Triple Play: Saros

Kirk, Jason, and Maddy descend on the planet Carcosa to talk about Saros, the latest PlayStation 5 exclusive from the developers of Returnal. They talk about the game's difficulty, the ballet of bullets, and why it feels so good to play.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:04Kirk Hamilton?

  All I know is, if I were the CEO of an interstellar mining corporation, I would only colonize chill planets with no monsters where time flows normally. Welcome to Triple Click, where we bring the games to you. This week, we're talking about Saros, a nifty new PS5 shooter from the team that made Returnal. It's a sci-fi story on a very unchill planet, but that's what makes it fun.

• 0:31Kirk Hamilton?

  I'm Kirk Hamilton.

• 0:32Speaker 01

  I'm Maddy Myers.

• 0:33Jason Schreier?

  And I'm Jason Shire. Hello.

• 0:35Speaker 01

  Hello.

• 0:36Kirk Hamilton?

  Hello, my friend.

• 0:37Jason Schreier?

  How's it going, guys? Guys, I saw a rumor over the weekend about Final Fantasy VII Remake Part III, and the rumor, which I hope is not true, says that it'll be called Final Fantasy VII Return. And the reason I hope it's not true is because then Kirk would win predictions.

• 0:55Kirk Hamilton?

  Well, I hope that it is true. And the only reason I wouldn't hope that it would be true is that it would confuse people, because they've already used Return. Was it Crisis Core a subtitle?

• 1:04Jason Schreier?

  No, no, no. Reunion is the one they used. That's why you predicted it would be Return.

• 1:08Speaker 01

  That's right. Kirk, past you was very intelligent.

• 1:11Jason Schreier?

  Did you forget?

• 1:12Speaker 01

  You need to give yourself more credit.

• 1:13Kirk Hamilton?

  No, it's just that these names are all kind of the same, and I get them mixed up anyways.

• 1:17Speaker 01

  I don't know what you mean.

• 1:18Jason Schreier?

  Okay, nice, okay. There are only so many words that start with Re. They could've called it Final Fantasy VII Returnal.

• 1:25Kirk Hamilton?

  They could've called it Final Fantasy VII Saros. As a spiritual successor. Okay, so past me already thought this through.

• 1:32Speaker 01

  Yes, yes. You've already solved it.

• 1:34Jason Schreier?

  You did your research.

• 1:35Kirk Hamilton?

  I did. Well, if all of you listening to this show have been following us for a little while, you know that it is the end of Max Fun Drive. It just wrapped up last week. Thanks so much to everybody who joined up to become a member or increase their membership during Max Fun Drive. We hope you Get your keychain soon and enjoy it. Also, thanks, everybody who came and hung out during the stream last week. That was a lot of fun.

• 1:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:58Kirk Hamilton?

  Had a good time playing.

• 1:59Speaker 01

  Still on YouTube. Still in the archives.

• 2:01Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, we should.

• 2:02Speaker 01

  You can belatedly check it out.

• 2:03Kirk Hamilton?

  We had a good time playing Diablo IV. I played some Retro Rewind, which was a kind of a random pick that wound up being pretty fun. And then, of course, we closed out with some Balatro. That's still on our YouTube channel, and we'll leave it up for a while. If you want to go watch it, it's, uh, it'll just be around on our YouTube channel. So you can find that at TripleClickPod on YouTube. And go just hang out with past versions of ourselves. Hang out with echoes of us as we play video games.

• 2:26Jason Schreier?

  It's kind of like when you're playing a Souls game and you see the Echo just kind of doing something else. That's what watching our stream is like.

• 2:33Kirk Hamilton?

  So those of you who are new members, of course, have a ton of bonus episodes to go through. The most recent one we ran during Max Fun Drive was our Sopranos seasons two and three Beanscast, which was a ton of fun. It's like two and a half hours long or something. It might be the single longest thing we've ever published.

• 2:50Speaker 01

  I think it is.

• 2:51Kirk Hamilton?

  So we'll do a few of those for the remainder of Sopranos over the coming, maybe, year and change, probably fitting a couple of seasons into super long episodes. What a fun show to talk about. That was a lot of fun. And yeah, if you're new, enjoy all the bonus stuff, because there's a ton of it for you. And there'll be more in the future.

• 3:08Jason Schreier?

  How many people out there would pay us to do an episode by episode breakdown of the entire series?

• 3:14Speaker 01

  Right in.

• 3:15Kirk Hamilton?

  Just wondering. I mean, I know some people would because people have told us. If only time were infinite and it was possible for us to make six or seven podcasts apiece, we would do that. Because yeah, that show would support it. All right. Well, let's get into the topic for this week. We're talking about Sorrow's, the new PlayStation 5 exclusive, which the three of us have been playing and, uh, and I think we're looking forward to talking about. So I wrote a little intro for it, which I will now read to you all.

• 3:49Kirk Hamilton?

  Saros is a third-person rogue-like shooter with a narrative rooted in sci-fi cosmic horror. Places an emphasis on fast-paced firefight in enclosed areas with players shooting, jumping, and air-dashing their way through spiraling vortexes of color-coded enemy attacks. You can think of it as a third-person iteration of what's come to be known as bullet hell gameplay. Think Gradius, Ikaruga, or more modern derivations like Enter the Gungin, or even Hades, or Vampire Survivors.

• 4:20Jason Schreier?

  Undertale.

• 4:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, Undertale, for sure.

• 4:22Kirk Hamilton?

  Undertale definitely has some bullet hell elements. The map is constantly covered in streams of slow-moving projectiles, sometimes fast-moving projectiles, which players must navigate while executing their own offensive maneuvers. Finnish developer Hausmark has a long history with bullet hell game design, particularly in their celebrated Super Stardust games, though Saros is most clearly a follow-up to their 2021 game Returnal, and is very similar in most respects. I suppose I should say Saros, because we've had some discussions of how to pronounce the name of this game.

• 4:53Speaker 01

  I'm pretty sure that's what it is, but they don't say it in-game, or they have yet to, for me, so.

• 4:58Jason Schreier?

  Oh, you haven't gone to the scene where they're like, "You know, it really is a Saros."

• 5:04Kirk Hamilton?

  You meet a character named Saros. It's actually the character with all the arms on the cover of the game.

• 5:08Speaker 01

  Oh, really? Okay. I'm wondering who that is.

• 5:11Kirk Hamilton?

  No, I'm kidding. In Saros, you play as Arjun Devraj, a soldier working for a Saltari, a corporation who have funded the colonization of a planet called Carcosa in pursuit of the mineral Lucinite, a powerful energy source. Saltari has sent and lost contact with several colonies, codenamed Echelon, before Arjun's Echelon IV group arrives, tasked with finding what happened to the colonists of Echelons 1 through 3 and re-establishing the extraction of Lucinite. Devraj also has a more personal stake in his mission. His wife, Nitya, was among the earlier colonists who have gone missing. Of course, Carcosa is not a normal planet. It's more of a Lovecraftian hell world where nothing is as it seems. Dangerous enemies lurk around every corner.

• 5:56Kirk Hamilton?

  Powerful eclipses rewrite the rules of reality. And time does not function as it should. Arjun and his companions find themselves trapped in a surreal spiral of looping time and madness as their grip on reality slips and he continues to fight his way forward. And that's Sorrows, pretty much. You start shooting stuff and you go in loops because it's a rogue-like and it's pretty damn fun. So we've all played kind of similar amounts, not a whole ton, but I think enough to know what this game is kind of about. So let's talk about it. Maddie, how about you kick us off?

• 6:31Speaker 01

  Sure. I've played several hours. I'm still on the first boss, which I think is probably around where I was in Returnal when we recorded that episode and is enough for me to know that I think bullet hell games are very difficult. This is also a bullet hell game, but thankfully, unlike Returnal, it also has a lot of elements to it that help you not necessarily make it, but certainly help make it easier, but also make it what you want it to be. There's a skill tree. There's a sort of RPG-esque skill tree where you can, when you go back to base, there's a base, 80s style, there's a base that you return back to and you unlock things.

