Speaker 1: Sorry, I just choked on so much water.
Speaker 2: That's it. That's it. That's the start of the show.
Go go into it. Be it, bro we didn't get
Come on, hey, everybody, this is the start.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to the fire Escape cast. It is who
the fuck knows what day it is, it's episode eighty seven.
That water went straight into my lungs.
Speaker 2: I think, oh man, it'd be funny if it was
like anything but water.
Speaker 1: No, it's just water. I have tea here too, but
that'd be funny. That would have hurt because this is hot.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah.
Speaker 1: We were trying to get room silence for Jake. This
is all. This is all really nitty gritty stuff. And
then I just choked on water.
Speaker 3: And then it's fun to watch you like knock in
a second, go though. This must be how the Olympians
feel when they are competing and there's no redo and.
Speaker 1: You just to go. I mean, I'm like stevens Netterosic.
If I walked up to the pommel horse, did one
spin and then crouched punched it and then fell off, do.
Speaker 3: You get you'd get bronze.
Speaker 1: No, I just lose. I would fall off the pommel
horse completely, Okay.
Speaker 2: Is he the guy who's a wiener hit the bar
on the way down?
Speaker 1: But that's that's that.
Speaker 2: He didn't like get like, didn't like ruin his wiener
or anything. Right, Like he's okay, like we could laugh
at it.
Speaker 1: No, Yeah, I think those poles are pretty flexible, Okay,
And so is the thing he's jumping over. There's got
a lot of good stuff. We we've uh, we were
not super excited for the Olympics, but then the day
one we started watching him, we've been they've been on
all the time in our apartment.
Speaker 2: Feels like I've just seen the wiener guy.
Speaker 1: That makes sense. You've probably seen the Turkish air pistol
guy with his hand in his pocket. You've seen him.
He there's that event where they're using like the air
pistol on the target. But a lot of people have
like this these crazy metal your solid squei apparatuses. He
just like basically had a hand in his pocket and
regular glasses and like kind of just nonchalantly walked up
and got what silver I think, oh wow, to the Korean.
Speaker 3: I think the girl who had all this stuff also
looked really cool with all of her goggles and glasses
and do dads. I love watching the Olympics. It makes me.
It's the most patriotic I get every four years. I
basically like only stew about the things I don't like
about America, and then during the Olympics, I put on
my American flag cap and root for the gymnastics team
because they always do so good. And again they got
the gold, so I was really proud of the girls.
They just killed it.
Speaker 2: Are we generally good at Olympics as a country.
Speaker 3: It depends, but we're known for getting up there on
the metal counters, so like they usually compare how many
medals each country gets, and I think we were up there,
although I don't actually know where we fared, but we
were stuck it last time.
Speaker 1: I looked no no, no, no no. That's because track and
field hadn't started yet. We're well ahead of China. China
has I think more golds. Let me, yes, We're almost
like always really good at the Olympics. So China has
twenty one gold medals, we have twenty, but we have
seventy eight. Totally have fifty three. Wow, France is doing
pretty well. They're at forty eight medals.
Speaker 2: What do we suck at?
Speaker 1: Well? It's the first time men's gymnastics as a team
got medal since two thousand and four. Mary, you would
probably know more than me something like that. We're generally
really good at swimming. This is the first time ever
in Olympics history that the four by four individual or
four by four medley relay we did not get the gold.
That's when they do four guys or four women, but
in this case is the men. Each person on the
team does a different stroke, and that's the first time
we've lost it ever.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, the Olympics. Is Michael Phelps still doing the
swimming thing?
Speaker 1: No, not for a while. Oh he was there, he commentates.
He's like a big pundit now he uh he his
coach at Arizona State is now coaching like the fastest
swimmer in the world, who is French Land Marshaan and
Michael Felt. He broke Michael Phelps record for forget what
stroke it was, breast there's a lot of sexual terms
in swimming. Yeah, breaststroke, that's about it.
Speaker 2: Stroke stroke I meant and stroke are both yeah. Yeah. Uh.
Speaker 1: Basketball has been fun to watch because it's a ton
of players I usually hate because they're on the other
teams that are on team with Steph Curry now and
Steve curR is coaching. He's a Warrior's coach. It's fun.
Speaker 2: They like all NBA players.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and they're playing a lot of NBA players on
other teams. But it's it's a pretty scary lineup. It's
always scary, but it's like Lebron, Kevin Durant, Steph Curry,
Devin Booker, Joel Embiid, Anthony Davis. It's a lot of
good players.
Speaker 2: If there was like a dude that was incredibly good
at basketball but had no desire to play in the NBA,
could he be on the team Technically with the NBA players.
Speaker 1: I think, technically, yeah, there's nothing to stop because I
don't I forget what year they started allowing NBA players.
I think it was the Dream Team with Bird Jordan Johnson.
Speaker 3: I like the idea of just getting one unbelievably tall person. Yeah,
they're not really necessarily, but they stay really close to
the net and then they put it in there.
Speaker 1: There's a French player. He plays with the San Antonio
Spurs in the NBA, but he plays for France and
the Olympics. He's a center, he's seven to four.
Speaker 2: Remember that Billy Crystal movie My Giant. Yeah, who was
that guy? Was he a real basketball player? I'm gonna
look him up. He was really tall. Georgia and mort
Sean he was seven but seven he's still alive.
Speaker 1: Wow?
Speaker 2: Seven? Seven's insane?
Speaker 1: You say. Photo of Shaq and Simone Biles standing next
to each other from a few.
Speaker 3: Us, Yes, that's shocking.
Speaker 1: She's four to eight, oh geez. Yeah, and he's he's
seven to one or seven feet tall or something.
Speaker 3: She's like not even to his waist. It just looks
like a.
Speaker 1: Small child yea, and a huge adult man, which is
what he is.
Speaker 3: Which is what he is. That is accurate.
Speaker 2: We've got a couple of those photos of Bonk and
professional wrestlers like The Big Show and No Moas who
are like seven foot plus and she's five foot.
Speaker 1: It's always fun. It's like, how are we the same species?
It's crazy?
Speaker 3: How tall was Andre the Giant.
Speaker 2: Shoot or work height?
Speaker 3: What?
Speaker 1: In real life?
Speaker 2: You're normally spared this because he wrestling pan ratio is
not cross on this podcast, so I don't poison this
one with wrestling doc uh, he was built at seven
foot four or he might have been build at seven
to six. Wikipedia has him listed as a shoot seven
to four, which is real. Shoot is real. Yeah, let's see.
Speaker 1: That's how it all women yama is It's it's crazy,
but yeah. The Olympics have been super fun to watch.
Paris has been like killing it it all everything I'm
reading and like, uh seeing everybody seems excited. The crowds
are packed. Beach volleyball has been super fun to watch.
Tennis was fun. Djokovic got his first Olympic gold. I
don't know, we weren't looking forward to them, and all
of a sudden they started. We're like, oh, yeah, this
is really cool. When it's We're also coming off of
the COVID Olympics where nobody was in the stand, so
obviously no whay to go up. Well you can only
go up from there. But it's still been super fun.
Speaker 2: I've definitely seen more Mario and Sonic Olympics than real
shoot Olympics. Yeah, it doesn't surprise me, but I think
I think I would like it. I like competitions.
Speaker 1: You know, there's some like fun stuff like there's break dancing, Oh,
there's the table tennis is always just those are honestly
the most impressive people at the entire Olympics. I don't
understand how their brains work that quickly.
Speaker 3: Skateboarding is fun to watch skateboards the Olympics, it is.
They add them all the time, all the time. They'll
be like, this is a new sport. Everyone's really stoked
about it. What do you think? And then there's probably
some kind of like secret elite process that we're not
privy to, or they decide whether or not it's allowed
in Still cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love competitions and I love the idea of
like finding out like the objective best in the world
at something, And it seems like that's what the whole
point of the Olympics is.
Speaker 3: That's why I feel like there should be more like
best in the.
Speaker 1: World for us to congratulate.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm just realizing it as I talk it
out in my head.
Speaker 1: It's like, wow, you're getting there.
Speaker 3: For Like, didn't they talk about sports?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, we talked about esports. I do remember that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, we've talked about real sports too, But
the sports on the Olympics. No, not yet, but there's
it's been discussed. I'm sure. Actually, I'm not sure. I'm
just saying that has it been Mary, you seem to
think it has been.
Speaker 3: Gold medal, Tetris finalist. I mean, I just think like,
there's there's a world here where we can compete with
who is best at Mario Party, and.
Speaker 2: I bet it would be an event that Jeff Keeley
owns and charges a lot of money for can broadcast.
Speaker 3: No, I don't let them get his mits on that.
Speaker 1: Hey, will guys welcome to No, that's JFK.
Speaker 3: Hold on second, it's the same keep going.
Speaker 1: Okay, guys, Hey, everybody, welcome to gaming's biggest night. No,
it is not the Game Awards. It is the Olympics.
For the first time ever, we are here. Also here
my friend Hideo Kojima. That's all I've got. I think
it was better the first time I ever tried it
randomly covered in medals, and I'm.
Speaker 2: Wearing it went all the The best game developer of gold, silver,
and bronze A word.
Speaker 1: Just keeps trying to give the gold today and I
was like, I don't play overwatch.
Speaker 2: Mike. You said something a second ago and then said
you weren't actually sure of it, which reminded me You've
got a little corrections I heard.
Speaker 1: Yeah, apparently, what do you want to call it? Sparkling
water hydrates you just as much. Which here's my question.
Does that mean that if I had this cup filled
to the brim with still and then the same exact
size cup filled to the brim with sparkling drinking, each
of those would hydrate me equally.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if you just dumped a bunch of bubbles in there,
it wouldn't suddenly make it not hydrate gas.
Speaker 1: It takes up. It takes up. It's like that's going
to change the volume.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the volume. There we go.
Speaker 1: So okay, So my question is how, and this is
a genuine question because I don't fully understand it because
the bubbles take up space.
Speaker 2: I never thought of that.
Speaker 1: So if you drank the same liquid volume of both,
I can't. I don't understand how sparkling would hydrate you
as much.
Speaker 2: What if the bubble is like super What if the
bubbles maybe.
Speaker 3: It's that small it's like, yeah, maybe it's like an
insequential amount of volume.
Speaker 2: Or what if the bubbles have like a hydration multiplier,
Like they take up a little bit of space, but
they have a times two hydration factor.
Speaker 1: I don't know maybe, but like I mean, I don't
think that's the thing, but who knows that?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: What if? What if it's not a bunch of little bubbles?
What if it's one big bubble. You last episode for
saying there was really wrong of me to call it
the sphere?
Speaker 2: I right, I remember talking about the orb or the sphere.
I thought that was Mary's whole gimmick, though it was
she came up with it.
Speaker 1: I truly don't remember.
Speaker 2: But I think the orb is Mary is doing also.
Speaker 1: But people did support my claim that what do you
want to call it? What's the water thing? You freak
out about? Liquid death? Oh yeah, yeah, that has like
non natural additives.
Speaker 2: As a gave something in it.
Speaker 1: A gave is natural, but it's also got.
Speaker 3: Dan's like, listen, it's got chemicals. They saw a gove and.
Speaker 2: That hang on, I'll look at me. Okay, carbon and
water gave nectar, centric acid and natural flavors.
Speaker 1: That's it, Okay, yeah, okay.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and their iced tea has a small amount of
natural caffeine from black Tea.
Speaker 1: Okay, But I still will never take liquid advice from
you because you drink prime.
Speaker 2: I'm leaning more on liquid death. These days.
Speaker 1: Liquid death is great. We went to we didn't on
location project at a game studio in the summer and
or sorry in the spring and they stock their fridges
to the brim with liquid death. That was my first.
Like we were at the studio for like a week,
so I was just pounding them. Mango is awesome. We
talked about me the best. Yeah, mega chan sounds great.
I like, I like, is it just like mixed berry something.
They're all puns grape berry something like that. Yeah, craefberry.
But I okay for the people who wrote in that's
my question is all things being equal, and I have
two glasses filled to the brim. The's same size glass,
same hold, the same volume. If one is sparkling water,
one is still water. Would the still water not hydrate me? More?
Are the bubbles that in like small that it doesn't
make a difference, because that's vexing to me.
Speaker 3: I have a coworker who strongly believes that the temperature
of the water impacts how hydrating it is.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 3: Their theory is that if you were to have you
ever heard of like people who are like in a
frozen tundra and they're eating snow for water, and it
actually doesn't hydrate you because your body has to regulate
the snow right, has to melt it in your tum
tum turn it into water. And the amount of energy
that it takes your body to melt the snow into
water is more than the hydration you get from the snow.
So eating snow doesn't replenish your hydration. It actually will
make you more deep.
Speaker 1: There's like survival books and stuff that I've read. Yeah,
they put the snow in pots and stuff if they
can make camp and boil it.
Speaker 3: Correct, that's the max version. What my friend is saying
is that you should always be drinking room temperature water
if you get a cold drink.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but we're not on the tundra. We're just sitting
at desk writing about videos.
Speaker 3: Know what we're talking about. We're talking about what hydrates
you the most, and what hydrates you the most is
room temperature liquid that your body doesn't have to alter.
Speaker 1: Well, is this related to Apparently it was like, uh,
it was debunked that the cub Scouts used to teach
you if you are hot, overheated, like out in the wilderness,
you drink something hot to cool you down because your
body senses something hot going into you and then works
to cool your entire body down. But then they debunked that.
They're like, you know, you, guys, this is stupid.
Speaker 2: The boy Scouts stupid.
Speaker 1: I mean, thinking a lot of things right, but like
they don't teach that anymore. I don't think. You know
how often I you know, how seldom I talk about
something without having all the evidence to back it up.
Speaker 3: Are you a boy Scouts?
Speaker 1: No, Jeff was not. Jeff grab was what what did
he become an eagle Scout? Uh?
Speaker 2: No, I think he just meant to boy scouts.
Speaker 1: Oh that's like the blue Belt of boyscouts. So fun.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just say his house for a weekend to make fire.
I did. Yeah, it was awesome. I stayed in his basement,
which is like kind of like my basement where it's
just like nothing but like a game zone thing. It's
just it's just game ship everywhere. And he had a
pulled out couch and I just stayed down there and
it was like a cool like it was like staying
in a fun college apartment or something, and I had
the floor to myself, he had a bathroom and everything.
Manati came over, went to see wrestling. We went to bars.
Went to a really great place called sixteen Bit in Cleveland,
which is like a barcade, but you know, there's like
a million barcades now, and they're all like kind of
like the same kind of dingy ish. They all got
kind of that same vibe. This had like a really
kind of I don't know how to describe interior decoration stuff,
but it was just like sharp. It was sharply put together.
And they had all these bar games. They had Baci ball,
They had this new one where I'd never seen before,
where you throw these these circles at a circle on
the wall and there's hooks on it. Does it sound familiar?
Speaker 1: Is it on a string?
Speaker 2: No, it's like a big ass dartboard. It's like the
biggest dartboard you ever saw it, and you're throwing rubber
hoops at it.
Speaker 3: Ring Toss.
Speaker 1: No, No, that's what the bottles right, that's.
Speaker 2: A carnival game.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you're describing.
Speaker 2: Ring tom No, hang on, I'm let me google ring
toss here hoops. No, No, this is no. This is
on the wall. The big dartboard on the wall. Ring
Toss looks to be on the ground.
Speaker 1: Jake Dan was just hammered and he was on the
floor trying to play that's what.
Speaker 2: Are you tossing rings? But it's goddamn, I don't know
what to google.
Speaker 1: So I love video games, but if you put like
yard games in my vicinity, I will go to those
ten times out of it.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, and so we did all. We did the
fake ring toss thing. We did watch the ball. They
had duck pin bowling or it's the like short like
bowling alley with the pins on the strings that go
back in. It had this tiny little cage where you
could like put your legs in and play soccer on
like a tiny soccer field in a cage. But then
it also had like a billion arcade games and all
on free play and everything, and brewery stuff everywhere and
like fun cocktails. That place was fucking great. I've been
to a million barcages with that sixteen bit, and Cleveland
was maybe the best I've ever been to.
Speaker 3: What were you doing in Cleveland?
Speaker 1: Uh?
