Transcript
Speaker: Cool.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And so it's it's it's Mary Heron.
Speaker: And she's like, yeah, no, I'm I'm like having a woman direct.
Speaker: It was literally the only way you could do that movie.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yes, exactly.
Speaker: Well, and that's just it, I think.
Speaker: And that's the thing.
Speaker: It's just like Fight Club with those kind of dudes.
Speaker: If they admit that, then they've got to admit like, oh, this might not be about the thing that I think it's about.
Speaker: It might not be cool for the reasons I think it's cool.
Speaker: I might actually be watching something that's criticizing all the shit that I like.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And they just do.
Speaker: They can't.
Speaker: They can't handle that.
Speaker: They can't deal with that.
Speaker: No, of course.
Speaker: Let's not be silly.
Speaker: Let's not be silly.
Speaker: No, no, they can't do that.
Speaker: But you know, it is silly.
Speaker: What's that?
Speaker: Hey there, everybody.
Speaker: Welcome back to Pixel It.
Speaker: My name is Kevin.
Speaker: With me, as always, is Phil on today's show.
Speaker: We dust off the cobwebs to return to Metal Gear Solid by Raymond Benson, a Hideo Kojima production of a book, of a movie, of a game.
Speaker: In a manner of speaking, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, so to speak.
Speaker: So to speak.
Speaker: We've been...
Speaker: recorded in a few weeks because just so you all know, first we recorded this and then we had our little guest trade-off spots with Vigigame Apocalypse.
Speaker: So Phil went over there, Michael came over here, and then I had some work commitments for
Speaker: like a couple weeks and then it was just like oh well you know the episode's coming up we gotta we gotta get back on it so we here we are um like four weeks later we're recording part two of this this book and let me tell you i think uh we were much we much would rather have just forgotten that this book started uh if i had a if i had a
Speaker: If I had like a fake episode I could have put out instead of part one of this book, I might have just to give us a little bit more time.
Speaker: Yeah, we actually were planning on recording this sooner, but Kevin got sick and I'm not entirely sure that that wasn't your body trying to stop you from having to talk about this book more.
Speaker: I vomited for two days straight.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it still painted a prettier picture than what we get from this book.
Speaker: My back.
Speaker: We were coming off hard on this book, but it's bad.
Speaker: It's not.
Speaker: It's far from the worst thing.
Speaker: It's far from the worst thing we've read.
Speaker: It's just really it's just like so astoundingly boring compared to what you would have expected.
Speaker: And it's like it's it's boring and horny in all the wrong ways.
Speaker: Well, you know, and it's funny, I was listening to just like an old James Bond movie.
Speaker: Well, yeah, I was I was listening to the last episode recently.
Speaker: And one of the things I said was, you know, just kind of trying to make a gag said something about like how it's been a bleak year for us.
Speaker: And I was like, you know what?
Speaker: It's the exact opposite.
Speaker: We have we have gotten so spoiled with a certain level of quality, even in the stuff that we haven't like 100 percent adored.
Speaker: that when we get to this kind of thing, it just feels extra tedious.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: You know, it's not even that it's bad in an entertaining way.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's just tedious.
Speaker: Bad tends to be like, okay, well, you got to cut a steak that's way too much fat and gristle.
Speaker: You know what I mean?
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Like the marbling.
Speaker: The marbling's all wrong.
Speaker: And you're just not really going to enjoy it.
Speaker: It's just going to be a little too squishy.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: In your mouth.
Speaker: By God, it's going to be interesting.
Speaker: It's going to be interesting.
Speaker: You're going to remember it forever.
Speaker: This is more of just like a dry steak.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Just a badly cooked steak.
Speaker: A badly cooked steak.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: So a bad book is just a bad cut that was probably cut fine.
Speaker: That was probably cooked fine.
Speaker: This is a good cut that was cooked poorly.
Speaker: I mean, I feel like that makes sense to us.
Speaker: I don't know if it will make sense to everybody else out there, but...
Speaker: Patreon.com slash PixelitPod is your place to join us for, if you want more stuff, you want more steak metaphors, $1, $5, $10, and the free dollar, the free dollar tier.
Speaker: That's what I'm going to call it, the free dollar tier.
Speaker: Free dollar, I like that.
Speaker: Three dollars.
Speaker: Three dollars here.
Speaker: I like it.
Speaker: And apparently I haven't even checked to verify, but I'm trusting and not verifying because I listened to the Noclip crew cast today and Danny O'Dwyer himself said we are now allowed to make posts for patrons.
Speaker: that include the free dollar tier.
Speaker: So there we go.
Speaker: Just for followers, which is something that I've wanted for a long time.
Speaker: So come along, go to patreon.com slash pixelipod.
Speaker: It's free to follow.
Speaker: But if you want to throw us a buck or five or 10, we won't yell at you.
Speaker: No, we won't get mad.
Speaker: We won't throw things.
Speaker: We won't hurt you or send people to dox you.
Speaker: No, we won't.
Speaker: It'll all be cool and copacetic.
Speaker: It'll all be cool and groovy, baby.
Speaker: $1 gets, you know, access to Phil's blog, which he talks about the books that he reads and how infatuated and or disappointed he is in them.
Speaker: Most recently, I talked about Vermis, a video game...
Speaker: what would you even call it?
Speaker: Like a strategy guide for a video game that does not exist.
Speaker: That's actually an interesting concept.
Speaker: I think you'd like this a lot.
Speaker: It's very much, it's like, it's based on a FromSoft kind of game that's not real.
Speaker: And it just kind of walks you through.
Speaker: It doesn't have, the way I describe it is like, no plot, no overarching, you know, thing to tie all these levels together, just vibes.
Speaker: It's just, it's just, just rolling, just heavy rolling on vibes, baby.
Speaker: That's it.
Speaker: That's it.
Speaker: It's dark souls.
Speaker: It's souls like vibes.
Speaker: That's the whole thing, which is right up my alley.
Speaker: Cause it means I don't have to, you know, smash another controller against the wall.
Speaker: Let's, you know, let's praise the sun to some jolly cooperation and, you know,
Speaker: And yeah, Vermis is interesting.
Speaker: $5, you get access to the ad free and the bonus episodes when we resume recording them.
Speaker: We should be doing that over the summer now that schedules are allowing.
Speaker: And $10, you get all of the above, but also you get your name shouted out in the episode.
Speaker: So to that end, shouting out Ruthless Mudder, Kyle Seaman, Jesus Loves You, and Friendly Friend.
Speaker: Friendly Friend.
Speaker: Thank you for being a friend.
Speaker: We love you.
Speaker: Patreon.com slash PixletPod.
Speaker: Do it today.
Speaker: Do it.
Speaker: Do it.
Speaker: So how are you feeling about getting through this book?
Speaker: I mean, we're all going to die eventually, right?
Speaker: It doesn't matter.
Speaker: And, you know, with the heat death of the universe, there will be no memory that this ever happened.
Speaker: None whatsoever.
Speaker: In the universal long term, everything gets wiped from the record.
Speaker: And some people see that as nihilistic and painful and they can't deal with it.
Speaker: I see it.
Speaker: I see acknowledging that as the only way to be really free.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Unless, you know, you just start worshiping the warp gods and, you know.
Speaker: Which, look, no judgment.
Speaker: No judgment.
Speaker: You find your bliss where you need to find it, even if it's in the scaly hands of Slaanesh.
Speaker: fuck around and slaughter some people for corn, you know?