• 7:14Speaker 01

  And that's been really helpful for me, given that every time I die, I'm like, okay, great. I've got, I've got a way to get stronger. I can go talk to this AI computer and help it give me upgrades. But we'll get into it, but I do think that the game, okay, so here's another thing about this. I had sort of intended on playing it like a little bit on my Steam Deck, like, you know, while Dina's watching a television show. And usually if I'm doing that, I'm playing with the sound off. I don't think you can play this game with the sound off. I don't know if you two tried that, but it's way harder if it's completely silent because the sound design for the enemies is so expressive and

• 7:57Speaker 01

  Creepy, like they kind of make clicking noises. They're like these sort of alien tentacled beings. And in my headphones, which I'm wearing right now, which is how I've generally been playing the game when I do the best, I have that kind of surround sound, so I know exactly where they are. And then I can use the dash mechanic, which is lovely, and the shield mechanic to make sure I'm, you know, absorbing projectiles correctly, etc. But also, I know exactly where every enemy is behind me via sound. And I thought that was an interesting aspect of the game that I don't think I tried with Returnal. And I'm wondering if I went back to Returnal, would it be easier for me if I played it with my pretty expensive surround sound headphones?

• 8:38Speaker 01

  So I've really been aware of sound while playing this game as being something that is helping me play better than I think I would otherwise.

• 8:48Kirk Hamilton?

  Interesting. Yeah, we can talk more about the sound and the situational awareness, maybe, when we get a little deeper into it. Jason, how about you? What are you thinking of this game, big picture?

• 8:57Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, I'm up to the second area. I really like it. I don't know how much more I'm gonna keep playing, but I've enjoyed what I've played so far. The story hasn't really done much for me. It feels very trope-y, very, oh my god, my, my crew are going insane on this planet. And there's, uh, no, nothing is as it seems. From what I've gathered, reading things online, the story gets more interesting later on, but it hasn't hooked me right away the way that Returnal's story did, where you're playing as, what was her name? Celine? Celine? And, uh, this kind of, uh, middle-aged lady who just wants to know what the hell is going on and seems to be driven to insanity.

• 9:42Jason Schreier?

  So, so the story has been a little bit disappointing for me, but the gameplay is really cool. I really enjoy playing around with the shield and how that changes things. I've been thinking a lot about the design of this game in comparison to, um, other rogue lakes and other action games. And what I think is really interesting about this particular bullet hell and about, um, I think some similar bullet hills is the way, uh, that its bosses' patterns work. And so when you're taking on a boss in Saros, it, you, it is following a very specific pattern, the way that kind of like,

• 10:18Jason Schreier?

  I don't know, an old school action boss might, where you know it's gonna do pattern A and then pattern B, and then when it changes into phase two, it'll start doing pattern A and then B and then C. And it's all about execution rather than recognizing what it's doing, as opposed to, say, Elden Ring, a Souls game where you're fighting a boss and you have to react to what it's doing in a very different kind of way. You have to recognize what it's about to do and react accordingly. In this game, you have an idea of what it's going to do. You just have to have the twitch reflexes to get around it. And that's really interesting. It's a different kind of way to play an action game, more of an old, an old school feeling to an action game. Everything about this feels, feels

• 11:01Jason Schreier?

  very kind of classic in its nature. But yeah, it feels really good to play. I'm really enjoying it. Matty, to your point, by the way, I believe that it's after the second boss is when you unlock mods that let you make the experience way easier for yourself.

• 11:19Speaker 01

  Interesting, yeah.

• 11:20Jason Schreier?

  What you'll need to do, I don't know how, it sounds like you're pretty early, but have you gotten the second chance ability yet?

• 11:26Speaker 01

  I just got that.

• 11:27Jason Schreier?

  Okay, that'll make things easier for you.

• 11:29Speaker 01

  Or as one might call it, a death defiance, if one knows it from

• 11:32Jason Schreier?

  I mean, I would call it an astronaut, because it's an astronaut in Returnal.

• 11:35Speaker 01

  Sure, yeah.

• 11:36Jason Schreier?

  It's, that'll make things easier for you, especially on that first boss.

• 11:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, I finally got that on the run I was playing right before this call.

• 11:45Jason Schreier?

  Another pro tip is that there's a shortcut that you can take as soon as you do the whole moon thing. There's a shortcut, so you don't have to play through the second part of the level. You can just go right into the boss. So just find that shortcut.

• 11:58Speaker 01

  Great. Love to hear that. That was another thing that I Googled at one point. I was like, when and how will there ever be fast travel in this game? And it's nice to know that eventually there will be.

• 12:09Jason Schreier?

  No fast travel, but shortcuts for sure.

• 12:10Speaker 01

  Or at least something like it, something

• 12:11Jason Schreier?

  Well, there, I mean, there's, you can fast travel between the different regions, but there's no like real fast travel. It's more about the shortcuts. But yeah, overall, really, really enjoying it, I would say.

• 12:22Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I'm liking it as well. And yeah, I do appreciate how there are just some persistent things in the level. I guess is how I would describe what you're describing, Jason. You open a door and the door stays open. There are some doors that, once you open them, you can then access the boss. So you don't have to play through the whole level if you die at the boss. Though you can play through the whole level since playing through the level gets you upgrades and gets you new artifacts and all kinds of new things, more powerful weapons, etc. Yeah, I'm liking this game. I suppose, first of all, I should say I've died six times. So I haven't beat it, though. I'm only up to the second boss, and I will certainly die more than seven times on this game. I kinda wanted to get to eight, just to let myself off the hook a little bit, stop thinking about it. And

• 13:07Kirk Hamilton?

  also, just because it would have been funny to have died eight times already. But I'm sort of playing this game a little differently than I played Returnal, and having more fun with it. And also, death is kind of an important part of this game, in particular because a lot of the story kind of develops as Arjun returns to base. I just had a cutscene play out with a very important character, kind of a mysterious one, a little bit obvious, maybe, what they're going for, and so the ways that the story is generally kind of obvious, kind of trope-filled, as you said, Jason. But, you know, I think you really get to see that stuff if you die. And death, it just doesn't really punish you that badly pretty quickly in the skill tree. You also unlock the ability to lose less lucinite,

• 13:49Kirk Hamilton?

  which is the thing you're collecting from enemies and then using to purchase your upgrades, along with some other rarer currencies. And yeah, I wouldn't say, I mean, I want to be clear, I guess, with people, this isn't an RPG skill tree. Like, you're not deciding that you want to play a tank versus, like, a summon character. Like, it's just a, it's like, you get more powerful the more you play. And so, you're just, it's kind of a tree. And there are branches in it. You can kind of choose which direction to go. But I would imagine that as you play-

• 14:17Jason Schreier?

  Sort of.

• 14:18Kirk Hamilton?

  You kind of just unlock it all as you go.

• 14:20Jason Schreier?

  Yeah.

• 14:21Kirk Hamilton?

  Like, now, I'm just, I've unlocked a ton of stuff, and I'm just, like, a lot better. Like, my guns do more damage, and I have more health, and I kind of have, I get higher-ranked guns earlier. It's kind of that sort of a deal. The same as a game like Hades, or- You know, another roguelike. Anyways, I think this game is really, really fun. The story is not really grabbing me. We can talk about the story more in detail, maybe all together, but it's cool. I think the setting is just beautiful. It looks amazing. It reminds me of that movie Event Horizon, combined with the, if you remember, the vision that Commander Shepard has in the first Mass Effect, when Commander Shepard touches the, whatever it is, the thing that gives them the vision.

• 15:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, I replayed Legendary Edition all the way to the end when that came out, so I remember it very, very strongly. That was a pretty recent replay for me. It's a good vision.

• 15:15Kirk Hamilton?

  It's got that kind of orange-hued body horror, screeching, flash cuts to things that just seem terrible, you know, like a microchip being stapled onto a brain or something. You're not sure it's happening fast enough that you can't quite figure out what it is, but it's enough to leave you feeling disturbed. A lot of the transitions between sequences in this game have the same kind of jump cutting. You're not really sure what's going on, though, of course, they're gradually doling it out to you. And I really think it's beautiful looking. I mean, Returnal was also a beautiful-looking game. And then to your point, Matty, beautiful sounding. The music is amazing. I mean, this is something Housemark has always been good at. A bullet hell game is kind of a music game. It's something you were saying,

• 15:56Kirk Hamilton?

  Jason, about the boss fights. When you're in a boss fight, especially when the attacks begin forming these beautiful spirals and patterns, and the music is just pumping in your headphones or speakers, and you're dodging, and you're kind of doing this dance-dance revolution, you know, mostly just holding down the trigger to shoot, and not even looking where I'm aiming almost, and just dodging my way through. It feels a little like a dance more than a fight at times. And so I think it's like, the sound design is amazing. Also, this game, like Returnal, makes probably the best use of the PlayStation DualSense controller of any game, just because it's a PlayStation exclusive and- Astro Bot would have some words with that.

