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Minecraft: The Island - Part 1
11 Plays1 year ago
Look at us! Reading a book for those Gen Z cats! Or Gen Alpha? Anyway, we are reading Minecraft: The Island written by Max Brooks, author of World War Z. Also Kevin's daughter makes her official podcast debut to talk a little bit about the Minecraft, the game created by Hatsune Miku and continually developed by Mojang.
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Book SynopsisWashed up on a beach, the lone castaway looks around the shore. Where am I? Who am I? And why is everything made of blocks? But there isn’t much time to soak up the sun. It’s getting dark, and there’s a strange new world to explore!
The top priority is finding food. The next is not becoming food. Because there are others out there on the island . . . like the horde of zombies that appears after nightfall. Crafting a way out of this mess is a challenge like no other. Who could build a home while running from exploding creepers, armed skeletons, and an unstoppable tide of hot lava? Especially with no help except for a few makeshift tools and sage advice from an unlikely friend: a cow.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Welcome
00:00:00
Speaker
I remember that constantly at night when I'm staring into a broken mirror.
00:00:06
Speaker
How did it break?
00:00:09
Speaker
Who knows?
00:00:10
Speaker
Who knows?
00:00:11
Speaker
I don't know.
00:00:12
Speaker
I certainly don't.
00:00:13
Speaker
I didn't break the mirror.
00:00:15
Speaker
But you know what else is a broken mirror?
00:00:21
Speaker
What's that?
Introduction to 'Minecraft the Island' and Special Guest
00:00:23
Speaker
Hey there, everybody.
00:00:23
Speaker
Welcome back to Pixlet.
00:00:24
Speaker
My name is Kevin.
00:00:24
Speaker
With me, as always, as I've been on today's show, we are starting a brand new book.
00:00:29
Speaker
It is Minecraft the Island, written by Max Brooks.
00:00:36
Speaker
And today we have a special guest that we brought in for a little bit.
Camilla's Minecraft Memories and Experiences
00:00:44
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.
00:00:55
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
00:01:00
Speaker
I was almost 30 when it came out.
00:01:04
Speaker
I was in my 30s, yeah.
00:01:06
Speaker
So, thank God.
00:01:08
Speaker
When did it come out?
00:01:08
Speaker
When did the game come out?
00:01:12
Speaker
I have a pulled 2011 2011.
00:01:13
Speaker
I was 2009 2009 was like it's its first launch.
00:01:15
Speaker
The real big the coming out was 2011.
00:01:16
Speaker
Yeah.
00:01:16
Speaker
Okay.
00:01:16
Speaker
Okay.
00:01:16
Speaker
That makes sense.
00:01:16
Speaker
Okay.
00:01:16
Speaker
I turned 30 the year after it came out.
00:01:18
Speaker
So yeah.
00:01:33
Speaker
Awesome.
00:01:33
Speaker
Yeah, it came out two years before our guest was born.
00:01:36
Speaker
So without much further ado, let's go to our little interview that we had with my daughter, Camilla.
00:01:44
Speaker
So, Camilla, how long have you been playing Minecraft?
00:01:47
Speaker
I'm pretty sure it's been since I was like five.
00:01:51
Speaker
Wow.
00:01:52
Speaker
Yeah, that sounds about right.
00:01:54
Speaker
So you're about to turn 11.
00:01:55
Speaker
So it's been like six years since you first started playing Minecraft.
Minecraft Mobs and Building Memories
00:01:59
Speaker
What's your favorite part of the game?
00:02:03
Speaker
Definitely not being exploited by mobs.
00:02:06
Speaker
Sure.
00:02:09
Speaker
What's your favorite?
00:02:11
Speaker
I know you keep track of the mobs that are added to the game.
00:02:14
Speaker
So what's one is your favorite?
00:02:16
Speaker
Well, I hate the warden.
00:02:18
Speaker
I'm not trying to throw it out at anybody, but it's like... What's the warden?
00:02:23
Speaker
The warden is basically an axolotl that's blind, but basically they don't... It's like
00:02:32
Speaker
Not really that many people know about it's like an axolotl.
00:02:38
Speaker
But it's like, it's like mutated and all that stuff.
00:02:42
Speaker
And it's gone blind, but it can hear you with your hearing.
00:02:49
Speaker
And it has like 500 hearts.
00:02:53
Speaker
Oh, wow.
00:02:53
Speaker
Oh, gosh.
00:02:54
Speaker
That's a lot.
00:02:56
Speaker
Yeah.
00:02:57
Speaker
You want to avoid that if at all possible.
00:02:58
Speaker
Yeah.
