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More like Benny Hill Am I right? (Return to Silent Hill - Part 2)
281 Plays1 month ago
For the number of pages there isn't a whole lot going on in this book.
We are in the adaptation endgame now.
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About the Book
In the latest Silent Hill film, based on the classic psychological horror video game Silent Hill 2, James must return to Silent Hill to rescue his soulmate. The town has been changed by an unknown malevolent force that makes James doubt his ability to survive. In my restless dreams, I see that town. SILENT HILL. RETURN TO SILENT HILL brings the iconic psychological horror franchise back to the big screen. When James receives a mysterious letter from his lost love Mary, he is drawn to Silent Hill—a once-familiar town now consumed by darkness. As he searches for her, James faces monstrous creatures and unravels a terrifying truth that will push him to the brink of survival.
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Transcript
00:00:00
Speaker
it's So is there any continuity like in consciousness, hypothetically, between what it was and what it becomes? and this is that's ah That's a good question. this is going to bother me probably for the rest of my life.
00:00:13
Speaker
Yeah, probably. It's like week the bug of Yeah, exactly. The bug of Theseus. um
00:00:23
Speaker
You know what else is a ship of Theseus? What's that? Hey everybody, welcome back to Pixel It. My name is Kevin with me as always is Phil on today's show. in part two of the return to silent Hill.
00:00:38
Speaker
That's right. We're we're talking more about James. We're going to say more things about James. Good old James. good old good old James we're gonna talk about Mary we're gonna talk about Angela we're talking about Eddie and oh fucking Eddie Jesus Christ okay yeah this they somehow make the worst version of Eddie like in this movie yeah they they made him worse I don't know how they made him worse but they did it They did it.
00:01:09
Speaker
Yeah. So if you're, ah you know, interested in knowing what we were talking about before the show started, it was a really hot topic. We're talking about fucking...
00:01:23
Speaker
Like butterflies and shit. Yeah. Yeah. Lepidoptera, motherfucker.
00:01:32
Speaker
Like Phil has that shit. Phil, I'm sure, has a bolo tie of ah of a moth somewhere. I do. I have a death's head moth bolo tie. A death's head moth. What is the caterpillar that a death's head moth comes from?
00:01:46
Speaker
That's a very good question. Let me see. This is Phil Jeopardy. If there was just like a bug version of Jeopardy, i think Phil would be and in pretty good company.
00:01:57
Speaker
I would be happy. Oh, they're very pretty. Wow. ah Yeah, they're a form of Hawk Moth. And here, I'll put it in the chat.
00:02:08
Speaker
All right. They are not the same color. They are actually kind of like more fabulous. Is there a way I can put a picture in this?
00:02:21
Speaker
No, I think if you just send me the link, though. I'll send you the link. That'll be the easiest thing to really. Yeah, they're they're like bright green and absolutely gorgeous. And they turn into ah these fucking like harbingers of doom, ah which which makes sense because sometimes you'll get a caterpillar that's like really bland looking, just brown and all this stuff. And then and suddenly it's this bright, colorful butterfly or something. So, yeah. God damn the death's head.
00:02:52
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. That's a fucking... that the The face on the back of it is terrifying. Yes. Yes. A very, very fucked up thing. Yeah. They're huge too. I love it.
00:03:04
Speaker
So yeah, the caterpillar... Yeah, it's not unlike the um the color of the regular hawk moth that we had a caterpillar that was growing on... Or not growing.
00:03:18
Speaker
Munching our tomatoes the other day. uh just a little less fabulous with the it didn't have the blue racing stripe aren't those cool god damn that shit's cool and that bright kind of tealy kind of blue i love it you guys need to do this google the death's head moth uh caterpillar you will not regret it it's cool as shit really cool design aesthetic it's got absolutely yeah What are we talking about? Oh, you know what I was talking about? I was talking about patreon.com slash pixelipod where you too can go listen to us talk about ah at even more length ah hawk moths and butterflies and ah growing things in your own garden and eating those things.
00:04:05
Speaker
Not the hawk moths. Not eating the hawk moths. Probably a bad idea. Probably a bad idea. Probably don't eat it don For the most part, like I know there's like insects that are good and fine to eat, like, but for the most part, consult your local ah entomologist ah before consuming an insect because some of them are no bueno for humans. Yeah.
00:04:34
Speaker
Just assume it's a no yeah for you that's before you go. that's That's a smart foundational beginning. Just start at no and and and go from there. Crickets, fine. you crickets can Crickets, you can turn them into a flour, bake with them, whatever you want to do. I've been meaning to do that. i i You can get it. that Apparently, it's good for like people keep bringing up banana nut muffins that cricket flour really good for banana nut muffins and like yeah red it's like heavier so I'm gonna try that and I'm going to eat it and you're gonna yeah
00:05:09
Speaker
Part of me wants to like give Emily one and not tell her ah what it is until after she's had it. I think that is grounds for divorce. Yeah. She will kick my ass, man. oh that No, that's the thing. She will not divorce me. She will make my life miserable.
00:05:25
Speaker
ah Suddenly this amazing thoughtful wife turns into my greatest enemy. yeah and that and And all because of a muffin.
