Fire Escape Cast #71

Hello, everyone, don't don't start with the diddling thing. No, lete, come in, Come in with I don't care about anything. Don't have any of the beginning that would explain why we're talking about fingers. Just come in with Mike saying, I don't care about any fingers unless they're diddling me. I have a reputation to uphold. It's very pristine. You don't very clean people. Well, first of all, Happy New Year to both of you. It's actually not New Year's yet, but if you're listening to us,

it is. You thought we wouldn't have an episode on January first, and we fucking wrong. Yeah, a lot of people, they text me all the time. We do this. Two weeks one, I didn't do an episode. Have we ever missed an episode? We There might have been like one time that there was like an upload issue or something, and maybe we came in like an hour later or something, but we read for it to be a day or too late to hit an embargo. But that doesn't

mean yeah, that doesn't mean we missed it that right. Have we ever taken an episode off? Though? I don't think so. No, we're very professional, man. But it's twenty twenty four we're thinking. I'm going to ask you, guys, thinking a few days ahead to twenty twenty four, what do you think has changed by the time this episode goes up? How many times have you farted in those two days, Dan, since the clock struck, since the ball fell in times square until the time this episode

goes up. No, from right now when we're recording it, till right this episode goes up, until it is, Oh, my times you fart into twenty eight in one each day or total total? Oh, that's just what you know about. I bet you that you fart all the time in your sleep and you're not like aware of them. Those are probably like aware of farts. But I would kind of like if there was like a little

like odometer thing on my buttthole that counted the farts. I think that's what it would say at the end, like an objective sign and typic, not just me. Oh, I think twenty eight, Like twenty eight like on your phone when it's like, oh, I got my steps in and it's like, oh, I've hit my farcal apple watching your ass for a couple of days and then tells you, yeah, it's a weird ass. We're all much more mature in twenty twenty four that we can tell with certainty nothing

nothing else is I don't think anything will change. Oh wait, actually I've got a quick interior decor update for video patrons. I guess you could describe it. Amanda got this from me for my birthday. I finally put it up. Yeah, fire escape candle plant holder. It's like escape. It's a it's a metal fire escape like shelf. I'm describing for people who aren't looking at it, and I'm using it. It's got good sunlight on that wall. I'm using it for the propagating plants. You see some in water.

Those are I trimmed off certain plants. You can put them in the water for a bit and they'll grow roots, and then the ones in the pots are I repotted them. So that's like my my neonatal care ward for plants. I think it wouldn't make sense. It's funny that you said it would be a candlehold, because it wouldn't make any sense a fire escape candle holder, because every candle would be burning the level above it with the fire.

The whole ideal fire holder does not have another level right above the candle as the fire escapes are for escaping fire, not housing it. That's true. That's true. You do not want fire on your fire escape. I don't know what the fuck this wall is for, but we're in like a brownstone townhouse right next to another one. So my father in law and I were drilling into the wall and we hit concrete, and I don't know,

you could see there's like inset bookshelves below it. And I found it funny and maybe appropriate that we're actually drilling a fire escape into concrete as they are in real life. I think I'm not an architect, so it's functional, that's what you're saying. It's functional, and it's yes, on a miniature scale. Okay, drilling into concrete's not fun though, but yeah, that's it's a nice it's a nice little uh. I guess it's not even on

camera until I move the camera, but it's there. Reminds me of this reminds me of that show we all do. Yeah, I'm reminded of the show when we're also doing the show, which is like coincidentally, we're both reminded of the show right now. Yeah, Yeah, just kind of crazy feedback loop. Yeah, I start fires and I always think about our show. Yeah, you're the Beavis of fire Escape. I fart and think about

our show. Yeah. Ah, the guys would love this. As I light up another mall would Mary would be proud as I rip ass I saw. We talked about Stop Making Sense going back to theaters in September the remastered version. We missed it because of wedding and COVID and preparing for our own wedding the next month. I saw it last night. It's awesome. For those who don't know, it's the Talking Heads, one of the first like concert films. Jonathan Demi, who did Silence the Lambs, directed it.

David Byrne wrote a for the stage. We saw it in the village last night. It's fantastic. It's phenomenal if you can get it or go see it. It's back in theaters for like a week in certain places. I'm not sure if it's just a New York thing or not, but it's unreal. It's very weird to see the crowd on the blu ray we have that's like on constant loop in our apartment. You can't see the crowd. It's too fuzzy, and you can see little details like on their clothing. That's

I never noticed before. The sound sounds much better, like the guitar strings, the drums, the snare drums sounds much crisper. It's it's unreal. I'm not like, I'm not usually big on like if a remastered video game comes out, I'm like, sure, this looks better like Metroid Prime remastered. I get it, it looks better. I'm not usually that I don't

normally care about that stuff. But seeing something like this that I've been watching basically weekly in my apartment on the big screen in remastered formats eye opening. That's awesome. Yeah, I like it a lot. Best ever saw Iron Claw a couple of nights ago. It was really good. Is zach Efron

good in that? Yeah, it's really good. Like everyone's really good, and it like, I think the worry whenever there's like a mainstream thing about wrestling, is wrestling pant or conditioned to be like, oh, this is just gonna be like made by people that don't understand anything about wrestling, and

they just like boil it down to something it's not. And this was clearly made by people who like cared about the history of the family, about the business and things like that there were definitely things that like as a wrestling upsess, so I was like, that's not what Rick Flair sounds or looks like. But ultimately like as a wider mainstream Hollywood movie about wrestling, like it's just below i'd say the wrestler as far as like, oh, this is

actually very respectful of the business and does a good job. Is what was the Steve Carell movie about wrestling? Suff Okay? I think actually that was like act like Olympic wrestling not I don't know what you're talking about. It was like Oscar. I think it won a few oscars, like you can wrestle in the Olympic years ago. I thought it was just interested, Yeah, really muscular people. You really like those stupid guy like yeah, like

earguards and and uh the assex shoes. That kind of wrestling and that shoot wrestling. Yeah, that's what's called. That's the Do you know who like the people that made Iron Claw Are they from wrestling industry? Are they fans

who make movies? I know, I don't know these specific writers or directors or anything like that, but it's just very clear based on like who they worked with and like they were bringing in the right people, and like historically, most of the stuff they were saying was was correct and stuff, even if some of the depictions were kind of like eh, it's not. I mean, that's always the thing once I historic, like, I know very well what Rick player looks and sounds like. And I've seen this specific promo

a million times. It's in the movie, and it's like, Okay, well, to me, this feels weird because that's not really what it looks or sounds like. But like to someone who's not into wrestling, who sees this well made movie, it's just like, okay, yeah, that's Rickclayer.

So I try not to get mothered by that. You know, could you imagine if there was an Olympic wrestling that was stupid, where it's all pred but you still got like a gold medal and it was still like Russia versus America, but everyone's just throwing each other around and we just like predetermined who wins. I would argue against that being in the Olympics. If that was the case, no place in the real sporting world, nobody would suspect

it. It's just so calculated to go to that level and have it still be a farce. I think you could really like. I think it would really unite the countries. I think keep wrestling stupid is my thing. You know there's the like keep Austin weird stuff. I think keep wrestling stupid is my twenty twenty four. You know that's my mantle. Don't allow it to be important. No, no, I want I'm stupid. I'm just looking up the actor who played Rick Flair, Aaron Dean Eisenberg. The first article

I saw. I don't know. The website fightful. I don't know. Yeah, yeah, I don't know what their reputation's like. They had an op at about how his portrayal Rick Flair is the best part of the movie. The differing opinions, I guess which happens. Obviously, it's not terrible. It just I think they just got the wrong guy to like. The guy didn't seem like a bad actor or anything. It's just I think it was the wrong guy. But I think people are super mad about it on

the internet. But I don't know, it's not that big of a deal. Really. Gamers are like that too, where if they don't feel like the actor was the exact person to play their beloved gaming character, they go crazy, but it doesn't have to be this one on one identical replica. Yeah, but like god forbid, tomb Raider doesn't look exactly like tom Raider too, tomb Raider to have this like very specific look. I feel like maybe people on the internet just need to chill out across the board mostly should

they get mad about it is not at all worth getting mad about. I agree. Sometimes it's also I've never ablem of people's opinion on the Internet. I don't know what, Well, you're just super online. Mike Maharty's always goes hot, takes hot, take Mahardy over here, fucking reviews editor with his opinions. You probably have like a bunch of nerve accounts, which is how you get out all your angst. So you're like, I really don't have an issue with anyone, and then you're just like hot Rod for twenty

is just like each ship, you piece of ship. I fucking hate you. I'm gonna find you and kill you, and then you Marris Bangs on the video version, Oh my god, what the book is? War is for men? Of War is for men. That's what I always say. Drudge is an indie those things that one isn't that bad. That's the most vanilla you're talking about, Like really sexist takes here. Yeah, Mike, if we're doing an impression, Mike, it's just got to be way more

sexist. That's kind of I love. I love the bits where you just create an entirely different version of me and then send it out the masses. It's a good time. It's going to come back and bite me in the butt at some point. No, we defend you. We'd be like, hey, check the context. We were clearly just check check the context where I that I created to get him in trouble, I fully vouch for him. I mean, we're all in trouble with the sound bites from this show.

