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Droven! (Driver: Nemesis - Part 3)
158 Plays6 hours ago
Well that's over. Or drover. I'm feeling punchy as I write this. Happy Christmas you crazy kids.
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Transcript
Introduction & Podcast Overview
00:00:00
Speaker
Maybe he's just doing more Broadway or or the theater stuff then. Still absolutely wild. Absolutely wild. You know what else is absolutely wild?
00:00:12
Speaker
what's that Hey there everybody, welcome back to Pixel It. My name is Kevin with me as always is Phil. On today's show, we discuss Tom Hulse's career.
Review of 'Driver Nemesis'
00:00:21
Speaker
ah no yeah we we Welcome to the show. Welcome to the show. No, we finished Driver.
00:00:26
Speaker
Driver Nemesis. It's a bad book and we feel bad for reading it at you folks, but it's fine. It's fine. We're all fine here. We're fine. How are you? at I'm great.
00:00:39
Speaker
And you know where else we're fine. we're We're fine on patreon.com slash pixel at pod where you too can give us money. We have we have three tiers for if you count for free. One dollar gets you access to the blog and the ah early episode, early version of the episode. Five dollars gets you access to the bonus episode and ten dollars gets your name shouted out.
00:01:00
Speaker
And to that end, I want to thank, and you are hiding song 85. Jesus loves you. Cal semen, riddle smutter, middle thing, sigma sales, sanguine flatulence, big, dammit thick and friendly friend. Thank you so much for being a friend.
00:01:14
Speaker
Pixelitpod.com or patreon.com slash pixelitpod. Do it today. eight So.
00:01:26
Speaker
Huh. Driver nemesis, huh?
00:01:31
Speaker
Right. How is Tom Hulse involved in Driver Nemesis? ah He played Jericho. that's Yes. Okay. I thought you were going to say the Indian. No.
00:01:47
Speaker
No, ah the the Indian was played by um the guy from... Fuck, what's his name? ah In Usual Suspects. You know, the guy with the really high cheekbones ah who is the lawyer in Usual Suspects. Oh, oh, oh, goddammit.
00:02:10
Speaker
Crap. Now have to do this. He was
Director Baz Luhrmann Discussion
00:02:16
Speaker
Kobayashi. Peter Pasta Wait. That's right. He is awesome. That guy that guy is a real another really good actor.
00:02:25
Speaker
He died a little while back, didn't he? He died 14 years ago. Yeah, a little while back. A little while back. yeah A little while back.
00:02:35
Speaker
little while back. remember he really good the town. Real. Yeah. He was gangster in the town. good. He was those kind i could who's a gangster in the town he's good he he was real good at those kind of
00:02:55
Speaker
like It was like intellectual rough and tumble kind of shit. Yeah. He played ah he played Friar Lawrence in Baz Luhrmann's Romeo and Juliet, and he brought a gruffness to it. ah I remember... i not not It's not a great movie, but I remember he had no shirt on at one point, and he they had given him this elaborate Catholic cross tattoo on his back.
00:03:23
Speaker
um And it just gave some dirt to the character that he carried really, really well. it He said guys it it was a good actor. Baz Luhrmann. Baz Luhrmann. He's a guy who did a thing.
00:03:38
Speaker
He's a style over substance chap, isn't he? Couldn't agree more. i I keep giving them and I keep giving them tries. i You know what? I don't mind this. I don't mind it too much. I like it's it's fine. But it's like it's like I know i know ah writers who use subtext and they're all cowards.
00:04:00
Speaker
Right. But turned up to 11 Baz Luhrmann. ah is is bas
00:04:06
Speaker
I feel like somebody is going to say something in the discord about our, our, our feelings on Baz Luhrmann, but motherfucker is just like, I like Chicago at least.
00:04:20
Speaker
Did he do Chicago? Yeah. Didn't he do Chicago? he didn't do Chicago. No, he did Moulin Rouge. He did Moulin Rouge. And like Moulin Rouge. ah I like Moulin Rouge because that is... Oh, Rob Marshall did Chicago. Okay. Never mind. Yeah.
00:04:36
Speaker
Yeah. No, no. ah Well, I like Chicago. Right. Yeah. well chicago's Chicago is great. They did. That was, a that you know, if ah if ah ah was the movie that's always tootsie, they use it in screenplay classes and stuff like that. like the the person I think that i think Chicago should probably be the equivalent of that for any ah class about adapting theater to film.
00:05:04
Speaker
um it's it's and i'm not saying anything that hasn't been said over a hundred thousand times already but it really sure is incredible uh the way they did it no i like i like moulin rouge because the whole thing fit together in what they were trying to do it was a melodrama and it was done in a crazy over the top and she has the consumption and right right Touch of that touch the old but the old consumption, the tuberculosis. The old TB.
00:05:34
Speaker
ah we are aculus we' are going to do we' are going to talk about anything other than this book. ah By God. By God, by golly. ah We are going to avoid putting the body in the marsh. oh I said it.
