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S5 E5: Aloy Resurrections
66 Plays4 years ago
This episode we talk about the Witcher 4 announcement, absolutely destroy the steaming pile of crap that was The Matrix Resurrections, review Horizon Forbidden West and take a deep-dive into the film director Edgar Wright. Oh, and we drank craft beer... lots of craft beer!
Beers reviewed this episode:
- White Bay Beer - Morning Yearning - Coffee Porter - 6.8%
- Little Bang Brewing - Sol Era - Kriek - 5.8%
- Small Batch (Batch Brewing) - Lychee, Cranberry & Pomegranate - Sour - 5.6%
- Hawkers Beer - Bourbon Barrel Aged (2022) - White Stout - 6%
- Garage Project - Mecha Hop Singularity: Centennial - IPA - 6%
- Small Batch (Batch Brewing) - Orange, Honey & Thyme - Sour - 5.4%
- Small Batch (Batch Brewing) - Cherry Cola - Sour - 5%
- Moon Dog - Mosiacy Breaky Heart - IPA - 7%
- Yulli's Brews - 'Gretchen' Organic Honey Kolsch - Kolsch - 4.5%
- Yulli's Brews - Dad's Army: Chris's Barrel Aged Imperial Stout - Imperial Stout - 9.4%
- Small Batch (Batch Brewing) - Pineapple & Chilli - Gose - 5.1%
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Transcript
Introduction & Subscription Request
00:00:30
Speaker
Welcome back to pixels and pints. Tom's doing a little jazz. Pete did a little head nod right there. So it's a little good way to intro, but only for the video side of it. Everybody go and subscribe to our YouTube channel. If you're listening to it on audio and everybody on the YouTube channel, go and subscribe on.
00:00:46
Speaker
your favorite podcast platform, which I don't actually know what we're on these days, Pete. That's how much I pay attention to all of them. Pretty much all of them. Yeah, once you publish to Spotify. Yeah, once you publish to iTunes, Spotify, I think we're on Pandora. Alexa will play it for you. A bunch of other places. Whose Alexa just kicked in?
00:01:10
Speaker
Yeah, mine, because I said the word. I said the wake word. So we're pretty much everywhere that you download podcasts. Overcast. In fact, 60% of our listener base is sitting on an overcast. That was a bit cloudy, actually. Well, that purl of a one-lighter was Tom. Hello. The brains behind the operation is Pete. Howdy. And I'm in a surprisingly good mood today, and I'm Dan.
Pop Culture and Film Critiques
00:01:39
Speaker
We're gonna talk pop culture, we're going to have a look at some news, not cover the big news story of today which is Will Smith smacking the shit out of Chris Rock. We're gonna destroy the Matrix resurrections which should be something about burying the Matrix rather than resurrecting it because that's not what they fucking did.
00:02:01
Speaker
Tom's going to give us a quick breakdown of the gameplay improvements in Horizon Forbidden West. We're going to have a look at the filmography of the wonderful director Edgar Wright and drink some beers.
Beer Selections and Social Activities
00:02:24
Speaker
And we're going to get drunk doing it. I've got all Aussie beers today. I don't know about you two.
00:02:29
Speaker
I've got all batch Sourfest beers today. I thought where was the thing? We had to keep it all Australian. Yeah, well, that's all New Zealanders. It doesn't always play out that way. It's not always what's available, but yeah, okay. Not all of us live in fucking Merrickville or close enough that you can get everything from Merrickville, Tom. Everywhere delivers, Peter. Everywhere delivers.
00:02:53
Speaker
I meant to get some beers from the butthole on. So Tom and I caught up last night for a couple of bevies. I think you were busy, Dan, or at least you just ignored us on WhatsApp. I actually didn't necessarily see that you were going- Conner, Conner B? This weekend, but we're away all weekend anyway, so.
00:03:10
Speaker
Yeah, right. So we went out for a few beers and we talked about the fact that my fridge was empty other than the Sourfest beers that Tom was very kind enough to, to supply me with. Oh look, I'm even wearing last year's Sourfest shirt. And Tom said, Oh, well there's a bottle over attached to the union, which is where we were drinking. Just grab some on the way out. Yeah. That was about 3.30. He said that we, we left PM.
00:03:37
Speaker
That was 3.30 in the afternoon. Well, we started drinking at 3. I think Tom had to leave in a bit of a hurry at about 9.30. It was about 8.30. It was at 8.30, was it? I was asked to leave as the premises was closing and obviously the bottle had been well closed before that.
00:03:56
Speaker
Have no beer. No, you stayed for hours after me. No, it wasn't. It wasn't for hours. We're only there for about another half an hour, 45 minutes, and then they shut them up. Anyway. So let's do some news. Do we want to do first round of beers first? Yes, let's.
00:04:15
Speaker
I'll jump in because I'm ready. I've got White Bay's Morning Yearning. That's how good my English is. It's a smoked Baltic porter and coffee and smoked almonds.
00:04:33
Speaker
6.8. That's the collab they did for Mountain Cultures Festival. Ah, that came from The Rock. It could be a festival, did it? Yes. That would make sense. I don't get much coffee out of it. The smoke character's nice for a Baltic porter. It's got a nice Baltic porter backbone to it. I don't get a huge amount of coffee out of it, but maybe that's why I'm so perky.
00:05:00
Speaker
Might've just been the baggy you just finished before starting the podcast. Yeah, yeah, maybe that turds. Definitely one of the two. Definitely, definitely my every, that's what I line up every Monday afternoon. It's just like, I can't hold myself away from it just to face the week like a piece of shit on for the next four days. And the almonds, I guess these smoked almonds, sorry, I'm in one of those moods. Just went dark. Absolutely no idea why I'm in one of those moods.
00:05:27
Speaker
And the the almonds are sort of sitting there in the background and I really like smoked almonds like we buy bags of them from From Woolies and they're fucking expensive, but they're really good So definitely get that that smoked almond character to it and it's a good level of smoke all the way through it It's got it's got
00:05:49
Speaker
It's got an unusual character there. I wonder what sort of smoke malt they used. It doesn't smell overly bacon character, like Beechwood smoked smoke, smalt. So I'm wondering whether it's like Oak smoked or Manuka smoked or something like that. Not sure. But yeah, I like it. I like it.
00:06:14
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know. Solid three and a half, four. You pick Pete, one or the other. 3.75 it is. Tom.
00:06:26
Speaker
Have I'm just trying to figure if that's actually the name of the beer If it's it's so it's a little bang brewing their Creek. I think it's called the sold dot era as in Solera and It's they yeah, it's a cherry cherry Creek pause a nice deep you know red Almost burgundy
00:06:49
Speaker
I would say and
Beer Tasting Notes
00:06:51
Speaker
it's got a wonderful wonderful kind of nice cherry flavor throughout it's not it's not a smack in the face kind of kind of cherry but it's definitely there and but and like a nice pleasant acidity as well it's not it's not too
00:07:12
Speaker
It's not sucking the insides of my mouth out whenever you know every time I take a sip kind of thing But yeah, they talk about how they They have barrel aged this one and It's spent a year in the barrels on the cherries they talk about the
00:07:32
Speaker
Spend a year on whole, uh, cerevolo family orchards cherries. Um, and yeah, you can, it's despite spending a year on the cherries, you're not getting, you're not getting smashed by them. It's quite a pleasant cherry flavor. Um, and I would give it a solid four.
00:07:49
Speaker
but yeah, 5.8%. So a nice little starter. Canuts kind of, you know, it's a bit trippy, bit funky. Little Bang generally do some pretty interesting artwork on all their beers. Yeah, I would happily get this again, this is great.
00:08:07
Speaker
Gotta say they must never be bored over there at Little Bang. The amount of fucking different shit they put out. And like wildly different too. Like a creek. Not many people do that. And like a barrel aged one too. Everything I've had for them has been wildly different styles. It hasn't been just another pale ale, a Australian pale ale, a New Zealand pale ale, an English pale ale, an American pale ale.
00:08:38
Speaker
Very different. Yeah. So what a pale owl. Well, yeah, I guess that only popped to mind when there was a pale owl pack released a few years ago by one of the larger the larger Yeah, right around. So that's just what popped into my head more than anything else. Fair enough. What are you drinking Peter? I am drinking small batch.
00:09:01
Speaker
I actually like the... I mean, I know the can art's the same for all the small match, but I like this color scheme the most. It's kind of purpley and hot pinkish and stuff. This is the Lychee Cranberry and Pomegranate Sour Ale. That's in my fridge, ready to go. For Sourfest. It's 5.6%. And... it's...
00:09:24
Speaker
sour. It's quite a light, it's a light, almost champagne color. You won't be able to see it properly there. Yeah, the light, your back lights just caught it in the camera. Yeah, you could see through it.
00:09:44
Speaker
In terms of flavor profile, I don't know, it does have a bit of a weird bitterness bite to it. It's not a true bitterness in the sense of a beer. God, my mouth is salivating from the sourness though. I'm finding it hard to slurp my words out. I suspect that's probably the lychee. Or maybe the pomegranate. It can be quite bitter if you get into that. I don't get any cranberry out of it. So to me, it's kind of,
00:10:14
Speaker
It's a sour. It doesn't stand out. The fruit flavors aren't all that powerful, so it doesn't really stand itself out or apart. But none of those fruits are on their own. Power it. Yeah. They're not big hitting flavored fruits. They're all combination fruits, I guess, if you were to put them with things. So a combination of those sort of things, I guess that's kind of what I'm expecting when I crack one open.
00:10:44
Speaker
is that background palette. So we've used cranberries in one of ours hours, and we put fucking buttloads of cranberries in, and you only just get a cranberry flavor out of it. There's almost as much cranberry as there is fucking beer. They're quite subtle flavors. Yeah.
00:11:03
Speaker
Yeah, all three of those fruits are quite subtle in their flavor and I'm a smoker. So you can take the top 30, 40% of normal taste palette out, just discard it. So I don't get a lot of subtleties out of beer sometime. But you know, it's a well-made sour. It's making me salivate, which is a good sign. I like a good punch you in the face mouth puckering sour. So I was gonna give it a four out of five.
Will Smith & Chris Rock's Oscar Incident
00:11:41
Speaker
Will Smith bitch slacking Chris Rock at the Oscars. We weren't going to talk about that. No, fuck Tom. Just because he's been hearing about it all day at work. I don't give a shit about his problems. It's fucking big, man. He was, and you know, the thing I don't, so, you know, we'll, we'll, we'll play it for the video episode on YouTube while we're talking to it. But like Chris Rock makes a joke at Jada Pinkett Smith's expense. Cause I don't know why she's bald at the moment. I presume it's,
00:11:57
Speaker
Noice. Noice. Noice. Dan ruined my favourite news for the thing, so let's do news.
00:12:10
Speaker
Right. That's probably what Will Smith got his back up because she's not well. I don't think so. I don't think that's what got his back up because he makes the Chris Rock makes a joke and says I can't wait to see GI Jane 2 because obviously the original GI Jane had a shaved head. It cut to Will Smith. Will Smith was laughing.
00:12:31
Speaker
He was smiling and laughing at the joke, and Jada's face was stoned. His laugh was like a, I'm gonna fucking punch you in the face, you're a piece of shit.
00:12:42
Speaker
Well, I don't know. Look, the way that I read it, or the way that I read his facial expression, he was laughing along. Jada's face was like stone cold fucking anger. And all I can assume, all I did assume when I was watching it is that they made eye contact off camera and Jada gave Will a look of death. Like, are you gonna defend my honor or not? Because the next thing he walks up on stage, he bitch slaps him and walks, palks back and sits down.
00:13:10
Speaker
and him yelling in the middle of the Oscars in front of everybody like everyone thought it was staged in a bit of a joke and it's like take my wife's name out of your fucking mouth and he yelled it so I was just it's not something I expected to see at the Oscars
00:13:26
Speaker
There's people make jokes all the time at others expenses and those things between that and the the Emmys with What's his name Ricky Gervais? Just fucking torturing and roasting the shit out of everybody Just not what I expected to get a slap
00:13:43
Speaker
I'll defend comics and their bad taste jokes as far as you can go. I watched that latest Jimmy Carr special and I thought it was fucking hilarious. And so I will defend comics and their choices but when someone's unwell and like I don't, it's like completely out of school here, I don't know how close those families are, the rocks and the smiths and
00:14:11
Speaker
Like you don't know what someone's life is like when they're unwell there might be more background conditions All that sort of stuff and he just will Smith might have just had a shit fucking day But I'll tell you what it's the first time I've ever seen Chris Rock forget a line and just completely lose all composure
00:14:29
Speaker
Cause he just, he went to continue after the slap and then just bailed on it. It just knocked him for six. Like it really fucking surprised him. It was a big hit. It was a big dating game kiss. I caught that. Fuck, I shouldn't have done it. I squished my hand between two kegs today. So that really hurt. Ouch. Why'd you do that, man? Of course, I'm a dumb.
00:14:59
Speaker
Thank you. You're an asshole. I guess that's fair play. You ask a silly question, you get a silly answer. Just quickly talking about Academy Awards. So the Oscars, June killed it today. So I picked up five Academy Awards, Best Music for Original Score from Hans Zimmer, Best Visual Effects, Best Production Design, Best Film Editing and Best Cinematography.
00:15:27
Speaker
And Return of the King is still laughing from its 11. Fuck yeah. I wasn't trying to compare it to history. I'm just saying like this year they absolutely like June smashed it. And I think... How many awards are there? I wonder. I've never paid attention.
00:15:46
Speaker
Don't you make us look ill-prepared when you ask questions that we all are ill-prepared? Furiously trying Google to get an answer. You're both doing it at a time. It's a race. It's a race! Nah, you can go. It's a race! It should obviously be pointed out that after 30 minutes after he cracked Chris Rock across the face, Will Smith did win Best Actor 2. Which they're considering asking him to give it back.
00:16:08
Speaker
Yeah. There's 24 Oscars each year. Right. And they picked up five. So that's a pretty, pretty big number. Um, Spider-Man was only up for, I think, best visual effects and got pushed out. So Spider-Man got nothing, which after seeing the movie. And what else should it have got? None. It's just, it's best.
00:16:34
Speaker
It's better than Endgame. What a bad call that was. I stand by. I stand by that you're wrong. I stand by that you're wrong. So fuck ya. Fuck ya. Geez, I'll tell you what, the other two spoiled them in. Actually, it wasn't both of them. It was... Who's the first Spider-Man? I never remember his name. Thank you. Toby has not aged well. He just hollowed eyes, sunken cheeks, just does not look healthy. He's probably older than us.
00:17:06
Speaker
I think he's in, I think he's in, I reckon he's in his mid fifties. Fifties? No. Really? He's not in his fifties. No. Fuck. No. Well, when first Spider-Man came out in 2000 and he would have been, he would have been like at least mid twenties in there. Yeah. Okay. You could be right. You could be close to it. Um, it's all right. We don't need to guess. We've got Chrisopedia right in front of me. Just give me a sec.
00:17:34
Speaker
He's 46. I win. 46. You said mid-50s. You beat everyone else to disprove your own point. You're only 10 years off. I never said it was a point. I took a stab in the dark. The only other piece of news that I saw that was interesting might actually encourage me to install Steam again. Speaking of Steam, if you've got yours on in the background, Dan, can you turn it off? Because I've noticed your upload.
Nostalgia in Gaming
00:18:00
Speaker
actually i've got everything goes steam is releasing um so close porn tube too because that sucks good old good old games uh stinging and yeah that looks like about it yeah
00:18:15
Speaker
Steam is releasing three Dungeons & Dragons Forgotten Realms archive packs, so they're real old-school games, and I got a little bit of a semi because I recognised most of the games, played through most of them, but they've all been updated to run on modern PC technology.
00:18:33
Speaker
So the first archives, all three parts of the Eye of the Beholder trilogy, which is kind of a dungeon, one of the first dungeon hacks after Dungeon Master. Can you run through what type of games they are? Because I read this in the news but didn't read past the first line because I thought you'd go into it.
00:18:49
Speaker
Sure. So Eye of the Beholder is a game from the 90s. Yeah, 91. Amiga MS-DOS. It's a first-person turn-by-turn dungeon crawler. So very similar to the original Dungeon Master, if you ever played that. Forward, back, left, right on the keyboard. Yep. And then you've got a part of your four characters, typically your fighters up front and your casters or rangers out back.
00:19:18
Speaker
because if a skeleton swung at you, it always hit the front characters, not the back ones, but you put the squishy guys out front, they're glass cannons, they die quickly. So yeah, I mean, it's in the Forgotten Realms, you know, campaign universe within Dungeons the Dragons. It's based on first edition rules or AD&D, which is kind of first, kind of not first.
00:19:43
Speaker
Yeah, I remember playing them as a kid. They were great. I don't know how they'd stand up today in terms of gameplay, but I'm definitely going to download it and have a look. The second archive pack has fucking six games in it. Oh, okay. Yeah, no. I just looked at one image on Google Images, and it just so couldn't be that.
00:20:05
Speaker
ray tracing and all sorts of shit, but it's definitely not that. Definitely not that. So the next archive pack contains six titles. I'm not going to read them all, but Pool of Radiance and Curse of the Azula Bonds are two that I did play. They're even older. So Pool of Radiance came out in 96.
00:20:32
Speaker
No, it did not. It came out earlier than 96 because it was available for the Amiga, the Apple II, the Commodore 64 and MS-DOS and the Atari. So yeah, real old-school. That's a text-based game-scroller, D&D crawler. So no, no graphics, essentially. Just text and some bad ASCII fucking visuals. I'm from memory. It's been a long time and I didn't do much research into the actual nature of the games.
00:21:02
Speaker
And then the third contains two more games that I didn't recognize the name of. But it's cool to go back and revisit some of these old AD&D original classic games for systems that don't even exist anymore. So that's my digital archeology update for the week. Preserved for historically preserved for future people to look at and go, what the fuck is this shit?
Digital Media Preservation
00:21:30
Speaker
once our nostalgia dies out. Yeah. There's an interesting thought. It's not going to be too many more generations of humans before digital archaeology will actually be a thing. Of course it will be. It'll have to be.
