Fire Escape Cast #49

Hello, everyone, Welcome back to the Fire Escape Cast. I am Michael Rowayne Mahardy, your host is always here with Dan Reiker. Yes, Hello, that's me Mary Cash. Are we doing middle names? Is that what your thing was? Yeah? Do you guys know my middle name? We talked about this, Rowayne, We we've definitely covered this. Yeah, I don't remember it, but yes, so you've told me at some point the middle name you would never expect someone Sometimes it sneaks out. What would you

think my middle name would be? Starts than our? No, that is my middle name. I'm saying, what would you think it would be if that was Wayne is? Yeah, it's my mom's maiden name. Sturgil, Michael Sturgil, Mahardy, Shit, no, I want that to be um. I was thinking would also start with with an M because that would be cool. So like Michael May Magoo, Michael Magoo, Mahardy, Mikey Magoo, Yeah, Mikey too, Magoose Mahardy Yeah, yeah, yes, is

this a guess? I know Dan's you do. We've we've we've actually talked about this entire thing on this We show you are an old podcast word for word someday just went from like May twenty twenty one, word for word, just like slot in different game name. We're losing material. It doesn't Maybe we should shut this down this episode until we forget is it. Well, let me double check in that while you guys keep talking the beginning of the

end. My middle name is Elizabeth, Elizabeth Lizbeth and okay, most of the time my family would call me Mary Beth because it sounds nicer. So it's episode forty nine. Sorry, I did it again. Okay, Well, we got it. We got a big We got a big extravaganza for fifty weeks planned that we get now we know. Guess we've got Yeah, it's gonna be eight hours long. We don't. I don't think we realized it was fifty coming in now we do. Well, we frantically planned for

it. We did our one year was that last year? We like did a big hullabaloo for it. I think we should plan another hullabaloo in the future. I am game for hullabaloo anytime. Yeah, well we have. We'll do Game of the Year in person next year, barring any crazy tornado that stops us from doing it. Speaking of crazy tornado, we're not having tornadoes, but it did just crazy like downpour snow for the last day,

which is insane because it's late February and it's been warm. Although in Portland we call that our February fake out or it seems like summer is here and we've actually made it. But psych usually we get second winner. But our second winner came really hard because it's actually there's at least two feet of snow, which is nuts. It's rare up there. It's so rare it's like once every few years. Oh wow, we didn't get ship here. Really.

I don't know if New Yorker is the same or Hobo. We were like sweeting of it, yeah yeah, but I mean like in general this Oneter we didn't get shit. Oh no, No, we got that one like Arctic front that made things freezing, but not much snow. Yeah. I'd rather get snow any day than the cold. I do prefer snow than rain, and it is our rainy season, so I agree with you. But it makes driving kind of ree sky. But you know, I don't

drive that much, so it's really not that big of a deal. And we have a liquor store one block from the house, so it's kind of nice to be like, you know, just just scooting my feets across the sidewalk ever so delicately to get to the liquor store and stock up and get home. That's the solution, is just never driving. I found that to be. It makes life a lot easier for you. Yeah. Yeah, I mean we don't. We don't drive much at all. Well, I

guess it is. It depends for mom not really gets fast food while he's playing video games live. Yeah, I don't like I travel, Like I got travel coming up and stuff like that, but like an average week, I'm not going anywhere. I'm here twenty four seven. Pretty Oh yeah, that's what she was saying. Things come to you mainly, but no also to have like items explain how the aready. Not the case. Oh I see, Socially, things don't go to you. No, no one's up

here. I see what you mean. I took Mary was saying, like, you don't have to drive for work too and from every day. Oh yeah, everything's in this room. Everything I do is in this room. That's where I live. Yeah, I don't. I haven't left the apartment much this week, which has been nice because it's been shitty weather. It's nice weekend, though, I find it, Like, how often do you go into the office these days? Average once a week? Okay, that's

a good cadence office. Yeah, I would like that starts me when I go in like every usually going on Wednesdays now, and it's a good hump day. Like all right, I got over the beginning. Energize me for the home stretch to the weekend. I'm not working for the weekend. I like Polygon, but weekends are still nice. I'm only say this because I'm only saying this because like two of my bosses listening to this fire Skate Chelsea Chris, if you're listening, I love working for Polygon. I hate weekends.

Yeah, he wishes he could work on the weekends all the time. No, Polygon actually like actively brates me when I don't take time off. It's not probably healthy. It is healthy, um, mainly not the time off. I love being berated. I'm such a little what's the word sub dude dominate me all day. Yeah, once a week I'm in the office.

It's nice. It energizes me. I miss it because like you look like you know our friendship and then like all the friendships you know, like look at you know, Tim and Hands and these guys have been friends with program. That's the thing. It was all forged in, like the ability to like, oh okay, like, hey, you guys want to go get some lunch today, or this new game came out. Let's all okay, we don't want to spoil it, so let's all go to the kitchen.

We'll talk about this game for a while. Water cooler talk, gossip, mutual hatred of somebody. Oh yeah, there was a lot of that going on. Yeah, I hate most people, so that comes up a lot. Most of my friendships were forged in dis Oh yeah, like this motherfucker. Well we all hate this motherfucker. Okay, what's all hang out? We all agree? Uh yeah, I think that that is true. I've lost that. I mean, luckily, I've had so many wonderful friendships

from those days that I can maintain that. I feel pretty fulfilled. I don't feel like I need more friendships. In fact, just the other day, that's someone who like you know, reached out of nowhere and was like, hey, we should like catch up. And I thought to myself, I'm all good, not because they're not interesting or that I don't like you, it's nothing like that. I'm all like I'm tapped on. I don't want any more social interactions. I don't want to add to my calendar.

H no, thank you. And that's kind of a weird thing to think about, but I decided I didn't want any more friends. Yeah, because at a certain point it can get annoying if like enough people are getting a hold of you or texting you or something like that. Like there's there's a sweet spot. I think you don't want to be just like total Herman, not talking anyone, but you also don't want to be like talking and good in text like all day, Like I don't see people in person often anymore.

But between like this is huge for me. I love doing this with you guys, and then with Giant Bomb everyone there is awesome, and then just the streams I do like I feel like the social quota is being filled, plus just living with Bonk, and like I it probably sounds sadder than it is because I don't feel like depressed about it, but I mean, I really don't leave the house, but I'm still talking to people all the fucking time all weeks, so it's like, I don't know, I'd rather

be around people i'd like to, Like, I'm jealous when I hear about like Hanson having a party in the backyard where he's he's showing the rock on a projector screen. Everyone just sitting aroun the backyard drinking beer. It's like, God, damn, I wish I could just go over there like I used to a minute in Minnesota. But you know, I'm not hurting too bad here. I think if it wasn't for fire Escape, I agree, I would be more proactive about keeping up with a certain subset of people.

But with fire Escape Plus, it's funny. I've been thinking about this a lot. With like wedding guests, I'm like, who do I There's certain people I just that them. They and I are bad at keeping up with each other, but I still love them and want them at the wedding. There are other people It's like, we don't keep up. Is that because we're bad at keeping up or because we don't need to They I don't need, No, they don't need to be at this big day for me.

So I've been thinking about that a lot. If it wasn't fire Escape Plus, like the same eight friends, I consistently keep up with another thing is also that many of them keep up through multiplayer games. I really don't play online games with most people, Like games are mostly a solitary thing for me. So like all text I'll be talking to Jake and then he'll be like, yeah, Pete was saying the other night. I was like, I doesn't Pete catch up with me? He's like, oh, no, we

were playing like Rocket League or something like. Yeah. See, I don't do that anymore. That's why I don't. So then I have to catch up with them separately, which I enjoy doing. But it is a very smaller and smaller group of people, and the older I get. I don't know if it's an age thing or just a comfort thing. I just don't, you know, Yeah, yeah, I don't. I don't remember what age I was when I stopped like feeling the need to keep up with everyone.

But it was a while ago. I just have not have friends for a while. Do you have any friends that even if you're not looking at your phone, you can tell who it is just by the cadence of the texting, like the vibrations. Yes, I don't accustom one. I mean

just like, oh, this is how this person texts. I have a person who always talks in threes, and so if I get three buzzes in a row, I can almost instinctively know who it is because they tend to tell me stories, not just like what's up, which is my least favorite text. Um. I like when somebody starts with like a you won't believe this shit, sure, and then that's what happened. And so it's like these three buzzes of like story um. So I can tell when it's somebody

like that. Um. Whereas like I'm pretty close with my parents and they will very clearly like text me once and just be like, haven't heard from you in like a few days, and it's just like, I know that's my parents. I know it is. I can tell when it's just a one solitary buzz. The one I can always tell is Boniello, because I don't know, this is just how the kids today text. But it's not just one text. He'll have a thought and he has to break it up

into six different texts. He was like, Dan, so send h. Yeah. It's always when I'm like we were hurrying a bunch of shit, or like I've got both the dogs on a leash and I'm like carrying something in from like the driveway or something, and I just like rampramm Bram's goddamn Boniellow. He's got a thought. He's concentrating on something real deep. Here have the thought he broke into six or six to eight things. It's the staccato rhythm. Yeah, I don't I'm ship. My internet's unstable. As

we're talking about communicating, can you hear me? All right? Yeah, you're going I'm sick of this shit. Um yeah, I usually just send one. Mary knows it's me because she gets a text and then looks over at her window and I'm standing there staring into her house. Yeah. Yeah, so that's more of a just like a it's more of a note that just kind of placed, you know, on the rain in the in the window. Yeah. I send her like a gift with like a cross hairs

on her face drawing radicals. Pin. He sends me a mat pin of my own house. I am here, this is Mike's location and pin drop. Oh my god, that's really good. I'm gonna do that. We should drive out for a Game of the Year when we go to Portland. Well you, I mean let me you should drive and I'll sit in the car, but we should drive the whole cross country. Yeah, such an adventure. I went to Boston once with Mike and he drove and it was nice. Yeah, it's the same thing. Road road drip. No,

it's not that's that would be fun both the way. It's fine. We would hit Indiana and I'd be done with you going from here. We reached like, I don't know, we reached the Midwest and I can't take much more. How delay is this pretty much to the Midwest? I could drive. I could do like never Aska, Kansas type driving. I think you could do some simple flat drive in um I drove when I'm moved from Ohio to San Francisco. I did that trip via car and I loved it.

I loved every minute of it. It was really cool and I learned a lot about American landscapes that drew through a lot of cool stuff. I did that from Minnesota to San Francisco. I did, uh, did you do it like a three day thing? Like? How long did it take you? From Ohio? I think I stretched it because I wanted to see a couple of things. I wanted to see the Grand Canyon, which checked me out of the way by Lake half a day. Also, I wanted to see it, so I only drove three hours that day so that I could

enjoy the Grand Canyon for the rest of the day. And I wanted to see the one the highway that goes up across up the California Coast. Oh, the like Pacific Rim. What the fuck is it called the Great American whatever? The Great American Rim? Is that it? No? Um, I don't know what it's called. Pacific Coast Highway is. Yeah, I think it's called That's why I said, and so, like I just came back. No, no, I know, you just came back. I

just said that, Mike. Uh And if so, I wished the wause further than I needed to so that I could go up the one UM on my way to San Francisco. And that took an extra full day. So I think it ended up being five days, but they weren't legit driving days. That is super fun though, because like it's also like a transition period in your life where you get this new job, you're moving to a new city. Like I did the same thing. I did, not, Oh you okay, I drove on a hope and a prayer and a contract for

three Yeah. Yeah, boy, I cannot fucking imagine that. That's stupid. I did three days from Minnesota and I stopped and I spend a night in Deadwood. Um, because I like the show a lot, so I went there and I gambled Kevin Costner's casino. That's a cool idea. Yeah, that was fun. And it's like the Black Forest, Black Black Hills, Black four or something or other. Drove through Mount Rushmore, saw that for the first time, stayed in Renoe. No. I stayed in Salt

Lake City, which was boring. Um, but that was just but it's still pretty. Yeah. Well the stuff like the salt lakes, well, yeah, salt Lake City, there's a salt lake. That stuff looked really pretty. And then going through the bad Lands and everything through and then I stayed in Reno and then when San Francisco from there. But the thing I used to be able to do that shit I used to. I drove from Minnesota in New Orleans and or Minnesota to San Francisco, Like I can do

it. I should. I like that for you. I think it was now it's crazy to think about. It's like three years ago. I drove from Portland to um Colorado because I wanted to see Denver and I wanted to see Colorado Springs and do a road trip out there. And I just thought, oh, we'll just drive it. I want to say, it's eighteen hours, so whether or not that's a two day like rough two rough full days or three days days or on the way home. One day that I

did it, I just was feeling crazy. I so the way there was all planned with three like Airbnb stops, so I knew how far to go, right. I knew I was going to drive seven hours and then stop in you know, Boisy or whatever, and then on the way home and have nothing books. And I thought, when I'm tired, I will pull over into some motel and I will sleep. But every time I just like didn't really want to pull over. And then I was making great time.

And then it was like our thirteen, and it's like you can do on a more hour. By the time I knew it, it was like our sixteen. It was like three hours left. It was so close, and so I just kind of like tuned it all the way there. Oh my god, that would just kind of shit. I mean, driving that tired I was not a good driver at the end. I will admit that mentioned

Airbnb and remind me. So, my dad's sixtieth birthday is coming up in a few months, and so you know, I want to do something special with him, and it's always been a lifelong goal is to see a game at Fenway Park and Boston Red Sox game. And so it's like, well, shit, I can get up there pretty easily, and you know we're gonna spend it together anyway, So I'm gonna take a train up there, and you know, it's his birthday. So I was like booking the hotel

and and all that. I was just setting up the whole trip and everything, and you know, I'm I got the tickets and all that stuff. But we're gonna split the hotel. And I was like, all right, so I'll find something downtown, something so we can walk, we don't have to uber everywhere or whatever. And he's like, all right, well, um, find a hotel that's less than one hundred and fifty dollars a night maximum. And I was like, that's hard to do. I'm not that's

downtown Boston is not gonna have a sure it is. I mean like I've never stayed in a hotel that's more than seventy dollars a night. Dad, I don't know if this is the seventy shit hauling murdered exactly because Okay, for my fucking wedding, Mike, you remember this, he was everyone stayed at that hotel in Jersey. We add the block of rooms and stuff like that. He wanted to save like twenty bucks, so we stayed at this fucking highwayside shit ass motel that was like far away, and he was like

texting me from He's like, this feels legitimately dangerous. Thin I'm gonna get stabbed in the parking lot. And then he has to take like a thirty dollars uber to get to the thing, which immediately negates anything he's saving. But he just refuses to like stay where anyone's staying or spent more than seventy dollars a night. It's like, I don't know how you expect this to

work at all. Though. Yeah, if you talked to Jake about Pax East a couple a few years ago, he that was when we drove to Paxis Believe no, they might have been before we drove to paxist, but he was with someone who was saying that they knew Boston super well. And then is this somebody that that's spent some time in New York Yeah, okay, then New Yorker okay, And they were saying like, oh, yeah, no, I know, I know city, I know exactly where we're

going. And then they went like an hour outside of the city to like twenty three forty five Handover Street instead of Handover EV. And they get there and Jake, Jake nicest dude ever, is like, dude, what the fuck are we doing here? That might I'm trying to think if that was the year when you and I drove there, because you and I drove there, that would have been twenty nineteen. Maybe I think this was before that. Yeah, yeah, that was twenty nine. That was like near the

end of my first Giant Bomb run where you you and I win. Okay, so they are separate trips. But yeah, I don't know where you would find a hotel for seventy dollars in downtown Boston. Absolutely not. Well, just the logic of like you can bring up the fact they're like, okay, yes, dad, I can maybe find a super shitty dangerous hotel that is forty five minutes away from Finnway Park or something. But and he's

like, well, it's fine. It's just like it's like the weird principle of like can you just lie and say, um, like morally, can you just can you just come to terms with it and be like I found one, give me seventy five dollars and then just cover the other two hundred and just you know, just eat it. If it got to that. It definitely that was what I was going to do. But eventually he's like,

no, I'll do it, but I'm not happy about this. Like the cheapest hotel in Boss He's like, hmm, I don't approve of this. I wouldn't personally feel comfortable staying in a hotel like that because like it can get pretty risky in just the areas outside of your room, and I don't know that every Game Informer hotel for my safety, we had such shitty like at one point they for Game Informer, the whole staff they set up like really far from the convention center and it's like bad part of town.

There was black mold in the bathrooms, there were cockroaches in the rooms,

and there were people. We all we always had to share rooms, like whenever we traveled with game informers, so we'd always have a roommate that we had to stay with, and it was it was the only time where we just had to be like, Okay, this is not this is not healthy for us to be like covering the show for a week and this extremely dangerous circumstances, like there's literal black mold and we had like send pictures and stuff. Oh my god, that shit sucked. There's so much like cost savings

associated with that. I've been at Twitch long enough to know that originally when we started, room sharing was also required, and that's no longer the case. But if people had to, like, you know, like there was a there was a whole like stink raised about it because it was just like I don't want to share a room. And there was this um one kind of iconic person who stork at Twitch that was a bit of a bit of

a partier. That's what he did. He would go out and he would hang out with creators and then he would come back at like four or five in the morning and then like slink into the rooms. Whoever had to like room with this person was like, oh, so unfair. I got the party guy, and so we'd all like just be like, don't give me the party guy because I don't want to deal with it. And I was lucky because they wouldn't put a boy with a girl so I could get away

with it. So I would always either yeah, I would always have like a normal roommate. But it's just this one. You know, it's like a wild card because if you if you got this person as your roommate, you knew you were in trouble. Like he was going to come in at weird hours of the night, he was going to ask you for weird stuff, or like come in and you know, start eating a cheeseburger and put on TV without thinking about you. You know, just like stuff like that.