00:05:38
Speaker
All because of muffin that was probably baked with love, but... Probably. um ah Not... Yeah. So patreon.com slash pixelpod. You can have more, like, listen to more conversations like this on that site. We have the the bonus episodes posted. and We got three tiers, $1. $5 gets you those bonus episodes, and $10 gets your name shouted out in every episode.
00:06:01
Speaker
And I would thank those members of the $10 tier. And you are hiding. Song 85, Jesus loves you. Kyle Seaman, Ruthless Mudder, Middle of Things, Sigma Sal, Sanguine Flatulence, Shilohood, Chut Beaks, Dumb and a Thick, and Friendly Friend.
00:06:15
Speaker
Thank you so much for being a friend. Patreon.com slash PixelPod. Do it today.
00:06:22
Speaker
Well... Do we want to ah marsh this body? if we If we have to. if we I don't think we do. We do. We tied ourselves into this obligation. The promise was made to marshists to put this body in the marsh.
00:06:39
Speaker
And daggomet, we're going to do the in-water ending for this book. When I tell you to dump a body in the marsh, you dump them In when I tell you.
00:06:54
Speaker
and Yeah, probably. The book will end up in the water. um So ah chapter 17. We're picking up at chapter 17. James comes home one day to find Mary and her friends being all weird in the living room of their apartment, talking about how love is difficult, but Jonathan Crane showed them the way.
00:07:16
Speaker
When James makes himself known, they act like they were doing nothing weird at all. his the Mary's friends leave and Mary mentions that they just came by and James confronts Mary a little bit about whatever the heck is going on and she's cagey and she just wants to keep itt compartmentalized. she's like She's like, I just want things to be between us, James.
00:07:39
Speaker
And then me and my friends are another thing. and So weird. It's so weird. Mary then goes and closes a cabinet with a bust of a strange man in it.
00:07:50
Speaker
um And that bust was Christy Gnome's busty husband. Hell yeah! dirty slut. That one's for free.
00:08:01
Speaker
yeah ah Chapter 18.
00:08:06
Speaker
We're back in present day and James finds a patient form for from Mary from the Brookhaven Hospital and decides that's where he's got to go. On his way out, he runs into a dude that is throwing up in the bathroom.
00:08:18
Speaker
This guy's name is Eddie and he's a piece of shit. He's not quite like Eddie from the game, who is also a piece of shit, just a different kind. He's from Silent Hill and is sick from all the stuff in town, but he also thinks that the place is heaven now because there's no one left to make fun of him.
00:08:35
Speaker
Eddie joins James briefly and they continue together until they find a grate in the hallway and a little girl on the other side of it. James tries to convince the little girl to come to him, but then Eddie's like, get the fuck out of here, little girl.
00:08:48
Speaker
And also Pyramid Head shows up. ah Eddie's like, forget it, man, and runs away. And then the girl the girl decides to hide yeah in an opening in the wall and James has got to run because here comes Pyramid Head.
00:09:04
Speaker
Chapter 19. the The least interesting iteration of Pyramid Head I've ever seen before, by the way. Yeah, right? Just... yeah ah There's nothing fun about this Pyramid Head. There's nothing...
00:09:20
Speaker
ethereal, not the pyramids heads ethereal, but there's nothing. I'm trying to find the word. It's on the tip of my tongue. There's like a ah grandiosity to there's almost like in a weird way, there's almost like this demonic regalness to a pyramid head. And it's so matter of fact in both the film and the book, it just doesn't inspire. Doesn't translate.
00:09:45
Speaker
Pyramid Head goes straight into rage mode in this. And in the in the game, pyramid the first time you see Pyramid Head, he is just staring at you.
00:09:58
Speaker
through this grate. Yeah. He's not doing anything. And it's it's so unnerving. And this one, it's like, ah, he's coming. And ah everybody everybody clearly is aware of him, which is different because, okay. So, all right.
00:10:20
Speaker
For those of you who have played the game, you know, probably what I'm going to get into. And for those of you who haven't, here's the here's the lowdown is that in the game, there is no there's pyramid head is not seen by anybody else.
00:10:35
Speaker
Nobody else has any interactions with pyramid head. Or any other monster. None of the other monsters are are visualized by other people because Silent Hill, in the way that James perceives it, is only in that way for James.
00:10:56
Speaker
For Eddie, it's ice cold. And for Angela, it's burning hot. And for James, it's this fog-laden mystery town that he can't make heads or tails of.
00:11:09
Speaker
So one of the things that the movie and the book adaptation does is it collapses everything from everybody's perspective into one thing that everybody shares.
00:11:22
Speaker
So in this instance, Eddie and everybody else is like, ah, the the fucking monsters out there or whatever. And when you talk to Laura in the game, the young girl, she to her, the town is just empty.
00:11:40
Speaker
There's just no one there. And it's not fucked up or anything. It's just empty. Yeah. There's no monsters. Yeah. It's just no one. and She doesn't find any like there's just James and Angela and Eddie and that's it. yeah It's just like it's weird that there aren't that many people here. Huh? ah Huh?