00:21:46
Speaker
going back and finding, I saw in the news today, they finally, a guy reverse engineered Windows version 1 to find an Easter egg that you couldn't even possibly have found when the thing was released. So in every version of Windows, there's a specific sequence of keystrokes that brings up the credits
00:22:08
Speaker
shot for the people that worked on development for that Windows version. But it's just a list of names. It's not like it's a photograph with all these people, but yeah. But they never found one for Windows version one. And this guy apparently found that it was a bitmap file that was embedded in an executable file, and then the bitmap itself was encrypted.
00:22:35
Speaker
So it's like how the fuck would anyone back in like the early nineties would we had no one even had the technology you had to use tech that they currently started using in windows three to get it and then yeah when he got it and then one of the guys who developed windows one was Gabe Newell who yeah went on to get valve so it was like yes.
00:22:58
Speaker
It was just, that's all, the screenshot got shared, I think, sort of in Kotaku and it was literally just like a little box that had eight names in it. Just names in it, yeah. But he found it, he was very, yeah. So yeah, he is already a digital archaeologist. Archaeologist, there you go. Cool.
Witcher 4 Speculations
00:23:15
Speaker
All right, let's start destroying my tricks for directions. No, no, Peter, you've missed the most important news of the week. How could you have missed the most important news of the week?
00:23:27
Speaker
You're looking there like, you're looking like, like what the fuck are you talking about? What the fuck? You know what I'm talking about, Thomas? The Witcher 4.
00:23:36
Speaker
You got circumcised by a Wolverine in the wild? The Witcher 4. Well, you can add to the run sheet. Yeah, I know. Yes. You can open the run sheet. You can open the run sheet earlier than when we start recording, fucker. I literally cannot. Oh, there's an edit button. That's why I can't do it. It's probably an opening word button too, buddy. John Wick 4 was announced. I didn't see Witcher 4 announced. Tom put it in the chat.
00:24:08
Speaker
Oh, did he? They just dropped the image. They haven't really seen anything. There you go. It's in. But it sent Dan into a fervor. Into an early morning fervor. And I... Is that why you're in a good mood, Dan? And that's why I got the animal right, too. Just out of pure luck, I looked at the nose section when you posted it, Tom, because it's the medallion embedded in Snow Pete, if you haven't seen it.
00:24:37
Speaker
Oh, I did see this chat. I just didn't connect the dots that it was an announcement, an official announcement. Yeah. So I looked at the nose part and sort of zoomed in on it and it had whiskers engraved in the cat-like nose. So, yeah. And it was the ears. Well, it was the ears and the long sort of beard part at the front. And I've just gone, that looks like a fucking lynx. And so I went and pulled up a picture of a lynx and I'm like, yeah, it does look like a fucking lynx.
00:25:05
Speaker
And now CD Projekt Red has said, yes, it's the school of the Lynx. So that is all we know so far. They're not. Damn. Video game detective and real life archaeologist. Knows what a fucking real life animal looks like. Yay, me. I don't know. There's something about Lynx. Have you ever heard the fucking weird noise that they make?
00:25:30
Speaker
Not for at least a couple of months, mate. They've hunted them to extinction in my backyard. One day, Google links cry, and it's a weird sound that these cats make. But they're beautiful animals. They haven't announced anything. It's cool of the links.
00:25:51
Speaker
It's in the snow, so it's going to be after the time of the wild hunt, which is why it's in the snow and the great blizzard, the big whites come, the Ragnarok of the Witcher world is there.
00:26:06
Speaker
I imagine, that's what I gathered from the snow. Yeah, they haven't announced whether it's going to be Ciri, but I reckon it's probably not going to be Ciri, but Ciri might play a big part in the story again. I think she's way too OP to be... What the hell was that?
00:26:27
Speaker
Is that just, oh, is that, you've got that open at the back. That's a Lynx. I turn my speakers on just for that moment, mate. That look of confusion. Yeah. It's, now you've thrown me off my course of thinking. Good. I reckon Siri is way too OP to have her as a, like a player. And you, you got that from the missions that you played with her in, in the Witcher three.
00:26:56
Speaker
They were made for run-through levels where you just were way too powerful to annihilate everybody that was there.
00:27:06
Speaker
Yeah, so I don't because she's got witcher training, but she's elven blood or elder blood elder blood And she's got mystical powers, so There's also take the take the best bits of every other kind of character There's a lot of people saying that they would love for CD Projekt Red to let you create your own witcher character which would be cool, but I
00:27:32
Speaker
I think I would probably rather a really well-scripted, like, well-made, well-thought-out character rather than people. Because otherwise, you're only going to meet generic characters for which you've already got no established history. And you end up as a voiceless character, even if it is voice acted, you'd never really
00:27:57
Speaker
connects. Yeah, that sort of stuff or it doesn't deliver. And I mean, don't get me wrong, they've done a fantastic job with V in Cyberpunk, but it still is a player created visual character. But that character is still fully scripted. He or she has a name. She's referred to as V and remembered as a character and you can play it out along
00:28:26
Speaker
a certain personality type. So it is a scripted person. But I just I mean, we fell in love with Geralt because Geralt was Geralt and it was written. It was written the way it was written. So that's I really hope they stick to that formula.
00:28:43
Speaker
wouldn't have made much sense having Geralt's voice-acted parts playing out of a very small, diminutive, ginger-nut fucking child, for example. So if it does give you the ability to pick your own graphics for your character, having pre-recorded voice lines of just dark, low, throaty grunts just wouldn't make sense for a lot of characters.
00:29:06
Speaker
I mean obviously they do two genders don't get me wrong but I mean in terms of even the guys there's a lot of scope for creating strange combinations of characters for visuals for for each of the genders yeah and I mean it would be it would be super and like like I said last last time we recorded playing V in Cyberpunk as the female character is badass and I'm still so enjoying the shit that she throws out there because I just think it's much better
00:29:34
Speaker
Voice acted, yeah, delivered. Delivered. So I'd love to see a female witcher traditionally towards the books. All the witches are males. But they did start to lean into that a little bit within the TV series, with the series almost taking the trial of grasses.
00:29:54
Speaker
So it would be excellent if the School of the Links was set in, I guess, the near future after the World Hunt, where maybe Ciri sets up a female school and trains some witches up through there, and that would be cool. I'd be really, really into that.
00:30:14
Speaker
it would like rather than giving you the ability to customize your visuals it would actually make more sense for them to define five or six schools and then have you pick which school your main character is going to belong to throughout the rest of the series although it probably still has pretty heavy influence on your interaction with the world I suppose so that
00:30:34
Speaker
Yeah, well it does, the few that you see there, I mean they all have their own armour, I mean they broke that a little bit in Witcher 3 with Geralt being able to get all the armour from the four schools that they had written for, but that leaned into your playstyle as well, however you wanted to play, whether you wanted to play the big heavy bear school or the quick fast lightly armoured cat school.
00:30:57
Speaker
that that sort of it so but i mean letho from school of the serpent he in um in the witcher too he's of a much different mentality than the the the witches from the school of the wolf so it's a
00:31:12
Speaker
Well, that's what I mean. So if you picked your own school, it should change that character's interaction with the world and the way the world interacts with you.
Voice Acting Diversity in Games
00:31:21
Speaker
Yeah, but you want to, like, they're definitely not going to allow, do that because they're going to lean into this school of the Lynx.
00:31:29
Speaker
that side of it. But that would be super hard because they'd have to have, rather than male and female dialogue, they'd have to have dialogue for the opinions of... Male school the cat, female school the cat, male school the bear. Exactly. So thousands and thousands of lines of dialogue. Well, I mean, they probably already have thousands of lines of dialogue, but yeah, even more now. Anyway, I'm excited. I'm excited and we know fuck all.
00:32:00
Speaker
Plus, I mean, look, you can always get a really talented voice actor and they can do four different voices. Oh, yeah, it's just time, time. And you look at... I was... Yeah. I was looking at Ashley Burch's profile today, who voice acts Aloy, but also Tiny Tina. Same thing, same thing.
00:32:16
Speaker
and a shit ton of other stuff. So it's amazing. I always find it interesting to see, particularly cartoon characters, video game characters with very specific voices. It's always interesting to watch that content for 50 to 70 hours and then suddenly see a YouTube video where that voice is coming out of a human's face.
00:32:41
Speaker
And it just takes the brain a couple of seconds to kind of connect the two because it's like she doesn't look like Aloy And yet if you look at any of and as I've been playing through and we will talk a little bit later about Horizon But as I've been playing through Horizon the because the graphics are so fucking amazing I go back to IMDB every now and then to look at what is the act the voice actor look like?
Graphics Evolution in Gaming
00:33:02
Speaker
That is voicing this part and Jesus Christ. They get them close now
00:33:07
Speaker
Like you would be able to, if you knew that person in real life, you'd be able to recognize them in the video game. No questions asked.
00:33:14
Speaker
Often I can find that when I'm playing a game and I'll and then I'll watch something randomly and I'll be like I fucking know that person's voice I've never seen them before and anything and I look it up and they were like either a significant side character or they voiced like Someone I played it haven't heaps in Game of Thrones. I used to find that all the time And then became more and more distracting like the more games I played I'd be like fuck
00:33:38
Speaker
kind of eat you up inside until you get it. And then it's like, Oh shit. Yeah. There is like a, quite a decent amount of, uh, like crossover. I mean, look, there are exceptions. Chris judge, big lumbering black man, uh, African-American voicing Kratos, who's like a, an ash skinned white painted skinned Greek guy.
00:34:06
Speaker
So obviously it's not always a direct correlation, you can't see any Chris Judge in the way that they've animated him, but still, you can in a lot of stuff. It's funny, you can't, obviously not in the character representation because the character was around long before Christopher Judge was voice acting, but definitely in the mocap.
00:34:27
Speaker
There was in the way he moves. Oh, yeah. The expressions, the micro expressions. There was one section when Atreus has just found out they're gods and Kratos is talking to him and he's pulling the boat back to the back to the water. And if you look at that side by side with their mocap and the
00:34:49
Speaker
I would have hated to have been that kid acting across from Chris Judge, even when he was in a mocap suit, because he fucking dropped that rope and turned around to that kid with just fury in his eyes. And yeah, and he's an enormous man too. I've seen him in real, seen him in real life. There's another story for another night. And he is a mountain of a man.
00:35:20
Speaker
Yeah, Sonny Solgik on the other, and I don't know if I'm pronouncing his surname properly there, but that's who plays Atreus. He looks exactly like he does in the video game, down to the gleaming blue eyes, and I figured they'd probably just color-enhanced it for the video game for some reason, but the actual actor has, and we've talked about this about 10 episodes ago actually, when I was talking about my playthrough of God of War. He's a dead ringer.
00:35:45
Speaker
But we're getting to the it's the thing that makes horizon stand out is the technology Has gotten to a point where it's it's becoming closer and closer to reality and so it's you notice those types of things If you don't know I know Pete you haven't played at Tom. I don't know whether you have Hellblade Senua's sacrifice So it's a
00:36:07
Speaker
I know, I know of it, but I never played it. Yeah. It sounds like a porno. She's a, you play a Senua and she is a Celt from the Celtic Isles of the UK. Uh, in, uh, and in the Nordic land. So she ends up in Norway because of storyline plot. And she's, she's,
00:36:34
Speaker
Yeah, that will happen because of because things and they developed a technology and this is years ago and it was groundbreaking at the time and it was Live so she was live acting with the the dots and the mocap and all captured on her face and it was being live projected within the game graphics and
00:37:00
Speaker
Okay, so real time. Yeah, so if you're looking for something that, and I know you're saying it's much more prevalent these days, but for one of the games that really stood out, there's some really great behind the scenes stuff of her acting out a scene and it playing on the screen next to her.
00:37:18
Speaker
With like a burning tree and the voice of a god talking to her and she's acting out and Even more so for her. She wasn't an actor when she came into it. She was part of the production team I think and they needed someone to stand in for the character. So she ended up
00:37:36
Speaker
she ended up playing the main character. And she played a character that has mental health issues. It's early, it's early depression. It's early psychosis where she's hearing voices of the voices just in her head. Oh, are they the gods talking to her? And this would would have been a time when
00:38:01
Speaker
people with those issues would have been talking to gods and demons and things like that. And the whole game plays out that way. And you never really held a scene with sacrifice. It's a linear story in little small hub area worlds. They really focused on that technology and really leant into the mental health aspect of it.
00:38:28
Speaker
Rather than being a big open world large-scale thing and I love it. I think it's fucking great game and Not only that one of my I'll have a look at some of the behind the scenes one of my favorite bands is doing one of my favorite Norwegian bands is doing the
00:38:46
Speaker
is doing the music for the second game, which is Hellblade 2, which is Xbox exclusive, so I'm glad I've got a good PC these days. And I'll play it on that. It's gonna be completely based in Norway and Nordic Mythology, and it looks fucking bonkers, so really looking forward to it. But yeah, look at that behind the scenes stuff, because it was really, really groundbreaking. The performance she puts in, having never, having done anything like that before, is fantastic.
Matrix Resurrections Critique
00:39:16
Speaker
And you'd be... Graphics just on the two second silent playthroughs you get on YouTube. The graphics look better than Avatar. Definitely gonna watch some. Sorry, just try and get as many fucking rib punches as I can into that fucking game. Tom wasn't around when we watched that horrible Avatar trailer.
00:39:43
Speaker
For the best for the best fuck off avatar like that's shit fuck it
00:39:51
Speaker
And I didn't do my rant over the movie studio for the podcast, but that's all right. I'll save that for another time or just not bother. Do you want to start talking about Matrix resurrections while I go feed the cats? So they're at their feet at the moment. Yeah, Tom hasn't seen it. So I'm not going to miss you hating on it. No, I mean, I can't. I can't hate on it too much with you because you can't bounce back telling me how much shit it was.
00:40:19
Speaker
Okay. I can pretend I'm a very good actor. I see what you're saying. No. Do you want me to get the beer? Well, okay. I'll be back. Uh, it was horrible. Tom. It was, it was the, think of this more, not, not of bouncing off ideas. I was enormously disappointed. There was,
00:40:46
Speaker
I mean, we'd spoken about here either that I didn't want any more spoilers, I just wanted to let it play out. And I... It was a good, what, three, four months before it came out? You're like, that's it, no more. Like, we had radio silence in the chat when anything new came out. Like, we didn't post anything, we didn't talk about it. And I enormously appreciate that. And I got closer and closer to the time and there was just little niggling things that started to play on me that made me go,
00:41:16
Speaker
Not sure there was just and it wasn't it wasn't I didn't watch any more trailers The the last few trailers that came out and I didn't say still haven't seen them I might go back and watch them now to see if there was any big red flags in it
00:41:28
Speaker
I watched that first trailer quite a few times because I really like Jefferson Airplane and the White Rabbit version that they made for that. I thought it was really modernized, really appropriate, and I was really looking forward to the continuation of Neo's story, which this definitely is the continuation of Neo's story.
00:41:52
Speaker
It's definitely a continuation of Trinity's story And that's or and it's the and there's a big spoiler here. I hope you don't care. Do you care? Shall I just go? Okay, let's boil away. No Noobie is in it. So talking about Jada Pinkett Jada Pinkett is in it again She is in some fairly possible old lady makeup
00:42:18
Speaker
But they like she's a fit 40 year old, 40 something year old lady and they're getting her to shuffle around the set like she's some old grandmother woman and it just
00:42:35
Speaker
It blatantly stands out like she actually looks like a young woman trying to act like an old woman. And she doesn't and she's a young woman trying to put on an old woman's voice. It's like that, that shakiness in the voice and it. And yeah, it's a bit like what's his name in Prometheus, the the Aussie guy Pierce.
00:43:02
Speaker
when he's playing the old guy, Whelan in Prometheus. He's a young guy in old guy makeup. You know what? Just get a fucking old guy to play the old guy. There's plenty of them. They could have easily just gotten an older actor and said, this is Naomi.
00:43:25
Speaker
And everybody would have gone, yep, she got old and she changed. Like they didn't have to dress up Jada Pinkett. Don't get me wrong, I love her. I think she's great. And I thought she was fantastic in the game and the second two Matrix movies.
00:43:41
Speaker
But it just didn't work. And that was just a tiny thing. That was a tiny, tiny thing in it. The treatment of Morpheus in it was horrible and such a disservice to Laurence Fishburne. Just completely disregarded who he... everything he bought. And he was the heart and soul of the first three movies.
00:44:05
Speaker
And they didn't bring him back. It's like... And then he gets... You know what? I can't even remember what they said actually happened to the first Morpheus.
00:44:18
Speaker
And I know in the Matrix online, he continued the fight and died at some stage. I don't know whether that's canon and whether it's not canon, but I seriously cannot remember what I said happened to him in the movie. It was, it was so much of a throwaway line that it just, it didn't even resonate. The, the only, the only new character that I can remember the name of.
00:44:47
Speaker
was bugs. So she's the short. I want to say she's American Asian actor. She was good. She was good. She was she was a highlight. And all of the rest of them can go and suck a big fat dick because they added nothing to the story. Oh, Jessica Jessica Henwick. Yeah, she was in Daredevil.
00:45:17
Speaker
Was she? Yeah, she I know. Fist. I was going to say she wasn't Electra. And that was the only no.
00:45:28
Speaker
No, no, no, no. But then, oh, she would have been in the defenders. So she was good. I really hated the ham-fisted way they made her bugs, as in Bugs Bunny, as in the white rabbit for Neo to follow. And she had the white rabbit tattoo on her shoulder. And that was all really ham-fisted in there.
