Triple Play: Pragmata

Kirk, Jason, and Maddy are playing Pragmata, a video game about being a dad in outer space. They talk about the unique hacking-shooting mechanics, the story (for what it is), and the beautiful 3D-printed world you get to explore.

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

• 0:04Speaker 00

  Podcasting is great for multitasking. You could listen to this while you hack into the mainframe of that terrifying robot coming towards you. Welcome to TripleClick, where we bring the games to you. This week, we talk about Pragmata, a first-person shooter that makes multitasking fun. You hack with one hand while dodging and aiming your weapons with the other. Shouldn't work as well as it does.

• 0:30Speaker 00

  I'm Maddy Myers.

• 0:31Jason Schreier?

  I'm Jason Schreier.

• 0:33Kirk Hamilton?

  And I'm Kirk Hamilton. And hello.

• 0:35Speaker 00

  Hello. Hello.

• 0:36Kirk Hamilton?

  How's it going, guys?

• 0:37Speaker 00

  Happy Max Fun Drive, you two.

• 0:39Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah.

• 0:40Speaker 00

  It's Max Fun Drive.

• 0:42Kirk Hamilton?

  It is.

• 0:42Speaker 00

  The most wonderful time of the year. And we're gonna talk about it.

• 0:46Kirk Hamilton?

  Gaming's biggest night.

• 0:47Speaker 00

  Gaming's biggest two-week time period.

• 0:50Kirk Hamilton?

  Gaming's biggest two weeks.

• 0:51Speaker 00

  Not just for gaming, but for Maximum Fun, our wonderful podcast network as a whole. But here at TripleClick, it's gaming's biggest two-week period. We're gonna talk about that more later as the show goes on. But just like we have done in previous Max Fun Drives, of years gone by, we are going to do a livestream, the three of us. We're gonna play some games together and stream it on our YouTube channel this year. So that's TripleClickPod, if you wanna go subscribe to us right away.

• 1:21Kirk Hamilton?

  Which we should do.

• 1:22Speaker 00

  Or you could wait all the way until the day of, which would of course be May 1st. We're gonna start at 8:00 PM ET. Come tune in and watch us play games. And we'll answer some questions in the chat. It'll be really fun. I think that's technically the very last day of the drive, so we'll definitely be...

• 1:40Kirk Hamilton?

  And also May Day.

• 1:41Speaker 00

  Yes, it's May Day. It's May Day. Happy workers' rights. It's all a wonderful...

• 1:47Kirk Hamilton?

  Yes, we'll be repping labor.

• 1:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, actually, yeah, we are repping labor.

• 1:52Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, with our worker-owned network and everything.

• 1:54Speaker 00

  Our own labor. So it's all... The confluence is totally perfect. So May 1st, 8:00 PM. Mark your calendars for our livestream. Before we get to our topic today, Jason, you had something you wanted to talk about.

• 2:07Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, so last week, we talked about AI. And we cited a blog post by an astrophysicist named Minas Karamanis. And he wrote about like AI and how it de-skills people and so on and so forth. And since that episode, we got an interesting email from someone going by the name Boxomixfoxxo, who wrote a pretty long blog post laying out a case that the essay that we cited was in fact written by AI.

• 2:44Jason Schreier?

  So this guy, this Boxo guy lays out a pretty compelling case, including one piece of evidence that I found most compelling, which is that the original essay quotes Frank Herbert in one of the Dune books and writes the sentence, quote, "Things we do without thinking, semicolon, there's the real danger." But in the actual book, that semicolon is an M dash. And that kind of implies that one thing you might do if you were writing an AI is do a Ctrl F and find and replace all the M dashes for semicolons to make it seem like you didn't use AI, which is the only way I can think of that like a quote from a book would turn,

• 3:29Jason Schreier?

  would like be turned from an M dash into a semicolon. But he lays out a bunch of other cases, too. It's pretty compelling. And it makes it even funnier that all of these like blue sky posts about how compelling the writing was in this thing that's kind of denouncing AI, if it in fact was written by AI. Also on Minas Karamanis's blog, the blog that is cited, the blog in question, it says, God, hold on, I'm gonna find this. It says, "I write everything on this blog myself. After drafting, I edit using grammar checkers and occasionally an LLM to polish the prose," which is the type of thing you write on your blog when an LLM

• 4:12Jason Schreier?

  has written everything that you write. It's always, it's never like an LLM wrote all my stuff. It's always occasionally I'll use. To polish just a little bit, a little bit of polish.

• 4:23Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, we should say here that we don't actually know

• 4:25Speaker 00

  We don't know.

• 4:26Kirk Hamilton?

  Was really used here. This is all a bunch of suppositions.

• 4:28Jason Schreier?

  We do not, but we, but he has admitted that he uses an L L to polish the brush. But yes, the bigger point here, yeah, I'm getting at that, Kirk. The bigger point here is that this proliferation of AI has led to this really uncomfortable and will become more prevalent prevalent ecosystem where there's accusations about AI. We don't know what's ever truly written by human or truly written in AI. There are all these tells, but like some of the tells are inadequate. And sometimes something that seems like AI, if you run it through a detector, might actually be human written and so on and so forth. Then it's just all led to a very poisoned internet ecosystem.

• 5:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 5:06Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I think it's just kind of how things are now. I guess it's poisoned. I mean, I think that the conversation we had, the three human beings sitting in front of microphones was interesting. And in the end, it really isn't that germane how much AI was involved in articulating those ideas. And, and I wouldn't say actually that Karmanas's post was like, you know, strongly anti AI. It was like a very nuanced and complex and very lengthy look at the ways that AI works and the ways that it doesn't. And in the essay, he talks about how he uses them and, you know, they're, how he thinks they're appropriate at various points. So it was like this kind of very complex post that, you know, you could kind of read it either way. That was a bit of the critique that that we were sent was like,

• 5:50Kirk Hamilton?

  well, it's kind of a Rorschach test, right? You can look at it and see it as anti AI or pro AI. And that that kind of matches up with it maybe being AI generated in the first place. That it kind of toes this middle line and lets you, you know, make of it what you will, which is a very kind of AI way of being.

• 6:06Speaker 00

  Says what you want to hear. It's what Sam Altman would have wanted. It's whatever you want it to be. That's, that's what it says.

• 6:12Jason Schreier?

  I'll throw a link to the blog in the show notes. So you can check it out yourself if you're curious. But yeah, it's pretty wild. And speaking personally, just as someone who writes for a living, I find it very easy to tell when something is written by AI. I can almost always tell and it's got. To the point where it actively annoys me when I see something that is very clearly written by AI. I was actually I watching I was watching a GDC talk because they just put up all the GDC talks from this year's show on on the internet. And so you can watch them if you had a like if you went and you have a membership there. And as I was watching it, it just became very clear that it was written by AI and I just couldn't watch anymore.

• 6:52Jason Schreier?

  It was just so insufferable. So, uh, yeah, it always it gives me the ick when I read something and then it turns out it was written by AI. I really don't like it.

• 7:01Kirk Hamilton?

  You know, Matty, this is something that you didn't get a chance to talk about in our episode last week. But the fact that you're accepting freelance submissions and then now part of your job as an editor is sort of, you know, putting the putting it through the sieve to try to tell is this AI or not is a kind of a new aspect of your job.

• 7:19Speaker 00

  Yeah, I would say it's easier said than done. I think if something is just straight up written by AI, Jason, I agree, it's very easy to tell. But it becomes more and more difficult if somebody does what Minus did, what I what I suspect he did. We don't know for sure, which is have some parts of of it that were perhaps composed by AI.

• 7:41Jason Schreier?

  Find a place the M dashes.

• 7:42Speaker 00

  Right, for example, but but if a lot of it is human written, or if a human goes in and then fixes it afterward to add in their own thoughts or make it sound like their voice, then you might be reading something and be like, well, this is a bit stilted. But maybe this is a beginner writer, or for example, um, those AI checkers that you referred to, Jason. A lot of times they'll flag non-native English speakers because that'll be somebody who writes in a more formulaic way or traditional or even academic way. Um, and so those checkers are flawed as well. And it's just been a real challenge. I mean, I think it's I think it is getting harder and harder to tell,

• 8:20Speaker 00

  especially when it comes to people who are using their own skills as writers to bolster an AI-written text. And that I feel like is what has really poisoned the well is that like, we'll never know, we'll never know if somebody like. Made an outline and themselves and then had something else write it for that. Like it's, I don't know, the whole thing is, it's just a mess.

• 8:41Kirk Hamilton?

  It's just the new normal. Yeah, it's a, it's a minefield out there. It's very, a very complex space now of artificial and human made thinking and writing and material.

• 8:50Speaker 03

  And like, what is the nature of work?

• 8:53Jason Schreier?

  Speaking of artificially made things, what are we talking about today?

• 8:57Kirk Hamilton?

  Nice. I was hoping, I knew one of you would, would make that transition for me. Yeah. Speaking of rogue AI, taking, taking over everything. Today we're talking about a video game, the video game Pragmata, which is a new, um, a new IP from Capcom. A totally new thing that is a really fun game that the three of us have been playing. Maddie, I believe you have finished. Is that correct?

