Transcript
Speaker: So yeah, fuck Simon Cowell.
Speaker: Yeah, no.
Speaker: Simon Cowell is just a... He is actually, I believe, and this is canonically true, he's a pile of rats in a human suit.
Speaker: Yeah, I think you're right.
Speaker: That is canonically true.
Speaker: Was it Skaven?
Speaker: Is that what it's called?
Speaker: Skaven, yes.
Speaker: Skaven.
Speaker: In the Warhammer verse?
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: He's absolutely a worshiper of the horned god.
Speaker: No question.
Speaker: Simon Cowell, worshiper of the horned god.
Speaker: You heard it here first, folks.
Speaker: Yes, indeed.
Speaker: You know what else you heard?
Speaker: What?
Speaker: Hey there everybody!
Speaker: Welcome back to Pixel It!
Speaker: Where we read, recap, and review novelizations based on video games.
Speaker: My name is Kevin, with me as always is Phil.
Speaker: Hello!
Speaker: How's it going Phil?
Speaker: It's good.
Speaker: It's good.
Speaker: Life is good.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We've wrapped up another Resident Evil book.
Speaker: Wrapped up another Resident Evil book.
Speaker: Isn't that wild?
Speaker: We are full circle, my friend.
Speaker: We are full circle.
Speaker: There's tea again.
Speaker: There's the tea.
Speaker: It's always right as we start recording.
Speaker: Yeah, we get started.
Speaker: She's like, oh, thank God he's gone.
Speaker: I need to settle down.
Speaker: I need some, you know...
Speaker: Camomile.
Speaker: Sleepy time tea.
Speaker: Some sleepy time tea, you know?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Some lavender scents in the tea.
Speaker: Some chamomile.
Speaker: Chamomile.
Speaker: Chamomile.
Speaker: You know, I don't actually believe that any of that stuff is in any of that tea.
Speaker: Because it's like these flowery flavors that it's like, yeah, it's in there.
Speaker: There's a flavor in there.
Speaker: It's like when people put like rose in something.
Speaker: You're like, you can really taste the rose.
Speaker: And they're like, no, you can't.
Speaker: They had, I think it's Woodford Reserve.
Speaker: We saw a commercial for them where they were like, discover over 200 flavor notes in Woodford Reserve.
Speaker: And I went off on a rant.
Speaker: I was like, fuck you, fuck you.
Speaker: If that's even true, which it's not.
Speaker: Which it's not.
Speaker: It's meaningless then.
Speaker: It's just chaos.
Speaker: There's that like you are the reason that people think wine wine aficionados are full of shit.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Those of you listening at home who don't know, I used to work professionally in the wine industry and I love that shit.
Speaker: And it's stuff like that.
Speaker: Over 200 different 200 notes of flavors.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like, sure.
Speaker: By the time you get to the reserve, shove an orchestra in your mouth.
Speaker: It tastes of rosin and caramel.
Speaker: There are four day old coffee grounds and also five day old coffee grounds.
Speaker: Not six, though, which is very interesting.
Speaker: Go straight to seven and ass.
Speaker: I believe that's ass that I'm tasting.
Speaker: Have you ever wondered what the rosin bag that a pitcher uses tastes like?
Speaker: Oh, we've got Nolan Ryan's Rosen bag from 1984.
Speaker: It has been sitting in the vat with this wine.
Speaker: So if you order an 84, if you order an 84, we believe Nolan Ryan had a no-hitter that year.
Speaker: If you order 84, you're going to get some of that Nolan Ryan no-hitter tastes.
Speaker: The taste of triumph.
Speaker: The taste of triumph in your mouth balls.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: And that's just number 76.
Speaker: It's just such a wood for reserve.
Speaker: Just catching random stray strays in the beginning of this episode.
Speaker: Catching like to formally announce that our sponsor from here on out is Uncle Nearest.
Speaker: So we're going to be skipping past the wood for reserve straight to the good shit.
Speaker: Uh, how are you, Kevin?
Speaker: I'm great.
Speaker: We're off to a good start.
Speaker: I found my clippers.
Speaker: I was able to shave.
Speaker: You know, I'm feeling good.
Speaker: Looking all trimmed and manicured.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I'm feeling good, feeling clean, feeling streamlined.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Your aerodynamics.
Speaker: I'm more aerodynamic now.
Speaker: And also, when I shave the beard down, it gets rid of all the gray hair.
Speaker: So, like, you can't really see them anymore.
Speaker: So, I feel...
Speaker: Like two years younger.
Speaker: They blend into the white background.
Speaker: Solid 17 months younger.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Makes me feel like I'm 36 all over again.
Speaker: 36 and a half.
Speaker: I'm feeling... My good sir, you look not a day over 36 and eight months.
Speaker: It's good.
Speaker: So that's that's what clean living does for you.
Speaker: It's what clean living, you know, clean living, clean eating.
Speaker: There is no way that in the past 24 hours that I had goldfish the cracker for an entire meal.
Speaker: I didn't have I did have not had a goldfish meal in 24 hours.
Speaker: No, that would that would that would be silly.
Speaker: It would be irresponsible.
Speaker: It would not be the actions of an adult.
Speaker: That would not be the action of an adult.
Speaker: No, I'm I.
Speaker: This is off topic, but I'm having trouble delineating when you're actually... When are you an adult?
Speaker: Because I have been just flying by the seat of my pants since I was 18.
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: There's no... When I was a kid, I thought there would be a firm delineation between I am...
Speaker: Childhood is over.
Speaker: I must put away childish things.
Speaker: I am an adult human being now.
Speaker: And I just turned 38.
Speaker: And I don't know.
Speaker: 20 years have gone by since I've been legally an adult.
Speaker: And I don't feel that much different.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: Like up here.
Speaker: There's a lot of things I care about less.
Speaker: Is that it?
Speaker: Is that it?
Speaker: I think I think that's the key.
Speaker: I was I really do.
Speaker: I really think that's what it is.
Speaker: It's less about the things that you can do now or anything like that.
Speaker: It's more about the things that you leave behind.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: You know, and it's not even childish things, although you could argue it.
Speaker: But I find that it becomes we were talking earlier how I've gotten older and I don't know in some ways if I'm maturing or dying inside, you know, just.
Speaker: I don't know if this is a good or a bad thing.
Speaker: I do know that a big turning point for me was when I was 23, 24 and I was teaching high school English, if you can believe that.
Speaker: And that was I remember those days.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, that was right before we met, actually.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I think you quit right before we met or something.
Speaker: Or no.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I think you were still working right before we met.
Speaker: Right there at the beginning, I was still working.
Speaker: And then I think you quit during that semester.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: During grad school, it was the it was my last year.
Speaker: The summer came and they paid me through the summer and that was it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it was.
Speaker: But but I think that was important time for me because, you know, you grow up in a more authoritarian household as I did, and you
Speaker: are basically led to believe in, you know, adults have it under control, period.
Speaker: That's how this works.
Speaker: And it wasn't until I was 23 or 24 and I became a high school teacher and I started having meetings with other high school teachers and it occurred to me that they were fucking idiots.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: These people who could have been my high school teacher because they were twice my age.
