Transcript
Speaker: So like this guy made it worse.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He made it significantly worse than it is in the game.
Speaker: But the game without the, we're just, fuck it.
Speaker: Hey there, everybody.
Speaker: Welcome back to Pixlet.
Speaker: I'm not even doing a thing.
Speaker: With me as always is Phil.
Speaker: Hello.
Speaker: I don't even want to waste it on the preamble.
Speaker: Fuck it.
Speaker: Fuck it.
Speaker: You know what else is fuck it?
Speaker: It's Pixelit.
Speaker: Hey there, everybody.
Speaker: Welcome back to Pixelit.
Speaker: Oh, it's going to be a good episode.
Speaker: I finished the book today.
Speaker: One hour ago.
Speaker: I hit record.
Speaker: Yeah, we're recording, baby.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: He literally got on the call, and we were just like starting... Immediately.
Speaker: He just started ripping immediately.
Speaker: This book, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: So I didn't take any notes.
Speaker: So what's going to happen is I'm just going to really drunk history my way through what happens in the back third of this book.
Speaker: Sláinte, Phil.
Speaker: I got myself a Diet Coke, and we're going to go to town.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: So...
Speaker: In the back third of the book is basically everything that you know.
Speaker: If you've played the game, you know what happens to the back third of this book, right?
Speaker: So there's two boss fights that he has to do.
Speaker: It's basically Sniper Wolf boss fight part two and Vulcan Raven boss fight part two.
Speaker: And both of them are just absolutely absurd, right?
Speaker: Oh, yes.
Speaker: So there's a Sniper Wolf one, and it's like...
Speaker: He is dueling with Sniper Wolf, and she's the most deadliest sniper in the world, but Snake is better still, obviously, because he's the son of Big Boss.
Speaker: But meanwhile, this whole time, Hal Emmerich is like, don't kill her, Snake.
Speaker: I fell in love with her.
Speaker: What the fuck?
Speaker: What the fuck, buddy?
Speaker: What the fuck, man.
Speaker: Which is, yes, it's also in the game, but it's somehow more endearing in the game than it is in the book.
Speaker: It just comes, it just feels like it's out of nowhere.
Speaker: So Snake is just like, I got to kill her.
Speaker: I got to kill her, Hal.
Speaker: And him and Sniperwolf are having a sniper's duel, and then Snake wins.
Speaker: He shoots her right in the chest.
Speaker: Oh.
Speaker: But, and hey, for the sake of the dude writing this book, he had a chance to say something about her breasts, and he did not.
Speaker: You know what?
Speaker: Yeah, I'm going to give him full credit for that.
Speaker: I think he earned that much, at the very least.
Speaker: The fuck.
Speaker: The fuck.
Speaker: So, Sniper Wolf has this whole, like...
Speaker: Oh, to be a warrior.
Speaker: There's like so many scenes of waxing poetic about what it means to be a warrior and a soldier in this world and how she was always at war because she's a Kurd and...
Speaker: you know, the geopolitical history of, of Kurdish people.
Speaker: They've always kind of been in a, been in a dicey precarious situation over there in, in Iraq.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: They're, they're, they're, they're, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So anyway,
Speaker: So she's like, Snake, do me the honor of killing me.
Speaker: Like, don't let me just bleed out here.
Speaker: And Hal's like, no.
Speaker: And she's like, I'm going to die anyway.
Speaker: And he's like, OK.
Speaker: So Hal looks away and Snake shoots her in the face.
Speaker: And she said, doesn't she say something along the lines of like, I wasn't, I realize now I wasn't trying to get out of here.
Speaker: kill people.
Speaker: I wasn't looking for someone to kill.
Speaker: I was waiting for the person who, who would be able to kill me, which is, which is, I'm sorry.
Speaker: I hate to, I hate to sound like a, a fucking femme, femme lefty over here, but, but it's like, I don't because I, I am, uh, but just like, like, uh, do any of the guy characters say anything like that on their way out?
Speaker: Or is it just, it's just the girl.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Interesting.
Speaker: Found that interesting.
Speaker: Interesting.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, um,
Speaker: So there's... These boss fights kind of are like basically the tent poles of the back third of the book.
Speaker: In the meantime, there's a moment at which Snake is... I recall this part explicitly because I text Phil about it.
Speaker: And there's a moment in which Snake is like running up a flight of stairs and there's like a fire down below.
Speaker: And he's like...
Speaker: He starts thinking about 9-11, which... So random.
Speaker: What the fuck, man?
Speaker: Would you please... Do you have your phone?
Speaker: Would you please read what you said to me?
Speaker: I'd like to hear it in your voice.
Speaker: This is what I texted you.
Speaker: That's random.
Speaker: This is what I texted you.
Speaker: Let's see.
Speaker: This was.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Here, scrolling past.
Speaker: Yeah, I'm scrolling beyond.
Speaker: We're recording this the day after Trump was convicted.
Speaker: So I'm still drawing.
Speaker: It's great.
Speaker: Oh, God, where is it?
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: I'm like, the tower's burning on 9-11, but those towers had been hit with jets, and this one hadn't, so Snake felt safe.
Speaker: Brother, what?
Speaker: And you say, holy Jesus shit, and I respond, literal holy shit from Jesus' butthole, soft-served onto the ground in a tight coil, with Jesus pointing at it and saying, damn, that's a holy shit.
Speaker: That's it.
Speaker: That's all we need.
Speaker: That's it.
Speaker: That's all the description it'll ever need.
Speaker: That's all the description it will ever need.
Speaker: Because... So the game came out before 9-11.
Speaker: The game was mid-late 90s.
Speaker: It's what, 1997, I want to say?
Speaker: Or 8 at latest, yeah.
Speaker: In 97, 98 or something like that.
Speaker: And it takes place in 2005.
Speaker: So the game has no mention of September 11th, obviously.
Speaker: But the book sure does because the book comes out in 2008, I want to say.
Speaker: And it's in a post-9-11 world.
Speaker: And obviously we're...
Speaker: Raymond Benson had to shoehorn that reference in there somewhere.
Speaker: Gotta put it in because we told them we'd never forget and he's gotta... We would hashtag never forget.
Speaker: Yeah, so... You know, it's 23 years later and we hashtag have not forgotten.
Speaker: We're trying like crazy to.
Speaker: But we made that oath.
Speaker: We made that oath, God damn it.
Speaker: I was 17 years old.
Speaker: And yeah.
Speaker: That was my freshman year.
Speaker: I had been out of the house for two weeks.
Speaker: Freshman year of college.
Speaker: That is amazing.
Speaker: So here's a fun fact.
Speaker: My brother's first day of work after graduating college was September 10th.
Speaker: 2001 working for a commercial travel company.
Speaker: Oh, Jesus Christ.
Speaker: Like a business to business travel company.
Speaker: Jesus.
Speaker: He then September 11th, he was furloughed September 12th, 2001.
Speaker: I bet he was.
Speaker: It was a great couple of days at work.
Speaker: Fun while it lasted, boys.
Speaker: Let's back it up.
Speaker: Fun while it lasted, boys.
Speaker: Yeah, he was fresh out of Georgetown with his business degree.
Speaker: Oh, man.
Speaker: Anyway, fucking Metal Gear Solid.
Speaker: Had shoehorns September 11th in there.
Speaker: Yeah, because fuck it, you know?
Speaker: Why not?
Speaker: Fuck it.
Speaker: Hashtag snake never forgets.
Speaker: That's true.
Speaker: So, anyway, there's a whole lot of bullshit going on between Snake and the Colonel over the course of the intercoms and Master Miller.
Speaker: I had been hinting at Master Miller is not the real Master Miller.
