Transcript
Speaker: So when he chose his English pen name, he went Sam Lake.
Speaker: That's funny.
Speaker: You know what?
Speaker: Respect.
Speaker: That's pretty cool.
Speaker: When it's as simple as that, you know, you might as well.
Speaker: That's pretty funny.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know what else is funny?
Speaker: What's that?
Speaker: Hey there, everybody.
Speaker: Welcome back to Pixlet.
Speaker: My name is Kevin.
Speaker: With me, as always, is Phil.
Speaker: And on today's show, we're starting a brand new book.
Speaker: And it's a book about books, kind of a bookerton.
Speaker: That's what you call a person who writes books, right?
Speaker: It's a bookerton?
Speaker: A bookerton, yes.
Speaker: Only if they've been published, though.
Speaker: Only if they've been published.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Otherwise, it's just a...
Speaker: A sparkling amateur writer.
Speaker: A Booker Teen is non-published and a Bookerton is published.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: There we go.
Speaker: Sparkling.
Speaker: Otherwise, it's just sparkling Bookerton.
Speaker: Sparkling Bookerton, yeah.
Speaker: So it has to come from that region of the Upper West Side.
Speaker: You have to be, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: It has to come from that specific region of Philadelphia or else...
Speaker: Or else it's just a sparkling throwing batteries at Santa Claus.
Speaker: That's all.
Speaker: In case you somehow missed the title of the episode, we're talking about Alan Wake.
Speaker: The novelization of Alan Wake.
Speaker: And the book is written by Rick Burroughs.
Speaker: Phil, who is Rick Burroughs?
Speaker: Well, if you look at the very back of the book...
Speaker: You'll see this about-the-author blurb, and I'm just going to read it real quick.
Speaker: Rick Burroughs lives in a small cabin that he built himself, an A-frame on 40 acres in the Pacific Northwest.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: Effectively off the grid, Burroughs avoids processed food, processed news, and celebrity culture.
Speaker: He has traveled extensively in South America, Africa, and the Middle East.
Speaker: He has not yet found what he is looking for.
Speaker: Alan Wake is his first novel.
Speaker: Sounds like bullshit, right?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That kind of sounds like...
Speaker: like a fake about the author thing.
Speaker: And I was really intrigued by that when I started doing the research.
Speaker: Cause it sounds a little bit too much like your dream life, but it does sound a little like that.
Speaker: Doesn't it?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It sounds a little suspiciously like Phil living on a farm, not eating the only the food that he kills.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Off the grid effectively.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Traveling extensively.
Speaker: Yeah, it does sound very suspicious.
Speaker: And I got infuriated with all this, especially when you consider this is his first novel.
Speaker: And without jumping too far ahead, it's shockingly competent for a first novel.
Speaker: So I went ahead and looked up this Rick Burroughs person, and there is nothing.
Speaker: There is nothing on this guy.
Speaker: Off the grid indeed.
Speaker: Yeah, he he either truly is mostly off the grid and lives this weird eclectic life.
Speaker: And this is just something he did as a favor to Sam Lake or to whoever.
Speaker: Or it's a pen name of somebody else.
Speaker: And you'll get into who Sam Lake is.
Speaker: It's just Sam Lake.
Speaker: I think it might be Sam Lake.
Speaker: I'm starting to suspect that maybe this is just Rick.
Speaker: I don't know why.
Speaker: I don't know why he would go with Rick Burr.
Speaker: They could have gone real cute and been like Alan Wake written by Alan Wake or something like that.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But I don't know what the motivation would be, but that's all I could find a Rick Burr.
Speaker: There's nothing.
Speaker: Not a damn thing.
Speaker: Yeah, I just Googled it, and in the Sam Lake subreddit, there's... Someone wrote, a small review of Alan Wake's novelization.
Speaker: I just finished.
Speaker: It's solid, especially for a first novel, and there's a little bit about the author.
Speaker: Rick Burroughs, everything you just said.
Speaker: So, somebody said...
Speaker: that some people are saying that, like, yeah, it's 100% Sam Lake writing under an assumed name of Rick Burroughs.
Speaker: But it's not confirmed anywhere.
Speaker: But I think it seems like other people have gotten to that, you know, come to that conclusion and be like, this guy doesn't exist.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: So yeah, the game is Alan Wake.
Speaker: It's an action adventure game.
Speaker: It's by Remedy Studios.
Speaker: And it's one of the games written by Sam Lake for Remedy.
Speaker: Remedy's done...
Speaker: A whole bunch of games, including Death Rally, Max Payne, Alan Wake.
Speaker: And most recently is the most recent big one that I'm... I was a huge fan of Control, which is...
Speaker: So if Alan Wake is like action adventure, Control is more on the action side.
Speaker: And between the two of them, there's a subtle connection.
Speaker: And don't, it's like, you know, the connection between the two of them kind of is spoiler territory for Alan Wake.
Speaker: Yes, because control takes place after Alan Wake.
Speaker: But yeah, the game was released in 2010.
Speaker: It was originally for the Xbox 360.
Speaker: And then it's since been released for...
Speaker: every other console.
Speaker: So it's on everything.
Speaker: You can get it on Steam now and all that stuff.
Speaker: But yeah, 2010, it was an Xbox title.
Speaker: And then 2012, it rolled out to everything else.
Speaker: There is a sequel in the works as of 2021, slated to come out this October.
Speaker: So is it that soon?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: What is going on with this year, man?
Speaker: I'm never going to catch up.
Speaker: It's a good problem to have, I admit, but there's so many things on my radar I want to try out for the end of the year.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So Alan Wake 2 coming out, and I'm really curious to see what it does in a post-control world with the character.
Speaker: I guess I better play Control.
Speaker: There was a DLC for Control that was just called AWE.
Speaker: And I think it was called, it was like the Alan Wake experiment or something like that.
Speaker: So yeah, AWE can, yeah, the Alan Wake expansion.
Speaker: And it's not just a clever name.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And also AWE is the, is, stands for altered world events, which are in the Bureau of Control every time one of these objects of power comes
Speaker: messes with the fabric of reality, it creates an altered world event, which is like a collapse between multiple realities at once.
Speaker: Not all objects of powers do that, but every, there's all these objects of power and that's when it starts getting into the Alan Wake spoiler territory.
Speaker: So before we go too far down that road,
Speaker: We're just going to go ahead and get started.
Speaker: What surprised me most about the book before we get started coming off of our last book, which was XCOM UFO Defense, a novel.
Speaker: A novel, yes.
Speaker: Was that this book has plot and characters.
Speaker: It's right off the bat.
Speaker: You can tell that it has a plot and characters.
Speaker: That is absolutely true.
Speaker: Yeah, that is true.
Speaker: Would you say that it's enough plot and characters to put the body in the mosh?
Speaker: Yeah, I'd say we should, uh, we should put the body in the mosh.
Speaker: I'm a naked animal.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: And whether that's Alice's body or not, we don't know.
Speaker: We don't know yet.
Speaker: We don't know yet.
Speaker: We don't know yet.
Speaker: And you got to collect all the pages to get the good ending anyway.
Speaker: You got to collect the manuscript pages before you really know.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I didn't have the patience for that.
Speaker: I'd never do anymore.
Speaker: The collectibles.