00:05:50
Speaker
You said it. Now we have to do it. Now we have to do it. Oh God. Okay. When I tell you to dump a body in the marsh, you dump them in the marsh.
00:06:05
Speaker
Okay. Chapter 21. um So Tanner takes a bus back to New Orleans after putting Quentin on a bus headed the other way out of town. He tells Quentin to lead a better. like I hate to interrupt already, but that's got to be the ultimate humiliation for a guy who his whole thing is driving. He's that for a car guy. Yeah. Yeah. To go on and sit on a bus.
00:06:29
Speaker
but It made me think of the ah the Spider-Man ah game where he you would occasionally take the subway instead of like web crawling across the city. The fast travel animation was hit was him sitting on the subway going across town. Right. And it's just like, it's it's it's fantastic. But yeah, it's that without the charm. Yeah.
00:06:52
Speaker
Without the charm. 100%. Let me bring this up to half the screen. There we go. Tell us, Quentin, to lead a better life. stop crack Stop cracking safes. Put on a tie and get a job. Like, oh, man, those ah early 2000s were just putting on a tie and they handed a job to you. That was just how that worked. Yeah. That's just how it worked back then.
00:07:15
Speaker
Yeah, that's all you need. Tobias meets Tanner at the bus station. Tanner wants to see pal, but pal won't meet with him. Tobias says he tried until he was blue in the face. ah And for a proud black man himself, that was a serious concession. What the fuck is that? Was that line?
00:07:35
Speaker
I don't. i There are a bunch of them in in this this leg of the book that I'm like, guys, I need you to fucking try a little. way And yeah from this point on, Tobias is played by David Cross in my head because he blew himself.
00:07:55
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. It's it. Yeah. yeah yeah as ah And he's joined like the as a proud black man myself.
00:08:06
Speaker
ah Oh, no there's a fire Right.
00:08:16
Speaker
Anyway, Powell won't change the focus, the investigation because he wants to use it for his Senate bid, um which is a big, big leap from police chief to senator. That's a that's a that's a leap and a half. That is a jump. Yeah, no question. yeah Maybe mayor, I would have believed. But sure. Sure. The mayor. Alderman.
00:08:39
Speaker
Alderman something. But Senator. Bypassing Congress? All right. um Tanner drives the Indians new bolt hole after getting checked for weapons. He waits to be let in. he hears an argument brewing between Jericho and the Indian about chain of command and the Indian seems to be losing his temper.
00:08:58
Speaker
Also, it seems like Jericho didn't even know about the bomb and that the Indian, not Jericho, is the one who is the more clear and present danger based on the way he's acting. Don't worry. We're going to drop this line of thinking immediately. Immediately. Don't you worry. Don't you
Critique of 'Driver Nemesis' Writing
00:09:16
Speaker
worry. It's not a double switch of the Indian actually is the bad guy. No.
00:09:22
Speaker
no No. That would that would be interesting. Yeah, exactly. that would that would That would be interesting. That would make this a compelling read, and we can't have that.
00:09:32
Speaker
That's not fair. Tanner accused, we got a thousand more pages to go. Tanner accuses the Indian of trying to kill him. And then the Indian is like, what? Me? No, you're my new top guy. Anyway, we wanted to be terrorists.
00:09:46
Speaker
ah Jericho says that they're meeting with the smaller gangs tonight to sign a peace deal. Tanner and Jericho have a stare down and then Tanner asks, when do we leave? ah They meet with the two low-level gang leaders, Bergeron and Vadrine, at a safe house. But during the meeting, a sniper tries to shoot at them, but they're saved by Tanner.
00:10:06
Speaker
They end up in a standoff until Tanner reminds and hit them that he saved them, and they put their weapons down. And ah then a bunch of goons come in and start beating Bergeron and Vadrine. It was Jericho's plan all along.
00:10:21
Speaker
Jericho is going waterboard them now. And he tells Tanner he has to wait outside so that the goons can get a show. And while waiting outside the room, Jericho's phone rings. Tanner answers it and it's Bowman.
00:10:35
Speaker
He said he's figure out who the rat is. It's Julia and he's going to go find Tobias and kill him. de den du Bowman was the guy in the car at the end of that that one chapter where there's a guy in the car.
00:10:49
Speaker
is this around the time where one of them says that the Indian has fully gone off the reservation? Probably. That was another, that was another moment that I was like, guys, like it's come out it's, it's already a thing that, that you, you try to avoid saying, and then you throw, i know it's, it's pre Katrina, New Orleans, but yeah let's so yeah dial back the racism just a little bit, just a little, just a little,
00:11:17
Speaker
Oh, God. Because we still, Kanye still hasn't said George petru george Bush doesn't care about black people yet. Those innocent days. Those beautiful halcyon days. I mean.
00:11:30
Speaker
God. Katrina was ah was just a fucked up time. New Orleans and got gets leveled and the government just was like, well.
