Fire Escape Cast #54

Don't like a bar. You don't have to start, are you? He was doing like small time bar talk about those Warriors guys tonight. Don't follow sports, Okay, I don't know. Maybe maybe Stewart does. Who's editing this episode? I actually you're gonna start this off with him being like, what do I do with this intro? That was so bad? That the intro that was it clear is nowhere near the worst one we've done. No, No, we've done much for us. At least I didn't mention any

baby so far. Oh yeah, we don't have to go into that, Mike. No, I'm legitimately excited for the game. Warriors Lakers is a good matchup. That's good ball. Back at it. We're going to a baseball tomorrow later this Week's a good song, I am. I'm going to a Red Sox game at Fenway Park football. It's got a big wall. I guess my dad wanted to see the big Wall for his whole life, so the Green Monster. Wait, your dad is a Royals fans, the

Royals guy, but he's just an overall baseball fan. And I know of the Green Wall from King Griffy Jun your own Superintendo m it's a man. Boston sports fans are gonna hate me. Amanda would know. I think it's a smaller field than usual. Yeah, like shorter to hit a home run, not taking the green wall and the green monster. I think they call it into account. That seems wrong. Well, no, so that's baseball is like there are certain regulation measurements and rules. But also like soccer in

Europe, I don't know if this pertains the MLS. The fields are different lengths sometimes, like if you go to uh, Wembley, the field's going to be way longer than a lot of other sports, like home Again, that seems obviously if it's like elementary school and they're like this is all we had in the backyard. There's a big pit in the middle of it, like you just work around. No, but this is like professional national level.

Yeah, they should do it like in basketball and be like, oh, if you play the Orlando Magic, the hoop is twenty five feet tall, you know, it's just like really it goes up and down real fast. If you play the Utah Jazz, only Mormons can come watch. Yeah, that's right. That doesn't impact the play. It's like the little like

play situation where it's more like I never have its. Like if you were to be like in Detroit and they're like, well, our baseballs are twice as big, and it's there I and they're made of iron, good luck, you know. And they're tied with a string to the center of the field. Yeah, and there's a pole and you have to hit it, you know, but it's baseball. Where was the last time you played tether ball? I love tether ball angle that perfect forty five degrees and they can't

hit it on their side. They're screwed because it's her ball pole. That'd be sweet. I could do that, putt. You'd be such a bully. Yeah, that's what's such a cruel thing to have in your house. There's no chance Bonk would play tether ball with me. There is no constantly bopping it way over that head. She would hate She would have hated it if I had like a soft little thing, like if I had like a little thing like you know those Kleenex, uh, the single serving clean X

things. If I tossed one of those underhanded to her while giving her heads up, she would still do the like George Michael from the rest of Development, like fall into it like she does not like things being thrown at her or athletic things or things lying around her head be the last thing. I think that's probably a good survival instinct. It is, I wonder it reminds me of a line from Clueless, where they're playing nis and one of the

girls goes, I can't play with a note from my doctor. I'm not supposed to play anything where balls fly at my face and the girls your social light. That's right, that was a trailer. I think I was confused by it because I didn't know sex stuff when it came out. That's right, it was about ballstic. I didn't under a lot of things in movies. I started to finally understand in like sixth grade. I didn't know what

a vagina was the first time I saw a rat race. And he says it in the bathroom when he's trying to get who is it Cuba gutting? Junior says in the bathroom to that guy that he needs his I think he's a bus driver. He needs his clothes because he's trying to pretend to be a bus driver like hit Man style. But he's telling her that his wife. He's telling the bus driver that his wife is in the other bathroom and

he's like, give me your jacket. He's like it's for the embiotic sack or something, and he's like, what do you need the hat for. He's like the vagina, And I didn't know what a vagina was, so I it's not even a funny joke. Now that I'm old enough to understand it. Yeah, but at the time, I'm like, the mind wanders when you hear things you don't know. I think I may have brought this up for maybe like Shrek had a bunch of like really spicy jokes that I

don't think I really comprehended. And it wasn't even I wasn't that young, but I remember when I saw it, it just like didn't hit me at the time. Shrek. Shrek takes the double entendra that Disney does to like times ten levels. For sure. There was a lot of like like in Wayne's World, you know, there's the part where they do, like, oh, the gratuitous sex scam and it's just like Mike Myers flopping around on top of to your career, and I was like, what are they doing?

I have no idea what's happening here? It was all terminator that I understood the the baseball thing we were talking about, sure, Supermaga Baseball four thing, and it's actually got real baseball players. Like I'm loving a thought of Keith Hernandez rocketing a ball at like Kurt Schilling's crotch. I only know Keith Hernandez because of that Seinfeld. He was a really good Mets player. Okay, is he still playing? No? Okay, if they Ruth is

old? Is he bab Ruth's in the game of some I'm in the trailer? Yeah, okay, yeah, I don't know how they who they selected total, but I do want to play that. I can't wait. I don't know. We have a story up on Polygon today that I gotta that we might have mentioned it. Let me look. That World series we did was extremely fun. We should do that again when the new one comes out. That'd be fun. Yes, I would like to do that with you. That was Oh here we go, Okay, let me see uh June

second. Holy shit, that's a month from this recording. Okay, I'll play the hell out of that switch probably maybe another World series. Yeah, I get my dad on the horn. That was fun. There was that like three game stretch where the games were not close whatsoever. We one of us had dialed into the control each game, and then we're just like going to ding dongtown every think you were killing me, like the way there was one where you won, like twenty to four, though, and it's demoralizing,

especially again the whole time. Shit, yeah, we gotta do it again. That'll be fun. I think I'm trying to remember whether I won. What the hell was it was it four to three in the series or the game seven or something like that. I think what is six? But yeah, go dubs to the basketball fans. It was fun. What else you guys been up to? I always like block out the old sports chatter anytime, Like people are like, I'm too cool for sports. I'm I

might fucking video games. You are one of us, you nerd. I'm I'm definitely a nerd. Mary, I'm with you. Sports are boring. I'm with you, except for hockey when they decided to fight each other on the ice. YEA, what fighting? If you want to watch fighting or fake fighting? More fighting when it breaks out in somewhere where that's not the main objective, that's true. It's like like a Wendy's if you see a

fight, it's more exciting than if you see a match. Yes, I looked up the Creator Clash results because I was interested in the concept of like streamers and content creators punching each other. Because I didn't think they could do it, but they did. I do want who should I fight? Um? I watched Alana's match. She won. I thought that was pretty cool. He's worried that I like have too much boxing experience to that's true. It'd be a bit unfair. It'd be an unfair. Yeah, you get

Wait, Alana won everything. That's one the whole thing. It's a pyramid, you know, and each time they would keep going she made it all the way. Is that you just only boxed me serious, only one person. That's like like grudge matches. I guess you could probably say that,

but yeah. The idea is you you get paired with someone in your weight class and you fight them and then just like a boxing uh night, there's like maybe six to eight matches and like there's one like heavy weight that's like the main yeah, the title match, and then everybody else, you know, you just fight until you win or lose. Cool. Um, I

think It's interesting. It's an interesting concept of like the new normal, which is like, instead of professionals, what if just a bunch of average mumbly Joe's got up there and we taped their hands and they just started flailing at each other. I would watch it decent. The fights, Um, yes, and no. I would say, like generally, you're not talking about professional boxers. You were talking about not even amateur you're talking about people. Yeah, I agree, but I think they did their best. I don't

think anyone phoned it in. Um, but I think if you were expecting like legit boxing, it's probably not that caliber. When is legit boxing, they're legit each other. But I think that for the training that they go through, which is probably three to six months of training, that's what you're seeing at the end of it. You know, I bet would kick assid.

That is Vinny Caravella. Really, I don't think he's he's like trained or anything, but I just yeah, I've just I've never been punched by him, but I assume he's got some like weird dad straight where it's just like he would just knock you out with one hit out. Well, maybe it's one of those like paternal things where you have to like hang his kids in a cage above the match. Yeah, you know, like hook and it's like you gotta win this fight or we're gonna keep him. And then

yeah, and then he just goes. He goes crazy and he's like kills everybody. I think you gotta get that, you get that like paternal rage. He could beat like Lennox Lewis. I bet if he did that. He's got that like when he devotes himself to something, He's got that laser focus too. I could see him coming in with some technique. Yeah,

I could see. Yeah. I think I would come in there with a wily Hubris and I would just be like, I'm gonna give him the old pop pop and I would miss and someone would just bash me on the top of the head and I'd fall flat. Fighting me. If you thought me, Mary, I think you would come out of the game strong and I would just crumble completely. I would put my hands up and just whoa. I'd I do the thing where I get between the second and third ropes and

I'm like, I'd be spanking you. Yeah. I think like I'd have different techniques for each of you because I assume that Dan, if I just came at you like a crazy spider monkey, I think I could freak you out mentally. I would try to poke your eyes. Is the first thing you have boxing gloves? I would take them off. Look, I'm a survival mode here. I don't work. It's not a fight to the death. Most of the time. You're talking to someone who watches more like w

W E than any boxing match. You that superkick on Rocky five is your favorite of the bunch, of course, yes, what would be for me? I would have to take it more seriously. I don't think I could psych you out mentally, and I know you have boxing experience that you work out mostly fighting and bar fighting. Yeah, I think honestly, cushions on our knuckles on the streets, I'd probably try and play dirty. I'd probably be like, oh, so you're like Diamond Dame, going for them the

weird joints that you know are out of shape. You hit in my right shoulder because you know it's strained. Yeah, I'd be going for any weak points, whether or not it's cool, um, because I think you'd probably I think you'd probably punched me. Now we've had this discussion before. I think if it was like fight to the death and there were no boxing rules,

I think I'd have a better shot. But within you understand, I would get all times I am too like killing you already, So like the moment someone says one of you is not leaving this room, I'll pull out my like derringer from But I've always been prepared with like a shiv at any moment, like I'm always ready to like I have a gun on the inside of my shouldn't. I don't think you can do this in boxing. I

can't do anything cool in boxing. If I was going into a ring with Mike Tyson, I would have a derringer on each of my limbs, because that is the most terrifying human being I've ever seen in my life. Do you think if you add like if you were like dual wielding stun guns and Tyson was coming after you, do you think you could uh survive? Like you know what, would you survive that? Or would he be able to

knock you out? I think he has enough like fortitude to push through it and still strangle me to death and then muscles go crazy, like it's like you can't stand right. Have you ever seen someone on meth with those like they still go Actually, yeah, I thought there's some I don't know if it's like an adrenaline thing that can kick in. I don't know. I've never been stun gun again. Like father, you know, paternal madness. You hang Vinnie's kids in a cage above the ring and then you zip zap

him. I think he pushed through it. If you would kill just saying, are you suggesting you zip zap the kids? No? No, no, you guys zip zap him. I'm just saying you just hear what she said about zip zapping Vinnie's kids. I did. Yeah, I'm called for really. Yeah, I doator clash. I do the hook thing. Dude, if it was me and Vinny, I would have to bow out or at least let him punch me, because he's such a he's such a nice guy. I just don't think I have it in me to to, you

know, to bop him. I don't think I could do it. How does PCP work? Because I heard you like, if you're on PCP, you can like fall out of a building and walk away. So like, could I just take a bunch of I don't know if you take or snort. Or I don't know how PCP works, but could I have a bunch of PCP right before I fight Vinnie and just not register anything and then be

why is Vinny in this scenario? Or you can I have a bunch of it could be just an unknown uh boxing, I think you'd be stronger, Yeah, and I wouldn't feel the pain, right, I just eatn't eat enough PCP, it won't feel anything. Well, I think you just don't think you're in this world. I think part of that is also why a lot of in drunk driving accidents, the drunk driver walks away like unscathed because they're drunk, so they're not seizing up and like tightening when they're crashing and

breaking shit in their body. Yeah, I always felt it's a stupid thought. I'm sure this isn't how it works. But like if a plane was going to crash over a car was going to crash, I always assumed if I just like made all my limbs just like really like flex them all like, they would make them like more solid and then they wouldn't like I wouldn't

get all squished up. No, Like, I think that's the worst possible thing you could do I think I could survive a plane crash enough pp, I'm sure you think you could give me a bonus, but I just think I think it would go Okay, I'm not You want to ask people that like jumps at the end, like right as it crashed, I could time. Yes, absolutely you cannot. And first of all, it was learned in one of those MythBusters that jumping at the end of like a falling elevator

