode goes up late this year. But hey, it's
one of the greatest games of all time, and it's
easily I would say, my favorite game since Breath of
the Wild.
Speaker 1: This new Astrobat is.
Speaker 2: The New Astrobat is among my favorite games ever. It
is unreal how fucking good it is. It is. I
don't know if you played much of Playroom or Rescue Mission. Yeah,
they're amazing, but it's like there was like caveats with
both where it's like, god, damn it, this is amazing.
But you know, Rescue Mission is VR and I don't
want to wear this clunky thing and you can't really
play it on your PS five. And you know, Playroom
is like incredible, but it's very very short. It's it's
basically like a you know, few RS line. It's like
a demo that comes at your PlayStation, but an incredible one.
And all I'd wanted was like a full on game.
Made by them, and they did it, and they did
it exactly right. It Oh my god, it's like it's
I've never ever compared platformers to Mario in terms of
like putting it on that same level of quality, but
I will put this up there with Mario Odyssey with
six or four all see right now, It's definitely better
than Super Mario Sunshine. And you know how I talk
about that game. I love it, but it's deeply flawed.
Astrobot is not flawed. I look, I haven't beat it yet.
I'm like, I've only been playing for the last like
twenty four hours when I started it because I've been traveling,
but as soon as I got back I started. But
as of right now, I want to use the word perfect,
and I don't ever use that word. I've used that
for like Mario World and Link to the Past. You know,
I don't use that word often with games. This is
a game that when I used to review all the time.
Now I gave five out of five's at Giant Bomb
because it was a five star system and the five
is easier to give out than a perfect ten. But
when I've had a ten point system at a game
and former and before I never gave out tens. I
reviewed a thousand games on ten point systems. I gave
out one ten, and that was to link between worlds.
This I would not hesitate to give a ten to again,
have not beaten it yet, but there's just not even
a question in my mind.
Speaker 1: What is there? Yeah, what's how is it like a
full game? Are they doing like a different like more
varied worlds, et cetera.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, So it's really great with the variety
because like some of them, I'd say, a lot of
the bigger levels are more I don't want to say,
like open hubs like Mario sixty four style. They are
more like there is a place you start and you
are kind of working generally linearly towards an end point,
but like there are larger like areas in between where
basically instead of stars like in Mario sixty four or
Odyssey in the moons, you're finding bots and like, you
don't have to rescue these bots to beat the levels.
Actually you do eventually, Like some bosses and stuff are
gated by like, oh, you need seventy bots to break
this law can fight the boss or whatever, So at
a certain point you do need to get a certain
amount of bots, but you can beat a level and
progress to a point without getting them. But I was
obsessive every single level I did. I would not move
on to the next one unless I got every bot,
every puzzle piece, Like these big ones typically have seven bots,
and you know, some of them are just normal bots
hiding or in peril, and some of them are actually
a lot of them. I want to say, it's like
one hundred and sixty nine are references to PlayStation first
party stuff, and there happens if I saw one about
an hour before we started recording, where I seriously looked
out loud by myself, so are you fucking kidding me?
That I couldn't believe they included this fucking character in
the game. It's one that I love a lot, but
no one ever talks about. So it's yeah, it's got
like the obvious PlayStation stuff, like you know you're gonna
see Crash Bandicoot and the Last of Us characters in
metal gear and stuff like that. But then there's stuff
where it's just like, oh man, this is a weird,
deep cut third party thing that I can't believe. What's
that gex? But I haven't seen gats I haven't seen
gex got I've got crash, but like you can also
like so they populate like this hub area. You're basically
like building your ship back and your ship is a
PS five that breaks apart when it crashes, and so
all your little dudes that you rescue, and there's three
hundred total, they kind of get sent to this hub world,
the crash site when you save them, and there's also
a Gotcha machine there, so you're collecting coins throughout the game,
and you can use coins, you know, one hundred for
a pull of the Gotcha machine, and most of them
are like little props and stuff for like, oh, like
Leon Kennedy. His little prop or set is like a
heartdoor and like a keychain. He's like a little bot.
Leon's like flipping through all these like you know, heart
and spade keys and stuff like that, and you know,
you go up and interact with them, punch them and
stuff like that. And they all have like little flavor
text and one liners that are really clever. But it's
just it's got so much personality and everywhere you look
in this game, whether it's the hub world or a
little linear level or one of the bigger hubs.
Speaker 5: I I every area.
Speaker 2: I go into, I just have to look around at
everything because some of the stuff is like, oh, sure,
here's a hidden paths to get to a bot, and
some of it is just like, oh, I don't know,
here's this fun little here's a little bot, you know,
squirrel that's like popping out of the ground with a
golf ball and you look around and you're like, oh,
there's a golf hole over there, and you're trying to
like hit the ball into the hole and that might
get you a puzzle piece that might just be a
little animation. But there's just so much personality everywhere. There's
so much discovery. There's more like discovery and joy in
the first level of this game than in like almost
any other full game. It's and down to like the
little tiny things. Like one of the first levels is
this creamy canyon and it's like a snow level, but
everything is kind of like ice cream, and you know,
so as you're going through the snow, you see the
ground underneath it is like waffle cone texture, and you know,
the trees are waffle cones with like soft soft serve
ice cream. But then there's sprinkles all over the ground
and like the physics going on in this game, like
just piles and piles of sprinkles and it's so fun
to just run around and punch the sprinkles everywhere and
the stuff it does. You know, this is the first
party PlayStation game, and it really makes a lot of
use out of the controller motion stuff, you know, all
the like very specific little happic feedback stuff. It is
so just the tactile like sensation of going through a
pile of leaves or sprinkles or whatever are done way
better here than any like rumble thing I've ever felt before,
even like they're.
Speaker 4: Known for their physics. Like I remember an early like
the first Astro bought there was a water world and
it was so much fun and there was an area
where I think you wore like a floaty tube or
whatever and you had to float on the waves of
the water. And I remember thinking, like for like a
game that a little studio put together, I was like,
this is incredible the physics of this water. Yeah, the
puzzles they did with it were really cute and innovative too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's all over this too, Like the uh, there's
a lot of water physics, a lot of liquid stuff
going on. There's like the some of the powers you get.
One of them is like this little elephant backpack you get,
and if you go on top of like honey or
like goo, you can pull the right trigger to kind
of suck it up and that'll give you three charges
of like if you jump and you hit our two,
the elephant will like spit it down. And so if
it's like the uh, if it's this one like green
and Go, it'll create this like plant platform. It's kind
of like the cloud Mario thing and Mario Galaxy, so
you can create platforms in the air with this like
elephant thing. There's one where you're a fucking sponge. You
turn astrobot into a sponge, and if you jump into
a bottle of water or a body of water, he
gets really huge and you can kind of stomp around
and run through walls and stuff, and then if you
are too again, you squeeze yourself out and also shoot
a lot of water out, so you can put out
flames or create platforms and lava. Like. It's got a
ton of powers, which like Mario and other platforms have done,
but it's all stuff that I haven't seen before, where
it's like, Okay, you got these two froghands that turn
into like basically like extendo boxing gloves or grappling hooks
for like swinging on stuff, or yeah, you're a sponge
or you know, you've got this weird goo sucking elephant
on your back, and like all this shit is really
fucking fun. I'm smiling the entire time I'm playing this game.
The boss fights are incredible, the animation, the actual gameplay
of them, the variety and the levels. You know, it's
rarely just like oh, here's the lava level, here's the
ice level, Like they all have their fun little twists
on it. Fuck, it's i mean, every second I'm playing
this game, I'm just like, I have no complaints. I
can't complain about this game. It's everything's so fucking snappy
that the hub world's nice. Everything goes in and out
with like almost no load times. It's just there's one
part in this one level. It's called like Funk of
Trunk of Funk or something. You'll know it when you
get there, but like you just start doing like a
random thing in the level, and then the thing happens
where I'm just staring and watching this for a while,
I'm like, this is crazy and hilarious and awesome, and
I just want to soak in every fucking nook and
cranny of this world. It's uh and then just the sheer,
just platforming, the control, the way it feels to run
around as Astrobot is untouched. I mean, you go on
ice and you're skating, and when you jump, it's a
pure wet and you know, there's the attention to detail.
Is is fucking crazy in this game. It's one of
the rare times I can think like, I'm going to
be so bummed when this game is over, and I'm
already looking forward to the speed around DLC. I'm definitely
going to platinum this game, which I really do that
with games these days.
Speaker 5: But uh yeah, without reservation.
Speaker 2: Just based on the first two and a half Worlds,
I've played, one of the best games of all time
and my favorite game at least since twenty seventeen.
Speaker 1: Sounds all right fine looking forward to playing it. I
that like, it also sounds like gonna be a good
palette cleanser. For no, that's not the right word. So
many of the games I've loved this year have either
been like very very big like open world kind of
stuff or small contained, very focused indie things. This sounds
like it'll be a good way to get back to
that like really creative triple A space.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but it's also really good at like if you
want to sit down for hours and really like you know,
say fifty bots, you can. But there's also times where
it's like, oh, I got to leave for this doctor's
appointment in twenty minutes, and I'll load it up and
I'll pick because you can see on the hub world like, oh,
this one has seven bots to rescue in three puzzle pieces,
or this one has one, so like, oh, this is
going to be a short, little challenge level, so you
can crank out a few of those on the hub
world and you know, have a good fifteen minute session
with the game and be done. Yeah, it's I cannot
wait to play more of it. I will probably do
that tonight as soon as we're done recording.
Speaker 4: Wow, I mean that sounds really exciting. I really liked
the last Astrobot I played, and it was one of
the very few games that when my parents visited me
and my parents are not gamers, I was able to
give them the controller and they could functionally like run
around and understand what was going on. I think it's
like it's skilled and challenging, but it's also so lenient
to people who are like, what's a game.