00:45:52
Speaker
And then that actually got me thinking about another thing. Are tattoos permanent when it's your digital projection? And did they just put the white rabbit on there for her to show to Neo so Neo would trust her? And could anybody have done that and just put a fucking rabbit on their shoulder and said, hey, Neo, follow me? Oh, I fucking did, man. Well, you really did go down the rabbit hole in that thought process, didn't you? I've gone down a few rabbit holes with this because it was horrendously bad. And so Pete,
00:46:22
Speaker
There was one section that I really wanted to wait for you to get back to hassle. So I haven't started from the start. I'm just nitpicking it bits and pieces that I fucking hate it, which was the whole thing, really. Other than the first 20, 30 seconds where they did the whole going through the matrix code, the phone number and all that. And it was, I got like, yeah, okay.
00:46:42
Speaker
nostalgia vibes there. It's a bit of excitement. I think I might get into this. And then actually the whole Jefferson Airplane White Rabbit song sequence where Neo's sort of lost in the treadmill day-to-day grind of the world. I liked that. I really liked that. That was well done. But it was the fucking trailer, the trailer that I loved. And that was the only good thing. The Merovingian Pete.
00:47:09
Speaker
Yeah. So they came back. Yeah. It's like wiping your ass. So you got none of that. You got none of that. So he's like a fucking trash bag. Literally a trash bag fucking discarded homeless program now.
00:47:28
Speaker
So he's been, there was, there was none of that eloquent rhymes. And you know what? I guarantee that fucking actor wasn't even on set with anybody else because it shot him like we're looking at each other now with no other fucking characters. He made a few fucking quippy lines and then at a cut back to his fucking, his rejects from Robin Williams fucking hook movie, the, the rejects of the Lost Boys in there.
00:47:54
Speaker
orange fluoro fishnet trash bag outfits fighting throwaway characters from ION like just the these new characters that I don't remember a single one of their fucking names and it was an absolute waste of time fucking sequence it was nothing he wasn't there yeah like if he was there it was a fucking waste of the character and the interactions that he could have had but I guarantee he wasn't there and hmm
00:48:24
Speaker
I just found the whole thing forgettable, like I have to Google what you're talking about and then I Google it and I see the screenshot and I just go, oh, that, like, that's the whole movie for me.
00:48:44
Speaker
I'm pissed off with Keanu, because I love Keanu as a human, as an actor, and I just, he disappointed me by being in this movie. I don't think that, it's 100% not his fault. He took a paycheck, he did it, and he never saw the final cut until it was the final cut. He probably did some good scenes where he thought, yeah, okay, cool. There's probably a lot cut out of it that might have been good, but you say forgetful, Pete. That fucking joker that played Smith
00:49:14
Speaker
Why was he even fucking there? Like, there was no reason for Smith to be in there. There was absolutely, and there you go, okay, well, he's the opposite to Neo and he has to be there. It's like, fuck off! Like, how many bits and pieces do you want to throw in there that are just wasteful and pointless, and just because you can't come up with something fucking new?
00:49:37
Speaker
Yeah, because the original lady who wrote the script didn't write another script for the Wachowski sisters to steal this time. Yeah, well, fair enough. Yeah, no, I understand. They did. I mean, they literally stole the story and she sued the shit out of them. So, oh, fuck, we got to do another movie because we're running out of money. Let's just rehash, because that's all it was, was a fucking, it was a horrible
00:50:05
Speaker
We stuck the original three movies in a blender and the vomit that came out if that's the movie that we're making. Yes, I agree that There was definitely some of those elevates in there. They did try they did try some new things but they were so ill thought out and unprepared and They needed
00:50:29
Speaker
No, no, there was no complexity to them, to those, those new devices, which is why I go back to you didn't have someone's script. I cannot even remember the name that they gave to Neil Patrick Harris, Harris's character. He's the fucking, he's the main protagonist. No, either.
00:50:46
Speaker
antagonist, antagonist, antagonist in the movie. I can't remember what I called him. I'm just calling him the architect because that's what he's based on. And that's the one I remember. And it's a memorable name because... But he almost takes on the Agent Smith's role out of the original trilogy as well as being the architect. Why do that when there's Smith there?
00:51:11
Speaker
They called in the analyst by the way Yeah, the only good thing the only little bit that was in there that I've gone. Yeah, okay You know what? I like that. It was the little girl from the train station in revolutions turns out to be the replacement of the Oracle she's not the Oracle but she's kind of guiding the hand there to
00:51:37
Speaker
help Neo continue down the path to remember who Neo is. And I'm like, yeah, you know what? I like that. I like that she is a program in there like the Oracle was working to help Neo fulfill, well, in the end, Neo and Trinity fulfill their oneness, their tuness, their dichotomy. Is that the right word?
00:52:00
Speaker
The duality, the duality of the male and female and the one is both, but not one. And ironically, it almost felt like they were trying to talk about the Holy Trinity, which is a whole, which is a similar, but different, slightly different, but complex topic where, you know, it's got, it's the, the father, the, the son and the Holy Ghost. They're three entities, but they're all one entity.
00:52:28
Speaker
There's a oneness about it and that's kind of what it felt like a really fumbled attempt at kind of drawing some sort of parallel to religion, which the first trilogy did a decent job of. It was it was a religious story just in a different shell.
00:52:43
Speaker
Uh, this was just a travesty of a movie. It's the worst movie I've seen this year. I'm pretty sure I'll be able to say that at the end of 22 would say that. We're two years into this decade. I'm calling it's one of the worst movies of the decade because it was, it was a horrendous, absolutely
00:53:03
Speaker
It wasn't, it wasn't even fun to just sit back and watch Tom and not take seriously. And that's, it's not even where I got to having not seen it. And in the end buying it on Amazon because it still hadn't gone up for rent. And you know what? I'm like, this isn't going to be so bad that I'm not going to watch it again. So I'll pay the, I'll pay this one. And I was wrong. I was horribly, horribly wrong.
00:53:30
Speaker
Because there was one scene where Keanu and Kerry and Moss are in a coffee shop talking, just literally sitting at a table, coffee each talking, and it felt like straight out of acting school actors sitting there, ad-libbing or just going- Ad-libbing or something like that. It almost goes
00:53:58
Speaker
I'm just gonna throw you a line and you're gonna carry on the scene from there, go. And it was awkward and stuffy and I don't know what to say next. It did, it just felt awkward. I felt awkward sitting there for, and I don't know if they were trying to go for the awkwardness of two people trying to
00:54:20
Speaker
Well, exactly. I mean, everybody's had a bad first day where you didn't know where to continue the conversation, but this wasn't that. This was two people. You're right. It was like ad-libbing or let's just, you know what? I know this is bad. You know, this is bad. Let's just like deliver these lines so we can get the fuck out of this scene and get back to something else that's better than this rubbish because that's what it felt like.
00:54:45
Speaker
I got it. I got it. The one thing I will say, yeah, I completely agree. One thing I will say is Carrie Anne Moss is looking fucking pretty darn good for her age. She's 54. Yeah, absolutely gorgeous. She is gorgeous. Absolutely 100%. Very impressive. Impressive that she has aged as well as she has. It doesn't look like she's had what she's done, which is don't fuck that she hasn't.
00:55:06
Speaker
Keanu looks fucking awesome. Keanu looks awesome with no beard and no hair as well. He looks so good in the real world. That man's 52 or something as well. And yeah, man, if I can look half as good as him at 52, you can definitely tell he's there. He's got the old Harrison Ford Kingdom of the Crystal Skull kind of stutter to him when he tries to do things that he's there.
00:55:30
Speaker
It's not as mobile as the young Neo. But yeah, right. They were talking about Keanu's fucking immortality not too long ago. And it's become a whole internet movement now. They've found a painting of a French actor from the 1800s. And it's a painting because it's pre-photography. So it must be earlier than that. And I tell you what, one of the paintings of this actor
00:55:58
Speaker
It's a fucking dead ringer. I'll find a picture of it while you keep talking, and I'll throw it up on the screen. I'm really disappointed. Pete, I was saying before you came back, the treatment of Morpheus was horrible.
00:56:09
Speaker
It was a real disservice to the absolute emotional linchpin of the first three movies which was Morpheus and his quest for Neo, his belief in Neo and his continuing belief in Neo even when Neo didn't necessarily believe in himself the whole way through the movies and that was a complete
00:56:30
Speaker
No. There was no vulnerability in any of it, other than him being confused about who the fucking really was. There's so many regurgitated scenes and actual footage from the original Matrix. Thomas Anderson had made a trilogy of games called The Matrix, and they are known to the world, and they were these massive hits.
00:56:57
Speaker
At one stage, they, uh, the people that are trying to free Neo again, I can't even remember any of their names other than Boggs, uh, they get him to a point where they go, oh, we're gonna, we're gonna like put some nostalgia up here that might jog your memory to who you are. And it's literally scenes from the first Matrix playing on the wall. And he looks at it and he's gone, oh, these are scenes from my game. And it's like, really? You couldn't have re-shot shit like with actors that looked almost like
00:57:27
Speaker
Neo, Trinity and Morpheus and like he's not gonna go out and find fucking Lawrence Well, he might because it's the Matrix so there's copies of them So I might have been shooting myself in the foot here with this all this train of thought But I'm sure they didn't think that far fucking into it. They just went and regurgitated fucking movies like scenes from the original movie and
00:57:47
Speaker
And just popped it up on screen. I totally agree. Oh, yeah, well. It was minimal effort. And obviously, people who aren't watching this on YouTube aren't going to get this. But I've brought up a photo of Keanu Reeves and Paul Munet, who was a French actor from 1847 and 1922.
00:58:14
Speaker
Uh, that's on the right and on the left is a painting of Charlemagne from 748 to 814 AD. And, okay, the Charlemagne's a bit of a long stretch. Yes, he has the same nose, but, you know, that's kind of where the resemblance stops. Well, he doesn't have the epicanthic fold that Keanu does because he is half Hawaiian, half something else. There's some, some like Polynesian, some sort of Asian. I can't remember exactly.
00:58:46
Speaker
But the guy on the right, Paul Monet, fucking does look a hell of a lot like him. It's pretty close. Yeah, so, I mean, it was just a train wreck of a mash together of, let's just throw every piece of excrement at the wall and something's gonna stick, man.
00:59:06
Speaker
And that's exactly what it was. It was a shit smeared wall of crap. Like it's just, there was, there was Beirut. There you go. It was born in Beirut in Lebanon. There was minuscule seconds of good filmmaking in there, but that was about it.
00:59:31
Speaker
The fight scenes weren't good. There was no tension to the fight scenes. They were rubbish. They were throwaway characters. It was a throwaway storyline. They tried to redo the Agent Smith virus copy within the Matrix with a thing called the fucking swarm, which was dumb and pathetic. And it just did not work.
01:00:06
Speaker
And these days, if you've seen a fireworks display in the last few years, you've seen swarms of drones doing light shows now. So, you know, the world has moved on in terms of technology. When was the Matrix? 90s? Late 90s. I want to make one more suggestion and I want to see what you think of it. I actually paused the movie three quarters of the way through. Actually, it was just after that horrendous
01:00:18
Speaker
It was a really it was a really fumbled attempt to modernize the terminology because we are now used to different words.
01:00:29
Speaker
Yeah, that horrendous fight where the Miravijian was standing away and not even participating in the fight. And there was all of those throwaway characters. So they tried to introduce Tom, they tried to introduce a whole new Nebuchadnezzar crew. I can't even remember what the name of the fucking ship was called and I can remember the Nebuchadnezzar.
01:00:50
Speaker
Like, it's fucking ridiculous that I can remember that. Yeah, neither do I. And, like, they tried to introduce this, this crew that was gonna be the replacement for this, that was gonna... And I can't even remember if any of them fucking died or survived. That's how much I don't remember these characters. And...
01:01:09
Speaker
That's exactly it. So I paused it after this and said to Louise, what they should have done, and I couldn't write a movie, but I'm sure as hell could write a better fucking Matrix movie than this piece of crap. Yeah, exactly. But we're awesome armchair critics. You've got to give it to us.
01:01:26
Speaker
Neo and bugs and the program that was now Morpheus and the operator and forgotten all of the rest of those fucking throwaway dickheads. If they had just had those four characters,
01:01:42
Speaker
Was that four? Neo, Bugs, Operator and Morpheus, yep. If they just had those four characters do the whole movie, there would have been more emotion and time to focus on the new characters of the new Morpheus and Bugs. We know Neo, the Operator got a bit of a look in and his new hologram thing was ridiculous and didn't really make any sense.
01:02:08
Speaker
But if they'd had a limited crew and just had them take off from Ion or Io, I can't even remember what the name of the fucking city was,
01:02:19
Speaker
It was one of them. If they'd had those four go off on the the suicide mission to rescue Trinity, then it would have been more focused and you would have been more engaged if they'd thrown a few different enemies at them to fight in the Matrix and Neo had to help the others fight. But you straight away get Neo split off fighting this dickhead Smith who makes no fucking sense to be there anyway. And he just pops up like there's no explanation as to why he just keeps turning up.
01:02:51
Speaker
And it would have been more focused and you could have had a more heartfelt story. Like by the end of the original Matrix, you end up with Morpheus, Tank, Trinity and Neo. You end up with the four characters. So focus on four characters again. And you cared whether they were going to go. Tank lost his brother.
01:03:11
Speaker
Switch and Apac died, and fucking Cypher turned. Like, you cared about what happened to each of these characters, even though Switch and Apac didn't get much time. They were cool characters.
01:03:26
Speaker
And for anyone thinking that it's unfair to compare a trilogy of three movies to a single movie, all of the stuff you're talking about happened in the first movie, the original Matrix, you'd already established a baseline relationship with the main characters that continued. And to be honest, some of them didn't get much screen time in the subsequent two movies anyway. Actually, none of them did because three of them died.
01:03:53
Speaker
Tank got rewritten because he wanted more money and they didn't want to give him more money, so they bought the other operator in. And that's it. So you actually only had three characters from the original, well, four if you count Smith. You only had three of the humans from the original movie carry over to the second two movies. And then you developed the relationship with the other characters as you went through, like Niobe and I forget the general's name, but the kid,
01:04:22
Speaker
Yeah. It was IO was the name of the city, by the way. And the reason why you can't remember the name of the ship is because it's practically unpronounceable. The NEMA sign, but it starts with an M as in mnemonic.
01:04:38
Speaker
So that's probably why you can't remember it because, you know, it doesn't roll off the tongue like the Nebuchadnezzar. The Nima sign sounds like a zygote. This is the anyway. I was going to go to a dark place. It was just a tragically bad movie all around. It just didn't even tell a story.
01:04:56
Speaker
I mean, nobody just sat back and just said, right, it's a three act play like every fucking movie. We've got a beginning, a middle and an end. We've got a climax at the start of the end and the anticlimax. Build tension through it. Like, why? It's a Hollywood fucking movie. Why did no one sit down and say this script needs to be thrown in the bin?
01:05:21
Speaker
You know why? Because this fucking Warner Brothers is why. And they release so much fucking rubbish. It's not funny. Yeah. It's true. It's true. One thing that they, there was absolutely no reason to change and they changed it far for the worst. The fucking pills.
01:05:43
Speaker
the red and the blue pills. They were like glossy fucking designer drug pills. And in the original movie, they were like Panadol gel capsules. They look like these were like literally Tom, they were fucking like glitter pills. The red, they,
01:06:02
Speaker
They reminded me of those old toy capsules that used to put 20 cents in the machine and it shat out the, the, the, the pop capsule with the toy inside it. You're giving this, like you want it to make it, make it look like the analyst.
01:06:18
Speaker
was giving Neo the blue pills as his psychosis drugs. And they look like fucking glitter pills. They look like glittery, they look like my young niece and nephews got their fucking glitter ones out and they're like this big. And they're just, they're shiny blue glittery things that you get from the fucking Easter show. Like, they don't look like an anti-psychotic pill. They look like a fucking party drug. Like a designer party drug that you would see in like,
01:06:47
Speaker
What was that movie about the injecting strange days? Indirecting people's dreams into their brains? Anyway, sorry, it was a good movie. It was pre... It's funny you say that, I'm so nemous. It was pre Matrix, but it was along those lines.
01:07:05
Speaker
Yeah, right. Right. So the Nemo sign, the name of the ship, is actually a Greek Titaness and is the goddess of memory and the mother of the nine muses. Oh yeah, they are real shameless. So at least there's some sort of tangential link to the plot. It's the ship of memory. We need to jog the whole movies about him remembering. Anyway.
01:07:28
Speaker
Can we move on? I feel like I need a shower after talking about it. It is that bad. It's that fucking bad. To call it resurrections, they had such a fucking stick up their arse to go down that route and think that this is going to resurrect.
01:07:44
Speaker
an amazing movie and which now in hindsight of this steaming pile of crap was a very good trilogy and i probably would never have claimed that because i don't particularly like revolutions um i don't mind reloaded um but that first movie
01:08:03
Speaker
That first movie, the original Matrix was generation defining of the 90s. I think it came in the last year. It laid a lot of new technology. Every action movie has from like in the early to mid to late 2000s has used bullet time. Games still use bullet time. It's like they really laid some groundwork there and then
01:08:28
Speaker
Yeah, they couldn't steal any more stories or they didn't steal them from the right people and they didn't pay the right people enough money. Like they should have just paid that lady and got her to write a fucking trilogy. But I mean, they got their billions out of it in the end. So what the fuck do they care? Yeah. Yeah. So what you're telling me is I should save myself the two and a half.
01:08:51
Speaker
I think you should watch it just to share our pain when it when it goes on to one of them when it goes free on Netflix watch it then because Yeah, yeah, definitely don't pay for it because I don't pay for it right I strongly worded word letter to one of others saying I'm a big supporter of you fucking you need to like refund me my $25 because that was fucking horrible and
01:09:19
Speaker
I did just look up the yeah, it's just Lana. Yeah, it's just Lana. Oh, really? Oh, okay. So I just looked up. Obviously, I was took some of the photos of on IMDB and saw the house shiny those pills do look. But then I came down and the top review is a six out of 10. And it just started the matrix should have stayed a trilogy. I was like, yeah, that pretty much sums up what the boys are saying.
