What's The Deal With: DOOM

Kirk, Maddy, and Jason grab their chainsaws and get ready to slay some aliens (demons?) in DOOM: The Dark Ages, the latest game from id Software. They talk about the new DOOM's pros and cons, the lasting appeal of the franchise, and how fun it feels to hack apart aliens (demons?) at 400 miles per hour.

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

• 0:04Speaker 00

  I don't know about you, but I'm against all the evil that hell can conjure and all the wickedness that mankind can produce. Welcome to Triple Click, where we bring the games to you. This week, we talk about Doom: The Dark Ages, in which you shoot demons and punch demons and fling a buzzsaw shield around a battlefield at demons.

• 0:30Speaker 00

  I'm Maddy Myers.

• 0:31Jason Schreier?

  I'm Jason Schreier.

• 0:33Kirk Hamilton?

  And I'm Kirk Hamilton. Hello, friends.

• 0:35Speaker 00

  Hello.

• 0:36Kirk Hamilton?

  How nice to see you both.

• 0:37Speaker 00

  To my gaming friends.

• 0:39Jason Schreier?

  You guys want to hear a fun story?

• 0:42Speaker 00

  I do, actually.

• 0:44Jason Schreier?

  It's kind of fun, semi-fun. So I have a groundhog who's living either in my backyard, potentially under the house, we're not 100% sure.

• 0:52Kirk Hamilton?

  Caddyshack situation.

• 0:53Jason Schreier?

  Exactly, exactly. We're trying to play golf in the backyard and suddenly like...

• 0:59Kirk Hamilton?

  This groundhog just keeps interfering.

• 1:01Jason Schreier?

  And so I called this company that like will trap the groundhog for you and then go drive like 10 miles north and let it free. And I was like, great, I don't want to hurt this thing. I just want it like to not cause damage on my property. And so they set up a cage and like put some apples and stuff inside the cage. And I was like, okay, great. And then yesterday I go and look at the cage. They're checking it every day, but I went and checked it during the day also. And there's a squirrel in it. And I'm like, oh my God, this is so sad. Like this little squirrel is like trying to escape this cage. And I call them and they come over and they let the squirrel go. And then they set up a cage again. And then about half an hour later, I go out and I look at it and there's another friggin squirrel inside it. And I'm just like, this seems like an inefficient system

• 1:47Jason Schreier?

  for catching a groundhog if you just wind up with a squirrel in it every hour.

• 1:52Speaker 00

  There's a lot of squirrels.

• 1:53Kirk Hamilton?

  Unfortunately, a groundhog trap really works well as a squirrel trap.

• 1:57Jason Schreier?

  Yes, so now I have a squirrel trap in my backyard, which I do not want. And so clearly I need to put a big sign on it that is like,

• 2:04Speaker 00

  No squirrels. Like really Elmer Fudd style where you're like, listen.

• 2:10Kirk Hamilton?

  Language. Warning, this is a trap. So the groundhogs won't be able to read it.

• 2:13Jason Schreier?

  Exactly.

• 2:14Speaker 00

  Right.

• 2:15Kirk Hamilton?

  But the squirrels will know.

• 2:16Speaker 00

  Will know, and then they won't get in. I wonder if it was the same squirrel both times, Jason? Because that also is

• 2:20Jason Schreier?

  It's very possible because that squirrel associates that area with apples and delicious food.

• 2:26Speaker 00

  And also the squirrel's like, I got out of this. So this was actually fine for me. I went in, I got some food, and then later somebody came and let me out. I'm gonna go back in there. I'm gonna get some more food.

• 2:36Kirk Hamilton?

  You're training a squirrel right now.

• 2:37Jason Schreier?

  Exactly. They need to drive a squirrel like 10 miles north.

• 2:43Speaker 00

  Oh my goodness. Well, you know what, Jason? I'm gonna trust your genius brain to somehow figure this out. And why do I say that? Because we recently recorded.

• 2:54Jason Schreier?

  No, the segue is if you want me to afford to keep setting traps for groundhogs.

• 2:59Speaker 00

  This is another good one.

• 3:00Kirk Hamilton?

  I like where you're going with it, Maddie.

• 3:02Speaker 00

  They're both good.

• 3:03Jason Schreier?

  Okay, okay, okay.

• 3:04Speaker 00

  They're both good. We recently recorded Beans Cast on Blueprints for our bonus feed, which of course you can only get if you go to maximumfun.org/join and you become a supporter of our wonderful ad-free show on the wonderful Maximum Fun Network, whom we love. And you know what? It was a fun Beans Cast. It was great.

• 3:26Jason Schreier?

  Yeah.

• 3:27Speaker 00

  Great stuff.

• 3:27Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, it was very fun.

• 3:28Speaker 00

  Fun to hear some puzzle spoilers and also talk about the story of this game. And you know, what really happened in it? Piece together our political theories. If that sounds fun to you, maybe you want to hear about that. Once again, maximumfun.org/join. But hey, even if you aren't done playing Blueprints and you don't want to listen to that one, there are tons and tons and tons of other ones in the backlog that you will also enjoy very much. We did a Severance Beans Cast where we spilled the beans about seasons one and two. We're gonna do an And/or One soon. That's inevitable. I know we did a season one And/or Beans. That's way back there if you crawl back in the backlog. So that'll come down the pike.

• 4:10Jason Schreier?

  Next month. I mean, we could just say.

• 4:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, we're gonna, come on. When do you think we would do it? It would be next month. That would be only logical.

• 4:18Kirk Hamilton?

  Coming right up.

• 4:18Speaker 00

  And also. Coming right up, although not next month, but the following one is a live show. We are going to Kirk's home base. We're going to Portland, Oregon. And on July 11th, at the Alberta Rose Theater in Portland, we are going to do a live show. There's a link in the show notes, so you should get a ticket so that we know whether or not you're coming. And also so that you have your ticket safely secured. You don't want to miss this. We're going to play multiple songs.

• 4:52Speaker 00

  We've made a decision.

• 4:53Kirk Hamilton?

  It's gonna be a real extravaganza.

• 4:54Speaker 00

  Be a band now? I don't know. We'll also do a podcast while we're there. This isn't just us deciding we're a rock band, but it might be. It might also be that. So you don't want to miss this. So yeah, definitely get your tickets to that. Okay. Kirk, what are we talking about today? Once again, I almost forgot who to throw to, but it's Kirk this time. Kirk, what are we talking about?

• 5:18Kirk Hamilton?

  It is. We're talking about Doom, baby.

• 5:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 5:27Kirk Hamilton?

  We are talking about Doom: The Dark Ages, the new Doom game. We are talking about Doom in general, going back all the way to 1993 when that series began. And yeah, we're just gonna talk about Doom and what's the deal with Doom? I think this is a very important and interesting game series. It has had a couple of different eras, each of which have interesting things to say about the games industry and the video games we were playing at the time that they were coming out. And there's also a new one that's pretty darn fun. So that's what we're going to be talking about on this episode.

• 6:01Jason Schreier?

  Can I just say, I'm very excited for this episode because Doom is like a complete blind spot for me. I have zero interest in these games, do not enjoy a second of them. And I'm very excited to hear from you two, like what you, what you two both really enjoy about them.

• 6:16Kirk Hamilton?

  Is it a blind spot if you don't like it and don't care about it? Is that still a blind spot?

• 6:20Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, I guess a blind spot is the wrong word. No, blind spot is the wrong word. It's just like not, it's like totally out of my wheelhouse is the right way to phrase it.

• 6:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, but it's still like an intellectual curiosity for you where you're like, that's interesting. Like National Geographic style, what's with these gamers who enjoy Doom?

• 6:35Jason Schreier?

  I like hearing you two talk about things you're excited about. And like, I would love to leave this episode being like, okay, I see the appeal of Doom. So I'm very excited to hear from you two about it.

• 6:45Speaker 00

  I think we can try.

• 6:46Kirk Hamilton?

  It's also such an important and formative games industry story. I mean, the creation of Doom is one of those video game legends, you know? Carmack and Romero getting together to-

• 6:57Speaker 00

  Being all punk rock, yeah.

• 6:59Kirk Hamilton?

  But we mostly talk about those two guys to make this crazy game, you know? Just some kids who changed the world. And then, you know, the series has always kind of been synonymous with video games, for better and for worse. I mean, it was so controversial in the 90s. It was seen as this ultra-violent corrupting force. And then it kind of went away for a while and then it came back. But let's start just talking about The Dark Ages. Maddie, you made this your one more thing-

• 7:24Speaker 00

  I did.

• 7:25Kirk Hamilton?

  -last week, and I've been playing a bunch since then. So maybe I'll start with some impressions and then-

• 7:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, tell me what you think about it.

• 7:31Kirk Hamilton?

  And then throw to you. Yeah, I think this game is really fun. It's a very funny game in that it's funny strange. It's an unusual game.