doesn't save your life. It doesn't reduce impact. That's crazy to me. It seems like you're thinking all the downward stuff. I don't know. This is probably also a myth I heard that if you were in a falling elevator, yeah, you're supposed to go flat, Yeah, because that otherwise my legs would just shoot through your chest. I could see that. But I would also say, like, what's better in your opinion when falling an extreme height into water. Is it penciling in or is it being as flat as

possible? Because when you are as flat as possible you hit that full smack with your belly, you're still going to be Fuck. You're in a high enough height, you're gonna be at terminal velocity. It might as well, be concrete. It doesn't matter how you're laying. I think I think to down and you didn't have shoes on, I think it would kind of like

make it what situation which a little pencil. I would if you fell out of a plane, if the point was on fire and you jumped out and you had time to think about it, I would take both my shoes out. I would go pencil, and I would point my toes straight down like a dagger, carving a safe path. I'd go deep. The thing I'd be worried about is that goes so deep that I would have to swim up

really fast before I drowned. But I'd be fine with the impact the the There's a lot of physics happening between you jumping out the window and hitting the water that I don't think you're accounting for. You could get sucked in that little in the you get sucked in the jet even that like no I do. If you don't, you don't just jump straight out when something's going that fast, like it's there's gonna be a lot of wind resistance when you're jumping

out. All this works, he does like a little summer salt and like a perfect dive. You gotta hold your butt in though, because a bunch of water I'll shoot up your butt. I'd wear pants, get will go through there, water gonna break. But how where do they do this? How does it workt So if I don't clench, a lot of water will go my butt. Oh man, damn, there's easier way to make that happen, Like yeah, oh, trust me, there are quite a few. I'm just like adding any one to the list. The day is like

seventeen on my list. So go down, then jump out of the plane, do not clench, and then can you imagine me falling from the sky into the Hudson River, spreading my ass cheeks, just rinning from ear to ear, straight down. A man died at Niagara Falls. Uh. The CCTV cameras caught his last moments of him spreading his butt cheeks and jumping off of the falls. Whites said, he seemed ecstatic. He's just doing like

a cannonball. Put your hands down there, spready cheese. You're on a yellow stone like the guys he fucking got a newspaper, Like you're taking a ship, but you're just waiting nature's but day or like public enema ah um. I don't think you survive a plane crash. Oh I'm very curious how those like that one person on certain flights does I would be that one I have. I have a dreams crashing and they have to like land on the FDR or like some crowded highway or like the soul usity have dreams like that

all the time. I doo do it very similar where it's like, yeah, you're taking off, it's like, oh my god, it's going upside down and we're trying to save or we almost hit a tree or something and you have highway like in a swamp even and I was like, wait, shouldn't the wing have clipped that tree? But it doesn't because it's a dream

and I'm bringing the water. Impact is so weird in dreams, right, Like I don't have tree landing dreams, but I definitely have, like tried to fight someone in my dreams, and my fists always kind of like it kind of just smooshes against their face when I fight them. It's very anti class. Oh yeah, it's also hard to sprint in some dreams. It's so hard to sprint when you're someone dreams reading unsatisfying running in a dream like.

That's one of the ways you're supposed to if you want to lose a dream, is you try to read something, because in real life you look at the letters and stuff and they're just words and they don't move around. Open up a book or look at something in a dream and it'll just be all jumbly and moving around. Or if you look at it, look away, look back, the words will all change. And that's how you know you're dreaming. And that's like a technique for lucid dreaming. It just makes

you wake up right, no, no, you Yeah. So I go long periods of my life, like three years at a time where I only lose a dream, really, and it sounds cool and it is at first, and you can make some cool stuff happen. However, it gets a bit exhausting because I wake up and I don't even know. They say, I think, in like your deepest sleep, you're dreaming and you wouldn't know it's a dream. Lucid dream is kind of like a halfway. So if I'm doing it that often, I'm probably not sleeping all that well. But

lately I've actually been dreaming and it's weird for me. Because usually I know right away I'm dreaming, really and yeah, are you good at Like can you fly? And stuff like that? When you're flying is super easy. Yeah, it's it's it's like it's like the Mario triple jump. Like the first few times I try, my mind can't wrap around it. It's like the Neo jump in the Majors. But then finally I'm like, I'm I'm

asleep in my bed. This is not real. And then I start flying, but often my mind wants me to come back down, so it takes a few jumps or whatever. You can kind of like glide a little bit. Yeah, that's fun. That's so cool. I can never control my

dreams of what I think about the fact that I'm dreaming. I will instinctively wake up, and I also when that happens, I forget what I was dreaming about, and I like, I think I typically have really fun dreams, Like I grant myself good dreaming situations, so I want to remember them because I think they bring me joy. There are weird tactics if you because it's very very common when you become lucid in a dream to wake up immediately you're like, oh shit, I'm dreaming, then hey, wake up.

The tactics that work and no one really knows why is one big one just starts spinning spinning place and that'll kind of like ground you in the dream. Another one is do something like, you know, rub your hands together and really focus on like the feeling and just lock in on that. Or I'll drop to the ground sometimes and like if it's asphalts or grass, and I'll just like put my hands on it and really focus on, you know, what it feels like. And sometimes that'll just kind of lock you in and

you don't get jolted out. You know. Interesting. Those are good tactics. But I feel like if I thought to myself, don't forget about those tactics Dan said, when you were dreaming, I'll just I'll pop out, you know. Yeah, it's hard, it's hard to say sleep. Yeah, it can be fun though. Yeah, it's like an easy thing to say or like suggest, and it's so hard to execute. Yeah. It's cool though, but again, my veil, my dream veil so thin.

Like the second I question whether or not it's reality. Yep. Every the different thing where you wake up and you're you're convinced that it's it's a real life and then you're still dreaming. That happened to me once where I dreamt uh that I I caught my partner lying to me, and I woke up and I was mad about it. I don't know if that's ever happened to

you, but I let it go eventually. But because the dream felt real and because I woke up upset, it was really hard for me to separate that it didn't happen for how my feelings were valid, that I was angry at this person for lying to me. I think I let it go like

in a like a couple like an hour. You know, that's normal, I think, And that's like understandable because they're the motions are no less real just because it's happening in a dream like or I don't know what you quantify that, but I had an X that would happen, but it would take like three days for them to get over it. And you both know who I'm talking about. But it happened fairly consistently, and wait, she would get upset about something of a dream and me did and be actually mad at

real you. That's what Mary was saying. Happens like like there's a big difference between that and like having an issue or a fight or day's worth of weirdness. No, it well, probably yeah, because like I think the longest one week, a few days. But then at a certain point, I'm like, Okay, you realize I did nothing wrong. Your perception of me and your dream was what the one you're subconscious thinks that I might do this at some point. I don't know how it works, but like,

I didn't do anything wrong. Do you want to do dinner tonight? Where do you want to do dinner? And like, I don't know if I can make that. Still I'm still a bit feels a bit off. I'm like, all right, man, it's it's a shame you guys broke up. I know we were all rude for what it seems like a good match. Every piece of evidence along the way pointed to Ted when you guys broke up. I don't know why those six times. Yeah, I don't know

why. Nobody. Nobody pointed out to me that matches could never lead the way. We could never really know, the like Seinfeld thing when it's like, you know, Mike would break up and then be like, oh I can finally talk about like man that was clearly a toxic and then like, you know, two weeks later, so I'm back with her. It's like, oh cool, she's with her. I mean, it's like, can

be more like official now. I had a friend, a mutual someone we worked with a game spot who dated someone and we were all like, yeah, they're fine, and then when they broke up, one of my other one of the other co workers unfriended her. Yeah, and it was contentious where it was like follow her back and you were like, no, I'm

allowed to unfollow anyone at any time. I will not be beholden to this relationship used to work with me. It's like the guy that I used to work with that I had that ego app and it would tell him whenever someone unfollowed him, and he would walk around the office if it was someone that you worked with him, why did you want follow me? You want followed me on Twitter? Like in the office, I cause an issue about it. That's one of the quickest ways to announce to everybody in the vicinity that

you're a very insecure human being. Oh yeah, I'm assuming we were talking with the same person. I know we are, Um I noticed that or It's funny. I noticed that before you told me that he used that app because I went on this like unfollowed spree when I moved back to the East Coast. I was like, all right, you know what, like I like a lot of these people. It's not nothing against them. I just

really want to start using Twitter less. And yes, we'll help if I unfollow a lot of the people that I often talked about Twitter related stuff within San Francisco, so like, it's nothing against them. Of course, that's that's the logical way of thinking about it. Of Course, emotionally, no one, very few of them saw it like that. And I don't blame him. I get it at a certain level. However, I noticed that

this person. I forgot how I noticed. I remember it now and we might have already talked about this in Fire's Gate, but we're at the New York office and I mentioned that I unfollowed him, and you're like, oh, you know, he has like he used to use this app. I wonder if he still does. And I looked at his profile and he had unfollowed me. I was like, yeah, it's like an immediate thing. Yeah, yeah, not just insecure, but also petty Dad can he bake

a nice pie? He can fall from six thousand feet and not get any water up his ass, but it's a huge dick on Twitter and to save his life, but Dan, can he install him a day we're talking. I've had those experiences before, and I think they're always like really gratifying though too. When you unfollow someone for personal reasons or for mental health reasons,

whatever reason, you don't really need a reason. You can just do it because it's not real life and it's okay, And the immediate like retract unfollowed to me is like, I mean, I don't care. Those things are not valuable to me. But the fact that it was an exchange in the first place only validates that it probably wasn't a good exchange. Because the people

I follow, I follow because I hope they say something interesting. I've done the thing where there's the awkward like I unfollowed them and they unfollowed me, and like, you know, we didn't talk for years or whatever, but then like, oh, you run into them at an event, you know, like three four years later, and you wonder, oh, is this

going to be weird? But it's gonna be a conversation with them and then it's like okay, and then you follow each other games like Okay, I guess we all we just grew up, and you know, yeah, it's kind of good. But you can also not grow up or like have any growth at all. You can also be in a better place in your life. You're like, oh, I'm ready to see your messages again. Right

then, I'm ready to see your stuff. I've unfollowed people before because they like worked for a company that like had nothing to do with games media, and I really associate my Twitter with games media. So if you're like I've decided to work in the steel mill, I might not follow you anymore because your tweets will no longer be relevant to me. Right, yeah, that's fair, and that's it's like a business transaction. But person the grocery store

wouldn't be a weird thing. No, and unless they made it a weird thing. And then if they if I saw them at E three and they were like huh E three rip and they were like yeah, you know, I'm getting back into it or I'm playing Zelda now, I'd be like, all right, I'll refollow you because you still have something that is of interest to me. But it's like, it's not personal. It's not because like I was a child or mad at them. It was a transactional thing,

and I think we forget that the Internet is very transactional. So it's okay to like let it go at the very least mute for your health. I mute so many people when I'm like, I've seen too much X, I just don't want to. Oh, I've muted people for spoilers a bazillion times. If you if you ever ever ever tweet something about a TV show and I haven't seen it yet, I just I just mute you immediately. I never looked back. I have a big list of muted words, so I

don't see any of that. But then I just I literally muted everyone. I have both of you muted, Like literally everyone on Twitter is muted. For you to say that you muted, no, I'm literally saying every single person on Twitter that I follow I have muted. I'm not kidding. So it's so what do you go on to Twitter? Four? So I have to like have a reason to go on, like I didn't want to just

like news. So yeah, for instance, like I put everyone into little buckets, like you guys are in like the gaming and close friends, but it compartmentalize me. Man, I put you in close friends you have, you should also put me in the list, all right, So, and I have like a wrestling one, so if something crazy is going on and wrestling, some big news broke or whatever, I can go to my wrestling list and I can see what wrestling people are saying. Or I literally never

go to the gaming one. I just don't care. Gaming Twitter has always been the fucking worst, So I don't know what anyone in gaming Twitter said for like six months. You guys occasionally see because you're in my close friends one, and every once in a while I'll be like, oh, I wonder what's going on with my close friends And that's a short scroll because there's only full of people in there. So yeah, it's it's great, But yes, you're both absolutely yeah, I'm I'm. We talked about this a

lot. I'm to the point really where I almost don't go on Twitter ever. Twitter has really become for work. It helps for new stuff at work. I'm I'm not always on news stories at work or even like ever, but at that point I don't need to be signed in to see that stuff.