Certain roommates you walk in and they might have invited other people into the room for certain things and not locked the door. That stuff has happened, for sure. Yeah, Jesus Christ, I'm but yeah, I don't know if this is more of a thing company like in terms of companies these days, but the room sharing I hear about less. I remember back in CBS Interactive, like me and Benny like room together for two weeks during a Game of the Year, you know time. I hope Benny doesn't hate me.

At the end of like two weeks of like being in this tiny hotel room together, you've probably learned a lot about you. But I feel like, yeah, I remember having a lot of good heart darts with the Gunny. I like talking about our families and our uprings and stuff. And actually we

didn't have a lot of really heart to heart time. There was a couple of girls at Twitch when we would room together that I remember being kind of it was like the one time where I was like, this is really cool and we would watch Golden Girls as we all like zend out to go to sleep, and someone would always bring a weed pen, no matter how dangerous it was, so it's just like this, like this like sacred bond or it was like, well, I have a weed pen and we're gonna we're

gonna watch Golden Girls and we'll just do that for the next three hours and we'll wake up at five in the morning. It was a Pax West years

ago. I think Bonk and I just kind of started dating and she came out there and at one point I was taking an appointment somewhere, and she was back in the hotel, like she was like laying in bed, and they had checked some dude in to the same room, like they didn't realize we were in there, and so they're like, here's your keys or there in your room is whatever, and so Bonk was just laying in bed and like another covers and then some dude just walks in the room and she's like,

uh, like what the fuck? And so what I heard about this, I got ahold of the like the management and stuff like that. I was like, this is not acceptable at all. What the fuck? I mean, they're so lucky she wasn't like getting changed or like in a compromising position. I would have freaked. I would have called the police. Yeah, it was. I gave us a bunch of like credit for anything in the hotel, and so it's like we had like a day left or something,

and so we just had to spend this credit. So she had never played Link to the Past, and I think I brought like a Super Nintendo Mini or something. So we just got beer played she was playing Link to the Past, and I had like eighty dollars worth the credit, and I just bought I spent it all on Buffalo Wing room service, like a giant fucking box. We're just sitting in bed, playing links with the past, eating a million Buffalo wings, and drinking beer. Because some dude walked in

on her. It's the best way you could make up for it. Possibly. I think one of the worst stories I ever heard um wash Day nine, who's a streamer and like a friend from twitch and he's a host, and he was on a show and he came back and they thought that they got confused and they thought he had checked out, and all his stuff was there, and they like cleaned it up and removed all his stuff, and he had like they just like put it in like some of it they threw

away and some of they put in storage. And he had like cash on the counter and the cleaners thought it was for them because they thought he had left, and so they took it and it was just this huge like kurfuffle or it was just like, you can't just assume these things. If his entire luggage is here, something's wrong. And they just like I've never heard of all their ship. Guess they got kidnapped or something. They basically were like, well, I guess he left everything. Jesus Christ, I remember

that. Do you guys remember that E three We're Giant Bomb had all their stuff stolen from from the studio the E three like it was a skid row blaze, but all the cameras, everything at storm. Everybody was on the show floor and somebody just came by and just cleaned them out, all these expensive ass cameras and everything. That's like supers sad to hear. I remember like right as I started working at game Spot, IGN got robbed under a bridge. No, people on a shoot under a bridge in San Francisco got

like held up. I do not think it was like guns. I think it was serious intimidation where they were like the Miller wasn't there. Miller would have kick their asses. He's a wrestler. Hell yeah, dude, Miller. You think Miller's flexing everyone into the fucking bay. You think Miller's never never been in a bridge fight, Get out of here. Miller lives for bridge fights. I think Greg Miller could easily kick my ass. That's a

really good question. You know they're talking about all those creator clashes. Do you think he would fight Miller in a creator clash? What are what are the rules of a creator clash. It's a boxing match. It's legit, like you have there's a there's a person who watches what are they called judicators, and you wear boxing gloves and it's traditional boxing rules, so you can't like, I don't think you put people in a chokehold or anything. It's

just straight boxing, hunting and after I think five rooms rounds. Uh, it's either a knockout or it's by decision of judges. I don't think I could beat Miller. I'm trying to think of of people we know and people in gaming that I think I could handily beat as someone who's never been in a fight in my life. Uh, let's see the short Hanson Ben Hanson, I could. I think I could beat up Ben Hanson. Um Let Ben Hanson in a fight. Would be like a praying mantis with no arms.

It's like Woody from toy Store, just like flailing around. Yeah that's good too, yeah yeah yeah, with a huge stick and it can't get through a doorway. Ben, they're calling you a dog with a stick in your mouth trying to get through a doorway. I can't think of any other like big games media folks that I think I could handily beating them, but definitely not Mike, not you Mary, Like, no way, I think that in a fight doesn't mean well, I don't know. I think I

would take my ass. Well, you have longer reach than I do, your arms are longer. Yeah, but everything hurts. Yeah, I'd go for the belly. I'd try and take you down from below padding there. That's the worst place you can up. Just give me some much there and they're old shatter, I just like start throwing pez at you and you can't help it but catch them and then you're like, ohh, I'll I quit. That's good. Just throwing laffy taffy's on the floor, whoa piece of

candy? And then I just bop you on the head worked pretty well. Yeah. I feel like I would just roadrunner you, you know, like I'd have like all this like stuff in a box and then i'd be behind it with a rope and when you get under their pullet, I wouldn't suspect it at all. I'd just like fresh, freshly made hot pocket. Oh nice kind of fight scheduled with Mary, I would just kill her the night before like sleep Oh yeah, okay, make it easy. Yeah, did

not stipulate that I can't kill you while you sleep. No, I don't know if my couchs a win for the fight. If you kill her before the fight all weekend, that burnies her and bring her to the fight and then just throw her on the scale. Just let her hit me a few times with her dead limbs. She got me. She's so strong, elaborate system of levers and pulleys. Its operating the mute at the same time you're boxing. It's weird. Every time his right arm moves, her left arm

moves, it's crazy. They're so in tune. Also, every time you like put on a special song, I just kind of get back ups. I bet Drew Scanlon would kick ass. What don't you think Drew Scanlon could kick ass? Oh? Absolutely? That man is a force. He eats really well, he exercises, He takes care of himself. I don't think that I am familiar with his punching skills, but I know that he bikes

across the United States. Yeah, for charity. So I would suspect he's very strong um and would would out would out box most of us quietly and efficiently. He's not a mean person or a violent person. I think he would just just very as nicely as you can, just beat the shit out of you. It would have to be for charity. I just don't think he has it in him. I don't think he would kill for anything else besides good. Well, well, anytime you get in the ring about boxing,

you could kill the other person, not accident. I've seen a Million Dollar Baby. Isn't the same movie. Both finish each other's sandwiches, But like I fucking assumed it was Million Dollar Baby. I've not seen that. Well, it's a very good film, but I've spoiled it for you now. I heard about the spoiler. I know about the dying. Yeah, it's kind of the main thing. But that that got spoiled all over the place when it first came out. That was immediate, it was, I

think so. And that was even like that was like early two thousands, right, That wasn't like full on social media spoilership everywhere, Like I remember that getting spoiled pretty quick. Oh that's a shame. It's pretty good. I saw a movie, um that I don't know if we we've discussed, but I wanted to bring it up in case you haven't, which was the Banshees of inn Is Sharon. Yeah, I loved it. I loved it. I okay, brand was awesome. It's the it's like the spiritual sequel

to U in Bruges. Okay, different. This is the Irish thing, right, Brendan Gleeson. Right, It's filled with Irish humor, like the kind of humor were like a lot of regular people will watch this and be like, this isn't funny, it's really sad. And I was laughing the whole time. Also before people sending corrections, I fucked up. It's Martin McDonough's a director. Kenneth Brana did Belfast. Martin mcdonah didn't bruision this.

Okay. What's the name is the banshees of Initiarin Initiaran? It looks like almost okay, isn't that an anime? Any any Yosha is a different thing different, it's any Yosha's pretty good though I've heard that people. It's really good. It's like filled with delightful banter about people who don't get along and how they deal with it when you don't like someone in whether or not you

tell them and stuff. And I think that's it's just a really good commentary on like how you deal with social situations, and some people are like, I just hide when I see this person. And some people are like, I hate your guts, I hate your face, I hate when you fucking talk to me. I don't want everyone to know. I feel like I like that Brendan Gleason guy and things I've seen him in. Let's check that out. I think he hosted Esnell around the time that came out. It

took me a while to connect Brendan Gleason as being Dominall Gleason's dad. Dominall Gleason is the redhead from X Machina Star Wars, the new Star Wars movie. That's his? Okay, mad Eye Moody is Dominall Gleason's dad, or is the guy from X Mochina's dad? Dude? You mentioned X mochin now we okay? Have you guys seen Annihilation? Alex Garland? Are you fucking with me? I feel like I know you've seen it? Yeah, my

top three movies at all time? I don't think so. So we came out it was Natalie Portman, It's Alex Garland, Tessa Thompson, great Cast, Bonk, and I saw in the theaters when it came out, and we were both like, yeah, that was good, that was well made,

that was you know. I think we both like, you know, four stars on letter box, four out of five, you know, like we liked it for sure, but we just decided to watch it again at just I got the four K and like, let's check it out, and holy shit, if it's not like both of us, I think upon second viewing, I don't know why it hit us both so much harder, but we're both like, yeah, that's like five stars. That is like one of the best sci fi movies we've ever fucking seen. I have seen this.

It's based off of a book. Yeah, yeah, Jeff vander Meer's Southern Reach trilogy. It's so good. It reminded me almost like two thousand and one of Space out of Sea. Yeah. Skobrick or Tarkovsky, the Russian director who did Stalker. Annihilation is large. Southern Reach trilogy is largely based off or inspired by Stalker. It's about people going into this like Thermo nuclear zone in Russia, where like the laws of physics of stop working.

Oh cool, Okay, yeah, I think Bonk mentioned that. Yeah, I think the reason we didn't watch that because Bonk brought it up, was I thought, isn't there some boring game about Stalker or it's called Stalker. There was the PC nineties shooter, but there remain it's very soviet. Is that the same thing? Yeah, They're Stalker is yeah, loosely based off of the movie Stalker, which is based off the book Roadside Nick. Yeah, okay, yeah, because I was just picturing like Metro twenty twenty three.

I just find that whole setting and like unbelievably boring, just that like that type of future apocalypse which is like, oh, we wear a gas mask and it's snowy, Like I think that's super boring. Um, but fucking Annihilation just the all the sound and music in the last like thirty minutes in particular, and everything about that concept and Oscar Isaac's fucking creepy in it

and weird and we we were blown up. I've been thinking about it since we watched it like a week ago, like that's it's one of my favorite movies. Now. It's so fun. Oh yeah, it's incredible, Like it doesn't it doesn't feel the need to explain each and everything in the plot half the time you come away from the movie like more confused than last time. It's incredible. Also, the soundtrack is like half those weird Ethereal alien noises and half Crosby stills in Nash. Yeah it's weird clash. Yeah,

it's awesome. Yeah, we read that Originally, the like the guys financing it or whatever, they saw the first cut and they were like, Oh, this is too intellectual, this is too complex. We need you to like basically make it more palatable to the masses or whatever. And they had

final cut. The director and the producer didn't, so they were able to say like, nah, fuck, you were keeping it this way, Like what that's such a ballsy thing because you know, like it could hurt the box office, but also it's going to give it such a longer tail and probably be seeing as a classic if they're confident enough in being as good as it is, which I don't know why it hits so much harder this time.

Like have you ever had that where you see a movie that you've seen before and it's just like you liked it way more than the first time. Yes, I felt that way with Apocalypse now. Yes, I remember my dad loved Apocalypse Now. I was like, you have to see this movie, Mary, It's gonna change your life. And I watched it and I was like, this movie's weird. Everyone's crazy, they're mad, it's war,

it's really stressful, and I don't like it. And then I think at some point, probably like way later in life in college, I was like, I'm gonna watch this again with my friends, and I was like, this movie's genius. It's brilliant horror, but it's not. It's not intending to me, But then it is, And that's a huge commentary about the whole thing, the psychological stuff that's going on the whole time. I actually now I think Apocalypse Now is one of my favorite films of all time.

But I had no appreciation for it when I first saw it because I just didn't understand why it was so so upsetting to watch it. Turns out I love watching upsetting films Now. I wonder if it's just like an age thing, because like, yeah, I watched Pocalypse Now for the first time in high school when I was just trying to, you know, a young film doors like I gotta take in all the classics, and I watched, oh, this is a you know, Copple, I gotta watch this.

And I don't know if I was just distracted or just didn't have enough, Like it's not life experience because it's not like between high school and now. I've like been in Nam like, so I don't know why. I like, you know, you really don't appreciate war films unless you've been to Nam. But Block and I watched that a few years ago. I was like, oh, this might be the best movie we've ever seen ever, Like,

m is it just age? Like anyway? Is it like Bruce Springsteen where you here like as a kid and you're like this is Boringston and then you get older and like, oh, this is this is some real shit here, this is great, this is some real shit like what I think? No, I think it's just like the like with age, you start seeing more and more and you see shitty movies and you see good movies and you realize like what's just homage and what's cliche and what's not? And then

Apocalypse now, in my opinion, is very much its own thing. It's original, I don't I mean, obviously it's everything's iterative, But I don't know Apocalypse. I find I had the same thing. I watched it when I was maybe twenty. I was like, ah, I don't get why. That's like, this dude tortured this this machine had a heart attack. Yeah, like most people on the boat are so bummed out. Im was fine. It worked out all right, right from my understand got through it.

I don't know. I'll look into that more. But no black movies, fucking ever. It's just pure psychological horror in the horrors of war and man, and like, oh my god, it's awesome. Have you seen Heart of Darkness? The Francis Ford Coppola's wife Sophia the documentary. Yeah, yeah, we watched the documentary. Yeah yeah, I like that a lot. Wait, Sophia is his daughter, right, Sophia's the daughter from Godfather three. I forget his wife's name, and then Nicholas Gage is the nephew,

and then his wife did the documentary. But the documentary, he's like, oh my god, everybody who made that movie almost died of like just high blood pressure by the end. Here he's making a new one now, and it's like, so I'm hearing that, it's like a hell shoot again. And I guess just the thing with him is like the more hell the actual shoot is in the making of it. It turns out those are like the all time classics, and so I guess it's just a shit show.

Right now, there's a shining megal Yeah, yeah, shining totally. Megalopolis is what this one's called. I don't really know what it's about. Necessarily, I remember looking at the cast and be like, oh, that's interesting. Um, it's a David Cronenberg did the original Megalopolis? Is that the same thing? Oh? I don't know, No, wait, Cronenberg did, Uh the Robert Pattinson movie. Was that megalop Us? I don't know, I might be confusing him. Let me google it. I do want

to see is in the guy that did Parasites' new movie? Right? They put out a teaser of like it's like, yeah, Bong Juno, Yeah, it's like a sci fi movie with Robert Pattinson and Bong Juno. Like that sounds awesome. That does sound good. I'm thinking of Cosmopolis. Sorry, Nagolopolis is not, okay, same thing whatsoever. Yeah, I'm glad you like Annihilation now, I fucking adore that. But it's it might it's top three legitimately for me. So I remember I have seen it and I

did it like it. So because of this conversation, I'm going to watch it again because I would recommend it. Yeah, I thought it was too obtuse, and I thought that it was trying to be smarter than it was because it wasn't explaining anything, which is something movies do, and they're like, we don't know what's going you know. It's kind of the inception problem,

where like inceptions like who knows how it works? Guys, just enjoy the ride, and when you think about it, you're like, wait a second, you didn't explain and shit, like you have to like work this out. Well. I remember feeling that when I left Annihilation the first time. It's saying like, well, that was obviously extremely well made, but I don't know what the fuck happened in that movie and then and it's not that I remembered it or anything, because I don't forget things immediately. This

is basically the first time I saw it again. But I just wasn't confused this time. I don't know why. I was just like, oh, I understand what's going on here. I understand what's going on in the shimmer and like the end made sense to me and everything. It all just kind of clicked this time. So I definitely recommend a second watch on it. Got the fucking just the blend of this weird like Last of Us style wilderness overriding everything. Can you still hear me? I gotta I'll figure this out

on the break, my internet coming in and out. Yeah, but like the blend of that kind of Last of Us wilderness overtaking civilization meets sci fi meets horror meets like this military investigation thing. It blends these like four genres in such an incredible way. And then also all of a sudden, you it's one jump cut and then Natalie Portman's like, how long have we been in the Shimmer? They're like like a month and a half. She's it

makes you so unsettled, it's incredible. Yeah, Well, just the idea of like just this isn't a big spoiler or anything, but just like the idea of DNA and like cells just all kind of mixing from plants and peoples. Yeah, all within this thing. It's just like, oh my, it's fucking tear. Like the Bearer thing is one of the creepiest fucking things. I've ever seen in a movie like, oh man, it's so good.