Speaker: And I start looking back on all because I was a very obedient kid for the most part.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: All the way through college.
Speaker: And I look back at those teachers that I had way back when and I went,
Speaker: Oh, there was nothing that I was misunderstanding in their actions because I would I was the definition of giving them the benefit of the doubt.
Speaker: It's like, well, I'm their adults, so I'm sure they know they know what they're talking about.
Speaker: And and then I became a teacher and I and very quickly realized, oh, no, they're just fucking stupid.
Speaker: None of us knows.
Speaker: No, no, no, no, no.
Speaker: We're doing laws don't mean anything.
Speaker: Money is worthless.
Speaker: It's all made up.
Speaker: It's all made up.
Speaker: It's all made up.
Speaker: It's like it's like whose line is it anyway?
Speaker: You know, the points don't matter.
Speaker: The points don't matter.
Speaker: And I think that to me is the that's way more important.
Speaker: That realization is way more important than like any, you know, arbitrary delineation of am I an adult?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: No, that's the thing about it is like adulthood is basically like your entire life, your entire childhood.
Speaker: It's like being at a rental store and I'm already aging myself.
Speaker: A video, you're at a video rental store and the adult section, the adults only section is behind a curtain, right?
Speaker: So imagine, imagine your picture of adulthood is this curtain that says adults only.
Speaker: and you are living your entire life and you see this adulthood is this curtain that's in front of you.
Speaker: It says adults only and you're just thinking, wow.
Speaker: Once you get through that curtain, you must know your shit.
Speaker: You must know life, the meaning of it, all that stuff.
Speaker: Because your parents did, clearly, and your teachers did, obviously, right?
Speaker: And then one day they let you behind the curtain.
Speaker: And there is just, it's, there is no difference.
Speaker: They are, it's like, oh, it's just, it's just sadder children on the other side of this, Kurt.
Speaker: Pretty much, yeah.
Speaker: You're so excited, and for a moment you're thrilled to be over there, and then you go, oh, this is the same, there's just more cum.
Speaker: That's pretty much...
Speaker: That's that's that's being an adult.
Speaker: It's it's the same.
Speaker: There's just there's just more come, which is great for a few years, which.
Speaker: Yeah, it's great for a few years.
Speaker: And then, you know, and that kind of evens out to.
Speaker: Yeah, I hope we have younger viewers.
Speaker: I really hope so, too.
Speaker: I hope we're filling their minds with all kinds of worldly wisdom today.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Look to us as mentors and we will guide you.
Speaker: We don't know what we're doing.
Speaker: We've got it figured out.
Speaker: All those other adults, fuck them.
Speaker: We don't know what we're doing, but we have a lot of experience not knowing what we're doing.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We don't know what we're doing, but we'll look you in the face and tell you that we don't know what we're doing.
Speaker: Where else are you going to get that?
Speaker: Where else are you going to get that kind of that kind of fatherly advice?
Speaker: You know, that kind of terrifying honesty.
Speaker: It's refreshing.
Speaker: Really?
Speaker: You should be thanking us.
Speaker: It's true.
Speaker: It's true.
Speaker: Send us cash.
Speaker: Send us cash.
Speaker: Non traceable bills.
Speaker: Please, please.
Speaker: Launder them.
Speaker: Launder them.
Speaker: Please.
Speaker: Again.
Speaker: Literally in the laundry.
Speaker: I don't know where it's been.
Speaker: It's a pandemic out there, goddammit.
Speaker: The comfort of a $100 bill that's been run through the rinse cycle is just chef's kiss.
Speaker: Beautiful.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's why we make our cash out of cotton.
Speaker: Oh, absolutely.
Speaker: It just feels so good.
Speaker: Fabric softener on your green, green dollar bills.
Speaker: Little downy.
Speaker: Little downy bear wrapped up in...
Speaker: Cash.
Speaker: Cash.
Speaker: So chapter 13.
Speaker: Chapter 13?
Speaker: We're reading Resident Evil Caliban Cove, by the way.
Speaker: We're finishing up Resident Evil Caliban Cove today.
Speaker: And we got a little sidetracked.
Speaker: But here it is.
Speaker: It's chapter 13, and we're sprinting to the end.
Speaker: And chapter 13, they're basically just cutting across campus, heading towards another building.
Speaker: And everybody is like...
Speaker: Everybody's pretty much bummed out because Karen is she's not doing too well.
Speaker: She's not.
Speaker: Her days are numbered at this point.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So they get they get into one building and they they they press a button because they solved one of the puzzles and it spits out a key card and it's the lighthouse access key card.
Speaker: And they're they're now like walking up a hill and the hill kind of plays into a few things involving like Karen's health and all that stuff.
Speaker: But they they're they're walking up a hill and they're they're they're feeling bummed.
Speaker: You know, it is it is mostly internal monologue at this point between different characters about how shitty like everything is.
Speaker: And then basically they like I think at this point, Rebecca tells Karen, she's like, listen, this isn't good.
Speaker: Like you're you're not doing so hot.
Speaker: She spends a long time like in her head going, should I be bringing up the fact that she's going to turn into a zombie in front of everybody or would that be insensitive?
Speaker: And you just want to grab me like you maybe should do the thing where she knows that she is going to die.
Speaker: That would be that I think that would be the really considerate thing to do.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Jesus.
Speaker: Sweet.
Speaker: Jesus.
Speaker: And then we get a basically they realize that there could be a trap and they open a door and it cuts to Karen's point of view, which I thought was a really interesting decision because of the way S.D.
Speaker: Perry writes it.
Speaker: It feels almost ethereal in the way she starts describing everybody as like, yeah, their faces are wrong.
Speaker: Everybody is pointy.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's a terrific section.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Where she can't focus her eyes clearly.
Speaker: It's really dreamy and strange.
Speaker: She can't like make out people's faces.
Speaker: And she ends up saying things that make sense in a way like she's she talks to them and tells them, you know, that it's getting worse.
Speaker: and that it's getting really bad.
Speaker: But the level of effort it takes for her to do it, I don't think we've ever we've definitely never seen the T-Virus or any of the various Resident Evil viruses portrayed so well.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: In the games or, you know, in the books so far, this is only the second one.
Speaker: But this is just really, really it's a it's a step.
Speaker: It's basically right up there with the that first famous
Speaker: journal entry from the first rest of the novel game.
Speaker: The Itchy Tasty.
Speaker: The Itchy Tasty.
Speaker: This is right up there with Itchy Tasty in terms of like an iconic level of point of view for somebody that's deteriorating like this.
Speaker: And I'm not exactly, it really is great writing.
Speaker: It's fantastic.
Speaker: One of my favorite lines is where she says, her skin was itchy, but now it feels like it's itching itself.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I was like, that is an interesting way.
Speaker: It is like one big mosquito bite and it was itchy and now it's itching itself.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Like ants crawling all over her.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So that's an interesting way that it's portrayed.
Speaker: So she's fading fast.