01:09:54
Speaker
Yeah. Look, we're all, like you and I, are both very disappointed. That's what it was, a bitter disappointment. We didn't want to put any, we didn't want to invest any excitement into the movie because we suspected that it was going to be one of those fucking shit reboots, but then it was hard not to get a little bit excited with the opening sequence. And it's like, okay, please be good, please be good. And then just to have it exceed all expectations for being fucking shit.
01:10:11
Speaker
It had so much potential to be something more.
01:10:22
Speaker
It's just... And like I said, when a time came out the same week or the week after June, like, you can't compete with a... And I'm gonna say, even though I think it's enormously wanky, you can't compete with a film... Yeah, with a film like June... With a cinematic masterpiece? With a wall of excrement that is the Matrix Resurrections.
01:10:49
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And I think it is fair to call June a cinematic masterpiece since they did just win the Oscar for cinematic masterpiece-edness. So yeah, let's move off matrix because I feel dirty. And I've had my rant and vent and... Yeah, not in a good way. Have you ever? Have you guys cracked second beers?
01:11:14
Speaker
Do you want to give us a retrospective?
Additional Beer Reviews
01:11:16
Speaker
I needed to go get one as well, but I was so enamoured by Dan's rant that I couldn't get myself up to leave. Do you want to take a quick break? I need to calm down and clean the kitchen or something.
01:11:34
Speaker
Yes, someone needs to go take a lap out of the backyard. Go smoke a car. Maybe that's where my pressure level came from. Because I knew I got to tear fucking absolute shreds off the matrix in this... Yeah, shreds. I've been thinking about it all day. Tear that movie and you fucking want to watch.
01:11:53
Speaker
Cool. You know what? I'm going to interject one more comment here. And Pete, you can put this in there if you'd like. Did either of you ever play The Path of Neo?
01:12:06
Speaker
No. Okay, so in the Path of Neo, you got to play Neo. Thankfully, in a Matrix game, you actually got to play Neo. And it was really cool. There were some really cool extra training sequences where you got to train in Swordplay, which was an old Kirasawa samurai program that you fought in there in proper
01:12:31
Speaker
garb with the sword and everything like that. There were some really cool bits like that. And then there were some really cool extra little bits in the story beats of the three movies. And then you get to the end of revolutions where Neo fights Smith and ultimately in the end he goes, this is inevitable and becomes part of the virus to destroy the virus.
01:12:54
Speaker
And then you had a interjection from the Wachowskis, like a cut going, uh, yeah, okay, well this is how it actually ended, but this isn't an exciting way to end a video game, so here's a boss fight.
01:13:10
Speaker
So, it was a giant Agent Smith that was, like, made up of cars and building and, like, rubble of buildings around. And you had to fly around as Neo and fight this giant Smith made of, like, construction shit. And it's like, no! This, like, we wanted to play this because this is how it fucking ends, you motherfuckers! Like, this is how it ends! Everybody knows!
01:13:37
Speaker
that Neo goes, yes, I accept this fate to save everybody, and you just fucking, you destroy that choice by making him go some useless fucking boss fight. Anyway, rant over.
01:13:50
Speaker
You just went and cleaned the kitchen to calm down, and then you just got yourself worked back up again. I did, I really did get myself worked up. The classic game getting to the end point, Arkham Asylum stands out for that. And then it's like, oh wait, you need to fight a hulking Joker. It's like, what? No, no, what? Just became a beat-em-up.
01:14:10
Speaker
Before we get too much further into random rants, your second beer, do you still have enough of a memory to talk about it, Dan? Yeah, it's a big can, so I saved a little bit. It is the Hawker's White Stout, the barrel, bourbon-barrel aged white stout.
01:14:26
Speaker
The 2002 version, it's a 6.6%. I hope that's gonna glare lots off there, so I apologize Pete, you're not gonna be able to get that. It's all good. It's got loads of vanilla in it. Just loads and loads and loads of vanilla. It's a bit sweet for my liking. It's got some coffee characters, it's got a lot of sweetness in there, and a lot of vanilla in there.
01:14:53
Speaker
I get a little bit, I guess, of Bourbon and Oak. Not a huge amount. I guess there's some background characters of it. It's...
01:15:04
Speaker
It's okay. It's definitely not my favorite and I'm definitely not going to finish that can just because of the overall vanilla aspect of it and the sweetness of it. It's a 2022 version, yeah? Yeah. That's what you were saying? Yeah. Yeah. And there's a lot of writing on the side of the can, but I cannot read it. It's a silver on a white label. I can't read it in this light, so. Yeah. It should be gold, I know.
01:15:29
Speaker
Oh, maybe it's gold. It's yeah, metallic of some sort on there. Yeah. Primarily just making sure I'm looking at the right beer on untapped. Yeah, you're probably right. It probably is gold. Yeah, yeah, it is. What's the ratings? Fine. It's a three. It's okay. Cool. Tomo. I am drinking the Mecha Hop Singularity Centennial.
01:15:54
Speaker
It's the second in the series. So this is from Garage Project. It's a kind of horizon-y looking artwork. It's actually, if you look pretty close, it's a bit steampunk-y this time. Like the center of this, what looks to be like a brachiosaurus, has a little dude pulling ropes and levers and stuff.
01:16:16
Speaker
And it's this time they've done it as a so last one was a hazy pale. This is a West Coast pale ale and obviously they Only used Centennial being a single hop And they said they used CO2 extract t90 cryo incognito and then in the dry hop cryo t90 and hot burst oil and
01:16:41
Speaker
And it pours a lovely, clear, classic West Coast color. It's got a, like, bing, obviously in the paleo style. It's not as intense in the bitterness as you'd expect from a big West Coast. It sits at 6%. It's still piney and a bit dank and has classic West Coast flavors.
01:17:03
Speaker
Um, little bit of light citrus coming through it. Um, and very, very enjoyable. It's hiding that 6% very well though. It's going down too easily. Oh no. Oh no. Just so we don't get accused of not explaining things within beer for the non-beer people. It had T90 hot pellets. So T90 hot pellets are
01:17:26
Speaker
The Hot Pellets have 90% of their original organic material in them. It had, what'd you say, it had Cryo and Lupimax? CO2 Extract. CO2 Extract, which is a CO2 extracted bitterness from a hop, yep. Cryo and Incognito. Incognito, so I think Incognito is a flavor. That's the window I open when I want to look at the nudie ladies.
01:17:58
Speaker
Now you've thrown me off my train of thought again. The incognito is the opposite to the CO2 extracted. So when they take out the bitterness from the hop, they're obviously left with the flavor side of the hop.
01:18:18
Speaker
I could be wrong here, but they're left with the oil. The big companies usually wanted the oil, the CO2 extracted bitterness, so they take the bittering side and now they've left with something that
01:18:34
Speaker
originally nobody could use but now they've made it all into these aroma oils that you use on hot side and I think you can put it in dry hop as well that these aroma oils that don't give bitterness so this is the this is the new thing in the the craft side that these aroma control the the properties far more granularly
01:18:58
Speaker
Yes, you're not going to get the side effect of bitterness by when you change the hot profile flavor. That's exactly it. Yeah. So it was it was just a byproduct of a a product that was in demand with the the bittering side. And this was a byproduct. This has been made into something else. And then cryo is just a
01:19:18
Speaker
Double-down version of hop so it's the like the resin shit that's scraped off the outside of the barrels when all the palletizers when Then lick the lick lick the hashpot. It's the yeah. Yeah, basically. It's basically the hashish of the hop world Cool yeah, it's tasty. It does actually tell I'm just looking up and see if it's the same artist What was your rating
01:19:46
Speaker
Oh, it's four and a half easily. So I'm really happy that Garage Project will release this because we've been doing, at the Australian Brewery, we're doing a single hop series, which I actually have two new ones coming out this week. So I'm going to send them both to you because I have three beers coming out this week. And we did a centennial single hop one a few months ago and we picked almost the same style. So we picked actually an American pale ale
01:20:13
Speaker
to for out to be our um centennial single hop one so we're really stoked when like a month or two later garage projects release their um the centennial single hop so the one we have we have the opposite one of theirs so we have their our centennial hazy pale owl coming out this week so right okay but uh yeah do you have an answer okay i'm i'm still looking up i will find out and get back to you you go mate talk about your view
01:20:41
Speaker
Cool, I'm drinking another small batch. Funny that. This is the Orange Honey and Thyme Sour Ale. For the sourfests, 5.4%.
01:20:53
Speaker
It smells very different than it tastes for me. I know, Dan, you had this this afternoon. Yeah. You get a lot of balanced orange and honey on the nose. It reminds me in a good way. I'm gonna preface it by saying in a good way. It reminds me of a throat lolly where you'd get that honey and orange. Not like a butterscotch, whatever those ones were. Butter menthols.
01:21:23
Speaker
Yeah, not like a butter menthol, but kind of similar. I get less of it on the palate than I do on the nose. I've actually purposely kind of let it sit there just to see if it opens up as it warms up. Again, it's a solid sour base, as Batch have been doing an excellent base sour for years and years and years.
01:21:45
Speaker
It's really enjoyable. It's not mind-blowing. I think it brought back some memories for you, Dan, of some sort of treat. Honey jumbles. I said in my text message I couldn't remember the name of the biscuit, but honey jumbles are these like oval biscuits that have this hard icing on them.
01:22:03
Speaker
And the biscuit is almost gingerbread consistency. And then it's got this hard icing on it. They're called honey jumbles. And I fucking love them. And I haven't bought them in years. But I'm suspecting, Tom, I don't know if you know what the base recipe for this, but I'm suspecting there was so much
01:22:24
Speaker
biscuity maltiness to it that it must have been something like a Morris Otter or an English biscuit malt, an Abbey or Vienna base malt that like really gave that biscuity baseline to it. Then the honey and the floral came over it with the orange in there.
01:22:43
Speaker
And did it have lactose in it? Because it definitely had that lactose sort of sweetness to it for me as well. And that's why it really sort of rounded out in that biscuit, that honey jumble biscuit. And it just tasted and smelt like a fucking honey jumble.
01:23:01
Speaker
I'll have to, I'll ask her. This was brewed by Danny, who's one of the assistant brewers, and it was one of her first, how did she put it? It's the first beer she's put her name to. So I think it was her idea for the recipe, and then she worked on it with Red, our senior brewer.
01:23:22
Speaker
But yeah, it was the star favorite. It was the clear winner for everyone. But I'll find out exactly. I didn't ask what the malt there was on it. Yeah, the base malt, I'll just say it. I mean, it really smelt and tasted like there was some lactose in there. So if not, she's done a fantastic job of balancing that malt sweetness out. So whichever way I'm happy with what she put out there. I thought it was a really good and
01:23:47
Speaker
I thought it really, and it even had that kind of, I know it had time in it, so it really had that. Time is not like a super herbal herb, if that makes sense. It's got that kind of like savory meatiness to it. And I just, I thought all of that just rounded out really well. So absolutely well done because that was, I thought it was fantastic.
01:24:15
Speaker
It is the same artist between both of these cans as well by the name of Tim Gibson. Just quickly I'm giving mine 4.25 out of 5.
01:24:31
Speaker
Dan you're into your third beer aren't you mate? I am. So we're gonna have to interrupt Horizon Forbidden West discussion for you to describe it before you run out of it I presume. I picked up the wrong one which is why I'm sitting here very confused about what the flavor profile on it was.
01:24:48
Speaker
That'll happen. I thought I brought home the batch, the same one you just had, the lychee cranberry one, but I didn't. I'm like, this is like vanilla-y and it's like, did I like not wash my glass out well enough from the last one? But I've picked up the fucking cherry cola one. I almost grabbed that actually. I was super confused about what I'm tasting. Okay, now with that in mind, I will continue. Is that your second or third, Tom?
01:25:18
Speaker
That's my second. I have my third sitting there waiting, ready to go. I'll race out and get mine in a minute.
Horizon Forbidden West Experiences
01:25:25
Speaker
Horizon Forbidden West, the sequel that you and I both anticipated. I, to the point that I had to go back and play the first game to make before the new one came out.
01:25:36
Speaker
thoughts? I mean you haven't finished the game but you've been far enough into the storyline, we're both far enough in that we know what's going to happen. Yeah, it's kind of the story. I'm sure there will be a twist or a turn at the end. There has to be, it's a trilogy.
01:25:52
Speaker
well yeah i mean um i just in terms of the way they uh usually write their stories the team the gorilla games um they usually love to put a little twist in the second to last mission or something and um you know i'm at the point where it's kind of
01:26:07
Speaker
It makes you feel like you're gearing up to do the last bit and I guarantee something's going to go pear-shaped and I'll have to do a little bit more because I'm only sitting at, you know, I've basically revealed the whole map and I've got like 80% of it, like the game done. So I'm definitely not close enough to like 20% is not going to be done by one mission. Yeah, there's going to be a few more to go.
01:26:29
Speaker
I've got to say, the one thing that I have found the most useful in the sequel, so a lot of the same gameplay elements, I find I never really use my spear at all. There's only a couple of times, like I use it for stealth attacks, but that's it. In the first or the second game?
01:26:51
Speaker
Both both right so it's like that's carried over for me. It's just ridiculously underpowered against the robot dinosaur monster things and it's decently powered against the human enemies, but it's Overpowered as a stealth. It's a one-hit stealth for most of the
01:27:12
Speaker
the humans and even some of the The weaker robots you can kind of take out in one The thing that I found the most enjoyable and I don't know if you have Pete the stash
01:27:26
Speaker
No, fuck the stash. Stash is good, but the amount of times he talked about it. There's no more inventory management. I mean, the first game, you were constantly having to balance and shuffle and sell shit and hope you didn't need it and stuff. And the second game's just completely removed that mechanic. So did you say stash? By having a magical... I've looked at Tom's stash and I'm like, I just went straight to Super Troopers and was like, who wants a mustache ride? Anyway, continue. I do, I do, I do.
01:27:54
Speaker
No, the thing I found the most useful is the gliding option, the gliding mechanism. I use that when I really don't need to. Yeah, if I'm jumping down off a building. Just for fun. Just gonna glide. So pretty early on. Half the time instead of running, I'll climb a mountain and jump off just so I can glide down. And I know that I feel like I'm saving time, but I probably spent 15 minutes more climbing that goddamn mountain. Just because it's so fucking fun.
01:28:22
Speaker
Yeah, so she gets this piece of like projected armor tech. So some of the human enemies use it like a shield. In fact, she defeats right at the start the opening sequence for the game or the opening sequence for the main part of the tutorial. She has to face off against a champion representative from one of the tribes and he's using it as a shield.
01:28:47
Speaker
and she damages it in the fight. And she's like, well, it's not going to be strong enough to be a shield, but I might find some other use for it. And that's her glider is just a energy shield. It looks cool. Yeah, it's like a small. It looks cool. Yeah, so she holds it over her head and jumps down and it's it's actually very fun to watch it when it reacts to weather. So if you're gliding in the rain, it bounces little bits of light off it when rain hits it.
01:29:13
Speaker
which is just a nice little touch that they do for that. That's definitely the most useful upgrade for me. I abuse the crap out of that little glider because you don't run out of energy for it. It's not like you can, in other games where you have a glider, it's like you can only do it for a certain amount of time. It's like I've gone to the highest mountain. We're looking at you, Breath of the Wild.
01:29:38
Speaker
Yeah, it's a very, very breath of the wild. Like, it's taken it from that. But it's, yeah, so there's actually a trophy for gliding for 60 seconds or more. And, you know, I figured, I know that at some point in the game, you get a flying mount. So I assumed it'd just be fly up to the very top of the skydome and jump off and glide all the way down.
01:29:58
Speaker
But I just I happen to be in a mountain and the map says this is this is black area that you cannot trespass over and I managed to scale that mountain anyway and jumped off with the fucking shield wing and and hit the trophy so
01:30:13
Speaker
So there's a point in the game where they like tell you, you should jump down and glide from here. And I timed it just being like, this seems a bit on the nose. And it's like 61 seconds. Like to where you actually your feet just scrape the thing. So it's like it's like a scripted moment. But I did feel like so. So when you are doing it, Dan, particularly considering like, if you're like me, you don't want to land.
01:30:37
Speaker
you'll do everything that you can. Actually, the one disappointing thing is there's no updrafts. And it would have been cool if they'd included some sort of updraft mechanic to bring you back up. But I end up feeling like I'm in a wingsuit where I'm just brushing the treetops knowing that the mountain range is about to open back up again for me. And you do everything you can, you fucking slalom down the mountainside to try and avoid anything that's gonna make you land.
01:31:02
Speaker
Did you find the camera mechanics a little hard to get used to at the very beginning, Tom?
01:31:13
Speaker
Not overly not that I can really think of I just live I've adjusted now because you know you get muscle memory But I found when I first started playing the tutorial the opening tutorial Left stick right stick traditional controls for so many of our games that we play these days And I just found myself overshooting with the camera twirl every fucking time Yeah, I just so so what's different with the camera?
01:31:40
Speaker
The mechanic works exactly the same way as every other game, including Horizon 1. I just found the sensitivity was tuned a lot higher than I expected. Oh, so it's just your brain in your...
01:31:50
Speaker
Like I said, I had to rewire my muscle memory if you like. Your incompetency. Yes, definitely. Don't blame the game. I've got to say, this is the first game where you... I've got to weigh in somewhere here, man. Yeah, that's fine. You just hang shit on me, bro. It's all good. This is the best implementation and probably one of the earliest examples of how it should be done of the new DualSense controller.
01:32:15
Speaker
It is such a tactile experience. When you're gliding, you get just a really light vibration all the way through. When you've got the tall walker running past, you get this solid thump in the controller. Both- Longnecks? Both tallnecks, sorry. Longnecks when I'm drinking, tallnecks, yeah, I gotta climb. Both triggers are perfectly tuned in terms of force feedback.
01:32:41
Speaker
in terms of the bow pulls, in terms of the interactions with your spear, when you interact with some of the environment, the unlocks, they've all got their own unique field, depending on your action. And even between bows, it feels different. So I'm really happy with that. So your sharp shot bow. Sorry. You got the three bows. No, I was going to go on that. You go.
