Speaker 1: What's going on? Walter Pronan, We're back fire escape cast?
Speaker 2: I think I like that worse what's happened? I like
Speaker 2: it less.
Speaker 1: Billy Krappnan, what's Gucci? Stanley Tucci?
Speaker 2: Billy Crappnon's growing on me.
Speaker 1: I sink I'm starting to like this guy. That's Dan Reikert.
Speaker 1: OHI that's me Yellow and that's Mary Kish Back back
Speaker 1: back from Japan, your gallivanted around? Did you knock over
Speaker 1: any restaurant walls? Again?
Speaker 3: I have a new embarrassing story. All right, Yeah, I
Speaker 3: was in Japan for work. So I did Tokyo Game Show,
Speaker 3: which was awesome in Tokyo, and then I went to Kyoto.
Speaker 4: Uh and uh.
Speaker 3: Where else did I go to?
Speaker 2: Be a museum? Nintendo museum?
Speaker 4: I did go to the Nintendo Museum.
Speaker 3: I have a cool That one was embarrassing, But I
Speaker 3: will just say if anyone has ever heard of this
Speaker 3: in Kyoto, the original like Nintendo Home and it's a hotel.
Speaker 3: It was so sick and I'm so fortunate that I
Speaker 3: got a tour of this place and I saw the
Speaker 3: actual physical playing cards that the i Machi family made
Speaker 3: to essentially that became Nintendo.
Speaker 4: And in the tour, I got.
Speaker 3: To see the elevator that they used to bring these
Speaker 3: cards up and down because back then obviously all paper
Speaker 3: cards very heavy. And it's just like a really fascinating
Speaker 3: history that ended up becoming what Nintendo is. And that
Speaker 3: was one of the highlights of the trip, was to
Speaker 3: be able to meet the people working in that space
Speaker 3: and what is to become of it now, which is
Speaker 3: like more of a incubator for upcoming projects and programs
Speaker 3: of smart people. But they still really cling to their
Speaker 3: roots of this card of cards, right, because that's.
Speaker 5: What the museum is, Like did you make your own
Speaker 5: cards and do all that stuff and like painting the
Speaker 5: cards And it was.
Speaker 3: Mostly for me, Like this hotel was essentially just going
Speaker 3: through the rooms and seeing like the grassroots of these
Speaker 3: original halls and spaces, and I think we got to
Speaker 3: see some places that like you really should not see
Speaker 3: without a tour guide. I was very fortunate that they
Speaker 3: like allowed us to see it, and including just all
Speaker 3: the detail that went into the walls and the carpets,
Speaker 3: Like they just put a lot of energy and this
Speaker 3: was you know, back in like the late eighteen hundreds,
Speaker 3: early nineteen hundreds, So this is a very old Japanese building.
Speaker 3: It looks stunning, so that was really cool. I felt
Speaker 3: like throughout this entire time, I would just like to
Speaker 3: say that I hadn't done anything super embarrassing. And every
Speaker 3: time I go to Japan, I do something stupid because
Speaker 3: I can't help it, and I'm American, and I embarrassed myself.
Speaker 3: But I had somehow perfectly stumbled my way through without
Speaker 3: embarrassing myself. And on the last day in Kyoto, we
Speaker 3: did this thing where you get to kind of dress
Speaker 3: up in a kimono. They like help you know, dress
Speaker 3: you up and guide you and prepare you and everything
Speaker 3: like that.
Speaker 5: And so we had can I guess you had a
Speaker 5: bad diarrhea situation and you had to go out in
Speaker 5: the woods. But he excellently crapped on a shrine and
Speaker 5: he didn't have no paper, so you had to use
Speaker 5: like this ornamental robe to wipe your ass and they
Speaker 5: got upset with you bad.
Speaker 2: Is that what happened exactly?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what she told me, she texted me yesterday.
Speaker 1: Is exactly what happened.
Speaker 4: I did not ship my kimonos.
Speaker 5: Call their white guys. No, you shit on the shrine
Speaker 5: and wiped with the kimono.
Speaker 3: That's just such a bad story. No, mine was what
Speaker 3: are you doing? You made it sound now my story
Speaker 3: isn't so bad. I was actually like, I was really
Speaker 3: embarrassed when I walked in. They have all these signs
Speaker 3: saying do not wear your shoes in this space, and
Speaker 3: I know that you're not supposed to wear your dirty
Speaker 3: shoes inside their beautiful, like all the floors so delicate, right,
Speaker 3: like everything is very old, it's very proper, and you're
Speaker 3: really not supposed to wear your outdoor stuff in there.
Speaker 3: But there were all these I don't know what these
Speaker 3: are really authentically called, but they are those wooden sandals
Speaker 3: that you often wear with the Kimona rocks.
Speaker 1: That's what they are. In the Netherlands.
Speaker 3: A lot of people don't know that the Cross family
Speaker 3: originated in Kyoto. Wooden sandals right by the entryway.
Speaker 1: Did they have the little the beer bottle opener on
Speaker 1: the bottom that you can use when you're.
Speaker 3: On the beach, like the real classic ones?
Speaker 1: Really quick because I'm gonna forget. Yeah, a genius was
Speaker 1: the person who decided I'm gonna put a beer bottle
Speaker 1: over on the bottom. These flip flops.
Speaker 5: Is there a better feeling in the world than somebody
Speaker 5: needs a bottle open? You're like, how about this.
Speaker 3: And shoes opening my beer?
Speaker 4: Anyway?
Speaker 1: I don't knock it, yeah, till I come up. Till
Speaker 1: I come up.
Speaker 3: Belt buckle would be cooler.
Speaker 4: Oh my god, he's just trying to high kick.
Speaker 3: Now's not flexible anyway. I look at these shoes and
Speaker 3: I say, Okay, I understand. I take off my sneakers
Speaker 3: and socks and I put on these wooden shoes to
Speaker 3: walk inside this place. That's what it's guiding me to do.
Speaker 3: So I do that. I take off my shoes, I
Speaker 3: put on these wooden shoes and I walk into the
Speaker 3: house and there I say, where's your bathroom?
Speaker 4: And they say it's upstairs.
Speaker 3: And I I walk up these long, very difficult staircase
Speaker 3: with these shoes, and I'm like, this is such a hazard.
Speaker 3: I cannot believe they would ask me to do this.
Speaker 3: And I get upstairs and a woman looks at me
Speaker 3: and goes, no shoes. And she obviously doesn't speak like
Speaker 3: very much English, but she knows to yell at me
Speaker 3: and that I fucked up.
Speaker 4: And I I look at her.
Speaker 3: I go but I put on the and as I
Speaker 3: say it, I realize that I am wearing someone else's
Speaker 3: shoes in this house. I had taken off my shoes,
Speaker 3: and I had seen all these other authentic shoes and thought,
Speaker 3: those must be the indoor shoes. That's just another fucking
Speaker 3: person's shoes.
Speaker 5: You're supposed to wear, wear their proper shoes, to wear
Speaker 5: their or were you supposed to.
Speaker 3: Save You just wear bare feet in this.
Speaker 5: House, so you weren't supposed to be wearing any shoes,
Speaker 5: much less someone else's.
Speaker 3: Shoes, a stranger shoes in the upstairs of this house.
Speaker 1: And I had bonking up the stairs when you're fucking
Speaker 1: wickerman feet.
Speaker 6: And I had to clom all the way down, and
Speaker 6: all the women who worked there were all crowding around
Speaker 6: the staircase as I was making so much noise in
Speaker 6: these wooden shoes.
Speaker 1: That was the sound of a fucking moron coming down
Speaker 1: the stairs.
Speaker 5: And there was a light up shoes from ninety three
Speaker 5: where the lights happened?
Speaker 2: Are you disrespectful?
Speaker 1: I were very.
Speaker 3: Loud wooden clog shoes, and I like clunked my way
Speaker 3: outside and took them off. But like from then on,
Speaker 3: like the ladies never really looked at me the same,
Speaker 3: and I knew that we had all agreed that I
Speaker 3: had embarrassed myself, but like the audacity of myself looking
Speaker 3: at her and being like, no, ma'am, I believe I
Speaker 3: put on the shoes that you asked me, Yeah you have, no,
Speaker 3: I did. As soon as it like came out of
Speaker 3: my mouth, I went, no, these aren't these aren't these
Speaker 3: aren't shoes for me?
Speaker 1: Are they?
Speaker 5: Wait?
Speaker 1: Sorry, what was stopping from taking them off upstairs and
Speaker 1: then carrying them down?
Speaker 4: Embarrassment?
Speaker 3: I turned right around and I just clink clunked all
Speaker 3: the way down those stairs and out that fucking house.
Speaker 1: That's that's that's funnier than the wall. I don't know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then I got a tea somewhere, not because
Speaker 3: I needed it, but because I needed to pee so bad,
Speaker 3: and I would not go back and ask them to
Speaker 3: use the bathroom again. Like you know, the story was
Speaker 3: over for me at that point, so I just yeah,
Speaker 3: I just found somewhere else.
Speaker 1: Well, we're glad you survived the embarrassment and made it back.
Speaker 3: Thank you. I'm glad to be back. I was severely
Speaker 3: jet lagged. I do you think i'm i'm, I feel
Speaker 3: functional grateful to be able to go to Tokyo Game
Speaker 3: Show and see the spectacle that is Tokyo Game Show.
Speaker 3: As we all know, PAS has like these very strict
Speaker 3: rules about like what can be a booth babe, But
Speaker 3: in Tokyo Game Show they let them hang and I.
Speaker 2: Two thousand and five all the.
Speaker 3: Time there you see everything. I mean, it's crazy. They
Speaker 3: just let those booth babes go all in and you
Speaker 3: know AI is here and it is real. And like
Speaker 3: these they have like giant screens of anime girls with
Speaker 3: the biggest gigondo boobies you have ever seen.
Speaker 2: AAI anime ladies boo.
Speaker 3: I mean I think they're constructed. Yeah, they don't seem
Speaker 3: super uh artistically inclined, but they get the job done.
Speaker 1: Not like.
Speaker 3: I have a problem with these AI titties. I want
Speaker 3: I want them a little bit more real. Anyway, just
Speaker 3: like all over the place, it's it's uh, it's hard
Speaker 3: to avoid.
Speaker 4: It's really fun.
Speaker 1: Dan hounk Dong at a Tokyo Game Show once.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I don't know how to yes and that.
Speaker 1: Well, it's not my problem.
Speaker 5: Did you hanged on not at Tokyo Game Show?
Speaker 1: Now sorry.
Speaker 5: I've been to Japan many times and change my clothes
Speaker 5: while taking a shower into in Japan.
Speaker 1: It was in public, it was in Boston. I think
Speaker 1: as a pecks East, I don't.
Speaker 5: My penis has never been exposed at a at a
Speaker 5: games event.
Speaker 1: You know, No, what were you going to say about?
Speaker 1: What else did you Japan? Mary?
Speaker 3: That's about it. I mean I did like the usual stuff.
Speaker 3: I ate a shit ton of ramen and ate a lot,
Speaker 3: and I enjoyed Tokyo Game Show. I went there on
Speaker 3: bealf of Twitch, so we had like a little booth
Speaker 3: and we did a meet up and that was it.
Speaker 3: It was great. I loved it. I was grateful to
Speaker 3: go and see all those sexy booth babes. And I
Speaker 3: am sorry to the people in Kyoto that I embarrassed
Speaker 3: with my stupid, stupid shoes.
Speaker 1: He desecrated it.
Speaker 4: I can't.
Speaker 3: I mean, I was all up in that house because
Speaker 3: the bathroom was upstairs, so I went all the way
Speaker 3: through the middle, all the way up the stairs and
Speaker 3: all the way up like the main floor before I
Speaker 3: was caught.
Speaker 1: What was your favorite part of the trip.
Speaker 3: I think I ran into Peter Brown. He just happened
Speaker 3: to be able to go for tote. We didn't think
Speaker 3: he was going to be able to go. I play
Speaker 3: a lot of peak with Peter Brown used to be
Speaker 3: a game spot networks at Sony, and I just happened
Speaker 3: to be able to run into him in Osaka, and
Speaker 3: uh we did my favorite thing, which is we met
Speaker 3: at a random alley and then walked until we found
Speaker 3: a place that we thought looked cool and the name
Speaker 3: of it was called Guts. So if you're ever in Kyoto,
Speaker 3: check out Guts Kyoto. Sorry, osakach go.
Speaker 1: To Guts anyway. Stuff there is great.
Speaker 5: Japan in general is just incredible for just like you know,
Speaker 5: there's just so many, like all these buildings in any
Speaker 5: big city, you're just like eight to ten floors of
Speaker 5: just like every floor is a different thing. So it's
Speaker 5: like oh, DBD shop, restaurant, club, all this, and like
Speaker 5: you can just like window shop in a way where
Speaker 5: it's like you know, Tim Terry and I when we
Speaker 5: would go with Game Informer, we're just like that's probably good,
Speaker 5: right because you're not like yelping the shit in Japan,
Speaker 5: you know, and you go in and more often than not,
Speaker 5: it's just like Oh, this is what an incredible like
Speaker 5: true hidden gym, Like it's great for that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you find My recommendation for anyone who's like I
Speaker 3: don't know how to Japan, you obviously can just look
Speaker 3: up touristy things and do it. My genuine thought is like,
Speaker 3: go get lost, Go walk down the alleys, go walk
Speaker 3: down the streets. Most of the restaurants are excellent. The
Speaker 3: meat quality is so high there. They have very high
Speaker 3: standards for food quality. So like just stumble into a
Speaker 3: random place and love it and love getting lost and
Speaker 3: love like not knowing what to do. We ordered too
Speaker 3: much because we didn't know right then. We just like
Speaker 3: had a lot of food and we just stuffed ourselves silly.
Speaker 4: It was the best night ever.
Speaker 3: And it's just really nice catching up with an old
Speaker 3: friend like Peter and I get along like peas and
Speaker 3: carrots and so it was like absolutely fantastic to see.
Speaker 4: Him in Japan. And that's probably one of my favorites.
Speaker 3: The other thing I'll say is I found a tour
Speaker 3: guide who's lived there for like thirty years. He speaks
Speaker 3: fluent Japanese and English, and he took us to some
Speaker 3: onsense which are like essentially public hot springs that you
Speaker 3: could not go to unless you speak Japanese like they
Speaker 3: would because it's all locals, like you would.
Speaker 1: Didn't go into some of those if you have like
Speaker 1: tattoos either show yeah, oh wow.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're particular. And so he kind of guided us
Speaker 3: in the spaces. He like made sure the locals understood
Speaker 3: that he was also a local. He's been living there
Speaker 3: for thirty years, and so they kind of left us alone,
Speaker 3: and then we were able to enjoy these really unique
Speaker 3: and interesting hot springs as a result of him. Oh,
Speaker 3: one of the people in my group shit their pants,
Speaker 3: kind of like what we were saying. So we were
Speaker 3: in a car in a van for a lot of these,
Speaker 3: and then every meal we basically like stumbled, right, and
Speaker 3: sometimes you stumble and you'd eat stuff that you wouldn't
Speaker 3: usually eat, like really rare meat, and I think it
Speaker 3: just didn't settle with his tummy. He didn't get food poisoning,
Speaker 3: but his stomach was like I don't like this raw beef,
Speaker 3: Like I don't like it.
Speaker 4: And then we got.
Speaker 3: To the first hotel. These are old on sense in
Speaker 3: old towns. These are not like super nice refined hotels.
Speaker 3: These are like owned by a grandma. She's not fucking
Speaker 3: having it. And you get the room, you get whatever
Speaker 3: you get. And he had to go to the bathroom
Speaker 3: so bad. He just asked to go as he first
Speaker 3: got there, and she was like, oh, there's like a
Speaker 3: bathroom outside. Our translator had to help guide this conversation,
Speaker 3: and he ran around the corner and then he came
Speaker 3: back like really distraught and upset, and it sounds he
Speaker 3: basically galed us that like she had guided him to
Speaker 3: the public toilet, which is a hole in the floor,
Speaker 3: and he like, panic, shit in this hole, And then
Speaker 3: he basically assumed that was like the toilets in this hotel.
Speaker 3: It was just like all holes, and so he had
Speaker 3: to go, and so he just like he just went
Speaker 3: like in a panic and like kind of made a
Speaker 3: mess out of everything, and he had to go back
Speaker 3: to the room. And as soon as we got to
Speaker 3: the room, there were normal toilets in the room, and
Speaker 3: he was like really upset about that because if he
Speaker 3: just waited five minutes, he would have had a normal toilet.
Speaker 2: But wait, was the hole meant for shit?
Speaker 3: It was meant for shit, but I okay, it was whether.
Speaker 2: A tower outlet or something.
Speaker 3: It wasn't it wasn't not a toilet, but I would
Speaker 3: say compared to our standards, it was not what he
Speaker 3: was hoping to explode, you know, his stomach into Like
Speaker 3: he was hoping for a toilet, and that's just not
Speaker 3: what he got.
Speaker 1: That's when we're down recording, I'm gonna ask you who
Speaker 1: that was.
Speaker 3: I'll tell you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're we're considering doing for leisure. Doesn't have anything
Speaker 1: to do with TGS. We're considering Japan as one of
Speaker 1: Amanda and I are considering Japan next year. I don't
Speaker 1: it was Sokka twice. I've never left Oscca, though I want.
Speaker 1: I want to see Tokyo, I want to Kyoto, but
Speaker 1: there's also like I'd love to make it up to
Speaker 1: Hokkaido if I can.
Speaker 4: Oh, that'd be so nice.
Speaker 3: Well, I'll say the same thing to everybody, which is
Speaker 3: the person who was my guide. He has a website
Speaker 3: called Unbeaten Japan, and he's just a dude who's like
Speaker 3: lived there for thirty years. That's it, like that's his
Speaker 3: experience and he just loves it. But because he can translate,
Speaker 3: he was our key getting into these places.
Speaker 4: And so that's who I recommend, and he's just a
Speaker 4: he is this a nice guy. He is a bit
Speaker 4: of a personality.
Speaker 3: I think that's just what you get when you get
Speaker 3: someone who's like traveled most of their life. And he
Speaker 3: had a lot of information and insight that I didn't
Speaker 3: have without him and basically took us to a bunch
Speaker 3: of newdion sends for the week.
Speaker 4: It was great.
Speaker 3: I saw a lot of the hanged on. I saw
Speaker 3: a lot.
Speaker 4: Yeah, every time we went to one these.
Speaker 3: I mean, because they're public, people use them to like
Speaker 3: bathe and relax and that's like totally accepted.
Speaker 4: So yeah, I saw it.
Speaker 3: Saw a lot.
Speaker 4: How many how many dongs?
Speaker 1: How many of each?
Speaker 3: I'm honestly going to say two dozen. I saw a lot, yeah,
Speaker 3: two Yeah. It wasn't the same dong twenty four times, right. Yeah.
Speaker 4: There was these signs. I'll share you guys.
Speaker 3: I took a photo of one when you walk in
Speaker 3: and it just had a photo of a guy, like
Speaker 3: a cartoon guy ending like this and it had a
Speaker 3: no symbol and it said no showing off. It's like
Speaker 3: the Onsen's way of being like don't fucking wag your
Speaker 3: dick around.
Speaker 2: Like applying his dick staff or is it just like
Speaker 2: you shouldn't be doing cartwheels.
Speaker 3: Don't show you? It just said, don't show off, like,
Speaker 3: don't show off your your helicoptering.
Speaker 2: Yeah, one for everyone?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I mean.
Speaker 1: What was happening twelve Yeah.
Speaker 3: The rest of the trip we kept saying like, don't
Speaker 3: show off, like put it, put your goddamn dick away.
Speaker 4: I don't want to see it anymore.
Speaker 3: You know, you just kind of got to you gotta
Speaker 3: contain the locals.
Speaker 1: All right, have a Have I talked?
Speaker 5: I haven't talked to either of you since my house
Speaker 5: almost exploded. But were you aware I did one Instagram
Speaker 5: story about this?
Speaker 2: Did you?
Speaker 1: I didn't know.
Speaker 3: I don't think about the explosion and explode war with
Speaker 3: your birds?
Speaker 5: Oh the birds are that's a that's the forever war
Speaker 5: here is like that's well, I mean like I did
Speaker 5: a bunch of shit in the last week and it
Speaker 5: didn't work, and I just don't know what else can
Speaker 5: be done.
Speaker 1: Henry Kissinger of his neighborhood with the birds.
Speaker 5: The explosion actually might have actually solved the larger war,
Speaker 5: but so no, I'm getting a new driveway and I.
Speaker 3: Can't peck a house that's fucking blown up.
Speaker 1: It's true.
Speaker 5: So I was getting a new driveway and they were,
Speaker 5: you know, they dig up the old one and everything
Speaker 5: and they get rid of all the concrete. They're still
Speaker 5: working on it. They're almost done. But I'm down here.
Speaker 5: I was doing the boy smail dump truck. It's one
Speaker 5: of our podcasts of Giant Bomb. I'm in the middle
Speaker 5: of it, and I can hear Bank coming down and
Speaker 5: like calling my name, and I'm like, right away, like
Speaker 5: that's where she's like, you knows when I'm on the air,
Speaker 5: and you know, like nose to you know, and then
Speaker 5: she like walks in and like you know, I'm on
Speaker 5: the air. She walks in and I'm like, okay, something
Speaker 5: must be up, and I turn around. She's like, we
Speaker 5: have to get out of the house right now. They
Speaker 5: hit a gas line. And so it turns out like
Speaker 5: they did the thing where they called in, because you know,
Speaker 5: you got to call in, Like every state has a
Speaker 5: different thing. The one here is called gopher. I've learned
Speaker 5: a lot about this in the last week or so.
Speaker 5: And they it just wasn't marked properly, and so they
Speaker 5: took these post holes or posts something or other I
Speaker 5: don't know what it's called, but like they did this
Speaker 5: thing that like it's supposed to be you know, like
Speaker 5: more than twelve inches down is where.
Speaker 2: These pipes are supposed to be and these gas lines.
Speaker 5: But you know, the house is from like the seventies
Speaker 5: and stuff, and it's like maybe they don't have all
Speaker 5: those records or whatever, so like it wasn't marked and
Speaker 5: so they just like drunk chunk. They just took out
Speaker 5: the ground and it wasn't a nick. It was a
Speaker 5: full on sever of the gas line leading into the house.
Speaker 5: And so they're like, you gotta get out of the
Speaker 5: house right now, Scots, scram on out there.
Speaker 1: They spark it outside, it'll come inside and blow everything
Speaker 1: up and it wouldn't be good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like seriously like bad news.
Speaker 5: So we get out there, Box got the dogs, and
Speaker 5: it's like I instantly started thinking about the cat, like
Speaker 5: what the what the fuck do we do about to
Speaker 5: get the cats in there? Like you know that there's gas,
Speaker 5: there's potential explosion stuff. And they're like they have fireman come,
Speaker 5: the city comes, they bring excavators, they fire trucks, they.
Speaker 2: Bring everything in.
Speaker 5: All these guys, you know, the driveway dudes, the firemen
Speaker 5: everything are going door to door in my neighborhood and
Speaker 5: saying get out of the house, go down, go like
Speaker 5: over a block away. Do not start your car because
Speaker 5: I have a car. Like by the way, everything reeks
Speaker 5: of gas, like just ad like for a block.
Speaker 2: That's the thing.
Speaker 5: So we had razor and gizmo and you know, box
Speaker 5: down amount of leash and everything. She was able to
Speaker 5: grab the leash and then we had to scramble out
Speaker 5: and so I'm asking like I'm like I got a
Speaker 5: cat in there. I gotta get in there. And the
Speaker 5: driveway guys were like, uh yeah, go ahead, go in there.
Speaker 5: And I'm like I start walking up to the house
Speaker 5: and it is like the sound is like it was
Speaker 5: so loud that the fireman thought that it was the
Speaker 5: main line to the neighborhood that got separate because it's
Speaker 5: like I just gas going into the air and I'm
Speaker 5: going up to the door and I'm like, I almost
Speaker 5: certainly I'm not supposed to go in there. And I
Speaker 5: turned to a fireman who's not going in there, and
Speaker 5: I was like, can I go in here? And He's like,
Speaker 5: oh no, do not go in there. I was like okay,
Speaker 5: thanks driveway guys. Yeah, it's cool.
Speaker 1: I don't know what's going on.
Speaker 5: So it was like it was really rough because it
Speaker 5: was like, you know, we have to stay far away
Speaker 5: from the house, and it is like, I mean, they
Speaker 5: were being very serious about like the slightest spark could
Speaker 5: like ignite the fucking neighborhood, like the house would be
Speaker 5: so and yeah, it's it's interesting because like you know,
Speaker 5: you can't you can't manufacture these type of like potential
Speaker 5: emergency situations, so you don't really know how you react
Speaker 5: in it until you're there, and you know, it is
Speaker 5: interesting because it's like in the moment, I was just
Speaker 5: like all I was thinking about was the cat. You know,
Speaker 5: it's like anything else the house could fucking explode and
Speaker 5: everything I've ever owned whatever, that's things replaceable, but.
Speaker 3: I just assurances for but you can't replace beloved exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so sad well, well, I mean happy ending in
Speaker 5: case anyone's listening here, but yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 2: So I'm just sitting out there saying I can't.
Speaker 3: Go in there in his house.
Speaker 1: Mike, Yeah, animals are Dan, are.
Speaker 3: You in the house?
Speaker 5: So yeah, I'm just didn't all you can. Is just
Speaker 5: I'm just standing outside just watching, like you know, people
Speaker 5: like cautiously approach the house, and neighbors like they're all
Speaker 5: coming up and asking and stuff like what's going on.
Speaker 2: It was just a hole to do.
Speaker 5: And I'd say, you know, thirty forty minutes or whatever,
Speaker 5: they did a test. They were able to go inside,
Speaker 5: and they're like, okay, the levels inside the house seem okay,
Speaker 5: Like it's like these the gas line was outside, so
Speaker 5: most that gas is just in the neighborhood air at
Speaker 5: this great.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the bird's problem birds, yes, falling left.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 5: They're like, because I have to ask about the cat,
Speaker 5: and they're like, okay, you can go in, but don't
Speaker 5: leave the door open long because more gas will get in.
Speaker 2: And also just don't be in there long. You know.
Speaker 5: It's like, you know, because any sparks anything, there's gas
Speaker 5: in relations up here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I smelled like crazy when I was going
Speaker 2: in there.
