Transcript
Speaker: I remember that constantly at night when I'm staring into a broken mirror.
Speaker: How did it break?
Speaker: Who knows?
Speaker: Who knows?
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: I certainly don't.
Speaker: I didn't break the mirror.
Speaker: But you know what else is a broken mirror?
Speaker: What's that?
Speaker: Hey there, everybody.
Speaker: Welcome back to Pixlet.
Speaker: My name is Kevin.
Speaker: With me, as always, as I've been on today's show, we are starting a brand new book.
Speaker: It is Minecraft the Island, written by Max Brooks.
Speaker: And today we have a special guest that we brought in for a little bit.
Speaker: We figured why talk about Minecraft from the point of view of two 40-year-old geeks who were never the target audience of the game, even when the game was new.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker: I was almost 30 when it came out.
Speaker: I was in my 30s, yeah.
Speaker: So, thank God.
Speaker: When did it come out?
Speaker: When did the game come out?
Speaker: I have a pulled 2011 2011.
Speaker: I was 2009 2009 was like it's its first launch.
Speaker: The real big the coming out was 2011.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: That makes sense.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: I turned 30 the year after it came out.
Speaker: So yeah.
Speaker: Awesome.
Speaker: Yeah, it came out two years before our guest was born.
Speaker: So without much further ado, let's go to our little interview that we had with my daughter, Camilla.
Speaker: So, Camilla, how long have you been playing Minecraft?
Speaker: I'm pretty sure it's been since I was like five.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: Yeah, that sounds about right.
Speaker: So you're about to turn 11.
Speaker: So it's been like six years since you first started playing Minecraft.
Speaker: What's your favorite part of the game?
Speaker: Definitely not being exploited by mobs.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: What's your favorite?
Speaker: I know you keep track of the mobs that are added to the game.
Speaker: So what's one is your favorite?
Speaker: Well, I hate the warden.
Speaker: I'm not trying to throw it out at anybody, but it's like... What's the warden?
Speaker: The warden is basically an axolotl that's blind, but basically they don't... It's like
Speaker: Not really that many people know about it's like an axolotl.
Speaker: But it's like, it's like mutated and all that stuff.
Speaker: And it's gone blind, but it can hear you with your hearing.
Speaker: And it has like 500 hearts.
Speaker: Oh, wow.
Speaker: Oh, gosh.
Speaker: That's a lot.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You want to avoid that if at all possible.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's why I usually try to stay like at anything.
Speaker: If I hear like a thing in the caves, I'm like running out of there.
Speaker: But I would say my favorite mob is the sheep.
Speaker: A standard sheep?
Speaker: They're derpy.
Speaker: Because they're derpy faces?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, they're adorable.
Speaker: Wow, the apple did not fall far from the tree here.
Speaker: But if we're talking about recent mobs, I would say probably Axel apples.
Speaker: Do you have any particularly good memories of games of Minecraft that you've played with your friends or anything like that?
Speaker: Anything cool that happened?
Speaker: Yeah, the first server that me...
Speaker: and him made were like, we made like, we were in Acacia by, Acacia by?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And like, we built like a super tall house and it was like adorable.
Speaker: And my room was at the top and I loved it.
Speaker: There's no real objective.
Speaker: You don't necessarily, you can just kind of hang out and be like, ah, I'm building this house and I'm building this island and I'm building this
Speaker: you know, the tallest thing that can be possibly built in the Minecraft world.
Speaker: Oh, wait.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Wait, wait.
Speaker: You built like a giant tower in like one of my servers.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I like the PC that's in your, um, on the PC that's in your room.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The one that you want me to fix.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's in my office.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's, um, it's, it was a giant tower and it was at the foot of it was just like a pool of water to, so you could just jump all the way down.
Speaker: It was like the world's tallest diving board.
Speaker: He built it to the highest, he built it to the,
Speaker: height limit.
Speaker: It was hilarious.
Speaker: And also, and also like nearby I was building like miniature people, like, like little people statues.
Speaker: And it's adorable.
Speaker: That is too much fun.
Speaker: You see right now with my kid, the closest I get to play Minecraft with him because he's only six months old there.
Speaker: So you can see he was he's he got a hold of my book at one point.
Speaker: Graham was chewing on it.
Speaker: He was chewing on it.
Speaker: He's got his two little bottom teeth now, so he's got a little couple of fangs in there, so he uses them at every opportunity.
Speaker: Well, Graham is Graham's at one stage and Camilla's at a completely different stage.
Speaker: I mean, she's got her braces on now and she's I think you had.
Speaker: Do you have any teeth left to lose Camilla?
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: I'm pretty sure I have one more or two more.
Speaker: Well, so she's she's almost out of baby.
Speaker: Almost out of them.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Look at that.
Speaker: Those are big.
Speaker: Dang.
Speaker: So, Camilla, is there anything about Minecraft?
Speaker: What is the thing that you love most about Minecraft?
Speaker: If you could put it into, like, if you could just put it all together into, like, a sentence, what is it that makes you love Minecraft?
Speaker: Getting to see all the cute mobs, building cute houses and all that stuff.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And sometimes mining too, but mostly chopping down trees.
Speaker: But I do replant them.
Speaker: All right, Camilla, thank you so much for being on the show.
Speaker: I'm going to play Minecraft anyways.
Speaker: Yeah, go play Minecraft.
Speaker: And we're back.
Speaker: Thank you so much to my sweet baby child who is a baby child and forever my sweet baby girl loving her forever and ever.
Speaker: Sweet girl who has who has slowly been worming her way onto the show for like slowly since we started, you know, since we started just she's been making more and more appearances and those appearances seem to get longer each time.
Speaker: It used to just be her poking her head in and now it's her poking her head in and walking all the way up to the camera and saying hello.
Speaker: And now she's officially.
Speaker: She has been a guest on the show.
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: Before we get started, though, before we go too much further into the episode, I got to tell you about something.
Speaker: It's a very special website.
Speaker: Oh, well, please do tell.
Speaker: Patreon.com slash pixelitpod is where you can go.
Speaker: If you want to learn more about us, and when I say learn more, I mean give us money.
Speaker: Please.
Speaker: Because what is the best way to understand somebody than to give them money and see how they react?
Speaker: I personally think that that's the best way.
Speaker: Like sociologists agree with that.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: So if you go to patreon.com slash pixel at pod, you can join for free.
Speaker: It's there's a free you're paying with your your time and love.
Speaker: And we accept that as currency as well.
Speaker: But we love that.
Speaker: Also, we love that.
Speaker: We love that.
Speaker: But also there's a one dollar tier that gets you in the door and that gives you access to Phil's What Are You Readin' blog where he talks about books that he's been reading recently.
Speaker: $5 gets you ad-free episodes, and I'm starting to put some more bonus stuff out there onto the feed.
Speaker: Hell yeah.
Speaker: And $10 gets you a shout-out in every single episode.
Speaker: So I would like to shout-out...
Speaker: Ruthless mutter, Jesus loves you, Kyle Seaman and friendly friend.
Speaker: Friendly friend is the friend that we have had.
Speaker: The friendliest.
Speaker: Very friendly beginning.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Patreon.com slash pixelitpod.
Speaker: So Phil, who is the, who's the author of this book?