Speaker: And we had been Frankie foreshadowed that that was a thing already because we get the scene in which Master Miller is killed, presumably, at the very beginning.
Speaker: Now, in the game, if we're talking about, like,
Speaker: where things are supposed to happen in a story so that it's like a, Oh, like you can, you could have withheld that information from the audience.
Speaker: Like that.
Speaker: Oh yeah.
Speaker: That did not have to be spoiled.
Speaker: Like it didn't have to be in, in precise, uh, uh, chronological order.
Speaker: We could just know we can, we can be interesting in the game.
Speaker: That's a twist.
Speaker: It's a twist in the game that master Miller is not master Miller.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's a twist that it's actually Liquid Snake pretending to be Master Miller the entire time.
Speaker: So anyway, Master Miller is doing some bad information.
Speaker: He's giving misinfo, disinfo campaign to Snake by being like, hey.
Speaker: that Naomi Hunter character is weird, huh?
Speaker: And Snake's like, what do you mean?
Speaker: And he's like, well, you know, something, something, Fox die.
Speaker: And Snake's like, what's Fox die?
Speaker: And Master Miller's like, I don't know.
Speaker: You should ask her about it.
Speaker: And maybe ask her if there's a vaccine.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: Maybe.
Speaker: Just check with her.
Speaker: It's not very subtle.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: Hmm.
Speaker: So he wants a vaccine.
Speaker: Master Miller is wondering about a vaccine for Fox Tie.
Speaker: And anyway, Snake goes on.
Speaker: He ends up fighting Vulcan Raven.
Speaker: Oh, Sandwiched in Here, I forgot, is a battle with the Hind D where it's Snake versus...
Speaker: Liquid in all of these moments are like tears in the rain.
Speaker: Like cocaine in the snow.
Speaker: We've really got to stop referencing better media when we talk about these books.
Speaker: You know, it invites comparisons.
Speaker: It does.
Speaker: It demands it.
Speaker: It demands a comparison.
Speaker: So Snake fights against Liquid at one point, and Liquid's piloting a hind D. And Liquid loves to be like, brother!
Speaker: That's his favorite thing to say.
Speaker: Brother!
Speaker: Why does he keep calling me brother?
Speaker: He's not Hulk Hogan.
Speaker: Colonel, Colonel.
Speaker: He's telling me to take my prayers and say my vitamins.
Speaker: So, yeah, the...
Speaker: Snake has a battle with a hindee, and he's cartwheeling around a lot, you know, doing tumbles and stuff, and eventually gets his hands on a rocket launcher, and he shoots the hindee down.
Speaker: And he's like, yes, I killed Liquid.
Speaker: And then Hal Emmerich is like, ah, there's a fucking, there's a guy.
Speaker: I think there's a guy.
Speaker: I think there's a parachute guy over there.
Speaker: And he's like, ah, shit.
Speaker: So Liquid is still alive.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Liquid is still alive.
Speaker: And, you know, what else happens?
Speaker: He runs into Vulcan Raven.
Speaker: They talk a lot about... There's some weird shit with... There's a lot of weird genetics and racial stuff in the book as a whole.
Speaker: Yes, that some of it was like in the game, but it's because it's so distilled in the book.
Speaker: You're like, I am less comfortable about the concepts that you're proposing.
Speaker: Yeah, it gets real fashy.
Speaker: It's it's uncomfortable.
Speaker: So Vulcan Raven tells Snake about how their ancestors had to have met on the battlefields of Mongolia and things like that.
Speaker: Because obviously, clearly Snake has some sort of Asian in him.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: He's got a little Asian in him.
Speaker: So he's got to have had an ancestor on the battlefields of Mongolia like...
Speaker: Vulcan Raven would have been because the Inuit people also originated from Mongolia, which, sure, I guess that has, I mean, the Bering Strait and all that stuff.
Speaker: But, you know, you're really speaking on that from a position of authority, Vulcan.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He knows it as a holy man.
Speaker: I'm sure that's part of it.
Speaker: He knows it as a holy man, as a holy shaman.
Speaker: Shaman, yeah.
Speaker: A guy who is ordained in the life church of online Vulcan ravens.
Speaker: What the fuck?
Speaker: What the fuck?
Speaker: It's so weird.
Speaker: It's so weird.
Speaker: It's so weird.
Speaker: And for those of you who are new to the show, you should not be surprised that when I do a book and if a book gets continually worse as we read it, the less respect I have for actually taking notes about what happened in the book.
Speaker: Kevin respects the book about as much as it respects him.
Speaker: He starts from the beginning, assuming full respect.
Speaker: But as it becomes clearer and clearer that that is just not a real thing, Kevin says, I'm just going off the dome at this point because fuck it, man.
Speaker: Yeah, you're not breaking out with me.
Speaker: I'm breaking out with you.
Speaker: So Vulcan Raven is basically like, and have at you.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: What is a Vulcan but a miserable pile of ravens?
Speaker: So anyway, they have their duel.
Speaker: More tumbling, more gymnastics tumbling and cartwheeling from Snake.
Speaker: A lot of that in this.
Speaker: He throws a stun grenade.
Speaker: He never did gymnastics in high school.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: He throws a stun grenade at one point, and he kills a bunch of ravens.
Speaker: And he's like, well, you...
Speaker: Vulcan Raven does not like that.
Speaker: He's like, why are you killing my birds?
Speaker: Yeah, he is pissed.
Speaker: And honestly, I'm on his side for this one.
Speaker: I'm on his side for that.
Speaker: I'm on his side.
Speaker: Then they go back and forth a little bit, and it's quite a boring fight.
Speaker: It is a boring fight.
Speaker: If I'm really being honest, none of the fights in this book are good.
Speaker: Good.
Speaker: They're not written in a particularly interesting way.
Speaker: They're not, there's no tension to them.
Speaker: They're very straightforward and it makes me think a little bit of any time we've read a book where it was basically just a transcription of what happens in the game.
Speaker: Which is, this is that.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: For the most part.
Speaker: It was like, he did this, and then he did that.
Speaker: And then, so he did that, and then he did this, and there's not much else.
Speaker: He did that.
Speaker: There is one moment where Raymond fast-forwarded slightly, and I will give him one point of credit out of a scale of 100.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: For that.
Speaker: He knew when to get to the goddamn point for once.
Speaker: For once.
Speaker: Fair enough.
Speaker: So, you know, he fights and he kills Vulcan Raven.
Speaker: He kills him.
Speaker: He got him.
Speaker: And then he, of course, Vulcan Raven's the boss, so he has to have a lot of dying words for Snake.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: And he goes to town on Snake.
Speaker: He's like, for all this bullshit he says at the beginning about, you're an honorable warrior, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker: At the end, he's like, nah, Snake, fuck you.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: He drops that real fast.
Speaker: He's like, you're a real piece.
Speaker: You're just a murderer, Solid Snake.
Speaker: You're just a murderer, and you're murdering everybody around you, and all you'd want to do is murder people.
Speaker: you fucking dirty murderer.
Speaker: And Snake's like, what the fuck did I do to you?
Speaker: Other than kill you.
Speaker: Other than kill you, yeah.
Speaker: Other than kill you, but that's, you know, weren't you just doing the same thing?
Speaker: And Vulcan's like, nah, man.
Speaker: Nah, my shit was cool.
Speaker: My shit was tight.
Speaker: I was awesome.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I was awesome about it.
Speaker: You were uncool about it.
Speaker: I had a really cool machine gun.
Speaker: You were doing cartwheels.
Speaker: Like, that's not cool, man.
Speaker: Vulcan Raven looks... Before he dies, he looks Snake in the eye and says, it's kind of cringe, bro.