00:11:42
Speaker
What can you do? Yeah. yeah Whatever. It doesn't. Whatever. We tried. You didn't. you kind of did. We tried nothing and nothing works. Roll out of ideas. and Roll out of ideas.
00:11:56
Speaker
it's Yeah, that was, that was a oh yeah. And the fact that that ah anyone saying that George ah W. Bush doesn't care about black people would be considered controversial on any level is kind of hilarious if you think about And the fact that all these years later, it's like, oh, it was Kanye ah back when Kanye was, you know, not
Cultural Commentary & Book Analysis
00:12:22
Speaker
what he became. He's when he was using controversy for good.
00:12:26
Speaker
For good. For good. Oh, Mike Myers was not comfortable in that. in that It's yes so bald face. For those of you who don't know, was like a fundraiser and Kanye was standing next to Mike Myers when he said this.
00:12:42
Speaker
Yeah. ah They had a script that they were reading off of and Mike Myers was reading off the script and Kanye was not. Was not. Yeah. Yeah. Chapter 22, Tanner leaves and tells Jericho he's on his way to pump people for information on Quentin. Meanwhile, Tobias' place, he accidentally knocks his phone into some water, considers trying to fix it, but then he decides he's off the clock. He doesn't need his phone.
00:13:09
Speaker
ah Tanner is trying to call him to warn him that that warn him while he drives, trying to catch up to Bowman, ah who he sees several blocks ahead. He tries some tricky driving to catch up, but ends up on someone's lawn and unable to get traction on his wheels.
00:13:24
Speaker
Tobias is walking out of the house when a bullet whizzes past him. He gets tries to get his gun out before he is shot five times. Tanner finally arrives and shoots Bowman three times.
00:13:35
Speaker
He checks on how many times were people shot? One, two. He checks on to Tobias and he finds out that he had been wearing a bulletproof vest. Tanner then checks on Bowman and confirms to him before he dies that he's a cop.
00:13:50
Speaker
Then he goes back to Toby, who is woozy now because they didn't notice he had been shot through the thigh when he passes out in the ambulance. Tobias is in a coma now, the next morning, Bergeron Verdreen's bodies were recovered in a river near Carlisle.
00:14:06
Speaker
Tanner then goes in and has ah a heated exchange Powell about being stonewalled from refocusing his efforts towards Jericho. Hey, remember, Tanner, when you said the Indian was the real threat? No, I guess not. He forgot as fast as the rest of us. He forgot as fast as the rest of us. Powell's like, I'll take you off the case.
00:14:29
Speaker
I'll have your badge, blah, blah, blah. And then Tanner goes out into the hallway and has a confrontation with Cochran. Is Cochran, by the way, are you waiting for any surprise storylines with Cochran to emerge? No, this is the last time you'll see him in the entire Don't you worry about it. Don't you worry about it. And there was, and there's, and this is a 400 page book. It's a, it's a level. It's, it was an effort to erase some of these characters without any. We have a hundred pages left to go.
00:14:59
Speaker
a Anyway, Tanner's confrontation with Cochran's like, I am the copiest cop here.
00:15:09
Speaker
Chapter 23. Yep. Yep.
00:15:12
Speaker
yep Tanner cooks up a plan to get Jericho arrested on a weapons on weapons charges. ah And he ah he gets him arrested on weapons charges, but not before revealing to Tanner that he's planning on killing Julia. Then later at the police station, Powell lets Jericho go and turn for flipping on the Indian.
00:15:32
Speaker
Tanner is big mad. Chapter 24. um Tanner goes to meet Julia to warn her. He tells her that he's an undercover cop and lets her know everything. She eventually explodes on him when she asks to go potty.
00:15:46
Speaker
Um, She's like, I got to go potty. And he's like, no, you got to do it when we get to the safe house. And she's like, you lied to me. I deserve to go potty. And he's like, all right.
00:15:59
Speaker
And then it's relatable it's relatable. Then she's taking too long to go potty. And he goes in and Tanner's like, all right, I'm coming in. And he goes into the bathroom and she jumps from behind the door and zaps him with a taser. And then he wakes up later to find a voicemail from her saying that he's a lying liar and that she's disappearing forever.
00:16:19
Speaker
Then he gets another call. Tobias is awake. He tells Tobias everything he knows about the case that's happened in the last 72 hours. Tobias gives him a pep talk because Tanner is in Downsville.
00:16:31
Speaker
He's downtown. He's in Skid Row mentally. Yeah. he said We all are. i think we're all there. Yeah. Uh, chapter 25, ghost beard is at the hideout telling the Indian about a weapon shipment that's coming from LaVanche, uh, and ghost beards getting, getting out of town, ah after doing this, after flipping on LaVanche, they go to where the LLR gun deal is, but they've, the LLR have been tipped off and there's a gun fight.
00:17:00
Speaker
Um, Then the cops show up and the Indian runs away into a building, but he's caught by Julia who wants to kill him. But then she decides against it that she's going to call Tanner and put him in real justice jail.