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Speaking of slaughtering people, let's put this body in the marsh.
Speaker: Let's do it.
Speaker: When I tell you to dump a body in the marsh,
Speaker: We start in chapter 11.
Speaker: Snake arrives in the next building and Meryl calls him to mention that she's in there as well.
Speaker: And they talk for way too long about how that happened.
Speaker: All dialogue in this book is just too long to describe what actually happened.
Speaker: Meryl was able to get in faster, not because she's sneakier.
Speaker: It's just because she is wearing a guard uniform.
Speaker: Which Snake could have done at any time.
Speaker: At any time.
Speaker: If it was literally that simple.
Speaker: It's that simple.
Speaker: She's just moving around pretty much unnoticed because she has a guard uniform on.
Speaker: And it's one of the wild things about this story.
Speaker: Anyway, Meryl just like hopped in a truck that was going to the next building and she was allowed in.
Speaker: While Snake is in there, he sees a bunch of ICBMs and he gets a history lesson about them from the comms chatter.
Speaker: And they also tell him about the START treaties, which the U.S. and Russia are on the eve of START III in the Metal Gear Solid universe.
Speaker: FYI, START II never actually... They mentioned that START II was never ratified.
Speaker: That's true.
Speaker: It never ultimately is ratified.
Speaker: and there is no start three in 2010 in, I mean, in the real world, there is no start three.
Speaker: In 2010, there was a treaty called new start signed between Obama and Medved, Medved, fuck it.
Speaker: Uh, Dimitri, Dimitri, president Dimitri M. Um, um,
Speaker: Dimitri M. Medvedev.
Speaker: Was that it?
Speaker: Medvedev?
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: I had it earlier today.
Speaker: Anyway, that was when Putin was letting Dimitri run things for a little bit as president.
Speaker: Putin took a break because you're not allowed that many...
Speaker: concurrent or consecutive presidencies in a row in Russia.
Speaker: And let's be honest, he earned it, didn't he?
Speaker: He earned that break.
Speaker: He's worked so hard terrorizing those poor people.
Speaker: Yeah, so for his like 2008, 2012, Dmitry's in charge, and then Putin's right back in, baby.
Speaker: Right back in, right back in.
Speaker: Wettin' that whistle.
Speaker: Gotsta.
Speaker: Gotsta.
Speaker: Gotsta.
Speaker: Anyway, they're talking about ICBMs.
Speaker: Master Miller calls, and he's acting out of character because it's clearly not him.
Speaker: And he tells Snake to find a rocket launcher, and he's very specific about the office that it's in.
Speaker: And Snake's like, okay.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like, Master Miller's like, he's like, it's in this office in the cabinet.
Speaker: The cabinet code is XYZ14 filed under R for rocket launcher.
Speaker: L for launcher, comma, rocket.
Speaker: Launcher, comma, rocket.
Speaker: Snake has become equipped with.
Speaker: Launcher, comma, rocket.
Speaker: Psst.
Speaker: That was really solid.
Speaker: Snake finds the rocket launcher, which is a Nikita, and he gets a call from Deep Throat warning him about the electrified floor he was about to step on.
Speaker: So Snake figures out a way to use the rocket launcher right away, and he shoots it through the wall at the end of the hallway, which blows up the circuitry and fries the electrical floor.
Speaker: They talk about that.
Speaker: That's another thing they talk about a lot.
Speaker: Like he has to figure out the logistics of it and everything.
Speaker: And it's like, yeah, I don't think we need to do that.
Speaker: I don't think we need to do that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: At this point, I'm, my eyes are glazing over and I'm reading like the first two words and last two words of each paragraph.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Okay, good.
Speaker: As long as it wasn't just me.
Speaker: I'd be like, uh-huh, yeah, okay.
Speaker: Uh-huh, got it.
Speaker: Wait, that doesn't make sense.
Speaker: And then, like, if it didn't make sense, then I'd go back and read the paragraph.
Speaker: Yeah, you're doing what they do in Fallout 4, where if you're done with the dialogue and you want to skip through it, and your PC character just goes, uh-huh, uh-huh, okay, uh-huh, just cutting through the bullshit, like, that's what you're doing reading-wise.
Speaker: Hitting skip.
Speaker: I'm hitting skip cut scene as I read a book.
Speaker: Just the facts, man.
Speaker: That's just, yeah.
Speaker: So that's the end of chapter 11.
Speaker: Chapter 12, we get a bunch of guards standing around Hal Emmerich's cell, and they're talking about how the only good otaku is a dead otaku.
Speaker: Which, look, fair enough.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Fair enough.
Speaker: But I also like these guys know enough about like otakus just to give a damn.
Speaker: It's so random.
Speaker: It's so weird.
Speaker: And then they get ninja timed.
Speaker: Basically, somebody starts playing fruit ninja all over their bodies.
Speaker: Pretty much.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Snake walks in on the murders and it's pretty gruesome.
Speaker: There's like one guy who gets his half of his head sliced off like like and it's like the wait, sorry, it's what?
Speaker: It's
Speaker: Okay, cool.
Speaker: Does that make sense?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: I'm following you.
Speaker: And then it just slides.
Speaker: It's like the anime thing where it's like.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Split and there's a pause.
Speaker: Split, pause, and then blood.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: I just saw a clip of the first time that was ever done in Japanese cinema.
Speaker: I think it was a Kurosawa film or something.
Speaker: Yeah, is it Seven Samurai?
Speaker: I think so, and it's all because it was a malfunction in the blood.
Speaker: I love that fact so much.
Speaker: Yeah, Kurosawa, it wasn't intended to be so stylized, but then it just...
Speaker: ended up being i love that that just like something that just influenced the shit out of everything was just a fuck up and i love that shit i love it yeah it's like there was that uh was it they had a blood pump to like so that some blood would spray out but instead it was just like all over the goddamn place i love it that's so neat i love that stuff
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, it's wild how many things that people assume are intentional in like older movies, especially in the 50s, 60s, and 70s, when it's not like super intentional.
Speaker: It's just like, well, fuck it.
Speaker: We had two takes and that was take two.
Speaker: Let's move on.
Speaker: Yeah, that's it.
Speaker: We are not made of money.
Speaker: Let's keep going.
Speaker: And then later they're like, oh, that's kind of neat.
Speaker: Well, we're just going to let that influence the world for as long as possible.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Oh, cool.
Speaker: Cool.
Speaker: It's amazing that anyone admits that they didn't do that kind of thing on purpose to me.
Speaker: I like just like, yes, yes, of course.
Speaker: I thought that would be a fun if it sprayed like that.
Speaker: That's it.
Speaker: That's all.
Speaker: I am.
Speaker: I equal genius.
Speaker: That's all.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: What's your favorite?
Speaker: What's your favorite curse?
Speaker: All movie.
Speaker: Or is that a blind spot for you?
Speaker: I was just looking.
Speaker: HBO has a bunch of his films, and I really need to take advantage of that.
Speaker: You need to watch if the samurai film isn't necessarily your thing.
Speaker: Sorry, I did see Throne of Blood.
Speaker: That's the Macbeth remake, right?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I liked that a lot.
Speaker: I saw that when I was a kid and I thought that was freaking amazing.
Speaker: And Rashomon is the one where it's like the story keeps getting retold from different points of view.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: That was another really influential one.
Speaker: The one, though, that I love that is not a samurai film is Ikiru, which is basically it's like a guy examining his life as he is dying of cancer.
Speaker: Oh, wow.
Speaker: Jesus Christ.