Speaker: I love the collectibles, but I always run out of steam before the, before I get, I'm like super hyped for it at the beginning.
Speaker: And probably by like hour two, I'm like, Oh yeah, it's still.
Speaker: I'm not.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: But yeah, by the time I get like two thirds of the way through, I'm just like, I just, let's just, we're just going to finish this game.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And that's fine.
Speaker: Heads, heads down.
Speaker: Let's get to credits.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: So the book starts with a prologue dream sequence straight from, and you know me, I hate prologue dream sequences, but this is straight from the video game.
Speaker: Like, so you can't really, I can't really fault the book for starting the same way that the game started.
Speaker: One of the things that's different between the book and the game, and I started up the game.
Speaker: I never beat the game, but I started it up right before we were recording just to kind of like re-familiarize myself with the character from the game and all that stuff.
Speaker: Is that the game is told in the first person, as in all of Alan's...
Speaker: voiceovers are I and what have you.
Speaker: The book is told from the third person.
Speaker: So a slight difference.
Speaker: Prologue starts.
Speaker: Dream sequence.
Speaker: Alan is driving down the road and he hits a hitchhiker with his car.
Speaker: Or at least he thinks he does.
Speaker: The hitchhiker turns out to be one of the characters from his stories and begins chasing Alan with an axe, trying to kill him and calling after him.
Speaker: Like, I'm going to get you, Alan.
Speaker: All that stuff.
Speaker: Alan is running, running, running.
Speaker: He runs into a man named Clay Stewart who tries to hold off the hitchhiker but is axed to death.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Not just any axing.
Speaker: He axed him to death.
Speaker: Axed him to death.
Speaker: Murdered the shit out of him.
Speaker: Yes, he sure did.
Speaker: He sure did.
Speaker: Alan gets into the cabin and the hitchhiker disappears, but then the cabin starts shaking as if it's in a storm.
Speaker: And then a deep sea diver appears and tells him a poem about how Alan is safe in the light and that the darkness can't hurt him there.
Speaker: And he wakes up.
Speaker: Chapter one.
Speaker: Um, Alan was asleep in his car on a ferry and, uh, his wife is beckoning him to look at the view that she's seeing out in the rally.
Speaker: Um, and, uh, we get some little details between Alan in the book and Alan in the game and that Alan, the book was like, it's a good view.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: From here.
Speaker: Looking at his wife's butt.
Speaker: Uh,
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He's totally that guy.
Speaker: It makes a lot of sense.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He's totally that guy.
Speaker: They're on their way to, I mean, and Sam Lake, if you happen to be listening to this at some point, you do have the face of a guy that is going to say something like that.
Speaker: He is very smarmy looking.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So they're on their way to Bright Falls, which is a nonspecific Pacific Northwest logging town for vacation.
Speaker: We get a lot of stuff about how Alan is kind of a grumpy guy by nature.
Speaker: And while Alice is prodding Alan to get his picture taken, an old man named Pat Main, the local radio host, starts talking to them about Deerfest and how it's the perfect time that they're in town.
Speaker: Deerfest is two weeks away.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Alan nearly picks a fight with another random dude on the ferry who was staring at them.
Speaker: It's weird fast.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It gets weird fast.
Speaker: It really sets up that, you know, Alice is the tender hearted woman and Alan is the bitter man trope.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Like that kind of couple.
Speaker: He's an asshole pretty quick in the story.
Speaker: Very quickly in this.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We don't waste any time on that one.
Speaker: No, they kiss, they get back in the car and they drive off the ferry.
Speaker: And Alan's talking about being surrounded by nature.
Speaker: And he's like, hey, if you're good, I'll take you to deer fest and let you pet Bambi.
Speaker: And Alice responds to him.
Speaker: Look where you are, Alan.
Speaker: Around here, they don't pet Bambi.
Speaker: They eat him.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Actually, I would kind of expected that to be his line.
Speaker: So that was that was.
Speaker: There's a little reversal there.
Speaker: Yeah, that was interesting.
Speaker: Give me one second.
Speaker: The door opened creepily and I'll be right back.
Speaker: There's the culprit.
Speaker: You know what you need is like a little kitty door on your office.
Speaker: That would be neat.
Speaker: I should.
Speaker: Yeah, they would love that, actually.
Speaker: They would really go for that.
Speaker: She can just like walk in and out.
Speaker: Yeah, that'd be cute.
Speaker: That would be cute.
Speaker: Speaking of cute, chapter two.
Speaker: Cute chapter.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: It's a very cute chapter.
Speaker: Alan is being a little snobbish about the town.
Speaker: He complains that there's no Starbucks.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Alice drops Alan off to get gas and Alan goes into a diner to get the keys to the cabin and he bumps into a life-size cardboard cutout of himself advertising his latest book, The Sudden Stop.
Speaker: And he hasn't written anything yet for his new novel, Departure.
Speaker: He meets a super fan by the name of Rose Marigold, who, which is flower flower.
Speaker: Isn't Marigold?
Speaker: That is a name, man.
Speaker: That is a name.
Speaker: That is a name.
Speaker: She works at the diner and there's also Rusty, the park ranger, who she refers to as black coffee under a thin layer of skin.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I like that.
Speaker: That was good.
Speaker: And the brothers tour an Odin Anderson who had wandered off from the psychiatric facility.
Speaker: And the Anderson brothers at Hector him into playing B2 on the jukebox, which is the coconut song.
Speaker: I don't know what, what the coconut song refers to, but I think talking about, I've got a lovely bunch of coconuts.
Speaker: Maybe or lime in the coconut.
Speaker: Lime in the coconut.
Speaker: That's also lime in the coconut.
Speaker: Drink it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I said, doctor.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's definitely one or the other.
Speaker: That's all there is.
Speaker: One or the other.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I'm going to go with lime in the coconut because I think I think that was that's more likely to be on the jukebox.
Speaker: That's actually you know what?
Speaker: Very good point.
Speaker: Alan goes into the back to find Carl Stuckey, but instead finds a cribby old lady in black who gives him the key to the cabin, which is like the fact that he doesn't really ask any questions about it is, is always struck me as a little weird.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: She's like, I will be by later to check on you.
Speaker: And he's like, no, please don't.
Speaker: I don't think that.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: No, thank you.
Speaker: I think we've all been there too.
Speaker: Whereas I'm going to come by.
Speaker: No, you.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: I would love to meet your wife.
Speaker: Want to meet your wife.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: There's another woman, another old woman holding a lantern and she warns him how he's lucky.
Speaker: He could have gotten hurt in the dark, which is we're really hammering home that the dark is bad.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Remember how the dark is bad?
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Every second of my life.
Speaker: Yes, of course.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I hate the dark.
Speaker: I'm scared of the dark.
Speaker: So let's, yeah, got it.
Speaker: The situation in the diner continues to twin peaks as the twins are now demanding alcohol.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It really does peak in the peaks, doesn't it?
Speaker: It's, it's,
Speaker: Alice pulls up and he's like, all right, I'm out of here.
Speaker: So chapter three, we start with Alan and Alice walking through the woods.
Speaker: Alice has pulled off to the side of the road because she thought she saw something.
Speaker: And what she saw was a car that looks like it was simply...