Speaker: Oh, well, the author of this particular book is Max Brooks, who actually you probably know from his novel World War Z, which was an oral history of the zombie apocalypse.
Speaker: He also broke, he basically broke in with the zombie survival guide, which was ostensibly a humor book, but actually contained weirdly specific and
Speaker: if I do say so myself, solid advice for anyone who, you know, is in a weirdly post-apocalyptic combat kind of situation.
Speaker: Anyone who fashions themselves a survivalist.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: As one might, you know, Phil is like maybe a degree away from that.
Speaker: I'm one bad day away from just being going completely off grid going.
Speaker: It is not.
Speaker: Phil is one bad day from being a prepper at all times.
Speaker: So I have warned my wife about this constantly.
Speaker: We started dating during covid.
Speaker: So she knows how far I can go.
Speaker: And it's it's it's like literally the day we we we we.
Speaker: met up for like our second date, I had gone and bought as many cans of beans as I could reasonably carry to to stuff onto shelves because I didn't know what the hell was going on and neither did anyone else.
Speaker: No one else knew.
Speaker: We are still slowly consuming those beans.
Speaker: Those beans have lasted through several moves.
Speaker: Hey man, Beanie Weenie, it's the best.
Speaker: So yeah, they actually have those, those beans were purchased in the Atlanta area.
Speaker: They moved to South Carolina and now they are Virginia.
Speaker: So those means they've seen some shit.
Speaker: They've seen, they've been on the road.
Speaker: Yeah, it's so it is actually a pretty, you know, obviously no one can know squad about what actually would happen during that.
Speaker: But as far as I don't know if you could even call it satire, but like, you know, alternate history, fictional universe survival guide.
Speaker: It didn't.
Speaker: They're not.
Speaker: It's not funny is my point.
Speaker: It would always be in the humor section because where else are you going to put it?
Speaker: But it wasn't funny.
Speaker: It was actually zombies.
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: But it's played pretty straight.
Speaker: It is.
Speaker: It's very it's like horror nonfiction kind of.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's a better if bookstores weren't slashing their horror sections bit by bit, then there would be a horror nonfiction section.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: The Barnes & Noble by my house, by the way, has a horror section is three stands.
Speaker: Mine too.
Speaker: It's actually pretty impressive, all things considered.
Speaker: There's some places that don't even have horror sections.
Speaker: That's true.
Speaker: Your favorite bookstore in Greenville did not actually have a horror section, right?
Speaker: Which one?
Speaker: Oh, no, actually that one did.
Speaker: That one did.
Speaker: Oh, no, sorry.
Speaker: No, the one downtown.
Speaker: That one did not.
Speaker: No, that one did not.
Speaker: But there was a used bookstore that I also liked that had a pretty impressive one.
Speaker: I had a lot of bookstores I liked.
Speaker: But I was like, when did I take him to Mr. K's?
Speaker: I remember that's not the one you're talking about.
Speaker: So two other side notes about Max Brooks that are very interesting is, A, he's the son of Mel Brooks, a legendary funny man, and actually resembles him quite a bit.
Speaker: Just it's very sweet in a way.
Speaker: Younger, more spry Mel Brooks.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: The other thing that I find actually almost more interesting than this is that he...
Speaker: was actually invited to be a senior fellow at the Modern War Institute at West Point, based on World War Z and the Zombie Survival Guide.
Speaker: Because apparently higher up officers read those books
Speaker: And he had done a lot of research on, I was listening to an interview with him and he was talking about, what is that?
Speaker: The really, he based World War Z on the great World War II oral history by Spuds Turkle.
Speaker: Spuds, is that something?
Speaker: Spuds Turkle.
Speaker: Spuds Turkle.
Speaker: Studs, Durkle.
Speaker: What am I talking about?
Speaker: Studs.
Speaker: I'm calling him spuds.
Speaker: He's spuds.
Speaker: God damn it.
Speaker: The good war.
Speaker: The good war.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: It was just like, it's like, I've never read it, but it's like the quintessential history of the war.
Speaker: It's told from, you know, from the perspective of the people who did it.
Speaker: That man could smoke a cigar.
Speaker: Look at that.
Speaker: Oh, yeah, he could.
Speaker: Yeah, he could.
Speaker: That's a good name for a guy like that, Studs.
Speaker: Studs Terkel.
Speaker: You can't imagine a guy named Studs Terkel and he doesn't have a cigar in his mouth.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: I mean, come on.
Speaker: He actually, he missed a very lucrative career as a sports bookie if he didn't end up doing this because he just, he looks like he, I look at him and think I owe him money just based on that look.
Speaker: Yeah, no, I agree.
Speaker: I think he's got some sort of
Speaker: leverage on me.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: I should be worried about that.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: But he based Max Brooks based World War Z on that.
Speaker: So it was very military oriented, very intelligently thought through.
Speaker: He did a lot of research and that sort of thing in terms of how world governments and militaries would react to something like this.
Speaker: And it impress
Speaker: the upper brass at West Point enough that they actually started bringing him in to do lectures and to assist in research projects and to give perspective on all this based on
Speaker: Nothing other than his own research.
Speaker: And he's not a military man.
Speaker: He never served.
Speaker: You know, his dad did.
Speaker: He didn't have a choice.
Speaker: But he didn't have a call.
Speaker: But this guy, he impressed them enough that they made him a senior fellow at one of the most important military learning centers in the world.
Speaker: That's amazing.
Speaker: Isn't that crazy?
Speaker: He was also the voice of the lead dog in the wild Thornberries.
Speaker: And so, you know, it makes sense.
Speaker: It all comes together at all and comes full circle when you realize that this is the first of three Minecraft books that he has written.
Speaker: The latest one having come out last year.
Speaker: Yes, yes, it's a little Minecraft trilogy that he put out.
Speaker: So I'm sure that this is chock full of painstakingly researched military survivalist, because it makes a lot of sense, Kevin.
Speaker: You know, when you think about it, what is more survivalist than Minecraft?
Speaker: Minecraft is the Prepper's video game.
Speaker: It absolutely is.
Speaker: My ex the extent I wouldn't want to say this when Camilla was on, but the extent of my experience with Minecraft is when it was free on Xbox 360 for a little bit.
Speaker: And I downloaded it and played in a lonely little server all by myself while I was getting hammered drunk on gin, listening to Anne Hathaway read The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
Speaker: She wasn't in the room.
Speaker: It was an audio book.
Speaker: But
Speaker: And just and I and I looked up things to do in Minecraft because I still I'm not good at freedom.
Speaker: I have to I have to have some level of guidance.
Speaker: And a lot of people were making roller coasters.
Speaker: So I said, OK, that's what I'm going to do.
Speaker: I made myself a little house that I could hide in at night so that the zombies wouldn't get me and all that stuff.
Speaker: And then I built a high as high a hill as I could, built tracks, built a cart and rode it all the way down and went, huh.
Speaker: And then just started over the next day.
Speaker: And I really enjoyed the soundtrack.
Speaker: I still like the soundtrack quite a bit.
Speaker: It's a good soundtrack.
Speaker: It's a good relaxing soundtrack.
Speaker: And I liked it when it would rain.
Speaker: So it became this kind of little white noise machine for about a week where I would drink gin and listen to audio books and like build little houses.
Speaker: And then I put it down and kind of forgot about it.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So what I'm saying here is clearly...