Speaker 2: That's a great point because really most of what you
do is X and square exes jump X again is
to do the laser hever squares punch. You can hold
square to charge punch, and then like when you get
the power ups, it's L two and R two to
do some stuff. But it's pretty easy to explain, so
I think like a kid or someone who's not a
traditional gamer could really enjoy it. But also there's like
for someone like me that wants to get everything, like
there is a good amount of challenge and like, oh
how do I get to that bot? Where am I
missing this? And then you know the fact that it's
so good. It controls so well that it lends itself
to speed running well, like that can be extremely high
level play if you want to, or you can hand
this controller to a six year old and they're probably
also gonna have a really fun time just looking at
all the incredible visuals and personality. It's yeah, it's a
genre that I care so much about and I love
so much, but I just feel like outside of the
core Mario games, it's not I mean you'll see like
there's a lot in the ndie space and a lot
that I have enjoyed, but I still think there is
so much more room for great three D platformers and
like to see something on this level of quality that's
not just the next Mario game. I really I hope
it does well and I want to see more of
this because it is this. This is the type of
game that makes me love video games.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's three D platformers have been one of those
genres for years now. In saying like Nintendo's the only
thing keeping it from truly going extinct, like it's extinct
is super strong because there are some you know, quote
unquote like smaller budget games that have been doing some
really cool stuff. But again, it is nice to see
like PlayStation come out with its version of its swing
at Mario in twenty twenty four. They've had obviously they
have PlayStation has no shortage of like notable mascots in
the platforming space, but nothing that really went for that
the breadth and creativity at Mario.
Speaker 2: I mean, there was that period in PS one where
you know, Crash was kind of a big thing, but
like I liked Crash, but well yeah, but you know
Spiro at the time, you know, a third party and
you know, Crash was very much like the like first
party attempt, and even at its peak I liked Crash Bandicoot,
it was not on the same level of Mario you know.
Speaker 1: Those games same thing as like, you know, like those
were great. I love the first one especially, but like
those had flaws you had to kind of forgive while
you're playing them.
Speaker 2: And also like Jack and Ratchet, Like I love both
of those series, but like those were kind of action platformers,
you know, especially Ratchet with the amount of like you know,
guns and level up stuff and everything. It wasn't just
like a pure Mario sixty four style platformer. This is
a pure three D platformer and it is as good,
if not better, than any Mario game I've ever played,
and I don't say that likely.
Speaker 1: Definitely want to check it out.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, it's what a what a referral?
Speaker 2: I mean, look, I can't hold back. It's this is
it's making me incredibly happy to play.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 1: All right, so Mary, you have to follow that up.
It is Slider one of the best games you've ever played.
Speaker 4: I mean, I don't think it's one of the greatest
games of all time.
Speaker 1: Move on, Move on, Move on. What about what about Corekeeper?
Speaker 4: Wait? Yeah, Corekeeper is actually pretty cool.
Speaker 1: Nah, nope, I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. Slider. What's
what's going on with Slider?
Speaker 4: Okay, Slider is going back to remember how we were like,
we don't like the puzzles where you like move a
slide down ranger. That's all Slider is wo But they
did it with puzzles that are really interesting. So, for example,
you start on one block, so it's let's say it's
a nine by nine grid. You understand, and you're on
block one, and it'll be like, you need to get
this block to the right so that you can get
something from the right, and so you slide the block
over and then you walk off the grid and you
collect something and that helps you get slide two. Now
you have two slides. You interact with the puzzles in
between two slides, that'll give you the third slide, so
on and so forth, and so you're basically collecting nine
slides so that you could move everything around. Despite the
fact that I've very clearly said I don't like it
when you have to move the nine pieces around when
you only have four. It's really interesting. It's the puzzle
is not about how hard it is to move them around,
it's wait, how am I moving these pieces around in
order to solve this puzzle? And the puzzles are actually
very thoughtful and intra staying I and it evolves incredibly.
I cannot believe. I think I'm on Area four and
the Area four is insane. The puzzle design is so
complicated and so interesting. It's totally different dynamic than than
Area one. So very advanced at this point, but very intricate,
thoughtful puzzles that will absolutely rack your brain. And I've
enjoyed running around talking to characters. They'll be like, I'll
try and give you an example. I was gambling with
someone and they were like, I won't even talk to
you unless you can beat my dice. Roll and they
roll a seven, and so you roll and you roll
a four and they're like ha, you suck. And then
it's like, oh, wait, I can move the slider and
so when I move the world, the dice keep rolling
and he's like, wait, you Chang, how are you able
to change your slider, and so like, now I can
change my dice roll and beat him and get a
slider and another one. I'm like doing a race, and
what I do is you cannot beat them physically. They're
faster than you. But if I go down and then
I slide it over twice and then go up, I
can beat them. And so it's about putting all the
slides in the right spot, thinking about what the game
wants you to do to solve these puzzles, and interacting
with the characters to figure out what every person needs
or their desires are in order to get it done
on time. It's a brain buster.
Speaker 2: So I'm looking at a video of this right now.
This is free to play, kind of a game Boy
style like art style.
Speaker 4: It does have a game Boy it's like black and white.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it says it's free on Steam. Is that
the I have to just always wonder like is there
end game? Like is there a catch there? Or what's
the deal?
Speaker 4: How did I acquire this?
Speaker 2: I'm looking at it says free.
Speaker 4: I guess I just I guess I just downloaded the
free game.
Speaker 2: Yeah, here's Slider releases for free. Sliders now available three
your journey. How did they how do you do that?
Speaker 4: I don't know. There's no like secret you know, Dorito's
ads in there. I don't know they did it. It's
not a virus.
Speaker 2: You just don't see that.
Speaker 4: I think I found a couple games on Twitter this
last these last few weeks, and it won Best Student
Game at the IGF. And I'm a big sucker for
the IGF. I love when they helped me discover like
unique puzzlers. I really have to recommend this. I was
very surprised now that I know it's free too, like
that changes everything, but like I forgot that I how
I acquired this quite frankly, but like so many interesting
different puzzles that really rack your brain. And uh, this
is a bit of a cheat, but I think it's
worth letting you know that when you're playing this, if
you get really really stuck, there is a one button
that gives you three hints before telling you that solution.
And I love that because it's not just about moving
the sliders where they need to be a lot of it.
The puzzles are complicated and you're like, I actually don't
understand how to solve this, and so the game will
give you one to three hints before they actually literally
say this is what you need to do. Ding dong.
Speaker 1: And it's nice text.
Speaker 2: Base or is it like stuff on the screen, like
pointing at things.
Speaker 4: It's text. It's like I think it actually takes you
to the steam page, and the steam page is like
a text based walk through, but again, it gives you
multiple hints before it actually just tells you what to do.
And I love a hint or too when I'm getting
stuck after a certain amount of time. Yeah, it's it's
hard to describe, you know, outside of just sliding the
world around. But I've had a lot of fun just
moving the world around and figuring it out. I'll give
you another one. Like there's one where someone's like, I'm fishing,
but the the fish can't get upstream, so there's no
fish anymore. And you'll notice that all the sliders have
a river in them, and it's like, oh, I'll just
complete the river, and if you move all the slides
in the right spot, the fish go upstream and now
the fishermen can fish, and they give you another slide.
Speaker 2: Oh cool.
Speaker 4: Stuff like that. It's just neat, But they don't say
complete the river. The guys just like these fish ain't bite,
no mo And then you have to be like, why
aren't the fish biting anymore? Well, the river isn't completed.
Hey there's river. If I put all these sliders in
a certain order, then the river would be completed. Bing
bang boom.
Speaker 2: That's a game that sounds better than just like slide
puzzles for slide puzzle's sake.
Speaker 4: That's one hundred percent. What I don't like about the
Nine Slides is that it's you know what you're trying
to do. You're like, I'm trying to make a snowflake,
but I can't get the one where I want it.
I hate puzzles like that. That's not what this is.
This is there's four sliders. It's very easy to move
them around, but how are you getting them into the spot?
And what spot do you want them in? Because there's
a puzzle that you're solving, and that's interesting to me.
So that's why I think it gets away from the
trope or like from that annoying type of puzzle design.
This one's more about like what are you trying to solve?
Not how you solve it?
Speaker 1: Nice?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think it's cute. It's free. Can't beat that.
I'm also playing a game called core Keeper. Now this
one I'm interested in.
Speaker 1: It's uh, are you playing on game Pass or what
are you playing on? Because it came early last year,
I believe.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I bought it. I bought it on Steam.
Speaker 1: I know. Did you know it was on game Pass?
Speaker 4: Yes?
Speaker 2: Okay, okay, I.
Speaker 4: Think it's an intentional kish because.
Speaker 1: If you don't, if you want it on PC and
not Xbox.
Speaker 4: Then I don't want it on x Well, you can
play Xbox games on a PC. Yeah, I want to
on my Steam deck.
Speaker 1: Okay, fair enough, gotcha.
Speaker 4: I didn't know it was on game Pass though, because
it only just gets no an educated decision.
Speaker 1: But it was like early access early last year, memory serves.
Speaker 4: Yeah, this game fucking slaps it is. I want to say,
eight player online co op. It has Terraria slash Minecraft vibes.
You start in the middle of nowhere, like in a
hole in the ground, and you have to make everything.
So you have to make your first pick axe, you
have to make your first shovel. They're made of dirt
or crap, and you just slowly like hack away at
the dirt. There's an energy system, a food system, so
you get hungry because you're you know, chopping at the
dirt and you have to eat mushrooms and stuff in
the world, but the real joy comes from playing with
other people and beating the bosses. There's bosses in the
in the world andvarious locations, and so when you're playing
with other people, you just slowly will find these very
aggressive bosses and you have to work as a team
to tear down these giant bosses and kill them in
different ways. One of them is like a huge worm,
and it's impossible to just hit this worm to death
because it's too fast. So everybody's basically like cool, we
need to make traps. So like I'm gonna go mine
iron and like you get a bunch of food and
so that we can cook it and it'll give us
three times our damage and then we'll trap it and
then we'll all take our food and get three times
damage and we'll hit it simultaneously. And that's how you
like take down the bus. So it's teamwork. It's world building.
Oh there's there's like some just casual stuff in here too.
I got animals and I put them in a farm
and I milk them, and I drink the milk for
a defense increase. And I have a farm and I
farm all the food for the team, So I've kind
of become like the farmer person that makes the crops
and the meals and the milk, and then I go
kill bosses with it.
Speaker 2: So are the bosses just like like wandering the world?
Like is it like, oh, this guy stops around the
forest here, so stay away. Yeah, I was taking to Bellheim.