All Right, the next time we record, I will have watched Annihilation a second time, and I will let you know if I like it now. Yes, I remember not hating it. I remember not liking it. That was my immediate reaction. I'd be very curious because yeah, Bonk and I both had like major levels up in our appreciation of it. Wow, would you say it's as big of a shift as it was from like some of your giant video game mood shifts like a death stranding, Yeah, like

a death stranding mood shift. Death stranding I like a lot. I really appreciate death stranding. I definitely don't like death stranding the way I like like a Metal Gear or anything. Because like death stranding, for as much as I did grow to enjoy the gameplay of it, that story is still total horseshit. I'm glad it's horseshit. It's Kajima ask Kajima, which is always at least interesting to me. But it's not a well told story. I

don't think it's a particularly good one. Whereas like Metal Gear, I think the gameplay was good, the story was good, it was ridiculous and horseship, but it all kind of like made sense in some fucking weird ass metal gear way. So that's to say that I don't Maybe I do love DEAs Stranding, but it's not like an all time favorite for me. Versus Annihilation went from like that was a good movie to oh, that might be one

of the best movies I've seen. So there's something about that structure. A movie like Apocalypse Now and Annihilation and two thousand and one all have the same general structure of this team of explorers, or at least like, maybe not in two thousand and one as much, but like going into this unknown zone,

Stalker is one of my favorite movies. There's something very compelling about that that allows the filmmakers to not have to explain everything, because like, half to the mystery and intensity of watching it is not knowing what the fuck kind of like laws of physics and chemistry and biology you're going to be going on in there. Yeah, well, Apocalypse Now it's more just like going into insanity as like this stand in for the Vietnam War. But yeah, I

like that kind of movie a lot. All right, do you guys want to talk about video games? Oh sure. Yeah. But first Dan, Mary, I've been telling both of you how much I've loved wine in the last decade now ish, and I've been trying to get you guys into it. Dan, you've been coming around. Mary, you are slowly coming around. It hasn't completely worked, but I have good news. I have something that might help even more. It's called First Leaf, and we've been trying

it out. Dan, what do you think about First Leaf? I love it as I have been loving my wine experimentation for the last few months. But when I go to the store, I don't know what the hell I'm looking for. I don't know what's good, I don't know what's bad. That it's very intimidating. So firstly, through their site, you basically say like, oh yeah, I like the taste of almonds, Oh I like

this, I like citrusy things. I don't like this, And then the algorithm or whatever magic wine magic they're doing there, sends you a bunch of wines in the mail. And I'm having the second of the bottles here tonight and loving it. So this is something I can't wait to keep getting boxes up in the mail. Yeah, Mary, you got some Rose's and whites. They just basically say, like, do you like oak, oaky kind of stuff? Do you like earthy? Do you like mineral? Do you

like citrus? And you've got a bunch of Rose's. How's it been going so far? That's right, I'm that bitch. I like rose and I think it's fun that the online markets do not judge. These are nice wines. These are not like wines that I would probably accidentally pick in a supermarket because I don't know any better. These are more curated for me, and I've enjoyed everything I've gotten so far, so I'm actually feel like I'm growing a little bit with my taste. I might be catching up to Dan's level

of wine not knowledge. Yeah, well we have flashcards now too. I know the one I'm drinking now has notes of plum fig and violet. Because of these andy flashcards here, I'm learning. Yeah, and you get first leaf. You get your six wines every month, or you could double it if you want to get two of each, and you just basically give a thumbs up or thumbs down to every wine each month and that will help them curate your next month. And you also get discounts if you rate each of

your wines every month, so there's a lot of incentives. I absolutely adore it as someone who knows wine fairly well. Just the hobbyists Somalia, I would say, intimately yeah, And then good news for fire Escape listeners if you are, if you've been converted from me telling you how good wine is. We have a great code you can use. Sign up today with first Leaf and you'll get your first six bottles for thirty nine ninety five US dollars

plus free shipping. Go to try first leaf dot com slash fire Escape. That's t r y f I r st l e af dot com slash Firescape. To get your first six bottles for thirty nine ninety five plus free shipping, try first leads off com Slash fire Escape. Please do it. You for being able to spell that properly. We don't have any games to talk about this week. I'm a bit worried. No, February has been dead. February has been shit games. I haven't touched that I really want to

at this point. There's totally sounds twenty five games in my backlog. I don't We've talked about this briefly, I think on a previous episode but I don't get bothered by my backlog anymore. Games come and go and they pass me, and I'm like, I'm fine. I don't need to fucking play Metal Hell Singer much more like I don't need to touch Cadence of High Rule past what I've already done. I'm just naming Rhythm games. I don't really

like him. But um, lately I've really been feeling it because I'm you know, Polygon and Giant Bomb and Twitch, like you see these games or you're helping cover them, and I'm getting really backed up and all of them sound awesome, uh something that we can't talk about yet. But PSBR two, God, yeah, that's the thing. It's like I've been so bogged

down with the last few weeks. You know, we'll talk about it, but like A Dragon and PSBR two, I've covered both of those for Giant Bombs, so I've been like, do you neck deep in that stuff for the last few weeks. And it's like a fucking Metroid Prime remaster came out.

That's a fucking incredible game, one of my favorites ever, and I have not touched it yet, and it's like that's insane to me, Like I hope by the time Zelda comes out that I've kind of cleared cleared the path a little bit, because hopefully it's a little less crazy the next few months. But it's so we're recording this on Wednesday the twenty second, so literally in like an hour, Sons of the Forest goes live, the sequel to the Forest from fifteen sixteen, that Survival Games survival thing. Yeah.

Yeah, Jake, who's listening, is probably already been Actually he's probably played a lot of it by this point when he's editing this, but he, he and Matt Paget, a bunch of people like GameSpot played a lot of it, so I know they're excited about the sequel, Destiny Lightfall. I don't play Destiny anymore, but that's going to be a long tail game. Kurbal Space Program two is officially out. Now. I was never a Kurbal person, but I know, like Vinny Caravella is an obsessive So there's still

a lot of like long tail games going up to Resival four remake. What else is in March Skull and Bones got delayed once again coming out. Yeah, it's going to suck, probably, but yeah, so Dan, we might as well. Start with PSVR two. You and I both have covered it for work you talked about in the Bomb cast. If you want to go here, Dan, do that on Giant Bomb. You can go listen

to that. I wrote the review for Polygon. Go read that, and it was weird because a week ago during the pre release period, when I was getting ready to put the review up, I'm like, this thing is super It's literally behind me. I did not do that for this. It's just where I'm getting it out of the way. It's super comfortable. A lot of good quality of life stuff. The Metal Quest two I really like,

Dan. I know you found it a bit uncomfortable for longer periods, but like I mean, all VR, it's not just the Metic Quest. The thing with the Metic Quest I don't love is like the weird velcro, like it's just kind of hard to make it comfortable, you know. So once you get the hang of the PSVR two, it's easier to like tighten the back, like loosen the front. It's got that great rubber light bloders and yeah, it's crazy even with glasses, like I got big glasses,

and it's like super comfortable. Like it's the most comfortable with that I've ever seen. It's like a tale as old as time. It's like, it's a great headset. Plus it's got okay, it's got the power of the PS five. That's like it's elevator pitch. You've got the PS five backing these PlayStation games. Horizon Call of the Mountain as like the show piece. During the pre release period, I was like, it looked good, but man, it just felt like a proof of concept for VR that could have

come out in twenty fifteen. Literally, the twenty second the headset came out for the public, I played Resuval Village in VR. I played No Man Sky in VR, I played Grand Turis Most seven in VR, and literally, as I mentioned in my initial review, I'm like, hey, my opinion on this whole thing could change in a week. Right now. It needs games desperately, all of a sudden launch day. I still think it's

really fucking expensive. It's five nine ninety nine. Yes, if a previous headset has not changed your mind, I don't think this thing is going to. But if you've been interested in VR, if you've been keeping up with the iterations, this is definitely, in my opinion, the best one. Holy shit, playing Resival Village in VR. I mean it's kind of exactly what you think it is, but also a bit more. It's fucking horrifying. That first trek through the woods after the truck crash, when you get

to that, Oh my god. There's something about that series, or at least the you know, post six, you know, like that once we've got on the first person ethan verse or whatever. Yeah, that it lends itself so fucking well to VR. I mean, his first person that's probably a big part of it. But Villa or a Biohazards seven was easily my favorite VR experience ever, you know, leading up like Horror works so well in VR, and that game in particular because it's a real last game.

It's a full game. It doesn't feel like a gimmick. It doesn't feel like I'm actually surprised to hear that you were super down on Horizon. As much as I don't like the like Bass Horizon games, I was actually pretty impressed with the VR one. But it's still it does feel very VR game.

It feels like there is some openness to it, but it's still very gimmicky and kind of unrails and stuff like that Versus Village and Resonable seven, which are full ass games in VR and incredibly effective in ways that like I didn't jump scares, didn't get me in the resonaval games before I tried the VR versions, and like I played maybe forty five minutes a village today.

You know I got to the first Like there's the part where you're going through the snow and everything, and it's basically the village from our four where you just survive a certain amount of time. Yeah, and it's so fucking intense. Guys just shooting flaming arrows and stuff from the roofs, and you know the AMMO situation, Like it's even more frantic when you're reaching down to like trying to load the gun and like cock the gun, popping the magazine out,

putting it in, cocking the gun or the Yeah. So if you played Resival four VR in Quest two, you kind of know each They went all in on giving the different guns unique reload animation. The Red nine you actually flick it like Leon does, which is incredible. Yeah. Yeah, it's I encourage Mary to buy that and upgrade that weapon as soon as you could when we played. But um, the fucking sniper rifle. You do the whole bolt action, pull the shotgun, you have to load each individual

shell. So like they're very much doing that half life Alex thing where it's like reloading a gun is no longer something you could take for granted when these seventeen werewolves and this giant hammer wielding guy are chasing you through this village and oh man, I'm halfway debating, like actually playing through speaking realistically, like halfway through that game. I do not I'm good with horror. You both know I love horror. You both know I played a lot of horror video

games. I can I enjoy the scares. I genuinely don't know if I could handle the house, the second area, you know what I'm talking about. The baby, the fetus thing. Yeah, oh fuck that that was on a TV screen. That's one of the scariest moments in resonable history. And I cannot imagine. I couldn't imagine regular regular style being in that closet or I was in a locker. I think looking at the at the baby,

I do not think that I could handle that VR. I remember vividly was it seven var was so scary going to the basement with all the like mold dudes and everybody, oh the mold uh scene And actual think we actually have this recorded on game Spot because this was like years ago, right, and we recorded going down into the mold with like two shotgun shells and like six bullets. You know, it's not enough to take care of these guys. And the build up to that scene, you know I'm talking about.

You go into the room, there's um, there's a hole in the room and you have to get down on all fours and crawl into the hole and you see a shrine and then when you turn around to leave the hole, there's like a girl's legs outside of the hole's like she saw you. She like runs away, and you're just like, I'm never coming out of this hole. I'm gonna die in this hole. You don't want to leave the

hole now because everything outside of the hole is danger. You leave the hole and as you know it, as you leave the hole, like the room is like fucked. And I think the I think the mold is like literally outside of the door. So the second you open the door, he's like waiting for you, like ready to get and it's just like the build up the tenseness. Well, so no horror. Oh that's the thing with like call them mountain and obviously it's very different genres. I'd say call them Outain

is like this climbing sim adventure first person get like gallery shooter. Um, whereas, yeah, Dan, you mentioned it, like village is very much a long form video game, ass survival horror video game. So I think the fact that I am in this village and I can see this church up here where I need to go. I'm already sweating thinking about House Beneviento as I just googled, I forgot the name. Um, I haven't seen Lady D yet. All the screenshots for the press assets are like here's Lady D

and VR and she's like towering above you. Now I'm excited to see that, not from the horny perspective, just from like like Scout, from a sexual perspective. Now all, I'm not even a little hard. I don't even care about boners. I was just intry stid it through the science. No, I was thinking we could measure it and my boner for science, not have for boners. I have not jaded three times to Lady D today

already. Have you guys tried Blue Chow. No, I'm first. It's amazing how they turn like mundane things that like would not make you bad an eye and like, like, let's say, in Village, there's a part early on where you get knocked into kind of like a crawl space and there's a lot of bodies down there, and like, okay, sure, a creepy bunch of bodies and stuff. There's a part where you walk up to one and you hit X and like you lift up a guy's head and it's

like, oh oh and dead guy. Whatever is it going to do a jump scare or whatever? I guess not. I don't think twice about that when I'm playing on my TV, but when you're in VR and you are like confronted with it, and I did that today. I hit X on the guy's head and it pulled it up and your face to face, and suddenly the idea of like if this motherfucker opens his eyes and the yells at me, I'm gonna shit bricks, like it is so much more effective way.

And Mike, I'm the same way where it's like I don't know if I'm gonna beat it necessarily, but I just kind of want to try it out so I could talk about it tonight and now I'm like, fuck, that was really good, and like it changes the gun play. It's not a lazy port. It's not a like, well we got a first person game, will make it so the VR controls the camera or whatever, like the gun stuff. Like it all super works, which excites me very much

about Resume before remake if it's a similar situation. Oh yeah. The tutorial for Resume of Village VR is like, you're in this military bunker, presumably training for like the BSAA, like Chris Redfield who comes in with his team at the end of Village spoiler alert, you're presumably doing that because it's all military. And you get to the final room in the in the tutorial and it's like, go turn the power on across the garage and the pitch dark.

But like even even your flashlight you have to open your jacket kind of like the Resume four merchant and grab your flashlight and then turn it on. Yeah, going across that room like this already fucking sucks in the best way. I hate this, Like something's going to jump out. It's so smart and how it does because like you know, it's such a cool VR thing

to like open up your jacket and grab the flashlight. But also it realizes that, like, well, you don't necessarily want to be holding that the entire time, so if you let go once you've turned the flashlight on, it just acts like your head where you're looking has the flashlight things, so you don't constantly have to do that. It's and then it's so smart.

I feel like they one thousand percent realize that people like Village just as much as an action game as a horror game, because they're like, hey, go try to pistol out the fire and range. You're like, okay, pop the magazine out with circle, grab with on my left hip for a new magazine, pop it in cock it aim. Once you bring your left hand up, it aligns the radical and I was like, wait, I'm seeing two guns. Something's fucked up. Then it closed. Oh that was

fucking super cool. The e PSVR two has eye tracking. It can tell what your eyes are doing. I did not think Village was implementing that until I brought the gun up. If you were just holding the gun with two hands, you see two guns. Beca has like a blurred gun because it's it knows that what two of your eyes are open. If you close your eye to aim, you see one gun and it lines up with a radical didn't realize that. Yeah, So then they're like, go try the shotgun.

I'm like, okay, this will be the same control as like nope, you got a load each shell individually, and then I go to shoot it didn't work. It's like oh right, I was like, oh man, they know like shotgun is. So it's so satisfying and recent Resoneval games anyway, and when you were like holding it with with your hands and blasting things, it feels so fucking good. Plus the knife, which the knife. If you're using the knife and resonaval, you're in a bad way and

it sucks. You feel ineffective and everything. But here it's on like this sheath on your forearm. Yeah, and so like when it comes time to the knife, you're like, yeah, it feels awesome. It's like they're like, let's make a Rambo simulation meets horror game. And also you can punch through windows. Give you like do this with your hand. Yeah, if you hold both R one and R two or L two and R L one, you can punch and then you hold up up your wrists like this.

Yeah, you know, if you're not watching the video, you'd literally just make like I don't know, like you just hold up your fists in front of you to block you're doing, and that's how you block and then you punch. Oh man, they did not half ass the ship. The idea of like physically needing to hold up your hands to protect yourself as UM, if you're so visceral and like stressful, the idea that I would I

would physically hold up my hands. I remember even like when when VR was just kind of get going and it wasn't very good, but we were all giving it that saving grace because it's interesting and you want it to work. UM and playing some like really half assed, uh scary VR demos that you don't have like yeah, they'd have like little things like pop out at you as all like shock value. But it worked because you feel so vulnerable in VR. UM Horror and VR are just the peanut butter and chocolate of of

games. It's just like so ridiculous. It's meant to be UM, but definitely not for the faint of heart. And when I say faint of heart, I also mean, like people who have like hard conditions. I think you can genuinely totally die playing this from scaring your I was going to mention, as far as I could find, there was no teleport movement option. So if you get motion sickness in VR, I don't think Village is going to be doing you any favors. Unfortunately, I don't. Luckily, it's

got the snap stuff. It's got the like yeah yeah, but moving around yeah, which is unfortunate. Like Russ frushtick. He and I got the polygon units initially for PSVR, and he was saying, like, dude, I want to play more. That seemed great, but I'm just getting violently nauseous immediately. You can't do it. I'm like, oh that sucks, because I mean, yes, I'm not done talking about Village on the show. Probably next week. I think I'll have played a lot more. But

gee, Grant Raise Most seven. I'm not a racing game correction. I love arcade Racers, but I'm not a simulation racing boat with that, but same thing. Just to like update the review and check out some great PS five games with the VR updates, I'm like, I'll played Grants most seven nothing full games, full real ass games. He's aren't gimmicks, These aren't short little demos. These are like grand TRESM seven is a full ass racing

game. Again called them Outain is good looking, it's great looking, but god, Grants seven. You're in the you're in the driver's seat. I did a race at night when it was raining, and the light the way the light like refracted through the droplets on the windshield. Uh, I acted actually looked up in my rear view, got literally blinded by headlights behind me

in a way that just would not have happened in outside of VR. It's a completely different experience to the point where, like you know, Grants Were seven's been out for a while, I never really like I loved GRANGERSMO three, but I haven't really thought about it since. Now I'm like, fuck, I have an Xbox Wheel, do I need to get a fucking PlayStation wheel? Just because like a wheel with VR looking this good like that sounds like a fucking awesome. So I think now all of a sudden, I'm

super interested in GT seven because racing him. Also, you're not necessarily going to do you don't have to do a two hour session if VR is a lot for you, which it gets uncomfortable for me. But if I do a few races be done in a half hour, that sounds like a good time to me. So yeah, I will say about GT seven car pervs need to settle down with the car stuff. The there you go. It's

like the fucking intro video. Did you watch that, Mike? I had already watched it when I played on PS five, so I skipped it. It's fucking like ten minutes long, and it's like Da Vinci and Alexander Graham, Bell and Elvis and sock hops and cars. It's like yeah, So it's like you can't just show the history of the last one hundred years of humanity and be like, well, yeah, cars were the big thing. It's like they're cool that they go for room and take you to the grocery

store. But we don't need to like whack off all over him. Is it Sauci the current creator? Uh? It looks up super quick. Yeah, polyphonya cousin Ori Yamouchi. So I actually always took him as kind of the Kojima of racing games, Like he knows it's melodramatic and dumb and grandiose, but he goes for it, which Ali Welsh Polygon wrote a really good view of Grandtisms seven from last year. It would have been March twenty twenty two if memory serves uh, And I think he's saying like yeah, like

Yamouchie just knows what he's doing with that. Like sure, if if you come in blind, it's gonna be like, oh my god, what are you doing? But like I think it's self aware. Okay, yeah, yeah, it helps. As someone who has not played grants most since was a Spec three on PS two six three, I played a bit of four, but a Speck was the one I played the ship out of that game, So that was my That was my our only PS two game. That was our PS two bundle game when we got the PS two for Christmas with

my family, so we played a lot of that. I heard a lot of ninety nine left balloons kickstart my heart. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that game's great. Yeah. It's the fact that like I suddenly want to like play through a Grand Charismo game is very telling, like they and that's the key, right, look at the things that we're raving about versus the things we were lukewarm or not into the things we're lukewarm or not into.