• 7:40Speaker 00

  I would say it's funny haha and funny strange.

• 7:43Kirk Hamilton?

  It is occasionally, if it's very straight-faced, but it is still somewhat funny.

• 7:48Speaker 00

  I don't know that it's trying to be, but I'm laughing at it.

• 7:51Kirk Hamilton?

  No, no, I think this series has become more, has started taking itself more and more seriously with each subsequent entry. By this series, I mean, starting with 2016's Doom, and then Doom Eternal, and now Doom: The Dark Ages. Oh, so to explain what The Dark Ages is, so it's the third in the modern Doom trilogy, though it is actually a prequel to 2016's Doom. And Doom, you know, originally came out in 1993. And then there was a run of Doom games, Doom and then Doom 2, just a year later in 94, arguably the definitive Doom, I think anyways. Having played both of those games fairly recently, Doom 2 is pretty incredible. Then there was a long run in the 90s where just a lot of variants and expansions of Doom came out, because it was pretty easy to just crank out levels.

• 8:36Kirk Hamilton?

  And then, after a whole lot of hype, in 2004 Doom 3 came out, notably the same year as Half-Life 2. And it was a kind of a weird game, like a survival horror game. It was very flawed. It was kind of the beginning of the end for that whole era of game design. And of id for that era and also for that style of game. So then many years pass and they announced Doom, which what eventually became Doom 2016. I believe in 2008, so they announced it not that long after Doom 3. But it was then in development hell forever. It was, I believe, rebooted several times. No one knew what it was gonna be.

• 9:16Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, I wrote a big story about that at Kotaku, actually.

• 9:19Kirk Hamilton?

  Okay, maybe you can you can relay that right now. What was the story?

• 9:22Jason Schreier?

  I, I, this is in 2013. And you don't remember it word for word? I have not reread it recently, but I do remember that it was like, it was rebooted to be more like it was. It was more of a sequel to Doom 3. I think they were trying to like recreate Doom 2 in some ways. And then they like totally rebooted it and then wound up with the game. But like they changed directors a bunch of times. Yeah, it was just a long saga of like technical and design woes. Well, we'll link the article in the show notes.

• 9:52Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, we'll link the article in the show notes. The main, the gist is that it was really in development hell for a long time. I remember thinking it was gonna be terrible and expecting nothing from it when it came out. And when it did come out, it was co-directed by Hugo Martin, who then was the director and has been the director on all three of these games. And it crushed. It was this incredible game. It had an unbelievable soundtrack from an Australian composer, Mick Gordon. It rocked so hard. It was irreverent and fast and funny and ridiculous. It was this just huge stupid story of this basically demigod called the Doom Slayer, who looks a little bit like the playable character from the original Doom games, but is not Doom guy. He's more of this like huge hulking monster.

• 10:36Kirk Hamilton?

  And you just get all of the same guns from Doom, the chain gun, the shotgun, the super shotgun, the chainsaw, and just carve your way through the forces of hell. You run incredibly fast. The game never slows down. And it played quite a bit like those original Doom games. And it was this shocking revelation, I think for a lot of people anyways, it certainly was for me, that this style of game, now known as the boomer shooter, was actually really fun and was a viable alternative to a cover-based shooter like Uncharted. Or a more thinky, you know, set piece based shooter like Half Life 2. And so it kind of revitalized that whole genre and shocked a lot of people with how great it was.

• 11:16Kirk Hamilton?

  Then came Doom Eternal, which was in 2020, a significantly different game from Doom. Still fast moving, still a lot of the same enemies, the same style, but, but pretty different in its design. It was like a much more rigid game. It required a lot of complex combos. I didn't love it as much, mostly because I just never pushed myself to become fluent in it. And I think that people who did really love it. I think it's a very well-designed game and well-regarded among people who dig it. So that brings us to Doom: The Dark Ages, which is a prequel narratively to Doom 2016. It tells the story of the Doom Slayer in this kind of Warhammer 40k setting. It's like

• 11:54Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 11:55Kirk Hamilton?

  The Dark Ages, but also everybody has spaceships and like laser guns, kind of. And so, you know, it's, it is not exactly like medieval Doom.

• 12:04Speaker 00

  No.

• 12:04Kirk Hamilton?

  There's a lot of technology.

• 12:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, like there's castles, but people also have like iPad tablets and stuff and like kind of technology-ish and there's like kind of big hulking dragon-y guys and guys of horns and all that stuff. You know, like classic medieval folklore that we're all familiar with. All that stuff happened.

• 12:23Kirk Hamilton?

  Right, right. It's a, it's a little bit Thor and a little bit 40k.

• 12:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 12:28Kirk Hamilton?

  And it feels kind of comic booky and very pulpy and silly. And you are swinging a mace and you have a shield and you are once again crushing the forces of hell, this time as a prequel to set up Doom 2016. So that's what the game is. It's a first-person shooter where you fly around the battlefield. Once again, as heavy metal music plays, Mick Gordon did not do the soundtrack to this one. He had a fairly high profile falling out with Bethesda. He alleged all kinds of mistreatment over what happened with Doom Eternal. And it's really unfortunate because the music is fine for this one, but Mick Gordon's music was something special. But even so, there's still heavy metal guitar playing, you're still ripping and tearing, and it's still a very fun game. So that's what it is. I've been talking for a while, but I'll just say, I guess, we can, Maddie, I want to hear

• 13:12Kirk Hamilton?

  a little more of your thoughts on it, since I'm assuming you've played some more. I think the game is super fun. There's some weird things about it that we can get into, but I'm curious if you've been able to play some more.

• 13:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, a little bit. I still do think it's super fun. I got to agree. There's sort of like a general consensus that of what I had said before, because I'm always right about everything and everybody agrees with me, which is that the pairing is actually super fun, having that shield, which is like that kind of buzzsaw style shield that I described last time. But if this is your first ever episode, it's like Captain America's shield, except it's a buzzsaw. You just fling it around the battlefield. There's multiple mechanics that kind of orient around that. One of them is like the shield push, where you're like going along with the shield, like zipping across the battlefield towards somebody and pushing them, or just using it to stun them. Both amazing. That sense of like connecting different moves together and using the shield

• 14:03Speaker 00

  all feels great. Almost everything else in the game, like every now and then there's like these huge battles with the Titan guy, or you have to like stand behind, like one of those, why can I not remember the name of an automatic rifle that you use? A turret, a turret. I'm just kind of like, that stuff isn't really what I want to be doing. But that's me personally. I did kind of notice other people saying that and being like, yeah, the pairing and the shield is really fun. All the other gimmicks that they try to introduce, not as much. But that's okay with me, because I can just ignore those and then get back to the part of the game that I like. And I'm also continuing to skip all the cutscenes. But I'm curious what you think about them, Kirk.

• 14:44Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, so I think the basic gameplay, the run and gun gameplay is exceptionally fun. Agree that the shield is super fun, and it's not a defensive weapon, which is an important thing to keep in mind.

• 14:57Speaker 00

  It's a shield, big air quotes.

• 15:00Kirk Hamilton?

  You can block and parry attacks, and parrying is a really fun part of the game. Anytime there's a green projectile coming at you, if you block it at the right time, you'll send it back from whence it came, which is a really fun mechanic.

• 15:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, and like helpfully, the demon spawn have labeled all those attacks as bright green. So that's the way that you know you can parry them and shoot it back at them. Yeah, very nice.

• 15:24Kirk Hamilton?

  Doom is unabashedly video gaming.

• 15:26Speaker 00

  Oh, color-coded. We can get into it.

• 15:28Kirk Hamilton?

  I mean, this is also a game where the Doom Slayer is collecting little miniature toys of himself.

• 15:32Speaker 00

  I know. I, I, we can get into that when we talk about Doom 1993, which I did go back and start replaying last night on your advice. And I was like, wow, this game is really reminding me of Doom: The Dark Ages in a good way.

• 15:44Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah.

• 15:44Speaker 00

  Like, you're just-

• 15:45Kirk Hamilton?

  It's fun. It's-

• 15:46Speaker 00

  Everything's color-coded.

• 15:47Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, it's remarkable how, how well it holds up.

• 15:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 15:50Kirk Hamilton?

  And how, and how true they stayed to those original games.

• 15:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:53Kirk Hamilton?

  But yeah, I think this, the shield charge, which you alluded to, where you hold down the block button-

• 15:57Speaker 00

  The best.

• 15:58Kirk Hamilton?

  And then an enemy becomes highlighted and then you zoom across the battlefield and smash into them is incredibly cool. I mean, it is the blink of this game. This is the most mobility I think I've ever felt in a Doom game. I played quite a bit of Eternal and never felt that mobile. And there was never a move where you could like grappling hook your way across the entire battlefield. I love that kind of move. And it really underlines something that is so fun about this game, which is the sense of weight and mass that you have. I guess maybe that's the same thing. Just the, the heaviness of the Doom Slayer. When you jump from a high height and land on the ground, this shockwave comes out from you.