Speaker 5: So I get in there and I'm just like, okay,
Speaker 5: the cat's probably under the bed upstairs, and so I
Speaker 5: run upstairs. Sure enough, this asshole is sitting smoking a cigarette. Yeah,
Speaker 5: just having a great time, sunglasses on, and he's a
Speaker 5: dead center under the bed and it's like you know,
Speaker 5: king sized things. So it's like I can't just easily
Speaker 5: reach there. So I'm like, buss, come on, and he's
Speaker 5: a fucking cat. Like the dogs you can like cook,
Speaker 5: come on, man, and.
Speaker 4: They'll need a broom handle or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So the cat was not having it.
Speaker 5: I was like, dude, we are we need I'm trying
Speaker 5: to save our lives here, Let's get out of here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And so I take my cut.
Speaker 5: There was like a little pad or something under there,
Speaker 5: like a little like seating pad for the cats, and
Speaker 5: I grabed I swiped it at the cat and he
Speaker 5: ran to the other side and I was like okay,
Speaker 5: and so I crawl around to the other side and
Speaker 5: he runs to the center again like you motherfucker, Like
Speaker 5: we are going to die.
Speaker 2: So just like poking him. He's going to the other side.
Speaker 5: And finally I just had to like kind of like
Speaker 5: put my fingers kind of on the back of his
Speaker 5: neck a little bit when and just kind of like yeah,
Speaker 5: the scrub, and I was able to just kind of
Speaker 5: lead him out and grab him throwing a c and
Speaker 5: take him outside.
Speaker 3: It's unfortunate, but like there is just a rule to
Speaker 3: save a save an animal's life, I would absolutely it up.
Speaker 2: I would ask, oh, yeah, just to get him the
Speaker 2: fuck out of the house.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we've thought about it all. If we have, like
Speaker 1: if we ever had a fire here, I always think about, like,
Speaker 1: oh god, Daisy and Luna would be easy enough to get.
Speaker 1: We know all their hiding spots when they're like anxious.
Speaker 1: Scarlet is the one who does goes to the center
Speaker 1: of the bed when if there's There's been a couple
Speaker 1: times when I needed to get them to the vet
Speaker 1: or I had to get when I was living by
Speaker 1: myself before I'm an Amanda, I had to get Daisy
Speaker 1: and Scarlett to the vet because Daisy was all of
Speaker 1: a sudden not feeling well. It seemed like an emergency.
Speaker 1: So Scarlett was doing the bed thing. I was like, nope,
Speaker 1: not having it. So I grabbed the bottom of the
Speaker 1: bed and just like lifted it up so it no
Speaker 1: longer became a hiding spot for her. It was just
Speaker 1: this like weird thing. So then she ran to the other room.
Speaker 1: I got her, but yeah, there they are elusive creatures.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and he did not like it because like put
Speaker 5: him in the crate took him outside. He's never outside.
Speaker 5: He's a you know, fancy flufy as cat. He doesn't
Speaker 5: go outside. So he was nowing a lot and everyone,
Speaker 5: all the dogs were freaking out and stuff. Then eventually,
Speaker 5: like the fireman go in to try to like give
Speaker 5: the all clearer basically because like you know, just to
Speaker 5: make sure the house wasn't filled with whatever gas. And
Speaker 5: the fireman comes out and I kind of run up
Speaker 5: to him like are we good, and he just goes, man,
Speaker 5: I just want to tell you you are my hero.
Speaker 2: And I was like, uh, I was like my first
Speaker 2: day was.
Speaker 5: Like okay, this is like a giant bomb finger, like,
Speaker 5: what's what.
Speaker 2: Is going on here? And he just goes no metal
Speaker 2: gear solid, I love metal.
Speaker 5: He saw his house, he saw the Big Boss statue.
Speaker 5: Inspirement's going around looking for Gast like, oh ship is
Speaker 5: that big Boss?
Speaker 3: We gotta save this house.
Speaker 1: Everyone walking around unopened, and sixty four cars just mysteriously disappeared.
Speaker 5: In the cast.
Speaker 2: I wish unopened ones.
Speaker 1: Is just bulging.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's got all the.
Speaker 1: Convention Yeah, so funny.
Speaker 5: Or Marge, I guess yeah, But he told me later
Speaker 5: once it was all done and everyone was leaving, He's like,
Speaker 5: I'm sorry if that was unprofessional back there, but it's
Speaker 5: really cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah, man, about.
Speaker 3: Saving the cat. I thought it was because you came
Speaker 3: right back.
Speaker 1: In to save the cat.
Speaker 2: He didn't say shit about the cat.
Speaker 3: About that cat, but he was like, you are so
Speaker 3: cool with all that fucking gamer ship in there. Wow.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so avoided. Uh you know we got back in
Speaker 5: that night. You know they're back working on the driveway.
Speaker 5: I just, yeah, I don't know. It's an insane sequence
Speaker 5: of vincent. I was on the air when it happened
Speaker 5: to be like, I gotta leave this podcast now bye
Speaker 5: and hang up.
Speaker 4: And yeah, just a terrifying way to end.
Speaker 3: But I'm glad that everything worked out and you're okay,
Speaker 3: and it looks like your house is in order and
Speaker 3: they've cleared up all the gas.
Speaker 4: I hope it hated into the air.
Speaker 2: I mean that was last Thursday. I've I've made it
Speaker 2: almost a week, so it should be okay.
Speaker 4: I feel like if you were to have blown up,
Speaker 4: it would have happened by now.
Speaker 2: I don't think I'm I think we're fine. We've used
Speaker 2: fire in the house.
Speaker 3: Since then, so you used a fire.
Speaker 5: Actually, I can't confirm that, but I'm sure Banks used
Speaker 5: the stove. I have not made a fire since then,
Speaker 5: but forever really, but yeah.
Speaker 3: You very barely if ever make a fire.
Speaker 2: Dawn, No y I happened. We'll talk about that later.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, I will say.
Speaker 3: When I was in Osaka, Osaka has a castle and
Speaker 3: my hotel kind of like faced the castle, and I
Speaker 3: thought to myself, a castle times, what would we do
Speaker 3: in castle time?
Speaker 2: A different type of castle times?
Speaker 5: Like when I say castle times, I mainly think, you know,
Speaker 5: swords and knights and stuff totally, you know, like this
Speaker 5: is like times, right.
Speaker 3: I mean you can think about it when you're in
Speaker 3: Yota as well, because yeah, we probably wouldn't have a
Speaker 3: lot of jobs back.
Speaker 2: Then, right right, Yeah, I would have sucked back then too,
Speaker 2: But yeah, I.
Speaker 1: Believe took place far in the future compared to what
Speaker 1: Dan's talking about.
Speaker 5: Yota was after castle times and hundred years after Sushima.
Speaker 1: And there's guns, you there's guns.
Speaker 2: That's going to be least eighteen hundreds right.
Speaker 1: Actually, now I'm curious what is the exact year we'll get.
Speaker 2: To when you last Samurai happened?
Speaker 4: When did guns get invented?
Speaker 2: Guns are probably eighteen hundreds, right, would they have those
Speaker 2: big stupid.
Speaker 3: Must until you see the whites of their eyes?
Speaker 5: Was no?
Speaker 1: Late eighteenth century, seventeen hundreds.
Speaker 2: Did they have guns in the Revolutionary War?
Speaker 5: Did they have guns?
Speaker 1: You're asking me if they had guns in the Revolutionary War?
Speaker 1: Did assume they did?
Speaker 2: I assume they did.
Speaker 3: It was only swords back then, Dan.
Speaker 1: I don't believe you. You're not This is yes, we
Speaker 1: fought the British off largely with guns. I mean, yes,
Speaker 1: I would have that's I would have said, yes, that's
Speaker 1: probably what happened. But you're just asking for clarification.
Speaker 5: Okay, I mean there's not like a famous like like
Speaker 5: okay Lincoln got assassinated with the gun that was the
Speaker 5: eighteen hundred. It's like what was like a famous gun
Speaker 5: thing that had like a gun incident from the seventeen hundreds.
Speaker 1: She just wore no, she said, don't the shot heard
Speaker 1: around the world is what started the Revolutionary I don't
Speaker 1: know what that is. And Lexington, Lexington and Concord and
Speaker 1: Lexington literally like one musket supposedly, you know, the Revolutionary War.
Speaker 1: She just said, don't shoot till you see the whites
Speaker 1: of their eyes. But I have no idea the context
Speaker 1: the Battle of Bunker Hill. I believe there were so
Speaker 1: low on AMMO that the like the American general said, like,
Speaker 1: don't fire into until you see the whites of their eyes.
Speaker 5: Mary, is this one of those things where you're you
Speaker 5: also didn't like Hamilton, but you didn't want to say it.
Speaker 3: No, I mean I think I know a little bit
Speaker 3: more about guns than you. But I will say, Mike,
Speaker 3: your war knowledge of like knowing the battle is.
Speaker 1: No, I don't know Bunker Hill. I don't know where
Speaker 1: there were so low on ammo that don't fire until
Speaker 1: you see the whites their eyes. Oh, it was an
Speaker 1: animal conservation thing. Yes, they're so close you see the
Speaker 1: whites of their eyes. Don't fire until you know you're
Speaker 1: gonna hit something with the one musketball you have or whatever.
Speaker 1: You ago.
Speaker 2: What I never thought about that would have phrase before.
Speaker 5: I thought it was just because like their guns sucked
Speaker 5: whenever they said that, and so they got to wait
Speaker 5: till they're closer.
Speaker 1: No, Yeah, we had. There was plenty of guns during
Speaker 1: the Revolutionary War. I'm trying to think of the earliest
Speaker 1: one that like didn't the.
Speaker 2: Jesus times didn't have guns.
Speaker 1: Correct.
Speaker 5: Is Jesus times Castle times, Jesus American dimes. Figure if
Speaker 5: he had a gun, Oh, Jesus had a gun. Yeah,
Speaker 5: Jesus with a glock would have been a very different massides.
Speaker 3: I turned that water into one. And now check this out?
Speaker 1: What is he looker? Yeah, I'm curious. Okay, now I'm
Speaker 1: gonna actually look up the dumble chat. I don't think
Speaker 1: it was Bunker Hill now they think it was. Uh no,
Speaker 1: what about Yorktown? Yorktown? They didn't have an ammal problem.
Speaker 1: And then the French were there, I believe.
Speaker 2: Uh, the French were in the Revolutionary War.
Speaker 1: The French funded us.
Speaker 2: What do they have to do with anything? It was
Speaker 2: America and England.
Speaker 1: They were rivals with the British. England. They were colon
Speaker 1: like colonial rivals with the British.
Speaker 2: Did they send dudes over here? Yes, dudes?
Speaker 1: Uh? Marquita sat like guns dudes.
Speaker 2: He was the guy thatcked all the word sex.
Speaker 3: Uh right, your memory is so selective.
Speaker 1: Marquis is sadist. Wait now, so this is the funny thing,
Speaker 1: Like I I now I'm miss mixing up stuff. So
Speaker 1: Marquis Sat I think he was a French writer Nope,
Speaker 1: I got it wrong. He was a guy, yes, correct.
Speaker 3: I think it was like smut, stop saying sex guy.
Speaker 2: That was his deal though, right. They made after how
Speaker 2: much is he liked sex stuff?
Speaker 3: Everybody?
Speaker 2: He was like, he was crazy about it.
Speaker 1: It was Bunker Hill on June seventeen, seventeen seventy five.
Speaker 1: I was correct, but I was not correct about Marquis
Speaker 1: de Sade. But uh yeah, no, they were read a
Speaker 1: book lots of guns in the Revolutionary War.
Speaker 3: I did how sadism was invented a book by freaks.
Speaker 1: Marquis de Sade was horny intro.
Speaker 3: By Dan Reikert, who apparently loves this shit.
Speaker 5: No, I do get confused about, like there's sadism and
Speaker 5: masochism and one of them is hurting and one of
Speaker 5: them is loving getting hurt, And I don't whatever Marquis
Speaker 5: dead was into is what sadism is, because I think
Speaker 5: they named sadism after him. So masochism is there a
Speaker 5: dude named like Steve Masochism and he loved getting hurt
Speaker 5: Steve Macho, Yeah yeah, and he was like, oh step
Speaker 5: on my dick, yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: And Marquis was the one who stepped on his dick.
Speaker 1: That's how we got right.
Speaker 2: Yes, the Revolutionary War go off, and.
Speaker 1: Then and then we did not have guns of the
Speaker 1: Revolutionary War. So and then all of a sudden, Marquis
Speaker 1: Dead showed up with like a fucking fifty kl machine gun.
Speaker 1: They're like, what is this and he's like, I'll show you,
Speaker 1: and he had a rock hard dick. Steve Maso was like,
Speaker 1: shoot me, shoot me over and over and over, and
Speaker 1: he fucking spooged all over everybody. That's where spooge Town,
Speaker 1: the capitol of Virginia came from. Okay, yeah, yeah, don't
Speaker 1: see what that Yeah, no way, No, let's be quiet
Speaker 1: and let Mary finish that thought. Mary, the floor is yours, Mary,
Speaker 1: the floor is yours. I was going where you were coming.
Speaker 1: No imagine if you're imagine, if you you have you're
Speaker 1: like one of fifty dudes and you have one musketball
Speaker 1: and the entire British armies charged up a hill at you,
Speaker 1: and this fucking just gonzo general goes, don't shoot until
Speaker 1: you see the whites of their dicks.
Speaker 5: What do you do?
Speaker 1: I would run direction you.
Speaker 3: Wait until you see the whites of their dicks.
Speaker 1: But the other direction is just the top of a
Speaker 1: hill that's still surrounded.
Speaker 3: You coward.
Speaker 1: You're gonna get fucking talk about hanging dong during the
Speaker 1: Revolutionary War.
Speaker 3: You gotta face it, Mike, you coward.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess so.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna report you for abandoning your post. Are you
Speaker 3: from being afraid of Big Dick?
Speaker 1: You guys want to talk about video games? Okay, Mary,
Speaker 1: now that you're back from your escapades, uh, we are
Speaker 1: able to talk about a couple of games that you
Speaker 1: missed out on the conversation about Hades two Ghosts of Yota.
Speaker 1: I believe you played both. We have some new stuff,
Speaker 1: but let's do some some circling back the time being
Speaker 1: how much what are you thinking of Hades two so far?
Speaker 3: I am really enjoying Hades too as a comfort food.
Speaker 3: This reminds me of Hades. It's so fluid and smooth
Speaker 3: and everyone's ridiculously hot. And I think you know this.
Speaker 3: But like whatever they did in one where they were like, yeah,
Speaker 3: we love to make everyone really attractive, in this one
Speaker 3: they were just like, let's give aphrodite no clothes and
Speaker 3: maybe just a sliver of hair over.
Speaker 5: It was a controversy because they think she's not hot enough.
Speaker 5: The internet is mad about you said, and.
Speaker 3: Fordite isn't hot enough. That's insane.
Speaker 1: It's the Internet.
Speaker 5: It's the same type of dude who said that Margot
Speaker 5: Robbie wasn't hot enough to play Barbie.
Speaker 3: You're just not allowed to have those opinions and a penis.
Speaker 3: I think it's ridiculous. Those people are so hot, And
Speaker 3: I understand that to a degree, this is all subjective, right,
Speaker 3: Like whether or not someone is attractive is personal. You know,
Speaker 3: you can have a different vibe than I do.
Speaker 4: That's fine.
Speaker 3: But to tell me that Aphrodite isn't hot and is
Speaker 3: like they've like made a mistake constructing this character is outrageous.
Speaker 5: I think the argument that's, well, my internet translators are
Speaker 5: well Jeff Grubb, but to a bigger degree, Mike Manatti,
Speaker 5: because Mike Manatti is extremely online and he was saying
Speaker 5: I think the thing is that they said Aphrodity they
Speaker 5: made look more like a dude, is what they said.
Speaker 5: I look, I've seen that Diity model a lot. That
Speaker 5: looks like a naked lady.
Speaker 1: Yeah, naked, seen a naked woman. I'd say she probably
Speaker 1: aligns with Well, if you've seen a naked woman. You
Speaker 1: would agree she looks like a naked woman.
Speaker 2: She looks like a naked.
Speaker 3: Woman, and Trogyny is also hot. Like I think it's
Speaker 3: kind of like again going back to subjective, but there's
Speaker 3: so many people who are like, yeah, are on the
Speaker 3: verge of like who's to say, they have elements of
Speaker 3: all genders and they look smoking hot. It's like ridiculous
Speaker 3: that someone's not lady enough to be hot. She's hot, period,
Speaker 3: end of story. I refuse to entertain that she's so
Speaker 3: fucking hot. Everyone in this game is very attractive that
Speaker 3: I feel we don't talk about our boons enough.
Speaker 2: Good boons, yeah, boom.
Speaker 3: I've enjoyed the mechanics that you essentially start with everything right.
Speaker 3: You're not like, uh, you have your X, your y's,
Speaker 3: your b's, and your a's right, you have a dash,
Speaker 3: you have your main attack, you have an additional attack,
Speaker 3: and then you have like an aerial. I don't know
Speaker 3: what you would call that, but like maybe it's usually
Speaker 3: it is like some kind of freeze or pose.
Speaker 1: So good you can you can freeze them and then
Speaker 1: hurt them or and then the way you can.
Speaker 3: But I've been enjoying like unlocking all the different, uh,
Speaker 3: different types of weapons and kind of playing around with them, right,
Speaker 3: the fire sticks that like throw fire from a farce
Speaker 3: that's like more of a distance weapon, Maine that I've
Speaker 3: been enjoying a lot.
Speaker 4: I am stuck. I haven't beat it yet. I'm at
Speaker 4: the dog.
Speaker 5: Okay, so you're the third third boss when you're going out, Yes.
Speaker 3: And I wish I had more time with it. I
Speaker 3: think like with more time, I absolutely would be a
Speaker 3: little further. But I've unfortunately been a little limited with
Speaker 3: my work and travel schedule. But with the time I've
Speaker 3: put into it, I have been consistently able to get
Speaker 3: to the dog. But that dog is hard. Yes, It's
Speaker 3: very difficult.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The bosses are all hard, i'd say in their
Speaker 1: own way. At first, when you're fighting the band at
Speaker 1: the end of oceanis like it's one of those games
Speaker 1: where we're like, how the fuck am I ever going
Speaker 1: to beat these these the bosses, the sirens sirens. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So you get to a point where like they just
Speaker 1: become more of like a light stepping stone on the
Speaker 1: way to the new boss. It's giving you trouble.
Speaker 5: It also kind of becomes like, you know, like a
Speaker 5: good rogue light. They've just become nothing at a certain point,
Speaker 5: Like I died the probably ten times before I moved on,
Speaker 5: and then it's like I don't even think about it.
Speaker 2: When I approach it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you're like not even questioning it anymore. I think
Speaker 3: it's it's a I think it's brilliant, and I don't
Speaker 3: really have a lot of notes. I think the only
Speaker 3: thing and this is like just the minoriest of things.
Speaker 3: But maybe this will come up in Gody. I don't
Speaker 3: really know which is Like, this game was our Gody
Speaker 3: once upon a time, and it really scratched an itch
Speaker 3: for me that I didn't know I had. I didn't
Speaker 3: know that I would be so addicted to a game
Speaker 3: like this. And with the second one, I think it
Speaker 3: is it is perfecting more of what I loved about
Speaker 3: the first one. At the same time, my needs in
Speaker 3: gaming has shifted very slightly, ever so slightly from when
Speaker 3: we like are originally like loved this game, And so
Speaker 3: while I think this game is excellent, it is not
Speaker 3: always what I am craving to play, Whereas like the original,
Speaker 3: I was like craving to play Haites like every freaking day.
Speaker 3: I could not put it down.
Speaker 2: I kind of went the other direction where it's like
Speaker 2: the first one I loved, you know, like I didn't
Speaker 2: you know, I don't think it was my personal game
Speaker 2: of the year, but I think I definitely didn't push
Speaker 2: for anything else to be our game of the year. Sure,
Speaker 2: talk about it, yeah yeah, but the thing.
Speaker 3: Was likely didn't discuss it.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah.
Speaker 5: Like to beat that one, though, to really beat it,
Speaker 5: you have to beat Haiti's like ten times or whatever.
Speaker 5: And I remember I beat it once and I was like, Okay, good,
Speaker 5: great game. Love that game. Uh with this one, you know,
Speaker 5: I won't spoil anything, but like it is not a
Speaker 5: thing of like, oh, you don't just beat Kronos once
Speaker 5: and then you're done. And I was still so so
Speaker 5: into it that I very much went all the way
Speaker 5: in and beat it many many times.
Speaker 2: Got the credit. I know, there's like the real super
Speaker 2: duper ending thing and everything, but like I saw credits.
Speaker 1: You know, I.
Speaker 5: People who be I will know what that means. But
Speaker 5: and I think I like this one way way more.
Speaker 5: And I adored the first one. It's just like this
Speaker 5: one does so many smart little things, like even as
Speaker 5: simple as like the cast thing like that is such
Speaker 5: a more effective way to attack and contain enemies now
Speaker 5: really an update.
Speaker 3: I also just want to say too, like I think
Speaker 3: mechanically they've made this sharper, but I think they've added
Speaker 3: more human too. I heard someone singing when I got
Speaker 3: home after you know, losing a battle, and like went
Speaker 3: up to them and there was a button to sing
Speaker 3: with them, and I just sang with them for like
Speaker 3: five minutes, and it was so beautiful and it was
Speaker 3: such a delightful addition to this space to just let
Speaker 3: me sing a song with someone who it's the person
Speaker 3: the archer I think marine yeah, And I just I
Speaker 3: adored the energy. They knew where to put the extra
Speaker 3: elements in this game to let you feel its soul.
Speaker 4: I think you really know that they cared about this game.
Speaker 5: I mean, this one really makes me appreciate I guess
Speaker 5: the first one too, like early access, because you know,
Speaker 5: I've said plenty that, like I don't play games in
Speaker 5: early access really because I just want to wait till
Speaker 5: they're like done, done, done. And like I learned my
Speaker 5: lesson with like Rogue Legacy two I was so excited
Speaker 5: about and then I played in an early access and
Speaker 5: I was like not really, there's not a lot there,
Speaker 5: and by the time it actually came out, I like
Speaker 5: didn't really even really play it that much.
Speaker 1: In case in point, I didn't play in early Access.
Speaker 1: I have played it since it's like been finished, and
Speaker 1: I fucking love game.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and I hear it's great, but it's like and
Speaker 5: I'll probably get to it at some point and be like,
Speaker 5: oh shit, I missed out, but like it's because I
Speaker 5: played it a bunch when it came out in an
Speaker 5: early access and blah blah blah. You know, I've said
Speaker 5: this for it, but like, I once again feel justified
Speaker 5: in waiting for this one because I love what Early
Speaker 5: Access allowed them to do. Because this game is just
Speaker 5: dripping with personality and all these little touches and things
Speaker 5: like Mary you saying, you know, singing along with the
Speaker 5: Artemis and things like that. Like I don't know every
Speaker 5: step of the way in early Access when they added what,
Speaker 5: but I do know that when I played it when
Speaker 5: it was one point zero, It's like this is such
Speaker 5: a like all that time in early Access clearly paid off.
Speaker 5: Like it's just this well fleshed out game with so
Speaker 5: much going on. Everything's so fucking polished and worth the
Speaker 5: way for sure. So but I also like, I don't
Speaker 5: regard to anyone obviously who like early access is a
Speaker 5: valuable thing.
Speaker 2: It's just not for me. But this game is tremendous.
Speaker 1: I've since played much more since I talked to Dan,
Speaker 1: you and Jesse about it. It's funny talking to people
Speaker 1: about their favorite weapons. I've gotten a very wide spread same. Uh,
Speaker 1: like I don't I don't see one clear front Runner.
Speaker 1: What do you think mine is? This isn't fun.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna say short, the short ones that are really fast.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna say the gun, the gun, I'm gonna say
Speaker 2: the skull gun.
Speaker 1: So what remind me? What of the names? It's like
Speaker 1: the sickle and this, the knife, one of those witch,
Speaker 1: the sister blades, Sister blades, those are awesome. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: just like you. Yeah, I know you're not the biggest fan.
Speaker 1: I think the umber torches are you say?
Speaker 5: I came around on everything like the torches, the skull gun,
Speaker 5: the one yeah, yeah, I didn't love them, and then like.
Speaker 1: I don't just stuff the original weapon. It feels like
Speaker 1: the spear from the first game. It reminds me of
Speaker 1: the age of Spear whatever it's called. I like the staff, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's and I love the reach of it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, honestly, they're all very good. Yeah, it's great, especially
Speaker 5: you get a couple of hammer up grades. You find
Speaker 5: an aspect that works for you, like you can really
Speaker 5: make it work for you, and they're all.
Speaker 1: Battle Axe has its own stuff going forward.
Speaker 5: I love the battle Axe, the site, the battle Axe,
Speaker 5: and I just like upgrade the shit out of the
Speaker 5: attack speed and it's like, oh man, I think it's
Speaker 5: a killer.
Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, I wrote it through you. I like
Speaker 1: the game a lot, like I'm kind of more in
Speaker 1: Mary's Camp where I played the first game to death.
Speaker 1: So now this feels like a meaningful evolution in which
Speaker 1: the character mechanically plays much different than zagrias did. Melanoe
Speaker 1: feels much more. I think that my favorite builds in
Speaker 1: the first Hades were very much about not giving a
Speaker 1: fuck about my spatial positioning. I would get Poseidon's Rage
Speaker 1: and would I would upgrade my dash a lot. I
Speaker 1: would stick to the weapons that were close range so
Speaker 1: I could just literally dart all over the map. You
Speaker 1: could do that as Melanoe. I will say, I think
Speaker 1: Hades two kind of forces you in a good way,
Speaker 1: or encourages you to really be aware of your positioning
Speaker 1: a bit more, because your cast is a close proximity thing.
Speaker 1: If you really want to you you cast in close proximity,
Speaker 1: then you can obviously move away and the enemies that
Speaker 1: were in it get trapped slowed obviously, you get Aphrodite's boons,
Speaker 1: you get Betidons boons. You can make that cast do
Speaker 1: very different things. The specials for the weapons. I'm trying
Speaker 1: to think if there's an an anomaly here. They're generally ranged.
Speaker 2: Well there's weird ones where it's like the skull is
Speaker 2: like it is ranged in that you are dashing, but
Speaker 2: it is also in your way of like retrieving your AMMO.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which that reminds me of the cast from Hades
Speaker 1: where you had to retrieve the AMMO.