Speaker: And in the meantime, everybody else had an encounter with one of the scientist zombies that is one of the scientist zombies that is working for Dr. Nick.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: And it's it's not super clear what exactly happened.
Speaker: We actually get another recap of what happened a little bit later because Karen is so ineffective at understanding what's going on around.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Karen's gone.
Speaker: Karen gone.
Speaker: Bye bye.
Speaker: And then so we jump to the next chapter and these chapters move pretty fast.
Speaker: Yeah, this is where it gets really fast paced.
Speaker: It clips along.
Speaker: It clips along pretty quick.
Speaker: We get to Dr. Nick and he basically tells one of the other doctors, Kinison, to grab a gun.
Speaker: And he's like, well, the gun's not loaded, but maybe you could trick them into thinking that it's loaded.
Speaker: and go down there and try to, and say the following things to them and maybe we'll be able to trick them.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He kind of programs them like a computer.
Speaker: Like it, it doesn't, it doesn't go to great detail, but it hints at the idea of like him giving him pre pre prepared answers to questions that he expects that they will ask.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's fascinating.
Speaker: He yeah.
Speaker: He treats him like a like an app, basically.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Do you do you need a zombie servant?
Speaker: There's an app for that.
Speaker: There's an app for that.
Speaker: And we jump back to Rebecca and Rebecca is basically trying to figure out why Karen is turning so fast.
Speaker: And her, the way she thinks, she thinks that the walk uphill might have done something to do to amplify the virus spread because of the increased heart rate required to walk up the hill.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, like the blood's getting pushed through her that much faster.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: So basically they they're underneath the lighthouse now and they're in these this series of tunnels and it would not be a Resident Evil without a weird maze like section.
Speaker: I, I thought that this was a really solid moment because yeah, they, they, they usually resident evil starts out, uh, with kind of a, a more Gothic rural kind of feel to it, uh, a more natural sort of environment, a village or a mansion.
Speaker: And then eventually you end up underground with lots of stainless steel and glass and, and halogenetic halogenetic bulbs and all that stuff.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: That's the right word.
Speaker: Jesus.
Speaker: Halogen.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Just like just bathroom lighting.
Speaker: Everyone looks like shit.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And this is where we're at.
Speaker: Finally, we get to that point.
Speaker: It's pretty it was picking up on a pattern, you know.
Speaker: And I think it seems like these these tunnels are they're not natural.
Speaker: I think they're I think the tunnels that they're walking through, it seems like they're walking through
Speaker: They say something like it's too smooth.
Speaker: And I think they determined that they are carved out by water, like erosion or something like that.
Speaker: So they get to this intersection of all these pathways.
Speaker: And they're supposed to be going southwest, but none of them line up directly southwest.
Speaker: And then the doctor, Kinison, who was sent after them, the zombie doctor, basically shows up.
Speaker: and has it's great because he he has like five responses that he can get.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It is like playing a video game in a way where you reach the end of the dialog tree and no matter what you try, they're just going to repeat themselves.
Speaker: And that's exactly what happens.
Speaker: They keep talking to this guy and he kind of like he'll like repeat himself.
Speaker: And then I think David notices that when he like turns away, the doctor turns away, like all emotion falls off of his face.
Speaker: And then he's like, he's going to kill us.
Speaker: It's like a Skyrim NPC, basically.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He's going to kill us.
Speaker: Rendering or oblivion.
Speaker: Let's not say Skyrim.
Speaker: Let's say oblivion oblivion.
Speaker: Yeah, sure.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And he just reaches the end of the things that he can say.
Speaker: And what is the last?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He keeps saying, oh, well, that's later.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He gets more threatening as we go on.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But yeah, it's it's wild.
Speaker: And and they kind of, you know,
Speaker: raise an eyebrow, but at this point, but they also kind of believe him like, Hey, he's human.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Everything's kind of fucked up down here.
Speaker: Let's, let's leave them be.
Speaker: So they split up.
Speaker: Uh, one team is going to take him, follow him back to the labs and the other team is going to head in the direction that he said the boats were in.
Speaker: Um, yeah, I believe is, is the way they split up.
Speaker: So Steve, uh, is going to take Karen with the doctor back to the lab to see if they can get an antidote.
Speaker: Everybody else is going to go get, go find a boat.
Speaker: And so we cut to Steve and Steve and Karen and the doctor are basically, you know, they're walking down this hallway and the doctor is moving just a little too fast for them to keep up.
Speaker: And Steve is is just, you know, really annoyed until he comes around a corner and Kinison has the gun on him.
Speaker: He's threatening to shoot Steve.
Speaker: Steve doesn't know that there's no bullets in this gun.
Speaker: Yeah, he's not.
Speaker: He's not aware of that.
Speaker: He's not aware of this.
Speaker: But basically, he he Kinison takes Karen and Steve hostage and they walk back to the laboratory.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And then we switch scenes and it's Dr. Nick again.
Speaker: And he, just a brief scene.
Speaker: It's him releasing the hunters.
Speaker: Yes, yes, we do.
Speaker: We do finally get the impression that we're finally going to meet these nasty hunter boys.
Speaker: These MA7s, which... So in the first Resident Evil, they're basically the second batch of baddies that is in the mansion after...
Speaker: After you've been through the mansion a few times, you're like, all right, I understand the zombies, whatever.
Speaker: The hunters eventually break into the mansion and they can kill you with one shot.
Speaker: They can slice your head right off with a good swing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So so that's what we've got coming our way.
Speaker: That's what they've got coming their way.
Speaker: And in chapter 15, yeah, we've already blasted through two chapters.
Speaker: Yeah, it's it's cruising along.
Speaker: It's cruising along here at the very end.
Speaker: Hmm.
Speaker: Hmm.
Speaker: Clearing my throat.
Speaker: I'm going to leave all this in, by the way.
Speaker: I'm just going to.
Speaker: Good, good, good.
Speaker: This is what the people want.
Speaker: This is what the people want is when your throat gets.
Speaker: Raw and uncut.
Speaker: Your throat gets that stuff in it and you take a sip of my spindrift.
Speaker: It's the T-Birus.
Speaker: We're going to try and get through this before Kevin gets all itchy tasty on us.
Speaker: Before I get itchy tasty.
Speaker: Let's finish this podcast.
Speaker: One year later.
Speaker: One year later.
Speaker: So they are walking down the tunnel, Rebecca, John and David.
Speaker: They're going down the tunnel.
Speaker: Rebecca is trying to convince herself that everything is A-OK.
Speaker: Everything's fine.
Speaker: I feel like everybody in this group, from Rebecca to John to David, everyone has a different moment in this and the following like this around about this 30 pages where each one of them takes a turn taking the POV and blaming themselves for all the bullshit that has happened.
Speaker: It's all my fault.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, pretty much.
Speaker: David does it the most, I think.
Speaker: The Brit.
Speaker: The British.
Speaker: Without question.
Speaker: The without question.
Speaker: Basically, what happens next is John, David and Rebecca just they start running and backing up, going the opposite way because the hunters are barreling down on them and they they they kill one of them.
Speaker: But they they're quickly joined.