Were things that are kind of like gimmicky VR things or you know, Mike, you've seen a little more down on Horizon than I was, which is very much a VR game. You put it on the right, full relast game, Resonable Village, Resonable seven before it, and Grand Turismo seven add something substantial to it, you know, yeah, yeah, And I mean

even No Man Sky. I saw two planets today. The first one you're very much they're showing you how to scavenge and craft a few things to get off planet to get to the next one that I want to replay just because holy shit, No Man Sky has done so much renovation since the last time I played it in twenty nineteen, and now I'm just I want to play No Man Sky. I want to play Granturisma seven, I want to play Resume Village in VR because none of them are half assing it, Like I'm

saying, yeah, the same way with No Man Sky. I haven't played it since launch, and I remember I kind of liked it at launch back when like everyone was like man and there wasn't a lot going on there. So like now there's what five years of shit they've added to it and now it's in VR like that, like, oh dude, love it about You can like role play, you can fully roleplay as a pirate or a smuggler or like you get these other missions. It's like rock Star levels of side

stuff you can do as a like as a pirate um. You could build a base on this planet. You can log this planet and go keep a home there. You can go to this intergalactic space station and trade with other people. It's like it's one of the biggest post release updates of a game. Like the entire studio is just dedicated towards making content. I think it's a huge victory for that team. They should be very proud. Also,

the community really rallied behind them too. After like a Rocky start, I think everybody has really gotten their money's worth in that game if you've continued to

play it. Well. I feel like Rocky is underselling it because, like I remember being really bummed out because I know Hello Games is a small team, and I really like Joe Danger, and I remember working with the Hello Games team several times when I was covering Joe Danger a Game Informer, and I was like man, what a just humble, awesome group of folks. They're they're they're all awesome, and then like the no Man Sky thing happened and it's like, oh man, they are getting the full brunt of Internet

pissed off Breddit shit. Now, oh you lied to us, like you under deliver. Yeah, I know a lot of the messaging, Like I don't know the whole story, but like I know there was some like messaging that wasn't clear or whatever, but like the Internet was like they were like bomb threats and shit, you know, like it was. It was as ugly as that shit gets basically, and then for them to have like again, I've played it since launched, but from all accounts that I've heard,

they have turned that thing around. They have stuck by it, and Mary you mentioning that the community is like come around on it, Like that's what a rare good story in terms of this stuff of like toxic Internet shit and expectations from developers, and seems like everyone got to a good spot. I mean unless again, I've been following it, but it sounds like it's been positive. No, I mean it's positive. Now, I wouldn't say it's

a positive story because gamers are just the worst sometimes. Yeah, and man, we just didn't have the whole bomb threat part that'd be the better. Should never have gotten to that low. But I'm really happy to see that the game deb's always believed in their vision and continue to work on it, and they just needed a little bit more time. And I think that that is true of so many games. We say this all the time, but every game that releases is a miracle. So it is so difficult to create

again construct a game and release it out into the world. We should be so thankful any time a game comes out, and if it's your cup of tea, that's super understandable and you can go find something else that is.

But to be like just straight up angry about it is so ridiculous and I just don't specially a lot of patience for it, especially because like anyone on the outside doesn't know what the reasonings are for something like maybe like and I don't know either, you know, we just cover games and stuff like that. We we don't know, like maybe Hello Games wanted to do a certain thing but then because of budget stuff or something that declined from a you know,

Sony or something. We don't fucking know. So I just hate saying like I've just seen so much in both video games and wrestling where these like obsessive fandoms are so convinced of something like this happened because of this, and

they are just wrong almost one hundred percent of the time. And so it just bumps me on so much that like imagine like a development team that like had the best intentions and everything, and then it's like, well, we can't talk about what really happened here, but people are fucking wrong with what you think here. Like that's just such a shitty position to be in, you know. Yeah, yeah, So I never thought Pete like VR would be the thing to bring me back to check up on this five years of

progress that no Man Sky has made. But immediately, and I've heard anecdotal things like I have one friend who's got like seven houses across his galaxy. He's got like eight ships in his garage like that he like made some of

them himself, Like, like god, that sounds awesome. He's like, yeah, Now, I just like role play as a smuggler with a few friends, like other people role play as like pirates and stuff like this sounds awesome, Like like he was one of those people who had initially helped Kickstar Star Citizen, and that is like, no, I mean parts of it piecemeal. That is like, I don't know, I don't want to accuse like Chris Roberts of anything, but like that strikes me as the what people

were accusing No man Sky of What else are we playing right now? Dan? What are you playing? Resident of five? We talk about Resident people full Here's the thing. I'm playing through it with my sister. My sister has the most fucked up, fucking opinions about Resonaval ever, Kayla. I know you're like her order sucks. It's it's objectively just insane and weird and

shitty. It's weird, weird. It's not contrary, I know, but it's so bad that she means it and she understands that, like what she says one and two she hates and that Resonval to remake is the worst because it's stressful. It's like, I know, I've I've complained about this a million times. Yeah, completely door dashing right now and listening to this and

laughing. But god damn it, we're finally to the point now that she's done her weird ass order through the series that we're at the co op ones now, so we're at five and six, and I don't fucking understand how much shit resoneval five gets and people act like it's not a fun game, like especially co op. I've never played the game solo when it came out, played it with a roommate, and this is my second time playing through it, and I'm playing with Kayla, and it is a dumb ass fun

co op game. It is, I guess I can understand, like if you're a purist, if you're like ten, control Resonable one and two, you know, like a survival horror. Like it is not that this is a dumb ass co op action game, but it is such a fun one and it has things that like it has a lot of those feelings that resume be Forehead, the foehead, the village. You know, Five's got the part where you know that the guy's running around with the axe thing and there's

the barrels and the electric stuff. Like it feels similar. But with a friend. Yeah, it's not scary. I'm not necessarily getting scared. It's it's intense, But Resoname before wasn't even that scary, and that's like, you know, everyone loves that game. I just I guess I don't understand why everyone shits on Resumeable five so much because we are having a fucking blast

playing it. Well, I think that I just want to clarify that playing almost anything with another person that you like is fun, So the bar is really low when you can enjoy a world old. I have played some really shitty games with my friends. There's this one where it's like, you're basically just like playing pub g but in an Ikea, and it is a total mess. But because I'm joking about being in an Ikea with my friends and they are funny, we're having a good time. Is that game really fucking

good? No, you can't rely on the fact that you're playing with your very entertaining, very funny sister and be like, actually, Resident Evil five is good. No, that's not true. What's happening is is that you're really funny, really charming sister is making up for the fact that game is fucking stupidly weird, and it actually like probably brings up a lot of what makes her so fun. It's stupid, it's irreverent, it's ridiculous. It

doesn't make sense. She gets to have fun with it. It's probably actually bringing out the best in both of you. Maybe it's not a bad game. Is this why Tim Terry thinks that Resideval six is one of the best games of all time and beat it like twelve times. It's fun with the right people. But were a lot of games. This is like my issue with a lot of games that are co op and everyone's like, is this

game genius? And it's like, I don't know, maybe not, But like you have to consider the fact that as soon as you add other humans into the mix that you like, that game already has so much going for it. Because you're playing with people you like, you're already having a good time. That's not across the board though. Because me and Brian bore my old roommate game for one of my best friends just went to San Antonio with him. We bought Resonaval six. We're both Resonaval fans, and we're like,

we're gonna do this co op together. You're gonna come into my place, We're gonna play on the same screen. We're gonna we're gonna do this. We both bought it. We had like one three hour sitting with it, and we were like, this shit sucks, and we turned it in and never played it again. Maybe you guys aren't really as good of friends

as you think you are. Wait, maybe you're not. Maybe she's not like the person you thought I was, and you guys are actually both lame, and it made you self discover that about yourselves, And it's kind of a better gamer in Apocalypse Now you like became self where in the middle of it what a monster you are, and then reconciling that was like, no, it's the game that's wrong, not me. It's the game that's wrong. I'm selling it. I never thought of it that way. How funny.

So you're saying every game is better in co op Mary, because Resival five tests in our friendship maybe more than anything. Yeah, we stopped, we almost stopped being doing the show and being buds and everything. It's pretty crazy. There was definitely is available. Everyone will know what we're talking. You can see exactly what I went home that night, questioning what the next morning would bring. At work, I'm like, are we going to be

good then tomorrow? Like we both got legitimately pissed. I was mad, but like I have a boss fight. You're when you're in the swamp doing the boat between the islands, and then they're like the drawbridge puzzles with the spikes. That's where we're at right now. We're like at the part where you gotta get all the different parts to the door. And Yeah, I don't know. It was I mean, you are you in Kayless streaming it?

Yeah. I was gonna say, maybe it's because it was this like weekly show that Mary and I. It was just it was after hours. Maybe it was because it was work that it was just more likely to frustrate us. But I guess if you guys are streaming it, then it's not completely different. But like, I don't know, two in the morning on a Friday and we're drunk, Like it doesn't feel like work. Yeah, I don't know. Maybe we just had seen too much. I I think

it felt like work. I think it was just like it's coop, you rely on each other. If you feel like you can't trust the other person, it does start to get a little bitter. I was like, legit trying to do a good job, and if we start messing with each other too much, it can get spicy. But I think like you have to work together there. Some of my like darkest Resident Evil days are with Mike, but it doesn't mean I always blamed him. I had a really rough

time in Resideval three, but I always like appreciated Mike. I just was broken sometimes. And in Resideval five, I had the ability to say that was your fault, you stupid bitch, and that really upsets Mike and it causes a chain reaction where Mike no longer appreciates me and thinks it's my fault for the reason we didn't beat the boss, and then our friendship is at risk. Oh, I'm thinking of something completely different. You're talking about the

boss fight against Oz. So it's funny. It's funny your memory of like when we're fucking pissed at each other, because in the scene we're talking about, I actually was having a really good time and was just messing with you and just like dropping the draw bage on him on purpose, and he actually got mad at me. My memory is a put the controller and refused to play, and let you know, Mike literally stopped playing in the middle of a boss fight to spite me and to kill us. I know, thank

you. I forgot what was her name? Oswel you suck? That was? Do anything as bad as Kayla? Who I saw the rocket incidents the thing. She fucking gets the rocket and I'm like, hell, yeah, you got a rocket, okay, and now be careful. She's like, should I shoot it? Like noble games? You like, get like one fucking rocket and it kills if she just shoots it into the fucking lake. But I think I think it's a really funny clip and people should watch it.

I think I see a lot of myself in her, which is when someone when someone gives me something and looks me in the eye and says, whatever you do, don't run backwards with this in your hand. My instinct is to look at you in the eye and run backwards with the thing in my hands. If you say, whatever you do, don't just shoot it. She's instinctively she's going to be like, WHOA, what a lull? This will be? What a gas? I'm gonna shoot it into the dingdong.

She knows what she's doing it, and I think she's winning. I don't know how the fuck we progress through any game we play, because I think we're both just like we lean into the chaos, but somehow it works. She's obviously fucking with you and winning victoriously. I'm super proud of her, and you know, she'll probably get through it anyway. She'll suffer here because she doesn't have the best weapon, but she did it all just to fuck with you for that one moment, and I think that's worth it.

You almost always have too much ammo. After the last boss fight and residual games, she'll be, Yeah, you've been holding out of this thing forever, and then yeah, yeah, I don't think there's some game code, Veronica you could run out and find I did no I I Me and Bianca both had the same experience of the Tyrant fight in the plane, like we didn't have the ship that you need or whatever, and like you can't just go back to a safe room room. Mary got close, but I think

she had like two extra Magnum rounds that saved her. Oh yeah, Magnum was like such a godsend in that game. I can't believe we got back to Resident Evil somehow. What else are we playing? What are you playing? Um? I am playing Returnal on PC, and yeah one, I love Returnal. I'm so glad you have returned her Returnal. You think it would be some weird fever dream, but I can't tell you how glorious it is. The first time I ever played Returnal, I think I played it.

This is gonna reveal a little bit about myself, but like I think, it took me two weeks of playing pretty hardcore before I can get past the first area. I didn't understand, didn't understand the mechanics I was. It was really rough for me to get through that first boss. Um. I got there to the first boss lots of times and died and I just could not get to area two. I picked up this game and it was like a kid on a bike. That's like, but I'm drunk and like,

you know, not fully coherent. I knew the mechanics, but I was still barely getting through. Listen, my metaphors are golden. I'm saying, like I knew what to do. I was back, but I couldn't remember all the pieces. Um, I didn't have my sword because I'm playing it again from scratch. Playing that game without without a play is so mean. I couldn't. There was just like, oh, you even get the ability your phase, the ability for you to like warp from place to place.

That's earned. So the first time I get to one a warp, it's just like, you don't have the skill yet. And I was like, I don't have the skill to use a bubble. I didn't know that before. It's just a bubble, just put me through. But all these things you have to um, you have to like earn through the game by playing it again and again and again. So by playing it, I think, I want to say, like two hours in, I had done the

house and I had gotten through to the first boss and beat it. And it felt so good to get to that boss and beat I don't know what the boss identifies as, but to beat that boss on the first try, and it was it's a very difficult boss, even that first that first dude, I was really excited to see that amount of progression of myself, really proud to like see that in about two hours I could get back to something that took me weeks to do the first time I played that game. It's

still so gorgeous. The audio is. I mean, it's just a dream. That audio deserves to win every award. It's just an incredible game on PC. You get to play through it all again on the Steam deck, you can play it. I had to reduce the quality a lot. I had to reduce the frame right. I think it's worth it because it's a tiny little screen. I wasn't like I can't see all the you know, reflections in the pond. It's like, who cares, man, It's a very tiny screen. And it's really cool to be able to play it on

the go. I do think it's a battery eater, just because it's a heavy game, so I wasn't able to play. But the fact that you can play Returnal like in your car while your dog is at the vet. My dog is going through physical therapy right now. So cool while you're driving, Yeah, it's awesome while you're driving. Do not play return while you drop. You will die in the game, possibly in real life. There's no way you could beat the boss while driving. That's not a challenge,

don't. This is really like I got the code for it, but I haven't played it yet. And just because there's been a lot of shit going on, but like, I want to go to this so bad. I want to go the met but Return just here. I have not held the control or playing Returnal for a couple of years now. I remember fucking loving thing from the moment I started moving around in that game. I remember thinking,

like, I'm going to fucking love this. It feels it feels so good, and it has some extras things that I didn't play the first time we played it. I don't know if you guys did. It has co op or like the ability to play with other people. That's fucking crazy. And then it has the ability to play I don't know what this is, but it says like play old like worlds or old lives. I don't know what that means either. Maybe you can jump into an old life that you

died at before. I don't know. I don't know because I haven't been able to do it. And then I think I didn't really know this because I don't remember playing this when we played it. But you run across old bodies of your like dead self, and then you can try and beat the thing that killed your dead body. Right. All this stuff was like I had no memory of that sounds familiar. That was in the original, I believe, so apparently it was like all broken and they took it out or

something like that. I don't I didn't know that so playing it again, I was kind of like relearning it. It felt like it felt like reading a book that I had read ten years ago and being like, I remember this chapter. I got so excited when I saw an enemy that I remembered very vividly getting to the second area. I've only been able to get to

level two in my time so far. But getting to level two and having those cubes skycubes come after you, and you being like I was so strong in L one, but in L two, these cubes they'll get you. Oh, they can kicks ass. The fact that you mentioned this, Mary, but like the Returnal was one of the early, like true PS five exclusives. The fact that you can steam de Yeah, the fact that you

can play on a steam deck is nuts. It's it is nuts. Morales is on there too, But again, like Returnal was up like straight up PS five s. I will reiterate that the PS five version is so superior to the steam deck version, but the fact that I can play Returnal on a steam deck is a modern marvel. It is just incredible that we have

come this far as a society and as a people. But you will not get the quality that you expect a Returnal on a Steam deck, but I was able to sufficiently play it. There definitely is a game that like I want to turn the lights off. I want to, you know, turn on this round sound. I just wanted to like turn off anything, and phone's on silent, Like I just want to sink into this fucking thing. Such an atmosphereic game, Such a sinker. I think it's a great game,

and coming back to it has been a joy. So I'm delighted to say that it is on PC. It plays fabulously on PC. If you played it before and you want to have an excuse to play it again, good news you have it. If you've never played it before. Hullo Return underrated, I under talked about. I feel like people don't talk about that game. What a hidden Gem returns? That's so good and it's it's back, baby. What else was even like up for a Game of the year

that year? What was even? Because I feel like we we came to this pretty easy. Even it would not like I remember Hades was like we literally didn't talk about it, but like what else would have been that year? Twenty one? Oh no, I'm trying to remember, No, no, no, twenty twenty would have been Hades right now? Fuck two thousand, Yeah, twenty twenty was Haydes because two thousand nineteen was out of Wilds,

none of that. But for us, we did the one before fire Skip was a podcast, We did the twenty twenty Game of the Year, and then we did twenty twenty one. So we've done three of these now, so it's Hayden's internal. What was our one this last year? Game of the year? Last year was what was it? Oh god, I'm blanking, yeah, what what one game of the year last year year? Oh? Elden Ring, elden Ring. Oh yeah, yeah, and we discussed it. Yeah we did. Yeah, so elden Ring, Hades and

Returnal. Okay, that covers all the bases, right, we've done right, So twenty twenty one was like death loop. Um everyone remember it takes two. I don't think we would that was returned. Yeah, one would have been return Twenty twenty was Hayes. Twenty nineteen would have and um outer Wild's uh securo we didn't do twenty nineteen, correct, I'm just thinking what else did? What else were we talking about with Returnal? Oh you don't have a website? Would even look this up. Go look at polygons like

Top fifty to jog my memory. I want to see ours escape the game of the year. Here's our twenty twenty two. Oh Final Fantasy seven remake, Halo and Hitman three, h so, Metroid Dread. Half Live Alex got number two on our Games of the Year on twenty twenty oh. Me and Mary were pushing Oh, I fucking loved Half Life or I was obsessed with that game. That was one of the ones that to me was a was a VR seller. It was the only reason I would play VR was

to play that Half Life game. I very much want to play that. Store Wilder a Weird Year twenty twenty. Yeah, I want to rate our twenty twenty number ten, Ghosts of Sushima, number nine, Desperadoes three.