• 9:20Speaker 00

  I did. I rolled credits.

• 9:22Kirk Hamilton?

  Nice. I am like up to the final boss. So I've played almost all of it.

• 9:26Speaker 00

  Which is a tough one, I will say.

• 9:27Kirk Hamilton?

  And Jason, you have played, I believe, a, a healthy chunk of it. So this is a really cool game. I didn't actually write a big intro for this. It's a pretty straightforward game and I've also just been very busy. So I, I figure we can just kind of summarize it on the fly. We can do it live and describe for everybody what this game is. So let's see if I can do it. So Pragmata is a third person shooter that has a unique mechanic behind it, a unique hacking mechanic. It is set on the moon at some undisclosed point in the future. You play as a human named Hugh, who is part of a sort of salvage, uh, check-in corporate team. That's kind of set, sent to this moon base that is a kind of corporate controlled research base on the moon.

• 10:12Kirk Hamilton?

  They're sent to check in because there hasn't been any, you know, communications from the moon. And as we know, if you make a moon base and they're doing top secret research and then suddenly their comms cut off, everything is probably fine. You don't have to worry about it.

• 10:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:25Kirk Hamilton?

  It's gonna be okay.

• 10:26Speaker 00

  And that's what the game's about. Hugh goes there and everything's ship shape and then he goes home.

• 10:30Kirk Hamilton?

  He's like, they show him a little bit around. They show him how they're doing their research and then he takes off. It's pretty cool. No mad scientists there doing rude shit. No rogue AI.

• 10:38Jason Schreier?

  It's like the Artemis mission. It just goes well.

• 10:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, they just take right around the moon and like take some beautiful photographs. It's kind of a walking simulator.

• 10:46Kirk Hamilton?

  It's so true. Oh, man. Artemis, man. The Artemis mission is funny because I just watched Project Hail Mary and like having seen this incredibly high-wire act, you know, the fictional outer space adventure where everything goes wrong and they get by, you know, on the skin of their teeth, then watching just normal astronauts like doing a good job and like landing safely.

• 11:05Speaker 00

  But also the voice actor who plays Hugh, David Mencken, was talking about how he felt like he couldn't share photos of the Artemis mission because he was worried it would like break his embargo, which is so funny to me. He was like, I know I'm not supposed to talk about the moon, so I'm not going to post anything about the moon.

• 11:18Kirk Hamilton?

  In my NDA, the word moon appears enough times.

• 11:20Jason Schreier?

  Geez.

• 11:21Speaker 00

  I felt for him.

• 11:23Kirk Hamilton?

  So, yeah, so Hugh, played by David Mencken, arrives and very quickly there, the station AI turns on him and his team, kills all of his friends in a kind of shocking open opening sequence that is like loosely referenced at points in the story, but also kind of goes unmentioned at other points.

• 11:40Jason Schreier?

  He gets over it very quickly.

• 11:41Speaker 00

  Yeah, he really shakes it off.

• 11:43Kirk Hamilton?

  Maybe he didn't really like this, guys. There's also one line where Hugh is like, God, kids, who would want kids? Ugh, or something like that at the very beginning. So Hugh is alone pretty quickly. All of his friends and his teammates have been killed and there's a rogue AI rampaging. There's no human beings in sight anywhere on the base and something appears to have gone horribly wrong. Hugh is really quickly kind of injured. He gets knocked down into a pit. He's knocked out and he is awakened by a little girl, or what appears to be a little girl, who is actually Diana, whose actual name I have written down. Oh, she is D I zero three three six seven. Diana. She is an android who happens to look like the cutest little girl you've ever seen, like a little six-year-old, but is in fact

• 12:27Kirk Hamilton?

  an incredibly powerful artificially intelligent robot called a Pragmata.

• 12:32Kirk Hamilton?

  So she teams up with Hugh. She's really nice. Hugh is drawn to her immediately. Like, they have a nice little rapport. And then he teams up with her. And it becomes clear that she, through her cybernetic powers, can hack into these robots who are attacking Hugh, which, if she does the hack properly, renders them vulnerable to his weapons that he carries. Bing! Kirk here. I'm editing the episode, and I'm realizing that I forgot to mention maybe the most important thing in this game, which is that when Diana hacks really hard, like, when she's doing a super difficult hack, she goes 001100011100, like, really, really fast. She just says zeros and ones. It's incredibly silly and very funny, and I just feel like I should probably mention that. Okay, back to my description of the game. Bing!

• 13:18Kirk Hamilton?

  So thus comes the mechanic of the game. The game is, you're walking around as Hugh. You have Diana kind of standing on a cute little backpack sort of stand on Hugh's back, so she's looking over his shoulder all the time. It's basically Donkey Kong Bonanza. She is standing on his shoulder. And when a robot comes at you, you will aim at the robot with the trigger, and then a hacking screen pops up. This is a third-person shooter, so Hugh is over on the left-hand side of the screen. To his right, this grid pops up, and you have to use the face buttons, like a D-pad, to manipulate this square through the grid, moving through different squares from the start point in the upper left to wherever the end hack button is, which means moving through different squares,

• 14:02Kirk Hamilton?

  moving around, hazards, and playing a little grid-based location game, like, solving a little puzzle. While the enemy is coming at you, sometimes you're being shot at by multiple enemies, complete the hack, and then suddenly, boom, the enemy becomes vulnerable, and you can start shooting them. So that's the main idea of the game, this brilliant, I think, idea, where you have to hack and then shoot, and soon you're fighting all different kinds of enemies with all different kinds of attacks. You are shooting enemies in order to hack better. You're hacking enemies before you can shoot. It's this constant cool back-and-forth between these two offensive mechanics that Diana and Hugh are doing in tandem. That's pretty much the game. We'll talk more about the story and how it all works,

• 14:43Kirk Hamilton?

  but that is the gist. So now let's just talk about some broad opinions of it, some broad thoughts. Matty, let's start with you, since you have finished the game. What do you make of Pragmata?

• 14:53Speaker 00

  Sure, I did finish the game. It took me about 18 hours, if anybody's curious about how long it is. I appreciated that this game wasn't too long. I definitely could have done it in less time, but like I said, that that final gamut and lead up to the boss is pretty hard. So I did go back and collect some power ups because

• 15:11Kirk Hamilton?

  I was thinking I was gonna marathon that last night. And then I was like, okay, this kind, I don't want to rush through this. There's a lot going on. I'll finish it, but just

• 15:18Speaker 00

  There are some kind of RPG elements, as we might call them, where the more you collect around the world, the more you can level up Hugh's suit and Diana's hacking abilities and your weapons and all that stuff is, in my opinion, the best part of the game. Like what Kirk described, all those combat mechanics, the idea of doing this hacking mini game while you're also dodging real time fire from these robots that are slowly meandering towards you. It seems like it should get irritating over time, and it just never did for me. It stayed pretty fun the whole way through. There's some variation in the kinds of enemies and the kinds of hacking that you can do. Over time, you unlock all of these different

• 16:01Speaker 00

  kind of hacking nodes, I think they're called, that have different effects on each of the enemies. And you'll you'll end up having different preferences, like, oh, maybe I want the enemies to get confused and start attacking each other, or maybe I want to make sure to have like, the overheat attack and overheat all of them, etc., etc. And like, just kind of creating that immersive sim aspect of making all the robots have these different effects happen is very fun to watch. I really liked the combat of this game. Really could take or leave the story, though. Like, I'm sure we're gonna get into it. But I felt like it was pretty ignorable. Which is kind of all I have to say about

• 16:42Speaker 00

  that. But I had a great time playing the game overall. And I obviously finished it, and I had no trouble doing so. I had a really, really lovely time with the combat in this game. And I think there's a lot of room for a sequel in terms of where they could iterate on it and things they could do.

• 16:57Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, nice. Jason, how about you? What do you think of the game? And how much, how far are you in it?

• 17:01Jason Schreier?

  I'm on the forest level. Okay.

• 17:05Kirk Hamilton?

  So the third major area.

• 17:07Jason Schreier?

  Far. Yeah, the third major area. You're like coming up on halfway. Sure. I mean, I've played as much as I need to play. I don't feel the need to play anymore. But it but it's fun. I like it. It's like it's unusual that a game like this is coming out in 2026. It feels like a game that should have come out 15 years ago. It feels like it's it's meant to hang out alongside Vanquish and Bayonetta and Dead Space on the Xbox 360. Dark Void. I always think of the Jetpack game Dark Void with Nolan.

• 17:34Kirk Hamilton?

  Amazing.

• 17:34Jason Schreier?

  That everybody has forgotten but me. Because it feels like that was a time of experimentation and new IPs because you could get away with it because it only costs you $10 million to make a game as opposed to 100 or even 300 million dollars to make a game. And so I'm glad that this game exists because it just feels refreshing at a time when mostly what we're seeing is sequels or continuations and or live services as kind of new things. There aren't a lot of new, just kind of standalone, big budget, single play, just traditional narrative games, the way that this is. So that's cool to see. And yeah, I really enjoyed it.

• 18:14Jason Schreier?