• 16:37Speaker 01

  Well-

• 16:38Kirk Hamilton?

  I don't agree. I think it's stronger than Astro Bot. Astro Bot feels gimmicky to me. It uses a controller really- Well, but this to me feels like a much more holistic use of the technology. It feels like really an organically connected part of this experience. Some of that is because Astro Bot is just somewhat gimmicky or like it has a more toy like playful energy and this is a little bit more of a considered experience. But man, I mean, the way the haptics work during explosions or these like horrible, you know, bio robot sounds are so cool. I don't know if I have you ever just take your headphones off and listen to the controller.

• 17:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, I have.

• 17:16Kirk Hamilton?

  Awesome.

• 17:16Speaker 01

  Go on, what is it, what is it doing? What is the controller doing that I'm missing?

• 17:19Kirk Hamilton?

  Well, remember, so this is something we had an expert come on and tell people about this, that the haptics in the DualSense are sound based. It's actually speakers that are generating that sound rather than just the, you know, the jumping bean like tumbler that used to make the vibrations in like an Xbox 360 controller. And so when you listen to it, you'll just hear it like groaning and shrieking. It sounds totally insane. It's really recommended. I might, if I have time, I'll put a microphone on mine and just record it so people can hear what it sounds like because it's really cool. Anyways, I really like all of that stuff in this game too. I've talked for a while. Let's talk a little more about the combat, I guess, like, like what we think of it. Jason, you were saying some stuff about how this game does bullet hell. I'm curious if you have more thoughts on that.

• 18:02Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, well, the shield really changes things because in Returnal, it's all about dodging the bullets and here you have to kind of have that extra thought in your head of, oh, should I be absorbing these bullets? For those of you who haven't played it out there, the way that Saros approaches this, I'm just gonna say Saros.

• 18:19Speaker 01

  It's fine. Say whatever you want.

• 18:21Jason Schreier?

  It's just a thing that's gonna happen.

• 18:22Kirk Hamilton?

  People know what we mean. That's what matters.

• 18:23Jason Schreier?

  I'm from New York. I'm gonna say Saros. Okay. I'm from New York. I'm walking here. I'm gonna say Saros.

• 18:29Speaker 01

  New York. It's Saros.

• 18:32Jason Schreier?

  So Returnal didn't have any sort of shield. Saros does. It gives you a shield and the shield kind of creates this big blue sphere around you, kind of like the Vegas orb, which I saw last week and is really mind blowing. Puts a Vegas orb around your character.

• 18:46Kirk Hamilton?

  Did you go to a show at the orb or did you just see it?

• 18:48Jason Schreier?

  I just saw it from the outside.

• 18:49Kirk Hamilton?

  I want to go to a show there.

• 18:50Jason Schreier?

  I was on my way to the airport and it was like, it was, it was, I don't know, hologrammed up, whatever you want to call it. It was skinned to be like the moon and there was a full moon above it and it was crazy to look at. Anyway.

• 19:01Speaker 01

  The planet Carcosa actually was once Las Vegas, but it's been destroyed and this is just what it looks like now.

• 19:06Jason Schreier?

  That makes sense. Okay. The Saros is actually a casino in Las Vegas.

• 19:11Speaker 01

  Spoilers, I guess.

• 19:13Jason Schreier?

  That's the plot.

• 19:14Kirk Hamilton?

  What a twist, that would be amazing.

• 19:16Jason Schreier?

  That's what makes the story interesting.

• 19:17Speaker 01

  It's like a very like Planet of the Apes situation where like suddenly you get to the Chinese theater or whatever the heck and you're like, what's going on?

• 19:23Kirk Hamilton?

  Or Jean goes through a door and comes in on the floor of a casino and it's just like a bunch of people like at the slots.

• 19:29Jason Schreier?

  Blackjack tables everywhere, yeah, god. Anyway, so, okay, so you get the shield and it surrounds you and it's blue and if you use it for too much time, it will shatter, it will stop working, but it blocks all attacks from hitting you. And then to keep it recharged, you can absorb blue orbs into it, which will keep it recharged and will also recharge your special ability that makes a weapon do an extra powerful attack. So you are incentivized to be absorbing bullets so that you can use extra powerful attacks, especially on bosses where there is a rhythm to it of collecting these blue orbs and then spewing, spewing your attacks back out at the enemies.

• 20:12Jason Schreier?

  But then there are also orange orbs, which you don't want to absorb because those will deteriorate your health and basically just temporarily lower your max health so that you can't even restore past a certain amount, kind of like taking, chipping away at your health meter. So yeah, it's a cool system and makes you rethink just the kind of typical dodging bullet, bullets, routine or rhythm that you would in Returnal or another kind of more traditional bullet hell game. And yeah, I really enjoyed it. Once I got the hang of that first boss, so I believe it's called Prophet, I got really into it and was just kind of like feeling the zen of just dodge, dodge, absorb, shoot,

• 20:56Jason Schreier?

  dodge, dodge, absorb, shoot. It really, like I mentioned before, it has a very different feel than an action game that you might be more accustomed to playing in 2026 because the bosses just follow that same pattern and same routine, which really changes the way that you think about it. It makes it a little bit more, I don't know, meditative than it does your, your engagement. Aging your kind of passive brain a little bit more than your active brain because you kind of you know what you're doing and you just have to kind of have the muscle memory to pull it off, which which is fun, which is a cool and feels very different than playing a lot of other games these days. And it's also beautiful to look at. I mean, just seeing these orbs,

• 21:39Jason Schreier?

  this just kind of this rain of blue orbs just everywhere and at this consistent 60 frames a second, like you never lose this frame rate. There's some technical wizardry going on here. It's really, really cool to look at. And that's that also kind of adds to that meditative meditative experience where you just feel like you're you're serene. You're just at peace with the universe and all of the orbs and the madness surrounding you and you're just soaking it in.

• 22:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't know if I ever feel at peace entirely because the music is playing this like industrial sawmill like like that kind of sound.

• 22:16Jason Schreier?

  What, you don't find that calming and meditative?

• 22:18Speaker 01

  Typically, no, but I do. I do know what you mean because I feel like just at the stage of the game that I'm at, which is a little like behind you a step. I feel like I'm finally getting to that zen place where I'm like, okay, I understand the kind of wax and wane of the shield and how to use it. And it's important to use the shield. Definitely, I was dodging too much when I was first starting out playing the game because the dodge feels really good. And I just was like, oh, great. Like, I don't, I don't really need to think about that shield. And then over time, I was like, oh, the shield is actually extremely crucial to ever getting my power up, superpower, gold bar filled.

• 23:01Jason Schreier?

  Power weapon.

• 23:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Because if you don't ever use your shield, then you'll just run out of that. And that can be very important against like higher level enemies and stuff. And also, even if you don't think you need the shield, I would often find that was like my health was chipping away, even if I thought I was dodging everything. And it's it's better to use the shield and absorb more because you can get closer. There's also a melee attack in this game that feels very good as well. So like that combination of Having it be a shooter with a lot of weapons, possibly all of them in some form, will just auto aim in some way for you. I think because the game moves so quickly. I feel like it's very forgiving, essentially.

• 23:45Speaker 01

  Like, the game is very forgiving about just kind of making sure a bullet or two will make it to the target, even if you were dodging.

• 23:53Speaker 01

  Which I appreciate in a game that so heavily wants you to use a controller as opposed to being on PC, where, you know, PC and mouse obviously is better for like a Twitch shooter, but that's not really the vibe of this game, as you're saying, Jason. It's more reliant on movement, and any game that's reliant on movement and you using the joysticks to aim is gonna want to have a very forgiving aiming mechanic so that you're not constantly like having to move the camera around.

• 24:18Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I appreciate that. There's like a different amount of auto aim or aim assists on different weapons. And it really makes a big difference to me, the type of weapon I'm using. I've gotten some really good weapons, and they all have like a secondary function where you half press the trigger and shoot them. One that I really like is a kind of hand cannon that you can fire at as fast as you can pull the trigger, if you pull the trigger halfway, and it does a ton of damage and is good at range. There's a shotgun you get later where the alternate fire turns it to like a vertical spread. So depending on the enemy that you're fighting, you can kind of think tactically. And the weapons all just feel really good and are very fun to use. I definitely have my favorites. On my best run, I had like an autocannon that was really incredible.