01:33:04
Speaker
But yeah, so your sharp shot bow, it's your long range bow. It's a heavy pull on the left trigger. On the right trigger, when you go to draw it back, you get a lot of resistance right up until the end and then it clicks and you can feel it click into place as if you've knocked the arrow. Whereas
01:33:19
Speaker
the mid-range bow, it's a very light pullback. And then you still get that solid click to know that you're drawn or overdrawn depending on what bow you're using. Whereas the attack bow, which is short range, like rapid fire, you get almost no resistance whatsoever.
01:33:38
Speaker
So that's just between three bows. But then you've got the bow caster and you've got blasters. You've got basically a machine gun crossbow and that just feels like a machine gun in your hand. It's got a real heavy rattle with a different trigger pull weight. So I've just found the whole implementation of the DualSense controller in this game is brilliant.
01:33:59
Speaker
I've definitely been enjoying the, uh, the spike thrower, the spears. Sorry. Having a lot of fucking fun with them. Yeah. There's nothing quite like having a giant fucking storm bird coming up over a thing at you. Like, and I ran up onto this little bit and it like rose up like with its thing. And I'm just there with this explosive spike and I just right into the center of it and just fucking annihilated it. I was like, you big bird. Sorry. It is.
01:34:24
Speaker
That's the third one. It is a, it is a satisfying game to play. And the graphics are spectacular. I've got to say, I mean, obviously you play PC, right? So PS5 is never going to compete with a modern computer. But the cinematic experience of the big screen TV while you're on your couch, and the quality of the graphics is just, it's certainly up a notch from most of the games I've been playing recently.
01:34:52
Speaker
Yeah. It's not really a spoiler, but it's a question for you, Peter. Have you come across the totems of war? It's like an orc theme. Totems of war. I don't know if you try, either the answers know or you're- It's collectible. You'd know it. You'd know it. It's from- Right. You're just being too cryptic because you don't want to give anything away.
01:35:17
Speaker
Yeah, so it's like a little, there's three little collectibles you come across and they are. The cups. Well, sorry, they're represented by the cups, but they're the. They're little statues, little statues of a certain frost axe wielding person we love. Because it's a Sony game. Yeah. Yeah.
01:35:41
Speaker
I have not come across those, no. Oh, they're crate. You only, you will never see them on the map. Did you just say they're crate? You won't come across them on the map. You only find them through audio cues and it's satisfying. So it's an Easter egg. Yeah, all it gets you is a certain
01:36:04
Speaker
certain face paint that would be familiar. Even if you just watch the show or listen to the show or see our artwork. If you look at the main artwork you'd know exactly what face paint I'm talking about. Really cool little hunt thing to find. The game feels
01:36:23
Speaker
Like, so I struggled, and I think you said the same, Tom. I started playing the game, played through most of the tutorial. Oh, and you can tell the devices they're using. And I've got to say, it was kind of intelligent and annoying at the same time, because you could respect the thought process that went in. If someone's never played the first game and they're playing this, we need to introduce them to the storyline without her going through it. Aloy, the main character, because she's already lived it.
01:36:49
Speaker
So the first opening sequences and the tutorial you've got Val, which is one of her companions She gives him a focus which is allows her to see the old world technology and then starts explaining the backstory of the first game to him Yeah, and then thankfully he fucks off pretty early on because it would have annoyed the shit out of me if you'd been dragging that fucking asshole around all all through the game but overall the game to me just feels like a nice
01:37:20
Speaker
Like refinement and polish on the original game in terms of mechanics. I literally just driven harder than my front. It's gonna pick up on the camera. We're just gonna ignore it. There's a lot more dinosaurs, there's a lot more weapons, there's a lot more variety in the dinosaurs as well. They've got different mechanics, the elementals. They actually have some dinosaurs now. There's the Velociraptors, there's Triceratops. Oh, they're full-on dinosaurs. But they're like organic dinosaurs.
01:37:53
Speaker
They're not. Yeah. Okay. They look like dinosaurs. They're almost like robots in the like robotic heads on a dinosaur body. Is that what you're going?
01:38:05
Speaker
Well, I think the first game, and being a mad fucking dinosaur dino fan, you could recognize the face of the dinosaur they used. But it's a lot closer now. There's ankylosaurus, there's, you know, with a big armored back. Well, a lot of the ones in the first game were based on animals that would have been alive at the time.
01:38:26
Speaker
that, you know, there were bears and lions and stuff, but now, yeah, you literally, there's like, they have plow, it's called, it's like the plowing. There's a plowing dinosaur, which is, it's based off of Triceratops. There's a Spinosaurus. It's like, yeah. There's a Stegosaurus, there's a T-Rex. It was T-Rex in the first one. The T-Rex's. Longtooth. No, no, no. Longtooth was fucking lame before time.
01:38:55
Speaker
Sharp tooth? Long tooth? Sharp tooth? Sharp tooth? Sharp tooth? Sharp tooth, was it? Yeah, sharp tooth. I can't remember any lines that that little thing said. But I think I found... Butterface. That's a sister. Sorry. The thing I found, I guess, the most frustrating was all the stuff talking about going to the Forbidden West.
01:39:21
Speaker
You had to play a good solid 10 hours before you get into the West. Wow. Because you have the opening tutorial. The tutorial is pretty open. Well, the tutorial mission, like the opening mission is a good hour-ish, 45 minutes to an hour of gameplay, where you're going through this one base. But then you go into an area which is kind of like the buffer zone between the East where you originally were and the gate to the West, and it's a literal gate.
01:39:48
Speaker
and then there's like so that's Got enough content in it that it you know It's a solid solid couple of hours like it could be up I think was about 10 hours before you actually cross this gate and actually become into the into the into the Forbidden West area and for
01:40:08
Speaker
Um, for the game art at the start, like on the box and everything is all talking about, like, there's a lot of shots of like San Francisco and like the Golden Gate Bridge. The Golden Gate Bridge. Yeah. Yeah. Like I only in the last like couple of hours I've played and I've put a good solid 80 hours into this game. Have I managed to get this map is huge. You're literally 20, 30 hours ahead of me at the moment.
01:40:31
Speaker
Yeah, but I did a lot of fucking around with the glider, I reckon, at least. But you know what, this is a game. There's a good 15, 20 hours that I could have cut back where I wasn't just like, yay. This is a game where Griffin laughed.
01:40:49
Speaker
But this is a game where, first of all, the environment differences are significantly greater than in the first game. So obviously in the first game there were different environments. You had the snow in the expansion, the frozen wilds. You had some desert areas and you had some savannah areas.
01:41:07
Speaker
the stark contrasts in this game are a lot broader. You've got, you've got forests, you've got open plains, like grasslands, you've got desert, you've got the coastline is completely different from everything you've seen before. You still have the high like the Alpine regions, so snow and all the rest of it. And you've got like a redwoods forest, like, you know,
01:41:32
Speaker
Yeah, a proper redwood forest too. It's the first time you see trees that are taller than a long neck. Tall neck, fuck. And then the swamps. But this is a game where I literally spent
01:41:49
Speaker
I wanna say eight hours yesterday? Yeah, yesterday morning. I spent eight hours doing nothing but hunting creatures, not dinosaurs, animals. The little woodland creatures, foxes and owls. For pouch resources, knowing that I was never going to use the weapon type to match that pouch anyway. Just because it was satisfying to stalk through the fucking forest. And if you want ducks, you need to go to the swamp. If you want...
01:42:18
Speaker
lobsters and crabs and fish, you gotta go to the coast. I know.
01:42:25
Speaker
Yeah, and so many other games. No, no, no. So many other games. I don't think there's- I mean, fucking, Assassin's Creed was exactly the same. No. Go on AC3, where you're in, you're the American Indian, and you had to go and hunt various wildlife, and they were regional wildlife. I think it might be Native American, but yes, I understand what you're saying. What did I say? American Indian, but- What did I say? Regional. Native American, yeah. Native American, my bad. I just- So are you, continue.
01:42:56
Speaker
I just, I found it relaxing. It was thoroughly enjoyable. I was avoiding dinosaurs. I obviously can't weigh in on the same level that you're playing now, but there's an element where they get it right and there's an element where some games just drag it out.
01:43:17
Speaker
Just have it so arcadey that it's just a just a crapshoot like it's just whatever but Yeah, what what I'm kind of getting that with with with getting the required parts to level up your armor and like weapons and stuff The mode the like
01:43:37
Speaker
going to have to find particular variants of different creatures like to get their like apex and get this little thing it's like the heart essentially um that for me has been a little bit of a drag in the first one too though wasn't it you had to get it yeah
01:43:54
Speaker
Yeah, it was the first one too, but like so it's got the point where I've got I've got this the legendary armor now And I've got it up to level four or five But looking at the requirements to get level five I'm just like actually just can't be bothered and I don't need it to be at full like all I get is It's not it's not a significant enough bump of the stats of the armor for me to be like okay. That's worth like Fighting that particularly difficult creature
01:44:19
Speaker
It's the extra unlocks, like you'll get like, you'll go from 15% bonus critical damage to 60% in the final unlock. So it's actually not the armor stats, it's all the bonuses. There are a lot more machines in this game. So there are, I'm just looking at now, there's 45 types of machine and for each machine, almost every single one of them has between three and 12 variations.
01:44:46
Speaker
And so you'll have a base creature, like an acid mole, and then you'll have a fire acid mole. I picked a really bad example. That makes no fucking sense. What's one that you would have seen before? We'll go with the raptor. You got the raptor. So you got the basic velociraptor, then you can have a fire raptor, an acid raptor, and then you can have an apex raptor, an apex fire raptor, or an apex fire acid raptor.
01:45:11
Speaker
So it's like, you know, there are many variations of each, but they'll be like, it's not just like an apex raptor heart, it's an apex acid raptor heart. So you have to go find where the acid raptors are, and you can only hunt the apex ones at night. Yeah, so the apex variant always comes out at night. And then sometimes they don't even drop the fucking heart.
01:45:32
Speaker
Well, no, so you need to read the instructions, my friends. I did read the instructions. If you look at- A trement task is meant to drop me a heart 100% of the time and it's not. So the game is having a glitch. Only if you don't, no, no, no, no, no. So, and this is going to be a little point of interest for Dan. They've expanded the concept of weak points.
01:45:50
Speaker
So there is now a weak point on almost every type of beast that drops a resource that only drops if you destroy the weak point before the creature dies.
01:46:03
Speaker
So the tasks, you have to shoot the task off the creature using tear damage before the creature dies. Let me finish, let me finish Tomo. But you might have, particularly on a bigger creature, you might have eight to 12 weak points. Some of them have a chain reaction. So if you make them blow up, it then blows up other weak points. Some of them only react to their elemental type.
01:46:31
Speaker
or they're opposing elemental type but with a different result. Some of them get destroyed when the creature dies. So if you want the resource, that particular weak point drops like a carrying canister. You have to kill the canister before you kill the creature.
01:46:45
Speaker
other weak points hold loot types that you have to leave intact on the creature, so it's a harder fight. So for example, on the bellobacks, if you shoot their throat gullet, they've got this big gullet full of fire. If you shoot that weak point and destroy it, then the whole creature blows up, loses half its health and it can't throw fireballs at you anymore and makes the fight a lot easier.
01:47:09
Speaker
But if you want the loot that is in that gullet, the creature has to die with the gullet intact. So you have to go in planning what loot you want out of the creature if that's why you're killing it. I reckon you've just fucked up with your research. No, I reckon you've just told me something that I already fucking know.
01:47:28
Speaker
Alright, you just fucked up? You should write a sternly worded letter. I'm not, I'm just gonna wait for them to update it and then I'll get it. Don't tell me I don't know what I'm fucking doing, you dumb bitch.
01:47:48
Speaker
I do like that the stalker idea where they had the the predator invisible armor was expanded to a flying creature because i've got to tell you that's a scary fight yeah it's like a giant yeah so it's a giant vampire bat with massive massive fangs and it turns invisible
01:48:09
Speaker
And you've got no idea when you're gonna get a fucking game. So it doesn't even have like the predator, like shimmery, oh it does, I guess. Oh it does, but it's a lot harder to see a shimmer in the sky when it moves very darn quickly than it was the old stalkers in the forests. I'm thoroughly enjoying the game, I think it's better than the first one by a country mile.
01:48:27
Speaker
The storyline was surprising, the core storyline in terms of being able to extend the life of the original story. And I still think that the original story, it's like a Dungeons and Dragons campaign come to life.
01:48:40
Speaker
like this whole concept that you've got the MacGuffin that you're going after and then the MacGuffin gets broken up into eight pieces and you have to now go on eight major quests with different themes to get all the pieces. Okay, that's a pretty common D&D campaign idea but then three of those pieces just get wiped off the board.
01:49:02
Speaker
So you might be two missions in, you might have collected two pieces and another three just disappear. Like they're no longer relevant to the story. And then another piece reappears. It's actually quite a complicated story if you just zoom out 10,000 feet and don't talk about specifics. I'm thoroughly enjoying the complexity of the story.
01:49:24
Speaker
Why are you smiling Dan? I'm trying to be cryptic because I don't want to add spoilers. It just probably means I'm not making any sense. I'm just laughing at the description of zooming out 10,000 feet and looking at it with, yeah, from observant eyes with no dialogue involved or no involve, no physical involvement. Yeah. No. Um, and, and, and I'm going to be other thoughts for the listeners. Don't be cryptic for me.
01:49:55
Speaker
Yeah, no, I just figured this there's probably a shit ton of people still playing the game. And whilst the major antagonists, yeah, while the major antagonists are introduced pretty early in the story, they gave me a very happy, warm, oh fuck, I did not see that coming moment. And I wouldn't want to deny that to people like I did you with that movie that time.
01:50:20
Speaker
I think the thing for me is like they're very, very midway in the story, they quite obviously set up that it is going to be a trilogy. They knew that before they started writing the first game though.
01:50:36
Speaker
Yeah, but like trilogy yeah, um, but I just for me it was just a bit too It's just a bit too on the nose to suddenly Have this new group of people appear and be like, oh, okay And I'm sure but I'm sure it'll play out Like play out well when they do it the Tribes they say the ideas, you know, there's the just a bit
01:51:01
Speaker
three main tribes I think are really well fleshed out in terms of they have been yeah yeah yeah and they just clearly are established and it's all based on you know there's a desert clan sky clan and the lowlands clan and they just they all feel different but you can see that they would have all come from the same
01:51:22
Speaker
Yeah, same group of people that would have survived the initial apocalypse and then they managed just because of where they are located, they had to kind of change just enough to survive. You can tell that they've done a shitload of research into real northern American tribes and Polynesian tribes and I don't know specifically where they've drawn inspiration.
01:51:46
Speaker
But there's too much culture in cultural variation and cultural similarity amongst the three main tribes in this game. And then the difference between those three main tribes and the two tribes that you already encountered in the first game, they had to have done a lot of research to get that right. Because it does feel fleshed out. Yeah, it feels it's it's it's it's.
01:52:09
Speaker
They're essentially just one new, well they're one new people. So you had the three varied people in the first game. You had the Nora, the Oserum and the Karja. And then you've got the Tanakh, who are the new group. And they have split off into three and it's really, really nicely and cleverly done.
01:52:26
Speaker
Well, and don't forget the, well, no, but you also had the, not the Benuk, who were the frozen residents? Yeah, so that was another tribe in the first game in the expansion. And again, you're now talking about six cultures that are all believable and fleshed out sufficiently to be believable.
01:52:45
Speaker
And I've found it surprisingly intelligent the way they've integrated how would a base tribal people react to discovering old world magic, old world technology. Some of them are going to adapt easier than others. What would happen if you suddenly
01:53:03
Speaker
handed them a piece of tech that allowed them to rethink everything they've grown up knowing. Their entire tribal culture gets thrown in the bin in a heartbeat when you hand them a focus. How would they respond? And I think the voice acting and the mocap acting throughout the game for the main characters and you start to collect a band of merry men,
01:53:24
Speaker
have been brilliant. The facial expressions, the line delivery, it's really well acted. I think the best thing for me about this is obviously a bunch of the enemies do look pretty similar. And I think I talked about this with, what was it?
01:53:42
Speaker
the rats plague one plague tail um that i was killing the same french dude like every two minutes like it was they just didn't put any variation into their their you know bad guys yeah and here's the same here with the humans that you're fighting you're right they are yeah they are similar enough but like they you know it kind of makes sense because it's all it's all based on like
01:54:03
Speaker
like tattoos and markings and stuff that it's like, okay, sure, they might actually have different features, but they all look pretty generic, but it's like, but that's what a tribe would have to mark. Through the cross hairs of my bow, they look the same. Giant bow, yeah, that's gonna shoot explosive arrows at you. Can you pad for another two minutes while I go grab another beer?
01:54:25
Speaker
Sure can. Do you have more to say? Look, I could talk about this topic for the rest of the fucking podcast. I want it. No, no, nothing really more to say. Just no, I definitely agree. It's it's
01:54:35
Speaker
I think the first game was good enough that I was gonna be surprised how much they could improve on it, but they've managed to surprise me in that. There's- The RPG elements actually can- I need to go- Run, run. Can we come back to it? I'm guessing I'm gonna let him talk about this bit. I don't know exactly what he's going to say.
01:55:00
Speaker
I wouldn't yeah it's uh it's not a great game I highly recommend it for anyone who's if anyone's been sitting on the fence it's a big game though you you will be investing like the first game was big it was a massive map and they will look like they've at least doubled it like it's huge it was a bit daunting actually at first when you first look and see the you know west area like a pier all clouded over I'm like that's a big fucking map that's gonna take me
01:55:28
Speaker
a long time to get across. So it's a big map. They've obviously given you a lot of traversal options to cover it quickly rather than it being a big map.
01:55:48
Speaker
Oh it never feels like a slog for me and you can fast travel and I find myself frequently avoiding fast travelling because I'm just enjoying filling in all the gaps and all the little question marks and discovering stuff. The one thing that has pissed me off in this game so far is like God of War
01:56:08
Speaker
there's gated areas that require a tool to open up the area or to finish that little section. And you don't get that until midway through the game. And so you're constantly backtracking the same way you were going to go to war with the fucking the brambles, the hellfire brambles and that sort of stuff.