Speaker 2: Oh right, you had to go around like you drop
Speaker 2: three or four casts then yeah come up yeah.
Speaker 1: Which that was a cool mechanic. But I do appreciate
Speaker 1: that Melanoi feels very much like a new character. I
Speaker 1: had the weirdest reminder of Dark Siders the franchise when
Speaker 1: I was playing this, because they're very similar. Actually, No,
Speaker 1: Dark Siders two went Open World three was like an
Speaker 1: action RPG, but you're pulling characters from a like a pantheon.
Speaker 1: This is obviously Greek myth. Dark Siders was more actually
Speaker 1: Dark Siders with some Greek myth too, but then some
Speaker 1: like Roman stuff peppered in. But they're finding different characters,
Speaker 1: and then it's very much about how they function differently,
Speaker 1: Like the difference between Melanoe and Zagrias is similar to
Speaker 1: the difference between like Bayonetta and someone from DMC. They
Speaker 1: play that differently in my mind, So sure, yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: I'm And then I said this last time, the more
Speaker 1: I unlock aspects of the what's the what's the hideout
Speaker 1: called here, the HQ, the something ground, witching grounds.
Speaker 4: I do you know the official name for shit?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Like you know the super area, It'll come to me.
Speaker 1: The crossroads, right crossroads, I think it's Crossroads. I it's
Speaker 1: just not the easiest space to parse, even as I've played,
Speaker 1: I don't know, I have fifteen twenty hours at this point.
Speaker 1: Like I think the the original just rooms of the
Speaker 1: first game just were way easier to kind of jump
Speaker 1: around when you had some chores to do before you
Speaker 1: went into your next run. I agree with you, Mary,
Speaker 1: it's gorgeous. I love how characters come in and out.
Speaker 1: I love Nemesis. Uh, she's cool as hell. I like Odysseus.
Speaker 1: I love the new characters. I appreciate what they did
Speaker 1: with the returning characters. The Festus is super cool. Uh,
Speaker 1: Hecate the Goddess of Fire?
Speaker 5: Is that?
Speaker 1: Am I getting there?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: First?
Speaker 1: Boss? Yeah?
Speaker 2: She's cool?
Speaker 1: No, no, no, no, Heckita the.
Speaker 2: Hephestius.
Speaker 1: Hephestius is the smith, the godd.
Speaker 2: Eric Aris got a war. Who's the fucking fire gimmick?
Speaker 1: Hecatay, she's the Goddess of fire.
Speaker 2: He is the witch from the main area that for
Speaker 2: the first boss fight.
Speaker 1: Okay maybe, yes, okay, so she's like your mentor.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 1: What is the name of the Goddess of fire? She's
Speaker 1: the Uh, hell's her name. She's Scottish, she's got a
Speaker 1: Scottish accent. She's one of She's she's definitely bigger than Afrodity.
Speaker 5: I'll go.
Speaker 1: I don't know, it doesn't matter, but I just like
Speaker 1: I last Estia, thank you when you're start with an h. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Heckata is the witch. Yeah. I like this game a lot.
Speaker 1: It's so I don't know what I would want them
Speaker 1: to do if it wasn't just make more hades, So
Speaker 1: I appreciate that's what they did, but the minor meaningful
Speaker 1: tweaks add up to a experience that's larger than some
Speaker 1: of its parts. So I'm really liking that game.
Speaker 3: Dan, as someone who beat it, Can I ask you
Speaker 3: a question about the narrative? Yes, I think that generally
Speaker 3: I'm in agreement, even though I have not completed this game.
Speaker 3: That gameplay wise, I think it is a step up
Speaker 3: from the first Hades. I think they've just done a
Speaker 3: little bit more mechanically, and it just seems like it's
Speaker 3: a bit more polished and fine tuned. However, sometimes I
Speaker 3: think like the story of one of like Zagrias, he's
Speaker 3: like kind of like this spoiled little prince and he
Speaker 3: kind of has to like fight his dad and it's
Speaker 3: just like a fucking sick story. Like, now that you've
Speaker 3: completed did it, do you feel like the story is
Speaker 3: as good as the first?
Speaker 5: I feel the exact same way as I did in
Speaker 5: the first, and that, like I can tell this dialogue
Speaker 5: is really well written. But at the end of the day,
Speaker 5: I'm not really following anything. I'm kind of hitting a
Speaker 5: through a good amount of the dialogue. I was like, yeah,
Speaker 5: I get it. R just give me my boon, give
Speaker 5: me my boon. I don't care. So there's bad I
Speaker 5: got there's like, look, every video game is just there's
Speaker 5: a bad guy, go kill it, like Silk Song, what's
Speaker 5: the story. Look there's a big crazy spider, go kill it.
Speaker 5: I don't know, Like it's just like I don't care.
Speaker 5: It's if it's not metal hear solid. It's like, just
Speaker 5: let me play the game. So I'll say, dialogue seems
Speaker 5: good in this too. I don't know.
Speaker 2: I couldn't tell what the story was.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've been reading.
Speaker 4: Let me try again, Mike, what do you what's your opinion?
Speaker 1: I mean you kind of said it. I felt like
Speaker 1: the first game was just a spoiled prince, like just
Speaker 1: having a tantrum the whole time. It led to a
Speaker 1: fun game, so I was fine with it. I liked
Speaker 1: a lot of the surrounding characters this one. Actually there's
Speaker 1: way more at stake, like melanois on like Legit Revenge.
Speaker 4: It feels like kill Bill and family right, like my
Speaker 4: family was killed.
Speaker 1: I said this last episode. I didn't realize how much
Speaker 1: this game also reminds me of kill Bill, because Yota
Speaker 1: very much is kill Bill to me, But this game
Speaker 1: is like, you're the way that they present enemies in
Speaker 1: kill Bill. In the both of them, it's like they're
Speaker 1: these mythic enemies like the Fighting forty nine or whatever
Speaker 1: they are, and then it's like a black mom Yeah
Speaker 1: it's at Yeah. So I I think Hades two to
Speaker 1: me has more narrative momentum. The first game was just
Speaker 1: like this angsty dude who was meeting people way cooler
Speaker 1: than him and it pissed him off even more and
Speaker 1: he just kept having to go beat up on his dad.
Speaker 5: Which is just hot rod. Yes, I do think it's
Speaker 5: the way that Hades presents it that makes me not
Speaker 5: necessarily care. Is that, like Yota, you brought up, is
Speaker 5: this revenge story? Just like apparently maybe it's it was
Speaker 5: a revenge story. I don't think I knew that, But
Speaker 5: like Yota is like, it's like the whole blood of
Speaker 5: the game, what do they do to run away? I don't,
Speaker 5: I honestly don't know what she's getting revenge.
Speaker 3: She talks, She's like I have to get them and
Speaker 3: killed my whole family.
Speaker 2: They're in the game, they're not dead. What I'm saying
Speaker 2: is my point is that Yota is like a movie.
Speaker 5: You know, you're watching cut scenes, there's you know, there's
Speaker 5: characters talking to each other. No I mean actually no,
Speaker 5: I did switch to Japanese audio, so I am reading
Speaker 5: the stubbs. But it is presented like a movie. It
Speaker 5: is very like wonderfully shot and everything where it's like
Speaker 5: I just don't need to look at an animated still
Speaker 5: frame and then a paragraph of text like I don't
Speaker 5: really care about that. But a movie, Holy lord, I
Speaker 5: love a movie, and Yota feels more like that. So
Speaker 5: it's that, you know, I know, just the game stories,
Speaker 5: what's that.
Speaker 3: Like you play through it, like I think this is
Speaker 3: early enough that it's not a spoiler, but like you
Speaker 3: play as your young child self, and you like find
Speaker 3: a guy in the forest and he helps you find
Speaker 3: mushrooms and then he is bad, and like.
Speaker 4: Is like, I know, it's literally with an hour of
Speaker 4: the game.
Speaker 1: M might be right.
Speaker 4: I'm just saying, like it's like the main plot point.
Speaker 3: I think, like one of the very first things that
Speaker 3: happens is you see the tree of your house on fire,
Speaker 3: like it's very clear.
Speaker 4: Very early.
Speaker 1: Well that's the first cut scene, yes, but you don't
Speaker 1: know how it leads up to that until later on.
Speaker 1: I'm just saying if someone can start it, I don't
Speaker 1: think so. I think that sometimes calling you out right.
Speaker 3: Well, it's very early in the game, very very so
Speaker 3: you like meet someone and so you're kind of like
Speaker 3: literally playing the characters that are impacting your family, which
Speaker 3: is and I think a huge mechanic of the game
Speaker 3: is that you change back to your child self.
Speaker 2: Early on. Yeah, And it's like I think that works.
Speaker 5: But like there are a bunch of just like traditional
Speaker 5: put your controller down cut scenes in the otay and
Speaker 5: I guess, I guess we'll just move on to Ota here.
Speaker 1: Mary, you weren't here, Okay, let me really quick before
Speaker 1: I asked Mary, I'm curious what she thinks.
Speaker 5: Dan.
Speaker 1: How again, the whole thrust of the game, as you're
Speaker 1: tracking down and killing the Yota six, whether that's successful
Speaker 1: or not, we will leave that to people to see
Speaker 1: when they play themselves. But like, what what how many
Speaker 1: members have you like done their main story for.
Speaker 2: Two although one of them was very involved, which I
Speaker 2: found interesting because it's like, look, this game gets a
Speaker 2: lot of comparisons to like Assassin's Creed Shadows, and I
Speaker 2: definitely did not beat that game, but I saw enough
Speaker 2: to be like, oh, you could just stumble upon one
Speaker 2: of the dudes and kill them. Yeah, and Shadows, and
Speaker 2: maybe that is the case with some of Theta six.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 5: I don't know. I only killed two, and one of
Speaker 5: them happens, you know, like it's not a super long thing,
Speaker 5: it happens very early on. And then I just did
Speaker 5: one that is like, oh my god, this is like
Speaker 5: a fucking game in itself, like a yeah, there were
Speaker 5: not just a quest line. It's like multiple quests getting
Speaker 5: to this and setbacks and getting back to it. Oh man,
Speaker 5: this is like I don't know if they're all going
Speaker 5: to be like this, because I don't think it's going
Speaker 5: to be a one hundred hour game, but like this
Speaker 5: one was a lot of hours, so you.
Speaker 1: Again like, yeah, it's almost set up like a Zelda
Speaker 1: game where no, you go to a new biome and
Speaker 1: a member of the OTE six is the like main
Speaker 1: boss there, and the whole time you're basically you're doing
Speaker 1: side quest, you're maybe building up kind of a rebellion
Speaker 1: maybe you're trying to find a way into their fortress.
Speaker 1: Like I think you went for the one right away, right, yes,
Speaker 1: because you told me you went to the autumnal area.
Speaker 1: What was that called? It'll come to me.
Speaker 2: I went to plans, I think Ishi planes.
Speaker 1: I went up to find U Katsune the Fox in
Speaker 1: the snowy area. And so the cool thing in this
Speaker 1: game that I like a lot, every time you get
Speaker 1: a new weapon or a new armor set, there's really
Speaker 1: cool context and storytelling around it that makes it feel
Speaker 1: more impactful. When you get the crimson kimono, or you
Speaker 1: get the black mask up in the snow area, in
Speaker 1: the bamboo forest, there's just the game does a really
Speaker 1: good job. Yes, they're absolutely like traditional cutscenes, and I
Speaker 1: think it lends itself well to like you've just been
Speaker 1: spending an hour or two finding hot springs and doing
Speaker 1: foxtends and.
Speaker 3: Wolf tends awesome, so in the beautiful.
Speaker 1: And then like there are other times where different villagers
Speaker 1: you talk to are talking about, oh, this person who
Speaker 1: lives over there across the shoals. And then when you
Speaker 1: get a new weapon, it's not like you just haven't
Speaker 1: know how to use it. Generally that you have to
Speaker 1: go through some sort of actual training it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it reminds me of like, you know, Kill Bill,
Speaker 5: and there's a lot of comparisions to make here and
Speaker 5: Kill Bill, just like Pime sequence of training, Like I'm
Speaker 5: a sucker for that stuff.
Speaker 2: Yea, Like they totally have that in this Like you
Speaker 2: literally have.
Speaker 4: To like practice cutting through bamboo and stuff to like
Speaker 4: to use it.
Speaker 1: Yea.
Speaker 5: Yeah, was it last week where your last episode were
Speaker 5: you talking about like them kind of like it's hard
Speaker 5: at first and then like as you train, like that's
Speaker 5: so cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you have to learn. Basically, the atsu is learning
Speaker 1: how to use her offhand and the way that Sucker
Speaker 1: Punch contextualize that. I think the vast majority of people
Speaker 1: playing this game are going to be right handed, so
Speaker 1: you actually have to use the left side of the
Speaker 1: controller with the bamboo cut, which if it's your weak hand.
Speaker 1: It's also just not like you're like, oh fuck, I noticed.
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, they're not used my right I'm
Speaker 1: not they're not using face buttons in R one, R
Speaker 1: two and the right analog or no, sorry, you don't
Speaker 1: use analogs. But as the days go by, I guess
Speaker 1: you could technically complete it on that first day. Maybe
Speaker 1: I don't know, I fucked up because I sucked with
Speaker 1: my left hand. Then you wake up on the second
Speaker 1: day at the break of dawn. You wake up on
Speaker 1: the third day, and they gradually start introducing easier patterns,
Speaker 1: many of which I noticed use my right hand way
Speaker 1: more so it's like, oh, I'm learning dual swords. It
Speaker 1: like they're actually kind of reflecting that on the controller,
Speaker 1: which is a cool way to tell you to atsu.
Speaker 1: I liked it a lot. It sounds like a gimmick
Speaker 1: when I say it out loud, but it worked because again,
Speaker 1: it's like a rocky training sequence where you're I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's getting easier. But yeah, Mary, overall, you are where
Speaker 1: are you in the game? Based on what we were saying,
Speaker 1: where you like, did you go to I think I've
Speaker 1: killed three? Oh shit, okay, so did you go to Yeah?
Speaker 1: So you left the grasslands? Yeah, I mean the first area.
Speaker 1: Did you go to the snow Did you do the
Speaker 1: snowy stuff?
Speaker 3: I'm in the snowy stuff, I think, Okay, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: I'm on the third because I've killed two.
Speaker 1: So you did the you did Ishikari planes, the autumnal
Speaker 1: he's building the fortress. Okay cool, uh yeah, so you're
Speaker 1: on the third I think I because there are points,
Speaker 1: there are points where you think you're about to bump
Speaker 1: up against the main encounters, and then they're yeah, like
Speaker 1: and then you're like, oh wait ship, no, that's down
Speaker 1: the road.
Speaker 2: That's gonna have this goober that shows up.
Speaker 3: Hey, I want to They keep pushing me around, they
Speaker 3: keep kicking the can a little bit. I think there
Speaker 3: are times I'll just start by saying, I think this
Speaker 3: is the most beautiful game I've ever played. I think
Speaker 3: stunningly gorgeous. I think I smealed the style riding my
Speaker 3: horse and like having all these wild horses next to me.
Speaker 3: I am like loving visually what is going on in
Speaker 3: this game.
Speaker 4: They just absolutely aesthetically. I am swooning.
Speaker 2: I'm just a late title card. When you're red horse
Speaker 2: and use of color yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, purple flowers, and then all of a sudden you're
Speaker 1: in the snowy area. But then you see like red trees,
Speaker 1: but the orange trees that you're tracking down for that
Speaker 1: side quest.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and just like the detail, you know, allowing like
Speaker 3: petals to fly, you know, through the leaves to kick
Speaker 3: up when you're fighting. I mean, I think it's absolutely incredible.
Speaker 3: I'm getting a little tired of the in this area
Speaker 3: you have to use a giant katana and if they
Speaker 3: have a certain weapon, you need to use your giant katana.
Speaker 3: If you use the double katana, it's not going to
Speaker 3: be as effective. And it's just like I don't want
Speaker 3: to change my goddamn weapon eight times.
Speaker 5: I kind of don't love that either, Like I wish
Speaker 5: it was a thing where it was like it made
Speaker 5: it harder to like if you're in a fight and
Speaker 5: somebody's got a spear, it's like, Okay, if you use
Speaker 5: the dual katanas, it's going to be easier. It's like
Speaker 5: if you do it with just the standard katana or
Speaker 5: the spear whatever, it's just like, yeah.
Speaker 1: Maybe I'm misunderstanding. It is easier when you use the
Speaker 1: right rock paper scissor combination.
Speaker 5: I mean you really should be like, I'm sure you
Speaker 5: can technically do it, but if like they make it
Speaker 5: a pain in the ass intentionally, if it is the
Speaker 5: wrong thing, which like that's fine on like you know,
Speaker 5: encounter to encounter basis, if it was just like one
Speaker 5: or two dudes. But it's the fact that a lot
Speaker 5: of these fights are these big, you know, cuts, not
Speaker 5: cut scenes, but set piece moments where there's like fucking
Speaker 5: ten onny raiders around you, and I'm not really like,
Speaker 5: I'm just worried about positioning myself and like parrying and stuff,
Speaker 5: and I'm not thinking necessarily like, Okay, he's got the
Speaker 5: dual stick, so I'm gonna switch to the spear, and
Speaker 5: I'm gonna he's got that I'm switching to. Like that
Speaker 5: is an extra layer that is not fun for me.
Speaker 5: I wish I could just be in the moment of
Speaker 5: the fight and like kind of like parrying and counterattacking.
Speaker 3: I also like.
Speaker 4: Mastering something right, like I like playing.
Speaker 3: I do like that they're teaching me, so like going
Speaker 3: back to like the learning how to cut the bamboo.
Speaker 4: Loved it.
Speaker 3: I thought that was a really neat sequence, And I
Speaker 3: agree with you, Mike. I thought it worked for me,
Speaker 3: even though if I'm describing it, it feels gimmicky when
Speaker 3: I describe it.
Speaker 4: But in the moment, I was like, I'm learning.
Speaker 3: To cut through bamboo because my master's teaching me. I
Speaker 3: felt really invested. When it starts to pull me out
Speaker 3: is I've learned this giant sword. I don't care for it.
Speaker 3: It's too slow. I think it's kind of heavy. They
Speaker 3: want me to use it to block, but it's just
Speaker 3: like not, it's not really my weapon of choice. I
Speaker 3: feel obligated to constantly pull it out every time I
Speaker 3: see someone with their two swords because it's the right
Speaker 3: sword that they've educated me to use.
Speaker 4: It's just not how I want to play.
Speaker 3: And I think sometimes the game is essentially being like, well,
Speaker 3: you're meant to use all of the weapons that were
Speaker 3: giving you. I would prefer to just master the weapon.
Speaker 1: I want a master. Yeah, it's my opposite of which
Speaker 1: obviously they give you. It's just funny we're talking about
Speaker 1: hades too.
Speaker 3: We totally and how much we love it that we
Speaker 3: can make those all be your favorite.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I like that Yota is making me switch.
Speaker 1: I know if for those who haven't played Sushima, June
Speaker 1: did not have a ton of weapons. He had basically
Speaker 1: a couple options, but he had different stances, so he
Speaker 1: had to use high stance against shields. He had different
Speaker 1: stances to take them on. But like I've started, it's
Speaker 1: almost like it's tough to talk about all the weapons
Speaker 1: and yota without spoiling because it actually is kind of
Speaker 1: they do stuff later on, you get some cool tools
Speaker 1: that I don't think they've shown in trailers and whatnot. Trailers. Sorry,
Speaker 1: but yeah, it works for me. But I see that
Speaker 1: especially because like you do get enough tools where you're
Speaker 1: throwing kunai and then you're doing smoke bombs, and then
Speaker 1: you're doing the the ones that like kind of flash
Speaker 1: in their face, like flash bangs. You have a lot
Speaker 1: of tools, so I could see definitely wanting to just
Speaker 1: focus on the choreography of the fight rather than what
Speaker 1: you have in your hand. That makes sense.
Speaker 3: It's like a minor thing for me, and I think
Speaker 3: I'm gonna continue. I don't think it's gonna stop me
Speaker 3: from playing the game. I think for me though, I am.
Speaker 3: I am playing this game because I'm interested in the story.
Speaker 3: I think the acting is really good. I think the
Speaker 3: voice acting is excellent. I think Eric she killed it.
Speaker 3: It's a really good performance. And as Dan said, like
Speaker 3: those cut scenes where there's like family drama, you're like
Speaker 3: meeting these new bad guys that are telling you they're
Speaker 3: gonna kill you. They're good, they make they make this
Speaker 3: a movie and that you get to play and run around.
Speaker 4: So I think it's beautiful.
Speaker 3: I do enjoy it. I wish I could just focus
Speaker 3: on one weapon. And I think the last thing I'll
Speaker 3: say is like, when it comes to like an RPG,
Speaker 3: you're just like a game where I feel like I
Speaker 3: should be immersed and really want to be this person personally.
Speaker 3: Get is stoked to be a samurai in this era
Speaker 3: as I would like Red Dead Redemption era.
Speaker 4: This is like such a minor things.
Speaker 3: I would do that too, But I think like in general,
Speaker 3: this isn't usually like the type of role play I
Speaker 3: want in a game, but I am allowing it because
Speaker 3: it's so damn beautiful and it's so immersive. I'm enjoying
Speaker 3: it despite the fact that this is usually the type
Speaker 3: of game that I would I would pick.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the world, I'm loving it.
Speaker 5: I'm I think I'm twelve, fourteen, fifteen hours and something
Speaker 5: that maybe more.
Speaker 3: Someone said that it was twenty two to beat, and
Speaker 3: then I saw someone reply to that and be like,
Speaker 3: that's fucking bullshit, So.
Speaker 5: I have no idea how long to be said something
Speaker 5: like in the twenties, and I was like, are you
Speaker 5: kidding me? I just killed my second guy like yesterday,
Speaker 5: and I've played a ton.
Speaker 2: Of this game.
Speaker 4: Maybe the other ones are weak as fuck.
Speaker 1: I was gonna say, but this game's designed to lure
Speaker 1: you off the beaten path. Literally, there's a gold there's
Speaker 1: a bird that shows up, there's a fox that you
Speaker 1: like chase. It's it's just trying to pull you every
Speaker 1: which way and.
Speaker 5: I can't help but like follow all of that. Also,
Speaker 5: the fast travel being so easy and there's no load times.
Speaker 2: Oh, it's just like one of.
Speaker 1: The best quality of life things I've seen in an
Speaker 1: open world game in a while, not only in so
Speaker 1: with the locations in villages, you click on the village
Speaker 1: and then it brings up that radio. Not radio, it
Speaker 1: brings up that the row of icons you can pick. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's awesome.
Speaker 5: I will do it with then, like I'm already in
Speaker 5: the fucking town. I'm buying maps from a dude, and
Speaker 5: I'm like, I know I could probably find the Arrow
Speaker 5: Lady very quickly.
Speaker 2: But I will just warp to words because like I
Speaker 2: don't want to look around. Yeah, that's great.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's amazing.
Speaker 5: It's the opposite of that Red Dead thing where it's like, no,
Speaker 5: you have to like you got to hike all the
Speaker 5: way back to game.
Speaker 3: You have to enjoy it because it's beautiful and we're
Speaker 3: going to raise the music ever so slightly when you
Speaker 3: ride your horse because you're in a movie. I think
Speaker 3: you can have it all with this game. I think
Speaker 3: it's a good example of the fact that you could
Speaker 3: have it all because it is beautiful to ride your
Speaker 3: horse and just enjoy. But if you just want to
Speaker 3: go to the taverns that you can cash in that
Speaker 3: money prize, then fucking fast travel, I go for it.
Speaker 5: It's not ashamed of being a video game in a
Speaker 5: way where it's like, you know, it's got those things
Speaker 5: where it's like if you want to sit down and
Speaker 5: make camp and like you can like set the options
Speaker 5: where it's like I'm gonna do the cooking mini game
Speaker 5: every time.
Speaker 3: Music with a dude for like fifteen minutes. The other
Speaker 3: day we were like, you know, playing string instruments. I
Speaker 3: can give a ship you can waste.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's like if you if you like that Red
Speaker 5: Dead two style of just like everything's gonna take a
Speaker 5: while and everything you can turn on things where it's like, yeah,
Speaker 5: everything is gonna be manual and I gotta make the
Speaker 5: fire every time and everything. But if you just want
Speaker 5: it to be a fucking video game, you can just
Speaker 5: set it to be, like, all right, I want the
Speaker 5: cooking thing some of the time or none of the time.
Speaker 5: And then when you're riding around on your horse you
Speaker 5: see a fucking crafting material, you don't have to.
Speaker 2: Hold on, buddy, I gotta get off and pick this
Speaker 2: flower and all right, body get back. Hey, you know
Speaker 2: know you just hit our two and you keep going.
Speaker 2: You don't even fucking slow down.
Speaker 3: Like I love that, love that you don't have to
Speaker 3: get off the horse to pick it.
Speaker 1: You get it. You get a fucking you get an
Speaker 1: armor that like, like you get a percentage chance if
Speaker 1: you're riding through white flowers to pick up crafting materials.
Speaker 1: I want ship like that just be a video game,
Speaker 1: like you can be something and be a video game.
Speaker 1: Read That Too is one of my favorite games. But
Speaker 1: I agree with everything you're saying. Yeah, even if Arthur
Speaker 1: is catching strays as they say, I don't.
Speaker 5: I mean, and I'm not as harsh on Readed two
Speaker 5: as I used to be, but that stuff still is
Speaker 5: just kind of like the reeks of the rock Star like, no,
Speaker 5: we've made art and you have to take it on
Speaker 5: our terms.
Speaker 2: It's like I hate that shit.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, I think it's a beautiful statement. Just to
Speaker 4: say it.
Speaker 3: It knows it's a video game. It kind of embraces
Speaker 3: that video game aesthetic of like, yeah you can fast travel,
Speaker 3: Yeah you can pick up stuff really quickly. Yeah you
Speaker 3: can craft super fast. But if you just want to
Speaker 3: sit and enjoy it, you can do that too. It
Speaker 3: lets you make that choice. And this game is so
Speaker 3: beautiful that you might find yourself riding your horse to
Speaker 3: the next area even if you can fast travel. And
Speaker 3: I have done that because it's pretty and I want
Speaker 3: to enjoy it. Also, I stumble across random shit I
Speaker 3: stumbled across. There's so many people who want to kill me.