I don't know if that's actually a game. Yeah, Tony Hawks pro Skater one plus two, Number seven is Super Meaga Baseball three, Hell Yeah, number six, Kentucky Route zero, number five, Astros Play Room, Hell Yeah, number four, Last of Us Part two three, Ori and The Will of the Wisps two, Half Live Alex and one Haities Do Maternal was there. I'm just looking at the games that came out that year. Yeah. See if I find our twenty twenty one, what a rabbit hole.

Yeah. I I love our picks for Games of the Year, I think, and I stand by them, like absolutely the ones we picked should have won. Oh here, okay, wait, well, Kentucky Root zero was the one that was going up against Haiti Era was trying. I was trying to get it higher that year, and I miserably failed it. Just it's a hard sell for this, oh one. If you were on Intellectuals, it could have been higher. But I got our twenty twenty one. Here's

here's our top ten. Number ten is Death's Door. Number nine is Wilder Myth Nice. Number eight is Hitman three Nice. Yeah We're seven is Halo Infinite. Number six is Chickory. Number five resident Evil Village. OI reaction to Chickery is I helped you get it, unbelievably over the fact that I got Game of the Year by any fucking outlet is insane, dude, little indie bullshit game. There's eight million of those games. It's what gave it,

What gave a game? Who gave a Game of the year. Fucking Giant Bomb and mid Max both gave a Game of the Year, by my understanding, you watch someone play it for fifteen minutes and you just didn't buy it, played half the game and I was like, yeah, I guess that's cute whatever, Like let's just cancer. Yes, indie games out there. It's another one of those. That's why it's solvated, because it's better. You fucking like a million ass the same ass games too. You're like

a guy. You're like a game with a guy just delivering shit's so boring. Wait yeah, wait what else? Continue from Chickory. Number five is residentaval Village. I want to box you right now. You'll kill me? Do you do? You want to murder on your hands? Jesus? From Times is Nuts two Great Game. Number three is Metroid Drid Greater. Yeah, yep. Two is Inscription Deserving it deserving? Oh, inscription, What a beautiful game. That's a good year. Because I don't think I disagree

with the games. I don't disagree with the number. I'm like so happy with that entire list. I will say I had a lot of victories that year, Like I had a lot of ones where like I argued a game to get up to the number it deserved multiple times that year. I'm looking back at these and I feel like there's not a lot of damn games that

I've gotten up there. Like it looks like I got Astro up to five, which is great, but you guys got a bunch of your fucking shit up here, Like, I gotta I gotta fight harder now, you're probably like fighting for games from like nineteen Dickty two that you were like. I played this a lot with my sister and we were like, Okay, who cares it didn't come out this year? She shot a rocket into a lake. Yeah, okay. Fast forward to Game of the Year twenty twenty three.

I think that Resident Evil five original should be on this list. Literally was talking to Bok about this like last night, saying that, like, this is i'm my punch out speed running thing. Is clearly this midlife crisis deal. Okay, some guys fucking buy corvettes and have affairs. I'm just getting way too deep into a game I loved when I was eight. It's my midlife Christ all things consider, that's probably a healthy midlife crisis. Yeah,

yeah, I have no problem with the Shark isn't barfing lightning. I don't want to play this game. That's that's a video game. That game was fun. Um But Dan, well, no, I'll save Mike Tyson for the end. Mary, you mentioned what else are you playing? Did you mention in Kulinati? How you say it? Are you playing? I am not going to pronounce this correct. It's so funny that you said that.

I've been calling it ink Illuminati, which I think is wrong. It is let me, I want to make sure do it do it justice in Kulinati. It's okay, it's inc based, So Inculinati. Sure that also works with ink Illuminati because I think it works on many levels. But it's wrong and I know that it's wrong. Okay. So it's medieval manuscripts once again. So it looks like pentiment at a glance. It does, and it's like darkest dungeon style turn base turn party fighting, and it looks awesome

and it is pretty diabolical. You are. There's some really interesting rules. I am playing against AI and the idea is that I am drawing characters with a physical hand like i'd actually Oh, there's um, there's videos of real people in this game, which I love when games is it like yeah, duck a muck on the DS where you're drawing Daffy Duck and you see the hand shows a human hand come on the screen and draw the characters that you

create. Yeah, you're picking your your characters, and so I pick like the first thing you pick typically that they're starting with as a dog. Um, the dog has swords. The dog can you know, cut, but it can also be hurt. Um. And then you'll fight other creatures or characters. So the opposite will be like maybe a bunny and they'll have a bow and arrow. And so the first thing that happens is you're drawing your dog and the enemy is drawing their bunny, and the bunny gets an arrow

and shoots her dog. And it's pretty hard to watch your dog take damage. I saw a lot of dogs die, right, Oh, they die, and it is pretty brutal. I do. Actually, I would like to preface this that there is like it's not horrible violence, but you are killing cats, bunnies, donkeys, dogs, I mean they're all dying, so you do have to like be okay with that. Um. It has a lot of brevity to it. The donkey, like one of his moves is a fart, and it um debuffs other characters makes them blind, probably

because like the poop juice or something. So there's like a whole world of like jokes that are happening here. But at the end of the day, you're trying to clear the board and be victorious, and you can do this in so many strange ways. There's like totally different rules than any other term base I've ever played before. You create your characters. They're fighting, but at the end of each turn, you the hand also get a move, and you can move characters, and you can push characters and they push to

the next available spot. So in one of these turns, I had my character next to the edge, but I was safe, and the AI had their character push me off the ledge and I died And I had like eighteen HP. I had all this health, but because I didn't have anything behind me, I got pushed right off the edge of the earth. I guess it's like the book page and I died. So it's pretty grueling to find out like how you can win and lose. It also has very cute kind

of jokes inside of it. Everything that's happening is being transcribed in the book. So as I shoot somebody, as they push me off the ledge. You will see text appear in the background of the game written to say, you know, Julius pushes you know, young Gilt off the edge to his demise, and so it's it's literally being kept forever, all of these choices that I'm making, and it's being written as if it's history, which is

pretty fun. Some of the characters, one of the cats, it has like a pope hat and if you attack it, you become like a heretic or maybe like a demon, and now you take more damage because you attacked a pope. You're not supposed to attack a pope. So there's like all these like fun rules that you're learning while you're playing, of debuffs and buffs, who you should be attacking and why to try and get through the world.

But I find the most fun part is the hand because I get to decide whether or not I'm going to buff a character, push a character. I can push anybody on the map like left or right, which is really interesting, so I can move their characters around that will benefit me. And I can flick people, which gives them damage. Obviously, it's kind of like the little flick of God. I can just like give someone five damage if I don't like so lots of choices in this game. I would say

this is very difficult for me because it's so strategy based. My little brain starts to melt. I played this and literally set out loud. I think Mike would love this game, and I think you should play this because it is It is such a strategy person's dream, especially for someone who enjoys like a bit of a bit of lightheartedness and cheekiness. It's it doesn't take itself

too seriously, but you do have to think. I died multiple times, uh, you know, not fully planning my path accordingly, and I was killed I think three times in an hour, and I lost my entire save. You have you have you heard of the tabletop game called Root Root.

Uh, it's like this. It's like Civilization but violent in one woods, in one forest, and they're like the foxes are fighting, the skunks are fighting, the deer et c. Someone described in Kulinati as Darkest Dungeon combined with Pentiment visuals combined with Root. I was like, those are three games I'm obsessed with. So I feel like I would love this. I just have not gotten around to it. It's also on game Pass if I'm not mistake, it is on game Pass. It's why I played it, because,

um I typically you should have bought it. You should have bought it. I look for a game Pass before I buy a game on Steam now, so I just check game pass first. My instinct on Monday's when I stream is check game pass. If there's nothing on game pass that really vibes with you, buy something on Steam. That's my current system. But I check game pass first so that I don't kish it. You've changed. I just don't want to waste any more money. Do you know how many games

I would bought on game Pass? There was like eight last year. I'm we have to make a category for it. Yes, it's horrid anyway, fame has changed, Mary, I think you should play Incaluminati Inclumla in column atom Onowitz in Calumny. Listen here, mister Scarlet brow Let's let's you're here, mister skip Hopodopolis. We got a InCom I want to play it. I literally have a tab open in my my vox Media Chrome page. Whatever you want to say. This game is difficult for me to get into.

It's hard because I'm not a turn based strategy person. But I really like it. I'll try it um and won't ramble too long in case my internet does start being dumb again. Did you guys play Octopath Traveler one? Yeah? I liked it me too. Um. I know people criticize the story. I was like, what what why are you going to these kind of games for story? And the combat was good, it was snappy, everything looks great. Bomb put like two hundred hours into it did like super duper

super Final Boss ending or whatever, like that game's awesome. The people that say it sucks, okay, whatever their own, But like, if you're gonna say it sucks, because if it's scripting and it's story, and like, if you're going to s story anyway, you got amnesia and there's an evil in the land, whatever, it's like going to a picnic and being pissed when the ants show up, like whatever. So Octopath Traveler too.

I've played two hours, so not much. I'll keep it brief. I'm already liking it a bunch from what I have talked to other people about at Polygon who played more of it. It really embraces the each different character is kind of a different genre. So I picked I started with Oswald. His whole genre at the beginning is a prison break from this wintry wilderness, and then his is a whole revenge tale because he was wrongfully accused of killing his

wife. I'm like, all right, awesome, I want that's like the genre fiction I want. He's a may age I start. He's got a muzzle on him in the prison so he can't cast spells. Awesome. My other coworker started with I forget like the samurai stand in there's like a warrior

print story in the desert. I'm like, okay, awesome. So they're basically just doing these different, like entirely different JRPG genres, Like there's of course the character with amnesia who's like this whatever, like traveling the world to help people out. So which I'm not to interrupt too much, but Live

Alive. It's interesting because like, yes, yes, I noticed that with Octopath and now knowing Live Alive I didn't even know existed, but like that was way older and having played the Switch one, and it's like, oh shit, that concept of like here's a bunch of different like genres piece meal that you can play like, which is around for a while. It's exactly

what I wanted out of Octopath too. It's like, I want different, like a short story collection where like the progression and equipment and inventory is shared and you're meeting new people and recruiting a party. So so far, I'm loving. It's only two hours in, but I'm already doing like a like puzzle solving I'm doing. I'm meeting a bunch of people in this prison. I'm getting ready to or I've broken out at this point. It's great so far, I want to keep playing that. I'm playing on PS five.

I kind of wish I had it on Switch. But oh, I guess I assumed it was like a Nintendo first party thing. Is it? It's some place oxypath Traveler one was this is on? This was on PS five Day one? Oh okay, who so who makes? Is this like a third party thing? I just assumed this was like a Nintendo thing. Uh No, Square Square Enix published. What the hell's the name of the developer? Then? Uh it starts with an A? I believe Yeah, I just thought it was straight up Nintendo. I'm playing on PS five. It's

gorgeous. Um, I mean, the PS five is not gonna like make this kind of graphical style saying that much more. But MBR. But MBR it's amazing. I wish it was in VR. It's a choir is the developer. Um but yeah, Square Enix published. I want to keep playing it. I same thing with like the Bravely Default games. I'm not going to these games the story. I'm enjoying the long form grind and JRPG just like kind of mellow upgrading these eight different playable characters. Yeah, that was

my takeaway from Octopath. Is that snappy as combat? Like I thought that Brake system. Yeah, it's great. Yeah, it's like what Bravely Default kind of wanted to be with their Bravely Default system. Um So I'm enjoying it. Lets well, I'm gonna keep want to check that out. I'm about I've gotten two characters now I'm going I started the far northeast on the Snowy Island in a prison. I went down southeast. It's it's a ring world again, so you collect people as you're going. Sure, I've got

two people. It's more of the first game. People who dislike the story of the first game are liking this more from anecdotally what I've seen. But yeah, I'm gonna keep playing it, right, I will check it out. Yeah, Dan, I really really really really want to play Like a Dragon Nichian, but I have knocked out the time. Oh it's really fucking good. Have you played they Aakaza? I've played Like a Dragon and sorry

I played. I know it's confusing, I played yet for those listening, I played Yako's a cull in Like a Dragon, the turn based one from two years ago three and I started Kiwami but then got sidetracked. Kiwami was the remake of one. Well there's Kiwami one and two, which a remix one. I'm sorry I played. Yak was A Zero, which was the prequel. That's the one I played all the way through. So that's the only Yaka is the game I've played all the way through. But leg a

Dragon is eighteen sixties Japan Samurai era kind of shit. Yeah, And my main warrior was that it just wasn't going to be goofy like yeah, because A Zero was. But it's goofy as shit. It is. There is there's a certain type of I don't know how to describe it, like metal gear is the only thing that has really perfectly nailed it for me your words, Like the main stuff is the most deadly serious nukes and genetics and all this stuff. It's just like the end of the world, is it?

And but then also like I'm whacking off in a locker, you know, like like and the President. It's like it's just the huge spectrum of like the most serious shit to the dumbest shit possible. And Yaka is one hundred percent that, Like I am way invested in the story of yaks or like a dragonation. And I'm also just every fucking dumbass thing. Like I just walk around the city and everybody that comes up to me, I'm like, yeah, tell me your whole deal. I want to I want to get

involved with whatever this weird side story is. And that is so opposite of how I usually deal with games. I don't want to read textboxes, I don't want to you know, hear story stuff or whatever. With this game, it's all just so well done and the tone is so right that like the serious stuff is dramatic and awesome, and then this stupid stuff is so weird and stupid that I can't help but love every second of it. It's like there's it feels old. I mean this game was a PS four launch

title. It was this game was on PS three fourteen, it was twenty No. Eleven, no No twenty fourteen. Yeah, because twent thousand and fourteen was the was this Yeah, twenty fourteen was PS four and Xbox One.

I think yeah, And uh so, I mean it feels old the way that like all the Yakusi games, it all just kind of feels like kind of jankie, like people like talk to you all wooden and walk away the same way and everything like it doesn't feel like a modern like like the combat things like now we're in combat time and it's like the combat is not amazing or anything. It's hilarious that you're just fucking shooting dudes in the face. Now. Yeah, you can do a katana and a gun wild Dancer

mode. Yes, there's different modes and wild Dancers the one. Yeah, there's sword in one hand gun another. Yeah, there's strictly sword. There's the brawler, which is your fists, just a gun, strictly guns,

strictly sword, brawler just fists, and then a wild Dancer. I kind of like the idea of just the gun running hilarious because there are some where it's like if you're powered up enough and you're just walking through a part of town and all these like dorks, like just these drunk assholes that Joe like, we're gonna fight. She was like, okay, great, the fight

starts are just fucking dead. Brawler is fun too because you can like pick them up and just throw them into the river and ship like you just fuck dudes up constantly in this game. Um, dude, it's it's really good. I'm and that's part of the reason I haven't got to play a lot of stuff recently is because I'm forty hours into Like a dragonation and that's great.

Yeah, it's long, but I'm super into it. It's the Yakisa series is such a joy, and I've only think I've played the Like a Dragon and I fell in love with the idea of like all the different ways you get to play. Um, obviously you can play the game, but you can also just like run around and like get crane machines and deliver pizzas

and help out the local weirdos. Um, there's like a dude who was in his underwear that always was into some kind of mister yes who could forget mister Levito, And I think like those types of interactions made that game made the hours blow by, because it wasn't me trying to achieve things and getting through the game. It was just there was always something really exciting happening that I had to investigate because it was You're never board, you never board.

