Silksong, Metal Gear Solid, Mafia, And More

Jason, Kirk, and Maddy react to the news that Silksong will be out very soon, then talk about some of the games they've been playing, including Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater, Mafia: The Old Country, and more.

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

• 0:04Speaker 00

  Snake, are you trying to save your game? If you're interested in games, you might try listening to a podcast called Triple Click. This is Triple Click, where we bring the games to you, such as Metal Gear Solid Delta Snake Eater, which we all played, plus some other games like Mafia: The Old Country, Wagon Tabi, and Gears of War Reloaded.

• 0:30Speaker 00

  I'm Maddy Myers.

• 0:31Kirk Hamilton?

  I'm Jason Schreier. And I'm Kirk Hamilton, and hello.

• 0:34Speaker 00

  Hello.

• 0:35Kirk Hamilton?

  Hello, my friends.

• 0:36Speaker 00

  We're back.

• 0:37Kirk Hamilton?

  Dental plan: Kirk needs braces. Dental plan: Kirk needs braces. I got braces. I'm finally fixing my teeth. I'll be able to chew food for the first time in many years. I'm excited about it. Congratulations.

• 0:48Speaker 00

  I can't believe we're revealing this on the show. I wasn't sure if we were supposed to talk about it. I mean, it's so, it's so personal. It's so intimate to reveal that Kirk has braces. People can't see him.

• 0:58Kirk Hamilton?

  It's so intimate that I have these things on my teeth that everyone can see.

• 1:01Speaker 00

  But the listener can't see them. The listener doesn't know. But if the listener did want to learn even more about us than they ordinarily could, then they might want to get access to a monthly bonus episode. And there's only one way to do that, and that would be to become a MaxFun member. You gotta go to maximumfun.org/join, and then you get our monthly bonus episodes. Some of those are about our personal lives. We did a deep questions one a while back, but usually it's us spilling the beans, AKA spoiling a game we all played, or a show we all watched, or a movie. And this one that's coming up next is actually gonna be a Beans Cast for Ocarina of Time,

• 1:45Speaker 00

  which we have all played and almost have all beaten, completed, seen Gannon's Castle, saved Zelda from his clutches, et cetera. So we're gonna talk about it and everything that happens in between.

• 2:00Kirk Hamilton?

  And we should say that will be out a little bit into September.

• 2:02Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's true.

• 2:03Kirk Hamilton?

  That'll be like a couple of days into September.

• 2:05Speaker 00

  But it's coming. It's coming soon. And yeah.

• 2:08Kirk Hamilton?

  And it'll be worth it. It'll be worth the wait.

• 2:09Speaker 00

  Maximumfun.org/join is where you would go to become a member, and it's very much worth not only the wait, but becoming a part of our wonderful network of supporters, because that's how we do what we do. And then we have something a little special to present today. Jason, you wanna explain what that is?

• 2:26Kirk Hamilton?

  Kirk here. Just with a little note, something that you've probably noticed is that there is some construction going on on Matty's building during this episode. I edited around most of it. It shouldn't be too much of an issue, but you will hear some sawing, some hammering. You will hear some sounds. It's gonna be okay. There's not too much of it. So sorry about that, and hopefully it will not be an issue next week. But I just wanted to give you a heads up that that's what you're hearing. All right, here's Jason. Bing.

• 2:54Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, one thing on Ocarina, real quick, is that we're not gonna be doing another episode in the main feed. So this is gonna be our next big thing, is us talking fully about the entire game after we've all finished it. It will be exclusive to bonus subscriber, or to max one subscribers, supporters of the show. For a little while, I think at some point, we'll throw it on the main feed, maybe in a few months. So if people want to hear all that whole discussion. It won't be paywall permanently, but it will be, it will go first to people who support the show. Yeah, a couple of things we should talk about up top. First of all, a couple of weeks ago, we were talking about AI, which is always, always a fun topic to wade into.

• 3:33Kirk Hamilton?

  So fun. By fun topic, you mean a huge mistake. Yeah. No, it was fine. No, I'm kidding. I think we had actually a really interesting conversation about it.

• 3:41Jason Schreier?

  No, it will, this will not be the last time, because unlike, like, previous, there have been some fads in the past that have kind of been flashes in the pan, NFTs, Metaverse, etc. This has some traction. This has some staying power. We will be talking about it more in the future, and hopefully approaching it with a nuanced, kind of like, fair-minded approach. I don't know, without being afraid to kind of talk trash about the shit that doesn't work and all the mistakes it makes. But hopefully bringing some nuance to the conversation. Yeah, yeah, I think so. All that said, a couple of weeks ago, we were talking about it, and I kind of got in over my skis. Is that the expression? Where I was

• 4:22Jason Schreier?

  talking some, I made the mistake of talking about things instead of asking people about things, which I'm much better at doing. And so I was talking to a buddy of ours, friend of the show Brett DuVille, and he was like, hey, let me kind of correct and And clear up a few things about the way AI works when it writes code and how it takes code from, how it takes ideas from all of the internet, the way that a lot of these AI programs work, where they're just kind of stealing data from all across the internet, and how it kind of funnels that into the code that you see outputted on screen. So we actually got Brett to record a brief clip, which we will play right now. Here is Brett.

• 5:03Speaker 03

  Hello, Brett Duvall here, longtime video game programmer and currently the Technical Director of Twin Suns Corp, also co-host of the Dev Game Club podcast. I just wanted to briefly comment on Jason's remarks about generative AI creation of code in last week's Mailbag. It's inaccurate to say that code generation by LLMs just follows the rules of C++. In fact, LLMs generate code in the same way as they generate a natural language like English, by predictive next token approach, that is, by generating the next word-like object. Often, it generates uninspiring but functional code, just as it tends to generate uninspiring but functional English. In experimenting with LLMs as an aid to coding, I found them helpful to give me a starting point, because they have digested large APIs, which are the interfaces

• 5:48Speaker 03

  programmers use to use other programmers' code. Once I have that starting point, I'll use that to find either the documentation I need, or to browse through the source code directly. While it might give me a good general idea of where to look, it's often wrong in the specifics, and it can fall prey to some of the same sorts of errors that it does in other domains, such as hallucinations. As an experiment, earlier this year, I used an LLM to create a pretty specific tool in Python inside the Unreal Engine. I'd like that hour or two back, for sure, not just because it kept getting things wrong, but because if I had done it myself, I would have come out with another problem-solving tool in my bag, because that's what engineering actually is: solving problems, not writing code. Writing code is just one of

• 6:29Speaker 03

  the tools. And this is what I worry about most in wide-scale adoption of LLMs to generate code. They will lead to a workforce who lack the mental tools to evaluate what is generated. We already have a problem with software quality and security, and LLMs seem likely to make that problem much worse, because they've been trained on that poor-quality code, and will be evaluated by people who can't write, or even conceive of, better code. I hate the idea of losing a generation of young programmers who would be better served by mentors. When it comes to games, programming is one part of the creative collaboration that leads to fun. If I can wax a little poetic, it's part of what makes games human, another voice in our little chorus that makes our art. Just as a reader, I can't imagine being

• 7:12Speaker 03

  interested in a novel written by an LLM. As a small G gamer, I'm not interested in playing games with parts of its humanity removed. Thanks for the podcast. It remains a highlight of my week. I look forward to your next East Coast live show. Please stay out of any spider mansions until then.

• 7:31Jason Schreier?

  Thank you, Brett. Thanks for clearing that up.

• 7:33Speaker 00

  Yay.

• 7:34Jason Schreier?

  In the future, we will just bring on people who are smarter than us instead of trying to do these things ourselves.

• 7:39Speaker 00

  It's a good idea.

• 7:41Jason Schreier?

  One other thing we should talk about before we start getting into the games of August, the games that we've been playing recently.

• 7:48Speaker 03

  I'm vibrating over here.

• 7:52Speaker 00

  Buzzing like a bug? Yeah, yeah.

• 7:57Jason Schreier?

  Seven years ago, a podcast called Kotaku Split Screen started getting into a little game called Hollow Knight, and I think got a lot of people into it along the way. And somewhere in there, somewhere in the last seven years, it has become like a bona fide cultural phenomenon. Hollow Knight's sequel, Silk Song, is coming out next week. It was just announced while we were on vacation.

• 8:22Speaker 00

  NBD. It's coming out next week. Who cares?

• 8:25Speaker 03

  Can we just sit with that sentence? Hollow Knight Silk Song is coming out next week. That's a true sentence that you just said on our podcast.

• 8:32Speaker 00

  Finally.

• 8:33Jason Schreier?

  It's not a shadow drop. So we had thought that it might be because the Switch version of Hollow Knight was shadow dropped. So we thought this even might be. It was not.

• 8:41Speaker 00

  We've even predicted in the past at various points year over year, we've predicted.

• 8:46Speaker 03

  I'm glad it's not a shadow drop. This is perfect, having two weeks to get really excited, but not that, because shadow drops can be kind of stressful. You're like, oh, God, I guess I have to go play this right now. You're in the middle of something. This way, we have just enough time to get excited, but it's so soon that it feels like it's right around the corner.

• 9:02Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, I'm so excited that I actually went and replayed like the first hour of Hollow Knight up till playing Hornet, and you can beat Hornet. And be like, now I'm really getting in the mood by watching her moves in this first boss fight.

• 9:12Speaker 00

  She's so cool.

• 9:14Kirk Hamilton?

  She like stuns over you over and over in that fight.

• 9:16Jason Schreier?