  It's actually the way that Kirk, you described the combat with hacking and shooting and trying to dodge enemies. While at the same time, you're doing this hacking mini hacking mini game with your face buttons. I think if you haven't played the game, that might sound super overwhelming. But actually, in practice, it works really well. It works surprisingly well. I was shocked to find that it actually feels really good and you don't feel completely overwhelmed while you're doing it. I don't know if it's because they're kind of slowing down the way that the combat is working while you're doing the actual hacking mini games or because you can just kind of dodge and get out of the way

• 18:55Jason Schreier?

  and you wind up feeling super badass when you actually pull it off because you're kind of you're using two sides of your brain at once. It's like you're doing this ultimate multitasking by by doing the hacking mini game and also watching your enemies and dodging them and shooting at the same time. It feels pretty good. And yeah, surprisingly, just not as overwhelming as I would have expected. Just, I don't know, watching gameplay footage of of Bragamata.

• 19:25Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I think that's just a testament to the quality of the design, the combat design team. I think they did an amazing job. This game reminds me of The World Ends With You, the DS RPG where combat takes place on both screens and you have to manage two characters at once. That's the first time I've ever had this feeling of having to split my brain between two different things. I find that game a lot more awkward. It's very interesting and cool. Yeah, I was gonna say, that's, it's a cool game, but that's a lot, that actually is overwhelming in a way that this isn't. Yes. I don't want to give people the impression that this is as overwhelming, and actually, I think it's a testament to how well-designed this is that it isn't. You know, they've done a lot of smart things. I think enemy attacks are very easy to read. There are some pretty scary melee enemies, but they always have a big, long wind-up

• 20:10Kirk Hamilton?

  before they attack you, and it's big enough that I always see them out of my peripheral vision when I'm looking at the hacking window. Also, Diana is very helpful. She's always calling stuff out for Hugh. "He's about to attack. Hugh, move, jump." She'll say, there's one big beefer enemy that jumps and then lands with an AOE attack, and you just have to jump, because Hugh has actually a lot of mobility options. He can float in the air. There are actually mods that incentivize shooting in the air. And when I started using that more, like floating and shooting from, from the air, the game became much more vertical for me, which is fun. You just have to hit the jump button. So having Diana just say, "Jump," while I'm trying to hack and focus on other things, is really, really helpful. So they've designed all this smart stuff to make the game feel, you know, to make it

• 20:53Kirk Hamilton?

  not feel overwhelming. And I am like, yeah, I'm over the moon about the, this idea, this central idea. Over the moon, huh?

• 21:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, I really appreciate that you can also kind of design Hugh in your own play style. Like, that's cool that you got really into jumping. And I know you can like, level up the thrusters and whatnot, but in classic Matty fashion, I really tanked my way through the game and like, leveled up Hugh's health a lot and was like, okay, how much of a powerhouse can I be? How much can I withstand so that I can really complete complex hacks and maybe even take a hit? Like, eventually, there are power-ups you can do where it's like, okay, even if I get hit, I'll be able to continue my hack, for example. And that kind of thing was really fun for me. And there's also ones that are like, the closer you are to an enemy, the more damage you deal, things like that. So it, basically, you can design...

• 21:45Speaker 00

  Your play style around what power ups you get, which I mean, we talk about this kind of game all the time as like a favorite of ours is like, oh, we can actually play in each of our three preferred modes. And I loved that.

• 21:59Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, the leveling is pretty cool, the way that it's handled. There's a little bit of souls to this where there are these, you'll kind of come across these tram points when you're out exploring the map. Well, for starters, actually, the map isn't really detailed. Like, there isn't a mini map in this game. And I was surprised by this in the second full area, the sort of city area, that there isn't like a really easy way to tell where you are and where, you know, the like, power up that you can see in the other room, like, how to get there, because there's no mini map. And that is something that I unsurprisingly really like about this game. There is a map you can go to in the pause menu, but it doesn't show you in great detail where you are. So there's this feeling of kind of getting to know the level. And then, in particular with the forest level and the city level, of kind

• 22:43Kirk Hamilton?

  of unlocking shortcuts and gradually turning this big vertical space into something that's easily traversable. You know, you'll go through a whole gauntlet and then open a kind of one way door leading back to the start. So then, as I said, you unlock these tram points that let you go back to a safe room. The safe room is this kind of, you know, home base where you can do upgrades. You can, you give one of the, something I really like in this game are these collectibles. They're called REMs. What does that stand for? Rare Earth Memories?

• 23:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 23:12Kirk Hamilton?

  Something like that.

• 23:13Speaker 00

  They're holographic toys, basically.

• 23:15Kirk Hamilton?

  They're, I think they're 3D printed.

• 23:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, I suppose so. But they kind of like, wibble in and out as you construct them in a holographic way.

• 23:24Kirk Hamilton?

  Right, but then Diana will go sit in them and play. Like, she'll go down the slide, so it's 3D printed. So the premise of this moon base is that there's like massive 3D printers in the sky that can print everything. And, man, okay, I don't want to get sidetracked by that. I'll come back to that. Let me finish the level design description and like the way that the kind of general gameplay works and then come back to it. So anyways, you're going back to the space, you're leveling up, and then you're popping back out to the level. So there's a kind of that feeling of soulsy exploration, then leveling up, then popping back out and all the enemies are kind of back in the world. Like, it has that kind of rhythm to it, even though you don't lose progress when you die and it doesn't have that soulsiness. So, okay, the 3D printer. Something really cool in this game, I think, is this idea that this whole, like, base,

• 24:07Kirk Hamilton?

  this whole area has been 3D printed. And that lets you have things like these cool Earth memories that Hugh is giving to Diana. There, it'll be like, you know, there's a set of them for each level, and then the set, you kind of build them back in your home base. So you've built a, like, camping site with, like, you know, a cool little tents and, uh, I don't know, a fishing area, or there's like a playground with a slide. And Diana freaks out because the whole story is like that Diana wants to go to Earth, like, she wants to see what it's like to be a kid on Earth. So you're showing her all these cool things from Earth that the staff of this moon base were printing to, like, remind themselves of home. And it turns your home base gradually into this really neat-looking space with, like, all of these little, you know, kind of Earth, like, little mini biomes that she

• 24:50Kirk Hamilton?

  can play around in. But then, also, because this whole thing is 3D printed, the levels are much more interesting than the 2010s version of this game, I think, would have been. Like, the Vanquish version would have just been a bunch of chrome and silver and shining lights and, like, you know, a factory, and then the, like, recycling plant, and then the sewers, and the outside area would have been the big variety, you know. Here, the second level looks like Times Square, this insane 3D-printed, kind of like AI-slopped Times Square. And then the level after that is a big forest.

• 25:20Jason Schreier?

  The developers said they, like, intentionally made it want to seem like AI-slopped.

• 25:25Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I saw that. And so it's really cool, like, and you're kind of 3D-printing the level in real time. Like, I think that's such a great idea, because it makes this moon-base, outer-space game sometimes look really different. You're in a huge forest with, like, trees everywhere, and I find that visual variety really appealing.

• 25:41Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, I think that's the biggest, that the combat is really cool, and then the level design, like you mentioned, the combination of the art direction and the style and the way it all just kind of feel, has this surreal, uh, 3D printer feeling. Um, that combined with the design itself and the 3D design and the way you'll circle back. One thing that's also sold us, to your point, Kirk, is the way you'll, um, you'll be exploring one, one area, and then you'll loop around it and wind up back in, like, the first area started, you started in, but from a different perspective, and then you'll be able to Kick down a ladder. I think you mentioned there are shortcuts and stuff like that, but also just kind of seeing each new, each area from a bunch of different perspectives and being able to kind of locate yourself in like proportion to where everything else is.

• 26:26Jason Schreier?

  And then eventually you get items that let you take shortcuts, metroidvania style, like you can knock down obstacles in the New York area. You get this one thing that lets you cut through these big like tentacle things that are in your way. And it all works really nicely. And it also gives you pretty straightforward goals, very clear goals for each area. Hey, go five, find five unlock things, find locks to unlock, find two elevator areas to explore. Do go this way, like go pick, pick between A and B of these encounters. And then at the end of it, you'll, you'll reach an unlock and then you'll have to do that three times and then

• 27:08Jason Schreier?

  you'll beat the level. It's all very regimented and structured in a way that I think works really nicely for a game like this.

• 27:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, I, I also think like, even though I kind of said I didn't like the plot, I agree that the world is what's really cool about this game. Like the whole concept of the 3D printing being on like a massive scale. And like, it's not like 3D printing from our world. It's like this fictional filament, as they call it, that can produce all of these different incredible things, including something like Diana, which is like this very humanoid synthetic being. And like the idea of like, okay, well, we could 3D print organs and like there's sort of this facsimile of human life. Like that whole concept is really fascinating. And I think

• 27:54Speaker 00

  that that almost carries the game at various points, like just the pure visuals and conceit of all of that is really fascinating. And I, I just wish it had gone so far as to also have better moment to moment writing, because like, this is also a classic game where you're picking up people's laptops and reading their emails, for example, some real corny email writing in this game. And like, I mean, we, the, the crux of the game is of course, the, the growing friendship between Hugh and Diana and like this idea that he's meant to slowly have this paternal bond toward this little robot girl. And I don't know.