Nobody escapes that. You know, I've I've said some things that are not fair that I don't condone that could look bad if if soundbited. I said I could eat a tough of macaronio cheese, and I looked like a damn pool afford, couldn't that One's just that's innocent stupidity. You're not gonna, like not get a government job because of that. People will just think you're slow, right, have liked really controversial, problematic presidents, and we

have assumed that Mike really loves people in jail for horrible crime. I just love war. Is that my thing? War an advertisement, especially when they collide. But yeah's about to have companies and ads. That's great pro war Abrams with their new M eighteen tanking And check this out, guys. For only thirty million, you can have an M eighteen in the driveway. They sent me one. It's sick, guys, It's sick. I'm a influencer, weird. Check out the cannon on this, babe. Oh my god,

it's got arranged. You can hit a fly from here to Iran with it. It's crazy. Dan, Dan, Relax, I'm just doing a bunch of gun YouTube videos of brock Lesner. Yeah, that's my new career. Is he a gun guy? His name is brock Lesner and he looks like that? What do you think that's a very good point. I'd actually be surprised. I think it's more like, oh, he is a gun

influencer, Like there's now there are YouTube videos he's done with companies. I swear to god, it looks like he's holding a mini gun and he is just vaporizing prairie dogs. Like, there is a YouTube video of him just annihilating gophers and prairie dogs for real. Yeah, it is insane and people like this man, well, what's your definition to like, there's a lot to find interesting about him. I don't know. Like we've talked before,

he is a genuinely horrifying, like terrifying. I would not want to be in the same the most city as him if he was angry. I have talked to the man and looked in his eyes, and he has shark eyes. He is. He is a terrifying human being. Imagine speaking of shoot wrestling, dude used to shoot wrestle for Minnesota, right, he was a champion, He was a UFC champion. He is like, I can imagine, how did he ever lose anything? Has he lost anything? Like?

Actually, he lost the UFC title and a couple of his fights in uf because he was fighting with diperticulitis. Oh it took a disease since they were like falling out and he was still basically kicking people's asses. Jesus Christ. Scary guy. Of course, he likes tanks and missiles related. No, I saw Past Lives. I watched Past Lives, very good movie. Have you either seen that, Dan, I don't think it's your thing. It would be your thing. It's a romance from Selene song to like Childhood's sweethearts

from Korea go separate ways. She moves to New York, Mary's Jewish guy in New York, and then the Korean guy from her childhood comes back to visit her in New York. I don't know if I've seen a romance movie. It's been a hot minute. I saw a fan of romance or rom comms. I just don't care for that. You, Okay, So Past Lives, I will say, is not at all. It's very atypical. It is. That's why I liked it. But I mean, I like rom comms. But Past Lives is incredible. I think it might be my

Granted, I've not seen every movie this year. This year, I've actually seen fewer movies than any of maybe any year ever in terms of new releases. But Past Lives is my favorite i've seen so far. It's very good. Okay. I just went to my letterbox and I sorted by all the movies I've seen, which is like fourteen hundred movies, and it does say that by genre. I've seen one hundred and eight romance films. It probably counts like Titanic as a romance film, but a lot of people die in

that, you know, Like that's what I consider like so romantic. The person who I see are Joe Dirt and Entrapment. Joe Dirt is not a romance. Comedy parts of Entrapment, Yeahart, Trapped Guy, Sky Punch Shrunk Love zero zero a romance, say, is not a romance? Punshrunk Love. Sure, I see that, But like all of these are just examples of like when someone is like, what if I made a super fucked up

romance movie Andica is on here? What that's not a roman dude, all the American pies, mister Deeds, Mike Meyers, the love Guru, oh forgetting Sarah Marshall. Yeah, that's a romance. That's a rom com I think like generally what they're saying is that if it has romance at all, if it contains a romance, they can put romance under it. But I don't think that's the actual you know, that's a tag. That's a tag.

The wrestler is here. I don't think anyone's been like I'm gonna see that new romance movie The Wrestler with Mickey Rourke between a strange father and his daughter and the guy has a fucked up career, Mike, Dazzled's done here and you watched it in the last year. No, no, just I've watched but Dazzled pretty often. I am trying to think of like, because there's the one woman towards the end that like it kind of becomes a love

interest. But I wouldn't. I think that's more of a comedy, not a rom com Her, the one we're walking in Phoenix, wants to fuck his phone. I guess that it's a romance movie that's a romance. Is a romance in the sense that her is. It's like really not about like a guy loving a woman. It's more, well it is, but it's like subversive. I guess. I don't know. I know, I can't Dan. I'm not recommending it to you, Mary, maybe not even you. But Passlives is very good if you're into that sort of thing. It's

hard. Wait, leaving Las Vegas is under romance. I don't know. That's what I would call that movie. Dysfunctional Mask The Mask is under romance. One of the most romantic movies I've ever seen in my life. I don't know what Letterbox is talking about. I don't either the mask. Imagine like being like, honey, we haven't had a date night in a really long time. Go make some popcorn. I'm gonna pop a bottle of wine, and we're gonna watch soul Plant on the Green Face paint in my yellow

suit. Let me put on the Grinch and let's see what happens. It's just like, yes, there are there is like a romance in that film, but at no point can you possibly that those are romances. They just have a romance in them at some point. It's so weird. Mars Forgetting Sarah Marshall is still very good. We watch it like twice a year. That's the only one that I think is a rom com. And I can't imagine watching that twice a year. You guys are fucking weird. That movie

is not that good. And I'm just gonna say that good. It's not that good twice a year or you like it's June, honey, sit down, We're watching Forgetting My Sarah Marshall again March at October once or twice a year. You read a billion hobbies that are extremely time consuming that you dive very deep into. You also to watch a cat job in a side podcast and a very active social life. How are you watching Forgetting Sarah Marshall twice a year? I would take an hour twenty minutes to watch a really well

crafted movie twice. Ye. Sorry, I don't monetize watching movies. Read back me up right and talk about how it's a fucking masterpiece of a rock I saw when I came out, and I remember thinking it was quite good. I remember thinking it was quite good the last time I watched it, which was like three months ago. Although Russell Brand I cannot fucking stomach anymore so like I that he's tough, he's canceled. It's I mean, he's a he's a he's a weirdo. He was an unsurprising one, right.

I feel like from the time I saw him and Forgetting Sarah margin for the first time, I was like, I don't think I like this guy one thousand. I was never intended to be like someone that you should trust. It's always been really weird because his character has always been kind of a skeazy weirdo that like uh, tends to be interested in all women. Weird going. Oh the dude, dude constantly do podcast and shows and stuff, and people like looked up to him and it's like, oh, he got over

addiction. He's talking to all positive and something like. I always felt very snake oily with that guy. And I've I've, yes, absolutely, I've seen him come on a few talk shows and it's the most fucking like soapbox ayah tribes about like I think we need to like just like listen to everybody, and everybody's thoughts are valid, and I'm like, okay, in a perfect world, I get that. But then he doesn't really actually say anything when someone challenges him. It's it's he's just a pain. I just don't

like him. I mean, there's reasons to not like him, but I also just viscerally cleared the air no longer a huge Russell Brand fan. So you can't watch Forgetting Sarah Marshall anymore anything anymore. I know I can't watch Forgetting Sarah Marshall. I can't watch a fucking certain third movie and a boxing

trilogy anymore. It's there's a lot of think but Dazzle's fine, right, I hope, so Dazzled is still safe to like, right, imagine if Elizabeth Hurley came out as like a weirdo, I don't even want to google that. I also like, hope she doesn't die now that we brought her up, because that has happened on this podcast three times before. That would be kind of shocking. I think she's doing fine. I'm heavily assuming she's doing fine. But we'll see by the time this goes up in two days,

we'll see how she's faring. Yes, God, I hope I don't kill Elizabeth Hurley. That would Please don't kill Elizabeth Hurley. That would be such a weird Freudian like not at a pole. She's not my mom, but like I kind of wish she was. What, let's talk about video games. So yes, I think we should pull this thread a little bit. Yea, let's go after this break. So you said, so Peter did not go to the cabin, right, And this is what's sad.

He decided to only do New Year's because he was like, he's he didn't really feel like snowboarding, and he was like, I'll just chill with you guys as soon as you're done with the cabin and as soon as we were done with the cabin. Everyone got sick and the cabin was fucking rad. Like, we had a really good time. We played uh we like snowboarded every day and then at night we would just like watch really shitty movies or good movies. Katrina had never seen the Thing, and then I played Escape

from New York. Nice. Yeah, the Kurt Russell Yeah trilogy, Yeah good John Carpenter, Kurt Russell going on there. Yeah, I mean it's amazing. Obviously Escape from New York is like not as good as the Thing, but it was really good. And she doesn't like scary movies, and so it's really good to be like you can handle this because it's not it is scary. But I was like, it's not so much that it's like

terrifying. It's more like a who done it? And I think that's what makes that movie so good, is like you don't actually know who's who's bad in it, And I think that's so good. Ud it holds up fantastic and every time I see it, I'm like, holy shit, this is still so intriguing to me. I'm still actually not sure. And and they did this purposefully. You never really know when everybody gets infected. There's lots of theories of when a character gets infected in the Thing, but not all

the time. Sometimes there's no conclusive event that is it. Who's the guy who's with him at the end? Uh, there's no conclusive evidence that that guy is infected. There's a heavy assumption that he's infected, and there's a lot of reasons to assume he's infected, but there's no definitive proof that that dude is infected. And then if you keep going backwards each character until it's like conclusive that they are infected, and they start like freaking out, you

don't really know yet. Yeah, I find that they don't ever explain which is hell is? Why can't I remember it? It's he's the actor is a I want to say it's Chibes, but it's not David. It's Keith David's character. Yeah, it's Keith David's character. But childs That sounds good. Hold on, uh, like they could either either of them could be

the thing at the end. It's like knives or something. But yeah, there's a there's a really good one about like Child's child his name is Child's I was pretty close with and Chives I was like I was like, it's like it's like knife Chibes childs. I literally like threaded the needle, but like incorrectly. Both times. There's this really good character, the doctor, and he starts freaking out halfway through the film and he's like ripping apart.