Speaker: Me being an A++ prepper, you know, anarchist lunatic.
Speaker: If I'm thinking this far ahead for like what is possible in this universe, I'm sure Max Brooks took us on an adventure of survival and he didn't do that, did he?
Speaker: He did not.
Speaker: He didn't.
Speaker: I don't know what to make of this book, so we're just going to go ahead and get started with it by putting the body in the marsh.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Timothy, Timothy, Timothy, Timothy Delahond.
Speaker: So, by the way, I am not reading the book.
Speaker: I'm listening to it, and I think that might be making...
Speaker: all the difference because I can't imagine reading it and getting the same value out of it than listening to Jack Black performing it.
Speaker: You have to I'm starting to realize I am reading it and I'm like, you need a very good voice to make this work.
Speaker: It could work.
Speaker: And he makes it work.
Speaker: It is a lot more interesting because I listen to it.
Speaker: And then when I did my notes, I was rereading chunks of it.
Speaker: And I was like, oh, there's something missing here.
Speaker: It's Jack Black.
Speaker: It's Jack Black.
Speaker: It's the je ne sais quoi.
Speaker: Quoi Jack Black.
Speaker: Quoi Jack Black.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Genesee Jack Black.
Speaker: Genesee Jacques.
Speaker: Jacques Black.
Speaker: Jacques Noir.
Speaker: Yeah, there you go, Jacques Noir.
Speaker: So the book starts with an in-character introduction that the book is basically a journal of this character's adventure through their time on the island and that hopefully it can help the reader.
Speaker: Mm hmm.
Speaker: So we which is a very zombie survival survival guide kind of thing to say, to be honest.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It's in the same same vein.
Speaker: Chapter one is titled Never Give Up.
Speaker: And we start in media res as the character who has no name is.
Speaker: And I started calling this character Steve.
Speaker: which is, I think that's very appropriate after a bit, you know, because Minecraft Steve is, that's the, the guy on the cover, the guy with the blue shirt or whatever, uh, the, the blue pants and green shirt and the,
Speaker: Anyway, it's Steve.
Speaker: He's in the middle of the ocean and he's drowning and kicking his way back up to the surface.
Speaker: And he gets to fresh air and he's stunned when he sees the sun and it's square.
Speaker: And he has no memory of his life.
Speaker: He doesn't even know how he got here.
Speaker: He's just in the water and he begins to swim to the west of
Speaker: by following the clouds.
Speaker: And at some point he has an altercation with a squid and the squid is all blocky.
Speaker: And he's like, ah, this is so weird.
Speaker: But the squid swims away.
Speaker: So he keeps swimming West and he comes upon land after swimming for a while.
Speaker: And Steve comes ashore, and he notices that everything is cubes.
Speaker: All around me is cubes.
Speaker: What's in the box?
Speaker: Cubes.
Speaker: Cubes.
Speaker: And it must be, he thinks that he must be having, he has some sort of head wound.
Speaker: Hey, it's the munchkin.
Speaker: Hey.
Speaker: Hello.
Speaker: She couldn't go.
Speaker: She had to come right back.
Speaker: She had to come right back into the show.
Speaker: That's how good this show is, people.
Speaker: That's how good it is.
Speaker: Love you.
Speaker: So...
Speaker: Or was I?
Speaker: Oh.
Speaker: He thinks he's had a head wound.
Speaker: He thinks he has a head wound.
Speaker: Which is actually pretty, they do that pretty funny.
Speaker: They do that pretty funny.
Speaker: They're pretty funny about how they roll with that.
Speaker: I got a kick out of that.
Speaker: Yeah, it must be the massive head wound that I have.
Speaker: Because he notices that his hands are also squares.
Speaker: And that he can't open his hands.
Speaker: They're just these little blocks at the end of his arms.
Speaker: It's a very literal interpretation of all this.
Speaker: We are getting hyper literal.
Speaker: He is and he has a meltdown over his newfound form and he is snapped.
Speaker: He's grounded and snapped back to realization by the fact that he is hungry.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: And then he looks around and he discovers that he h as a backpack, an inventory, and he starts discovering how he can interact with the world by punching blocks.
Speaker: And he also experiments with eating things.
Speaker: But he discovers that his hand will only let him eat things that are actually edible.
Speaker: Eventually, he finds an apple and he eats it, satiating his hunger, and he learns a valuable lesson.
Speaker: Never give up.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: That's the end of chapter one.
Speaker: That's it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's it.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Chapter two, panic drowns thought.
Speaker: Hmm.
Speaker: Hmm.
Speaker: Take a sip of my Diet Coke there.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Just give yourself a minute.
Speaker: Give yourself a minute.
Speaker: Give myself a minute because panic drowns thought.
Speaker: Yes, exactly.
Speaker: You got to take your time.
Speaker: You got to take your time.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Steve discovers that he can stack like objects in his inventory.
Speaker: He also meets a cow and he also accidentally punches a sheep.
Speaker: The sun goes down and he encounters a zombie and has a bit of a rough and tumble encounter with it, which ends up with him burying himself under some dirt cubes for safety.
Speaker: And he can hear the zombie grumbling outside.
Speaker: He realizes that none of this is a dream and that he needs to learn how to survive and that panic drowns thought.
Speaker: And that's the end of chapter two.
Speaker: I mean, nothing else really happens.
Speaker: I mean, that's, yeah.
Speaker: That's pretty much it.
Speaker: Chapter three is titled Don't Assume Anything.
Speaker: Steve realizes that he heals pretty fast once he eats another apple.
Speaker: He talks about survival tactics out loud in the direction of the zombie as if it's conversation and the zombie is responding with his groans.
Speaker: And then suddenly the zombie groans a different groan and stops.
Speaker: And then Steve breaks out of his little dirt tomb and he sees that it's morning again.
Speaker: The zombie is gone and the only thing that's left over is a stench.
Speaker: and a piece of zombie meat laying on the ground, and he collects it.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: He then experiments a little bit with the zero gravity effects of the Minecraft world, and where you can, like, stack two things of dirt and then knock out the bottom thing of dirt, and the top thing of dirt stays where it is.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He makes the connection that the sun kills zombies, and he punches out the sign, Help, on the side of a hill for anyone that might see it.
Speaker: He then realizes that he can't break rocks with his fist and that trees don't fall when a block is knocked out at the bottom.
Speaker: He discovers crafting and he makes a club.
Speaker: And at this point he says, me strong, me have weapon, which is good if you're listening to the Jack Black version of the book.
Speaker: Yes, yes.
Speaker: And by the way, Kevin is being literal.
Speaker: He literally says these things.
Speaker: He's not, this is not like an example of silly things.
Speaker: This is literally what he says.
Speaker: He literally starts saying me strong, me have weapon, me have club.
Speaker: It's, yeah.
Speaker: And it's not a club.
Speaker: It's not a club.
Speaker: It's just a stick that you get from crafting.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He continues experimenting and ends up making a crafting table and then a whole bunch of other things, including a door, a hatch, storage boxes and a boat.
Speaker: So he decides to take that boat, put it in the water, and sail away.
Speaker: But the excitement fades once he realizes that he can't, once he gets out onto the water, and he doesn't have any idea of where to go.
Speaker: He doesn't have any food, and he begrudgingly finds his way back to the island.