00:17:15
Speaker
ah But no, no, she's knocked out by Jericho who then kills the Indian. And then Tanner talks to Powell about going to save Julia. But Powell's like, no, we got our guy.
00:17:28
Speaker
ah he cares about Jericho. And he's like, but what about Julia? And i'm he's like, I'm sure her head her body will float just like the rest of them. And Powell is just an awful dude. Tanner's like, I'm going to go get her. And Powell's like, I'll have your badge.
00:17:48
Speaker
And Tanner's like, I'm going. Chapter 26. Tanner is on his way and Julia is trying to escape from her predicament. She is in the basement of the place and she's trying to figure out a way to knock out the guard.
00:18:04
Speaker
And considers, she's like, well, there's bleach in here. If I mix the bleach with this pee, this bucket of pee, lot of, lot of pee and potty stuff, this bucket of pee, oh yeah I could create like a mustard gas and knock them out, but that might hurt me too. um Yeah. Yeah.
00:18:22
Speaker
Yeah. For a lot of reasons. but For a lot of reasons. Tanner goes it goes to one place where he thinks that she might be, but finds Quentin. He never made it out of town again.
00:18:34
Speaker
Quentin tells je Tanner where Julia is. It's the LLR hideout. Why does Quentin know this? Doesn't matter. Yeah. Do you really care at this point, guys? Like you shouldn't.
00:18:46
Speaker
You shouldn't. Julia manages to electrocute the guards whose name was Love Money ah by pouring pee onto the carpet and then grabbing an exposed wire and jamming it into the carpet where Love Money was standing.
00:19:01
Speaker
And it kills him. ah Neat. Cool. Tanner, Tobias, and the swat and a SWAT team... Where did he get the SWAT team? I don't know. ah They arrive on the scene and they just murder a bunch of dogs.
00:19:18
Speaker
Yeah. About that. Was that a lot of dog abuse in this book? You notice that? A lot of dog abuse. Like they just show up and there's no like come out with your hands up. The SWAT team just shows up and starts shooting people. Yeah.
00:19:36
Speaker
the snipers from the SWAT team, like, is like the dogs drop and then some dudes who look after the dogs get shot as well. and' like, that's not police procedure. I mean, it is, but it's not supposed to be. But you shouldn't say it out loud like that. You shouldn't say it out loud. You're doing the quiet part out loud, Tanner.
00:19:58
Speaker
but Anyway, Julia thinks about just escaping, but she's like, nah, I'm going to go kill Jericho. And then she finds Jericho and tries to seduce him into killing him. And we get some like real erotic writing about her tum her tummy and and how riply it is.
00:20:14
Speaker
Perfect riply tummy. Yeah. And then and then oh Jericho shoots her in the gut ah because he he knows he knows that she's just trying to seduce him. Tanner then finds her and she dies.
00:20:27
Speaker
saying it's not his fault. So, okay. All right. um And you actually texted me about this and it was like, admittedly, this is actually a pretty, this is a surprising twist. Yeah.
00:20:48
Speaker
ah but yeah it doesn't bring us anywhere closer. it It just, we just, you know, I think what you said was it just brings us back to the stance quo.
00:20:59
Speaker
Brings us back. It's like an episodic, you know, like how in like episodic television, Um, so there's like TV shows that are working towards an overarching plot and then there's episodic television, which almost always returns to a status quo at the end of the episode. Um, sort of like how,
00:21:20
Speaker
The Simpsons. The Simpsons a great, ah great example. For the most part, things that happen in an episode don't carry over to the next episode. There's an episode. It's I would want to say in a recent season, but it was probably 20 years ago. Yeah.
00:21:35
Speaker
little more They get their kitchen remodeled in the next episode. They have their old kitchen again. Right. Yeah. You know what i mean? Just like little stuff like that. Her dying and like basically is just like, oh, we're back to status quo. We don't need to really worry about her ah in the next game that this is leading into.
00:21:59
Speaker
Don't worry about it. Don't worry about it. We took care of it. don't and He's not going to bring it up in the next game. So don't worry about it. Everything's Don't worry it. We will never reference this again. And that's fine.
00:22:12
Speaker
That's fine. ah Tanner or chapter 27. Tanner organizes the funeral. Weeks later, Quentin calls him and tells him that Jericho is taking his organization out of town and a convoy is heading over the causeway in an hour. ah They have a boss fight.
00:22:28
Speaker
The fucking boss fight. ah Tanner's shot a couple of times. Jericho's car blows up. He's seemingly dead, but there's no body. But Tanner knows that Jericho is going to San san Francisco.
00:22:41
Speaker
ah And then with epilogue. Tanner's back in San Francisco and he races some kids thinking ah about Julia or something. Who cares? doesn't...
00:22:56
Speaker
It's like an epilogue is meant to like kind of tie things up and it this doesn't do any of that. It's it's just a little detail. and It's like for the most part, the momentum of the plot really ended ah When Julia, well, it ended in page one, but it yeah for all intents and purposes, Julia dies and then it's like, oh, okay.