• 16:35Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's amazing.

• 16:35Kirk Hamilton?

  Sometimes you'll land next to dudes and they just all blow up into goo because the force of your landing. Or when you do that shield, like bash across the field, you'll hit a small goon and a whole bunch of enemies around you will be eviscerated in the shockwave. You feel like you weigh 5,000 pounds-

• 16:54Speaker 00

  It's very effective.

• 16:55Kirk Hamilton?

  And you're just crashing around. Honestly, this is something that I've always felt is missing from Halo games. The feeling that Master Chief is this huge, heavy dude because a Spartan is, right, in, in Halo?

• 17:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, they're tall. They're super tall. They kind of show you that in the wide shots, where like he's towering over every, all the kind of regular humans that he comes across.

• 17:13Kirk Hamilton?

  And they like barrel around the battlefield and they're these huge, you know, unstoppable, almost like a human tank. But in the game, they always feel kind of bouncy and light, especially in the earlier Halo games. This finally feels like, when you run, it's like you're this giant dude and you can just hear like boom, boom, boom with his footsteps. And then he jumps and you don't, I don't have a double jump yet, but my- Single jump sends me like a hundred feet into the air. Yeah, and then you land and these shockwaves go out. That feeling of weight and power is so much fun. And then combining that with the shield and just the the enhanced mobility. It's a really, really good time.

• 17:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, totally agree. Can't help but notice you didn't mention the story at all, though. Are you also not vibing with that?

• 17:54Kirk Hamilton?

  I don't really care.

• 17:55Speaker 00

  I feel like you've played more of these than I have. So am I missing something? Like, is this like a scenario where if I played all the intervening Doom games, I'd be like, wow, it's so crazy that the Doom Slayer is like being brainwashed by a religious cult in this one. And they're like making him do stuff. That's the plot, right? I think.

• 18:13Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah. Well, the makers are this one sort of like alien race. I don't really know. I mean, no, I have never paid close attention to the story of these. And like I said, I didn't finish Eternal.

• 18:22Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 18:23Kirk Hamilton?

  They did all have a story and there's kind of a memory of there's a moment early in Doom 2016, where the radio is going is like squawking and the Doom Slayer walks over to it and picks it up. And the guy on the radio, who's the voice on the, you know, the the quest giver, he says, hey, I'm gonna need you to do something. And the Doom Slayer just punches the radio and then it keeps playing.

• 18:42Speaker 00

  That's pretty good.

• 18:43Kirk Hamilton?

  And it's a great moment, but it's not actually indicative of that game's approach to story. It'd be very cool if the whole story was that way and there was a story happening, but the Doom Slayer

• 18:51Speaker 00

  Just didn't care.

• 18:52Kirk Hamilton?

  Just didn't care.

• 18:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:53Kirk Hamilton?

  And while that's sort of true, he does keep getting kind of roped into doing things for these characters. And there is this whole story that I never cared about. I just wanted to blow up demons. And then Eternal doubles that and there's way more story in Eternal. To the point where there's like, I mean, there's an opening text crawl in Doom: The Dark Ages, which is like not the kind of game that needs an opening text crawl. It's like, so, yeah, I mean, I don't care about the story, but I but also it's it's fine. I mean, I'm fighting through a siege right now and the the setup for the siege makes sense. There's some artifact that my guys have and there's this demon army and they're trying to get it. And the Doom Slayer is temporarily on loan to them from these other creepy dudes in space. And of course, the Doom Slayer keeps trying to break free.

• 19:37Kirk Hamilton?

  And I know that's going to play into the story and I'm I'm whatever. It's it's pretty dumb. I appreciate that they just kind of drop you into the middle of it. And don't tell you too much and you just kind of get to go start killing stuff. Like they, they spent a little while on cutscenes, but it never was over, has not overstayed its welcome.

• 19:52Speaker 00

  It's not weighing me down. It's not weighing me down at all and nothing can because I'm the Doom Slayer. Yeah, I, I totally agree. And I also feel like the moment when they could have introduced a story and didn't in that way is 2016, based on your timeline. Like it, that was when they could have had what Jason might call their Wolfenstein moment, where we were talking last week about how the Wolfenstein games, also long running decades old series, but it has an actual story now. They've really tried and that's cool. That's like something I think is pretty cool about those games. Doom maybe could have done that with 2016 and just been like, it's still going to be a boomer shooter, but we're going to actually try to have the Doom Slayer be a person and have motivations.

• 20:32Speaker 00

  But instead they did something that I really appreciate, which is just lean into the 1993 of it all, but just turn all the other dials way up where it's like, okay, it's also going to be like super high resolution, high tech. Everything's going to look great. Everything's going to feel great. It's also going to have a camera that can actually move. And like, that's going to make the entire game feel differently than 1993 for obvious reasons.

• 20:54Kirk Hamilton?

  Oh, you mean like a camera that can go up and down?

• 20:56Speaker 00

  Yes, yes, exactly. It has free look, uh, but we aren't going to take away the fact that the whole reason why you're here is to punch demons. Well, shoot them, whatever.

• 21:07Kirk Hamilton?

  Or that your run speed is 150 miles an hour.

• 21:10Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 21:10Kirk Hamilton?

  Or that, yeah.

• 21:11Speaker 00

  And, but, but some of that is just like this very pure mechanical thrill that I, I feel like is, I mean, this is why I like Years of War. There's a story and I actually kind of enjoy the story of those games, but that's not really the point. The point is that you have a chainsaw gun and it feels really great. And it, it like vibrates and it like has a certain set of sensations where you're like, yeah, I feel like I'm really there. And this to me, I'm like, why wasn't I playing these all along? I don't, I don't know what I was doing with my life.

• 21:38Kirk Hamilton?

  They're fun. I mean, if you like this one, I would recommend especially playing 2016. 2016 is still my favorite. This game is pretty similar to it and I, I think it's fun in the same way, where it's chaotic and improvisational. I love the new focus on melee attacks in this game. Like when you're going toe to toe with a big motherfucker.

• 21:56Speaker 00

  Can we explain that a little? Cause it's so fun. Go ahead. Do you want to try to explain?

• 22:00Kirk Hamilton?

  No, all you, you do.

• 22:01Speaker 00

  Yeah. So, so basically as you parry, you're stacking up charges for a melee attack and you want to get three. And once you get all three, you can do a melee attack on a really big guy. So like normally with those big guys, obviously you're not going to be able to take them down in one hit. Like there's a lot of like little guys that Kirk was describing. You can just splat them in various comical scenarios. There's some medium guys. Listen, these characters may have names. Those don't matter. A big guy.

• 22:31Jason Schreier?

  What if it was like the last of us two and all of them were just like, oh no, you killed Thor.

• 22:37Speaker 00

  That would actually be incredibly funny if they just did that where like all of them were like shouting each other's names.

• 22:43Kirk Hamilton?

  You killed Stockholm.

• 22:47Speaker 00

  They should do that in the next one and then the Doom guy should punch them in the face. So the way the melee works, once you have all three charges is, it's almost kind of like, uh, you know, that slow mo Batman Arkham asylum kind of a thing. The Arkham games where you're like, you have to time the attack in a certain way, but you only really have to learn that one time to attack. It's not like it's going to get really complex over time. You just kind of do like a slow mo, like punch, punch, punch. And it just feels so good. And like for me, I'm like, oh sweet. I'm charged up my, it's, it's your reward for parrying is that you have all these melee charges. And you're like, finally I can smash across the field and use up my full trio to do the punch, punch, punch and kill the guy.

• 23:31Speaker 00

  I don't know. It rules. It's, it's the best feeling in the world.

• 23:35Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, it's very satisfying and it's a, it's kind of a stand-in for the chainsaw since the shield kind of works like a chainsaw. And there are some, you know, times where you'll cut a demon's head off, but in Doom 2016, your chainsaw is kind of how you get ammo back. And that's definitely how the game, how eternal works. There's this whole weird thing where you have to set enemies on fire. I'm going to forget all the particulars, but if you want to replenish your health, you have to kill one way. If you want to replenish your armor, you do another. And if you want to get ammo, you do a third way. You have this chainsaw, this is in 2016, you have a chainsaw with limited fuel, but when you chainsaw an enemy, it gets you ammo back. So when you run out of ammo, you pull out your chainsaw and do like this gnarly chainsaw kill. Yeah, and it's all kind of designed around this, like, you're constantly managing your

• 24:19Kirk Hamilton?

  different levels of your armor and your health and your ammo. And you have to be thinking like really strategically about what you're doing. And then that was pushed to a much higher level in Eternal, which is something that people who got into it really liked and that I kind of found was too much management. I just want to run around and kill stuff. So I'm finding that Eternal has a good amount of that where I'm kind of thinking about my melee charges, but also I'm using the mace now. Like, I just have this huge mace that I just smash into enemies' faces. And I'll just, you know, I'm using the super shotgun almost exclusively because it's so freaking good.