They catch him ripping apart the helicopter, and then later and he's like he destroys their audio system, which is really interesting, and he's like nobody's getting out, nobody's getting in or out, which to me makes me believe he's not infected, right, because the thing wants to leave right transport, they shove him in a room and isolate him because he's going crazy and he's shooting

people, so they can't have him in society. And they check on him and he's got h a noose in the place, so he's like losing his mind and like possibly like gonna hang himself, who knows. And then they check on him a second time and he's like, I'm all better, I need to get out, let me out. And I believe he's infected then, because the thing would never make a noose because the thing wants to live,

It would never try and kill itself. But at some point when he's like, I'm good now when they check underneath his house later and he it was the fucking doctor that was building a ship to leave. That was him. So when did he turn? He obviously turned. They never fucking explain when they don't say why, they don't say who did it. All of it is such a good mystery of like when was the timeline when the doctor flipped positions and then started building a goddamn like what do you call it?

Spaceship underneath the ice to peace out? Such a good fucking movie. I think we should keep this SoundBite in. I think the Thing is like me, watching the Thing twice a year is so much better than watching forgetting Sarah Marshall twice a year. That's fine, I have nothing to say about that

is the thing, or forgetting Sarah Marshall better. It's like, I feel like that's been done to death on the internet, learned from Sarah Marshall on like the tenth watching when are you like, oh my god, I've never noticed. I never saw this before, like you. Just last night I was like, hey, honey, Russell Brand's kind of he sucks. She's not super too. She sprints into the Living. She's like, oh my god, you're right. Look and listen to this guy and everything about him.

Maybe he sucks. Huh, I have this guy seems cristy. Are you playing anything? Sorry, Harry, what you know? Russell Brand thoughts, No, that's it. That's all I have to say on Russell Blant. I think we've I think we've really explained that way got up. That's what I call it now. Russell dumb say at our Top Ten of the Year, I had so many like accidental bad statements because I was so accidentally funny all night. I said, I said, it goes together like peanut,

butter and butter. Oh yeah, Now it's a common household saying. People say that all the time. Since our Game of the Year show, God fucking people were like pointing out we did an entire work day's worth of a show eight hours. Yeah. Yeah. I came to a realization afterwards that I had like four Saturdays in a row where I was doing like extra like like three of my four big Saturday shows were like over seven hours long. Jesus Christ, no wonder, I'm tired. I it didn't feel that

long while we were doing the show. And then as soon as we stopped rolling, my body was like, oh my god, please, that's the sign of like if you're doing a show you like, you know, it goes by so fast, Like I've been on podcast episodes that aren't really and you do check your right. It's like when you work a shitty job and you're so keenly aware of like, Okay, I'm an hour and a half

from break. I can take a break in an hour. I can take a break, okay, thirty minutes, thirty more minutes, and I take a break and you're taking shits and just you know, you're done shitting and you're just dried up, and you're still just sitting there checking your phone because you don't want to go back to your fucking call center desk. That's what I say after I go too, I'm dry. There's nothing else in there.

You know how Pegel I played sitting on a toilet in the late two thousands in Kansas because I didn't want to go back to my desk to answer GPS TEX support questions. I cover I cover my clock when I drive with like a stuffed animal or something, because when I'm driving and it's like a forty five or it's an hour long drive. I will check the clock every two minutes to be like, how much left is on this drive, and

it drives me up the wall so I can't look anymore. I love having something that just distracts me music or podcast while I'm driving, just so that I'm not looking at that clock because it's evil. Just reminds you of how much left you have to go, especially we're doing something dry like driving, like into pooping, so dry poopy is more fun than driving. Use well, it depends on the car, depends on the road, depends on the poop. You can't poop for three hours though, Okay, I gets to

rid the next challenge next time you're in town. Jake with a stop Watch with binoculars in the bathroom, can't make me that was just me on this one. No, it's fact check it Jake, Mary and I. On the other side of a one way mirror and or two way mirror. I'm always confused by the nomenclature. Why is it one way? Well, two way mirror is just a window, I know, but that's why I think

that's what they're called. Like I said, this called the windows. That's a one way mirror is one person can look and the other person gets a mirror like the interrogation window types. One way mirror, also called two way mirror is a reciprocal mirror that appears reflected. And once I know that, because a one way mirror is just a mirror, and then a two way mirror is a window, we got to figure out a new interrogation screen. Yeah, there's gotta be something better. But I want I want to make

a house made of whatever we call those. And then I roam around the outside of the house while my Airbnb guests are sound asleep. Wait, so everyone on the outside can see everything on the inside, and if you're on the inside, you can't. It's a glass house. It's a glass I think. I don't know. Man, Frank Lloyd right, did it? Nah? He didn't. I but they're not gonna find out noted pervert Frank Lloyd right. Also, when the airbnb guests show up to the house,

I'm pretty sure they'd catch on when they see the house. Yeah. Well maybe it's like you know, they're the bathroom stall things that have like the frosted glass when you go in, like there are a way that they have the technology now to where it could be opaque until you flip a switch or something and then YEA three of Ted Lasso had that in her office. Have you ever seen the bathrooms that are glass doors and you can see the toilet

and then when you lock it, Yeah, that's yeah. Yeah. I don't like that because what if you accidentally don't lock it all the way and then you just poop it in a mirror like in a window. I like having the option to let people watch me. It's a nice I feel like it. And then who I didn't lock it? I hope no one's watched. I hope no one's watching with a megaphone. Apparently I'm screaming being loud. I think you're just screaming. I hope no one's watching me poop.

I think it's the content of my scream rather than the volume that's alarming my wife. But have you guys played video games of a break? Would you play? I have been? Go ahead, Dan, Okay, A couple quick ones? Okay, there you go, you go first. You got anything? Chaos? He's calling you right. A big one I started playing was Cobalt Corp. Bank suggested it to me. It is a indie game

that I would describe as Into the Breach meets Slay the Spire. You're controlling these ships and like Into the Breach you can see exactly what it's like a deck builder, and so you can see exactly what the ship is going to do your opponent ship is going to do to you next turn, Like, Okay, it's going to shoot me for two damage from this cannon and then it's gonna you know, heal itself and do this. And so you can kind of plan ahead and be like, all right, if I put myself

in this position and then I can shoot this weak point. It's you've got action points for your card. So it's kind of got that Slay the Spire element, but also has the positioning and knowing what your enemy is going to do from Into the Breach and man, it got me real real quick. It's very much a rogue light. You're like end of the Breach, you're getting different like captains that have different sets of cards and abilities and things like

that, and uh, just the battles are very quick. It's very very good on Steam deck. It's I heard it runs great on Switch that's what banks playing on. And uh, it's it's just been great since I've done about six or seven pole runs of it now and I'm still going trying to like unlock everything, get all the different cards, but highly recommend it if you liked into the preachorst Lay. The spire looks like, uh, it's the divot. It looks yeah, I was gonna say, like space ships.

It's also it looks like each of your characters is like on a different turret on your space ship. Yes, like module section of your ship will do a different thing, so like one of them will be like, oh, it has these two cannons that you can toggle between based on what's better for positioning, and some of them you can add you can like shuffle your ship parts so like there's like actually an empty spot between so like you could position it so enemy shots will go between there and not hurt you. So

yeah, it's uh. I haven't been quite like it, but well outside of the two games I keep comparing it to, but it looks good your PC. Uh. I've played mostly on steam Deck because I've been traveling for the holidays, so yeah, yeah, so mainly on on steam Deck. Also decided to play Doom Eternal again because I never played all the way through it, and I was like, well, I forgot who was I was talking to somebody in the last month or so and they're like, man,

that game kicks ass and said, shit, I never beat that. And it runs weirdly good on the steam Deck. It's for for a game that looks as good as it does. It runs very smoothly on steam Deck, and it's really good. I see why I kind of fell off before it

does, like there's almost too much going on. For the first like two missions, there's just way too much, like, Okay, well, here's this flamethrower that you used to get armor, and then here's this thing you used to get this, and here's one of seven different upgrade systems and the collectibles and stuff. But once you kind of get used to that and it

doesn't take super long. The action is incredibly good in that game. I would say the traversal stuff sometimes it goes a little too hard on it, and some of it is not very clear, like where you're supposed to go next or how you're supposed to get to the next area, so it does slow down. Like the pacing is a little weird in the game. But whenever I'm in a like Combat Arena in that game. It is pretty unmatched in terms of just like fps, mayam stuff. Okay, yeah, I've

been doing that quite a bit. Yeah sorry, I just look at Coble Car. Looks really good. I feel like it's something. I'm going back to Cobalt Core. But the image of Cobalt Core looks like a child's cartoon, and I think it's I don't want to say it's not good. I think it's adore. I think the characters are really adorable. I think it's great that they did that. But I actually think that the image on Steam

on the store is really misleading. When I'm like a visual novel or something, it looks like an adorable like everything's pastel and everyone has cute little button noses and everyone like bubble. It looks like a merry game, just to judge, because it looks like it looks like you're about to bake a cake for you know, in space, and it's going to be like a Who's gonna bake the best tasting cake and outer space game. That's what it looks like to me. Yeah, yeah, from that keyard I'm looking at it

now, it totally does. But then you look at the actual gameplay, and it's just like, here's a bunch of spaceships, like blowing tactical card based battle. Yeah, I think it's great. It's just really funny to see the characters. What I will say about this is like, I think that that assumption is not great right on my part. We should leave room for really interesting tactical space games where all the players look like adorable rodents.