00:12:02
Speaker
So, yes. So and that's kind of the thing with Pyramid Head being seen by others. And also Pyramid Head being in the original Silent Hill movie.
00:12:17
Speaker
it's a very It's something that is specifically tied to James Sunderland. And even though it's over the years become extracted from James Sunderland's point of view...
00:12:30
Speaker
it doesn't make sense for it to be so. And I know the the that we'll get to it. The movie and the book does more make it more explicit about it being related to James Sunderland. But the fact that he's visible to everybody else...
00:12:45
Speaker
And that ah the changes and and and the monsters and all that are visible to everybody else are visible to everybody else is a huge difference between what is ah the game's text versus the text of the book and the movie. Yeah.
00:13:08
Speaker
it It makes everything that much more banal. it it's just it's it just It's just a monster movie when you do it that way. it it's it's It's not about your inner demons. It's not about like anything beyond like, oh, well, this is it's a big scary guy. with He's got a triangle on his head. Isn't that terrifying? like That's it.
00:13:31
Speaker
Yeah. And that's the thing is that the the the movie in the book ah try to have it both ways where it's like inner demons, but also there's stuff happening. Yeah. um But it's really happening, but it's also inner demons, but also it's all real.
00:13:51
Speaker
um it's It's trying to explicitly have it both ways instead of... The thing that works so well in the game is that, and I know people have so many theories about Silent Hill 2.
00:14:08
Speaker
Of course. the The thing that makes it work so well in the game is that it's not explicit about anything. It's like, these events happen?
00:14:20
Speaker
Question mark? He sees things? Maybe? Yeah. We're not saying yes or no We're just showing you what his experience is rather than in this instance in the book, in the movie where it's like, no, this explicitly happens like this, but also this also explicitly happens like this. And they're two diametrically opposed versions or flavors of horror.
00:14:45
Speaker
Yes. It's very much the the um limitation of the medium. um Yeah. that's That's what horror in video games can do that you just can't do in a book or in a movie or or it's a little easier in a movie, but certainly almost impossible in a book where it's just like the keeping the audience in the dark in a way that the audience is thrilled to be in the dark.
00:15:12
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, and then I mean, and unless it's like, i don't know, House of Leaves, but that's just more. That's a whole other bag of wax. Yeah. Bag your wax, ladies and gentlemen. and Yeah. Yeah.
00:15:30
Speaker
Bag it up. You're right, though. that is That is a pretty creative and interesting way of doing as much as I didn't really care for that book. ah You cannot say that it wasn't like really innovative and creative. It was really interesting. ah it was just It was just a slog for me to get through. That's all.
00:15:49
Speaker
But yeah. Yeah. um And you can't do an audio book of it. So that's. No, you really can't.
00:16:00
Speaker
um So we're at chapter 19 now and James is running through the hallways and he finds a disembodied head that looks like Mary. ah He tries talking to it, but then a bunch of moths erupt from its mouth and he drops it.
00:16:14
Speaker
And the head rolls towards a mantis like clockwork monster, which puts the head on and begins to give chase. ah James runs away and finds an apartment to hide in. He then hides inside of a closet and the Merry Mantis monster ah comes into the apartment looking for him.
00:16:32
Speaker
It's just about to find him when Pyramid Head shows up and beats it to death. Now, Pyramid Head is looking for James and just as he is about to find James in the closet, the air raid siren goes off and James passes out.
00:16:45
Speaker
um Yes, so...
00:16:49
Speaker
uh, chapter 20. Got that taken care of. Got that taken care of. um James wakes up in a room that seems to be more like a ballet practice room.
00:16:59
Speaker
ah Angela is in there and she speaks cryptically about how he can't save Mary. This scene is relatively close-ish to the game, but in the end, she doesn't give her knife to him because it's all about Mary and Angela has no plot or agency in this version of the story.
00:17:17
Speaker
James offers to help. She tells him not to touch her and to leave, so he does. That's the one thing that i really hate about and we'll kind of get into it when we get into part three is the merging of Angela, who is very clearly played, is but played by the same actress who plays Mary, that Angela is just another, in a terrible wig.
00:17:46
Speaker
Angela is just another version of Mary, basically. Um, but just one that James does not, is not able to recognize, uh, unlike Maria.
00:17:58
Speaker
ah Chapter 21. James is walking through the streets of Silent Hill again and finds Laura sitting on on the top of a wall. She climbed up there to avoid one of the dudes that crawl around on the ground.
00:18:11
Speaker
She jumps down and James catches her and asks her about her doll, which is basically a dead fetus that she is... Yeah... That's a cheese car. I've heard of baby alive, but... oh ah ah And actually, the thing that I thought of was the the the baby in PT that is in the sink, the sink baby.
00:18:40
Speaker
The jelly belly baby. The little jelly belly baby just got... Yeah. um And she says Mary gave it to her. And then ah she runs away from James when the radio begins to crackle ah and and she runs towards the park and James follows her.