Speaker: Vulcan Raven has left the chat.
Speaker: And then Snake walks around, walks away, and then...
Speaker: Raven does give him an extra key though, aside from telling Snake that he's just a loser who kills people.
Speaker: He gives him a key and then the Ravens come and land on the body for a second and then fly away and the body is gone.
Speaker: I've got to say, I'm confused, and not for the first time in this book, or in this franchise, I suppose.
Speaker: I guess I don't understand what a Gatlin gun style machine gun that's normally on like an A-10 Warthog or something like that, what that weapon in particular has to do with being a holy man that birds like.
Speaker: Well, the Vulcan, it's a Vulcan cannon.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I guess I was just raised on old school D&D, where when you were a cleric, you could only have blunt weapons and wizards couldn't use swords.
Speaker: Yeah, you know, yeah.
Speaker: You know that General Electric made the Vulcan cannon, the M61?
Speaker: They did?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Jesus.
Speaker: It's a General Electric piece of hardware right there.
Speaker: Oh, General Electric.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Just... GE.
Speaker: Just, just, they can make, they can do it all.
Speaker: Dishwashers, other home appliances, motor machines.
Speaker: No, they just.
Speaker: They kind of, they kind of suck comparatively now.
Speaker: They could do anything until they couldn't.
Speaker: They could do anything until they couldn't.
Speaker: What was the guy who ruined General Electric?
Speaker: Oh, Jack.
Speaker: Jack Welch.
Speaker: Yes, Jack Welch.
Speaker: He's the guy.
Speaker: Ruined a lot of things.
Speaker: Ruined a lot of things, but he really fucked up General Electric.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: For the long term.
Speaker: Go listen to the Behind the Bastards.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Series on Jack Welch.
Speaker: And you'll learn a lot about why if you work for corporations, you have to have a 401k now instead of just having a pension.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And companies just used to just take care of their retirees rather than, you know, like invest in the stock market.
Speaker: Huh?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Feed the machine.
Speaker: Just kidding.
Speaker: Be a part of the cog forever.
Speaker: Forever.
Speaker: It's real.
Speaker: It's like financial Warhammer.
Speaker: Like if there was a book about.
Speaker: If there was a 40K story just about finances.
Speaker: I would really appreciate it.
Speaker: And it's just like, I bet there is.
Speaker: You think there is?
Speaker: You think it's in the black library?
Speaker: It's I think it's a horror story.
Speaker: It's a short story.
Speaker: It's very, yeah.
Speaker: Someone, someone's worked that in there somewhere.
Speaker: Because they can only tell the story of two armies kicking each other's asses for another 500, 600 years.
Speaker: Then they're running out of steam.
Speaker: Max, Max.
Speaker: Yeah, because, you know, I mean, I feel like, I think the emperor would be, he would be a big stock market guy.
Speaker: He'd be a spreadsheet dude, finance bro.
Speaker: He'd be a finance, that's actually...
Speaker: You know, the God finance bro of all time.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Spreadsheets for the Excel throne.
Speaker: Lock it in.
Speaker: Lock it in.
Speaker: Lock it in.
Speaker: We're, uh, so anyway, uh, meanwhile, uh, literally anything else.
Speaker: Um, there's more scenes of master Miller going snake.
Speaker: Uh, he has this real smarmy smug voice in the game.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: And he's like, Snake, Naomi Hunter, you have to blah, blah, blah.
Speaker: And so anyway, they're looking at Roy Campbell.
Speaker: He is looking into Naomi Hunter because clearly she's not who she says she is.
Speaker: She's being interrogated.
Speaker: At some point, Naomi gets a hand on another codec.
Speaker: and just owns up to a bunch of things.
Speaker: So, like, basically, Naomi Hunter is a fake ID.
Speaker: Hunter does not actually exist.
Speaker: She doesn't know what her real name is.
Speaker: She was found in Rhodesia, which...
Speaker: Buddy, Raymond, he goes... I mean, I'll look.
Speaker: Look, if we want to be completely fair, if you want to set somebody in a place that is filled with chaos and bloodshed and pure just insanity...
Speaker: Rhodesia would be a good spot for it.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But... Yeah.
Speaker: How old is Naomi supposed to be?
Speaker: Because... Oh, yeah.
Speaker: It became Zimbabwe in 1980.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So, like...
Speaker: That could still work.
Speaker: Especially if this takes... No, but it takes place after 9-11, according to our author now.
Speaker: According to Raymond Benson, this is 2000... This is a post-9-11 world where this girl is like, no, he found me in Rhodesia.
Speaker: And Snake's like, you mean Zimbabwe?
Speaker: And she's like...
Speaker: No.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: It's Rhodesia.
Speaker: And we're like, and everybody, it's like the Fallout 4, everybody disliked that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You're like, oh, okay, Naomi, we're going to have to.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Look, I'm not going to get into it right now, but we're going to have a talk on the way home.
Speaker: We're going to have to have a talk about, you know,
Speaker: colonized countries and eugenics and all that fun stuff.
Speaker: And there's a mention of like, that's probably why my skin color is darker.
Speaker: And it's like,
Speaker: Just more of the bloodline shit.
Speaker: More of the bloodline shit.
Speaker: It is not great.
Speaker: It is not great.
Speaker: So anyway, she tells a story about how Frank Yeager, who the one-time Solid Snake best friend known as Gray Fox, found her when she was a kid in Zimbabwe.
Speaker: And like...
Speaker: you know, rescued her and kind of raised her as, uh, his sister, so to speak.
Speaker: And then big boss came and took Frank away from her.
Speaker: And, uh, then snake ends up killing Frank in a fight over between, you know, it was in one of the prior metal gear games.
Speaker: Um, so, and then Frank gets resurrected as, as the gray ninja Fox dude.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: Yeah, so anyway, she wanted to kill Snake, but she is having second thoughts about it.
Speaker: Aren't we all?
Speaker: Aren't we all?
Speaker: You know, we're not in on that anymore.
Speaker: We're, you know, we're fine.
Speaker: We're all fine here.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: How are you?
Speaker: How are you?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So then she gets cut off again, and he's like, Colonel.
Speaker: And Roy Campbell's like, I knew some of these things, but not all of them.
Speaker: They're like, Colonel.
Speaker: And he's like, and Snake's like, Colonel.
Speaker: And Colonel's like, all right, well, let's just move on to the next thing.
Speaker: Yeah, sure.
Speaker: Colonel?
Speaker: No, no, no, it's fine.
Speaker: It's fine.
Speaker: It's fine.
Speaker: It's fine.
Speaker: The snake finds the room with the metal gear in it.
Speaker: Metal gear.
Speaker: Finally.
Speaker: Finally.
Speaker: He finds the room with metal gear in it.
Speaker: big old robot.
Speaker: Um, and, uh, there's a control tower up at the top of the room and he climbs up metal gear, uh, and like sneaks in so he could listen to what's happening in the room.
Speaker: And he hears liquid and ocelot, uh, talking about, uh, Fox die and, and all this stuff.
Speaker: And, um,
Speaker: It's like, well, you know, it seems like Sniper Wolf was immune to the fox die because of all the drugs that she took.
Speaker: Like, what?
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And what else did they say?
Speaker: Something like somebody else also seemed to be immune to the fox die, but decoy octopus ended up getting killed.
Speaker: That was, oh, that's the thing.
Speaker: He figures out that decoy octopus was the first of the foxtown guys' bosses to get killed.
Speaker: Not Decoy Octopus.
Speaker: He was my favorite.
Speaker: Not Decoy Octopus, our favorite character.
Speaker: Oh, man.