• 28:37Jason Schreier?

  As one does. Did it make you guys want to become parents?

• 28:40Speaker 00

  No.

• 28:43Kirk Hamilton?

  No, it raised a lot of questions for me. I mean, I haven't finished the game, but like, what do you do when your child doesn't grow older?

• 28:49Speaker 00

  I had a lot of questions about that.

• 28:51Kirk Hamilton?

  And the game, I don't think it's a, I mean, I guess this point I say the game really doesn't interrogate that question. No.

• 28:56Speaker 00

  So like Diana is, she's eventually revealed to actually be seven as like the prototype. She's supposed to be a seven year old. And I, that really like messed with my head as well, Kirk, to be like, okay, so she's got all the wonder and delight of a seven year old. Like every time you give her a new toy or, or show her something, she's like experiencing it for the first time. And I'm like, oh, that's really cool. Like, that's what's exciting about like having a kid around is how excited this kid is. But also she's never in a bad mood. She doesn't start throwing tantrums at any point. She doesn't do any of the other things seven year olds might do. And also she can't grow up. And like, those are some really interesting pieces of narrative tension. But this just isn't the kind of, this game is a little too light of a touch.

• 29:37Kirk Hamilton?

  This is not Interview with the Vampire.

• 29:39Speaker 00

  Exactly. I also thought of Claudia from Interview with the Vampire. I was absolutely thinking of Claudia, which by the way.

• 29:45Kirk Hamilton?

  The most famous immortal child in all of literature, probably, right?

• 29:48Speaker 00

  If I, I truly can't recommend that TV show adaptation enough. I will take this extra moment to recommend it. It's so good. Um, but yeah, I mean, even the original Kirsten Dunst portrayal of Claudia, also really great. Um, from the movie way back when. But yeah, they just don't get into that in this game. It's, it's, it remains very superficial in the sense that it's just Hugh wants to care for this little robot girl because she looks like a little girl. And it's just that simple, you know?

• 30:12Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I think so. The director of this game, Cho Young Hee, who was at Platinum Games and worked on Bayonetta games, on Nier Automata. Like, there is a lot of Platinum DNA in this game.

• 30:25Speaker 00

  Explains how fun it is, for sure.

• 30:28Kirk Hamilton?

  I think I've read this, like, I think what I've seen around is that the idea developmentally on this game is that this is a kind of a younger team at Capcom. It's sort of a new group that they're giving a chance to make something new instead of just like more Resident Evil and Monster Hunter. Though, like the other director, I think, worked on RE2 Remake. Like, there's a lot of veteran Capcom devs working on this as well. But you can see that Platinum-iness, like both in the design The game, the kind of video gamey structure, there are these like red zones you can unlock with a red key to have a special challenge.

• 30:58Speaker 00

  And they're like super hard sometimes, yeah.

• 31:00Kirk Hamilton?

  They're really fun. Those are great. And like the training missions, like if you do the training missions, that's the key to leveling up because those will just shower you and level up. Rewards and there are these really cool little very quick like a race through like obstacle course or a like contained fight. Like they're really fun, but they feel like a bayonetta, like a platinum game. And the enemy designs, which are fantastic, especially the bosses. I mean, the bosses, we haven't mentioned bosses, but the boss fights in this game are awesome. And like, they're these huge crazy looking robots. That are just really, really cool and feel like a platinum game. So it's got all of that, but then you just don't really have that like. I don't know, there isn't a Yoko Taro, for example, behind this, like there is in Nier Automata.

• 31:42Kirk Hamilton?

  Coming up with this like bigger narrative that's going to ask these big questions and really kind of provoke you in these ways. It's really just kind of, okay, it's a really cute android kid. You're going to get to know her. That's kind of all there is to it. Like it doesn't raise any, like all the questions we've been raising about AI. It doesn't really raise any of them. Like it's, it's content to just exist in a very simple fictional world.

• 32:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, which is kind of too bad. I mean, you're right, like Yakuza, Yakuza's voice in this would have been so fascinating. I mean, that would never happen, but like thinking about Nier Automata and like the story that that tells, or even like Camille with Bayonetta, much as I may.

• 32:17Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah.

• 32:17Speaker 00

  Quibble with him to say the least about some of the decisions he's made. I can't deny he's got a strong. Sense of who Bayonetta is as a character and that's like a big part of what makes those games function at all. And like, it does feel like that's a fundamental thing that's missing. From this game and that there's just, I don't know, it's, it's, I mean, it clearly worked for some people and just not me. And there's so much about the game that I love. It's just that it felt like there's just one thing missing, which is like this larger sense of humanity at the core of it.

• 32:48Kirk Hamilton?

  I do think that that is what separates it from being a real all-timer. Like, I can imagine a version of this game where the story really hit, like, where there was just more to Diana, where she became a kind of iconic character. Her character design is so great, like, she's just like the way, she's like kind of running around in this big coat with this big floppy hair. She's just like, her animations are amazing, she just really looks like this cute little kid. And like, if there was more to her, more dimensionality, more complexity as a character, and if Hugh, in particular, was better, you know, just better developed. It's nice that he's just a supportive, nice guy, but he spends 90% of the game with his face covered in this just kind of vanquish suit kind of look. So there'll be these like scenes where Diana is kind of emoting,

• 33:30Kirk Hamilton?

  and Hugh is telling her something about Earth, and literally you can't even see his face. And I'm sure that saves money and they don't have to do facial animations, and there's a lot of reasons that they might have done that. But, it holds the game back from like what I think would be, there's a version of it, you know, that would really be like, people would be talking about, there'd be like memes and people sharing videos just of like, interactions and animations online, like, it would just have that extra kind of a thing. As it stands, it's just an exceptionally well-made action game, that really is exceptionally well-made. I mean, Matty, you mentioned the pacing, like, how it feels like it never repeats itself and it's always introducing something new.

• 34:06Speaker 00

  It's so-

• 34:06Kirk Hamilton?

  That is hard to do, and like, man, I just think that this game crushes that. Like, I'm right up to the end, there's never been a point where I've felt like, "Oh, alright, now I'm just gonna go do more of this", like, never. Like, you're always in a new area with new enemies, there's a new mechanic being introduced, some new like wrinkle or complexity on the mechanics, then they're like giving you a new ability, and then they're forcing, you know, they introduce a new enemy type pretty late in the game, and it's a really fun enemy type that like mixes up combat even more, like, it's a real challenge. And I just like, the pacing is just masterfully done, and when it comes down to it, like, that is helping the game. I mean, it's, it seems to be selling really well. I think people are digging it, and that's just because it's like well-made and fun.

• 34:47Speaker 00

  Oh, for sure.

• 34:48Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, there's a, there's a good level of challenge throughout the game, which I also really appreciate. Um, and you do have to think on your feet a lot, um, in- The hacking mechanic, you get these, these yellow nodes that can do extra damage or it can have other effects, like one of them allows your hack to, to apply to multiple enemies that are on the screen, but you only have a limited number of them. And while you can replenish them throughout the level, you still, you use them up every time you use them. So sometimes you have to kind of think on your feet and be like, oh, do I really want to use one of these yellow nodes? Do I want to avoid that while I'm doing the hacking mini game? Oh no, I accidentally hit one of those. Do I want to keep going or make the split second decision to go back and potentially

• 35:33Jason Schreier?

  get hurt, but also like, don't want to waste it. And so there's really fun kind of rotation of that stuff. Um, yeah, I haven't seen enough of the story to be able to comment substantially on, on that other than I thought it was, it was a fun little moment when you was like, you know, I was an orphan and uh, he almost straight up says, and therefore I relate to you being an orphan and now you're going to be my orphan.

• 35:57Kirk Hamilton?

  But a nice bit of like, you know, adopted kid visibility.

• 36:00Jason Schreier?

  Sure. Yeah. It's a fun little, fun, fun little moment. Um, but I do think, I think it signals, the game signals pretty, uh, pretty clearly at the beginning of the game when they just move on from all of his friends dying and pretty signals pretty clearly that this is not a game you play for a big emotional wallop of a story.

• 36:19Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, I suppose not. And I, I do, I had no problem getting to the credits on this game. And usually I'll kind of talk about like, oh, I, I wanted the story to motivate me to complete it. And I just was fine with that not being my motivator this time, which I think really speaks to how propulsive the game's design is in every other particular like Kirk was, was highlighting, which that's a huge compliment. Like the fact that every single area looks completely different and is fascinating and has all of those environmental puzzle aspects. Like late in the game, there's just randomly this level that has this sliding box puzzle that like, doesn't have any combat. And I thought was so fun. And I was like, I don't know who designed this room that just has all these

• 37:04Speaker 00

  sliding boxes. This is awesome. This is like exactly the kind of like, Metroid-esque, like Dark Souls-esque, like environmental puzzle that will just randomly be in a level. And like, somebody at Capcom was like, I gotta do this sliding boxes thing. Props to that person. I thought that was so fun and surprising and just like, it never happens quite that way again. And I, I just think that's really neat. That combined with the whole, you can kind of see a power up in a level or see power ups around a level and be like, I don't know how exactly I'm gonna get there, but I know eventually I will. That sense of reward and tension between the environmental hazards is really fun.