01:56:23
Speaker
Yeah, that pissed me off a little bit. It's a minor inconvenience because you do get the tools early enough in the game I'm only about 60% of the way through and I can now do everything But it still just bugs me as a game mechanic But I did find the RPG variants pretty broad
01:56:38
Speaker
and impressively so. There's five main skill trees, six main skill trees, and they favour different play styles and they favour different weapons. So I went in as a stealthy bow person to start with. So I put all my points in the stealth skill tree, unlocked everything like the sharpshooter bow, the sniper bow,
01:57:02
Speaker
and hiding in the bushes and killing people. They've removed the cheat mechanic of whistling at five people and only one person at a time responds. You can't do that anymore. The closest you've got is a rock and most of the time all five people are going to walk over and annihilate you.
01:57:20
Speaker
So that was an interesting choice. But you've got herbalism so you can heal and survive longer. You've got the trapper who puts traps down and the traps have actually expanded significantly in terms of ingenuity. They've done a decent job. You've got the hunter, you've got the stealthy person, you've got the machine person and you've got the melee fighter. So there's six completely different skill trees favoring different styles of play. I thought that was quite impressive.
01:57:48
Speaker
Yeah. I don't know if you have, I haven't really been, you get this new thing, like it's called a Valor Surge, and if you build up enough of this, like you build up this meter, then you get to use like a ultimate attack kind of thing. I keep forgetting it's there. Yeah, I don't use it. It's, I think that's the only thing that's not implemented well into that game. It's like, it tells you to use it. And it's like, it's part of the skill trees to unlock different and like level up. I disagree. Cause the times that I remember,
01:58:15
Speaker
Kick some fucking ass it does change the tide of yeah, it can easily change the tide of a battle Oh, I'm sure would but I just always forget to use it. It's like I use that's not on them. That's on you No, but I think the game does a much better job of Getting you to use the orange like the little skills stamina the stamina skills rather than the valor skills I I I think the game definitely leads more into that and
01:58:42
Speaker
Well, yes, and they're designed to... You're right. It's a similar... So you've now got three mechanics. You've got concentration, which you had in the first game. So... Slow time. Sorry? It's slow time. R3 to slow time. And it recharges and it depletes. You've got a similar mechanic for weapon stamina that allows you to do one of three unlocked special attacks with your bows.
01:59:05
Speaker
And you can do them over and over and over again as long as you've got stamina. And then you've got valor, which you accumulate through various things like hitting the enemy. You get lots of valor for like a stealthy headshot as opposed to a little if you just slap someone on the ass with your stick. So that's the slowest mechanic to charge, but when you unleash that thing, it kicks fucking ass. So some of your valor moves might be an area of attack
01:59:35
Speaker
melee that lightning bolts everything in the vicinity and now that I've fully decked it out it kills anything that happens to be within 12 feet of me as opposed to I'm gonna boost my melee crit chance for the next 30 seconds or the next 12 arrows I send out of any bow is gonna be at 200% damage so it's I don't know I think it's implemented as well as you could implement three competing mechanics that are very similar
02:00:05
Speaker
Yeah, okay, fair. Yeah, for me personally, I just find it's a forgotten- You forget. It's a forgotten time. And I have to force myself to remember it. Yeah, but I don't forget to use the stamina skill, because I always have the one to knock three arrows to my hunter bow. I always remember that. The hail of arrows is fun too. No, brilliant game. I'm actually really impressed. I'm glad I've got something to fill the time while I wait for God of War Ragnarok.
02:00:32
Speaker
And it's similar enough that I'm getting the fix and different enough that I won't be burnt out by the time Ravenrot comes out. There you go. That's cool.
02:00:43
Speaker
And I can't wait for the Lego tall neck kit to come out. You might say Lego Star Wars. That's my next. That'll be on the. We into our. I have this much left just so I can.
02:01:04
Speaker
So this should talk about that. This was my small batch confusion based beer that I had is that you've got the same one, have you? Why did you grab the same one? I was completely confused when I started drinking. I'm like, ah, there's so much vanilla in this and spices like what the fuck is like I've just I haven't washed my glass out well enough from that white stout.
02:01:27
Speaker
But it's the the cola, the cherry cola and it's bang on like there's so much spice character in their colon art and cinnamon spice. There's cherry character there. I never liked. I didn't like I never liked cherry. It was like too sweet. For me.
02:01:48
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, sure. Mine's been out for like, 25 minutes now. And I've been sitting here while you guys have been going and I've been it's been getting smaller, I've been taking tiny, tiny sips of it.
02:02:01
Speaker
I've been watching you take the tiny steps. Don't worry, I saw it. I was like, hmm. There was that much in the glass when he put the glass up to his mouth. Is he just like touching it? I'm just trying to get the spice character and everything going. And I mean, there's something like this where the spice... Yeah, it definitely is. It's Christmasy. It definitely is. And that spice character could be overdone easily.
02:02:27
Speaker
I guess the only
02:02:48
Speaker
It's very cola. It certainly balances more on the cola side with all those spices than it does on the cherry side. For me, I'm used to drinking complex barrel aged cherry sours and this is definitely not that. I know it's not supposed to be that either.
02:03:05
Speaker
But I'm not getting a whole lot of cherry there, but it's more like the red. To me, it's more the cherry skin. You know, like all the flesh is gone and you get that. The bitterness from the cherry skin and that.
02:03:23
Speaker
There's no other word to describe it other than the cherry flavor from what's left. And you can almost taste the red in the skin because that is what your visual brain is telling you.
02:03:38
Speaker
when you get that little bit of skin left over. Yeah. And you'd certainly get a lot of vanilla. Yeah. And as it warms up, that vanilla dies down and the rest of the spice takes over. And then midway through, the cherry was really present. So it started as vanilla and then it went cherry and now it's spice. And it's just, it's developed in those, those layers as it goes on. And
02:04:02
Speaker
That's cool. I do like a beer that does develop as it warms up and I would say it's Developed because it's just changed. It's just yeah develop was the wrong way I know I know what you mean and I definitely agree It's the it's I just articulated that incorrectly
02:04:20
Speaker
It's um, it's changed those those layer complexities have changed like in one has taken over the the other as it goes through Yeah, it's balance is balanced. I really like it. I definitely give that a four How many give that a four how many picks only thing I'm not giving it more for is I would like it a touch more sour. Oh
02:04:42
Speaker
I completely agree. I think that's a perfect final statement on that. I thoroughly enjoyed it as well, for all the same reasons. It is a fucking fantastic Christmas beer. And the devastated fact that we don't get white Christmas over here, or a cold Christmas at all, that we can enjoy these things.
02:05:02
Speaker
This is just it's roasting chestnuts on the fireplace. I went to I was lucky enough in 2019 before fucking COVID hit to experience the start of an American Christmas in Portland at the start, mid the 12th and 13th for four or five days in Portland and
02:05:25
Speaker
Like, all those Christmas movies in Tom, I mean, I'm absolutely preaching to the choir here, is those, like, the Americans just go fucking crazy. You walk into the cafes, and they're fucking decorated like you would expect to see in a movie. The streets have tinsel and lights between the fucking streetlights. Like, it is literally what you see in an American movie, like, played out in an American city.
02:05:51
Speaker
all that just leans into that and I mean even the English heritage that I have and leaning into those those hot big hearty foods and those spices and things we just we just don't get that here I mean we're
02:06:05
Speaker
And struggling to push the door of the pub open because the snows built up on the outside I've never been I've never been to a white Christmas But I have been to England in the middle of a blizzard and kind of got that very similar experience because as soon as it's winter they get out the chestnuts and you could literally Stalls on the side of the road with like a webbeque and it wasn't a webbeque, but the equivalent. Yeah Roasting chestnuts and I was like
02:06:32
Speaker
The girl that I was with at the time said, oh, would you like a bag of roasted chips? I'm like fucking I thought like I've been hearing about this my whole life in TV fucking go get me some girl Yeah, I so I totally understand that where you coming from then
02:06:49
Speaker
Same with the spiced gin that I've got. It's actually called the Christmas gin and I haven't cracked it yet because it just didn't feel right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I've had that. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Me and dad drank that before Christmas. Yeah.
02:07:08
Speaker
You remember telling me that. I think it was in one sitting you and your father got through that bottle. There was another crack at night by the sound of it. Not as bad as that. That was only a third of a bottle. I'm going to go and rinse this glass out because my last beer is a more delicate product.
02:07:26
Speaker
Well, can we let Tom do his third beer? Let's take a break so we can come back for trailer trash and finish it off with our main topic. Well, OK. Well, this is probably good to do mine just before the break, because I'm going to bring the tone down a hell of a lot. As I told you guys last week, unfortunately, BeerWorld lost a big hero in the form of Wags. He worked for a couple of different breweries.
02:07:55
Speaker
uh... mountain goat temple but uh... he spent most of his time in his late years at moon dog uh... he was uh... excellent man he unfortunately lost a two year battle with cancer uh... and it was it was everyone thought he was going to make it through he was doing an experimental treatment i think he's one of fifteen people doing this treatment uh... and for all intents and purposes two months ago his cancer was gone uh... and it just came back with a vengeance uh... so it's uh... i'm drinking a moon dog beer tonight
02:08:23
Speaker
in honor of Wags as a big thank you and shout out to him. And it's called Mosaiki Breakie Heart because I think that's a lot of the beer community at the moment has a bit of a broken heart with Wags being gone. It's their new single hop mosaic IPA. It pours a nice kind of bitter clearness. So it's definitely that West Coast style. And it's it's a punch of mosaic to the face like it is tropical goodness. It is
02:08:51
Speaker
But it's really balanced. It's very, very easy drinking. It is 7%. And yes, it's, I think, a very fitting way to say, rest in peace, Wags. You're an excellent, excellent human being. And Moondog have been great supporters of us over the years, especially Robbie, if he's listening to this. He has given us many beers over the year, and he worked very close with Wags. Wags was his hero, so. Cheers.
02:09:20
Speaker
to the Moondog team. It's been a pretty hard slog having to go through that. Cheers and thank you. But yes, this is most excellent. Five stars.
02:09:35
Speaker
Cool. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna sculpt it. And on that somber note, we might, we might take a quick break. Break time. And we're back. We are back.
02:09:57
Speaker
So I have a two pronged attack at my next beer. It's a... nothing. Sorry. I'm gonna do the beer butt chicken with the rest of the can. So it's a...
02:10:21
Speaker
No, I'm just I'm just jumping in because I only just thought of I remembered grabbing this at work last week for the purpose of this but then forgetting why I actually had it so I actually grabbed this over the Anymore of the the batch sours or the two other beers that I bought today Because I think it's a very very very interesting
02:10:45
Speaker
Technology it is a technology That has just come about so this is the Gretchen from Yulee's Brew It's their organic maple colesch, right? So I remember in itself. It's a bit of a it's a it's a bit of a different product So Gretchen has been released a couple of times already And always in a labeled can right? Okay so this is a
02:11:17
Speaker
not a labeled can and not a mass produced printed can. This is a
02:11:26
Speaker
to order printed can that East Coast Canning is now doing over labeling, printing labels and pre-labeling cans. So, it's a fully printed can. The technology is not quite there and I've spoken to some people in the know that... Yeah, yeah, that's exactly what I was looking for but I couldn't quite see it in the light.
02:11:50
Speaker
So when the condensation, it lifts the clear coat a little bit, it gets under it. So apparently I've been told when it dries out, it's perfectly fine. You can't tell the difference.
02:12:04
Speaker
But it's a fucking printed can to order for limited small batches. So the days of running labels underneath the ridge only and having the silver, the black, the white, or whatever your stock seasonal can might be potentially on its way out.
02:12:24
Speaker
and a fully two-order printed can might be the way of the future. I don't know whether the technology is going to make it to that point, but the big fact is why I wanted to bring it along here is there is no more label joint. Yeah. So there's no more accusation points for me. Oh, Dan, if I could show you this. It's pretty bad. Like, I'd say the beer was good, but... Oh, wow.
02:13:02
Speaker
It's barely been used. This is the actual first one I've ever held in my hand. I heard about this technology
02:13:11
Speaker
Probably six months ago from our label guy. He said look this is happening. We're looking at potentially the idea of buying one, but apparently the footprint for the machine to print these cans is massive. I'm just looking at the tech now. It's really interesting.
02:13:26
Speaker
Okay, and I've got a few videos to have a look at and my label guy sent them through to me, but it's very interesting how far we've come, not just as a brewing industry and what we're brewing and how we're offering it to customers at venue. We're now taking that leap on how we offer it for you to have this at home in a more
02:13:51
Speaker
And this is just a fucking aesthetic thing. Like, it could have a fucking label on it, and it's gonna have exactly- But you know what Dan? Other than marketing, it's what sells beer. When you've got 400 craft beers in a fridge, the can that jumps out is the one you're gonna grab. It's that simple.
02:14:11
Speaker
And there's no fidelity lost, like it's not gonna come across in the camera at all very well, but there's no fidelity lost in the printing of the label. Everything is there, it's not gonna come across in the camera, but it's all 100% legible, it looks exactly how it would be if it was on a printed can or a printed label. It feels different, it has a matte sort of- It's an aluminium feel.
02:14:36
Speaker
No, it's not. It's not using a print feel. It's not slick like a matte print on a can. You can definitely feel the print, like obviously where the can has had some imperfections in it when
02:14:55
Speaker
The print has gone onto it, so you can feel some wrinkles in the print. They're not visible, I'm not saying they're visible, but there is where the can has, like, aluminium cans when they're empty are fragile as shit.
02:15:08
Speaker
So any pressure on it is going to cause a wrinkle and you can feel that slight change in the print when it goes over it. I reckon if I stuck my nail in it, I'm probably able to pull the print off and I'm not going to. But to me, it's an amazing technology. It just shows how far
02:15:28
Speaker
other industries around us are developing because of the consumer base. People are wanting to buy so we're experimenting with the products we're making and our suppliers are experimenting with the supplies that they're able to deal to us and I just think it's
02:15:49
Speaker
and i've probably said this for the last five years we've been recording i think this is a very exciting time to be this is this is what turns me on about technology man i mean you know as as time goes on consumer is king every but every company knows that um it's driving technology forward in weird and unusual ways and occasionally once every 120 years or so you'll get a blip like a pandemic
02:16:14
Speaker
that will push technology in a specific direction really, really quickly, well before anyone was really felt ready, only to realize that, oh, actually the tech's been around for 20 years guys, you just haven't fucking adopted it. Like homeschooling through video calls, like being able to seamlessly send your staff home and have exactly the same working experiences they would if they were in the office for white collar workers. You know, labeling cans, the printing technology has been pushed by the whole movement of 3D printing.
02:16:45
Speaker
I would almost guarantee that it's all evolved side by side. To the point where companies like Games Workshop and Final Fantasy Flight Miniatures or Fantasy Flight Games are starting to look into, and none of them have committed to it, but starting to look into, do we even bother selling miniatures anymore? Or do we sell non-fungible tokens that you are able to print on a 3D printer at home?
02:17:12
Speaker
So you're still going to pay us for the same as you would have if you bought the miniature, but you're also going to have to fucking print it yourself because the resin UV prints these days, 4K and up in terms of resolution, those miniatures printed have 10 times the quality of anything you'd go into a store and buy traditionally unless it was made out of pewter.
02:17:37
Speaker
So, yeah. I mean, this is what turns me on, man. With a guy on Instagram, I follow teeth and props. He does like, he makes like prop lightsabers and stuff, but he'll be putting up ads at the moment. Like he can sell you a fully put together, like made lightsaber or something. But he'll more often than not, he'll just sell you at a much cheaper rate, the plans, and then he'll email you the plans so your 3D printer at home can do it.
02:18:05
Speaker
Yeah, it's coming up a lot more now, yeah.
02:18:09
Speaker
How many pixels out of five pints? You know what? I've had that massive spiel about it and about the can, the printing technology and everything like that. And I hadn't even tasted the beer. No, no, no. You started talking and I actually tasted the beer and it tastes like, I'm not actually sure I've ever had this before. Like, and I've had most of the Yule's beers and,
02:18:38
Speaker
Actually, I'm almost certain I haven't had this before. I know they've brewed this previously, several times. It tastes like a dark beer. Like, it's the maple character, and I've spoken to the brewers about, I know the brewers obviously very, very, very well.
02:18:53
Speaker
I've spoken to them about how they brew this beer and the how the maple addition comes about in it And it's a fucking it's a college like it is a it's a it's a it's a lager at a altar I'll at lager temperatures I Can't remember which way around I can't remember which way it around it is Keep talking fuck it. It's it's a
02:19:22
Speaker
Beautiful light straw color no malt character beer straw colored beer the maple is so rounded it tastes like a Dark maple beer like it There's no bitterness coming through the maple which can come through because maple is in its pure form is quite bitter there's a
02:19:46
Speaker
Very little to no malt character to back up that maple character and round it out. It's just a light colch beer with a whole bunch of maple character and it's really fucking good. Really good. I don't know how many I could drink in a row.
02:20:04
Speaker
But for the terms of hitting, yeah, sorry, burp and speaking at the same time, for the fact of hitting the brief absolutely nails the brief. So yeah, four stars.
02:20:19
Speaker
I'm four pints or four pints out of five pixels. Tom, what are you drinking, mate? I'm also having a Ulyss beer. I'm also having a Ulyss beer. I would like to point out to the listeners and viewers that at no point do we plan what we're drinking anymore. We just go get your own beers when you're at home. Unless some good Samaritan ships me a bunch of sours when my beer fridge is empty.
02:20:44
Speaker
And I probably should point out this was given to me by Yulies. I didn't pay for this. This is not a paid endorsement. This is a purely on the fact that I love the technology that's coming about with this. And that was a 100% genuine review of the product. Cool. As all of our reviews on this podcast have ever been.