Speaker 3: Every time I'm like going anywhere, there's some guy who's like,
Speaker 3: this town big enough for the two of us, and
Speaker 3: I'm you know, in these duels all the time. So
Speaker 3: I think it's it's a brilliant mesh of both worlds.
Speaker 2: Also, the most like made for photo mode game I've
Speaker 2: ever seen in my life.
Speaker 3: Crazy.
Speaker 5: I rarely ever messed with that, but there's just times
Speaker 5: in this game where it's like, good God, look at this,
Speaker 5: Like I'm just standing on a cliff overlooking like an ocean,
Speaker 5: and like there's lightning in the distance, and it's just like, yeah,
Speaker 5: I'm gonna take a photo of this.
Speaker 2: That's incredible.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a little remote corner of the world that you
Speaker 1: didn't really need to go to. And there's like a
Speaker 1: shunk at Shrunken Shrine. There's a hole in the ground
Speaker 1: where some dudes poop in like you don't. It's so
Speaker 1: funny that zoom in enhance computer load upole please.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I like it tremendous.
Speaker 1: Oh, last thing I'll say. I'm gonna start bringing this up.
Speaker 1: I know none of us have time to play older
Speaker 1: games like Semi.
Speaker 2: I play whole games all the time.
Speaker 4: No no, no, no, not old.
Speaker 1: Okay, it's talked about it before.
Speaker 2: In another zone of not retro but current last.
Speaker 1: Like five years. I've said this before.
Speaker 3: What my like?
Speaker 1: You know how I think Blight Club you guys do
Speaker 1: it where or I don't know the rules. I don't
Speaker 1: watch Giant Bond stuff, But like, I think it's like
Speaker 1: you get to you eventually get to recommend a game
Speaker 1: that you think someone will like that they didn't play correct.
Speaker 5: We do. I think call Delight Club every once in
Speaker 5: a while Delight Club or no, you're thinking of punishments.
Speaker 2: That's another thing.
Speaker 1: But yes, okay, yeah, punishment that's what it was.
Speaker 5: I knew.
Speaker 4: I liked it so so many stupid names.
Speaker 1: God, the great names. I we were talking about.
Speaker 3: Different PP hour.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's where we haven't launched that yet. Mary, I
Speaker 5: told you off stream Jesus Jay cut that.
Speaker 1: Jake Jay cut that they cut that.
Speaker 2: Ruined the announcement.
Speaker 1: We're talking about switching weapons you're talking about in this case,
Speaker 1: I'm talking about Star Wars Jedi Survivor.
Speaker 5: No.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that game got ripped at first for bad technical performance.
Speaker 1: I think people thought I had a slow beginning that game.
Speaker 1: I've we talked. I think it was like a year ago.
Speaker 1: I brought it up, and I'm like, I don't know if,
Speaker 1: like Dan you of all people, once you get into
Speaker 1: that game, it becomes so much like three D platforming focused.
Speaker 1: And then also you're just collecting a fuck ton of
Speaker 1: different lightsabers and you can actually do And I've stopped
Speaker 1: being a Star Wars stand a long time ago. The
Speaker 1: Star Wars aspect of this game is so tertiary for me,
Speaker 1: but you can master a weapon, and it's similarly, there
Speaker 1: are certain times where they kind of want to push
Speaker 1: you toward one weapon, but they're not stopping you from
Speaker 1: using the base lightsaber, the dual wheel or the Darth
Speaker 1: Maul double blade sided. But like, that's that's the game.
Speaker 1: I keep telling people. I'm like, if you get like
Speaker 1: several weeks, which no one ever does when you don't
Speaker 1: have a new game to play, That's why I was saying,
Speaker 1: like it's tough to like slot In because it's not
Speaker 1: an old retro game and you can't make content around it.
Speaker 1: But like, but it's it's it's not brand new. I
Speaker 1: just think Jedi is Star Wars Jedi Survivor. I want
Speaker 1: to start evangelizing it whatever I can, because I was
Speaker 1: so surprised. Also, tons of Zelda esque puzzles and like
Speaker 1: basically dungeons everywhere. I just that game rightfully got chastised
Speaker 1: for a bad technical performance on PC right when it launched.
Speaker 1: I'm not disagreeing with that at all.
Speaker 5: I mean for me, it was like I remember it
Speaker 5: was running fine on my PC when it was about
Speaker 5: to come out, and it was it wasn't even so
Speaker 5: much that it was just slow. It's just that I
Speaker 5: feel like, you know, I played like an hour of
Speaker 5: it or something, and every bit of it just seemed
Speaker 5: like every by the numbers triple A, just like here's
Speaker 5: the bar of this happens, and here's the bar where
Speaker 5: I learned this, and here's the skill tree that doesn't
Speaker 5: really add anything that I haven't seen a million times before.
Speaker 5: Like I could be wrong, because I mean I played
Speaker 5: an hour of it, but the first hour so very
Speaker 5: much just spelt me like yep, paint by numbers triple A.
Speaker 5: Like it didn't didn't strike me as doing anything particularly interesting,
Speaker 5: you know, Yeah, no, yeah, the first the beginning of
Speaker 5: that game is not the greatest. And I'm always usually
Speaker 5: the first one to say, like, if the game's not
Speaker 5: good by five hours in, is it really a good game?
Speaker 1: But if anybody's looking for some play, which.
Speaker 5: You know what, I did write it down here because
Speaker 5: like I I liked a lot of that first game,
Speaker 5: and I didn't give it a full shot.
Speaker 1: I will say this though, the first game was trying,
Speaker 1: way trying, to its detriment, to be a Frumsoft game. Sure,
Speaker 1: this game just went all out there, like, no, you
Speaker 1: know what, We're gonna put wall running in Prince of
Speaker 1: Persia kind of puzzles in. We're gonna do three D
Speaker 1: platform and we're gonna do way more puzzles, and we're
Speaker 1: gonna do just like you collect a new fucking like
Speaker 1: outfit every five seconds. Okay. I like it a lot.
Speaker 1: At some point, maybe the opportunity will arise to play it,
Speaker 1: but that's neither here nor there. What else besides let
Speaker 1: me pull up Dan, you've been playing some new stuff?
Speaker 5: Yeah, let me say, because we were talking about like,
Speaker 5: you know, from stuff, talking about Yota and and you know,
Speaker 5: kind of combat focus melee focused games. I have been
Speaker 5: playing Ninja guid In four quite a bit, and that
Speaker 5: is the reason if you notice the episode went up
Speaker 5: late today, it's because the embargo just lifted. I didn't
Speaker 5: know what to expect from this game. You know. I
Speaker 5: thought it was cool when I saw the reveal because
Speaker 5: it's like, oh man, J guy, and like, you know,
Speaker 5: we that was a huge one and like what four
Speaker 5: whatever when that first Xbox kind of comeback came out,
Speaker 5: and then it's kind of diminishing returns. Like two is
Speaker 5: a good game, you know, people didn't like it nearly
Speaker 5: as much as one, and then three kind of got
Speaker 5: shipped on all over the place. So it's like, and
Speaker 5: it's been a long time since three?
Speaker 4: When did three came out?
Speaker 5: Three?
Speaker 2: I want to say, was that like a Wii you excluded?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 2: Did a we you addition or something?
Speaker 1: Was re you always the protagonist before the.
Speaker 2: Anys ones, they s ones and the Xbox One.
Speaker 1: Okay, I remember when I remember when he when that
Speaker 1: game first came out for the Xbox, I wasn't allowed
Speaker 1: to play it because well, I mean because it was
Speaker 1: purportedly violent, but also my mom was like, I'm not
Speaker 1: sure I left his outfit it was like tight fitting
Speaker 1: leather ninja. Really yeah yeah yeah, And she was she
Speaker 1: loved his outfit.
Speaker 2: Yeah too much?
Speaker 1: Too much? Want to go?
Speaker 4: How hot is he?
Speaker 1: She didn't want you to convert me when I was eight.
Speaker 3: It is better not awaken anything in me. He's interesting,
Speaker 3: like my straight straight son.
Speaker 1: You'll get you with a shirk.
Speaker 5: Those characters always had like a like wet charsk to
Speaker 5: you just cover a bedazzled look at this all day.
Speaker 1: Okay, all right, I'm a game.
Speaker 4: I'm a.
Speaker 1: Sorry Dan, I'm so sorry you were talking. You were
Speaker 1: saying something.
Speaker 2: Uh yeah, Mary, it came out in twenty twelve, was
Speaker 2: the last one?
Speaker 5: Okay, Yeah. So that's why I say, like, when I
Speaker 5: saw the trailer, I'm like, hell yeah, I like old
Speaker 5: things that I recognize.
Speaker 2: And then it's like, oh wait, what is this actual
Speaker 2: game going to be?
Speaker 5: Uh? And god damn if it isn't like one of
Speaker 5: the best Ninja guide in games it is, I would
Speaker 5: say like, I'm oh God, what am I like ten
Speaker 5: twelve hours in or something like that.
Speaker 2: I'm like six seven chapters or whatever.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 5: I am enjoying this in a way. I don't remember
Speaker 5: liking a Ninja Guiden since that Xbox one the first comeback,
Speaker 5: and like I think, oh four, And it is cool
Speaker 5: because it makes me nostalgic for like the character action
Speaker 5: games of the two thousands. You know, I'm thinking Devil
Speaker 5: May Cry. I am thinking, you know, those those Ninja
Speaker 5: Gaiden games where I have always really appreciated the from
Speaker 5: approach that has kind of taken over third person action
Speaker 5: games in recent years. There are a lot of incredible
Speaker 5: games there, and From themselves do a lot of great
Speaker 5: things all during one of the best games of all time,
Speaker 5: but I am nostalgic for the like you are crazy overpowered,
Speaker 5: flashy ass dude with melee weapons or and or guns
Speaker 5: and you're just getting a bunch of red orbs and
Speaker 5: getting more attacks and stuff like that, and like this
Speaker 5: is purely in that line, and like they have not
Speaker 5: done anything to try to be like now it's like
Speaker 5: a from game because that's what's hot now, Like Nope,
Speaker 5: this is like if we just went from like Ninja
Speaker 5: Gaiden oh four and then you cry tenically froze everyone
Speaker 5: that made that game, and then another one.
Speaker 2: Now it's like it's like that.
Speaker 5: It's also there's a lot of like Metal Gear Revengeance
Speaker 5: going on here, which I know a lot of fans
Speaker 5: of that genre like love that game. So it's like,
Speaker 5: you know, very fast paced, just kind of like almost
Speaker 5: like auto parcouring over stuff and unbelievably fast combat, a
Speaker 5: like almost overwhelming amount of moves and combos and stuff
Speaker 5: to unlock. You know, you're just getting red orbs, buying stuff,
Speaker 5: huge crazy boss fights and everything. It's it knows what
Speaker 5: it's doing, it knows who is coming to this game.
Speaker 5: You know, fans of the originals, and like it is
Speaker 5: violent in a way that I loved from the original ones.
Speaker 5: Like right away, it's like, do you want to enable
Speaker 5: or disable the emphasized dismemberment option?
Speaker 2: And that's enable, and it's like, okay, what about do
Speaker 2: you do you want the bloodbath killed camera? Yes?
Speaker 1: I do. Yeah, it's like no, I'm not going to
Speaker 1: turn off the ball buster SlowMo.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Hitler's nuts came or whatever there for Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 5: So like they they know their audience. Like there's not
Speaker 5: even like an opening cut scene, Like you just start
Speaker 5: and you're on a fucking train, which there's a lot
Speaker 5: of like train levels, and then you guide in history
Speaker 5: and so it's like okay, yep, already in. Then you're
Speaker 5: on a train, bunch of dudes shooting at me with
Speaker 5: guns and you're just slicing these motherfuckers up and they're
Speaker 5: just their parts and bits are just all over the
Speaker 5: train floor. And I've always loved games where it's like
Speaker 5: the blood or the bodies or whatever kind of stay
Speaker 5: on the ground, and so it's like just chunks of
Speaker 5: bodies all over this train floor, and as it's rumbling around,
Speaker 5: like they have physics and so like it's just sliding
Speaker 5: around arms and heads and torsos as you're just bathing
Speaker 5: in the blood of all these fucking dudes and just
Speaker 5: dashing super fucking fast and throwing shirts kins and running
Speaker 5: off walls and like it's just fucking sweet.
Speaker 2: It's it's exactly what you want from this.
Speaker 5: And like when I talk about knowing the audience and everything,
Speaker 5: like you know, anybody who play those old Ninja guid
Speaker 5: In games, especially that four one, it's like the Flying
Speaker 5: Swallow and the Azuna Drop where two that's the moves,
Speaker 5: Like the Flying Swallow is the one where you jump
Speaker 5: and you hit wye in the air and you like
Speaker 5: dash in and like if you do it right, you
Speaker 5: can just like cut someone's head clean off. And the
Speaker 5: Azuna Drop is this thing where you can like juggle
Speaker 5: a guy up in the air. You grab and you
Speaker 5: go upside down and you do this like spinning pile
Speaker 5: driver into the ground. It's just fucking awesome. And everyone
Speaker 5: to play those old games loves them, and it's like
Speaker 5: those are like right there to purchase early on. So
Speaker 5: it's like, Okay, I don't know how many, if any,
Speaker 5: of the people making this game were involved with those
Speaker 5: old games, but they sure as fuck played them and
Speaker 5: know what people like about them and understand it. So yeah,
Speaker 5: I don't know if there's any crossover. I really have
Speaker 5: no idea who the team is behind this. I don't
Speaker 5: know if they worked on Revengeance. I don't know if
Speaker 5: they worked on the old Ninja Guidance, but like they
Speaker 5: clearly understand.
Speaker 2: What was good about those games.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's it's extremely difficult, but it's fair. There's a
Speaker 5: lot of like accessibility options. You know, I'm just playing
Speaker 5: the Defaul difficulty, but it looks like there are a
Speaker 5: bunch of different options and things. But like it's a
Speaker 5: game where you get to a boss fight and I
Speaker 5: will just get my ass kicked ten times in a row,
Speaker 5: and I will just keep going back because it's like,
Speaker 5: all right, I just need to learn these patterns more.
Speaker 2: I just need to like dodge better. You know.
Speaker 5: It does some of that kind of like which time
Speaker 5: Bayanetta stuff. If you do a perfect dodge out of
Speaker 5: the way, you get like a moment of slow down
Speaker 5: or you can really just get in their ass afterwards.
Speaker 5: And it's just NonStop. It's NonStop action. And if you're
Speaker 5: not slicing someone up, you are grappling hook you know,
Speaker 5: a wall running. You know, you're you've got a hang
Speaker 5: glider thing that if there's the winds, you're flying between
Speaker 5: mountains and stuff.
Speaker 2: It's just NonStop action and uh, I love it. This
Speaker 2: is this is a game for me. And holy shit,
Speaker 2: this year with.
Speaker 5: Ninja Gaiden tune, Ninja Guiden games, a Shnoby game Yo
Speaker 5: tailor between like the year of the like you know
Speaker 5: Ninja Samurai, like this this year is.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think we're gonna have to discuss that
Speaker 3: at some point, sooner rather than later. Like what's your
Speaker 3: favorite Ninja game?
Speaker 1: Oh boy?
Speaker 5: I mean, like I haven't beaten this yet, but like
Speaker 5: Shnoby is probably I Looby's fucking awesome. Yeah, that's probably
Speaker 5: my number one right now. But this this has been
Speaker 5: killing it and I'm pretty deep into it, Like I
Speaker 5: I just can't wait, probably after this podcast keep playing.
Speaker 5: I've playing it right before we went on the area.
Speaker 1: So I like that. And uh was it Ninja Guiden
Speaker 1: and Shanobi did that like Steam package those two together did? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was awesome. I thought, yeah, because I.
Speaker 1: Think you put it out there in a couple episodes ago.
Speaker 1: It's like these two what the Sega and the Nintendo
Speaker 1: Origin Ninja games were kind of having a moment in
Speaker 1: the same year, and they decided to do this bundle together.
Speaker 1: It was a nice nice thing to see.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and like, this is so cool to me as
Speaker 2: like an old guy gamer who also very much is
Speaker 2: nostalgic for all this old franchises and stuff, like the
Speaker 2: fact that it's not just like slapping Ninja Guiden onto
Speaker 2: a thing and it's like, no, no, this is like,
Speaker 2: this is a Ninja guid This is what I would
Speaker 2: want Ninja Guiden to be in twenty twenty five. It's
Speaker 2: not just a nostalgia play. It works for that.
Speaker 5: But also if I'm fucking fifteen years old and I
Speaker 5: just want to play a cool Ninja game. I've never
Speaker 5: heard of Ninja Giden before, there's no denying this is
Speaker 5: just a good fucking game.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I want to play that really badly. I
Speaker 1: gotta play. I gotta go back to Shanoby. I mentioned
Speaker 1: that I started Chinobi. I got like I got I
Speaker 1: don't know a few levels in however you want to
Speaker 1: call levels in that game where it's kind of Metrovnia.
Speaker 1: But I loved it from what I saw. But they
Speaker 1: were adding so many new abilities and tools into my
Speaker 1: repertoire at such a rapid pace. I was like, I'm
Speaker 1: I need to come back and restart this game once
Speaker 1: I've played finished Yota, because I just Yote grabbed me
Speaker 1: in a way that something hasn't in a while.
Speaker 5: So they do that here where it's like even for me,
Speaker 5: who like, by the way, I'm playing this in Yota
Speaker 5: like concurrently, like in the same night, like this is
Speaker 5: a three day weekend. I played both these games every day,
Speaker 5: and it's like I have to remember all these things
Speaker 5: I'm unlocking and the combos for like both Atsu and
Speaker 5: uh A Ninja guid and for so it's kind of
Speaker 5: been a lot.
Speaker 2: But Mary, you were bringing up how like in Yota.
Speaker 5: I think a complaint that I share about Yota is
Speaker 5: what you said about like I don't want to have
Speaker 5: to like constantly think this rock paper sissor thing. I
Speaker 5: just kind of want to be in the moment and
Speaker 5: do the combat. This game. It gives you a million
Speaker 5: different combat options, and you know, I have a couple
Speaker 5: of different weapons right now where it's like I've got
Speaker 5: this like kind of spear thing that can expand into
Speaker 5: like this weird death umbrella, and then you have just
Speaker 5: like your double sword thing and you're unlocking a shit
Speaker 5: ton of moves for both, but they will both get
Speaker 5: the job done. Like you get to just kind of
Speaker 5: choose in the moment where it's like, all right, well
Speaker 5: this one kind of attacks a little faster, or this
Speaker 5: is better for groups. I guess I'll use this. But
Speaker 5: if you just fucking love the spear thing and you
Speaker 5: want to put all your red orbs into upgrading that.
Speaker 5: I haven't run into any enemies that like, oh, you
Speaker 5: have to use the swords for this, so you can
Speaker 5: just kind of go with the thing that kind of
Speaker 5: speaks to you more.
Speaker 2: Than you can in the OTA.
Speaker 4: I think that sounds nice.
Speaker 1: I mean I do.
Speaker 3: I do also like respect the idea of like, in
Speaker 3: this situation, you're really gonna want to use X, but
Speaker 3: it's like, ultimately, I usually fall in love with a system,
Speaker 3: and I want to be able to just enjoy my system.
Speaker 3: So that sounds really cool. I don't think i've ever
Speaker 3: played this series before. Do you think like there's anything.
Speaker 4: That I'll miss in the story or understanding what's going on?
Speaker 2: Oh you're you're just aninja.
Speaker 1: How would you describe the world on Ninja Guiden, because
Speaker 1: like it's.
Speaker 5: You're a ninja in like modern times.
Speaker 3: You're a ninja.
Speaker 1: Yes, you are a ninja, but yeah, not like it's
Speaker 1: like Industrial revolution in the first in the Xbox Revamp,
Speaker 1: wasn't it Industrial Revolution time? Like trains and steampunk kind
Speaker 1: of things.
Speaker 2: There's like zeppelins and stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I don't really know what the Industrial revolution is, but
Speaker 2: it's like.
Speaker 5: There's buildings and like tanks and helicopters and you know,
Speaker 5: it's like there's modern technology. It feels like kind of
Speaker 5: a modern ward like modern world. Like I don't know
Speaker 5: if they say you're in Japan or you're in whatever,
Speaker 5: but like it's buildings, it's tanks.
Speaker 2: It's cars, it's zeppelins, it's you know. Yeah. Cool, it's
Speaker 2: a very very fun game.
Speaker 3: I want to play it.
Speaker 4: There's so many things going on.
Speaker 3: I feel overwhelmed.
Speaker 1: What is this character you're doing?
Speaker 3: It's just me.
Speaker 4: I'm just complaining.
Speaker 3: It's what would you call it? What are they called
Speaker 3: first world problems?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that's all. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Like I'm just complaining because.
Speaker 5: That's not like the Woodpecker thing. I understand that is
Speaker 5: not a real problem. I mean, it's a pain in
Speaker 5: the ass.
Speaker 1: But yeah, Mary, you we talked about Baby Steps on
Speaker 1: the last episode. Have you played much of it? How
Speaker 1: far have you gotten?
Speaker 3: I did, Uh, I've quit and I didn't like this,
Speaker 3: and I wanted to tell you I felt like that's
Speaker 3: how you guys would feel. I've liked his previous games,
Speaker 3: and I got really into getting over it with Bennett Foddy.
Speaker 3: I thought that was a really lighthearted and cheeky way
Speaker 3: to kind of push players into maybe like a bit
Speaker 3: of like a frustration, but it's so rewarding when you're
Speaker 3: able to kind of get through it. It's also narration
Speaker 3: is very cheeky, and I I really appreciated that original game.
Speaker 3: I think I played six hours of Baby Steps. It
Speaker 3: is so frustrating even from the beginning, and at no
Speaker 3: point did I feel like I had mastered walking. I
Speaker 3: never felt like the game wanted me to get good
Speaker 3: at anything, and really reveled in Falling. I think the
Speaker 3: thing that really fucking chapped my ass, like the reason
Speaker 3: where I was like finally like all right, fuck this
Speaker 3: game is that. Pretty early on I came across this
Speaker 3: like super cute duckling and it followed me around, and
Speaker 3: so I wanted to keep this.
Speaker 4: Did you guys get the duck?
Speaker 1: I have not played the game. I have no plan
Speaker 1: to play that game.
Speaker 3: If you stumble across a barn, you'll find a couple
Speaker 3: animals in the barn, including a baby duckling, and the
Speaker 3: baby duckling will follow you in the game.
Speaker 4: And I kind of thought that maybe it was challenge
Speaker 4: for me to try and get through this.
Speaker 3: Game with this duckling. It's cute, it can't travel in
Speaker 3: every way that I can, and so I had to
Speaker 3: like make accommodations to the path that I picked that
Speaker 3: the baby duck could join me. It just got to
Speaker 3: a cruel area where like the steps that I was taking,
Speaker 3: the baby duck couldn't jump. So I had to decide
Speaker 3: to abandon the baby duck or you know, keep going.
Speaker 3: There was, in my opinion, no path forward that I
Speaker 3: could find that I could save this cute little baby
Speaker 3: duck and continue on my journey. It felt punishing for
Speaker 3: punishing's sake, and I was at no point actually was
Speaker 3: I like, oh this is funny and cheeky and enjoyable.
Speaker 3: It is a miserable game to play, and I can't
Speaker 3: believe that they designed it as such that they want
Speaker 3: you to be miserable while you watch this sad chunky
Speaker 3: cheese it boy not want to receive any help or
Speaker 3: benefits from the game, and he can't even help this
Speaker 3: baby duck that like wants to follow him and get joy.
Speaker 3: It's just it's just a miserable experience.
Speaker 5: I'm with you, Like, I think the writing is great,
Speaker 5: Like obviously there's like a metaphor they're going forward that
Speaker 5: I'm sure is brilliant or whatever, but it's like.
Speaker 1: I.
Speaker 5: I just got to a point where it's like I
Speaker 5: love the idea of like, you know, a quop like
Speaker 5: weird physics bullshit games and stuff like that. Like I
Speaker 5: think that's really funny. And so I thought I was
Speaker 5: gonna love this, and I got to the first part
Speaker 5: where it's like I kind of went up this mountain
Speaker 5: and i'd go across this kind of like rocky river thing,
Speaker 5: and I slipped on a rock and my guy fell
Speaker 5: down like a while, and I was like, Aha.
Speaker 2: That's funny. And then it was like it didn't.
Speaker 5: I thought it was gonna checkpoint and like send me
Speaker 5: back up or whatever, and it didn't, and every thinking
Speaker 5: it was just such a while, like oh my god,
Speaker 5: I just lost like ten or fifteen minutes of progress
Speaker 5: that I like saved the clip when we're like, oh,
Speaker 5: when the barber's up, people aren't gonna believe how much
Speaker 5: progress I lost here. And then I found out, like
Speaker 5: the day of release, how much people are falling down
Speaker 5: entire mountains and losing like an hour of progress. I'm like, oh,
Speaker 5: that's just what the fucking game is. So literally, when
Speaker 5: I lost that ten or fifteen minutes of progress and
Speaker 5: it didn't check point, it didn't send me back up,
Speaker 5: I was like, all right, well, I guess I never
Speaker 5: playing this again.
Speaker 2: That's fine, you know I cannot wait.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm never playing that game again.
Speaker 1: Go ahead, Yeah no, no, I said this last time.
Speaker 1: And I have to like kind of like check myself,
Speaker 1: because who am I to judge other people for how
Speaker 1: they spend their time and what they find the experiences
Speaker 1: that they find to be worth time investment. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I'm into stuff that no one else gives a shit about,
Speaker 1: Like who the fuck else? Like, I'm sure people would
Speaker 1: look at the amount of time and money I've spent,
Speaker 1: like studying wine, it'd be like, that's fucking ridiculous. I
Speaker 1: get that not everything is going to be for everybody.
Speaker 1: I cannot I just can't put myself in a place
Speaker 1: where that kind of game feels like a good no
Speaker 1: use of time for me. But I also know that
Speaker 1: there are a lot of people who are like they're
Speaker 1: into the masochism of that and that is rewarding to
Speaker 1: them when they finally reach the top of the mountain
Speaker 1: or whatever it is. And I do like the idea
Speaker 1: that there is that spiral staircase that's supposedly easy, like
Speaker 1: you could do it if you.