I mean, if something's important, like I will see tweets allthing, like I'm in discords, I check my discords, and like if something crazy happens or someone tweets something super stupid or super funny or something like, I will see it surface somewhere, so like I'll follow a link and see it. It's just like it's never the scroll, you know. Yeah, but yeah, I am just like markedly more content. Yeah all the time. Not all the time at all, like during the day, but most of

the time I'm content because I'm not going on all this. But there's so many reasons that Twitter has become way less valuable to me. I think some of it is my job now where in many ways because of my role is to listen to streamers and help advocate on their behalf, there's a bit of a floodgate of like issues or problems or things to work on and fix that can be overwhelming over time, and I need to turn it down and turn it off sometimes so I can refilm my cup because I would never want to

listen to someone's complaint and think to myself like who cares? Right, Like I want to always receive those things with empathy and with care, so I would rather not receive them at all if I am not in a good mindset for it. So I have these times where I can't really receive Twitter anymore. But in addition to my work of how much I can take in, I also used it just for enjoyable camaraderie of people in the industry. And

now because this stupid check mark situation. Every time someone tweets something like interesting, and I use the word interesting because it doesn't mean it's right. It

doesn't mean it's wrong. What it means is is it has a lot of responses because what they've said is something that makes you want to be involved, and then you click on the responses to see what dialogue this like interesting post has stated, and all the nuanced responses and all the check mark responses that are surfaced to the top are just arbage and most of the time extremely hostile and sometimes like just dressful and scary about like what a piece of shit that

person is or how they like suck, and it's just like, this isn't the kind of discourse that I came here for. I really liked following you because when you tweeted something kind of like crazy and weird. A bunch of people will be like that's our dan, or like that's a really weird thing to say, and let me dispute it. That's so much more interesting than seeing a bunch of people say that they don't like you or that they don't

believe you. And it's just like, I don't I don't want to hear that that type of discussion, and I didn't sign up for that discussion. So I've just completely phased out of Twitter. Well, it just seems like it's just a total misunderstanding what the fucking barrication was supposed to be for in

the first place. You know, it's it's weird seeing like a very public figure or whatever and you go to their page and there's no check mark, because that used to be like, Okay, that's really them, and now you can see it and it's like, I don't know, maybe is this a parody account that got a bunch of fucking followers? Like I don't just

ruin that whole syste completely. It's so weird that there was a system where you would get a blue check marks that people knew that you were either an important person or historical figure, or maybe you worked for a company and then kind of dissolve that concept. So now that a blue check mark is almost like a weird sign of stress to me, Like when I see it, I question whether or not yeah, I want to interact with that person. So it's it's really done the opposite of its intention, and damn, what

a bad call. Let it burn. Let the whole fucking thing burns. But there needs to be some kind of backup. I think, I think what I would say. I don't know if everyone would agree with me, but my opinion on this is is having a space where people can freely exchange ideas in an open forum tightly, insistinctly, and I think that's important because like we can all fuck have blogs, but like a tight message to just say, you know, it's my birthday. I do have the runs,

but I'm gonna make the best of it. Having everyone respond in real time and say we root for you is meaningful in real time. That's just telling someone you have diarrhea and then saying that my birthday and so it's my should I tweet? I tweet from the fire Escape account it's my birthday, but I have the runs, but I'm gonna make the best of it. Yeah, no, just say it's my birthday but I have the runs. Yeah you should do that. Um oh hear it. Yeah, now this is

what I go on Twitter for. The thing that's frustrating is like I do still. I don't know if I'm just naive. He did tweet go up. It's so stupid. You've put a period at the end. Its period. It's a sentence. You guys get mad at me when I don't have grammar in my tweets. You get mad at me, both of you. It's it's just funny that like you you you closed off that thought with a period. I don't know. I wanted to say, but I'm gonna make the most of it, but I was told ended like nope, okay,

now say this will make sense in a week for people. It's uh, I don't know if it's being naive, but I feel the same way Mary in terms of like I do I like the idea of something like Twitter, if it just wasn't so shitty like and so like blue Sky, like I hear about that, imagine non shitty Twitter exactly. And so it's like, even though I actively hate Twitter and have tried to like remove it from my

life. I think about like when I when I see something like blue Sky and people are like, man, it's really good, it seems all right, and I have that part of my brain it's like I need to get an invite? Who I know, how do I get invites? This thing is being naive, Like it's just going to turn into the same thing these people are going to. I'm not saying like Elon and even like Dorsey did

not have a hand in what Twitter became. However, at the end of the day, these people who think blue Sky in five years will be any different are dumb asses. Yeah, you're probably right. I mean, it's going to it's context collapse is going to happen in this forum. That's not like it's going to happen. That's what happened with Facebook. When the news

feed was introduced. You no longer were just seeing your friends interactions. You were seeing an interaction that someone had with someone you're not friends with, so then you become them. But then you're like, there's no useful context within different groups. It's not to say that like a shared forum is not useful, but now it's just going to amplify the same kinds of thoughts that Twitter is right now, maybe it won't. Maybe I'm wrong. I don't think

I know A fresh slate would be good for humanity. You know, sometimes you just gotta like wipe it and start again, you know, just like when you have the runs. I think you have to like really think you got you gotta like start fresh with a clean slate. And I think that that really does re establish us as humanity. When I think of Twitter now, I think of it as a place to complain in real time when your flight is delayed, so that you can at Alaska and be like, you've

fucked up at Alaska? What are you going to do? And that's not what I want that they have a whole system to fix people's there's a whole system for that. Lead don't leave that, don't put that here. This should be a place where you express your thoughts about your life and in real time people can react with you. One of my favorite use cases of Twitter is when this is not a positive one, but when there's an earthquake and I see in real time a bunch of people all saying there's a fucking earthquake,

isn't there? And everybody in real time is like, yep, I just felt, Oh my god, I just checked it. It's a it's

a two point nine. Oh yeah, like this book just felt And He's like, you get to see all these different things interacting with people at the time that it's happening, and that is fascinating too, but that also goes in the bad place to where like, Okay, there's a mass shooting or there's some awful thing that happens, and then it's like that immediacy just leads to so much misinformation and confusion and conspiracy theories and all sorts of ship Like

an earthquake. Sure, that's you know, innocent, you know, there's no one to fault there, but like when there's actual like shit going down, it's like a boy, somebody tweets, I'm like, this is the suspect, but it's the wrong picture, and now that person's everyone's finding this person's Facebook, and it's just it's that turns into a clusterfuck so fucking fast. It's um, I'm actually reading a book that I think both you would

find fascinating or maybe you've started reading it. Traffic by the Drug that made the movie the one where all those scenes in America are in blue and all these scenes and Texas Mexico Orange because we just wanted to make sure you knew. Yeah, no, it's it's traffic colin genius, rivalry and delusion in the billion dollars Race to Go viral by Ben Smith. Traffic. If you look up traffic Ben Smith, you'll find it. He was this Smith.

He was editor in chief of BuzzFeed News, among other things for a while. I'm very curious. It's largely about how BuzzFeed sites like BuzzFeed started, and then how BuzzFeed News came up, and why BuzzFeed well, as a very recently, why BuzzFeed News didn't work um or rather didn't work in the eyes of the people who owned it. But it's just largely how modern digital

media that chases traffic became this thing, and why it's not sustainable. It's it's there are parts of it I'm like, I think you're missing the point, but other parts that are definitely hit close to home, like, yeah, I heard it time to be an online media. Yeah, yeah, for there's never been a better time. The wider landscape scary for sure. I'm glad I'm at Polygon personally, like we're doing well. Um but it's definitely like it's a weird time for a lot of people. M hmm,

yeah, yes it is. It is a weird time. But yeah, re traffic if you're time to be alive. I was in uh Memphis because I told you guys, I went to Saint Jude and um, I had to tell you guys this. Did you guys know that Memphis has a giant pyramid that is uh it's like one of those like places where you get shooting stuff, Beast Pro Shop. It's based it's a giant bass pro shop, but it's a it's a oh yeah, yeah, yeah, the third biggest pyramid in the world supposedly, but it's a it's a bass Pro shop.

Didn't it used to be a venue? Look, I think they used to be wrestling shows. They're used it would have actually been a great wrestling venue. It is saw real as a bass Pro shop because you walk in it and it's fucking gorgeous, like all this wood to make these like beautiful sculptures

and there's like all these animals on the wall. Like you're going into some outrageous rich person's mansion who goes hunting for living and you know, probably gonna like, you know, set you out to pasture and hunt you down. And then when you walk into the main area, it's a legit uh would you call it like a not a pond, but like a buyou or whatever. And it has legit fish in it and crocodiles okay, no, no in the yeah, in the environment. And they're like they're in the area

where you would like get on the elevator. They can't get you, but like all glass in case, they're just there. And you're walking around in a bass pro shop. There's a bowling alley, three restaurants. Oh my god, I'm looking at a picture that goes up to the top for review. This looks insane. Wikipedia picture. This is a huge it's fucking insane. I think we should have our reunion here. They should set the next assassins Creed in Memphis. It's so it's so fucking crazy. Dan, I

couldn't rent my mind around what happened. And like basically, like this was their big center where they had sports games, and then they built a bigger sports game stadium, and so it was like, what do you do with a sports game stadium when you have a bigger, better, newer sports game stadium, and it stayed vacant for years and then bass Pro is like, we'll put fucking gators in there, and they did. Yeah, twenty ten is after five years in negotiating the bass Pro shops in the city Memphis signed

the agreement. Yeah, but it used to be like Lennox Lewis versus Mike Tyson was there, debit, Saint Valentine's Day masker there, like Tyson von there. And now there's Crocs by the elevator. It's the craziest place and it has it's a massive shop. You can buy all sorts of stuff. You can buy guns. We checked out the gun safes just in case. All the gun racks as you know, gifts. There's an archery range, a shooting range in a laser oka. There's a bowling alley, a saltwater

aquarium. Wow, the tallest freestanding elevator in America. Yes, holy shit, restaurant bar, multiple restaurants, six hundred thousand gallons of water. You can buy an ATV, theream zip line or they're considering adding a zip line in the second hotel to the pyramid. Holy shit, second hotel. That's it. Yeah, you can spend the night man are runt of the luxe Or Vegas. I think it's an e sports arena now. The luxe Or is a really interesting concept because it was made back in the day. Maybe

you can google it, but like lux Or was made. My dad used to tell me all this cool stuff because my dad was a big Vegas person as an adult, so like probably my age to where he is now, he went to Vegas every year. That person as an adults a child, I just couldn't stops it really into it. As a child is an adult, there's nothing to do. As a kid in Vegas, it's probably boring, but like as an adult, there's all this shit to do. He told me about the luxe Or and he said it's one of the most fascinating

building creations ever because the whole concept, right was pyramid pyramid pyramid. So to design it in such a way where the inside is completely empty and all the edges are the rooms, it's a huge feat of engineering that had never been done before. And when they finished it and they were like, we

did it. Look at all of our good job, and they like had the public everyone was complaining because when you flushed the toilet all the pipes went in between the rooms, so you could hear all the p like going in between the walls. What's to doing in a normal hotel? Uh, it goes down, Yeah, but I mean it's got to go past all the room and be Amanda in the room. We're gonna sound dumb. She understands buildings. Get an engineer in here. I believe there's like specific um like

up together and then they're insulated and it's not like just surrounding. Well, okay, you know there's the whole mystery of like how they built the pyramids back in the day and like, but now we've built pyramids in Memphis in Vegas, like we should know take that Egyptian No, no, no, no, no, it's because we have modern machines and shit they had tons

and like they had a lot of slaves. Yeah, pay similar concepts though, like mechanics, I mean the actual levers and pulleys like no that, I mean they'd use machines to do it in like with nowhere near as many people, and they pay those people. It was yeah, I mean it was harder, but it was the same, right, But did they did not know how the pyramids were built? I don't know, Like does humanity

still not know how the pyramids were built? From my understanding, we admit it's a it is a huge feet of engineering, but it's largely because they had many many slaves died who they worked non stop doing. Yeah, blocks up there, Jesus. But yeah, they were using they were using stuff like I'm fairly I don't know if they were the ones that figured out but to move those giant I think it's limestone from the court pharaohs were taking a

shit. Everyone could hear it, and that's what we learned. Did the pharaohs, like I know, chamber pots were a thing back in the day, but like, did pharaohs and stuff have like a fancier like shitting receptacle that they didn't have to like have sit in their room. I don't know. Now that I think of it, I'm putting the connection together that there's a pyramid building in Memphis, Tennessee, which presumed it is named after Memphis, Egypt in ancient Egypt. In ancient Egypt, it was a pretty big

it was that was like a tributary of the Nile. It was a big it was a big city on the Nile. But I don't know if there's any connection with the Best Pro Shop in Memphis, Tennessee. Is there Bass Pro Shop in Egypt. The thing is is once the pyramid has been abandoned for a certain amount of time, they will replace it with the Bass Pro Shop, and they takes about five years to negotiate, but the Bass Pro