00:23:22
Speaker
She doesn't get her revenge, I guess. And ah Tanner right doesn't get to make anything up to her for the thing with her brother.
00:23:35
Speaker
Right. No, there's there's no real, ah what would you call it? um There's no resolution to that. It's just. There's no resolution. it just kind of happens. yeah lot of dogs are dead.
00:23:50
Speaker
lot of dogs are dead. Like, like a lot. And the the dogs that aren't dead are kicked. Are thoroughly kicked. Yeah. Phil, what do you think of this book?
00:24:01
Speaker
I don't like this book. Why is this book so long? Why was this so long? This doesn't. it wouldn't I wouldn't have really enjoyed the book a hell a lot of it. It's a 400-page book.
00:24:15
Speaker
Right. I wouldn't have really enjoyed this if it was a 300-page book like most of the stuff we read is. It wouldn't have made it that much better. but it would have been just another one of the, you know, you know, medium ugly books that we have read where it's just like, Oh, that sucked, but whatever. I'm going to forget about it in a week. So who cares?
Final Thoughts on 'Driver Nemesis'
00:24:40
Speaker
um It dragged on and it it was so long and it didn't earn that length. And therefore it took it from the kind of medium shitty ah book that it was to like, I'm actively angry at this book.
00:24:57
Speaker
It's like, why? Right. if This is another one of the books that like if we didn't have a podcast, i would ah I would have tossed this over my shoulder and around. Yeah, this is ah this is a ah DNF on Goodreads for sure. Yes, big time. big time And i was I was talking to somebody about like...
00:25:16
Speaker
I feel like I've learned a fair deal about books, uh, just from, from being forced to finish bad ones. Yeah. Yeah. Me too.
00:25:26
Speaker
Me too. Uh, I think I, I've, I've, because books more often than anything else, like a move bad, you know, bad movies, bad, whatever,
00:25:39
Speaker
ah I will kind of, I can kind of push through and and get to the end. Right. But a bad book, I'm usually like, man, Or even a book that's like seems good, but I'm not totally vibing with it at the time. And like did not finish, did not finish. You know what I mean? Books are much more easily dropped to me than than other things. And this is this book is a DNF all over it because it's crazy. It's absolutely crazy.
00:26:10
Speaker
There is nothing interesting going on in this book. ah the characters are The characters are tropes, which is fine. i eat i'm not a I'm not a trope hater, but they're they're so tropey trope.
00:26:28
Speaker
that I, there's just nothing there. You can just kind of predict every little, you can, you could see several beats ahead. And that's, that's something I didn't enjoy. i you know, what'd been interesting is, uh, the, the Indian kills Jericho.
00:26:46
Speaker
Sure. That would have been something. suddenly shit gets really weird. You know what i mean? If they gave the Indian anything at all to do, I think that would have been interesting other than be a patsy. um and And here's the thing. If he exists to be a patsy, fine. But- he was in there for way too long. Like we should have moved on from him pretty quickly after we were introduced to him. It was like, oh this guy. Okay. Yeah, no, we're, we're, we don't need to worry about this guy. And there was so much signposting that Jericho was really the man in charge from the very beginning. Yeah. ah I think I'd said it in an episode one. Like, I think Jericho is going to come out and like, either he is the Indian or he's in charge or something like that. It seems super obvious and maybe like the intention was to make it super obvious, but don't know, titillate me a little bit. Give me, give me something to chew on.
00:27:42
Speaker
Well, that's just it. And there's a reason that it's so much easier for you to drop a book as opposed to a movie. a movie is going to keep you there for at most, give or take about three hours.
00:27:56
Speaker
Yeah. At most. And that's a rarity in and of itself. You have to put in, you know, half a day's worth of hours over the course, usually of several weeks ah to finish a book. Yeah. And if you're not, if you're not being kept by that book, then what the fuck are you even doing there?
00:28:15
Speaker
Right. makes it, it's, it's, it, it's kind of blows my mind when I'm a book is that, uh, mediocre and also that long it's yeah i don't know where anyone's head was at yeah in in that it doesn't it doesn't make any sense what are the longest books we've read i'm trying to remember uh there was the one that we did five there was one of the i think it was one of the halo ones was like a five four episode that one was a four episode one the um gabriel um
00:28:49
Speaker
almost like Gabriel Knight was long. Yeah, Gabriel Knight one was about 400 and some odd pages. Yeah. ah want to say Bioshock. The Bioshock book was pretty long too. That one, I don't know if it was all the way to 400, but it was on its way. That one was surprisingly long. But that was a great book. Yeah, that was a good book. Yeah.
Upcoming Book & Gaming Discussions
00:29:10
Speaker
Yeah, Bioshock Rapture was 430 pages. So that might be... Oh, shit. Okay. That's even more than I thought it was. Yeah. um Yeah.