Speaker 5: Will man break her. The big thing, Like that's the
Speaker 5: thing is like it is a good spectator sport. Like
Speaker 5: grubbed something about this game. Yeah, but something about this
Speaker 5: even without the streaming aspect, you know, talking to Grub
Speaker 5: about this game and here I'm talking about on the BombCast,
Speaker 5: He's like it really spoke to him in a way
Speaker 5: that like I'm prepared for him to like push for
Speaker 5: it to be high up on Game of the Year
Speaker 5: this year, and like it really resonates with some people
Speaker 5: and it really doesn't with others. And like I think
Speaker 5: I can it is super not for me, but I
Speaker 5: think I understand it more than I did. Like when
Speaker 5: I was initially turned off by like a red Dead
Speaker 5: or or death straining, was like how could anyone like this?
Speaker 5: You know, I think with baby steps, like I kind
Speaker 5: of get it, and it clearly does have some kind
Speaker 5: of metaphor where it's like here's the stairs and stuff,
Speaker 5: and like watching Grub, like you know, he was like
Speaker 5: several mornings in a row streaming on Giant Bomb of
Speaker 5: going after the man Breaker, and like I would tune in,
Speaker 5: I would just have him on, like it got tense
Speaker 5: where it's like he gets near the top and then
Speaker 5: he slips and he falls. He's all the way to
Speaker 5: the bottom the way, Okay, we'll be back tomorrow with it.
Speaker 5: It's like it could not be me. I could not
Speaker 5: fucking do that. But like I do kind of respect,
Speaker 5: I don't know that the maniacs that are just gonna
Speaker 5: keep going at it.
Speaker 1: To Mary's point, though, is Grub playing it off stream
Speaker 1: at all?
Speaker 5: I mean he certainly has at times, and I think
Speaker 5: when he got to the man Breaker, I think he
Speaker 5: was like, this is gonna be my like every morning, I'm.
Speaker 4: Gonna you want you want the lore, you want the people,
Speaker 4: and I think.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like I get and like body in games have
Speaker 1: all like Getting Over It, Yes, for sure, and there
Speaker 1: are games many many games have gone viral Repo, Lethal
Speaker 1: Company Chain together, Pasmophobia would not be near only would
Speaker 1: not be nearly as big if it wasn't for king yeah,
Speaker 1: like these.
Speaker 3: Are games for for psychopaths who just want to get
Speaker 3: through incredible even uh like honestly, even Silk Song to
Speaker 3: a degree like these later areas are so miserably difficult.
Speaker 3: I am like, oh my god, I don't know how
Speaker 3: I could do this. But when you have a crowd
Speaker 3: cheering you on and they're like, this is impossible. I
Speaker 3: could never spend my time doing this. I will watch
Speaker 3: this person who's dedicated way too much time playing this
Speaker 3: game to beat this. There is a system for this.
Speaker 3: Here's why I don't fucking like baby steps in all
Speaker 3: these other games, including Getting Over It. Every example, you
Speaker 3: guys have said you're learning tactically how to get better
Speaker 3: at the basic mechanics of the game. So that's so
Speaker 3: the beginning area actually is kind of like a cakewalk
Speaker 3: at some point, right, Like you're just kind of like
Speaker 3: you've memori you've brute memorized it, you understand mechanically how
Speaker 3: to get through it. Haites is such a good example,
Speaker 3: Like you remember, like you talking about the sirens and
Speaker 3: you're like, I don't even think about the sirens anymore.
Speaker 3: I don't even give a shit about those sirens. I
Speaker 3: just breeze through them in baby steps. Even the beginning
Speaker 3: areas are fucking miserable. It is miserable to walk in
Speaker 3: that game. They made the basic mechanics not on for
Speaker 3: me to play, so I can't actually get better at
Speaker 3: this game. And that's what pisses me off about this,
Speaker 3: Like if they mechanically made it so that it's like, yeah,
Speaker 3: I'm like so good at walking now that this is
Speaker 3: a joke to me, But I actually think, like it's
Speaker 3: gonna just be painful to walk in that game forevermore.
Speaker 3: That's what they wanted to make. They were very successful
Speaker 3: at making that. Congratulations for making that. I don't want
Speaker 3: to play it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think they made exactly the game they wanted
Speaker 5: to make. Yeah, I don't think it was an acting.
Speaker 4: I don't they failed. I think they succeeded.
Speaker 5: And it seems very clearly not for us, but it
Speaker 5: is very clearly for some other people, and so I
Speaker 5: guess good on them, it was a success. I just
Speaker 5: I have no interest in playing it further.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm not even like I'm over it.
Speaker 3: Like I like, I look forward to their next Psycho
Speaker 3: game that I think other people will enjoy, and I
Speaker 3: appreciate that, but I yeah, I'm so over it. I'm like,
Speaker 3: I I will not play that game again. I also
Speaker 3: didn't like the story. Did you say you liked the story? Dan,
Speaker 3: I do not like that story A guy in video games, Yeah,
Speaker 3: I love.
Speaker 2: They were just drawing of the Cheeto boy.
Speaker 5: If you're just a drawing of the Cheeto boy with
Speaker 5: a paragraphic text, I think that's how you do storytelling.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, simple m hm.
Speaker 1: Speaking of cheetos, Dan, you played Consume Me?
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is boy. This is the type of Have
Speaker 2: you guys heard of this? Yeah? I guess I don't know.
Speaker 2: I want jay leno.
Speaker 1: Have you seen this? Weird about this? It's this guy,
Speaker 1: this guy, this guy, uh he he he's got shakes,
Speaker 1: baby steps up a mountain. I actually have not seen
Speaker 1: enough leto ever to do it good.
Speaker 2: You've had a better life for it. You know, he's
Speaker 2: he sucks as a person and a comedian.
Speaker 5: Well he was a good standing meeting, but he's anyway.
Speaker 2: Consume Me is the type of game that like.
Speaker 5: I would have never gravitated towards or tried really and
Speaker 5: this is very much, uh you know, a bonk influence here,
Speaker 5: which I always appreciate because she is, you know, over
Speaker 5: ten years, introduced me to a lot of things that
Speaker 5: I would not have normally tried or been interested in,
Speaker 5: and I think I've bettered as a person for it.
Speaker 5: So this is one that she started playing was that.
Speaker 1: Felt for literally everyone by saying we agree, Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: You both knew me pre bunked every day.
Speaker 5: So she, uh, she brought this up to me, and
Speaker 5: I knew, like this was like all I knew about
Speaker 5: it was that it was like, you know, one of
Speaker 5: those like empathy games where it was about eating disorders
Speaker 5: and you know, disordered eating. And I, you know, I
Speaker 5: respect the things like you know, Depression Quest or you know,
Speaker 5: Papers Please and things like that you know exist, It's
Speaker 5: just never been really the things that draw me to
Speaker 5: video games. So like, you know, I'm not going to
Speaker 5: be liked fuck this game, but like it's just I
Speaker 5: don't play them really, but this is something like disordered
Speaker 5: eating is something I learned a lot about when I'm
Speaker 5: at Bank, because like that's one of the first things
Speaker 5: she told me is that, like she really struck with
Speaker 5: anorexia and disordered eating prior to meeting me.
Speaker 2: You know, she was like really really struggling with that
Speaker 2: in a very major way.
Speaker 5: And it was a thing that like I had never
Speaker 5: thought about disordered eating or antarexia or anything beforehand. I
Speaker 5: heard of it, didn't really know anything about it, but yeah,
Speaker 5: I learned so much when I met her, and you know,
Speaker 5: I wanted to learn more about it because something she
Speaker 5: struggled with and I've read like Porsadarossi's book from Arrest
Speaker 5: of Development and like learned about like oh, okay, this
Speaker 5: isn't just a like you know, I always think about
Speaker 5: how like with anxiety, if you talk to a lot
Speaker 5: of people that don't have anxiety, Yeah, their first impressions
Speaker 5: like just chill out, what are you worried about?
Speaker 2: And it's like that's not outworks, and like yeah.
Speaker 3: It's like super dismissive of like a oh god, you
Speaker 3: told me that, sure, Like oh, have you tried militonin
Speaker 3: I'm like yeah, But the thing is.
Speaker 5: It does come from a lot of people that think
Speaker 5: they are just like they're not trying to come from
Speaker 5: a bad place.
Speaker 2: They're just like you've got nothing to worry about it.
Speaker 5: It's like, you know, you just don't get it. You
Speaker 5: just don't really understand what anxiety is. Not that I
Speaker 5: would expect someone to do whatever, you know, but like
Speaker 5: you know, I think with annaxia, and there's probably a
Speaker 5: ton of people that have that same dismissiveness. Cheezberg, what's
Speaker 5: the deal, You're not fat? It's just like no, it's
Speaker 5: just like I learned so much in the early times
Speaker 5: that at Daton Bond can read those books and stuff that,
Speaker 5: like it's just about the control and like this is
Speaker 5: part of your life you can control and the calories
Speaker 5: and and calories out and you know, just a body
Speaker 5: dysmorphia and things like that, learning about all these things
Speaker 5: that I've never experienced. And so anyway, that's a long
Speaker 5: walk to get to. This is a game that does
Speaker 5: tackle that from someone who has struggled with it, and
Speaker 5: it is like a semi autobiographical telling of.
Speaker 2: This girl, Like I don't know what grade she's supposed
Speaker 2: to be.
Speaker 5: It's clearly like a junior high high school type age,
Speaker 5: and it is via many games like almost like Warriorwaar
Speaker 5: style minigames telling the story of this girl trying to
Speaker 5: like figure out how to manage her like calorie intake
Speaker 5: while still getting all these other parts of her life
Speaker 5: under control. So like you literally have meters for like diet, athletics, academics, chores,
Speaker 5: and you have a certain amount of like time basically
Speaker 5: during the day day that you can do things. And
Speaker 5: so you know, if you there's an eating mini game
Speaker 5: that's almost like a Tetris, it's almost like a reisdon
Speaker 5: Evil like inventory situation, and if you eat too much,
Speaker 5: then it's like, oh god, I'm over my calorie limit.
Speaker 5: Or they call them bytes in the game, you know,
Speaker 5: like they try to avoid and may kind of like
Speaker 5: triggering like specific calories and stuff like that. So you know, oh,
Speaker 5: I'm over five hundred bytes for today. So I could
Speaker 5: study for this upcoming test that my mom's yelling me about,
Speaker 5: or I could do chores to try to earn money
Speaker 5: for a swim suit because there's this beach party coming
Speaker 5: up and I want to impress this boy. But I'm
Speaker 5: at five hundred and twenty three bites and I need
Speaker 5: to be under five hundred, so I should probably take
Speaker 5: this time slot in the evening and work out, and
Speaker 5: everything's going to be a mini game, and the minigames
Speaker 5: are fun. It's like it's actually like it's like it's weird,
Speaker 5: how like the dissonance between it's like a very jaunty
Speaker 5: like silly game, like visually and the music and everything
Speaker 5: and the minigames themselves are really wacky. But then there's
Speaker 5: like this underlying kind of like darkness to the disorder
Speaker 5: and everything that they get across.
Speaker 1: So it really.
Speaker 5: Illustrates it extremely well via a game of just like
Speaker 5: how much this thinking in this disorder can kind of
Speaker 5: take over your day to day life where it's like, man,
Speaker 5: I do have all this stuff I need to do,
Speaker 5: but I'm so fixated on staying under this calorie limit
Speaker 5: and things like that that like, oh shit, I didn't
Speaker 5: do the laundry cleaning mini game this week because I
Speaker 5: was too busy trying to stay under.
Speaker 2: My calorie limit.
Speaker 1: So oops.
Speaker 5: Between class and this thing a bus, there's a little
Speaker 5: viniet that plays of a bus splashing you, and your
Speaker 5: clothes are dirty and you can't change because you don't
Speaker 5: have any clean clothes. You didn't do that minigame that week,
Speaker 5: so it's like then your mood, Like there's these meters
Speaker 5: for like mood and gut and you know stuff like that.
Speaker 5: It's like, oh, your mood goes down because now you're
Speaker 5: walking around in shitty, you know, dirty clothes and stuff
Speaker 5: like that because you spent all your free time, you know,
Speaker 5: trying to work off twenty calories or something like that.
Speaker 5: So it is just like it's a really really well done.
Speaker 5: Like I haven't played a ton of games like these,
Speaker 5: but I think even someone who hasn't like ever had
Speaker 5: someone in their life that to struggle with this stuff,
Speaker 5: I think it does a pretty tremendous job of like
Speaker 5: oh I never really you know, thought about it like this,
Speaker 5: and uh, while still remaining like an actual Like it's
Speaker 5: weird to call it like a fun game, but it's
Speaker 5: like the systems work, the minigames are fun. It's like
Speaker 5: one of the minigames like if you if you choose
Speaker 5: to like I'm gonna study because you know, like your
Speaker 5: mom will come in and be like, oh, you're gonna
Speaker 5: get a shitty grade on this. It's like, oh shit,
Speaker 5: I should level up my academics, so you'll do like
Speaker 5: the studying minigame. And so the studying minigame is like
Speaker 5: there's a book in front of you and your head's
Speaker 5: just rotating around and you need to like whenever your
Speaker 5: ConA vision is over the book, you need to jam
Speaker 5: on a to kind of keep it there.
Speaker 2: But there are like these thought bubbles that.
Speaker 5: Come in, and the thoughts will be like your mom
Speaker 5: yelling at you the scale, you know, the boy you
Speaker 5: have a crush on or whatever, and if the cone
Speaker 5: hits that, it reverses. So you got kind of like
Speaker 5: feather the a button to kind of keep it on
Speaker 5: the book. While all these other thoughts are like it's
Speaker 5: just it all kind of works together really well, Like
Speaker 5: it's very gamified, but they all it's all in service
Speaker 5: of the message it's doing. So yeah, I haven't beaten
Speaker 5: it or anything. I've played a decent amount of it,
Speaker 5: but like it just seems to really do a great
Speaker 5: job of exactly gamifying kind of a message. And and
Speaker 5: you know, the empathy for the situation that we might
Speaker 5: not all have so really really worth checking out.
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, I appreciate it. That's great because like
Speaker 1: the that's also is like probably a good follow up
Speaker 1: to the conversation about Baby Steps, a game that I
Speaker 1: just really don't want to fucking play. Maybe there's some
Speaker 1: mindset that Baby Steps is conveying that they're going forward
Speaker 1: with that type of gameplay, that it's trying to convey
Speaker 1: a story that I'm just not aware of. That's the
Speaker 1: time thing.
Speaker 2: It's about depression or something, or like not being able
Speaker 2: to do your life in order.
Speaker 1: But like, yeah, but consume me. Yeah, I want to
Speaker 1: at least just like put that out there that I'm
Speaker 1: sure there's some like something going on there, but no
Speaker 1: consume me. I've heard good things from several people that's
Speaker 1: saying I should try it out because it's a yeah,
Speaker 1: I played like that Dragon Cancer back in the day
Speaker 1: playing games like that that, you know. I I love
Speaker 1: when games can can tell a story that way. I'm
Speaker 1: trying to remember. God, there's something on a tip of
Speaker 1: my tongue where it's like it's a systemic kind of
Speaker 1: storytelling and you don't really realize what it's doing until
Speaker 1: all of a sudden the actual rules change and like,
Speaker 1: oh shit, it's papers please. Like papers please is a
Speaker 1: good example. But there's something I'm I'm missing, But it's
Speaker 1: that idea where you get so into the gamification of
Speaker 1: it you don't realize that that's that is the story,
Speaker 1: and then by the time it like shit falls apart
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, like to your point, I can't
Speaker 1: I don't have clean laundry. Now it's like, oh, I
Speaker 1: didn't realize what they were building to exact.
Speaker 5: And like, especially if you I think it's almost more
Speaker 5: effective if you have not dealt with the issue, because
Speaker 5: you know, like I asked Boncle she was playing. I
Speaker 5: was like, did you feel like this is like an
Speaker 5: accurate rate? And she's like, oh my god, absolutely, this
Speaker 5: is resonating. But like if you don't, like she's felt
Speaker 5: all that stuff before, I think for those that haven't
Speaker 5: struggled with it, it's eye opening and that like the
Speaker 5: same way that depression quest. You know, I've never had depression,
Speaker 5: and there was this stuff where it's I would ask
Speaker 5: you a question where it's like, oh, it's Friday night,
Speaker 5: what are you doing? And it's gould be multiple choice,
Speaker 5: like you know, go to a party with your friend,
Speaker 5: or go do this thing or this, and like you
Speaker 5: would pick, I'm gonna pick go to a party with
Speaker 5: my friend and then it crosses out like in real time,
Speaker 5: and it's like, oh nope, you know, you just like
Speaker 5: totally flake on your friends and you just felt like
Speaker 5: you couldn't get out of the couch or whatever, and
Speaker 5: like that was kind of eye opening. It was like,
Speaker 5: oh wow, this idea of like you know, like, oh
Speaker 5: I can't get out of this bed, and it kind
Speaker 5: of explains why that's difficulties, you know.
Speaker 1: It's it's yeah, I remember what game it was now
Speaker 1: and it's not the same type of game. It's what
Speaker 1: remains of eith Finch had certain aspects of that, where
Speaker 1: obviously what remains VII Finch is more you know, walking simulator,
Speaker 1: gone home adjacent Firewatch kind of game. But sure, there
Speaker 1: was that one set everybody goes to the rapture but
Speaker 1: good exactly, And there's that one sequence where the sun
Speaker 1: and like the everybody in this family just dies young
Speaker 1: of mysterious causes. The sun is at the fish factory,
Speaker 1: thank God for the hatchery, and he guiding the fish
Speaker 1: through the you're basically separating fish. But then your daydreamings
Speaker 1: start to take over more and more. The way that
Speaker 1: they tell that story it's just the most show don't
Speaker 1: tell us storytelling that I fucking love, I love and
Speaker 1: stuff does that. So I should put this on my
Speaker 1: list too.
Speaker 2: It's yeah, I think it's a really cool game.
Speaker 4: I just saw that this.
Speaker 3: One the IGF Samus McNally Grand Prize, which Papers Please
Speaker 3: also won. So this is like a It's obviously indicative
Speaker 3: of something that is a great way to teach the
Speaker 3: player something that's bigger than the mini games with the gameplay.
Speaker 4: Itself, but about life.
Speaker 3: I resonate a lot with learning about others through media
Speaker 3: and understanding what different disorders are, and so I appreciate
Speaker 3: you sharing the book that you read. I just wanted
Speaker 3: to throw out another that's really worth reading for anyone
Speaker 3: who's like interested in understanding a little bit more about
Speaker 3: disordered eating, but maybe in a light way that won't
Speaker 3: like stress you out. I'm glad My Mom Died is
Speaker 3: one of the best books about this subject and other
Speaker 3: subjects I've ever read.
Speaker 4: It's so freaking good.
Speaker 3: I think it's it's written by a child Disney star
Speaker 3: Jeanette McCurdy.
Speaker 4: She was on I Carly.
Speaker 3: I don't know if you guys grew up watching I Carle,
Speaker 3: but I didn't it was I Carlely is so good.
Speaker 3: But one of the little the girls who like grew
Speaker 3: up doing the show. She wrote a book called I'm
Speaker 3: Glad My Mom Died and it is so damn good.
Speaker 3: I wonder if Bunk would like it. But it's it
Speaker 3: kind of touches on a lot of this stuff, and
Speaker 3: a lot of it's really similar about like how the
Speaker 3: mom is like you need to practice more. How many
Speaker 3: calories have you had today? And it's a lot of
Speaker 3: it is learned, right, It's a learned trade as a
Speaker 3: child that you have to.
Speaker 4: Live with now.
Speaker 5: And that is very much like again a show don't tell,
Speaker 5: Like I mean, the mom is a character in this
Speaker 5: game where she will show up and just kind of
Speaker 5: like give you shit for something, and you just kind
Speaker 5: of like see how that impacts the character, like not
Speaker 5: through a long cut Sander dialog box or anything, but
Speaker 5: just like the way, oh that thought bubble of the
Speaker 5: mom pops up and distracts you from the mini game,
Speaker 5: It's like, oh, it's just kind of like an elegant
Speaker 5: way of getting that message across.
Speaker 3: Yeah, good on the developer for having the guts to
Speaker 3: put her in there. It takes a lot of guts
Speaker 3: to share, uh, you know, a personal issue with depressive depression,
Speaker 3: disordered eating anything like that's really hard to put that
Speaker 3: in a game.
Speaker 4: But also to be like my mom was.
Speaker 3: A huge bitch to me all the time is like
Speaker 3: the icing on the cake of like, good for you
Speaker 3: to put in your trauma out there, because that's gonna.
Speaker 4: Help a lot of fucking people.
Speaker 5: My way of coping with that with my father was
Speaker 5: just putting him in front of a microphone for fifteen
Speaker 5: years and letting people figure it out. O.
Speaker 4: Yes, this is why I'm fucked up.
Speaker 2: I didn't have to spell it out. Just talk dad,
Speaker 2: y all love.
Speaker 1: You, d Yeah yeah, take the take the stress out
Speaker 1: of explaining you to people.
Speaker 5: Yeah yeah h they'll figure it out. Consume me, check
Speaker 5: it out. I really really it does a great job.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, thanks for sharing this, Uh, Mary, I think
Speaker 1: you both played clover Pit correct. Yes. Yeah.
Speaker 4: I don't know if Dan you feel like the way
Speaker 4: I feel.
Speaker 5: About it, but I like it.
Speaker 1: It's good.
Speaker 5: It is good. I have thoughts about it because I
Speaker 5: think a lot of people are going to compare it
Speaker 5: to blotro understandably. Oh you know, it's just like it's
Speaker 5: that like oh, instead of like you know, tweaking, like, oh,
Speaker 5: I can make the three of a kind the most
Speaker 5: powerful thing. I'm going to make clovers the most powerful
Speaker 5: thing for those Sorry, we're jumping right into it.
Speaker 2: And Mary, do you want to like explain kind of
Speaker 2: what the game is?
Speaker 3: Sure, this is a game about uh gambling, and you
Speaker 3: have to make enough money or the game kills you.
Speaker 3: That just means game over. But it like throws you
Speaker 3: into a death pit. And so you're putting money into
Speaker 3: the machine. You're trying to gamble to make enough money,
Speaker 3: but you have to vest in these I think they
Speaker 3: are like cards or tokens. Essentially, these items arms build
Speaker 3: a better deck essentially that way, maybe like if you
Speaker 3: get lemons, lemons are worth twice as much. You have
Speaker 3: a button that makes lemons most more likely to appear.
Speaker 3: Thus you're more likely to get five lemons in a
Speaker 3: row and make your quota and live. The whole thing
Speaker 3: is kind of surrounded in an air of like death.
Speaker 3: You're like in some kind of dungeon. It looks pretty
Speaker 3: dastardly and sad down there, and there's like lots of horps.
Speaker 5: It's like a torture chamber, and there's like corpse parts
Speaker 5: and stuff in there, dark and evil, and there's.
Speaker 3: Like lots of secrets and stuff. I use to use
Speaker 3: the bathroom. If you use the bathroom, yeah, you take
Speaker 3: a shit and then you get a token that's like
Speaker 3: everything that's like a brown item is worth more, right, Yeah,
Speaker 3: if you pee, everything that's yellow is worth more. Things
Speaker 3: like that. I mean, it's that's it. That's that's the
Speaker 3: core mechanic. And so you're choosing the right totems, which
Speaker 3: cost tickets. By the way, that's kind of an early
Speaker 3: mechanic that it teaches you is if you have less polls,
Speaker 3: you get more tickets, but you need the polls that
Speaker 3: you can make more money.
Speaker 5: So you get like basically for every round, you get
Speaker 5: like three rounds. Well, I guess for every set there's
Speaker 5: like three rounds, and a round can be like you know,
Speaker 5: five to seven poles of the slot machine lever. So
Speaker 5: it's like it'll tell you basically you've got three rounds
Speaker 5: to get to seventy two gold, which is your debt
Speaker 5: that you have to pay off. So you know, you'll
Speaker 5: finish one round and you'll be like, you know fourteen gold,
Speaker 5: and like, you know, you really by the third one,
Speaker 5: you're usually like, okay, I really got to pay this
Speaker 5: thing off. But you can you can break it in
Speaker 5: a way where it's like, oh man, I'm beating all
Speaker 5: these rounds in my first I don't know, I don't
Speaker 5: know if they're called rounds or sets or whatever, but
Speaker 5: like you can beat it early and you'll get these
Speaker 5: tickets like from an arcade machine or something, and then
Speaker 5: use that to buy charms.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think that it's funny that you were comparing it
Speaker 3: to bilatro. I've been comparing it to inscription.
Speaker 5: Yes, yes, it's got that too, for sure. Like tonally,
Speaker 5: I think it's it's way more Tonally.
Speaker 4: It's so inscription.
Speaker 3: I just want to set the audio listeners expectations that
Speaker 3: if you're like I fucking loved inscription.
Speaker 4: It's not as good as an inscription.
Speaker 3: It's not as I mean, no game is as good
Speaker 3: as Plato, Beyonce, Platro. Are you out of your time?
Speaker 4: Any any game.
Speaker 3: Compared to balatro, you're fucking, like, fucking with people's minds.
Speaker 3: It's it's not even a fraction of nobody's blatro. But inscription.
Speaker 4: I'm like offended, but don't even bring it up.
Speaker 3: Inscription had these like moments of deception where you kind
Speaker 3: of felt like you were smart and beating the game.
Speaker 4: I think this game lets you do things like that.
Speaker 4: It's just not on the same level.
Speaker 3: So just I'm pulling it back from this idea that
Speaker 3: like it's bigger than it seems, and there's all these
Speaker 3: like ways that Inscription really toys with you.
Speaker 4: This game is a much more simple.
Speaker 1: Version ridiculous man he is, he is his father. I
Speaker 1: know you can hear me through much Normally when I
Speaker 1: get a beer.
Speaker 5: I gotta go take my headphones off.
Speaker 1: There funny bilical cord from the computer your.
Speaker 4: Head like a baby trying to crawl out of the world.
Speaker 1: Now I need chords in my life all the time.
Speaker 2: I can't ever take It's a strand.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I can't do life anyway. This game is a simple,
Speaker 3: simplified version of Inscription. It doesn't have as many alterations.