Shop will eventually take over every major building, the pyramids in Egypt. This I realized how little I know about Egypt, because like I always assumed when you hear about ancient Egypt and the pharaohs and the pyramids, it was like millions of years ago. But then it's like I played that Assassin's Creed and there's like fucking Roman statues and stuff there. And so it was this like was this during like the Renaissance that the pyramids were built or is that like

the timeline. I don't fucking understand that the Renaissance would have been way after they had like the paper press back then, like Egyptians were like carven shit in the walls. They were the Egyptians like Jesus times, like two thousand years. Well, so the Roman Empire, the Roman Empire came over to Libya, took over Libya Libya from understanding was passed back and forth by Roman and Greek imperialists. When you say the Roman Empire, do you mean like

Caesar? Is that? Yeah, Julius Caesar and Cleopatra, we're hooking up, dude. I seriously, every time I hear Cleopatra, I think it's the snake hair lady. And I was like, wait, you Satra like the historical figures. She's like, I got a war boss. I forget. It's two different things and clasp fake. Cleopatra's an actual historical person, right, correct, And no snake nona. Although Cleopatra has been widely mythologized as like the most beautiful woman ever and that she would what do you want

to say? What's the famous thing? There's this launch thus ships. Right, No, there was this myth that that was that's Helen of Troy or whatever. Right, oh right, Yeah, there was a myth that Cleopatra would like offer men the chance to sleep with her, but the caveat being they had to get executed in the morning if they did. But I think that's been disproven. Oh okay, but I like that it's a hot man. It's very praying mantis. Yeah, like, come, you get it,

but I will kill you. Clip. And then there's still a line and there's this all these people who want to die. Clip. Patra's so hot. That's hot. I don't know it. Kill me in the morning, clip, Patra are hot? Did she run? She got exiled for a while because her brother or cousin Tolemmy the Second took over. There's like a coup and then she was exiled, but she came back and reunited. Shit about female leaders, like was Egypt like progressive a recent episode? We

are never understand what's going on there. If people wanted to know whether I read corrections, here's proof because I remember someone telling me. I think it was told me, told me the second. I don't know. Yeah, um, I've read a lot about like every day Egyptian life, their practices and stuff. But it's like the you know, like what would the succession

of ancient Cleopatra was Shiv? No, Cleopatra was more Cleopatra would have been more like logan logan o yeah, and then but told me the second would have been Roman. Who's the kindle of ancient Egypt? Julius Caesar, what does he have to do with Egypt? Cleopatra. Where, Yes, Roman, Rome, Egypt and Greece. Aul, how is he getting down there? There? Weren't planes or ships? Don't take like years, wouldn't it? No, it's not that far then the Roman Empire, it's across the

Mediterranean Sea. If you told me they were like ten thousand miles away, I would have I would have believed you. No, not nearly Europe, right, But Rome Italy was like Roman Empire stretched, was vast and it went all the way down to the Mediterranean Sea. Wait, so the Roman Empire was that outside of Italy too. Yes, Roman Empire is different than Rome today although many like Rome. Italy the capital today was the site of is the site of many Roman rules because it was part of the Roman Empire.

Roman Empire was like all he was trying to like they wanted. They were everywhere in your Did Rome like own England back then? Uh? Yeah, Romans in England That's what they owned it. Like so Caesar like made England law. No, Caesar would have been I don't know when Caesar would have been. Um, but like Rome had a heavy hand in Hadrian's Wall, thank you. Hadrian's Wall was the Roman thing that they built to keep out the visigoths, barbarians and as they called them. Um, you've seen

the movie King Arthur with Clive Owen. It's about movies. That was sick. Matts Michelson is a bird that he sends out to attack people that life. No, I don't think Tristan was a real person. You just didn't know. Does Matt Michelson's do that even hotter? If he did, he's already pretty sick. He's hot hot. You can kill me and Cleopatra. I've watched Matt's Michelson Cleopatra bang and then kill me in the morning and be worth it. That's hot, you guys want to I'm looking forward to the

corrections. I look forward to definitely Tatra. I'm sure I was having an intense deja vu before I realize, oh, this isn't deja vu. This happened. It probably also happened like six times like me, and you will be right back to Cleopatra in like three episodes, I'm sure, because she's hot. Pictures of Cleopatra. Yeah, uh, well that's what I was gonna say. So they like they did that historical record reconstruction of what she

actually would have looked like. I don't know how they do it. I think it's like an amalgamation of what a lot of people in that part of the world in that time period would have looked like Inde, I I don't want to be. Everybody's beautiful in their own way, but this woman they reconstructed was not the woman you've seen in like paintings and fictionalization and whatnot.

It's it's fucked up when you see pictures of people that you think there shouldn't be pictures of, Like like you see like a picture of Abraham Lincoln, like not a painting, Like there are just pictures of Lincoln, And I'm saying, how the fuck, Like there's there shouldn't have been cameras. That's a whole movie with it. It's about the vampire vampire killer. I'm talking about Lincoln the movie. There was Abraham Lincoln, vampire Hunter. Jeremy Strong

is in Lincoln. Yeah, who was he in Lincoln? It's like his No, it's like his assistant or something, because remember in that big I can't remember his vandy a pair of gqu or what they interviewed him about. What a psycho he is? Oh, I guess he probably like fucking lived in the eighteen hundreds for a year to get ready for that role or something like. I don't know, like that was his first like big breakthrough thing. I think Daniel da Lewis was like his big idol and everything, so

that was a deal for him. So I remember they interviewed um, Brian Cox for that was in New Yorker profile Yes, where Brian Cox is just like, yeah, well so does he. I think he came across that he likes him on on like a friendly level emotional level. But the quotes he was saying, he's like, yeah, I'm a bit worried about him. Yeah, I don't really drive with that stuff. They're like the I forgot how they phrase it. The writer, I gotta look at again,

but the writers like they had. When asked how he has such good performances without taking baggage home with him after works over, he responded, I'm an actor. It's the job that really just pretend to be a guy and be good at it. Yeah. No, no, no, Bryan Cox was saying, Oh, say that's my job. They're like, hey, you're on Broadway, like you you've won some major awards. How do you not take it? Home. He's like, I'm an actor. That's what we do, That's why I'm supposed to work. Um. I've learned that I

really need to meet Karen Culkin. Um. I've heard from several people that I haven't seen it, but I heard he just talks about wrestling and plays you can be ticon and punch out, and I feel like I would get along with Karen. Oh, he goes. He starts going on a tangent about how you need to play it on a did you talk about crtvs? Like the input doesn't make sense on an HTMI? It's like it doesn't.

Oh my god, I gotta meet this guy, all right, He's it's he He's simultaneously like someone I'd love to hang out with, but also someone like if he wasn't famous and I just met in another world, if he wasn't famous and I just met him at the bar, like, I would not like him. How much of Roman is him? You think? Seems like a lot? Okay, but but no, no, character wise, I don't. I think he's putting on like a huge show. I mean, Roman's a nightmare. Yeah, yeah, romans possibly the worst, wouldn't

He says he's the funniest one. Yeah he is. Yeah, but because he's so bad, he is the terrible Yeah, from the last one. But just like there was a rough one for Roman, the last one. Yeah yeah. The the insults this season have just devolved in him. Be like he'll answer from be like, Hey, what's up? Fucking fun funck? What do you want? There's just so much he can't even be clever with his Yeah, all right, you guys want talking? All right?

A bunch of games coming out or have come out later early May. M hmmm, got another one on the horizon. Oh there's another on the horizon. Oh it's on the horizon. Yeah, yeah, looking forward? No, no, are you I I don't even know if I'm allowed to say. Oh I wonder, I wonder if you are I am. Yeah, Yeah, that's great. I did play well. So we we have not talked about Tears the Kingdom yet. On Fire Escape, you and I did do that prevw together, which you talked about Giant Bomb I wrote about in

Polygon. What were your thoughts from then? What do you think? For real? That's you guys can be more real on here. Why don't you tell me what you actually think? Now? I'm just dying because there's so much in this fucking head right now. But he's just gonna talk about the preview. He's just gonna talk. Yes, I'm gonna talk. I'm just like curious what you thought of the previo because I never talked. I loved

it personally. I loved it. And I heard I heard that you thought that the controls were kind of finnicky with uh, you know, putting the stuff on, you know, stick and stuff. Are you joking? Wait? I thought no. I a lot of people on Twitter saying that, and I in Polygon slack was people were asking me they were like with the controls, they were like, no, like Breath of the Wilds weren't great in the beginning either, Like I don't know who told me. I thought

someone told me that you thought they were finnicky or something. Okay, well, no, I was going to defend them in saying that, like I thought they were fine. Like it did take a little like fiddling and stuff in the same way that like if you can do the magnesias stuff, you know, yeah, and rotate you know whatever, like it's not that hard. But I said on Giant Bomb that, like the thing is I was comfortable giving Breath of the Wild to my dad because you know, he didn't

but he doesn't really play games. But I figure it's it's so open and you can just kind of explore and make your own fun that I I thought he could, and he did. He really enjoyed it. But where he got kind of tied up is in moments where you kind of have to do a little more nuanced control stuff. And I did think that the attaching things and the ultra hand stuff and everything did require more than Breath of the Wild to a degree that like someone like my dad or maybe a very small child

might struggle with it a little more. I did not struggle with it. I played a lot of Breath of the Wild. I get used to it. It's fine. So yeah, I was ready for you to say that you hated the controls and suffing. No, I what was my I didn't even It was one of the things where I came away from the previews, like there was if you have been playing Breath of the Wild for a while, I think most of this will feel at home, or you'll feel right

at home. It's just like they were already trying to cram a lot onto a controller in Breath of the Wild. I don't think it was perfect by any means. I think that the fact that they've just added more involved abilities than Magnesis and the would they call those his runs, I think it might

take some getting used to. But again, for our preview, we were thrown into seventy minutes of having all of links abilities and like trying to figure them out right away, like they set up the demo for us, so like that's unfortunate because that's not really like the correct It was just the lots to figure out. Like even if you hadn't playing Breath of the Wild, it would have been like, okay, shit, I got to get used to using recall, which is the rewind. Well obviously to start at an

earlier area, but I understand what they're doing. Like I don't fault them for it, but I would have preferred to start at the beginning because now you're like, how do I use all these items? Yeah, they just wanted to be like, here's the whole toolbox. Have fun, and like they did. There was like a presentation beforehand where they were like, which, hey, so this is how this thing works, and here's how this thing works. So they didn't just drop us in cold. They did kind

of show us like, here's the gist of it. Yeah, go have fun. But yeah, I'm sure. I look, I have not played the game beyond that. I am sure there is a similar deal to like the Great Plateau, where it's like, Okay, here's the new abilities. Do these four things to prove you know how to use them, and then go nuts. I love the way Brought the Wild did that. Even coming

out of the preview, I was like, it's Nintendo. If any developer, if any first party studios know how to tutorialize their games, they are the master of it, right. I was not worried coming out of the preview, but yeah, it's just like the Yeah. So the demo we did was a series of islands. They basically were like, Okay, get up to that one, and then use that one and then that one. And even in that small amount of time, in that seventy minutes we played

that we recorded, we actually played a few more minutes before it. It's like everybody the demo is doing things differently. I was in order to get there's this one island finally that like stump me for a bit. I think most people basically you were trying to connect Zoni items, which is like a Zoni rockets or they're basically the items you can they're like the mechanical parts to the vehicles you can make from the ultrahandability, and you can fuse weapons with

them, which is also a whole other thing. I think a lot of people were putting rockets on the side of these floating barges and then angling them up to get up at the island. Instead, I went straight to the bottom of the island and it had this big stalactite hanging from the bottom, and I got under it and you can use Ascend. I think a lot of people, based on footage before that preview, we're thinking Ascend would only

work on thin ceilings to get to the floor above. In the demo we played, you can go to the bottom of that stalactite, use as scend and he'll link swims up through this like ethereal space inside it for like hundreds of yards. Yeah, and that's ability. Like I had to remind myself that I had it, because it's like, I don't think I've ever played a game that lets you just like basically no clip in that way where it's

like, yeah, it's one direction, you're going up. Yeah, but it's you can just go through a lot of shit with that because like then Breath of the While is great because you could climb most surfaces. That combined with the paraglider made it easier than any game that comes to mind and meet

any trying to think like superhero. I mean, they're superhero games that make going like vertical easy, but like in terms of like a semi grounded human being, him being able to glide down his stuff or climb stuff was great. And then just playing that demo, I was like, oh, man, ascend. Combined with the paraglider, you can be like a fucking I imagine you could be like a ninja. But it's it felt I felt the same way. I was like, fuck, I forgot I had ascend.