Speaker 2: SummerSlam? Wwe was there and it's like, well, you know,
Manatti and Greb both lived near there, and not a
lot of excuses to go to Cleveland. There's not really
like game stuff out there, so it'sa liked, well, fuck,
let's go to a wrestling thing with my friends. So
I went after the weekend and it was just a blast,
great time.
Speaker 3: Did you go to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?
Speaker 2: Did not?
Speaker 3: No, we did number one claim to Fame.
Speaker 2: We thought about it. We thought about it on one
of those afternoons, but then we just watched Grub try
to set an nes speed run record on Mario one,
which is pretty much the same as the Rock and
Roll Hall of Fame, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the Olympics of rock and Roll.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we literally were like sitting around and we had
like several hours and it was like, should we go
to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame? Well, we
have time before SummerSlam and it is right next door.
But then we all just decided to sit around and
watch Grub blay Mario, which was nice. It was very nice.
Speaker 3: It is hard to justify it.
Speaker 2: Nobody did much better than I did.
Speaker 3: No, I've been to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
So I'm frying Columbus, which isn't too far away, and
so we used to go to Cleveland for like a
couple of things. Not often though, because there's not really
a lot of good reasons to go to Cleveland, But
I went once for a film festival and I remember
doing rock and roll in Fame there.
Speaker 1: Did you like it?
Speaker 2: Yes, it was the coolest thing there.
Speaker 3: I don't think I really was stoked about anything. But
I was also probably like fifteen and not very wise
to rock and roll then.
Speaker 2: And my dad drove out there once just to go there,
like from Kansas, and spent like two whole days at
the Hall of Fame. Like he's the guy that like
reads every plaque and just like takes his damn time
at every museum. But he loved it.
Speaker 3: It's a memorabilia place, right, So it's like if you
want to see the scarf or like the boa that
Jimmy Hendrix wore while he was at the Palooza, then
that's the place that you go. But you know, you
have to be really interested in artifacts from that era.
Lots of guitars, lots of say they have like a
hall of guitars, right, they do, and it does look nice.
I just don't think I had the aware at the
time that I went to a really appreciate it.
Speaker 2: One thing I've learned is just boomer Cat nip argument
is they love it when hip hop acts get inducted
into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Right, yeah,
that is something a lot like. You know, I think
like EM and M's in there, Run DMC, and you know,
Doctor Dray and Snoop. I think I think they're in there.
But it's just I've seen many sixty plus year old
men talk about, well, you wouldn't put led Zeppelin in
the wrap Hall of Fame, and it's like they put
every classic rock band in. They're already. They need to
stay open and keep doing. What do you expect? You know, Yes,
they have a business to run.
Speaker 1: I wonder if those people who got inducted in the
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame actually cared or wanted
to be because there's a hip hop It's in New York.
It's much smaller, but there's like a hip hop Hall
of Fame too.
Speaker 2: Oh sure, yeah, I want to go back there because
I really did have a great time, and I would
go to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame if
I went back. But honestly, I was super impressed by Cleveland.
It was just very much it was a Midwest city,
and I've learned that I just between you know, Kansas City, Chicago, Minneapolis.
There's just a certain vibe to a Midwest city that
I like a lot. Like I don't like the rural
parts of the Midwest as much, but you know, a
mid sized Midwestern city is what I'm used to.
Speaker 1: Well, you grew up in Kansas with like Kansas City
and like right sort of there, like aspiring to it
for a bit and then going to college and Lawrence
and like, I think Kansas City being there the whole time.
I think it's kind of that's how I felt about
Syracuse being five hours from New York City. We were
always kind of looking up to New York City.
Speaker 2: So yeah, we just never it was we were always
just in the We were suburban as hell. It was
Johnson County, Kansas. It was just like that's where all
the you know, suburban kids went to school basically. So yeah,
what until that extra life trip I did a couple
weeks ago where I was like actually staying downtown and
Kansas City has like come pretty far since I left
in nine But yeah, yeah, Midwest cities good stuff.
Speaker 3: They're not bad. There's a whole bunch of them over there.
I don't think I have too many family left in Ohio.
But man, the next time you do a trip to
the ye old Ohio, I might come with you. I
like that kind of stuff. It's been a while since
I've been in. Yeah, I got some I got some
family still left in the Columbus area, which isn't really
that far away at all.
Speaker 2: Nice. Yeah, I uh who was Somebody was telling me that, like,
oh yeah, in Cleveland, like the one big city in Ohio.
And I was like, well, there's Cleveland, there's Columbus. There's
a Cincinnati. Like I always thought of it as like
the three sea cities. We're the big ones.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 1: I think that's true, Big Columbus. I've heard good things
about people were like flocking there ten years ago before
like Denver became the new hotspot. I don't know what
it is now, but I know Columbus for a while
was attracting a lot of like young professionals.
Speaker 3: I heard that too, because the I think the house
prices skyrocketed one one general span of years where they
were just like our houses that used to be like
one hundred and twenty five k for like a really
decent house, or all of a sudden, like two hundred
and fifty three hundred K, and it changed the vibe
right because the same thing happened to Portland, which is like,
Portland is really rad. But one of the things that
made it so cool was that, you know, you could
sell turnups on the street and totally functionally afford a
house over here. And I just feel like that's so
much harder now with all the people who have moved
here that have raised the median house price, and you
kind of lose your luster a little bit, You lose
that value add that people love about you so much
that it's weird and eclectic.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know that feeling, like when a city is
really cool and you almost wanted like, hey, don't tell anyone, like,
let's keep it this way. Let's you know, we don't
want a bunch of people moving in here and ruining it.
Speaker 3: Nose Normy's ruining it. Shut up, tell them it sucks. Yeah,
you gotta find the secret.
Speaker 1: Sucks it fucking it's the worst. I hate Hoboken's a shithole.
Minneapolis sucks too.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Portland is Portland is dick.
Speaker 2: For dick city. What they should call it.
Speaker 1: That is what they call were board Lynn. Yeah, but yeah, no,
it's the Midwest. Is it's great? What else did I do?
I feel like I did a lot. So let's say
you I had barbecue, speaking of Kansas City, I had
barbecue on Friday in Red Hook at Hometown Barbecue.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, that's where you yeah, the proposal right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the around No, I mean that's where the wedding was.
The proposal was on Cape Cod but yes, that's where
I like one of our first days was.
Speaker 2: Right, first date, That's what it was. Yeah, I remember
referencing it in the speech. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I for all times sake, it was our
it was our engage aversary, though we didn't really realize
until we were on our way over. So I did
the whole pretended to Bee. Frid was a phone bit class.
She still loved it just as much. Nice, but that
barbecue's good. If you're in New York and you're looking
for they've got those places in Midtown and flat Iron
like a hill country.
Speaker 2: I like that place was something.
Speaker 1: Those are fine. I will say, if you're like from
the mid West, or you're from like the Carolinas or
Texas and you're looking for I'm not gonna claim it's
on par with any of those, but I mean it's
it's good. It's uh Billy Derney who also owns this
place called Red Hook Tavern, which I will say, hands
down is the best burger in all of New York,
at least the places I've eaten burgers. So, I mean,
you know, great of salt.
Speaker 2: I'm obviously partial to Kansas City barbecue, but like barbecue
is kind of like pizza in that way where it's like, look, yeah,
it's going to be pizza. It's going to be good,
you know, barbecue saying, which pretty much anywhere is going
to be good, and like there's gonna be better options
if you want to get very particular, but like, ye,
it's gonna be good.
Speaker 1: We've got to go to hometown next time you're it
makes sense. It's kind of a trick to get to
Red Hook, as you guys know. But like, uh, I'm
curious what you think of it, because it's good barbecue.
Speaker 2: We like it a lot nice. I'm not picky.
Speaker 1: Joe's is really good when you mess it that one time,
got a picky man.
Speaker 3: I mean I don't think I don't look at you. Actually,
I think you are very picky with your food. You're
just not picky in terms of how high quality is.
You're picking what you won't eat.
Speaker 2: That's fair, Okay. I guess I am picky and that like,
oh I don't want onions on this thing, or I
won't have mustard or pickles or whatever. But likes to.
Speaker 3: Be forty dollar uh slab of meat or if it's
a three point fifty slab of rib.
Speaker 2: I think I'm kind of like the way Mike is
with like drinking, where it's like, yes, he likes very
fine wines and very nice liquors and stuff like that
and cocktails and stuff. But I've shotgunned but lights. With Mike,
you know, he's not going to turn his nose atgun exactly. Yes, yeah,
so he's like he's not going to be snobby about it.
Like I feel like I'm the same way where it's like, look,
we love going to something like oh James Beard Award
winning restaurant and getting like a super nice meal and stuff,
and I can I feel like I can really appreciate it.
But also I can go to Arby's and I'm going
to really enjoy that meal, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, speaking of kind of a sharp left turn.
But I taught you had a shotgun beer at a
Halloween party when I was interning a Game Informer. Yes,
which unfortunately I don't know if people saw the news,
but game Stop finally pulled the plug, and know, it's
kind of wondering when it would happen, and still absolutely
sucks and a lot of super cool people lost their jobs.
But yeah, that's where I met you, Dan, I met
Tim Turry and met a lot of future friends. I
literally have my current job because I met Matt Berts
at Game of Former back when he yes managing editor
there and I was a little twenty one year old.
Speaker 2: So well, and look at everyone that was working there
when you were there as an intern, and they have
gone off to like pretty much everyone that was there
when you were there left prior to game Stuff shutting
it down and went out to Microsoft, went out to Sony,
went out to like a million different places. They are
all over, Yeah, they are all over the industry, and god,
they really curated an incredible staff over the years. But
before my time during after Man, that place was really
really fantastic. And yeah, Mike, you know you and I
have the personal history there, like without game informer. We
don't meet. This podcast doesn't exist. I don't go to
Giant Bomb, I don't meet Bianca. I don't you know.
You know, Tim Terry was my best man at my wedding.
You know, it's like like friendships at like the reason
I moved back here. We're friends like Ben Hansen that
you know, like it was. It was such a special place.
It is the entire reason I do what I do
and I've lived the life I live is because I
subscribed when I was nine years old, so everyone knew
this is how it ended, how it was going to end.
You know. It was run by game stop game stops
days remembered. I remember when I got hired in two
thousand and nine. I remember thinking, like picture in that
doomsday clock and being like, okay, we're a couple of
minutes to midnight here. Hopefully I can get my shit
in and get a resume, you know, enough time here
to actually you know, like brag about working here and
get a job. And it lasted way longer than anyone
expected to. GameStop is still, in spite of itself, still around,
but as they are circling the drain and have been
for a long time they're taking cost cutting measures, and
of course this shitty company that's always been shitty had
to do it in the most kind of petty and
needlessly cruel way, where it's just like, okay, no warning,
you know, middle of making the next issue, let's just
pull everyone into a meeting, let's nuke the let's do
an AI written goodbye. Note that nobody on the staff
signed off on let's nuke the website. So we've got
so many years, so many like thankfully, well, you know,
there are elements they haven't got too yet, but all
the articles and everything are gone up the internet. Now, Yeah,
nuke the Twitter account, locked the fucking doors to the office.
So all that game preservation and history that are there
that if anyone's ever seen videos of the vault and
things like that, it's really the most incredible collection of
game history I've ever seen in my life. That is God. Note,
I mean you can probably assume what GameStop is going
to do with it. And yeah, so I mean, look
that's the negative stuff. We've known this is going to
happen for a long time. But yeah, so many just
industry legends have come through there. And then the staff
that we're still you know, still there at the end
and are now looking for jobs. You know, there's if
you look at well, shit, no, they deleaded the Twitter ground.
Look at look at Brian Shay's Twitter. Look at Kyle
Hilliards Twitter, Look at Alex Van Aikins. You know, there
are a lot of people that have posted the mask
head of everyone, not just the writers and people that
appeared on videos and podcasts, but also the layout people
you know Lelay and Margaret you know, people that worked
there for many, many years that are now looking for jobs.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: It's man. I I I had a lot of thoughts
this weekend. You know, I was sitting in grubs basement
and I got a text from from someone that, uh,
former editor and let me know, and it was like, well, shit,
there it is. It happened, and yeah, yeah, I don't
know what else there is to say. It was kind
of that last bashion of the games media that I
grew up with that made me want to go into
this line of work. You know, they were the last
US magazine. They Yeah, and you know what I'm I
was glad that I was there during the pivot to
you know, it was this old print media, you know,
magazine that I was there, when you know, they start
doing podcasts and streams and we got to do fun
stuff like like replay and you know Hanson and Tim
doing the podcast and it's I feel like, despite being like,
you know, a dinosaur, some might say this old brand
from nineteen ninety one, they stayed around and they stayed
relevant and like we were staying with the staff, like
you know, talk about some great names that have gone
on to do great things, and I'm confident that the
staff that were just laid off are all going to
go do great things as well.
Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, yeah, they survive for so long. There
are a lot of good sites that struggle to survive
under good owners or at least like maybe not good owners,
but like more benevolent than Game Stop, I think you
could argue. So it's absolutely just a testament to their
flexibility and versatility over a game informer throughout many years.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I don't envy the staff that I had to
work there in recent years because when I was there
from nine to fourteen, the cool thing was we never
had to fucking talk to Game Stop at least, like
you know McNamara, I think with like all of the
communication with you know, Grapevine, Texas, and he kind of
shielded us from that, you know, we you know, GameStop
never got involved and told us to change review score,
said some edict about like, oh, we need to do
a feature on this thing. We're trying to push. GameStop
never fucking talked to us on the ground. We wrote
whatever we wanted to, We made the magazine we wanted
to make, and he shielded us from that stuff. And
from my understanding, it's you know, in recent years, as
GameStop has kind of spiraled downward, they did get more
hands on in a bad way, and that's when he
started seeing like there were a couple of rounds of
like rough layoffs, so you know, people getting laid off
when they're out of town on work trips and things
like that. It's happened a couple of times now. So yeah,
I don't envy having to work with with GameStop above them,
because they have always been dumb as fuck as a company,
like just petty, shitty, dumb, bad company. But at least
when I was there, we didn't really have to see it,
you know, unless we walked into it. So like they
made bad fuck like you know, when I was there,
it was obvious that downloading was going to be the
future and everything, and so they were flailing around. They're like,
we're gonna open up all these simply max stores and
we're gonna do what we did with games where we
can buy and sell used iPhones and iPads, and that
didn't do shit. And then say, we bought, uh, we
think flash games are the future. We uh, you know,
we we bought Congregate. They're a flash game portal. We'll
publish Hollow Night. No that didn't. I'm sorry. Yes, even
in his game.
Speaker 1: Stop or a game Informer Lament, he had to throw
that in.
Speaker 2: And even now that I like Hollow Night. Yeah, but no,
it's just they flailed. They they they published an Insomniac
game at one point. I don't know if you remember
Song of.
Speaker 1: The Deep remember that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they were clearly flailing. And then the fucking memes
talk ship shit happened, and clearly no one knew how
to turn that into anything of note that would help
the company. It just, if anything, got their name in
headlines for a little bit. But yeah, yeah, they they
never figured it out. They're not going to figure it out,
like the company will stay on a death spiral and
selling some shitty funko pops and they're you know, reduced
amount of brick and mortar stores is not going to
turn the tide. So you know, fuck them, but uh.
Speaker 3: Sober, But I think, like there's so much to be
said for the impact they had on a whole generation
of gamers and how we're enjoying now and the content
that people like now is being created by the people
who grew up a Game Informer. And I think back to,
like tell God, like twelve years ago and I was
getting started. One of my very first meetings was at
a Game Informer, and I thought it was the greatest
opportunity of my career was to be in a Game
Informer and try and get coverage for one of the games.
I was doing PR four back in the day, and
just being in their hollowed walls was a huge deal,
and how how honored I was and how much everybody
there cared about every article and everything that they made.
It was made with blood, sweat and tears and just
an unbelievable amount of dedication and love. And yes, it
is sad, and I do think a lot of those
people will be able to find jobs because they're hardworking people,
and I'm sure they will they will find something else.
But I think it's a dark day that we have
a lot of money in games media. There's still a
lot to be done when it comes to like people
who want to watch this content, they want to enjoy it,
but a publication like that doesn't have its place anymore.