Speaker: deposited in the woods.
Speaker: It couldn't have been driven out there because of where it is.
Speaker: And they're like floating theories back and forth to each other.
Speaker: Maybe it was a tornado picked it up somehow.
Speaker: Yeah, like it dropped out of the sky.
Speaker: Or it like fell out of the back of a cargo airplane or something like that.
Speaker: Until Alice notices that it's getting dark and she starts rushing back to the car.
Speaker: And while they're in the car, they continue talking about the different ways it could have been put there.
Speaker: A UFO.
Speaker: My favorite was the siege engine.
Speaker: Alice says that some engineering students made a siege engine and just flung the car.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Use the insurance money to buy chain mail and shit.
Speaker: To buy chain mail.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And when they get to the end, then they see the cabin.
Speaker: It's an absolutely gorgeous view.
Speaker: Alan gets a phone call from his agent, Barry, but brushes him off and they get to the cabin.
Speaker: Alan heads to turn on the generator while Alice goes inside.
Speaker: And we get a little bit more from Alice from Alan about how Alice is deathly afraid of the dark, like true phobia levels.
Speaker: And then Alan notices the initials TJ and TZ and BJ carved into the cabin.
Speaker: And also when he goes inside, he knows there's books by someone named Thomas Zane in the cabin from the radio.
Speaker: We hear Pat main is hosting his radio show.
Speaker: Alan goes upstairs and Alice surprises him.
Speaker: Not that she is half undressed.
Speaker: That is not the surprise.
Speaker: That is not the surprise.
Speaker: That was just a detail thrown in there.
Speaker: She surprises him with his typewriter.
Speaker: She brought his typewriter along.
Speaker: Like, here's your typewriter in case you feel like writing.
Speaker: And he's just like, I don't want to.
Speaker: I thought we were taking a vacation.
Speaker: really loses his shit.
Speaker: He loses his goddamn mind.
Speaker: He really does.
Speaker: Like we said, they don't ease up on Alan Wake being an asshole at this point.
Speaker: So, yeah.
Speaker: So, yeah, Alan loses his shit.
Speaker: And then she mentions Dr. Hartman, the psychiatrist from the local clinic, is like renowned for working with creators.
Speaker: And he's like, oh, and this is why we're here.
Speaker: Ah.
Speaker: And Alan walks out.
Speaker: He's halfway across the bridge when the lights cut out.
Speaker: And she just starts screaming as soon as because it's dark.
Speaker: And we have established firmly that she is terrified of darkness.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Alan runs up to the bedroom, back into the bedroom.
Speaker: She's gone.
Speaker: She had been screaming that someone was after her.
Speaker: And then he runs and he looks outside and in the lake, he thinks he sees her sinking into the lake and he dives in after her.
Speaker: And so now we're in chapter four.
Speaker: And in chapter four, at the beginning, Alan is in the water.
Speaker: He's losing his sense of direction, which if you've ever been in water at night, that is easy to do.
Speaker: Easy to do.
Speaker: Easy to do.
Speaker: Don't go swimming at night without some lights or something like that, because you can't tell which way is up once you get down there.
Speaker: And then Alice's voice screaming wakes him up and he wakes up from a the nightmare having been in a car accident.
Speaker: He has no memory between the car accident and diving in the water.
Speaker: And he looks through their stuff in the trunk and then tries to put a note on the windshield of the car.
Speaker: I thought this was hilarious that he puts the note under the windshield of the car.
Speaker: And then as he does that, the car rolls off.
Speaker: and put it right here and oh and boom there there there goes okay all right i'm not gonna get the deposit back on that that's yeah that's uh i really should have uh paid the extra 15 for the uh insurance insurance on that rental yeah that was uh
Speaker: Good for me.
Speaker: Want to save a buck.
Speaker: Awesome.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Good for me.
Speaker: He continues through the woods and his head wound is oozing.
Speaker: And as he's walking, paper begins to fall from the sky and he grabs it.
Speaker: And it's a manuscript.
Speaker: It's his manuscript that he hasn't even started yet.
Speaker: The chapter ends with a segment of...
Speaker: Possibly from the manuscripts.
Speaker: I don't really know.
Speaker: It's just written in the book itself.
Speaker: It's like outlined in, it's like outlined as separate from everything else.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: I feel like this has got to be from the game, right?
Speaker: Yeah, I assume it's specific to the stuff you read in the game.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: The segment is about a man named Blaine and his wife, Asako, and his in-laws visiting from Japan as they drive around Bright Falls in an RV.
Speaker: And he's annoyed about it.
Speaker: Yes, he's just super curmudgeon-y, pissed off that he says something like, they're here from Japan, they want to take a picture of the sunset or something.
Speaker: He's like, they don't have sunsets in Japan.
Speaker: Of the sunset as if there's no sunsets in Japan.
Speaker: Dude.
Speaker: There are absolutely things that are worth being annoyed at your in-laws visiting over.
Speaker: There's no question about it.
Speaker: But...
Speaker: You're getting it to the point where it's like, oh, no, you're the asshole here.
Speaker: And I wonder if we're ever going to get a character who isn't an asshole.
Speaker: I'm surrounded by assholes.
Speaker: I'm surrounded by assholes.
Speaker: Yo.
Speaker: Keep going, assholes.
Speaker: The Alan Wake story.
Speaker: The Alan Wake story.
Speaker: Alan Wake, the lunchbox.
Speaker: Alan Wake, the flamethrower.
Speaker: Alan Wake, the video.
Speaker: I haven't watched that movie in forever.
Speaker: Now I have to watch that.
Speaker: We just got done watching all the Star Wars movies, so we figured we might as well watch a good one and watch Spaceballs.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: What the hell am I looking at?
Speaker: Now, sir.
Speaker: We're looking at now.
Speaker: What happened to then?
Speaker: We just passed that.
Speaker: When?
Speaker: Just now.
Speaker: When will then be now?
Speaker: I think my favorite line of that whole movie was, is this safe?
Speaker: Of course.
Speaker: Scotty beaned me twice last night.
Speaker: It was wonderful.
Speaker: Oh, God.
Speaker: I got to watch that movie again.
Speaker: Happy birthday, Mel Brooks.
Speaker: It just turned 89.
Speaker: 89.
Speaker: Jesus.
Speaker: I thought he was, I thought he was older than that for some reason.
Speaker: He's, he's, he hasn't hit the 90, uh, 90 yet, but we got another 10, 15 years with him.
Speaker: We're good.
Speaker: We had a good, yeah, we got a good amount of time with Bell Brooks.
Speaker: He's, he's a national treasure and we are not going to let him, uh, uh, go good, go into that good night.
Speaker: No, no, we're not allowing that.
Speaker: I'm afraid not.
Speaker: I know you want to be reunited with your beloved wife, but no, we just want to sit around and look at you for another 20, 30 years.
Speaker: It's fine.
Speaker: It's fine.
Speaker: It's fine, you guys.
Speaker: Your son will take good care of you.
Speaker: Max, I mean, he's got all that zombie.
Speaker: That zombie money.
Speaker: He's got that zombie money.
Speaker: Good zombie money.
Speaker: Chapter five, Alan keeps on walking and there's a line in here.