Speaker: It is heavy.
Speaker: That sounds heavy.
Speaker: Jesus Christ.
Speaker: Oh, I'm on the Wikipedia now.
Speaker: I didn't realize this.
Speaker: The screenplay was partly inspired by Tolstoy's 1886 novella, The Death of Ivan Ilyich.
Speaker: Jesus Christ.
Speaker: Okay, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Some nice light reading.
Speaker: Some nice light reading.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Holy crap.
Speaker: See what we do to avoid talking about this book?
Speaker: A terminally ill Tokyo bureaucrat and his final quest for meaning.
Speaker: Let's watch that instead.
Speaker: I think I'd rather watch that kind of a bummer.
Speaker: Hey, you want to be bummed out for two hours and 23 minutes?
Speaker: At this point.
Speaker: It's like Ikiru is like this American, not this American life.
Speaker: It's American life.
Speaker: What movie am I thinking of?
Speaker: It's a Wonderful Life.
Speaker: Oh.
Speaker: Ikaru is like, it's a wonderful life, but it's, he, it's like, it's, if it, this, it's a wonderful life, but, you know, he came to terms with, he lived a good life, but he did it halfway through falling.
Speaker: Right, right, yeah, on his way out.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: An occurrence at Owl Creek.
Speaker: Yeah, pretty much, yeah, like just a slow-mo.
Speaker: Spoilers for an occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.
Speaker: We all read it in high school.
Speaker: You don't need anything.
Speaker: We all read it in high school.
Speaker: We all saw the experimental short film that was... Did you ever see that?
Speaker: No.
Speaker: Go find yourself a copy of...
Speaker: of that short film based on the same story.
Speaker: No, I've only ever read the story.
Speaker: What the fuck are we talking about?
Speaker: What book is this?
Speaker: I think it's A Wonderful Life, the novelization.
Speaker: I think it was The Death of Ivan Ilyich we were talking about.
Speaker: A Day in the Life of Robin Donizovitch.
Speaker: Tolstoy.
Speaker: God, if we ever did a podcast on Tolstoy...
Speaker: God, what would we do?
Speaker: What would we do if we ever... An episode of page.
Speaker: What would we do?
Speaker: Yes, exactly.
Speaker: What would we do if we ever... Here's the thing.
Speaker: We bitch and moan about this mass-produced dreck, but what would you and I actually do if we were tasked with taking a sudden left turn into actual classic works of literature?
Speaker: We'd be fucked.
Speaker: We'd be absolutely fucked.
Speaker: I'd be exposed as the fraud that I am.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: People would know for a fact that we are hacks and frauds.
Speaker: Hacks and frauds.
Speaker: And maybe that's what we deserve, Kevin.
Speaker: That's what we deserve.
Speaker: That's what we deserve, yeah.
Speaker: But, you know, we're all hacks down here, Georgie.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: My God.
Speaker: So Snake walks in on the murders, and they're pretty gruesome.
Speaker: And Snake and the ninja fight.
Speaker: And the ninja is really into being hurt.
Speaker: He sure is.
Speaker: Loves being hurt.
Speaker: In a dramatic scene, it comes out that the ninja was killed in Zanzibar Land, and he's actually Snake's old squad member, Gray Fox, in the suit, even though Snake was certain that he was dead.
Speaker: And Gray Fox then leaves after screaming about the medicine.
Speaker: It's weird.
Speaker: It's really weird.
Speaker: Like...
Speaker: Yeah, chapter 13, Snake asks the support staff for a debrief on the whole dead buddy thing.
Speaker: Dr. Hunter... Can someone explain this shit to me?
Speaker: Please, somebody tell me.
Speaker: So Dr. Hunter's like, all right, well, here's what I know.
Speaker: It's definitely not my dead brother.
Speaker: And...
Speaker: I know that for a fact.
Speaker: I know that for a fact.
Speaker: That's easy to know.
Speaker: It was done by my predecessor, but after Colonel Campbell retired.
Speaker: So it's like that narrow window where everybody who's currently involved had nothing to do with it.
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: Ever so convenient window.
Speaker: They call it the convenience window, in fact.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: unaccountable convenience window.
Speaker: Oh man.
Speaker: That fucking window.
Speaker: It's responsible for so much bullshit.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Uh, so the predecessor died and they thought that the project reviving Gray Fox was destroyed as well.
Speaker: Um, snake freeze Hal Emmerich, uh, also known as Otacon.
Speaker: He likes to be called Otacon, which is short for Otaku convention.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: Hal also asks Snake if he is an otaku because he likes to work alone.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Sure, buddy.
Speaker: Atacon gives Snake his rundown on his family history.
Speaker: He's a cursed family history.
Speaker: My grandfather worked on the Manhattan Project.
Speaker: And my father born the day that the bombs dropped on Hiroshima.
Speaker: Coincidence?
Speaker: I think not.
Speaker: I think not.
Speaker: And he also gives him a rundown of like, here's what the Metal Gear can do.
Speaker: And Snake's like, yeah, all that and launch nuclear missiles.
Speaker: And Otacon's like, no.
Speaker: What?
Speaker: That's silly.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: I didn't do that.
Speaker: Come on.
Speaker: Come on.
Speaker: It's like, was that guy's name Tim Robinson or whatever in the hot dog outfit?
Speaker: We're all looking for this guy.
Speaker: Oh God.
Speaker: Uh, so, uh, snake goes like, all right, I'm, I'm leaving.
Speaker: Wait here.
Speaker: Um, chapter 14, snake goes down another level and he takes out more guards, uh, and he sees Merrill and her curvy posterior walking around.
Speaker: That's how he knows that it's Merrill.
Speaker: That is how he identifies her.
Speaker: Cause he never forgets Nass.
Speaker: That never, he never forgets a bitch.
Speaker: Like that is just his thing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And he follows her into the women's room and she draws on him because, you know, he followed her into the women's room.
Speaker: And they have a really weird conversation that gives me the ick about how Snake never forgets a lady, but also how she worshipped him when she was a kid.
Speaker: Do you understand how those two facts juxtaposed next to each other?
Speaker: Are we following the map here?
Speaker: Yes, exactly.
Speaker: Are you there?
Speaker: Are you with us?
Speaker: Jesus Christ.
Speaker: Jesus Christ.
Speaker: Meryl convinced the snake.
Speaker: And how bad was the security at the Campbell household?
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Why does Meryl know this shit?
Speaker: That's not good.
Speaker: I mean, I feel like you should report Colonel Campbell to your dad.
Speaker: Yeah, someone needs to know.
Speaker: Someone's got to find out.
Speaker: My God, man.
Speaker: Anyway, so Meryl convinces Snake that she won't slow him down and they continue on together until they run into Dun Dun Dun Psycho Mantis.
Speaker: In a really uncomfortable scene, Psycho Mantis controls Meryl.
Speaker: Mind controls Meryl into making her beg Snake to make love to her.
Speaker: It's, it's gross.
Speaker: It's, I hate to, I hate to keep using that word, but it's just what it is.
Speaker: Snake knocks out Meryl.
Speaker: He punches her in the face, gives her a good old slap and says, snap out of it, woman.
Speaker: But to be fair, that is how he has foreplay.
Speaker: That is kind of his thing.
Speaker: And then Psycho Mantis materializes out of thin air.
Speaker: And, uh, he's like, ha ha.
Speaker: Uh,
Speaker: I have you now, Snake.
Speaker: And Snake runs away from him and he ends up at a carnival from his childhood in Oregon.