So it's just a time and a place. And I
think that's sad. But we will basically be the children
of that content for a long time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And how long have we talked about how how
much games media has changed with all the layoffs and
stuff in the last five ten years. And you know,
I used to always, you know, say like, oh, okay,
how many places can you actually make a full time
living doing games media, you know, like outside of the
Patreon and individual streamer route. And I used to always say, Okay,
there's yg in, there's GameSpot, there's a game Informat, there's Polygon,
there's Katako, you know, and like now it's just less
and less every day, it seems, you know. And you know,
now there's just a few behemoths, and then there's some places,
you know, just trying to to scrape on by and
then everything else has kind of gone the Patreon, you know,
individual streamer route and everything, and you know game and
Former being the oldest of the old guard. Uh, just
the most like legendary name in that space. Yeah, it's
it's it's uh yeah, it's going to be a huge,
huge void left behind. For sure.
Speaker 3: I deserved it. There's sometimes like I'm just so they
deserve to be here. They deserved to have that spot
just because of the legacy, right, It's just like just
leave them alone. Let them quietly have their little magazine
that people don't read anymore, and enjoy their life because
they've earned it. It's kind of like when you're like
retired and you're like you don't want to do anything
in your grumpy all the time, and they're like, whatever,
he's earned it, leave them alone. That's how I feel
about gaming.
Speaker 2: Do whatever he wants. Yeah, they can do it.
Speaker 3: He can do whatever he wants. You leave you leave
him alone. Whereas like there's Giant Corpse now making massive
purchases and pivots. That's suck and are fucking people over
Like well, I know we don't usually talk about the news,
but if we're talking about this, like Zif Davis buying
Humble Games and then just shuddering. It is such horseshit.
Speaker 2: And several.
Speaker 1: A bunch of people a few months ago, and yeah, yeah,
a handful.
Speaker 3: Do They made extremely successful games. Unpacking is a very
successful game. Most people know what Unpacking is because it
was so popular, and you still fumbled it and you
still shuddered it without anything for any of these people,
this game publisher that you purchased, even though you work
in media. Who was there for the purchase, Who was
there for the fumbling of the actual business, Who was
there for shuttering it and leaving all these people for nothing?
It's just such it's just such bad decision that impacted
so many good people's lives, not to mention all the
incredible games that should have been coming out well that
are now like a drift and we don't know all
happened to them. Fucking zif.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And I mean you look at LinkedIn these days, if
you're in the games industry, and every post is a
I just lost my job, bungee, I just lost my
job from Humble Games. I just like like every like.
Speaker 3: I have two decades of experience, I have shipped fourteen titles.
Speaker 2: And I applied for ten places in the last week
and haven't heard back from many of them. And yeah, yeah,
it's fucking rough.
Speaker 3: The talent that we will lose from this type of
situation is what should really scare everybody, because we all
have the same north star, which is we love playing
good games. And when you do not have consistent roles
for people where they can provide for their families and
grow in this industry, they will leave. They will go
and work for the Chase Banks or wherever it is
that doesn't lay them off every two fucking years after
they work extremely hard to complete a project, and we
will lose whose talent that make the games that we
hold so dear and so like, in five to ten
years we're playing some fucking garbage, cookie cutter game that
Triple A is just pissed out. Again. We can all
remember there was lots of opportunities for indies. This year,
we're playing indie after indy, but we keep like shuttering
these studios and harming really talented people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a bad landscape right now. It's it really
is rough. I mean, I guess all we can do
is celebrate the work of those that have been shut down,
and I guess more in the projects in future, things
that are that are not going to see the light
of day, And I don't know how long that's sustainable,
you know.
Speaker 1: I remember my first Gisu it was Champions of the
Norath Realms of EverQuest. Not a good game, and.
Speaker 2: I've got almost the full run out there. Is that
like an three issue or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was still like long before the redesign. Oh yeah,
it was still school like so much text on the cover,
half naked elf woman.
Speaker 3: Uh, never forget, I didn't.
Speaker 1: I mean I kept the magazine in my nightstand for
years and years because I loved reading about Champions the Norath.
That's the only reason why. But yeah, it was it
was fun. I And that was like it was so
weird too because from the time I like, it dawned
on me. Oh right, I've been reading these people for
nine years, some of these people, and it's only just
now occurring to me that like they do this for
a living, Like I guess I could try to do that.
That's that was my weird Like it was twenty eleven,
I remember, and I was like Arkham City was about
to come out, and I asked just on a whim.
I asked the local like free newspaper, not the school
newspaper or the actual like paid newspaper. It was the
Arkansas Free Weekly. I was like, hey, could I write?
Do you need anybody to write a review? They're like, sure,
we'll give you fifty bucks, which in college, like writing
a video game review after when I had already played anyway,
was crazy, So I was like sure. And then of
course I modeled how I spoke about games, on how
Dan Riiker had been talking about games, Tim Urry had
been talking about games, you know, the people that at
game Form I had been reading. And then from there
I was just hooked. I was like, well, I guess
I could transfer over to the journalism side of school.
It's not gonna it's not gonna hurt. And then you know,
got the internship and then from there now here we
find ourselves and I'm on a I'm on the podcast
with like two people I have always admired. So it's
it's it sucks, and it's like, yeah, everything's gonna evolve
and change. Like mainstream news is also not doing all
that well in terms of like print and magazines.
Speaker 2: Of prime time via the Hurst Entertainment everywhere has been
fucked since the Internet started. Basically they still haven't figured
it out.
Speaker 1: Even people, but the people that are, you know, like
working for that Internet machine or this is not every place.
And I've worked to some great places that are doing
some awesome stuff.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: I love Polygon, I love game Spot, but it's still
just like it's crazy to think, you know, back in
the day getting that physical magazine. Game Former is still
like the one I'm nostalgic for, so it is. It's
crazy it's gone. And I watched so much fucking replay.
I didn't listen to podcast as much, but I watched
a lot of replay and that was like a weekly
ritual for me.
Speaker 2: I mean, that was one hundred percent where I cut
my teeth as far as like being a personality and
doing videos and playing games while talking to a microphone
like that. That was incredible for me. You talked about
when you first realized you could do it for a job,
and that's one hundred percent my how I based my
entire life was I was nine and I wanted to
know the fatalities in Mortal Kombat. So I went in
tech cameras, funkle Land or video like it must have
been funk Land because it was exclusive to there, And
I saw they had Mortal Kombat on the cover and
I just got the Genesis one and it said like, oh,
you know, fatalities codes or whatever, and so I bought it,
opened up and like they had the about the editors
section at the beginning, and you know, so it's like, oh,
here's Andy mcmara, Here's Andy Reiner, and just with their pictures.
So it's like, yeah, the Raging Gamer and yeah, the
game Mombrade and stuff, neighborhood right, the game Dandy, Yeah,
all that stuff. Yeah, And I'm just looking at these
pictures of these dudes. I'm like, these are adults, and
like this is theirs, their job. They're they're talking about
Mortal Kombat, Like, are you fucking kidding me? So like
at nine, I had that like, well, okay, I just
need to move my entire life in this direction. So
like it's so weird talking about like a brand, a
company or whatever as being such a like important part
of someone's life. But like literally, from the age of nine,
Game Informer was like the biggest fucking thing, the biggest
through line in my entire life. From like shooting that
commercial for them when I was eighteen and meeting those
guys for the first time. The first issue I'm in
is the Jade Empire issue. There's a picture in GI
Spy of somebody in a shark suit playing Aquaman for
the Xbox. That was me at eighteen, shooting that commercial
up there, and I put on a shark suit that
I bought from all of America and I played Aquaman
for the bit. And then years and years later, after
bugging Andy at e three, all those years, you know,
he takes a chance on men O nine worked there
and like so that's it's crazy. Like I talked to Andy.
I had a great I caught up with him at
Summer Games Fest and in the right before I moved
to Minnesota, I had like a forty five minute conversation
with him about bikes because I wanted to get into
biking around Minnesota. This is the guy that at nine
years old, I saw his picture in a magazine and
I thought, I want to do that. And here I
am thirty years over, thirty years later, and we're just
you know, I moved to Minnesota because of his magazine.
Now I'm talking about bikes and hanging out with him
Summer Games Fest, and it's just like, man, what a
fuck just opening that magazine, that tiny little thing in
nineteen I guess it was nineteen ninety three or nineteen
ninety four. It started in nineteen ninety one, but anyway, Yeah,
it's had more of an impact in my life than
pretty much anything you know.
Speaker 1: I started in nineteen ninety one as well. The magazine
was as old as me. And I told you this
story really quick before we move on. But have I
told you where I was when I heard that I
got the internship I applied for. I applied for the first,
very first internship because that coincided. It could not have
been more perfect, like uh, serendipitous timing. I decided I
kind of wanted to do this, and then I wrote
an Arkham City review, and then the next day Game
Informer on the website said hey, we're doing an internship program.
I was like, what the fuck? So I or I
wasn't the next day, I'm exagger I was like several
months later, but right around when I decided, I was like,
I'm gonna apply for the summer one. I didn't get it.
Matt Miller did respond saying, hey, I like your stuff.
Keep applying. You know, I think local people got hired
for that one, and you know they they moved in
and then they started to expand it farther because people
were willing to. This was an unpaid internship, mind you,
Oh yeah they were. And uh, ironically, do you know
where I was when I heard that I got the
internship to Game Informer where it was inside a game stop,
like I got. Matt Miller called me and asked me
if I wanted to come. I was like in Syracuse,
New York, or I was back on summer vacation from
University of Arkansas. I was like yeah, and then it's
like I'm not gonna make any money. I'm gonna somehow
move to Minneapolis for three and a half months. And
then I remember walking up to the counter like beaming,
and I forgot what used game I bought. Because I
got a game, I was like I got to commemorate it.
And oddly enough, I don't remember the game, but I
remember the guy who always worked there and he's like,
what are you so happy about? And I was like,
I just got an internship at Game Reformer. So he
was like he was so fucking happy for me because
I used to go in there all the time.
Speaker 2: Oh man, that's all.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, really have such a dream. You're like the
luckiest kid in the world.
Speaker 2: Oh it's a Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. It's the
Golden ticket. Yeah, it's you were there during the office days,
you know, obviously way pre COVID and everything. That office
was fucking incredible, which reminds me as of today that
we're recording Ben Hansen over at Minmax just put up
a video where it's just a ton of footage from
the old office, but it's also earlier this year. We
all kind of knew this was coming at some point,
and so Hanson kind of organized a thing where him
me Alex been making and Leo Vader went to the
current office that no one's actually worked at. It's basically
just like a storage facility for like all the old
statues and games and stuff like that, which you know
that's again going to go to wherever the fuck game
Stop wants it to go to. But it's just this
really cool walk down memory lane of all these things
interspersed with a bunch of old footage from the office
and Hanson, God bless him and doing incredible work. Again,
he's going to do like I don't know if he
said a month or he's basically doing a giant celebration
of Game Informer's history. I mean, min max was founded
after that first big round of layoffs a Game Informer,
and so now you know, like tonight was the first step,
first video he put up. But I know he's planning
a bunch of stuff to kind of memorialize Game Informers.
So I know I talk about Hanson a lot and
min Max and all the great work he's doing over there,
But if you have any interest in this type of
thing we're talking about, Hanson is going to put together
a bunch of great stuff with a bunch of those alumni,
myself included. So definitely check out what he's doing at
min Max.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. And Hanson, you know, is a friend
of fire Escape. It comes on the show, I'm sure
you know it won't be too long before he's submon
in for somebody.
Speaker 2: Yep, yep, Mary, when did you go there? I'm wondering
if I if there's any chance I was there.
Speaker 1: I might have an email hold on Oh wow, is
that game for Australia.
Speaker 2: Let's see all right, because yeah, we did have a
game in Former Australia. It was like virtually identical, but
they would like replace the Madden spread with like a
soccer thing.
Speaker 3: I think I was there twenty twelve.
Speaker 2: I would have been there in Minneapolis.
Speaker 3: I wonder. I don't think you were there.
Speaker 2: I was working there in twenty twelve. What game was it?
Speaker 1: Uh?
Speaker 3: It was Sorry, I'm like looking for the email again.
Speaker 2: Was it from mac namara?
Speaker 3: No, this was back when I worked at Zoo Games.
Remember the badso the Bad publisher. Oh sure, And we
had a couple of indie games that we were trying
to get coverage for.
Speaker 2: Huh.
Speaker 3: I don't think we didn't get anything, but we were trying,
you know what I mean. Like we were like knocking
on doors and being like, yeah, I like this, and
then people were like, no, we don't want to read
about Eminem's racing. So maybe you were like the one
who like didn't let me in.
Speaker 2: Probably yeah, I was the one who vetoed everything. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you were like these games are bad and she
sucks and she can't come back here.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 2: I would have been like I like M and MS
I love branding, right, and I love cart racing. Yeah, yeah,
it's cool.
Speaker 3: Essentially with a crap I was peddling back then. But yeah,
I have like I have like a couple of emails
from that era from like various people that I tried
to keep in touch for it with. Yeah, just like
a yeah, I'm like reading one about the Yeah, the
Dust Force, a Game Informer has expressed interest twenty thirteen.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I left in twenty fourteen, so oh my god. Weird.
Speaker 3: We might have been in the same circles. But yeah,
I don't remember meeting you. I feel like I would
have remembered that.
Speaker 2: Sure, I think I met you, and yeah, when I
went to CBS.
Speaker 3: But I mean I was a kind of a I
think what's important to remember is like during that time
as well, I was a pr person, so my name
had no weight or value. I was like, I am
here with a developer and I would love for you
to talk to them about their video game, and so
I was just getting things to you, so nobody really
knew who I was.
Speaker 2: That was kind of how it always went because it
was like, you know, Minneapolis is where Targeting Best Buy
are located, so it was always companies when like they
would bring in some developers, or they would have people
from the publisher doing their rounds at like Target and
Best Buy to figure out like how many units they
would buy or whatever, and then they would stop by
Game Informer to show off the game. It would always
be like one pr person, be like two developers, be
like the creative director and someone else, or they'd be
like vuying for a cover or something. It's like the
story about when Randy Pitchford made me and mcmahra play
through all of Duke Nukem Forever in a hotel room
once you know that's yeah, I'm trying to get the
cover for that, you know. So yeah, they would always
swing by and basically make their pitch, and Andy would
be the you know, the American Idol judge or whatever.
Speaker 3: So yeah, stressful, Yeah, I feel like those are really
wild times. Something that similar to your guys' big break
was my ability to go on this journey to go
to a couple places and pitch these games. And I
went to San Francisco as well to like pitch them
to IGN and game Spot, and I met people at
game Spot as this agency, and I was like, yes,
I really do love games, Like, let's keep in touch,
here's my card. Later on we keep in touch. In
years later, they're like, hey, we have a contractor position
possible at E three and I was like, I will
drop everything for this, and I did. But I met
them like four years earlier doing that pr run, So yeah,
I was like all connected. It's just likeok, a long
time for me to like get my foot in the door.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's just incredible, Like you know these places
that they just seems like, okay, first job in the
industry whatever. Then you think about just the sliding doors.
Why life is where? Oh, because I got this job
that was just oh you know, I was twenty three,
twenty four or whatever, got this job, and oh I
met this person, I met this person. I met this person,
and you just look at all the different ways that oh,
just my first job or whatever just affects your entire
life and social circle and career. It's a yeah. And
to me and then so many others, Game Informer was
just the absolute biggest.
Speaker 1: So I got my job at game Spot in in
part because the person who recommended me was dating someone
I met at the internship. Oh wow, it is just
another weird roundabout like yeah, whatever.
Speaker 3: Gets you there.
Speaker 2: I'll never forget. When I got the job offer. I
was working at the Garmin GPS tech support place in Kansas,
just call center, you know, and they were so look,
I love Game Informer. Game in Former never paid shit
while I was there or before. I don't know what
they're like more recently. But I was making thirty k
year at the call center. I was a college graduate,
and Game Informer offered me the job, and they did
tell me like, hey, heads up, it doesn't pay that much.
And again it's not like I don't put that on
the heads of Game Informer. I put that on Game Stop,
you know. And so it was like a one thousand
dollars a year pay cut. And I'm recalling my dad
so excited about, like, oh my god, I got my
dream job. This is it, this is it. I got
the offer. How much to pay? It was twenty nine
and how much McK now thirty. Well, again, don't don't
ever take a pay cut, And Dad, I understand that
in theory, but this is a very extreme circumstance for me.