• 25:04Kirk Hamilton?

  I've found that there's a significant difference between the boss fights and the fights in the arenas. And I guess that's kind of worth teasing out a little bit here, explaining to people who haven't played the game. The boss fights, yeah, are almost this dance, you know, experience. Jason, I'm curious, when you beat Prophet, did you get to that final phase before beating the boss? Or was that, did you see the final phase like the first time when you were, when you got to it and then you beat the boss?

• 25:31Jason Schreier?

  Well, this will spoil something for Maddie, but the game's been out for a little while, so I'll just say, yeah, I... God, I beat the second phase with like a sliver of health yet. And I was like, fuck yeah, I did it. And then I immediately died.

• 25:49Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, the final phase is wicked.

• 25:50Jason Schreier?

  It was a nice, it was a nice little practical joke.

• 25:52Speaker 01

  That sounds a little bit more like, like an Elden Ring than, than, than otherwise. It's like the second gargoyle showing up or whatever.

• 25:59Kirk Hamilton?

  It kind of is. I mean, in the way that when you really learn a Souls fight, then when you finally learned it and you, you get almost to the end and die, you'll typically go back and beat it without getting hit at all. I was having that experience. I died, I think, twice on the boss. On the second time, I'd figured out all the moves and seen most of the phases. And then I got to that final phase. I still had my extra life and I was like cruising because it was that experience of, I know every move. I go left, I go right, now I jump, now I wait. Don't go to the sides because that's where the tall grass slows you down. And then the final phase is so cool and I won't totally describe what it is, but it's just like really, really intense. And it feels like Tetris effect. It feels like you're just like totally in the zone. I was like, oh my God.

• 26:41Kirk Hamilton?

  It was like absolute health and it was incredibly thrilling.

• 26:45Jason Schreier?

  I just want to say, I just want to say that I have died a lot more than six times.

• 26:50Speaker 01

  That's okay, it's fine. This is a safe space.

• 26:53Jason Schreier?

  I am way worse at this game than Kirk Hamilton is. Kirk says, oh, Jason, it's probably because you're watching TV. And I'm like, well, no. It's because I'm not quite as good as twitchy she is.

• 27:06Speaker 01

  In my case, I have elected not to watch TV while, while playing this.

• 27:10Jason Schreier?

  Right, yeah, for you.

• 27:11Speaker 01

  It is helping.

• 27:12Jason Schreier?

  Yeah.

• 27:12Speaker 01

  It does help.

• 27:13Jason Schreier?

  I just want to point out that there are some games that I, I am very good at. This is not one of them.

• 27:19Kirk Hamilton?

  That's fair. Let's talk a little about the difficulty and I can maybe explain a little bit about how I play. Cause yeah, I, it is funny. I think I play this game pretty well and I don't think of myself as being like a great Twitch player exactly, like a twitchy shooter player.

• 27:33Speaker 01

  Well, how are you at like Tetris effect and other, that kind of game? Cause I actually think that's an interesting comparison.

• 27:39Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I'm okay, but I'm not great. What I like about this game is that it allows, like, I think I, my strategic approach to these fights tends to be pretty effective. And it does feel very similar to Returnal to me. And that's just to keep moving. Like, yes, you want to use your shield kind of aggressively. It's nice that a lot of enemies will shoot blue, you know, blue projectiles, and then the projectiles will stick around for a little while, so you can go kind of mop them up with your shield.

• 28:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, like Pac-Man eating my dots. I love that.

• 28:08Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, it feels like Pac-Man, which is cool, and kind of charge up. But at the same time, you know, when I beat the first boss, I then went to the second area. I cleared the entire second area and got to the second boss, all on that same life. Like, I just kind of kept going, and it kept working out, because I was just playing, I guess, really mo, I was really moving. Like, you just run in circles. This game for me is just running in circles while shooting the game. And you never stop moving, and it's kind of just like, it's never as bad as I think it is, you know? Even when enemies warp in in the middle of a fight, and there's a kind of sub-boss chasing me around the room, it's never quite as bad as it seems. And if I just kind of slow down for a second while

• 28:49Kirk Hamilton?

  kind of holding the thumbstick forward, I'm usually okay. And I find that that mobility is the key, though, to staying alive.

• 28:56Speaker 01

  Hmm. That's good advice.

• 28:59Jason Schreier?

  I think I'm more aggressive than you, and maybe that's why I have died a lot more.

• 29:05Kirk Hamilton?

  You have to be smart about it. You have to make your choices as to when to be aggressive. And like, I don't like playing with a shotgun, for example, because it's really short range. And I vastly prefer a long-range weapon, where I can kind of keep something between me and every enemy. Like, the first sub-boss that you'll fight is just this big, huge bruiser dude who jumps at you and has a couple of kind of nuke attacks that'll do a lot of damage. He's so easy, if you just run in a circle and like, keep some element of the environment between you and him. And that's something I guess I just do instinctively from Returnal. I don't think it's some mind-blowing strategy. I'm sure a lot of people do this to game. The levels are designed to make you do that. But that's really crucial, I think, is to just move in circles around the edge of the room and try to keep your wits about you in.

• 29:49Kirk Hamilton?

  Terms of location. I also find, actually, I play this some on the TV and then mostly on a computer monitor. I find it way better on a computer monitor in part because you do have a minimap that isn't, you know, this isn't a game where you need a map to navigate exactly, but in combat, it's super helpful to look down. And it's kind of like Halo or whatever. You see red dots. And in some of those fights, especially later, when you're fighting a big beaver and they're pushing you around the room, suddenly ads will just spawn in. And if you're not paying attention, you can really lose a lot of health just because there's like a dude standing right behind you who starts shooting you that you didn't even realize was there. So looking at the map, I've found that's super helpful. And on the TV, it's like, the screen is a little too big.

• 30:30Kirk Hamilton?

  Like, there's too much to take in and it's so visually overwhelming and so easy to lose your head. And the minute you start to panic or get too excited, that's when you start taking damage and, and pretty quickly die.

• 30:42Speaker 01

  That's a good tip. I haven't been using the minimap in that way and I, I like that. I do, I will confess, you can also fall off a cliff in this game. I don't remember if fraternal involved that.

• 30:54Kirk Hamilton?

  Oh, yeah.

• 30:55Speaker 01

  But some of the times when I'm trying to do what I didn't know is the Kirk Hamilton method, which is simply run in circles. I agree, very effective. I have been known to simply fall off a cliff and immediately be like, well, I was going really great.

• 31:10Kirk Hamilton?

  Well, you don't die, to be clear.

• 31:12Speaker 01

  You just take a little bit of it.

• 31:13Kirk Hamilton?

  You just lose a chunk of health if you fall off a cliff.

• 31:14Speaker 01

  It is, it is personally humiliating though, so there's that.

• 31:19Speaker 01

  It's deflating.

• 31:20Kirk Hamilton?

  You're just psyched out and you can't, you can't get back on.

• 31:22Speaker 01

  I do feel like you kind of lose your momentum in a very literal sense if that happens to you. But I do, I agree with you. I think you're right that that focusing on movement, accepting that sometimes you will fall off a cliff. And in my case, I think I'm a little too scared of that as a possibility. But it's actually not that punishing. It just takes off like, I don't know, like a tiny hair of health, just as a mild punishment. It doesn't send you all the way back to the beginning. If it did that, that would be. Really tough. That would change the game. If it became like a 3D platformer in addition to everything else that is.

• 31:53Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, that would be brutal.

• 31:55Jason Schreier?

  Can we talk about the story for a second? Sure. So when I started this game, I was like, I was ready to be like invested in the story. I like Rahul Kohli. I like his performance. I really liked him in The Fall of the House of Usher.

• 32:10Jason Schreier?

  That show.

• 32:11Kirk Hamilton?

  Pretty silly, but pretty fun show.