And then also, what did I do the part where a bunch of Bocabblin's role the spike ball down the ramp. I immediately fused it with a stick. I had to make a spike fuse the ball. Yeah, so you do so based on the preview, you could you could fuse it doesn't matter how based on the preview, it didn't matter how big something was, you

know, the parrot the airplane glider thing you could make later on. Yeah, yeah, someone the treehouse rep next to me recommended that I fuse my shield with that parrolder and then they shrink to fit the weapon you fuse it with. So the spike ball became like a morning Star. But other people said they recalled the spike ball up to the both albumins. That's what I did, Yeah, and I was like, oh fuck, I forgot I

had recall. It's one of those games where you have such it was one of those demos where I had such crazy abilities for long periods of time. I could imagine myself coming out of it, like forgetting I had this and that. So it's it's exciting links less like just this magician. Now he's like a full on like engineer, which is super cool. And that's just not something that like Zelda has done a lot of fucking things for a long time. I'd never I don't think any of them have had the type of

like kind of crafting, fusing type of situation that this does. No, I came out of it being like it feels like a Nintendo is just like making cheat codes the game or like giving players these these crazy codes right away to fuck with shit. It also like the game is really fucking funny, Like you could tell Nintendo's having fun with it. I mean that they seemed

like they were having fun with Breath of the Wild. But Breath of the Wild, by contrast, compared to this shit that we saw, Like someone pointed out after watching my footage I recorded from the preview, how dumb funny it is that because now most of the weapons you're it seems like you're going to be using our fused weapons. Yeah, in order to make the bo Cobblin parts that you fuse with weapon Like now all the bo Cobblins have like

scythes for horns and like swords for horns. It's like they've evolved a bunch of weapons. Yea, the Wild they didn't have that if so someone on Polygon I was like, I love that they're like lore justification for making these weapons shaped is now just they added these like these horns are no longer like look real at all. It's just like basically yeah, it's like Nintendo, you could carre didn't. You could tell they didn't care like about the justification.

Um, but yeah, I mean I was putting fusing shit right away. Fuse was super fun, um, and like that was four islands in the demo, Like I'm I was already imagining like going to the Eldon region where it's all gore and shit and volcanic and like the stuff you could fuse

there and build there, et cetera. And then same thing with like the line reason with the Zora armor and weapons and spears from Breath of presumably you know, like stuff that they're just like thinking back on Breath of the Wild, what Breath of the Wild would have been like if I could fuse all this stuff? It was really exciting. Um, by and large, did

you dislike anything from the preview? No, I'm I came away from that thinking about the possibilities of the full game and I haven't been able to stop thinking about it, and it's killing me because I'm not playing it, and I know a ton of people I know are and I want to ask a million fucking questions, but I also don't want to know. And also there was news, you know, as of this recording that it's out there, This game is out there apparently, so I know that information is out there.

I could go to some large websites right now and hear everything from the leagues apparently, and that it intrigues me. But I just don't want to know. I want to go in blind. It was one of my favorite game experiences ever, going into Breath of Wild not knowing anything about it, and I don't want to know. I loved it. I loved being surprised. I don't want to know. I said the same thing in my tweets.

I'm not watching the trailers, oh no, And everyone was freaking out when that trailer happened, and I was like, I want to know, because, well, did you know about these abilities we're talking about. I haven't been listening to you, guys. I've blocked it out. I'm really good at it. I've just been like zoned out. I definitely know when it's best that I'm not paying attention. First of all, I can't help you because I haven't played the preview, so there's really nothing I can add.

I did hear about the nipples, sure, but I don't think that's actually a spoiler. Well, you know, I guess we'll find out if it is. I I'm okay with it. Yeah, I'm away from the preview thinking that this, like elden Ring in its own way, was really fucking funny, like a comedy in a lot of ways. Yeah, I came away from the preview of Tears the Kingdom hoping that they Nintendo was going

for like this giant triple a open world comedy in a similar vein. It's just fucking crazy to me though, because, like I think, all things considered, like Breath of the Wild is about the most open ended open world game I've ever played in terms of just go wherever you want to in any order, do things the way you want to solve these shrines the way you want to in ways that are just insane that like the developers probably didn't even

think about, like just all these systems working together in tandem to create magic. I'm excited to play, Yeah, I mean, like just I'm assuming just today, probably somewhere on YouTube someone posted something that they did in Breath

of the While that no one had done before. The fact that Nintendo is like tripling down on that and Tears of Kingdom be like, oh, like, it's super cool to see that Nintendo presumably enjoyed that aspect and now they're giving them even more tools to fucking sequence break every five minutes if you wanted to. That's what's insane to me, is like if they are trippling down on the game that was already the most insane in that regard, Like what

does this even fuck? And it looks like what clips are we going to see them out of this? What does the speed rank man be going to be? Like this thing? It's holy shit, It's it's like even more heartening that it's Nintendo taking that approach. Nintendo like a lot of their first party games are playful, but I wouldn't with control. I was gonna say, I wouldn't dubbed Nintendo the studio. I would expect to give up this

much control to the I agree. We said that about the first like Zelda Breath of the Wild, which is this is really out of character and out of pocket and a lot of people don't like that. So I some Zelda fantade of it and it's doubling down interesting. Well, I'm excited to play it when it comes out. I don't think we should say anymore. I think we should uh, I think we should lock that one up. Sure, talking about it, I also played h I got off Corressant in Star

Wars Jedi Survivor, and I had really positive impressions that game. I wanted to play more. I played on PC, and I every time I went to the start menu, it broke the audio on my PC to restart my computer, and I tried several times. I was like, okay, if I just don't pause, it'll be okay. And just the beginning, it just you know, it's the thing where you're walking and you're handcuffed and it's just like, oh, here's the world, and you know, guys are

talking to you. It just everything just reeked to me, like this seems like a safe Triple A licensed game, and I feel like, I'm sure it's gonna be fine. I'm sure it's gonna be very well crapped and everything. But nothing about what I've seen or read about this game, like I fell off the first one. I got like almost to the end of the first one, and it just wasn't really moving me in any way. So like, I just I don't know if I want to put the time into

this one. You know, Yeah, I like the first one, despite even some late game annoying shit. The lack of fast travel was very annoying, especially in a game where it's like yes on the elevator, pitch is Dark Souls meets Dark Souls Light meets Star Wars, and I think they now that even more in the second game, and they added some quality of life stuff for the metroid Vania aspects on backtracking, and I have not had too much backtracking yet, but already it seems like they iron out some kinks in

the first game. I'm not far in at all, but I do want to play more at some point, Mary, have you been playing anything but a couple of things. I played the Cult of the Lamb DLC really nice to be back in Cults of the Lamb. I forgot how much I enjoyed that game and that experience. It was like one of my favorite games last

year. So it gives you a really good excuse. It redes all bosses and there's like four and then I think there will be a final boss that I didn't get to, which means it's in many ways the game again, because that's a lot of worlds you'll probably remember, but I'll refresh remember if you don't that when you go into a new area like a grass area or the woods area, whatever. You have to complete it like four times right open the door, right to open the door. So it's a lot of

work to get through those areas. Doing that with a full area for my home whatever, because I've I've completely established it. I've got rocks, it's beautiful, I've got gems. There's everything you could ever need. There's bathrooms, there's morgues. I've they've got new upgrades I've never were aware of. I don't know if you had these. They had cooks now, so I don't. It's a cook. Oh, it's pretty crazy, Like you assign one of your followers to be a cook, and so somebody's out there like

flipping eggs and it's all automated. You had to cook, and then that attracted everybody to wherever your kitchen was, right they all kind of hop up there and eat all the food. Yeah, Okay, that's enticing because I like that game quite a bit too. But after a while, the routine of going around blessing people, cooking, going to do one of the ceremonies of sacrific ices got a bit old quick. Yeah, like the repetition of it is unnecessary. It's a new game. Plus they're giving you easier outs

to make it seamless. I think you still have repetition. For example, Um, you I'm at the point where everybody's house sucks up their prayer juice and then you can like come and gather it. That's all manual. So I'm going to like each house and just like hitting X and like scooping up all their all their juice. Um. I forget what it's called, but you know what I mean, Like the juice yea devotion. It's like the thing that they give me so that I can upgrade my abilities. I have

to like still manually suck all that juice out. Um. I don't mind, but I do. Uh. And then there's new um rituals and things you can do with your cult. But I would say largely what you're doing is the combat areas, the going through those new rooms fighting tougher enemies. It is tougher. They've are assuming that you are skilled up at this point, and they are not going easy on you. I died several times trying to beat the main boss and then get them, but it took it took

time. It was not easy, and they accounted for the fact that you've been playing this game for a while. It's you have to have beaten it to get into it, Like, yeah, I think so. Otherwise I think you wouldn't be able to because I would almost consider this new game plus because the idea is that it's not DLC like it's a new world like you've

started over. It's the same world, but all the all the areas that you went into, the four areas, they've been totally reflipped with new enemies and new bosses, and then there's a new main guy waiting for you at the end. Okay, so it's just new combat, and if you're interested in the combat in that game, then it's worth revisiting. I really enjoyed going back and playing it again. I don't think I have the same like level of addiction that I had last year. Maybe it's because starting up your

cult is really exciting. Yes, my cult is self sufficient now, so I don't feel that same urge try to play. It feeds the purpose of a cult, doesn't it. Yeah, they want sufficient. I know they're working themselves out at this point. You know, the only thing I have to do is put a couple of people in jail every once in a while. That's it, Like it's there's nothing to stress about with the cult anymore. And maybe that isn't good, right, You're right, you do enjoy

solving cult problems. I mean that was that was my favorite part. Like I remember every time I had to go into the woods and do the stuff. It's like, I'll do this and it's fine. Like I didn't dislike the combat, but it's like, yeah, like I want to go build stuff and have weird you know, just like you know the ritual and all that. But you run out of materials, right, and so you have

to go on these hikes because getting wood is really precious. So in the DLC, when you're going on these adventures, you know, the pathways give you the ability to like this one will give you wood and this one will give you a new follower. And it's like it's not really motivating to get wood because I have wood making machines and then I have a full time dude who converts my wood into planks. So every time I go home, I can build whatever I want. I'm not resource poor anymore. I have everything

occultists could want. So you're really playing it for the combat. Okay, you say it was free or is it paid it was free for me. I I think it's free. Yeah, I thought I heard it was free. I think it's free. I didn't freet's come for me. If it's not, it's free. Yeah, we're recording as of this episode. Going up, the Case of the Golden Idol DLC will be out Cult to the Lamb. No, sorry, I'm transfer Case of the Golden Idol. Last year's Detective Logic puzzle game is also has new DLC. Oh, I don't

know what that game is, Yes, you do. We talked. Did we not talk about Case of the Golden Idol last year? Yes, we did. Maybe, I don't know. It did fairly well. We talked about it a decent Well, it wasn't very good because we've forgotten it. Yeah, I don't remember. Oh wait, did it come out? We absolutely talked about it during Game of the Year stuff like you talked about it. Yeah, got technic, really good taste. You should play this game. This is the game I was telling you, Dan, I remember when

we first talked about it that. Um it's these still images are kind of like still scenes of murders, and you're trying to figure out what happened, piecing together these logic puzzles based on who that character isn't who that is. If this character is that, then they wouldn't have this weapon, et cetera. If you haven't Yeah, logic, but based on these, we had