  It's very exciting. I actually, I spoke to Team Cherry's co-founders, William Pellet and Ari Gibson, a couple of weeks ago for a story on Bloomberg and was very pleasantly surprised when I talked to them. Cause I reached out to them and I was like, hey, do you guys want to talk about the development of Silk Song? It's been so long. And they were like, yeah, let's chat. And so we set a video call and I was chatting with them and I was like so shocked when they were like, yeah, there were no issues. Like we just had a really good time making this game. It was just super fun to work on.

• 9:44Kirk Hamilton?

  It's so funny, you know, I, I interviewed those two guys for Kotaku Split Screen way back in the day. And reading your interview, which is wonderful and people should go read it. We'll link it in show notes. Just reminded me of that interview too, where at the time as well, then it wasn't quite, I'm talking to the, you know, the guys behind this cultural phenomenon, but it was, I'm talking to the people who made this unbelievable work of game design brilliance that I loved. And, and it was just striking how they're like these chill dudes in Adelaide, just hanging out, making games for fun. And then they just happened to make a masterpiece.

• 10:17Jason Schreier?

  It's very funny. I mean, you, I'm, I'm like watching them. We're, we're on a Google video call. And like the backgrounds of their office are just like these ugly avocado colored walls. There's no art. Like they don't do anything. They were telling me they don't do anything. Well, at least Ari doesn't do anything but work on this game. Like he just goes home and then comes into the office and works on this game. William has kids, so he does do other things other than work on the game, but he also is just like, so they're both so devoted to it. And the key is that they both have so much fun, like the process of making the art is so enjoyable to them, which I think is not the case for a lot of artists, even great artists and great writers and great musicians. Like the process can be torturous for a lot of people, but for them, and they almost seemed in shock when they told me,

• 11:01Jason Schreier?

  they were like, somehow we've just stumbled upon this development methodology that is just so joyful for us. And we don't know how we did it and we don't want to change the formula in any, any way by adding people or changing how we do things because we don't want to ruin the fun for ourselves.

• 11:16Speaker 00

  That's adorable.

• 11:17Jason Schreier?

  You can tell that. I mean, Having that conversation, I left thinking, oh my God, Silk Song is gonna be just as good as Hollow Knight, if not better, because they just have so much fun making this thing that that's gotta be channeled into the final product. It was a really fun conversation to have and yeah, it was a cool process.

• 11:33Kirk Hamilton?

  And heartening.

• 11:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, I couldn't believe that they just paid no attention to the fandom, which is such a correct choice across the board. They just don't care.

• 11:42Kirk Hamilton?

  They're just not online. They're not brain wormed. They're not on social media. It's so healthy.

• 11:48Speaker 00

  And I love that for them. And I think that's part of why they probably had such a joyful time making it, because the pressure's off if you're just ignoring that and you're like, okay, great. The fans are anticipating the game. It'll be out when it's out. Like, what a healthy mentality. I kinda can't believe it and I'm a little jealous, you know? Maybe, maybe we could all take a page out of their book and.

• 12:08Kirk Hamilton?

  I think there's a lot of lessons to be learned.

• 12:11Jason Schreier?

  So they told me specifically, they said, we made Hollow Knight just kind of shut away in our little cave, just working on it without outside kind of input. And we wanted the same thing for Silk Song, because again, we didn't want to ruin that formula that worked so well for us the last time. And we don't want to ruin what's so enjoyable for us. That's one aspect of it. The other aspect of it is that like, we'll get into this more in the next couple of weeks as we really dive into Hollow Knight and Silk Song. But, um, but, but I think it's, it's really interesting that, uh, it didn't become a meme. It didn't become this phenomenon until like the last two or three years. Before that, it was just like a beloved game and the sequel people were really excited about.

• 12:51Jason Schreier?

  But just for a point of comparison, at Gamescom last week in Cologne, Germany, the big gaming convention, there was a demo of Silk Song and people were waiting online for two, three hours just to play this like 20 minute demo. At E3 2019, there was also a demo, including, I think it had one region that was the same as like the Gamescom ones. So similar stuff in it. And that demo, I remember standing there and I could just walk onto it. Nobody was playing it. Like, it was, it was cool. Like, people were excited about it. It wasn't quite like this. Yeah. We'll get into that more next week, because I think that's a really, it's really fascinating to kind of trace that phenomenon and figure out how it happened. So we'll talk about that more down the road. But the point I'm making is that for Team Cherry, for those guys, if they're kind of,

• 13:33Jason Schreier?

  if they're mostly offline, it might not, they might not even realize, or like, maybe it's kind of still hasn't really dawned upon them how big a phenomenon it's become.

• 13:44Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah.

• 13:45Jason Schreier?

  Cause it happens.

• 13:46Kirk Hamilton?

  When you created something like that, you can't, you can't totally know what it's like for someone to play it. I mean, the experience of playing Hollow Knight was so dense and complex and involved, and it became such a big part of my life for the whole time I was playing it. And if you made all of that, you just can never have that experience. So in a very real way, they can't understand what it's like for the people who love the game.

• 14:06Jason Schreier?

  Hmm. And the other thing they told me that kind of cements that, that theory that I have that like this hype only really started relatively recently is that in, so they said publicly in 2019, when they announced Silk Song, Hollow Knight had sold something like 2.8 million copies in February of 2019 when they announced it.

• 14:24Kirk Hamilton?

  This is an insane number that you're about to say.

• 14:27Jason Schreier?

  As of, as of a couple of weeks ago, it has sold 15 million copies. So that's about, about 13 million have been sold, or sorry, about 12 million have been sold in the last six year, like since, in the years after. So that essentially means that four fifths, 80% of Hollow Knight's sales came after the Silk Song announcement, which kind of, again, plays into this idea that like this game really only became this, like it was a very popular, very successful game when Silk Song was announced, but now it is a cultural phenomenon. Now it is this incredible beast of a thing, one of the most popular indie games of all time. Anyway, we'll talk more about that next week, but it is very exciting. Silk Song's gonna be out real soon.

• 15:08Kirk Hamilton?

  It sure is.

• 15:09Jason Schreier?

  And yeah, we're all excited to play it. I expect it to be more Hollow Knight, but just like bigger and better and more elaborate and a different, a faster main character. It's gonna be super cool. All right, let's talk about some video games we can play and have been playing as of right now. We're gonna get into a video game roundup for some August games, because there's some cool stuff that has come out in the last few weeks that we haven't talked about much. Let's start with Metal Gear Solid Delta, Konami's new remake slash remaster of Metal Gear Solid 3. This is made with Konami and Virtuos, and it is essentially a recreation of Metal Gear Solid 3 with brand spanking new, beautiful graphics, PS5

• 15:53Jason Schreier?

  level graphics, 2025 caliber graphics. And also, most importantly, you can play with what essentially feels like Metal Gear Solid 5's gameplay, in that it is like third-person, twin-stick, can't control the camera with one stick, and it kind of feels like a normal action game. As opposed to the original Metal Gear Solid 3, which was like a top-down, just kind of really not the most pleasant game to play, was fixed with its kind of subsequent release, which I believe is called Subsistence, Metal Gear Solid 3 Subsistence, which gave you another camera option, like a third-person camera option, which made it much more pleasant to play. But still, it wasn't quite like this. Now it feels more

• 16:34Jason Schreier?

  like a modern game, a modern version of Metal Gear Solid. I think all three of us have been playing it. What do you guys think?

• 16:41Speaker 00

  I'll go first. So this is actually my first time playing any Metal Gear game at all.

• 16:47Jason Schreier?

  Oh, interesting.

• 16:48Kirk Hamilton?

  Wow, that's cool.

• 16:49Speaker 00

  I feel like you two have maybe forgotten. It's fine. I've mentioned before, this is like one of my notorious gaming blind spots.

• 16:55Kirk Hamilton?

  I really did not know that. So yeah, if you mentioned it, I have forgotten.

• 16:58Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, I totally, well, Matty, there hasn't been a new one since we've been podcasting, so it makes sense.

• 17:04Kirk Hamilton?

  Maybe that's why.

• 17:05Speaker 00

  It's true. It's true. So maybe that's why. And it's not that I haven't read about them, watched cutscenes of them, know a lot about them. But I was really looking forward to finally playing this. And it's so weird.

• 17:21Speaker 00

  Such a weird video game. I just want to say playing Dust Running one and two didn't prepare me for how extraordinarily strange this video game was going to be, or even years upon years of people telling me how weird the game was going to be. I am laughing at it a lot. It has moments in it that feel like slapstick comedy to me.

• 17:44Jason Schreier?

  How far are you?

• 17:45Speaker 00

  I just beat the pain, which is like the big hornet guy, really annoying boss fight, but I did it, baby. Used those grenades, figured it out. Ocelot is a fully crazy character. And that boss fight that you have with him where you're both on two cliffs, he juggles his revolvers for, I don't know, three minutes? I'm gonna say three minutes. I was laughing. I was like, this is like Austin Powers or something. Like, it feels like a parody of a Bond movie, not like anything that would really happen in a Bond movie. And I don't know, it's, it's kind of blowing my mind how funny the game is. I just, I really wasn't expecting that. I'm enjoying it a lot, but I kind of thought it

• 18:30Speaker 00

  would be a little more self-serious and that there'd be goofy moments, but not, not what it is. Not what, not what I expected.

• 18:37Jason Schreier?

  Do you, do you, are you familiar with the end, that boss fight? Do you know anything about it?