Speaker: He had taken on the appearance of the DARPA chief, Donald Anderson, when Snake founds Donald Anderson in the cell and Fox Dye kills Decoy Octopus as Donald Anderson.
Speaker: Because, as we learned, that Donald Anderson had actually died
Speaker: because of Revolver Ocelot's torture, because Psycho Mantis couldn't read his mind because of the mental shields that he had installed.
Speaker: Are you all with us still?
Speaker: It's everyone there.
Speaker: Is everyone still awake?
Speaker: Anyway, so yeah, decoy octopus did get affected by fox die.
Speaker: Sniper wolf did not.
Speaker: Vulcan raven ostensibly did not, I think.
Speaker: But they're dead anyway, so what's it really matters?
Speaker: Who cares?
Speaker: Yeah, fuck it.
Speaker: Who cares?
Speaker: Fuck it, man.
Speaker: Let's go bowling.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Pretty much.
Speaker: At this point, this is like, that's what Ocelot should have said, you know?
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Like...
Speaker: I would have loved that.
Speaker: Fuck it, Liquid.
Speaker: Let's go bowling.
Speaker: Let's go bowling.
Speaker: So then Snake is like, all right, well, I got to get this key card to disable the launch of the Metal Gear, the activation.
Speaker: I got to put in these key cards.
Speaker: And he's like, I only got the one key card but the three slots.
Speaker: And they realize that the key card is like...
Speaker: It's malleable, so it has to be at room temperature for the first one.
Speaker: It has to be freezing cold for the second one and really hot for the third one.
Speaker: So fucking stupid.
Speaker: So fucking stupid.
Speaker: Fucking stupid.
Speaker: Which in a video game is like a neat little moment of puzzle solving.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: But when you read it in the book, you're like, oh, no, really?
Speaker: So dumb.
Speaker: So he puts it in the first one.
Speaker: Before this, sorry, he accidentally drops it into radioactive sludge.
Speaker: Yeah, of course.
Speaker: Yeah, sure.
Speaker: Of course.
Speaker: He drops it into radioactive sludge.
Speaker: And he learns the secrets of the ooze as he drives it.
Speaker: And tries not to become a Ninja Turtle.
Speaker: He has to dive into the radioactive water and get the key card.
Speaker: And he's like, my favorite moment is when he's like shuffling through stuff that's in the water.
Speaker: He finds a like a level three key card.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Oh, God.
Speaker: So he finds the key card.
Speaker: He gets back up.
Speaker: He puts it in the room temperature one, and he's like, ah, I got to go to a cold room.
Speaker: So he goes backtracks to a cold room, and he's sitting there, and he's just thinking about life and shit.
Speaker: And then he puts it back, and then it kind of, like, jumps forward to, like, okay, he's on his way back from doing it in the hot room, too.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, which, all right, good, good.
Speaker: That was, like, the one moment where Raymond Benson decided to fast forward a little bit.
Speaker: Like, okay, he doesn't need to.
Speaker: Thank you, Raymond.
Speaker: We didn't need to get the blow-by-blow of him walking back to the room where everything was molten lava hot.
Speaker: Yes, absolutely.
Speaker: And the fact that you recognize that gives you, you get a gold star.
Speaker: You get a gold star for that page.
Speaker: That was a good page.
Speaker: All the other pages are frowny faces.
Speaker: Frowny faces, but you know what?
Speaker: I'm putting a frowny face or a gold star sticker on each page.
Speaker: You're going to have to invest in some frowny face stickers, I think.
Speaker: And get Jetpack Braggon to draw our little avatars, like, sad.
Speaker: Genius.
Speaker: And then the other one is holding up with thumbs up.
Speaker: Like a thumbs up one and a sad one.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: Yes, that's it.
Speaker: That's what happens next.
Speaker: That's what happens next.
Speaker: That's where this is going.
Speaker: Snake puts the keys in and whoops.
Speaker: The card thing that he just did actually turned it on.
Speaker: What?
Speaker: What?
Speaker: They never had it turned on.
Speaker: They were just playing him the entire time because he's a dummy.
Speaker: He's a dumb-dumb.
Speaker: He's a silly little boy.
Speaker: Silly little boy.
Speaker: Silly.
Speaker: Who just doesn't get it.
Speaker: No, no.
Speaker: He's not listening with his active ears.
Speaker: He's not stopping to listen.
Speaker: He's your big boy brain.
Speaker: He's your big boy brain, and he's significantly less horny in this third of the book, by the way.
Speaker: Just FYI, if you're wondering.
Speaker: I think that, I don't know if that makes it better or worse at this point.
Speaker: Honestly, worse.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Gave, gave something to kind of hold on to.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Something.
Speaker: Hey.
Speaker: Hey.
Speaker: So anyway, um,
Speaker: He activates it, and Liquid's like, ha, ha, ha, you fucking idiot.
Speaker: You're a fucking idiot.
Speaker: You're a fucking idiot.
Speaker: So we got a boss fight between Metal Gear with Liquid piloting and Snake.
Speaker: And Snake, you know, he has to, like, bait out some shots and go get a stinger whistle and hit it.
Speaker: It's a real boss fight.
Speaker: And then at some point when he has done enough damage, the ninja comes out and he's like... Snake's like, Frank.
Speaker: And the ninja's like, I know what I'm here for.
Speaker: I'm here for you to kill me or something like that.
Speaker: And then the ninja saves Snake by like holding up the foot when it tries to step on him.
Speaker: And anyway...
Speaker: Ninja gets smushed.
Speaker: And Snake hits it.
Speaker: Not a minute too soon.
Speaker: Not a minute too soon.
Speaker: And then in the meantime, Hal is like, I'm working on the thing.
Speaker: And he gets the cockpit to open up.
Speaker: And Snake shoots a rocket into the cockpit area.
Speaker: And everything gets blown up, blown to smithereens.
Speaker: At some point during this intermission, Snake talks to Frank and...
Speaker: And it's like, ah.
Speaker: And Frank's like, I killed Naomi's parents.
Speaker: Tell her that.
Speaker: Tell her it was all my fault.
Speaker: And Snake's like, I'm okay.
Speaker: I will.
Speaker: I guess.
Speaker: I guess.
Speaker: Um, so, yeah.
Speaker: The Metal Gear blows up.
Speaker: And Snake at some point passes out.
Speaker: And then he wakes up.
Speaker: And Liquid has dragged his body to the top of the Metal Gear.
Speaker: Um, and taken Snake's shirt off.
Speaker: Um.
Speaker: So they can have their... So they can talk.
Speaker: So they can talk.
Speaker: He really just wanted to reenact the Top Gun volleyball scene.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Will you be my Val Kilmer?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You could ride my tail anytime.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: He's like, if Liquid is Val Kilmer, then he wants Snake to be as Tom Cruise.
Speaker: Yeah, that's really where we're at right now.
Speaker: I think that's what we're... Yeah, and it's nice that he knows that he's the antagonist at the same time.
Speaker: It's nice that he knows that he's the Iceman.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: It's nice.
Speaker: And he gives an entire speech to that effect about how...
Speaker: He just really info dumps, ties all the threads together.
Speaker: You know, the Les Enfants Terribles, that they are the terrible children made from the big boss.
Speaker: There were originally eight and they killed the other six fetuses because...
Speaker: reasons to make them strong.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: Not really explained.
Speaker: And it follows twins logic.
Speaker: So we're talking about the movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito, where one twin is all the dominant genes.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And the other twin is on the recessive genes.
Speaker: Because that's how it works.
Speaker: Because that's how it works.
Speaker: It's science, baby.
Speaker: It worked for the 1987 hit film.
Speaker: Is it 1987?
Speaker: Twins.