Speaker: Psycho Mantis is really silent, hilling the crap out of him.
Speaker: This might be the only good part of the book.
Speaker: So Snake is just running around from ride to ride.
Speaker: It's getting weird.
Speaker: At one point, he runs into everybody he knows in different torture rooms, and he runs into his dad, big boss, and he's like, I haven't told him anything, Snake.
Speaker: And then as he's like...
Speaker: watch it as he's talking to big boss like his head just slowly starts to split apart and open and it's like that uh scene at the end of uh bionic commando where you blow up adolf hitler's head but instead of a fast it's like really slow it's just like in like an eye it's it's it's bad um speaking of have you watched late night with the devil yet
Speaker: No, I have heard a lot of ho-hum reviews.
Speaker: I really liked it.
Speaker: That doesn't mean I'm not going to watch it, but yeah.
Speaker: All kinds of chaos is happening in this house.
Speaker: Everything okay?
Speaker: Yeah, I liked it.
Speaker: There's a lot of neat.
Speaker: It's worth a watch, I'll say.
Speaker: All the trailers, I'm very intrigued.
Speaker: I'll have to give it up.
Speaker: I mean, I'm going to give it a try.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Let's see.
Speaker: Snake...
Speaker: Snake fights his way past the hallucinations, and then Mantis starts attacking with throwing things, and he realizes that Mantis can only do so many things at once.
Speaker: He can't throw and make Snake's gun weigh a million pounds at the same time.
Speaker: Yeah, fair enough.
Speaker: Fair, fair.
Speaker: So he baits Mantis into throwing and then shoots him twice in the chest.
Speaker: Boss fight over.
Speaker: He takes off the mask and Mantis is all scarred up.
Speaker: And the next 20 pages of this chapter is Mantis giving Snake directions.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: First.
Speaker: to the sizzler down the road and then if you go past the Dairy Queen, you've gone too far, you've got to double back and then there's a Staples.
Speaker: Behind the Staples is going to be the building that you're looking for.
Speaker: It's very elaborate and it goes on for
Speaker: Longer than I was, even for this book.
Speaker: If you see a sign for a Winn-Dixie, don't buy it.
Speaker: The Winn-Dixie closed down years ago and relocated to the other side of town.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And then burned to the ground.
Speaker: And then burned to the ground.
Speaker: But there is a Piggly Wiggly there now.
Speaker: Yes, yes.
Speaker: Hit up the pig wig.
Speaker: I mean, that's worth it.
Speaker: That's just worth it.
Speaker: It's just like...
Speaker: It's just like really slowly talking.
Speaker: Mantis talking about how he, I'm dying.
Speaker: I've been shot twice in the chest, but let me tell you about my childhood.
Speaker: Can we get into this?
Speaker: How much time have you got?
Speaker: Let's get into this.
Speaker: I'm going to psychically add some orchestral strings to the background.
Speaker: You know, I gotta say, if you had that kind of a power, I mean, that would make at least your final moments interesting.
Speaker: You're like, I'm gonna tell you this story, but you know, look, the soundtrack's by John Williams, just relax.
Speaker: It's gonna be great.
Speaker: It's a John Williams medley.
Speaker: I can't, you know, I start humming Superman, and then I'm humming Star Wars.
Speaker: I can't keep them separated.
Speaker: And at some point, Psycho Mantis became Mark Hamill's Joker.
Speaker: And in my voice, like, oh, snake.
Speaker: Oh, snake.
Speaker: Oh, God.
Speaker: So, uh, Marilyn Snake regroup and continue.
Speaker: I think that's how it ought to be from here on out.
Speaker: It's just, I am become the Joker.
Speaker: Um, this book's going to do weird things to all of us.
Speaker: I don't think it's going to work.
Speaker: They see some, yeah, it's basically just a bad recounting of the first Metal Gear Solid.
Speaker: That's just what it boils down to.
Speaker: They see some sled dogs they need to sneak through.
Speaker: Snake uses a flashbang to give them some CTE slash knock them out.
Speaker: And they also fight a puppy and they leave it with the other dogs.
Speaker: They sure do.
Speaker: It's kind of, I can't help but feel like this might come up later.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Maybe.
Speaker: I hope.
Speaker: Maybe I don't hope.
Speaker: I hope just for the sake of writing and bringing things to a close that you've started.
Speaker: But maybe I don't.
Speaker: Maybe I just hope it ends sooner.
Speaker: It's a Chekhov.
Speaker: It's like not a Chekhov's puppy.
Speaker: It's just a puppy.
Speaker: It's just a puppy.
Speaker: I wanted to have a puppy.
Speaker: I wanted to have a puppy.
Speaker: I wanted a puppy.
Speaker: Batman.
Speaker: Oh, Batman, I wanted a puppy.
Speaker: You wouldn't deny me this one thing, would you, Batsy?
Speaker: Batsy.
Speaker: Jesus Christ.
Speaker: We both have a Joker, but neither of us have a Batman.
Speaker: What's up with that?
Speaker: That's probably for the best.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I can't speak for you, but I feel like if I ever had a Batman, I'd be fucked.
Speaker: It wouldn't take long.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I got no Batman for you.
Speaker: They end up, they stop when Snake sees a sniper rifle laser dot right between Meryl's boobies.
Speaker: No, no, no.
Speaker: To be specific, on her chest between her breasts.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Fucking Jesus Christ.
Speaker: Like, we didn't, we, like, on her chest.
Speaker: Got it.
Speaker: Between her breasts.
Speaker: Got it.
Speaker: Got it.
Speaker: In the cleavage.
Speaker: Where the nipples go.
Speaker: Got it.
Speaker: And Raymond Benson continues, where the French call it décolletage.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And then Snake went and got a tissue.
Speaker: And oh, God.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Finish.
Speaker: Can we flash forward, please?
Speaker: Flashing forward 30 seconds.
Speaker: If you wouldn't mind, it doesn't take long.
Speaker: Snake pulls her out of the way, but she's shot in the shoulder and hip anyway and ends up sliding away from him.
Speaker: A sniper wolf who is across the field and is breasting boobily on the other side.
Speaker: Oh, Sniper Wolf.
Speaker: Is using wounded Meryl's bait.
Speaker: By the way, why does Sniper Wolf have a laser on her sniper rifle?
Speaker: It is something that has happened in games and media and movies, like, forever, and it's never made sense.
Speaker: Where's the laser from?
Speaker: The whole point of being a sniper is not to have a goddamn laser pointing you out to everyone.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: People, please.
Speaker: I'm begging you.
Speaker: I don't think I've ever, like, you'll see the laser, like, it's a thing that they show all the time in media, but then they show the sniper, and you're like, wait a minute, where's the laser coming from on that sniper rifle?
Speaker: Yeah, where is that, exactly?
Speaker: It's just lazy movie-making language for we want you to know that bad things are about to happen.
Speaker: Bad things are about to happen.
Speaker: Well, I'm reading Metal Gear Solid, the novelization, so I can kind of assume that bad things are going to happen.
Speaker: Bad things have happened.
Speaker: It's sort of like the cut to the passenger seat of a car looking at the driver.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: In movies.
Speaker: Like, oh, they're going to get hit T-boned in an intersection now.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You just know.
Speaker: You just know.
Speaker: You have that feeling.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You just have that feeling.
Speaker: You just know.
Speaker: All right, so... All right, where the fuck... Snake gets the sniper rifle that Merrill was holding by using a chaff grenade as cover, and in a quick sniper duel, he shoots Sniper Wolf once, wounding her.