• 32:13Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, very silly and very fun show. And I think he's a good actor and I was ready to get into the story, but like from the get go, it throws like 10 different characters at you, acts like you should care about them. It's like, oh no, we lost. I forget their names, but like this guy, oh no, we lost him. Oh no, this guy's going insane. Oh no, everyone's so sad. And it's just like, I have no idea what's going on. It's like the, this just awful sci-fi novel that I've just been thrown into immediately. There's really nothing to grab onto other than your main character looking for his wife, which I think would be a little more interesting if it weren't just stuffed with all these sci-fi tropes about people going madness because of space disease or whatever, which feels like every

• 32:57Jason Schreier?

  single sci-fi movie I've ever seen in my life. And again, I, from what I've gathered, the story does get more interesting later on as your main character, Arjun's kind of character is revealed more, but it does not start with a bang. I don't know how you guys felt, but I was just kind of ready to not even, I just stopped even doing dialogue in the home base with people just because it was so boring for me. I just had no reason to get into it. Plus the combat is, is a lot more fun. So I was just eager to get back into the gameplay.

• 33:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think the combat is definitely the star, but I'm saying that also having not gotten to the part of the story that is supposedly good. I think what's tough about it is that although I actually think the voice performances are really great across the board, the mocap, the motion capture is not. And typically, especially in that opening scene, the characters are, the voice actors are like fully bringing it. They sound so stressed out. They're like, how are you alive? Like, it's clear that Arjan is coming back from the dead and he's been missing for a long time. And they're like, have you succumbed to space madness? Are you about to kill all of us? They're freaking out as soon as they see you.

• 34:12Speaker 01

  But like, the actual character models are not matching that expressiveness. So like, that was kind of an issue that I noticed throughout where I'm like, okay, I guess they just chose not to have that be something that was super important. But it does mean that then I don't feel as connected to the characters. And instead, I'm like, okay, like, the voice performances are good here, but like, the characters themselves end up seeming more wooden than I think they deserve. That said, I, I didn't really mind the bit you highlighted, Jason, about the fact that it's all just proper nouns. I'm okay with that in a science fiction story. And if anything, I'd rather that than people trying to explain everything to me. And I sort of appreciated that they didn't.

• 34:54Speaker 01

  And that I was just dropped into the story and was like, okay, I don't really know what's going on, but I'll figure it out later. And that's, that's okay with me. That's how I prefer it.

• 35:05Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I kind, I generally agree. The setting, like, the setup is pretty familiar. Like I mentioned, it really does remind me of Event Horizon, that movie. Just the idea that something went wrong and now we've arrived to find out what. And it seems like, I think a lot of the twists feel fairly telegraphed to me in the broad strokes. Just what we're gonna, we're gonna find out some things about these early colonies. And I don't exactly know what, but it just seems like whatever it is.

• 35:34Speaker 01

  They'll be bad.

• 35:34Kirk Hamilton?

  Good. You know, we're on this planet where time doesn't function the way that we think it should. So that opens the door to all kinds of possibilities with like, who's really behind all this? And there are cut scenes. It's you in the past.

• 35:47Speaker 01

  I mean.

• 35:47Kirk Hamilton?

  Could be, it's something like, but right, you're kind of anticipating like, oh, this is gonna be that kind of a story, something like that. There are cut scenes with more motion capture.

• 35:57Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 35:57Kirk Hamilton?

  I just saw one, it was nice. And I think those are cool. I'm guessing this is just an issue of development resources and I understand why they would focus on some things rather than others. But yeah, you notice it when you're in the base and it's kind of just an actor's voice reading over a mostly static, you know, character model just sort of standing there. And I think that reduces the effect where. I mean, comparing this to Returnal, you can imagine a version of this game where Arjun is alone, at least for a while, and they maybe more gradually introduce the cast, and in particular, introduce characters who are more important to him, who we've, I've now met a couple, and like, built up those relationships a little, like, given

• 36:37Kirk Hamilton?

  me a little more time, and also had more time with Arjun, and maybe Primary. Primary is the name of the AI, which is this pretty cool, I mean, one of the things that this story has going for it is great art design. Everything looks cool as hell. And Primary is this like, monolith that floats in the center of your base, and it talks to you, it's really rude.

• 36:58Speaker 01

  I liked that. I thought that was a fun detail, to have the AI be-

• 37:02Kirk Hamilton?

  It's the, like, 23rd century bossware AI of this, this space corporation.

• 37:08Jason Schreier?

  It's the opposite of your pal in Pragmata, who's just like, ultra bubbly.

• 37:12Kirk Hamilton?

  Yes, very much, yes.

• 37:14Speaker 01

  It's the opposite of ChatGPT. It doesn't tell you what a great question you just had, or whatever.

• 37:17Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, it's the opposite of Diana. That's really funny.

• 37:21Jason Schreier?

  Oh, no, I meant, I didn't mean Da-, well, yes, Diana, but I meant the, the little, like, screen thing you get in your base in, in Pragmata, but Diana-

• 37:29Kirk Hamilton?

  Oh, yeah, that's a good point.

• 37:30Speaker 01

  That's true. I can't remember what that little guy's name is. He's adorable, too.

• 37:33Kirk Hamilton?

  I think his name is Cabin.

• 37:35Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, Cabin, yeah, that's it, yeah.

• 37:37Kirk Hamilton?

  Primary and Cabin should, should hang out.

• 37:39Speaker 01

  They would not get along.

• 37:41Jason Schreier?

  That should be a sitcom, Primary and Cabin. Could you imagine them being roommates? Oh, my gosh.

• 37:47Kirk Hamilton?

  I kind of could. Wow, the highters that would ensue.

• 37:49Jason Schreier?

  They would get up to. Be like BoJack and Mr. Peanut Butter.

• 37:52Kirk Hamilton?

  It would be. So, I think that if it were just Arjun for a while with Primary, and we spent some more time with him, that could maybe have been more effective. Then again, I also understand why Housemark would want to do something different. Celine in Returnal was all alone, and that was very effective, but it wasn't just that she was alone. So, early in Returnal, Celine is making her way through this alien planet, and then suddenly, there's a house, like an Earth house, just sitting there. You know, on the face of this planet. And then you go inside and it becomes like this first person game where you're walking through this house. And it's this memory, it seems clear it's a memory, but it's not clear of what. And like, it's got this like horrific kind of scary energy.

• 38:37Kirk Hamilton?

  And then you gradually re-experience that house and the house becomes like how Celine's backstory and the narrative is delivered. That's really cool. You know what I mean? That was the kind of thing that jumps out at you and that I still remember all these years later is the feeling of seeing a house and being like, what the hell? And going inside it. And I think that by comparison, there is, or I haven't come across anything yet in Saros that feels as immediately iconic and interesting and different. It's more, it's all very familiar. And I would imagine with more cutscenes, more time, really seeing the more expressive versions of these characters, and then learning the twists and turns, even if some of them are somewhat predictable, like I can imagine that eventually making it all feel more narratively interesting.

• 39:22Kirk Hamilton?

  But it does kind of, it doesn't grab me as nearly as much at the beginning.

• 39:25Jason Schreier?

  Uh huh. Worth noting, by the way, one of the big differences between this and Returnal is that in Returnal, if I remember correctly, you had to go through each biome every single time you started a loop. So like you died, you started all the way back at the beginning. You had to go through biome one, then biome two, then biome three, et cetera, which also gave you more of an opportunity to keep seeing that house and seeing new story stuff. In this, there is, you can, you just start at the new biome. So you beat biome one and then you can just start at the beginning of biome two. So very different type of structure, which I think also just kind of plays into the storytelling.

• 40:01Kirk Hamilton?

  I like this structure in general as a video game.

• 40:04Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, less, less repeating things.

• 40:06Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah. Yeah, and also it has a kind of a metroidvania feeling too, because this also happened in Returnal, but it's structured differently in this game where, you know, the first thing you unlock after beating that first boss is the ability to jump off of these pads. So when you're going through the first area, you'll see these latch points and it's like, okay, well, I'm going to get a grappling hook that will pull me up there. Or you'll see like a thing on the ground beneath a jump that you can't reach. And it's like, okay, well, clearly at some point I'm going Be able to trampoline off of that. So, once you start to get that, there's a reason to go back to the earlier worlds. You get more story, you find more, you know, like, audio logs. But also, you get more upgrades and you can kind of unlock more stuff. So, you do have an incentive to go back, but then also, you can just push forward, like you were saying, Jason.

• 40:51Kirk Hamilton?

  And then, you know, once you've unlocked the boss room, you can explore as much as you want to upgrade. It's kind of a risk because you might lose some health, but you're probably gonna get more powerful. And then you can just go straight to the boss and fight them whenever you want. And like, that kind of more empowering and slightly more like, player-friendly video game structure is definitely a point in this game's favor. I mean, I'm sure the two of you remember, listeners might not remember. A big thing with Returnal when it launched was that you couldn't stop playing in the middle of a run.