It's literally my dream job I will take. I would
pay a thousand dollars a year to go work my
dream job and fucking review a portal two instead of
help this old lady acquire sat lights on her Newvie device.
Speaker 1: You know. Yeah. Plus at that point, I correct me
if I'm wrong, But did you think you'd ever even
like at that point, You're like, all right, this, I'm
going to be a game form of the rest of
my life. I'm going to try to be eic and
I'm not gonna You're not thinking about like that as
a stepping.
Speaker 2: Stone, No, absolutely not. I literally when I walked in there,
I remember thinking like, I want to take over this place.
I want to become editor in chief. I want this
to be my life's you know, I want this to
be the rest of my life. And I realized pretty
quick I got there, and like a few months in,
I remember going to Andy McNamara's fortieth birthday party and
thinking like, hang on, he's not really that. I don't
know he's retiring any times.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's not like the president is seventy one.
Speaker 2: It's not like eighty year old dude.
Speaker 3: I was like, I gotta get this old guy out
of here. It's time for some new blood.
Speaker 2: He did leave, I would just have to wait a
little bit longer. But yes, I did go in there
thinking like, yes, I want this to be And no
way did I see it as like the stepping stone
type thing. It's like I'm moving. I fucking love the city,
loved everyone I worked with, I loved the work itself. Yeah,
I would have stay there forever if it had continued
to be a viable business, you know. Yeah, And even
like when I left in twenty fourteen, and it's like
I didn't know, Like obviously I loved Giant Bomb and everything,
but I had never listened to or read Giant Bomb.
It wasn't like Game and Form, where I spent my
whole life revereing this brand and everything. It was just
i'd gotten to know the Giant Bomb guys. I liked
those guys, and it seemed like they were more equipped
for kind of the future of games media where it's like, okay,
they're really big on podcasts and streaming and stuff like that.
I have more faith in that being a way forward
than as much as I fucking loved this brand and everything,
I had no faith in Game Stop even back then,
and I thought at some point the House of Cards
was going to fall down I didn't know would last
this long. But but yeah, that's the only reason I left.
It's just because I thought the reality of the business
was like not going to go in their favor, which yeah,
and to know detrimental, Like you know, they continued doing
great work until the very end, and it was it was.
It went down for the exact reasons everybody could have expected.
Speaker 1: Yeah, everybody listening, When you get the chance, pour one
out for Game Performer and say something good about them
on social media, et cetera, we will remember them for
a long time. And I have all my issues here
in the closet as well. It's my bust those out soon.
Speaker 2: And yep, I got almost a full run out there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Godspeed Game Informer, you were a good one.
Speaker 2: We appreciate you, all.
Speaker 1: Right, Do you guys want to talk about happy Yeah? Sure,
Dan and Mary. You know how hard it is to
get me to shut up about wine.
Speaker 3: Oh you will not shut up about wine, that's true.
Speaker 1: Well, guess what firstly is here to help me out
even more Because it's getting toward the end of summer,
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Whether it's bringing some cabiny front to your barbecue, whether
it's having a nice sauvignon blanc on a hot day,
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you out if you're new to wine or if you're
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Speaker 2: How well, yeah, I know. Whenever I'm hosting my big
barbecues and my happy hours and my family dinners, I
off for First Leaves Fine Wine Upgrade and that gets
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Speaker 1: All right, before we move on to new stuff, I
did play. Thank goodness you're here.
Speaker 2: Ah, let's hear it.
Speaker 1: I agree, it's very funny. Yeah, I think that it's
paced well. I beat it in like a sitting on
a Saturday morning, which is great. I there was a
few times I dan the sexual on double Entendre is everywhere.
Speaker 2: Look, okay, I'm willing to wave the flag that. Uh,
it's probably that I've forgot them versus because like every
time somebody brings something up, like what about the hot
dog hole, it's like, oh right, yeah, ro what about
the milk part? It's like, all right, yeah, it's I.
Speaker 1: Think you also skipped over a very important facet of
this game, which is that Matt Barry is a voice
actor in it. I don't like know who that is
from the IT crowd what we do in the Shadows.
He's last Cravensworth, he's the guy, he's the gardener. And
when you first meet him, he's got his back to
the camera and he's just like doing something furiously to
his crotch.
Speaker 2: Oh that I did not notice at all.
Speaker 1: And then he turns around and he's trying to fix
a hose and he's like, oh hi, and it's just classic.
Matt Berry is like something that clogged up the works.
See if you can get down there and squeeze something
out and then he puts it back in his pocket,
and then you go under the tunnels and down the
well in the w's.
Speaker 3: Your little lemon head. I love how like last episode,
Dan was like, oh, I didn't even think about that.
It was a little sexual and it's just like there's
something clogging up the pipe, so why don't she get
in there and see if you can squeeze it.
Speaker 1: Out for me?
Speaker 2: Let me just do you know what I mean?
Speaker 3: And Dan saw this is a nice little game for
the children.
Speaker 2: It's to show you the depths of how much things
go over my head. Literally an hour before we started recording,
I was making a microwave meal and I had a
plastic film over the top and I've had I've been
bit enough times where I go to grab it and
the steam burns my hands, and so I put a
fork in there to let the like lift the lid
and let some steam out. And as I was doing that,
literally a couple hours ago, I thought, oh, let off
some steam. Like I only knew it as the like
metaphor version, never as the like there would be a
real thing behind it, like, Oh, it's based on letting
steam out of something too, Like I just knew it
was like, oh, chill out, let off some steam. I
never thought about the actual steam related thing. Does that
make sense?
Speaker 1: Yes, but I think blow off and steam is from
like coal engines, not microwave dinners.
Speaker 2: Well, just I'm generally getting the steam out of something
in general.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, it's pent up energy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I never thought about there would be a
literal connotation to it. I thought it was just like
a saying or something in Commando. Yeah, did you think.
Speaker 3: When somebody said they had to drain the lizard that
they were going into the bathroom and a lizard and
hurting it.
Speaker 2: No, I know that's a peepe thing. I get some
of it. I think that's just a lot of them
can fly over my head very easily. The one with
the hose and the whack and off that did not
some of them. I forgot that one. I definitely didn't
even register at all when I played it.
Speaker 1: But it's still it's super fun. I found myself getting
so caught up in the jokes that I often forgot
what my objective was supposed to be. Yeah, that's not
like it's not like an open world where you're going
left and right. But there's definitely the kind of that
item trading sequence vibe to most of the game. It's like,
all right, I gotta go unclog the the pipes or
the the what the hell's the word? Uh, what the
hell's the word? I'd worked in restaurants. It's the line,
the lines. I gotta go unclog the lines so the
bartender can pour a beer for the alcoholic locksmith, so
he can go open the shop, so I can get
butter to let this person out of the sewer grate.
And other times I got so caught up laughing hard
that I forgot what they told me, And the game
doesn't if you go talk to that character and they
don't really repeat what you're supposed to be doing. They
just say something like, gogeous day out, isn't it, Chap,
don't forget to like buston up if you go out?
Speaker 2: Yeah, And there's no quest log. There's like absolutely no
like UI or anything. But luckily, like all these spaces
are pretty small, and so you just got to walk
around and slap things for a while and you'll figure
out where you need to go and more often lap
a couple more things, just slap things. You'll see funny
stuff if you've been on your way to getting the thing.
Speaker 1: So yeah, those faces in this game are just funny
on their own. I remember one of the earliest things
they panned to you're the protagonists, and it's just.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and sometimes it takes up the whole screen. It's
just kind of timing on so much stuff in the framing,
like they understand comedy very well.
Speaker 1: Also, I love the fucking the actual like live action
quick recordings that are on loop for the pause menu
and the loading screens. What does it say in the
pause menu. It doesn't say quick to windows. It says
like I've had enough of this shit or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's something very British.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's no that came super fun absolute like
just quick one sitting gem that is just paced out
really well. You might get like lost a few times,
but there's so much there's so many jokes laden into
the environment that I never like got frustrated because there
was a little like a bit around every corner. But yeah,
it's it's it's not really a game where you're like, Okay,
I gotta go get this done and then I'll do
this it's more just you're kind of going with the
flow and being this like buffoon around town slapping.
Speaker 3: Like I never had any idea what I was supposed
to do. Like at no time was I like, ah, yes,
I need the key for the fence so that I
can get the dish. It's just like the whole time,
I'm like, I don't know, I'm gonna slap this guy,
I'm gonna slap this girl, and I'm gonna slap this
ham again because I gotta slap those hammy hams. I
was always like starting chaos. It was very controlled experiment.
I think, what's so great about this is like how
rare it is. How often are there games that are
just essentially little joke machines for three hours? Like never
games do all sorts of things. They're entertaining, they make
you think ems some of them are about your dexterity.
But how how rare is it that it's like this
is just to make you laugh, that's its only purpose.
It's stupid, just laugh.
Speaker 2: For three hours, And it's even rarer that it's successful
at that. Yeah, that's actually funny, you know. They when
you see a movie, there are certain movies where you
know you're checking your watch, and there are certain ones
where it just kind of flies by because you were
super invested in it. I feel like there is kind
of like an analog to that in games, where it's like,
even good games, it's like, all right, I gotta get
done this. This mission is a pain in the answer.
I got e have an escort mission here. Okay, this
thing here, I'm just kind of grinding the level up.
Just what you know, those things where it's the equivalent
of checking your watch. This one's three hours. At no
point was I like, Ugh, this quest sucks or I
need to move on past this. I was just enjoying
it for three hours and then it ended before any
of it got tired. It was just I have no
complaints about that game.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's super good. God I played it.
Speaker 3: I'm glad we bullied you into finishing it. That's that
was super worth it.
Speaker 1: You bullowed me into playing it to begin with.
Speaker 3: Yes, that's right, I did, and I do it again.
Speaker 1: We kind of came away from last episode with some homework.
Dungeons of Hinterberg. I have played quite a bit of
that game, played a little bit of it very pleasantly
surprised by that those who don't know. Just generally speaking, structurally,
I guess it's a mix of Zelda and Persona and
there are some loot esque elements but not much. It's
kind of like Stardu Valley set up. You're just like
on Victory, you're getting away from your desk job and
you arrive in this it's an Austrian developer and it's
based in the Austrian Alps, and you arrive in the
town called Hinterberg, and I really appreciate this is a
very dewey intro. There's a quick cut scene when you're
in a taxi and then you get there and then
the briefest of exposition. It's like everybody thought it was
a hoax, then they thought it was a mass solution hallucination.
All we know is twenty five dungeons just landed in
this place and then monsters were everywhere. So people go
vacation in Hinterberg to like blow off steam and kill
monsters and explore dungeons. And the dungeons are puzzle heavy
with some rudimentary combat I think is probably the best
way to put it. But yeah, between dungeons you are
also doing persona stuff. Improving bonds with certain characters around town,
improving your own stats. You can just forego a dungeon
entirely on any given day and then go sit at
a picnic table for the afternoon and increase your relaxation
stat I like it a whole lot. It's I think,
I don't want to assume anything, but it's relatively lower budget,
I think shows compared to something a bit more polished.
The combat can be a bit stilted, but overall, the
overall loop of this game is really compelling. I'm having
a I thought I would just play a dungeon in
order to talk about it with you guys, and then
all of a sudden, like I'm on the sixth dungeon.
Speaker 2: Now, now let me ask a question here, because I
started that night of the tutorial dungeon, and yeah, you know,
the combat is fairly simple, but I did just start out,
and then I got back to the town, I got
the magic spell the wrecking ball thing, and I was like, oh,
that's that's kind of a fun unique item, and then
I started kind of talking to people. So I feel
like I saw just the beginning of that loop where
it's dungeon and then town stuff. Does it continue that
way where it's like dungeon and like is each gimmick
or each item is it tight, like, oh, this is
the wrecking ball dungeon and then this is the blank dungeon?
Or does it add like do you have that wrecking
ball the whole game?
Speaker 1: There's four there's four areas that you can go to,
so it's it's not an open world. It's segmented like
an old school Zelda, like an Ocarina whatever. There are
four biomes basically you can go to, not counting the town,
and in each of those, Mary correct me if I'm wrong,
you get a different duo of spells. Got yeah, okay,
the the ranged RB or R one and the L
one which yeah, at first, like there's some clear correlations
between like the bomb ability in Breath of the Wild
and how they have you use the wrecking ball which
you can explode remotely, Yeah, pressing it again, but no,
you get you get some wind powers in the second area.
I haven't gone. I just unlocked the third area because
in each area there are like seven dungeons apiece, and
you can repeat some if you want. I don't know
why you would thus far or something, but there's also
other mini objectives in the world. Again, there are those
places where you can upgrade your own stats. They are
a little side quests that pop up when these like
certain characters are like bring us monster parts, but no,
each each new biome kind of plays with the magic
spells you get in cool ways.
Speaker 2: And then when you're doing the kind of persona type
stuff or whatever, like, I'm willing to give it a
shot even if that type of stuff isn't normally my thing.
But if I don't like it, that stuff in between.
Is that skippable stuff or is that like critical?
Speaker 1: It's pretty critical because it's not like you're just upping
a number with a character. You're actually by spending more
time with the Blacksmith, you are unlocking a whole mechanic
by upgrading relationship.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, that was my question.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I will say, as someone who I think
all three of us have pretty low patients for like
very extensive cut scenes and conversations. Mary, would you wouldn't you?
Would you agree that those conversations with characters are always
fairly brief, And then all of a sudden, you're like
you unlock sword charms, which can do some pretty cool
abilities and whatnot.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I think they are their brief I
still found them too long. And then I did the
fast forward. So there's a button and it just zips
through all the conversation.
Speaker 1: You can skip everything in this game if you want to.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's pretty nice because I don't. I don't actually
give a shit about any of the people in this town,
and they really want me to. There's I think four
things that you can increase based on your amusement, renown, relaxation,
Familiarity is the familiarity yeah, yeah, and so you're like
meeting people to boost these different things. I remember one night,
I was like, I'll just see a movie that we
don't have to talk to anybody, and then it like
made me watch the movie and learn from the movie,
and I was like no, and so I fast forwarded
through the movie and then I just got up and
then I talked to somebody else some other night and
I unlocked a perk, but I just fast forward through
every conversation and dialogue option because I don't care. Also,
I'm curious with my things. I just thought sometimes they
really portrayed people in a negative light.
Speaker 1: The right r.
Speaker 3: Like I was surprised that journalist is such an asshole,
and I just don't understand, like they want you to
be friends with these people and like kind of get
to know them. And a part of me was like,
is this gonna be a romance thing? Because it was
like odd the way they were setting us up to
like have a drink at a bar together. But he
just kept shitting on like the town and like the bar,
and he was just like it's bar. It's just a
little it's just a little like overdone for me, don't
you agree? And my options were like yes, like sucks
ass Like no, I actually like it, and you're you're
a piece of shit, and like the other one was
like say nothing, dot dot dot, and I was like,
I guess I'll say nothing because this is such a
weird place to put me in. I don't want to
talk to any of these people or interact with them.
The meat of this game is running around doing the dungeons.
I appreciate that this game tried to get you to
do other things, to explore a town, to grow lots
of different skill sets, to have two different uh, I
don't know, special skills per area. I think that's really
neat there's really good ideas in here. It just so
happens that the only thing that I personally find fun
is dungeon ing. That is like the only thing I
give a shit about. I don't care about anything else.
I tried, I'm not into it. I find the dungeons
are a lot like a Lara Croft.
Speaker 1: They are environmental pulleys and.
Speaker 3: And they're good. Sometimes I got stuck a couple of
times and I was like, what are you wanting me
to do?
Speaker 1: Here?
Speaker 3: There was this pulley system. If Mike, if you've done six,
we've probably done the same ones by now because I've
done all the easy ones and no, I'm on all
the hearts finished medium.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, basically the uh it was kind of the
first dungeon from Twilight Princess, very okay of it with
the monkeys.