It kind of sounds like that.
Speaker 4: It does now because they can really they can section
off the world better because there's certain areas that you
wouldn't be able to get to with your level one axe,
Like the dirt won't break. It's like too hard, and
so you can't get there till later. So they've kind
of determined that you're going to go to certain bosses
first and then once you kill them, you'll get an
item that you bring back to your base. There's also
like some kind of like supernatural stuff going on, and
so when you like bring the egg back to your dome,
it'll it'll light up some lights and be like, now
your next boss is over here. So it does have
that vibe to it, but you can also build a house,
oh that's also like Felheim, and live in it and
just enjoy the experience of like making beds and decorating.
I painted my house, which I thought was pretty rad.
So you can kind of decide what kind of person
you want to be. There's a lot of different characters
that you can build and grow. I started as a ranger,
but I really grew my farming skills. The more you
do something, the more you'll get points in that system
and grow that system. So I became quite an avid
farmer and fishermen and just animal trainer. And whereas like
other people, they became like a really good swordsman because
they were just running around killing stuff the whole time.
So you you grow your skill tree in what you're
doing the most. I have poured hours into this I
am blown away, very similar to Minecraft. How you can
throw eight hours into this game and be like what,
we spent the whole day doing that, and I did.
I spent multiple full eight hour days playing this game,
and I was never bored or felt like I didn't
know what to do. The only time I got frustrated
was I think I'm on a boss that does lightning damage.
It can really zip Zapia and we keep dying, and
so that's kind of frustrating, but it's just like, obviously
we have the wrong tactic or we need to like
up our food supply before we take it down. But
it's really fun getting a bunch of people together and
being like we're all gonna kill this boss and picking
out ye. I feel like this game is meant to
play with friends. I think you could have fun by yourself,
because much like Terraria, it's about exploration and building and
you can play your way. I just think that the
true joy in it for me is running around with buds,
hacking into the dirt and not knowing what is next,
and so if there is a boss back there, we
can all take it down together. So I think that's
kind of what I like about it. It's really fun
to like get on Discord and play this. So I
think it's a great team game.
Speaker 1: I've heard great things about it when it was Early
Excess last year.
Speaker 4: It's smooth too for eight people drop in drop out,
like not a lot of technical issues. I was pretty
amazed with how seamless it was. Somebody basically hosts and
the server and you can have your little characters join,
and you can have multiple characters. So I have a
character who's more of a farmer, and I have one
that's more of a ranger, and I have you know,
you can you can really expand the way you want
to play this. But I see stuff like this and
I just think it's so brilliant and like the future
of games. This is like everybody from around the world
pop in here and just play on one server. I
think it's awesome. I love shit like this, and I
hope this game does well because it's the kind of
game that I love to play.
Speaker 1: Would be a fun fire skate game, I think.
Speaker 2: So.
Speaker 4: I think you're gonna have a lot of fun, like
deciding what kind of person you want to be. And
it's also nice when someone's like, I've discovered how to
make train tracks and or like tracks and then we
can all like fast travel different places by getting in
a little cart and getting on tracks and stuff like that.
You remember, like Dan, the first time you got like
a horse in Stardoo, and you're like, this is the
greatest thing on Earth. It's really fun to like find
travel systems and get fast and speedy, or find a
really fucking good gun because you like killed some guy
for it. Now you just have like the most powerful weapon.
It's really fun.
Speaker 2: Nice you mentioned to Stardo. Uh, have you played Fields
of Mystery?
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 4: I thought, did. I I like it. My response was,
it's very Stardoo, almost to a fault, because I like
Stardoo and I can always play Stardoo, and it's just
like this is kind of Stardoo, but everyone's smoking hot,
and I have enjoyed it, and I've put in not
that many you want to say, like eight hours into it,
but I just feel like I've already played this game
and it's called Stardo.
Speaker 2: That's the thing is like I have every time I've
recommended this, I'm like Giant Bomber elsewhere. I've like, I'm
really enjoying this game a lot. But when it comes
time to differentiate it from start, it's kind of like, hey,
you can jump. You don't have to fill your watering can.
You know it's uh, there's a checkbook on the inventory.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I fill my watering can.
Speaker 2: What's that?
Speaker 4: I fill my watering can?
Speaker 2: I didn't know you could. There's not like a finite
there's not like a water bar like there is in Stardoo.
Speaker 4: But it says you're out.
Speaker 2: Oh I haven't. Maybe I haven't gotten there yet. I
have like nine plants. Oh, you can run out.
Speaker 4: You can run out of lot.
Speaker 2: I want to kild it once. That's a deep fucking
can shit. That was like my one talking boy for
how it's different. They don't have to fill up the
watering can.
Speaker 4: You have to fill up the watering can shit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, to start do but you can jump. Yeah. That's
the things like I'm trying to figure out, like is
this game doing anything significantly different or has it just
been long enough? And I like playing Stardoo, you know.
Speaker 4: And people were starved for something else, right, and the
Haunted Chocolateeer hasn't come out. I think people are itching
for something like this, and I do think it scratches
that itch. I just think for me, I like new experiences.
I like trying something I've never tried before. And so
for me it was a hard sell because I was like,
I just feel like I prefer to start new games
as opposed to playing the same game that I feel
like I've played. Yeah, I mean they do things a
little differently, but even just the fact that like on Friday,
if you go to the bar. All the people are
there and they're having their little potti. I was like, oh,
this just reminds me of I Started.
Speaker 2: It really really is. Yeah, And I've like, i know,
Started is added a billion things since last time I
played it, and I've always been like, oh, maybe I'll
go back to it, and I'm like, I've already played
this game, and I think so that this being technically
a new game is what kind of like made me
okay with like, Okay, it's a new game. I'm not
just playing a game from twenty seventeen but or twenty fifteen.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and it is good, it's well done.
Speaker 2: It's really good. I am really enjoying. I'm going to
keep playing it. It's a great playing game. But yeah,
it's definitely Stardu.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: It also has like the same systems of like collect
them all right, oh yeah, the museum, the museum.
Speaker 2: Yeah. But and that's another reason I was hesitant to
criticize it for being too much like Started, because Starty
was just doing Harvest moot. So it's not like Started
was like We've invented a genre, you know. It's like, no,
it just did a really good one. Modern times you know.
Speaker 4: At a perfect time too, when people really looking for
something like that right, Like it really says timing is everything.
For all we know, somebody right now is making the
perfect dig Dug duplicate and now everyone will be like,
this game is brilliant. How come it's never been done before?
World Steam World dig Doug.
Speaker 2: All right, I'm in.
Speaker 4: It's like the same thing, but if you do it
at the right time, it's brilliant. And I do think
that Fields of Mystery is a solid stardoo for the
Stardoo enthusiast. I I'm playing other things.
Speaker 5: Sure, yeah, there's a lot now right now.
Speaker 4: So what else, Mike, we haven't talked to you in
a while.
Speaker 1: I've been playing several things, but the one I have
been enjoying the most is Tactical Breach Wizards.
Speaker 2: I started that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I like the game a whole lot. From the
developer of Heat Signature, among other things. Look that up
just to make sure I'm Tom Francis, I believe. Let
me just look that up quick. The x Calm one right,
Uh yeah, x Comm.
Speaker 2: Camera Squad something Mike would like.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Wizards, uct and Druids and ship like that. A
Suspicious Developments uh techle Breech Wizards, Heat Heat, floating gunpoint.
Speaker 4: It's the same game, but everyone's hotter.
Speaker 2: Yeah, with a hot Wizard, Ta Wizards, Bloody Wizards.
Speaker 1: X Comm. You have played XCOM Chimera Squad. That game
is very much about You're actually uh turn based breaching
into these close quarters as opposed to XCOM to Xcom
and to be unknown within those were outdoors, largely urban environments, rural.
This is small rooms, but you get different characters who
have different powers, and the world building here is pretty unique.
They took really like hardcore tactical aesthetics of like a
Navy seal or a Green Beret or a swat team,
and then combine them with fantastical stuff like your main
the first character you have, he's dressed like I don't
even know, like a ghost recon soldier combined with like
a gandalfast looking wizard and clothes like that. And he
has a a light machine gun that like has crystals
on it that can manipulate time. His power is basically,
among other things, he generally speaking can kind of just
set up things one second in the future. He also
that one second into the future, which I don't know
if you've seen was it Knowing with Nicholas Cage, I
was knowing and next Knowing is like when he knows
like nine eleven's coming or something. Yes, one second.
Speaker 5: One of those is that they make that film.
Speaker 1: We watched it at Post or Not. We watched Next
Post e three in Venice Mary when we got that
Airbnb GameSpot crew. Anyway, he could see one second of
the future, which kind of leads to the end of
the breach mechanic. So into the breach you get a
limited number of.
Speaker 4: What fucking value is one second into the future gonna do?
Speaker 1: So I was literally about to tell you he can.
You can set up I know.
Speaker 4: It's gonna happen. You're gonna tell me what's gonna happen
in one second.
Speaker 1: See, there you go. It's an advantage. You basically can
like decide to preview what's gonna happen if you end
your turn. That will show you if the stuff you
did is going to get anybody hurt, if it's going
to take out all the enemies in one fell swoop,
or if it's gonna lead to some more catastrophic stuff.
As opposed to into the breach, these rewinds that you get.
If you don't like that outcome, you get unlimited rewinds.
They really want you to like min max this game
like and like try to get perfect missions in as
few turns as possible, as little damage as possible. I'm
at a point in the game now where I don't
know how any buddy wouldn't take damage on some of
these moves. I just like there's another character, for instance,
she is a more of a witch, and she's got
like some of this druid stuff like all over her
and among other things she has, like she could just
like push people out windows and or like levitate stuff
and also just knock people off course into the first
characters like Trapsi's set up basically you are doing the
into the breach thing where you're using different characters to
kind of set up this chessboard and then unleash it,
and then you kind of they give you every tool
you need to know what's going to happen next. But
when you end your turn, it seems like.