the same conversation. Yeah, if you're like going to be on a flight or something, it's probably really good for that or Steam deck fucking perfect for steam deckses. They're calling him Golden Idol Mysteries, which implies that I think they're going to do more, which is awesome. If people haven't played Case of the Golden Idol, they should it brought it up on the podcast for the first time. Yeah, it is good. Yeah, I'm curious about

this game I've never heard before. Yeah, we talked about Mary. You're like an indie queen. I played indie games. You should have played Case of Golden Idole. I consider it a failure on your part that you don't know what it is. I hope you can't feel me in that box. I can't know them all. There's so many indies. I think it's a failure that you never brought it to my attention before. Yeah, you should have brought it up on our video game podcast. Okay, literally have a

podcast for this reason. My I, Uh, somebody who's listening right now, please clip when I talked about it, and look any take anything. Yeah, they're just gonna put words in my mouth. It's a lie. Yeah that's hot. Um yeah, you should play Kays of Gold. Niel though he'd like it, I think, Um, I have not played Red Fall yet. Let me, Oh you played it, Dan, didn't you a little bit? It's I did the preview event like a month or whatever ago, and then I played a little bit with Backler on the quick look

on Giant Bomb. Oh man. Look, I've recorded a lot of quick looks and a lot of videos about a lot of games over a lot of time, and I've never done a video that was just so emotionless as the quick look of Redfall is me and Backler. It's just it's so boring. It is so nothing that game that you just run out of stuff to talk about with it. Like we just both ended that quick look being like, I guess we both should just uninstall this right now to free up some our

drive space. It is just fucking static. It is nothing. It is It's an open world game. Where watched that video and we set an objective across the map and we're walking and it's like, oh, co op open world game, let's go do some cool shit and see what kind of fun stuff that can distract us along the way, and some combat scenarios we'll get into. And no, we're just we're just quiet and we're just walking and everything looks and feels like it was made in twenty twelve and it was like

a ho hum Borderlands clone back then. But no new, big fucking game from Arcane in twenty twenty three. And it's fucking soulless. It's fucking boring, it's fucking broken at times in terms of the AI. It is empty. It is how the fuck did this happen? It smells, Yeah, it's it's stinky. Um as you both probably know, I'm an Arcane I it's funny, Like I would actually say, the last game I really liked from them was Prey in two thousands seventeen. I believe it's great. They

then worked on or helped do Wolfenstein Young Blood. But oh that was a co op one right, yeah, it was um But then they did Death Loop that was the leone studio, so that was not Austin um so This is personally the first thing from Austin is this the one replays four different types of people. Yeah, and like a Stephen King esque midnight mass kind of

cartoon. Vampire Players has the bones of something that's interesting. Now when they showed that, like that that a trailer that they debuted with where it's like, oh, it's this like stylish four player vampire hunting thing, and it's like none of that style or fun or levity is like, none of that's there in the game. It's just soulless and empty. Yeah, and I'm gonna play it just because I've it's an Arcane game. I don't have high

hopes based on everything I've heard. Um, I've often like liked their games in theory more than in practice. Death Loop is kind of chief among them. Dishonored. I love those games, but going back to them sometimes they're they're kind of messy. Um in terms of like people say like, oh, it's an immersive sim you can do this and that, it was like,

it's actually kind of restrictive. It's kind of ironic to me that Nintendo is releasing basically an immersive sim two weeks after Arcane Studios putting out an immerse SIM and I've played an hour of Nintendo's Well, that's not true. I played an hour that I could talk about based on the hour that I've played one week. Yes, I was still coming out of that more excited for Tears the Kingdom as an immersive SIM experience than I was for Red Fall,

and now even more so based on what I've heard about Red Fall. That's a shame. The abilities aren't fun. The skill tree is not fun. It's like the characters aren't good. Cool character, compelling character design with like actual abilities to shake up combat can take a game a long way, even if everything around it's not good. But I've heard even that is like, no, it's still kind of just a boring shooter. Yeah, the gun

players really just wrote it is a cool world. Arcane making a like basically their take on Elevator pitch Wise, Arcane making a far Cry game set in like a Stephen King esque universe is like, it's like your favorite things. Like the fact that none of them sound good is really disheartening. I don't know what went on. They delayed a bunch of times. I think we expected this. We got the game code, I think last Friday was it broken for you? It was broken for us. I couldn't even get into

it. It kept saying like the client was broken or something. Yeah. I think our reviewer played on Xbox. Ok no, they played on both and they went to PC because it's Microsoft. But um, then the embargo was eight oh one pm Eastern the night basically of release. Like, that's not a good signal. Sometimes there's been a few cases recently where like that's not a good sign Then the game's actually fine. This doesn't seem like it. I don't know. I worry about arcane. Sometimes Arcane Leone has been

it seemed fine. So this is a real bad one. I mean, this is a people were saying and I feel like you're not. You don't often say things this harsh. This is like, I mean, there's just nothing going on with this fucking game. There's not, And like I don't like I I wish I would have liked this. I like a good co op shooter. I like a mindless you know, like get some loud and kill some stuff. Like it's man, all the side stuff, it's just

the exact same shit. The open world is nothing. It's just damn broken. AI broken, fucking can stand right next to guys and they won't even realize you're there. They're running run into a wall, and you can just go melee im until they die. It's uh, I can't believe this game came out like this. Damn, there's no way I don't play this game again. Like, I'll probably play it just for the sight seeing of that

island. Yeah, I mean there's there's like I like the frozen, the crash and the water, like, there's there's a couple of cool things to look at. But it can only go so far. Someone should just make that same game. But good, yeah, THEYD let's do it. Yeah great, Yeah, there's always a good consistency between people who review games and their ability to make games. How hard can it be? How hard can

it be to make a video game? If it's not ready, just to lay it a bunch of times, figure out why you want to release it? Yeah, text film, common sense, it's common. Get a sugar mama to fund it. You can build up in Fortnite now building in Fortnite and transfer it over. I have so many printed I have so many thumb drives in the back. Can you play anything else, either of you? Yeah? Yeah, I want to do a catch up round up here from last time, do a catchup round up. It's it's my segment to catch

up round up since last time? What happened last time? Onenes that you guys suggested to me, A few of them are ones that I, for some reason, out of the last one, I thought I would play. So Dredge, Uh, Dredge is very good. I like it a lot. It's it's really fun. There are parts where I would kind of like I check the board on like where I need to go next, like the pursuits, and it's just kind of like all I have available was like catch some weird fish. Yeah, I don't know, what do you want me

to do? Like go out there, bud, good luck? I would and I would just catch a bunch of stuff and I would get a bunch of upgrades, and I would like go to the dry dock and upgrade my ship and stuff. But there were definitely a lot of times where I was like, all right, what am I doing here? Like, what's what's the goal? What am I pointing towards here? Um, I don't know if I'll finish it. But I played several hours of it and definitely enjoyed it, and I have not played anything it. Wow, I was thinking

of you when I was filling out the encyclopedia. I got every fish, I got every ending. A fucking was obsessed with that game. I'm glad you played it. It's good. I do like the game a lot. So good. Uh no, man, Sky, I did go. I forget how that came up last time, but I started here is it. It's twenty twenty but out for what six years? And uh, yeah, it seems really cool. I was wearing a game spot when this game came out. Say, yeah, that was back when I worked at Giant Bomb

Full Circle. Yes, no, it's it's really cool. I'm playing a third person now, which I've never played before. It's I don't know. I didn't play enough of it at launch to know exactly what all they added, but it's pretty clear. Like it's not it doesn't feel like this big, open just what am I doing next thing it or just a grind thing.

It feels like there's a little more direction. I haven't gotten to the points yet where you're getting these huge frigates and fleets of ships and all that stuff, But I've just seen enough stuff where it's like, Okay, I definitely did not see this in the first few hours of Last Time. Yeah, and just it looks beautiful and it's just so fun landing on a planet trying to figure out like, Okay, is this gonna be a good one to build a base on or no, it seems like a shitty, snowy

Blizzard world. I'm not going to build a thing here. Like, it's just fun hopping around a galaxy and seeing what he'd planet is going to hold, And yeah, I kind of want to keep going with it. I don't think it's gonna be one that I'm going to like put one hundreds of hours into, but I think it's one that's late at night. I don't know, I could kind of wind down with some No Man Sky Before Better or something like that. So yeah, so that seems cool. And the

other one is Advance Wars. So I played. I got like halfway through the second well Advanced Wars two as the like different factions, and I got like halfway through the second Factions campaign, and I started thinking, like, man, I don't know if I played the second one much on game Boy Advance and I love the game Boy Advance and I've got an analog pocket, and I know there's not really a lot of quality of life improvements in this

remake. So I just restarted the game on game Boy Advance and it's like, Okay, I actually like it a lot better on there. It's just the original game and the sprites are better. I like the musical lodge that the analog pocket feels great. So, I mean, there's nothing wrong with

the switch port. It's just that like there's not enough that they added, and the original game looks fucking great, and I've got an analog pocket which is really easy to carry around and whip out and play a couple of maps, and so yeah, I'm just going through the whole game again on game Boy Advance, which has been great. Advance, m that's awesome. I mean, in my pocket is like my go to like traveling, Like I gotta get on a train early tomorrow morning. I'm just gonna play a pocket

the whole time flight thing. Every time, My my like consistent thing is when I know I'm gonna fly. And when I went to Memphis, I knew I was going to be flying for like six hours. I download like a little indie game because then you go. I'm Mike, and I play it on the plane and then I decide in that flight if I like it or not. That's nice. Yeah, that's a show right there. That's

a YouTube channel. Yeah, you're just flying around, Yeah yeah, yeah, a cross country flying buying indie game and tell you if it sex or not. I I bought it was You probably saw this team was doing its puzzle game deals, so you could buy a whole variety of puzzling style games at like eighty percent off. It was nuts. And I love puzzle actually indie indie esque puzzy games. And I grabbed Piku Niku, which I've never played before. It has really good reviews and it's so cute and really funny

and charming. It's not new, this game is several years old, but I got it on sale for like a couple of bucks. Absolutely charming. It is filled with like adorable simple characters. They're basically shaped with legs and eyes and they It's just got really good writing it. I was kind of smiling immediately from the get go. Or they were like, I'm a salesman, I'm selling you stuff, like come on down today and you're helping townspeople

solve things. It's very point and click adventure where you're like the UK. It's cute loco roco or like a Wattam or something. Yeah, it does look like wottom. I think that's a great way to describe it, and it almost plays like that as well. You have two legs, and it's very funny when you're swimming and you want to swim this way, your right leg is like this, and when you want to swim the other way, your left leg is like this, and then your little head just bobs the

way you want to go. Very simple animations, but it conveys everything you need and so you're just kind of doing what the townsfolk want. It's it's got a really cute premise, like right as you start, the townspeople are like, you know, you're the monster in the hill and you can't speak. You don't have dialogue. Really, you have some options, but it's limited, so a lot of times you're trying to just convince people you're not a monster. It's it's adorable. I love a good puzzle game like that,

So Piko Niku very sweet and easy to play. I'm looking I'm scrolling through photos of it here and I thought I came upon what I thought was a screenshot and nope, I'm just on dev and art and they've done their thing with Piku Niku. Get out of there. All the other fucking pictures of Piku Niku. It's just him. He's just a blob of red and he's got two red stick legs. That's one is just that, but like super detailed feet better than the one next to like the Cinnamon role Yeah yeah,

yeah, Tarantins tarantineus Punk. That was like a core rox seed stump. Yeah it does. Yeah, it's a very cute game. So I encouraged people to play it, especially if they're looking for a puzzle game on sale. Again, it came out years ago, but it has super good reviews on Steam, which is why I snagged it up. And I thought it was great for the I would say I played it for one flight, so not that long six hours. Um. On my other flight, I I played the DLC of Cults of the Lamb, and of course I played

um Vampire Survivor. I didn't put that on my list because we've talked to death about Vampire Survivor. It's just a it's just the ultimate uh flight game. It's just super easy pick up podcast game or yeah, dude, it's just like I got an hour to kill. I'm gonna try and play the Wizard again and get as far as I can. It was great. Um. Now I'd like to Can I ask you guys a question now? Please? Nice? Sure? I guess have you heard or seen footage from the

Last Case of Benedict Fox. No, I've heard of it. I'm okay, Dan, I'm going to describe to you this game, okay as best I can. It is a metroidvania, okay, with two worlds. One of them is a horror world of dead people that you go in to solve the real world because there are dead people and you're solving their murders. Are the maps overlaid? Like is there like you go into a portal, it's

the light world dark world situation. Yes, they're not overlaid. The idea is that when you go into a dead person's body, it's like trupe Now you're in their dead person zone. Okay, but it's all metroid vania in the sense that, like you can't get a certain places you like knock on a door and it won't open. It's because you got to go to a different way, but to go a different way, you need to be able to probably like triple jump or fly or whatever, because I don't have those

skills yet. So you're seeing a lot of spaces that you are looking at but you can't enter. So Metroidvania, I would say horror like it's got like a creepy, spooky element. You are both yourself and you have a I don't know oo's ghost that's like inside of you, and he talks really scary, and he's like talking to you about stuff that's happening, especially when you see dead bodies and ship like that, and he's a crazy Yes, it's like your guide, but I don't know if he's good or bad.