Uh you know that bake great cakes. I think this is kind of nice, and we shouldn't lead that assumption that this kind of game can only occur with like really brutal looking Uh, you know, guys with stubble can be in the cockpit here, Like, why can't they be adorable little cartoon? Why do they have to be dudes with beards? Mike? Because video games are for men? How many talks about it we did in the first segment. I'll do cat is over all. Yeah, that's it, just so

exhausted by his own stereotypes. God, that's our our new merges. Jake Maharty twenty twenty four campaign stickers video games are for men, men only. Uh, I'm just that's how I get on the ballot in all these states. That are dropping Trump and men you pick up that base. That's how my hearty guy, he knows. And then they find out I hated Ragnarok, They're like, no, never mind vote for I don't know, you just didn't like the women in it, said, get out of my game.

Teach my son. I'm trying to teach my son how not to cry when a dog dies. Get the fuck out of here. That's my sister. My sister does not like the new guy of Wars at all. She is obsessed with the original trilogy and like the old cradles and she does not like. Uh, well, we've agreed that your sister's opinion is not not something that we really like, consistently agree with on this thing. Right now,

Cayla, do you hear what Mary said about you? I heard your Resident Evil ratings, and I have judged you that is the truth, and I like you as a person. I question your game rating. Okay, that's fair. I forgot about the Resident. I like that you torture your brother and it looks like you could chug a beer, and I think that's cool. Systems are questionable. I did one mean to bring up that. I was just reminded of Paul Raikert challenged me to a trivia contest. Yeah,

we were drunk and he yelling about you. I woke up. I woke up whatever. A few days ago when Dan was in Kansas for the holidays, and I woke up to a missed FaceTime call from Dan. I don't know what time I had gone to bed at a relatively allowed it was late. Yeah, And then a follow up video in which Dan and uh, your other sister and your dad were at a bar and Paul was I don't know, I'll i'll look back at it. But basically, Paul was just a claiming he was smarter than me, and he challenged me to a

trivia contest to prove it. Yeah. He thinks since you like wine and boats and stuff, that you're just putting on airs and trying to be a fancy guy. Most trivia is about wine and boats. He's fun, so he thinks he's over. He kept yelling, He kept going to bars, and this is my code. This is a working man's bar. I'm from the dirt. This is like we're this is where real men go. This

is where it is dirt, dirt. Your parents are own a grocery store, like you're talking about, Yeah, how many how many like fucking nails have you hit with a hammer in your life? Paul, Yeah, a he fucking I had to tell him. We went to a bar in Kansas City Christmaster. Yeah. He kept saying that a gallant kind of a good line though, but yeah, he's not from I'm more dirty than he is. I'm dirtier than he is. At a bar on Christmas Day. He

wanted to go to watch the Chiefs game in Kansas City. So obviously the Chiefs are very big in Kansas City. Everyone's wearing Chief stuff. He wanted to go to like root against them. And I was like, Dad, if you get your ass kicked by Chiefs fans for being an asshole, I'm

not going to defend you because I've seen him do this before. And it's like like the Chiefs will throw an interception and he'll be like yay yayo, I mean oops, like he'll like be coy about it, like, oh, I didn't want that to happen, yeah, you know, And so like Patrick Mahomes at one point got tackled and as he was walking off the field, my Dad's like, ooh, he's limp and he might be hurt, he might be heard yay, and I'm like, Dad, you're going

to get your ass kicked and a monster. I cannot fucking defend you, Like I don't even do about sports or anything. That is just some troll shit that I cannot get behind it all. I mean, let's say for a second though, that like he is a good person and he got into a fight, you wouldn't defend him. You're not capable. You're not a fighting person. I like how dance painting it as like this, this secret weapon is no longer in Paul's art. Sorry, I can't defend you because

you're bad and this is morally wrong the bar. Sorry, Paul, So I be your bodyguard? No, no, I do have the weapon of diffusing. I could get in and be like, sorry, he's drunk, he's just being like I'm a good diffuser. I've never been in a fight, you know. Like, so, I'm not going to go in there and kick someone's ass on behalf of my dad. But I could maybe diffuse a bit your political defense. You would, you would be a buffer.

I mean, I think at the very worst, maybe you could throw your soft body in there to take a few punches while your dad gets away. I think that that's also a possibility, which I would not do in the scenario at the bar. No, No, well you can't because he's a monster. If your dad takes a punch, it's because your dad should have taken that punch. Ye. If you tell me a story later about how your dad got beat up, my response, much like Russell Brand, would

be what did he do? And say what happened before he took that punch, because he probably said something. Were people noticing that he was doing that? Not because he wasn't drinking that day, but I have been at bars with him when he's drinking, and like he will be louder and more obvious about it if he's drinking. But no, he was just kind of like silently rooting against them, and like he likes seeing everyone get bummed out. When the sports Shodenfreud, He's like, oh, look at him. They

all these few big fans. They don't yell. Yeah, you know, like, isn't he a big does he? He's a big baseball fan, right, he loves the Royals. But he said he almost got to the point where he rooted against them because they started getting too popular when they won the World Series. Because he's from the dirt. He's from the dirty, from the dirt, unlike us from the clouds. Yeah, I'm from Jupiter.

Oh oh god, Weeds because Boulevard is like the local brewer in Kansas City and it is a Boulevard. Weed just had normal ass beer and had order him. Hey, look everyone, look at his pretentious wheat. He's got a pretentious wheat, like a default beer anytime Midwest if it is not Cores or Miller or Bud or PBR, Like I ordered a PBR once and he's like, are you gonna be okay with that? Mister, big city? Okay with that class beer? It's a dollar Well he said, at

what points you? Oh, you didn't get that at one of your fancy big city bodegas. Are you gonna be okay? And it was like, Dad, you don't know what ada is. Bodegas aren't fancy. That's like saying small castle that that's small castle. You can be okay with that. That's a working man's beer. Are you sure you can handle that? And God, like Paul, I'm sponsored by bud Light. I literally make them

money. Although I actually am now a local breweries. Yeah, that's unpretentious again, Yeah your hipster now, but yeah, that was a fun video to wake up to. And then but I don't know trivia. I'm I'm hit or miss with trivia. I would facilitate it. I would love to make that happen sometime. I it would very much depend on what the trivia contest is fun because it's not at all a measure of intelligence, but we can use it for bragging rights whenever we win. Exactly, Yes, it's

good for that. I've been on a an old I've so okay. Actually, here's something cool. Battle for middle Earth too? Uh? When it and Battle for Middle Earth? Electronic Arts published Lord of the Rings. Real time strategy games from the early two thousands are not in any digital storefronts. EA's license with Lord of the Rings ran out, and so it's not on Origin. They can't put it on there. They also like, I don't know what the back room dealings are where no one's really like letting anyone remaster

it. I really don't know. But basically, you cannot play these games legally unless you have the original CD. It was the era of PC games where you when you installed the game, you had to use the key on the back of the game manual. So every time I go back to my parents, I'm looking for them. But my dad found this like stray box in the back of the storage room that basically I found Battle of Middler two with the manual with the cdkey and Which King of Angmar with the expansion with

the cdkey. My PC does not have a disk drive, so my dad also just had an external disk drive that I can connect. It's like USBN one side, micro USB on the other. I've been playing those games and it is the weird and I got them running. I had to down I had to mess with the inne files a bit to get them to launch correctly on Windows ten. But I've been playing those and I've also been playing Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds, just doing like a nostalgic. I intended it as more

of an nostalgic. I want to play some RTS games I used to play when I was like way too much when I was young, But it turns out they're all still very good even by today's standards. Galactic battleground is way better than I remember. I remember having a lot of balance issues, but it's just like not as smart back then. Definitely, that's exactly what it was. My taste was worse as well, and I'm much smarter now and my taste is impeccable, and now I'm playing this game and it's it's still

really good. I believe ages really well. I mean, there's something about just the look and just the tactical nature of it that, like when we played Command and Conquer when they did the remaster and me and you didn't frames with that just as fun as I remember it. It's and it's also you get such different things from these games too. It's like Galactic Battlegrounds. I believe it's on the age of Empires two engine. So there's actually a lot

of nuance for a licensed Star Wars game. It's astounding how many strategy nuances there are and options for like different unit behavior. The pathing is generally good. I wouldn't say the same thing for Battle for mid Earth, but like even Battle fro mid to Earth, so much care and attention went into representing the licenses really well, but also just being very good games in their own right. But then you go over to Command and Conquer and it's just bullshit.