Speaker: Ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, Phil had a standup routine about 13 years ago, about 14 years ago, about cicadas.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: And how basically the noise they're making is just how they're screaming, fuck me, to each other.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And in this book, there is a line where the crickets, Alan says that the crickets' noise is just them saying, pick me, pick me.
Speaker: Yeah, that's it.
Speaker: Yeah, pick me, pick me.
Speaker: And I just couldn't.
Speaker: I just started laughing because I couldn't help.
Speaker: And it was a very diplomatic way of putting it, Rick Burroughs.
Speaker: Rick Burroughs.
Speaker: I remember it.
Speaker: And it was also the last thing you would do in your set because it required literally just me on stage screaming.
Speaker: And where do we go from there?
Speaker: Fuck me as loud as possible.
Speaker: Off the mic because I would have blown every, yeah, like just screaming.
Speaker: And when you've got a grown man clutching the side of a microphone stand pretending to be a bug screaming fuck me over and over again at the top of his lungs, you don't, there's nowhere to go from there.
Speaker: It's a closer.
Speaker: It has to be a closer.
Speaker: That's your closer.
Speaker: So, um,
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Those of you in 2009, 2010 who hugged around, was it Club One?
Speaker: Where would you have done that?
Speaker: Club One.
Speaker: Club One in Savannah, Georgia.
Speaker: And you're the real ones who know what I'm talking.
Speaker: This is for all y'all.
Speaker: All y'all out there.
Speaker: The real ones.
Speaker: Spent time in Club One in Savannah, Georgia when one Phil Keeling was doing one of his sets.
Speaker: Screaming his head off.
Speaker: I had a method.
Speaker: I had a method.
Speaker: I would get nervous to be on stage.
Speaker: So I would drink beer, which is pretty normal, but I had a scientific mathematical method where I would have three beers –
Speaker: And then I would go on stage holding my fourth beer, a new beer, and I would drink that through my set.
Speaker: And that was just enough that I was chill and I wouldn't tremble and freak out.
Speaker: But I was still sharp.
Speaker: I was still on top of my shit.
Speaker: Because I saw something online the other day that was so accurate that it hurt, that it said people with anxiety, the first two drinks, don't really count.
Speaker: They just turn you into a normal human being.
Speaker: And yeah, that was what I would do.
Speaker: And, and, and that was, yeah, that's where a lot of that shit came from.
Speaker: When you have, when you have an actual method of like, all right, no, I can't have, cause I would, I did one where I had four beers and took my fifth beer up there and died up there.
Speaker: Just absolutely sucked ass.
Speaker: And I never again, never again.
Speaker: Listen, kids, if you're about three plus one,
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: If you're six feet tall, between 250, 280, and you're thinking about doing stand-up, three beers, then your fourth beer on stage.
Speaker: Don't fuck with the method.
Speaker: It's just math.
Speaker: It's math.
Speaker: Math is math, and books are bread.
Speaker: Math is math.
Speaker: Books are bread.
Speaker: Still have to make that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Oh, boy.
Speaker: Where the hell are we?
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Crickets pick me.
Speaker: He eventually arrives at a logging camp.
Speaker: And as he's walking through the camp, he hears a man calling out in pain.
Speaker: And it's a hunter who's been all cut up by an axe.
Speaker: And lo and behold, is Carl Stuckey, the proprietor of the cabinry, is holding the axe and just repeating random lines from marketing brochures.
Speaker: Yeah, he sure is.
Speaker: It's weird.
Speaker: And the emphasis that the author places on the different words.
Speaker: It's so strange.
Speaker: Let's see if I can find some.
Speaker: Premium cabins.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Weird stuff like that.
Speaker: He's just talking about the cabins and, like, you'll lose your deposit if you no-show.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: It's so strange.
Speaker: And not even yet in a... Because for anyone who hasn't figured it out yet, this is Stephen King the game, basically.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: And you can see that kind of Kingian influence, if you will, based on... The game starts with a Stephen King quote.
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: So they know what they're doing.
Speaker: They know what they're doing.
Speaker: And this is something that's very Stephen King, having a guy chasing you with an axe while quoting like marketing spiels.
Speaker: And it's a little silly, but you see where they're going with it.
Speaker: Right, exactly.
Speaker: Um, so the hunter is on the ground.
Speaker: Uh, uh, Alan's like, what are you doing?
Speaker: Did you take my wife?
Speaker: Did you, did, did, do you have my wife?
Speaker: Um, uh, Carl kills the hunter, uh, chops him up real good.
Speaker: And Alan runs to a trailer, uh, in the, uh, logging camp and inside the trailer, he finds a revolver.
Speaker: another manuscript page and tries to dial 911.
Speaker: But Carl cuts the line after he gets someone on the phone.
Speaker: And then Carl rams the trailer with a bulldozer.
Speaker: Alan jumps out of the trailer through the back door before the trailer and the bulldozer go over the cliff.
Speaker: And then he checks the manuscript page and refers to something called the Taken.
Speaker: He continues on through the woods when he's attacked by two men with axes.
Speaker: And during the fight, Alan notices that putting the flashlight on them before shooting them strips away their darkness armor, basically.
Speaker: And they're killed.
Speaker: And when they're killed, their bodies just vanish.
Speaker: So clean up's easy.
Speaker: It clean up's easy and no cops.
Speaker: You know, you don't have to really deal with the cops with that one.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: The chapter ends with another segment, a nonlinear segment thrown in there.
Speaker: Ends with Alice lining up a photograph of the cabin and seeing a shadowy figure behind it.
Speaker: Chapter six, Wake continues towards the Stucky gas station and then puts two and two together that taken from the manuscript page are what he has been fighting.
Speaker: And he begins to understand Alice's fear of the darkness.
Speaker: As he gets closer to the gas station, he hears Stucky again, reciting his marketing taglines, including one about hot dogs.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's so weird.
Speaker: The belly burster is the best hot dog.
Speaker: I think it was honestly at this point, and then goes into like, everyone knows that's the best hot dog.
Speaker: And this one is the second best hot dog.
Speaker: And like, at that point I was like, okay, I like this.
Speaker: I've been, I've been, this is great.
Speaker: Never touch a salad.
Speaker: A man needs a hearty meal to make it through the day.
Speaker: It becomes Jordan Peterson on us.
Speaker: It becomes Jordan Peterson.
Speaker: It's a fucking carnivore diet.
Speaker: No, no.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's all meat.
Speaker: Never touch a salad.
Speaker: Hate your life.
Speaker: Melanie Mack over there shoving down a stick of butter into her mouth.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: God, what's going on with this fucking world, dude?
Speaker: You know, right-wing grifters will really do whatever they want to make money.
Speaker: They'll just say it's anti-woke and then do something absurd.
Speaker: And people will give them money for that.
Speaker: I don't understand it.
Speaker: It works.
Speaker: It works.
Speaker: It works.
Speaker: We were in a small town, South Carolina, just yesterday, where my wife's, a lot of her family lives out there.
Speaker: And they recently had a Trump rally.
Speaker: And Trump and...
Speaker: Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lindsey Graham and all kinds of just human awful just showed up.
Speaker: Well, Lindsey Graham is your senator, right?
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: I mean, that one at least.
Speaker: You're like, yeah, I guess.
Speaker: Yeah, I guess.