00:03:00
Speaker
That's why I usually try to stay like at anything.
00:03:06
Speaker
If I hear like a thing in the caves, I'm like running out of there.
00:03:11
Speaker
But I would say my favorite mob is the sheep.
00:03:19
Speaker
A standard sheep?
00:03:20
Speaker
They're derpy.
00:03:23
Speaker
Because they're derpy faces?
00:03:25
Speaker
Yeah.
00:03:27
Speaker
I mean, they're adorable.
00:03:30
Speaker
Wow, the apple did not fall far from the tree here.
00:03:33
Speaker
But if we're talking about recent mobs, I would say probably Axel apples.
00:03:42
Speaker
Do you have any particularly good memories of games of Minecraft that you've played with your friends or anything like that?
00:03:49
Speaker
Anything cool that happened?
00:03:51
Speaker
Yeah, the first server that me...
00:03:56
Speaker
and him made were like, we made like, we were in Acacia by, Acacia by?
00:04:04
Speaker
Yeah.
00:04:05
Speaker
And like, we built like a super tall house and it was like adorable.
00:04:10
Speaker
And my room was at the top and I loved it.
00:04:15
Speaker
There's no real objective.
00:04:16
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
00:04:24
Speaker
you know, the tallest thing that can be possibly built in the Minecraft world.
00:04:28
Speaker
Oh, wait.
00:04:29
Speaker
Yeah.
00:04:29
Speaker
Wait, wait.
00:04:31
Speaker
You built like a giant tower in like one of my servers.
00:04:37
Speaker
Yeah.
00:04:38
Speaker
I like the PC that's in your, um, on the PC that's in your room.
00:04:44
Speaker
Yeah.
00:04:44
Speaker
Yeah.
00:04:44
Speaker
The one that you want me to fix.
00:04:46
Speaker
Yeah.
00:04:46
Speaker
That's in my office.
00:04:47
Speaker
Yeah.
00:04:48
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.
00:04:59
Speaker
It was like the world's tallest diving board.
00:05:01
Speaker
He built it to the highest, he built it to the,
00:05:05
Speaker
height limit.
00:05:06
Speaker
It was hilarious.
00:05:08
Speaker
And also, and also like nearby I was building like miniature people, like, like little people statues.
00:05:17
Speaker
And it's adorable.
00:05:19
Speaker
That is too much fun.
00:05:22
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.
00:05:28
Speaker
So you can see he was he's he got a hold of my book at one point.
00:05:33
Speaker
Graham was chewing on it.
00:05:34
Speaker
He was chewing on it.
00:05:35
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.
00:05:46
Speaker
Well, Graham is Graham's at one stage and Camilla's at a completely different stage.
00:05:50
Speaker
I mean, she's got her braces on now and she's I think you had.
00:05:54
Speaker
Do you have any teeth left to lose Camilla?
00:05:57
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
00:05:57
Speaker
I'm pretty sure I have one more or two more.
00:06:01
Speaker
Well, so she's she's almost out of baby.
00:06:04
Speaker
Almost out of them.
00:06:05
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
00:06:06
Speaker
Look at that.
00:06:06
Speaker
Those are big.
00:06:06
Speaker
Dang.
00:06:11
Speaker
So, Camilla, is there anything about Minecraft?
00:06:15
Speaker
What is the thing that you love most about Minecraft?
00:06:19
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?
00:06:29
Speaker
Getting to see all the cute mobs, building cute houses and all that stuff.
00:06:35
Speaker
Yeah.
00:06:35
Speaker
Yeah.
00:06:36
Speaker
And sometimes mining too, but mostly chopping down trees.
00:06:44
Speaker
But I do replant them.
Post-Interview Reflections
00:06:46
Speaker
All right, Camilla, thank you so much for being on the show.
00:06:49
Speaker
I'm going to play Minecraft anyways.
00:06:52
Speaker
Yeah, go play Minecraft.
00:06:54
Speaker
And we're back.
00:06:56
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.
00:07:08
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.
00:07:22
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.
00:07:28
Speaker
And now she's officially.
00:07:31
Speaker
She has been a guest on the show.
00:07:33
Speaker
That's right.
00:07:34
Speaker
That's right.
00:07:36
Speaker
Before we get started, though, before we go too much further into the episode, I got to tell you about something.
00:07:44
Speaker
It's a very special website.
00:07:46
Speaker
Oh, well, please do tell.
00:07:48
Speaker
Patreon.com slash pixelitpod is where you can go.
00:07:53
Speaker
If you want to learn more about us, and when I say learn more, I mean give us money.