Speaker: That sounds about right.
Speaker: 88.
Speaker: I'm pulling this right out of Twins movie year.
Speaker: What year was it?
Speaker: 1988.
Speaker: I was off by a year.
Speaker: There we go.
Speaker: It felt right around then.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, yes, absolutely.
Speaker: Right in there.
Speaker: We're talking late 80s.
Speaker: It's about to be the 90s, but not quite.
Speaker: That was one of those movies that as a kid, everybody had a VHS of and would talk about.
Speaker: And I didn't see it until I was an adult.
Speaker: And I was like, wow, I'm glad I waited this long.
Speaker: I've not seen it since I was a kid.
Speaker: It's not a good movie.
Speaker: It's just not.
Speaker: As two of my favorite people in the world, it's just not a good movie.
Speaker: Just didn't hit it for you.
Speaker: Predator era Arnie.
Speaker: And Danny DeVito.
Speaker: And Danny DeVito.
Speaker: Anytime, really.
Speaker: Anytime.
Speaker: Anytime at all.
Speaker: You can give me Danny DeVito.
Speaker: But honestly, you know, late 80s, Burton era, Batman Returns, like...
Speaker: Of course, I think that was 90 or 91, but it doesn't matter.
Speaker: It was like 91, yeah.
Speaker: That's still right in there.
Speaker: And that's, I mean, that's a very, very good time to be watching.
Speaker: C. Day DeVito said something about, like, it's always sunny in Philadelphia for the new season.
Speaker: He's like, oh, no, we're going places with this next season.
Speaker: The first 15 seasons were way too soft.
Speaker: Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha
Speaker: That's good.
Speaker: His existence on that show and that show in general are a direct refutation to Seinfeld's... You heard Seinfeld talking about the left woke cancel culture is destroying comedy.
Speaker: It's refuting.
Speaker: There are shows on today that you couldn't dream of airing back then.
Speaker: No, it's... Come on.
Speaker: It's an argument for people who aren't paying attention, is really what it comes down to.
Speaker: Yeah, no, and...
Speaker: You know, Northern Lion actually had a good point.
Speaker: It's like, you know what?
Speaker: I think we can just sometimes say when you did for older folks that say this stuff, we can just say that they're cooked, you know, they're they're cooked and we can move on with our day.
Speaker: We don't need to turn into a whole thing.
Speaker: I think we'd be a way better, healthier internet if that's how we did things.
Speaker: It might cease to be the internet, but isn't that a better thing at the same time?
Speaker: Seinfeld's just, he's just cooked.
Speaker: He's just a little cooked.
Speaker: Yeah, he's cooked.
Speaker: I think that's, you know what?
Speaker: I'm putting it out now.
Speaker: That is the official pixel-it stance on shit like that.
Speaker: We look at the boomer or whoever else and go, oh, that dude's fucking cooked.
Speaker: He's cooked.
Speaker: You know, he doesn't have it anymore.
Speaker: Lost the fastball.
Speaker: He's still trying to throw the fastball, but he lost it.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: No, no, no.
Speaker: It's just sad to see.
Speaker: He's cooked.
Speaker: Forget it, Seinfeld.
Speaker: It's Chinatown.
Speaker: It's Chinatown.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, yeah, they talk and Liquid talks about how you can't say anything without the left woke mob coming after you anymore.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It talks about...
Speaker: Fucking bullshit philosophy, fucking bullshit warriors, and God, it's so insufferable.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: It's pretentious shit.
Speaker: It is the most pretentious bullshit about fighting and warriors that the world has ever seen.
Speaker: Where it's like, the world needs a place, needs to revere its heroes and warriors again.
Speaker: We need to be in a world of perpetual war and...
Speaker: I can't, man.
Speaker: I've decided I'm going to get us back to having our, if you enjoyed this, you might enjoy that, sections of our social media for these books.
Speaker: And just because of that pretentious speech, I'm going to find all of the anti-war books I've ever read and just pile them into the fucking thing.
Speaker: It's just going to be the things they carried.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: War fucking sucks.
Speaker: War sucks, man.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Pair this with like, you know what?
Speaker: Pair this with Blood Meridian.
Speaker: Yeah, there you go.
Speaker: You'll learn something.
Speaker: I feel like the judge and Liquid would just talk each other to death.
Speaker: Probably.
Speaker: I think the judge would eventually reach over and just tear his head off.
Speaker: Honestly, I think the judge would just kill Liquid.
Speaker: And the judge would be naked for some reason when this happens.
Speaker: Someone playing a violin in the background.
Speaker: The judge is the Mortal Kombat skin we're waiting for, by the way.
Speaker: He is, honestly.
Speaker: That's the one whose fatalities I want to see.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Because I don't play the game anymore, but I like getting on TikTok and seeing the latest.
Speaker: I would love the judge as a Mortal Kombat character.
Speaker: And it's like, war was always waiting for us.
Speaker: He just takes them and adds them to a tree covered in dead babies.
Speaker: He just grabs the person's head and says, that which exists without my knowledge exists without my consent.
Speaker: And he just crushes their head in.
Speaker: That's good.
Speaker: I think, you know...
Speaker: Who makes Mortal Kombat?
Speaker: I think they owe us a call.
Speaker: It's, who is it?
Speaker: I mean.
Speaker: Don't worry about contacting Cormac McCarthy's estate.
Speaker: We'll take care of it.
Speaker: We'll handle it.
Speaker: We'll take care of that part.
Speaker: Yeah, don't worry about it.
Speaker: We got it.
Speaker: Who is actually the owner?
Speaker: Okay, it's NetherRealm.
Speaker: Does NetherRealm still make them?
Speaker: I don't think they do.
Speaker: Do they?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: And NetherRealm is the studio that makes them.
Speaker: They're the guys that were originally the Midway guys that started the series.
Speaker: Midway is what I had in my head.
Speaker: Midway was the, yes.
Speaker: Midway's definitely.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: They are Midway.
Speaker: Does Midway exist?
Speaker: Defunct as of 2010.
Speaker: They can't be still a thing.
Speaker: Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
Speaker: Everything was acquired by Warner Brothers Interactive.
Speaker: And I guess sounds right.
Speaker: The Mortal Kombat studio.
Speaker: The people who did Mortal Kombat were.
Speaker: just folded into a, they made their studio within Warner Brothers called NetherRealm.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: That makes sense.
Speaker: That makes sense.
Speaker: Which uses the same color, similar color palette to Midway.
Speaker: Oh, well, that's nice.
Speaker: It's like a little throwback.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: A little tilt of the cap.
Speaker: I like that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Fuck my ass.
Speaker: What were we talking about?
Speaker: Oh, it doesn't matter.
Speaker: It doesn't matter.
Speaker: They fight.
Speaker: By the way, Liquid has Merrill strapped up with a bomb.
Speaker: They fight.
Speaker: It looks like Liquid's going to win, and then he doesn't, and Snake throws him off of the Metal Gear and down to the concrete below.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And then with the help of Natasha, hey, remember her, the Russian weapons expert?
Speaker: Snake disarms the bomb that's strapped around Meryl.
Speaker: And he's like, Otacon, how do I get out of here?
Speaker: And Otacon's like, that way.
Speaker: And he's like, all right, I'll see you out there.
Speaker: And Otacon's like, I'm not coming, Snake.
Speaker: I'm going to die here.
Speaker: And Snake's like, what?
Speaker: Fine.
Speaker: Fuck it, man, come on.
Speaker: And Anacond's like, all right, fine, I'll find my way up.
Speaker: So they get out, Meryl and Snake get out, and they hop in a Jeep, and they start driving, and we get the mandatory vehicle sequence.