• 37:41Jason Schreier?

  I wonder if that was a vestige from a previous iteration of this game.

• 37:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, I wonder.

• 37:45Jason Schreier?

  It's worth noting, we didn't talk about this earlier, but this game was announced in June of 2020. When this game was announced, just to put this in perspective, this game was announced when the PlayStation 5 was announced.

• 37:58Kirk Hamilton?

  And they said it was coming in 22.

• 37:59Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, yeah, 2022. This game was announced about a month after we started TripleClick. This game was announced, this game was announced in the same stream that, that like Spider-Man Miles Morales was announced. Again, just putting things in perspective for you guys. So yeah, I mean, that was, that was a very long time ago. And so I imagine this game has gone through a lot of different, just kind of iterations over the years. And maybe at some point they had a puzzle box, like set of levels.

• 38:32Speaker 00

  The whole game's gonna be sliding boxes. And then they were like, that's only fun for about one minute. And we're gonna keep it in for one minute.

• 38:37Jason Schreier?

  So we'll just keep one, yeah.

• 38:40Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, they definitely, I mean, they must've had to iterate on this combat so much since it is genuinely new. I mean, there are, you know, there are elements of Alan Wake in it, in that in the Alan Wake games, you need to burn off a shield before you can attack an enemy. So there's this feeling of an enemy advancing on you, but you have to do something before you can fight back. And there's elements of Resident Evil, just in that it's like a cover free shooter. You're kind of, you know, you have to keep moving.

• 39:05Speaker 00

  Enemies are really slow, for example.

• 39:07Kirk Hamilton?

  Right, enemies are slow. There's a bit of control. I feel a lot of times when I'm doing a big crazy fight and then it ends, I feel that same kind of exhilaration that I often felt playing Control, where you just have Like destroyed this whole room and there's like just been this massive fracas and you came through it. That grip gun also feels like Jesse's main gun in Control. Well, and the guns, I mean, I, we haven't talked about the weapons, but the weaponry in this game is really fascinating and the approach to weapons. So you have basically like four different kinds of weapons, but it isn't just like shotgun, rocket launcher, you know, whatever, I don't know, pistol. Like you have one primary gun that can, for me, I've only got two, maybe there's a third one, but I only ever had two.

• 39:46Kirk Hamilton?

  It's like a rifle or a pistol and it like has a set number of ammo, like not that much ammo. And then when you run out, you just wait and it slowly replenishes. I can't think of the last game that I played that does this. It is like a kind of revolutionary idea that you're doing a bunch of damage, but then you have to stop. And because you're also hacking, it like forces you to kind of balance between hacking and dodging and shooting. Then there are the offensive weapons, you know, a shotgun, like bolt rifle, whatever. And there are defensive weapons, but you can only carry a few of them. And when they run out of ammo, they're just gone. So it isn't like you're constantly just picking up ammo everywhere.

• 40:25Kirk Hamilton?

  You actually have to think about what you're, you know, what you're using and when you want to throw out, you know, the net, there's like a kind of a web.

• 40:32Speaker 00

  The stasis net.

• 40:33Kirk Hamilton?

  Stasis net.

• 40:34Speaker 00

  I love the stasis net.

• 40:35Kirk Hamilton?

  Incredibly useful.

• 40:36Speaker 00

  Stays good all the way through to the end of the game, I gotta say.

• 40:39Kirk Hamilton?

  Incredibly useful. There's, but there's like, there's another defensive or like crowd control weapon that like, it's these like sticky grenades that cause the hacking window to get smaller and smaller. And sometimes on the bosses, like the hacking window will be this giant minesweeper board and you're like, oh my God, like I don't have time to go through all this. You do unlock an auto hack for Diana as well. That's very useful.

• 40:59Speaker 00

  But it's limited as well.

• 41:00Kirk Hamilton?

  But it is limited. Um, but you know, hitting it, so using that cluster grenade or whatever to make it a lot easier to hack. Like there are all these cool kind of balanced strategies. Then there's also, man, the D, I don't know if you guys use the decoy.

• 41:13Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 41:13Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, the decoy is like. Also useful. Incredibly useful. Like that's it. If I ever died in this game, it was because I forgot that I had a decoy that I could just shoot down. Cause then you shoot that thing and then all the enemies just start attacking it for a while and you can kind of just relax, you can. Heal, you can like hit him with a net and like do a bunch of damage. But the weapons, I think that the weapon design is like really interesting. Consider, I was not expecting that, you know, a lot of games like this, it's just rifle, sniper rifle, shotgun. You know, this game has kind of variations on that, but they're all kind of interesting. They all feel really good to use. They're all limited in interesting ways and they like interact with one another in really incredible ways. So I guess what I'm saying is all that extra time was definitely used for like a lot of iteration on this combat system until they've,

• 41:57Kirk Hamilton?

  they've really got it dialed in.

• 41:59Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, I mean, if you think about it, like I said before, the way that they've managed to make a combat system where you're shooting and hacking at the same time, using like different parts of your controller, make that feel good and intuitive and not completely chaotic and messy. I think it's really a testament to the skill of these designers. And yeah, it clearly took a long time. I'm sure they went through, God knows how many different versions of it along the way. But, uh, but yeah, it worked out and I'm glad this game exists. And I'm glad that like a new IP is coming out and seemingly succeeding in 2026. It's, it's just, uh, it's a feel good story all around, I think.

• 42:38Speaker 00

  Yeah, I agree. I hope that in the sequel, they like find a couple writers who are super into the sci-fi premise and dive into it more. Because I really do think there's a lot of potential here and that's like the last missing piece that would make this incredible and so, so cool because it's already has so much potential just from the central hook of it. And it's like, okay, but you just need a couple more creative people to come in and be like, what if this, what if that? What if the robots had these types of feelings about their situation? That would be great.

• 43:11Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I agree that a sequel, this has just all the hallmarks of one of those great first game that has a spectacular sequel. Just because they've come up with this new idea. And yeah, for me, I think playing it, I'm just so, it's so cool to see a new idea, especially in a third person shooter. You know, it's just a reminder that people can have new ideas and they can make something, make something that no one's made before and that will always be true. Like as much as people think, oh, it's just everything is going to be like this, it's going to be like that. You know, the, the era that we're hearkening back to, the 2010s, that was kind of the era where everything was a cover shooter. And everything had to just be like years of war because that's just what video games are now. And people were really tired of it even then, but it'd be like, dude,

• 43:54Kirk Hamilton?

  do we really need another like cover shooter in Unreal Engine where you're lumbering around behind cover? And then, of course, there are, you know, a variety of people said, no, we don't actually need that. But it's just like seeing someone take a third person shooter and turn it into something totally different. It's very exciting for me. Like, it's just neat to see. And then also, right, the fact that it did well, just that Capcom seems to be crushing it lately, that they're just so, seem so reliable to be just releasing these single-player games that people love. It's nice to see, given that the industry is doing so badly. I hope they don't make a sequel. I hope they make something totally new.

• 44:29Speaker 00

  It's true, they could.

• 44:30Kirk Hamilton?

  I hope that they refine. I mean, I, like, video game sequels are so, they're distinct for me in terms of like follow-ups, in terms of other types of art, just because, once you've spent six years turning this game in, from whatever it was, into what it is now, you deserve, I think, to then relax and just like enjoy the fact that now you have succeeded, you've made it work, people like it, they want another one, and you can really just lean into whatever you think is cool. And like, all the ideas that you didn't have time for, or like you were saying, Matty, like, bring in some narrative people who have some ideas for this world to really do something cool. Like, it, video games, it's such an important part of the development process, is to take your success and then build it into something really cool, that, that I hope they do it. But, you know, of

• 45:13Kirk Hamilton?

  course, yeah, I also hope that this gives Capcom the kind of internal permission, or like bolsters the internal arguments to like, hey, let's let some of our new people make teams to like have new ideas and make new things, because new ideas can still sell. Like, I kind of want both things. I think we can kind of both end this one.

• 45:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, right on.

• 45:34Kirk Hamilton?

  All right. Well, that is Pragmata, a straightforwardly cool game with a genuinely awesome new idea, a lot of fun, and, and yeah, I think we all liked it. So, all right, so let's take a break. We're gonna tell you some about Max Fun Drive 2026, and then we will move on to one more thing.

• 45:54Kirk Hamilton?

  It is Maximum Fun Drive, Max Fun Drive 2026.

• 45:57Speaker 00

  Yay.

• 45:58Kirk Hamilton?

  If two of you excited?

• 45:59Speaker 00

  I am excited. It's fun every time.

• 46:01Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, I mean, I want one of those keychains.

• 46:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 46:05Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, man.

• 46:05Jason Schreier?

  Those look sick.

• 46:06Kirk Hamilton?