• 18:41Speaker 00

  I mean, I was just introduced to him as a character. So no, I, he, that was the scene I was just playing through before we started, is when he gets, he gets wheeled out in the wheelchair. No, you haven't spoiled anything.

• 18:53Kirk Hamilton?

  You see him in the helicopter and stuff. He's around when the Cobra unit is first introduced.

• 18:57Speaker 00

  He's around. I've seen him and I know he's dead, question mark. And then he's saving all of his energy for the battlefield, according to the boss, the greatest character in the game.

• 19:06Jason Schreier?

  I, I, I won't say anything else, but yeah, you're in, you're in for some, some interesting stuff.

• 19:11Speaker 00

  I'll, I'll update you too. I'm gonna keep playing it because, again, I do feel like this is a blind spot that's worth filling for me. And it's so much sillier and more fun than I expected it to be. I really thought it was gonna be more serious than this, but I'm having a really great time. And the actual combat, which there's barely any of, I'm really just watching cutscenes, like, so far, anyway. Maybe there's more stuff later on. But, uh,

• 19:37Speaker 00

  It's kind of just like a funny TV show that I'm watching with Solid Snake, world's most awkward man, and I love him and I want to protect him.

• 19:47Jason Schreier?

  I think Metal Gear Solid 4 was like renowned at the time because it had like an 80 minute like cutscene.

• 19:53Speaker 00

  Oh, boy, I bet, yeah.

• 19:54Jason Schreier?

  Eighty minutes of solid cutscenes.

• 19:56Kirk Hamilton?

  Yes.

• 19:56Jason Schreier?

  Kirk, what's your take on Metal Gear Solid Delta?

• 20:00Kirk Hamilton?

  It's so good. I'm impressed by this remake and yeah, I have a lot of thoughts on it. I share your sentiment, Matty. I have played this game, or at least started this game several times. Only the subsistence version, the version with the third person camera. And they kept re-releasing it. I think I played it on Vita, then I played it on 3DS. There kept being this promise that, oh, you're finally gonna like this. Like, I'm finally gonna be able to play this because I am really used to modern controls and just can't get used to some of the way the shooting and aiming worked, for example. And because these games are so complex and have so many systems and menus and little, all this micromanaging that you need to be doing.

• 20:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, we can get into that.

• 20:42Kirk Hamilton?

  The controls are important and so getting your head around all of that is just, it was always hard for me to get my head around all of that when I was playing with these controls that didn't feel intuitive to me. So I never really got that far. You know, I've gotten past the prologue and into the main game a few times. But now I do think I'm gonna play this whole game because I have played, I played a lot of 2, just on a friend's PS2. I played all the way through 4. That was the first Metal Gear that I played. Which is an insane first Metal Gear to play, but I just sort of played it. I had no idea what the hell was going on.

• 21:15Speaker 00

  I mean, aren't they all insane? I don't know.

• 21:16Jason Schreier?

  No, Matty, you're actually in the perfect place.

• 21:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 21:19Jason Schreier?

  Well, Metal Gear Solid 3, on the Metal Gear Solid timeline, Metal Gear Solid 3 is the first one. Well, this is the first one.

• 21:28Kirk Hamilton?

  It is chronologically the first. So it's an origin story.

• 21:31Speaker 00

  Got it, got it.

• 21:32Kirk Hamilton?

  And Boss is not the same as Snake. Like, they're not the same character, even though they're voiced by David Hader and they're called Snake at various points. They are different characters. You are playing Big Boss, who, get, correct me if I'm wrong, Jason, but this character in Metal Gear 3 is also the main character of the Phantom Pain. Or at least

• 21:49Jason Schreier?

  Sort of.

• 21:49Kirk Hamilton?

  is in the Phantom Pain. Yeah, sort of. I guess it's more complicated than that, but like,

• 21:52Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, it's, it's

• 21:53Kirk Hamilton?

  it's kind of the same guy, Big Boss.

• 21:54Jason Schreier?

  It's never, never

• 21:55Speaker 00

  There's an, there's an old Snake and a new Snake and they look similar, but

• 22:00Kirk Hamilton?

  Right.

• 22:00Speaker 00

  one of them is actually

• 22:01Kirk Hamilton?

  Well, old Snake is in form.

• 22:02Jason Schreier?

  No, old Snake is the different character.

• 22:04Speaker 00

  I shouldn't try to have any input here.

• 22:07Kirk Hamilton?

  Old Snake is an older version of Solid Snake. But there's like chronologically, it's like Peace Walker comes after this and then is that right that Metal Gear V comes in, like Metal Gear IV is the last one chronologically. Yeah. I think Metal Gear II is before IV.

• 22:21Speaker 00

  This is really reminding me of like when I try to explain X-Men comics to people. It's like not.

• 22:28Kirk Hamilton?

  Well, let me wait, let me actually say what I think that the timeline is.

• 22:31Speaker 00

  Okay, good.

• 22:31Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, you're, you're right, Kirk. What you're just. Metal Gear IV is the last one and that is the end as it stands. Metal Gear II comes before IV, I comes before II, then V comes before I and then Peace Walker and then III is the very first one. So this is like the origin story of Boss and so when, you know, when the boss gives him her headband and he puts on the headband, like this is all origin story stuff.

• 22:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, it, it felt very origin story.

• 22:58Kirk Hamilton?

  Okay, so the actual game, I, I think that it's so cool. It is so funny. I'm much more used to the style of play because I played so much Metal Gear V and have just, I'm kind of like in the rhythms of it now. It is like slapstick comedy. It's so silly. I save scum a lot and just reload. I remember the loading times being really long on III and it kind of punished you for screwing up and it didn't really make it possible to retry, even though it's really easy to screw up. Um, and I'm just, I'm kind of amazed at it. It's so systemic. It's so complicated. I need to interrupt you there because Punished Snake is actually a different cat.

• 23:37Speaker 00

  And we're not talking about that.

• 23:38Kirk Hamilton?

  Not to be confused with, with Naked Snake, who isn't the same as this snake when I take off his shirt. Well, this, no, this snake actually is Naked Snake. Oh, he is Naked Snake, okay.

• 23:47Speaker 00

  He is at the beginning, yeah. That's his code name.

• 23:48Kirk Hamilton?

  And he's truly Naked Snake when you take his shirt off and then that actually really helps his camouflage. Well, then, no, then he's Naked Naked Snake. Right, Naked Naked Snake.

• 23:55Speaker 00

  Oh, my goodness.

• 23:56Kirk Hamilton?

  Not to be confused with Half Naked Snake, who he turns up in Peace Walker.

• 23:59Speaker 00

  This is the kind of humor in the game as well. Like, we're joking, but like the game is that self-aware of how silly it is. I think it is.

• 24:07Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I'm not joking at all. No, Jason's just telling us actual facts about Metal Gear. Just facts. So yeah, anyways, I could talk much more. I think we should get into the gameplay systems and the complexity of it, the simulation. I love it.

• 24:20Jason Schreier?

  Well, yeah, tell us what you think of the simulations and then the gameplay system.

• 24:24Kirk Hamilton?

  Oh, it's so cool. There's all this, there's, there's so much experimentation. It gives you so much time and space to just mess around, you know, find different ways around things. I was reading, just in a review, they said that if you blow up the food in an enemy base, then later the guards will be hungry and so they'll be less attentive. There's so much stuff like that in this game and the more you play, the more you realize just how reactive it is and how complex the simulation is. And while it is a lot of cutscenes, it's also this incredibly complex world filled with, you know, reactive systems and hidden systems and it feels like you're discovering these little mysteries as you play. And I love that. It's so delightful.

• 25:05Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, it's, it's notable. I think Five was my favorite in terms of the gameplay.

• 25:09Kirk Hamilton?

  Yes, easily for me as well.

• 25:11Jason Schreier?

  But Five, but it is really strikingly different, I think, because Five is a lot more about kind of scouting at an outpost, sneaking around, taking out guards, finding a way inside, infiltrating quietly, and basically being like, I don't know, a James Bond type, like a super spy. The other ones, including Three, are also about being a super spy, but there's a lot more kind of strangeness in how you interact with the world because you're not like going around and infiltrating bases. You're kind of more like going on this linear path that'll take you through bases and take you through different, different areas and different fortresses and stuff. You have to seek out guards and do some of the same sort of things, but in a different, a much different rhythm than

• 25:54Jason Schreier?

  kind of the, all right, we're in base, we're going on a mission, take out this outpost, go back to base, go on another mission, et cetera. And yeah, there's, therefore, there's a lot more room for that kind of experimentation, for using porno mags to distract guards or like hiding in your stupid little cardboard box and taking advantage of camouflage and stuff. And yeah, I think it's the type of game where you could just kind of play it as like a run and gun game where you're just... Like shooting everybody with your train gun. And I think that makes it a way less enjoyable experience. You really have to be willing to just kind of dig into it. And there are a lot of people out there who get really into playing in like full on ghost stealth mode, where it's like you die if you get caught once or something like that.

• 26:37Jason Schreier?

  And the game really gives you all these tools to allow you to do that, like all the different elaborate camouflage systems and like all the other crazy things you can do, like Kirk described. It's super cool. And yeah, some of the best boss fights that I remember from that era, including the aforementioned The End, which I won't say anything about because Matty, I'm

• 26:59Speaker 00

  I'm about to do it.

• 27:00Jason Schreier?

  Very excited for you to experience that. It's really fascinating. And then, yeah, a story that is just kind of like defies comprehension, but also is a lot of fun to watch unfold, I would say.