• 24:52Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah. It's very good.

• 24:53Kirk Hamilton?

  And so I'll have that thing, and then I've got my shield bash, and then I've got my melee. And between those three things, it's just, I'm kind of just this wrecking ball flying around the battlefield. You know, I mean, it's a really good balance. And I think about what I'm doing a little bit, but mostly I'm just kind of in the moment, especially when things heat up toward the end of one of those intense encounters. And it's very fun.

• 25:13Jason Schreier?

  Do you guys feel, okay, so in this game specifically, is there like, is there a challenge to it? Do you feel like you're slowly getting better at the game? What is kind of, is there an appeal beyond just kind of like watching aliens' heads explode into goo and using a chainsaw?

• 25:31Kirk Hamilton?

  Well, they're demons, not aliens. So for starters.

• 25:33Jason Schreier?

  Oh, my apologies.

• 25:34Kirk Hamilton?

  Just be clear with the type of video game enemy we're dealing with.

• 25:37Speaker 00

  It's so different. It's so-

• 25:39Kirk Hamilton?

  They might be alien demons.

• 25:40Speaker 00

  They might be. They might be. I do feel like getting better is absolutely part of it. And I feel like there's much more of a rhythm-based component to this game to, as compared to like, okay, I actually feel like there's a rhythm-based component to like a From Software game as well. But it's a very slow balletic rhythm.

• 25:58Kirk Hamilton?

  All video games have a rhythm.

• 25:58Speaker 00

  And I know how pretentious I sound by using the word balletic.

• 26:01Kirk Hamilton?

  No way, man. Like, all video games are musical and have a rhythm. They're just all different.

• 26:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And like, it's very methodical in Dark Souls. You're kind of like watching the enemies attack and you really have time to respond. In Doom- Doom, it's much more fluid because it's so movement based that it's almost like you never want to stop moving. And if you stop, then the game just starts feeling bad, at least for me. Where it's like, okay, I've miscounted like my health packs or something and I need to like stop and go back. Like, that's what I never want to have happen. So instead, I'm constantly like looking around the room everywhere and being like, okay, so there's some items over there, but there's also these enemies over here. I can probably get those as I pick up those guys. How fast can I make it through this entire room and clean up every single item I want to get?

• 26:49Speaker 00

  It's almost like connecting the dots across the room, or at least that's how I'm kind of looking at it, is both a rhythm and a spatial awareness puzzle. I don't know if you feel that way, Kirk?

• 27:00Kirk Hamilton?

  No, sure. Well, and so some of the encounters that come later in the game are a little bit more designed. So for example, there's a boss that is fully shielded.

• 27:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 27:09Kirk Hamilton?

  And you have to lower the morale of the boss until its shield goes down, meaning you have to kill all the demons around it.

• 27:16Jason Schreier?

  Oh.

• 27:17Kirk Hamilton?

  So unfortunately, no, you don't, you don't insult it.

• 27:19Jason Schreier?

  You don't yell at it and like.

• 27:22Kirk Hamilton?

  You don't learn its backstory.

• 27:23Speaker 00

  You're ugly and your mom doesn't even think you're that cool. She just feels bad for you.

• 27:29Jason Schreier?

  You tell it it's getting sold to another company and all of its colleagues are going to lay off.

• 27:33Kirk Hamilton?

  All these other demons are going to get laid off.

• 27:35Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 27:36Kirk Hamilton?

  And then its morale just bottoms out. No, you just kill the demons. And then, but it is, you do have to then approach the fight in a different way. And usually the leader is always like a boss or one of the kind of sub bosses. It feels like Diablo, honestly, especially this game feels to me a lot like Diablo.

• 27:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 27:53Kirk Hamilton?

  Where just you'll run into an encounter and you'll be up against some interesting sort of mix of enemy types, where you can't just plow your way through.

• 28:02Jason Schreier?

  Without the loot of it all, without the chase of, because that's the appeal to a lot of people.

• 28:06Kirk Hamilton?

  Well, there's loot. It's, you're not picking up, you're not picking up randomly dropped like upgraded weapons, but there is a gold system with an upgrade system. So you're exploring the map. And actually, map exploration is really fun in all of these games. The maps are really well designed. There's a ton of hidden secrets. It's very true to the original Doom. You'll find a secret key that'll open up a secret door and then that door gets you a collectible or a currency to pay for upgrades. So there's a lot of kind of exploration, to the point that Doom 2016 felt a little Metroidvania-ish to me at times because I was using the new double jump that I could use to do some, you know, clear some jump that I couldn't do before to, to reach some item. But yeah, there, there is a, there is kind of an interesting like design layer on top of just run around, don't die and

• 28:50Kirk Hamilton?

  kill everything. That said, I think this game is easier than Eternal. It's certainly easier for me and it's a much less technical game. I think if, people who are really into just fast-moving, incredibly technical, difficult shooters, I think get a lot out of Eternal. And that's the one of this trilogy that's probably the most that way, especially if you play on the higher difficulties. And Eternal and 2016 also have these, I think they're called master mode or something like that. There are these new difficulty levels that you can do and modifiers that make the game super crazy. So there, and there are people who get really, really into this stuff and I think get a whole lot out of it. Some of that hasn't been added to The Dark Ages yet, or might not be in the

• 29:28Speaker 00

  game. I'm sure it'll come though, right?

• 29:29Kirk Hamilton?

  It seems likely, yeah. Especially given that this is a full-priced game. I think this game is $70 and there's no multiplayer and it's kind of just a campaign, which is pretty expensive for a game that doesn't seem to have some of the features that the earlier games have. I've definitely seen some people complaining about that. And I get it, even though, you know, I have a good time just playing through the story. I also didn't pay $70 for this game, so if I had, I think I maybe would want a little more.

• 29:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, I, I didn't either.

• 29:55Jason Schreier?

  Well, Microsoft is, is hiking their prices up to 80. So really, this is a budget game.

• 30:01Speaker 00

  Great point.

• 30:01Kirk Hamilton?

  Well, and it's the like, get everybody onto Xbox Game Pass, right? So then you can, you can play it that way.

• 30:06Speaker 00

  It's true. It's also a Game Pass game, so that is a cheaper way to play it.

• 30:09Kirk Hamilton?

  Well, they're just trying to motivate people, most likely over there, if they're not willing to pay full price.

• 30:13Jason Schreier?

  Right. Why would anyone pay $70 when you could just pay $10 for a month or $15, whatever it is now, for a month and just play it?

• 30:19Kirk Hamilton?

  I'm sure there are reasons, but I, I believe that Microsoft would like people to at least be asking themselves that question, right? At least seems likely.

• 30:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 30:26Jason Schreier?

  Right.

• 30:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, for sure. Do we want to talk about the 1993 game at all? Because Kirk, I want to hear about you saying you remembered every single secret. I definitely did not, but I did have a really good time going back and playing it and it did unlock some elementary school memories in me.

• 30:45Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I've I've told this story many times on the show, but that I loved Doom. And it was one of the first video games I got really into when it was first out on shareware. And that was a big thing that Doom helped popularize was the idea of shareware where they made a demo of the game, which I think was maybe the first 10 levels or something, was totally free. And it just didn't care. They just gave it to people and said, whatever, whoever it's shareware, copy it around. It was on a floppy disk, you know, just anyone who wants to can play it. So I got a copy of it off some BBS or something in 1993 or four, probably 1993, like right when it was pretty new because I had played Wolfenstein 3D before that, which was their their previous game. So I was playing this, I would sneak up at like four in the morning.

• 31:29Kirk Hamilton?

  I would get up quietly and go play it on my dad's laptop computer clandestinely because it was so violent. And because I knew I wasn't really supposed to be playing it.

• 31:36Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 31:37Kirk Hamilton?

  And but I was so into it just because of the way it looked, the way it moved. I mean, for the time, it was just so groundbreaking. The thing I was struck by going back and playing it yesterday was how fun it still is.

• 31:48Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 31:48Kirk Hamilton?

  It's a great shooter. It really reminds me of Mario in that way.

• 31:51Speaker 00

  It's actually still really fun. I know.

• 31:53Kirk Hamilton?

  It's the thing where you play Mario, Super Mario Brothers, and you're like, wow, this is still a really well designed, good platformer for all the advances that have happened in the intervening decades. And going back and playing Doom feels the same way. I'm like, dude, this is a fun game. And Doom 2 is even more fun because it just dials everything up and there's way more enemies and better weapons and it's just much more exciting. But it's a good game. I mean, yeah, it holds up and I was surprised by that.