Speaker: The cow greets him, and Steve realizes that he has to think before he acts, and he needs to turn the island into a comfort zone.
Speaker: He says that he can and he will, but he realizes the sun is setting and he needs to figure out something to hide from the night terrors.
Speaker: That's the end of chapter three.
Speaker: Yeah, it clips along, people.
Speaker: This book clips along.
Speaker: It's not very long.
Speaker: It clips along.
Speaker: Chapter four, details make the difference.
Speaker: Steve has to hurry and build some sort of coverage.
Speaker: He uses all the dirt he has in a door, but runs out of building materials until he starts using all the wood that he has.
Speaker: Steve watches a zombie attack the door, which begins to splinter and crack, but it never actually breaks.
Speaker: And he realizes that the zombie can't break the door, much like Steve can't break a rock with his bare hands.
Speaker: After noticing that the zombie is absentmindedly holding a shovel, Steve gets all inspired to craft again and begins putting the shovel idea to the test on the crafting table.
Speaker: He makes a shovel and then a hoe, and then he makes a wooden pickaxe, followed quickly by a stone pickaxe.
Speaker: That's the end of chapter four.
Speaker: And products and services?
Speaker: How about that?
Speaker: Yeah, why not?
Speaker: Why not?
Speaker: And we're back.
Speaker: We're clipping along with this book.
Speaker: Chapter five, be grateful for what you have.
Speaker: Be grateful.
Speaker: Be grateful.
Speaker: With the morning sun killing the zombies, Steve goes to work with his new tools, planting seeds.
Speaker: One of the chickens lays an egg and he investigates it.
Speaker: But suddenly...
Speaker: A creeper shows up and blows up, throwing Steve into a lagoon.
Speaker: He swims back and he's very wounded.
Speaker: And he finds that a cow and two chickens have died from the explosion.
Speaker: And he picks up their meat that was left behind.
Speaker: He's out of food and he can't heal unless he can eat.
Speaker: So he eats an apple, but that's not enough.
Speaker: So out of desperation, what does Steve do but eat a
Speaker: Raw chicken.
Speaker: Meat.
Speaker: Which is delicious and healthy.
Speaker: And we all know that.
Speaker: But we all know.
Speaker: Not always pleasant.
Speaker: I'm having flashbacks.
Speaker: So, OK, there was this time.
Speaker: There was this time when my parents were out of town and
Speaker: And it was just me and my brother.
Speaker: Oh, no.
Speaker: My brother was... I think he was in college at the time.
Speaker: And I was in high school.
Speaker: And they had left, like, a whole chicken for us.
Speaker: They left the instructions.
Speaker: And they're like, yeah, you just put it in the oven for this long.
Speaker: Take it out after this many minutes.
Speaker: So...
Speaker: My brother put it in and we set the timer.
Speaker: Yada, yada, yada.
Speaker: Take it out.
Speaker: Looks cooked from the outside.
Speaker: We're pulling it apart and it's like, just kind of, you know, when you cook a whole chicken and there's a time between when it's raw and when it's actually cooked that everything just kind of gets wibbly wobbly and like the legs will just pull off easily.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: When it's fully cooked,
Speaker: They don't just pop off.
Speaker: And when it's raw, they don't just pop off.
Speaker: There's an in-between state of matter with the chicken meat.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Where it's just slime.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Where it's just cold chicken now heated up.
Speaker: It is not cooked chicken.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So the chicken's doing this and we're taking it and the meat is just sliding right off the bones.
Speaker: And my brother and I were like, wow, the meat's sliding right off the bones.
Speaker: We must have just, we must have cooked this really well.
Speaker: We must have nailed the shit out of this.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Chicken was still, was still, it was still not cooked.
Speaker: Lovely.
Speaker: We ate it.
Speaker: It's not cooked.
Speaker: Jesus Christ.
Speaker: So when you see me retch at the idea of somebody just taking a chicken breast and biting into it, know that it's coming from a place of, I can't.
Speaker: It's the real deal is what you're saying.
Speaker: It's the real deal.
Speaker: Got it honestly.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I got it.
Speaker: I've been there.
Speaker: Just remember, I can still hear it in my head.
Speaker: My brother's saying, but look, it's falling off the bone.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Chicken is is one of those first things before you know how to cook.
Speaker: It is it's it might as well be fish in terms of how intimidating it can be.
Speaker: So, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I just don't I don't recommend anyone cooks any sort of bird without a meat thermometer.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: It takes a certain level of confidence that maybe some people just don't have.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's understandable.
Speaker: It's understandable.
Speaker: A chicken will kill you.
Speaker: A chicken will kill you.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So he throws up naturally.
Speaker: He gets nauseous.
Speaker: And then he decides, okay, well, what do I have left?
Speaker: He has a raw steak.
Speaker: And he eats that and that doesn't make him nauseous and he's able to finish healing, which makes sense because there's a world of difference between raw red meat and raw white meat.
Speaker: It's like it's a it is a chasm of difference.
Speaker: Huge, huge difference.
Speaker: There is there are so many dishes which include raw beef that.
Speaker: like you got your beef tartare, you got others.
Speaker: I can name one.
Speaker: You have others.
Speaker: You're just rare steak, like just really rare steak.
Speaker: I mean, just really rare steak.
Speaker: And that's actually what he says is like a lot of times you can order a steak where just the outside has been seared and it's pretty much raw on the inside.
Speaker: So he's like, this should be fine.
Speaker: And it was.
Speaker: So there you go.
Speaker: There you go.
Speaker: There you go.
Speaker: Probably doesn't taste as good.
Speaker: No, I mean, definitely not.
Speaker: You want to add a little seasoning?
Speaker: Something.
Speaker: Just a little searing on the outside.
Speaker: Anything, really.
Speaker: I'm not a blue.
Speaker: I don't like it blue.
Speaker: I don't like it.
Speaker: No, I'm not a big fan.
Speaker: I like rare, but medium rare, please.
Speaker: Something.
Speaker: Medium rare.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: A little salt on there.
Speaker: Maybe a little pepper.
Speaker: So this reminds me of the time that we were at a steakhouse with our friend Ian.
Speaker: And...
Speaker: So exactly what story you're going to tell.
Speaker: So Phil and I were at a steakhouse with my parents and, and our other friend, Ian, who lived in, in the Philadelphia area was like, Oh, I'm going to come by and, and join you guys.
Speaker: So my dad is going to be paying for this whole dinner because that's just how he rolls with this stuff.
Speaker: And it was very generous.
Speaker: And it was, cause it was a, it was a nice place.
Speaker: Yeah, it was a nice place.
Speaker: Ian gets in there and he listens to the specials and the steak that the guy lists off a bunch of steaks and Ian is like, oh yeah, the last one.
Speaker: And the last one was the most expensive steak.
Speaker: It was a Wagyu, yeah.
Speaker: It was a Wagyu.
Speaker: It was like $200.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I'm going to give him credit because I always interpret it because he came in after we'd been there.
Speaker: We had settled in.
Speaker: We already had our meals.
Speaker: And he was just sitting in.
Speaker: And your dad's like, just order something.
Speaker: And I always interpreted it as he just wanted to.
Speaker: He didn't want to make a fuss.
Speaker: He didn't want to.
Speaker: Read the menu.
Speaker: Cause they were like, we could, you could take a look at the menu.