• 27:12Kirk Hamilton?

  You know, I am finding the story, the broad strokes of it easier to comprehend this time than in any pastime that I've played the game.

• 27:19Jason Schreier?

  Well, it is until you get to the late game twists. And then it's like, oh, this person is a triple agent for this person. And then that's when things get off the rails a little bit.

• 27:30Kirk Hamilton?

  Right. I guess I just mean the historical setup that it's like Khrushchev trying to head off this internal coup attempt, basically. And he's working with Johnson and they have to have disavowal. Like the whole diplomacy aspect of the story is actually like pretty easy to follow. If you have, I think I just have a little bit more knowledge of Cold War geopolitics than I did the last time that I played this. And that it's neat. It's actually a really neat setup for a story. And then almost it makes it funnier that once you get into it, it becomes, man, Matty, your description of it as a parody of a Bond film is perfect. I mean, all the way through and including the like totally ridiculous and gross, just like ogling of Eva, the way that this game is like so sexist.

• 28:14Kirk Hamilton?

  It's really funny that the opening.

• 28:16Speaker 00

  They give you.

• 28:17Kirk Hamilton?

  Opening text in the menu. It says, warning, this game objectifies the shit out of the female characters, basically.

• 28:22Speaker 00

  So many words. It's like that Disney plus warning where it's like, this is a product of its time, people. We are leaving it as it is. Then also, there's so much science fiction stuff in this game. Like, yeah, Khrushchev is a character. There is the Cold War machinations. But this is also a game where a guy has hornets at his command, like as a superpower. And like, I watched a cut scene where there was like a ghost guy. And like, I don't know who that guy is yet. He was there. And like, things are just occurring. And I'm just along for the ride. It's not like just a Bond film with like

• 29:01Kirk Hamilton?

  Right.

• 29:01Speaker 00

  obvious, like, maybe there's a little sci fi with like a pen that turns into a gun or something, like things that couldn't really exist. This is like, okay, it starts off that way, but then it immediately becomes completely ludicrous as to how any of these people could even exist or what their, what any of their deal is. I've, like, multiple people are already double agents. And I'm already like, I don't really understand why that's happening. So I'm glad to hear from Jason that that's gonna continue. Because that's already comedic to me. It's like, why? No one has any accents. Everyone has an American accent, but all of them work for like six other countries.

• 29:37Kirk Hamilton?

  It's such a like blender pastiche kind of thing. Like, it really feels like, we know that Kojima is media obsessed.

• 29:43Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 29:44Kirk Hamilton?

  And is a sponge, you know, that he's watched a billion movies and read all this manga and comics and books. And like, he's just digests all this stuff. And it feels like someone just did that, you know, watched every Bond movie ever, every Cold War thriller ever, read a million of these books and histories, and then just like spat it out into the most crazy, just this huge blended disaster that that's so interesting at all times and like so funny and kind of overwhelming and bizarre. And then got a good, a team of game developers together and they like made a really like interesting, cool stealth game to tie it all together. I don't know, there are not other video games like this. I mean, this, you know, we'll talk about other games we've been playing, but picking this up.

• 30:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, they're nothing like this.

• 30:28Kirk Hamilton?

  I was like, whoa, this is a thousand times more interesting than the last game I was playing.

• 30:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, the characters are obsessed with movies too. Like, they talk about movies constantly in this game.

• 30:38Kirk Hamilton?

  I was telling Snake about her. Favorite movies?

• 30:40Speaker 00

  Well, but also like the Colonel Zero or whatever his name is is really into movies too. I was just watching a cut scene where he was lambasting Snake for not liking James Bond movies enough. I'm like, they just, they just list off movies they're into for like 10 minutes, like just

• 30:56Kirk Hamilton?

  For a long time, like when you're just like, I'm just trying to save the game, man.

• 31:01Speaker 00

  I know. You can't save the game. You can't.

• 31:03Jason Schreier?

  You can see, playing this, you can see why Kojima and Metal Gear Solid has been so discussed and debated.

• 31:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, beloved and mocked.

• 31:12Jason Schreier?

  Decades. Matty, I'm, yeah, I'm very, I'm curious to hear your thoughts as you keep playing. Let's talk about a couple of other games. So Mafia of the Old Country is another game that came out this month. And in stark contrast to Metal Gear Solid 3, this might be the most straightforward, like

• 31:28Kirk Hamilton?

  Right down the middle.

• 31:29Jason Schreier?

  All of its cards, cards on its, on the table type of game. I played a chunk of this, very slow start, very pretty game, very slow game, very good performances, very, as the kids might say, mid-game in a lot of ways. They really like knife fights and making you do them and other kinds of mechanics that you've seen a million times in other games. It's very much just kind of like, you know, if, if Kojima games are like a bunch of movies just dropped into a blender and then just like poured into a cup for you, this is kind of like a bunch of PS2 games like dropped into a blender and then poured into a cup for you.

• 32:09Kirk Hamilton?

  Maybe PS3.

• 32:11Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, maybe. Graphic wise, like PS5 level, but like mechanically.

• 32:16Kirk Hamilton?

  It's like a cover shooter, you know, so there's.

• 32:18Jason Schreier?

  Sure. I guess the cover, the cover shooters came later. Yeah, that's true.

• 32:21Kirk Hamilton?

  The stealth is kind of the last of us. It feels kind of PS3 here.

• 32:24Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, you're right. You're right. You're right. But like, this is very much, this is a game that does absolutely nothing that you've, you've, I haven't seen a million times in other games before. Pleasant on the eyes, pleasant to look at, pleasant to drive or ride around on these horses. Very inoffensive type of game. $50, so it feels it's like very much marketed as a discount game. I don't know. It's an interesting one. What do you two think of Mafia of the Old Country?

• 32:53Speaker 00

  I haven't played this one, so it's all you, Kirk.

• 32:55Kirk Hamilton?

  Oh, okay. It's all me. Yeah, I've played a chunk of this as well. I'm up to the kind of actual meat of the game, like I'm starting to shoot people, I guess. And that was actually where I kind of tapped out. I was like, okay, I got it. And not just in terms of the gameplay, but the story too. And I think that's, for me at least, the thing that isn't grabbing me. Like you said, Jason, it is anchored by very strong performances. Hanger13, who I think was started to make Mafia 3 and made that game, which is, I think, actually a really cool game in a lot of ways. It has some flaws, but one of the things that makes Mafia 3 remarkable is the acting, the writing, the story, and the cutscenes. And so this

• 33:36Kirk Hamilton?

  game carries that tradition forward. But at the same time, Mafia 3, if we go to their first game, or their first Mafia game that the studio made, I mean, that's a game about a black Vietnam veteran who returned in the 1960s to basically New Orleans. And it's told, did either of you play Mafia 3 at all?

• 33:57Jason Schreier?

  Yeah.

• 33:57Kirk Hamilton?

  Or do you remember it? You did. It's told in documentary style?

• 34:01Jason Schreier?

  Oh, cool.

• 34:01Kirk Hamilton?

  So you're seeing interviews with people who are older and are remembering what happened. And so you get these interstitial interviews that are really striking, really well performed, and they look like, you know, they are believable. And they're telling you, like, okay, well, here's what happened. Well, I remember this. Well, no one will forget the night that this. And then it flashes back to you playing through it. And then the story is this, like, really interesting, you know, unusual and unpredictable story that feels like very vibrant and very in a particular place in history, in American history. It's about a lot of, like, really important and interesting cultural topics. And it loses its way because it's too much. Like, it goes, there's a ton of side quests, and like, you drive around the city, and there's just like a million repetitive things that you can do.

• 34:46Jason Schreier?

  Well, there's a grind. There are a lot of points where you have to, like, grind through these districts and like...

• 34:50Kirk Hamilton?

  And it's about conquering territory. It's like one of those Godfather-type games where you have to, like, work with different factions, and then you just do repetitive side quests forever to conquer the map and eventually take it over. And like, it just lose, like, I didn't finish it. I think I went... And watched the end, just to see how it ended. But, um, but the story was like, kept me going in that game for sure. And the issue that I'm running into with the old country, which is set in Sicily around the turn of the century in like 1904, 1905. Sicily is a actually really interesting historical backdrop. There's a lot about Sicily that I didn't know. My sister was actually just there visiting and was telling me like how Sicily is like very much this place unto itself. It is like separate from Italian history and has its own whole culture and history. And it's very tied in with organized crime.

• 35:34Kirk Hamilton?

  And there's a lot of really interesting stuff that has happened there and continues to happen. So it's not like a bad setting, but everything in this story is so familiar. Every guy that you meet, it's like one of those guys from a mafia. Okay, there's the Don, the aging Don who is honorable, but ruthless. There's his like lieutenant, who's the guy training you, who's very dapper, but you're not sure if you can trust him. There's the fuck up nephew who's like a hothead and is always getting into trouble. And you can tell there's going to be tension with, with you and Enzo, your character, who's like this new kid who kind of gets thrown in with them. And of course, there's the beautiful daughter who Enzo, immediately they've like fallen in love, even though they barely have even talked. And of course, that's going to be an issue because she shouldn't be talking to the lowly farmhand and, but Enzo can't help himself.

• 36:20Kirk Hamilton?