Speaker 3: You can see the inspiration behind it. There's one that
I did in a cave system and it's a trolley
system and you can see the line you need to
pull the trolley. I got really stuck because I pulled
the trolley all the way. But then I didn't know
what else to do, And it turns out you had
to pull you know, you had to return the trolley
to the original position to keep going. I thought that
was really smart, and it reminded me of of environmental
puzzles I used to do in Tumorder. I could like
imagine Turmader graphics over this type of puzzle and all
of us eating it up and being like, oh, that
was really smart, like the way that you know she
did that. Ultimately, though, the combat was less than desirable
for me. I don't really genuinely enjoy the combat. The
puzzles is where it's at. It's fun going through the dungeons.
I wish that the combat was a little bit more
impact y.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's not as crunchy as I would like, because
even when you get like you start to get cool
even outside of the because there's I agree wholeheartedly. I
actually think the persona stuff feels like an afterthought. I
think you could accomplish all the same stuff just by
treating it more like Monster Hunter, where it's like you're
back in town, you're buying potions, you're prepping, Oh hey quick,
before you do the next dungeon, you got to go
talk to her, and then you unlock a pretty important
upgrade mechanic. But then you start getting stuff like whirlwind
attacks and like Diablo Barbarian leaps, and I was like, okay,
this is fleshing out a little bit. The problem with
the combat is that it takes It's like the Tails
games Jake Decon, I'm talking about you guys played like
Tels of Vespiria or the combat brings up these like
arbitrary barriers around you and they don't go down again
until you fight all the enemies. It's like a little
like wave based thing. They all go fairly quick. I
think it's just interesting enough to like shake up the
pacing of some of these dungeons. But I also feel
as if the loot system is kind of tacked on,
and I don't think necessary I would have. I think
it's an easier sell to say, hey, this is Zelda
plus Persona plus some loot than to say, hey, we're
trying to do Zelda. How many people try to do Zelda.
But yeah, I think the puzzles are all so far
have been like good, bordering on great. I got stuck
in the same one as you, Mary, I don't. I
think sometimes these puzzles, ever, occasionally are difficult in a
bad way in that they they don't have the same
like skill with visual language that something like a Nintendo would,
where you could just see an item and kind of
figure out what you could do with it, whereas in
this game, it's like the dungeon leading up to that
one with the mind carts is very much about getting
around these locked doors to open them from the other side,
and then all of a sudden you come up on
one that are like, how the fuck do I get
past it? And I was like, Oh, they don't want
me to push this mine cart, they want me to
jump in it, and then all of a sudden it
automatically shoots through the door. How would I know that
if I? But what? I don't know?
Speaker 2: Once you get and should be more like Nintendo, Yeah, yeah,
just come on, what are you doing?
Speaker 1: That's not the last for sure, that's an unfair comparison,
but like there's something about the the art direction of
the game that I can't always parse what is important
to the environment and the puzzles and what's just environmental art,
because it is it's like that sable cell shaded hand
drawn kind of aesthetic.
Speaker 2: Line vaguely like jets at radio type kind of Yeah.
Speaker 1: No, it's absolutely unfair to compare it to Nintendo. It's
just like, while I'm doing all this, I'm like a
man now I want to play like Twilight Princess or something.
But I really do enjoy these dungeons. I I also
think it's a pretty like just fun setting to explore
the Austrian Alps, and like the biomes are pretty detailed
and cool and uh, there is there is some bloat
this game, but I'm still finding the overall loop to
be like, I want to go back and play it
more tonight.
Speaker 3: I agree, I'm not done with it. I don't think
it's perfect. I think we've talked a lot about the
things we don't love about it. I think the dungeons
is where it's at. I think it has a great
loop of like the day and night cycle. It's fun.
I enjoy going in it, and I will also continue
playing it. Like I think, I'm only eight hours in
and I want to play more. I would like to
continue eight hours.
Speaker 2: How many dungeons would you say that is?
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 3: I'm in an area three, okay, I.
Speaker 1: Just unlocked Area three, and it probably like a because
you can you can spend a lot of time staying
in one area and trying dungeons that are above your level. Again,
I saw that and stuff. I again, I think at
this point in the game, and I just unlocked a
third biome. Keep in mind, I have not anywhere near
completed the first two. They basically want you to unlock
all four and do the first two in each area
and then kind of go back and forth between them.
Once you up your character level, your gear, attack and
defense levels, I think or have a measure whether you're
ready for that dungeon. And I'm pretty that just only
applies to the combat.
Speaker 2: I am intrigued. Something I like about this from what
I hear is that like it's just twenty five dungeons
and then like I know, it's Zelda like in the dungeons,
but Zelda also had a bunch of stuff between. You know,
Zelda would have like, you know, six or seven dungeons,
and in between there's two hours where you got to
go play a song for some frogs or milk acaw
or something, you know exactly. Yeah, there's like a bunch
of shit, you which I love that shit some of
my favorite stuff. But like I also like the like
like Shadow of the Classes. I always loved that. It
was just like, here's just like fifteen boss fights and
it's just this is the boss fight game, you know,
And I like the idea of like, this is the
dungeon game.
Speaker 3: Uh, get in there, dungeon it up. That's what you
do the dungeons. My job is dungeon.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm actually curious because there is a difficulty called
vacation mode, and I'm curious about that because if that
removes the need to really worry about my item level
and difficult combat, I might go down to that because
these puzzles are definitely are intriguing me, because.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because that's not going to change the puzzle solutions,
it's just going to make it to the combat stuff.
If that's weak, that sounds that I'm assuming.
Speaker 1: I don't know for sure, but I'm gonna I kind
of want to check that out because so far, the
only difficulty Slider I can see is enemies, enemy health
and variety, et cetera. And the combat's not why I'm
going to this game, and it's not the draw. So yeah,
I'm curious about that. But yeah, this game has been
a very pleasant surprise for me.
Speaker 2: Nice I'll keep going with it. It does run pretty
well on Steam Deck and with all my flights and stuff.
That's when I've been playing that also. Zelda we talked
about a little bit here. Quick update. I have the
tri Force and win Waker. I'm about to go. I
forgot what the very end of that game is outside
of the game and fight. I think you go under
the castle and all that stuff. But again, that game,
I'm playing the HD version. It is God damn it.
It's so good. So yeah, almost done with it, and
just go play it if you haven't played it. It's fantastic.
Speaker 1: The last time I replayed it, I've never owned my
own and we you. And when I lived with Jake
Decker in San Francisco for a year and Tim Turry
and everybody, Jake and I both started Campaign or sorry
restarted Twilight Princess and Win Waker. He had never played
Twilight Princess before. I might be butchering this, sorry Jake,
but I believe he was playing Twilight Princess for the
first time. And then I was like kind of simultaneously
replaying Win Waker. I have not played. That would have
been two thousand and seventeen, so I got to replay.
It's coming up on it. I just want those both
on switch. I know there are ways to play them handheld,
but like.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know, I wish it was on Twitch. I
was tired of waiting. I was just like, so I
got it working, you know, on a steam deck, and
it works really well.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I might have to pick your brain about
that because I'm I'm also losing losing patients.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yep, speaking of steam deck stuff. I boy, Steam
World Heist two is what I started that this afternoon,
and oh man, I don't know, did you guys play
the first SteamWorld tyst.
Speaker 1: I am a huge fan of all the SteamWorld games.
I remember I sold you on Quest. Yeah, yeah, a
different games like that.
Speaker 2: It's cool about SteamWorld is that it's all these different
genres and and some of them like I didn't love
the city Builder, but like I love dig I loved Heist.
I liked Quest a lot more than I expected to.
I just think what they're doing is such a cool
deal where it's like, Okay, we have this world in
this name, and then we're just trying all this different
shit and some of them get the sequels and some
of them are one offs, and just what a cool thing.
But I think this might be the top of what
they put out. Again, I just started this afternoon. I'm
like a couple hours in, but it's like there's so
much depth in the combat. It's it's a very tactical game.
It's not like a tiles based you know thing, but
it's it's if you haven't played the first one, it's
not side scrolling, but it's you know, the side perspective
two D. And it's turn based, so you know you'll
have two three people on your tea, enemies coming in.
A lot of environmental stuff, exploding barrels, stuff like that.
It's a lot of aiming your guns and like the
sniper rifle might have a line that you know, you
can see how it's gonna ricochet, so you can bounce
it off the ceiling and then the wall and then
into an exploding barrel. It'll kill two guys. Or this
guy is just like a melee guy, so he's got
to run around and get close and everything. But yeah,
it's turn based. Your team does your stuff, their team
does their stuff. But then in between the loop is
so cool. If like going back to the submarine and
I don't remember the in between stuff. As much in
the first heist, but this one has a full like
overworld and you're sailing around in a submarine and you're
getting upgrades to the sub you're getting guns on the side,
you're getting you know, armor plating and stuff like that,
and there's like pirates sailing around that you got to
take out and you can you know, plunder them for
resources and go sail up to a bar to end
your day and upgrade stuff and maybe recruit some new
members to your team. But it's got all these different systems.
It is a very deep game, but it is so
efficient and how it teaches you stuff, Like, you know,
we don't have a lot of patience for really time
hockey games. I also super don't have a lot of
patience for games that take fucking forever for tutorials, like,
for instance, like the Mario Luigi games. I fucking love those,
but some of those are just like I feel like
it's four hours of like let's take you into a battle,
and then some assholes like there's just a million speech
levels like now try this, now, try to time this thing.
This one like in the first hour and a half,
it teaches you a bunch of different systems very quickly.
It does not waste time. You can button through stuff
pretty quick, and it's just kind of laid out in
a way that's easy to grasp. It's not confusing at all.
And it's also fun from the start. It's not like
that first hour and a half is just learning, like
you are doing fun battles and stuff. It's just like
adding a layer and then you do that fight, adding
a layer. Okay, now to do some overworld stuff and
learn this. Now we're adding a layer, and now you've
got a third party member. And I've heard it's a
pretty big game. So the fact that I'm you know,
just starting out and it feels so good already and
it's great Steam Deck game. I haven't played the Switch
one yet. I would imagine it wouldn't be I can't
see why it would be, you know, poorly running on
Switch or anything. But I haven't tried it yet. But yeah,
I've got like two overseas flights this month, and I'm
just so excited to just sit back and play this
game for hours and hours. It is a blast so far.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the I adored that first one because I mean
the general pitch for the first one was you know,
sci fi kind of steampunk two dimensional x com, at
least for someone like me who you know swore by
x com. Yeah, it sounds like they added to what
you were saying, much more to that interstitial strategy layer
between the tactical battles, which is exciting. Plus it's also
not sci fi. It's more Pirates now right. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
yeah that's I can't wait. I saw like a lot
of reviews were super positive. I really want to play
this game. I love that first game. I think I
played through it twice in the harder difficulty the second time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this seems like a Mike Maherty game for sure.
Speaker 1: They changed their name because it was motion. What the
hell was their name?
Speaker 2: Oh the studio. Yeah, they're like Thunderfold now right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's thunder Motion.
Speaker 2: Twin motion is that?
Speaker 1: No? Yeah, your image and form. But now they're Thunderful.
Speaker 2: Thunderfol is a better name. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I I remember when Quest came out, I was like,
because I like steam World Dig two. The new steam
World dig is that city build. Steamware steam World Build
is kind of dig meat city building.
Speaker 2: But Dig a lot didn't love build.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it's good to see this do well because
I didn't love Build either, but god yeah, Quest was
great the fact that they could do a like Slay
the Spire basically but on this like adventure game structure.
There they nailed how many different genres at this point,
so it's great to see that that's still doing well.
Speaker 2: And I watched the like steam page trailer forard I
think this one specifically said it's from the makers of
steam World Heist and steam World Dig like, so I
don't know if it's like one team handles those and
the others through the others, but like if that's the case,
then like this team kills it. I mean, all their
stuff is really good, but like this is the top
for me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I really really want to play that, especially all
the submarine upgrade stuff sounds kind of what was the
game where you're building up your ship and recruiting people
on islands like like two years ago, and there's like relationships. No,
but it's kind of like a ship that you're building up.
Speaker 2: Thieves.
Speaker 1: No, I remember we Assassin's Creed Black Flag that was
an indie game.
Speaker 2: Heart Drench, No, Dave the Diver.
Speaker 1: No, You're it's two dimensional. You're going your your character
is like a battleship, and you're going between islands and
you're recruiting people and getting supplies and building, like putting
your stacking like expedition. You're stacking lopside and stuff up
on your boat as you go between islands. You must
build a boat. There's listeners right now who want to
what are you talking about? Keeping you know, what the
hell is it called?
Speaker 2: You have to describing things until we understand what the
hell you're talking.
Speaker 1: I remember Alex a giant bomb told recommended I play
it on a beast cast and then I played it
and it was great. There's something like characters go to
Heaven at a certain point. What there's listeners right had
a weird dream.
Speaker 3: Oh wait, are you talking about the indie game Spiritfarer?
Speaker 1: Yes, I got it forgot there. That's gonna be that's
a bonus episode there and go to heaven.
Speaker 3: What are you talking about? I thought you were talking
about fighting people like on battle No. No, no, you
got to get some crew and drop some crew off.
Speaker 1: You're like making guards go to heaven. I did a
very that's a bonus episode where we just job. We
all just try to do the worst job possible. Describing
a game, like a game we sort of forgot, like
oh there's yeah there, Yeah, it was good, beautiful.
Speaker 3: It's one of the most beautiful games it's ever been constructed.
It's all about understanding loss and appreciating life and loved
ones as you know it. I mean, it's it's like
one of the number one games that will make you
cry and like really appreciate those in your life.
Speaker 4: It's yeah, oh it's Golden Bones. Okay, Flag change my life,
Sid Myers Pirates.
Speaker 3: That's how that's why I believe in God.
Speaker 1: Shadows of the Damn, that's how I lost faith.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I'm sure I will touch base on this
again after these flights and stuff. But so far, so
very good. I would say, I gotta.
Speaker 1: Get me that game I got. I got to get
me that game that he says, I got to get
Steam World going. Yeah, that's that's encouraging because I was
really excited for that. Uh Mary, Oh, did both of
you play a Ranger or Mary?
Speaker 2: I briefly did Mary?
Speaker 1: Probably curious because that's how I list either, you know,
like I'm close to beating it. Oh, so what's good?
Speaker 3: I'm like ten hours in. I feel like I'm in
the final stretches, you know what I mean, Like where
you have like a my character has like built up
all these relationships, and now I'm saving my character as
a different character that I saved earlier, and I just
I feel like I'm I'm getting close. I think it's
really good, especially for light puzzle noodlers. So you get
the way I was describing it when I was streaming,
because I kept having new people come in and I
had to be like, you have to explain why this
is so hard because it looks easy. They put you
in a spot and you're like, I just have to
get this knife to this monster. That's so easy. We
makes it complicated is every time you go left or right,
you move the entire horizontal row, and every time you
go up and down, you move the entire column. And
so that's what makes this puzzle juice, because all of
a sudden, the items move if they're on your row
or column, and so you have to navigate accordingly, usually
by making tiny squares to move things around to the
position you want them and then.
Speaker 2: Loop around to loop around and get them in there.
Speaker 1: That reminds me heavily of something I mean, it reminds
me of those like slide games when you slide puzzles,
but there's a video game specific Yeah, it's probably like
Zelda dungeons that it's reminding me of. Kind it's sort
of like the ice blocks and the ice camera.
Speaker 3: Okay, but yeah, anyway, it evolves slightly, but it's the
same mechanic over and over and over again. Like they
don't mix it up too much. I also just want
to say it gives me Braid vibes because I believe
I'm gonna muck this up. But the art director or
whatever is the co founder of this studio, and you
can tell that the Braid people are in this. It's
just you know, Braid. Every character you were like, why
do you have such a big fucking weird head.
Speaker 2: Here's little guy, aren't you.
Speaker 3: This is the same ship every character. I'm like, what
the fuck is up with this guy's head?
Speaker 1: They've made every character you're here can do it. But
suddenly Jonathan Blow is involved and it sucks.
Speaker 3: It's just so pretentious. No, it's really good. It's I
just think it's an odd art style that's very distinctive,
so it's not pro nor con Some people like, fuck
up weird looking dookie characters.
Speaker 1: I'm just saying, oh God, I did.
Speaker 3: I'm not It's not for me, but I don't think
it's necessarily bad or poorly made.