Speaker: Snake gives chase, only to end up surrounded by soldiers, and he has to give up.
Speaker: And while he's arrested by the soldiers, he says, A lady sniper.
Speaker: Who would have thought...
Speaker: me like snake is probably what one of the most backwards uh and i just think of that tweet by kojima where he's talking about uh when you uh learn the reason for quiet's exposure like quiet was the one with that like just wore a bikini around yeah you will regret your thoughts
Speaker: It's something like you'll regret your words and your deeds.
Speaker: Your words and deeds.
Speaker: That's what it is.
Speaker: Your words and deeds.
Speaker: And it turns out.
Speaker: What was it?
Speaker: You will feel ashamed of your words and deeds.
Speaker: That's it.
Speaker: But once you recognize the secret reason for her exposure, you will feel ashamed of your words and deeds.
Speaker: And the reason why is because she breathes through her skin.
Speaker: It's like, look, I think people get the wrong idea with this shit.
Speaker: It's like the guy who made Nier Automata at least came out and was like, oh, I like pretty girls.
Speaker: Great, great, me too.
Speaker: Awesome.
Speaker: Have you ever watched that Pro ZD sketch where it's an anime fan defending a sexualized character's outfit?
Speaker: and the whole thing is the anime fanga fan going actually uh if the boob window is a metaphor for how how she wants people to look go through her outer self and into her inner self and then it cuts to pro zd playing the creator of the original manga and just in an interview going i just wanted to see titties
Speaker: pretty blatant about that stuff.
Speaker: I love that.
Speaker: That's fine.
Speaker: That's fine.
Speaker: You will feel ashamed of your words and deeds.
Speaker: Listen, Kojima, I don't need you telling me when to feel ashamed.
Speaker: I already feel plenty ashamed.
Speaker: I'm on it.
Speaker: Dude, I am on it.
Speaker: I don't need your help.
Speaker: Lady Sniper.
Speaker: Who would have thought?
Speaker: By the clap of my ass cheeks, it's a Lady Sniper.
Speaker: Oh!
Speaker: How do they get the rifle so they've got the boobs?
Speaker: It just, ah, man.
Speaker: She must have removed one with fire like the Amazons of old.
Speaker: Oh, God.
Speaker: That was fucking why the last man, too.
Speaker: Was it?
Speaker: Now, that's a comic book that I was like, this is cool when I read it when I was younger.
Speaker: And if I just reread it now, I'm going to be like, this is fucking hot garbage.
Speaker: I guarantee you, if I reread Why the Last Man now, I will rip my hair out.
Speaker: Anything that anything and that's not wise fault and it's not your fault, but anything that blew your mind apart from 1999 to 2009.
Speaker: I don't know why I said it that way, but anything that like blew your head off, like conceptually, if from those days, just leave it alone.
Speaker: It's it's not.
Speaker: Yeah, it's it's not going to work out.
Speaker: Those were the early the yachts were not the best years for real for real cultural longevity, were they?
Speaker: No, no.
Speaker: Me and my wife just watched the Kevin Spacey documentary on HBO.
Speaker: Oh.
Speaker: About all his evil deeds and all that stuff.
Speaker: He is not ashamed of his words.
Speaker: No, no.
Speaker: Creepily so.
Speaker: As if the man, I did not know that the man could get creepier, and yet.
Speaker: But like they showed, one of the things that they didn't address that confused me was when they show him winning his Oscar for American Beauty, and I thought about American Beauty.
Speaker: And I was just like, oh, I haven't seen that movie in years.
Speaker: And I bet that movie does not hold up at all.
Speaker: Yeah, it's one of those I'm saying something movies.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But what are you saying?
Speaker: But what?
Speaker: But what?
Speaker: You know, not everything needs to be actually said in the way that you're saying it or at all.
Speaker: Or at all.
Speaker: Or at all.
Speaker: What is it that there's beauty all around in a fucking trash bag and Kevin Spacey banging his underage neighbor?
Speaker: And Chris Cooper playing a Nazi, I guess.
Speaker: A gay Nazi.
Speaker: A gay Nazi.
Speaker: Gay Nazi.
Speaker: That's the worst kind.
Speaker: The worst kind.
Speaker: I mean, Milo Yiannopoulos was pretty bad, so.
Speaker: Pretty bad.
Speaker: Pretty bad.
Speaker: Now he's broke.
Speaker: Now he's broke, which brings a smile to my face every day.
Speaker: Which just, yeah, sometimes the world works out okay.
Speaker: works out perfectly chapter 16 snake wakes up in a room surrounded by liquid revolver ocelot and sniper wolf who despite it is mentioned despite now being bandaged is still breasting boobily of course we need we need to hear we need to know you need to know you need to know revolver ocelot has like a mechanical prosthetic now in place of his stump that he got cut off earlier um
Speaker: And Liquid is just Salad Snake with blonde hair and a British accent.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Inexplicably.
Speaker: Inexplicably.
Speaker: We learn that the Americans have made no move to negotiate and also that Liquid and Salad are brothers, which, duh.
Speaker: Anyway.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We already covered that.
Speaker: We've been foreshadowing that for 15 chapters now.
Speaker: Anyway, Snake is going to get tortured by Ocelot now.
Speaker: Bye-bye.
Speaker: They all leave.
Speaker: Ocelot and Snake exchange some banter.
Speaker: There's a Jerry Lewis reference, and Snake passes out from the pain.
Speaker: Was there more disgust then?
Speaker: Yeah, who cares?
Speaker: It's about Ocelot's past as a Russian.
Speaker: It gets covered in the game Metal Gear Solid 3, which is a much better game than this is a book.
Speaker: Anyway...
Speaker: In his cell, he calls Campbell on his codec, which I guess a cursory search of his person doesn't find because where the fuck is the codec?
Speaker: Anyway, he tells Campbell to stop playing dumb.
Speaker: Also, the body of the DARPA chief is in the cell with him.
Speaker: He looks like he's been dead for days.
Speaker: Guess what?
Speaker: My favorite detail of all time.
Speaker: He's dead for days because there's maggots crawling in and out of his body.
Speaker: Phil, how are there maggots in an Alaska archipelago?
Speaker: I don't think that's... I was literally just listening to a thing about fermenting meat in the Arctic and why it works okay up there because it's not... The warmest days are maybe 59 degrees.
Speaker: So... No.
Speaker: No bullshit.
Speaker: You would need to have imported the maggots for this scene to work.
Speaker: That's exactly it.
Speaker: It's...
Speaker: Which, you know what?
Speaker: You know what?
Speaker: Knowing Metal Gear, maybe.
Speaker: Maybe.
Speaker: Maybe.
Speaker: Maybe.
Speaker: Maybe.
Speaker: Anyway.
Speaker: Maybe.
Speaker: Snake, the DARPA chief is getting, is rotting by way of flies and maggots because, of course, he is in a frozen, like, it's not just it's cold outside.
Speaker: It's not like it's warm inside the facility for all intents and purposes.
Speaker: It's not like a hot facility.
Speaker: Besides, even if it was, that's where all the flies would have to live.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Snake promises, what's his face, the guy from Rambo that he'll save Merrill before he's taken for more torture.
Speaker: Colonel Campbell.
Speaker: Campbell, yeah.
Speaker: Whose likeness is based off of the colonel from Rambo.
Speaker: Yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker: What's his name?
Speaker: I can't believe.
Speaker: Fuck.