02:21:06
Speaker
Yes, I just wanted to point that out. I did pay for this beer, though. This is the Yulee's dad's army. This is their... They do a barrel-aged... It's an Imperial Stout. They change it every other time. So this is Chris's barrel-aged Imperial Stout. It was aged in Starwood Whiskey barrels for three months. Comes in at a... Starwood Whiskey? Yeah, from Melbourne.
02:21:34
Speaker
It comes in a delightful 9.4%.
02:21:39
Speaker
I was actually going to crack a deed stout I had there, but it was 12% and I do have to actually get up in the morning at a decent enough time. It is my day off. We were out drinking pretty late last night, two times. Yeah, I've been pretty hungover today. It is just thick black goodness. I do have the day off tomorrow, so I'm going to probably, after this, go sit and watch something. Finish a horizon. No, I think I might just sit and watch something after this and just happily sip on this and let it warm up.
02:22:08
Speaker
Um, I am gonna have my first sip now though. It's very tantalizing. I remember when they first ordered the dad's army. That!
02:22:19
Speaker
That's a shot of whiskey to the face! Yee-hoo! That's got a heap of whiskey, like, straight off the bat. Like, it's... That's an awesome, like, rich roastiness, but just a big hit of, like, whiskey, kind of, boozy flavors, in a good way, like, not in a bad way. It is...
02:22:41
Speaker
really accentuating those whiskey notes. And they said they used Starwood Twofold, which is their new Australian whiskey, or their kind of like Core Range Australian whiskey. That's great. You definitely know it's 9.4%, or whatever it is. 9.4. Yeah, 9.4. Got a nice rounded bitterness. I think it's definitely gonna get real deep as it warms up a bit.
02:23:10
Speaker
It is straight out of the fridge. But yeah, that's a good four and a half. Well done, Yulies. Sorry, what were you going to say, Dan, before I got whiskey punched to the face? Sorry, was that four and a half out of five? Did you say? Yes. Thank you.
02:23:29
Speaker
No, I remember when they first made their first dad's army because James Harvey that he brewed it at a contract brewery because this was well before they had their own brewery. And they released it at the Australian, the Rocks beer festival, the Australian hotel.
02:23:52
Speaker
heritage hotel that's what i was trying to get out i was trying to think of whatever it's uh... what it's what it's extra names were they released it there at that festival and uh... here in the house bring me up some because i was talking to him about it before it while he was doing it and he was like i don't know how this is going to come out man it's like the first barrels we've ever done it's like uh... just for the imperial stout and i don't know what it's going to work out like he brought it up and it was really good and it was just and obviously that's that's then continued through their bid their dad's army series and
02:24:21
Speaker
I've just had a wave of warmth come through as well. I'm ready to just sit back. That's just the nine and a half percent, bro. I was lucky enough to go down to Starwood Whiskey when they were relatively new through work and meet David, who is the owner and who was the distiller for a while, David Vitale.
02:24:47
Speaker
I got to sit on the Starwood Throne, which is a rip-off of the Game of Thrones sword throne. But they made it out of barrel staves. And nailed it all together. It was great. And that is bringing back memories of sipping that delicious whiskey. And it's one of my favorite, like, whiskeys you can get, Starwood. I love it. I sent it to mates all over the world. I was like, you have to fucking try this whiskey. It's really good. But it's that.
02:25:14
Speaker
you know when you're sipping on a nice whiskey and you just get that that that it's like from like cracking it cracking the egg on the head and it just goes from the top of the head right I just got that whole wave and
02:25:26
Speaker
I'm chill, bruh. Let's talk. Let's talk, Ed. Go right. No, let's talk about Pete's beer. What are you drinking, Pete? I'm drinking Small Batch. No surprise there. Pineapple and Chili Goza. And I got to say, it's a cracker of a beer. The one, the one Tom can't comment on. It's in my fridge, though, that I think I might gift it to a friend.
02:25:47
Speaker
You get, I'm actually really impressed by the way this, the flavour unfolds. You get the sweetness of the pineapple, the flavour of the pineapple, no separation, it just leads straight into just a chilli hit. Just a little bit of chilli flavour and heat. They used jalapenos by the way.
02:26:08
Speaker
Well, perfect. It's seamless. Usually with a chilli beer, you can separate out the flavours in your brain when you're tasting it. There are notes as you drink it, as it hits the palate and you swallow it. You can actually feel the various flavours separate out. With this, you just get the charred pineapple almost.
02:26:32
Speaker
you get the sweetness, but you also get a little bit of bitterness and then it goes straight smoothly into the chili. It's fucking fantastic. The only thing that I would say is I reckon at 5.1% they could have dialed up the ABV just a little bit. Just would have reinforced the burn. It would have, it would have seamlessly like extended out from that chili note. Why do you disagree, Dan?
02:26:59
Speaker
Because I disagree because I think everything needs to take a fucking step back and come back from fucking seven, eight plus percent to these five, fives through six and a half. That's all you need, five through six and a half. Tom and I were drinking the 10% micro dosing series. Was it one drop? Oh God. Mountain culture. We made our way through a couple of those last night. Two of them at least, yeah.
02:27:27
Speaker
Yeah. That oyster stout was really good. That burning oyster stout, that was great. Yes, it was. Yeah, that's a crack in beer. I'm giving that a four and a half as well. I'm very impressed. And the one thing I will say is,
02:27:43
Speaker
The salt water is quite prevalent as a finish. So you get through the pineapple, the sweet notes, you get through the chilli heat, and then you end up with salt water in your mouth. And it's actually quite complimentary, which is not something that you would expect when you describe it. Yeah, right.
02:28:06
Speaker
I'm just reading Dan's expressions. You don't like that. I'm leaving you with salty things in your mouth. I knew that's where you were going. Alright, let's quickly get through trailer trash. There's only one trailer I found that was of any kind of interest and that was a movie called Memory.
02:28:28
Speaker
Uh, stars Liam Neeson, uh, alongside... I was just about to look it up and you said stars Liam Neeson. I'm like, no. I enjoy the Taken series. Okay. The third and the fourth and the twelfth, you know, getting a bit longer. I enjoy the Taken series, but every other fucking movie that has him after that,
02:28:50
Speaker
It's like half of him and then every other fucking secondary cut of him taking somebody out is a back shot where it's a stunt double. Because he is an old man. It's all the same shit. He's an old, lanky, tall man. I don't have a problem with that, that he's an old man. No, no, no. I like Liam Neeson. I have massive respect for Liam Neeson and I wish Liam Neeson did
02:29:14
Speaker
less of this garbage. He wants to do this. He's like, all he wants is a part in Expendables Five. That's his life goal. He just wants to be one of the old fucks in that movie. And he's rapidly approaching it. I just want him to do more family guy and I'll be happy.
02:29:37
Speaker
He does have a very distinctive voice and I actually think he would be I don't know what he's acting chops are like He comes across as a decent actor, but I don't know if he's Shakespearean trained, but I'd love to hear that voice doing proper like Drama
02:29:55
Speaker
like Patrick Stewart style Shakespearean era acting. Yeah, I'm not quite talking that level. I just I reckon I reckon Liam nation should read that book. Go the fuck to sleep. And I, I, I'm gonna look that up. Is it Samuel Jackson? Samuel Jackson did it.
02:30:16
Speaker
There's quite a few. The chick that we grew up watching on... Only Hazelburst did it. Thank you. You straight away. Oh, really? PlayStation lady. PlayStation. Play school. Play school lady. Play school. Yeah. No, there's no Liam Neeson. Go the fuck to sleep. Look, the movie itself looks like a mashup of Taken and Memento. That's kind of what I took away from it. He's going a little bit crazy. Directed by the guy who did Casino Royale.
02:30:43
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, which I actually think speaks highly of the potential for the movie, because Casino Royale was was a good fucking movie. Yeah, it's the best. I was just gonna say that we had since it's the best bond we've had since Casino Royale. Casino Royale was the best bond since Casino Royale? Yes. Because it was a there's two of them. Sorry, that just computed.
02:31:08
Speaker
Take a step back. Have a think. It will be another action Liam Neeson movie. I still think he was underutilised in the Star Wars series and I enjoy watching his films.
02:31:29
Speaker
those are random thoughts sewn together into a sentence bottles to his knuckles and then cracks them and goes to fight a wolf I'm like you're a badass motherfucker yeah so I mean it was the only trailer that kind of stood out for me yeah there wasn't much else he seemed he seems like a man that has a fantastic sense of humor for all the shit that he does
02:31:55
Speaker
But then he just doesn't do anything that's him as the main humorous. Like, I know that does make sense, but... He's not the comic relief.
02:32:08
Speaker
Yeah, but the thing is, he does a whole bunch of shit. Like, my family guy reference is, there's a whole episode where Peter goes and is the assistant to Liam Neeson. And it's Liam Neeson doing the voice of Liam Neeson. And Peter is the assistant to Liam Neeson. He makes him do all of this weird shit. And he delivers it.
02:32:28
Speaker
deadpan, like so dry, and he just gets him to do it. And it's just, he's the comic relief there. And if you just took Liam Neeson and put him as the main, the main character in something comical, I think it would be amazing. I think that is something that he needs to lean into and get away from this action-hero born identity, born series. He's lost his expiry date for those kinds of movies.
02:32:57
Speaker
And that's exactly it. And I think that's, I would love to see him move on from that and be this, this deadpan comic actor that he definitely has the ability to do. Yeah. You can easily see my late night talk show kind of. Oh, get him. I don't know whether he's.
02:33:19
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know whether he's ever hosted Saturday Night Live, but that would be fucking hilarious. And I'm sure he's been on all those shows and done the circuits, and I'm pretty sure I've seen a few of them. And you're right, he's a genuinely funny guy too.
02:33:34
Speaker
Probably most of them have been taken skits or a Like they've probably been variations of the phone call that he makes within the first 20 minutes of the first taken movie They've probably been all those. I have a certain set of skills. Yeah, he's almost certainly become like that's South like ever sober's rub Schneider is the carrot like a stapler
02:34:01
Speaker
he's kind of just become that now it's just like Liam Neeson is killing someone again like it's just yeah it's it's hard not to go into Sean Connery yeah and that really is hard I I watched that trailer just in one of our breaks before and Pete came back and he's like you're so still and I was like yeah I'm watching Liam Neeson trailer he looked like he'd crashed his face was a hundred percent
02:34:22
Speaker
But if I move, Liam Neeson will kill me. It's like, it's like, stand down the T-Rex in Jurassic Park. It's like, don't move. Yeah. It looks, it, I, I'm glad I actually watched the whole trailer. Jesus. Cat. Loki's there. But the opening 30 seconds of that trailer, it's just him walking up to a window and shooting someone. I was like,
02:34:46
Speaker
I'm not watching the rest of this. It's gonna be all the same shit. But then I watched and I was like, Oh, no, it does. Like the whole memory loss thing does look kind of a little bit fun. But yeah, he's basically going crazy. And obviously, there's going to be some sort of conspiracy theory there. And they were, you know, making him crazy with the tablets that they were telling him was going to solve his craziness or some shit like that. Yeah. Anyway, let's move on to Monica Belushi's in it. And
02:35:12
Speaker
It was the only reason to watch the remake of V for Victory was. V for Vendetta? V for Vendetta, sorry, my bad. And Monica Baluchi isn't in V for Vendetta. She was in Matrix 2. Yeah, she was. She was in 2 and 3. Who am I thinking of? Natalie Portman was in V for Vendetta.
02:35:35
Speaker
Mmm no wrong You know what if you guys fucked me up, and it's actually no it was V for victory. It was a TV series It was a remake of the original movie And I still don't know for sure if Monica Baluchi was in it, but I'm
02:35:51
Speaker
I'm pretty sure she was. Anyway, let's talk about Edgar Wright. No, actually, I was actually going to bring her up and I think she has amazing foresight for never having signed on for that horrendous movie that I think now shall no longer be named, The Matrix Resurrections.
02:36:12
Speaker
The merovingian was there and she was not who she was. She was Persephone. And yes, she was not. So she made a very good choice not to be part of that fucking train wreck. Good job. And it's sorry, it wasn't her. I don't know why I confused those two actresses because they are very different people. It was Marina Bakker and I was thinking of I from Deadpool and Firefly.
02:36:39
Speaker
I really like it. Oh, yeah. Yeah, just unusually. Anyway, Edgar, Edgar Alan, right? I don't know why I wanted to say that Edgar right, the director, we got enough time to do this justice or probably not, to be honest, we're at two and a half hours. And it's not lose half an hour. Far away, boy. Get to talking. It also depends on when Dan has to get up and start moving kegs.
02:37:05
Speaker
I don't move kegs particularly these days, but I still get up and do shit. But yes, anyway, it doesn't matter. I will get up when I get up and if I get up and I don't feel like going to work, I'll send the boys a message and I say I'm going to be late.
02:37:21
Speaker
Get on up, get on up, get up, get on up. All right, let's talk about- There's nothing particularly, actually there is shit to do tomorrow, but nothing that's absolutely pressing. Let's talk about the interesting director, that is Edgar Wright. And this was Dan's idea, so I might let you introduce the idea that prompted this topic.
02:37:44
Speaker
So Edgar Wright, I find Edgar Wright a very modern director with a lot of callbacks to old or classic age cinema, I guess. I think you look at what he's done. So he's done Scott Pilgrim, which was a graphic novel adaptation of a pretty whacked out story.
02:38:12
Speaker
Then he moved on to do the Cornetto trilogy with Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, which, two of those movies, to put it definitely, Shaun of the Dead definitely put him on the map. So I think two of those three movies are two of my all-time favorite movies. One of them most definitely, the first one, Shaun of the Dead definitely got me
02:38:39
Speaker
very interested in that style of filmmaking and that style of storytelling. And he's very English and the way that they portray the English life as something ordinary that can be extraordinary. Yeah. Uh, overall in those, in those three movies. By the way, he did Scott Pilgrim well after he did Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead. Oh really? Yeah. So Shaun of the Dead was 2004. Uh, Scott Pilgrim was 2010.
02:39:11
Speaker
Wow, is there that much difference between? Okay, so I stand corrected. Sorry to cut you off. I didn't go out of my way to correct you. It's just an interesting point of fact. Definitely. So I actually think in the highlight of his
02:39:27
Speaker
filmography, I think Hot Fire's, all right, so, and then he went on to do Baby Driver, he's got some more coming up as well, so. He didn't direct Baby Driver, oh no, sorry, he did direct Baby Driver, my bad. Yeah, so I think he wrote and direct Baby Driver. And yeah, and the latest stuff he's done is Last Night in Soho, which was last year, and he's got the running neck coming out. So I haven't seen that one. Nor have I. I haven't seen it last night in Soho, yeah.
02:39:54
Speaker
So he did, he wrote the, so what I really wanted to focus on here was the Cornetto trilogy. I fucking love the Cornetto trilogy and Hot Fuzz. Sorry. One more, Dan. Sorry. One more. Ant-Man. Yes. He wrote Ant-Man. He wrote the screenplay of the original Ant-Man movie. He was signed on to direct it and then left the show or left the movie due to artists or creative differences. Yes. Yeah. It was important to mention that because that would have been his foray into the MCU.
02:40:24
Speaker
Yeah, and I think he got some credit for that as well. Well, he wrote the screenplay, so he would have been credited with the screenplay.
02:40:36
Speaker
So three flavors. Yeah, so Hot Fuzz is one of my all time favorite movies. I think the the writing, the directing, the story, the acting, the comedic delivery of everything that happens in that movie is almost infallible. I think that from the movie that it is, I think it's an absolutely
02:41:00
Speaker
almost flawless movie. I think the actors are incredible across the board from people that aren't actors if you watch some of the behind the scenes stuff to the comedic delivery between
02:41:17
Speaker
Timothy Dalton. Nick Frost and Simon Pegg who in the middle of it had a massive spat and then the next day had to do a scene that was solely them working together and they were that professional to just sit there and they hit every single mark that they had to do and you go back knowing what scene it is and you look at them too in it and you go
02:41:45
Speaker
You guys have been doing this together for years. Like, you don't think they miss a beat. But they were apparently having a huge spat in the middle of this filming. But the rest of the cast around this movie is fucking brilliant. Martin Freeman, Bill Nye. Nye? I think that's it. Nye, yeah. And the other one that jumps out on the page is Bill Bailey. And I don't know if anyone ever watched Black Books. It's one of my favorite comedy UK, BBC comedy series. But Pete, no one tells me nothing.
02:42:13
Speaker
But they are the tiniest characters. Yeah, I know. So Bill Bailey has two parts, him and his twin brother. They banned the desk. But it's such a perfect role for him too, though. That's him. That's his persona on stage.
02:42:31
Speaker
Yeah. He has like five lines in the entire fucking movie. And Bill Nye is the police commissioner that comes in at the start and the end. And that's it. He's the bookend. And that's it. You want to go upstairs? You want to get a commissioner down here? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's exactly it. And Martin Freeman is one of those as well. And like the other, the other people that just come in and then the, the, the so many
02:42:54
Speaker
in jokes that are written not in jokes it's not the right the the the background jokes that are delivered in that movie to the foreground action and happening and script of the whole movie is just i i think it's perfect and i i
02:43:10
Speaker
I'm going to wax lyrical about this movie till the day I die. And I think all of that developed through the planning and execution of Shaun of the Dead, which in my mind was a very English version of another one of my favorite movies, The Evil Dead 2, which was a Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell. The horror comedy there that is delivered
02:43:38
Speaker
One in a very over-the-top American blood gore Walls exploding things getting shot off and cut off with chainsaws to a very English Proper sensibility drinking and we're stopping it We're stopping it too for tea and things like that. It was it was that English sensibility and I think he brought such a
02:44:02
Speaker
Such a gravitas to that horror comedy genre that it's hard to ignore. But you would say the egg right name to the average Joe on the street and they'll go, who? Then you'll go Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz and they'll go, what? Or Scott Pilgrim, which was a Hollywood movie, which was excellently written. I love that film. Once again, executed and cast. Yeah. Yeah. I've got to say on that.