Speaker: And he was like, Oh no, no, just, and I think he just wanted to order something.
Speaker: It's a, it's the special.
Speaker: It's fine.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The special and the special is like the most, it just, it just so happened.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: that it was about the most expensive thing.
Speaker: It was a wag you cut a beef flown in from Japan that morning.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It just... And your dad is a class act and said, right on.
Speaker: And just like I offered.
Speaker: So he, you know, no one said a thing.
Speaker: And I was waiting for at least...
Speaker: you and me with him later when we were all hanging out and stuff, someone to bring it up.
Speaker: I was like, but it's not going to be me.
Speaker: I'm not going to say that.
Speaker: Cause I just met him at this point.
Speaker: You'd known him longer.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I was like, I'm not going to bring this up.
Speaker: And just, we never addressed it until you and me went back to our hotel room and you were just like, well, what the fuck was that about?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Oh my God, that was amazing.
Speaker: There's one of two Ian-centric stories that night.
Speaker: The second one is much shorter, but it's the waiter holding the pepper grinder up to Ian.
Speaker: And Ian looking at the waiter and saying, yes, that's very nice.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: He's like, uh-huh.
Speaker: That's a very nice thing you have there.
Speaker: That's very nice.
Speaker: It's pepper, honey.
Speaker: Like, what do you want?
Speaker: He's asking me, what pepper?
Speaker: Oh, which also, I mean, that feeds into an explanation as to why, how this all happened.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, Ian, I love Ian.
Speaker: He's great.
Speaker: Oh, he's a beautiful person.
Speaker: But his steak is going to be from the Sizzler, not from, you know, the whatever place we were at in Philadelphia.
Speaker: Capital Grill or whatever it was.
Speaker: It was at least a Capitol Grill or a Capitol Grill level restaurant.
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: Yeah, it was it was a lovely meal.
Speaker: Best tomahawk chop I've ever friggin eaten.
Speaker: It was it was terrific.
Speaker: It was a great meal.
Speaker: That was a fun weekend.
Speaker: We were there for a fun week.
Speaker: We had such a good time.
Speaker: We need to do that again.
Speaker: I know.
Speaker: I know.
Speaker: Anyway.
Speaker: Anyway, surviving in a cube world.
Speaker: Surviving in a cube world.
Speaker: How could one do it?
Speaker: Huh.
Speaker: While starving, Steve accidentally figures out how to make a furnace and begins to cook food.
Speaker: And chapter six is titled Overconfidence.
Speaker: Steve accidentally figures a lot of accidental discoveries.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Serendipitous shit.
Speaker: Serendipity.
Speaker: Figures out how to make a window, which is by you build a furnace and then you put sand into the furnace and it melts.
Speaker: It becomes...
Speaker: And he puts it into the wall and realizes he wanted on a different wall so he could look at his garden.
Speaker: But instead of becoming a block when he breaks it, it's just broken.
Speaker: You can't.
Speaker: When glass breaks in the Minecraft world, it's broken.
Speaker: It's just broken.
Speaker: So he decides to risk going out into the night to get more sand.
Speaker: But as he's gathering it.
Speaker: He's attacked by a spider and he kills it by burying it under some debris and he heads back to the hut and he picked up silk from the spider as he went back in.
Speaker: But he ran out of wood in the furnace and he decided to burn some saplings, which we get some foreshadowing that this was an environmental disaster waiting to happen.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Eventually, he runs out of fuel and in an effort to get more, he digs down and find some coal and the coal burns a lot longer.
Speaker: And while he has light, he tries figuring out a torch, which he does eventually.
Speaker: And he also discovers that torches don't run out like a furnace does.
Speaker: You can just put a torch on the wall and it stays up.
Speaker: It stays.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Pretty handy, honestly.
Speaker: It's pretty handy.
Speaker: Yeah, torches are the MVP of early game Minecraft.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: As the sun rises, Steve says he's done being afraid of the dark.
Speaker: Chapter 7, Take Life in Steps.
Speaker: While tending to his garden, Steve is attacked by a spider and it hurts his leg.
Speaker: He thought the monsters only came out at night, but then he puts together the spiders and the creepers can hang out in the shadows.
Speaker: On the way back from the lagoon that he ran to to hide from the spider, he finds what he first thinks is bamboo and then realizes that it's sugar cane, but he can't do anything with it yet.
Speaker: Steve starts cutting down trees in desperation to find some sort of food, but finds nothing.
Speaker: And then he accidentally punches a chicken.
Speaker: And the cow comes back to calm him down.
Speaker: Steve realizes that he needs to calm down and take life in steps.
Speaker: And that the next step is that he needs to understand the creatures that would hunt him at night or from the shadows if he was going to continue to be able to continue life on this island.
Speaker: So that is the first third of this book.
Speaker: That's it.
Speaker: That's 90 pages, by the way.
Speaker: Now, mind you, the reading level for this book is pretty, is relatively low.
Speaker: Oh, absolutely.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Still, Phil, what are your thoughts so far?
Speaker: I kind of hate it.
Speaker: On one hand, on one hand, um,
Speaker: We have talked about books in the past on this show that were very I'm playing the game and writing about it.
Speaker: This is the crowned king of games that I'm playing and I'm writing about it.
Speaker: You can literally in your mind's eye see middle aged Max Brooks playing this game going, huh, I can build a thing.
Speaker: He puts the controller down.
Speaker: He goes to his notebook, writes out.
Speaker: It's like literally moment for moment how that works.
Speaker: And on one hand, there is a there is a small level of self-awareness to that fact.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Which is which is funny, which is which is funny.
Speaker: He can be very funny in this.
Speaker: Some, you know, Mel Brooks, big surprise.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, he's been funny before.
Speaker: Yeah, funny guy.
Speaker: He can be funny.
Speaker: But it's also so low effort that right now it's driving me crazy.
Speaker: On one hand, it's an interesting perspective on this whole thing.
Speaker: Because I thought I was like, well, this is, you know, it's Minecraft.
Speaker: So you create it.
Speaker: They made Telltale Games did this where you have a whole adventure that is an adventure in and of itself.
Speaker: It just happens to take place in the Minecraft universe.
Speaker: So we don't need to get to, we don't have to get into the fact that everything's a cube.
Speaker: Not really.
Speaker: But we have.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: We have gotten into the fact that this is a person from the real world.
Speaker: Ostensibly in another universe.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: In a very gamey, video gamey universe.
Speaker: And it's so I think I am enjoying it more simply because I'm listening to Jack Black perform it.
Speaker: I can only imagine.
Speaker: I imagine that makes it a lot better.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But yeah, I agree.
Speaker: I think.
Speaker: It just feels like, and maybe this is the point because the age, the reading age for it is between the ages of eight and 11 and it's Minecraft.
Speaker: So the goal was to like, Hey, I'm just going to,
Speaker: capture basically everybody's first experience in Minecraft.
Speaker: This is literally if you were the first time you played Minecraft, you probably went through this stuff and it's designed.
Speaker: It's supposed to be relatable.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: That being said, it's just like it's just a little bit too.
Speaker: Oh, we're really going beat by beat of everything you're doing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's it's it's just not very you can you can have a low reading range and still have interesting, more interesting things happen.
Speaker: There's not really a plot.
Speaker: I mean, I compare it to like one of the books my daughter read for school last year is Charlotte's Web.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Which has a lot of interesting things happening in it.