Speaker: But it was just, it was, obviously we missed that.
Speaker: But we did see the aftermath of it with just like all the people.
Speaker: Like there was a restaurant that was like charging $80 for parking for the Trump rally.
Speaker: And like, it's like, okay, yeah, that's...
Speaker: That's hilarious.
Speaker: But we passed this sign on the highway for a gun store and it said,
Speaker: It had the name of the store and it said free rifle for any U.S. presidents who show up at our store.
Speaker: And I was like, oh, you're just you're really.
Speaker: Oh, wow.
Speaker: Like, wow.
Speaker: You know what?
Speaker: You shot your shot.
Speaker: And I can't you shot your shot.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I can't even pretend that I don't respect it.
Speaker: Like I do.
Speaker: That was that was a fair effort.
Speaker: That was a fair effort.
Speaker: Yeah, that that man has never looked at a gun, let alone held and shot one.
Speaker: I don't know how people fall for this.
Speaker: She's like, look at that man.
Speaker: Does that man look like he knows his way around an AR-15 to you?
Speaker: Does that man look like he knows his way around a firearm?
Speaker: No, I wouldn't trust him with a Nintendo Switch.
Speaker: Are you fucking kidding me?
Speaker: How are you fooled so badly?
Speaker: This is a man that needs to be weighted on hand and foot.
Speaker: Yes, for everything.
Speaker: Everything.
Speaker: He has never not been rich.
Speaker: He has always had people doing things for him.
Speaker: Do you think he understands anything about firearms?
Speaker: No, he doesn't.
Speaker: You are being lied to.
Speaker: You're being grifted.
Speaker: So hard.
Speaker: And if it was just you who's being affected, I'd sit back and let it happen.
Speaker: I'd just eat popcorn and leave it alone.
Speaker: But it's not just you.
Speaker: But it's not just you.
Speaker: You're dragging all of us down with us because you're not critically thinking about the rich billionaire from New York City who said he was going to grift the right wing five years before he started grifting the right wing.
Speaker: He doesn't hide anything.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: Anyway.
Speaker: He doesn't know how.
Speaker: He doesn't know how.
Speaker: Alan Wake.
Speaker: Alan Wake.
Speaker: fucking Alan Wake.
Speaker: We're in chapter six.
Speaker: We're still going through chapter six.
Speaker: Hot dogs.
Speaker: That's how we got there.
Speaker: Hot dogs.
Speaker: That's it.
Speaker: Nailed it.
Speaker: Nailed it.
Speaker: Wake kills Stucky with the light and the revolver like the others and the body dissolves into nothingness.
Speaker: When Wake gets to Stucky, he sears that deer fest is now seven days away.
Speaker: So two weeks.
Speaker: On the radio, Wake hears a call into the Pat Main Show from Maurice Horton about how his dog Toby had disappeared into the woods.
Speaker: Nearby, on a TV screen, Wake sees a man typing on a typewriter over static, and then it disappears.
Speaker: From the gas station, Alan dials 911.
Speaker: And at the end of the chapter, we get another segment about Rose and Rusty.
Speaker: And that's Rose and Rusty are two characters we had seen, we had heard from earlier there at the diner and the diner store employee.
Speaker: Diner store employee.
Speaker: Diner.
Speaker: It's the diner store.
Speaker: It sells diners.
Speaker: You've been talking politics.
Speaker: You're all kerfuffled.
Speaker: I get it.
Speaker: I'm all kerfuffled.
Speaker: Yeah, it happens.
Speaker: It sells diners, prefab diners.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's just easier.
Speaker: You go in, you look at the... Actually, have you ever seen... A lot of those diners were just prefab.
Speaker: You could just buy them as a...
Speaker: it was like a trailer that you, you bought and then you just like dropped it down into the spot and you hooked up the water and all that stuff.
Speaker: I'm not surprised.
Speaker: I mean, yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That would be how I would want to do it.
Speaker: Of course, that's how I want to do my home.
Speaker: So I'm literally like, we're going to live in a trailer.
Speaker: You know that, right?
Speaker: And I was like, okay, cool.
Speaker: It makes you wish for the days where you could buy a house from Sears.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: As in, you order, you write in to Sears and be like, I would like one house, please.
Speaker: And then a truck came by and dropped off all the shit, the kit that you needed, and you built the house.
Speaker: Precisely.
Speaker: That would be way, way better than...
Speaker: I don't trust myself with any of that, but you know.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But you know, you could build your own damn house.
Speaker: That'd be awesome.
Speaker: Chapter seven, Alan is being investigated by Dr. Nelson at the sheriff's station looking at the head wound.
Speaker: He wants to give Alan an MRI, but Alan is like, no.
Speaker: He wants to give Alan an MRI because Alan is talking about a cabin that doesn't exist.
Speaker: There is no island in the middle of Crater Lake.
Speaker: Never was.
Speaker: Or there was back in the 1970s when it sunk.
Speaker: Because of volcanic activity or something like that.
Speaker: Like literally sank.
Speaker: It literally sank.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Oh, that's amazing.
Speaker: So the doctor's like, well, you know, you got a concussion.
Speaker: So he's like, I'm going to go get the sheriff.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Don't don't fall asleep.
Speaker: Don't fall asleep.
Speaker: I'm going to get the sheriff.
Speaker: And then first thing Alan does is fall asleep.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Immediately, in fact, immediately dozes off.
Speaker: He has a dream about a time that they were in their apartment in New York and the lights went out and Alice was having a pretty big moment about it.
Speaker: What was that?
Speaker: Like a car backfired outside.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Alice is having a pretty big moment about it.
Speaker: So the sheriff wakes him up and reminds him that he shouldn't sleep for at least eight hours because of the concussion.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And then he tells her about the cabin that they were staying at.
Speaker: And the sheriff is like, again, it doesn't exist.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And he's very insistent on this.
Speaker: It's like, you've got to, it doesn't exist.
Speaker: What's up?
Speaker: I thought Camilla was knocking at the door.
Speaker: Yeah, it doesn't exist.
Speaker: So like, what?
Speaker: Oh, you know what?
Speaker: It's fucking people with the stupid...
Speaker: It's we're recording on July 5th, everybody.
Speaker: Oh, people still setting off fireworks.
Speaker: They're still setting off fireworks.
Speaker: And it's it's driving the dogs nuts.
Speaker: Of course, because I live in Florida and people think it's cool to just set off big old micro explosions in their backyard forever for whatever reason.
Speaker: Yeah, just do it forever.
Speaker: It's fine.
Speaker: Just do it forever.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Anyway, now I lost where we are.
Speaker: Stupid fireworks.
Speaker: Sheriff wakes him up.
Speaker: There we go.
Speaker: Cabin doesn't exist.
Speaker: Alan says something like, she's very trustworthy, but I don't trust her with the truth.
Speaker: And I was like, okay, Alan, you do you.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: You're going to expand on that?
Speaker: No?
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: No worries.
Speaker: No, we're just going to leave that there.
Speaker: And there's the munchkin.
Speaker: What's up, Camilla?
Speaker: Hello.
Speaker: Hi.
Speaker: Bye-bye.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Then Alan gets a phone call from somebody who claims that he has Alice and that he has kidnapped her and Alan must meet him at Lover's Peak at midnight.