• 41:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was gonna bring that up.

• 41:20Kirk Hamilton?

  Or you would just have to restart.

• 41:21Speaker 01

  That was a huge issue.

• 41:23Kirk Hamilton?

  And the runs were freaking long.

• 41:24Speaker 01

  Then they became longer and longer the more you played.

• 41:27Kirk Hamilton?

  My finishing, I remember being like, I don't know, an hour in or something. And just being like, oh, man, you know, up to the final boss or whatever, and just kind of couldn't stop playing. And of course, people have all kinds of reasons that they need to stop playing games. This was a huge problem.

• 41:40Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, I complained about this quite a lot because I had a, my kid was like, two, one and a half or two at that point, my oldest kid.

• 41:48Kirk Hamilton?

  Yes, and this was clearly a lesson Housemark learned. They added that function to Returnal.

• 41:52Jason Schreier?

  Right, they patched it in, yeah.

• 41:54Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, and this game is much more player-friendly. In that way, you know, we talked about getting the extra life in Returnal. That was always something you would find, and if you played thoroughly, you would typically find what was called an astronaut. And that was your extra life, which was very nice to have, but you had to find it on each run. In this game, you just have one. Like, I have an extra life all the time, which feels incredibly luxurious. And then, as we've mentioned as well, you can actually unlock modifiers for the planet itself after the second boss. And like, make the game way too easy for yourself, I think, if you want to just plow through it and see the story. So, it's a way more approachable game. My guess is that that's because probably some terrifying, small percentage of people actually finished Returnal.

• 42:37Kirk Hamilton?

  And Housemark was like, well, it would be nice if people actually finished their game and saw the whole thing.

• 42:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:42Kirk Hamilton?

  So, I'm assuming that's kind of where they're coming from.

• 42:44Jason Schreier?

  I wonder how many people didn't finish Returnal because of the challenge versus didn't finish it because of the repetition? Because having to start from scratch was a drag.

• 42:54Speaker 01

  Or just the fact that you couldn't reasonably play the PS5 and have other people in your household who might want to play the PS5, like suspending Returnal in the middle of a run and being like, well, now I can't use the PS5 and just having that unfriendliness of saving it, that lack of user friendliness is such a prohibitive aspect that kind of has nothing to do with difficulty and is like a user friendliness issue.

• 43:18Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I wonder. I think it gets back to something we talked about when we talked about different types of difficulty on the show where this game is difficult in that pure mechanical way. It just is mechanically difficult. But then Returnal was a much more emotionally difficult game because of the length of the runs, the amount of lost progress, the daunting feeling of having had an insanely good build and everything you needed and then having screwed up or worse, having that power go out.

• 43:46Speaker 01

  Oh, God.

• 43:47Kirk Hamilton?

  You lose your progress.

• 43:48Speaker 01

  It's even worse.

• 43:49Kirk Hamilton?

  Where in this game, the emotional difficulty is significantly lower, which is nice, though also just different. I'm sure some people prefer Returnal. And in some ways, to me, actually, Returnal does still feel like a more pure execution of the kind of central idea here. It's interesting. The other week, we were talking about video game sequels. Jason and you had said, I hope the Pragmata team doesn't do a sequel. I hope they do something new. And I was like, well, but video game sequels are really cool because it's this kind of, it's an opportunity for a team to have really dialed in what they were making and then iterate on it. I think that very clearly happened here. The developers at Housemark have talked about how this was like a pretty, pretty good development

• 44:33Kirk Hamilton?

  cycle and they had all the pieces in place. So they knew what they were doing already. At the same time, you can see how refining something in some ways, it's not lesser, but it is a little, I don't know, it's not quite as pure. It doesn't quite have something that Returnal had. So you can iterate and improve in a lot of ways. And this is a fantastic game. And yet you can still also lose something in that process, which is something worth paying attention to and just kind of noticing.

• 45:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, isn't this kind of the best case scenario where, like Jason said, they should make something totally different and creative after Pragmata? And they've kind of done that here by having a game that's in the spirit of Returnal, but it is completely different.

• 45:14Kirk Hamilton?

  That's a good point. It is its own thing. It's its own story, but it is also kind of returnal, too.

• 45:19Speaker 01

  It's also kind of a returnal at the same time.

• 45:22Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, I feel like I want to chew on that one and think about the differences.

• 45:27Kirk Hamilton?

  Yes, it's an idea I want to throw out, especially, I want to throw it out and I want to throw it out from the place of having played 30% of the game. And I do plan to keep playing this. Every time I'm playing it, I'm just like, woo, I'm having a great time. So I think I'll probably stick with it and at least get to that eighth death. And then I think by the end, I'll have an even stronger idea of that. But it is, I think, actually just really neat that we get these two very similar and yet different games from the same team to kind of just compare and contrast them and understand how their creative process has changed and how they approached the second crack a little differently than the first one.

• 46:03Jason Schreier?

  Yeah.

• 46:03Speaker 01

  It's funny that the eighth death is what you're trying to get to, like that.

• 46:08Kirk Hamilton?

  Man, it's gonna be a load off. It's been kind of stressing me out, this whole seven deaths Hamilton thing. It's hanging over me.

• 46:15Speaker 01

  You gotta just kill yourself a couple of times. It doesn't matter that much.

• 46:18Kirk Hamilton?

  I should just maybe go jump off a cliff a couple dozen times.

• 46:21Speaker 01

  You'd have to jump off a cliff a lot of times to die is the issue.

• 46:24Kirk Hamilton?

  Poor Arjun. He's like, what are you doing? I'm like, well, look, I make a podcast, all right? He's like, I don't know what a podcast is. It's been a long time since we had this.

• 46:33Speaker 01

  It's like an audio log.

• 46:34Kirk Hamilton?

  It's like an audio log. All right, well, that is Saros, a very cool game for the PlayStation 5. It's out now. And let's take a break and then we'll be back for one more thing.

• 47:14Speaker 03

  This year, we've decided to send the proceeds of the charity sale to the Center for Constitutional Rights. They're dedicated to the creative use of law as a positive force for social change, tackling issues like human rights abuses, racial injustice, and sexual and gender-based violence. These folks are fighting to make things better. So to get your keychains and support the Center for Constitutional Rights, head to maximumfun.org/charietsale. And if you're not yet a member, you can still get in on this. To support the show you're listening to and get access to bonus content and the charity sale, just click the link in the show notes. The sale is live now, and it ends on Friday, May 15. That's maximumfun.org/charietsale. And thanks again.

• 48:00Speaker 04

  Say, what's the trivia show where dreams come true?

• 48:03Speaker 05

  It's gotta be Go Fact Yourself! Legend in the house!

• 48:07Speaker 04

  We quiz celebrity contestants about topics they love.

• 48:11Speaker 05

  Then bring out surprise experts.

• 48:13Speaker 04

  To delight and amaze. And then finally, tell us why you know and love the lyrics to the song "Knockin' Boots" by Candyman.

• 48:19Speaker 05

  Joining us tonight is a rapper and producer. It's Candyman!

• 48:26Speaker 04

  This is among the greatest moments of my life.

• 48:30Speaker 04

  This is one of mine, too. I'm loving it.

• 48:31Speaker 05

  That's Go Fact Yourself.

• 48:33Speaker 04

  Twice a month, every month.

• 48:35Speaker 05

  Here on Maximum Fun.

• 48:39Kirk Hamilton?

  And we are back for one more thing. I'm gonna go first. My one more thing is a piece of hardware that I teased on the stream last week. It is the Steam Controller, the new controller from Valve. Valve sent me one of these, I should say. So I've had it for about a week, even though it just came out on Monday. And I've had a chance to play around with it with a few different games and kind of put it through its paces, though I have not been as thorough as some of the reviews that are out there. If you look around on YouTube, you will find no shortage of reviews of people who have really tested this thing out, because it is a kind of deceptively simple piece of hardware. It's actually quite complex. There's a lot that you can do with it. I really like the Steam Controller. I think it's very, very cool. That shouldn't come as a surprise.

• 49:24Kirk Hamilton?