Speaker: And it was written by E.B.
Speaker: White and E.B.
Speaker: White had a fetish for grammar.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Wrote a whole goddamn book on it.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Not a long book, but a book.
Speaker: But a book.
Speaker: And if you are a writer, you have read it.
Speaker: If you're a writer and you haven't read it, you probably need to.
Speaker: You should.
Speaker: You should.
Speaker: That's half of Stephen King's on writing, just telling you to get out.
Speaker: Half of Stephen King's on writing is just, is him saying, you know, you should probably just go read Strunk and White elements of style.
Speaker: My dad got me Strunk and White as a stocking stuffer when I was in the eighth goddamn grade.
Speaker: He, cause he was like, oh, Phil's a writer.
Speaker: He better get this stinker under his belt.
Speaker: Jesus, he was he was I never thanked him for that.
Speaker: Like you got me ahead of it.
Speaker: So that's nice.
Speaker: He got you ahead of it.
Speaker: You got to rip the bandaid off at some point and read.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Because absolutely everything Stephen King says, which is don't use any words other than said is from elements of style.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Avoid the adverbs.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: Avoid the adverbs.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Don't put more words.
Speaker: It's great advice.
Speaker: It's like you cut out any words in a sentence that aren't don't do not need to be there.
Speaker: It's simple advice, but you got to imagine when Strunk and White wrote wrote this.
Speaker: I imagine it was the 1950s that they – Yeah, it has to have been.
Speaker: Yeah, sure.
Speaker: Elements of style.
Speaker: It's got – I want to say 1956, but it's – that is not the elements of style I'm talking about, Google.
Speaker: Jesus Christ.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It went to fashion style, I'm assuming.
Speaker: It went to home decor.
Speaker: And I was like, oh, come on now.
Speaker: You suck.
Speaker: Google.
Speaker: Style.
Speaker: This is.
Speaker: It's been published so many times that.
Speaker: Wow, 1920.
Speaker: 1920.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: How does that make sense?
Speaker: Yeah, 1920.
Speaker: Holy shit.
Speaker: Oh, Strunk wrote the original one by themselves in 1918 and then 1920.
Speaker: And then E.B.
Speaker: White came in in 1959 and updated it and it became Strunk and White.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: That makes a lot of sense.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Great, great, great.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So it was just Strunk's elements of style and E.B.
Speaker: White's like, let's fix some of these things.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But I can imagine- Things change.
Speaker: Things change.
Speaker: But I can imagine in the first half of the 1900s, you had some purple ass prose out there.
Speaker: Oh, yes.
Speaker: I think that might have been the only kind of prose that existed.
Speaker: You red bride's head revisited.
Speaker: I mean, my God.
Speaker: I could just imagine Strunk sitting there trying to read Lovecraft and being like, oh,
Speaker: Stop.
Speaker: Just put it down.
Speaker: Just put it down.
Speaker: Don't do that to yourself, Strunk.
Speaker: Jesus.
Speaker: To my dear colleague.
Speaker: Writing a letter.
Speaker: Those people were getting paid by the word.
Speaker: So, yeah.
Speaker: That's how Scientology happens when you pay a motherfucker by the word.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You pay one sci-fi writer by the word and Tom Cruise is jumping on a couch.
Speaker: You get the worst religion ever.
Speaker: And there are a lot of bad ones, as it turns out.
Speaker: There's a lot of bad ones, but yeah.
Speaker: So where's Shelley Miscavige?
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: I imagine there's got to be a Scientology listener to this.
Speaker: We're back.
Speaker: We're pivoting the subject matter of the show until Shelley is found.
Speaker: Until Shelley Miscavige is found.
Speaker: Until there's justice.
Speaker: The Pixel Lit podcast is now called Justice for Shelley.
Speaker: And you're just going to have to join us on this ride.
Speaker: She is last seen in public August 2007.
Speaker: I'm just making sure that she hasn't been seen since then.
Speaker: Yeah, no, I think she's... She's a ghost, man.
Speaker: She's a ghost.
Speaker: There's no way.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: And even if you see her alive, that is just... That's not her anymore.
Speaker: Yeah, that's just David Miscavige puppeting her with a stick or something like that.
Speaker: Yeah, the longest marionette strings known to man.
Speaker: The longest marionette strings known to man.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That got weird.
Speaker: On this show?
Speaker: Never.
Speaker: Never.
Speaker: Come now.
Speaker: Phil, I got one question for you then.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: What are you playing?
Speaker: Oh, I'm glad you asked.
Speaker: I haven't been playing a ton, but what I've been playing, I've been, this has been a good, this has been a good week for me in terms of finding, you know,
Speaker: the games that will chill me out.
Speaker: And that's what I need now.
Speaker: And so just right off the bat, I have been playing more Star Wars The Old Republic, just kind of like fucking...
Speaker: Like sleepwalking through it.
Speaker: Not really paying too much attention, but, you know, beating a level, doing some dailies and getting the good old classic MMORPG endorphin rush with some familiar lightsaber sounds.
Speaker: Shit like that.
Speaker: I have not gotten to the new DLC.
Speaker: I probably never will.
Speaker: That's fine.
Speaker: I have invested about six hours into The Hunter Call of the Wild.
Speaker: This is my new relaxation game.
Speaker: It is so strange.
Speaker: I never imagined this would be the game for me.
Speaker: You know, like I said, I got it for like $1.50 on sale.
Speaker: And then I found out that it's, you know, it's got a, as you pointed out last episode, there's so much, um,
Speaker: downloadable material and content there.
Speaker: And they're having a publisher or a franchise sale on Steam.
Speaker: And I know it's going to be, yeah.
Speaker: And it's going away tomorrow, I'm assuming, because I think tomorrow the new Steam sale kicks in.
Speaker: Tomorrow the big Steam sale kicks off.
Speaker: So it's going to be.
Speaker: I went ahead and bought a bunch of the DLC for like five bucks.
Speaker: Why not?
Speaker: Why not?
Speaker: I love it because they're basically two different ways to play the game.
Speaker: You can stalk, which is the more active way of playing the game, which is still pretty slow paced and you're
Speaker: tracking through the woods and trying to be quiet and trying not to scare anything off.
Speaker: And I love doing that on certain days.
Speaker: And then there is ambushing, which is like finding a spot, finding like a watering hole for a specific kind of animal you're trying to get, maybe setting out some urine, a little urine.
Speaker: You know, a little cup of urine, you know, a little bit of urine and a call, a little call, you know, and just lying down in a heavily wooded area.
Speaker: I'm just waiting, man.
Speaker: I read like three chapters of this book just sitting there waiting for a white tail deer to show up.
Speaker: And you know what happened, Kevin?
Speaker: Nothing showed up.
Speaker: Nothing showed up.
Speaker: And it was time well spent because I was in the beautiful opulence of the Pacific Northwest in autumn.
Speaker: And I have no regrets whatsoever.
Speaker: Can't beat that.
Speaker: I love this game.
Speaker: It's so stupid.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: And the latest DLC did literally come out last week.
Speaker: That's like in Africa or something.
Speaker: I'm not ready for hunting tigers yet.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Or whatever it is they got.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But in terms of newer stuff, I did get and I started playing Bolt Guns DLC.