  And so all of these storylines are so familiar and they're all well done. And if this were just a Netflix series or something and I was just kind of watching it, it'd be like, oh, okay, cool. I know where this is going, whatever, I'll put it on. But something about having it be a game, I know this game isn't too long, but it's just long enough. It makes me feel impatient in that way that I have started to feel when I'm playing a story or reading a book where the story is just kind of rote. This happens to me with Brandon Sanderson, actually. I've talked about him a few times on the show. As much as I enjoy his books, he's great at writing action. It's always worth, the juice is always worth the squeeze in the end. There are long stretches of those books where I'm like, I know where this is going. This guy isn't going to die. He's eventually going to be redeemed. Like these two are going to meet and fall in love. There's going to be a love triangle.

• 37:04Kirk Hamilton?

  Like you can just see what he's setting up so clearly that then I just start to feel impatient. I'm like, can we just get to the thing that I know is going to happen? And I'm feeling that with this. This game as well, where I I just felt impatient. Okay, I know basically where this is all gonna go. Why am I actually even doing this?

• 37:20Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, it does. It does feel like a shadow of a Godfather, like a like one of those like a picture of the Godfather. That's like poor, the Polaroid is kind of like only half. It's been photocopied multiple times. Exactly, exactly.

• 37:34Kirk Hamilton?

  And like mafia has always, you know, played with the pastiche of mafia movies, but at the same time, Mafia Three was such a shot in the arm and was such an interesting story. And and then I don't know, I I recently watched Miller's Crossing. I've been watching a bunch of Coen Brothers movies because they're talking about the Coens on Blank Check. And some friends and I watched Miller's Crossing, which is a gangster pastiche. And like, that's a that's an example of what you can do with gangster pastiche if you really have vision and know what you're doing. And obviously, the Coens are a very high bar, like it's a high. It's it's hard to compare a game to a Coen Brothers film, but at the same time, this same studio did make Mafia Three, which was closer to that. It felt fresh and it felt surprising.

• 38:18Kirk Hamilton?

  And in some ways, this game actually reminds me of Red Dead Redemption Two, partly because of how it looks.

• 38:23Jason Schreier?

  Because, yeah, that that sequence that you probably just did where you're shooting the bandits just feels like the beginning of Red Dead Two, where you have to go and shoot the dudes. It's like identical and like the gunplay, the covers, it's the the whole setting looks exactly the same. And the horses also.

• 38:38Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, that's it. And it's like, and it's really beautiful and in a way where you you do just marvel at the beauty of the natural world in this game, the way that I that I would in Red Dead Two.

• 38:46Jason Schreier?

  Yeah.

• 38:46Kirk Hamilton?

  And then a big difference is in the narrative setup. And I think that this is kind of an this was a thought I had playing it that is that I now will be keeping in mind when I think about this kind of story. That beginning as a nobody who is, you know, like an indentured slave, basically in a mine, just working, you know, until he dies, who barely escapes and then is thrown in with this new family and works his way up. That's a familiar framework for a video game because it lets you grow more and more powerful and take on more and more responsibilities. What's so cool about Red Dead Two is that it begins, you're a lieutenant in this existing group. And it's such a better beginning in Red Dead 2 because there's all these pre-existing relationships. Your character has pre-existing relationships with everybody.

• 39:31Kirk Hamilton?

  It's very complex. There's a lot of show don't tell. You're watching as like each of these dynamics begins to play out and you figure out, okay, what's the deal with this guy? What's the deal with this lady? Oh, they're married, but what's that about? And you kind of watch it grow and as a result, you really become comfortable in the story and it just feels much more interesting and nuanced. Where when you're beginning out and you're playing this like kind of very familiar narrative where you're you're nobody and you're getting to know people and then everyone's kind of just feels more like a trope, it just isn't as interesting. And I think, I don't know, like if you're going to take a pastiche in the way that Miller's Crossing does as well, it's very interesting to begin it in a different place or focus on a different kind of character. Miller's Crossing, again, is about a lieutenant, a very mysterious lieutenant who's the guy behind the guy.

• 40:16Kirk Hamilton?

  And it throws you right into the action, but because you're in the middle of these pre-existing relationships, it's a much more immediately interesting story than beginning you as the fish out of water who doesn't know anybody. And yeah, and I was just struck by that playing in.

• 40:29Jason Schreier?

  You also immediately have the mystery hook of like what went wrong in this in Red Dead 2, what went wrong when this like this heist that went awry and they all allude to that.

• 40:40Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, and you can really tell the story of relationships. You know, the relationship between Arthur and Dutch and Arthur and John is so interesting. In Miller's Crossing, that is a movie that is about the relationship between these two men, the mafia leader and his his second in command, Gabriel Byrne's character. And in the end, it's like a very subtle and interesting story about friendship, kind of, because they have this very longstanding relationship. And Mafia, the Old Country, just can't really have that because your oldest friend dies in the prologue and then your Enzo doesn't know anybody in the game. And so there is no time to really believe in any of these relationships. Like the love story, I'm like, okay, he said one thing to her that kind of caught her fancy and now they're, she's willing to like risk his life and he's willing to throw it all away.

• 41:24Kirk Hamilton?

  I don't know, like it just is a much harder thing to do to build relationships with that framework.

• 41:28Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, a couple of thoughts on Mafia before we move on. One is- Is that I appreciate that this game is smaller in scope than a lot of games and isn't trying to do everything as kind of as rote as a lot of the gameplay is and I would have appreciated if it was like fewer knife stabbings and shootouts and sneaking and something else that was original, even if it was like just talking or something. Some sort of mechanic that brought something new to the table. I would appreciate that. I still, I, I think it's a good thing that it's not trying to do the skill tree and the crafting and the open world and all the other kind of

• 41:59Kirk Hamilton?

  Well, there is the rosary skill tree. Like there is kind of a

• 42:02Jason Schreier?

  Sure, but it's, it's not quite like the building, getting experience. You can upgrade your jump by

• 42:07Kirk Hamilton?

  You really cruise through it. It just, you just go in and it's almost like watching a movie.

• 42:12Jason Schreier?

  And the other, and also that they're selling it for 50 bucks. They're saying this is like, this is kind of a discounted title. Which quick side note, by the way, the day that it came out, there was an earnings call where Take-Two CEO, the CEO of the company that makes this game, Strauss Zelnick, he said something about how like customers will only buy great games. Good is the new bad and great is the new good or something like that. And like games can no longer be good, which is hilarious that it came out the same day as they're just kind of like, here's our good, but not great game Mafia.

• 42:44Speaker 00

  Good is the new

• 42:45Jason Schreier?

  Anyway, the other thing is just a little bit of context here is that Hangar 13 is very much not the same Hangar 13 that made Mafia 3.

• 42:52Kirk Hamilton?

  That seems evident.

• 42:53Jason Schreier?

  Most of those people are gone, have been laid off over the years. They've had a lot of canceled projects. They've opened new studios in, I think they opened a new studio in Brighton in the UK and then they also absorbed like 2K Czech, so their office in the Czech Republic. And so they have, a lot of this game was made there in the UK and in the Czech Republic. And I think they still have a small presence in Nevada, California, where Hangar 13 was originally based, but, but it's, it's a different makeup, this studio. And they had a lot of canceled games over the last few years, including like an attempt to do a Mafia 4. I think they, if I remember correctly, they were going to do something in like Vegas in the seventies. I did a big report on this for Kotaku a few years ago. They also were working on this big like superhero game that they got canceled.

• 43:39Jason Schreier?

  Hayden Blackman, who was the studio head and the founder, or Not the founder, but he was the studio head and like the, the lead on Mafia 3. He left the studio. So very different studio. This feels like they're kind of like, we're gonna ship something game and then hopefully springboard from there into something more ambitious, um, sort of thing. So maybe if we do see this lead, this become kind of a side story. And then we see a Mafia 4 that maybe takes more ambitious swings, especially mechanically. I think that would be cool to see. Cause there's a lot of stuff you could do with mob mechanics, like have your lead character go to a therapist and you have to, you have to navigate your conversation topics with that therapist and.

• 44:22Kirk Hamilton?

  Your lead character takes his daughter to, to look at colleges and sees a guy that.

• 44:26Speaker 00

  I don't know. It sounds bad to me. I don't know what you guys are talking about. It sounds really bad, though.

• 44:32Jason Schreier?

  But no, I feel like there's, there's so much you could explore with the Mafia game that hopefully they do in the future. Let's try to hit on a couple of more games really quick. I played a game that I don't think you two have called Wago Tabi that just came to Steam a couple of weeks ago. Man, this game is so cool. I played like 25 hours of this game in the last series.

• 44:50Speaker 00

  Did you have time? Wow. Okay.

• 44:52Jason Schreier?

  This is a game, well, this is a game about learning Japanese and it's a game that teaches you how to learn Japanese and it immerses you in it. It's kind of like, it's, it's a little bit of a janky game. It's kind of Pokemon-ish. You're walking around this world, 2D Pokemon style graphics. As you walk around encounters will get the exclamation or NPCs will get the exclamation point on their head and they'll encounter you and, and like start a conversation. And there are all these different mechanics for like teaching you new words and new grammatical kind of concepts and sentences. And as the game goes on and on, it gets more complicated and the, the English is essentially replaced with Japanese and you eventually have to like be reading the entire thing in Japanese.

• 45:32Jason Schreier?

  It's really cool. Um, it's, it's, you have to kind of know Hiragana and katakana. So like the basic, the letters, um, to actually get started. So you have to do that before you start playing, but then you can start, you can just kind of jump in and start learning the language right away. I highly recommend it. It's like one of the best techniques I've seen for actually learning it, cause it makes it a lot of fun, um, to just kind of immerse yourself and go and speak to people and try to understand what they're saying. And, um, it uses a lot of the same tools that like a Duolingo will use where like it'll read a sentence out loud and you have to, you have to write, like pick from these little word clumps and put it in the right order. Or like you have to spell out a kanji or whatever it is.

