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