Speaker 2: They're big on like letting you kind of play at
your pace and your your skill level, because one thing
I noticed early on was that like you can just
fucking pick whatever mission you want to do, regardless of
if you've gotten that far, Like you could like skip
to the last mission in the game if you wanted
to and just start it, which it's rare to see
that level of just like nap Bucket, Yeah, you can
just get this level yep.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Then you get like character who like it is,
you know, like has a riot shield and you're going
up against enemies that are like basically traffic police. Like again,
the world building here is very much like there's a
lot of humor between missions about like bureaucracy and you're
kind of playing detective with these characters. But I actually
find a lot of the writing to be quite funny.
I wouldn't put it on par with like I'm thank
goodness you're here. Sure, it's not that funny, but nothing
is nothing is. And Tackle Breech Wizards I like quite
a bit. It's very tightly designed. My my gripes are
kind of the similar things I had with Chimera Squad
and with Xcom two, which I have also been playing
a lot of because I saw Alien Romulus and I
was like, oh, Xcom was really inspired by Aliens, So
I'm gonna go play that again and I've been playing
with more mods, but that's not right now, Mike.
Speaker 2: I would just like credit for hell uh noble, I've
been for not saying anything. The forty nine times you've
said alien on this podcast.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I just want I just want credit for that.
Please you also, Mary, you heard it too.
Speaker 1: It becomes a problem with one of our sponsors, is
like he's pronouncing our name wrong. You got to re
record this. No, he's just from Syracuse, ye, And like
there's people from upstate New York listening that are like,
we don't say that. Let's say I don't know where.
Yeah no. Actually a lot of people curl their a's
like that up there, but I don't know.
Speaker 5: If it's I've never heard.
Speaker 1: That instead of a it's like, ah, like curling Italian okay,
as opposed to Long Island'd be more like Italian.
Speaker 2: Say the Nintendo's mascot's the name.
Speaker 1: I grew up saying Mario. But I've now living here,
I've I've come around to accepting Mario.
Speaker 2: Okay, you've accepted our style. Look it's insane.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I mean this like around here you But no,
I grew up saying Mario Okay, no tactical Breech Wizards.
I want to keep playing. I love the variety and
the environments too. Some of them you're in office buildings,
some of them you're on like tankers out at sea.
It's I'm really enjoying the game. It's exactly what I've
come to expect from the team that made heat signature.
It's just very tight. I again, I don't sorry, I
don't even know if I finished my thought x Com
Camera Squad and this. There are certain instances where it's
actually not completely clear what an attack is going to do.
And I know I said earlier that you know exactly
what's going to happen next. You have every tool at
your disposal. The game gives you as many as it can. However,
there're sometimes where like visual bugs pop up and that
gets in the way of you making the right decision.
It's hard to gripe when you can literally rewind as
many times as you can. So then I'm like, oh right, okay,
let me just double check that I'm lining this up
the way I wanted to. So again, that's like if
the game and if I like was getting people killed
like I was in x Com too, and that was
happening that becomes way more egregious, but here it doesn't
matter that much, but just a really unique, cool, like
intricate game. I'm getting to the point in the game
where it does really feel like those hectic.
Speaker 2: Just you know.
Speaker 1: Chess matches that you get into and into the breach
and you know, you're like starting to really get a
feel for every character's nuances and how they synergize. And
then you could pick you can rearrange the doors each
character is going to breach through, similar to Kimera Squad.
So that adds another layer to like not just what
do I want to do? This turns like how do
I even want to kick off? This whole puzzle? It's
absolutely more of a puzzle game than anything.
Speaker 2: So really cool style too, like I like, you know,
knocking guys out of windows and the whole like you
know kind of cop vibe thing in between missions. Like
it's got a real it's got a real unique feel
to it, and that I appreciate.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was trying to put my finger on what
it looks reminds me of. Visually, It's a cross between
like Kentucky Roots zero and twelve minutes.
Speaker 2: Remember that they were a big twelve minutes guy.
Speaker 1: I never played it. I know people really hated it
the more they played it, but it's like it has
a similar palette. If sure even makes sense.
Speaker 2: I could see that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but cool game, and that's I think twenty bucks
well worth it. Go check it out. Nice Dan, you
saw some Nintendo stuff.
Speaker 2: I just did. I took some Nintendo appointments at packs,
which is why this episode is going up with a
few hours late. Yes, yes, yeah, I'll start with Zelda
Echoes of Wisdom, which I thought, look, anytime there's a
new Zelda game announced, my ears perk up. But this one,
you know, being like a very unique one where it's
oh okay, first full one where you're playing Zelda. It
seems like it might be kind of a swan song
for the Switch as we go into this last stretch
of of Switch games. And it's also got that kind
of like top down links of Wake any remake art style,
which I think pretty solid. So like, I like the
idea of using that art style for a whole new adventure,
and I think this really over delivered.
Speaker 5: I was already really excited for it.
Speaker 2: But playing it and like messing around with the echo system,
which you've seen that trailer where it's like basically what
she's doing is like creating echoes of enemies and you know,
torches and rocks and sea urchins and things like that,
and then using it. Like she does have a sword
mode that you can use and like attack traditionally like
in a Zelda game, but that's very very limited. That's
like a bar of energy you've got. So it's the
echosystem that the first time I played it, it reminded
me of the first time I played Scribble.
Speaker 5: Knots, where you would get to a puzzle.
Speaker 2: Or something and it would be like, oh, get past
this thing or defeat this enemy, and you're thinking, like,
you know, you've got this. You know I can type
in anything, what do I want to do? Like it's
not quite that level of typing in whatever you want,
but once you've like assembled a good amount of items,
it's like, oh, could I climb up above this thing
and just drop beds on this thing's head? Or you know,
do I want to spawn a bunch of bats and
attack this enemy? Like it just feels like there is
a wide variety of ways. Even in like the short
time I play well, I guess I played like an
hour and a half, but like you know, had a
limited amount of echoes. Let's say I had fifteen twenty
various things I loved every time I encountered like a
boss or a puzzle and being like, all right, let's
see what I got here, and cycling through them is
kind of like that Tears of the Kingdom style where
you just kind of like hold a deepad button I
think it's a deepbad button, and you cycle through and
you can sort by last used, most frequently used. So
it's all like, even though it has all these things
in your inventory, you can cycle between. It's it is
pretty snappy and easy to access everything, and it just
leads to a lot of funny situations where it's like, oh, okay,
I need to get this fire over to these boxes
to get up to this thing. I wonder if I can,
you know, put this bed down here and the bed
catch is on fire, but all of a sudden you're
just in a flaming bed and links on fire, and
so oh that didn't work.
Speaker 5: Okay, let's try this way here.
Speaker 2: Which it's a really funny thing that if you spawn
a bed, you can sep in it. I can tuck
under the covers with a and like recover hearts, so literally,
in the middle of a boss fight, you can just
like put a bed in the corner and try to
get a quick nap in to get some like health
and then pop back up and spawn a bunch of
bads or spiders or whatever.
Speaker 5: So, yeah, need to break.
Speaker 2: I think, Yeah, there's gonna be some crazy speed run
stuff for this. I think it's gonna be really cool
to watch. And yeah, I went from being very curious
too very excited after the ninety minutes we had with it.
Speaker 4: Very cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's I think it's gonna be a
really cool one. And yeah, I always wonder with things
like this, is this a main line entry in the
series technically, And they straight up said this is a
main line entry in the Zelda series, So let's put
that in the ground right now. It is a main
line Zelda game. And yeah, I'm sure it'll be the
last like main entry we get on the switch. So yeah,
it seems like they're going out with a really interesting one.
Speaker 1: Dude, you got to stop with the whole I don't
want women in my Zelda games. Maybe that's Mike Manad's gimmick.
Speaker 5: That's a Jake Decker. That's Jake Decker.
Speaker 1: Yeah, to fuck Jaked if you want to learn more.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and also leading this to be the most mean
Nintendo appointment I could have. I saw Zelda and Mario Party,
so I played Super Mario Party Jamboree. We got some
little miniature looks at like several different modes, so we
did a few turns of like the standard party game mode,
which I liked. It's got seven boards. It's got too
If you remember, Superstars was the one that was like
all classic mini games and maps. This one is mostly
new stuff. But it's got two classic maps and two
of my favorites, and it's got like I think it's
like twenty two characters or something. It's a huge, huge cast.
But yeah, it's more straightforward than Super Mario Party, the
last all new one. It kind of does away with
the partner system, like the ally thing that they had
with that, so it's a little more streamlined. Should be
a little easier to just like get new players in.
But yeah, as far as the main not story mode,
but the main mode, it's a Mario Party. It's got
a shitload of new mini games, and I really enjoyed
the ones I played. They also had us play the
twenty player online mode, which I was a little unclear
if you you could like party up with or room
code with like twenty people, Like I don't know if
we could start a stream and share code and have
twenty people join. They said you could party up with
eight people, but like a lot of this was a
little unclear based on my time with it, but we
did play it with eight people, and it's got like
a racetrack and it's all like bespoke mini games to
this mode. So it's these modes where you're like fighting
to get coins and things like that, and live you're
seeing the standings go around the like racetrack and completing
laps as you go. So it's definitely not the traditional
roll dice, go to item shops all that stuff intindow game.
It's a different deal. So I don't know for anyone
thinking it's a twenty player Mario party thing, just no,
it's not the traditional Mario party mode.
Speaker 1: But it was fun. It sounds like Fall Guys Adjacent
or something.
Speaker 2: But yes, there were several several parts where it's like, Okay,
we're fighting Bowser here and you've got twenty characters and
you're all running away from Bowser and there's like fire
and the floor is dropping out.
Speaker 5: Felt very very fall guys. I definitely had that thought.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: Which, you know, I want to try all he's online,
Like I love Mario Party, but like you know, I'm
not against you know, trying some new things with it
as long as we still have that core board game element.
And then the other one they had to play was
an eight player co op mode where you're like on
a little stage almost like a Mario Kart battle mode stage,
and Bowser is kind of rampaging around or he's imposter
Bowser technically, and you're running around breaking open these crates
of bombs and you're all like you know, loading up
on bombs, loading it into a cannon, and then just
shotgun blasting Bowser with bombs and he's got a health bar.
There's many games in between. You can get power ups
and stuff like if you do good on the mini games,
it's like now you can get this glove that helps
you carry you can carry four bombs at a time
instead of two, or you're doing more damage to Bowser.