  Anyone listening to the show will know I love the Steam Deck and I love the controls on the Steam Deck in particular, the way that the Steam Deck allows you to reprogram and reimagine the controls for any game. There are two touchpads on the front, which are also on the Steam Controller, and Steam Valve has created a software overlay Steam Input that allows for really complex and you can really get deep on designing multi-touch options and building macros in and using the combination keyboard and controller. It's an incredible software interface built to support this hardware. So I really like it and that shouldn't come as a surprise. But I figured I'd talk about it a little

• 50:08Kirk Hamilton?

  bit, just because I've been using it and it's new and exciting. So yeah, to explain it to people who have never seen a Steam Controller or a Steam Deck or anything, it feels basically like a PlayStation controller. It has the parallel thumbsticks, two triggers, shoulder buttons, face buttons, the usual. And then it has two trackpads, these little square trackpads that are below the thumbsticks that you can slide your thumbs down onto, and it has four underbuttons, which are four little buttons you press with your middle and ring fingers on each hand. No wonder you love it. It has four underbuttons. Wow. I love it, man. Well, the older I get, the more I watch out for my thumbs, man, and like jamming my thumbs on face buttons. The main game I've been playing with this

• 50:50Kirk Hamilton?

  is Diablo 4, and I like to play that game with a controller, but I have all of my abilities, my facebutton abilities mapped to those underbuttons. It's so much better for my hands. I really feel like this is a real health thing for me, more than fluidity with gameplay or anything. It's just taking care of my hands, and I do really like that. Another thing that this controller has, though, in addition to all those buttons, is it has remarkable gyro options. And that is something that I think is a little underexplored, certainly underexplored by me, but a really cool part of using this controller. I was playing some Cyberpunk and remembering playing that on the Steam Deck and having a similar kind of a setup, something very cool that both the Steam Deck and the Steam Controller have.

• 51:34Kirk Hamilton?

  Talk about the controller, I guess, since that's what I'm talking about here. The thumbsticks are capacitive. They're TMR, I think it's called, thumbsticks, which are the really good ones that don't do the thumbstick drift that people are running into all the time on different controllers. I'm not sure if they're hall effect. I get kind of some of those terms mixed up, but they're really good and they're very reliable. And they're also capacitive. So when you place your thumbs on the thumbstick, that counts as an input. The thumbstick knows that you've touched it, even if you haven't done anything. So something I would do on Steam Deck and that I now like to do just for fun with the Steam controller is when I place my right thumb on the right thumbstick, it activates gyro aiming. So basically, anytime you're getting ready to move the thumbstick, you can move the

• 52:19Kirk Hamilton?

  controller instead for more precise aim. Or, something I've also done, when I'm pressing the right thumbstick and I press the left trigger. So basically, when you pop into like aiming down sights mode, only then it activates gyro aiming. So you can get a kind of a fine tuned aim. And then there are, of course, all kinds of sliders and faders. You can adjust like the granularity of the gyro aiming. So you can just get a little bit of like extra movement. It's the kind of thing that if you practice with it a lot, you can really come up with like a kind of weird new way of playing that's incredibly specific to how you like to play. And those kinds of controls make it possible. I think that stuff is really cool.

• 52:57Jason Schreier?

  I'm really enjoying how excited you get over the minutia of a controller.

• 53:03Speaker 01

  It's very endearing.

• 53:04Kirk Hamilton?

  I really love it.

• 53:04Jason Schreier?

  By the way, I tried to buy one of these and couldn't.

• 53:07Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I've heard they're sold out. I'm sure they'll turn up eventually.

• 53:10Jason Schreier?

  Well, no, it wasn't that they were sold out. It's that 30 seconds after they went live, the credit card payment just borked and nobody got it. I had to like hit refresh 50 times and still couldn't get one. So now I just don't have one.

• 53:22Kirk Hamilton?

  Memories of buying a Steam Deck. And now they're sold out, right? Oh, I'm sure they'll make more.

• 53:26Jason Schreier?

  They were sold out like 20 minutes after it went live. Nobody could buy one.

• 53:29Kirk Hamilton?

  I gotta say, I mean, I do love this stuff. I think that human interface is just really cool. I've always been interested in the different ways that we interact with technology and video games are such a cool type of technology. Like, I really do love to see people experiment. And I really appreciate how Valve allows such an open-ended approach from players. The Steam controller also has, it can sense, I think, when you're gripping it. So there's also like some kind of capacitive thing on the side of the controller. And all of this stuff is accessible separately, so you can build all these just crazy things if you want for different games. And while some of that is, you know, this is designed to support the Steam machine, which they're going to launch at some point, which I think will, like this,

• 54:13Kirk Hamilton?

  be a more interesting piece of hardware than it maybe seems, like than just a desktop PC, partly because of the hardware integration and the way that their software like will support playing on a TV. But this is definitely designed for like mouse and keyboard support if you want to play with your Steam machine on TV. But also, there's just little stuff, you know, like the gyro aiming I was talking about, like building radials that just allow you to easily quick save or go to the map. If you get creative or even just look around YouTube or wherever, you'll see people doing a lot of cool stuff that isn't totally reimagining a control scheme. It's more just, what's a cool way I can make this a little more fun or a little more easy or a little more streamlined for me to play? And I really like that they make that kind of thing possible. So I'm a fan of it.

• 54:58Kirk Hamilton?

  I would say if you already have a good controller, it's certainly not essential. You know, especially if you're not playing like mouse and keyboard games on the couch. I mean, that's the thing it would really be good for. It's 100 bucks, that's not cheap. Most controllers have just gotten more expensive. I love controllers, I like buying them. I would have bought one of these if Valve hadn't sent me one, but that's me. I think for most people, if you've already got like a DualSense that you like or a Switch, the Switch controller, the Pro Controller 2, which is a fantastic controller, like this isn't a better controller than that just as a straight up pair of thumbsticks with buttons and triggers. But if you're into this kind of thing and you mostly play PC games, and especially if you want to play mouse and keyboard games, then for sure, it's worth looking into. Because it's really neat.

• 55:43Kirk Hamilton?

  And I guess my final thought is, even if you don't get a Steam controller, if you play a lot of games on Steam with a controller, look into Steam input a little bit more and explore. Or what you can do with it because a lot of the stuff I'm describing can actually just be done through steam input. Steam input can access like the back buttons on a DualSense Edge. It can get at a lot of the special functions of a given controller. And you can build a lot of cool custom control schemes for yourself. If you just put a little bit of thought into it and maybe find a much more comfortable and and empowering way to play a game, even with a non steam controller. So steam input is also very cool. All right, so that's me. Let's keep going. Maddie, how about you? Let's hear about your one more thing.

• 56:28Speaker 01

  My one more thing is an extremely cool docu- documentary that Deena and I watched. It's called Secrets of the Bees. It's a National Geographic documentary. It's on Hulu. Bees, as in bees, as in the buzzing, as in it's.

• 56:43Kirk Hamilton?

  Joe's not on board.

• 56:44Speaker 01

  It's, yeah. Okay, so I found out right before we recorded this that James Cameron produced this documentary, which makes sense because it is so.

• 56:55Speaker 01

  It revolves entirely around the use of these extraordinarily tiny cameras. It just feels like the kind of thing that James Cameron would be a huge dork about.

• 57:03Kirk Hamilton?

  He does love cool future cameras.

• 57:05Speaker 01

  He does love cool future cameras and the results are so, so cool. So they have placed these tiny, tiny cameras. I can't even imagine how tiny, given the shots that they are capable of getting of the beehives in this documentary. Inside these hives, it's incredible and it is hosted by this just super excited, endearing British man who's just loves bees and like his energy is infectious. It does, it really changes just the kind of vibe of the documentary. You're just like smiling with this guy the entire time and you're like, I can't believe how much I'm learning about bees. If you think you know a lot about bees, and I feel like I know, I learned so much from this documentary and my wife.

• 57:47Speaker 01

  Who majored in biology and is a gardener also was repeatedly turning to me and being like, I had no idea bees could do this. I don't want to like quote unquote spoil things in this documentary because it was that fun to watch it. And it's like, you know, it's Nat Geo, so it's pretty family friendly, obviously, as long as you don't have a child who's afraid of bees. But to just kind of like describe some of the things, they do interview a scientist in this documentary who's working on just various kind of games to make bees play, like that they can solve complex puzzles via these little games, like these mazes, like you sort of picture like a mouse going through a maze and solving puzzles. They're doing that with bees. The bees are smart. I don't know. You leave with a bunch of respect for bees.

• 58:32Jason Schreier?

  Oh, yeah.

• 58:32Speaker 01

  I think bees are already so cool.

• 58:33Jason Schreier?