Speaker: So Alan's going to go leave the sheriff's station.
Speaker: He runs into the lantern lady again, Miss Weaver, who is checking the lights for them.
Speaker: She's like, remember, stay out of the dark.
Speaker: Thanks.
Speaker: Thanks.
Speaker: Where'd you get that lantern?
Speaker: Nevermind.
Speaker: Nevermind.
Speaker: Thanks.
Speaker: Living tutorial.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: So as also as he's leaving, a man is being dragged in and handcuffs, being hysterical about needing more light and not wanting any shadows in his cell.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Dr. Hartman is also in the lobby.
Speaker: And despite all the stuff that Alan has going on, going on right now, his wife is missing, potentially kidnapped.
Speaker: Dr. Hartman's like.
Speaker: Hey, buddy, why don't you come in for a therapy session for creatives?
Speaker: You should do it.
Speaker: That's what I do.
Speaker: I could help you.
Speaker: Alan punches the ever-loving shit out of him.
Speaker: And I was like, yes.
Speaker: And he deserves it.
Speaker: He did the right thing.
Speaker: He did the right thing.
Speaker: He did the right thing.
Speaker: He's held back from hitting him more because I think Alan would have just beat this guy to death if...
Speaker: If he wasn't being held back by the sheriff.
Speaker: He really is a violent guy.
Speaker: Like for a violent temperamental guy hands.
Speaker: It's crazy.
Speaker: He throws hands.
Speaker: Barry Allen's agent arrives and Barry tells Hartman and the sheriff to get their hands off his client.
Speaker: And the sheriff says, all right, well, Alan, you need to come back later when you're feeling better.
Speaker: And Dr. Hartman's like, I'm not going to press charges.
Speaker: It's a hazard of the position.
Speaker: Hazard of the position.
Speaker: I'm used to creatives losing their shit.
Speaker: Indubitably.
Speaker: Alan and Barry load the luggage into Barry's car.
Speaker: And chapter ends with a segment about the take-in and how they...
Speaker: they have their echoes of their former selves.
Speaker: So they, they might have memories or whatever that they might keep talking in loops or, or what have you.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: Chapter eight, Barry apparently has been in town for two days and he hadn't heard from Alan since that first day phone call.
Speaker: Alan has Barry drive him to the gas station first to get the gun and then on the drive to the lake where the lake house would be, he fills him in on all the other details.
Speaker: When they get to the lake, they're
Speaker: like everybody else is saying, there's no cabin there.
Speaker: There's no islands, whatever.
Speaker: Uh, Alan's like, but look, there's remnants of a bridge and Barry's like,
Speaker: Buddy, that's your really pushing.
Speaker: Yeah, there sure is, pal.
Speaker: Good call.
Speaker: He's like, I don't believe you, but I believe you believe you.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: It's a good line.
Speaker: It is a good line.
Speaker: I'm not saying you're lying.
Speaker: I'm just saying I don't believe.
Speaker: It makes about as much sense as the whole, like, I trust you with everything but the truth.
Speaker: Except the truth.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Sorry.
Speaker: You opened that, that, that door, my friend, we're just going to, yeah, let's just keep going.
Speaker: Let's dive right into it.
Speaker: Um, and, uh, Barry convinces Alan to, uh, all right, let's just go to that visitor center area and let's rent a cabin.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So they drive up there and they run into Rose, who Barry had met previously on his quest to find Alan.
Speaker: And she tells him about Rusty's dog, Max, getting all torn up the previous night.
Speaker: And Alan... And then there's a moment where Barry stares at Rose's butt.
Speaker: And Rose kisses Alan on the cheek.
Speaker: And Barry's like, why don't you get all the kisses?
Speaker: That's what he does.
Speaker: Just...
Speaker: He's just bummed out, you know?
Speaker: He's just a sad guy for a lot of reasons.
Speaker: Sad guy for a lot of reasons.
Speaker: They call him Butterball, I think, at one point.
Speaker: Yeah, like a red Butterball because he's wearing a red raincoat or some damn thing.
Speaker: Oh, buddy.
Speaker: Alan checks in with Rusty about renting a cabin, and his dog Max is definitely not in a good place.
Speaker: He's, like, all bandaged up.
Speaker: But Max actually responds well to Alan, and Rusty's like, oh, that's weird.
Speaker: You know, usually Max isn't friendly with people who are, like...
Speaker: Not from around here.
Speaker: And then Rusty also gives them directions to Lovers Peak from where they are.
Speaker: And at the end of this chapter, we get another segment, but it's in the first person about a metal trunk with a lot of batteries and ammo and guns and flares and things like that.
Speaker: Chapter nine.
Speaker: They get to the cabin.
Speaker: Alan takes a shower and takes a nap and has a dream about Alice walking down the street in the city, but he can never actually catch up to her.
Speaker: Alan wakes up.
Speaker: His heart is pounding.
Speaker: Barry offers to call one of his clients and former FBI agent to come up and help handle things with the kidnappers.
Speaker: But Alan's no, I'm doing it myself.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Barry then makes Alan a delicious triple decker peanut butter and jelly Sammy.
Speaker: And I want one.
Speaker: It's such a simple piece of genius.
Speaker: Three pieces of bread, two layers of peanut butter and jelly.
Speaker: My God, I've been living a lie.
Speaker: I'm like, wait a minute.
Speaker: We can get more calories out of the simple PB&J.
Speaker: What?
Speaker: It's like eating two PB&Js at once.
Speaker: Listen, people, you got to stick with the fat guys.
Speaker: We have the best ideas.
Speaker: We always do.
Speaker: Just stick with us.
Speaker: So Barry gives him a triple decker PB and J and it really did.
Speaker: It makes out.
Speaker: It improves Alan's mood.
Speaker: It does.
Speaker: It does.
Speaker: It visibly improves his mood.
Speaker: Yeah, I believe that.
Speaker: That's the only that would have been the least believable thing in the entire book.
Speaker: If he took a bite of that and was like, I don't really want it.
Speaker: Like that would not be like bullshit.
Speaker: Fuck you.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: He wolves that that triple decker PB and J down and all the way down.
Speaker: He's like, all right, I'm ready to take on some kidnappers.
Speaker: Shoot someone in the head for my wife, if need be.
Speaker: If need be.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Barry wants to come with Alan, but Alan isn't having it.
Speaker: He wants Barry to stay behind in case something happens.
Speaker: And then this chapter ends with another segment.
Speaker: But this time it's about the sheriff that we heard from earlier and her issues with an FBI agent named Nightingale and how he's he's kind of an asshole.
Speaker: And yeah, that's that's where we will leave it.
Speaker: For the time being, that was the first nine chapters of Alan Wake.
Speaker: Yeah, roughly the first hundred pages.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So how are you feeling so far?
Speaker: we talked about this earlier.
Speaker: Kevin and I kind of both agreed where it was just this feeling of like, after the past few books we've read, not all of them to this extent, but there was just, it's so shockingly competent that we're just like, good, good.
Speaker: It's fine.
Speaker: It's fine.
Speaker: This is fine.
Speaker: This is, yeah, it's, it's, it's got a steady plot.