Speaker: They released the Forges of Corruption.
Speaker: And I played through the first couple episodes.
Speaker: It's just more Bolt Guns.
Speaker: And that's- Did they add more enemies?
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, there are more enemies, more maps, more weapons.
Speaker: I've got a missile launcher, which is super fun.
Speaker: Took out a great unclean one with a goddamn missile launcher and it was super fun.
Speaker: I love this game.
Speaker: This is one of the, another really ideal game to just go in for a level that'll take you 20 minutes and just blow shit to Kingdom Come and shout about the emperor, you know, the dedicated button for, for,
Speaker: clasping your fists together.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: For making Rahul Kohli shout about the emperor.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: It's it's so much fun.
Speaker: I it's just more of the same for the most part with a few new weapons and a few new bad guys.
Speaker: But that's fine.
Speaker: You know, that's that's that's all it has to be.
Speaker: It doesn't really doesn't require.
Speaker: I was never going to require much more.
Speaker: And it's six bucks.
Speaker: It is.
Speaker: And I think I think it's well worth that.
Speaker: Also, on a side note,
Speaker: Like last year, whenever I finished it, I mentioned on the show that a glitch happened as I was finishing the game and I never got my achievement for finishing the last chapter on the difficulties I did and everything like that.
Speaker: And I logged in to play this for the first time earlier this week and immediately got those achievements.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Oh, that's amazing.
Speaker: Yeah, it says I accomplished them a couple of days ago, but fuck it, I don't care.
Speaker: I got my credits.
Speaker: Take the win.
Speaker: Yeah, I took it.
Speaker: I took it.
Speaker: It's great.
Speaker: I also played the Crow Country demo.
Speaker: Oh, I love Crow Country.
Speaker: I might need to come back to it again and try.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: I'm surprised.
Speaker: It didn't grab me the way I thought it was going to.
Speaker: And this should be a slam dunk for me.
Speaker: It should be a slam dunk.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, I love Resident Evil.
Speaker: Signalis was like one of my favorite.
Speaker: I wish I had played that earlier just so I could have put it on my game of the year list in 2022.
Speaker: I might just need to come back to it again, try it again.
Speaker: Because it just didn't give me the oomph.
Speaker: Didn't click.
Speaker: Didn't click, which genuinely shocked me.
Speaker: What does the demo do?
Speaker: What's the demo's...
Speaker: As best as I can tell, it's the opening.
Speaker: You know, I just I didn't go very far.
Speaker: I got in.
Speaker: You go into the theme park.
Speaker: Mm hmm.
Speaker: You get the it is a very funny intro where she's like introducing herself over and over again.
Speaker: It's very funny.
Speaker: Don't forget my name.
Speaker: It's Mara.
Speaker: Don't forget it.
Speaker: You better not forget my name.
Speaker: It's pretty funny.
Speaker: And then and I found a survivor and helped him out and then got into some monster shit.
Speaker: And and I just I think part of it might be that the environments are so similar that it was like I was getting frustrated trying to figure out where the hell I was.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: I think I need to I should give it I'm going to give it another try.
Speaker: Give it another shot because the environments are a lot more varied.
Speaker: Like once you get out of that first area,
Speaker: the environments are very, they're basically like biomes almost.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And how different they are because there's one area that's like the back rooms.
Speaker: There's another area that's like Poseidon's adventure.
Speaker: So it's all, you know, decorated with that kind of bullshit.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: There's the theater area.
Speaker: So yeah, give it another shot.
Speaker: I'm going to get another try.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: See if it clicks because Crow Country is one of my favorite games of the year.
Speaker: That's the thing.
Speaker: I know I need to give another, because I'm genuinely surprised at how ho-hum it kind of left me feeling.
Speaker: That doesn't make any sense for me.
Speaker: So I'm going to give it another try and see if I can get any further.
Speaker: But that's been the extent for me.
Speaker: What about you, Kevin?
Speaker: What have you been playing?
Speaker: I have been playing.
Speaker: So I played, I purchased, played and beat Still Wakes the Deep.
Speaker: Oh, shit.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Which is the new game from Chinese Room.
Speaker: They, um,
Speaker: So Chinese Room, their previous work includes one of the Amnesia games as a machine for pigs, I believe.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Admittedly, the week, which is your.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Which I know is your least favorite of the Amnesia titles.
Speaker: It's a good, but it's a good story.
Speaker: I mean, they write a hell of a story.
Speaker: So Chinese Room is very much writing focused and gameplay second.
Speaker: Whereas a lot of the other Amnesia games are very much, they have a lot of gameplay.
Speaker: Like the bunker was.
Speaker: Well, the bunker had more gameplay than any of them.
Speaker: The bunker had the most gameplay of any Amnesia game, but it had interaction.
Speaker: still wakes the deep is still very much in line with their other work where they did uh what remains of edith finch right i don't think that's what remains of edith because that is a brilliant game oh no never mind that was giant sparrow my bad never mind never mind uh who all right chinese what is the non uh
Speaker: Chinese room, that is not the one I want.
Speaker: God damn it, Google.
Speaker: They're not helping me at all today.
Speaker: Why would they?
Speaker: They don't owe you shit.
Speaker: Everyone's gone to the rapture.
Speaker: That's what I was thinking of.
Speaker: Okay, yes.
Speaker: So everyone's gone to the rapture, and they are working on Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines 2?
Speaker: Yes, fingers crossed on that.
Speaker: Fingers crossed on that.
Speaker: That has had a very up and down kind of a production cycle.
Speaker: Oh, and Dear Esther.
Speaker: Dear Esther.
Speaker: Dear Esther.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: I knew it was an E name.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: That's why I thought he was fish.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So Still Wakes the Deep is very much in line with their other walking sim type stuff.
Speaker: It has a lot more, it has a lot of like pseudo platforming in it.
Speaker: So the setting of the game is it's on an oil rig.
Speaker: It's in the 1970s.
Speaker: It's during the height of the international oil crisis that was gripping the entire world at the time.
Speaker: And you are on an oil rig off the coast of Scotland.
Speaker: And you play a guy named Kaz McCleary, who is on the oil rig because he is trying to
Speaker: escape from something that is happening back home.
Speaker: And you get more details about it.
Speaker: It starts the opening starts with a letter from his wife telling him that if he doesn't come back home, she's going to divorce him.
Speaker: That's like the opening of it.
Speaker: And then you're called into your boss's office and the boss says, I've had the police have been calling for you.
Speaker: What bullshit did you bring to my door?
Speaker: You got to get out of here.
Speaker: You're fired.
Speaker: Get out of here.
Speaker: And as you're going to get on the helicopter, the drill on the oil rig is,
Speaker: hits something and rips it back up.
Speaker: And you are on the helipad at the time.
Speaker: You fall off the rig, but you end up getting pulled back on by a few folks.
Speaker: And that's when shit starts getting...
Speaker: Starts getting weird.
Speaker: And there's colors out of space happening and a lot of purple and glowy and things like that.
Speaker: And it really does turn into
Speaker: The thing meets an oil rig.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Well, shit.
Speaker: Now, the story is great.
Speaker: I really love the story.
Speaker: Gameplay is fine.
Speaker: It costs a lot of money right now.
Speaker: It's like 30 bucks for what amounts to I beat the game in four hours.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So if you're on the more expensive side for that, yeah, for a dollar per hour gamer, if you try to get more bang for your buck, I would wait till it goes on sale.