• 32:16Speaker 00

  I really agree. And I also really enjoyed playing it as an adult because I remembered thinking it was really scary as a kid. And I feel like anytime you go back and revisit something that you thought was scary when you were a kid, it's like the funniest shit ever. And that also was my experience here where I was like, I guess it's a little scary. So like the parts where the lights are out and you can't.

• 32:34Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, when they they trap you in a dark room with some imps.

• 32:37Speaker 00

  I mean, I get it. It was kind of scary if you're a child at 1993, certainly. But if you're being now, oh, there's also invisible enemies. I mean, those concepts were really cool and scary to me then. And now it's like, well, yeah, sure, like a semi invisible enemy. Everyone's done that by now, but.

• 32:56Speaker 00

  I agree, like the metroidvania of it all, I'd kind of forgotten about, like walking around, finding keys and being and finding like little extra rooms and unlocking the entirety of the map. That's stuff that my adult brain finds really fun.

• 33:10Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah. And the way the secrets are hidden is really pleasing and kind of true to that time period, I guess. Like Nintendo games do the same thing where there are these weird hidden secrets in Super Mario World that you can only find if you have a certain upgrade and do a certain thing. And the secrets tend to be stranger and kind of more deeply buried.

• 33:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. And I also was, I'd somehow forgotten, even though of course, there's no free aim back then. That was something that was introduced later. But I was kind of looking into it and I was like, well, surely people have created mods for this where you can like look anywhere in the game and it's just like a regular first person shooter. And I found some really interesting threads of people talking about how although those mods exist, they'd never use them because the game feels really bad, apparently. I didn't try it, but I completely believe it because since you can't move the reticle up and down, you can only move it side to side. You, there are a lot of like height based puzzles as a result, like switches that you can only hit if you like reach a

• 34:11Speaker 00

  certain area. And if you can hit them at any time, the game becomes trivial. And also like there are enemies and boss fights that are designed around the fact that you can't move the reticle. So you have to use either an elevator or some other tool in order to get around it. And I just was like, oh, that's, that's so cool. Like to like use this limitation and design an entire game around it. I just, I don't know. It made me both want to try breaking the game and doing that just to see how bad it feels. But also it made me kind of grateful for the game being exactly what it is and being like a fun game despite its extreme limitation in aiming.

• 34:48Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah. Yeah, no, I mean, it is designed to work the way that it works and it works pretty well. And I, when I played it, you know, the way that you would play these games was moving with the arrow keys and then shooting with the control on the left side.

• 35:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 35:00Kirk Hamilton?

  Like that was shoot. And now when I play the new version that it had re-released at some point on Steam. You play with a mouse, and I think you could play with a mouse even at the time, but that was just not done.

• 35:10Speaker 00

  Right.

• 35:10Kirk Hamilton?

  Like, mouse look wasn't a thing in 1993. So using the mouse to just turn horizontally works fine, but it's not necessary. You can just use the, you can just use like the alt key to strafe and, you know, and move with the arrow keys, which was how a lot of those early first-person shooters worked. And it works fine. Yeah, they designed the game to work that way, so it's still totally playable that way.

• 35:30Speaker 00

  Yeah. Do you think that at any point in developing the new trilogy of Dooms, they were like, should we make it so the Doom guy doesn't just pick up a copy of his self everywhere he goes and like a copy of his armor? Like, do you think?

• 35:45Kirk Hamilton?

  It's funny. I wonder where all, like, I would love to have been in the room.

• 35:49Speaker 00

  It's exactly the same. It's exactly the same.

• 35:51Kirk Hamilton?

  I think that they were really smart about sticking to so many of the design ideas from the original series.

• 35:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 35:57Kirk Hamilton?

  Just because it was such a breath of fresh air in 2016. We had been, you know, we were coming off a decade of-

• 36:02Speaker 00

  Right, like, it's retro. Yeah.

• 36:04Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, it's so retro. It's so proud to just be silly and ridiculous. You know, you're gonna play this guy who runs at 100 miles an hour, who also then slows down to solve puzzles in the environment. And then the reward for the puzzle is like a little Kakao demon stuffy that he kind of like pokes with his finger for a second after finding it. Or just that at the end of every level, there's a total up screen that's like, you got this much gold and this much like, whatever, you know, you got this percentage completion. It's incredibly video gamey, and they were wise to lean into that, especially in hindsight, because the game was such a success. I mean, people just hadn't really seen that. It felt, it felt really new, even though it was actually old.

• 36:44Speaker 00

  Yeah. I just respect the commitment to just sticking with that, I guess, through all three trilogy games, because Dark Ages is the only one that I'm like really trying with. And just the fact that every single thing, and it feels like it should be in a game from the 90s is, is really charming to me.

• 37:00Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, and you mentioned the vehicle segments. When you get into a big Pacific Rim mech and have a big fight, or you fly around in like a crimson dragon.

• 37:06Speaker 00

  The gimmicks. Yeah.

• 37:08Kirk Hamilton?

  Those don't really work very well and they do feel very mid 2000s where it's like, "Oh, let's put in a vehicle segment for no real reason." And, you know, the minute you're, with the minute I'm doing them, I'm like, "Okay, all right, I guess I get how the dragon works and all right." And I'm flying around and then I get off the dragon and I start fighting around. I'm like, "Oh, right, this is 500 times more fun." Like, when I'm doing this and they really should have just stuck with it. So in that way, it does feel kind of like a throwback. I appreciate that it's something different, though. I think it's actually a cool thing about this trilogy, that all three of the games are similar in some ways, tonally, they look the same, they're on the same engine, they move kind of the same, but they're all designed pretty differently and that's kind of cool.

• 37:50Kirk Hamilton?

  They're all fun and the same kind of player will probably at least enjoy all three of them, but they are all different and that's kind of a neat and very, it feels like a very conscious decision, especially given that they had the same director for all three games.

• 38:03Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm. They also have the benefit of the Satanic Panic just feeling kind of laughable now in a way that I think it kind of probably didn't in the 90s. I mean, I think we talked about this a little bit in our "What's the Deal with Diablo?" episode way back when, where like, a lot of that game's fun, goofy spirit, it's like all the pentacles and like the fonts and like, just the Diablo of it all. And like, that's all really on display here too, but it feels like funny and charming now, whereas I feel like in the 90s and early 2000s, it was like worrying that video games would be leaning into this imagery. And it was like something that was like, "Should they even be allowed to do that? It's what makes them illicit. It's what makes Kirk sneak down in the middle of the night and play it when no one knows."

• 38:47Kirk Hamilton?

  You know, it's interesting that we mentioned Wolfenstein and so the two villains in Doom and Wolfenstein are demons and Nazis.

• 38:54Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 38:55Kirk Hamilton?

  And demons and the occult are seen as, it's kind of silly now and they lean into the silliness of it. Nazis aren't so silly and Wolfenstein kind of really benefited by taking Nazis very seriously.

• 39:07Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 39:08Kirk Hamilton?

  And it kind of goes to show those two, there were two very common video game enemies, but they benefited from a very different treatment in a modern video game.

• 39:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's a good point. I guess it's kind of hard. Hard to like, take demons seriously as a threat.

• 39:23Kirk Hamilton?

  Well, also demons haven't taken over our country.

• 39:25Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly. Like, what's, what's the version of the game that does that?

• 39:29Jason Schreier?

  Uh, Buffy the Vampire Slayer?

• 39:31Speaker 00

  Right, that's true. You could do the Buffy version where it's like, the demons are actually a metaphor for trauma. And that would be the worst thing ever.

• 39:39Kirk Hamilton?

  That's true, but the demons in Buffy are very silly most of the time. Also, sometimes the demons just make everybody act out a musical.

• 39:45Speaker 00

  That's also true. They do have some funny episodes of Buffy. But they also like lean into the metaphor of it all sometimes in the way that like a modern horror movie does. Um, I'm glad Doom didn't do that.

• 39:57Kirk Hamilton?

  No, and I'm glad, I'm just glad that Doom has, has had such a resurgence. It was such a surprising thing. I still, I really do remember being certain that that 2016 game was gonna be bad.

• 40:07Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 40:07Kirk Hamilton?

  Just cuz I just assumed it would be. I thought it would just sort of be a weird, forgettable thing. And then it was just so shockingly good. And then has led to this just long resurgence of this series. I don't know, it's nice to see. Um, Doom is at once synonymous with video games. Even while kind of, I don't know, like resisting any, anything in the rest of the culture. We were talking before we got on the air about the Doom movie.

• 40:32Speaker 00

  Oh, my god.

• 40:33Kirk Hamilton?

  The one with The Rock. There was another one in 2019. It was like a straight to video Doom movie.

• 40:37Speaker 00

  I don't think I even knew that happened, by the way.

• 40:40Kirk Hamilton?

  I maybe heard something about it, but was basically unaware of it.

• 40:44Jason Schreier?

  There was a Doom movie in 2019? Oh, Doom Annihilation? Wow.

• 40:49Kirk Hamilton?