Speaker 1: I'm god, this is such a derail. I'm trying to
decide whether I'm far enough removed from an interview I
did with Jonathan Blow to share it funny baby No
no no, no, no no no no? Uh ship am
I Well, I'll yeah, I'll tell a story and then
maybe all okay, So the Witness I had. They gave
that game out like two months before it came out, yes,
And Pete Brown's like, Mike, do you want to review
The Witness? Jonathan Blow? Like sure? And I love that game.
I think it's phenomenal. It's difficult, it's absolutely can be
pretentious in some places. But like a month before the
release date, pr asked if I wanted to interview him
to kind of supplement coverage around it after the review,
And I think he's got enough of a reputation for
he can kind of like you know, close his eyes
and say something and then like look down his nose
at someone as he's talking, and you know, like clearly
a smart dude. But I remember at one point in
the interview. It was a fifty minute interview five zero,
so it was lengthy at least for at that point,
and you know, playing the game. But I remember he
was just saying something that just I think the conversation
had gotten to a point where he stopped. Really he
was not grounded anymore, and so he was saying something
about the game and the philosophy behind it and how
he was kind of thinking about the flow of the
puzzles in your mind space as you're moving through the
witness and he leaned back like this in his chair,
and I noticed that not only were the buttons on
his button down shirt misaligned, but the entire button down
shirt was inside out. So somehow this guy could make
a game that was as genius I will say, the
Witnesses like borderline genius. Yeah, in many ways. However, he
somehow didn't notice that the collar on his button down
shirt was on the inside, and then he buttoned it
like almost completely, and I remember from there on out,
I was like, I need to not laugh during this
interview because he's saying a lot of stuff that I
need to like pay close attention to. And it was
just I told Pete Brown about that right after the interview,
and I was dude, I had to hold it together.
Oh I tried so hard.
Speaker 2: I thought you're gonna say he laaned back and then
like the rolling chair whenever, like on his asked.
Speaker 1: About that immediately, I would have mentioned that Indian the story.
I would have mentioned that in the review for The Witness.
Oh wow, No, I love The Witness, but he's not
attached to this at all.
Speaker 2: Jonathan Blower is not attached to a ranger.
Speaker 1: Gotcha? Are you sure? Have you looked at the credits
and made sure that none of the names are like
an anagram of his Mary?
Speaker 2: I played. I played a bit of it, and like,
I feel like the way I hear people talk about
this game is kind of how I felt about it,
where it's just like, yeah, it's good, it's good, puzzles, good,
think them. You know, it's like very clever stuff, but
like it sounds like you were obviously much further than me,
and it seems like you're saying it's kind of the
same stick for lack of a better term, it's just
kind of like, Okay, gotta move these tiles around, gotta
get that thing over here, I gotta get myself over there.
I gotta, you know, move this sword to that guy
so I can move like and I was kind of
tiring of that after like an hour, and I was
kind of like, okay, and let's just like introduces something
new to the equation soon. I don't know if I
feel the pole to keep going.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I can see how a lot of people will
feel that. And I will say this speaks to me
because when I'm doing one of my favorite things in
the whole world, which is watching TV kind of mindlessly
and playing a video game casually, I like simple puzzles
that I don't have to pay attention to. And I
think this is that it is not super difficult. It's
not super complex. I did get stuck a couple times,
but you you just move shit around until you figure
it out. You know, have you guys we've all played
one of those games where it's it's nine squares and
one of them is empty.
Speaker 2: I've been able to do this picture.
Speaker 1: And you just to move things out of that.
Speaker 3: Yes, okay, well those are stupid and they you there's
no strategy, like maybe sure, but these aren't Rubik's cubes.
You just move things around until it solves itself. And
that's what this game is. If you really don't want
to think about it, just keep moving around, just cleep
sliding around, and you'll figure it out. You can ham
fist your way through this game. In fact, there is
a slide puzzle in this game if you keep playing
at some point. And what pisses me off about it
is that they kind of made it seem like an award,
like or like a reward. I just completed this huge
puzzle and I get to the top and they're like,
you did it. I'm so proud of you, and they
gave me the slide puzzle, and I.
Speaker 2: Was like, what the fuck.
Speaker 3: I don't want to do this. I don't care for
slide puzzles personally. I think a ranger is like a
different thing, and I think it just scratches an itch
for me. But I don't think it's for everybody. But
I think it's simple and it functions well. Oh the
characters names. Let's forget about how weird they look. Can
I tell you some of these character names? Hold on,
let me see if I can. Fine, dude, the character
names are so Weirdlanathan.
Speaker 1: Joe Arrange, Nathan Lebau, what.
Speaker 3: The fuck is this game? And also the game name
is really long. It's not just called a ranger.
Speaker 2: Oh is it like a ranger like a slide puzzle
adventure or something puzzling adventures.
Speaker 3: You don't need it. I'm trying to.
Speaker 1: Escort service.
Speaker 2: Yes, I'm curious.
Speaker 3: God damn it, I'm not keep laughing making I thought
there's an article that's about all the names. But the
names are like, you know, Zimbooble Bob and they'll just
they'll tell me, like two characters fall in love and
run off to get married, and they keep saying their
stupid names, and I keeping like, I cannot take this
seriously that two Star Clock Cross lovers ran away and
are now missing and presumed dead because their names are
like Ziffer Oligoss and Booble Dobbe and I can't. I
just like, I am not worried about them.
Speaker 2: God, you just reminded me. My sister Kayla, who's probably
listening right now, is playing through Middle Gear Solid the
series for the first time on her Twitch, which that
has been fascinating to watch. I've been watching all her
VODs and everything. She was trying to name Zanzibar Land
she was trying to say, like, oh, yeah, so he
met a snake in gray Fox knew each other from it.
She was trying to say zanzibar Land and she said,
zin zinnaty. That's incredible.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Check out team Kayla on twitch. That has been very
fun to watch. Yes, But yeah, Mary, I don't know.
I don't know if I'm to keep going. I feel
like there's a lot of games I've been playing lately
where it's like, Okay, I get what they're doing here.
I played an hour or two of them not really
getting hooked yet. I throw Heinterberg in there, I throw
a ranger in there, A ranger.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: It's just like it reminded me of like a dumber
Baba is you? Does that make any sense? I mean
Boba's you was the whole like logic and words is
very different, but like the moving things around, you know,
kind of reminded me of how you're just moving things
around here, and there are a lot of clever things here.
I had the moments where I just beat my head
against something for a while and then figured it out.
But then I had moments where like I had that aha,
you know, like Eureka moment and felt pretty smart for
a second. But I don't know. I just feel like
other games have done it better. Like I'm not feeling
the itch to keep going right now when there is
like a lot of other stuff I'm trying out.
Speaker 3: I don't think I can justify it. I think what
I'm saying is is I think it's a really nice,
like couch game that I think was good for me.
I don't think it's gonna be for everyone, and I
don't think it gets harder, although I will say they
just unlocked a new concept of the very what I
assume is the very end of the game, which is neat.
I wish they introduced it earlier.
Speaker 2: The rocket lutter, Yes, you can finally.
Speaker 3: Kill so the idea like remember how you can like
slide horizontally and vertically. So uh, if the row is broken,
then you're you only complete one. They've given me this
machine that completes the row.
Speaker 2: Okay, huh.
Speaker 3: I don't know if that makes sense, but it means
that now I can I can travel a lot further
than I did before, and it makes the puzzles a
lot more complex, and I feel like they should have
introduced it right away, so.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's something there. There's some there, and like you said,
like there's always value to a game that's like good
on Switch or steam Deck, and you can just like
there's not a lot of like cut scenes that you
have to pay attention to, and you can just play
while you're watching something else, Like those are real bad
about it.
Speaker 3: I just don't think I agree with you. Like if
I got really wicked stuck on a puzz I'd just
be like, blow it's over. Like I wouldn't. I'm gonna
fight to finish this. But sure, I think the other
day I was playing, Oh my gosh, I was watching
that shark under in Paris, Shark in Paris? What oh, Harris?
And then there's a shark in this in this scene.
Speaker 1: Documentary What.
Speaker 2: Are you waiting? Is this a television show? Is this
something that?
Speaker 1: Okay, yes, it's a documentary about like an actual around
And then they and.
Speaker 3: Then a bunch of swimmers are swimming a competition, swimming
with all.
Speaker 2: The sharks, the Daisy Ridley one right? Is it good?
Speaker 1: No? Why are you talking about it?
Speaker 3: Because that's what I was watching. I was watching when
I was playing Arranger, and I I could have played
a different game. I could have played more Dungeons of
Hinterberg or anything, and I played more Arranger because I
was like, this game is simple that that was my point.
I don't know why I brought up the Shark.
Speaker 1: Dan. Yes, you played Kunitsugami Path of the Goddess. Is
this the one that's sort of pickman esque over the Lord?
Speaker 2: I could see it. Yeah, yeah, because you get all
these villagers, you give them rolls and stuff, and you
kind of like order them around a map to do things.
So it's like, all right, you guys, go attack over here.
You are more defensive and you're gonna protect the lady here.
And it's kind of a wave based thing, so it's
like during the day you're kind of you're going around,
you're trying to purify all of this stuff, which like
dudes fall out of these evil plants and they become
your villagers, and so it's like resource management during the
day as you're trying to get this lady from point
A to point B, and then at night all these
demons come out and then you got to take your
villagers like okay, you're the woodcutter, so you're the melee dudes.
They go up and attack and then like you're the aesthetic,
you're the guy who slows everything down, and so we'll
put you in front of the lady so it'll slow
down all the demons so the woodcutters can get you.
And you're the archers, so I'm gonna place you up high.
And there's just so many little mechanic and stuff like
that where it's like there's night levels where you have
to light lanterns and you can only attack things in
the light, so you got to make sure all the
lanterns are lit before the demons come. And so it's
a lot of trial and I don't want to say
trial and error, it's a lot of like, Okay, I
failed this mission because I didn't realize there were going
to be this many flying enemies. So next time, I'm
going to turn more villagers into archers. And it's you know,
some good upgrade stuff in between. The loop is really
good because like you'll beat a level and that turns
into a base, and then you repair the base. So
like in between the combat things, you are going in
and you're assigning your villagers like okay, rebuild this thing,
do this. I'm leveling up my archer's here I'm using
these resources to level up, you know, different aspects of
the base and characters, and then you go into the
like I need to purify this area and in fight
all these enemies. So it is a weird mix of
like tower defense and like light RTS and then your
character it selvy like you have you know, X and
Y attacks like you would any you know, like Devil
may Cry type game or something, which I think I
thought this was going to be like a Devil May
Cry Bayonetta type game from the trailers. Yeah, and as
much as I love those games, I think I'm liking
this more than I expected to, just because it is
like wholly unique. It is I've not really played anything
like it. I could see the Pickman comparisons for sure,
but I don't know, like the light RTS tower defense
stuff is working for me. It's got some weird sorry ahead,
Oh yes, there are boss fights that like have weird
difficulty spikes. So it's like, Okay, this is pretty early
in the game for this giant centipede boss to be
like very specific with what I have to do to
beat it, and it's it's not really clear how I'm
damaging it. So it's it's kind of hard, but ultimately
I've liked it a lot. I think I'm gonna keep
going with it. I'm liking it more the more I
play it, and the more I kind of see the
loop and level up my characters. But it's it's a
really weird thing. So i'd say check out like a
trailer or just see, like watch one mission on YouTube
and see if it strikes your fancy because it's not
what I expected. I don't know. I'm not sure I'm
playing on Steam okay, which it's also if you are
playing on Steam Deck, it won't run great if you
just load it up, but switch it to thirty frames
a second, bring the refress rate down to thirty and
yeah yeah, change the end game step to thirty and
a couple other tweaks and it runs much better. So
but yeah, it's been it's been a fun one.
Speaker 1: I'm looking at game pass for August.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, okay, I don't know why I assume that.
Speaker 1: Crash Bandicoot Insane Trilogy.
Speaker 3: It seems pretty good.
Speaker 1: Boor Keeper, that's a good game.
Speaker 2: Actually actually started Crash four on the plane. Oh I
need I'm goving to play more of that. Crash four.
I played like two levels of it, and its seem
pretty good.
Speaker 3: I got a New York trip coming, so I'm gonna
need some good games as well.
Speaker 1: I played it. Actually, the Dan talking about Kunitsu Gami
reminds me. Have you played Pickman four? No?
Speaker 2: Not a Nintendo guy, really, but I thought you played
the first three?
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 2: I try to stay away from Nintendo, so I don't
have a switch.
Speaker 1: Have you played? Okay, I take it by your tone
you played Pigman four.
Speaker 2: I get you're doing. You're doing a joking version of
the my actual brain thing. Okay, I see, yes, yes,
I understand it.
Speaker 1: Just bringing up old wounds from our argument at the
end of the Game of the Year last year.
Speaker 2: Oh oh, I thought you were making fun of me,
not knowing you like Total War.
Speaker 1: It was a combination. Oh wow, speaking of wow jokes,
that's also a transition. What a pro I God, I'm
so good at this. I'm getting really good at hosting.
It just took eighty seven fucking episodes. I won't harpen's
too long. I know you guys tune out when I
talk about Total War. No, no, no, But for the people,
but for the people listening who are interested any four
x people. Total War Faraoh when it released last year
kind of it kind of fizzled out right away. It
was seen as not being super content rich. There were
just generally after the Warhammer trilogy, there wasn't like dragons
flying around and demons punching each other in the face
on the front line. So I think that combined with
the fact that people saw it as basically a saga title,
which is like the small one offs, they wrote it off. However,
Creative Assembly just released Dynasties, which is this huge free
update that's basically makes the world massive. It's now like
basically Total War Bronze Age in all but name. So
you have like Agamemnon in Myceni and Troy and you
can recreate their war, and then you have Mesopotamia and Egypt,
so it's basically everything around the Mediterranean right before the
collapse of the Bronze Age. They've added some really cool
stuff if you like Total War three Kingdoms. I actually
find myself doing much more on any given turn in
Dynasties than in Warhammer. I'm actually doing all the court
intrigue and gossip and rumors and plots you can assign
airs if like Agamemnon dies, this personal takeover the throne
kind of not quite as not nearly as deep as
Crusader Kings, but you know, same vein. There's just a
lot going on in this game. And if you're someone
who enjoys four X games where it's not just completely
combat focus, although that's a huge focus here, try out Dynasties.
If you own Pharaoh already and kind of wrote it
off and just kind of got bored with it, which
I did as well. They've also just added a bunch
of updates. It's huge now. It's basically the Immortal Empires
of Pharaoh. It's a massive map and I've I'm playing
as Agamemnon and Mental House and it's just it's one
of the better Total War historical titles. Now if you
wrote it off last year and you were hoping it
would be bigger, it's huge now. I've played a bunch
of it over the weekend and it it has be
hooked for sure as far as Total War. It's pulled
me away from Warhammer as far as Reggie games go,
which is saying something, but yeah, that's Total War. It's
just it shows up as a separate game in my
Steam library now, like you have to launch Total war Dynasties,
not just Total Warfare. Oh it's weird, Dan, I think
you had another.
Speaker 2: I had a couple of kind of brief ones I
played at Tay. I'm sure I'm saying that right off
of Mary's recommendation.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: Mary, you made the comparison to Powerwash Simulator, which I
think is very apt, and I fucking love Powerwash Simulator.
One thing I really like about this is that, as
much as I love Powerwash, there's always that part of
the end where it's just like, okay, I'm at ninety
nine percent.
Speaker 3: Were's some final thing.
Speaker 2: I'm pad like, where's the fucking tire wad? It's going
to pop up at some point, but like that's not
fun for anyone. As much as I love that game,
this one is pretty generous and loose with like, all right,
there's a tree, I'm gonna like drag my paint thing
over it, and like you.
Speaker 3: Give me moderately most of it.
Speaker 1: It's just like.
Speaker 2: Boore, I went over the trunk a little bit, I
got some leaves, Okay, boom, it's done. It's it's fantastic. Yeah,
And it's like it's got that same feeling where it's
like you know in Powerwaise should go into It's like, well,
that van's fucking filthy. I'm gonna clean the shit out
of that. Like this is like you walk into a
new area and it's like, oh, it's all black and white.
I'm gonna paint the shit out of this place white.
Speaker 3: I can't wait to get in there.
Speaker 2: It's going on the soundboard way too white.