Speaker: Naturally.
Speaker: Naturally, where you're fighting Snake and Merrill are fighting liquid through a tunnel and on backs of Jeeps and stuff like that.
Speaker: Meanwhile, I forgot to mention Jim Housman, the Secretary of Defense, has arrested Roy Campbell for leaking secrets at some point in this whole thing and has ordered a nuclear strike of the base just to wipe it out.
Speaker: That feels okay.
Speaker: Feels like an overreaction.
Speaker: If you're going to arrest somebody, there might be evidence in there that you'll want.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So anyway, they fight Liquid and there's a car accident.
Speaker: Two car pile up.
Speaker: They're all ejected from the Jeeps.
Speaker: And then Snake wakes up and Liquid is standing there.
Speaker: And he's like, I'm going to get you.
Speaker: And then Liquid has a heart attack.
Speaker: Whoops.
Speaker: Fox die kills him.
Speaker: He has a heart attack.
Speaker: That was good timing.
Speaker: That's good timing.
Speaker: That worked out nicely.
Speaker: Good timing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Couldn't have had a heart attack at any point prior.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Until... Yeah.
Speaker: Right now.
Speaker: Right now.
Speaker: He dies.
Speaker: Now.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He dies.
Speaker: And Snake and Meryl are like, ah, this is great.
Speaker: And then Campbell calls, Colonel Comicals is like, ah, Houseman just got arrested.
Speaker: How about that?
Speaker: Guilty on all 34 counts.
Speaker: Guilty on all 34 counts.
Speaker: The bombers have been called off.
Speaker: And then Otacon shows up.
Speaker: He's like, I'm here also.
Speaker: Let me show you to where the people, the hostages were all.
Speaker: And they save all the hostages.
Speaker: And Campbell's like, I faked your death for you, Snake, and the records, you're dead.
Speaker: And Snake's like, thanks, buddy.
Speaker: Thanks, pal.
Speaker: Thanks, pal.
Speaker: And that's pretty much the end of the book.
Speaker: Thank God.
Speaker: There's an epilogue.
Speaker: There's an epilogue with a phone call where we only hear one side of it, and it's Revolver Ocelot.
Speaker: He's on the phone with a man who, and he's like, oh, yeah, the one with the inferior genes ended up winning.
Speaker: But no, the other one thought he was the superior one the entire, or the inferior one the entire time.
Speaker: But nobody will know about you, Solidus, or should I say, Mr. President.
Speaker: He's talking to the president of the United States, who's the third brother, the third Lea Fon-Trible.
Speaker: Very, very weird world.
Speaker: Very weird world that we've been given here.
Speaker: Very weird world.
Speaker: And you know what?
Speaker: You'll be ashamed of your thoughts and deeds.
Speaker: I already am.
Speaker: I never stopped being ashamed of my thoughts and deeds.
Speaker: The reason for her exposure, you'll be ashamed of your thoughts and deeds.
Speaker: I am ashamed, Kojima.
Speaker: You really, you ashamed me.
Speaker: You gotta remember, we're Americans.
Speaker: We're Americans.
Speaker: Presumably raised by Christians.
Speaker: We got plenty of shame already.
Speaker: Hey, we're...
Speaker: We're all shame over here, buddy.
Speaker: All shame all the time.
Speaker: All the shame all the time.
Speaker: That's it.
Speaker: Listen, uh, uh, oh, what's the name of the, it was a poet that we had on classy hands once.
Speaker: And, uh, Oh, that was fucking awesome.
Speaker: Uh, I always quote his, what his poem and it's, it's my life is a raging river of regrets.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: John Tottenham, John, John Tottenham.
Speaker: That guy fucking, I got to meet that guy.
Speaker: He fucking ruled.
Speaker: Our buddy Keeler introduced me to him at a bookstore he worked at, and I bought his poetry book and I handed it to him and he was so meek and kind of like frightened all the time.
Speaker: He's kind of a frightened mouse.
Speaker: And I said, well, you've got to sign this for me now.
Speaker: And he goes, oh, why are you doing this to me?
Speaker: I'll never forget that.
Speaker: It's great.
Speaker: It's amazing.
Speaker: Oh, God.
Speaker: What did you think of the book, Phil?
Speaker: It wasn't the worst thing that we've read.
Speaker: It wasn't the worst thing we've read.
Speaker: I think the problem is it's like... There's like... It's just bad on a certain subset of criteria that made it particularly boring and milk toast.
Speaker: It was just slow going.
Speaker: It was...
Speaker: Yeah, it just, even some of the worst books that we've read on this show have inspired me to go, well, I need to read this and find out what happens next and everything.
Speaker: But Kevin got sick twice over the course of us reading this book.
Speaker: And I'm not pointing fingers.
Speaker: I'm not saying the book was definitely responsible.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But the fact of the matter was is every time Kevin was like, hey, man, I'm sorry.
Speaker: We're going to have to push back a recording date.
Speaker: I just don't feel good.
Speaker: I was always just like, first off, I was like, that's fine because look, get better.
Speaker: And also because I was like, that's fine.
Speaker: I don't care.
Speaker: I don't care about this book.
Speaker: I don't care enough to even get mad about it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, no, I am feeling way better, and I felt like coming out of being sick really invigorated my joy for life and my anger at shitty writing simultaneously.
Speaker: I think it was a simultaneous, it's a twofer, you know?
Speaker: I was like, oh, man, how does this book get away with wasting precious seconds of my life?
Speaker: Fuck you, book, you know?
Speaker: Thousands of trees that died so this book could be printed out.
Speaker: Thousands of trees died so that this book could exist.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, so general thoughts made me dislike Metal Gear Solid more, which is fine.
Speaker: I don't think that's happened yet.
Speaker: I don't think that's happened on this show where the novelization sucked.
Speaker: Actually made me drained my appreciation for the game away.
Speaker: But if it was going to happen, it would be with this franchise.
Speaker: It would have to be with Kojima.
Speaker: I got to say, because my relationship with the Kojima stuff is tenuous at best.
Speaker: Like, you know, Metal Gear Solid's 1, 2, and 3, I really loved them when they came out.
Speaker: I've never revisited them.
Speaker: Like after, you know, I beat them when they came out.
Speaker: Never really revisited them.
Speaker: I'm not really a revisitor, so to speak, anyway.
Speaker: That's not my gamer archetype.
Speaker: I started for didn't like the fact that Snake was an old man.
Speaker: And I was like, ah, that's a bummer.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: So I never finished four.
Speaker: And then five, I think I started playing once and stopped playing it.
Speaker: Five is apparently really good from a gameplay front.
Speaker: Is that the one that came out most recently?
Speaker: That's the most recent one.
Speaker: And it's also, you're not actually playing as Snake anymore.
Speaker: you're playing as Big Boss and you're not even actually playing as Big Boss.
Speaker: It's weird.
Speaker: Because nothing can be straightforward in these games.
Speaker: Because nothing can be straightforward in these games.
Speaker: That's why Kiefer Sutherland is the voice.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I forgot that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He replaced David Hayter with Kiefer Sutherland because Kojima just can't help himself.
Speaker: He can't.
Speaker: He's got to stir the turd.
Speaker: It's constant with him.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's lucky he didn't recast him with Guillermo del Toro.
Speaker: And those two love each other.
Speaker: They do, and it's adorable.
Speaker: I think that's nice.
Speaker: But yeah, no, there's a lot of dumb stuff in the Metal Gear Solid stuff philosophically about... I mean, I feel like the more...
Speaker: The more you try to explain a really deep thought about war, the worse off it gets.
Speaker: And I think that's kind of why the judge in Blood Meridian is such a fascinating character.