00:29:21
Speaker
It's a long, long boy. ah It's a long boy. It's a lot. Well, thanks for noticing. Thanks for noticing. yeah ah Yeah. So I don't think i have anything else ah for for Driver Nemesis. ah The yeah the next book we're covering is a.
00:29:46
Speaker
Bad Warhammer book, if I'm not mistaken. Apparently, it's a bad one. But yes, we are starting the Warhammer Dawn of War quadrilogy.
00:29:57
Speaker
i believe it is. I love a good quadrilogy. Don't we all? Don't we all? And and and like like all quadrilogies, they only get better as as they go along. Well, that's been our that's been our experience.
00:30:12
Speaker
ah And the only quadriology we have read is the Five Nights at Freddy's. No, that was trilogy. That was a trilogy. Oh. And that one did get better as it went along, though. So there is hope.
00:30:26
Speaker
There's hope. it's It's nice to read anything by the Black Library, but it's it's um I'm also not ah anticipating this being you know one to shake the rafters.
00:30:38
Speaker
Sure. Yeah. ah But yeah, that's what we're covering next. But of course, ah before that, we're going to be doing our ah contractually obligated game of the year episode. It is contractually obligated.
00:30:50
Speaker
Yeah. That's true. yes always I always look forward to that. It's it's always a fun episode. Yeah. yeah Speaking of games and years and ofs and does. Sure.
00:31:05
Speaker
What are you playing? Oh, um well, actually, interestingly enough, ah in anticipation, I ah re-downloaded ah the original Dawn of War and started playing that. I say it's in anticipation. I just fucking love that game. And then I remembered that if I threw down a cool 20, I could get the veterans upgrade for the definitive edition of the game, which came out this year.
00:31:31
Speaker
And for 20 bucks, get HD remasters of of the first game and every single one of its expansions, which is a shit ton of game. ah And I haven't played it yet, but i it is gorgeous. especially Especially if you literally, a week ago, were playing the original heavily polygoned game.
00:31:56
Speaker
you know, ah whenever that game came out version and you go, Oh, it's so smooth and shiny. It's good. So I'm looking forward to that. That's going to be a nice little Christmas break, uh, game to, to, to get into my boo-boo. Um, I I'm still playing Knights the Old Republic on my, uh, switch and still really enjoying myself. Uh, just, a ah play Played through the planet of Manon while me and my wife watched Christmas Vacation last night, and it just sent all the little synapses in my brain to fire, and it was just a nice lovely, lovely little moment. Nice. That's been nice. I also, for my Switch, got, and I played the demo of this earlier this year, but I i went ahead and got it for my Switch, Cast and Chill.
00:32:45
Speaker
uh which is a casual fishing simulator game um and as the name suggests it's a very chill game it's got excellent excellent pixel art um it's a very cool calm game with the nice uh uh rotation you go out there you catch some fish you sell the fish you upgrade your pole and your boat and your bait and and and eventually you get unlock ah different places with different fish. awesome fish it's it's It's kind of the perfect game for any ah handheld.
00:33:20
Speaker
ah that's That's when you want to be playing this. I think I i i really enjoyed it when I played the demo on on Steam on my computer, on my desktop. But I couldn't help but think I was like, this is not the kind of game that I'm going to just plunk myself down on my desk and and invest hour after hour into this.
00:33:39
Speaker
But on my Switch, though. On my Switch. And it's great. it's It's got all kinds of little ah quality of life ah things in it that are that literally have no bearing on the game whatsoever, except for your just aesthetic enjoyment. You get to pick your buddy. You're going to have a a good boy in the boat with you. And there are several breeds of breeds and breeds and shades of dog.
00:34:05
Speaker
ah You get to pick your hat. ah You can, you know, everything from a baseball cap to ah to a straw, you know, fisherman's hat, you know, big floppy hat, which is what I did because I need to protect my neck from the sun.
00:34:20
Speaker
um And it's some of the prettiest goddamn backdrops. Yeah. I got a place unlocked on this river and I rode down to the end of it. And it was, I think it's called like Beaver Run or something like that. And at the very end, there's a goddamn beaver dam. And it's really, it's really pretty and charming. And, and it's just, it's just, there's a lot of love ah that went into this. And it's just, it's just, a it's, it's cast and chill. It's, it's what it says on the tin.
00:34:54
Speaker
And I really, ah i I just, I have said this several times. This was the year of Phil playing low effort video games. And and this is this is one of the better ones. So yeah highly recommend people at least download the demo and give it a shot. But it was just released on the Switch if you got one and you want to play it with a handheld or something. I highly recommend it.
00:35:18
Speaker
Awesome. Yeah. i've been I've been painting. I finished my... I just took some pictures of it. I'll... I'll post them later, but I just finished my artillery.
00:35:30
Speaker
this Death Corps Krieg? Yeah, it's Death Corps of Krieg. I watched a video on the Death Corps of Krieg. Oh, yeah? Because you how like you know like how cool they are. And it was like I was like, all right, yeah, I'll check them out. So I watched ah Arbiter Ian ah video yeah yeah on Death Corps of Krieg. And I was like...