  So that is, that is the, the big reward. There's always a big reward for Maximum Fun. If you, um, if you upgrade to the $10 a month, or you sign up for $10 a month, they always have, that's where the unique Max Fun Drive reward is. In past years, it's been an enamel pin. I have one of each of them. They're all in my bag that I carry around every day.

• 46:25Speaker 00

  We've had some cool pins over the years.

• 46:26Kirk Hamilton?

  It is cool. I like, like, we've been doing this long enough that I have a real collection now. But, um, this year, no enamel pin. Instead, we are doing a keychain that is designed by our beloved Tom DJ, the artist who has come up with a lot of our art and the pin designs over the years. He also did the Strong Songs art, incidentally. I work with Tom on a lot of things now. Tom's amazing. So he designed a keychain for us and for all of the other Maximum Fun shows that you get if you sign up during Max Fun Drive for the $10 a month tier, or you can upgrade if you're like an existing $5 a month member. And, uh, and that's really kind of the, like, that's the, the carrot, right? It's the, the sweetener. But really, like, this is just a good time

• 47:10Kirk Hamilton?

  to sign up for Maximum Fun because you can support our show and you can support the existence of Maximum Fun, which I think is a thing that, that should exist.

• 47:18Jason Schreier?

  And you get our, our bonus episodes every single month, which is pretty cool. We got some good ones.

• 47:23Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, we can always talk about our bonus episode.

• 47:25Kirk Hamilton?

  That's true. Jason, what's our, what's our bonus episode this month?

• 47:29Jason Schreier?

  Oh, man, we're talking about The Sopranos, uh, coming up real soon, actually. Between this, this week and next week, you will get that in your bonus feed, which is us talking about-

• 47:39Kirk Hamilton?

  Before the end of the week.

• 47:40Jason Schreier?

  Seasons two and three of The Sopranos, which we've been all watching and enjoying quite a bit and dissecting, because there's really no show more fun to talk about than The Sopranos.

• 47:52Speaker 00

  It's true, it's true. Season three was incredible. And by the way, I'm watching this show for the very first time because of Jason, and I'm very grateful. So excited to talk about Pine Barrens and everything else that happened in season three. That was just wild. Uh, I, things that I'm like, wow, I can't believe I have gone this many years of my life without being spoiled on these plot points. Still going strong.

• 48:15Jason Schreier?

  Good stuff.

• 48:16Kirk Hamilton?

  Man, yeah.

• 48:17Speaker 00

  We'll talk about it and it'll be in the bonus.

• 48:19Kirk Hamilton?

  I, yeah, I finished it as well. I'm very excited. One of, I mean, I'm looking forward to four and five, I guess, but season three is an amazing season of TV. I was really, really blown away by it by the end. Like, man, the strongest season of the show so far and will be very fun to talk about with the two of you. So, yeah, that's gonna be a supersized bonus episode. It'll be like two hours of us talking about The Sopranos. But of course, if you become a member, you get all of the past bonus episodes we've recorded on video games, movies, cooking, life. There's so many of them. They're so much fun. And you'll get everyone going forward.

• 48:51Jason Schreier?

  Really, they're all about life.

• 48:52Speaker 00

  They are. They're all about life. That's so, so true.

• 48:57Kirk Hamilton?

  Video games are just part of life.

• 48:59Jason Schreier?

  That's true.

• 49:00Speaker 00

  That's true.

• 49:00Kirk Hamilton?

  So, yeah, we're, you know, it's a yearly celebration of Maximum Fun. There are a bunch of other rewards. You can check the website, maximumfun.org/join. They've got all the other stuff. There's some, you know, a canvas travel bag, a visor, just the usual kinds of rewards that you can get this year if you sign up at, at the higher tiers. And, but mostly it's about that keychain and it's about supporting.

• 49:25Speaker 00

  Mostly the keychain is really cool. I mean.

• 49:27Kirk Hamilton?

  It's about supporting, supporting listener-supported media. All right. So that's enough. That's enough on Max Fun Drive for now. Thanks so much to everyone who supports us. Thanks for listening as well. Just thanks, everyone out there. We're really happy to get to make this show and we have a lot of fun with it. So, let's get back to the show and, and do one more thing.

• 49:50Kirk Hamilton?

  All right. We are back for one more thing. Jason, I want to, well, I've been playing this game, but I want to hear what you think of this game as well. Tell us about your one more thing.

• 49:58Jason Schreier?

  My one more thing is a video game called Titanium Court. And this is a independent game that is developed by, or directed and mainly developed by a guy named A.P. Thompson, who is an indie developer in New York. And how does one describe Titanium Court? I think the best way to describe it might be a rogue-like, match-three, tower-defense visual novel.

• 50:25Jason Schreier?

  Uh, mystery game. That's the best way to describe it. Yeah, that's, that's the pithiest way.

• 50:31Kirk Hamilton?

  It feels like Alice, like David Lynch's Alice in Wonderland, like it kind of has that.

• 50:35Jason Schreier?

  Sure. David Lynch's Shakespeare, I would say. David Lynch is like, uh, been a midsummer night's dream. Oh, okay. I'm interested. So, okay, how does one describe this game? So the premise of this game, so first of all, the way this game looks is it's a very lo-fi, just kind of, um, almost looks like an ASCII game, a little bit more advanced than kind of like ASCII graphics. ASCII graphics are like, what Dwarf Fortress.

• 51:03Kirk Hamilton?

  Like a VGA, maybe?

• 51:04Jason Schreier?

  The original, yeah, sure. Um, very, very rudimentary graphical style, but grows on you and, and looks much better in motion than it does in screenshots. And the premise of this game is that, uh, you control this character who, uh, just kind of winds up waking up in this, uh, in this area called the Titanium Court. This kind of like palace or castle, um, that is inhabited by fairies and the fairies declare that you are their queen. And you must therefore manage the court and, uh, take it out on these, uh, quests, which are these kind of campaigns, these wars they're called.

• 51:45Jason Schreier?

  And in these wars, uh, there are kind of two phases. One phase is the match three phase where you are matching, uh, kind of bejeweled styled, matching these rows of, of objects to gain resources and set up the position of the map. And then in the second phase, it becomes a tower defense game where you have various objectives, such as, uh, fighting enemy soldiers and defending your own court on this map that you've set up in the first phase. And to defend your court, you hire, um, uh, different knights and soldiers and archers and also, uh, mineral harvesters using minerals that you might've gained in the first, uh, section of the first phase of this combat.

• 52:28Kirk Hamilton?

  The phases are low tide and high tide.

• 52:30Jason Schreier?

  Low tide and high tide.

• 52:31Kirk Hamilton?

  Just the strange, specific language that everything seems to have associated with it.

• 52:34Jason Schreier?

  It is. I'll get, I'll get into the writing in a second, but the way, and then each of these wars, it has a series of levels. It's kind of, it's this rogue light structure where you go out on this run. And then at the end of it, you can fight a boss and bosses can be taken down in a variety of different ways. And then at the end of it, you wind up back in your court and you can navigate and explore your court and have all sorts of interactions with the citizens, potentially do things that get you more resources that you can then apply within the main combat section of the game. And then you go out on another run and you do it again. And this kind of, this cycle continues. And as the cycle continues, you learn more and more about this world that you're inhabiting.

• 53:17Jason Schreier?

  And here is where the game really reveals its brilliance. And that is the writing and storytelling of this game. This game is, is written in a way that unlike anything I've seen before, I think maybe the closest it's come is, or the closest comparison might be Undertale. It's written in this very kind of wry, sardonic manner that isn't quite snarky, but is very tongue in cheek and very just wink, wink in a way that I guess the way, when I say that, it makes it sound like it might be smarmy and annoying, but it's not.

• 53:53Kirk Hamilton?

  It's kind of fourth wall breaking. Like in the very beginning, it kind of says, well, you will be cast. The understudy is being cast as the lead role and you haven't read the script, but you're just going to have to go with it and you'll figure it out as you go. And there's this feeling of like, it's like a stage performance. And so there's a kind of a like, well, this is just a performance, like feeling. It's a little bit, there's that kind of ironic, like meta layer to it, I guess. It's, it's not sardonic, right?

• 54:18Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, but that's just a small part of it. I mean, a lot of it is just the way that these fairies interact with each other and with you. I mean, just to give you an example of, of how this game is, is, is kind of written and how the story is, unfolds. These fairies.

• 54:36Jason Schreier?

  They don't believe that cars exist. And there are a lot of signs in this world that are kind of traffic signs. Like you'll see a stop sign, you'll see a no turning here sign. And the fairies will look at them and be like, this is magic. Oh, I saw a stop sign, so I have to stop. And you'll try to explain to them that like, these are for cars. And they'll be like, cars? Like, what are you talking about? Like, is this, what, what is this? They refuse to believe, no matter how much you explain to them what a car is and that it exists. They just refuse to believe that it exists. And that's just kind of like a small, a small portion of the number of gags that are in this kind of bizarre world that you inhabit.

• 55:14Kirk Hamilton?