I'm busy saying what the fuck is going on? Mary? This might speak to you because like it does have all the little like random side things like oh, not claw machines, but you know, like that type of like just a femeral just like oh, I'm gonna do this thing very briefly or whatever. But then there's a full ass fucking star Do. There's a star

Do in this game. You get a fucking farm and you get to like there's a resident evil fucking uh at tache Case system where you're like deciding like I'm going to plant my dicons here or my sweet potatoes here, my onions here, and then like you're running a business out of your fucking house where people are ordering spinach and shit and you're growing spinach and you're upgrading dog houses and befriending dogs in the city, and that is absolutely same game. Yes,

it's fucking awesome. It is. And then like all these mini games to like cooks are like, oh, this guy wants this like specially prepared pickled cabbage or whatever. I gotta do this fucking mini game where it's like it's pickled cabbage. It's it's so fucking weird and fun. And in terms of just never being bored, it's like, if anything, it's just it's so much game that I'm almost like, goddamn, I need to mainline this

story so I can play other games. But I want to do all this other shit because yeah, you don't want to you don't want to run through it because it's so ridiculous and it's kind of such a joy. You do need to like enjoy that experience. And I think if you only mainline the story, you kind of miss the joy that's in that world. Like what

kind of makes it so special is is how stupid it is. Yeah, you gotta find that time to like, you know, I've probably spent a couple hours fishing, and there's a fucking dope in the city who has been fishing professionally for five years but never caught a single fish, but his wife every day thinks that he's like going out and like catching fish for the family. But he's like, hey, dude, like I don't know how to fish, and my wife thinks I've been fishing professionally for five years. Can

you, like, do you have a fish you can give me? I know? Um, what's his name? The tennis instructor who sucks and Jerry has to pretend to lose to him because he owes him because he owes him. Yeah, putty, I'm end of season sixty. That's where I'm at right now. The face Pan episode is the last one I watch. Yes, We're the travel feels like an army's night. Uh yeah, no,

Um, what is a Ryuga Gotoku Studio? Yeah? I feel like they make Rock Star games in miniature in a really good way, like these side activities that still feel like that slice of life that factors into the overall gameplay loop rather than just feeling like this ancillary thing that you could waste time with. Yeah. I I talked about this in the BombCast with My favorite character in the game is fucking junk Boy. You guys know about junk Boy. No, Boy's my favorite? Just boy is this idiot kid? Oh he's

that idiot. He'says, I think he's on hard times, but he's got all these friends who have toys and he doesn't have any toys, and so he's like mister mister, Like every time you see him, he's like, can you give me something that I can turn into a toy. I need to bring something to my friends to show him I have a toy and you can it literally opens your inventory and it's like, what do you want to

give the junk boy? And it's like, do I want to give him this literal scrap of paper or a bent screw or I'll just hand him a fish or a carrot, like you can just give him anything. And he's like, this is the best fucking ever. I love this. My friends are gonna be so impressed. And he runs up and next time you see him, he's like, my friends saw that carrot kicked ass so great because I know whatever I give him, it's like I need to clear out my

inventory anyway, and he's gonna love this shit. I got it. That's like number one on my backlog after a Metroid Primarymaster. I think I'd like a dragon is there? It's on my Xbox one. Ready. I want to talk about Metroid Primary Master. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I've been playing Matred Primary Master. Have you both played it before when it came out? And then I also played through it all again like

two years ago, so it's pretty fresh to my memory. I streamed it all like two years ago, so like it's very fresh in my head. I've played it twice, finished it once. I did not finish it until I got the trilogy collection on we on GameCube. I never finished. I got to like the underwater ship and got annoyed. Yeah, there can be some weird backtracking stuff. How are you liking it? There's definitely some weird backtracking stuff, and I do think you have to like prepare yourself mentally.

I think I was surprised. I think some people will listen to this story and be like, well, that's your fault. But like I beat the boss, like the very first, very original beginning bitch Boss, the ones in the tubes with the sliding glass doors. Right after that, there's a timer that counts down to five minutes and you got to get your ass out of there. Well, I was like probably taking my time and I wasn't thinking properly. I didn't make it out in the five minutes that is a

long timer. So for me to not get out and it starts me back out before the boss, I was like, get the fuck out of here. I have to redo this stupid glass boss that I can do. Another five minutes to get out of here can kind of suck you out, like sucks out a little bit of the joy of this game. But like, once you get into the good parts, it is a joy to play. I will say, like for it being what do they call it, like

the quality of life is higher and they've like like pleased it. They haven't done that for like saves, like you're still skunked for like, if you make a mistake, it's going to be like when was the last time you saved, you stupid bitch go o? Or is just like you okay yeah, because there's like this specific rooms and stuff you can go to and Sara's

auto saves for certain periods of time. And again, I think some people will listen to this and be like it's fine, like you're being a baby, but I just didn't, Like I do not like beating a boss and playing five minutes and dying and then being like do it again. It's just like, why didn't it save after that boss? Like, why are you being such jerks to me? But it's still a fantastic game. It's just I think i'd compare that to Dread, and I would rather play Dread.

I feel like I know the thing that's gonna blow me away is the first time I put hands on it, and like the dual analog sticks is because I'm so used to like and I love the controls of the first one. I know it's like dated now and everything, so it's not doing analog stick, but I thought that fucking lock on everything that worked great. The platform is great, but I know it's going to feel so different playing that game with two analog sticks, and I can't wait. Like the idea of just

like that being a playing game sounds awesome to me. Yeah, we're flying to or we have already flown down to South Carolina, uh as of this recording, and I think that's gonna be my playing game. It's either that or something on steam Deck, maybe checking out wilder Man's updates. South Carolina. Where the where the bourbon flow, the molasses, where the birds burb glasses, where the bourbon flows like the salmon of molasses. Whether where the

bourbon flows like the salmon of of Capistrana, both having strokes. South Carolina an ambulance. South Carolina. Where where Los Angeles resides, where the gate is all coming catch you off? You don't have enough molasses. This is true South Carolina, Asia of the East Coast, the South Carolina. No planes, go, get your train, get down. What Yeah? Um so I might play Metroid Primary Master on the flight if I can. Yeah, coming up Metor It sounds good. He said, you didn't do voices

anymore. I don't. I feel it's been long enough now. I'm like, maybe you can bring the voices back. No, I think you can do it. No, No, that's our Carolina. Okay some people. Some people call it pergatar. Some people call it heaven. Some people call it hell. I call it. I call it the Scandinavia, some Scandinavia of molasses. I call it. I call it molasses. I call it

the tributary of the molasses river weather weather where we bleed. Bourbon seems unhealthy, And the bourbon and the gadas and the gates arise out of the tides on Myrtle Beach, and it's all you can do to just and it's all you can do to just to just bleebir. It's so like it means a lot to me because when I was growing up, we didn't have a beach in Ohio. If you want to go to a beach, you had to go to drive to Myrtle Beach in Carolina. And that is such a ship

whole beach. It's just filled with like really drunk people in southern party and it's the closest I've ever like had to a beach. And it's just like my memory of like going to Carolina and just being like, oh, these people are wasted and I am eight years old and I would like to pick up clams and I can't. I feel like I didn't see the ocean until I was like twenty something. Can you get further from the ocean from the beach and Kansas, No, I don't think you can. Yeah, we're

going or we have China, I guess. Right now, we're in North Myrtle Beach, which apparently is the less touristy part. I've never been to any of it, So we'll see North Carolina. That's nice. I couldn't believe it. North Carolina. The Russia of the East Coast. All right, what else have you been playing? Um? I won't go too deep into it because I wrote a review. If you want to go read on Polygon Company, So go into it for a p length because I want to

talk about the next thing. You're talking on? What is the next thing? Oh? Okay, gotcha? Um Mary, this is probably not super up your ally, so I won't Oh great, I'm so glad that he is gone. Um. Have you heard of Company of Heroes? Is it war? It sounds like a war thing. Yeah, so two thousand and six Band of Brothers, Company of Heroes, Groups of Boys? No, so company Here's literally derives its name from a quote from Band of Brothers. Oh good, so good. Yeah, you could have just played it off

like you knew. Um. Two thousand and six, Relic Entertainment released it. It was like one of the best real time strategy games because it specifically honed in and figured out ways to make the path finding work with small squads. So like in Command and Conquer, are you just humoring me? No, I'm listening, okay, Because it is in Command and Conquer StarCraft Warcraft, you're actually commanding individual units to go to a spot. This was a

squad that would actually take cover where you sent them. Okay, that was kind of revolutionary for the time. Two comes along, I forget what year two fourteen, maybe a while after, and that introduced like weather effects. Three comes out yesterday or the twenty second of February, and it is going to the Mediterranean theater in World War two. But crucially they added a campaign

map overworld strategy layer like Civilization or Total War. You're actually looking at Italy from this god's eye, bird's eye view, this godlike perspective, ordering your armies around. When your armies clash with other ones, then you jump into the real time battles. So again they're borrowing this page from the Total War playbook. And additionally, you can also midway through the action just straight up pause it. It's called the tactical pause. Give orders to each of your

squads, your tanks, your anti tank guns, your artillery squads. Give orders in that tactical pause. Press it again and they'll kind of disperse and enact those orders as this wave like Rainbow sixth style. So it's actually one of the more it's the most approachable game in the series in my opinion, because it's not reliant on that fucking StarCraft too tight to be like your APMs have to be on point. You can actually take a moment and breathe and

think about what you need for your troops. The graphics are pretty good. Has this come a long way since you're start into this series? Yeah, in two thousand and six. The first game looked good for the time, but definitely has you know, not aged super well, but this game looks great. There's the North African campaign, which is the more traditional mission by mission real time strategy. The British forces are fighting Irwin Rommel, the Desert

Fox, the German famous German armored commander. But then yeah, the Italian campaign. The way that they use that, you're just basically you can take an airfield in Italy, so then that unlocks more air strike capabilities in your next battle, provided it's near that airfield. But then you can send an airborne company up to this next port city, which will allow you to call in more troops from your destroyers off the coast, while you send this Indian

artillery company to just bombard the ship out of this major crossroads city. So it's not perfect whatsoever. A lot of rough edges in this campaign. If you're into Total War or Grand Strategy games or four X games or anything that Paradox has been publishing, then you might find this Italian campaign lacking the AI, is super passive. They're not really going to go out of their way to fuck with you or attack you. They're just basically waiting for you to

come into range and then triggering these borderline scripted missions. But the freedom with which you can move armies around and kind of decide which order you want to do shit, and whether you want to go up the East coast and link up with the British invasion for us, or you want to just keep going doing your own thing, going up the west toward Naples and taking more ports

to bring people in. I like it a whole bunch, and the tactical pause makes it pretty easy if you're like a veteran real time strategy player. I will warn people to play out on a higher difficulty, but it's great. I like it a lot. Like we talked about this with Hitman three. Basically anything image and Form did and now Image and Form is called thunderful. I believe the Steam World devs. I really really am a sucker for devs that just like, no matter how short, how much of a shore

bet a game could be, they experiment. Regardless, Hitman three did that three games into the series. It kept being weird with Berlin with its final mission and whatnot. Company Heroes three could have just like they've already perfected their formula, they could have released The third game sold pretty well within the strategy community on the PC community, but they added two huge editions and I think they both work well. I think the campaign map needs some work, but

I respect the shit out of it and it's fun. I played the hell out of it. Yeah, it's good strategy games. They're they're so hot right now. They're so hot right now. Real time strategies. Death was greatly exaggerated, just like Disco. We just played Commoner again. Riddler two is one of my favorite. I played that world well. We talked about that World War one game that the Petroglyph folks are making. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, um yeah, but Dan, you want to talk about

the packet Yeah, thoughts super cool. Um, obviously I'm only using cartridges that I already own. But oh no, you got top of the open FPGA. Yeah, I mean you're you're you're using backups of cartridges you already own, using backups of cars as I already own. It took me a while, not a while, Like it's pretty streamline compared to other stuff I've used, like the odin pro is fairly complex. I don't necessarily know how to work with dolphin emulation kind of stuff. Is it Dolphin No and Dolphins

GameCube? Yeah, yeah, Dolphin emulation relator. So Dolphin was the like working title of game Cubans that's like the main emulator or a GameCube. It's great. Um, but man, yeah, the the pocket is it's great. I've been playing the minished cap Um. I'm using it primarily right now for just Gameboy, game Boy Color, game Boy Advanced, Zelda games. UMM Ages on there Oracle of Ages is fantastic. Yeah, um, Seasons was fine. It was more combat focus, but Ages has that like not

a time loop mechanic whatsoever, but like time travel. Um. I like that game a lot. But UM, I have not super dabbled in any of the like filters like my couh. Chris Grant my boss is get sending me some stuff like on how to use certain filters and whether they work with this system or that, or Hey, your boss's name's rhyme? Did they realize that Chris Grant, Chris Plant, Yeah, Hardy and Mike McWord, Oh wow, that we got Nicole Clark. Is that part of the hiring

process there? Yeah, basically when you get someone with an actually unique name. Sorry, chat, you have a name similar to theirs, you got a good shot because we got to fill out the twins in the sure, of course, trying to think of anybody because we have a symmatric Bill He's great. That's a joke for like forty people. That's good. Well Cross not non insulting the size of Patrick Gill's audience. I'm just saying the crossover between fire still is such a dumb joke. Um any who, Hey,

help you play ninety four? Pelsey Smark is also great? Y Um Claddy Flyers though, Claddy Flyers, Yeah, it's not. Hey, Donkey Kong ninety four minds supposed to be delivered any day I bought it. Have you played it? Mike, Donkey Kong ninety four? Yes? Do you know what it is? Nope? Okay, Mary, do you know? No? All right? You know the Donkey Kong right, I know, the Donkey Kong to jump in the barrels, the old the jump in the barrels,

the three to four levels. It's a classic. Of course, Mike, if you got an analog pocket, this is the ultimate analog pocket game. As much as I would like to stream this game, I specifically save it for being drunk at like airport lounges and playing this while drinking wine and it's the best time of your life. It's a good time. It's starts with just the Donkey Kong business that you know and love, and then it just goes fucking nuts and introduces a bunch of like Mario bullshit that like before

Mario sixty four and stuff. It's introducing like things that Mario can do later in this fucking nineteen ninety four game Boy game, stuff that you don't see until way way later. Game Boy game is introducing stuff that Mario sixty four did and beyond, like just different, like like you know the thing where in Mario sixty four where you like, you know, you change direction one eight and jump, you do that weird like kind of side flipping that started

in Donkey Kong ninety four. You're playing as Mario and like there's a bunch of you can walk on your fucking hands, you can do all sorts of weird hit you grab a hammer, you can flip it up, climb ladder, grab the hammer again. Like it's it's crazy how much shit this game does for nineteen ninety four and I didn't. This is not some nostalgia thing

that I played when I was fucking two years old. This is I did not play this until it was on the three DS virtual console, and I had such an appreciation for it. And now you play it on the analog pocket screen looking Christmas hell, Save States and all that. It is the ultimate analog pocket game. Please play Donkey Kong ninety four and report your thoughts. It is so fucking good. All right, I'll look into it. I probably have it, yeah, I've got yeah, yeah yeah, it's

in my shoe box. Yeah yeah yeah yeah. And I'm not even a huge like like I like Donkey Kong, like I respect Donkey Kong, like Dun Kong Junior and three and all that, but like this one is like important and cool and way ahead of its time. All right, what's up my alley, I'll check it out. I think you'll like it. Um, Dan, you have a dual Sense edge. Now, yes, very briefly, I'll tell you about that. Sony sent the duel Sense edge over along with the PSBR and uh, look, I like the weight. I'm

a big pro controller guy. I like the weight. I like my controllers to feel heavy and you know, nice, and it's got that. I will say. The main thing I love about this thing the nubs on the back because the Elite controllers, I typically with mine, I'll take the paddles off a lot of them because it's just like there's just a lot and they'll fall off and it's just sometimes you set it down and it's like, oh

fuck, it's just holding in the A button or something like that. Um, I love the Elite controller, but it's just a lot of paddle business going on in the back there. Are you a fan of the nubs, Dan? Well? Yeah, and they have paddles like you can you can choose to do paddles. It comes with paddles, but then it also comes to these little ass nubs which I'm holding one at. You barely even see it if you're watching the Patreon video. It's a nub. They're like half

of a PS three dome analog. That's a great way to put it, yeah, but grippier, Yeah, and I click it easy. That's why I used to switch between your your profiles, because like right under the analog sticks, you can just be like, okay, I'm playing Fortnite, so boom boom boom, I'm now now the nubs mean, this is Mark enemies in Fortnite, and this is like open chests or whatever you know, I

have. I have my profiles set to dead space, woe, long Fallen, Dinas or whatever and uh war frame just different anal, different stick, sensitivities, button layouts, et cetera. Well, and I think being able to see what you're switching to on screen is big because like you can do that with the Elite. You can hit the button and switch between like the three of the lights will light up, but you don't see it on screen really, so it's so nice to see it, like, oh, I

named that profile Fortnite. I know I'm switching to Fortnite. Okay, this is Mark, this is whatever. It feels great, Um, I don't. I think it's weird that there's like two different buttons underneath the analog sticks for the functions because like, I feel like there could be a more efficient use of those rather than like two things for switch profiles. That seems a little weird. I wish you could like customize. Maybe there is a way,

but I haven't seen a way to. Like, Okay, I wish the one end of the right analog stick I could customize to be its own button. As far as I've seen, there's not a way to do that, but I haven't found one. I think I just took it as like certain games, you'd never want to take your thumb off the right analog stick, so you'd be more likely to use the left nub other games, vice

versa. So you need right now for it if you're going like deep Esports level, like I could see how maybe that's useful, but yeah, or like oh shit, I'm fighting a boss and elden Ring and I'm still in my dead Space settings. Oh I use it for elden Ring on the inventory or the dodge in the inventory. And then yeah, Dodgin sprint, so like be I put on this and it's just like that help I did for

WOA long. Okay, so like game do that and then the controller the trigger throw stuff is great, you know, the Elite has that as well, so overall it just feels great. It's an improvement for sure. Um it's the battery life thing is a bummer, Like it's like less than two hours. Like the duals. The dual shock was dual sense. What's what's the dual sense? Okay, the dual sense is already pretty bad. This one you have to recharge a lot more. But it's a good controller.