Speaker: There's like a couple others on the way.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And David.
Speaker: basically just says fall back.
Speaker: We got to get out of here.
Speaker: Yeah, they do what you really should do in most race and evil games, which is just fucking run.
Speaker: Just run.
Speaker: Just run.
Speaker: Save your bullets.
Speaker: Save your bullets.
Speaker: It's survival horror.
Speaker: You got to run.
Speaker: Yeah, we we jump scenes over to Dr. Nick and Dr. Nick.
Speaker: This scene vaguely racist.
Speaker: Oh, my God.
Speaker: We get we get I spent a long time like looking at these these these a few pages in this section where I'm just like, do we we're just reemphasizing one particular thing.
Speaker: a little too much.
Speaker: A little too hard.
Speaker: Just a little too much.
Speaker: A little too hard.
Speaker: Dr. Nick keeps calling, and this is in the book, he keeps calling Steve the Hispanic.
Speaker: The Hispanic.
Speaker: Which is like.
Speaker: It's a step up from a black.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's a weird way to, it's a weird like country club way to
Speaker: Like 1960s country club away to talk about somebody.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it's not like we haven't been, he hasn't been given like all kinds of other characteristics.
Speaker: Like I really, the thing.
Speaker: He's handsome.
Speaker: I mean, he's handsome.
Speaker: He's young.
Speaker: He's super young.
Speaker: He's super young.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: I like to think that, I feel like Dr. Nick's probably my age, a little older.
Speaker: And if I were being accosted,
Speaker: by a heavily armed 21 year old Latino or not.
Speaker: I think the thing I would focus on is, well, this 20 year old has got a lot of guns.
Speaker: That's mostly what I would focus on.
Speaker: The youth would strike me a little more than that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So this is also one of, I feel like if this was, this scene was in a movie, it would be this scene alone would give it an NC 17 rating.
Speaker: Oh, yeah, this scene gets intense.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So what happens is the zombie doctor brings Steve and Karen into the room.
Speaker: And the other zombie doctor is like is holding is ordered to hold Karen.
Speaker: And the Dr. Nick points out to Steve like Karen's already gone.
Speaker: She's gone.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like she's she's already gone because Karen starts eating the face of the other doctor.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Who just kind of lets it happen and deals with it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it's just such a grotesque scene.
Speaker: And he's just he tells the other doctor who's getting his face to smile while it's happening.
Speaker: And Karen is just like crunching off his his chin and his jaw and like ripping parts off.
Speaker: And and Dr. Nick goes like at one point, he says the smile falters.
Speaker: But that's because probably because the muscles have weakened.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It's it's wild because we are now we are most certainly in the homestretch.
Speaker: We are 20, 30 pages from the end of this book, and we have had this entire team screening by.
Speaker: Yes, but but it's not like a slasher movie where we're slowly picking them off one by one throughout the book.
Speaker: We're you know, we are at.
Speaker: the final like 10th of the book.
Speaker: And we're about to hit a moment where you start to think to yourself, okay, well maybe it's gonna be like a kinder, gentler sort of Resident Evil novelization kind of thing.
Speaker: And yeah, and we're going to see them make it through.
Speaker: No, we're gonna start seeing people drop like flies at this point onward.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So one of the zombie docs is being getting his face eaten by Karen.
Speaker: And while Steve is distracted with with watching that happen and disgusted, Dr. Nick injects Steve with the same version of the T-virus that the scientists, the doctors have.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And basically, we cut back to the other team fighting off the hunters.
Speaker: And they managed to get through it.
Speaker: Through some good tactics and just unloading a lot of their bullets.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: They take a few of them out.
Speaker: They run a lot.
Speaker: Like, it's a...
Speaker: Yeah, they, they, but they managed to get away.
Speaker: They managed to get away and kill all of them.
Speaker: And then, um, they start, um, they start going back down the hallway that Steve and Karen went down and they find Steve and he delivers the news that Karen is dead.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: So it's, uh, it's just a bummer all around.
Speaker: Rebecca is sad.
Speaker: Um, and
Speaker: And I and I and I will say and this might be insensitive, but we do in the following pages for a little while, we get a lot of people bemoaning the fact that Karen is dead.
Speaker: I do not believe that it's a weird thing at all for them to be concerned that Karen is dead, but it goes to it like this is like this highly trained
Speaker: killer unit and it starts to feel like this is their first mission.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know, which, you know, it's like we've spent a lot of time talking about how Steve, for example, Steve, he's only he's 21, but he's gone out and he's done this this mission and that mission and seen people die and killed people and all that stuff.
Speaker: And basically they take Karen's death really hard to a point that that it actually felt
Speaker: It felt, you know, far be it from me to tell a person how they should mourn or not.
Speaker: But I feel like like, OK, well, yeah, someone someone on the team died.
Speaker: That's, you know, but focus up or everybody else will die.
Speaker: So, you know, right.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Pick up the pace.
Speaker: Pip pip, cheerio and all that.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So.
Speaker: The next scene feels like it's out of Reservoir Dogs with how bang, bang it is.
Speaker: So they get escorted back to the lab by Steve, who then turns around and doesn't double cross them, but he does what he was told to do by Dr. Nick, because Steve is not Steve anymore.
Speaker: He's just a zombie.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: But he's one of those special zombies that can follow orders.
Speaker: So the turnaround time on that virus is insane.
Speaker: Insane.
Speaker: It's absolutely insane.
Speaker: Um, so they, um,
Speaker: They follow him into into the into the lab.
Speaker: He turns around.
Speaker: He has he has his gun on him.
Speaker: John, who was the one that was pseudo, he was flirty with Karen and all that, has his gun out and points his gun at one of the other doctors.
Speaker: And that doctor has his gun on John.
Speaker: And it's kind of like that scene at the end of Reservoir Dogs.
Speaker: So what ends up happening is John shoots the other doctor and immediately Steve shoots John in the lower back.
Speaker: And John goes down and it's...
Speaker: It seems like John's dead.
Speaker: All intents and purposes, it seems like John's dead.
Speaker: And it's just like, bang, bang, bang.
Speaker: And then Dr. Nick tells Steve to push the other two into the airlock because he's going to flood it with water.
Speaker: And then once they're locked in the airlock, he has Steve shoot himself in the head.
Speaker: Which he does.
Speaker: Which he does, without question, because that's his, he's under the mind control or whatever of Dr. Nick.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And I was saying to Kevin before we started the show that the way this is written, because Rebecca, obviously we've got a connection with Steve, we've got a romantic interest kind of thing, and it's a particularly brutal way to go, you know, when you're mind controlled and someone tells you to kill yourself.
Speaker: It's a very Mr. Purple kind of thing.
Speaker: And it's pretty fucked up.
Speaker: And the way it's written is for all of the gore and gruesome details that we've gotten up until this point, basically, Rebecca is spared anything because her point of view is shielded from him shooting himself, which to me
Speaker: made me suspicious and like, oh, okay, he's, he's something, something happened.
Speaker: We got around it somehow.
Speaker: Steve ain't dead.
Speaker: Steve is dead.