Speaker: I do find some of the, I found a couple of the jumps of,
Speaker: from one scene to another to be a little jarring to the point where I had to stop and reread because I wasn't like, for example, when he goes into the water after Alice and suddenly he's in his car and it's, it's very abrupt in a way that made me go, wait, where the fuck am I?
Speaker: And I had to reread it a couple of times before I started to get it, but it's, it's well-written.
Speaker: It is following the game.
Speaker: to the T. However, with a game like this that involves so much more than just move to this area, kill a bad guy, move to that area, kill a bad guy, this is a genuinely unique way of telling the story, and it's a different perspective.
Speaker: Because you're right, in the game it is a first-person thing, but we're not hearing the narrative constantly in the same way.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So I think it's it's it isn't one of those novelizations that you're like, why the what's the point of even doing this?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I can see the value in it.
Speaker: What about you?
Speaker: What do you what do you think so far?
Speaker: Yeah, I like it so far.
Speaker: I feel like it's a little it's it's a little like.
Speaker: It's fine.
Speaker: You know, I don't like that.
Speaker: Alan is such a jackass all the time.
Speaker: It's it's it's pretty.
Speaker: I mean, he's don't get me wrong.
Speaker: He doesn't come off as like the coolest dude ever in the game either.
Speaker: But right.
Speaker: But it's just it's very heavy handed in the book.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I think it could have been a little bit lighter.
Speaker: Just make him just a touch likable something.
Speaker: A little kernel of likable likability goes a long way.
Speaker: Just a little.
Speaker: Just a little.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Um, not that all your protagonists have to be likable and all that jazz.
Speaker: It's just, it's very like in the book, he's, he's just, it's just, it feels like every chapter there's a reminder that Alan is an asshole.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And they, they think that being clever is going to make us like him more.
Speaker: Uh, but even the clever spots are kind of smarmy and dickish.
Speaker: So, right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's tough.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, yeah.
Speaker: I mean, that'll, that'll be it for, for it for tonight.
Speaker: We'll, we'll come back to it next week.
Speaker: But in the meantime,
Speaker: I have an important question to ask you.
Speaker: Please.
Speaker: Uh, what are you playing?
Speaker: Oh, I, I'm so glad you asked, uh, because I actually have big news.
Speaker: I finished far cry six.
Speaker: Woo.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I, yeah.
Speaker: I, uh, stand by basically everything I said.
Speaker: Uh, it is, it is of the modern far cries, probably the weakest.
Speaker: Um, um,
Speaker: The villains, despite the fact that he is portrayed by the incomparable Giancarlo Esposito, it wasn't as interesting of a character as we've dealt with with these iconic villains in the past.
Speaker: The story wasn't often as interesting.
Speaker: But goddamn, the fucking play, the gameplay...
Speaker: kept me hooked.
Speaker: I can't I can't call it a bad game by any stretch of the imagination.
Speaker: I don't put 50 plus hours into games that I think are bad.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It really knows how to get its hooks into you in the same way that the other Far Cry games do.
Speaker: It just didn't have, it doesn't have the personality of the other ones, which is a real damn shame.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But yeah, so I finished that.
Speaker: And I am also, let me see, let me see how much.
Speaker: I am 17 hours into Aliens Dark Descent.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And that's kind of a similar place for me because I can't stop playing it.
Speaker: I am so engaged by it.
Speaker: It has this wonderful gameplay loop that is very methodical.
Speaker: It takes its time.
Speaker: You have to take your time.
Speaker: You will be punished for not taking your time.
Speaker: You have to be really thoughtful about how you're doing these things.
Speaker: It's unnerving and frightening in a way that I've never seen in a strategy game.
Speaker: It keeps the tension up.
Speaker: Having said all of that, it has some bugs in it, no pun intended, that are so infuriating at times that I wouldn't be this mad if I wasn't
Speaker: so in love with this game.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I want this to be my game of the year.
Speaker: For me personally, it scratches so many different itches.
Speaker: It's got a really genuinely good storyline.
Speaker: I like the storyline.
Speaker: I like the drama.
Speaker: Um, it's got a lot of those just good aliens tropes in there.
Speaker: The strategy element of it is fantastic.
Speaker: It's, it's got this wonderful vibe, uh, combination of like Warhammer Dawn of War, uh, strategy with XCOM delivery and darkest dungeon follow through.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: And those are all flavors that we can all get behind and love.
Speaker: And it just so happens that those are three of my favorite games ever.
Speaker: So I find myself getting so frustrated.
Speaker: There are these bugs where you can't finish a side quest or something like that.
Speaker: You have to start over a certain thing, and sometimes it still won't work.
Speaker: And this is a game I should be 100%ing.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Because I love it.
Speaker: I'm having so much fun with it.
Speaker: And because I'm having so much fun, it makes those janky bugs that much more frustrating.
Speaker: Yeah, those moments are just killers, you know?
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yes, exactly.
Speaker: So I love it.
Speaker: I'm very frustrated with it at times.
Speaker: Not all the time.
Speaker: I'm making it sound like there's a thing behind every door.
Speaker: It's not like that, in fact.
Speaker: It's just that...
Speaker: You'll get this groove.
Speaker: You'll get this rhythm going.
Speaker: And I'm at a point in the game where I have, I've done a good enough job that my, I've got a pretty solid coterie of Marines here.
Speaker: That's a pretty, pretty hardy stock of people that, that I can handle most stuff that comes my way.
Speaker: If I go about it in the right way.
Speaker: And I get into a rhythm.
Speaker: I start feeling good.
Speaker: I'm like, here we go.
Speaker: It's, you know, the, the, the scissors on the wrapping paper start to glide.
Speaker: and I feel fantastic.
Speaker: And then you just hit this thing that you're like, there's no excuse for this.
Speaker: That's just such a basic thing.
Speaker: Why is that so broken?
Speaker: And it just frustrates the hell out of me.
Speaker: But having said that, I fucking love it.
Speaker: I can't stop playing it.
Speaker: It's exactly what I was hoping it was going to be outside of the jank.
Speaker: So, fuck.
Speaker: Yeah, what about you?
Speaker: What are you playing?
Speaker: So I played, since we last spoke, I played and beat Amnesia the Bunker.
Speaker: Ooh, I need to hear all about this.
Speaker: How'd you like it?
Speaker: I loved it.
Speaker: I feel like it has, it didn't quite hit the mark in the last 15 minutes or so.
Speaker: I wasn't a huge fan of the final 15 minutes.
Speaker: Because there's like, it's basically, it's like there's the final, there's like a final boss encounter or puzzle encounter without giving too much away.
Speaker: It's one of those things that like, if you have a, if there's, if you have a particular item in your inventory, it makes it a cakewalk and otherwise it makes it nearly impossible.
Speaker: is basically the balance between it.
Speaker: Like so much so that I was like, fine.
Speaker: After fighting, after doing the final encounter for like an hour, I was like, fine.
Speaker: And I went and I went back, all the way back to the other side of the map, got the item, came all the way back, and then it was like two minutes.
Speaker: And I was done.
Speaker: Yeah, it was done.
Speaker: Done.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I totally get what you're saying.
Speaker: And that's why the last time we talked about when I was playing it, that's the shit that I want to give the designers where it's just like, okay, it's like, if you could think about it, you can do it.
Speaker: It's like, um...