Speaker: And I think Blood Meridian is a good counterpoint to this, right?
Speaker: Because you look at the judge and one of his most frequent topics that he talks upon in Blood Meridian is war.
Speaker: The nature of war and the nature of humanity's relationship with war.
Speaker: But he speaks about it in less words than any character in any Metal Gear Solid game does ever.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And Blood Meridian's a long fucking book.
Speaker: Insul.
Speaker: I think, you know, it's like to quote William Shakespeare, brevity is the soul of idiots.
Speaker: Say everything.
Speaker: Explain everything.
Speaker: Apologies to H-Bomber guys.
Speaker: I stole this fucking joke.
Speaker: But yeah, it's it's there's a reason that war is hell is the most enduring and effective quote about war.
Speaker: Three words that that tell you the truth and do it pretty effectively.
Speaker: That's all you need.
Speaker: Or even fallout.
Speaker: War never changes.
Speaker: War never changes.
Speaker: Yeah, that's good.
Speaker: The bullshit about war, the weaponry and all that, that changes.
Speaker: Sure, fine, whatever.
Speaker: But the war as a destructive entity has never changed.
Speaker: Yeah, that's it.
Speaker: It's always the same lies, the same bullshit you tell kids to go off to die.
Speaker: The same pride, the same shit you take advantage of.
Speaker: It's all the same.
Speaker: It's all the same.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And we're venturing dangerously close to becoming the people talking too much about war that we're complaining about.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, you know, let's stop.
Speaker: Let's stop that.
Speaker: And move right along to a part of the show that I always love getting to.
Speaker: We somehow put in like a fucking hour, noteless, without notes.
Speaker: I'm impressed.
Speaker: I was like, okay, it's going to be a 20-minute episode and 20 minutes of what are you playing or something.
Speaker: But no, that worked out okay.
Speaker: Yeah, that was good.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: So...
Speaker: What are you playing?
Speaker: Oh, uh... I really strong-banned that one.
Speaker: What are you playing?
Speaker: What are you playing?
Speaker: Oh, man.
Speaker: Everything is about to get... Checking my emails.
Speaker: Everything's about to go crazy, go nuts.
Speaker: I'm sad that I'm flying.
Speaker: God, I love that shit.
Speaker: I played Children of the Sun.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: That is a Devolver game.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: It's got kind of a, I don't know,
Speaker: PS1, PS2 kind of aesthetic, very beautiful, but also very low-fi kind of quality to it.
Speaker: And you play the former member of a cult who can control bullets with her mind.
Speaker: And so the whole game, the entire mechanic is you with a sniper rifle approaching different camps of the cult as you try to get to the head honcho of the cult who killed your dad and all that shit.
Speaker: And you have one bullet and every time the bullet hits...
Speaker: a number of things like people, gas lines, anything explosive stuff like any time you hit something and the bullet causes damage of some kind, it stops and you can reevaluate where you're going next with the bullet.
Speaker: So the whole goal of the game is if there are 12 guys on the camp, you want to kill all 12 of them with the same bullet.
Speaker: It's Magic Bullet the video game.
Speaker: It's the JFK assassination, the video game.
Speaker: And I'm going to get put on a list.
Speaker: And it's one of those great examples of an indie game.
Speaker: Took me about five hours to beat, especially if you're not trying to, because they keep the leaderboards for everyone who plays it.
Speaker: So there's a big.
Speaker: Yeah, there's a big community of people trying to beat each other's scores and all that stuff, and that's pretty cool.
Speaker: That's not my style, but, you know, you can get through the game in a pretty quick amount of time.
Speaker: It's aesthetically very lovely.
Speaker: The soundtrack is kind of cool and strange, and the storyline is uncomfortable and unsettling and...
Speaker: But the gameplay, it's just this one clever mechanic that they boost up a little bit over the course of the game.
Speaker: You get different abilities and that sort of thing, and new kinds of opponents that can deflect the bullet or require some kind of special move or something like that.
Speaker: It's just very clever, very charming, bleak, and very violent.
Speaker: It's not like it's photorealistic gore or anything far from it, but there's something about it.
Speaker: I guess in this day and age, the gunman trope is not... It's a little less safe than it used to be.
Speaker: So even though the game makes it clear up and down, you are the good guy here, there's still a level of discomfort, which I found appealing on a certain level.
Speaker: I thought that was, it gave it some oomph, which I liked.
Speaker: I thought that was pretty cool.
Speaker: Putting that right on my wish list.
Speaker: Yeah, interesting game.
Speaker: Again, fun mechanic, cool aesthetic.
Speaker: I'm surprised I haven't heard more people talking about it, to be completely honest.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: I think this may have passed by people this year.
Speaker: And after that, I have been playing Paper Mario.
Speaker: What is it?
Speaker: The Thousand Year Door?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Because I never owned a GameCube.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: That era of Nintendo passed me right the hell by.
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: And so when I saw that they were doing a remaster of it and Nintendo did the shockingly decent thing of actually accepting one character's transness, which I think is fucking excellent.
Speaker: Yeah, I think made it even more explicit.
Speaker: Yes, they made it more explicit.
Speaker: They make it more explicit.
Speaker: And Mario shares in his first trans kiss, which is very cute.
Speaker: It's lovely.
Speaker: It's a lovely, but frankly...
Speaker: I love this game.
Speaker: I'm so glad I'm playing it.
Speaker: It's so much fun.
Speaker: It's just a charming, I forget how much I like Nintendo.
Speaker: Just their aesthetic, it's charming, it's warm, it's cozy.
Speaker: The game's got a great sense of humor.
Speaker: The aesthetic is nice.
Speaker: It's got strategy to it without being all up its ass about how difficult and all that stuff it is.
Speaker: It's just a nice little game that I can sit and play on my Switch at the end of the day and get a chapter done and feel very good about it.
Speaker: I just love these characters, love the writing, the little details, stuff like that.
Speaker: It's fantastic.
Speaker: It's awesome.
Speaker: I am shocked and appalled that I have never played this game before because it is right up my alley.
Speaker: Yeah, I feel like post N64, I mean, I had the GameCube, but yeah, I think I was kind of in the same zone of like, I just never, I was not playing a lot of Nintendo games, even with the GameCube beyond the point, beyond that N64 era.
Speaker: So yeah, I totally get it.
Speaker: I went straight from the N64 to Switch.
Speaker: I never owned a Wii or a Wii U, like anything like that.
Speaker: So it's nice to revisit these franchises that it's just lovely to see how they've evolved and it's still so fun and it's gorgeous.
Speaker: The remaster is absolutely beautiful.
Speaker: That's great.
Speaker: I've watched the Game Grumps play this game, and that was the extent of my experience with it.
Speaker: And I love it.
Speaker: I'm so glad I got it.
Speaker: It's super worth it.
Speaker: I'm having a blast with it.
Speaker: So what about you, Kevin?
Speaker: What are you playing?
Speaker: Okay, so because it's been a little bit since we got to record between parts two and three of this series, I played, and because I was sick, I played and beat Crow Country,
Speaker: which is so crow country is like a ps1 n64 era um kind of looking game it is a resident evil style game uh where you are you know you're you have your little character um her name is uh maya forest if i croc
Speaker: recall correctly, she introduced herself as Agent Maya Forrest, and she's there at Crow Country, which is an amusement park in Georgia.
Speaker: Oh, that's fun.
Speaker: And she's there to find the owner who has gone missing.
Speaker: And the amusement park has been closed down for years, though.
Speaker: And as you're wandering through the amusement park, you know, there's all these little puzzles to solve.
Speaker: But then there's these little monster things that start popping up out of nowhere.
Speaker: And you start unraveling this mystery.