Speaker: Steve is dead.
Speaker: We just, we're gonna save you any thought process here.
Speaker: He's very dead.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He is very, very dead.
Speaker: This afternoon's broadcast brought to you by Trader Joe's morning-o's.
Speaker: Morning-o's.
Speaker: You'll always disappoint your father.
Speaker: So the the other thing that happens to be in the airlock with them is Karen's body.
Speaker: So Karen is dead.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Karen's dead, by the way.
Speaker: They shot her in the head after she ate one of the other people.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So that's that's all tied off.
Speaker: But yes, Karen's dead body is in the airlock with them.
Speaker: I wonder if she has anything that could help them in this situation.
Speaker: I don't know, Kevin.
Speaker: It would be very deus ex machina to just introduce a random thing to save them.
Speaker: No, yeah.
Speaker: Introduced it in the first act.
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: For it to achieve any level of grace in that.
Speaker: And I can't think of any...
Speaker: Anything.
Speaker: Well, let's just read on, you know?
Speaker: Yeah, you know, let's find out.
Speaker: Let's find out.
Speaker: So, yeah, they're basically in this airlock and Dr. Nick is flooding it.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: He's basically...
Speaker: opening his bond style by the way he's taking bond style he wants to flood it and then have them eaten by the leviathans or something like that yeah they're a snack for the big fish it's it's very it's very gold finger uh very much so heads has sharks with lasers uh on their head austin power style um so
Speaker: It's a little much for the for the end here.
Speaker: But basically, they're David and David is just like he is just a sloppy, sad bastard at this moment.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: He can't do fucking anything.
Speaker: He's given up.
Speaker: And Rebecca's like, you piece of shit.
Speaker: Like, what is wrong with you?
Speaker: We got to figure something out.
Speaker: And he's like.
Speaker: I can't do anything.
Speaker: Karen, my team, it's my fault.
Speaker: And Rebecca's like, ah.
Speaker: And by the way, while all this is happening, Dr. Nick is giving them a classic villain speech of like, you don't understand you short sighted human beings.
Speaker: I'm offering the world peace, you know, because because his idea is if we make everybody a zombie, then it'll be a peaceful society because there'll be no more war and all that shit because there will be its its nature or something.
Speaker: I guess it's the kind of plan that makes Thanos is seem well thought out.
Speaker: Well thought out.
Speaker: and good and wholesome comparatively.
Speaker: Yeah, wholesome's the big word for it.
Speaker: So what happens next is Rebecca remembers basically, was it David says the word luck?
Speaker: And it all falls into place.
Speaker: The mug drops to the floor.
Speaker: Kaiser Sose stops walking with a limp.
Speaker: It all comes together.
Speaker: Basically, Rebecca remembers that Karen has a lucky fragmentation grenade on her.
Speaker: And you know, you know, one of those as you do.
Speaker: And this was set up earlier in the book that it was it was it was set up earlier in the book.
Speaker: She has a she has a grenade on her.
Speaker: I think the moral of the story here, Kevin, is if you're going to have any item on you at any point that arbitrarily you assign some semblance of luck,
Speaker: Please make sure that it will also explode or shoot things or otherwise cause some kind of chaos.
Speaker: Just in case.
Speaker: Just in case luck isn't real and it doesn't work out for you.
Speaker: So we get the actual blast though from Dr. Nick's point of view where he's watching them argue with each other and then hug.
Speaker: and then watching them try to like scramble out of the way for some reason like what are they doing they're trapped right and then and then the grenade blows and the door uh the the hatch the hatch blows open and hits him and then he gets just like like ice water just like covers him up and right and he's dead
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The blast door just flattens him Wile E. Coyote style.
Speaker: And that is a wrap on Dr. Nick.
Speaker: That's a wrap on Dr. Nick.
Speaker: Bye, Dr. Nick.
Speaker: Bye, everybody.
Speaker: Bye, Dr. Nick.
Speaker: Rest in peace, King.
Speaker: RIP, King.
Speaker: So they get up.
Speaker: They wake up.
Speaker: They're basically up on the beach after swimming up through the cold water.
Speaker: And there's some people with guns.
Speaker: And who would you know?
Speaker: It is the STARS team from the city of Philadelphia here to save the day.
Speaker: The Philly Stars team.
Speaker: Kevin's brethren in arms.
Speaker: The Philly Stars team.
Speaker: Captain Blake is here and he is ready to kill some zombies.
Speaker: They wanted, they first, they started by trying the, my guys, the Pittsburgh Stars team, but they were all fucking hammered.
Speaker: So.
Speaker: So basically, Barry called in reinforcements.
Speaker: They found out just in the nick of time.
Speaker: Just in the nick of time.
Speaker: Nick.
Speaker: Get it.
Speaker: Good job, Barry.
Speaker: And.
Speaker: Yeah, the Philadelphia Stars team with their, you know, proper armament and weapons have basically cleaned everything up nice and nice, nice and quickly.
Speaker: Because they're they're armed for something that isn't just a recon mission.
Speaker: They're actually armed with guns.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And we do and we do get a pleasant surprise here in this moment.
Speaker: You think for a moment that Rebecca and David are the only ones that have survived this horrible ordeal.
Speaker: But no, John is alive.
Speaker: He's made it.
Speaker: He made it.
Speaker: He's just been shot in the kidneys.
Speaker: That's all.
Speaker: He's just been shot and he's not feeling great, but they patch him up and he is A-OK.
Speaker: It takes a minute to make a smart-ass remark.
Speaker: And then the.
Speaker: Oh, you're looking up what he says.
Speaker: I'm going to.
Speaker: Yeah, he has.
Speaker: He has like it's the most 1980s action movie kind of like.
Speaker: He's like, yeah, he's about to pass out.
Speaker: I think they've injected him full of morphine.
Speaker: And he says, you two look like something a coyote ate and shit off a cliff.
Speaker: He mumbled.
Speaker: Seriously.
Speaker: John was followed into the healing blackness by the sweet sound of laughter, which is, of course, the best medicine.
Speaker: Laughter is the best medicine.
Speaker: The amount of laughter he generated with that comment healed his wound, actually.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Pushed the bullet right out.
Speaker: It's a good thing that Dr. Nick is so far down under the water, because if he had heard that joke, his body actually would have reinflated Judge Doom style.
Speaker: Judge Doom style.
Speaker: And he would have sought his revenge, and it would have been Caliban Cove 2 all over again.
Speaker: Judge Doom terrified me as a child.
Speaker: Oh my God.
Speaker: Yeah, well, that's because you were a human being and alive.
Speaker: We went to see that movie when I was a kid and I everyone has a story, I think, of being a kid and seeing a movie that unexpectedly scared the piss out of them and they cried in front of everyone in the theater.
Speaker: And that one was the one for me.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Christopher Lloyd scared the piss out of me in that movie.
Speaker: He still does.
Speaker: He still does.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Who saw that coming?
Speaker: And the gods and it was the coyotes or whatever.
Speaker: There are the foxes.
Speaker: Oh, you mean the hyenas?
Speaker: The hyenas.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: No, it wasn't hyenas.