00:19:02
Speaker
ah Chapter 22, we get a flashback chapter of Mary and James on the lake. Mary tells James the story of a disease that ravaged the town when it was first founded and caused the hospital to be built and how they dumped like 60 people into the lake to dispose of the bodies and that the lake might be haunted.
00:19:22
Speaker
James then sketches Mary, and when she grabs for the sketch, she falls into the water, which is cold. They make cute promises of many more sketches, and and he's like, aren't you getting cold in the water? And she's like, it's not that cold once you get used to it.
00:19:38
Speaker
Now this wasn't in the movie, was it? Or am I just completely zoned out of that? I don't remember. i would have to remember that being, I don't remember this part being in the movie.
00:19:49
Speaker
ah Yeah. probably watch my yeah yeah the The movie already had way too many flashbacks to him and Mary being happy. Right. ah So yeah, that's fine. I just, i I remember like really racking my brain trying to remember if this was in it and I don't think it I could always rewatch the movie on like 5x speed. I am ah still considering making that edit of the movie.
00:20:13
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So ah chapter 23, James meets a brand new character in the park. It's Mary's doppelganger, Maria.
00:20:23
Speaker
She prods him a bit for being unsure about his status with Mary. And he's like, oh, my God, she looks just like her. ah Maria says that James is the first person she's run into in weeks and decides to come with him to the hospital. and Just then, there's a radio crackle and they got to get a move on.
00:20:39
Speaker
They hide behind a Ford F-150 Super Duty with twin turbo cab engines or something. And Maria is trying to get his attention to take a shortcut, but James is lost in a flashback. Woo!
00:20:52
Speaker
Woo! When you actually like just write down what happens in a chapter, they go by so fast. Yeah. um Yeah. there's There's a lot of chapters where it's just they're they're just running or it's just five pages of description of a painting or a building or something.
00:21:12
Speaker
Yeah, but when you get down to it, it's none of it's terribly ah necessary. Like the actual beats are he sees them. He follows the end. yeah And that's chapter 21. Like, yeah, no, it's absolutely what it is.
00:21:29
Speaker
ah Chapter 24. One day, James saw Mary from across the street meeting up with some of her quote-unquote friends and decides to follow them to wherever they're going because he's been getting bad vibes.
00:21:40
Speaker
He follows them to an alley near the Silent Hill Historical Society and then runs into a den at dead end with a fence only to find a horizontal cut in it that allows him to sneak through.
00:21:51
Speaker
Then he finds that the alley is a dead end beyond that until he discovers a super secret hidden door with a hidden button that opens up ah that opens up and below is only darkness.
00:22:02
Speaker
oh Dun, dun, dun! ah Chapter 25. ah James steps out of it as the armless begins to attack.
00:22:13
Speaker
They circle around the truck so that aren the... and ah James circles around the truck so that the armless is acid, ah hits the rope that's holding down a stack of two-by-fours in the back of the truck so he can then take one and begins beating the armless with it.
00:22:28
Speaker
ah until he gets a mastodon to the 2x4 and it's useless. ah Maria gets a mastodon on her jacket James helps her get it off before it touches her skin. Maria then leads James through the shortcuts to get to Brookhaven Hospital.
00:22:43
Speaker
Chapter 26. James and Maria get to the hospital. Maria again asks James about the nature of his relationship with Mary, referring to her to her as his, quote, kind of girlfriend.
00:22:55
Speaker
James begins going through a pile of papers to figure out where she might be, and Maria fucks off to stretch her legs. Then Maria finds a voice recording of a doctor talking about Mary. And Maria talks about how there are rumors that ah Jonathan Crane's cult put hallucinogens into the city's water supply.
00:23:12
Speaker
James flashes back again.
00:23:17
Speaker
Chapter 27. James ventures down in the darkness and finds a group of being all culty in a large room. Darrow, one of the friends, is giving a speech about how Jonathan Crane led them to all of this. And she is joined by the twins up on the pedestal.
00:23:33
Speaker
They reveal that they have Mary and they have given her some sort of a drug. This scene is intercut with the audio of the recording that Maria is playing with a doctor telling Mary that the drug that they were giving her did permanent damage to her body and killed her free will.
00:23:49
Speaker
Mary begins to bleed and hemorrhage from every hole and the group of people lose their minds and begin like sopping it up and drinking the blood while James is screaming for her name.
00:24:00
Speaker
I can see why they didn't include that scene in the movie. did include that in the movie. Oh man, maybe I missed that. Yeah, I think this blood and drinking it.
00:24:10
Speaker
I think it was included. ah Chapter 28. The siren begins to wail and James leads Maria out of the office. Having traced a path to the emergency exits, he tells her that the Mary was admitted to the toxicology unit.
00:24:25
Speaker
They run through the hospital and this chapter becomes one long chase and fight scene with the nurses. At some point, Maria gets stabbed, and initially she fights through it, but when they get to relative safety, she collapses.
00:24:38
Speaker
Yes. Excuse me. So, ah yeah, that's and that's that's the stuff. that's That's all the book for for part two.
00:24:51
Speaker
ah Yeah. Feels like I went through it fast, but also... Not a lot to get into. yeah I don't know how you're going to link them that without actually padding the goddamn thing, which look, some of our authors have no problem doing. We want to avoid.