So that was fun. It felt like it was from
a different game than a Mario Party outside of the
many games. But again, more modes not a bad thing
to me as long as you got the core thing.
And the core thing is more boards, more many games,
more characters than like any of them have had. So yeah, look,
it seems like this is another game that I'm going
to be pulling out every time I go back home
and playing for player with my sisters and friends and stuff.
So yeah, Mario Party is alive, and well.
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to trigger you, I promise, because I
enjoy Mario Party. I'm not. My question is you just
mentioned like the core thing here seems to be more.
Has that not always been the case? Like what like
have mainline Mario Party games introduced like big new wrinkles often?
Speaker 2: Yeah, like Mario Party, I want to say nine and ten,
definitely ten. The Weiu one had this thing where everyone
they're kind of trying to speed up the board game
aspect of it, so everybody was in the same like
car driving around the maps to try to get you
to the minigames faster, and like, honestly, I didn't like
that nearly as much because like that's part of it
is everyone's kind of taking their own paths through the map.
Everyone's getting to Boo first or something. You know, it's
and so having to everyone in the same car like
on rails kind of ruin nine and ten for me. Again,
it might just be ten. It could be nine and ten.
And then like Super Mario Party introduced the ally system
where it's like all the maps have this thing where
you're basically getting allies that are rolling extra dice with you.
They're they're going around sometimes. I think they participated in minigames,
but it's definitely a different, different vibe to it. It
was an interesting, like I'm not against them trying new things,
but I don't know, it was a little little distracting
to be in every map. So this just being a
little more straightforward and just giving you more characters, more maps,
more many games like but then having the extra stuff
be on the side these like side modes. I I
much prefer this, So yeah, between this and Superstars and
I like Super Mario Party. But yeah, I think we've
got three good too great Mario Party games on the switch,
so it's awesome cool, yeah, yeah, good stuff.
Speaker 4: Right before they get a new switch.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, look, please be backwards compatible with anyone, because
I want to be able to play all these games.
Speaker 4: Still, did Nintendo Swatch be a bad name?
Speaker 1: It'd be weird to not be able to play like
tears that Kenya on the next one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but you know, we saw with Mario Kart eight Deluxe.
It's hey, we're gonna put out that game and charge
again for it, and it's going to be like one
of the most the high selling games ever. You know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Mary, you've been playing something called crypt Custodian.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm on my andy shit again. This is a
metroid vania that I think has promise but is a
bit rough on the edges. You can tell this is
a small team, or even smaller than a small team.
Speaker 2: But I I like some of the.
Speaker 4: That would be interesting because it is popular.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So this is a cat that has gone to hell.
They are a custodian cleaning up trash in an afterlife,
essentially as punishment for their crimes against humanity. You sweep
up trash, you kill any batties that come in your way.
There's an interesting concept with ghost puzzles. I think that's
what these are, where essentially you'll see a cat head
that looks like it's made out of gas, and if
you hit it with your broom, it'll fly in the
direction you want and bounce, So you have to hit
it in the right direction so that it gets to
an area where it'll open up a gate and you
can get some goodies and some secrets. I enjoy the
puzzle parts of it. I think the combat is not
impact y for me, doesn't feel chunky when you're hitting enemies,
and I really do think that a metroidvania needs like
a chunky feeling when you're hitting stuff. But I do
think that it has a nice expanded map that will
remind you of a hollow night or or where it
like really expands over time, and I do like that.
Much like any metroid vania, you're expanding your skill sets,
which allows you to traverse the world in new and
interesting ways, and so I like that about it. I
just think it's a little rough. I wish that it
was a bit more polished with its combat, which is
such an important part of metroid vaneas. But I find
it interesting. I like the idea of being a cat
in an afterlife, going to a bar and buying little
juices from a bird and ticking on the boss fights.
It locks you into spaces certain areas. Once you're in,
you can't get out until you kill what's in it,
and if you die, you just responded an earlier checkpoints,
so it's not that punishing. I don't even think it
has like a soul system, like I remember dying, and
I don't think I had to like go find my souls.
It's just a very not punishing death system. So but
for the cat enthusiast that likes Metroid Vanas, this could
be for you. I'm gonna keep playing it. I'm not
done yet. I'd like to get at least five or
eight hours in before I like make a very distinct
choice on this. I think it does some creative things
and also had some interesting boss designs. There was this
really funky one with arms that comes out of it
and then it claps you, and I thought that was
pretty fun, like I like when they have creative designs.
I also think the art style is nice. It feels
kind of hand drawn to me. That vibe to it.
Speaker 1: It's almost like a Night In or Knight in the Woods.
Speaker 3: The style.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think that's a good I think that's really
fair I think it's good to say that this looks good.
Speaker 1: Oh there's like yeah, there's almost like hyper light drifter
looking environments too.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's got a lot of traversal later on. That's
very heavy platforming, So you're gonna want to enjoy your
platformings to do this. But I I found that it
grew on me after a couple hours. I think it's
unfortunate that may be like the first three hours are
a little slow, or you might be like this isn't
pushing me enough, this isn't innovative enough. But I do
think it gets there. You just got to give it
probably like five to eight hours for it to warm
up to you.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I think it's worth playing, especially for someone who wants
a metroidvany in their life.
Speaker 1: Well. Yeah, the cat looks just like my cat Luna.
Speaker 4: It's got that flat evil face for sure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, huge eyes and soulless. No, there's a lot of
souls to herd.
Speaker 4: It looks like evil.
Speaker 1: No, she's very sweet. She just doesn't like.
Speaker 4: You evil face, evil presence.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I want to try this out.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think it's worth it. I I have enjoyed
it so far and do recommend it. I just think
that it's got some rough edges still.
Speaker 1: Okay, good to know, Dan, anything else you want to
set one, let.
Speaker 2: Me kind of lightening around some short ones here, just
some updates and some new things. While I was in
London checking out Metal Year Solid Delta, I also played
a game called Deliver at All Costs. It's a new
one coming from Kanami. It is like a isometric driving game.
You can get out of your car and run around.
But it reminded me of like the early GTAs, but
you're just like driving around delivering stuff and it's very
very weird humor. That was very much working for me.
It's a lot of like, Oh, I have all these
like shitty rotten watermelons that I want to sell, but
nobody wants them, so I'm going to like take them around.
Or they were like they were like rotten something, and
I spray panted them to look like watermelons and spray
them with cologne or something, and just like you do
a bunch of bullshit and then take it back to
the same place and sell it to them as like
new watermelons even though they're rotten. Grows fruit or here's
like a live marlin that I'm strapping to the roof
of my truck and I'm like driving it around. It's
a lot of like weird physics stuff, driving through houses
and fences, and of timed racing delivery kind of GTA
type missions. But I was very, very impressed by the humor.
It's very much in that kind of like weird sort
of fifties kind of you know, Fallout type vibe, but funnier.
So yes, I was. I was pleasantly surprised by that
at an event that was all about metal gear and
silent Hill metal gear. I will say just the short version,
it's very very good. It's exactly what I think I
would want out of a Meddle Year Solid three remake.
For my full thoughts on it, I pulled out the
old writing chops again. I wrote an article for GameSpot
dot com, so if you just search GameSpot metal Gear Delta,
you'll probably see my thing. I also put up a
video on game spots YouTube where I narrated with some
screenshots and things like that, but lots of quality of
life things. Visuals are great. It's the same old voice
acting that sounds great. So it's it's what I want.
I am now confident in this one where I was
skeptical before.
Speaker 1: It's my favorite. Wait wait, I have questions. That's my favorite.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah game Please.
Speaker 1: When you say it's just basically where you want, are
they sticking to like are they being super faithful with
the like level design and everything, it's still like.
Speaker 2: It's section yeah, like one to one, so like you
will get to the breaking point between this area and
that area, it fades to black, fades back in with
the name of the new one at the exact same spot.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 2: I wonder if they're gonna cause I only play the
virtuous mission, so I do wonder what things like the
end boss fight. Well, that'd be more of a contiguous,
you know, like big open area. But I mean it
seems like they are like very cognizant of like we
are not straying from Hideo Kajima's vision here. This is
as it was. It's just going to play better and
look better.
Speaker 1: Yeah. When you say play better, are like animations wise?
Is it the Phantom Pain engine.
Speaker 2: I don't know engine wise, but they had made some
control tweaks where it's like switching between weapons is on
the dpad now instead of the triggers like you know
middle ar one through four where it's got like hot
swap stuff with camos, so like you can just hold
in a deepad button and like switch CAMO on the fly.
You can you know, use the dpad you kind of
like just call someone in the without going to the
dedicated screen. But if you want to, you can still
do the old way. One thing I really loved was
like tooltips, because like CQC was a cool system and
snake eater, but you could do so much with it
that I would forget how to do specific things. And
this one, like you know, you grab a guy with
I think it's R two now instead of circle, and
things will pop up like this is for human shield,
this is for slip throat, this is interrogating. It's like,
oh thank you. It's right there. Like you're dangling off
a bridge and it'll like remind you, like, oh, hold
this to aim your gun, and it's like, oh right,
I can aim while I'm hanging. Like I was doing
more stuff that I could have done back then, but
it was just it was it's easier to surface now
that thanks to the tooltips.
Speaker 1: Okay, so I asked about the animation specifically just because
Phantom Pain and Ground Zeros are like the best feeling
third person games that come to mind. The way it
transitions from prone to crouch standing.
Speaker 2: Here, it's closer.
Speaker 5: It's closer to Fano Pain than it was the original
Snake Eater.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, And there's things where it's like you can roll
from a standing position. Now you know it. All the
buttons have changed around everything, but in a way that
feel immediately recognizable to like a modern gamer where it's
like you go back Snake Eater. I'm sure you and
I can go back and we remember how to do
all this, but it feels weird going back to if
you've never played it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I love those games with all my heart,
especially Snake Eater. Im I'll be the first to admit
it's like or I'll be the first to acknowledge rather
it's not the most intuitive button layout. Maybe there's a
universe where every game is designed like that, but I
think the wider games industry has kind of figured out
some more seamless control schemes.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think this is the perfect line of like,
people like me and you that love Snake Eater are
going to love it. And also if you're coming to
it for the first time, both in terms of where
it's at in the story and how it controls. I
think it will feel great to jump into for the
first time now, so very very happy with that. A
couple of other quick ones. Castaway is like a little
miniature Zelda in the way that like like a minute
or half minute hero where these like very condensed experiences
of like a Zelda type game or an RPG. This
is a game that the first time you beat it,
you'll beat in like a half hour, and it sucks, Cassia,
I know, it really does. Yeah, but it's like there's
like a few dungeons, there's boss fights, boss keys, you're
getting heart pieces, it's like there's an overworld. It's all
of the Zelda trappings are there. It's just like like
a speed run. There is actually like a speed run mode.