Speaker: But there is a pretty specific way that this is meant to be done, and it's kind of hard to deny that.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: There's some very specific things.
Speaker: And, like, if you think about it, you can do it and be like, okay, that's fine.
Speaker: But then, like, you shouldn't be, like, you shouldn't be having, like, things in your path that...
Speaker: you can't like just blow up.
Speaker: You know what I mean?
Speaker: Right, right, right.
Speaker: If you can think about it, you can do it.
Speaker: And I'd set a piece of dynamite and it isn't enough to blow up a little chain.
Speaker: I understand in gaming mechanics why that is, but if you're telling me that it's this mind blowing, then that's bullshit.
Speaker: If I can break a padlock with a brick, but I can't break a chain with that brick,
Speaker: when they're basically the same material, there's like a cognitive dissonance.
Speaker: So I love the game.
Speaker: I think it was like, it has some really good moment.
Speaker: It's like basically just like four hours of alien isolation.
Speaker: Really intense.
Speaker: Very intense version of Alien Isolation with no radar.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I liked the map system.
Speaker: I thought that was great.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The map system was neat in that you could not, you didn't have a map with you.
Speaker: You had to go all the way back to administration and look at the map to figure out where things were.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I thought that was kind of neat.
Speaker: I thought that was pretty, that analog aspect of it was really cool.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, yeah, I dug it.
Speaker: It'll probably be on my game of the year list when I'm, you know, when all is said and done.
Speaker: It's going to be on the list.
Speaker: And then what else?
Speaker: I played and beat, just because I had it, I think you had bought it from me like a while ago, the Horror of Salazar House.
Speaker: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, it only takes like, takes a couple hours to, it's nothing.
Speaker: But it's a really neat point and click.
Speaker: It's got some it's also got some alien isolation vibes to it.
Speaker: It does.
Speaker: Yeah, actually, you have to hide and there's like basically a stalker walking around the house as you and you have to keep track of like where the hiding spots are when you get notification that the stalker is on to you.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So yeah, Harv sells our house, a neat little game, very lo-fi.
Speaker: It's a lo-fi point and click that is very in the mold of like Deja Vu or what was it?
Speaker: Shadowgate.
Speaker: What was the other one though?
Speaker: Yeah, I think it was that.
Speaker: Shadowgate.
Speaker: but with real time aspects to it rather than paid like room by room.
Speaker: So that was pretty cool.
Speaker: What else have I been playing?
Speaker: I started back on Street Fighter VI.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Because I had been playing it and then I stopped and now I'm back into it and doing the world tour.
Speaker: And it's so fun.
Speaker: It's like you can just sit there and play that all day, you know?
Speaker: Man, I might have to pick that one up.
Speaker: It's fun.
Speaker: I haven't been this intrigued by fighting game in a very long time.
Speaker: very long time i'm gonna yeah and with the modern controls i think it it really plays into people who are uh you know casuals like myself um and they're like i'm not gonna do that input and they're like how about this input where you hold this button and press this button i'm like yeah i can do that maybe i can do that i love it i love it
Speaker: Oh, gosh.
Speaker: So, yeah, I'm playing Street Fighter 6.
Speaker: And then because we're reading Alan Wake, I started playing Alan Wake.
Speaker: So, well, I'm going to double feature my Alan Wake.
Speaker: And that way I can kind of keep tabs on the differences between the book and the game and all that.
Speaker: That's smart.
Speaker: Yeah, that's a good idea.
Speaker: Yeah, it seems very...
Speaker: Sorry?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It seems like a very literal, um, like, uh, translation of the game so far.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's as far as, yeah, that's the thing.
Speaker: I, I played and beat Alan Wake for the first time last year, um, as part of my education in horror games.
Speaker: And, uh, and I don't remember everything, but yeah, it's, it's, as I recall, mostly all there, I guess.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Well, that'll do it for tonight's episode.
Speaker: Before we go anywhere, Phil, do you have any thoughts of a place that people could go on the Internet?
Speaker: On the Internet?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Oh, oh, I think I know exactly what you mean.
Speaker: I think what you mean is patreon.com slash pixelitpod.
Speaker: That's, that's, that's obviously the place that people should go.
Speaker: A place where you can, for as little as a dollar a month, support our endeavor to read about and talk about video game novelizations and adaptations, uh, over and over and over again until our eyes fall out of our head.
Speaker: because we didn't get the Holy Grail soon enough or fast enough or even the correct one.
Speaker: So that's because this is just what Kevin and I were going to.
Speaker: We hit a point, ladies and gentlemen, we're past two years doing this show.
Speaker: Past two years.
Speaker: And in podcast terms, that basically means that we have to do this into the autumn and winter of our existence.
Speaker: Yeah, we can't stop now.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, there's no stopping.
Speaker: I'm good with that.
Speaker: I just did.
Speaker: But it is a fact that that's what we've got to do.
Speaker: So if you want to support us and in exchange, get some cool exclusive content, which is coming out, ladies and gentlemen, please hit up patreon.com slash pixel it pod.
Speaker: Do it today.
Speaker: Do it today.
Speaker: And if you just want to not totally commit to that whole Patreon vibe,
Speaker: We got some other websites for you.
Speaker: Twitter, Instagram, slash PixelitPod on both of them.
Speaker: You go to our website, PixelitPod.com.
Speaker: Join our mailing list.
Speaker: You can join our Discord.
Speaker: All that good stuff.
Speaker: And it's great.
Speaker: It's wonderful.
Speaker: But, you know, Patreon is also great and wonderful.
Speaker: Come on.
Speaker: Come on.
Speaker: Come on.
Speaker: Just one buck a month.
Speaker: One buck a month.
Speaker: That's like a coffee.
Speaker: That's actually like half of a coffee now.
Speaker: You can't afford anything.
Speaker: You can't afford anything.
Speaker: For us.
Speaker: You can buy us for a dollar a month.
Speaker: Buy us for a dollar.
Speaker: You can buy us for one dollar a month.
Speaker: One dollar a month.
Speaker: You can feed these children for one dollar a month.
Speaker: In the arms of the angels.
Speaker: They were just sitting there.
Speaker: I'm the grumpy cat that's just manged covered in this.
Speaker: Manged, yes.
Speaker: What's her name holding up?
Speaker: You could put me to sleep.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: What's your name holding up a dog?
Speaker: You know, you can save these dogs.
Speaker: This animal.
Speaker: This animal for only 25 cents a month.
Speaker: You could save these podcasters.
Speaker: You could save these podcasters for only 25 cents a month.
Speaker: Or a dollar a month.
Speaker: A dollar a month.
Speaker: Although, if we could figure out a way to accept 25 cents a month.
Speaker: We would.
Speaker: We'd probably do that.
Speaker: But with the Patreon cut, they would probably require us to be paid in hay pennies.
Speaker: Yeah, they'd figure out a way.
Speaker: We'd figure out a way to split it.
Speaker: Well, we had to go back to 1870, but we got a hay penny for you.
Speaker: We're making it happen.
Speaker: Lucky, lucky you.
Speaker: Thanks, Patreon.
Speaker: Thanks, Patreon.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And yeah, I'll do it.
Speaker: Good night.
Speaker: Bye.
Speaker: Bye.