Speaker 3: My biggest criticisms of this game is that, like, I
Speaker 3: really feel like there's only like four or five good
Speaker 3: hooks of items that work super well together. They need
Speaker 3: to put more time into making more items that allow
Speaker 3: me to play in different ways I get. I've put
Speaker 3: a taste in my hours into this game because it's
Speaker 3: really fun to play while I want it's uh spoop Tober,
Speaker 3: just so everybody knows it's October. This is my month
Speaker 3: where I'm allowed to watch as many horror movies is
Speaker 3: I fucking want. And I watch horror movies every day
Speaker 3: that I am home. And when I'm watching a horror movie,
Speaker 3: I like to also play, like maybe a scary game
Speaker 3: on my Steam deck And right now I've been playing
Speaker 3: clover Pit because it's kind of scary, but it's also
Speaker 3: really neutral. I can pull the lever and gamble with
Speaker 3: my life while also watching an old horror movie that
Speaker 3: I love. So it's it's perfect for like half game
Speaker 3: and half watching TV. That's why I recommend this game,
Speaker 3: and I have enjoyed it. I just think they need
Speaker 3: to do more to make it more randomized. It's very
Speaker 3: limited with what.
Speaker 5: I can do well, and so to make it more randomized,
Speaker 5: Like I feel like that is the thing that I
Speaker 5: don't like about it, because like you just don't want
Speaker 5: to gamble any well, any gambling is gonna involve, you know,
Speaker 5: some element of luck, certainly like poker does. But like
Speaker 5: I feel like with Blatchtery you had a little more
Speaker 5: control over the hands you were trying to make and
Speaker 5: the things that were valuable. I feel like you can
Speaker 5: do things like there are certainly charms where it's like, Okay,
Speaker 5: this run, I'm going to do all these things that
Speaker 5: help my sevens and treasure chests, and it's like, sure,
Speaker 5: if you hit those, very valuable, But at the end
Speaker 5: of the day, in this game, you are still just
Speaker 5: pulling a slot machine handle, and like there's you'll never
Speaker 5: get an upgrade that I've seen you misly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, get that perfect hand because you're just pulling a
Speaker 3: slot machine. Have you gotten one where it's blackout where
Speaker 3: all of them are there?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 5: You can get like crazy ones where like breaks and
Speaker 5: you get so many fucking points and everything, but like
Speaker 5: there's nothing like you can manipulate it to like, Okay,
Speaker 5: well i want there to be just treasure chests, so
Speaker 5: I'm going to pick these upgrades to make it so
Speaker 5: there's less clovers and sevens and more treasures. Like you
Speaker 5: can move things more in your favor and kind of
Speaker 5: tweak the odds, but there's nothing that makes it not
Speaker 5: a slot machine.
Speaker 1: Pull.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it is for the gambler.
Speaker 4: And I will say, like, for me, I like to
Speaker 4: cambl and like I enjoy not like all the time.
Speaker 3: I don't have a problem anyway. I enjoy the occasional
Speaker 3: thrill of the gamble. And so this scratches that itch
Speaker 3: for me where I am gambling, especially with my like
Speaker 3: fake life. So when I don't when I when I
Speaker 3: risk it for everything and I lose and I fall
Speaker 3: to my death, I'm like, that's cool, I'll just do
Speaker 3: it again. It's a really nice, low stakes gambling game
Speaker 3: that I think makes me enjoy that element of gambling.
Speaker 3: But I agree with you, there's not a lot of
Speaker 3: skill outside of picking the right pieces together and obviously
Speaker 3: getting the right amount of luck or you know, and
Speaker 3: there's bad luck too if you if you pull a
Speaker 3: six six six, you lose all your money, which really.
Speaker 5: Fun, You're just fuck Sometimes you can make every right
Speaker 5: decision strategically, yeah, like you can set yourself up for
Speaker 5: success and more often than not it'll pay off. But like,
Speaker 5: there are just times where it's like you'll pull the
Speaker 5: things seven times in a row and it's just like, well,
Speaker 5: nothing fucking came up, and I died and it's like, well,
Speaker 5: I made every decision you could make right this. So
Speaker 5: it's like that kind of stuff dampered my excitement for it,
Speaker 5: But like I did enjoy it, and like you said,
Speaker 5: it's like an ideal game if you're just watching something
Speaker 5: in the background or got a podcast on, like, you
Speaker 5: don't need to put a lot of brain power into
Speaker 5: this necessarily.
Speaker 4: So I've had a.
Speaker 3: Lot of time recently where I have been working really
Speaker 3: heavy hours. I've been coming off of a plane, and
Speaker 3: I'm mentally not in a good spot to play. Like
Speaker 3: you know, when I got back from Japan, I could
Speaker 3: not play Ghost Fyote like I could not. I was like,
Speaker 3: I'm barely functioning right now. But I can play clover
Speaker 3: Pit half brain Dead. I can sure I can pull
Speaker 3: that slot machine. So if you're ever wanting to play
Speaker 3: a game but you just don't have the capacity, that's
Speaker 3: where I think this one really comes into play.
Speaker 1: Sure Dan, you're playing Lego Party as well.
Speaker 2: Fuck folks, it's it's bet it is just better than
Speaker 2: Mario Party.
Speaker 5: Yeah, just that I can't sit here despite having what
Speaker 5: Mario Party came out in like two thousands, so at
Speaker 5: least like twenty five years of playing Mario Party with
Speaker 5: my friends and family and colleagues and everything in between,
Speaker 5: and loving it so much and loving the Mario universe
Speaker 5: so much. I cannot sit here and say into a
Speaker 5: microphone that Lego Party isn't better than Mario Party, because
Speaker 5: it is in every fucking way as a video game.
Speaker 5: Like sure, I love seeing Mario and Wallawejien Monty Mole
Speaker 5: and stuff.
Speaker 2: That's great. They can't do that. They can just make
Speaker 2: the game how they wanted, and they made the game
Speaker 2: better in like every fucking way. It takes everything that
Speaker 2: works about Mario Party.
Speaker 5: And makes it so fun and just makes it so
Speaker 5: much the quality of life, quality of the mini games
Speaker 5: that you know, Like I know, I like the bullshit randomization,
Speaker 5: rubber banding and all that stuff of Mario Party. But
Speaker 5: it's like, you know, like once you play a game
Speaker 5: that's like just like, oh wow, this is actually kind
Speaker 5: of skill based, and like it is it's not just
Speaker 5: horseshit where it's like, oh, a bunch of nonsense happened,
Speaker 5: and you landed on the superstar space and then you
Speaker 5: got this bonus star at the end, and I guess
Speaker 5: you won, even though you lost every mini game. You know,
Speaker 5: it's like that stuff doesn't really happen in Lego Party, uh,
Speaker 5: but enough stuff does where it's like you want a
Speaker 5: game like this, a party game, to be a thing
Speaker 5: you can take back on the holidays and play with
Speaker 5: friends and family that don't play games and let them
Speaker 5: feel like, you know, they're not just gonna get you know,
Speaker 5: just roasted, like if you played fucking a fighting game
Speaker 5: with them or something.
Speaker 2: You know, so it.
Speaker 5: Manages to do that, like there's enough I don't want
Speaker 5: to say randomization, but there is enough like chaos that
Speaker 5: they can throw into there to where like I think
Speaker 5: anybody could stand a fighting chance for plans, like I mean.
Speaker 2: Ideal Land, did I know?
Speaker 1: I think?
Speaker 2: I think I won once and I lost the second one.
Speaker 5: So so I was gonna say the I had family
Speaker 5: in last weekend, So I had my sister Katie and
Speaker 5: not Kaylee because Kayle plays a ton of games. Katie
Speaker 5: is her twin who doesn't play games, and her husband
Speaker 5: and her daughter came to town and they spent the
Speaker 5: weekend here. And Katie was always playing Mario Party with
Speaker 5: me growing up and to this day, like whenever it's
Speaker 5: Thanksgiving Christmas, we always all get together and play Mario Party,
Speaker 5: and Katie's brought her husband into this, and like it's
Speaker 5: just part it is a family tradition. And I knew
Speaker 5: it was going to be, like I wonder how they're
Speaker 5: gonna react to this when I say, like, hey, tonight,
Speaker 5: I know we're probably all assuming we're gonna play Mario Party.
Speaker 5: Would you be up for trying this thing? Like, trust
Speaker 5: me on this one. I played one game of it
Speaker 5: seems really good Lego Party, And Katie told me later
Speaker 5: that when I said that, her thought was like, we
Speaker 5: don't really care about Legos and Mario Party is kind
Speaker 5: of our thing, Like, yeah, we don't see each other,
Speaker 5: Like she was just thinking, like, we don't see each
Speaker 5: other that often. Let's go with the Shirefire thing. We
Speaker 5: played a game of it. They loved it so much,
Speaker 5: and they're like, can we play again right now? And
Speaker 5: we played again right then, And then I got a
Speaker 5: text as soon as they got back being like, hey, okay,
Speaker 5: what was the name of that game? And I said,
Speaker 5: and they bought it on Switch.
Speaker 2: So it's like it is.
Speaker 5: As it's so, it's so many smart little tweaks to
Speaker 5: the formula it's still a board game. And at the
Speaker 5: end of the minigame, you all roll dice and go
Speaker 5: around the board and you're trying to get gold bricks
Speaker 5: instead of gold stars. You're getting studs instead of coins.
Speaker 5: It is like a lot of the stuff is one
Speaker 5: to one Mario Party, but the tiny tweaks are just like, okay,
Speaker 5: so if you you know, the moment to moment mini
Speaker 5: games and Mario Party don't really fucking matter that much.
Speaker 5: You know, you get coins, but they could just go
Speaker 5: away whenever this one. Every turn on the board game,
Speaker 5: the placement or the order is determined by the placement
Speaker 5: of the minigames. So if we're playing, let's say me
Speaker 5: and Mike are both two spots away from the gold brick,
Speaker 5: which is the main thing the minigame before that, whoever
Speaker 5: win's first there is gonna roll first. So it's like,
Speaker 5: oh shit, it's not just like I know Mike rolls
Speaker 5: first in the turn order, he's gonna get it. It's like, no,
Speaker 5: if I beat him, I get to roll first, So
Speaker 5: I'm gonna get to it.
Speaker 1: So play mini games for the initiative, I mean, you get.
Speaker 5: The studs and stuff, like just like Mario party, but
Speaker 5: you also get like placement of like okay, I can
Speaker 5: get to that star first. That's super smart. They do
Speaker 5: these like two versus too mini games called brick battles.
Speaker 5: We land on this thing, so it's like'll randomly put
Speaker 5: like okay, me and Mary are together against Mike and Jake,
Speaker 5: and it'll be like for a golden brick, Like each
Speaker 5: each winner gets the golden brick. So it's like suddenly
Speaker 5: there's major stakes of these two verse two ones. They're
Speaker 5: not just random games that pop up. They do little
Speaker 5: things like you know the score at the end of
Speaker 5: the mini games, like you know, maybe ten seconds before
Speaker 5: the end, it'll fade away to kind of create that
Speaker 5: tension of like you know who's winning, but then like
Speaker 5: oh the last ten seconds they're not really sure who's
Speaker 5: going to win. The boards themselves as like they're different
Speaker 5: every time because like what I point to is the
Speaker 5: theme park world where it's like it starts as like
Speaker 5: a theme park thing and there's like a central fountain,
Speaker 5: but as you go to the corners, it'll ask you
Speaker 5: like do you want to build a extreme stunt land
Speaker 5: or do you want to build a haunted house? And
Speaker 5: that totally changes the layout of the course, the different
Speaker 5: ways you can get to the bricks and things like that.
Speaker 5: So it's like every time you play, there's variety. So
Speaker 5: the boards themselves are better. The mini games are way better.
Speaker 5: They're way more skill based. They're hilarious, but there's more variety.
Speaker 5: There's these like trivia games. There's kind of like physics
Speaker 5: y games and everything. There's this one trivia game where
Speaker 5: it's like, uh, it shows famous art pieces like you know,
Speaker 5: Starry Night, but a lego version, and I'll ask you
Speaker 5: questions about Starry Night and you'll get studs based on
Speaker 5: how fast.
Speaker 3: You answer and things like that, like trivia of like
Speaker 3: the artist.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it'll be like, oh when was this made or whatever?
Speaker 2: Or what is the name of this and things like that.
Speaker 4: Oh, that's like your kryptonite.
Speaker 2: Well but I mean that's I was playing with bomb.
Speaker 3: It's like a lego gun and it's like when was
Speaker 3: the first gun invented? And Dan's like no, but.
Speaker 4: I shoot it.
Speaker 1: Back.
Speaker 5: Fucking hates Mario Party, but like there was enough in
Speaker 5: there for everyone, so it's like, you know, she knows
Speaker 5: art very well, and so it's like, oh shit, it's
Speaker 5: an art trivia things.
Speaker 2: So she's winning that and stuff.
Speaker 5: Like I asked her, and she's never enjoyed a second
Speaker 5: of Mario Party.
Speaker 2: I watched her face.
Speaker 5: It's just just pure, just like I'm just going to
Speaker 5: get through this because it's a family thing that this
Speaker 5: weirdo family I'm married into takes seriously. But she actually
Speaker 5: liked playing Lego Party. It's just less time wasting bullshit.
Speaker 5: It's more just quality of life stuff that nintended would
Speaker 5: never do. It's got cross play, it's forty dollars instead
Speaker 5: of seventy dollars. It's just in every way, it's just
Speaker 5: a much much better experience. I will still play Mario
Speaker 5: Party and have a ton of fun with it and
Speaker 5: do shows about it and stuff like that. But like
Speaker 5: when it comes down to it, if I just you know,
Speaker 5: im back with family or whatever and we just want
Speaker 5: to play a fun game like Lego Party.
Speaker 1: Is just better.
Speaker 4: Okay, it's just better.
Speaker 1: Who are you and what have you done with?
Speaker 4: I'm glad. I'm glad that he can evolve.
Speaker 1: It's so noble. It's noble as what it is.
Speaker 3: Thank you, I was thinking of so, so maybe that's
Speaker 3: why that firefighter, an actual hero.
Speaker 1: Called you a yeah, yeah, Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 2: I think I'm probably more important since I have a
Speaker 2: big boss statue.
Speaker 1: Yeah no, Dan, last game. You played a little bit
Speaker 1: of Battlefield six. Yeah, it's look, I haven't really played
Speaker 1: since three. I think I reviewed three for Game Informer
Speaker 1: and I maybe played a little bit of four. I'm
Speaker 1: not a Battlefield guy. I like Bad Company more than
Speaker 1: the core numbered series.
Speaker 5: But it's it was fun. I played like an hour
Speaker 5: with Mike Manati. We had a good time. Like I
Speaker 5: mean anything, you're playing a game with your friend online, Yeah.
Speaker 4: You're a streaming game with your friend.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, it was good.
Speaker 5: It's just like it's a note like I'm just not
Speaker 5: the multiplayer shooter guy anymore. Like maybe I had a
Speaker 5: heyday with like some of the Call of Duty's and
Speaker 5: stuff like that. But I mean, there's just no way
Speaker 5: this is going to be my game when I'm going
Speaker 5: to put one hundred hours into Battlefield six.
Speaker 2: It's it's it's a good one.
Speaker 5: I didn't play the fucking twenty whatever one, the last
Speaker 5: one or Yeah, so I just I'm coming from not
Speaker 5: at all an expert on this series. Uh, it seemed
Speaker 5: fun and it seems likeeople that like the series are
Speaker 5: enjoying it, so that's good for them.
Speaker 2: I'm probably not gonna play a ton more.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm looking forward to playing with Jake at some point.
Speaker 1: They've definitely had to write the ship after twenty forty two,
Speaker 1: which got to a good point in its life cycle
Speaker 1: way too late. They had some problems early on with
Speaker 1: that game that I don't think they ever fully recovered from.
Speaker 5: But yes, then they got Andy mcmher in there. He
Speaker 5: got down. You got in the garage and just kind
Speaker 5: of built it, you know, just two by fours and hammers,
Speaker 5: and here you go and fix it, all right, Swap a.
Speaker 4: Couple zeros and ones, and you got yourself a stew going.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, they got it. They got a good stew
Speaker 1: of military shooter going on with it.
Speaker 3: I gotta play with the people at war Say what
Speaker 3: a stew of military action they talked about.
Speaker 1: They talked about Stu and warfare the movie. It was
Speaker 1: a it was a weird scene out of nowhere. They
Speaker 1: just start talking about stew. I don't remember that part.
Speaker 1: We're doing a bit.
Speaker 5: Is the bit that they didn't talk about Stu. Yeah,
Speaker 5: oh yeah, yeah, I remember when they talked about.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was great. You guys want to talk about emails,
Speaker 1: let me let me.
Speaker 5: I do want to quickly bring up just because I
Speaker 5: know we all are on the go and play games
Speaker 5: and the go. I got the the rog Xbox. Yeah,
Speaker 5: dance quick bit that he does? Is it an Xbox
Speaker 5: hand hell is talking about?
Speaker 1: I know it's Joe. I just didn't see on the list. Yeah,
Speaker 1: go for it, tell us, tell us I got her here.
Speaker 5: Uh, I'm not the super techy uh going and all
Speaker 5: the like how many kibble bits and stuff it's got.
Speaker 2: So I'll just say it the way I know it.
Speaker 5: The least interesting part about it, I think is the
Speaker 5: Xbox integration, just because like I don't know, I'm kind
Speaker 5: of like a lot of people right now where Xbox
Speaker 5: is not really top of mind in terms of like
Speaker 5: the platform I'm really playing a lot of or enthusiastic
Speaker 5: about because they keep kind of making we'll say, quiteable
Speaker 5: decisions and uh, but I will say, as a piece
Speaker 5: of technology, uh this, you know, I like the rog
Speaker 5: ally ax and stuff. I've used that quite a bit.
Speaker 5: This is like it does seem like a significant step
Speaker 5: up in terms of power. Uh, it's I There have
Speaker 5: been a couple of very obvious ones for me, like
Speaker 5: elden Ring, you know, like I remember it could you
Speaker 5: could play it on a steam deck o let or
Speaker 5: a steam deck?
Speaker 4: Why not a steam deck?
Speaker 2: What's that?
Speaker 4: Why not just steam deck?
Speaker 2: No, you could do it on either.
Speaker 5: I mean, I know it had a little bit more power,
Speaker 5: but it was just as Oh yeah, no, the thing's
Speaker 5: expensive as hell.
Speaker 1: Yeah is this one?
Speaker 2: I is it just a thousand? I thought it might
Speaker 2: be more. I I don't know, but it's yeah, the
Speaker 2: black one here is the.
Speaker 1: One changed it Dan. He doesn't pay for it.
Speaker 3: No, I know you so well, this to you with
Speaker 3: a whole hat and maybe some chairs that, yeah, because
Speaker 3: they probably give you, like some extra little swag that
Speaker 3: you like downed in your house.
Speaker 5: No, it just came in the box.
Speaker 1: There's some nachos and then.
Speaker 2: Oh man, if it came with nachos, I'd be saying.
Speaker 3: Came with rog boxers that he's wearing right now.
Speaker 1: The flap of the flap opens right in the center
Speaker 1: of the Oh yeah, yeah, sure, I put my wiener through. Yeah.
Speaker 5: I will say it is more powerful obviously than the
Speaker 5: steam deck. I think there are use cases I will
Speaker 5: go to for Yeah, yeah, that's a's expensive shit. Like
Speaker 5: I'll say it this way, I would not like if
Speaker 5: I didn't get this for free. I don't think I
Speaker 5: would spend one thousand plus dollars on this thing.
Speaker 4: Dollars on a handheld is a choice.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's I do not think I would do that.
Speaker 1: We have to convince Dan to spend ten dollars on
Speaker 1: a multiplayer game. Sometimes, I don't think he'd buy the
Speaker 1: rog X.
Speaker 5: Is the curse of getting everything for my entire life
Speaker 5: is that, Like, I really don't like spending money, so
Speaker 5: it's very difficult for me. And thank you for empathizing.
Speaker 5: I'm gonna make an empathy game about I'm going to
Speaker 5: spend ten dollars.
Speaker 3: You're gonna make an empathy game and find out how
Speaker 3: much it costs a higher one.
Speaker 1: Dev you find all the free stuff you get so
Speaker 1: that thing and then and then the game became a review.
Speaker 3: Of Dan what a piece of ship holding up his
Speaker 3: thousand dollars handheld, telling us that he thought it was
Speaker 3: pretty good, but he doesn't know about all the kibbles.
Speaker 4: And bits of it.
Speaker 1: Fuck you. A slow piano song starts. It's like there's no,
Speaker 1: there's no room for the Bojangles Xbox.
Speaker 2: That's like the room.
Speaker 1: Room, all right.
Speaker 2: It's heavier, heavier if you're holding it.
Speaker 5: It's if you're in bed and he put them on
Speaker 5: your jan and Joe is always dropping his fucking Steam
Speaker 5: deck on his head.
Speaker 2: This will break your fucking nose.
Speaker 5: It is clunkier in terms of the UI because it's
Speaker 5: like there's like an Xbox button on it and stuff,
Speaker 5: but like, ultimately I'm playing this like like everything I
Speaker 5: want to play for the most parts on Steam, So like, okay, sure,
Speaker 5: it's great that I can download Fortnite. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 5: like or hay lo, what things would you need outside
Speaker 5: of Steam? And then at the games so well, that's things.
Speaker 5: It's a Windows thing, so you can do things outside
Speaker 5: of that. But I feel like we've gotten past a
Speaker 5: lot of those storefront where it's like, oh, you got
Speaker 5: to launch the EA app, you got to launch the ubisop.
Speaker 5: Like everyone's kind of just back to Steam right now.
Speaker 5: So it's like the Xbox part of this is definitely
Speaker 5: the least interesting for me. The thing I'm liking a
Speaker 5: lot about it is I do think the form factor,
Speaker 5: despite being heavier, is really good and the power element
Speaker 5: like elden Ring was going to bring up that, Like
Speaker 5: you know, it ran on steam Deck. It chewed through
Speaker 5: battery like nobody's business, and it is kind of chunky.
Speaker 5: I mean, you could get settings in a right spot,
Speaker 5: but like elden Ring ran smooth as silk on this thing,
Speaker 5: and the battery seems much much better, like to the
Speaker 5: point where it's like, if I am playing a bigger game,
Speaker 5: like when I say bigger, like a higher fidelity Triple
Speaker 5: A type game or something, I will probably bring this
Speaker 5: on the plane with me because I think this is
Speaker 5: going to handle it a lot better. And I actually
Speaker 5: I do like the form factor a lot. I think
Speaker 5: I do play, despite what Mary says, a lot of
Speaker 5: endie games. So I think the steam Deck I will probably.
Speaker 6: Consume me because Bob told you to, because she's a
Speaker 6: queen and you're fus.
Speaker 3: She thanks you every episode.
Speaker 2: Uh what about eighties two? That's an indie game?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 1: Soaks On?
Speaker 5: Soaks On?
Speaker 1: I love soaks On?
Speaker 5: How about that?
Speaker 1: Now?
Speaker 5: Does that give me some points? Shobi?
Speaker 2: That's sega.
Speaker 3: May God have mercy on your normy God damn it? Okay, anyway,
Speaker 3: shill your sol you're free fucking xboxtizing it.
Speaker 5: I get everything for free. I shit on things appropriately
Speaker 5: or praise them appropriately. I will praise them for the
Speaker 5: power stuff. It is good, I will say. One of
Speaker 5: the weirder ones for me is Megabank, because Megabank is
Speaker 5: like a fucking what forty megaby game, four hundred megabay game,
Speaker 5: whatever it is. Megabank actually runs a lot better on
Speaker 5: the Steam Deck than it does on the old which
Speaker 5: is weird to me that this thing is running like
Speaker 5: like Ninja Got in four. I am playing that on
Speaker 5: this and it's running very very well. That is like
Speaker 5: a new Triple I don't know if you call Triple
Speaker 5: A necessarily. Maybe it's Triple A, but it's a demanding game.
Speaker 5: I tried playing on the Steam Deck. It was not
Speaker 5: playing great on that. It plays great on this, but Megabank,
Speaker 5: which is a tiny game, doesn't play great on this
Speaker 5: played great on the Steam Deck, So I don't know.
Speaker 5: There's probably a lot of driver stuff I don't have.
Speaker 5: This is pre release still, but like the short version is,
Speaker 5: I am impressed with the way it runs bigger, more
Speaker 5: demanding games right now, and I do like the form
Speaker 5: factor a lot so I think I am going to
Speaker 5: be going back and forth between now the Switch to
Speaker 5: the Xbox Rock ally and the Steam Deck, depending on
Speaker 5: what I'm playing. Obviously, it's always gonna be the switch
Speaker 5: for first party stuff, for a Nintendo stuff or Haites two.
Speaker 5: I mean that was my like, Haities two runs fucking
Speaker 5: great on the Switch. I think for general Steam stuff,
Speaker 5: like you know a lot of indie games and things
Speaker 5: like that, that's the one I'm gonna be using. And
Speaker 5: then if it's a more demanding game, I'm probably gonna
Speaker 5: use the Rock.
Speaker 3: So that's right, so many handholes to choose from.
Speaker 4: God's gift to gamers.
Speaker 2: I'm just doing my job a hero.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it so noble. You guys want to talk about
Speaker 1: emails please?
Speaker 2: All right?
Speaker 1: As usual, you can write into fire Escape past at
Speaker 1: gmail dot com questions, comments, concerns. Might read those questions
Speaker 1: on the air concerns I'll probably ignore, but that's fine.
Speaker 1: We still have the email. You can send stuff to it.
Speaker 1: That is Firescape past at gmail dot com. We have
Speaker 1: a couple tonight. I'll read this first one because it's
Speaker 1: about something I said last episode. Uh Hi, gang Phil
Speaker 1: from Finland. Here in the last email, my I talked
Speaker 1: about how I read Infinite just out of spite to
Speaker 1: annoy my girlfriend but ended up being my favorite book,
Speaker 1: and I got roasted by Mary. Then last episode, Mike
Speaker 1: said that no one should ever read the book and
Speaker 1: it's just for assholes with ponytails in college. Well, I
Speaker 1: can definitely see this being true, and since reading it,
Speaker 1: I've learned that it's a book people mainly care around
Speaker 1: to look impressive. I'm not a reader, though, and at
Speaker 1: the time when I read it, I didn't know anythingbout
Speaker 1: the book or it's fan base. The story and especially
Speaker 1: the themes of addiction hit really hard for me. This
Speaker 1: got me thinking about other things that are actually good
Speaker 1: but their reputation has been ruined by the fan base.