00:25:09
Speaker
Yeah. up Now I got a question because yeah admittedly my silent hill knowledge is not, uh, really in depth. I've, I've, I've never fully played any of them. I've, I've watched some let's plays of some different versions of it. Uh, that sort of thing. So I, I get, and I, and I, and I've watched, uh, the other movie that this particular director, uh, made, uh, 20 years ago.
00:25:34
Speaker
And, um, So the nurses. Yeah. That's like, that's about his repression, right? About like the way he handled her in the hospital and everything. Yeah. So everything. ah Yeah.
00:25:51
Speaker
So everything in silent Hill is thematically tied back to the way James ah views his relationship with Mary. Right.
00:26:05
Speaker
Right. so the nurses are very hyper-sexualized. Right. Maria is a version of Mary that is more along the lines of what James would have dreamed of.
00:26:22
Speaker
um You know, in the original game, she's basically wearing Christina Aguilera Teen Choice Awards outfit. Right. Right. right um And even in the in even in, I would say, the remake, they did a they even it made it more um obvious with things like the armless because they are wearing high heels um and the mannequin monsters are all it's basically just pairs of legs sewn together um that are ah just like you know legs.
00:27:05
Speaker
legs um And I, well, I ask because, because as you pointed out, they're going on in a much more literal direction yeah with this ah version of silent hill to the nurses. When I remember watching the movie and now again, reading the book kind of stuck out like a sore thumb in the sense of like, like my wife watched the movie with me and she was like, what, why are they nurses?
00:27:31
Speaker
She's like, why why why is it like, why are they sexy nurses? She goes like, that's, she's like, that always bothered me. Like, cause they had that in the, ah in the first movie too. But she was like, I don't understand. They're, they're grotesque, horrible things, but they still got to make them sexy. It feels gross to me. And i went, well, that's the idea from what I understand. It's meant to be, you know, kind of a comment on his,
00:27:53
Speaker
his, you know, his sexuality and and his repressed nature with his wife and the guilt of her death and all that shit. And she's like, okay, I didn't get any of that from this. And I can't help but agree with her. It's right.
00:28:06
Speaker
It feels more like fan service. It feels like we're putting the nurses in here because you expect the nurses to be in here. Right. Yes, exactly. um I agree. I think that's kind of like a, um,
00:28:23
Speaker
I think that's that's ah that's a big point is that things are just happening. Like Eddie, for example, is in it.
00:28:34
Speaker
He's in the movie and he's just in the one scene in the movie. We get a second scene of him in the book later in the book, but it's still not...
00:28:45
Speaker
It still feels pointless, right? Right. Yeah, it it is. It's it's he's in there long enough for you to go. What the fuck is this guy doing here? Like he doesn't he doesn't really serve a purpose. He doesn't, you know, help with anything. He's just another guy that is way too ah open ah with his situation with a stranger. He just who monologues at you, you know?
00:29:11
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. And I think one of the things that is not happening here, and I kind of spoke about it already, was that we're not able to compare and contrast what James is going through with what anybody else is going through because everybody else in the story seems to be just another version of Angela or James. even I feel like Eddie is supposed to be a stand-in for a version of James rather than just like...
00:29:41
Speaker
another guy who's going through his own story in Silent Hill that you... is almost like a... he's almost like a warning for James.
00:29:54
Speaker
Right. ah James' inability to deal with with whatever's going on with him. And Eddie, instead of dealing with it, starts to lean into it um and let Silent Hill just kind of become this you know take over his personality, so to speak.
00:30:13
Speaker
the The worst parts of his personality. um Yeah. So it's it's narratively, it's it's like if you squint really hard, it's clearly Silent Hill 2.
00:30:27
Speaker
um Right. you don't Actually, you don't even have to squint that hard. It's like the beats are there for Silent Hill 2. It's got some, but the thing is, it's like a Frankenstein's monster of Silent Hill 2 where it's got important bits carved out and replaced with bits from not Silent Hill or possibly from Silent Hill one where there was a cult, you know, one in three is about a cult.
00:30:54
Speaker
Okay. So there is cult shit in, in other, there is cult shit in the series. It's just a hundred percent not, With Silent Hill 2. Okay. Okay. Because it feels so weird in this. Like the the cult aspect is like we are already dealing with a lot of weird shit. We don't need her background to also have some because it doesn't connect to anything.
00:31:19
Speaker
It doesn't. Not really. It's right. It's. it's just another spooky thing and it just I can't I can't I also can't stop thinking of Rosemary's baby ah with them because it's just it's that kind of like cast of quirky characters ah right it's like oh so campy and it's like is that what you're going for I okay yeah it is very Rosemary's baby except it's not um It's Rosemary's baby without being told through the feminine horror lens.
00:31:53
Speaker
Right. Right. And it's a dude telling the female story. It's a dude trying to tell a female story almost. And if you're interested in seeing something that is that vein, yeah.