Speaker: I have to look it up.
Speaker: Speaking of actors from that era, Dabney Coleman died.
Speaker: Yes, I saw that.
Speaker: I thought he'd been already dead for a while.
Speaker: He was one of those guys, yeah.
Speaker: He was one of those guys that I just assumed was dead.
Speaker: Colonel Troutman.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I assumed that Dabney Coleman had been dead for a while, and then I was like, oh, he wasn't.
Speaker: He wasn't.
Speaker: Which means he should have been working more, I guess.
Speaker: He was 94.
Speaker: I mean, Dabney Coleman was playing old men, not old men, but like upper middle aged men in the 80s.
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: Maybe he should have been working less than, I don't know.
Speaker: Maybe.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, anyway, RIP Dabney Coleman, you were great.
Speaker: You were the bomb in Cloak and Dagger, yo.
Speaker: I'm going to have to take your word for it.
Speaker: And based on that recommendation, I'm never going to watch it.
Speaker: Hold on.
Speaker: I got to make sure he was in Cloak and Dagger.
Speaker: Oh, for God's sake.
Speaker: Yeah, that's probably good.
Speaker: Yeah, let me make sure.
Speaker: Yeah, no, no.
Speaker: Cloak and Dagger, Dabney Coleman.
Speaker: Cloak and Dagger.
Speaker: All right, good.
Speaker: Good.
Speaker: Starring Henry Thomas and Dabney Coleman.
Speaker: Henry Thomas, when he was...
Speaker: When he was little, the E.T.
Speaker: era, Henry Thomas, not the current Mike Flanagan starring in everything.
Speaker: Henry Thomas.
Speaker: Henry Thomas, classic.
Speaker: Henry Thomas classic, not Henry Thomas current, in which he is just, if Mike Flanagan is making it, he's in it.
Speaker: We get more stuff about Ocelots, Russians pass.
Speaker: He was called Shalashaska.
Speaker: That name keeps, like, I know that's what his name was back in the day, but they keep saying it like it's going to hit hard every time we hear it.
Speaker: Yeah, like they're expecting something out of you.
Speaker: And it makes you wonder.
Speaker: It really does.
Speaker: Yeah, Shalashaska.
Speaker: Has the SEO been fucked on this?
Speaker: What does Shalashaska mean?
Speaker: A slang for a suspicious hastily thrown together.
Speaker: Well, that I don't.
Speaker: A hastily thrown together novelization?
Speaker: It's a suspicious hastily thrown together novelization.
Speaker: Burn.
Speaker: You got burned.
Speaker: You got burnt.
Speaker: Yeah, you burnt.
Speaker: Yeah, it's a pixelate burn right there.
Speaker: There it is.
Speaker: The worst kind.
Speaker: Hey, we're not for burning books, but we've just burned your book.
Speaker: burning books.
Speaker: But don't do it.
Speaker: Not even this book.
Speaker: Please don't.
Speaker: Don't do it.
Speaker: Don't do it.
Speaker: Don't do it.
Speaker: Don't do it.
Speaker: Don't do it.
Speaker: But, you know, Fahrenheit 451.
Speaker: And all that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's a book and a recipe.
Speaker: But don't.
Speaker: But don't.
Speaker: Please don't.
Speaker: Begging you not to.
Speaker: Jesus Christ.
Speaker: We get a heart-to-heart post-torture scene where we learn about Naomi Hunter, how she had a brother, and that brother is not Gray Fox, and that snake has a lot of baggage.
Speaker: Really, now?
Speaker: Tell me the first honest thing said in this game, in this book, rather.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Otacon shows up wearing a stealth belt after Johnny, the guard, runs off to go poop in the bathroom and Snake is kind of rude to Otacon.
Speaker: And he steals a handkerchief from Otacon and places it in the middle of the room and then uses his manly ass to hide up in the ceiling.
Speaker: And when Johnny comes back, he just sees the handkerchief in the middle of the room.
Speaker: And he's like, what the fuck?
Speaker: And he goes into the cell.
Speaker: And the snake drops on him and knocks him out and takes his key card and leaves.
Speaker: And in the next room, he finds all of his belongings.
Speaker: And that's the end of this segment.
Speaker: I forgot to mention there is one part in which Snake does go into a cardboard box.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: And I appreciated that mention.
Speaker: But they had they was contractually obligated to include the contractually obligated cardboard box.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: So.
Speaker: What are you playing?
Speaker: I think it's clear how we feel.
Speaker: I didn't even put the voice on.
Speaker: What are you playing?
Speaker: It's just the defeat.
Speaker: What are you playing?
Speaker: I think I'll rally during what are you playing?
Speaker: Just get right back into it.
Speaker: There's a new roadmap for Power Wash Simulator.
Speaker: Oh, there you go.
Speaker: See, that's something worth talking about.
Speaker: That's worth talking about.
Speaker: No, I'll do it proper.
Speaker: What are you playing?
Speaker: Oh, so glad you asked, actually.
Speaker: Well, I've been playing Fallout 4.
Speaker: That's a given.
Speaker: Oh, still still playing that.
Speaker: Enjoying myself in the sense of, as I mentioned, I kind of hinted at while we were talking about the book.
Speaker: Totally going.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Uh huh.
Speaker: Uh huh.
Speaker: Through all the storyline.
Speaker: I'm just I'm I'm I'm there.
Speaker: I'm not there for story.
Speaker: I'm there to get all the settlements and connect them all through trade and maybe kill some institute goons on the way.
Speaker: Sure, sure.
Speaker: I'm playing it as mindlessly as I have ever played a Bethesda game in my entire life, and I'm having more fun that way than most, so that's worked out pretty nicely.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: I played some of Pools.
Speaker: Oh, that was the one that Michael was playing a few weeks ago.
Speaker: Yes, yes.
Speaker: I think it's interesting.
Speaker: This whole back rooms thing I'm intrigued by just because I like horror in general and it's definitely unique, but at the same time, I can't help but feel like I missed the bus on this one.
Speaker: This might be a generational thing.
Speaker: You know, in terms of like, it just doesn't really do it for me.
Speaker: I find it interesting.
Speaker: And I can see where the kind of quiet dread creeping factor is there.
Speaker: And it's actually a fascinating game in terms of it just being photorealistic at times and absolutely gorgeous.
Speaker: And you do get these wonderful moments where you're just creeping through.
Speaker: For anyone who doesn't know what I'm talking about, it's this game where you're basically playing through the back rooms, that liminal space that you read about on the internet all the time.
Speaker: And everything's covered in tiles and there are water slides where there shouldn't be water slides.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: and all that stuff.
Speaker: Non-Euclidean water slides?
Speaker: Pretty much, yeah.
Speaker: And it's a maze.
Speaker: It's what it comes down to.
Speaker: It's a maze game.
Speaker: And every now and then you'll turn a corner and there will be something just kind of sitting there or something will happen.
Speaker: There was a really effective moment where I walked up to this pit with a ladder and like grate in it.
Speaker: And I just saw these two hands kind of
Speaker: go down the ladder.
Speaker: And it was very effective.
Speaker: And I was like, okay, that sent a chill up my spine.
Speaker: Okay, I am scurred.
Speaker: Yeah, fair enough.
Speaker: But it's not enough.
Speaker: I don't know how much further I'm going to go with it.
Speaker: I played a game.
Speaker: I played the demo of a game called Cat God Ranch.
Speaker: Yeah, just the title alone had me very interested.
Speaker: It's weird.