  Yep, Doom Annihilation.

• 40:50Speaker 00

  Did it have The Rock in it? Or?

• 40:52Kirk Hamilton?

  I, no, it did not. Um, I've seen the Doom with The Rock in it, the, uh, the

• 40:57Speaker 00

  How was it?

• 40:58Kirk Hamilton?

  Earlier movie. What was that, 2005? The 2005 movie? Oh, it's incredibly bad. It's a very weird production where it was like a sort of multinational production across a couple of different studios. I can't remember the deal exactly, but it was, it was like when The Rock was not yet The Rock, where he was gonna be in the biggest movies ever.

• 41:17Speaker 00

  He was not yet cooking, if you will.

• 41:20Kirk Hamilton?

  He was, he was starting to cook.

• 41:22Jason Schreier?

  Guys, guess, guess how much, uh, guess how much money Doom Annihilation made, uh, on, on Blu-ray and DVD?

• 41:29Kirk Hamilton?

  I'm gonna say $700,000.

• 41:32Jason Schreier?

  Maddie, can I guess?

• 41:33Speaker 00

  Uh, $460,000.

• 41:36Jason Schreier?

  $78,000.

• 41:37Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 41:38Kirk Hamilton?

  I was off by a factor of 10. I overestimated.

• 41:44Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, so, uh, yeah, the first Doom movie is terrible. It does have a first-person shooter sequence at the end. That's all I really remember about it.

• 41:49Speaker 00

  I remember them putting that in the marketing where they were like, "We're gonna put the gun."

• 41:52Kirk Hamilton?

  The Rock grabs a gun and the camera goes behind the gun and then it looks like Doom for a second. But it just reminds you basically of-

• 41:58Speaker 00

  I could be playing Doom right now.

• 41:59Kirk Hamilton?

  Doom is something that you play. You don't wanna watch The Rock's gun move around. You wanna play Doom. And so it is very much video games. It is incredibly video gaming.

• 42:08Speaker 00

  It is, and I feel like other video game adaptations, like we're in the modern era now where like all the headlines are, including my own, I'm including myself in this, are like, "Oh, video game adaptations are good now." And like, here's how they're pulling it off. And like, they're taking these elements of games that really work in other mediums and adapting them. But Doom is like such a gamy video game that making it into anything else is like, what are you trying to do? It's like trying to do a film adaptation of Twister or something. It's like, what are you doing?

• 42:37Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, it's so tonally ridiculous. It's so maxed out. The volume is just peaked and it's, it's like this just electric guitar solo for the entire time. And that just doesn't really lend itself to-

• 42:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, maybe it could be a concert.

• 42:51Kirk Hamilton?

  An adaptation.

• 42:52Speaker 00

  Doom in concert. That would be good.

• 42:54Kirk Hamilton?

  It could be a concert. I would think it kind of is a concert already, especially those earlier games. Where if you look at, yeah, like Wolfenstein, the new Wolfenstein games could be adapted into a TV show for sure because they lean into the whole dramatic-

• 43:07Speaker 00

  Easily.

• 43:07Kirk Hamilton?

  -angle because it kinda works. Like, that kind of a story, that kind of a story doesn't work here. I mean, I could see maybe like an animated Netflix series.

• 43:14Jason Schreier?

  This is why I like the Wolfenstein games and don't like Doom.

• 43:18Speaker 00

  I get it, Jason. And I, but I also would say, Jason, you don't want Doom to have a story. Like, I would say, like, if it had a story, maybe you would like it, but there's no world where it would, so.

• 43:28Jason Schreier?

  No, there are just some games that I just accept. They're not for me and all like blessed me to those people who like it. It's just not for me.

• 43:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, no, I totally get it.

• 43:37Jason Schreier?

  But I do like Wolfenstein. And other shooters that do other kind of interesting things beyond just the basic shooting mechanics.

• 43:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 43:45Kirk Hamilton?

  Well, and like Wolfenstein, those modern games also, not only have they embraced the story and they have great writing and machine games is good at that kind of thing, but they are also borderline immersive sims. They have stealth segments, they have lots of gameplay variety. Where Doom just does not, it's gameplay variety is not what they're about here. And as we have said, the variety in the Dark Ages is kind of the weak point of the game. It's really when they're doing the one thing, the electric guitar solo. That's what they're good at. We don't need acoustic piano, guys. Like, we don't need the wind ensemble. We want the shredding electric guitar. That's what we're here for.

• 44:17Jason Schreier?

  Just play the hits.

• 44:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 44:19Kirk Hamilton?

  Play the hits.

• 44:19Speaker 00

  Yeah, play the hits. Yeah. And even when it's varying it up in Eternal, that's like the extent to which it's varying it up, is within those shooting mechanics and just really only doing-

• 44:28Kirk Hamilton?

  That's like 12-string guitar.

• 44:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly.

• 44:30Kirk Hamilton?

  Baritone guitar.

• 44:31Speaker 00

  Maybe there's multiple guitars on stage and they're each doing a solo.

• 44:35Kirk Hamilton?

  Some guitar harmonies. Right. That's as far as we want it to go.

• 44:38Speaker 00

  I now think that a Doom live-in concert idea is actually a really good idea, and I would go to that.

• 44:44Kirk Hamilton?

  I'm trying to remember if, I feel like Mick Gordon at least played some of the music at the Game Awards or something, but-

• 44:49Speaker 00

  Oh, my god, probably.

• 44:50Kirk Hamilton?

  He might have done a Doom concert at some point, because that dude rocks. He's written a lot of really good music. Bing! Kirk here, as I'm editing the episode, just wanted to say that I remembered correctly, Mick Gordon did play the Doom soundtrack at the 2016 Game Awards, where the game also, of course, won Best Music that year. And it's a pretty fucking show, especially for the Game Awards, where it's very hard to rock as hard as they did. So, I put a link for it in the show notes, go check it out. Bing! I mean, people have played Doom music live.

• 45:20Speaker 00

  Oh, sure.

• 45:20Kirk Hamilton?

  You know, back in the day when, when there was like, it was a whole, the heyday of bands like instrumentalists who would reinterpret the music from 90's games that didn't have, you know, CD-ROM soundtracks. Those original Doom songs have definitely been reinterpreted many times by many a metal band. But, um, yeah, I think Doom as concert is, is the way to think of it. All right, well, that is, uh, What's the Deal with Doom and some more thoughts on Doom: The Dark Ages, a pretty fun game-

• 45:45Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 45:45Kirk Hamilton?

  -that you should play, especially if you have Game Pass.

• 45:47Speaker 00

  Agreed.

• 45:48Kirk Hamilton?

  And, um, yeah, worth, worth checking it out to see how, how violent a shield can really be. All right, well, let's take a break and then we will be back for one more thing.

• 46:01Speaker 03

  Hi, is this Sam?

• 46:02Speaker 04

  Yes, it is.

• 46:03Speaker 03

  I'm Brenda, host of Secret Histories of Nerd Mysteries on Maximum Fun, and I'm calling because you've been named Maximum Fun's Member of the Month for May.

• 46:13Speaker 04

  Wow, I'm really excited to hear that. I love being a member. I like all the Boko, and I just, I enjoy all the shows that I listen to. I just, I love Maximum Fun.

• 46:22Speaker 03

  As our Member of the Month, you'll be getting a $25 gift card to the Maximum Fun store, a special Member of the Month bumper sticker, a special priority parking spot at Maximum Fun HQ in Los Angeles, California, just for you.

• 46:35Speaker 04

  I can't wait to see what the bumper sticker looks like.

• 46:38Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. I am obsessed with bumper stickers. What's your message to people thinking about joining Maximum Fun?

• 46:44Speaker 04

  I mean, if you really like the shows, I think it's like a really good way to help support them. I'm really happy I'm able to.

• 46:52Speaker 03

  Thank you so much for listening.

• 46:54Speaker 04

  Thank you for making your show.

• 46:56Speaker 05

  Become a Maximum Fun member now at maximumfun.org/join.

• 47:01Speaker 06

  It's hard to explain what Jordan Jesse Go is about.

• 47:03Speaker 07

  So I had my kids take a stab at it. Probably weird stuff.

• 47:08Speaker 04

  You talk about...

• 47:10Speaker 07

  Jobs that are annoying. Uh huh. Business.

• 47:13Speaker 04

  I think you probably learned your lesson after talking about business a couple of times.

• 47:18Speaker 07

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

• 47:28Speaker 07

  All the podcasts, so boring.

• 47:30Speaker 06

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

• 47:35Kirk Hamilton?

  And we are back for One More Thing. Jason, you were so patient as Maddie and I enthused about Doom, so why don't you go first and tell us about your One More Thing?

• 47:44Jason Schreier?

  No, I enjoyed it. I enjoyed hearing, like I said, I enjoy hearing people talk about games even if they're not for me. I find that to be in the Jordan space.