Cartoony awesome, some nukes and you can destroy a building with one dude with an assault rifle if you're patient enough where you cannot do that in the Star Wars game. But then you go over to what do you want? Like they are billions and it's this zombie defense Turtler's dream kind of thing. Like the amount of craft in the RTS space basically since its inception is just as sound. I mean, obviously, StarCraft two Warcraft three are still very

good even by today's standards. They age well. I don't think they all look good. I Warcraft three I don't think looks good anymore, but something like Age of Empires two still looks gorgeous. It's almost like sprites. They're

not sprites, but they almost are. I know, I never really liked once things started moving into three D. You know, the gameplay was very similar like Warcraft three Command of Conquer Generals like these are the ones that like moved it into actual like polygons, and I think you lost something there. Like I feel like Redtler two is my ideal look for ANOTHS game. You know, General's got way too General's was going for like a hyper realistic I

mean the Zero Hour. The expansion to Generals if you've never played it is awesome because you get all those themed generals leaders you can use, and one dude just is obsessed with lasers, so all his ship has lasers. But General's definitely also the enemy. The three factions were absolutely just thinly veiled stand ins for like what was going on in the world and two thousand and six

or whatever. Yeah, yeah, it was mid two thousands. It was full on like Iraq, and it was just like it was just everything was kind of like, yeah, and Red Alert was always so fucking goofy, even you know, the it was based around World War Two, but it was like wacky, like you know, warping Einstein around. It was a weird still alternate history post War Wars. Yeah, yeah, it was Red Dawn, but with Nikola Tesla was you know, inducted into the Soviet to

like for weaponry. But yeah, and then Home World three is not far off on the way, like one of the original artists is getting another game. It's been fun. I'm also still like finishing Jedi Survivor and I'm playing a shit ton of Marvel's Midnight Suns. Finally, I Dove into that. That's a whole separate thing. Really quickly. I'll just say real timee strategy games are still very good genre and some of the best. I wish it wasn't so niche as I mean, it's it's almost not niche, but it's

still pretty niche compared to a lot of things today. I think it's intimidating for like regular average people to get into. Like I remember my introduction to RTS was going to bars and watching professional StarCraft tournaments. It was so so many rules and so much to absorb. I felt like I was completely out of my element playing my first StarCraft game. I felt like I just there was too much to climb. And I did enjoy it, but I never

really got super into it competitively because it's so intimidating. Same thing, actions per minutent and stuff like that. Yeah, I mean, same thing with like DODA or League of Legends. It's there's just so much to absorb. I find it to be difficult for newcomers. Also, it's a very toxic

environment. Not that all games don't have toxicity in their player base, but being a new player in DODA, I have seen what happens to those players and they're just constantly yelled at. It's really hard unless you have a group of people that are like you will play with us, we will teach you, and then you can turn off chat outside of the people that are your

friends so that nobody screams at you all the time. I think that's the thing, is like, because I don't have any memories of like toxic stuff with RTS or anything like that, because the way I always played was I would play the campaign and learn kind of the mechanics and stuff, and then I would do skirmishes where I'm just doing like a war against AI players.

And when I played multiplayer, it was as my friends. I remember I played a ton of Reddler two in the dorms where it's like we would get like five or six of us on the same network on the same dorm floor playing against each other, so like none of us were Like the idea of like actions per minute and stuff like that is not a concept I even heard of until like I was working at Game Informer and covering StarCraft and stuff.

So like online play, I've never ever really been big on with like randos at least I play against friends or do AI and that its like Doda and Mobia and League and stuff like that. Like, I've never had any interest in that whatsoever, because like everyone's going to take it so fucking seriously, it's playing against Rando's. It's like, none of that sounds appealing to me. If you for those who haven't seen it, was it with Giant Bomb Dan the Redduler two thing we did, or was that on our streams on

my stream early pandemic that's I'm assuming still archives on your Twitch channel. Maybe it's it's like a sixtubing. I don't know, it's I don't know if it's anywhere. Did we not up do a vod? That was super fun? I mean I would have the vile somewhere, but I don't think we actually have it. No, it's not on there, you just put it on. We could put it on our YouTube channel for people want to watch on fire Escapes. But yeah, if you find it again, we should

do something like that. No, that's what I say. That was super fun. The Super Mega Baseball thing was fun. But the Commandic Cock Reddler two for those who didn't see it, like three years ago or whenever we did it, we just set up, we figured out what do we have to do because the Comandic Cocker Remaster collection came out several years ago. It's

incredible. Petrick Glift did an amazing job. Also all the archival stuff behind the scenes, the development stuff, all the cutscene like outtakes that they included with that. One of the best like remasters in terms of archival and preservation, and also just the game's work really well. We did have to do some I forget the site. We had to use the like fan run servers

for Redler two because you can't play those player versus player anymore online. I think you could probably still do land, but you can download them on like it was EA Origin at the time. But then you had to get like certain files to throw in. Yeah, cause but we what do we do? We did like Best of seven team was it was a lot you. You definitely came out. I think you won like double the numbers I did.

I buy the because you're you were fun to play against, and it's also fun to do a series because you start to learn the other person's habits. And I definitely rushed you like three times in a row and got those wins, so then you started building up. But I remember there was several times. There's such Reddler two is so fun because it's so imbalanced. There's some units that are basically useless, like the Chrono Legionnaire guys who warp and

then make buildings like cease to exist. Like dogs. They suck. Dogs suck. Yeah, like a hundred rocketeers in your andre. But no, you there was that one. The the like quintessential Reddlert two match is like when I'm building an army of laser prism tanks and then all of a sudden, as I'm coming towards your base, I see this lone chinook with eight of the same woman with dual wielding pistols climbing out at the back of my base to put t and t on all of my buildings. Like god,

damn it, and I didn't clicking eight different times. You blow that up? You get that. I just hear in the distance, like I forget what her voice line is. She's like, wack a load, let's do it. Yeah, it's on my radar. Damn it. Every time I think of that game, I just want to play it. That game. Yeah, it's it's one of the best ever. But which is all to say it's been again, I meant it more as like a nostalgic exercise going back. I was sorting through my the games I left at my parents twelve

years ago, and I'm like fully into all the Galactic Battlegrounds campaigns. Really good game if you haven't played it, and there's a you can doubt that is easily available on Steam. Actually I need to double check. But a few days ago there was an absurd Star Wars selle on Steam. They weren't specifying when it would end or what the occasion was, but you could get

some classic Star Wars games for like two dollars. I got the Galactic battleground Saga, which is the base game, and the Clone Wars expansion for two dollars, which is crazy. Even in twenty twenty three, like the Force and Leash games were on there. Jedi Fallen Order was like eight dollars. If it's still there, go do this. I don't know when it ends because they didn't say, but I mean there are some good Star Wars games and Steam has that crazy sell right now? Mary, have you been playing

anything else ysides the Lethal Company? You know Lethal Company has been I didn't talk about it yet. Oh yeah, that was off camera. Sorry, you completely. You have not asked me what I've been playing yet, so I can't tell you what have you been playing? Well, Mary, you know how he feels about women in video games, So you've been playing video games? Verry? What the fuck? Sorry? I was just the men were talking him on the side, Marry what she's playing? He's like,

fuck that satire anymore. I don't like that joke. Mary, How's Leafing Company? Do you sound up saying that? Mary, how's the video game you've been playing? Okay, it's true. Before we were recording, I'm trying to convince Mike and Dan to play Lethal Company with me because it's so fun. And Jake. I actually tried to get Jake to play two nights ago and he said to me, I don't have a computer right now. And I called him a bitch and he said, for not having a computer,

it's so good. I think you should the end of that I did, Okay, Sorry, Yeah, he should have had a computer. This game is absolutely worth everybody here playing. It is so simple in its design but so beautifully executed. The easiest way I've been comparing it is Pasmophobia,

which we're wires about four people to get together collaborate to find ghosts. But in fasmophobia can take like forty five minutes for you to get scared and figure out what you're doing and how to do all the rules of the game. This is so easy you don't need to know anything going into it. I got an incredible experience within twenty minutes. Twenty minutes, I had a really fucking good time. You're on a ship with a bunch of people, you

run out, you go into different rooms. They're all seated, so you never know what you're going to see. In these procedurally generated spaces, you're just trying to get items that you can sell them to survive another day. But there's monsters in there too, and holy shit, the variety in the monsters allows you to be so scared consistently. The very first monster I ever

had was a blob, which is not that scary. They're pretty slow, but over time they just slowly go towards you, so you and your friends are trying to dodge it or run away from it. It can kill you, but it's very slow. The next time I played, there was a horrible humanoid covered in spikes that like shook towards me that scared the absolute shit out of me and killed me. It's a very scary game, but shockingly,

most of it is funny. It's just extremely funny how you die and how your friends die, and how you sacrifice each other or run like hell, just like a total baby running away. Well, and the way it's presented adds to the humor because like it's proximity like fastmophobia. It's got that proximity based voice chat and you can buy walkie talkies and stuff like that.