Speaker: You play a farmer and there's this farm and you're dedicated to...
Speaker: satisfying the cat god in big quotes and it's a strategy game and you have a different animal you have groups of animals to choose from every turn and the animals have different synergies and some animals uh lay eggs and reproduce themselves and some just you know are meant to be sold at the market after a certain amount of turns and right and then you've got prey uh predator animals and
Speaker: and they eat other animals.
Speaker: And honestly, it's less about a farm ultimately and more about just the natural ecosystem.
Speaker: So you're just trying to maintain this farm and with all the right synergies and get like enough certain amount of coins that you've got to give to the cat god at the end of a week.
Speaker: And it's addictive in the sense of that kind of synergistic game always is, you know?
Speaker: But I was kind of expecting something called the Cat God.
Speaker: I was kind of expecting a darker sense of humor than it ultimately had.
Speaker: And maybe the full game will have that.
Speaker: But ultimately, it was a little too cutesy for my taste.
Speaker: I was just kind of like, meh.
Speaker: And I played the new Vampire Survivor DLC, Operation Guns.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Is that the Contra one?
Speaker: It is the contra one.
Speaker: And how was I supposed to avoid that?
Speaker: I ask you.
Speaker: And they have done such a good job allying themselves with different franchises.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Because it's so easy.
Speaker: It's so simple.
Speaker: The creator doesn't give a shit about.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So here's, and I'll put this out.
Speaker: It might be a controversial take.
Speaker: Vampire Survivors is the Fortnite character.
Speaker: Of $2 Bullet Heaven games.
Speaker: I mean, yeah.
Speaker: It doesn't have any continuity that you should give a shit about.
Speaker: You shouldn't take it seriously.
Speaker: In this one, you're being helped out by the Contra guys, you know, and you can unlock all them.
Speaker: Yellow headband and red headband.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: And there's a new level, which is...
Speaker: crawling with assets from Contra.
Speaker: And it's just, and some of them are updated, but most of them aren't.
Speaker: And it's kind of amazing like that.
Speaker: And it's got all the same, like, Giger ripoff shit that you expect from things like that.
Speaker: It's...
Speaker: I played through it.
Speaker: I got five or six of the achievements and unlocked a couple of characters and it's bliss.
Speaker: It's just more wonderful.
Speaker: It's awesome.
Speaker: And it's, I think, $250.
Speaker: One of these days, maybe in 10 years, they will release a full version of Vampire Survivors that includes all the DLC priced out.
Speaker: to the approximate price that a regular video game normally goes for.
Speaker: And it will be too much game for any one person to handle because they're just giving away just like new characters, new weapons, all the fucking time for a couple of bucks here and a couple of bucks there.
Speaker: In the end, it's going to be like thousands of hours of play time for some people.
Speaker: It's crazy.
Speaker: I don't go back to games the way I have gone back to this game.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I have not fully given up on this game the way I do with a lot of other shit.
Speaker: So I remain deeply impressed with how they're doing this shit.
Speaker: And I highly recommend it.
Speaker: It's just more of the same, but it's not the same.
Speaker: It's new stuff, but more of the same at the same time.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's great stuff.
Speaker: So that's what I've been playing.
Speaker: What about you?
Speaker: What are you playing?
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Well, I was playing Animal Well.
Speaker: Oh, okay.
Speaker: Tell me all about that.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Animal Well is a Metroidvania.
Speaker: It is made by Billy Basso, and it is published by...
Speaker: the big frog big mouth something it's dunkey's publishing company uh whatever it's called uh but billy basso is the creator and and i say that specifically uh because a lot of people have been calling it dunkey's game it's uh billy basso's game please uh actually say his name
Speaker: when you are talking about the game because I'm sure Dunkey helped in the publishing and did a lot in getting it across the line.
Speaker: But please talk about the dev in this instance.
Speaker: So I played Animal Well, and it is one of those games where I'm not sure if it's... I know a lot of people love it.
Speaker: I'm not sure if I like it just fine or I actively hate it.
Speaker: Oh, okay.
Speaker: So it's one of those... It's kind of like Tunic.
Speaker: I didn't like Tunic because to me, I was like, Tunic...
Speaker: So I'm kind of refining my take on this type of game.
Speaker: And I am less of a fan of a game that puts... It seemingly puts too much effort in the layer beyond the layer that is being presented.
Speaker: It's like... So Tunic, the combat was...
Speaker: But it was mostly about like, and there was some puzzle solving that was cool, but it was the deeper mystery.
Speaker: And I didn't really care for the deeper mystery all that much.
Speaker: There wasn't, it like, a lot of people loved it.
Speaker: And don't get me wrong.
Speaker: Don't come at me, Tunic fans.
Speaker: It just did not do anything for me.
Speaker: on any sort of level that I connected with for like, it just did not, it landed completely flat for me.
Speaker: So with that, those inputs, like the deeper mystery, okay.
Speaker: And the gameplay, I was like, fucking, I don't like Tunic.
Speaker: It's, I don't think it's, I don't think it's particularly, it's not my cup of tea.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, so two Nika's like that.
Speaker: There was a game last year and I mentioned, I put it on my honorable mentions last year called Void Stranger.
Speaker: And I liked Void Stranger more because I, it was the base gameplay loop was kind of like,
Speaker: It was kind of Sokoban, it was like a Sokoban that you could just kind of play.
Speaker: There was more stuff deeper down, but you didn't really have to necessarily do it.
Speaker: So I was satisfied enough with Void Stranger.
Speaker: Now, Animal Well is the third game I've played in this realm where it's like, ooh, me thinks there's another lair beneath it.
Speaker: And it's so Animal Well is is OK as a Metroidvania.
Speaker: It's got some really cool tools and stuff like that.
Speaker: Controls are fine.
Speaker: There's some weird game design design decisions in terms of like.
Speaker: impediments like falling in the water grants you like puts you back at the last point that you started but falling on spikes does damage with almost no cooldown in terms of getting back out of the spikes so you'll lose almost all your entire health like okay well what's the point just either insta kill me or restart me don't
Speaker: And then some puzzles are a little obnoxious in terms of like, oh, you messed up.
Speaker: Now I have to go all the way back around this series of rooms
Speaker: just to trigger the puzzle again.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: It's like I have to wait.
Speaker: It's just like there's a bunch of tedious puzzle solves in the game.
Speaker: And that's all just in layer one of the game.
Speaker: And then there's four layers to the game.
Speaker: Layer one is the main gameplay, and you roll credits by the end of that.
Speaker: That's four to five hours.
Speaker: And then layer two is just a literal egg hunt, and you have to find all 64 eggs hidden throughout the game.
Speaker: And I don't know, I just, I don't have a lot of, I wasn't getting a lot of enjoyment out of the egg hunt aspect itself.
Speaker: So I think I'm done playing it.
Speaker: And I'm trying to preserve whether my feeling for those first five hours, which were, you know, it's kind of nice.
Speaker: or outweighed by the fact that I then spent six more hours in this game world not really enjoying it.
Speaker: Yeah, that's tough.
Speaker: Because they, yeah, they took you five steps forward and then basically five steps back again.
Speaker: Yeah, it's just, it was like one of those, is the juice worth the squeeze here?
Speaker: Am I getting anything out of this?
Speaker: So, I don't know.
Speaker: That's kind of my take on Animal Well.
Speaker: Your mileage may vary, and I would...
Speaker: I would definitely go to a viewer who you feel aligns with your views on games to see if you should play check with your doctor to see if animal well is right for you.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's not for me.