• 47:52Kirk Hamilton?

  No, I know. It just felt like I had to pick somebody to go first.

• 47:54Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, that's fair.

• 47:55Speaker 00

  It makes sense to me, Jason.

• 47:56Jason Schreier?

  My One More Thing is the new DLC for The Rise of the Golden Idol. It's called Golden Idol Investigations: The Lemurian Phoenix. And, God, I get it. You guys, I could play one of these every single month without fail and just have a rockin' good time. They're so good.

• 48:15Kirk Hamilton?

  How many of their bands so far?

• 48:16Jason Schreier?

  This is the second DLC for Rise. Rise is a sequel to Case of the Golden Idol, which came out in 2022. Rise came out in 2024. And it's awesome. It's funny, I have this kind of ongoing running joke with Wout, who's the PR guy at Playstack, and he, people might have seen him actually accept all the game awards and stuff for Bellatro, because he's the PR guy for Bellatro as well. And he'll send me a code like a couple of days before this new DLC comes out. And like, three hours later, I'll be like, okay, beat it. Because when I get a code, I just drop everything. Yeah, it's like, time to play this. So he's like, you are the first person to beat this every single time. And so proud of that. But anyway, these things are amazing. And this new one is just as good. All these DLCs

• 49:01Jason Schreier?

  have been fantastic, and I highly recommend them. So this new one, it is a pack of, I believe it's five cases. They're completely solo from the main game of Rise of the Golden Idol. So you don't need to play Rise of the Golden Idol at all to enjoy this. There's one character, it's kind of an origin story for one character who's then in Rise of the Golden Idol. So it is connected.

• 49:22Kirk Hamilton?

  So it does tie in somewhat.

• 49:23Jason Schreier?

  It does tie in somewhat, but the story itself is standalone. And the way it is structured is that the first case, it starts off with the king of La Moria getting murdered. And you kind of piece together in Golden Idol style. I won't, I won't explain what Golden Idol is. Go back and listen to our old episodes if you don't know. So many old episodes. But you, so you deduce how the king died and who killed him. But you don't find out why. And then you kind of jump to a totally different scene. And it's like, completely unrelated to this. And then you get another scene and another scene. And by the time you're done, it's all piece that you piece it all together. And there's actually one cool little moment where

• 50:02Jason Schreier?

  you have to put all of this, the kind of incidents that you've witnessed in chronological order as you're kind of piecing together everything that happened in this whole story. So it's, it's this neat little self-contained, five-episode saga that also functions really well as DLC to the broader. Rise of the Golden Idol story and each of the the cases or each of the kind of scenes is fantastic. They're all great and like none of these have been bad, at least in my experience so far. Maybe a couple are weaker than the others, but like they're firing on all cylinders and it's still fantastic. This one is set like in the 1940s, so kind of a unique period in this country of La Moria.

• 50:47Jason Schreier?

  That is the a kind of, what's the best way to describe it? It's kind of got inspiration from Africa and Indian cultures. It definitely feels like it's kind of the, I guess, the the equivalent of like the east to the Europe centric or America centric places that we've seen in this world of Golden Idol. This is the more kind of like quote unquote exotic or would be exotic to Europeans. And so it's more inspired by the African Indian cultures. And there's a lot of just interesting stuff in that. There's a lot of interesting characters, a lot of awful characters in True Golden Idol.

• 51:24Kirk Hamilton?

  Of course.

• 51:24Speaker 00

  Of course, there have to be.

• 51:26Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, they're everybody's so awful and it's so fun to like watch them at their machinations. And also like the really bad ones get punished at the end of this, which is very fun. Very satisfying to watch. One of the cases in this actually has you like deciphering a language, which is super fun, like a symbol based language. Kind of like Chance of Sinar, that game I enjoyed a couple of years ago.

• 51:46Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah.

• 51:47Jason Schreier?

  So yeah, it's really good. Highly recommend it, even if you like bounced off Rise of the Golden Idol or you didn't play it entirely. This DLC is standalone enough that you can get a lot out of it. And then go play Rise of the Golden Idol. Man, everyone should just play all of these. They're just so good. And yes, keep them coming. There's supposed to be four DLC packs this year. This was the second, there's more to come. And as always, I will just be dropping everything and playing through them because they're just so good.

• 52:12Speaker 00

  Were there four for the first game too? Or just?

• 52:15Jason Schreier?

  No.

• 52:16Speaker 00

  I thought there were two, right?

• 52:17Jason Schreier?

  First game had two and each was a three, each had three scenarios in the.

• 52:21Kirk Hamilton?

  They were great. They were hard.

• 52:22Jason Schreier?

  They were great.

• 52:22Kirk Hamilton?

  I remember the DLC for the first game were difficult.

• 52:25Jason Schreier?

  And these, I wouldn't say these are as hard, but definitely is good.

• 52:29Speaker 00

  Cool.

• 52:30Kirk Hamilton?

  Nice. Yeah, I'll definitely play through it, but maybe when they're all out or maybe I'll just play two of them right now. I could use a little palate cleanser.

• 52:36Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, you really don't need, they're because they're not like episodic and all connected. You really don't need to wait for them all to be out.

• 52:43Kirk Hamilton?

  Right, I wouldn't wait for that reason. I just. Would wait because I don't know, like, I just don't feel ready to play.

• 52:48Speaker 00

  Wait till you're in the mood.

• 52:50Jason Schreier?

  Or just wait because it's like a good pin to be like, okay, now it's my time.

• 52:53Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 52:54Jason Schreier?

  But yeah, but they're all so standalone. Like, the first one is also completely standalone. Kind of follows what happens to one of the characters who was kind of a loose end from Rise of the Golden Idol. The first DLC follows his deal and kind of tells you a little bit more about what happened to him after that. The first one actually is more connected to Rise of the Golden Idol than the second one is. The second one is completely independent.

• 53:16Speaker 00

  That's cool.

• 53:17Jason Schreier?

  Or almost completely independent in a way that the first one wasn't.

• 53:20Kirk Hamilton?

  Cool. Well, yeah, I will. I will definitely play that. I'll go next. I watched another 1972 movie last week because my friend Sam and I are still on 1972 with our dice-rolling Oscar-watching game. And because we rolled such an interesting year, we kind of stuck with 1972 instead of rerolling. So I mentioned last time that we started with The Godfather because The Godfather won Best Picture at the Academy Awards in 1973. But it was up against Cabaret, which then won everything else, which doesn't really happen at the Academy Awards anymore, where one movie wins like every single award except Best Picture? That's very rare. But in this case, Cabaret, Bob Fosse won Best Director, Liza Minnelli, I believe, won Best Actress,

• 54:02Kirk Hamilton?

  and then it won, I don't know, like costumes, art design, cinematography, I think.

• 54:06Speaker 00

  I don't know.

• 54:07Kirk Hamilton?

  It was an adapted score, so that might be...

• 54:10Speaker 00

  Score already was out there.

• 54:12Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, right. And I think it was an adapted screenplay as well, and I believe that The Godfather won that. But anyways, it won far more Academy Awards than The Godfather, which is just sort of funny. Now that I've seen it, it's actually not so surprising because Cabaret is a really good movie. You've seen it, Maddy.

• 54:27Speaker 00

  Yes, it's very good.

• 54:29Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah.

• 54:30Speaker 00

  Shocking new take. Cabaret, 1972 film, a good film.

• 54:35Kirk Hamilton?

  I knew that it was celebrated, and of course, it won so many awards. I didn't really know what it was about.

• 54:39Speaker 00

  Oh, sure.

• 54:40Kirk Hamilton?

  I've heard a little bit about it, but just didn't... I just didn't really know what to expect. I know the one song, "Maybe next time I'll win." Yeah, I mean, Liza Minnelli is absolutely incredible in it. I think she looks a little bit like Anne Hathaway in this movie. Which is sort of interesting, like they're, they're very different in a lot of ways, but something in her face looks a little like Anne Hathaway. It's, I don't, I don't know. That was a thought I kept having when I was watching it. Maybe I'm the only one who's ever thought that. But maybe somebody out there is like, I've had that same thought. Anyways, um, this movie is just not really the kind of thing they make anymore. It's the story of a, a couple of young people, really. It centers around two young people, Sally Bowles, played by Liza Minnelli,

• 55:24Kirk Hamilton?

  and a young man, an Englishman, whose name I'm forgetting, but he is played by another well-known actor that you'll probably recognize if you've watched any movies from this time period, playing a sort of drifting young man who is, an Englishman who's in Germany. They're both living in Berlin in 1931 and Sally performs at a cabaret. And then the whole story is kind of, it's not a musical, like people start singing in the street. It's more that there's a framing device, which is just the cabaret hosted by this incredibly great MC, this guy who like sings every introduction to every song and is always kind of the, you know, the master of ceremonies on stage with all these women dancing and performing and the band full of, you know, women playing instruments and everyone is scantily clad and being scandalous and dancing around.