But there's one clip that I was just dying watching where we play it with Giant Bomb and Mike Natty was getting chased by a spider at one point, and you're just walking, You're running through all these like very just kind of metal hallways and stuff like that. So it's like a cartoon. You're just seeing Mike's character run down a hallway being chased by a spider, and you

hear him screaming and his voice is trailing off. But then as he starts coming back, you start hearing it it louder, and he's still getting chased by the spider. It's like a cartoon. It's fucking hilarious and it's pretty good. I really, I'm with you. I think we should play this together. That sound because I'm only played with the group of like nine. We had to do a mod where you could play with more people, So I would love to see like a more focused, like, you know,

the three or four of us playing it. Like, I think that'd be great. Nine sounds like a nightmare to be able to know who's talking and what's happening. I think it's really I deal with three or four people, and it's really interesting when you've learned to min max the game a little bit. We found that if you keep someone at the ship, it's they get

to scan, which means they can see where all the prizes are. They can also see where prizes you know, the items, and they can also see where the monsters are, and so on a walkie talkie they can tell you where to go to find all the items to avoid monsters. If you do that, we were able to actually accrue a lot of money and go to the further planets. But the further planets that you go to, the more fucked the monsters are. Actually, I was pretty shocked at some of

the the just frightening level of monsters that they had one of them. It's just so funny the variety. But like one of them was just like a little girl and she's dressed in like a little blue dress and she explodes you with her brain. She doesn't need to touch you. If you look at her, she'll just explode you. No, I watched my friend like pop pop from looking at her, which just makes me want to play more because I've just had the one session. I've only seen like the Spider and Wells.

The main thing I've seen is like the Spider. I'll tell you another one there was. I think it's I say this like with Spoils a little bit because I think some of the joy is finding a new monster, because there's so much variety in some of the things that will absolutely terrify you. One of the ones that I'll never forget is I watched Uh, I watched

this. It looks like a book or something maybe, and it attaches to someone's face and it kills them, but then it becomes them like a mask and it it essentially is a mimic and it kind of looks like one of the characters and it takes their voice chat and sounds like them. And I knew that the person was a mimic, and so I left. You know, you can leave the space if you're scared, and we all as a group left the space, and the mimic left the space too, and it

sounds like your friend. It's like, yes, eh, that's creepy. It can't say a lot. Yeah, it was awful. Was we were terrified. We were all running down the stairs and if I looked up, I could see it kind of running down after us. We're screaming, we're freaking out. We run to another set of stairs and I see my friend Peter and I'm like, Peter, you're you right, and he's like yeah,

I'm me And then I turn around and it killed me. And so the mimic was either Peter, which I actually never determined, or it was another It was the thing was behind us and it killed me and Peter at the same time. It was just like fucked up. We really weren't able to determine like what happened, but it was very much the thing, which is like nobody could trust anybody. We were scared shitless. We were just like running around freaking out. It's a brilliant design. It is silly.

It's made by one person, so it's kind of there's like some glitchiness to it, but I also think that adds to its charm, which is like you look silly when you're running and jumping and there's no guns, Like it's so hard to defend yourself, but it leads to really delightful results with your friends. And so I like, I can't push this enough, Like we have to play this game. I'm playing it all the time. I put like it's crazy how many hours I put to over a break, but I

keep playing it every night. I'm texting. I am the annoying friend that's texting people saying, come play this game with me right now. And I think it is a game that does it does help to have one person that has like I've done that one session with it, but you obviously know way more about it. So I agree what to do? Yeah, I mean even then, I'm not like that good, but like I could functionally get

you through this game. Well, I mean, we'll die. But that's also kind of like a brilliant thing about this game is the loop is really quick and easy. So every day in this game, it's it's twelve, like you basically like wake up at eight in the morning and the ship takes off at midnight, so you only have so much time and it goes quickly. I want to say, a day in this game is like fifteen maybe twenty minutes. It's short, so if you die, you just start a

new day. It's not a big deal. And you die a lot in this game, and that's okay. Nobody gets mad if you die, like you just respawn the next day. So it's it's a really seamless loop that encourages you to play play dumb, play for fun, die, rinse, repeat, And I think something like that should be eligible, like next year when we're doing like best Play with Buds of the Year, like that was after the cutoff, Like I think, I think anything that we started playing

after you guys were here, I think that should be eligible. Form I would have put this in my top ten with how much I've been playing it over break. I really do think it's it's a brilliant design and it's it's worth everybody. It's also ten bucks. If it's on game Pass, I will jump out the window. It's ten dollars, which is such a good price point for a game. A lot of games today, even indies or smaller games, they're twenty five dollars, which is like, uh, like,

do I want to spend twenty five dollars today? Ten bucks? It's a lunch. You can spend ten bucks on a game that you can spend this much time on. I think it's a great, great price point. Let's let's get on the calendar and really make a point to play it, because I do think. You know, we wanted to do multiplayer games for so long together, and it's just with all of our schedules it's been impossible.

But like, let's let's just plan for it. And three it didn't work for the Flairs like month, I know that was that was sad because we were all into it. But this game works. Oh yeah, yeah we tried for one. Yeah, yeah, go to that too. I wanted to play that, but yeah, Lethal Company is the priority. I hear such great thing and I've edited stories about it at work, but I have not touched it yet. Yeah, let's past track it. We should do that. Let's do it any other games. I'll briefly say I've played

a good amount of House Flip for two. It's good. It's satisfying in that way that like Powerwash simulator is where you walk into a place and it's like, man, this place is all fucked up, and then you do a bunch of stuff and it looks really good. It just has more variety in the stuff you're doing than like a Powerwash simulator, which you know,

I don't know there. I like the simplicity of Powerwash, but I also do appreciate the like like I have my own system where it's like, Okay, first I pick up all the trash, then I clean up all the stains, and then I start stripping off the wallpaper and changing it. Like it's it's very, very satisfying. So I didn't play a ton of the first one, but I'm seeing the appeal of this one. I brought up Marvel's Midnight Suns I'll say briefly as well. Still don't really care about Marvel,

and I am very into this game. Though I mean anything, I love anything for Axis puts out. The writing. The voice acting in this is not my favorite, but it it sucks because you kind of start the game with two of the most boring characters, Doctor Strange and Iron Man,

but then you start unlocking some better written characters. All that aside, I'm still not like playing it for the story or I'm playing it because I'm enjoying the three houses sclop of going back and doing these kind of persona gamified relationship dialogue trees, et cetera, exploring the abbey grounds, finding little like collectibles and whatnot. But then, God, the combat. The deck based deck building, turn based combat in that is just incredible. Like it's a shame.

If you don't like Marvel, you probably wouldn't pick this game up. However, you're like me, don't really care about Marvel but love for Access, and you haven't played this game yet. There's several new DLC characters out, just give it more of a shot. It's it's really well made. There's some rough edges in, especially in the social interactions between fights, but god, the fights, the boss fights, like the clever stuff they do

with some of the combat puzzles. You have to figure out the character upgrades and deck building. It's also like I get overwhelmed by a lot of deck building games, but because each character only has I think eight slots, it's easy to build out a deck and be viable. Really liking that game that's the thing I'm deepest into now outside of all those RTS games. Nice,

do you want to do emails? Yeah? Or okay. It is a new year, which means we have gone through most of our questions from twenty twenty three, and it's also been a few weeks since we did our last like normal episode, so we're resetting. So we need questions for this third segment as we go into our next episode on January fifteenth, right into fire State Past at gmail dot com. Fun questions. Game related questions are fine.

We talk about video games on this year podcast, but we enjoyed the weird ones, like if you had to eat your way out of a bathtub, what would be the best food? And we also really enjoy proving a certain someone wrong when they were pretty adamant about being able to do it with a certain food. Yeah, we filled about some with watermelon. So firescape cast at gmail dot com, get in your questions, get them in our inbox so we can stock them up for the next few episodes and maybe we'll

read it. That's firescape cast at gmail dot com. Today. We have a bit of a quiz. It's not gonna be We're not gonna like keep score anything. We're just gonna do more of a fun, breezy one rather than pausing to check the score after every question. But Dan, this one is or I guess I'll read it so you two can do the actual quiz. It's from Piston Hondai, a who's written in a bunch before. Hey, fire Escape cast, Sorry, hey fire Scape Gang, it's been a

while since the last quiz. On a recent Giant Bomb live stream, Dan discovered the insufferably British world of Commodore Amiga games thanks to Jockey Wilson's Companion of Darts and its incredible box art. Said it was the most British sounding video game he's ever seen. But that's just the tip of the iceberg. Attached there's a list of very real, very British Amiga game titles alongside a separate list of names of old newspaper comic strips. As I am convinced the two

share naming conventions that are damn near indistinguishable. Wow, so of course your task is to do just that. Instead of deciding for you, I've left them unordered, so whoever's reading the email can pick names at will and decide how long the quiz goes. Thank you, Piston. The superstructured quizzes can be not the best radio, so we appreciate it. That and there's so

many good ones to this is back to Piston. That and there are so many good ones to choose from that I couldn't in good conscious whittle them down. So again, we're not going to keep score. I'm just going to kind of jump around between these and Dan and Mary. I'll give you both the chance to say whether it is an Amiga game title or an old newspaper comic strip. Okay, Amiga or comic yep, and you don't need to

write a thing down. Just both sound off. Okay, I like writing you can if you want, I will, Okay, go for it. My finger is broken. We're really we really dusted over that this episode. But yeah, Dan is a broken finger from the from the tub incident. Yeah, I feel bad that we broke your finger. That was an unintended No. You did not make me to close the window that we had opened to allow the cheese humidity to escape, so we're partially responsible. Connection.