  The bees are solving puzzles.

• 58:34Speaker 01

  They are, and it's adorable. And you end up being like, bees are cute.

• 58:38Jason Schreier?

  The bees are all playing blueprints.

• 58:39Speaker 01

  And I love bees. I don't know. I liked bees anyway. I'm always rooting for bees. And so the documentary making the argument that they're deeply, deeply important to climates everywhere and showing beehives and all the different species of bees around the world, because there are bees around the world, but they're all slightly different and have different habitats and habits and kind of different types of intelligence that they exhibit. That was really fascinating, but I didn't really need to be convinced of that. Mostly what I thought was so cool was these freaking microscopic cameras and the shots that they were getting of like bees' entire life cycles. It was just really fascinating. So it's called Secrets of the Bees. It's on Hulu and I guess also Disney Plus now that those are the same company. I don't, I don't know, whatever. You'll find it if you got

• 59:23Speaker 01

  one of those two apps. It's good. It's really good. I'm 1,000% gonna watch this. This sounds amazing. You will love it. It is so, it just leaves you with a cool feeling. Like, we were just talking about the bee documentary for like four days. Amazing. I can't wait.

• 59:39Jason Schreier?

  I like, I like how James Cameron is just like, I'm gonna make Avatar movies and discover bees.

• 59:45Speaker 01

  Literally? And explore the bottom of the ocean. I love that. I love that he is so into the natural world. It makes me have so much respect for him and the vast resources that he has accrued from being a wildly successful director. And that he's just like, I'm just gonna contribute that to microscopic cameras and also undersea technology. Like, that is incredibly cool and we all get to reap the benefits.

• 1:00:11Jason Schreier?

  Love it.

• 1:00:11Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I agree. I can't wait to watch this. Jason, what's your one more thing?

• 1:00:16Jason Schreier?

  So I was trying to decide between two books for this one that I read recently and loved, both of which I loved deeply. One of them was London Calling by Patrick Radden Keefe, which I will not talk about because that book has gotten plenty of attention elsewhere. So instead, I will talk about one that deserves more attention. But if you're curious, London Calling is really friggin' good. And maybe I'll talk about it down the road. So I want to talk about a book called Like This. Kirk is shaking his head. Kirk is furious. You pulled a Kirk Hamilton and did two more things.

• 1:00:49Jason Schreier?

  My one more thing is a book called Like This But Funnier by Holly Cantor. And this book is about what it's like to be a writer in Hollywood, kind of in the tone of Hacks on HBO, a show that we all enjoy. And it's about this woman, this TV writer named Caroline Newman, who is kind of like in a career rut. She's been going through development on these shows. And development is this kind of torturous process where you're trying to get a show made and you're not actually getting paid for it. And you're just waiting for executives to say yes to you. And she's married to this therapist. And she winds up like accidentally, sort of accidentally, hint, hint, wink, wink,

• 1:01:30Jason Schreier?

  accidentally stumbling upon her husband's notes about this client of his named the teacher, who has some fantasies about murdering her students' parents. And Caroline, our protagonist, decides to just pitch that as a character in a TV show and through a hilarious comedy of errors, that winds up becoming like escalating and becoming the thing that she sells to the executives and they wind up loving it. And we see this show continue to make traction. And of course, she cannot tell her husband anything about it because she stole his notes. Then she, because this is a book about a woman who just makes terrible decisions and

• 1:02:12Jason Schreier?

  sabotages her life, then she decides that as research, she will finagle a way to meet this client, the teacher, and befriend her. Which, as you might imagine, leads to some, some issues. This book is incredible. It's hilarious. It's very entertaining. And it's a perfect, just pitch perfect send up of Hollywood and has so many rings of truth to it in just kind of like this capturing of what it's actually like to work in the world of TV and TV writing. There's this incredible sequence. There's some, a decent amount of like epistolary stuff in here. And there's a, this incredible sequence of emails towards the end of the book where everybody is, is exchanging

• 1:02:57Jason Schreier?

  emails about all these different things. And I won't get into the specifics, but there's one part where like all these assistants are just listing dates for like putting together drinks. And they're all just going back and forth over and over again about, oh, we can't do this one, can't do this one. Okay. Here's some other ones. And it's just written in this pitch perfect tone that is so very Hollywood. And it winds up being four months before they can actually get a date that works for anyone. It's just like, here are some options. 314 at 2pm, 316 at 5pm, 317 at 2pm. But, but, uh, but so and so has to duck out early for, uh, for her kid's soccer practice. And it's just incredible. But anyway, this book, if you like hacks, if you like anything that's kind of like insider Hollywood stuff,

• 1:03:37Jason Schreier?

  you will really enjoy this. The author, Holly Cantor, she, uh, wrote for Arrested Development and Inside Amy Schumer and a bunch of other stuff. So she's got, uh, legit, legit bona fide credentials. And her husband in real life is also a therapist. So as you're reading this, you get to kind of, the other fun part of this is just trying to decide to yourself and imagine how much of this story is true to real life or not. Very highly recommend this book. It's so fun and so true and so real and such a wreck. I guess the one downside is that the ending is a little bit abrupt, uh, but other than, I mean, it's just such a fun ride that like,

• 1:04:21Jason Schreier?

  it's the type of book that when I finished reading it, I immediately wanted to read it again. So once again, it is called Like This But Funnier by Holly Cantor. I think has gone pretty severely underappreciated. I haven't seen it get too much buzz out there. So hopefully some TC listeners go and check it out because it's very, very funny and very, very cool.

• 1:04:41Speaker 01

  Awesome. It sounds great.

• 1:04:42Kirk Hamilton?

  Are you both watching the new season of Hacks?

• 1:04:44Speaker 01

  We save it until we have all of it because

• 1:04:47Kirk Hamilton?

  Is it over yet?

• 1:04:48Speaker 01

  That's how we do things in our household.

• 1:04:49Kirk Hamilton?

  It's not done yet. It's still going. No, it's not done yet. It's good. Though apparently they go on The Amazing Race on the upcoming episode, which I haven't seen yet, like Caitlin Olson and Deborah Vance. The episode is called The Amazing Race,

• 1:05:00Speaker 01

  Amazing.

• 1:05:01Kirk Hamilton?

  Like D apostrophe, which is, I'm incredibly excited for.

• 1:05:04Speaker 01

  I'm glad Caitlin Olson is back again.

• 1:05:07Kirk Hamilton?

  It's great. What a good show. That book sounds awesome. It sounds a little bit, well, not subject matter wise, but the epistolary stuff sounds like Where'd You Go Bernadette? Which was my one more thing a little while ago. Those just hilarious emails between people that, I don't know, writing fake emails. I could imagine writing a whole book that way and it would never get old, like, just because we've all written so many friggin' emails in our lives that we're all, we're very good at parodying them. Did I tell you that I, I found that book in the, in my office and pulled it up? It's on my nightstand, waiting to be read. Where'd you go? Oh man, well, you will enjoy it. I will check it out. It's on my to read pile. It will make you laugh and laugh. All right. Well, that's it for this episode of Triple Click. As always, thank you all for listening. Thanks to all of our members for supporting us.

• 1:05:51Kirk Hamilton?

  Hope you're all enjoying the bonus episodes and enjoying the spring. It's gonna be a pretty cool spring for video games. There's like some pretty interesting stuff out and some pretty interesting stuff coming out. I've been digging 2026 in video games so far, I gotta say. So it's been fun to, to take the journey with the two of you and then with all of our listeners. So thanks as always to everyone for listening.

• 1:06:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure. Very good year so far.

• 1:06:15Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, and I'll see you both next time. Yeah, see you next time.

• 1:06:20Speaker 01

  Bye.

• 1:06:23Kirk Hamilton?

  Triple Click is produced by Jason Schreier, Maddy Myers, and me, Kirk Hamilton. I edit and mix the show and also wrote our theme music. Our show art is by Tom DJ. Some of the games and products we talked about on this episode may have been sent to us for free for review consideration. You can find a link to our ethics policy in the show notes. Triple Click is a proud member of the Maximum Fun Podcast Network. And if you like our show, we hope you'll consider supporting us by becoming a member at maximumfun.org/join. Email us at [email protected] and find links to our merch store and our Discord server in the show notes. Thanks for listening. See you next time.

• 1:07:21Jason Schreier?

  Maximum Fun. A worker-owned network. Of artist-owned shows. Supported. Directly. By you.