00:32:09
Speaker
um That is it's like it's something that is not the diet version of it. This is like diet feminine horror. so rights Yes. Yes. Yes. If you want the full full fat calories. Yeah. Go see Rosemary's Baby or on Netflix. Now there's a show. There's a miniseries called Something Very Bad is Going to Happen.
00:32:32
Speaker
um which I recommend people go and watch ah because it really hits a lot of the, ah a lot of those feminine horror ah spots. I like think you, yeah, I think you'd like it, Phil. That sounds interesting. I'll take a look at that. Something very bad is going to happen on Netflix.
00:32:55
Speaker
Um, just ignore the fact that it was produced by the Duffer brothers. Like yeah they're just, they're literally just the producers. Do my best. Yeah. Yeah. sounds good. And I appreciate, uh, something that has the, uh, that those kinds of titles, um,
00:33:15
Speaker
Like so like ah they're going to kill you. think it's a movie. I like we're going in this weird direction, especially in horror with these strange like titles of stories and books that sound like it should be a fallout boy song.
00:33:32
Speaker
Yeah. You know, it's like a full sentence or something. Right. Yeah. So, ah yeah. um So that's that's the book so far.
00:33:44
Speaker
and got another another chunk of it to go. ah Phil, ah in that mode, though, ah to that end,
00:33:56
Speaker
um
00:33:59
Speaker
What are you playing? Oh, okay. Well, um it has been a good week. ah I ah played the demo for, I think you played this, Horror Plant?
00:34:12
Speaker
Yes. Horrippolence, I think it's connected. Okay, that makes way more sense. Horrippolence sounds way better. um What an interesting game. Yeah. Like an actual, they they actually took...
00:34:28
Speaker
the clicker idler kind of thing and added some honest to God gameplay to it. Yes. I love the fucking atmosphere. I love the weird vintage souls like kind of vibe of the whole thing. ah It's very dark fantasy. Very cool. I don't know if I've got room in my heart for another idler.
00:34:52
Speaker
ah But the truth of the matter is, is i I played this goddamn demo right to the fucking end. yeah So maybe, ah maybe i really I really dug the time I spent with it.
00:35:03
Speaker
um I started playing ah the Dark Rites of Arkham, which I played the demo of. this you This is a game for you, Kevin. You're gonna love this.
00:35:14
Speaker
ah it's It's got it's it's a lot of fun. It is a classic LucasArts style point and click adventure ah set in Lovecraftian world.
00:35:26
Speaker
And so you've got your smart ass hard boiled detective and his occultist, you know, nerd partner, and they're trying to solve these murders. ah And i'm I'm really enjoying I'm kind of I've recently gotten back into really sinking my teeth in the story of ah of games, which ah for a while there, I was just kind of like, ah, let's move through it. And I'm really kind of taking my time with this one. And it's it's it's paying off. What's the name of it again?
00:35:57
Speaker
It's called The Dark Rites of Arkham. Dark Rites. There we go. Ah, yes. And the the font is stylized very much like a ah, there we go.
00:36:11
Speaker
i think I, right. Yeah. That's my wish list. Yeah. You take one look at it and you're like, oh, Kevin needs to play this. this it's yeah It's really as simple as that. um Weirdo characters. ah it's It's just lighthearted enough, but kind of foreboding at the same time. lot of fun.
00:36:30
Speaker
Really, really like this one. ah So I think that's one I'm going to play all the way end. I think you'd like it too. um And finally, i am steadily ah wrapping up the last handful of ah achievements I have to do to have a perfect achievement score on Vampire Survivors. I believe as of today, when we're recording this, ah ah the Dungeon Crawler Vampire game is coming out literally two weeks from today, I believe. Right.
00:37:04
Speaker
And that gives me enough time, I believe, to get. to finish Vampire Survivors. Exactly. To to complete it and and then move on to the the Dungeon Crawler version without guilt because that demo got its goddamn hooks into me. And I'm yeah really looking forward to it. yeah ah Good stuff. So having fun with that.
00:37:24
Speaker
ah Kevin, what do you plan? oh ah you know, I never thought that I would have this question turned back around on me. Curveball.
00:37:36
Speaker
Curveball. Here it is, though. um Okay. I... played a I played from beginning to end a game called Project Songbird.
00:37:49
Speaker
ah It is a first person walking simulator with at with some combat in there.
00:38:00
Speaker
A little bit of some puzzle solving, um a little bit of survival horror. ah It's basically a it's it's like I think of, um you know, how Still Wakes the Deep head is a walking simulator with a little extra juice.
00:38:17
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. Project Somburg is similar in that it it's it's it feels mostly like a walking sim, but it's got some extra gameplay juice with, ah you know, you have an axe and there's enemies and you can shoot things and all that.
00:38:35
Speaker
um But I wouldn't call it like it's not fully fleshed out in terms of like that kind of stuff. um That's not the main point of it. So I played it, beat it.
00:38:48
Speaker
ah It's weird because my feelings ultimately ended up being a little mixed on it. So there are moments of tension in Project song Songbird that are they're They made me feel more nervous than just about ah anything I've ah played before.