But yeah, you'll beat it like thirty minutes the first time.
I bet you can beat it in like five to
ten minutes easy the second time. But it's yeah, I
don't know, it kind of gets a lot of the beats.
It's like, you know, almost like a baby's first Zelda
kind of gets you all day, like, oh, you get
a hookshot. You fight this boss and move on to
the next thing, like it's got a death mountain area.
But yeah, it's very much billing itself. Is like this
is like a very short dog. Oh yeah, it's a
save your Dog, so you get your items back and
the save your Dog. That's it. It's a very breezy
but very fun.
Speaker 1: Love.
Speaker 2: I love a good Zelda like that has like an
interesting little tweak on it, and this being like the
super fast Zelda was fun for me.
Speaker 4: This is a really good game idea. I love this.
The idea of it's like it's a it's a bite
sized version of Selda you're meant to like play quickly.
I love this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then when you beat it, there's like a
fifty floor like tower mode with almost like a Rogue
Light thing where you're leveling up as you go through
and you can buy upgrades and stuff. So there's a
little bit past that, but yeah, I really really enjoyed
my short time with that. And last update is just
Steamworldhist two. I've continued to play that and I'm pretty
far into that at this point. With all the flights,
that has been my go to flight game, and it's
a real good one for just killing time on a flight,
because like every one of those missions, you're thinking so
much about every turn you make, and I'm restarting missions
all the time just to make better decisions and save
crew maids. And yeah, before you know it, you know,
hours have passed. I think Heighs two is one of
my favorite Steam World games.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I talked about it last episode and you're gone.
I've put a lot of time into it. I'm still
playing that too, really really good, like a bunch. I
especially like it's one of the more interesting or enjoyable
strategy layers in an xcom, like the just the yeah,
upgrading the submarine and I like the world itself, the
World's it themselves.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that loop is amazing. Like going back to your
you know, sleeping at the end of the day, you know,
going to do your sub upgrades and new personal upgrades
and things like that, trying to find like a shop
I want to do I want to.
Speaker 1: Buy recruit a new member, or do I want that
heavy machine gun on my sub Or do I want
to get a upgraded sledgehammer for my tank class?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Melee class.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a lot of personality, good writing, good visuals, just
love that kind of like two D tactical thing that's
got going on. It's a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: Yeah, marry anything else you've been playing?
Speaker 4: Yes, one more. I also found this on the Twitter.
A dev was talking about a game that they made
and how they were kind of getting good reviews but
not enough reviews, and I was looking at the game
style and I was like, this kind of looks cool.
So I ask them for a key and I've been
playing it and I am into this game. Uh rco is.
I'm trying to think of how you of a game
that you can compare it to, but side scroll with
combat that when you're making your action it stops, but
it is live action when you're moving around, so you
have to like make your decisions, but when it's your
turn to make a decision, it stops, so you can
think about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it does sound like oh like Frozen synaps was
this was a game that kind of did something along
those lines back in like twenty sixteen. But yeah, it's.
Speaker 4: Real time, but it pauses that you can like ards
me like a Kotour.
Speaker 5: I don't know if you ever played that, but like
the combat in.
Speaker 4: That someone when I was streaming it was like, hey,
this kind of reminds me of Transistor, and I was like,
oh yeah, like you know where you can like stop
and think for a second, but it is real time
and you have to be moving around. So this is
what that's very similar. This game is a RPG, it
blends turn based in real time combat. But I really
like that the stories are very raw. It's very bloody,
it's very murdery, and it feels like it's kind of
in a old American style, like old old Western. And
you are a rugged, ruthless dude. You don't really have
a name, or when you do, you don't really give
a shit. You don't meet people, you know, you can
decide how you talk to people, so you can when
you meet people, you can be like, I don't give
a shit what your name is, little little billy, or
you can like actually be nice to them. You can
decide like how aggressive you are right away, within the
first thirty minutes of this game, violence will happen. That's
I think pretty intense, and so you're it's setting the
tone that this is an adult themed situation where you're
like killing people who have killed people. You can decide
if you are an anti hero or a hero multiple times.
I have essentially helped people because let's say lizards were
killing their livestock, and so I go kill the lizards.
You can decide whether or not you do that. You
can actually not help people. You can avoid doing the
little extras for the townspeople. I liked doing them and
trying to help everyone out, but very rugged and very intense.
I died a lot playing this. You have to be
very thoughtful with your upgrades. Upgrades are precious, and so
whether or not you get a heavy arrow arc that
will stun enemies, or whether you go with a knife
attack that doesn't stuck them but does more damage close
up is up to you. You get to use your
you get to pick your character pyramid the way you
want to build it. But because it's so precious, I
think you have to be very thoughtful with where you
want to put all of your different skill sets. I
got really into arc arrows that do AoE damage, and
so I'm more of a shoot and run away like
a little bitch type aggressor. I shoot my arrow, I
run like hell. I shoot my arrow, I run like hell.
But you have to mix it up, especially with the
way they throw enemies at you. I loved the different
dynamics that they gave us throughout the I would say,
like the ten or twelve hours that I've been playing
with it so far, I've been thrown into all sorts
of different scenarios that I have thought were very interesting.
There's also environmental kills. A lot of spaces in the
environment explode upon damage. It's really fun to have like
six bad guys be like, we're gonna kill you unless
you give us five dollars, and it's like, over my
dead fucking body, am I gonna give you five dollars?
And I shoot the explosive and kill like five of them.
Very rewarding. You kill all sorts of stuff in this game.
You also get items that you can use to kill
people with. I thought it was really interesting. I got
dynamite and through it at a bunch of people and
exploded them all at once, and one one playthrough, I
also did one that's sticky and it makes them not
be able to move, So if you have a fast
enemy that's zip zipping around, you can make them stuck
where they are. Beautiful. This is a beautiful game. You
will look at it and you will say oh what,
this is just like eight bit It's gorgeous.
Speaker 2: I'm looking at it now. Yeah, it's got Do you
ever play West Torado? Yeah, it's got kind of that,
like very pixelated, like Western aesthetic for sure. Like I
don't mind that.
Speaker 4: The music matches the Western aesthetic to a t. I
also think the writing feels quite authentic and genuine. I've
played a lot of games like this where they're just
like this trown big enough for the two. This is
very well written. You can tell that the writers or
the people who have made this are quite invested in
having authentic representation of the characters that they are having
in this game. I think it's quite thoughtful. Of all
the games that I'm talking about, I think this is
the one that I kind of can't put down as
of late. Like I just get really excited when I
get to play this game. It plays like a dream
on the switch, and it lends itself to a casual experience.
I think this is a great plane game. I think
you could play this and do a couple tasks when
you're on your plane.
Speaker 1: This is.
Speaker 4: A game that I think has a lot of promise,
and I also think it's a bit of a hidden gem.
I don't think people are talking about Arco enough for
how well made it is, how thoughtful it is, and
how enjoyable it is, So i'd really this is like
the one for me.
Speaker 2: Okay, I'm making a note to download this on the
Steam deck. That sounds solid cool?
Speaker 1: All right? That was all for me was I've been
playing some other older stuff. Like I said, I've been
mean to try Alien Dark Descent came out last year.
Had it downloaded Steam forever. It's like a top down
real time Xcom esque or like maybe like top down
Republic Commando but set in the Aliens universe. I mean
to play that. But I also started a new Xcom
two campaign because I love just seeing what new mods
people have come up with over the over the years.
But yeah, outside of that, nothing major. Do you want
to do emails?
Speaker 2: Yanks? Do it?
Speaker 1: Okay? Before we jump into emails, reminder, you can ride
into fire Escape cast at gmail dot com. That is
fire Escape cast at gmail dot com for comments, questions,
stuff you want to be read on air. If you
do have any corrections, I will only read them if
they are directed at Dan and Mary. Mary, do you
want to read this? First question? We have from Matthew.
Maybe I should have. No. I meant I saw it
was fairly long, but that's because it was also in
regard to something we were talking about today, So makes sense.
Speaker 4: Here we go, Hey, Gang, following your discussion about the
Alien franchise this week, and I was reminded that I
have never seen Alien or Alien's or pretty much any
of the other movie that is, actually.
Speaker 1: How you alien Aliens?
Speaker 4: Alien?
Speaker 2: The name Ali, you can't even do it.
Speaker 4: It's like alien, Croatian alien.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's you're closer alien.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to think of what what word do you are?
Speaker 2: You?
Speaker 1: Do you actually pronounce the A correctly.
Speaker 2: Like that al like Al Bundy, it's alien alien and
the letters e in is how he says it end.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so could continue to wear it.
Speaker 4: The only one I've ever seen is Prometheus, a film that,
as far as I can tell, is largely disliked by
fans of the series. But I freaking love that movie.
I was super hyped when it came out and was
not disappointed. The funny thing is that I don't know
that it was Alien film until the very end when
it shows the Xenomorph, which, if you recall, is literally
the last five seconds of the movie. I'm sure for
fans of other movies it might have well been have
had this is an alien movie flashing on the screen
the whole time, But I was clueless. So my question
for you is, are there any games or movies or
books that are that you like but you're entirely unfamiliar
with the series. Have you ever tried a late entry
in a series and been inspired to go back and
try the originals or even some you feel like you
don't need to experience the original to enjoy the newest one.
Thanks for my favorite podcast. It's a highlight of mowing
my every two weeks. Much love, Matthew from Bentonville.
Speaker 1: I've been to Bentonville. You have not. I absolutely, phil Arkansas,
where I went to school, is like an hour from there.
Bentonville's famous for its big like Christmas blowout decorations and market. Matthew,
correct me if I got any of that wrong, But yeah,
I've been to Bentonville. That's really funny that you didn't
know that that was an Alley movie till the end.