Speaker: But otherwise, I think it is really fascinating and it's probably going to be on my game of the year list.
Speaker: just based on the strength of its writing alone and the authenticity.
Speaker: That's one of the things I, and I talked to Monty Zander about it.
Speaker: Monty Zander, the YouTuber and host of Lore Dump was, I was talking to him about it on Discord where it was like, he was saying he's Scottish and he was talking about how wildly authentic
Speaker: this stuff was like the little things that you find in the people's rooms.
Speaker: The the like there's a guy who's like a racist prick and he is he's part of some like party that it's that is like put Britain's first or something like that.
Speaker: There's a poster hanging on it.
Speaker: And he just remembers Monty was telling me he's thinking of stories that his dad would tell about, you know, guys like this.
Speaker: from this time period.
Speaker: And it's very Scottish in terms of dialogue.
Speaker: If you don't have the subtitles on, you will lose what they are talking about because they are speaking full on Scottish.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Good to know.
Speaker: I'm assuming that Iron Brew is everywhere.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Iron Brew and Lagavulin is... Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: Lagavulin's Scottish, right?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Scotch.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Of course.
Speaker: It is...
Speaker: And all right, so still wakes the deep.
Speaker: That's one thing I've been playing.
Speaker: Another game that I started playing was I finally got started on another crab's treasure.
Speaker: OK, I have been I have been waiting to hear your opinion of this game since I heard about it, I think last year.
Speaker: So please hit me.
Speaker: I'm looking.
Speaker: It is.
Speaker: Yes, the demo for it was out last year.
Speaker: It got its full release this year.
Speaker: It is if you took
Speaker: Banjo-Kazooie or one of those 3D mascot platformers, the brightness, cheeriness, the humor and all that, and jammed it together with Dark Souls, you would get another crab's treasure.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: One of the things that is fascinating about the game is it has a lot of things that...
Speaker: make it a souls like.
Speaker: And then it has a lot of things that are very unique to it.
Speaker: You got your crab has a fishing hook that he uses as a grappling hook.
Speaker: He uses instead of bonfires, there's like these little moon moon shells that that you can find.
Speaker: There's it's it's
Speaker: it's really really cute the the the i'm instead of souls you collect microplastics oh okay yeah i did read about that yeah i love that
Speaker: And then every time you kill a boss, it says pollution scoured.
Speaker: Instead of like great enemy felled or whatever.
Speaker: The noun verb of this game is pollution scoured.
Speaker: It is, and it is really funny.
Speaker: It's a funny little game where the crab, like, instead of like, fuck you, you know, you'll hear, you'll, crabs will say, shuck you.
Speaker: That's cute.
Speaker: I like that.
Speaker: It's got so many cute little touches and so many details.
Speaker: And there's a, I'm playing on regular, the regular mode, which is hard.
Speaker: It does have an assist mode.
Speaker: There's two levels of assist mode, there's story and then there's easy.
Speaker: But if you go to the menu with the accessibility settings,
Speaker: The story mode and the easy mode leave one box unchecked no matter what.
Speaker: You have to manually go put this box on.
Speaker: And the main character's name is Krill.
Speaker: There's a box at the bottom where you check it and it says, give Krill a gun.
Speaker: And when you turn that box on and go back to the game, Krill will just have a just a fucking Glock.
Speaker: And it's giant because he's a hermit crab.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It's a normal sized gun, but this is a normal sized gun, but he's a hermit crab.
Speaker: So but it kills everything because it's a gun.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: I love to shoot a crab with a gun.
Speaker: Nothing left.
Speaker: Nothing left.
Speaker: So I'm really loving another crab's treasure.
Speaker: There's some difficulty spikes.
Speaker: It is harder in some ways just because you got to get used to the fact that you're
Speaker: Instead of a shield that you can use like other souls likes that to just kind of tank damage, you have a shell, but the shell has its own health bar.
Speaker: And as you're going throughout the game, as far as I've played so far, I haven't even gotten like a real shell.
Speaker: I've had like a bottle cap.
Speaker: or a soda can or a coffee cup or something like that.
Speaker: All sorts of things that, you know, a hermit crab could just like sneak into.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: None of them are actual real shells.
Speaker: So, but each shell has its own ability.
Speaker: So you have this ability.
Speaker: Magic in the game is called umami.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And the stat that you level to increase your umami is MSG.
Speaker: Oh, I love it.
Speaker: Of course.
Speaker: Of course.
Speaker: And so each shell gives you a different magic spell, basically.
Speaker: So the soda can shoots at a bunch of little bubbles that go out and attack the enemies.
Speaker: The coffee cup is something like the ability, something like morning coffee and you press it and Krill is able to like move at like three times the speed.
Speaker: Oh,
Speaker: It's fantastic.
Speaker: There's like a coconut one where you can basically spin like Sonic and then shoot off at an enemy.
Speaker: Oh, I love it.
Speaker: That's fun.
Speaker: That's so interesting.
Speaker: You don't hear about stuff like that with Souls lights.
Speaker: Yeah, it is so colorful and it's so lighthearted.
Speaker: And do you hear the dogs?
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: It was urgent.
Speaker: Urgent doggy.
Speaker: Urgent, urgent doggy.
Speaker: So, yeah, it's really colorful.
Speaker: And it's basically, I would say, somebody described it as a souls like meets a platformer, meets like a 3D 3D mascot platformer.
Speaker: And yeah, I agree.
Speaker: That's that's a pretty, pretty good.
Speaker: Summation of it.
Speaker: That's really charming.
Speaker: I'm so glad you're enjoying it.
Speaker: I just, I remember seeing that and being like, Kevin.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: She gotta play this.
Speaker: I really like it.
Speaker: I'm glad.
Speaker: That's awesome.
Speaker: But, and you know what?
Speaker: I just want to throw it out there because I subjected myself to it.
Speaker: I watched Argyle.
Speaker: Oh, okay.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: How did you find that?
Speaker: It was terrible.
Speaker: But I just got to say, it's got a good... There's honestly what could have been a good movie in there, but the tonal shifts are all over the place.
Speaker: I remember watching trailers for it and being like, I just don't know what we're making here.
Speaker: I don't know what the...
Speaker: what the story is like.
Speaker: I don't know what kind of a movie we're looking at here.
Speaker: It was very unclear.
Speaker: It's basically it's not silly enough to do the thing that it's doing.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It's so anyway, but that'll do it for tonight's episode.
Speaker: Thank you all so much for listening.
Speaker: Please go follow us on the social medias at Twitter at
Speaker: Blue Sky, Instagram.
Speaker: You can find us all at PixelitPod.
Speaker: If you search PixelitPod in any of those platforms, you will be able to find us.
Speaker: So go ahead and do that.
Speaker: Rate us five stars on the podcast platform of your choice.
Speaker: Share us with a friend.
Speaker: Share us with an enemy or a sea anemone.
Speaker: Hey, tie it back.
Speaker: Hey, now.
Speaker: Or to a co-worker,
Speaker: Or to, I don't know, the ghost that lives in your attic?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Or a crab with a gun.
Speaker: Or a crab with a gun!
Speaker: That crab has a gun.
Speaker: He's got a gun!
Speaker: He's got a gun!