00:08:00
Speaker
Please.
00:08:01
Speaker
Because what is the best way to understand somebody than to give them money and see how they react?
00:08:10
Speaker
I personally think that that's the best way.
00:08:12
Speaker
Like sociologists agree with that.
00:08:15
Speaker
Yes.
00:08:16
Speaker
So if you go to patreon.com slash pixel at pod, you can join for free.
00:08:21
Speaker
It's there's a free you're paying with your your time and love.
00:08:27
Speaker
And we accept that as currency as well.
Patreon Promotion
00:08:30
Speaker
But we love that.
00:08:31
Speaker
Also, we love that.
00:08:32
Speaker
We love that.
00:08:34
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.
00:08:45
Speaker
$5 gets you ad-free episodes, and I'm starting to put some more bonus stuff out there onto the feed.
00:08:51
Speaker
Hell yeah.
00:08:53
Speaker
And $10 gets you a shout-out in every single episode.
00:08:58
Speaker
So I would like to shout-out...
00:09:02
Speaker
Ruthless mutter, Jesus loves you, Kyle Seaman and friendly friend.
00:09:08
Speaker
Friendly friend is the friend that we have had.
00:09:10
Speaker
The friendliest.
00:09:11
Speaker
Very friendly beginning.
00:09:13
Speaker
Absolutely.
Max Brooks: Background and Works
00:09:14
Speaker
Patreon.com slash pixelitpod.
00:09:16
Speaker
So Phil, who is the, who's the author of this book?
00:09:22
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.
00:09:38
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
00:09:50
Speaker
if I do say so myself, solid advice for anyone who, you know, is in a weirdly post-apocalyptic combat kind of situation.
00:10:00
Speaker
Anyone who fashions themselves a survivalist.
00:10:03
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:10:04
Speaker
As one might, you know, Phil is like maybe a degree away from that.
00:10:10
Speaker
I'm one bad day away from just being going completely off grid going.
00:10:15
Speaker
It is not.
00:10:15
Speaker
Phil is one bad day from being a prepper at all times.
00:10:18
Speaker
So I have warned my wife about this constantly.
00:10:21
Speaker
We started dating during covid.
00:10:24
Speaker
So she knows how far I can go.
00:10:26
Speaker
And it's it's it's like literally the day we we we we.
00:10:34
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.
00:10:47
Speaker
No one else knew.
00:10:49
Speaker
We are still slowly consuming those beans.
00:10:54
Speaker
Those beans have lasted through several moves.
00:10:57
Speaker
Hey man, Beanie Weenie, it's the best.
00:10:59
Speaker
So yeah, they actually have those, those beans were purchased in the Atlanta area.
00:11:03
Speaker
They moved to South Carolina and now they are Virginia.
00:11:06
Speaker
So those means they've seen some shit.
00:11:09
Speaker
They've seen, they've been on the road.
00:11:11
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.
00:11:18
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.
00:11:29
Speaker
It didn't.
00:11:30
Speaker
They're not.
00:11:30
Speaker
It's not funny is my point.
00:11:32
Speaker
It would always be in the humor section because where else are you going to put it?
00:11:36
Speaker
But it wasn't funny.
00:11:36
Speaker
It was actually zombies.
00:11:38
Speaker
Right, right.
00:11:39
Speaker
But it's played pretty straight.
00:11:42
Speaker
It is.
00:11:42
Speaker
It's very it's like horror nonfiction kind of.
00:11:45
Speaker
Right.
00:11:46
Speaker
Yeah.
00:11:47
Speaker
Yeah.
00:11:47
Speaker
It's a better if bookstores weren't slashing their horror sections bit by bit, then there would be a horror nonfiction section.
00:11:58
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:11:59
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:11:59
Speaker
The Barnes & Noble by my house, by the way, has a horror section is three stands.
00:12:10
Speaker
Mine too.
00:12:11
Speaker
It's actually pretty impressive, all things considered.
00:12:14
Speaker
There's some places that don't even have horror sections.
00:12:17
Speaker
That's true.
00:12:18
Speaker
Your favorite bookstore in Greenville did not actually have a horror section, right?
00:12:25
Speaker
Which one?
00:12:26
Speaker
Oh, no, actually that one did.
00:12:28
Speaker
That one did.
00:12:28
Speaker
Oh, no, sorry.
00:12:30
Speaker
No, the one downtown.
00:12:33
Speaker
That one did not.
00:12:34
Speaker
No, that one did not.
00:12:35
Speaker
But there was a used bookstore that I also liked that had a pretty impressive one.