00:39:18
Speaker
um So that's that's one thing that it's got going for it. What are those stupid cameras? Disconnect. Piece of shit. Camera disconnects whenever I reconnected the camera.
00:39:36
Speaker
There you are. There I am. All right. So ah my my stance on it is mixed. um Like I was saying, it has some some sequences that are just absolutely um riddled with tension.
00:39:54
Speaker
It's a... um One of the things that I felt a little annoyed by was it kind of pitches itself as a, as like, it's an, it's an Appalachia, right? That's yeah right for a her. ah Your character is going to stay in a cabin in Appalachia because she is a musician and she owes her record label like 10 songs and she hasn't, she doesn't have them yet because she's just been in a rut.
00:40:27
Speaker
She's dealing with some grief issues. Yes, it's an indie game about grief. Sure. As you do. ah So she goes, she takes her producer's ah offer and goes up to this cabin in Appalachia.
00:40:41
Speaker
believe it's West Virginia is named. And ah she begins having these dreams. And there's there's three dreams over the course of the game ah where basically you wake up in the middle of the night, you follow something. It's like a will-o'-the-wisp ah type light. You follow it through a door and now you're in some sort of dream world where you there are monsters and you have to solve puzzles and all this all this fun stuff.
00:41:11
Speaker
The thing is The game is set in Appalachia, but immediately does its best to kind of take you out of it.
00:41:22
Speaker
ah All of the things that would really... There's like some granny witch, like being that it's like a local legend or whatever. And she is the one that is casting the spell on you that is causing you to go into these dreams.
00:41:40
Speaker
And then at the end, you go into a mining tunnel um to for your final dream to find the final dream, so to speak, um where a bunch of people died.
00:41:55
Speaker
But that's that's it in terms of like real Appalachian stuff. Like it might as well it might as well not be set there at all.
00:42:06
Speaker
Right. Almost. It didn't, it doesn't, it could just be a cabin in the woods. It doesn't need like, and because to me, when you say you're setting it in Appalachia, you are setting a, to me, you're like, you are, you are setting a tone that this is going to get fucking weird.
00:42:24
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. That's a loaded thing. there's That is a loaded horror setting. Right. um There's implications there. There is implications. Yeah. Is there Is there a is the... ah What's his name? The hawk... ah ah The mothman gonna... Is he gonna show up? Yeah, not the hawk moth, but the mothman. Is he gonna show up? Is he gonna have a nice, juicy ass?
00:42:49
Speaker
um Probably. Probably. His statue is any indication. Um...
00:42:58
Speaker
Have you ever been there? Have ever seen the the Mothman statue? it's it's ah I've seen pictures, but the yeah the it it is actually an honest God family weekend we're going to do at some point. We've discussed this. We desperately want to go.
00:43:13
Speaker
Yeah, because you're in Virginia now, so West Virginia is just... Over that way. it's over It's over yonder. it's Just over yonder. up there in that hollywoodard Yeah, it's just far enough away to to make for a nice like long weekend trip. Yeah, get up in the mountains.
00:43:30
Speaker
yeah um Take me home. ah
00:43:37
Speaker
So, yeah, so that was kind of the the thing that disappointed me. um The other thing, and I i know i'm I'm ultimately giving away a little bit too much of the game, but it's it's really on my mind and this is my platform, so um Play it if you just stop listening and play it if you wanted to go play it.
00:44:00
Speaker
Otherwise, keep listening. um Another thing that bugged me a little bit is that halfway through, they introduce some like glitch horror elements.
00:44:11
Speaker
uh where like you you're introduced to this the where there's there's these locked doors and you can open them with your revolver uh if you have a spare bullet so you can shoot the lock off and go in and at one point you go into a room and then ah you get this message asset not loaded And it like does a fake crash of the game and it goes goes into full Doki Doki Literature Club moment where you get a corrupted screen and all that stuff. And then you go through and you get some narration of like, I'm sorry, I wasn't ready for that or something like that.
00:44:48
Speaker
and you And you go in and ah you reload and you're in the room that should have been there. And what you find in there is like is one of the other weapons, a hunting rifle.
00:45:02
Speaker
So that happens. The game up to that point is clearly about... a woman who is feeling creative burnout while dealing with the grief of her brother dying.
00:45:14
Speaker
that is that That is the plot of the story up to that point. And then you're getting this new wrinkle. um And it happens more and more often as you're going through the game. And I don't want to call it a twist.
00:45:28
Speaker
because a twist to me is supportive of the primary plot. Should be supportive of the primary story that you're telling. It's just like a new story that just starts edging out the old one.
00:45:45
Speaker
And ultimately by the end, you're finding... You beat the game, you get to the end, and you have a moment where your character has a conversation with like the ghost of her dead brother.
00:46:04
Speaker
um And she finally is able to sing the song that she's been writing.
00:46:11
Speaker
This opens up with the lyrics, when I found you ten toes off the ground because he hung himself. Oh, boy Yeah. All that. It's good lyric. It's a good lyric. It's a good lyric, though. Yeah, lyric. Basically, throughout the song throughout the game, she tries to keep singing, and she can never like find the right note to end the lyric on. Okay.