• 46:15Jason Schreier?

  Uh, and it does a lot of that kind of like repetit- repetition as a technique. And, um, it works really, really well. I really like it. I have a few nitpicks here and there, but I won't get into that. Other than to say that if you are interested in learning Japanese or you are learning Japanese, it's called Wago Tabi. You should check it out. I'm really enjoying it. It's really cool. It's very much for beginners. Um, I think that, uh, it's only, uh, so it's the game as constructed right now is only a limited amount of the language. And it has like two big worlds, two big regions of Japan that you can explore. And then the developers are planning on updating it over time with more and more and more as time goes on. Um, but, uh, right now it'll teach you, I don't know, 150 kanji or something like that.

• 46:57Jason Schreier?

  A bunch of grammatical like particles and other kind of concepts. And so it is very useful. I really enjoyed it. Um, but don't expect to go into that and like learn some advanced Japanese or anything like that. It's very much a beginner level tool. But if you are interested in learning Japanese, I think it's super cool. Really enjoyed it.

• 47:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, it sounds cool.

• 47:16Kirk Hamilton?

  Entertainment.

• 47:17Jason Schreier?

  One more game. Yeah, entertainment, man. Remember that was a dirty word. I feel like.

• 47:22Kirk Hamilton?

  We made a whole episode about that.

• 47:23Speaker 00

  Yeah, we did. Yeah, we did.

• 47:25Jason Schreier?

  Yes, wow.

• 47:27Jason Schreier?

  Uh, one more game, Maddie.

• 47:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, so I played Gears of War Reloaded, which is a new remaster of the very first Gears of War, which came out in 2006. And, uh, they did a remaster of this game in 2015. And at that point, they put it out for the Xbox One and Windows PCs. But the Windows port was really, really bad. And also it was only on the Microsoft Store and you couldn't mod it. Like they, they did a lot of things to make it a real walled garden that were very unpopular. And also it didn't run very well, but you couldn't even mod it to make it any good. And most importantly, it's never been on PlayStation. Gears of War Reloaded, I got a PS5 code and I played this whole game on my PS5,

• 48:12Speaker 00

  which was very weird because I played Gears of War one a billion times on my Xbox 360 when it came out back then. And I don't know, there's just a sense memory thing with the Xbox controller for me in this game. So I had to, I had to get over that. But you know, a couple of hours in, it was like. You know, just playing Gears of War again, and it looks great. It's 4K, very pretty. It's very funny to see like an upscaled version of a very cartoonish art style, like kind of a notoriously cartoonish art style. The, the guys in this game are very muscular, like to absurd inhuman degree, I would say. They don't have necks.

• 48:54Speaker 00

  They look kind of like orcs and they're kind of fighting guys that look like orcs and are very similar build to them. This was kind of notable even at the time as like a big macho game, like to the nth degree that people thought it was silly even then, and it is silly. But it's pretty fun. I still think it's really fun. The interesting thing about this game to me though, is what I said, which is that it has cross-play now. It's also going to be on Steam. So you can cross-play this game across all those platforms, which is a pretty wild move for Microsoft. They're increasingly taking things that were their notable exclusives. Like this was like a console war era game.

• 49:35Speaker 00

  Like it was only on the Xbox for the first year and then it was only on Windows PCs for ages and ages and ages. And it's just kind of interesting to me that they're taking that out of storage and putting it on the PlayStation and Steam. And also that next year, for the 20 year anniversary, I suppose, they're putting out that prologue game. That's like the beginning of Marcus Fenix and Dom Santiago's story together.

• 49:58Kirk Hamilton?

  E-Day.

• 49:59Speaker 00

  It's called E-Day.

• 49:59Kirk Hamilton?

  The new one.

• 50:00Speaker 00

  Yeah. And like clearly they're putting this game out so that people play it and they kind of get the story of those two as extraordinarily minimalist as it is in Gears of War one. There's just call it a story is.

• 50:14Kirk Hamilton?

  The world building is pretty cool though. I don't know. I've, I've always appreciated.

• 50:18Speaker 00

  It is cool. I really like the world building. I do feel like the games get a lot better as they go. I've always said that. I really do think that.

• 50:25Kirk Hamilton?

  And I thought. Two is great.

• 50:26Speaker 00

  Yeah. Gears of War V, Gears V was pretty criminally underrated. I really liked that game. I think, I think they get pretty good. Four is the one that's kind of weak, but two and three, very good. Regardless, I think that's why they put this out. So that people play the first one and then play E-Day, but like. I don't know. I don't know who's gonna play E-Day besides me, obviously. I'm not sure if like the Gen Z audience even really understands what this game is. And like, a lot of it is like post 9/11 commentary. There's like a whole, like, there's a fake fuel source in the game called Emulsion, and there's like no blood for Emulsion graffiti everywhere. Like Cliff Blazinski talked about this at the time. He's like, the guy that made the first few Gears of War games. And he was like, yeah, it's a 9/11 metaphor. And it's about like, kind of the endless war on terror that was

• 51:11Speaker 00

  in the early 2000s. Like, I don't know if that metaphor is still obvious now. I'm genuinely curious, like, how this is gonna go over with people who aren't me, and didn't grow up with this game in the context that it was in.

• 51:21Kirk Hamilton?

  Well, like, the, the commentary on Bush-era America may be lost on some people, but it is a game where you have a machine with a chainsaw on it.

• 51:31Speaker 00

  Not lost.

• 51:32Kirk Hamilton?

  And you play big beefy guys, and everything is goopy and gooey and full of guts. And you, and you just bust open piñatas of blood everywhere. I mean, it is still fun.

• 51:40Speaker 00

  That part's so good.

• 51:40Kirk Hamilton?

  And still kind of singular in terms of its gameplay. So I would imagine if the new one plays like that, and in particular, if the new one has a really good and fleshed-out Horde Mode, which is something they added in Gears of War 2, you know, this will whet people's appetite. I know Gears 1 does not have a Horde Mode, but that was the thing in Gears 2 that really turned Gears of War into a multiplayer phenomenon, because Horde Mode was incredibly fun. Now Horde Mode is like a very common thing in a lot of video games, but it was pretty fresh in Gears 2. And if they make a really fun one for E-Day, I could see that catching on just as easily as anything else.

• 52:12Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm. And there's still some fun multiplayer modes in this one, even though there isn't Horde Mode yet. They, they kind of preserve and amber some of the original modes. And one of the ones that they added for the 2015 version is this specific 2v2 mode that's really fun. And since the whole game is about you finding a partner, basically, and like, it's all about two guys facing of the world. And like, the other characters you meet, Cole and Baird, who are kind of like your other two guys, they're also best friends. Like, it's a big, like, when two guys are friends, nothing can stop them, the video game. Like, so having a 2v2 mode.

• 52:48Kirk Hamilton?

  We're always saying that here on Trip.

• 52:49Speaker 00

  We're always saying that, and so is Cliff Blazinski in these video games. So having that mode there, it makes a lot of sense, and it's very fun.

• 52:57Jason Schreier?

  I mean, as far as who would play this PlayStation owners who have never had

• 53:02Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 53:02Jason Schreier?

  Xbox will finally get to play Gears of War. That that is really interesting.

• 53:06Speaker 00

  And that's worth it for them, I think. Yeah.

• 53:08Jason Schreier?

  It's it's wild that, I mean, if you had said three years ago, there's gonna be a new Gears of War coming to PlayStation, we would have been like, wow.

• 53:16Kirk Hamilton?

  You know, and it is, I'm not sure if you mentioned this, Manny, but it's also a split screen game that you can hear the whole story through together. And that's really fun. I mean, that's how I played through, I think, Gears one and two and three. I think I played most of these games.

• 53:28Speaker 00

  I did, too.

• 53:28Kirk Hamilton?

  Either, you know, playing remotely with someone over with in chat or on the same screen in the same room, which is very, very fun.

• 53:35Speaker 00

  So fun.

• 53:35Kirk Hamilton?

  It does have that. And not many games do that anymore. So that's a pretty cool thing to give people.

• 53:40Speaker 00

  It was really a huge part of the game, too. Like, I played this by myself for the review period, and it was fine. But like, it's so much more fun with a partner. It's really designed for that.

• 53:52Kirk Hamilton?

  Split up.

• 53:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, you split up, you come back together. Yeah. They have a lot of moments where you split up with intention and like, you have to shoot a guy while your partner does something or vice versa.

• 54:01Kirk Hamilton?

  Playing split fiction.

• 54:02Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 54:02Kirk Hamilton?

  Split fiction is borrowing ideas from Gears of War. I like their and they're evolving them. But it's it is that it's the same idea.

• 54:08Speaker 00

  It's like one of the early examples of that. And I think co op games have kind of had a resurgence in recent years. And the success of Joseph Faris's games have been a testament to that, that people enjoy that still. And they like just sitting on the couch playing a game with somebody. And this game celebrates that very much so.

• 54:25Jason Schreier?

  Gears War.

• 54:26Speaker 00

  I know. It's so weird.

• 54:27Jason Schreier?

  What's next? A remake? A remake of Halo One also coming to PlayStation?