Speaker: They were jackals.
Speaker: Jackals.
Speaker: Jackals?
Speaker: Yeah, because, yeah, because their hyena cousins were the ones that laughed themselves to death originally.
Speaker: Got it.
Speaker: Weasels, weasels.
Speaker: Weasels.
Speaker: God damn it.
Speaker: Weasels.
Speaker: They were weasels.
Speaker: God damn it.
Speaker: They were weasels.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: And they all laughed themselves to death.
Speaker: Well, most of them laughed themselves to death.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker: God, that movie's good.
Speaker: I gotta go rewatch that movie.
Speaker: Who Framed Roger Rabbit is a good movie.
Speaker: You know, I know I'm.
Speaker: It's like an actual legitimately good noir film.
Speaker: I, you know, I respond to the shave and a haircut knock a lot like Roger does.
Speaker: Like you have no choice but to respond.
Speaker: If somebody is just doing shave and a haircut, just knocking shave and a haircut, I have two bits.
Speaker: Two bits.
Speaker: So quick, quick side story is the we got our roof done a couple of months ago and the one of the roofers was with a nail gun on the roof was going.
Speaker: No kidding.
Speaker: All day.
Speaker: And it was driving me insane.
Speaker: And I was like, you have to finish the pattern.
Speaker: Oh my God.
Speaker: I think the closest I've ever had to that, uh, when, when Emily and I first started dating and COVID had hit and there was nothing to do, but sit, we were both working from home there and we were just watching season after season, after season of drag race.
Speaker: Cause it had all been released on Hulu at that point for the first time.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And so we're just watching Drag Race and there's a part before every lip sync for your life challenge at the end of the episode where RuPaul will say the time has come and pause.
Speaker: And I would always go, the walrus said.
Speaker: at the end of it.
Speaker: And I couldn't stop after the time has come.
Speaker: The walrus said, and I feel like I think, you know, in the early budding moments of our relationship, Emily nearly dumped me at least once a day for watching while watching RuPaul's Drag Race.
Speaker: I couldn't stop.
Speaker: I couldn't stop.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, mostly happy ending.
Speaker: The only two people who died were Steve and Karen.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And basically, the Philly Stars team brought depth charges with them to blow up the tanks of T-virus stuff that Nick had hidden that he was planning on releasing.
Speaker: So, a nice tidy cleanup.
Speaker: Unlike the Spencer Mansion.
Speaker: Yeah, they take care of it in a hurry.
Speaker: They put a bow on that one.
Speaker: Oh, dude.
Speaker: We get an epilogue.
Speaker: We do get a little epilogue, a very interesting epilogue, I think.
Speaker: Yeah, it seems like some, these high ups at Umbrella are basically
Speaker: They're concerned about the number of shit that has gone down recently because the more things go down, the harder it is to cover things up.
Speaker: Yes, it does tend to work that way.
Speaker: This is kind of annoying, isn't it?
Speaker: It's basically the vibe of, it's a two-page epilogue, and everybody is just identified by their one character trait that gets mentioned.
Speaker: Like, there's a guy with a mustache, there's a guy that wears blue.
Speaker: And it's called mustache.
Speaker: And he's called mustache and blue is wears blue and tea is drinking tea.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And then we find out Mr. Trent is basically it seems like he's a fixer for Umbrella.
Speaker: Yeah, that like that's his day job is as a fixer.
Speaker: He's the what was that George Clooney movie?
Speaker: Michael Clayton.
Speaker: He's the Michael Clayton.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: He's Umbrella's Michael Clayton.
Speaker: But at the same time, he's playing both sides like he's still doing his day job with Umbrella being a fixer or cleaner.
Speaker: But he's also trying to hide the fact that he is leaking information out there so that people can find what's going on.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And he does it through riddles.
Speaker: And he does it through riddles.
Speaker: So, yeah.
Speaker: Because, yeah, and that's the end of Resident Evil, Volume 2, Caliban Cove.
Speaker: Done.
Speaker: Done.
Speaker: In the books.
Speaker: In the books.
Speaker: So what do we think?
Speaker: This might be one of my favorite books we've read on this show so far.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It actually almost could have stood to be like 50 pages longer.
Speaker: I would have loved for it to have been a little longer.
Speaker: Just a little bit longer because it feels like we go like the end is at a breakneck speed.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But
Speaker: Everything is really tight, like everything is set up and pays off at the end.
Speaker: I don't think they ever they never end up getting the information that they're there for.
Speaker: No, no, they just get they just get in trouble and need to get out of trouble.
Speaker: That's basically the extent of it.
Speaker: But they save the world as a byproduct of that.
Speaker: So that's we we don't even get a single person killed by a zombie.
Speaker: no we actually it's all it's all the ruinous man it's all man it's all man it's um i've been um it's it's all it like it andrew ryan would have had a field day with with this place oh god yes absolutely but i was just watching monty zander's uh
Speaker: video on Bioshock.
Speaker: And I just have Andrew Ryan's voice in my head all the time.
Speaker: Anytime we're talking about man, is a zombie not owed the sweat of his brow, the drool on his chin, the slack of his jaw.
Speaker: No, says the man at Umbrella.
Speaker: Well, it is something that all of these kinds of, we do keep running into stories about psychopathic corporations that, you know, operate outside of the law in bizarre clandestine, you know, dark rooms with swirling cigarette smoke and they try to ruin everything.
Speaker: The cigarette smoking man.
Speaker: Basically.
Speaker: It's true.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: They always ruin everything.
Speaker: And I think it's just because we believe that.
Speaker: We believe it.
Speaker: That sounds about right.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Just about right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's up there for me.
Speaker: I think it was definitely, I would say, in the upper quartile, I have to revisit my thoughts on a few other books just to remember.
Speaker: But it's definitely up there.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I preferred this to the umbrella conspiracy.
Speaker: Me too.
Speaker: It's a lot tighter and makes a lot more sense than the umbrella conspiracy.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know, and it just it just proves, you know, it's another piece of evidence that for the most part, when we let these authors play in the world, we get something that's
Speaker: That's just generally a better quality.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Then then, you know, holding to a preexisting game too tight.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: We've had exceptions to that one in particular, but but for the most part, I mean, has proven pretty true.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Halo, the Flood, Halo, the Flood was pretty good.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: In terms of recreating the first Halo game.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But yeah, otherwise... Rapture was good.
Speaker: Yes, Bioshock Rapture was very good in terms of...
Speaker: And everything in Bioshock Rapture is pretty much in the it's in Bioshock one and two through the audio.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But yeah, it's yeah, there's.
Speaker: It it it's hit or miss, but it definitely seems to be more of a rule of thumb at this point, a year into it.
Speaker: I think we can say that the pixelate rule of thumb is that when an author is allowed to play in the universe rather than be strictly beholden to the universe, the quality tends to go up.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Totally agree.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, your mileage may vary beyond that, but because I know- Generally speaking.
Speaker: Generally speaking.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And we'll find out.
Speaker: I mean, we're going to read more Halo books while we do this podcast.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: And more Halo originals and things like that.