• 56:09Kirk Hamilton?

  And so they'll sing a song that sets up-

• 56:10Jason Schreier?

  Sounds like a night at Kirk's house, am I right?

• 56:13Kirk Hamilton?

  Exactly. It's pretty much just a day in the life of-

• 56:15Speaker 00

  Yeah, that song was all boring. Yep.

• 56:17Kirk Hamilton?

  They'll sing a song, sort of setting up the next part of the story, but really it's kind of just a story of these two people living in this boarding house in Germany and the people that they meet. And it's mostly just a story of like a kind of a love affair and, you know, he's kind of figuring himself out sexually and she's very much like a prototype manic pixie dream girl, but also-

• 56:38Speaker 00

  I was gonna say, I feel like that too.

• 56:41Kirk Hamilton?

  A little more tragic.

• 56:41Speaker 00

  She's very manic pixie in the sense that like he's so fascinated by her and she's kind of like a metaphor for what's happening around her, I would say.

• 56:51Kirk Hamilton?

  And she blows into his life and is so sort of irresistible, but also like very selfish and kind of flaky. And over time, it becomes clear that she's like a very sad and lost person. So that's all cool, but what makes the movie work, or what makes the movie so fascinating is that it's set against the backdrop of Berlin during the rise of the Nazi party. So this is the end of the Weimar Republic and this is as Nazis are coming to power.

• 57:15Jason Schreier?

  So it's a prequel to Wolfenstein.

• 57:17Kirk Hamilton?

  Exactly. But it's also so backgrounded that it's not, I don't know, it was like, it's not what I would expect from a movie like this. And if they, if someone made a movie like that today, where the Nazis are in the background rising to power, it would be completely different. It would be much more heavy-handed. It would be like, full of dread and doom. It would have, it would really leave you feeling much more sure of yourself in a way. And while Cabaret is absolutely, has this undercurrent of dread and violence, and it's just so subtle. I really was just so surprised by it.

• 57:54Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 57:55Kirk Hamilton?

  I mean, the ending shot is famous, and I think I'd kind of heard about it. It's this really striking and terrifying final shot as the, you know, you know the Nazi bar joke, where you can't let a Nazi into your bar?

• 58:08Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 58:09Kirk Hamilton?

  Because if you don't kick the Nazi out, then eventually you're running a Nazi bar?

• 58:12Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 58:12Kirk Hamilton?

  That is basically what happens in Cabaret.

• 58:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 58:14Kirk Hamilton?

  Slowly and very much in the background. While in the foreground, it's just sort of this love story, these two people, you know, this kind of regular, just dramatic romance, whatever. Like, in the background, there's this sort of Nazi bar tragedy happening. And that really just makes the movie super fascinating. I think it's really interestingly directed, a lot of extreme close-ups, the camera work is really remarkable. Just, Liza Minnelli, of course, like I said, is amazing. Really, this is just an incredibly cool movie. I'm guessing there will be some people out there who've heard about Cabaret, have probably heard that one song, or heard some songs from it, but never seen it. It's totally worth taking the time to watch it. I was really surprised by it and just left, we've talked about, I'm still talking with Sam about it. It's just such an interesting movie,

• 58:55Kirk Hamilton?

  and very appropriate for the current times that we're living in, you know? There really are a lot of parallels to how it feels in America right now, though there are, of course, differences as well.

• 59:04Speaker 00

  Yeah. I mean, I think it's probably worth noting, like Sally's character is an American, too, living in Berlin.

• 59:09Kirk Hamilton?

  Oh, yes, yes.

• 59:10Speaker 00

  And like, that is a key part of what she represents, is like, the idea of an American just moving to Berlin, living there during this specific time period, and deciding she's not going to care what happens, because she's like, ultimately a selfish character. And like, Liza Minnelli's portrayal of that is incredible. Like you, you don't, it's not that you never have your moments of feeling sorry for her and, and whatnot, but like she, she's just a really fascinating character that by the end you're like, God, you're so full of shit, but like,

• 59:39Kirk Hamilton?

  Right, like, what have I made of these?

• 59:41Speaker 00

  Flayed woman.

• 59:43Kirk Hamilton?

  And even that, it's not heavy handed with any of the character stuff either.

• 59:46Speaker 00

  It's really subtle the whole time, which is wild. I mean, it's, it's cool to, to watch a movie where you're like, they are not going to spoon feed this to me. I'm going to have to sit back and be like, is this a commentary on Americans' approach to the rise of the Nazi party at the time? Guess it is, but the movie's not going to tell you that. And the musical's not going to tell you that.

• 1:00:05Kirk Hamilton?

  Especially to be so subtle, since musicals are typically the opposite of subtle.

• 1:00:08Speaker 00

  Like a character facing you and being like, I'm going to sing exactly what I'm feeling. Cabaret is very much not that, which is fun.

• 1:00:14Kirk Hamilton?

  Very much not that, and that makes it so cool. So yeah, big recommendation for me for that movie. All right, Maddie, close us out. What's your one more thing?

• 1:00:21Speaker 00

  Uh, it's something extremely frivolous, but why not? Why not end on that? So Gina and I have been watching a sitcom on Netflix. Uh, we're about halfway through season two, which is, there's only two seasons out right now. It's called Survival of the Thickest. It's like a classic 23 minute sitcom, starring Michelle Buteau. She's a, a plus size black woman who's a stylist. And it's just about her shenanigans dealing with like a very sizeist and sometimes racist industry, but Michelle is a comedian. Like this is a very, very funny show. So like, it's not a downer at any point. You can really freely root for her. You know, she's going to succeed in every scenario she ends up in, and that can be really gratifying to watch.

• 1:01:05Speaker 00

  Sometimes it just kind of be like, this woman is somehow figuring it out through this world that doesn't always care for her and is going to be very funny throughout it. Um, I don't know. I just think Michelle Buteau is really funny. And I already thought she was like, cool as a comedian. And this is like, her show that she got and the thing that she decided to make. And it's refreshing. I think the cast around her that plays her group of friends is really fun. I also didn't really know a lot about like stylist as a job. Like she does a range of things between like, dealing with rich people and Styling them, which in her case, she's trying to find like plus size women who are also famous. And just as like, I want to be there for you and actually help you feel like comfortable at events

• 1:01:47Speaker 00

  that you have to attend, where oftentimes your other stylists are not going to make you feel that way. But she also like styles photo shoots and there's like celebrities who make cameos in the show. And then, you know, Michelle Buteau's character is like starstruck by them in the context of the show. And that's really fun as well. I don't know. So basically just if you want to watch something really lighthearted, that is fun. Survival of the thickest.

• 1:02:12Jason Schreier?

  When you said survival of the thickest, I thought it was going to be like a reality show.

• 1:02:15Speaker 00

  I know, doesn't it sound like it? It's not, it's fiction.

• 1:02:18Jason Schreier?

  Something about people losing weight or gaining weight.

• 1:02:20Kirk Hamilton?

  Like a Too Hot to Handle spin.

• 1:02:22Speaker 00

  It's totally the opposite of that.

• 1:02:24Kirk Hamilton?

  That's good.

• 1:02:25Speaker 00

  It is very much like a lighthearted, kind show about Michelle Buteau. Just creating a character who's like, and maybe not based on her, I don't think it fully is. But it's, it's fun and clearly is, you know, sometimes it's a balm. Sometimes you need something that's fun. And that's what this show is.

• 1:02:44Kirk Hamilton?

  For sure. Yeah, I hadn't heard about this. Netflix, it's that Netflix thing where there are these shows that sound charming and then they, you just don't hear about them.

• 1:02:52Speaker 00

  You never hear about them. And then if you're in the right algorithm, then they'll tell you about them.

• 1:02:57Kirk Hamilton?

  Listen to a podcast.

• 1:02:58Jason Schreier?

  That's what we're here for.

• 1:02:59Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly. We're here to curate it for you.

• 1:03:01Kirk Hamilton?

  So yeah, we, we have told people about the things for another week.

• 1:03:05Speaker 00

  We did it. Did it again.

• 1:03:06Kirk Hamilton?

  You enjoyed all the things we told you about. This was a lot of fun. And yeah, the Blueprints Beans Cast will be out on Monday, so that'll be out in a couple of days. So you have the weekend to finish the game, if you're still working on it. And yeah, we hope you all enjoy that. Thanks as always, everybody who has become a member and who supports us making this show. And yeah, we'll see the two of you next week.

• 1:03:26Jason Schreier?

  See you next time.

• 1:03:28Speaker 00

  Bye.

• 1:03:31Kirk 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.

• 1:04:29Speaker 06

  Maximum Fun.

• 1:04:30Jason Schreier?

  A worker-owned network. Of artist-owned shows.

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  Supported.

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  Directly.

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  By you.