Speaker 3: Oh man, I'm gonna paint the ship out of this place.
What is this a fucking bakery?
Speaker 2: Oh oh, there's all this little ship I get to paint.
This is gonna be awesome.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, I'm I get the floor.
Speaker 2: You don't have to like it's not like oh I
need to pick green from my thing. I need to
do this.
Speaker 1: You just go in there.
Speaker 2: You're just holding in RT and just look, you're just
spraying everywhere.
Speaker 1: It's just all color hose.
Speaker 2: Yes, it's very sad. It's oh we got some Sparrow's boom.
Speaker 3: There you go, boom, No problem girl, the Hulu.
Speaker 2: It's such a simple dumb thing to bring that much pleasure.
But like, seriously, every time I walk into an area,
I'm like, oh, let's go here we go, Like it's
it's very very nice, and I've played it on a plane.
It's good for that. I haven't done enough to really
know the full like loop yet. I did some Stuffhe's like, Okay,
I made a painting and then I go to the
cafe and I'm putting up for auction and stuff like that.
So yeah, I'm still early on. But like out of
the ones, I've tried a bunch of games in the
last two weeks and like kind of been like ify
on them, like you know, the Hinterberg's Derangers things like that.
This is one where I'm like, Okay, this is going
like this is going to be in that home screen
of the steam deck for the next flight. You know,
I'm definitely gonna come back to this.
Speaker 3: I think it's worth having in your in your docket,
right because there's several things that it scratches in my brain,
which is like also cow usual watching TV. Just need
something like passively. You do not have to think about this.
This is a very casual experience. It's very fun. The
creativity is quite deep. I was amazed with how much
my paintings are probably very different than you. I actually
I would love could you send me some of your paintings,
like to screenshot them or like your first.
Speaker 2: One, because I can once i'm doing them, because like
I am early on. So mine was just like I'm
following the instructions. I'm like, there's a bird, like, okay,
I flip the bird, I resize it. There's another bird, Okay,
I paint in the background. Here you go, sell it well,
minimalist are well. Once I get a little further in,
then maybe I'll send you some.
Speaker 3: I'd like to see what dan art looks like compared
to my art. I have had a lot of fun
with it. You'll also get when you talk to people,
they will give you requests for paintings, and so someone
will be like, I would really love it if you
could have a bug and a bird and a cat
to show like a little bit of the food chain
type situation.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: And then I went harder and was like and here's
a person and here's like you know, like it's just
like we eat them and they eat them and it's
all circle. And like I was like going crazy with
like the con conceptualizing what my art was going to
be and mean, and then it's just like a bunch
of stamps, but I really enjoyed doing it.
Speaker 2: I love things like that where it's like, you know,
the game isn't recognizing what you're doing, it's not appreciating
what you're doing, but like it's just fun for you
to be like, Oh, I wonder how far I can
take this concept for your own enjoyment.
Speaker 3: I've made some real piles in that game as well,
just to see if it did lower the cost, And
every time I would hang up my art, they'd be like, oh,
this is going to go quick, and I'm like, you,
stupid bitch, go ahead, buy it. It's all brown. I
didn't even put anything on there, but go for it.
Speaker 2: But yeah, good recommendation any e. The Powerwash it's a
very different style of game than Powerwash, but the same
type of satisfaction.
Speaker 1: So far from when I played, there's an abundance of
like games lately, small games, double a sized stuff floweth over.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I just for the second time didn't even mention like,
I'm still playing a ton of ANYS World Championship. I'm
playing retro stuff a lot. You know. It's just like
there's a lot of stuff, but I feel like I've
been waiting for that one that like, I'm really like, okay,
I'm going all the way on this one. You know,
I know Astrobot's coming in like a month. That's definitely
going to be one I think for now, I think
Heist is that one that like got it toaks In,
and I hope that kind of keeps me going for
you know, at least a couple of weeks while I'm
waiting for Astrobot.
Speaker 1: All Right, you guys want to do emails? Sure, Okay.
As usual, you can run into firescape cast at gmail
dot com with questions, comments, concerns. Send in your questions.
I've been getting a bunch, but we can always have
some more to keep the tank full. Dan, do you
want to read this first one that was basically addressed
to you from uh Andrew.
Speaker 2: From yesxus hell y'all. Stray elderly jack Russell terrier followed
me home in twenty nineteen. It has been with me since.
I named him Humphrey because he likes to hump. His
favorite targets are human body parts, including my wife's neck,
my other dog, Toner, blankets, and absolutely nothing. He likes
to hump the air. Just thought Dan would get a
kick out of that. Oh and another thing. Shortly after
I took him in, he was diagnosed with pulmonary hyphpertension
and put on, of all things, Viagra. I had a small,
elderly horny dog running around with biagra pumping through his veins.
As a wise Dan once said, dogs are awesome.
Speaker 3: Dogs are awesome.
Speaker 2: Yeah, dogs living a life good for him.
Speaker 3: Andrew from San Antonio, Texas. First of all, thank you
for rescuing an elderly Jack Russell Terrier. That's very cool
of you. Rescuing older dogs is very rad and dogs
are awesome.
Speaker 2: They really are. Just every single day, just seeing Razor
and Gizmu, I'm just doing something weird and cute and
just like, God, damn it, I'm so glad you live here.
Speaker 1: Dude.
Speaker 3: Simon is becoming such a piece of shit in his
old age. Today we have a hole in our fence
and today I opened the back door to let him out.
He has a very you know, strong system. It's I
eat breakfast and then I go out and shit and
then I'm ready to start my day. And he's very
regular and I know it. I know at the back
of my hand, and so I let him out. He
sniffs around. He heads towards the fence, which we both
know he's not allowed to go through, and I said hey,
and he looked right at me. And then he walks
towards the hole and I said hey. He looks right
at me, very clearly understood that I said hey, no,
and he went right through that hole and he's shit
in our neighbor's yard.
Speaker 2: I love the moments where you can tell your dog
is like, no, I am choosing to not give a
shit about what you're saying right now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you can see them like decide that they don't
care for that brief moment.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's no consequence here, I'm just gonna do it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a cat thing very much. So that's funny.
It's funny when dogs do it because dogs are so
much more like uh, apparently cats. And I don't know
any of this for a fact, but supposedly I was
seeing that cats don't feel guilt. That's why they're very
hard to say, like when they do something wrong, you
can't then like shame them because they feel no shame. Yeah,
it's like they don't feel guilt. They don't attach what
they just did to what you're saying to them, whereas
dogs people seen like dogs put their ears down and
then like look down at the ground. They feel shame.
For sure.
Speaker 2: You could tell even if you don't yell at them.
It's like every once in a while, like the dogs
are our dogs are usually really well trained with stuff,
but like we'll like see Gizmo AND's like, why are
you behind that chair that I've never seen you behind?
And you were like ducking your head down, and it's like, oh,
you fucking did something. And then you'll like walk into
a room and he's tipped over a trash can and
there's shit everywhere. It's like, oh, okay, shit on the
floor or something.
Speaker 3: This one not only did he shit while looking at
me knowing that he wasn't allowed to be over there. Afterwards,
he walked up their stairs to their back patio and
there's a privacy thing, so I couldn't see what he
was doing, and I was calling his name and he
wouldn't come over. And there's no way into my neighbor's yard.
Their fence does not have an owl, so and the
hole was too small for me to get through. Plus
there was shit on the ground, so I had to
go this is like eight in the morning. I had
to go to my neighbor's house, knock on their front
door and be like, Hi, I'm sorry, my dog is
in your backyard. He also pooped, and I had to
go into their house in the very beginning of the morning.
Everyone's getting ready. They have a kid who's like in school,
and everyone's like getting their backpacks on, and I'm going
into the backyard and picking up my stupid dog and
leaving and being like, I'm so sorry. And I's like
put like a piece of wood in front of the hole.
He's such an idiot. Anyway, I love dogs, Yeah, they're
the best.
Speaker 1: This is Daisy, like literally right now as we speak.
Can you see that she's drinking out of like her
face halfway in a glass? That? Yeah, our tongue is
very long. All right, Well, thank you and Andrew. Uh Mary,
do you want to read this one from our friend
Wes who writes in often.
Speaker 3: Sure, Hey, what's a TV show movie that you swear by?
But it seems like you're the only person that has
ever watched it. There was a TV show on Amazon
years ago called red Oaks. It was set in a
country club in New Jersey in the eighties. It was
about kids in their late teens early twenties who worked
over there this summer. The adults were played by Gina Gershon,
Jennifer ray Gray, Richard Kind, and Paul Riser. It wasn't
life changing, but it was really enjoyable. Thanks Wes from Baltimore.
Thanks Wes.
Speaker 2: I have one that I've never heard anyone talk about ever.
It was from like the mid two thousands on Comedy Central.
It was called dog Bites Man, and it was kind
of that you know, does that sound familiar.
Speaker 3: I I'm going to look it up.
Speaker 1: I know what this is.
Speaker 2: So it was like, you know how like you know,
Ali and Borat and like that style of just like, okay,
we're presenting ourselves as like this actual interviewer or whatever,
like with people that don't know that it's like for
a comedy show. It was that, but they were like
a local news team. And it was Zach Galapanakis, like
I think before he was super is way you know,
several years pre Hangover and stuff like that, so he
was just kind of like a comic at that point.
Matt Walash that was on a UCB and Daily Show
and stuff. So yeah, it was like this foursome basically
of like a fake local news team that would go
to like spring break and stuff, and it's just a
bunch of people assuming that they're like, oh, here's the
local news is here, and they're just getting a bunch
of interviews. But they were all like, you know, really
good improv actors, and I just remember being super fucking funny. Yeah,
and no one ever talked about it. I don't even
know if it's still funny. I don't know if there's
anywhere you can watch it. I just remember thinking it
was funny as hell in college.
Speaker 3: That's so funny because one of the things you showed
me when I went over to your house was that YouTuber.
Speaker 2: Who's basically like a the Channel five stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, interviews people who are like really drunk all the time,
and that's not too far off.
Speaker 2: I guess it's similar.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: He was definitely posing as like he called himself Channel
five because it just sounded generic enough, and he was
just kind of playing the straight man and just letting
people in the parking lot of a fish concert or
something like, Okay, the comedy is coming from what these
insane people are saying and doing, So yeah, I guess
this is on Comedy Central dog Bites, Dog Bites Man.
Speaker 3: Yeah, classic Comedy Central fodder.
Speaker 2: I loved it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I have two Neither of them are comedies, but
first one. And I know now that i'm I was
definitely not the only person to watch this, But I
remember for years I would always be telling my friends
who were into Star Wars, like, you gotta watch Gendy
Tarkowski's Clone Wars animated series. Not mind you, the Clone Wars.
I think most people associate now the long running series.
This was a short mini series on Cartoon Network. In
year was this, I was fairly young, It was two
thousand and three to two thousand and five, and Gandy
Tarkowski did Samurai Jack Dexter's Laboratory, Symbionic Titan, Primal, Unicorn Warriors, Eternal.
So like some pretty like top tier underappreciated animated action
stuff or like some comedy, but like just really good animation,
and that's when like my first time seeing some like
Arctroopers from Star Wars. It was just an incredibly well
choreographed animated mini series about Star Wars. And it took
me forever to really piece it together that it was
the same Gandy Tarkowski who had done those other shows.
Because then, of course, like a more civilized age, the
podcast that Austin Walker and other people do, they talked
about it, so I was like, oh, okay, so I'm
not the only one who remembers that, of course, but
I remember for a while I would just talk to
friends who like Star Wars, like did you ever watch
that weird like three season thing on Cartoon Network And
these episodes were like six minutes apiece or something weird.
It was great. You can watch them online now easily
on YouTube. They're well worth like a lunch break or something.
And then my other one. I got to look up
when this was, but I remember being very excited for it.
It was a show called The Black Donale's. Does that
ring a bell at all?
Speaker 3: What's the genre?
Speaker 1: Basically it was following the hype around The Departed and
they were trying to make a TV show that was similar.
It was one season, got discontinued in two thousand and seven,
and if you're looking at the cast, you will notice,
like I don't know, google The Black Donali's you could
see the red and black like Olivia Wilde was in it.
It's basically, these four brothers in Boston takeover like the
Irish Mob, and one of them is played by a
grown up Smalls from Samlot, which is very funny to me.
But I remember being so excited for that show because
I was this like Irish Catholic kid growing up, had
just seen The Departed, was amped, you know, fucking Boondock
Saints was still in my blood. So I was ready
for the Black Farmlies. And they discontinued after one season.
I don't know if I don't remember whether I liked
it or not, but I remember it was just like
short lived.
Speaker 3: Some from my childhood that I actually do. Think people
know what these are, but I don't give a shit.
These are like my favorites when I was young. Garfield
and Friends Ultimate Cartoon. Joy watch it again. It's still good.
Speaker 2: It still holds up with the US Acres stuff, with
the farm and the eggs are Yeah.
Speaker 3: I never cared for the farm as much as I
liked the Garfield bits, but I the egg yeah, of
course they were. But just the Odie and normal. You
can't have you heard of this guy, This Garfield guy, he's.
Speaker 2: Hilarious me or whatever. But like Garfield, like genuinely, like
liked the comic as a kid and like had the book.
Its like Garfield, Parside, and Calvin and Hobbes were the
ones I had so good.
Speaker 1: Calvin Hobbs still what like to this day, I reread
them every once in a while when I go back
to my parents or I have several of them here
still to this day. Some of the most like like
what's the word I'm looking for? Just insightful storytelling even
though it's about a kid an imaginary friend. They like
Bill Waters or Bill Watterson just completely understands like what
it's like to be a kid. But I also a
father and stuff. Not that I'm a dad, but an adult.
Speaker 3: We'll say, I feel like I'm cheating because I don't
think these are hidden or unknown. They're just like really
good things.
Speaker 2: I like that.
Speaker 3: I don't see people talk about anymore Batman beyond Batman,
but he's in the future and he's a kid now,
so like Batman's old and now, the new Batman is
like a young kid that he's training, and it's kind
of like set in a futuristic Gotham.
Speaker 2: Huh so cartoon.
Speaker 3: Yes, this was definitely like in the cartoon series World
that I watched on the television. I was obsessed with
this show. I think it's phenomenal. I don't really feel
like anyone talks about it. I don't know if anybody
watches it, because no one ever really brings it up anymore.
But I think it was the most brilliant interpretation of
Batman that I had seen in a really long time.
Because like Bruce is old, and he's got like a
computer system, and he's just like teaching this youngling like
how to do it.
Speaker 2: Huh.
Speaker 3: It's neat indifferent nice. I don't think he's looking unknown,
but I think it's good.
Speaker 1: I was just looking for Bill Watterson's new book that
he did his first in like twenty years.
Speaker 2: I have it.
Speaker 1: It's called The Mysteries. I thought I was on this bookshelf.
Speaker 2: That's an actual book, like a comic thing.
Speaker 1: Uh, it's an illus traded book. It's very hard to describe.
Just look up The Mysteries Bill Watterson. It came out
last year. It is weird. It's like creepy photographs and
then he's writing like really archaic poetry to it. I
really can't explain it. If it's nothing like Kevin Hobbs.
If you had not told me it was Bill Waters,
if his name was not on the cover, I would
never know it's him. But right as usual, Thank you, Wes,
I love you.
Speaker 2: There are one more quick one. It's the Onion had
a very brief period, like a decade ago when they
wanted to do scripted stuff and they did a series
called Sex House and you watch this.
Speaker 1: We talked about that a game spot a lot.
Speaker 2: Yes, you can watch the whole thing in like an hour.
There's like I'm looking at it now, ten episodes and
they're all like seven minutes long, So just sit down
and watch the entire Sex House playlist. It's just a
parody of like it's actually still these shows exist, even
more so now where it's like we put all these
people together and they're gonna fuck, but it's like there
are all these like massive oversights, like they just put
like one gay guy in the house and he's like
this is a massive oversight on the producer's part, like
what am I doing here? And then there's one older
married guy that won a Tombstone pizza contest like Peter.
Then there's a virgin. It's just like the food situation
is terrible. The house is like he did all fucked up.
It just turns into this like very surreal, weird thing
very quickly. But I think it's sex house. Yes, sex
house lot. Yeah, welcome to sex House. Yeah, welcome to
sex House. It's incredible. Yes, I love.