• 54:32Speaker 00

  It could happen. It could happen. Microsoft is out here putting things on other consoles. I don't know. When will Gears of War one be on the Nintendo Switch two? That's what I'm wondering, folks. Wouldn't that be weird?

• 54:44Jason Schreier?

  There's no possible way a remake of Halo One will be coming to PlayStation.

• 54:48Kirk Hamilton?

  We we heard you, Jason.

• 54:51Jason Schreier?

  Two years. All right, let's take a break.

• 54:54Kirk Hamilton?

  I was gonna let it slide by subtly, but you know, I was kind of gild the will.

• 54:59Jason Schreier?

  Let's take a break and then we'll be back with one more thing.

• 55:05Speaker 04

  On Judge John Hodgman, the courtroom is fake, but the disputes are real.

• 55:11Speaker 05

  Brian would say, I'm the Gumby of this family. He's just not.

• 55:15Speaker 04

  Claiming to be Gumby is an ungumby-like claim. No, it's just Gumby and I being our authentic selves.

• 55:23Speaker 06

  So what's your complaint? Too many sauces?

• 55:25Speaker 07

  There are no foods on which to put the sauces.

• 55:28Speaker 06

  Have we named all the sauces on the top shelf yet? Not, not even close. You economize when it comes to pants.

• 55:35Speaker 07

  Truly, it's not about the cleanliness of the pants.

• 55:37Speaker 06

  Well, why isn't it? This is what I want to know. Judge John Hodgman, fake court, weird cases, real justice. On MaximumFun.org, YouTube, and everywhere you get podcasts.

• 55:50Speaker 04

  It's hard to explain what Jordan Jesse Go is about. So I had my kids take a stab at it.

• 55:55Speaker 08

  Probably weird stuff. You talk about... Jobs that are annoying. Hmm, business. I think you probably learned your lesson after talking about business a couple of times.

• 56:07Speaker 09

  Growing up jokes that I don't understand and there's no pudding making.

• 56:17Speaker 09

  All the podcasts, so boy.

• 56:19Speaker 04

  Subscribe to Jordan Jesse Go, a comedy show for grownups.

• 56:24Jason Schreier?

  And we are back. Kirk, Matty, it is time for one more thing. Matty, kick us off.

• 56:29Speaker 00

  Sure. So there is a brand new season of King of the Hill, which was my one more thing a while back on this show because I had never seen it. And then I watched it and I was kind of shocked by how good it was and how funny it was. This was a show that was on in the 2000s and it's kind of like a Middle America parable, like Hank Hill's the patriarch of a family with just one kid, Bobby, and Bobby often subverts hetero gender norms and shames his father in various ways. And it's a, it's a source of comedy, but also it's a very sweet show. And a lot of times it's like Hank's conservatism is the butt of the joke and many episodes are him kind of realizing that he should be more forward thinking.

• 57:13Speaker 00

  And it's a Mike Judge thing, which people probably know Mike Judge from Idiocracy, which is not a very good movie, but I feel like

• 57:19Kirk Hamilton?

  Office Space.

• 57:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, or Office Space, which is a pretty good movie. But King of the Hill, I feel like is his magnum opus. I really think it's great still, and I still recommend it. And I will say, I don't think you should watch the new season unless you've watched all of King of the Hill. I know that's a tall order, but it is, even though there's a nine-year time jump, it is like a direct continuation of all the storylines, and the tone is preserved in a way that's remarkable, considering that it's been nine years for the characters, and I'm not sure how many years in real life, didn't look that up, but roughly that. And it really works. Multiple voice actors have passed away and had to be replaced, and I liked most of the recastings despite that, and just was really

• 58:01Speaker 00

  impressed by how realistic the characters' new choices feel. Like, it's nine years later,

• 58:08Kirk Hamilton?

  Sixteen years.

• 58:09Speaker 00

  Okay, yeah, that tracks. It's very, I felt like it was a very long time. Yeah. But in the show, in the world of the show, it's only been nine years. So they had to invent what each of the characters were doing in that intervening time, and have it make sense for them, and then also do jokes about 2025-era political commentary, which I know people were worried about, and I was too. Like, the show has to, like, talk about COVID, Trump, list goes on. How's it gonna achieve that? I think it's great. I really enjoyed it. I, there's an episode where Hank Hill gets caught up with a men's rights YouTuber and is sort of briefly taken in by him, and like, kind of thinks he's cool for a bit, and then it sort of ends in total fantasy whereby Hank tells the guy off, and like,

• 58:54Speaker 00

  the way that you could only hope that Hank Hill would tell off a men's rights guy. It's, it's that sort of thing, where it's like, what, what would Hank Hill say in response to kind of modern conservative trends? And it just leaves you with a warm, fuzzy feeling in your heart somehow. I don't know how, but it just does. So I really recommend it. I recommend the whole show, and the new season's great.

• 59:13Kirk Hamilton?

  It's funny, we're talking about South Park, King of the Hill,

• 59:16Speaker 00

  I know.

• 59:16Kirk Hamilton?

  and Just Like That, which did the same kind of thing with Sex and the City.

• 59:20Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 59:20Kirk Hamilton?

  We're partying like it's the 2000s again. And we just talked about remakes of Metal Gear 3 and Gears of War.

• 59:28Speaker 00

  Everything old is new again.

• 59:30Kirk Hamilton?

  I mean, Mafia of the Old Country could have come out in like 2007.

• 59:35Speaker 00

  We are living in the 2000s and

• 59:38Kirk Hamilton?

  We really are.

• 59:38Speaker 00

  Those were also bad? I don't know, but we're making do. We're making do.

• 59:43Kirk Hamilton?

  Kirk, what's your one more thing? My one more thing is Alien Earth, the new TV show on Hulu that rocks so hard. I'm in love with it. So are a lot of people. I think the consensus on this one is that it kicks ass because like if you watch the first episode and don't think it kicks ass, well, I don't know what to tell you because the first episode kicks so much ass. This is a new show set in the alien universe, show run by Noah Hawley, of course, the showrunner of the Fargo adaptation, as well as Legion before that, two great shows. And Fargo, of course, demonstrated his and his, I would say creative partner Dana Gonzalez, who's an incredible director and has directed

• 1:00:25Kirk Hamilton?

  a bunch of episodes of both Fargo and Alien Earth. But his and his team's ability to create a pastiche that is completely believable and yet also feels like its own thing. In the case of Fargo, it was a Coen Brothers pastiche that still really became its own thing and went for whatever, four or five seasons, and they're all really good. The best ones are fantastic. Even the weakest seasons of Fargo are still worth watching. So he really knows how to take someone else's style and turn it into something interesting. And of course, Alien very much has its own style. Really, it has its own styles. And what this show is doing is kind of merging the style of Ridley Scott and Alien and also of James Cameron and Aliens.

• 1:01:08Kirk Hamilton?

  And you're getting this very interesting pastiche of the two that just is really cool from a things on screen that I'm looking at perspective because I think both of those movies are cool, especially Alien, 1979's Alien is an amazing movie and an amazing looking movie with unbelievable vibes, so many little tricks, especially these cross fades that Scott likes to do where, you know, it's a really long cross fade from one image to another, to the point where they're almost superimposed on top of one another. There's very eerie silence in that. You know, Hawley and Gonzalez really have a handle on all of that stuff. But what makes Alien Earth so good, to me anyways, is actually the narrative setup and the part of the narrative that has nothing to do with aliens. So this is a

• 1:01:54Kirk Hamilton?

  Broadly, it's a show, I think it's eight episodes long. Critics have already seen the whole thing. Everyone says it's really great, which also fills me with joy, just that people have watched the entire thing and they're like, "It's really good," because it starts so strong. But it is basically a Waylon Yutani ship. Waylon Yutani, the corporation that got, of course, owned the ship in The First Alien, is returning to Earth, having captured a bunch of xenomorph and xenomorph-adjacent creatures to bring back for research, likely for, you know, bioweapons or something. And the Earth has, this is taking place before, actually, the events of The First Alien. The Earth is just controlled by these mega corporations, Waylon Yutani being one of them. There were the five, now I think there are more, and they've introduced a new corporation in this that is kind of really important.

• 1:02:38Kirk Hamilton?

  So, this ship, of course, the aliens get out and kill everyone, it's like, happens in the very beginning, and the vessel, the Waylon Yutani vessel, crashes into a city somewhere in Asia, which is controlled by the Prodigy Corporation, which is a new corporation run by this very young man who's kind of like, he walks around in pajamas, he has like messy hair, he looks like, almost like a little kid. And he's a trillionaire genius, and he runs this company. And what they're doing in Prodigy is they are, they're looking into how to transfer consciousness and make people live forever. So it begins with this young girl who's dying from some disease, and then she is transferred into an adult body and takes a new name, and her name is Wendy. And then, a bunch of other

• 1:03:22Kirk Hamilton?

  kids undergo the same process, and they all take on names of the lost boys from Peter Pan. So, there's this kind of secretive lab where they have built these artificial people who have the minds of real children who were dying, but now are in fully grown bodies that are like, super strong, and they can do all kinds of crazy stuff. So they're able to be like, super soldiers, essentially. So-

• 1:03:48Kirk Hamilton?

  This is actually the narrative heart of the show is the question of what would it be like for children to be transferred into these super powerful bodies? And then this ship crashes and then, you know, they have to go and they're dispatched to go recover the aliens and things are going to deteriorate from there. But that hook, I think, is really fascinating and it's led to some great performances. So Wendy is fixated on her brother who thinks she's dead. And her brother, incidentally, is played by Alex Lothar, who played Nemec in Andor, which is also just really fun because this time we're going to save Nemec's life. I swear to God, Nemec is going to make it this time.