We don't know. They haven't really disguised them really discussed that Three. You're trying to get into certain spaces and it's key based, and then it turns out that it's kind of like miss and you need certain keys to get into certain locks, and you need to be able to alter the keys in unique ways to be able to solve these puzzles to progress the game. Is it good? I think there's things about it I really like. I really like

the premise. I think it's a fascinating concept of a universe to have like dual worlds, a live world and dead people world. I love horror elements, you know that. I'm like stoked about the horror aspect of it makes it really juicy and interesting. I want to know who's who murdered these people. Also, as you like uncover more shit about them, you see like their ghosts in the real world doing things that they were doing. You know, Okay, there's a shower scene, you'll see nothing, but like there's

a shower scene. You see the silhouette and is that and you get to like learn more about them. The upgrade system is fucking wild. It's tattoos. So you go up to this tattoo lady and every time you're like, I want to be able to butt stomp so that I can get through loose ground, she tattoos something on your arms, and so by the end of

the game you like covered in tattoos. That's like you can see it like in the gameplay, like as you're running around, Yeah, you're acquiring inc throughout the game, so as you're like doing stuff and achieving things and killing monsters, and the monsters are scary. You acquire ink and then you use that to like inc up say, I'm looking at it now, it's neat. Now. My issue is as a platformer, I found the running, jumping, and combat clunky, and I find that unacceptable for a metroid Vania

game. If you're going to sell me a metroid Vania, it needs to have really responsive jumping, dodging and movement. And I found the whole thing just a little God damn you. I thought you said that Hollow Knight wasn't good looking. That's totally different. Everyone knows that plays like a fucking dream. It's one of the most responsive, goddamn games out there. He could be a smash character. Yes, yeah, Look, we're not here to

talk about holiday. You're always bringing up Hollo at Night. You started it. The case of Benedict Fox is an interesting concept where they basically took three totally different games mash them together. It does work. I do think the mash is interesting and I would love to like extend the interest of this game to anyone who loves trying like mishmashes of games. Again, remember Cold to the Lamb is a mishmash, right. You get to build a world,

but you're also doing runs. It also had fishing for some reason. This game is very similar. It's trying a lot of new things. The look on my fucking face when they were like, oh no, this box needs keys that are equal to a number, and I have keys that are worth one hundred, one and ten and the number is like eighteen ninety nine, and so I was like, I had to make a key that's carry the

one and I was like, do it. I have a piece of paper filled with notes home now it's too blown out, but like it's filled with notes and little squares and circles and lines of all the different things I needed to know to get into these different doors and solve these puzzles. So it's a Thinkum, it's absolutely like a platform or puzzle and there's combat with scary monsters that are scary as hell. It has all the makings of a good game, but because it's a bit clunky, I can't, like one hundred

percent get behind it. I wasn't stoked with the combat system, and I also found it extraordinarily difficult for a puzzle game. For people who like to think and solve things, They're in for a difficult time when you have three monsters that are all coming at you and you only have like a little shiv knife. You do have a gun, but the bullets are made out of attacked juice. So you attack them, it fills up your bullet. You get one bullet, and then you have to attack a bunch that you can

fill up your bullet and shoot again. Somebody lacking in the thinky and the Dewey a little bit. It's trying to do both. I think it's a very fascinating concept, and I do encourage people to try it, especially if they liked all the makings that I said to you. But I don't think it's perfect. I think it has has some issues with the way that you're moving around, and I also think it has some weird issues with explaining things.

For example, the game never at one point said that, like, the purple stuff is poisoned, so I was just like running around and immediately jumped into poison and killed myself. Normally it gives you like a hint that's like purple stuff is bad. I will say I think they have a little river of it earlier, and it singes me. But that's not enough for me. I wanted like a sign or something that's the best purple stuff in a game. I gotta think. Was Mike nodding weirdly. I don't know.

Oh God, damn it, I say, it's almost like there's something that you got to talk about. What's purple in it? Didn't say shit? I know you. The main boss in Zelda is like a is a kumquat an eggplant? Yeah, thank you, That's what I wanted. I was like, what's that purple vegetable fucking called? I'm trying to think purple's usually bad, right games? Yeah, egg planting Inventure Island kills you. Um, what else is notoriously purple in a video game? WALLAUI do you?

Well, he's great, but I think some people see him as a heel. I don't know why, but um, other purple you gotta be famous purple characters, your famous every colored characters? Who's purple? Grimace doesn't really have a lot of time in the sun and video games. Purple isn't super popular. There's probably like some purple Pokemon or something isn't what's purple? I don't know. I can't think one of the links in Four Swords Adventures,

Lumpy Space princesses purple. I think they made a game about it, blue, green, red, purple in four Swords. Yeah, playing that right now? Is there a purple, blue, green, red, I'm red yellow. There's no yellow. M yeah. I think it's like a pink I don't know whatever, not a lot of purple. Fun fact, that's why Twitch's color is purple. So when Twitch originally was justin TV and the logo was gray and like a TV because that makes sense, it was

like a TV old school TV screen. When they went to Twitch, they put up on a board every major brand that was in the gaming sphere. So YouTube very synonymous with red um. There were like companies that had a lot of green. Microsoft is green, Blues was very popular, nothing in purple. So we made the logo super purple to be distinct and iconic in the space. And the immediate reaction streamer reaction was we hate it. Really yeah, they hated it. It's pretty synonymous now now it's fine, but

at the time it was spicy. I always think when i'm like color coating, like ATMI cables or something, that PlayStation's always blue, Switch is always red, yes, and Xbox is green, and like Switch is right, guy. I feel like the Nintendo logo, it's it's always been that red from like the NES you know, that logo was always red. What was multicolored? Sixty four was kind of like green was the dominant one. The PS two, the fucking box was the most blue box that's ever existed.

So I feel like logo itself was ringed in that orange yellow stuff. Yeah, the boxes. I'm looking at my PS two right now. No, the PS two, all the two blue? Yeah, yeah, they were always yeah, that was always blue. Yeah, rad is the dominant one in the PS logo. Um, I think they kind of were fairly blue for the blue light on the wasn't it purple? Well there's indigo, there's spice and orange and plat orange right there you got oh you got a GameCube

indigo? Yeah, Classic Dreamcast is orange, I mean white. But like you know, if I associated with the color orange, serious acts black or white, I still think green. Mine is all yellow because it's Bojangles. Can the most iconic colors say that and be completely truthful? Is looking at it right now? Just looking directly anyway. The case of Benedict foxes a very interesting premise, and I do encourage people to play it. And if

you have game Pass, good news. It's on game Pass, so it's available right now to try so. And I didn't pay for it wown past. I know I can't. I oh, I know I can't. You should go buy Red Fall. I do it all the time. You catched it. That's hot. I can't believe you'd encourage me to play a game that you hate. So you should. I said you could. I'm encouraging I think you could. You're kind of suggesting, like if I were to say, you know, like you could slap your mama. You're not.

I'm assuming I'm not, but I feel like it's it's that's right. You're like assuming that I'm telling you to do it, but I'm not saying you should. I'm just saying you could. You're incepting. Yeah, thank you, I've incepted it all right. When to emails, Yeah, let's do it, bay, So you can have that sound bite for free, sick okay. As usually, you can read into fire skate Cast at gmail dot

com for any questions, comments, concerns, corrections about Cleopatra Medusa. Let's hear those Medusa Cleopatra mix up emails are historical expertise, which is rarely called in the question. But please rest assured I will not read those corrections. Um. But yeah, as usual, you can send in questions Mary Well and then also worth noting, we're going to keep it to one tonight. Fairly short. We all have a crazy week. It's fairly we went long.

We had a good pad. The email section shorter than usually. Wow, somebody that wanted to look through the emails. That's not true. All these fine people spent their time. He really want to talk about the work I put into this podcast? Do you do you want to do publicly? That a weird exchange? That was I was like threatened and then maybe it was hot. I don't know. Most threats are hot, and most hot stuff is a threat. Um. I guess that's true. Mary, do you want to read? Hey, Mary, Mike and Dan. I have

suffered with anxiety for more years than I care to remember. I never used to be able to get very far in any horror game as a result. Then I discovered a little series of videos on GameSpot called Resident Knevil and gave them a watch. Marian Mike inspired me to give them another chance and fight through the Fear, and now I've completed them all, all horror games. I still have trouble with Dead Space, but I'm currently two chapters into the

remake. Wow, I have to play it in short bursts because my anxiety really doesn't like that one too much. Oh my god. Same to my question. Have you ever found a game or series of games just too creepy or flat out scary to finish? You're probably all a lot braver than I am, but I'd love to know if there are any. Thanks so much for all your videos and podcasts over the years. I fire Escape on constant loop pretty much as it makes me laugh. Oh and congrats Mike on your

engagement and good luck with the wedding. Best wishes. This is Lee Essex, England. No, that is not his name. His name is Lee Essex. Comma, England's Dan Kansas checking the hotel. It's me Mary Ohio. Oh my god, that's actually such a good name, Marry Ohio. Um, it sounds like a what does this sound like? It sounds like a government program, Mary Ohio, Mary Ohio, I know, I will, I know. I mean, that's a boring answer. I don't think

I've ever stopped playing a series because it was too scary my anxiety. Honestly, horror, I guess the more interesting aspect of that is horror has always been really good for my anxiety. Back when I had bad back, my anxiety was really bad. Thankfully, nowadays it's I really don't have much of

it, or the anxiety I do feel is under control. Horror has always been a place I go where I'm not anxious at all because the stuff I'm seeing, it's it's a good way for me to recognize that there's anxiety in the situation, but like also recognized it's not happening to me. Everything's fine with me. These people are fucked and it's great. That's the point,

and it's fake, you know. So it's like you can safely like in the same reason like I have rippling anxiety have my entire adult life, but like that's why I like jumping out of planes and you know, writing roller coasters and stuff, because like it's like, Okay, well, no, you've got a parachute, you've got this thing, You've got this harness that's keeping you in, Like it gives you that excitement feeling, but like you know you're going to be safe you know, like my anxiety has never I've

never had like actual anxiety the way I describe it with like a video game necessarily, well, I guess sometimes like with I got like a punch out or something. I've definitely had my heart ray go up with like for the speed Run stuff. But like a horror game, I don't think I've really had that. I cannot finish Amnesia. Oh, it's the scariest game in

the world. I believe, I feel strongly about it. There is a combination of such incredible build up. You're reading about this like torturous murderous guy. You're going deeper and deeper into this dungeon. It's getting weirder and worse, and you're recognizing though there's like something fucked going on, and then you see it, but you don't see it because the game is designed in such a way that the enemy in Amnesia distorts your camera, fucks up your vision,

and messes with your audio. You hear what I would equate to teeth grinding when you see it, and it's so awful audibly visually that you feel the need to run away. You do not attack this boss. In fact, in Amnesia, you have no ability to attack. You can only run and hide. It is fucking terrifying. And I quit. I've quit. I've quit that game like probably five times. I just can't. I can't go through it. I can't get through it. It's so effective. It's

incredibly effective. I remember when I was playing at the first time, it was like twenty eleven, twenty twelve or whatever. I was a plan at night, all the lights off, you know. And I'm normally not a huge like like jump scare, you know, a horror game type guy. But I was so just like, what does this fucking thing look like? I was hiding under every fucking table holding that lantern. I remember at one point my girlfriend at the time walks in. She came out of bedroom and

it was like, hey, she was about to say something. I just like it was super like, Oh my god, just freaked the buck out of the Yale, just like, what the fuck this happened? No, I was so on it. No surprises. Yeah, that game is a genuine terror, and I believe in my core. I just don't think I want to finish it because it's so scary. So that is the genuine answer to your question. Other games that I don't think I would have finished without