Speaker: And it's such a, it is, it's a fun adventure.
Speaker: an interesting story behind the mystery, actually.
Speaker: You're like, oh, that's kind of clever.
Speaker: That's kind of interesting.
Speaker: That's kind of neat.
Speaker: So Crow Country is, it's also like,
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: It's just satisfying to play.
Speaker: It's like only takes five to seven hours to beat.
Speaker: You know, it's like a standard Resident Evil length.
Speaker: And obviously, as you peel back the layers, you start finding out more and more, like, there's the mystery behind the mystery and stuff like that.
Speaker: So...
Speaker: I thoroughly recommend Crow Country.
Speaker: If you're looking for a Resident Evil style game this year, Crow Country is your best bet.
Speaker: I always am.
Speaker: There's Alone in the Dark is out there, and I've already talked about Alone in the Dark, but in terms of like...
Speaker: new-ness and feeling fresh, I would go with Crow Country over Alone in the Dark.
Speaker: But speaking of Resident Evil-style games, it's actually kind of unfair to say it's in the same genre as Resident Evil, but it's similar.
Speaker: It's like if you made a Resident Evil game and took out all the combat encounters and made it all puzzles instead, you would have Lorelei and the Laser Eyes,
Speaker: You were not the first person to bring this one up.
Speaker: I need to look into this.
Speaker: So Lorelei and the Laser Eyes is set.
Speaker: It feels like it's set in the 1960s, but there's some weird timey-wimey, wibbly-wobbly stuff going on.
Speaker: So you're not entirely sure.
Speaker: You are playing a woman who is, for the most part, referred to as Senora by the guy that you meet at the...
Speaker: this mansion, uh, or sorry, hotel called Let's See Yare Hotel, uh, which just in German means last year.
Speaker: Um, so you're there invited there by this guy, uh, who wants you to solve the mystery of, uh,
Speaker: what is happening at the hotel, but also to find his script pages that he requested that you bring because he's missing script pages from a film that he's writing.
Speaker: That's weird.
Speaker: I like it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So you're going around this hotel and you're finding all these doors are locked and you have to figure out, use the context clues of what you see in the hotel to figure out what the doors are, why the doors are locked or how the doors are locked.
Speaker: And you'll see what's really great about it
Speaker: is for 90% of puzzles, the solution is like right there in front of you.
Speaker: And you just have to piece together what you're looking at in order to make it happen.
Speaker: And it's almost always in the form of like a number or something like that.
Speaker: But you end up picking up like a Game Boy at some point.
Speaker: And the only reason, like one of the main reasons you use the Game Boy is because it has a calculator on it.
Speaker: Because sometimes you have to like solve a math problem.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Love it.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So there's a There's a whole lot of
Speaker: Yeah, there's a lot of mystery to it.
Speaker: It's one of those where you can read through.
Speaker: There's plenty of stuff to read through.
Speaker: It's nice because you actually have a reason to read everything that you pick up because everything that you pick up could have a solution to a future puzzle in it.
Speaker: So like if you pick up some documents, it's worth actually sitting there and reading through it.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Because you're eventually going to run into something that might reference something.
Speaker: And if you hadn't read through the document when you first picked it up, you're not going to realize that the thing that it's asking you is in something that you already have.
Speaker: So it's like...
Speaker: It's not like Resident Evil where it's like, ah, story shit, whatever.
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: Flip, flip, flip.
Speaker: It's actually helpful to know this stuff.
Speaker: Right, exactly.
Speaker: So Lorelei and the Laser Eyes is really cool.
Speaker: And briefly, only for about an hour, I started playing Manor Lords.
Speaker: Oh, how do you like that?
Speaker: That's been on my wish list.
Speaker: It's neat.
Speaker: Like you can tell it's early access, but it's cool.
Speaker: The mode that it has right now is basically the only mode it really has is like a 1v1
Speaker: mode versus the computer.
Speaker: I assume in like the full, the roadmap is probably like there will be a mode where there's like a bunch of people that you're fighting against.
Speaker: So it's like you have your territory and you just like start with your little territory and it's just like a few people and an encampment and like a hitching post.
Speaker: And it's like, all right, well,
Speaker: You got to build X, Y and Z first.
Speaker: You got to have like a logging area because you build too.
Speaker: It actually warns you the first few times if you're like starting up a game, you can't if you build too much stuff without building the logging area.
Speaker: then you're trapped.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Because you can't generate any more wood now.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And you need wood to build the thing in the first place that generates wood.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So it'll warn you.
Speaker: So anyway, yeah, you build your logging area and then you zone for housing and zone for market stalls and you start building out your little...
Speaker: where your peasants live.
Speaker: Beautiful looking.
Speaker: It's just got such a lovely quality to it.
Speaker: It's got a lovely quality, and I think the dude that is putting it together, it's like a single dev or something like that.
Speaker: See, Banished is one of my favorite games of all time, and it's got a... I love that shit.
Speaker: I love the single... It's something about the single dev town builders.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I have a weakness for him.
Speaker: Or a single dev card game, you know?
Speaker: Yes, that's true.
Speaker: Look at you, Local Thunk.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Look at you, Local Thunk.
Speaker: You know, when you're current... To me, he is... Local Thunk is currently... Or Balotro is still running away with my game of the year.
Speaker: Oh, man.
Speaker: I'm not sure I've played anything that really...
Speaker: I would I would like I am.
Speaker: We're just about at the halfway point and it's got to be a real there's got to be a real strong contender if you're for someone to unseat.
Speaker: Especially if we're talking about just based on hours played alone.
Speaker: Yeah, that's insanity.
Speaker: Yeah, no one's no one's come even close for me either at this point.
Speaker: Yeah, it's not happening.
Speaker: I just bought Nine Souls.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Which is the... It's by Red Candle Games that they did like Detention and Devotion.
Speaker: So, which are horror games.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So, I'm interested in that.
Speaker: It's a neat looking game.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: A lot of the games I've been playing so far this year are like games that don't have a ton of Steam reviews.
Speaker: Interesting.
Speaker: Like Lorelei and the Laser Eyes.
Speaker: You've heard a bunch of people talk about it, right?
Speaker: Yes, you're right.
Speaker: It only has 390 reviews on Steam.
Speaker: That's interesting.
Speaker: For a game that gets referenced a lot, it's like by other podcasters and content creators.
Speaker: It just, it doesn't have a huge footprint, it seems.
Speaker: Unless it's on Game Pass or something like that.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It's not, there's not a lot of stuff on it for, yeah, it's wild.
Speaker: That is wild.
Speaker: Crow Country, meanwhile, has nearly 2,000 reviews.
Speaker: Well, Crow countries and other people are talking about that one a lot, too.
Speaker: But that one that one's translated a little more into.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So.
Speaker: Anyway, that's that's it for the episode.
Speaker: You know, we didn't even talk about Patreon or anything.
Speaker: We just.
Speaker: Oh, I know.
Speaker: We just got we just we just got right into it.
Speaker: Into it.
Speaker: So I want to thank our patrons, Ruth Smutter, Jesus Loves You, Kyle Seaman, and Friendly Friend.
Speaker: Thank you so much for being our $10 tier patrons.
Speaker: It means the world to us.
Speaker: We love you.
Speaker: If you want to find out more about our Patreon page, go to patreon.com slash pixelitpod.
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Speaker: If you could do us a favor and rate us five stars on Apple and Spotify, give us a thumbs up on YouTube or subscribe and a bell notification on YouTube really helps out a lot.
Speaker: But that'll do it for tonight's episode.
Speaker: Thank you all so much for listening and have a good evening.
Speaker: Bye.
Speaker: Thank you.