Yeah, I've been doing good Bye a bit. Love the nubs. I love those nubs. You what's the what's the update on Mike Tyson? I'm in the dark period now of my quest. It is uh first of all, I've dropped since last time. I was fifty four last time, I am now fifty five because this motherfucker Jordan Jones is now forty six. Fucking incredible. If it's like this fucker what m kish one? Could that be amazing? Five days ago, Jordan Jones set a time of twenty minutes eight

seconds, and uh so it was pushing back to fifty five. So I got some work to do, and all I've been doing for the last week for at least an hour more realistically two plus hours a day. Last night I was going until like after two in the morning, Tyson, over and over and over trying to get that round one tko hardest thing I've ever done in the video game. I've gotten so close so many times. I know it's possible. Once I do it, breaks it open, I can possibly

get into the part of the leaderboards. But I've tried him thousands of times now and I cannot take him down round one. That's the main thing. That's the thing that's hold me back, so still at it every single day. The leaderboard is not really moving. I'm actually I'm I've got like a fucking twenty page script I've written in the last couple of nights of I want to do like a one oh one for like, Hey, if you want

to get into speed running, Tyson, here are starter things. This is not going to get you, like I realize I'm number fifty five in the world, Like, who wants to listen to the number fifty five in the world say how to start this thing? But I'm not trying to get you to like number one. I'm trying to get you to like, if you want to get into this which is very, very rewarding, here are some like here's a solid foundation that you can look to the where you can look

to the people that are way better than me and build upon that. But I want to give you like a one video where I can like teach you all the basic strategies and everything. So I've been working on that editing that the last few nights. I hope to have that up and I want to beat them round one before I put that video up. Do you want to be able to have that fucking clip? Do you know what you need to do differently to not ties in round one? Well? No, it's it's

it's it's pure execution. Like the thing is, there are a lot of these fights that are so complicated and so many that there's flow charts, there's all sorts of crazy fucking things that you can you can analyze and you can manipulate the RNG and all that stuff. Tyson is not that. Tyson is pure execution. There are two phases to it, and the round one is three minutes long. The first half of it is the uppercuts and you just got a one two punch and I've literally this is how fucking that I'm getting

with this stuff. Now, I'm watching clips of tool assist a speed runs, which means it's literally perfect, and I'm trying to like memory, I'm closing my eyes and trying to memorize the pacing one two, one two, and I'm trying to do it so much that when I'm playing, I can automatically do that. I literally want to fucking get an MP three of like a metronome with just that fucking timing. I want to sleep with headphones on just to burn it into my fucking brain so I know the timing when I'm

playing. I wanted to become an automatic reflex, but it's so fucking hard. For the first minute and a half, you have to one two,

one frame beyond, and he's gonna block it one frame early. You're not getting the damage, and then you gotta do a bunch of perfect shit afterwards if you want to do it. It's just I've been so fucking close so many times, and I know I can do it, and it is like, literally my hand I was laying on the couch before this podcast, laying on the couch with two ice gloves, two gloves that have been sitting and a fucking freezer that you put on your hands, and they're painfully cold and

I just lay there. I'm fucking in physical therapy now. I moved from my back because my back is feeling all right now. For I'm like, literally, just work on my four arms and hands. That's all they're doing three times a week is working on my fucking hurting hands and forearms. Because I'm doing this so far from your gaming from Tyson, It's just insane. I've been fighting this motherfucker for thirty something years and I'm still working on it.

It's like creator Flash, Oh, don't you do that car, Mike. You gotta get you in your lamb though barrels clean, fine, honey Spinney. It was queen only pranks, kind of booan Queen Old Pecan eat honey Boo boo boo bath goose cap booo in dejected weird. I'm getting kind of hyped up here, you know, I'm getting I'm making myself. Yeah, everyone's excited. I'm gonna drive around tonight and think about my life, think about Tyson. Yeah. So that's my update is that I just have

a long ways to go. I know I've got it in me to get much higher than I am on the Leader Awards. But what are you saying? Good fellows like that was the bad time, the salad days, the salad days, salads when you're setting new Pepe's all the time because you suck and you got room to improve on. Now I got most other fights in a pretty good spot. It's just fucking Tyson. Wait, how do you do you have like save states to can't start runs? Right? But do

you have save states to start out? To practice against Tyson? So when I practice, I saved state at the start screen because if I beat him, I want to be able to submit because like very few people have been able to beat Tyson round one, and so I would like to at least like there's a separate leaderboard for people who have done that, and I would like to if I do it, get on that. So I can't save state at the beginning of the fight. If I want to get on that,

you have to start from the title screen, right. But you said, like all you've been doing lately is practice against Tyson. So you're typing a code. There's the code, Okay, that's free, so yeah, but it takes a while. You can load it up. You have very very watched the thing and then I've seen this thousands of times. You got away from the dance down to the ring or whatever. I wish I could say, stay right to when Mario says fight, But yeah, you gotta

go to the whole ring of role Jesus. I mean, it's a lot, man, It's a big part of my fucking day every day. And blood born bosses where I had, like I probably fought them, all right, I did the thing in a bloodborn What boss was it? I forget or no securo. I was trying to beat that boss in the first fight. You're technically not supposed to. You're supposed to. It's an early boss fight. You're supposed to be right. Yeah, yeah, I think I

fought him two hundred times. That's nowhere near what it sounds like. You what you're doing. It's a lot. It's a whole lot to kill you. It feels good, though, it honestly feels good as much as it's like you you feel so defeated some nights going to bed where it's like you just want to stay up, but like you're you're literally falling asleep in the chair. It's a I now it's gonna be worth it. It's I can feel myself getting better every time. But God damn it. It is far

and beyond the hardest thing I've ever done. To be a game. Yeah, I'd be definite right three and every difficulty several times, I fucking like beat a bunch of rum or. Now i'd be blood Borne Eldon Ring, not a bunch of them. But like I've played a lot of hard games, this is so far beyond any of that. It's so much more demanding. I'm really proud of you, Dan, you sound really addicted in a good way. I think I feel like I'm kind of like destroying my you

know. Yeah, I'm motivated, so happy for you. Thank you. I'm thriving your obsession, complete addiction. Do you guys want to do some electronic mails? Yeah? Do it okay? As always, you can write into firescape cast at gmail dot com for any questions, concerns, comments, corrections. I read the corrections. I don't care about them. They go in one ear out the other in one eye out my ass. No, I'm just kidding. It's fine unless I asked for corrections. As the Greeks

say, in my eye out my ass's the old ancient Hammarabi code. Um Fire skate cast at gmail dot com. You can write in Dan before we get into emails. Tell them what they can do on Spotify. Go to the Spotify it's the big audio app, and that's where everyone listens to their music and their podcast everything. You give us the five stars there. Look, that's a good way. Like, if you don't want to give us money, that's fine. You don't want to do anything, that fine,

don't give us the five stars. If you look, you don't want to click a couple of things. But if you want to click a couple of things, you're taking a shit. You got a couple of moments. Give us the five stars. It helps us out and doesn't cost you damn cent. If you're shitting, you better be hitting five stars. That is Mary. That was so concise and so much better than what I said. You gotta start throwing a marry like, yeah, she's better, Mary. Where

can they go if they want to give us four stars? They can go to some other podcasts. I don't know. You name one I don't know. To us, it's just different names. Typically, oh right, we go by many names. We go by the Besties, we go by the resties, we go by kind of Funny dot Com. We go by Minas. Oh all of our friends basically that are us just shit on all of our closed personal friends. I love what every time Mike asks me to lie and I just like absolutely melt. You know what's Lucy's new podcast? Go

to her? What a jerk that Lucy? We love her? Go give her less if you don't like us. It was literally just while I was being texting, Greg Miller read how he did a really good job on a recent thing. What guy? No, he did a ratings reveal thing and he did a very good jobs as a superstar. He's doing excellent work. I saw him fall on a PlayStation VR box and it was so real. I couldn't believe it. I should see this same. It's it's very real.

It feels Authenticue Mary, do you want to read the first email from Tom from Wales? Um? Yeah, yeah, I'm prepared. Hi, Fire Escape love the podcast. I've been listening and laughing last he didn't write that. I'm sorry. I've been drinking this bottle of wine. You guys know I don't drink a lot of wine like oh Man, wine drunk is good. That's that first leaf. It's been listening and laughing since episode number

one, So thanks for all you do, smiley face. The other day, I was watching the most recent Resident Evil film, Welcome to Raccoons, and I couldn't help but notice that the actor who plays Chris Bardfield, who is Robbie Amel, bears a striking resemblance to a certain Mike Mahardy. Oh, let's google. Hopefully you guys agree with me. Oh yeah. After I noticed this, I started to imagine what would be like if Mike was actually playing Chris in the movie. There's probably been a lot of corny one

liners like did you check his pulse and take that you dick. For the record, I would one percent watch that. I would too, I absolutely would watch that. I didn't realiz see Stephen Mill's brother. Okay, we're going down a rabbit hole here. Oh, this guy does kind of look like Mikey. I would say, I can see it. This guy has like darker hair, but he's got your chiseled chin. But anyway, so

I'm gonna be Toma. So my question to you all is, if you had to pick one video game character to play in a film or TV adaptation in who would it be? M Why doesn't necessarily have to be someone you look like just someone you think you could bring to life on screen. Many thinks and best wishes, Tom from Wales's UK. That's a very cool question. I like that question is. Yeah, this is an obvious one and it's an easy one. But I would have a lot of fun playing Wallowigi.

Like I don't look like him, but just the idea of just chaos for chaos sake and nothing else deeper than that is like I relate to Wallauigi and I would like to play him. Yes, I don't know who i'd want to play. Mary. You've probably heard you look like Alloy. Oh I've never thought about that. That's cool. Um, I appreciate you saying that, because I think she's pretty hot. But I think, um, that's not why we are discussing this. I think it's I think I think

no, I can go. I wouldn't want to be her because that sounds like a really tough life where I'm like constantly battling like animatronic animals and like dealing with like people's problems. Who's like, oh, we don't have enough like water, and it's like, well, you should have thought that before

it became peasants. I think that I would like to be Cat from Gravity Rush, because oh, that is such a cool skill to be able to alter my gravity and go upside down and constantly like change gravity to be able to go to really interesting locations. I also think Kat is like a character

I really identify with because she's got like unbelievable skills. But at the end of the day, her goal is like, I would like my house that is in the sewer to look nice, and I would like it to have, you know, a lamp by my bed to say very often, that's my goal, which is like I don't need these lofty dreams, but it'd be really nice if my sewer house had like a matching bedset. You know. That sounds nice and that's something I can achieve. Also I can go

upside down. Does she have like pets and stuff? She does? She has a cat. I just feel very connected to Cat in many ways. I actually Um dressed as Cat one of the halloweens. I like to do that. M I like to try to like Um, you know, cause plays like people that I feel like are really I like identify with and enjoy. But that game is really cool. For anyone who's ever played Gravity Rush, it's super fun to be able to alter gravity so that you can get

into like really weird nooks and crannies. There's lots of stuff that you can collect in all the different places and hidden gems which I enjoy, like finding the secrets in the space. But it's a very you know, she's just in a very endearing character because she's not super she's not super smart. She's just a kind person that's doing her best, and she's like kind of dirt poor and like trying to get by, and so her goal is like to have a house with a bed, you know, like that's her goal.

And I just find her very endearing. So I would be her, and I would Um, I would probably rock that character. And I would really enjoy being strung up to a bunch of wires and going upside down a lot underrated game. I think absolutely, Mike, you've had time, and I feel like you've been noodling. I can tell your noodle face because you have these six squinny eyes and you touch your beard, which is such a thinking

man's thing to do. Um, what character would you be? Count Noctilus from Warhammer Specific He's a he's a pirate zombie undead captain and he rides around this bipedal mech with cannons for arms that's made out of the wrecked hull of a ship's flotsam and jetsam and uh. He his whole thing in Warhammers, Like he doesn't care about the war is going on. He's just going around trying to cause chaos along the coastlines and be a pirate and search for treasure.

I just really enjoy playing him in Total War Warhammer three because he's not really concerned with the affairs of men and elves and dwarves and demons. He's just more he's just more into being a rack on tour on the high on the high seas. But my real answer is Travis touchdown from No More Heroes. I think I could pull off. I think I could do it though. Yeah, I could see that it'd be good. Yeah, Pseudo would be into it. Pudo wants me to play him, he wishes I would

play him. I feel like there's a lot of characters I couldn't pull off, but it would be fun to play um Tiny Tina or something like that. Like I don't think I could like carry the weight of that, but that would be really fun. I'd be so much to have to like that energy. I wouldn't. I wouldn't be able to do it. Everyone, like the critics would eat me alive and be like, what a bad actress that was? Holy shit, she did not deserve that role. Um.

I would never be able to convey it. I'm just saying I would have a good time on set, just saying I would. I would be like excited to come to work every day. I would ruin it though. I just realized, I think this is very non specific, but I would have so much fucking fun if they were like, hey, we're making far Cry seven and I'm going to be the villain. Yeah, Like, not based on anyone. I just just let me just be a fucking maniac and just

fucking chew up scenery. You have to pick a villain. There's so many far Cry villains, which Varkry villain like, I would want to like be like, no, I'd want to be my own thing. What's the one that? Uh? Is it? The one with the like weird cult, the Jared letter Joseph. Yeah, I guess this looks alone. I would fit in with five way more than could be far Chry seven's villain. I'm available, folks. I want to put me in a game available. Ye, but far Cry seven is like coming out, like don't they have his

face or whatever? And he's been announced. That's what I saw was guys from Breaking Bed. Oh, I don't know what they announced you. I thought they showed a face. There's time for me to get hired. There's still time for Dan to be I've been in games. I can show you're real. I've been in Rockstar games. I'm in Soccer Bunch games. Put me in the game. I think you could be good in punch Out, the Hot News series punch Out. You could be um the first guy.

Oh good, Yeah, it'd be Gabby Jay's son who just gets knocked out and concussed immediately. Well, it depends on who you play against. Maybe you beat the shit out of him. Nah, Noah, the first guy is just gonna get his brains beat in. Your job is just to get the ship beating Nut's glass. Joe. That's Gabby Jane. That's their job. They're fucking Berry Horwitz. They're just getting their asses kicked. That's a good gig. No, just another Tuesday. Punch me in the face.

You can cuss for a hot dog and a handshake, can cuss for a hand a hand dog and a shake job, Dan, do you want to read this one from a mark? Sure, it's the way. It's the most annoying thing because my internet's being a dick again, So I can only cut in with like the weirdest comments ever to try to transition. Hey, we heard that. So meanwhile, Jakes listening to this be like Mike hasn't talked for like the longest I've ever heard him not talk before. Oh,

because he's getting crystal clear, Like, yeah, he doesn't. I'm whispering to him. It's sorry, Dan, it's high folks, it's the it's this long one. It's it's more of a prompt for like different foods that they eat in Taiwan. That he was because I had had a comment last time about the weirdest place the audience listens to us on Mondays. So that's a response. Oh I remember that. Okay, high folks. On the last fire Escape cast, you joked about where we the audience listened to the

bod. Here are some pictures I took at the moment I was listening to the discussion. Yeah, pictures I live in Taipei, Taiwan, and often finished work around ten pm too unwind, I went for a late night walk to chen k Shik Memorial Hall and was that shank Kai Shik Shanghai Shik Memorial Hall and listen to the fire Escape Cast. Just want to thank you all for the fun podcast that, despite its insanity, can be quite therapeutic and

helps relieve the stress of the day. To give you something to respond to, here are some interesting Taiwanese foods. Which do you think you would like? Let's give a yea, you're an a to each of these. We got tofu. Maybe it is fermented tofu that smells like sewage good start. Locals say it smells bad but tastes good. I disagree. I'm gonna nix that. That's a name for me. Yeah, I don't like tofu to begin with. Just don't smell like shit if I'm gonna eat you. I

really do like to try weird foods. Um the fact that it apparently tastes and smells like shit. It's not helpful, But I like tofu, so I would put this on the Maybe tofu is good, Okay, I'm going to also absorbs what it's next to and if it just like is next to a bunch of shit that smells like shit, it's shit, it might absorb that shit. Yeah, I don't want that shit tofu al right. Next up is tea eggs, hard boiled eggs that are stewed in tea, which

is absorbed into the egg. I'm going to nag because I still don't really understand hard boiled eggs. So now I love eggs. This is such a yes for me. I love soft boiled eggs so much. And I don't know if I'm overthinking this, but like, like, eggs that are marinated in miso are such a wind for me. Oh my god, They're so salty and flavorful and I want to make them on my own. And this is a yes, yes, yes, and Dan, you're missing out.