00:35:56
Speaker
Oh, God damn. This is, they are grimdark. They are. It's bleak. that Basically, to to TLDR, for those who don't know, that stop me if I get anything wrong, but basically, it's a planet.
00:36:11
Speaker
ah The planet is called Krieg, right? Which means war in German, by the way. I know writers who use subtext they're all I know writers who use subtext and they're all cowards.
00:36:25
Speaker
on it had the planet It had the name Krieg before the death core was a thing. it was a great planet and then there was some fucking betrayals and all that. The planet gets virus bombed or and and they live underground now and they never take these these rubber masks off, these weather these breathing masks and to make up for the original sin of the betrayer on their planet. I can't even remember the guy's name. um
00:36:58
Speaker
the like the it was It was the administratum guy. It was like basically the the world president. He turned his back on the emperor.
00:37:09
Speaker
So to make up for the original sin, everybody who was born on Krieg basically is just born to become a soldier. And they wear these like full body PPE um environment suits with the masks and all that stuff. they They go out and they are creepy as fuck to every other Imperium Astro Militarum soldier out there because they just don't talk. They go out there and they die.
00:37:43
Speaker
and They don't have names. They don't have names. But then, yeah, in the it was something weird, if something interesting where it's like in the instance where they have they get field promotions they and they have to choose a name. Usually it's like a name of someone, someone from the history or something like that. Yeah.
00:38:06
Speaker
And it's like often they'll get field promotions up to like sergeant or whatever ah because they're really good at killing. ah But they're even better at dying.
00:38:17
Speaker
Yeah. And that's their goal. Like their whole thing is is because you're right, they get a lot of field promotions and there's not a shit ton of like...
00:38:27
Speaker
ah pride in getting promoted or becoming a veteran or stuff because all they're thinking to themselves is, God damn it, when will I get to die for the emperor? um yeah And they do in droves. I think there's a quote by ah one of the the great Krieg generals who said something along the lines of, you your army will asphyxiate between our dead ah beneath our dead like it's like we're we're gonna die so spectacularly that you're gonna suffocate underneath our corpses that's amazing it's just about as grimdark as it gets and and and and it's me painting my thing i'm going with like as original of it because they're a siege warfare trench warfare army and so i'm trying to do that so i'm like painting up my my my my cannon here and I can't not hear the 1812 overture when I'm like painting him up and dead it did it and look he goes boom and then I've got my horseman and I'm like baby look look at my horsey guys she's like oh cute horsey guys and i'm like i'm got so I'm gonna have a lot of horsey guys ah and and then and then I sit down and read one of the books I'm like oh yeah I forgot I
00:39:35
Speaker
Yeah, just had head to toe bummer. ah Just bleak. Absolutely. Bummersville. Yeah. ah So what about you, Kevin? What are you playing?
00:39:47
Speaker
What am I playing? ah Let's see. Pulling up my my
Gaming Experiences & Impressions
00:39:52
Speaker
Steam. Okay. I have been playing Hades 2 on the regular as my like nighttime wind-down game. I finally...
00:40:03
Speaker
finally beat one of the... ah I finally got to an end the end of a run. um So Hades 2 is interesting. It actually has two paths. There's one where you can go down and into Hades and one where you can go up through Olympus.
00:40:19
Speaker
I beat with the hate one of the Hades path. I've beaten it a couple of times now, but I haven't beaten the Olympus path quite yet.
00:40:28
Speaker
Let's see. ah i have been playing. oh so Tainted Grail, The Fall of Avalon. oh yeah. Yeah. yeah Okay, so I play put in a bunch of hours into this game when it first came out, and then I came out, i was like, I'm bored, and I stopped playing it.
00:40:48
Speaker
So then ah GC Vasquez and Sputnik34, friends of the show, have been like talking about it nonstop, and I was like, fine, I'll give it another shot. It's had a bunch of updates since I last played it.
00:41:04
Speaker
So I'm playing it again. I reinstalled it, and I'm like, okay, I'm having fun, but I was having fun last time, because I started back at the beginning, right? I was having fun last time playing through all these areas.
00:41:19
Speaker
Am I going to hit this point where I stop having fun again? Right. o We'll see. ah Hasn't happened yet, though. ah hasn't Hasn't happened yet, ah but, you know, I think that's... um Yes. i We'll see. Let's see. I finished Routine. um So if you're in the mood for like a five hour ah Alien Isolation-like game, Routine is the way to go.
00:41:50
Speaker
um And I picked up a couple games on on the Steam sale, ah including The Seance of Blake Manor, which... That looks good.
00:42:02
Speaker
Yeah, it always it it looked interesting. And the first Berserker Kazan, which is a Dark Souls, a Souls-like game that came out earlier in the year ah that I just never we got around to play it because it was like $60 and I didn't want to take a flyer on a $60 game. But it was like, all right, well, it's down to $40 now, so I'll i'll try it.