Yeah, but I would also say because I triple cleaned your tub, because I I obviously don't want you to have a cheesy tub. So after this, which is not captured on film, I by hand and I think that's gross. So I just want you to know, by hand scooped out all that mac and cheese and then diligently cleaned every tile of your tub with like a lot of cleaner and a lot of like soap. And I want Kyle,

there's one tile that's not right by the tub. It's on the wall and there's just a little yellow thing and I see it when I walk in there, and I think about cleaning it every time. But I'm like, no, that's no. I was like, it's small and it's not obtrusive, and I'm like, you know what it's. It's a reminder I should be reminded of that. You don't want a cheese reminder, the cheese reminder. I triple washed the tiles that I saw, uh, And I think

it probably made your tiles slippy? No, I thought, no, you bonk and a test. I am numerous times a day slamming my feet and into things and tripping over things and just yelling and sometimes bleeding out of my head, and you know, like it's it's a constant thing. So this is not a you thing. This is a me thing. She's literally just heard me yell and walk into a room and I'm laying on the ground with like blood pooling around my head. What connecticuse I just stand in the because

I'm always thinking of a million different things. I was got so much shit going on my head all the time that I'm not prioritizing thinking like, oh, there's a thing my put's about to hit, because you know, up in my head with other stuff. You got to get back into meditation and clear your head. I I've been trying to. I don't want to. I don't want to prescribe and be an armchair psychologist. But no, I will say, I don't think it's healthy to have blood pooling around your head

when you fall. Oh, doctor Maharty, blood in your body drinking? Is PBR told me not to bleed? All right? Comic strip or Amiga game title? Right right, right back to the all right, dufis comic? You say comic? I think that could be a game? Is that final answer? Amiga game? Yeah? I say comic. It is an Amiga game. Yes, I'm winning. Let me tile one, Mary. We're not going to keep score. We're not going to be married, the one keeping score? All right? Next one donk exclamation point, donk comic

gay comic. Mary is correct again, it's an Amiga game. Piston sent through no joke like they're like maybe eighty here. I'm not. I'm doing I'll do like a dozen. I wonder if any of them are games based off comics, because they're like Garpield games. I mean, he is definitely Piston has definitely stumble on something. There are some like there's some similar vibe, like in all the naming conventions here. Sparky Watts comic strip dances.

Yeah, I agree, that sounds like a comic. Sparky Watts correct, it's a it's a comic. They cancel each other out, all right. We Willie Winkies World, that's a game. Amiga game dances. Yeah, we Willies. We will wee Willie Winky's World. The old triple w huh quadruple? Oh right, there's four, Mary, all right, the difference between three and four is so small. One yeah, world War Yeah, never mind, wee Willie Winky's World. Comic. It's a comic. You're

correct, Mary, You're correct, yea, I'm killing it. I'm not competitive here. I was like, so not paying attention that I didn't know if I won. All right, let's find another fun one. I think I've heard of that. I don't want to do that. If I've heard of it, I feel like Dan probably has all right, Oswald of the Ice flows Jesus comic comic game. It isn't Amiga game. God, oh my god. You know what my tactic is. It's just disagreeing with Dan. I know, all right, let's let's okay, let me let's find

a stumper. You know it's five to one. I gave you a point for us both being right, thank you, but you also gave yourself a point. So they did f l o ok fluke comic Mary f l o okay, yes, a different you are both correct. That's a com so I'll tell you why. It's a pun and comics are like notorious, like u k f l u k that's why I did it. Yeah, that's a good point. I was like, why does she care about the spelling?

That's good because because if it yes, games give a ship. I'm giving Dan all the inside chips and he needs them because he sucks at this games. Just Mary can be out of nowhere. The s c O games want to be spelled correctly. Comics not a book. Amiga was all about as maybe like a band loved it? Okay, comics newspapers, Hello, they don't care. Yeah, okay, okay, this is a fun one. Scarf Ad twenty one. That's a comic game. It's a comic, Dan, you got one damn scarth sc a r thh. Al right,

Ingrid's back comic. I'm gonna say comic because they didn't make games for women back then. In an ideal world, I'd agree with you, Mary, but no, it's a game, damn it. I really didn't think they would make any games with the lady in the title. These game names are very dumb. What was the Amiga? What if they look England's weird? Man? I never been there, yes, but I never I like it. But they got weird different stuff there. Okay, wait, this sounds

familiar, but I want to just say it anyway. Boob McNutt to t's at the end of course, Yeah, obviously, just state the obvious. That's a comic game. It's a comic. Dan, you're on a roll. I'm going to google Boob McNutt. Yeah, it looks like if it is indeed a dude, Boob mcnut's got to be a dude. Yeah, okay, that's not what I wos like an idiot. I'll look them up

later. All right, that does sound like a comic name, The Flipperty's the Flippert's comic game comic dant Yeah, oh man, Boob McNett looks exactly like you would expect them to. Dan, you're only down one now, look a here we go. What how many? You said you were going to do a dozen? So? How many more do you have? How many do I do so far? I didn't tick us for I'll do three more. No, I'll do keeping score because I'm not. Yeah, he is, we're going, We'll go, I'll do five more. I feel

like these are going. These are pretty these are pretty breezy. How about rolling Ronnie game comic? Dan is right, it's a game. Sounds trying. He's trying not to look excited that he just tied it up. He's so excited, arbitrary, We're just guessing. Why would I I'm not what is mary? I'm I should be impartial, but I Dan's been okay. The Cool Croc Twins game comic. Dan is correct, it's a game. Dan's winning. How many was that? Three more winners each? Dan?

Goodness? Three more? Uh bad Lands Pete game game. You're both correct, Pinky p I n K I E comic game. Mary is correct. It's a game. I believe it's tied up. Is this a tiebreaker? Yes? Eight to eight? All right for the win or we'll go until someone gets one wrong? Eeke and Meek with an amper sand comic that sounds like a comic to man? Can you can guess what Dan guessed? You don't have to go different comic. You're both correct, nine to nine.

All right, let's find out. I'm trying. I keep I keep saying I want to try to find a real stumper. I guess they all are, but some of them, any of these. I know, what's a what's a weird one? What's the Okay, this isn't weird, but might Stumpy c J in the U s A game? Game? You both said game. You're both correct. Have I done? Okay? Granny's garden, come on, game, Come on, Granny, you won't and we have a winner. It was a game Merry one. They're like they're like forty

more of these all up. I'm a lot like your dad. Actually, look you you're a granny gamer. If I called the granny gamers this is this is just a bonus one. If I were to do nu Nut Bros. Nutbros Dot Com. No, it's just Bros. Game. Oh okay, what is it a comic or game game? It's a comic strip. I should have used that one game. Here's here's what I'm going clear on, Piston. Are these comic strips also British or are these just all the

comic strips. I'm curious because they sound very British. They do. Yeah, Man Drake the Magician Frontiers of Science. Anyway, thank you, Piston, Mary Reigning quiz Champ. All right, like I said, get h we did, though it's here. I have it written down. Get those questions that are in. Get us stocked up for the first few months of twenty twenty four. Send in your send here, ideal world. Send in a question that could one day lead to us pranking Dan again at the twenty

twenty four Game of the Year Extravaganza. Make us like, figure out a question that's going to make Dan show his hubris, and then we can fill his tub with something else next year. I'm a monk at this point, I have no Huberts. Look at Mary's the one laughing and tackling at other's misfortune. We would have seen we would have seen it all. If you would have the comeback story of the year, he would have said, like it was, it was neck and neck, it was ten to ten.

We're just having fun here. Dan's no longer an angry not I've never been an angry man. Dan's no longer a prideful young man. I am a winning young lad. Winning Young Lad is my favorite Amiga game. I'm a victorious little boy. All right, fire skatecast gmail dot com. Get your questions in. I want them, I need them. Do it. Uh. That's our episode. It's a fun it's a breezy first kickoff the year, New Year's Day episode. I love that. An hour and a half

is like, wow, we really like phone in guy. It's like half the wheel. We earned a little fun episode after the fucking eight hour live stream we did see that was crazy. Do you remember the day before? No, it was the morning of. We were going over all of the categories just to make sure that they made sense and that we weren't just like phoning it in and we were adding categories that we thought we were light.

Yeah, we added stinkiest, I think, and like a couple others because we were like just to make sure, like literally, like six hours in. I was like, do we still need to read all these? And Dan was like, yes, we have to read every one of them. These are all solid categories stinkiest, most, fuck fun. Look, no one else is answering that question. Pretty good. Yeahs really fun. But yeah, Happy twenty twenty four to future Dan and Mary, and happy New

Year. Happy twenty twenty four to everybody listening around the world. Another I'm sure another great yearhead Twenty twenty three was fire Escape's best year yet. I'm sure that will that trend will continue upward. I'm already looking forward to Game of the Year twenty twenty four. I don't even know. I don't know what to like. Twenty twenty three is a crazy year for big releases.