Speaker: So I'm sure we'll find-
Speaker: more.
Speaker: And it's and honestly, it's not even necessarily always true.
Speaker: Dead Space was not based on the game.
Speaker: I mean, it's based on information from the game, but it's that was a pretty that was a pretty heavy exception to that.
Speaker: That was a big old outlier.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So big time.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Now for our new segment.
Speaker: What are you playing?
Speaker: I like this new segment.
Speaker: Gives me something to I have to you know, it's like when you're when you're closer to 40 than you are to 30, it starts getting to a point where if you have spent any time in the games industry, there's a part of me that feels guilty if I'm just enjoying something in and of itself.
Speaker: It's like, how do I make work out of this?
Speaker: And that's very sad.
Speaker: It is.
Speaker: But but it is what it is.
Speaker: So I've appreciated these opportunities.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I played two games this past week or so, both based on pre-existing franchises.
Speaker: One that I am really not all that familiar with and the other that I am super familiar with.
Speaker: And the first one was Doom Spice Wars.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: That's their real-time strategy 4X game, right?
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: It's very interesting.
Speaker: It's still in early access right now.
Speaker: It's very interesting.
Speaker: And I am a civilization fanatic.
Speaker: So this sort of thing, I'm not I'm not really huge into Dune.
Speaker: I really ought to watch.
Speaker: I watched the first movie like a thousand years ago.
Speaker: I don't remember much about it.
Speaker: And I still haven't seen the new one.
Speaker: I really should.
Speaker: You should.
Speaker: Yeah, but it's, you know, basically the idea is you are part of a civilization on this planet where you're trying to mine spice and, you know, take over the place through various means of, you know, walk without rhythm and you won't attract the worm.
Speaker: and all that other good stuff.
Speaker: And it's it's if you've played Civilization, if you've played any of those kinds of games, you know what you're getting into.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: You know what you're getting into here.
Speaker: And what's funny is that it plays like like Civilization, which I love, but like those sorts of four X's, there is still a steep learning curve for
Speaker: playing it effectively.
Speaker: And when you play as much civilization as I do, and that takes up so much time to play a single game of that hours and hours and hours to play a single game, I have, you know, you have to you have to ask yourself at a certain point, it's like, do I do I want to learn?
Speaker: Do I have the time?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: You know, it's like if you're looking for a new four X that you want to invest some time into and that kind of thing and you like doing, I can't help but recommend it.
Speaker: It's it's pretty it's right now it feels it's not as complicated as many four X's.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Let's just say.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So it would be easy right now for you to barrel yourself into it and
Speaker: and try it out.
Speaker: It's interesting.
Speaker: It's got a unique feel to it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So it's worth a look.
Speaker: And the other game I played is Warhammer 40,000 Dacca Squadron.
Speaker: Oh, hey, Warhammer.
Speaker: This is the first the first 40K game I've ever played from the orcs point of view.
Speaker: That's exclusively from the orcs point of view.
Speaker: It's a it's a it's a plane game.
Speaker: It's a it's a dog fighting game.
Speaker: Oh, can you paint this?
Speaker: Can you paint it?
Speaker: Can you paint the plane that it painted red and make it go faster?
Speaker: You can.
Speaker: I am.
Speaker: Make it go faster.
Speaker: When she paints it red, it makes it go faster.
Speaker: I was hoping we were going to get... Did you ever play Crimson Skies on the original Xbox?
Speaker: No, no.
Speaker: It's kind of a kind of a alternate future, not quite steampunk, but a little steampunk playing game where it's like world.
Speaker: It's it's early turn of the century era, but it's still futuristic in a weird way.
Speaker: It's kind of hard to describe, but it was a lot of fun.
Speaker: It was a real sleeper hit like anybody I know who's played Crimson Skies generally has nothing but good things to say about it.
Speaker: It was a very satisfying.
Speaker: feeling game.
Speaker: It was a lot of fun to play.
Speaker: It was very silly, had kind of an Indiana Jones vibe to it.
Speaker: It was super fun.
Speaker: And the way that it was looking, it looked like we were going to get that, especially because with the orcs, the orcs can be very serious.
Speaker: But unlike many of the other armies in 40K, they're one of the only ones that
Speaker: can and will be written as really funny and stupid.
Speaker: One of the canon things with orcs in Warhammer is that their technology, their ships, all that stuff, it shouldn't work.
Speaker: It absolutely shouldn't work.
Speaker: They have no idea what they're doing.
Speaker: It basically only works because they believe that it will work.
Speaker: So and that's hilarious in a in a in a game system and a story system that is like, you know,
Speaker: bleak Vatican nuns with guns, super God.
Speaker: It's so dark and it's grim dark.
Speaker: It's intensely grim dark, but you've got this weird group of orcs that are very silly and stupid at times.
Speaker: Just flying on the power of love, basically.
Speaker: It's exactly what it is.
Speaker: And so I was hoping we were going to get a game that combined those two things.
Speaker: And it is silly.
Speaker: It is funny.
Speaker: It's not quite Crimson Skies.
Speaker: OK.
Speaker: In fact, it gets very samey after a while, like after if you've played like the first four stages, you've played them all.
Speaker: Got it.
Speaker: It's not.
Speaker: I wouldn't recommend it if you really got a big itch for 40K or or dog fighting games.
Speaker: And and frankly, like I said, it's the first orc exclusive POV game I've ever played in that franchise.
Speaker: And then I think makes it worth a look just based on that.
Speaker: But probably I wouldn't recommend paying full price for it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So what about you, Kevin?
Speaker: What have you played?
Speaker: So I've been playing a few things.
Speaker: So the one I've spent the most time on was 20 Minutes Till Dawn, which is in the growing genre.
Speaker: There's been a few new names for this genre that Vampire Survivors definitely didn't start it, but it's kind of popularized it.
Speaker: Somebody said they saw someone refer to it as a enemy hell walk them up.
Speaker: Walk.
Speaker: Oh, I like that.
Speaker: That's good.
Speaker: That's real good.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And then somebody also said it's like it's just it's an enemy horde game.
Speaker: But yeah, so 20 Minutes Till Dawn is a little is a more active game.
Speaker: than Vampire Survivors because it is more it's more traditional twin stick where you your your WASDE keys are, you know, you walk in your direction, but your mouse, you actually fire your gun by clicking your mouse and you can you choose the direction that you're firing in.
Speaker: So more more traditional in terms of a twin stick.
Speaker: But it plays out in a very similar way where there's just a chaotic horde of monsters.
Speaker: There's upgrades.
Speaker: There's these things called synergies where if you have this power up and this power up and Mike grant you this third power up.
Speaker: Kind of like an evolution.
Speaker: Kind of like an evolution.
Speaker: Yeah, a little bit in Vampire Survivors.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: It's got a neat art style, and it's very addictive gameplay.
Speaker: It's not without its drawbacks, though.
Speaker: There's only one environment that you play in.
Speaker: It's kind of like this dark wooded area.
Speaker: And you only ever see the same enemies over and over again.
Speaker: So there's just no variety in that.