That's like the Bit and Sonny where Charlie thinks the
twist in the sixth sense is that it was Bruce
Willis the whole time, like the actor was Bruce Willis
the whole time. That's funny, like you, that's a different
twist than I think they intended.
Speaker 2: I was kind of late to Ratchet it was the
third one because I just thought they were like kids games.
And then like IGN gave the third one, I think
up your arsenal and like a nine point eight or something,
and I was like, what, that's a really high score,
and so I checked it out. It's like, Oh, it
turns out these are fucking great, And I went back
and played the originals, and.
Speaker 1: I mean that's how I was with Metal Gear Solid.
What was your first Snake Eater?
Speaker 2: Oh, that is a good first one because chron like
in the timeline, it's great. Box first one was four,
which is fucking crazy.
Speaker 5: Is the most fan service, you know.
Speaker 2: I hope you've read up on all this stuff before
we show you movie length cut scenes. And she liked it.
Speaker 1: All right.
Speaker 2: Cool.
Speaker 1: If ever, there's a game that's going to turn you away,
and I love that game. But if there's a game
that's going to push you away from the series, that's it.
Speaker 2: If you were into the series, though it is the
most like here is.
Speaker 1: Like, yeah, yes, Snake Eater, and then I went back
to play one and immediately missed a lot of the stuff.
So yeah, it's funny because Snake Eater introduced so much stuff,
like just the fact that it had so many like
outdoor stealth options and different movement and the camouflage, survival
light kind of elements. I missed those in Metal of
Your Solid but going back to see where it's from, uh,
Metal of Your Slid one is still my second favorite
of the series after Snake Eater. I'm trying to think
anything else. There's probably movie series that aren't occurring to
me yet, but I think the big one was Snake
Eater because Zelda Zelda might not count as much because
it was an age thing. My first Zelda was Ocarati,
and then going back to those early ones was obviously
pretty rough until I got to link to the past,
which was, you know, still to this day, really really
good game design that holds up really well.
Speaker 2: But and visuals.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Okera enough time is was my first Zelda and
now that's become probably my favorite series.
Speaker 2: There, you got me.
Speaker 4: Shows would be really interesting for games. I definitely played
Half Life two first, and I felt fine. I felt
totally in control of that situation, that there was nothing
that I'm missed other ones let me think, uh you go,
I can't think of any I definitely had.
Speaker 2: The order I watched Rocky was really fucked up. And
it's because of my age. So I was born in
eighty four. So the first one I remember seeing was five,
which is universally considered the shitty one, the only shitty one.
Well yeah, but the thing is we I saw five,
I think in the theater, and then we had it
on VHS, and so I watched it all the time
on VHS before I ever saw another Rocky, and so
like at the beginning, they would show the Drago fight,
and every time I'd watch Rocky, five would be like, Man,
this shit looks cool. Who's that big fucker from Russia?
But I never saw four for years, So I went
like five, one, four, two three was the order I think,
which invested up.
Speaker 1: Might be the weirdest order you could watch those, but
I still obviously fucking love it. But it's like from
five to like a genuine Oscar worthy movie, to four,
which is the best movie ever made, to two, which
is like the continuation of the Oscar.
Speaker 2: Yeah, three was like late, and by the time Bebo
came out, I was pretty caught up.
Speaker 5: But yeah, but I love five. I mean I didn't
know any better.
Speaker 2: It was the first one I saw, and so like
it's almost a good way because it's like, oh, man,
I love this character, I love this format and this music,
and then it's like, oh, now here's the good ones
after that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the only way you can enjoy Rocky five
is if it's the first movie you watch.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you're also, you know, six years old. Yeah.
Speaker 1: We also that games were a total war I played
the Warhammer games, then went back to the historical stuff,
and then they didn't have wizards and dragons and shit.
So I was a bit torn on them.
Speaker 2: Final Fantasy I didn't really try. I tried a lot
of seven, eight and nine or seven and nine. I
tried a lot of a good one.
Speaker 1: Because he also asks, here, what's a game that you
enjoyed where you don't feel like you need to play
the other game in the series. I love six, I
love was It, I love nine, but I and ten,
but I don't. I have no intention of playing any
other Final Fantasy at.
Speaker 4: This point, I got it the Witcher.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, what even is in there?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: How do you play? What's it about? I've never seen
it outside of Poland.
Speaker 1: It's text based RPG.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Poland.
Speaker 2: It's a dice game.
Speaker 1: You could only play it out of music.
Speaker 4: You get it in Poland?
Speaker 2: Yeah, like fan hacks and stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, that's a good one because I have I
have played the first two and like Jake might disagree,
but if you played Richard three and are been like
meaning to play one and two, you don't need to
look up a synoposive. And that's not to take away
from the fact they do some cool stuff.
Speaker 2: But I'd be willing to about the large majority of
GTA fans started with three, four or five or maybe
Vice says today. Yeah, like I started with one and
two the top downs, and like I remember thinking those
are pretty fucking crazy for their day, But like, I
don't know, three is when it kind of entered the
like super duper mainstream. Everyone's played this, you.
Speaker 1: Know, Oh dude, I mean, I mean, statistically speaking, GTA
five is so big that it's it's alive today. I
don't know why people who start with four would be
dead yet but.
Speaker 2: I would suggest one that you can't just hop on
now is if you if you're curious about Call of Duty,
you need to go back to the first one. Otherwise
nothing's gonna make it. So you got to play every
Call of Duty in order, every one of them, even
like the Big Red One and the DS one, or
you're not going to know what the fuck's going on.
Speaker 1: I like that you just combined the what you just
did with those two titles. Do you realize what you
just did? No, you said the Big Red One as
if it's like the game is a big red one,
because then you said and the DS one big red Bone.
Speaker 2: But the Big Red One was the game. Yes one
is like Mobilized.
Speaker 1: From World War Two. That also reminds me. And now
I'm just thinking a series where it's like I played
a really good game and now I either went back
to try the earlier ones and they didn't hold up,
or like I didn't need to fall Out. It's a
good example. Fallout three is one of my favorites. I
went back to play one and two when I was younger.
Really cool stuff going on, Like if they do a remake,
I think a lot of like Balder's Gate three fans
would be psyched, but like you do not need to
play those first two in their current state because they
don't hold up well. And Fallout three obviously is just
night and Day. It's open world onward, you know.
Speaker 2: On that same track. I would guess that Elder scrolls
the same way, yes, because I think, like you know,
I definitely know a lot of more wind like big
time fans like Bonks the biggest one, and obviously Oblivion
Skyrim got huge, but I don't hear anyone talking about
one or two.
Speaker 1: The Arena and Daggerfall are again, like honestly like they're
like the Bethesda catalog of RPGs had like that one
to two phase where different developers completely different styles, and
then they took some really cool world building and then
just went, you know, basically established the formula for like
free form open worlds going forward, and from the early
adds to the twenty tens.
Speaker 5: Yeah you again, I.
Speaker 1: Think there's some cool remake material there, like remake not remaster.
And again I'm not saying there's not cool stuff in
all those but yeah, god, Moroin is still well worth
trying out just to like just to see what it's
like play five hours that game if you haven't before,
and then if it doesn't hook you, that's fine, you've
still seen what cool stuff it's doing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, just hearing the stuff Bonk is described
about that game, it's like it seems like it was
doing some bold, crazy shit, like maybe even before a
lot of the hardware, especially the Xbox was ready forward.
Speaker 1: It literally wasn't the draw distance in that game you
can't see past like.
Speaker 2: The load times and stuff where it like actually like
shuts down the system and restarts it.
Speaker 1: And yeah, yeah, I wrote a very very good article
about that game on Polygon. Anybody who hasn't rid it,
go look up twenty years later morowin looking back on
mor and twenty years later the game that RPG that
changed everything. I might be butchering that, but that's those keywords.
We'll get you there. Yeah, I mean I think that
it's very I'm sure there's like movie series. It's tougher
for me to think of specifically because a it's way
easier to go back to an early movie and spend
like ninety minutes two hours watching it. Yeah, it's not
easy to tell me.
Speaker 4: From personal experience that I don't know anything about Marvel,
and I haven't been paying attention to the series, but
I watched Thor Ragnarok and I thought it was pretty good,
and I know, nothing.
Speaker 1: Too, Yeah, because it's like that's especially good because that's
funny because Marvel the franchise itself is built for you
to watch any of them and then like they hope
you go back and watch all the thirty five previous
ones because they're so interconnected. There's easter eggs. But I
like that Taiko whit TD came along in main one
where it's like, no, this is just funny on its own,
and you don't it's like a heist action. You don't
need to don't worry about the first Thor movie and whatnot. Yeah,
but yeah, games are just so much harder, like they've
evolved so fucking quickly in the last forty years or
whatever it is, and they're also much more time consuming,
so it's easier to go back and watch Like like
Matthew hasn't seen Alien Alien, sorry, and absolutely if our
earlier conversation didn't que you in, you should watch Alien
and Aliens immediately. They hold up really well. But it's like,
you know, going back to dagger Fall and Arena are
that's way different or even like early balders Gate games,
Like I'm sure there's a lot of balders Gate three
fans who have wanted to go back to one and
two and are finding it it's like, no, I'd rather
just start a new run in three because these are
a bit dated.
Speaker 2: Or even interesting ones where it's like I could see
people getting into Middle Year Solid five because like that
gameplay is so good and it's not doesn't really require
a ton o story knowledge because there's not that much
story in that game, and then like if you went
back to the early Middle Years, it's like, well this
is a different thing, you know, Like I love five,
but it's I love it for very different reasons than
one through four.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I also wonder if, like Breath of the Wild
got some young people into the series and they're like, huh, different,
there's some stuff there. It's just funny to think that,
like we came into Breath of the Wild thinking, Okay,
they took like the eight dungeon format, sprinkled mini ones
all over in an open world, whereas those people would
go back like, oh, they took shrines and made eight
huge ones yeah, with like a pretty bare bones open
world between them. But anyway, thank you Matthew for writting
in uh uh looking. I'm not going to go to
Bentonville this year, but I had fun when I was there. Dan,
you want to read this one from Erin.