00:46:35
Speaker
It's one of those. And then finally, she's able to to get through it by at the end of the game. um and But then you we're treated to a short film starring the creator of the game, and it's about his...
00:46:48
Speaker
about
00:46:52
Speaker
creative burnout in making the game and hit how like part of the story of the game is dealing with that creative burnout. um And then, you know, you go through the credits and then there's just like a little message from him ah and all that stuff.
00:47:15
Speaker
And I get it. That, but also I feel like
00:47:23
Speaker
That should have been... it should have been done in a different way because I feel like it kind of edges out the story of whatever you're trying to... It edges out the story of the characters that you're trying to tell the story about.
00:47:40
Speaker
Right, right. saying that that... That by doing a weird fourth wall break and saying they are fictional... Like we, it ruins any suspension of disbelief that you have for the story that you're trying to tell. And now you're like, hey, but also I'm having these issues in real life while I was making this game.
00:48:06
Speaker
And I don't want to sound insensitive to the facts that, yes, that is a true, that is an issue. The creative burnout is an issue, but also. Absolutely. This is not necessarily the time or place because now you're fucking up this other story that you're trying to tell me.
00:48:23
Speaker
Yeah. Is kind of how I took kind of what I took from it.
00:48:32
Speaker
Where it it it made the story. It made me care significantly less about the main story of the game. Yeah, I get it. It sounds it feels like at best, at best, it's a little condescending.
00:48:50
Speaker
You know, where it's like like where it's like, you get it? You get what I'm saying? Yeah, dude. Like, we get it. it's you can You can safely assume that the person who wrote this is a creative who it knows all about creative burnout and is using their experiences. We don't.
00:49:08
Speaker
I mean, and that can help for some people. And I hope it helped him. I hope i hope it was worth it to him to. to do that but yeah i can see where something like that from an outside point of view from the consumer point of view the person who's playing the game uh it it takes you right out of it uh so that's shame that's real shame yeah did you ever you've we've talked about this movie before stranger than fiction uh will ferrell yes yes the The end of Strangers with Fiction, spoiler alert, ah she this this author has been finding out that a book she's writing about this character, ah he is real and he is going to die because she's planning on killing him in the book. ah At the very end, she ah changes her mind because he's a real person and and she changes the book. And a professor who knows her work really well and admires her a lot, reads both versions. um
00:50:06
Speaker
And he and and the first the version with Will fer Ferrell's character dying, he was like, this is a masterpiece. I'm sorry. and he he literally tells Will Ferrell, you have to die. um And the second version of it, he kind of shrugs and he goes, it's all right.
00:50:22
Speaker
it's It's fine. and she And she goes, you know what? I have i have to accept that because that's right that's fine by me. ah that's what i That's honestly what it feels like here, where it's this kind of like you've made a personal choice for yourself that weakens ah the art.
00:50:38
Speaker
and And if that's worth it to you, then by God, gung-ho. But... ah Yeah, that's just... It's an odd choice. a yeah It's Yeah, it's odd. So I have... If you've played Project songberg and this Songbird and disagree, feel free to stand off in the Discord.
00:50:55
Speaker
But yeah, I... Very mixed on it in terms of... I mean, it sounds like I i disliked it more than...
00:51:09
Speaker
But I would say it's still a mixed opinion because there's elements of it I really like. It's just it became some of those become cheapened by the way sure the other narrative tries to kind of weasel its way ah into the story, so to speak. Absolutely.
00:51:26
Speaker
Yeah. um So, yeah, Project Songbird was pretty much the this thing that I was playing ah this past week. But I did start playing Power Wash Simulator 2 again ah with my kid.
00:51:40
Speaker
ah there was There's a new pack coming out at the end of this week ah that we'll be checking out the Adventure Time game. pack will be coming out very nice i've been playing peak a little bit more ah we did not do so well in our run today please played repo a little bit we got spooked uh right on out of out of doing our repo job and then we followed that up with phasmophobia lord okay and
00:52:13
Speaker
Which was...
00:52:17
Speaker
so at one point, Cam is is... The lights had gone out ah in the house in the house, right? In the house in Phasmophobia. And I'm like, oh, I'll go turn the breaker back on. So I go all the way through the house thinking that Cam is behind me the entire time.
00:52:36
Speaker
And I go into the garage. I flip the breaker on. powers back on and I turn to my left ah and they're standing out on the lawn of the house. I can see them through the garage windows. They they were like they pieced right fuck out of the house when the lights went out.
00:52:57
Speaker
That's funny. But yeah, Phasmophobia. It's a funny game to play with your kid who can't really stomach horror that much but tries to anyway.
00:53:12
Speaker
Um, that's, yeah. So that's what I've been playing. Love it. Love it. Um, yeah. So, uh, please go ahead and join our discord, join our Patreon. If you feel free and able to follow us on social media at pixel at pod, ah like us, give us five stars, uh, thumbs up, uh,
00:53:43
Speaker
Fuck Trump. Oh, yes. And his taco ass.
00:53:51
Speaker
And good night. Good night.
00:53:55
Speaker
I mean, that really says it all, doesn't it?