Speaker: There's not a lot of variety in the game.
Speaker: There's like seven characters.
Speaker: Each of them has their own thing.
Speaker: There's one character who is allowed to re-roll her choices when she gets a level up.
Speaker: Another has really high hit points.
Speaker: Another one is like shoots lightning every second.
Speaker: There's all these things where it's like on hit versus on shot.
Speaker: mechanics so when something triggers on the shot that means it's actually like the gun firing and then there's triggers for on hit so it's like you have all these upgrades and some of them are on the shot and some of them are on hit so like one woman has like every second shot regardless of whether it's a hit a lightning bolt comes down and hits the enemy okay
Speaker: Stuff like that.
Speaker: So it's got a ton of promise, but there's a bunch of issues with visibility in the game.
Speaker: It's a very monochromatic game.
Speaker: The art style is neat, but it makes it really hard sometimes to see the enemies when things get really chaotic.
Speaker: Now, a fan of the show, Harry from Video Games Are Bad, actually has been putting together mods for the game already to help with that.
Speaker: Oh, wow.
Speaker: OK.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So he's been modding the game to kind of help the visibility a little bit.
Speaker: But that's...
Speaker: Vampire, that's not Vampire Survivors, 20 Minutes Till Dawn.
Speaker: I made a review of it.
Speaker: It's up on our Steam curator page for Pixel It.
Speaker: So I personally reviewed it and then I basically used that review as a template for our Pixel It review and gave it a recommended.
Speaker: Because it's still only, it's like three bucks.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But despite all those reservations, it's like I got 10 hours out of a three dollar game.
Speaker: So like, I mean, yeah, I mean, what the fuck?
Speaker: I'm seeing that it's it's 299 just like Vampire Survivors.
Speaker: Like, what do you have to lose if you I don't know, man, I think if you got like two or three hours out of a three hour game, I'd say you've got your money.
Speaker: The only reason I have so much critique is because I see equal amounts of promise.
Speaker: Like if I didn't see any promise in it, I wouldn't even bother critiquing it or I wouldn't even put that much time into it.
Speaker: But I see the promise and that's why I have the criticisms.
Speaker: Is it it's early access?
Speaker: It's early access.
Speaker: So a lot of this might be if you're listening to this into the future, a lot of this might have been fixed.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Might be smoothed out by that.
Speaker: Even by the time this episode airs, it might have been smoothed out.
Speaker: The other thing I've been playing this week, started playing, is Card Shark.
Speaker: How do you like that?
Speaker: That looks so much fun.
Speaker: It is such a neat little game.
Speaker: So Card Shark is developed by Nereal.
Speaker: Nereal is the developer behind Reigns, which a few years ago, Reigns was...
Speaker: a huge deal.
Speaker: Basically, Reigns was a card game where you received a card.
Speaker: A card was drawn from a deck and it was usually you were playing the role of a king.
Speaker: The card presented a situation or a question and you could solve it one of two ways.
Speaker: You could swipe left or swipe right.
Speaker: And it also had a lot of neat hidden elements to the game.
Speaker: The Card Shark is cool because it's not about playing cards.
Speaker: It's about cheating at cards.
Speaker: That is the game, is learning how to cheat at cards.
Speaker: So you are learning all of these mini games and they kind of stack together in how to play, how to cheat and how to help your partner cheat.
Speaker: in the game, Cheetah Cards.
Speaker: So like you're the guy that you partner with, the Comte, Comte, I think that's the French word for count.
Speaker: Comte, I think.
Speaker: Yeah, I think it's French for count.
Speaker: Or something like that.
Speaker: So there will be one moment where you're both playing in the game and he's dealing the cards and he is dealing in a way where you can see what he's dealing to the other person's
Speaker: And then what you learn is how to hold your hand, how your character needs to hold his hand.
Speaker: So it's like if it's something like if three fingers are up, the suit that he has the most of.
Speaker: is the suit that he has the most of is hearts or spades.
Speaker: It's like two fingers, spades, one finger.
Speaker: It's like clubs and no fingers up.
Speaker: It's diamonds or something like that.
Speaker: And then it also teaches you to communicate through how you put your cards down.
Speaker: So if you throw your cards forward, the guy's high card is a jack.
Speaker: If you lay your cards down, it's a queen.
Speaker: If you drop them from a distance, it's a king.
Speaker: It's really fascinating, all these little mechanics that are thought up and put into play.
Speaker: It's truly not about...
Speaker: playing cards at all.
Speaker: No, it's literally about magic tricks and cheating at cards.
Speaker: That is fantastic.
Speaker: It teaches you the term in-jogging, which is like, if you're trying to make, oh, give me, what's your card?
Speaker: All right, put it back on the top of the deck.
Speaker: And it's like, this is how you mark within the deck where the card that they put back on the top of the deck is while you shuffle it.
Speaker: And it's it's it's such a cool game.
Speaker: I really like it so far.
Speaker: I've only put in like an hour because it is actually like mentally exhausting to play because it's one of those things with a lot of.
Speaker: since there's so many mini games that you play and there's little rules that you have to remember for them.
Speaker: It's like you it's not like 20 minutes till dawn or vampire survivors where I can mostly turn my brain off and play it.
Speaker: Card shark is like the ultimate focus.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It sounds it.
Speaker: And there's a difficulty of card shark that has permadeath.
Speaker: Oh, OK, great.
Speaker: which there's a little meter where if you're if you mess up like that, it's like a suspicion meter.
Speaker: And if the suspicion meter fills up, then I only assume it hasn't happened to me yet.
Speaker: I only assume you'll get shot at some point.
Speaker: I mean, that is how that is how card shark in real life is played.
Speaker: So, yeah, it makes sense.
Speaker: That's great.
Speaker: I was looking at that earlier.
Speaker: I think I'm sold.
Speaker: I really need to pick that one up.
Speaker: That looks like it.
Speaker: It's fascinating.
Speaker: It's such a good studio.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Really neat stuff.
Speaker: But yeah, that's what I'm playing this week.
Speaker: Sweet.
Speaker: And everyone who's listening, you should check out our Steam group, Pixelit Pod.
Speaker: We are gonna be curating all the games we cover in here and you can get some discussions going.
Speaker: We'll talk about the books we're reading and upcoming books and check us out.
Speaker: Check us out, all that fun stuff.
Speaker: Otherwise, check us out on Twitter at Pixelit Pod or on Instagram at Instagram, Instagram, Instagram Dark.
Speaker: Instagram at PixlitPod.
Speaker: We have new stuff up there just about every day for you to lay your eyeballs on.
Speaker: And if you can, give us a five-star review on Apple and Spotify.
Speaker: They both...
Speaker: They both allow reviews and five stars would really help us out.
Speaker: But would really, really help us out is telling your friends about us.
Speaker: Podcasts really only spread through word of mouth.
Speaker: So if you can do us, do us a favor and, and spread the word about Pixelit.
Speaker: Anyway, that'll do it for tonight's episode.
Speaker: Thank you so much for listening and have a good evening.
Speaker: Bye.
Speaker: Bye.