00:42:29
Speaker
Haven't played them yet, but I got them. and i have... I played a game called Repo, um which is a multiplayer early access game.
00:42:42
Speaker
i played it with with my daughter, and ah it's one of those, like... It's one of those games like Phasmophobia, but, you know, ah it's it's more it's kind of more interesting because there's a style to it or what have you.
00:43:01
Speaker
You play as these little dudes who are going into haunted buildings to basically repossess uh, material from the buildings. Like you're trying to find jewelry. You're trying to find vases. You're trying to find all this stuff.
00:43:17
Speaker
Uh, but there's creepy people inside these, there's like monsters and ghosts. And I got shot by a blind man who just like his walking stick is a shotgun.
00:43:30
Speaker
And if he hears you, he just takes a shot at you. I got shot by him today when I was playing with Camilla. Um, So, yeah it's it's fun. ah It's a quirky little game. it's in According to their versioning, and it's still in very very early early access, but it came out ah in February.
00:43:52
Speaker
ah And then speaking of early access, I fired up today for about 20 minutes before we got on the call the Warhammer 40K Dark Heresy ah Alpha.
00:44:08
Speaker
Which, yeah. ah So I'm playing as like, how is Owlcat just going to like crank out? They're making this and they're also making the massive DLCs for Rogue Trader. Well, I'll tell you, ah I mean, they're very, they're sharing assets between the, like it's, it's clearly the same style, you know? Yeah.
00:44:29
Speaker
you know yeah ah They're not like reinventing the wheel of the game. ah But Dark Heresy does have a bit of a update to to UI. They're trying to make UI improvements. ah the The dialogue is much more akin to ah like Disco Elysium rather than ah Fallout. What I mean by that is In Fallout 1 and 2, your dialogue was... And a Rogue Trader, your dialogue is center screen, kind of. And, like, you know, you do 1, 2, 3, 4 in a little box there. And in this, in Dark Heresy and in Disco Elysium, it is right aligned. There's, like, a so a strip of paper down the right side of the screen with, like, a little character...
00:45:25
Speaker
um headshots. ah So it's it's kind of cool that they're trying to change the style a little bit.
00:45:36
Speaker
um But ah visually, it's it looks very similar. The way the alpha works is you are basically given two scenarios that you can play through.
00:45:48
Speaker
ah It's not like the full, you know, you can do the character creator and start at the beginning and all that stuff. It's just like... They're giving you... Here's like, here is a piece of the game that is...
00:46:01
Speaker
marginally finished ah go play around with that and report the bugs back yeah that's not how it goes yeah so because the game I guess is supposed to release towards the end of next year I imagine ah if there's a I can only imagine it would have to be right like yeah right now just says coming soon so I have no idea yeah I mean, all I imagine once it gets into beta, it's probably going to be more akin to the, ah like, the beta version that we get to play will be a little bit more fleshed out than than what the alpha is right now.
00:46:45
Speaker
but yeah Yeah. So Dark Heresy, you play as an Inquisitor.
00:46:53
Speaker
And basically as an inquisitor, you're just like, ah hey, ah fuck you guys. I'm an inquisitor. i can do whatever the hell I want. ah You're basically, i would say rogue traders and inquisitors are both the epitome of the Ron Swanson ah scene from Parks and Recreation where he says something, he has like a little piece of paper that says I can do whatever Right, right. I mean, that really is, I mean, they're both pretty similar in that sense. You've got you've got a ah big amount of leeway in terms of what you can can't do.
00:47:34
Speaker
But I remember when the TTRPGs that these were based on came out and Dark Heresy was the first one. And the thing that everyone agreed on was that's fucking brutal. Like, yeah, you're being backed by an Inquisitor, but No one gives a shit half the time. know It's pretty amazing. Yeah. It's funny because in the Alpha, the one scenario, you're like, you've been locked into this area and they're like, oh, we can't let you pass until so-and-so says it's okay to pass. And you're like, but I'm an inquisitor.
00:48:07
Speaker
they're like, yeah, yeah. Well, tell so-and-so that. ah Not my problem. And then you talk to another guy who's like, oh, you're an inquisitor. And you're like, yeah, here's my badge. And they're like, okay.
00:48:26
Speaker
All right. Big ups, huh? Catch you later. Far out. route ah yeah yeah So, yeah, that's that is what I have been playing a for for for stuff, for things.
Podcast Future Plans
00:48:45
Speaker
ah Yeah. So that'll be it. Next episode, game of the year. And then it'll be 2026. ah Holy shit. It'll be 2026 guys. And you know what happens in 2026?
00:48:58
Speaker
ah The show turns five. Yeah. um We are actively looking for ah conventions that would like to have us.
00:49:10
Speaker
So if you know of any, reach out to me or Phil and that would be awesome. Yeah. ah In the meantime, in between times, ah ah good night.
00:49:23
Speaker
Bye!