Speaker 1: As someone who plays Deadlock on EU servers, I get
Speaker 1: why mobile players are known as the most toxic people
Speaker 1: in games. And standing in line to a death death
Speaker 1: Grip show, I wanted to place my fist in every
Speaker 1: face that surrounded me. Sure, what are things you like
Speaker 1: that people or the fan base ruin?
Speaker 5: I mean, God, what fandom immune from this? You know?
Speaker 4: I mean they're all there.
Speaker 3: There's this is ample right, I'm sure we have lots
Speaker 3: of them, but it's like, what's like the primo example,
Speaker 3: I think I have a pretty good one. Rick and Morty.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I really liked the first season of that show,
Speaker 3: and I remember being like, this is brilliant, what a
Speaker 3: cool concept of like being able to go into different
Speaker 3: dimensions and like kill characters and like have really serious
Speaker 3: topics like divorce and uh death and like you know,
Speaker 3: and it's just absolutely massacred by the audience to the
Speaker 3: point where like I would never like wear a Rick
Speaker 3: and Morty shirt out and public for fear that someone
Speaker 3: will come up to me and scream, pickle.
Speaker 4: Rick, don't.
Speaker 2: I would pull you aside and what are you doing?
Speaker 1: Mary?
Speaker 4: Yeah, but I do like the show.
Speaker 3: I think it's a good I think it's a good idea.
Speaker 3: I think it's a really smart concept. I thought it
Speaker 3: was funny and I like stand by that. But it's
Speaker 3: hard to say that publicly anymore.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I have to think for what it's worth.
Speaker 2: I do think less of you now, thank you.
Speaker 3: Figured it's like it's unfortunate. I think there's like there's
Speaker 3: redeeming qualities of the show. I think you could make
Speaker 3: maybe some arguments with a lot of shows of that nature,
Speaker 3: like South Parker or something like that where Our Family Guy,
Speaker 3: where people are like really and it's like listen, there
Speaker 3: are times where that show. Those shows are pretty good,
Speaker 3: but the audience can make it tough to love.
Speaker 5: I think. I think it's because like the overwhelming thing
Speaker 5: that you hear about with that audience, it's like, oh,
Speaker 5: you're just not smart enough to understand it.
Speaker 2: Like that is just the most like fuck you not great?
Speaker 1: No mine, mine is. It's probably wine. I I know
Speaker 1: it gets.
Speaker 3: Specifics.
Speaker 1: I I am friends now, I've made friends recently who
Speaker 1: are some of the most intelligent, curious people who will
Speaker 1: never once be judgmental about someone liking or disliking wine
Speaker 1: or having a certain preconception of wine. They're very, very
Speaker 1: grounded people who share the same passion for it that
Speaker 1: I do. But I absolutely I'll come across I'll stumble
Speaker 1: across videos and Instagram where like, wow, these two are
Speaker 1: acting like douches and it's not inviting people into wine.
Speaker 1: This industry that's hitting some challenges now, Like I absolutely
Speaker 1: get why U wine has the reputation it has for
Speaker 1: being stuffy or douchey or like. Similarly, I think like
Speaker 1: people like it's kind of like highbrow, when in fact,
Speaker 1: again it can be very low brow and grounded and
Speaker 1: with really cool people.
Speaker 5: But I think it'd be easy with you, in particular,
Speaker 5: that if someone didn't know you to think that like, oh,
Speaker 5: this guy you know wants to be a smalli A
Speaker 5: AND's obsessed with wines, Like do have some preconceived notions,
Speaker 5: but like I do always defend you when it's like
Speaker 5: I'll give you shit for it, but it's like I
Speaker 5: always say the thing was like, no, he gets it,
Speaker 5: and like he'll roll with the jokes about mbay yeah,
Speaker 5: high flutin or fancy.
Speaker 2: So I think a lot of people probably don't why know, Yeah,
Speaker 2: a lot of.
Speaker 5: Those people probably don't have I mean, tell me if
Speaker 5: I'm wrong. I would imagine a lot of people who
Speaker 5: are very into wine don't have that same sense of
Speaker 5: humor about themselves that you do.
Speaker 1: Uh correct, One the ones I'm good friends with, they
Speaker 1: do like they get it. They also are in on it.
Speaker 1: But there are many, many, many, I'd say probably more
Speaker 1: people who get into it for very different reasons than
Speaker 1: I do. Yesh, Yeah, yeah, no, definitely, Dan, I don't
Speaker 1: know if you have one locked in the life.
Speaker 5: I mean, I mean, there's my two or just like
Speaker 5: you know, when I say every fandom, it's like the
Speaker 5: two things I know more about than anything are wrestling
Speaker 5: in video games, and both fandoms are just like, if
Speaker 5: you were on the outside and you just saw some
Speaker 5: of the shit that becomes controversies or huge online firestorms
Speaker 5: and stuff, you do, what the fuck are these maniacs
Speaker 5: talking about? Like how many stupid fucking video game controversies
Speaker 5: happen every week? And then wrestling with all the like
Speaker 5: tribalism now between like WWE and AW now, and it's
Speaker 5: just like it's it's just embarrassing a lot of this stuff.
Speaker 5: Like there's just so I know so many people like
Speaker 5: you talk about the people that you talk to wine
Speaker 5: talk to about wine and stuff like that are people
Speaker 5: that kind of get it and everything. And like, I
Speaker 5: know so many great friends and great people that love
Speaker 5: wrestling video games the way I do. But then if
Speaker 5: you look at the just broad spectrum of people who
Speaker 5: go into that mainly just look at certain forums and
Speaker 5: social media and stuff like that, it just be like,
Speaker 5: oh my god, what is wrong with these people?
Speaker 1: You know? Yeah, I actually like to flip Phil's question,
Speaker 1: what is a fandom that you automatically assume you're going
Speaker 1: to like because they're a fan of something, or what
Speaker 1: is a thing whose fandom you're like, oh, fuck, they're
Speaker 1: probably really cool. You know.
Speaker 5: It's interesting is that the first thing that came to
Speaker 5: mind are is NORM. Yeah, because it's like that is
Speaker 5: the thing. But here's the thing with NORM too, is like,
Speaker 5: when I hear someone's a big NORM fan, I have
Speaker 5: the feeling of like, okay, okay, you you're funny, you
Speaker 5: understand a great comedian. But there is a contingency of
Speaker 5: NORM fans that are just like they don't look beyond
Speaker 5: just like, oh, sometimes he said things that were like really,
Speaker 5: you know, kind of like you're not supposed to say
Speaker 5: this thing or whatever, and like and don't really understand
Speaker 5: the like, you know, the the art that he brought
Speaker 5: to it.
Speaker 1: Really, you know, the.
Speaker 3: Comedian's fallacy of like you love them because they like
Speaker 3: said something really racy and like spicy and that can
Speaker 3: really hook people. But if that's all you can appreciate
Speaker 3: about that comedy, then you're really not ingesting what they're
Speaker 3: saying behind all of this, you're just saying like ooh,
Speaker 3: they said a curse word, and like yeah, like.
Speaker 5: Norm was never just saying something to be offensive or whatever,
Speaker 5: Like there was always just waste. Like I don't know
Speaker 5: if anyone knows the women driver joke from weekend up
Speaker 5: day way back in the way, but that that three
Speaker 5: part thing that just ends up with the audience just
Speaker 5: being like what the fuck? How do we even respond
Speaker 5: to this? Like that's the genius of Norm. It's not
Speaker 5: just like I made a joke about women drivers, Like
Speaker 5: that's lazy comedy shit, you know, So, yeah, it's I
Speaker 5: that's that's that's the.
Speaker 2: Thing with Norm.
Speaker 3: We always he was unpredictable, Like when he did the
Speaker 3: roast and he was he said really like kind of
Speaker 3: really neutral soft jokes towards it.
Speaker 2: They were just joke.
Speaker 5: Yeah, he was bombing on it, but like everyone expected,
Speaker 5: like oh in a roast, Like I remember I went
Speaker 5: into that thinking he's gonna tell the like craziest ship
Speaker 5: every Cloris Leachman they say, you're over the hill, but
Speaker 5: you'll never be over the hill, not in that car
Speaker 5: you drive, like you know, it's just like the it
Speaker 5: was like ancient jokes and everything, and just watching Greg
Speaker 5: Giraldo and Godfried and all these guys look around like,
Speaker 5: what the fuck.
Speaker 2: Is he doing?
Speaker 5: When the genius is that all these professional career comedians
Speaker 5: are like, what is this guy doing right now?
Speaker 2: Like that that's the genius of it, you know, I agree,
Speaker 2: I think he was the king.
Speaker 4: I think that's a good example.
Speaker 3: But I think all of these examples there could be
Speaker 3: people who take it too far. Probably I have one.
Speaker 1: I have one more from the previous question. Again, once
Speaker 1: you sit down with someone, Dan, I I I've talked
Speaker 1: to a man about this. I generally don't like the
Speaker 1: wrestling fan base. However, when you sat me down and
Speaker 1: showed me all these historic, historic matches and like the backstory,
Speaker 1: and I was like, I get it, Like I get
Speaker 1: a peek into that world, and I totally understand how
Speaker 1: you follow something get obsessed with it. Similarly, Mary, like
Speaker 1: when all of us talk about stuff when we like
Speaker 1: I and I talked to Jake, and I talked to
Speaker 1: people who have been here, I get it, and I've
Speaker 1: been there now I get how people are obsessed with it.
Speaker 1: But also, like generally speaking, people who are obsessed with Japan,
Speaker 1: I'm not okay.
Speaker 5: I like the Japanese studies class in college and there
Speaker 5: were a lot of flame shirts and you know, spiky hair.
Speaker 1: And yeah, but again, and then I went to a
Speaker 1: Soaka I was like, oh fuck, I fucking get it.
Speaker 1: And then I went back again. I'm like, I get it.
Speaker 1: And then we talked to Mary and I'm like, funk,
Speaker 1: I'm jealous. You just went I loved Japan. When you
Speaker 1: actually give, you know, the attention and time to something
Speaker 1: that it deserves, it's to the fan base when they
Speaker 1: actually want to like try to bring you in on it.
Speaker 4: It's great, but it's actually pronounced oh sorry, but yeah.
Speaker 1: In terms of fan bases that I assume I'm gonna like,
Speaker 1: I will say, trying to think of like shows, I
Speaker 1: would definitely say, I'm curious if you guys hear that
Speaker 1: someone's a fan of It's always Sonny, do you have
Speaker 1: a preconceived notion of them? Or is that show kind
Speaker 1: of neutral enough these days where it's big.
Speaker 4: I think it's really hard.
Speaker 3: I think people I don't like like It's always sunny,
Speaker 3: because again I actually think, much like Norm, that show
Speaker 3: is spicy as hell, and there are people who are
Speaker 3: really superficial that are like.
Speaker 1: I can't believe I did that show.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they did, you know, racist jokes and they have
Speaker 3: like really spicy episodes where they like do things you're
Speaker 3: not supposed to be able to do, and they fuck
Speaker 3: up that one guy who's like a priest, like ruined
Speaker 3: his life. Yeahsom you can. You can enjoy that show
Speaker 3: without understanding the nuance and the brilliance of the writers
Speaker 3: and the direction that show is like brilliantly directed too.
Speaker 3: I feel like that's not talked about enough, But I digress.
Speaker 3: There are a lot of idiots that love it's always Sonny.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, for sure. I I tend to like, I
Speaker 1: think it's I don't know if that's a matt of
Speaker 1: me thinking they're gonna be cool, or think it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's my kind of common ground with them as I
Speaker 1: get to know them, or something like that.
Speaker 3: Maybe, I mean, what a brilliant equalizer I have. I
Speaker 3: have bonded over The Simpsons my entire life with people
Speaker 3: of all backgrounds, of all ages, of all creeds, of
Speaker 3: all everything. Like, if you love the Simpsons, I have
Speaker 3: a commonality with you, and I can talk to you
Speaker 3: about very specific jokes from very specific episodes. It's locked
Speaker 3: in and I will probably like that person a lot
Speaker 3: better because we've bonded over those episodes, even if we
Speaker 3: don't have anything else in common.
Speaker 5: Mary, I think that's the best answer is because like,
Speaker 5: especially like that speaks to a certain like, oh.
Speaker 2: You grew up with the.
Speaker 1: Work.
Speaker 4: It was on all the fucking time, but.
Speaker 5: It's also aged incredibly well, and all those jokes are
Speaker 5: still really fucking funny, and like that if someone was
Speaker 5: like a Simpsons could grown up, Like I feel like
Speaker 5: Alex Navarro when I first started talking to him in
Speaker 5: like two thousand and eight or whatever, It's just like, okay,
Speaker 5: or Simpson's guys, yep, I totally get it. We can
Speaker 5: we can make these references. You're going to get it.
Speaker 5: So Mary, you're the same way with that. You know,
Speaker 5: Michael's jock but whatever.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he was too cool for school.
Speaker 3: I think like this is something like to this day,
Speaker 3: I send people Simpson gifts when like something bad or
Speaker 3: good happens at work and there is like a person
Speaker 3: who will like DM me and be like that was good,
Speaker 3: and it's just like all right, we get it, we
Speaker 3: get it. I have I'll die with that, like I
Speaker 3: will die with these Simpson references. It'll be a part
Speaker 3: of me forever.
Speaker 1: There's the last one. Mary, you'll appreciate this this time
Speaker 1: of year, very specific thing. Anybody else who's as into
Speaker 1: the movie the thing I'm.
Speaker 3: They have to be cool, right.
Speaker 1: I don't know that I've ever heard that someone loves
Speaker 1: the thing, like loves it, like goes to see it
Speaker 1: in theaters still in twenty twenty five, et cetera. And
Speaker 1: I've been like, oh, they probably I probably won't get
Speaker 1: along with them, Like I assume I will get along
Speaker 1: with that person. If that's the case. I guess it's
Speaker 1: just one of my times a certain responsibility. Yeah, Like,
Speaker 1: and it's not it's not a pretentious movie too, So
Speaker 1: like I don't think there's any chance there being pretentious
Speaker 1: about it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'll put mcgroober in that category.
Speaker 1: Yeah, mcgoverer, I do you really like and get.
Speaker 2: What makes mcgoover so exceptional? It's like, I'm just gonna
Speaker 2: like you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't think you forget a lot about mcgrooover
Speaker 3: to think I.
Speaker 5: Kind of do.
Speaker 3: I think you kind of do.
Speaker 1: It's like, I don't know. I'm not going to it
Speaker 1: this year because I fell asleep halfway through and Dan
Speaker 1: put his finger like up to this fucking wrist in
Speaker 1: my nose.
Speaker 3: I came here, I will say. I will say, you
Speaker 3: kind of rung the bell on macgoober. I feel like
Speaker 3: people didn't talk about that anymore, and as it kind
Speaker 3: of rises in popularity, I recognize that you were like
Speaker 3: an original seer of that.
Speaker 5: I think I'm maybe one of the loudest in Christopher
Speaker 5: Nolan has done interviews talking about how much he loves mcgover.
Speaker 5: But like, I've been yelling about it for fifty teen years,
Speaker 5: about how it's the best comedy I've ever seen. So
Speaker 5: I will take credit for a Groover's current cultural status.
Speaker 1: I'll give you that one you should and the others.
Speaker 4: All other content is worthless.
Speaker 2: Okay, there's probably a lot of game other reason in
Speaker 2: terms of like good or bad?
Speaker 3: Are we on the are we on the bad?
Speaker 5: I got one.
Speaker 2: I just I can't help it say about it may
Speaker 2: seem judgmental.
Speaker 1: Anime or something.
Speaker 5: I mean, it's worse. God, it's worse than anime. It's
Speaker 5: like if I find out someone is like obsessed with
Speaker 5: or deeply interested in Kingdom hearts.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you were so surprised when I told you I
Speaker 1: liked the first game right, like I would.
Speaker 5: I've been friends with a lot of like Mike Manati
Speaker 5: is one of my favorite human beings on the planet,
Speaker 5: and he loves Kingdom Hearts. Yeah, but if if someone
Speaker 5: is like a Kingdom Hearts person, they got to kind
Speaker 5: of dig themselves out.
Speaker 2: Of that hole a little bit with me.
Speaker 5: You know, it's like, ooh, I'm gonna all right, I'm
Speaker 5: not going to immediately judge it, but like, yeah you did.
Speaker 5: You got a longer way.
Speaker 2: To go with me than if you hadn't said that.
Speaker 1: Yeah. No, I remember I told you when I told
Speaker 1: you that I have a soft spot for the first Game.
Speaker 1: I don't like any other ones that much, but that
Speaker 1: first game has a special place mare. But I didn't
Speaker 1: tell you that until we had been friends.
Speaker 5: For glad you didn't otherwise our entire lives. I waited
Speaker 5: this podcast wouldn't exist.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I waited twelve years to tell you good because
Speaker 1: we were talking about Nadi. But that brings me to
Speaker 1: my next one. And I know this has been controversial
Speaker 1: on this show before, and I'm trying to come around
Speaker 1: on it because people have pointed out like, oh, people
Speaker 1: can like things you don't like, but I if someone
Speaker 1: is uh thirty or older and still obsessed with Disney,
Speaker 1: I am going.
Speaker 4: To you're going this way, I'm going to.
Speaker 1: Judge you, and I I'm not saying it's good that
Speaker 1: I'm judging you. I'm not saying it's good if in fact,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna come out and say it's bad on me
Speaker 1: for judging them right away.
Speaker 3: But but shame on me.
Speaker 1: It's probably a defense mechanism. I have learned to distrust
Speaker 1: those people because they don't fit into my lifestyle and
Speaker 1: my circles of friends. You ever, but I have like
Speaker 1: some family members who I love, love to kibbles and
Speaker 1: bits and the kids.
Speaker 5: Yeah, okay, that makes it a little better. I try
Speaker 5: to be reasonable about this. Despite my knee jerk reaction
Speaker 5: of being like, oh that's weird, I think like.
Speaker 1: Oh, okaying me and you are being very noble about this.
Speaker 2: We're being noble and smart and respectable people here.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I fucking love Mario.
Speaker 5: If you were like a normy, if you were just
Speaker 5: somebody who doesn't know shit about Disney or followed it
Speaker 5: like it's the last time you engage with Nintendo or
Speaker 5: Disney was in nineteen eighty eight, and you put me,
Speaker 5: who's obsessed with Mario and Donkey Kong and all these things,
Speaker 5: and Mike Manatti, who will also Mario and Donkey and
Speaker 5: all those things. But more importantly the Disney thing. I
Speaker 5: don't think it would look that different. I think they
Speaker 5: would look at it as like media that is for kids.
Speaker 5: And I understand that, like I am a thousand percent
Speaker 5: whatever you want to call I will own that.
Speaker 2: It's just the Disney thing is I know, we've talked
Speaker 2: about it, but it's just.
Speaker 3: Uh, people, if you don't have our hobbies are freakishly weird.
Speaker 4: Like I have family members that are like, are you.
Speaker 3: Still playing all those video games?
Speaker 1: And they you guys, you guys are in the video
Speaker 1: games and Disney. I'm in the wine.
Speaker 3: And when it's the only cultured one.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Marror, you're probably the most I don't know welcoming
Speaker 5: is the word, but like even like like a del
Speaker 5: she's in games, right, but even like like a K
Speaker 5: Pop demon Hunter's thing, it's like, do you have me
Speaker 5: watch it? And like I was kind of like, I see,
Speaker 5: I get it. Okay, yeah, this is well made. This
Speaker 5: is well made. And then you see the level of
Speaker 5: just like what a phenomenon it's been like with adults
Speaker 5: and stuff and like singing the songs and stuff. I
Speaker 5: could not tell you a gun to my head what
Speaker 5: any of those songs were or characters or I just
Speaker 5: remember like, yeah, they did a good job with that movie,
Speaker 5: like dre seeing like adults be obsessed with the stuff.
Speaker 2: I just can't.
Speaker 1: Adults in Brooklyn are are donning merch with kpe Op
Speaker 1: Dema Hunters left and right.
Speaker 3: They love it. I mean, it's a cultural zeitgeist thing
Speaker 3: at this it is. I just wanted you to jump
Speaker 3: on the wave. I think I like can respect quality
Speaker 3: and so even though that also I was like this
Speaker 3: is the leap of faith for me personally.
Speaker 4: But I was like, animation is so good, songs are catchy.
Speaker 4: I was like, I'm fine with this.
Speaker 3: I can accept this, even though it's not something I
Speaker 3: would usually go down into like and be like really into.
Speaker 3: But like I feel that way about a lot of
Speaker 3: Disney films too, where I'm like, this doesn't seem like
Speaker 3: it's going to be something I love, But every once
Speaker 3: in a while.
Speaker 4: Disney film like totally gets me and I'm like this
Speaker 4: is great.
Speaker 3: I'm glad I watched this even though I'm not eight,
Speaker 3: so everyone can appreciate a good Disney film.
Speaker 5: I will never deny the obvious quality and artistry that
Speaker 5: goes into Disney, like Disney, Pixar all that. You know,
Speaker 5: like clearly they're extremely well made. But as an adult
Speaker 5: who's just like, oh, everyone's talking about Wally, is this
Speaker 5: transcendent piece of film. I saw Wally and I left
Speaker 5: and I'm like, yeah, they probably did a good job
Speaker 5: on that. And then, like you know, twenty years later whatever,
Speaker 5: people are still talking about, like it's the fucking Chinatown,
Speaker 5: you know, it's it's That's the thing I don't really get.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a good good you can hear it.
Speaker 4: What is China?
Speaker 2: I'm saying.
Speaker 5: The way people talk about it is like how did
Speaker 5: you you were not your life was changed and moved
Speaker 5: by Wally. It was like, I don't know, it was
Speaker 5: a robot. And then they were like the animation was good, whatever, it.
Speaker 4: Wasn't that deep.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Like again, if you if you have kids and stuff,
Speaker 5: it's like, oh, my kids are really into this and everything.
Speaker 5: But like, I just can't imagine being affected by a
Speaker 5: Disney movie or a Pixar movie.
Speaker 2: Like as an adult, you.
Speaker 1: Know, Pixar, I will go to bat for Pixar over Disney,
Speaker 1: but that's.
Speaker 5: I would pick them over. I mean, I guess I'll
Speaker 5: have really seen this Toy Story but yeah, yeah, and
Speaker 5: like Toy Story.
Speaker 2: Like they're all good movies.
Speaker 5: I remember, like Hanson was yelling at me about seeing
Speaker 5: Toy Story three and The Incredibles for like most of
Speaker 5: the time we worked.
Speaker 1: Incredibles is his like favorite movie, right.
Speaker 2: Probably he's also obsessed with Incredible.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's something about dress Bar. I would guess he
Speaker 1: would friend.
Speaker 5: An. I don't know if he would.
Speaker 2: Say, what my favorite movie of all time? Well, I
Speaker 2: made him watch it with me, but.
Speaker 3: It's fucking mcgrib We all know.
Speaker 5: Bocklips now is my.
Speaker 2: Favorite movie movie?
Speaker 1: The kill They kill a boat full of puppies. I'm
Speaker 1: an alude, that's me that's ad about the war that
Speaker 1: he cares more about surfing and he means face.
Speaker 3: Joins our list of media that we don't like the
Speaker 3: people who love that film.
Speaker 1: Yeah no, but I did.
Speaker 5: That's to say that, like I finally have for years
Speaker 5: of em bugging me, watch Toy Story three and The Incredibles,
Speaker 5: and my only memory is the credits roll and me
Speaker 5: being like, yeah, I get those those seemed like they
Speaker 5: were well. I couldn't tell you a single fucking thing
Speaker 5: that happened in either one of those movies, but I
Speaker 5: remember the like, ah, they're fine, you know, like again
Speaker 5: if I have kids and stuff, But to be super
Speaker 5: affected by it as someone over the age of like ten,
Speaker 5: I don't really understand, you know that.
Speaker 1: I guess the last thing I want to say is
Speaker 1: there It's funny when you run into someone who's a
Speaker 1: part who's also a fan of the thing you are,
Speaker 1: there's always that moment of like feeling each other out.
Speaker 1: I think, where are you really cool? I'm using wine
Speaker 1: as an example because I will say even I, when
Speaker 1: I first find out someone's into wine, this is how
Speaker 1: much I the fan base can be stand or can
Speaker 1: push me away. When I first find out someone's super
Speaker 1: into wine. And this is why I'm so self aware
Speaker 1: of how it makes me look. I automatically assume I'm
Speaker 1: gonna be like, Oh, they're probably gonna be a bit
Speaker 1: stuck up about it. They're probably gonna be a bit.
Speaker 1: They're gonna be a bit they need to prove that
Speaker 1: they are the biggest wine fan, and the fans are
Speaker 1: the biggest, the most knowledgeable person in the room. However,
Speaker 1: then I get to know people and like I kind
Speaker 1: of you know, you do that like that sussing out period,
Speaker 1: and then all of a sudden, I'm like, oh, no,
Speaker 1: they're they're into it in the same way I am.
Speaker 1: It's like, no, if anything, we're trying to make it less,
Speaker 1: put the bring the walls down, because there's actually really
Speaker 1: fucking cool aspects about it, and a lot of people
Speaker 1: do making wine around the world are some of the
Speaker 1: coolest fucking people in the world and want to share that.
Speaker 1: But there's still a lot of people who have different
Speaker 1: motives and it's such a big world where there's gonna
Speaker 1: be yeah, people coming from every angle possible.
Speaker 5: That I mean, I can't tell you like I struggle
Speaker 5: with it with games, but I do kind of stay away.
Speaker 5: Like here's difference in like games in wrestling. Thing is
Speaker 5: like whenever I see like the bullshit like gaming controversies
Speaker 5: and stuff, it's so embarrassing, but like I don't really
Speaker 5: see it. It exists on like Twitter and YouTube comment
Speaker 5: and stuff that I don't really see. I'll hear about
Speaker 5: it and be like that's stupid, Whereas like for wrestling,
Speaker 5: I am sitting in a crowd with anywhere between I
Speaker 5: don't know, a thousand people and one hundred thousand people,
Speaker 5: and I look around and I see the way some
Speaker 5: of these people act, and it's just like there have
Speaker 5: been so many times I've been surrounded by people where
Speaker 5: it's like, boy, I don't know, do I like this sucks?
Speaker 5: Like I don't even know if like this it's not
Speaker 5: gonna turn me against the art of wrestling or anything
Speaker 5: like that.
Speaker 1: But like.