Twenty twenty four, it seems like it's going to be. I think it's gonna be one of the drier ones, which which I usually end up enjoying more. Though I'll make a prediction here. Switch two is gonna come out. There's gonna be some launch game that's going to be like a big mainline Mario and that'll be my Game of the Year. I'll make that prediction. Now, that's a good prediction, right, it's a safe prediction. Yeah,

yeah, Yeah. There's going to be a new hit indie game among us style that is going to have celebrities like tweeting about video games again, and it'll like be that weird mesh of worlds that we hate but will agree to it because when celebrities play video games, it like somehow acknowledges our industry. It'll be AOC playing among us again. It'll be something else. It'll be like Jason Momoa will be playing some kind of like a Battlestar jump rope

simulator. Okay, my prediction is, uh, Hades two will just will win Game of the Year at fire Escape and maybe at the Akilles And it's another safe prediction, but that's my prediction fire Escape. And have we ever aligned with the game awards on the winner. Definitely not, yes, because we had Zelda one win. When Zelda one won, God, the game wards are older than I. No, I did one one game year. We weren't doing this. That was twenty seventeen. We were Yeah, yeah,

there was three this. Well, if we were in existence then I think we would have haities definitely did I'm pretty sure Returnal did not. I don't think win Game of the Year for Coody for for a Killes? Did it not? What was what else was twenty twenty? We do this all the time. We forget I'm looking it up. Let's Ring. We probably aligned on eldon Ring, right we That was definitely the one to elden Ring. It takes two Jesus Christ, you remember that. We were all laughing

about that. It didn't even make our top ten. That was good book. What was the game that year that was a Returnal? I think twenty Last of Us Part two beat Hades for the Game Awards. Okay, that's bullshit. Yeah we uh we made it. So elden Ring is the only time we have aligned. We have a sure fire system of like what we actually played, and there's no politics or mumbo jumbo. We literally shit on very popular Triple A games because we owe nobody nothing, and that's what separates

us from the Killies. What Dan do you have the list up of game Wars winners. Yeah, what other years would we probably have aligned besides twenty seventeen, As Mary said, I agree, we'd probably do Breath of the Whole. Twenty nineteen was seci Row. That was Wilds. For me, we would have given into Desk Tranding. I think, yeah, resonable to remake was that year to remake? Or Control? Control? Also, I

still would have gone Wilds had a huge pull on both of you. I was like, okay on Control I love, but Outer Wilds was my twenty nineteen game. I feel like I'm pro Outer wild that was mine. Yeah, I feel like we marry. Did you liked out of Wilders a lot? Right? I think it was mine? Then I think won for sure because Outer Wilds is, like I think, in like the last decade, it's one of the best games I've ever played. Wilds is phenomenal for the

killies. That your Outer Worlds was nominated but not Outer wild that is again political mumbo jumbo, because I I swear to God what happens sometimes I can't see it, but like what I would assume happens behind the scenes is someone will be like they worked on this game for like eight years and it's like who gives a fuck? Like it's like they'll be like they knew someone who like really cared about you know, when we send in our ballots Polygon and

the sites we send in the ballots. So I guess that would be a result of not enough sites even suggesting outer wilds not I'm I'm not disagreeing to Mary. There's definitely a lot of politics involve but like they might have changed the system. I wasn't at Polygon back then, but these days Polygon we get together several of us and send in like five nominees for each category, and then I think they just tally up what was two thousand and eighteen?

I bet but I bet you that's not what makes the nominees. I bet you. It's like a factor, it's like weighted. I agree twenty eighteen was got of or for what would that hold? That would have been contentious for us. I would have read dead redention too. I would have been fighting hard for Dan. I would have gone nuclear against it. Let me see. You know what's funny is because like the death stranding, you were

against death stranding year it came out like very very hard against it. Well gotta where was my number one that year got very ten resifect for me twenty eighteen married. Do you know what years would have been? Offhand? Did you like Red Dead? I don't think you like Red twos? Was there dead dead cells? Dead cells? Although I kind of slept on dead cells and then became obsessed with dead cells with the new uh Caslvania thing Castlevania update.

I liked the Castlevania update more than I liked the original game. Dead Ceales was seventeen. It's on my top ten. You know, he had a long yeah, but he doesn't listen to dates, and sometimes when the game didn't come out that year, Dan will put it on his list, that doesn't I wonder if we would have gone with dead cells, because we would have been in a deadlock with Red de Redempt two, God of War

hit Man two was also that year. Oh never mind, we all I think all three of us would have gone for that, And if Jake was with us, absolutely would have been hit Man two. Yep. If Jake was there, he would have overruled us as the judge and just completely like he would have Supreme courted us and just like whatever, he would have scorched Earth seventeen Breath of the Wild sixteen, sixteen, Doom sixteen, Overwatch one. I don't think I would have given it to domn Titan two, hit

Man. I wasn't insisting. I wasn't into it until you two came out. I would have gone for titan Fall two. I think I was I a game spot then, because I remember arguing for titan Fall two because the campaign was so goddamn good. The game was fantastic. Yeah, that I didn't like or I didn't. I wasn't into Hitman yet until the second game came out. Then I went back after Jake when I lived with Jake and he was like forcing it on me. I don't think I was into hit

Man at that time, which is weird. My game my number one, hang on. I looked at my number one, Started Valley. That wouldn't have been I like, Started Valley. I wouldn't have. I didn't like. I wasn't into it the year it came out again, unfortunate, I would have gone nut by democratic process, we would have. I mean, I was obsessed with Stardoo Valley same, I would not. I remember. I still remember your tweets I got a horse, you were so like I

was. It was awesome to watch people like flip their ship over the stuff you could get in that game. The year No, wait, hold on Rock and Paigne League sixteen when is haunted Chocolate Tears. No, Rocket League was fifteen because at GameSpot we had there were people arguing about Rocket League over the Witcher three. League was fifteen. Jake would have three Metal Year five, Mario Maker. That was a good year. I still think I would

have gone Metal Gear five. Maybe I would have gone Mario Maker or Metal Year. No, I feel like I would have gone Rocket League anyway. It'd been a fun It would have been a Actually we got an email about that. That was a good question. It's like not really question there, it's like, have you ever considered doing a retroactive game of the year conversation

about the years where we didn't exist? Grub and Minati do that on their pot cast and they always post I haven't heard it, but they always post their top five every time, and I always like, it is very fun for me to like look back, what would my top five be there? Because like starting in like twenty ten or so, I have all mine posted so I can see it. But it would be fun too, Like what

government I do? Sounds like it's a lot of fun. We should do that, like maybe as a bonus or even not, like just maybe like a midway through twenty twenty four, we go back and like try it in a reasonable amount of time, try to map out our fire escapes top five from like twenty ten to when we started. But yeah, the decade before we go lightning round, Like yeah, but yeah, get those questions in Firescape pastgmail dot com. Dan, what do you have going on in your

spirit or not spare time? What else do you have going on professional? Hope not a lot. I hope a lot. I just want to play video games and watch wrestling for a month and not fly anywhere. So that's that's all I'm trying to make happen. Now, you've been busy. I genuinely hope that is the case. You get the chance to do that. That's very Yeah, what about you? I am just getting ready for a new year, so just prepping my mentals. I would say I'm a nothing

right now. I'm doing nothing. I have no plans, no things that I'm trying to achieve. I wake up every morning when I feel like it. Sometimes I'm like I guess I'll have lunch and it's like three pm. I am worthless to society and I will continue that trend for at least another few days. Hell yeah, I do have something exciting. I've told you before. I'm working toward eventually taking the intensive course to get my Smalia certification. All right, congratulations, Well no, no, no, sorry,

that's not going to happen immediately. There there's more money involved with that and more timing concerns, so I'm figuring that out maybe later in twenty twenty four. In the meantime, though, I have I'm taking the w Set Wine certification. Just like it's not building toward. It's not the same certification as getting your certification from the Court of Master smaal AA's, but it is going to help. It's basically, if you wanted to eventually teach wine or like

be a wine historian, you take these courses. So I'm starting that later in January. It's not again, it's it's not gonna hurt to have that when I go into eventually doing the Master of Smalia stuff. Sorry Smalia certification, I wouldn't be a Master Somalia for another like fifteen years. I'm excited wine and then be like this, I know what kind of wine this is. This is more theory and history's growing my reductionist view of a Somalia.

I'm pretty sure I know what kind of wine this is. That's yeah, let me tell you. Give me one sip, I'll know what that is. I think I can tell you that is. And you have to you have to talk like that to people, like there's all these people who have like saved up a lot of money to go to a really nice restaurant and take a bottle of wine. And you come up to them and you're like, I think I know what kind of wine that is. And you can blindfold me right away, you guys. You guys are really uh and you're

in front of them. Oh maybe I don't. Of course, this is an hundred dollars model of white whatever. You spit it out, all right, Yeah, this was a it was a pino from the sunset. I wanna, I wanna. I want to get Paul into wine. That'd be that's my ultimate Oh, Mike, just you would want to kill him so quickly. And you can't get your smell license without getting Dan Dan's dad into

wine. Everybody would come out of that more upset. Yep, I know that I was just theoretically, but anyway, first episode, first episode of twenty twenty four, on the first day of twenty twenty four. Love the show, Thank you as always to everybody for helping us keep it going, and uh yeah, we'll be back in a couple of weeks. In January fifteen, we get deeper into the year. Last of Us Part two remastered. We'll be able to talk about next episode if you guys are playing it.

If you guys are playing it, me out, Okay, I believe the fourteenth I don't know. We'll double check. I might have that might have been a false promise. Yeah, marry dancing you a couple of weeks and everybody listening watching see you in a couple of weeks. Bye bye, folks,