  A gag that I really liked is the tooltip pops up and it's like, hi there. These fairies religion does not allow them to acknowledge tooltips, but I'm a secular tooltip, so I can tell you what this menu over here is. And then throughout the beginning of the game, the tooltip keeps kind of popping up and referencing the fact that, well, they don't believe in me, but I do exist. And like, here, I'm going to tell you this. It's like that kind of humor. It's very oddball, but, but very funny, or I find it very funny.

• 55:38Jason Schreier?

  Very eccentric, very strange. I mean, another good example is that like, at the end of a war, when you're just kind of exhausted and drained and you're like about to go back to your castle, the prompt that just shows up just says, okay. And you just have to click on okay to keep going.

• 55:55Kirk Hamilton?

  Or like when you destroy another castle, it just shows like a sports image. Like it just shows like a guy hitting a baseball.

• 56:01Jason Schreier?

  There's a lot of, yeah, there's a lot of, the imagery is used in quite a, like, sometimes you'll like, you'll, you'll discover something you're not supposed to. And just like a bunch of little hand drawn images of like a guy putting his finger over his lips to shush you will just appear. It's just a very bizarre game and it's really brilliant. It's also at times infuriating and tedious because the rogue-like aspect of it all can get very repetitive. And there's a lot of like, really, if you really want to unfold, uncover all the game has to offer, there's a lot to do. And a lot of the things that you have to do grow increasingly complicated and like I said before, kind of tedious and overwhelming at different points.

• 56:45Jason Schreier?

  Parts, but the thing that has just kept me hooked on it. There have been multiple times I'm playing on my Steam Deck every night in bed and there have been multiple times and I've just kind of out of frustration turned it off. And then I like start playing something else and I'll just feel magnetized like I'll just feel the pull to come back to Titanium Court and keep playing. And that's because the writing is so good and the way that the story is told is so good and the way it kind of compels you to want to know more about the nature of this Titanium Court and how you fit into it and all the different mysteries surrounding it and the existence of, for example, a second queen. Hmm, who could that be? And just like lots of other just kind of interesting questions and mysteries that you're trying to unravel as you play.

• 57:30Jason Schreier?

  That has made me get willing, willing to get through some of the tedium. And actually, it reminds me kind of of Void Stranger, a game that was my one more thing a few weeks ago, which is a game where, again, like the story and the puzzles compelled me even to play through some tedious parts. This is nowhere near as tedious as Void Stranger was. This is, is a lot more user friendly, I would say, but you have to be willing to get through some repetition. And yeah, man, it's so strange. There's a lot of stuff that I don't want to spoil because a lot of the, the joy of it is just discovering how things unfold and how deep it really gets, but it's a lot more bizarre and deeper and has a lot more going for it than you might expect even just starting it.

• 58:13Jason Schreier?

  I highly recommend it. I think it's, it's going to be one of my favorite games of the year despite the tedium. And I think everyone should, should check it out. It's, it's really cool.

• 58:28Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I really like it too. I haven't played as much as you, but I'm digging it. And I guess to just add one other thought about the music. There's something aesthetically going on with the music that I think is very interesting and I don't know if this is AP playing the music, but it's a lot of guitar music, especially the kind of main themes, but it's played. It's just.

• 58:51Kirk Hamilton?

  I don't want to like sound like I'm knocking it. It sounds very amateur kind of like it just sounds like someone plugged a guitar into a basic amp sim and just kind of like played some chords and then kind of tried to figure out some leads with just a huge muddy reverb on everything.

• 59:14Kirk Hamilton?

  It has this kind of casual atmos, like, kind of amateur sound to it. You know, there are mistakes, like, there are just notes that don't ring out on the guitar. It kind of like, you'll be going through a little chord progression, and then the progression just sort of changes, and then it kind of almost gets lost and comes back. And I've been thinking about this. I don't know if this is on purpose. I don't actually know who's playing it. I might bing in if I can find out. I couldn't find a music credit when I was searching. But it just, it fits the overall kind of wobbly, uncertain vibe of the game really well. And I think it's kind of bold to put music that just has audible mistakes in it.

• 59:55Kirk Hamilton?

  It's kind of just a contrast to, I don't know, actually, a game like Undertale. I mean, Toby Fox's music is just virtuosic throughout that game. It's incredible. It's impeccable. And this is going for something different. And I do think that it's going for it on purpose.

• 1:00:11Kirk Hamilton?

  I don't know if this is like, an actual aesthetic shift, but it hits me in a certain way. Just hearing something that's so deliberately casually thrown-together sounding. It's so easy for anyone to just use loops and samples to like, create a just insane-sounding, massive, epic orchestral score for their video game. And which is to say nothing of the possibilities of AI-generated music. You can literally just type in a prompt and get cinematic cues for a game. That actually, it makes your video stand out a little bit when I can hear the person's fingers as they just kind of wander around on the fretboard. And it makes the game feel more handmade, and actually, like, really enhances the vibe of it as I'm playing it. And I really enjoy that about it. So it's just something

• 1:00:56Kirk Hamilton?

  that struck me, that I haven't heard it in a game in a while, like, with a soundtrack that sounds like this. It's this human element of it, that I just think is, is really cool.

• 1:01:04Jason Schreier?

  So yeah, Titanium Court, it's really cool. It is out, I believe, by the time this episode airs, so you can check it out now. I've been playing an early copy provided by the publisher, Fellow Traveler. It's really cool.

• 1:01:16Speaker 00

  I'm gonna check it out for sure.

• 1:01:18Kirk Hamilton?

  Nice. Well, I also have a video game to talk about. Maddie, how about you go second? So you can break up the games in the one more thing.

• 1:01:24Speaker 00

  Sure, we can have a video game sandwich because

• 1:01:26Kirk Hamilton?

  Yes, perfect.

• 1:01:27Speaker 00

  My one more thing is a TV show called Matlock, but not the original Matlock. There's a new Matlock. Did you two know this? Last year,

• 1:01:35Kirk Hamilton?

  I did.

• 1:01:36Speaker 00

  Kathy Bates became Matlock in a reboot.

• 1:01:39Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:40Speaker 00

  That is-

• 1:01:40Kirk Hamilton?

  Her final performance, is that right? I think she said she's not gonna do anything after this.

• 1:01:44Speaker 00

  She is 77 and she is playing a character who is her age on the show. This is absolutely nothing like Matlock and it probably shouldn't be called Matlock. And maybe that's just how they sold this show. So just to explain what the premise of Matlock 2025 is, Kathy Bates plays a lawyer. There's some similarities to Matlock, which are these. She plays a lawyer named Madeline Matlock, who works for a law firm and has a southern accent. But also does she because it turns out at the end of the first episode, it's revealed to you that that is actually a persona that she's created. Because the TV show Matlock exists in the world of Kathy Bates's Matlock.

• 1:02:29Speaker 00

  And people have heard of it. And so when she introduces herself, it's kind of a bit she's doing where she's like, yeah, it's kind of like the old TV show. And the reason why she's invented this persona is because she's actually on an elaborate revenge quest against the law firm and members of it that is revealed over the details of which are revealed over the course of season one, because this is not a procedural television show. This is a show that has a long running thriller plotline. It's not like a comedy show per se. It's actually pretty serious. I mean, Kathy Bates is incredible. Like, there are funny moments on this show, especially to do with the fact that she is lying to everyone, but mostly it's kind of stressful. Like, we describe it as like a stressful show in our house,

• 1:03:13Speaker 00

  where sometimes we're like, are we up for watching Matlock tonight? Because this is like a show where Kathy Bates is elaborately lying to everyone and pulling off this absurd scheme. And she's playing a very morally gray character. So I'm not going to explain why she's taking revenge because I think it's interesting and I'll let people watch it and determine for themselves what they think about it. But I would say she is, in my view, very morally gray. You're on her side nominally, but the decisions that she makes, you're like, oof, I don't know about that one. And that is really fascinating to watch. And also, she is an older woman, a woman in her late 70s, who is coming out of retirement to become a lawyer again. And that is a huge part of what the show is about, and about the idea of older women feeling invisible and kind

• 1:03:56Speaker 00

  of, in her way, getting away with things and taking advantage of the fact that she can seem invisible and unassuming to do kind of devious things. Like, no one would expect this kindly old lady to actually be doing nefarious schemes, like spying on people and stealing their emails and stuff. And that aspect of the show is really fascinating. And I just really like it. It's well into season two at this point. It's become one of our favorite shows over time, because I just think Kathy Bates' performance as a character has ended up being really interesting. And I love her. So yeah, I recommend it. It's really nothing like Matlock, though. It is a really strange show about Kathy Bates

• 1:04:41Speaker 00

  being a liar, a lying, scheming person. And she's very good at that. I mean, I'm sure you guys have seen Misery, or at least heard about it, and like some of her other famous performances as characters, where you sort of understand them, but you're like, whoa, you are scary. And she has some great moments on the show. So yeah, I recommend it. It's very thrilling, and you never know what she's gonna do next. And it's cool and weird, and I kind of can't believe the show exists. But I think it's doing well enough. It's been renewed for season three. So, yeah.

• 1:05:12Kirk Hamilton?

  Nice. Where can people watch that?