Mike. I do not think that I would have been able to finish probably Resident Evil remake. And I don't think I would have finished Dead Space without you. That game is very scary and without like you, you know, being this cheeky dude and being silly like you kind of added some brevity to it. You were with me. I had you by my side. It made it a lot easier. I don't think I would have done that without

you. And I also think Silent Hill too Silent Hill original actually with Nina, I don't I don't think I would have played that game without her. I needed someone with me. The thing with dead Space like the thing I'm not surprised that Lee was saying with dead Space is because that is a very specific type of horror that is trying to reflect the anxious mind of a guy

losing his mind his mind throughout a trilogy. And the music that Jason Graves does is like scratching trash can lids to be to make you think, you're like, I'm not equating the kind of anxiety I think they want you to feel in the game with actual anxiety. But again, I'm not surprised. That is the kind of game that does it for me. The I found the Outlast games, especially the first one, to be pretty scary. It was that simple mechanic of being able to look over your shoulder while you're getting

chased. That really fucked. That was a really brilliant mechanic. To add to that. The second few finder stuff too, like the camera stuff like that was all very effective. They did that thing in the first one, which all took place in an asylum, and then the second one I didn't finish. I didn't like it as much. But the first one they did that thing that Reson Eval seven did where you know where the basement is and you hear shit going on down there, but you're just like, I'm not

going down there until I absolutely have to. And then you see a note and Outlast next to the power box saying I think there was a fuse in the basement. Yeah, it's not the actual going down, it's the anticipation of it. I will never forget. It was probably the best VR experience

I've ever had. Was I played through seven going down into the basement and seven well, yeah, and it was so cool and so scary that, like I remember that was Bianco was watching me, and she usually likes watching when you play Resonaval hasn't played a ton of him herself, And in that moment, I like had her put on the headset and I was like,

yeah, okay, this seems like a scary part. Let's just you know, see how effective the VR is here, and her just like she stood at the top of the stairs for I don't remember how long it was, but it seems like an eternity, and like I saw her chest just like going in and I was just like staring down the stairs and I put my

hand on her chest and her heart was just beating like a drum. Just the idea of going down there in VR, and it's like, holy shit, that is effective as hell, like and invest use of VR I think i've ever seen. Yeah, Because then even later on, when um Jacob is chasing you around upstairs, that gets super fucking scary, yeah, Or when you're in the fishing shack with Marguerite, that's more of the like, oh god, I haven't gotten far enough marg. At some point, I'm

really I set it aside to go back and replay village in VR. I think that just Benevento with the Fetus. I just don't think that I could do that, and like imagine like trying to get into a locker. Yeah, like crawling under the bed. Oh that's too much, that's too much.

Yeah. I think with VR is like it so it sucks that like we can think of like how good these things would be, but it is still such a hassle that Like, as I'm playing No Man Sky, I keep thinking that, like my PSVR two is sitting right there, it is compatible. I can put this on, And I've had the thought while playing it, like it wouldn't be cool, just like be like I'm actually flying around in space whatever. It's like, yeah, but I don't want to

put that thing on. Yeah, you know, like VR is still at that point where we're getting better, but it's still just not worth it. Yeah. Yeah, but the Outlast games, I remember two was messing with me early on, but I don't remember liking it nearly as much. But yeah, I would say if there's like a game that it was probably like anxiety due to mechanics or like a something that I was dreading doing in the game itself, rather than like a horror game that really messed me up.

I used to feel that way about like certain all the dungeons when I was younger, Like the Water Temple just gave me anxiety until I grew up in the Water Temple. Yeah, I'm trying to think of like games when I was a kid where I was just like, nope, too scary for me, Like I'm not dealing with that well, and this isn't like things that shouldn't be scary but do terrify me. I think we talked about this before.

The Knights who say knee right, really the shot where it's like the wide shot of them being very tall in the forest and the Paperboy Burglar Paperboy sixty four Ye yeah, man, the Knights who say knee still did this good day? Get me? I can't laugh in that scene. I'm the spiders and Half Life too scared the shit out of me. The head crabs no, like the sand leg Oh those yeah, they're up very scary. But then it's interesting. That's why that game is so good is because it

goes from like horror to like friend. You know what's like speaking of bad purple stuff and okay creepy okay. The Shadow Temple in Akarina or the bottom of the Well. Genuinely, I've replayed it recently. It's still the dead hand enemy that that blob dude with like the head with this guy yes, yes, in the hands that grab you and it's and he's like, yeah, Zelda is really good and like, it's not a horror series by any means, but when it wants to be fucked up, like remember the Red

deads and Windwaker, the ones that turn like that's horrible. Yeah, it's like a itto, what's the manga artist? Yeah, ginge. I feel like Zelda does a lot of that kind of horror that's like it's like more unsettling than Yeah, I don't know, but yeah, the Shadow Temple I remember being pretty creepy. That's a good one. I think there's a lot

of untapped scary stuff that we'll see in the future. Um and especially thinking that the scariest game I've ever played, Amnesia, is fairly old, I think that we have a lot of work to do to try and genuinely scare the bijigs out of people. VR is one of them. Oh yeah, anyway, thank you, Lee, All right, sure, interview section I'll talk more about is that what I said, I'm tired, said interview. I'm tired. Well, now we're segueing into our new interview. Okay,

interview Mary, No you interview me? Hey, what's up? Start? It's such a bad interview. Gone, I've just been trying to really if sometimes the pursuit of art is drawing. What's your favorite drawing art? Drawing? Calvin and Hobbes? Which, no, which of the guy who Calvin or Hobbes is coolbs? If you were Calvin? What would you pee on truck? Hobbs Hobbs? All right, thanks for going on, Mike. Wow, what about valuable interview? You've learned so much. That's hot.

This podcast was hot. It's hot. Yeah. Dan, you're on a train tomorrow. Are you going? Are you talking about it? Is it secret? Yeah? On the show? Didn't we probably Boston? Yeah? Nice? Oh we totally talked about that's right. Yeah. No, I just doing Boston with my dad. What are you playing? Old Days? What are we playing? I'm playing Advanced Warse two on the analyt pocket and h I'm taking an amtrack and yeah, it's six sixtieth birthday tweet, which

my happy belated birthday. By the time, it is. He wanted to come up here, and so yeah, lifelong dream and going to Fenway, and then we'll spend a couple of days here in Connecticut before he hits the throw back to Kansas. Paul, Paul, you don't look at day over fifty nine now the cigarettes he looks, He looks sixty Fenway hardly, No way. Yeah, Faul's gonna come for me one day. He's gonna is that pack of cigarette still the creator clash is going to be me and you

would win immediately. He's trying to punch me. I don't want her to punch me like I think he retrieved the cigarettes last time he was here. Damn it. Yeah, I wanted to smoke him, just to fuck with him, just all of them in your mouth like homework. Wait, we talked about when I did that as a joke in college probably and dinner as a joke. I mean I did it, just smoked a bunch of cigarette, put like across my mouth and just staring. No oh, I vomited

profusely. But we were on the front porch at our house senior year, and I was bored and drunk, so I looked over at my friend put five cigarettes in my mouth, five or six and just looked him in the eye and inhaled them and smoked them in like forty seconds while looks at me, keeping eye contact the whole time, somehow not coughing until I started wrenching all over the front yard. Every time. You when I ate a bowl of cigarette with milk on it, what, No, did you think it

was cereal? No? I was in high school and I was we had to make PSA's and mine was an anti smoking one, and I did this like serious black and white thing of like you think it's just one cigarette, but then it turns into this and you just show somebody like chain smoking and stuff, and then before you know it, it's this. And I just shot myself on my deck fucking with a bowl like all cigarettes, fresh cigarettes and milking. And your dad's in the background smoking. He had started smoking

yet, he wasn't forty yet. He started smoking at forty a giant spoon like eating the cigarettes. Yeah, it was what grades you get? Uh? Oh? I got got great grades and video until I got kicked out the class. But I graduated business school really good grades. I haven't watched any Nathan in a long time. Well, since you were graduated school with really good just a bunch of season c minuses, it's passing, it's all matters. Yep, you're good. D's get degrees too. That does rhyme.

But I just don't want to hire someone who got d's. Well there, I don't think. Can you get it? I got DS, I got F side. Just fuck, it's as long as you get the paper, you're fine. I was summa cum laude. Does that mean graduated with honors? Probably from my Harvard of Journalism school, know, the Harvard of Is that what he says? Hard? I forget what you Harvard of Communications. You texted me that the guy. I know, but because I heard you say it before, because people do say it, but I don't.

Oh yeah people, people, Oh yeah, how you dec I'm not saying it's the Harvard Communications that I would do. People. Some people would say that it's the Harvard of Communication. I don't necessarily agree, but many people can say, yeah, I don't like the New York Times called it, but take that with a grain of salt. I guess it's just the paper of record, all right. Fire Escape Com, Firescape merch dot Com, fire Escape merch dot com. That's not actually the website. Don't go there.

Yes, it is Firescape merch dot com all one word. Yeah, that's so easy to remember. How can people forget it? I'm really selling that. Yeah dot com, go to it. It'll bring you to our merch pay Firescape merch dot com. That's how you get your T shirts, your mugs, your banana yellow T shirts, your uh mouse pads that explain Mike's awkward past. Get it all. Go into his college career as a Harvard educated man. But yeah, he wasn't educated. That's right, Dan,

What can people? What can people do on Spotify and iTunes, et cetera? Five stars? Just give it five stars. Let's click the five star. That's all you gotta do. What how walking through the process of giving us four or a fewer stars? You go to the other names like just the Polygon Show and the Katakut after Dark and uh joystick dot com podcast Friends per second. You give it whatever non fives you want to give it. Yes, perfect restes, EGM the Testies, that's their third one.

They haven't made it yet, but I know it's in prorod Mary. What are you going on? Nothing? Just the usual streaming on twitch On Monday's this podcast and Canini is back, So we're releasing an episode of Knini a week. Check it out. It's on our fire Escape YouTube. It's super fun. I've loved recording them. Mike, we're having a really good time. Oh yeah, I guess that's worth mentioning. We're not if you're a patron, which we'll I'll get to that shortly. If you're a patron,

you probably subscribe to our YouTube channel. That's where our video bonus episodes go up. But if you want to keep up with me and Mary playing through resume games, go subscribscribe fire Escapes YouTube channel. Yes, and in future things that we do like a Game of the Year and stuff like that. We actually have a YouTube channel now so we can upload to there. So yeah, subscription there and you'll see stuff pop up on fire Escape cast. Dan, what do you have going on giant bomb dot com? Lots of

fun stuff going on. We've gotten Mike Finati playing through RoboCop on the Xbox, which is absolutely terrible. We've been playing through four Swords Adventures through the magic of the Internet. All sorts of fun stuff going on there is check out a Giant Bomb and you can just follow me at twitch dot tv slash Dan record and if you want to become a patron, if you want to get ad free episodes, if you want to get video versions, or if you just want to tip us, show us some love. We appreciate all

of it. That is basically the money that gets us to do the big game of year, Game of the year, End of year extravaganzas if you will. It's how we fly out to yell at each other in real time. It ain't cheap, and you make it possible. Thanks, folks, thank you. That was episode fifty four. Good one. Yeah, Jake's off gallivanting across Europe for like a month. Mike, I can't wait for you to Yeah. I hope you can find something fun to do until we

record the next one. Mike, I hope you can find some fun games to play. I go your time with. I've just been living man, huh. Yeah, I just you know, looking at sunsets and you know, beating the sand. Oh, I've been looking at sunsets. My feet have been in the sand. Fuck, these are spoilers. Oh no, I'm not talking about anything a game with that, So that's not a spoiler. Enjoy yourself, Mike, enjoy yourself here. The sun, isn't it

the suns in the game. I know what you're doing right now, Mike, and I know what that feels like, and it feels really good. And yes, we'll see, we'll see, we'll talk. We'll talk more in a few days publicly from when this goes up. All right, good, we'll see you guys on the next one. Thanks for watching, listening, probably by probably more listening than watching. Good Yeah, maybe bye. The