• 1:04:26Speaker 00

  Justice for Nemec.

• 1:04:27Jason Schreier?

  Can I ask something? Is this one of the shows where it's like, we wanted to tell this story, but we won't get a green light unless we stick in the Alien IP?

• 1:04:34Kirk Hamilton?

  No, no, no, no. No, because it's very true to the world of Alien and like Alien has always been about synthetic beings, you know? There's always a synth on board. In this, actually, Timothy Olyphant plays the main synth.

• 1:04:46Speaker 00

  Oh, cool.

• 1:04:47Kirk Hamilton?

  And he's perfect as playing this because, you know, he's always kind of looking at you in a way like you don't know whether he's making fun of you or what. Like, he always has this kind of ambiguous vibe to him. It's a little sinister. He's perfect as the, he's kind of their minder. He's like the, I guess, the au pair or something for this, you know, this corporation. While then there's this like, this like really unstable genius is this kid who's in charge of everything, but he's so young and he seems very erratic. So between the two of them, they make for a very interesting pairing. So anyways, Sydney Chandler, who's playing Wendy, goes to get her brother and we wind up in these very interesting scenes where we know what the alien does, but we don't know what these kids can do because they're very dangerous themselves and they can go toe to toe with a xenomorph.

• 1:05:32Kirk Hamilton?

  It's not quite as simple as just the xenomorph kills everything because that's usually what it does. And then there are also all these other creepy crawlies that are horrifying and really cool. There's a lot of great goop and slime and, you know, viscera all over the place in this. So it gives you that kind of fun Alien stuff. But what really winds up being interesting is just watching these performances, particularly as these adult actors pretend to be children and are very good at it. There are just some really charming performances where one example that comes to mind is, you know, this fully grown, very fit like guy in soldier outfit is walking and he's just running his hand along the wall. And kind of walking the way that a little kid would, or the way there's a really wonderful friendship between two of the young boys who are now, of course,

• 1:06:18Kirk Hamilton?

  you know, soldiers, but they talk, they're like, dude, you swore you're not supposed to swear. Like there's there are these really charming scenes where they're really acting like little kids. And so you throw that into this broader alien adventure horror story and it's just really cool. I mean, there's so much going on. Every episode so far that I've watched three has just been provocative and interesting and fun to watch and just really entertaining. There are great needle drops. Every episode ends with like hard rock or metal tune with lyrics that are kind of appropriate to what's going on. Man, I mean, if you want to just watch a show that is entertaining and cool and beautiful looking and really just has a lot going on, I can't think of a better one. So I am all in for Alien Earth. It is really, really something else and I highly recommend it.

• 1:07:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, it sounds great. I gotta, I gotta watch this. I love Alien.

• 1:07:06Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, man.

• 1:07:07Speaker 00

  So it's on my list.

• 1:07:08Jason Schreier?

  So I still gotta watch the most recent season of Fargo.

• 1:07:12Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, that's really good, too.

• 1:07:14Jason Schreier?

  My warmer thing is a video game called Cross Code that I've talked about in the past. This game came out in 2018. I think I tried to get you guys to play it once for British.

• 1:07:23Speaker 00

  Yeah, we did.

• 1:07:24Jason Schreier?

  Did not win.

• 1:07:25Speaker 00

  We played like the beginning of it for an app with you once. I know I did way back in the day.

• 1:07:29Jason Schreier?

  Beginning of it?

• 1:07:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:07:31Jason Schreier?

  Anyway, the, the, this game, it's kind of a Zelda like top down action RPG. And I had played it before, played most of it before, but the developers just announced their new game called Albatross Dawn. And on a whim, I was like, man, watching this trailer brings me back. I should go replay Cross Code. And so I picked it up on my Steam Deck and was so absorbed that I wound up playing through the entire thing again.

• 1:07:57Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 1:07:57Jason Schreier?

  Plus the DLC. This game is still good. I think it might be one of my favorite games ever. It's top-down action RPG. The concept is that you play as this, uh, this woman, Lea, who is, um, sent to this fictional MMO, uh, where players create these avatars that kind of like exist in the physical space and inhabit this world where they like fight monsters and go on quests and stuff. Um, so it is kind of, it is a straightforward action RPG, but it's set within a fictional MMO. So there are a bunch of kind of concepts around it, like going on raids and instant dungeons and, um, kind of a lot of other good jokes and hilarious, uh, lines of dialogue.

• 1:08:37Kirk Hamilton?

  Isn't part of it that a character you'll meet also has someone behind them in the real world? Right, right. There's this sort of second layer to it.

• 1:08:43Jason Schreier?

  Right. So the characters you meet are avatars.

• 1:08:45Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah. Which leads to a lot of fun writing and ideas.

• 1:08:49Jason Schreier?

  And Lea is her own sort of thing, but like she'll meet this girl, one of the first people you meet is this girl named Emily and you meet her and you start talking to her and, um, she is in France and so she jokes about her like being in France, her jokes about her being French and stuff. And then at certain points it'll be like, all right, I gotta go, I gotta go do some homework or something and she'll, she'll log off in the game.

• 1:09:10Kirk Hamilton?

  Uh huh.

• 1:09:11Jason Schreier?

  And you can like assemble a party by contacting people and asking them to join your party. It's, it's a very fun, it plays around with this concept in a really fun way. But the reason to play it is because, uh, the gameplay is just so good. Like the action is really cool. The puzzles are incredible. Some dungeons in here that are just like these massive works of art, like along as good as any Zelda dungeon. And I say that having just played through most of Ocarina of Time. Um, there's some dungeons in here that are as good, if not better than any other, any Zelda dungeon. Um, some incredible puzzles, uh, some of which get a little too intense. Um, and fortunately there's a toggle that you can set to like slow down the speed of certain things if you're finding the puzzles to be a little bit too annoying. Um, but it's really, really good. It's just a complete

• 1:09:56Jason Schreier?

  package. Like it's hilarious. It's got amazing dialogue. The story is really good. It's got the dungeons. It's got these great boss fights and combat and you're constantly getting new stuff. Um, a lot of the puzzles are solved through one of Two ways. One is kind of environmental like verticality, like jumping up things and kind of figuring out spatial awareness. And so like every new region of the game that you get into, you can kind of walk along a path and just get from place to place. Or you can go on these kind of side paths and find different like areas where you can jump up and then like hop along these other paths and go on these side paths and find hidden treasures and then like unlock areas that are just kind of like in these,

• 1:10:37Jason Schreier?

  that might be five screens away if you follow the right path to get there. And there's a lot of really cool interlocking stuff like that. And then there are also these puzzles that are like activated with your elemental abilities that you get throughout the game. And they play around with those in some really cool ways, including the DLC, which I just be for the first time, which has this final dungeon that is massive and adds this totally new gameplay mechanic that is really, really cool. It's like this orb that like reacts to your elemental abilities in different ways. It's very cool. And I just feels, it feels like the kind of that perfect balance between feeling like a retro game. Like it feels a lot like a Super Nintendo game, but also feeling very modern because it just is has the gameplay you would expect

• 1:11:20Jason Schreier?

  from a game that came out in the last few years. It's really good, you guys. You guys would both love it, I think. And I think everybody out there who's into 2D action games would really enjoy it. There's a little bit of grindiness involved, but like, I don't know, if you keep up with side quests and stuff, it's not really a big deal, I've found. I just really love it. I think everyone should play it. It's called Crosscode. You should check it out.

• 1:11:43Kirk Hamilton?

  I played a big chunk of this and then wanted to play it on Switch because it would be so great and handy. And I remember the Switch version had some issues. I think this game is like running in HTML5 or something like that.

• 1:11:52Jason Schreier?

  Whoa, really?

• 1:11:53Kirk Hamilton?

  And then there was an issue with Switch performance and then that kind of bummed me out. And then I started it on Steam Deck where it runs beautifully and thought, okay, at some point here, you know, if only Silk Song weren't coming out in two weeks. But at some point, I think I will play it because I really liked what I played of it. And, you know, hearing you say that, man, it's especially cool to hear that the DLC is particularly great. Because it's that thing where you can see that the team making the original game. Have really grown and have all these cool new ideas. And then it just makes you that much more excited for the sequel because of course, they're going to be exploring all those new ideas in a full game pretty soon.

• 1:12:29Jason Schreier?

  I am very excited for the sequel. The DLC, yeah, it's very much like an expansion that just kind of like adds basically like one new zone and then like a big new dungeon. It's not like humongous or anything. The, the original game is pretty huge on its own. Um, and yeah, it runs great on the Steam Deck. I had to play around with a couple of settings to fix this kind of color over saturation, but, um, but it, but it runs great. I mean, I was playing at 90 frames a second the whole time. Um, and yeah, man, it's, it's so good. Uh, all right, let's end it here.

• 1:13:05Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, we've gone long.

• 1:13:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:13:06Jason Schreier?

  Uh, Kirk, Maddie, that was a whole lot of video games and we'll be back next week to talk about even more.

• 1:13:12Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I will see both of you then.

• 1:13:15Speaker 00

  Yeah, bye.

• 1:13:19Kirk 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. Find us on Twitter at TripleClickPod, send email to [email protected], and find a link to our Discord in the show notes. Thanks for listening. See you next time.

• 1:14:16Jason Schreier?

  Maximum Fun, a worker-owned network of artist-owned shows. Supported directly by you.