• 1:05:14Speaker 00

  I believe it's on Paramount. I always get this mixed up. Paramount and Peacock. But I'm pretty sure it's on Paramount. It's one of the P1s, guys. I don't know. It's on a streaming service. We watch it on Friday nights.

• 1:05:27Kirk Hamilton?

  Got it. Nice. Yeah, I've heard good things. Maybe we'll watch it at some point.

• 1:05:30Speaker 00

  It's just a tortiferous. I mean, if you like her, then you'll like the show.

• 1:05:33Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I love Kathy Bates. All right. Well, I'll go last. One more thing is a video game called Reanimal, which I've been playing with my co-op buddy, Dan, my friend who I most recently played through Split Fiction with. We decided to play this as our next, our next one. This is a 2026 game from Tarsier Studios, the Swedish game developers who made the Little Nightmares games, which I've never actually played. But this is very much in line with those. This is a sort of, you know, fixed camera angle, mostly isometric, but just kind of a lot of creative camera angles, a kind of survival stealth horror puzzle game along the lines of a Limbo or an Inside, I would say. I was gonna say, it kind of looks like Inside and Limbo, yeah.

• 1:06:18Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah. And I think that, I think of Little Nightmares as well as kind of Tarsier looking at Playdead, who, were they also Swedish? This is very like Scandinavian ethos behind these games, or aesthetic at least, looking at those games and thinking, oh yeah, we could do something like that. Playdead is Danish, actually. Oh, Danish. Okay. So Scandinavian, kind of like leaning into the, leaning into that, that kind of horror and that kind of darkness and vibe. So this, yeah, it works functionally, kind of like a Limbo, only it's co-op. It has, it's designed for two players. I haven't played it in single player, though I know you can play it in single player, but Dan and I have just played through the first maybe third of the game or something.

• 1:07:01Kirk Hamilton?

  And it's really cool. It's, it's very different from something like Split Fiction. And in some ways, I don't like it as much, but we're still having a great time. So the game is, the setup is very mysterious, similar to Limbo. You play as a little boy and a little girl who are called the boy and the girl, but they're both totally wild looking. Like, the boy is like, I think he has like a sack, a sack over his head and like a noose around his neck. And they seem almost like they're like discarded automatons or like reanimated corpses. Like, the way they walk is this kind of like loping, sort of loose shuffle. And really quickly, like they're trying, they're trying to infiltrate this island. Like they're returning to an island where it would seem that there are like other kids like them

• 1:07:45Kirk Hamilton?

  that are being held and maybe experimented on, or who knows? And they need to rescue them from these bigger beings and these creatures. Like there's all kinds of horrible science happening. The whole game has this beautiful, very dark and like starkly lit and staged aesthetic. It's very, very dark, like lighting wise all the time. And then just beautiful looking, you know? It starts, you're in this boat just out in the ocean with like fog on the water. And there's kind of one buoy floating with a light. Like that's very much the look of it. And then as you begin to make your way in through this facility and then, you know, kind of a train station and a factory and you're kind of making your way through these increasingly ghastly environments, you start to run into large creatures and these humanoid monsters.

• 1:08:30Kirk Hamilton?

  I don't even know how to describe them, who kill you if they see you. And, you know, there's a lot of stealth, like there's a lot of both of you sneaking and trying to distract a monster and get around it. The, the look and the movement and the aesthetic of this game is just exceptional. Like you can watch a trailer of it, you'll get a sense of it immediately. Like a lot of it actually reminds me of Killer Clowns from Outer Space, that movie, which is this B movie with these very weird clowns that show up and start killing everybody that I've always found to be like one of the scariest movies I've ever seen just because of the kind of unnatural, inhuman way that the clowns move. This kind of, the way it uses stop motion animation in some scenes is like, I find deeply unsettling. And this game, Reanimal, has some of that.

• 1:09:13Kirk Hamilton?

  Like some of the creatures that are chasing you are just like very upsetting looking. Like they don't move right. They, they're very scary. And it's very fun to play through that with a friend, you know? Dan and I are playing across, he lives in Massachusetts. So we're kind of, we're not in the room together, though you could play this in the same room. We're still like kind of reacting to this, just like, oh god. Like, we walk into a room that's just covered in blood and guts and we know we're gonna have to do something awful and some horrible monster's gonna come to life. And there's just a lot of that kind of fun sharing of, you know, just like, oh, here we go. Alright, I'm gonna go press the button, we'll see what happens. So that part of it is a lot of fun. It's like aesthetically wonderful. The game design is like, I'm kind of up and down on it. There have been times where we just get stuck because we just don't know what we're supposed to do.

• 1:09:59Kirk Hamilton?

  And we're trying to solve a puzzle and it turns out, it just wasn't at all what we were supposed to be doing. There was one point where we were trying to get into a locked door and we were just supposed to not even try and like go down a pathway that we hadn't even seen. And there was just, there was no way for us to really know that. And I guess there, there is like lighting maybe indicating it, but there's no like, there are these points where you'll just hit these dead ends and it really kills the momentum, or at least it has for us. And like normally in a game like, like a game like Split Fiction, you know, a Haze Light game, they're just moving you right along, like it's always very clear what you're supposed to be doing. And that momentum in a co-op game, I think is particularly important. Because you wind up just kind of sitting there and then you feel like, you're like, well, like we're wasting our time.

• 1:10:39Kirk Hamilton?

  You're kind of talking, you're stuck, it's sort of frustrating, you don't want to be frustrated together, you kind of just want to be playing the game. So I find that some of the level design is a little bit too opaque in what you're supposed to be doing. And some of the puzzles as well. Because also, this is like limbo. So if you remember how a limbo or an inside works, if you get spotted by a big monster in limbo, you just die. And then there's kind of like a death animation and it fades to black and you just have to try again. That's true in this game as well. So as a result, there's like, there's very, like it's insta-fail stealth. Like if you get spotted, it's over. And that's kind of frustrating, you know, when you're playing as a co-op game. And, you know, there's two of you, you're trying to go through this level and then you just get spotted again and again and again

• 1:11:22Kirk Hamilton?

  because you're kind of trial and erroring your way through a stealth mission. So like, that's a little bit frustrating as well. There's a bit of a, a bit of jank to the game, just in general, like the way you move and jump. It's not quite as like immaculately polished as something like in particular Inside, which is just like a ludicrously polished game. It doesn't quite have that, so there are just times where you'll get spotted and you don't think you should have, or just like the movement feels a little bit off, or you're trying to jump over something. And at least on PC, the load times are just like a hair too long as well. So there's kind of this feeling of like an insta fail and then you're like, oh, now we just have to wait and it kind of takes a long time. So there are these kind of friction points in the game that are a little bit of a bummer. Like, we'll keep meeting up and playing just because we're having a good time and it's just fun hanging

• 1:12:07Kirk Hamilton?

  out with Dan and playing a game. But I like have a walkthrough that I just have no compunction about just looking. Once we were stuck and I looked and the answer was, you're supposed to go right there and not left. I was like, oh, well, that's not a fun thing that I'm robbing us of figuring out. Like, that's just something we missed. So anyways, that's been kind of how I've been playing. It's like, I'm not afraid to look things up. We're kind of just experiencing. It sounds like you guys should just be on a Zoom call or something. You're playing something better. Well, no, the game is really cool. Like, I have these gripes with the gameplay, but like, it's really neat. I mean, I'll say, here's what I'll say. I had a nightmare that involved this game like two nights ago. And we haven't played in like a week or so too. Like, the imagery in it is genuinely awesome. Like, it really, the vibes, the

• 1:12:51Kirk Hamilton?

  aesthetic, the look of it are really, really cool. And the set pieces are really fun, too. Like, there are chase sequences that are like really thrilling, you know, that feel like something like an uncharted, almost like we're running and the bridge is collapsing behind us. And I'm like, ah! And like, we're kind of screaming. Like, there's a lot of really great highs in this game. In addition to the frustrations that I'm, you know, kind of putting on my game critic hat and being a critic, but like, there's a lot of fun stuff in it. So I don't want to give the impression that it's a slog or anything. It just could be better. Got it. But we are still having a very good time with it. And I definitely recommend it, especially if you have a friend and the aesthetic looks like it's your thing. So, yeah, that's Reanimal from Tarsier Studios. It's a new game this year. Really fun, kind

• 1:13:32Kirk Hamilton?

  of co-op horror limbo-like that I am really digging and will continue to play through. All right. Well, that's another episode of Triple Click on the Books.

• 1:13:44Kirk Hamilton?

  Join Maximum Fun, everybody. It's Max Fun Drive.

• 1:13:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:13:46Kirk Hamilton?

  This is the time to do it. If you're gonna, if you're gonna join, you should join now. Yeah, and you'll get The Sopranos app real soon. Yes, that will be out before the end of the week. And then, yeah, we'll be back next week to, with another episode. And with that, live stream on Friday, the first, over on our YouTube channel.

• 1:14:03Speaker 00

  The grand finale.

• 1:14:03Kirk Hamilton?

  All right. Until then, I will, I will see the two of you next week. See you next time.

• 1:14:08Speaker 00

  Bye.

• 1:14:11Kirk 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.

• 1:15:09Jason Schreier?

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