Speaker 5: You know, from just you know, misogynistic stuff for just
Speaker 5: shitty you know, chants and stuff like that, to like
Speaker 5: just dumb stuff where it's like I'm going to an
Speaker 5: NXT show once and Simojoe was wrestling. I know, you
Speaker 5: guys aren't wrestling people. You know, Smojoe Man's a fucking tank.
Speaker 5: He's he's fucking awesome, like and he would beat the
Speaker 5: shit out of anyone. And I'm sitting next to a
Speaker 5: guy at this NXC crowd and like this guy that
Speaker 5: just you know, morbidly ob and is sitting there and like,
Speaker 5: Simo Joe is one of the best wrestlers in the world,
Speaker 5: and the entire match. All he's doing is shitting on
Speaker 5: Joe and just being like you fucking you're a wrestler, Like,
Speaker 5: work on your cardio, Joe, work on your cardios, Like
Speaker 5: this guy.
Speaker 2: Fucking a muscle. What are you fucking talking about?
Speaker 5: Or like, you know, I've seen so much shit with
Speaker 5: like female wrestlers and stuff and people chanting stuff about
Speaker 5: who they're fucking are, like you know, page if the
Speaker 5: sex tape came out, and like all this stuff and
Speaker 5: like just see people being really fucking gross and shitty,
Speaker 5: and uh, that's the thing is Like with wrestling, it's
Speaker 5: more visible for me because I have to sit in
Speaker 5: a crowd around them sometimes, and with video games it
Speaker 5: just kind of exists outside of my blinders, you know.
Speaker 2: So yeah, yeah, I mean they're both.
Speaker 1: No. I brought it up because it's tough. I wish
Speaker 1: I could do more to bring down that those stereotypes,
Speaker 1: you know and one felt swoop, But I can't because
Speaker 1: they stem from somewhere and these people still exist out
Speaker 1: there and I run into them all the time at
Speaker 1: a company where I work. It's like, you see it,
Speaker 1: we take, you know, pains to try to make it
Speaker 1: approachable and on Fridays. If you wear a Hawaiian shirt
Speaker 1: into the bar, you get a discount. Literally, it's all
Speaker 1: off Fridays, Like we do stuff like that all the time.
Speaker 1: I'm literally hosting a Smash Bros. Tournament.
Speaker 2: That's what I was gonna say.
Speaker 5: If it was a legitimately pretentious place, they wouldn't let
Speaker 5: you host a Smash Brothers turnament.
Speaker 1: So so, but then you also get people in there
Speaker 1: who like, know, our seller is really good. We have
Speaker 1: like twenty five hundred bottles, We have really good wines.
Speaker 1: We have stuff you can't find anywhere else in the city.
Speaker 1: They come in and there are the people who many
Speaker 1: people who go in there are more knowledgeable by wine
Speaker 1: than me. And many of them really want me to
Speaker 1: know it. And no, I shouldn't say many a bunch
Speaker 1: of them want me to know it, and they want
Speaker 1: the table that they're with to know it, and they
Speaker 1: want their date to know it. And those are the
Speaker 1: kind of people who give it a bad name. And like,
Speaker 1: it's kind of this endless battle. Again, I don't blame
Speaker 1: people for having the preconceptions of about it that they
Speaker 1: come from somewhere, because there are people like that out there.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it kind of feels like just this like completely,
Speaker 5: like I don't have opposite the word, but like you know,
Speaker 5: with the wrestling thing, where it's like wrestling everyone assumes
Speaker 5: they're total idiots, and with wine people they assume they're
Speaker 5: all pretentious and things like that, and it's like if
Speaker 5: you exist somewhere, not on the extremes, it's.
Speaker 2: Just kind of thing where you see the compute. Yeah, yeah, I.
Speaker 3: Think also, I like sometimes it resonates with me, just
Speaker 3: the idea that the things you hate and other people
Speaker 3: are often the things you hate in yourself. Yeah, there's
Speaker 3: a self reflection that can be lost on people when
Speaker 3: they're like, oh, do you know wine as good as me?
Speaker 4: And it's like, who hurt you.
Speaker 3: That said that you didn't belong here, because you do.
Speaker 3: If you like wine, you do belong here. And I
Speaker 3: feel the same way about every genre.
Speaker 1: Like we can peek out right now if you want.
Speaker 3: You're a gamer unless you play it on expert mode,
Speaker 3: and it's like, babe, like it's not that deep, And
Speaker 3: I feel bad for you that you felt like you
Speaker 3: weren't a good enough gamer because you didn't you weren't
Speaker 3: able to beat that game that one time, and so
Speaker 3: now now you're hurt and like that that's sad.
Speaker 5: I think about that and like not to get like
Speaker 5: introspective or whatever three hours into a podcast here here, it's.
Speaker 1: Gone, way to run fucking show.
Speaker 5: This is something I've realized a lot. Or it's like
Speaker 5: I think you guys can both attest. I'm not an
Speaker 5: angry person. I'm not someone who ever wants to get
Speaker 5: in a fight. I've never thrown a punch or you know,
Speaker 5: like stuff like that, Like I'm not that's not me.
Speaker 5: I'm not an angry guy. There is one like again,
Speaker 5: my father, you know how much I fucking love him
Speaker 5: and bring on stuff and I have a complicated relationship,
Speaker 5: but ultimately love the guy. He is the one person
Speaker 5: when he is being extremely stubborn or just make no
Speaker 5: fucking sense or just like just you know, just something
Speaker 5: he's driving me insane about what he's saying or what
Speaker 5: he's doing, that I will feel that kind of like
Speaker 5: just like I can fucking punch you in the face
Speaker 5: right now, like I just and I've never felt that
Speaker 5: in my life about anyone. And it's like it does
Speaker 5: like make you kind of think that thing of like, uh, okay,
Speaker 5: I think I'm still kind of struggling with like I
Speaker 5: still have you know, I've been trying to kind of
Speaker 5: you know, recognize and remove the things that I from
Speaker 5: myself that I see from him over all these years
Speaker 5: and everything, and then I'll still kind of see it,
Speaker 5: and I think I'll maybe still see some of myself
Speaker 5: in there, and I think I get angry because of that,
Speaker 5: because like that's the only thing that I like.
Speaker 2: He's my father. I love him to death.
Speaker 5: But it's like I will get like worked up and
Speaker 5: be like I could throw a punch right now, and
Speaker 5: it's like, oh, probably because I think I probably still
Speaker 5: do some of that.
Speaker 1: That you can control yourself ultimately, and you can recognize
Speaker 1: it in yourself when you're doing those things, and then
Speaker 1: you can stop it. So then when you see someone
Speaker 1: else doing the things that you have the impulse to
Speaker 1: do yet control.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you can't do this. You can't realize what you're saying.
Speaker 1: The only way you ran in the face. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's frustrating. Yes, yeah, but yeah, thank you, thank
Speaker 1: you Phil.
Speaker 2: Thanks Phil. Let me go think about my life.
Speaker 1: Oh who's this? Who's better to read this? Either one?
Speaker 1: Either you could read this? Who wants to read it. Actually, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's from uh it's it's from your neighboring state. I
Speaker 1: guess uh lewis LOI.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Hey, mister Crappin and Friendshi Hello with mister With
Speaker 5: Mister yot With had some beers with Yota in the
Speaker 5: current gaming discussion and the inevitable comparison to its predecessor,
Speaker 5: I lament as I have the past few years the
Speaker 5: lack of recognition for Sushima's amazing multiplayer mode. At it
Speaker 5: as a free post on She'll See. I've invested the
Speaker 5: majority of my time in that game with my.
Speaker 4: Friend ever played it not the multiplayer.
Speaker 5: Of four player wave based mode with multiple difficulty levels
Speaker 5: culminating in nightmare gear based leveling, build crafting in class based,
Speaker 5: but it sounds like Randy pitch redier player choices that
Speaker 5: promote skills, synergies, and teamwork in addition to a two
Speaker 5: v two mode that plays like a third person Tetris attack,
Speaker 5: all the amazing combat mechanics of Sushima with Friends set
Speaker 5: against the supernatural backdrop with demons. My question for you
Speaker 5: is what other primarily single player games have had great
Speaker 5: multiplayer modes that you feel warn't appreciate it enough. Another
Speaker 5: example that springs to mind is Dragon Age Inquisitions four
Speaker 5: player dungeon diving. Thanks to keep you great content coming.
Speaker 5: That is Kent from Saint Louis, Missouri. PS, keep shitting
Speaker 5: on my great state. I get a friction of excitement
Speaker 5: every time you mentioned how bad this place is. Missouri
Speaker 5: is a garbage state, probably the worst in the entire nation.
Speaker 1: I have enough there myself to uh to say, I'm
Speaker 1: not the biggest fan either. It was all the Southwest men. Sorry, yes,
Speaker 1: got Sushima's mode they added with the DLCs. Fucking awesome.
Speaker 2: What was it called? There was like legends, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: we did it on a stream and it was like
Speaker 2: it was really good.
Speaker 1: It was. It's fucking rad. The progression was amazing, Like
Speaker 1: you're basically thrust into almost like years of war Horde,
Speaker 1: but you are the attackers and then you have to
Speaker 1: figure out how to approach it with different classes. Oh,
Speaker 1: it's amazing, and uh, each of the classes had such
Speaker 1: a good progression tree. It felt like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: almost like as deep as a single Some single player
Speaker 1: games really good. But I love this question because I
Speaker 1: actually asked this of people. A lot games are primarily
Speaker 1: single player that have this like kind of way better
Speaker 1: than it needs to be multiplayer mode.
Speaker 5: People would say you are tacked on, like I feel
Speaker 5: like Buiershock two kind of got.
Speaker 1: That boats Shock two. I will also say Resistance to
Speaker 1: that three player co op mode that it had. There
Speaker 1: were three character classes and it was way more in
Speaker 1: depth than anybody needed to make. They had the spec Ops,
Speaker 1: they had the Medic, and they had the Assault, and
Speaker 1: me and my brothers we just like dabbled in it
Speaker 1: because I just finally the PS three was not new,
Speaker 1: but I just finally got a PS three and we
Speaker 1: were all home for Christmas, and I was like, let's
Speaker 1: try this out. I've been playing Resistance too from Insomniac.
Speaker 1: They did Bratchet Client, etc. They're like, oh cool, I
Speaker 1: didn't know they were going more mature with this game,
Speaker 1: so whatever. So we played it and then we were
Speaker 1: getting our ass kicked. If you played it, you know
Speaker 1: it can be tough. We were all spec Ops because
Speaker 1: they were the DPS class, and then I was like, well,
Speaker 1: maybe we should try playing all three classes. And then
Speaker 1: of course that was us as a family's introduction to
Speaker 1: like role based multiplayer co op sure where you couldn't
Speaker 1: all just be the same class and get through. So
Speaker 1: then I started playing the the Metic, my brother started
Speaker 1: playing the Tank the Soldier. I think it was and like,
Speaker 1: you really do need to play all through class and
Speaker 1: it was such a well designed co op experience. Resistance
Speaker 1: Too is one of the ones I point to all
Speaker 1: the time, along with Sushima. Mass Effect three's co op
Speaker 1: Hormone was amazing. And then what's the last one I had? Mine?
Speaker 6: Oh?
Speaker 1: Oh, I think we talked about this. You can hack enemies,
Speaker 1: they're they're like brain chips, you can curve bullets. I
Speaker 1: want to say Gershman was a huge fan of the shooter.
Speaker 5: At the first first personularity. No, it's I know what
Speaker 5: you're talking about. Starts as an as I thought. Not
Speaker 5: same people are not saying to me in their cars
Speaker 5: right now, is it might be saying I think Conneticut.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that game was. That game was
Speaker 1: awesome too, Like you're you you can hack ais like
Speaker 1: almost like uh, Cyberpunk twenty seventy seven style. I had multiplayer, yeah,
Speaker 1: co op mode, like uh, I don't I think it
Speaker 1: was separate from the It was definitely separate experience, like
Speaker 1: these other games from the single player, but it had it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: those are the ones that come to mind.
Speaker 5: I Uh, the first one that comes to mind for
Speaker 5: me is kind of weird because the multiplayer was loved
Speaker 5: and perfect dark you know, the campaign was great.
Speaker 2: Multiplayer is great.
Speaker 5: But the thing I think people never talk about though
Speaker 5: was great was a multiplayer mode based on the campaign.
Speaker 5: So you could do counter op mode where let's say
Speaker 5: I am playing as Joanna going from level to level
Speaker 5: just like it is in the campaign, and then Mary
Speaker 5: you could play as any enemy on the level, so
Speaker 5: like where the actual enemy n PCs would be in everything,
Speaker 5: and you could like, you know, if you get killed,
Speaker 5: you could, you know it swap to the next one
Speaker 5: or whatever. And you can like shove like there were
Speaker 5: physics and stuff. You could shove a couch in front
Speaker 5: of a door or whatever, so like, oh, I think
Speaker 5: I'm gonna go plowing through this door and everything, but
Speaker 5: you put a thing there and you get a chance
Speaker 5: to shoot me and everything. Like the idea of like
Speaker 5: a single player campaign where somebody can be the bad
Speaker 5: guys and fuck with you. Like I thought that was
Speaker 5: really cool and no one ever really talked about it. Wait, sorry,
Speaker 5: this perfect dark from the sixty four Fuck. I don't
Speaker 5: know if I ever played that, but I.
Speaker 1: Played on I played a lot of the like a
Speaker 1: lot lot of the multiplayer bot based stuff.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, yeah, that'suff was awesome. Yeah, but counter Out
Speaker 5: mode was really cool, interesting.
Speaker 4: I think one that is beloved, so I'll say this
Speaker 4: with a caveat, but wasn't.
Speaker 3: The main purpose of the game was Years of War three,
Speaker 3: which had a fucking baller competitive mode that is still
Speaker 3: beloved to this day and actually still has a competitive
Speaker 3: player base because is that like.
Speaker 1: The smash Bros Melee of the franchise that people still
Speaker 1: roll with Because people still roll with it.
Speaker 4: It's so fun.
Speaker 3: They had this like train level where like trains go
Speaker 3: through and you have to like go after each other
Speaker 3: with the torque boat.
Speaker 4: I mean, it was so fun to attack.
Speaker 3: Real people, like you know, humans instead of NPCs in
Speaker 3: Gears of War, and they just cracked it. It was
Speaker 3: awesome the way they put it together. And I remember,
Speaker 3: I think I was working at GameSpot at the time,
Speaker 3: but I remember when it came out, everyone was like,
Speaker 3: why is this so good? Like you didn't expect it
Speaker 3: to be that good and to this day, people talk
Speaker 3: about it and play it.
Speaker 4: I don't play it no more. But like I loved
Speaker 4: that multiplayer when I came.
Speaker 5: Out, I was surprised to be like that game. Obviously,
Speaker 5: the campaigns were great, and it was known for co op.
Speaker 5: It was like one of the big first online.
Speaker 3: Totally, I guess it is playing. But the competitive multiplayer
Speaker 3: was shocking, and.
Speaker 2: That's what surprises me.
Speaker 5: As Like, you know, I played through all of them
Speaker 5: with Kayla in the last couple of years, and we
Speaker 5: just recently were going through Gears reloaded, and we would
Speaker 5: end our streams with, like, let's just do a one
Speaker 5: on one match a small map torqubos only, so you
Speaker 5: can only get chainsaw kills or torque bows, and it's
Speaker 5: like it's so tense and like the levels are designed
Speaker 5: very well, and it's like that shit, I think we
Speaker 5: maybe slept on a bit of the like competitive multiplayer
Speaker 5: Gears It's good.
Speaker 1: I mean I still play a lot.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, the competitive mode of these are still really good.
Speaker 4: Like there's still I would still recommend them.
Speaker 3: They're like brutal because you're playing against people, so they
Speaker 3: will fuck you up.
Speaker 2: But it's in the shotgun people that just fucking yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, especially if they've been playing now. Yes, if you're
Speaker 3: joining a lobby now a good fucking luck, because you're
Speaker 3: playing against people have been playing for ten year were
Speaker 3: probably like insane.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I'm trying to figure it out. Okay, so
Speaker 1: uh doublo James Bond Double O seven Agent Underfire. We
Speaker 1: had it for the PS two. There was a multiplayer
Speaker 1: mode competitive that was one of the coolest fucking things. Basically,
Speaker 1: one team, you're on each side of a train track. Mary,
Speaker 1: you you mentioning the Gears map. Just just jog this memory, yes,
Speaker 1: you like? This is my Uh you proosted me hard.
Speaker 1: One team is defending a VIP. It might be called VIP.
Speaker 1: I can't I just tried googling. I couldn't find it.
Speaker 1: One team is trying to defend this VIP. It's just
Speaker 1: a dude in a suit with a suitcase that's getting
Speaker 1: onto this train that's arriving at a predetermined time. The
Speaker 1: other team is on the other side of the tracks.
Speaker 1: And keep in mind that like on each side of
Speaker 1: the tracks there it's like a city scape, so there
Speaker 1: are different buildings you can get in. It reminds me
Speaker 1: a spy party, so you're and obviously much more rudimentary,
Speaker 1: but the other two are trying to get weapons and
Speaker 1: take up positions, like in such a way that they'll
Speaker 1: be able to kill the VIP as he makes his
Speaker 1: way from a building to the train. So it becomes
Speaker 1: almost like Enemy at the Gates with Jude Law and
Speaker 1: Ed Harris, where you're like, you're doing the sniper duel
Speaker 1: where there's two people on this side, two people on
Speaker 1: the other, and you're just trying to get a good
Speaker 1: vantage point without you know, the like I don't remember
Speaker 1: if it had the battlefield scope glint if you're sniping,
Speaker 1: but there were telltale signs where they were, and it
Speaker 1: became the coolest thing because Asian Underfire, it was early off,
Speaker 1: so we were, you know, we were so used to
Speaker 1: Perfect Dark or I don't know, Halo even where this
Speaker 1: mode came along, and it was super creative because we
Speaker 1: were still fighting each other, but there was a more
Speaker 1: central anterior objective, ulterior objective that we were trying to
Speaker 1: pursue that was very, very fun and I clearly it
Speaker 1: was underrat I can't even figure it out like googling
Speaker 1: it right now, but we love that like that was
Speaker 1: such a cool wrinkle to the multiplayer sphere at the time,
Speaker 1: and I don't think that's why people played that game whatsoever.
Speaker 1: That game in general looking back was not that great,
Speaker 1: but yeah, I had a blast with it. But anyway,
Speaker 1: a good question. Yeah, thank you, Kent.
Speaker 5: Kent from Saint Louis, Missouri sucks.
Speaker 4: Momo, Dan make fun of something Missouri, you can't.
Speaker 5: That's too broad of a question. It's just bad state,
Speaker 5: bad people, bad cities, bad food.
Speaker 2: Food they got.
Speaker 5: I mean, here's the thing, a lot of Casey barbecue.
Speaker 5: Technically on the Missouri side. I was technically on the
Speaker 5: Kansas side. But like the middle of the state, you
Speaker 5: got Columbia, you got greg Millertown. That's just another good
Speaker 5: comes out of the middle of Missouri. Oh no, wait,
Speaker 5: I think Chapelone actually was kind of from the middle
Speaker 5: of there. People that would say that, uh, it's just
Speaker 5: a bad time if you're driving through it, you know
Speaker 5: what I'm talking about. It's just a dirty, bad place,
Speaker 5: bad people, bad opinions, bad everything. Yeahs are gross. Yeah,
Speaker 5: those arks are gross.
Speaker 2: Are gross.
Speaker 1: I've spent a decent amount of time. Those are the
Speaker 1: parts I saw were nice there.
Speaker 2: There are some places you have fun. You have fun anywhere, camp.
Speaker 3: Fun, anywhere.
Speaker 2: You have fun in a trash can if you want to.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, I knew You've got
Speaker 1: photos of me doing it. I do, I do trash
Speaker 1: TC's are my favorite peas to be all right, Thank
Speaker 1: you Kent from Saint Louis and mimomo. That's our episode.
Speaker 1: You can ride into firescape cast at gmail dot com.
Speaker 1: Go to join the fun, get it red on the air.
Speaker 1: Good questions Kent and and Phil. Just some housekeeping stuff
Speaker 1: before we get to the end of the episode. We
Speaker 1: do have some new merch on the way. We've got
Speaker 1: our samples on the way. We're gonna start modeling it soon.
Speaker 1: I guess we're gonna start really, you know, like people
Speaker 1: can jump on it for a Game of the Year.
Speaker 1: We'll make that public as soon as it's ready to go.
Speaker 3: Speaking up this season, yeah, speaking time of giving.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and Game of the Year we are officially doing
Speaker 1: on December sixth, Saturday, December sixth.
Speaker 2: Got a calendar thing here, it's it's on my Google calendar,
Speaker 2: so be changed.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 1: We're fine to Minneapolis. We're descending on Minneapolis, as we
Speaker 1: always do. Jake, Mary and I are going to go
Speaker 1: to Dan's to argue and celebrate and dump on some games. Dumb.
Speaker 2: It's a month and a half away. That's crazy.
Speaker 3: It's crazy.
Speaker 4: I have a lot to play.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so do I. But yeah, December sixth, that'll be
Speaker 1: on I believe it'll.
Speaker 2: And what we've done recently is what we do is
Speaker 2: because we don't do the twitch. We don't.
Speaker 5: We might have the twitch account, I don't know, but
Speaker 5: we stream it on my channel on Dan Record and
Speaker 5: then the VOD will go on fire Escape channels. So
Speaker 5: if you haven't seen fire Escapes vod and so, we
Speaker 5: have smooth resident Knievel we got you know. We we've
Speaker 5: put more stuff up there there in the last couple
Speaker 5: of years, including our Game of the Year VOD. So yes,
Speaker 5: So go follow fire Escape cast on YouTube if you
Speaker 5: want to watch live as it happens on December that Saturday,
Speaker 5: December sixth, we'll probably we haven't said the start time,
Speaker 5: but yeah, safe to assume five Central six Eastern around
Speaker 5: generally around.
Speaker 4: Around din din time.
Speaker 3: Go get your bucket of fried chicken or bunch and
Speaker 3: champagne because it's a celebration, baby, Go get your taco bell.
Speaker 3: Get ready and sit down with us for seven hours.
Speaker 3: It's gonna be fun.
Speaker 1: Yes, And then in the meantime before we launch the
Speaker 1: new merch, you can gotta you can actually go to
Speaker 1: Firescape merch dot com. That will lead you to our
Speaker 1: main merch site where you can get bikinis, you can
Speaker 1: get banana hammocks, you can get some some flashy stuff.
Speaker 1: We do have the white stainless steel water bottle that
Speaker 1: was out of stock, that's back in stock. A bunch
Speaker 1: of people are buying that, So if you want that
Speaker 1: to stay hedrato throughout the day, go for it. But
Speaker 1: then we'll announce the new stuff when we have it.
Speaker 1: And then outside of that, I think that's it for
Speaker 1: fire Escape house cleaning. As usually, you can get the
Speaker 1: ad free episode and the video version if you're not
Speaker 1: a patron already. Vinnie Caravella and I Vinnie of Nextlander,
Speaker 1: if you're unaware, we've been doing two co Op campaig
Speaker 1: in Total War Warhammer three, which are both very fun.
Speaker 1: Both are unfolding not at all as I predicted and
Speaker 1: somehow exactly as I wanted, very entertaining and fun. We're
Speaker 1: doing a good quote unquote campaign for fire Escape. You're
Speaker 1: a video patron, you'll see those every other week. And
Speaker 1: then if you are a patron for Next Lander, I
Speaker 1: believe it's their ten dollars tier, you will be seeing
Speaker 1: the evil campaign we're doing in the weeks offsetting those,
Speaker 1: so two simultaneous ones, jumping back and forth beween the sites.
Speaker 1: It's very, very fun. We're already kind of talking about
Speaker 1: we're starting to talk about maybe what we want our
Speaker 1: victory conditions to because it's very much a sandbox strategy game.
Speaker 1: So Vinnie's already got some some rivalries brewing. I'm kind
Speaker 1: of helping him out where I might, you know, I
Speaker 1: might start to steer things to a less civil arrangement
Speaker 1: between he and I. But yeah, that's great, So go
Speaker 1: subscribe to us and next Lander if you're not already, Mary,
Speaker 1: what do you have going on at the meantime? Uh?
Speaker 3: Usually I'm live on Twitch every Monday. I've missed a
Speaker 3: lot because of all of my travel, and when this
Speaker 3: goes live, I'll be I think, still traveling, so really
Speaker 3: sorry about that, but when I can, and when i'm home,
Speaker 3: I will be live on Twitch playing whatever the latest
Speaker 3: indie game is that is my joy and that is
Speaker 3: what I always defall to Dan.
Speaker 1: What about you? Dan?
Speaker 5: Record on Blue Sky and Instagram and we are doing
Speaker 5: a twenty four hour live stream from a Giant Bomb
Speaker 5: on October twenty seventh. We are doing the Giant Bambathon,
Speaker 5: So follow Giant Bomb on YouTube and Twitch. We will
Speaker 5: be starting at five pm Eastern on Monday, October twenty seventh,
Speaker 5: twenty four hours.
Speaker 2: We will all be on this, taken together.
Speaker 4: Who's taken the late shift or you got.
Speaker 2: We're all in person.
Speaker 5: We are going to figure out based on like when
Speaker 5: people are tired and need to like sneak in like
Speaker 5: an hour of anap or whatever. Like we're gonna just
Speaker 5: make it work. But for we're gonna have multiple people
Speaker 5: on stream at all time at the entire twenty four hours,
Speaker 5: so lots of games, lots of incentives, subscriber drive stuff.
Speaker 5: We got Chuck and Sean coming out if you know
Speaker 5: them from Giant Bomb. It's going to be a lot
Speaker 5: of fun. So put a lot of a lot of
Speaker 5: planning into that. October twenty seventh, five pm Eastern.
Speaker 1: Be there, all right, what's our episode? Thank you everybody
Speaker 1: for joining Episode one eighteen Game of the year. At
Speaker 1: this rate, will that be one twenty.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, we've got that fucking way alone. One way.
Speaker 2: Okay, this is the twentieth. Uh no, no, we got
Speaker 2: we have a lunch before.
Speaker 1: I just like panic you. Okay, Well, thank you everybody
Speaker 1: for joining. We'll be back in a couple of weeks
Speaker 1: with the next episode Firescape cast. Meantime, go check out
Speaker 1: all this stuff Dan and Mary just talked about. Go
Speaker 1: subscribe to Next Lander, et cetera. We will see you
Speaker 1: in the next episode.
Speaker 4: Bye.