Speaker: Um, uh, it's not, it's okay for me.
Speaker: There's probably something better.
Speaker: Uh, if I'm getting my metroidvania fix, uh, if I said, if I, for me personally, if I had to say 2024, one metroidvania go, I would say, okay, Prince of Persia lost crown.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: The Prince of Persia game, boom, right off the bat.
Speaker: Sure, it's more of a higher budget game, but I mean, we're not really comparing budgets here.
Speaker: We're just comparing what game you like better.
Speaker: What did you have more fun with, period?
Speaker: I had a lot more fun with Prince of Persia.
Speaker: And it was really cool to be able to play Prince of Persia in Farsi.
Speaker: That is neat.
Speaker: That is a neat detail.
Speaker: I've got the demo of that downloaded on my Switch.
Speaker: Yeah, you should give it a shot.
Speaker: It's a good one.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: What else have I been playing?
Speaker: I've also been playing Fallout 4.
Speaker: I'm trying to figure out why I bounced off of it all those years ago.
Speaker: I'm starting to see why.
Speaker: It was not well liked when it came out.
Speaker: It was a very controversial one.
Speaker: I think the settlement thing...
Speaker: Like to me, in terms of game design, the settlement thing needed to happen much later after some actual linearity in terms of quests.
Speaker: Like give me some forward momentum in terms of doing shit.
Speaker: But the game kind of like you stumble upon the Minutemen and then you take them back to the thing and it just screeches to a halt where it's like, well, you want to start playing SimCity?
Speaker: It's like they're trying to get you off track with the side quests, which normally you do yourself.
Speaker: It's like they're trying to do that.
Speaker: It is funny.
Speaker: You know, the golden rule from the Faw TV show was thou shalt get sidetracked with bullshit.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: We don't need help with that.
Speaker: We'll figure it out.
Speaker: We got it.
Speaker: I found that several of my playthroughs of that game, I've only beaten it once and so many, and like 90% of the other playthroughs ended before I even got to Diamond City.
Speaker: Because of that, I think, because of the pacing of that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's weird pacing.
Speaker: And so I was like, all right, fine.
Speaker: I was playing around with the settlement and it's like, well, you got to build a power thing and you got to do this and be like, fuck it.
Speaker: I'm just going.
Speaker: I'm leaving.
Speaker: Bye.
Speaker: The settlement stuff isn't really done very well.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So I was like, I'm just going to the next thing.
Speaker: And I'd be like, all right.
Speaker: And got to the next settlement.
Speaker: And they're like, hey, can you go kill some raiders?
Speaker: And be like, I can kill some raiders.
Speaker: I can do that.
Speaker: I'm not going to build you a shack.
Speaker: Get out of my way.
Speaker: Thankfully, that's usually what they want.
Speaker: Usually they're like, there's some super mutants up the way.
Speaker: Please kill them.
Speaker: Please kill them.
Speaker: I got dessert placed on my.
Speaker: Oh, wow.
Speaker: Look at that.
Speaker: Look at that.
Speaker: Strawberry Shortcake.
Speaker: That's beautiful.
Speaker: So Fallout 4, I've been playing that a little bit, just kind of like meh.
Speaker: And I am still, so I finally am getting ready to play Pentiment.
Speaker: Oh, okay.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Crow Country is up next as well.
Speaker: I gotta get into that.
Speaker: That one looks fascinating to me.
Speaker: And I just started today because I saw Northern Line playing it, and let me say the man's a tastemaker.
Speaker: A game called Crypt Master.
Speaker: I just downloaded the demo for that.
Speaker: That looks fascinating.
Speaker: So it's like...
Speaker: It's a typing game where it's a typing dungeon crawl RPG.
Speaker: Fascinating.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Where your attacks are like you type your attacks, right?
Speaker: And each you have four members of your party and each of them has different attacks.
Speaker: So like...
Speaker: uh, the fighter, uh, their main attack is hit.
Speaker: So you hit.
Speaker: And then the thief is jab, jab.
Speaker: And then, um, the bard hit his, uh, first skill.
Speaker: So their first skill for each person is a free skill.
Speaker: And that means it doesn't count towards like, there's a, like a, there's like a soul meter, um, up in the corner.
Speaker: And, uh,
Speaker: you have to eat insects to keep the soul meter filled.
Speaker: Oh, that's some fucking Dracula shit.
Speaker: So, and as you, as you each letter takes a point down from that of the words that you type, right?
Speaker: Of the attacks that you type, but their first skill,
Speaker: free so hit jab and then there's one for the the bard called yell and you go and you type yell and you hit that and that resets the cooldown on the fighters timer so he could go hit again and then there's the fourth character which is a witch and she casts spells and all that stuff it's like so it's like type type type
Speaker: It's like, it's like, it's like figuring out the rhythm of like, like, I got to type this guy, I got to type this skill from this person, each person, like I opened up the skill sheet and I was like, oh, they have like a hundred
Speaker: words each that they learn as their skills.
Speaker: Oh my God.
Speaker: It is intense.
Speaker: That is crazy.
Speaker: So, uh, I just started playing that.
Speaker: It's like one of those games.
Speaker: So I put, put it in for like an hour, over an hour.
Speaker: Uh, and I'm like,
Speaker: I'm like, okay, I'm not 100% sure if it's for me, but it's really weird and interesting, and I appreciate the fact that it's weird and interesting.
Speaker: So, yeah, Crypt Master is also what I've been playing.
Speaker: Okay, I'm really looking forward to that now.
Speaker: I don't know if I'll get into it, but it sounds fascinating.
Speaker: We need more games like that.
Speaker: I'll at least watch somebody play through it.
Speaker: Sort of like the Sucker for Love games.
Speaker: I don't play those types of games, but I do watch the Scary Game Squad play them.
Speaker: And I just finished watching their playthrough of the new Sucker for Love game.
Speaker: game that just came out.
Speaker: So, yeah, you know, sometimes a game is a game you watch somebody else play.
Speaker: Sometimes it's a game for you.
Speaker: Sometimes it's a spectator sport.
Speaker: Sometimes it's a spectator sport.
Speaker: But you know what isn't a spectator sport is following us on social media.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: You should do that on X, Twitter.
Speaker: They're the same thing.
Speaker: Instagram.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Go subscribe to our YouTube page.
Speaker: Actually, if you're listening to this and you never listen to us on YouTube, do us a favor, though.
Speaker: Go over to YouTube, youtube.com slash pixelitpod.
Speaker: I'm going to sneeze.
Speaker: Hold on.
Speaker: Hey!
Speaker: youtube.com slash pixelipod.
Speaker: Go over there and just hit the subscribe button.
Speaker: It'll do us a solid in terms of getting our numbers closer to the monetization level on YouTube.
Speaker: Even if we're not running ads yet on YouTube, it just gives us more control over what we can do with our channel.
Speaker: So, hey, if you have a moment and you have a YouTube account and you're listening on Spotify, you're listening on Apple iTunes,
Speaker: You're feeling bored.
Speaker: You're at home.
Speaker: You got nothing to do.
Speaker: There's no Mari Povich on.
Speaker: Go over to YouTube.com slash PixelPod.
Speaker: Hit the subscribe button and you'd be doing us a huge favor.
Speaker: Otherwise, I think that'll do it for tonight's episode.
Speaker: What do you think, Phil?
Speaker: I think, yeah, I think that might be it.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Good night.
Speaker: Good night.
Speaker: Bye.