02:44:30
Speaker
If I said the name Edgar right to a bunch of my mates, the first thing that comes back is montage. He's the king of the quick montage. That scene in Shaun of the Dead, when it's player two has entered the game. Don't you ever work today? Player two has left the game, and then it's the scrape of the knife on the toast, the shoe being pulled through, the pen in the top pocket, and it's all with that whoosh noise of whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh.
02:45:00
Speaker
Like, they are pure moments of film genius and I have found a hypercut of them on YouTube. It is 3 minutes and 26 seconds long and it is, I got in the break, I got a minute into it and it was just, it was glorious. Like, there were only a couple in Shaun of the Dead and then he doubled down in Hot Fuzz.
02:45:25
Speaker
There's that the scene when he's opens.
Edgar Wright's Directorial Genius
02:45:28
Speaker
It's when Simon goes to go on the rampage and he's arming everything and clocking everything in and it's just it's so perfectly times like almost musical just. Cocking shells into the bottom of the shotgun and doing that it's just it's.
02:45:46
Speaker
They are some of the best, the best montages you've seen. And you look at, montage has always been such a great device for telling stories to get through. Or moving time quickly. Yeah, yeah. And just to get through a bunch of shit you need to get through, but you don't want to spend time waxing lyrical about. And then he takes it and makes them fucking hilarious. Like, for that alone, I think he's just a genius.
02:46:08
Speaker
And they can be tacky if they're not done correctly. They can be hugely tacky, but it's like he just nails the ability to do that. And that was one thing that I mean, I've only seen Baby Driver twice. And I think the first time I saw it, I was waiting for that.
02:46:30
Speaker
Telltale Edgar Wright montage of exactly that and and it never came and I I like baby driver I think it's original. I think it's very well written and I think it's very well acted It's a much slower pace and less quirky than the others. Yeah But I still I still enjoy it. So I would really like to move on to I didn't know he'd I'd had heard of the one night and so hope and
02:46:58
Speaker
but I hadn't seen it. So I think I might be hitting that up this weekend. Yeah, I haven't seen it either. My favorite out of all of them is going to be Scott Pilgrim. It was just such an original way to tell a pretty tired story. I mean, it was, if you boil the plot all the way down, it kind of reminded me of High Fidelity with John Cusack.
02:47:24
Speaker
I know that there's differences as well. It's about a guy going through his, so high fidelity was a guy revisiting his past exes to figure out what was wrong with him and why he was unlovable. Whereas Scott Pilgrim starts dating this chick who just comes out of nowhere in a bigger than reality kind of way. And then he has to fight her
02:47:50
Speaker
10 X's. Seven evil X's. Seven evil X's. Seven evil X's. Seven evil X's. And it was just like the- The visual. The visual storytelling element in that movie was brilliant in terms of taking a comic book concept and bringing a comic book to life in a movie. No one's ever done it and no one's done it since quite as well as he did.
02:48:18
Speaker
It's a very basic graphic novel as well, in comparison.
02:48:27
Speaker
But you know, I thought that was brilliant, that movie. People talk about, you know, when you adapt comic books and stuff, and people obviously go to, for the most page to screen, like adaptation, realistic adaptation, obviously everyone goes to Watchmen, which is one of, if not the most faithful adaptations from the original source.
02:48:51
Speaker
But Scott Pilgrim was the most inventive and clever way to be that faithful as well. It wasn't trying to faithfully tell a comic or a graphic novel story. It was trying to faithfully portray a graphic novel on screen. Yeah, that's exactly the difference.
02:49:11
Speaker
I was going to say, my favourite scene that whole thing, and it's purely for the weird little musical note, is when they got band practice and he goes for a P, and the P-meter goes down, and it's the Zelda fairy fountain music he's playing in the background where he takes a slash.
02:49:27
Speaker
I don't know why, but that scene's always stuck with me. It's like- But I love the, the, the, the, the, the band off at the end with the two fucking, um, the two hologra, yeah, the, and the two holographic fucking Chinese lions intertwining and fighting each other was just- Scott has learned self-respect. It's such a great movie and it's, and it's to Edgar Wright's vision in terms of bringing a, a comic book or a graphic novel to life. He did it in a completely unique and visual way.
02:49:57
Speaker
And I think that's what makes the rest of the movie so well. You were talking about montages. He brings a unique spin on a pretty, pretty well-known kind of movie mechanism to move a storyline forward. But he does it in a way that's different to what's been done before. I think that's why he's a standout director.
02:50:17
Speaker
Yeah, I definitely agree with you there, and I think that's definitely one of those things, like I said, it was... I missed that in Baby Driver. I just, if... I liked it, but if there was... I thought it was a pretty average movie to be honest.
02:50:34
Speaker
I thought it was... I thought it was a good movie. I really enjoyed it and I thought it was something original that broke the tone of the years that surrounded it. I thought the whole movie was a piss-taker Fast and Furious, to be honest, and Ocean's Eleven.
02:50:54
Speaker
Well, it kind of was. And I just wish he'd dialed it up a little bit. Just to make it more obvious as a piss take, just to say. Isn't there a little montage moment in the opening scene of Baby Driver?
02:51:05
Speaker
Yes, there are, I'm sure there's more than one montage in Baby Driver, in fact. But I just felt that it might've been a little bit subtle as a piss-take. I just would've liked a big fuck you. In comparison to like Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz that were piss-takes in their own. In your face piss-takes, yeah. And they were taking the piss out of themselves as well. In Shaun of the Dead where they meet the other crew that looks exactly like them. It was a piss-take of itself. I love that scene.
02:51:34
Speaker
And yeah, I mean the foreshadowing that happens in Hot Fuzz. I remember watching it for the first time and it was well before that the the internet spoiled everything for you. And watching it for the first time and not really knowing and just sort of expecting some English village murder mystery movie. For the greater good.
02:51:58
Speaker
For the greater good and then getting that and getting for the greater good like getting everybody that was involved and you get to the scene where he gets chased and or no he's chasing the hooded person after the floral shop lady gets killed with the shears and you like how was it how was that cousin like that far
02:52:24
Speaker
How is that person so far in front? And then you get for the greater good. And then you see that the montage of the people standing beside and the next person was there. And you start to run the logic of that through your head.
02:52:39
Speaker
Well, that person had to be there before that person could step aside so they could be running before that person got there. And it doesn't make sense, but in that world that he's created, you go, yeah, well, they did that. They planned that because they knew he was going to be there to do this. And it's just this weird logic to everything that he does in the world that he creates. And it doesn't.
02:53:02
Speaker
feel like there's plot holes there. I'm sure there is, don't get me wrong. But it doesn't feel like there's plot holes there because it unfolds quite well. He feels the void as well. You don't want to believe that Tim Dalton is... I'll be right back, sorry. You don't want to believe that Tim Dalton is part of this villainous thing, but he keeps saying shit like,
02:53:25
Speaker
looks like the good director lost his head when he's being decapitated in the car accident. It's like, no, it can't be that on the nose. Like he can't be like, yeah. But that's like, that's the genius of him flipping your expectations of him not being that obvious back to being like, no, I was being that obvious. And it's that little switch. But then, but then flipping it again, because it's everybody and not just him. And they're all involved into it.
02:53:51
Speaker
And there's, there's just some, there's the, and I'm sure you and me have very similar humor, humor, Tom. So there's, there's points where the, um, uh, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost are talking to the two detectives and there's, there's, there's one line there. It's such a throwaway line, but it's so foreshadowing. And one of the detectives said to him is, uh, you want to be a big cop in a small village.
02:54:16
Speaker
fuck off the model up to the model town. Yeah. And the model town is where the in the air and they end up with the big Godzilla sounds walking through the fucking model village. Let's fuck off up the model village. And I want some ice cream.
02:54:36
Speaker
It's just it's just little things like that that are just to anybody else they throw away lines and nobody no other director would hone in on that 10 seconds of fuck off up the model village and the entire final final fight Yeah is in the model village and he's a big cop in a model village like it's just it's just those ridiculousness things that in that hot fuzz that
02:55:02
Speaker
that just make me happy. It is a fucking happy place for me. Hot sauce, easy, happy place. I was saying to Pete last night when we were talking about at the pub, it was just like, that's the movie that when we have nothing to watch and we just want to watch something, Emma and I put that on. That or Shaun the Dead. I actually, I am, I've only seen- You got red on you. You got red on, no, it's orange on me.
02:55:25
Speaker
I've only seen world's end I think twice maybe three times it was I don't know why it felt like it felt so it fell so short it felt like it fell so short I think it just went too big like with the whole alien invasion thing it was just like there is some good bits in it like there are some hilarious bits in it but yeah I think I think it's also like that little switch up of
02:55:54
Speaker
Simon Pegg had always played like the lovable guy and when he was playing that bit of an asshole who's still like broken but lovable, it didn't kind of work as well. I think there was just a bit of a few misses there, unfortunately. And it is the weakest of the three. And you look at the other way around. I do tend to agree. Nick Frost has always been the dope sidekick and he plays that so well, but to have him as the
02:56:21
Speaker
The the voice of reason almost doesn't doesn't play like you you want him and I I guess they You want him to deliver the stupid one liners that are hilarious. I mean you want to see your favorite monkey? Yeah We were both in the same place there But I guess that goes it's on random
02:56:45
Speaker
That goes, uh, can I get any of you more, um, market pay? Yeah. Um, it's, I think it goes to everything we were just saying, Tom, is it like that in hot fuzzy flipped everything up in world's any flipped everything the other way. And yeah, I don't think it lands as well because he didn't lead into the strengths of those actors that were playing those parts or what they had preset in the other movie.
02:57:13
Speaker
But I guess that's a good thing that he wasn't being like, they're going to be typecast is once again, you're gonna have the smart, you know, um, I wasn't even necessarily the smart in hot fuzz. He was obviously a very clever detective, but he was so dry. Um, compared to Sean, when he's just like a bit bumbling, and then he's just this asshole character in the world's end, where he's just like, you know, still living on his glory days that don't mean shit. Um,
02:57:39
Speaker
Yeah, I like, it's just, I think it's just the way he played, like Simon Pegg doesn't, unfortunately doesn't play a lovable asshole. And you can take that on context as much as you want. Like he just came across as a real dick and I was like, oh, I can't get on board with you.
02:57:56
Speaker
Yeah. Particularly after watching two movies where the expectations have already been set and you kind of go in and say, ah, this is going to be another, another breath of fresh air amongst everything else I'm watching in Hollywood at the moment. And then he kind of flipped the script on its head. And I think as a trilogy, it was a good way to shake things up. But in the broader context of why you are watching an Edgar Wright movie as opposed to everything else going on in Hollywood, kind of broke from that.
02:58:25
Speaker
It broke from the recipe that had been tried and proven to be perfect. I do like that. Sorry, go ahead. No, there's just one line in World's End that breaks me and I will watch the entire movie to get to this point because it's literally right at the end when Simon Pegg's talking to the
02:58:46
Speaker
the alien voice done by Bill Nye. And he talks about there's only one, oh, forget the character's name. And the comedic timing of the alien saying something back to Simon Pegg and he goes,
02:59:07
Speaker
It's just it just is delivered so beautifully that I know it's editing and it's cut to be perfect. But it just I think the way that the tone the whole scene is done.
02:59:23
Speaker
that you can get things that are edited right so the right line is said at the correct time, but the tone is wrong because they're not continuing the conversation. You know that actually it makes it like from a editing perspective because you're right, you can trim down segments so that the delivery of timing is right on beat.
02:59:47
Speaker
The challenge there becomes you've watched this same sequence of events and these same lines delivered so many times that they start to lose their comedic value entirely and it becomes quite abstract. It requires a strong vision to say, no, that's the timing I'm looking for and we haven't quite gotten there because you've played that whole thing back 5000 fucking times.
03:00:10
Speaker
And you start to lose sight of where you were going in the first place. So, yeah, it's actually quite a testament to a lot of the film editors that they can maintain that connection, that alignment to where they're trying to go.
03:00:23
Speaker
I don't know if it adds any weight to that, but in terms of looking at how we're saying the world's end is like the weaker of the three. But Edgar Wright wasn't involved in the writing of that. It was just Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. Whereas Sean and the head of Pop Fuzz were written by Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg.
03:00:40
Speaker
So, you know, it's a different bowl of communities. Maybe that's why it has a different feel to it. I do like that Dylan Moran was in the first movie and Bill Bailey was in the second, because those two are a one-two hit duo from Black Books. That were the two main characters in Black Books. That's right, it was Dylan Moran in the first one.
03:01:01
Speaker
Yeah. He was obnoxious. You then roll into Paul was the movie that Nick Frost and Simon Pegg made outside of the Canordio Agility, while Edgar Wright was making- I enjoyed that film. Well, Edgar Wright was making Baby Driver and those two made Paul.
03:01:20
Speaker
And I definitely- Paul's probably more aligned to the rest of those movies. He is, but it still doesn't have that excellent directorial, editorial- There's the cerebral comedy layer above. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, you're right. I think they're all together, all good movies, but there's exceptional movies within all of those three people's filmographies.
03:01:51
Speaker
I'm just this I've got IMDB. I need to close it because they're doing a comparison of all the piss take movies all the movies They took the piss out of insurance of the dead. Yeah, and so they had the sequence of of Nick Frost
03:02:06
Speaker
I don't even remember what he was doing, but it was a free Willy rip-off and then they moved to Romeo and Juliet and they'd have the exact same sequence of events and he was holding the Tabasco sauce packet in his hand. The one scene that I will get them every time is, and it's a
03:02:27
Speaker
It definitely happens in all three. The fence jumping scenes? Yeah. So when Simon Pegg, especially in Hot Fuzz. Well, Shaun of the Dead, he face plants. Yeah, but in Hot Fuzz he goes over and then Nick Frost just barrels through the fucking fence and goes head up. Every time, that's just like, if everyone's ever sad, it's just like,
03:02:51
Speaker
Do you need your favourite monkey? Do you want to see Clyde? Just put up that scene for her and she's just instantly happy again. It's just, it is a pure joy moment. Yeah. No, he's a brilliant, he's a brilliant director. I really want to watch this one night and show her now. It looks a bit fun. Wasn't advertised all that heavily.
03:03:12
Speaker
No, I remember hearing the name of it, but yeah, it just never popped up on my radar. So yeah, I'm gonna have to prepare myself and I hope it's a really good chuckle.
Focus on Edgar Wright & Future Projects
03:03:23
Speaker
But no, I think, yeah, he's a perfect person for us to start like doing some of these director like little focuses on. Well, there's not six and a half thousand movies to review. Yeah, there is that. I mean, we're not going to do James Cameron in the entire catalog. But yeah. Well, Ivan Leichmann, he's a genius. Some late show comedy for you.
03:03:49
Speaker
Oh, very good. Half the jokes that I grew up listening to or watching on TV, you could not repeat on TV today. No. You'd be kicked off stage. You would be. But yes, don't go right. What a hero. What an absolute hero. Good fucking director. And Dan shows an awkward moment for us to have to pad out because we're at the end of the end of the episode. So Dan's going to come back and we're going to say goodbye.
03:04:15
Speaker
Yeah. So we hope you've had a fantastic episode. Oh he does have a new movie coming out though. Edgar Wright is directing and it's based off a Stephen King novel? The Running Man. Really? The futuristic United States where the world has become a dystopia. Cool. He could have fun with that.
03:04:38
Speaker
I'll watch that shit. Also, if you're not watching it, watch Star Trek Picard. It is fucking brilliant. Yeah. So brilliant, in fact, that I started watching the beginning of season two and went back and started watching The Next Generation. I think I'm four seasons into TNG now. Because Patrick Stewart's just such a fucking awesome actor.
03:05:00
Speaker
How did we get on to Patrick Stewart? Oh, we were we were having because you decided to take a leak just at the end of the episode. So we couldn't say goodbye. I was trying. I was trying to hold it, but I couldn't. Yeah, I know. Because I'm saying that Edgar Wright's got a new film, Running Man, The Running Man. He's doing a rehabilitation of The Running Man. So this is Philip K Dick Running Man.
03:05:23
Speaker
Phillips who's dick? Yes. Philip, Philip K. Dick. Running man, didn't he? You're telling the story, bro. It says here on IMDB that the writer was Michael Bacall and Stephen King. Stephen King, yeah, yeah. And getting Running Man and Blade Runner mixed up here. Sorry.
03:05:44
Speaker
Running Man was a Clint Eastwood. It wasn't Clint Eastwood. Who was the actor in the original? Arnold Schwarzenegger in the 80s. Yeah, it was an 87 film. So they're redoing that. That's how you go about the next film. What was I thinking? See, I really love the Arnie movie. So the Running Man was, it was a good 80s, it was a good 80s, 90s. I don't know when it was done, but. I think it was 80s. 87.
03:06:09
Speaker
87. Yeah. Domino. God Domino. It was the opera opera singing metal led light wearing. Yeah, yeah, crazy. I was thinking Westworld. I'm pretty sure
03:06:25
Speaker
was Clint Eastwood in Westworld? Anyway, we're way off topic. This is just a massive tangent now. Who's the famous actor that was in Westworld, the original movie, not the new series? No, no, the original. Um, cause that's a, that's an eighties movie. Originally. Um, it's not my, it's not on. I think we need to plug here.
03:06:53
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's the end. That's Kurt and Cole. That's us. That's us. Kurt and Cole. Kurt and Cole. Yes. I think we've talked up enough shit and talked down enough shit tonight that we can pull the pin at the three and a bit hour mark. We're just under three. Okay. Thank you as always for listening. Or go to the Winchester and wait for this to blow over.
03:07:18
Speaker
It's the wink that sells it. She put this song on again. It's on random. It's my favorite fucking line from that movie. Don't know why.
03:07:29
Speaker
All right. Cool. Thanks for listening. Thank you everybody. Subscribe, like, comment, hit our Instagram and now Facebook and all our other social media. Tom's extended social media presence will be exposed to the world so you can hit him up. What can I say, I'm a pretty big deal. I'm such a media. Yeah. Oh yeah. Bye. Thanks guys. Bye. Bye.