Eggs are like great, They're just little balls of flavor bud like you can put bacteria and fetuses, but they don't, but they soak in the flavor of whatever you put around them, like tofu. I like tofu. These sound good tea eggs. I'd try for sure. Century eggs eggs that are buried in clay for months until they turn black and gelatinous. No, no for me, I don't think I would. I'll try anything. I don't think i'd like those, Okay, who jao bing pork buns, crispy buns

filled with pork, green onion, and black pepper. Yeah, yeah, oh yeah, every day. Yes, all sounds amazing. That makes me want dim sums so bad. That sounds great. Bab one, a ball of jelly with pork and veggies in the middle, man, I just don't want the jelly part, the pork and veggies maybe, but no, no for me. We'll try it. We'll go for it like jello with veggies and pork in it. Sure, that sounds good for me, for my American palette, but I'll try it. I think, you know, some

of it is a bit riskier. Jelly specifically can be risky. But I think it's it sounds Everything else in there is like up my alley. It's gonna be fine. Speaking of up our alleys, sweet potato balls bits of sweet potatoes that are fried until they get filled with air and become crunchy. Sign me up. I'll be there with them. Give me them sweet potato balls. Let's go to town. I would eat a bunch of them and then liquefy them and inject them into my arms. Oh, we got an

MS paint drawing of the scrow to eyeballs. Oh I'd like to see that, please you don't want to. Part of this podcast is me immediately fucking men in black light thing in my face every time I'm done. I have no idea what you're talking about with eyes, and this one sound is stuck with me. Yeah, I'm gonna say no to the sweet potato. I don't like sweet potatoes. Ranch. I know of the very few things in the world that I just don't like. I don't want my potatoes to be

sweet. I want them to be savory. It bothers me nothing to you. I know, I know the amount of people that don't like sweet potatoes. I don't like them. I gotta be in the mood for him. I gotta be in the mood sweet. Like everybody's always like you'd like my sweet potatoes, and I'm like, no, I fucking don't. I don't like sweet potatoes. I don't care how you make them. I don't care if you make them with brown sugar or honey, or you know, like

marshmallows and brown sugar. All that stuff is weird to me. I want my fry savory. When you got here late one night, I feel bad, now you would I made Mary a blt and then gave her sweet potato fries on the side when she got here at like two am after a flight. I feel bad now, yeah, yeah, that was a situation.

I will eat them. They won't make me sick. It's just like every time, Like if a restaurant is like, hey, we for your burger, we have potato, we have fries, and we have sweet potato fries without a beet, I will go fries because there's no there's no way I would want sweet potato fries. Well, can I eat sweet potato fries? Of course, like they won't hurt me, but like they're a waffle form I love, but waffle sweet potato fries are still sweet potatoes. It's still

the problem. That was com That was Kyle from Boston in Taiwan. Okay, cool, all right, I'm gonna read this one. Hey, Mitch, you permanent marker sniffing baby. I was wondering if you guys have ever liked a game soundtracks so much that you have purchased it on another medium. I recently bought the Eastward soundtrack on vinyl because it's one of the best video game soundtracks I've ever heard, and it doesn't get enough love. Keep crushing

it, Keep pino flowing. John from Kansas City. Um, yes, I absolutely adore the Red Dead two soundtrack, which it's Daniel Lenois, so like he's done, like he's won Grammys and shit, so it's not super surprising. But wow, Grammys, that's so legit. I like, your Grammys are garbage. So he can't defend himself. Yeah, what a dumb love the Grammys. Grammys. Mike is stewing. Mike, please explain yourself.

I don't think you're frozen anymore. Am I back? It's not like shit, but yeah, Kentucky Root zero Sounds, hyper Light Drifter, Outer Wilds, Outer Wilds. I bought Wild. I have the vinyl for Outer Worlds in my closet here. I don't have a record player, but I have the Outer wild soundtrack. That's how much I liked it. Send it obviously you can't listen to it. Just send that my way. But the Outer Wild is the number one. I don't think I've ever bought a video

game soundtrack. I likes to hear that. Yeah, I've had individual tracks I've like downloaded on Napster back in the day, Like so you've stolen music. Yeah, it's like, well, it's like, oh, I'm making a sketch and I want to use the middle Year Solid Alert music or whatever like I'll do. But no, I don't ever bought a video game soundtrack.

Now, let me get my Spotify. My Spotify is funny because you know how like everybody gets their Spotify and wrapped and it'll be like you listened to Oh, I don't know, I spice a lot this last year. Well mine is always like Macinarium soundtrack is your number one record again, And it's like you've been that way for five years because I always listen to the goddamn Macinarium soundtrack because I think it's I think it's one of the best soundtracks

that's ever made. It's very simple. I don't want to say it's like life changing, it's does what it set out to do very well. It sounds amazing and to that point, disaster Piece like Fez soundtrack is like very phenomenal and absolutely worth listening to. These are just like soundtracks that might not be, like, they might not have Grammys, but they are, Like they're so extraordinary in what they set out to accomplish, the world building and

like the environmental storytelling that the music can give you. It will plant you right back into that game. And it is tremendous what they were able to accomplish with those soundtracks. This is biased, but I also think the Dust Far soundtrack is one of the best soundtracks I've ever listened to. My friend obviously wrote it, but it's a really really good soundtrack and I can listen

to that almost every day of the week. And then for Christmas, my friends bought me the Silent Hill soundtrack, which I thought was very thoughtful of them. Does it have the dog ending song, the barking one? It has some really sad, stressful yeah, yeah, the one where the dog is the that's my favorite pizza. Yes, that's the fucking best. It's a silent track in the yeah at the end, okay secret. Yeah. I can't believe you've never bought a soundtrack. I buy so many soundtracks.

Um, like not all obviously, but like, um, there's just so many that are like really tremendous, um that are worth listening to I'm Glad you said hyper Light Drifter, Mike, I think that's a that's just such

a tremendous soundtrack. I mean, it's a work of art. For me, it's it's so contextual where it's like when like when I'm running around Delphino Plaza, I want to hear think, think, Think, think think like I like, I love that music and everything, But I'm the complete opposite of Tim Terry, who anytime you ever go in Tim Terry's car, he's listening to some fucking not Sonic and Knuckles track, you know, or something like he's all day, every day listening to some fucking Rocket Night track or

something. It's always Genesis for the most part, but like that's his fucking thing and he loves it, and God bless him for word. But I uh, I outside of a couple of Metal Year tracks, I don't like that I downloaded for like sketches I was making in college. I don't think I've ever gone out of my way to listen to video game music outside of the context. I don't against it. There's a lot of great fucking video game music, but it's like I want to experience it in the game,

I think, so I want to just like cover. I have a couple liked songs in my Spotify that I think are worth mentioning. Um, Thomas was alone ost is really good. Um, it's extremely heartfelt and thoughtful. Um. Outer Wild was already mentioned. Throw it down there anyway because I did heart this. Um, this is funny. Mario Rabid's Kingdom has really good soundtracks with a full orchestra, and it's just like yeah, a little, a little, a little, it's very very good. So, um,

I think that's worth it. Um. I have a couple on here from Ico. Um Ico is uh something that I like. Can typically if I'm listening to music, I probably will fall into Ico. It's really good. Um. The track I have is There's so many A Heel is the one that I have that's really calming. Um, oh my gosh. If you're interested in like calming music, do uh dark Souls the safe space music. Oh, if you listen to that, you will go to sleep.

It will put your ass to sleep. It's so comforting. Same thing with resideval MICA's spot on, like there there is music there they associate me with like peace and serenity. Um, you know, I'm talking about like in the Dark Souls, like one where it's like mun and it's like kind of sad and dark, but it's also like really soothing because you know you're in a safe space. I love that one. Um, the entire city of Tears space in Hollow Night is like extraordinary and very peaceful. I could go

on about game music. I think basically, if I like listen to a song and it sticks with me, I will, um, I will like follow them on Spotify. I should make a Spotify playlist because I listened to a lot of video game music and be like, hey, I should. Yeah. I feel very strongly about video game music. I think it's uh. I think it's something we don't talk about enough, which is video game music is of its own right deserving of awards. We don't talk about video

game music enough. Um. I don't feel like we discuss it. Like I tried to make a Bangers Award for our Word show. Yeah that's right. Um. And I assume m Jeff Keeley's Goaties does music. I think they did. Um, they did because they gave it to Elden Ring. I'm pretty sure. But I think like there's a lot of Christopher Judge's speech erased it though, just kept talking. Yeah, shut up, my god. But you know, I'm just standing there for my kids. Anyway,

I'm gonna call it. I'll make I'll make a playlist and I'll share it. There's so much music that everyone should listen to. I don't know why I'm so like with movies, I'm kind of the opposite, where like I bought a bunch of movie soundtracks, and like I've probably listened to music from the Rocky soundtracks more than like goddamn any band in the last twenty years.

You know, like the amount of times I've listened to No Easy Way Out or fucking World Depart or any of the fucking You're just training montage music from Rocky just constant, constant. But like, I've just never felt the inclination video game wise. But I guess Rocky specifically cool Kentucky Root zero soundtracks incredible. Oh that surprises. Yeah, I guess I don't associate that with music

I always associated with writing. But it does have good music. Yeah, it's like folk bluegrass, but also the other half is like ethereal kind of synth wave. Um cool. My internet is shitty, so do you want to you want to lead us out tonight? You can do it, Dan, I believe you all right, Well, you can go to fire Escape merch dot com probably, I think that probably direct course or current situation by shirts by hats. Do we have ats? No, we have scratch that

we don't have ats. Buy shirts, buy shirts by mousepads, by mugs, by mugs, those are good. Uh, fire escape merch dot com. And let me tell you we do a patroon and Mary tell him about the patreon. Oh, the patreons probably where we put all the best goodies and we put bonuses in there like this. One time we did a road trip in the car and Dan and I got the truck to make the horn noise, and we talked about stuff that we don't share in the regular podcast.

So if you like that kind of extra stuff, or if you like add free or the video version. The video version is pretty cool because you can actually see what we're drinking right now. For example, I'm drinking an entire bottle of wine, which is why I couldn't read one of the emails. First leaf, what did I say? I think, yeah, first leaf, I did, I am I'm actually drinking a bottle from first leaf because I don't drink a lot of wine, so this is new for me.

Um, It's delicious. What are you drinking, Dan, I'm on my second I finished my bottle of wine. I'm on my second bottle light selter apple slices. I got a cranberry apple. He listen the ad free thing. That ain't no joke on the pare you know a un people are giant babies about fucking ads on podcasts. Out that podcast work and make money. So if you're a big ass baby that has a big ass problem with hitting forward thirty seconds once or twice a podcast, a few bucks are away,

we gotta Paytron. You don't have to ever worry about that ever. Again, that's how it goes. Oh yeah, oh my god. Chrono Trigger the original soundtracks, Dot Vote, Down Vote No podcast sponsored by Chrono Trigger. I also love the Game of the Year stuff. I wonder how they funded it, but I also hate ads. Doubt vote. I just

wish they didn't make money. I had a really good conversation with someone this weekend um who said something like capitalism, Um, and I was like, yes, capitalism, capitalism is a problem, but everyone also gets really upset every time there's like an issue in like games, media or like when our friends are in trouble. So don't forget about the ads because they help us do what we do for a living. Turns out, folks gotta make money.

It turns out kind of how we can't really change the greater scan things work with us. Yes, we do have a hat by the way, Sorry, we do have. It's a it's a beanie that says dorky Christmas on it. I feel like we should update that. There's a very specific hat. Nothing. There's no way that that's sold more than like one. Can we see who bought the one? They get our staf probably that call them out right now. Don't talk to them, but like give us the

first name Jenny. Really no, I don't know. You gotta give me more from I need more time. Um. Yeah, but it's been a fun episode. Okay, we did sell at Weather sold a hat. We sold one. Really start to god first name. It doesn't it's I'm not doing that that. I wouldn't lie my first name. Really, I think it's shocking we actually did sell one. We you know how we've sold a lot of dorky Christmas sweaters, which I think is great. Yeah, I

saw that. Give the last number of the hat buyers credit card. Never, that doesn'tify anything, just the last number. We just got what fifteen others to figure out. Yeah, that's not that's not doxin Um. There's also been a lot of mugs. Um. I would say the highest selling item, which is surprising to me, is the mug that's good mouse pad. I think it's because it's reasonably priced. We made sure that it wasn't like a super expensive mug. It's not like a pillar of what we do,

so we just made it affordable. Yeah, I'm well, actually I feel very strongly about that, which is like, the things that are on here are not here to make us like profit. The things are on here because because it's super cool to see a fire escape logo in the wild, Like that's the that's the thing that makes it awesome. Um. And if I when I see them, when I especially when I see the ones about

the author in the wild, great great joy. So I don't like the prices like basically for like construction, because I just want to see these things exist in the world. Yeah, we're not getting rich out this. We just want to make fun of Mike. I just literally want to him to be upset. Abject humiliation on my part has gone into this podcast for its success. So help us, help you, Mike. If you could find something half as potent as that for me or Mary, you would have done

it six months ago. I look, everyone's gotten shit that's embarrassing from their past and like, oh I was a shitty rider, or this is a dumb thing, or what a dumb idea, But man, yours is just so potent and concise and specific. Oh the moment I saw it, I just knew it was gold spilling on odd screen. I've watched the clip several

times, and it's funny, like watching emotions. Well, I immediately know what you see through a video call, and I'm like, oh, holy fuck, you can see my like end trails, leave my ass off camera show. Oh my god, that's so vivid. Man, you did great work. Thanks. I appreciate it. Um. Yeah, that's episode forty nine. We'll be back with episode fifty. We'll be back. This is today's February twenty seventh, not a leap year, doesn't matter. We'll be

back March thirteenth. Not quite the eydes of March, but also almost what are the IDEs? Did you mean that as a pun? No? What are the IDEs of March? March fifteenth is the IDEs of March? Halfway through the months when Caesar died, supposedly or god assassinated right by many pel Oh, I thought it was just that's the way to go. Okay. I thought it was brute way to go, getting stabbed by all of your friends, I mean friend. Also, he said, yeah, he was

a shoot nude. Right, he wasn't like a like that's not like a myth. Right, Caesar was a guy who was Yeah, Okay, there was several Caesars, many of them. Wait, like Saddam Hussein body doubles or no Augustus Julius like it was a family name. Oh? Okay? The what is it? Is it? Our calendar was mainly based off Augustus, Right, there's a whole month no August something calendar. God, I I gotta stop bringing this shit up at the end of episodes. What I've

been drinking? No, because August July July is named after Julius august Is Augustus. Shit, how about March, March, Marchius, Marchius? What the hell's the name of the calendar. Holy shit, I'm blanking the Fibrurion. No, okay, I got the Gregorian calendar. Sorry, it is named for Pope Gregory the thirteenth, the papal bull ter gravissimas in fifteen eighty two, What is Happening? Classic Gregory? Um, well cool, that was episode forty nine. We'll be back fifty hopefully I'll have caught up on

more of these. Well cool, cool greg Pope Pope Greg Oh you know what? Uh? That actually reminds me. You guys will meet my friend at wedding stuff. I steal all my jokes from him. But you know how a lot of people say, like to say like absolutely yes to a question. Someone will say does a bear shit in the woods? Or is the Pope Catholic? My friend in high school started combining him and be like, hey man, you want to go to this party, and I'd be

like, does the Pope shit in the woods? That he didn't come up with that. That's a thing that's definitely been said. No, he came up with it. I heard that a billion times. I have no idea who you're talking. No, you got it from him? No, Yeah, that's the thing. A lot of people. He saw that on some like Anchorman deleted or something. No, you don't give him that much credit. Yeah, you got it from him at all. Yeah, I just took it from something I heard that in Kansas twenty years. Oh my god,

it made it all the way to Kansas. That was ever thing. That he didn't come up with it. That's crazy that he would have made it. A person say it. That's insane that it got all the way from Syracuse, Kansas. Oh my god, osmosis of jokes across the fight fight at Mike's wedding, wedding, wedding. Now he'll be at the bachelor party too. I'll judicate. Let's see some let's see it. Dan gets pissed when people are funnier than him. No he doesn't, actually not at

all. Dan's us just enjoying when people are funny than him around him. I'm just enjoying most things typically good way to be just a pleasant man. Well that was episode forty nine. Thanks everybody. We'll be back episode fifty next week. That'll be excite. Do we want to do anything special? What do we want to do? Anything? We got I'm gonna get free snacks. Oh that's that sends some audio. That's good. I'm sure that'll

sound awesome. And I want to get the sharks. I want to get the ones that have the white sharks in them, well, the white bellies, the blue sharks with the white bellies, the frogs, the lime green frogs, frogs, classic gushers too, those are great. Those are amazing. I'm telling me a new thing I discovered recently, the trolley sour watermelon sharks. I had five of them before the podcast, and they are the only sure. The density of these sour watermelon sharks are unreal. I have

a high st standard for chewy sweet candies. I want sour watermelon sharks. They're dense as shit. I hate your mouth and you're just getting into it, all right, that's good. I hate when I have a gummy thing and it's super soft and my teeth just connect right away. That's why I put them there. I don't want the Harry bow I don't want the Harry bow bearers. Those are for those are for scrubs. You can't just get Baby's Classic. You have kee trains in the freezer. Trolley sour watermelon sharks.

I'm telling all right, I'm on the lookout. Okay, I bought a twelve pack of bags on Amazon. Alright, sick, all right, well everybody, thanks for joining. You could have been anywhere in the world Tonight Shows. Spend it with us. We will be back in two weeks March thirteenth, to celebrate Caesar's death. We'll be hanging out here with let's not get into this right now, episode fifteen. We'll see you then, bye bye mm hm. The US style