Speaker 2: Or High Fire Escapers. I know would you rather questions
are overdone, but I think there's no better crew to
discuss this important question. Would you rather slip and fall
every time you enter a new room or have to
scream every fifth word you say at the top of
your lungs. That's Aaron from Dallas scream. Definitely scream. There's
no injury risk.
Speaker 4: There's no injury.
Speaker 1: I agree.
Speaker 4: As we get older, as we enter our older stages,
I can't afford to fall.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'd be risking serious injury so many times a
day versus like, Oh, I'm gun of embarrassed. Every once
in a while.
Speaker 4: You could get like a fall guard.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 4: Have you seen that new thing that like you wear
it as a jacket as a person and when you
fall just just.
Speaker 2: Like take an airbag for your body. Yeah, wantsn't have
to wear that. I'll just tell people, Hey, I got
this weird thing a Genie cursed me.
Speaker 1: No, you wouldn't you like weird thing, like, hey, I've
got this weird.
Speaker 2: Right down. I'd hand everyone a note when I enter
a room or get on a plane.
Speaker 1: You wouldn't finish the explanation before you do the thing.
Speaker 5: You're explaining why it's the note, That's why it's the note.
Speaker 1: I would absolutely at this point in my at any point,
I would rather slip and fall because you're twenty. Yeah,
I'm twenty years old. I think you're young.
Speaker 4: Your bones will be fine.
Speaker 2: Fine.
Speaker 1: Both are going to do damage your reputation. I think
the screaming one is going to do it worse. But yeah,
to Mary's point, you could prevent as much as you
can some physical stuff.
Speaker 4: I would just get like a mobility aid, and then
I would I would just avoid. I would I would
cheat the system.
Speaker 1: You would do the fall thing, yeah, and then I
would sit.
Speaker 2: Oh see. I feel like as you get older, you
worry less about embarrassment and more about physical harm, and
so I think it's the long term play to go
with the screaming.
Speaker 1: There are also people that live with both of these
problems for real, but like for the record.
Speaker 2: Time to go into a room that I don't know
if that's a malady that people that's what.
Speaker 1: So then you're thinking it's like, Okay, you're going to
a like a not that we any of us really
do business lunches unless we're at a convention, but like
say you're going to like a professional lunch, do it.
You're gonna slip when you walk into the restaurant. Yeah,
hopefully you don't have to go to the bathroom, because every.
Speaker 2: Time I peel lot, I'm falling on every bathroom floor
I've ever gone to.
Speaker 4: Is it is it a new room in the sense
that it's a room that's never been.
Speaker 2: Into before, or is there like a twenty four hour
cool down, like you're safe for a bit and then
after midnight, though, you fall in that bathroom again.
Speaker 1: It would be more it would be more manageable if
it was like every brand new room. Yeah for the
first time.
Speaker 2: So like my house, like when I first move into
my house, I'm falling for all of them.
Speaker 1: Then you're a plan ahead. You could go to that
restaurant that you know you have a business lunch.
Speaker 2: At the fall Oh dinners at seven, I'm gonna get
there six thirty and fall down break in and just
I'll just get there early and I'll explain it. I'll
hand the note to the wait. No, I don't have
the scream anything. I don't need a note. I can
just talk.
Speaker 4: I'll have.
Speaker 1: Imagine imagine seeing security cameras have a break in and
a restaurant and someone just kicks down the door, slips,
runs through into the kitchen, slips, goes into the dry storage, slipslips.
Speaker 2: And boat bathrooms, runs out, doesn't steal anything. Yep, it
comes back for dinner the next day.
Speaker 1: It's going to scar the security guard for the rest
of his life. What's the worst place? What is the
worst situation where like building you could be in where
the slip and fall would like be a nightmare more
than spike factory.
Speaker 4: Mouse trap and glass factory.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's bad.
Speaker 4: You guys always made in the same space, or.
Speaker 1: Like a every time you go into a new room
when you're sprinting to catch a flight at the airport, it's.
Speaker 2: All kind of one room though, Like what determines a
new room. I think a door. I think it's a door,
Like a standard sized doorway is a new room.
Speaker 1: TSA is like okay, step forward.
Speaker 5: You go to the metal each shit.
Speaker 2: Through again.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if it's not a new room and you actually,
like every time you go through the doorway, you slip
coming bit towards TSA and then slip going back.
Speaker 2: Getting onto the jetway, getting onto the plane, moving between
first class.
Speaker 1: And coach, slipping and falling in a plane bathroom.
Speaker 2: It's not good.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, I'm just there's got to be like just
at the met or the Natural History Museicum, we're not
going to every new exhibit. Everybody's being quiet and observing,
like you know, just being really respectful. And or a
library in general will be funny. Or a ice floor, yeah,
like a nice floor building, a hockey rink.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's what you're describing. And that's just kind of
one big room, so you're probably okay. You know, like
a turf a turf floor bowl, turf floor bowl.
Speaker 1: Yeah, go Spelunking The Descent would have been a very
different movie with this melody.
Speaker 4: You'd never make it.
Speaker 1: I would. I would still got the slip and fall
regardless of that assigned it.
Speaker 2: You're gonna you're gonna regret that.
Speaker 4: I gotta go with the yell. I feel like already
yell every fifth word.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the thing. I'm like halfway there, like you
might as well as leaning, but what if like what
if you just adjusted, you're talking to all your words. No, yeah,
just scream everything and then it doesn't even stand out
stand out still, I mean, but not as like staccato,
you know, like oh man, he keeps doing this weird thing.
It's more like, oh he just yells everything.
Speaker 4: You get one of the those masks like Baine, and
it just mutes you a little bit.
Speaker 2: I think that's cheating.
Speaker 1: So I was breaking into a restaurant to slip around
it for a bit.
Speaker 5: That was your idea. I wasn't gonna break the law.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you didn't call me out for cheating.
Speaker 2: That's true.
Speaker 5: Look, we approach these things differently.
Speaker 1: Yeah, fair enough, all right, Well thank you Aaron from
delas Well. That's our that's our episode. Good stuff, more
more stuff. If I want like a genuine I feel
like anytime we get a would you rather? We've been
pretty it's been fairly civil. It's been pretty cordial. We've
never really been like, you're fucking wrong. I want someone
to send in a genuine stumper for us that like divides.
Speaker 4: Us, come get us.
Speaker 5: We're reasonable adults, but yeah, they can test that.
Speaker 1: I want one that's really gonna test us, but yeah,
I right that into fire Escape Cast at gmail dot com.
If you're not a patron, you can go to firescapecast
dot com. You can go to Patreon look for us.
You can contribute just a few dollars if you want
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Or you can get the ad free episodes or the
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We got to make them happen because we really want to.
You can also go subscribe to our YouTube channel. Right now,
Mary and I are very close to the end of
resume four remakes in our ongoing Residue Canievil series. This
one has been taken particularly long again, just a very
busy year. But you'll know when those publish if you
subscribe to our channel there, and that's also where we
put all those bonus episodes. So here's kind of two birds,
one stone. Mary tell them what they can get at
Firescape merch dot com.
Speaker 4: Oh, you can be getting some hot merch we just
had to purchase. I'm not gonna call them b out
in case it's a gift. You never know. But we've
just been getting some people getting some really nice T shirts.
I can't wait to see your banana yellow logos. You're
about the author shirts. You post them, I'll retweet them.
I love it, enjoy that march.
Speaker 1: Dan Yes, does does do the reviews help at all
any more of these days? Uh?
Speaker 2: It's a I feel like the last I heard about
that being a big thing was like when I was
at Debitu, Like, oh, yeah, I get the five star reviews,
but hey, look, if you're looking to do something, yeah
you can give us five stars.
Speaker 5: It's not gonna hurt.
Speaker 1: It'd be nice if it was like Steam and it
said like overwhelmingly positive US reviews, because I feel like
we'd get whatever the top tier is. But yeah, of
course reviews if you like it. Right outside of that,
that's a that's about it for the ways you can
support us. But uh, Mary, what do you have going
on outside of Firescape?
Speaker 4: I did a different podcast. I still love you guys,
but I did a podcast called Objectively Positive Podcast, which
I really really enjoyed. I was invited on by Tatum.
I hung out with Tatum at the Giant Bomb at
Night at E three this past year, and we talked
about media, any media that's had a really positive influence
on your life and or just hugely impactful. And I
gush about Rocket League for an entire hour. I talk
about how much impacted game Spot and the team there,
and how much we loved it and all the fun
we had with it, and how much it had me
of lasting friendships with my coworkers just because of Rocket Leagues.
So I encourage you to listen to Objectively Positive Podcast.
Good good stories in there. I really enjoyed doing that.
Speaker 1: Nice Dan, what about you?
Speaker 2: Giant Bomb got some fun stuff from Germany That travelog
should be up if you go to the YouTube channel.
Or also have Mike Benatti playing through Alone in the
Dark for the we on Blake Club where we play
the worst games ever and that has been hilarious, So
check that out. But yeah, Twitch, Now that I'm done
with most of the travel stuff, probably doing some more
streaming on Twitch Slash Dan Reichert, that's my stuff.
Speaker 1: Nice. I'm just here a Firescape cast outside of my
day job. Well great, it was episode eight nine. We
will be back episode ninety in a couple of weeks.
At that point, I'm trying to think there actually might
be a couple. Oh that'll be the day after I
turn twenty one.
Speaker 2: Big planets probably, yeah, yeah, get video first.
Speaker 1: Ooh, if you're not a video page? Am I allowed
to drink on Patreon?
Speaker 2: It? I guess I'm gonna make ane. I'm going to
show you some wine.
Speaker 1: Wine seems pretentious. You're you're a big boy now, seems
a bit too high brow. Do you have any white Zinfandels?
Speaker 2: It's my favorite?
Speaker 1: Oh nice, I'd like to try.
Speaker 4: That's all drink?
Speaker 1: Isn't it a bag?
Speaker 4: Yes, a goon sack.
Speaker 1: I've heard good things. But yeah. We'll be back on
September twenty third. The Fall it's here. I like it,
me too, holding down this weekend in theory.
Speaker 4: Yeah, sorry, all.
Speaker 1: Right, well ally right, thank you for joining. We appreciate it.
As always, We'll see you on the next episode of
fire Escape Cast.
Speaker 3: Bye. St