Speaker 1: I love when before they cut to the guy, the
gay guy, saying like this is a huge oversight. You
can see him like slowly in.
Speaker 2: The role, like ting in the room.
Speaker 1: He's like kind of feeling the people out. He's like, ah, so,
who do you have your eyes on? And all of
them said someone of the opposite sex, and that's it.
And he's like, okay, there's six people in the house.
Speaker 2: One of them is an old married guy. They're all
clearly stressed. He's like, what the fuck are you thinking?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I got it. Holds up if I remember, right,
Whenever you get like two hours, watch sex House and
the Clone Wars by Gandy Tarkouse.
Speaker 2: They're basically the same show.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, thank you, Wes. All right, I'll read
this one from Jeff high Fire Gang. I'm very behind
and catching up on your podcast, and I'm currently on
episode seventy one, where Mary discussed at length how great
the thing is and said that there's no way of
telling who was infected at the end of the movie.
In two thousand and two, a video game sequel came
out that reveals that mcretty and Child's were not infected.
Child's dies off screen between the events of the movie
and the game, and the player character teams up with
mccretty at the end of the game to fight the
final boss. What. I don't think that game is technically cannon, but.
Speaker 2: It might be like one of those Aliens Colonial Marines
thing where they marketed it as like, oh, it's this
is totally can but then it comes down man, not
really you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but bonus question, and this is super related to
everything I just read. How many pigeons do you think
you could reasonably hold on your person without the aid
of boxes or bags?
Speaker 2: Fuh six? How like like it's like, you know, when
you're carrying a bunch of stuff, like one in each
hand and then two I'm gonna say eight. I think
I could do three under each like four arm pinch
to the chest.
Speaker 1: You know, I think you underestimate how wiley any birds are,
but especially pigeons.
Speaker 2: I assume they were like sedated or something No.
Speaker 1: I I mean, if you sedate any animal, you could
carry many of them.
Speaker 2: So it's not just form factor, it's wiliness.
Speaker 1: Is factory pigeons specifically, Now you got to hold them.
Speaker 2: I assume it's like somebody opens up a like a
crate and it's like here they are, grab them.
Speaker 1: You've got to You've got to carry them a city
block without them escaping.
Speaker 2: Well, here's the thing. There's trained pigeons. I've seen trained pigeons,
like the stuff that Mike Tyson does, and like if
let's say they're pigeons that are trained to be pretty
docile and they like being held. I think eight.
Speaker 1: I think he would have I think Jeff would have
specified that, let's these are just city street bird pigeons.
And yes, let's assume you don't have to chase them
down and catch them. Once you're holding them, though, how
long could you hold? How many could you hold out
to from for a city block?
Speaker 2: Nine? Wait?
Speaker 1: I think you guys have Yeah, how is that won?
That amount in the middle hand in the mouth.
Speaker 3: Three in each hand. Here's my sample pigeons.
Speaker 2: Those are tiny pigeons.
Speaker 3: You we never discussed whether or not they were baby pigeons,
three baby pigeons in each hand, and then two underneath
my arm pits.
Speaker 2: I'm going more armpits and less like just one good
grip on, one good pigeon in each.
Speaker 3: Hand, and then one between my thighs.
Speaker 2: So you're just doing it like a shimmy walk. Yeah,
if you're getting your thighs involved, at least you can
get more than one. Thighs are like femers are long walk.
Once you walk, you can just go down to the knee,
just go from crotch to knee filled with pigeons and
then just shimmy walk.
Speaker 3: I'm talking about you even't thought about this at.
Speaker 2: All, No, I'm picturing this like that. It's pretty clear.
Like if you're already using this space, if you're already
using your femers to hold one pigeon, you can hold
three pigeons.
Speaker 3: No, because once you start shimming, they're gonna wiggle there
out of there.
Speaker 2: They're gonna be like, but one of them will say,
but you.
Speaker 3: Can you use your can you like stuff them in
your underwear and your bra.
Speaker 2: Umm, Mike, Mike, just lift the room. So I don't know.
I think he's the officiator here. Have do you even
do that, then it's like twenty five.
Speaker 3: Get so many in there.
Speaker 2: That's this is that's a controller. We've got the Patreon.
We have numerous stuffed animals and a Xbox controller inside
your shirt.
Speaker 3: Now it's everything I need and there's all your.
Speaker 2: Pigeon size accessor easiest.
Speaker 3: I could absolutely do. I think so eight, no, question nine,
questionably because I have to walk.
Speaker 2: I think six to eight confidently. What is Mike doing
since we started talking about this, he just put his
head set down? This is unprecedented. What does he have?
He has a book?
Speaker 1: He has?
Speaker 2: He hasn't answered the question either.
Speaker 1: Sorry, my cat just found a big bug and I
had to kill it and clean it up.
Speaker 3: Okay, I thought he was getting evidence.
Speaker 2: I was like, are you grabbing pigeons? What are you doing?
Speaker 1: Blake?
Speaker 3: My technique is sure felt as long as I get
their heads in my hand, I can squeeze three pigeon heads.
Speaker 2: But I think if you do that, I think they
were using their little beaks and biting you a lot.
Speaker 1: Sorry, that was a big one.
Speaker 2: Don't kill them, No, No, I can't co sign on that.
Speaker 1: Live.
Speaker 2: They have to be alive when you reach the destiny.
Speaker 3: It's not in the question. Jeff didn't say they had
to be alive. Think about many dead pigeons I could hold.
Speaker 2: Mike implied, right, Uh.
Speaker 1: Let's just I don't disagree with the fact that you
could hold a lot of dead pigeons. Let's say for
the sake of the argument, they're alive and adult and sated.
I I don't think I think I can hold one
live pigeon before guys nine, because I want to be
better than Are there not pigeons in Portland or Minneapolis Portland?
I don't think you see enough pigeons to understand how
wiley and served like. Those things are survivors. They will escape,
they're birds, and they'll flap, and they'll frolic. Well, not frolic,
that's happy one pigeon.
Speaker 2: I think they're trained for the use purposes.
Speaker 1: You said nine. You think you can hold nine pigeons
concerned in each.
Speaker 3: Hand, one in each armpit, that's eight, and then one
between my legs.
Speaker 1: I you're gonna zenda on the top of pigeon. I
don't think he said you can kill them.
Speaker 3: I'm not gonna kill it. I'm just gonna screw it.
Speaker 2: That might be the stupidest thing I've heard on this podcast,
and that's saying something.
Speaker 1: And yet I'm strangely horny. Still, I genuinely think I
can hold one max maybe two, one under each arm,
like really, squeeze it.
Speaker 3: I'll never be in the Olympics. No, that attitude. Have
you seen cre pigeons minimum? Have you seen creed one
guys are all losers minimum minimum?
Speaker 1: You're the Simone Biles of pigeon killing holding squeezing. Imagine
if they just added that as a fifth event to
the all around gymnastics, Like Simone preps to hold, it's
never been done before, your sixteen pigeons.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you can't kill any otherwise you could be cute
doing the floor routine.
Speaker 1: Simone Biles doing her floor routine like vaulting twelve point
seven feet in the air, and it just help they fly.
They don't fly things coming out of her arms. Yeah,
there's clearly a bunch of birds under her singlet.
Speaker 3: Those are a budgie smuggler. The tops of pigeon holding.
I want to be the Stephen Tommel horse guy.
Speaker 1: Any of us can hold more than three tops, I'll
say three is my max.
Speaker 2: Well, if we ever do like a pack panel or something.
Let's make this be the whole thing. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like, who's like bring pigeons?
Speaker 2: Yeah, like for an hour, I was just trying to
carry pigeons.
Speaker 1: Hold on to it throughout the entire panel.
Speaker 3: Oh, I still had one in here.
Speaker 2: See it's so easy. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I had a pigeon on me this whole time. You
guys didn't even know.
Speaker 2: If you've produced one right now, that would be incredible,
A live one out of your shoes.
Speaker 1: I would ship my pants purpose.
Speaker 2: That would be in the greatest moment in podcast history.
Speaker 1: I actually this is I had to pick up a
dead pigeon that had flown into one of our windows
like two years ago. And it makes sense they're birds,
but I it's crazy how light they are for how
big they are. Really, they're light, They're just they're very fluofy, feathery. Yeah,
but aerodynamic. M Yeah, I don't know. I really don't
think I could hold more than three pigeons, and three
is pushing it.
Speaker 2: Oh, some people are just more ambitious than others.
Speaker 1: Without boxes or bags, without the aid of boxes or bags.
Did just say some people are more ambitious than others.
Speaker 2: That's what I said.
Speaker 3: I can hold so many more pigeons than any man.
Speaker 2: We believe in ourselves.
Speaker 3: Yes quick, limitting yourself all.
Speaker 1: Right, fair enough that you jeff uh yes, as usually
you could write the fire skill never be on the
p Yeah gmail dot com.
Speaker 2: His dick's gonna get caught on the pole volt.
Speaker 1: Oh dude, my dick's gonna get caught him a lot.
Speaker 3: He's gonna get to three of his dick gets in.
Speaker 1: The way.
Speaker 2: In the like Olympics tree eyes because pigeons bit his
dick too much.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The way they talk about Soony Lee and her
kidney diseases that she bounced back from. They're like, he
had a horrifying accident when twelve pigeons flew directly as
crotch and pecked it apart. It's just it's just jumbalaya
down there now. But he still has to do the
pommel horse.
Speaker 2: One of them flew up his ass. We're doing a
different sport.
Speaker 1: There's a pigeon up his there's a pigeon up his
ass right now, but he still needs to do the
triple jump. What if that's Noah Lyle's secret is he
puts a bird up his butt.
Speaker 2: Before the pigeon, the full life pigeon, and that's why
he's running so fast, Yeah, streaking out. Yeah, I would
run really fast if there's a pigeon in my ass.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that'd be just anything to like try to outpace it.
What if it's flying in the same direction that you're
running in from inside you?
Speaker 2: Is that what's going on? When Mario gets the raccoon tail,
is the rest of the raccoon inside him and that's
why you can run and play.
Speaker 1: Oh the tanuki, I don't Yeah, I think so. I
think he just transforms into it.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, okay, that makes more sense.
Speaker 1: Well that was our episode. Thanks for joining everybody. It was.
That's been a fun one. Dan. I think you may
be out next episode.
Speaker 2: I believe so. I've got Yeah, I'm going to be
across the pond a couple of times, and I think
that's going to get in the way of me being on.
But I have faith in you two and finding someone fantastic.
Speaker 1: Have funny games come.
Speaker 2: Thank you?
Speaker 1: It's your first.
Speaker 2: Yeah, somebody I say.
Speaker 1: That like I've done numerous, I've only done one. It
was fun one. The only one is the So here's
what you think it for some reason. I think maybe
it's just the way the convention hall is laid out.
It felt like more people than eat than old school
E three.
Speaker 2: Oh that's what I've heard. I've heard it's like easily
the most like populous one.
Speaker 1: It's E three, but for Europe, so jesus, there's a
lot of people going to Cotton.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, but.
Speaker 1: Do you know, do you know which side of the
river you're staying on?
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: Shit, Okay, I'm assuming you'll thaying on the the actual
convention side. No, no, no, the other side, because the
side with the convention center is a bit quieter. But
if you stay on the other side, that's where all
the different town squares are where people hang out, and
it's a lot of it's a very German town. There's
like a lot of people hanging out in these like
Copplestone squares. Restaurants all have seating right in the courtyards.
Assuming people told you get a meat tray. They just
bring out these big wooden planks with every kind of
salted meat you could think of, and then they give
get coolsh. That's the cologne.
Speaker 2: I literally just drank it colsh. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I'm sure you've had colsh before, But that's
like Cologne food is great like for one night and
then I it kills me. It's like I can't do
it another night, but it's really good.
Speaker 2: It's me in Japan where it's just like, Okay, I'm
gonna be very adventurous for a few days and I
need some fucking McDonald's or something. You know.
Speaker 1: Oh I mean I yeah, I just mean like Cologne
has a lot of really good restaurants that are not
just like straight salted meat and kolsh, but you need
to do that at least one night, because that's definitely
the what it's known for.
Speaker 2: I'll be open minded and I'm going with I'll know
a bunch of people that have been there at a
ballion times, so it should be good.
Speaker 1: And then also I'm sure like Tam or Lucy will
steer you toward get some like curry brought.
Speaker 2: I've already heard some recommendations. Yes, absolutely, I think, yeah,
Lucy's got some stuff in mind.
Speaker 1: The one I went to was like right outside the
convention center. I'm sure they know it better and uh,
but yeah, it's that that's like what I look forward
to when I think about German food is curry brought nice.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like pretzels and beer and meat and stuff.
It sounds like it's gonna agree with my palette pretty well.
And cheese really good beer.
Speaker 1: Yeah for sure. I mean even if you don't get like,
get like a half of Eisner, get like like a
restore Pilsner or something, a lot of good pillsners.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's I had a sculpture earlier. Now I'm having
a pills So yeah, I like it.
Speaker 1: It'll be fun. Okay, Well, what else do you have
going on me?
Speaker 2: I am on giant bomb dot com about to wrap
up Blake. Actually, if you're listening to this, we might
be done with that Katana, depending on how Greb does
on this one. And we have selected Mike Manaate's next
Blake club game, and Greb and I watched a lot
of videos of it in Cleveland, and we are optimistic
that he's it's going to be a bad time for him.
Speaker 1: It's not public yet what it is.
Speaker 2: No, it's not public. It'll be public when the first
episode goes live and he will find out at the
same time as the audience. And uh, I think it's
going to be a good one. So yeah, try try
and bomb look up Blake Club, BombCast, uh, personal Twitch
stuff and everything. I hope after all this travel I
can get back to it. But uh yeah, damn record
on Instagram.
Speaker 1: Mary, what do you have going on?
Speaker 3: I'm going to New York to see you.
Speaker 1: Hung out once this episode goes up. But that we'll
I'll see you in what two days? Three days?
Speaker 3: Yeah, going to New York to talk about DJs on Twitch,
which is pretty fun, see some live djaying, and then uh,
probably just the usual. I think I'm I'm just hanging
out for a little bit. Uh, so I'll uh, I'll
just be streaming on Twitch every Monday.
Speaker 1: Sweet. And also you can go to as usual fire
skate merch dot com to get some sick fucking frags
and some threads. Get some fire escape rags, some fire
escape Yeah, wear that stuff so when we see you
in public, we can identify you. It's the only way
we know a threat did not mean it to sound
like a threat.
Speaker 2: Quigh five you if you have is about the author
on your back.
Speaker 1: Oh I won't. I'll jump off whatever subway I'm on.
And also if you are not yet a patron and
you want either the ad free episodes or the video versions.
You can go to firescape pass dot com, or just
go to Patreon look for us and subscribe, or just
if you want to treat like a tip jar because
you appreciate what we do, all of those very appreciated
the patrons or what you know, like what truly you know,
keep us going and allow us to do the extremely
fun end of the year awards every year, among other things,
and bonus videos and whatnot, which we're always formulating. Just
finding time for them, you know, it is the key.
But we've got some ideas coming up. So if you're
not yet a patron, go sign up and that's our episode, so.
Speaker 3: Video versions where it's at. You can see all the
pigeons that are in our shirts.
Speaker 1: Now now she's like investigating. I don't know if you
could see. There's like I had like books and video
game stuff on this bottom shelf and a big bug
crawled out.
Speaker 2: What kind house centipede?
Speaker 1: It was a small cockroach. Yeah, we get like three
cockroaches a year, I'd say maybe like two, and this
was one. So this is about the second one this
year and it's August. So that's a pretty good track record.
But it was small, so I got it before it
got big.
Speaker 2: Nice.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we'll be back in two weeks on August twenty sixth,
Mary and I will, I'm sure have found a good
replacement for Dan. While you are gallivanting across Europe, which
you always do, might still be drinking wine.
Speaker 2: I'm bringing my wine twocase, please do.
Speaker 1: Bring back some of those electric mosal reslings.
Speaker 2: Does liquid death mcwine in Europe highly doubted? Oh damn it.
Speaker 1: But I'm wrong about liquids often, except especially one. Anyway,
thank you everybody for joining. We'll be back in two weeks.
We'll see you then, right Cop