00:12:39
Speaker
I had a lot of bookstores I liked.
00:12:42
Speaker
But I was like, when did I take him to Mr. K's?
00:12:46
Speaker
I remember that's not the one you're talking about.
00:12:49
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.
00:13:04
Speaker
Just it's very sweet in a way.
00:13:09
Speaker
Younger, more spry Mel Brooks.
00:13:12
Speaker
Exactly.
00:13:13
Speaker
The other thing that I find actually almost more interesting than this is that he...
00:13:19
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.
00:13:32
Speaker
Because apparently higher up officers read those books
00:13:38
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?
00:13:45
Speaker
The really, he based World War Z on the great World War II oral history by Spuds Turkle.
00:13:56
Speaker
Spuds, is that something?
00:13:57
Speaker
Spuds Turkle.
00:13:59
Speaker
Spuds Turkle.
00:14:01
Speaker
Studs, Durkle.
00:14:01
Speaker
What am I talking about?
00:14:03
Speaker
Studs.
00:14:05
Speaker
I'm calling him spuds.
00:14:07
Speaker
He's spuds.
00:14:07
Speaker
God damn it.
00:14:08
Speaker
The good war.
00:14:09
Speaker
The good war.
00:14:10
Speaker
Okay.
00:14:11
Speaker
It was just like, it's like, I've never read it, but it's like the quintessential history of the war.
00:14:17
Speaker
It's told from, you know, from the perspective of the people who did it.
00:14:21
Speaker
That man could smoke a cigar.
00:14:23
Speaker
Look at that.
00:14:24
Speaker
Oh, yeah, he could.
00:14:25
Speaker
Yeah, he could.
00:14:26
Speaker
That's a good name for a guy like that, Studs.
00:14:29
Speaker
Studs Terkel.
00:14:31
Speaker
You can't imagine a guy named Studs Terkel and he doesn't have a cigar in his mouth.
00:14:36
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
00:14:37
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
00:14:37
Speaker
I mean, come on.
00:14:38
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.
00:14:52
Speaker
Yeah, no, I agree.
00:14:54
Speaker
I think he's got some sort of
00:14:56
Speaker
leverage on me.
00:14:57
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:14:59
Speaker
I should be worried about that.
00:15:01
Speaker
Exactly.
00:15:02
Speaker
But he based Max Brooks based World War Z on that.
00:15:06
Speaker
So it was very military oriented, very intelligently thought through.
00:15:13
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.
00:15:21
Speaker
And it impress
00:15:23
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
00:15:39
Speaker
Nothing other than his own research.
00:15:40
Speaker
And he's not a military man.
00:15:42
Speaker
He never served.
00:15:43
Speaker
You know, his dad did.
00:15:44
Speaker
He didn't have a choice.
00:15:48
Speaker
But he didn't have a call.
00:15:51
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.
00:16:05
Speaker
That's amazing.
00:16:07
Speaker
Isn't that crazy?
00:16:08
Speaker
He was also the voice of the lead dog in the wild Thornberries.
00:16:11
Speaker
And so, you know, it makes sense.
00:16:15
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.
00:16:27
Speaker
The latest one having come out last year.
00:16:30
Speaker
Yes, yes, it's a little Minecraft trilogy that he put out.
00:16:34
Speaker
So I'm sure that this is chock full of painstakingly researched military survivalist, because it makes a lot of sense, Kevin.
00:16:45
Speaker
You know, when you think about it, what is more survivalist than Minecraft?
00:16:49
Speaker
Minecraft is the Prepper's video game.
00:16:53
Speaker
It absolutely is.
00:16:54
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.
00:17:03
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.
00:17:16
Speaker
She wasn't in the room.
00:17:17
Speaker
It was an audio book.
00:17:19
Speaker
But
00:17:21
Speaker
And just and I and I looked up things to do in Minecraft because I still I'm not good at freedom.
00:17:29
Speaker
I have to I have to have some level of guidance.
00:17:31
Speaker
And a lot of people were making roller coasters.
00:17:34
Speaker
So I said, OK, that's what I'm going to do.
00:17:35
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.
00:17:40
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.
00:17:50
Speaker
And then just started over the next day.
00:17:54
Speaker
And I really enjoyed the soundtrack.
00:17:56
Speaker
I still like the soundtrack quite a bit.
00:17:58
Speaker
It's a good soundtrack.
00:17:59
Speaker
It's a good relaxing soundtrack.
00:18:01
Speaker
And I liked it when it would rain.
00:18:03
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.
00:18:12
Speaker
And then I put it down and kind of forgot about it.
00:18:14
Speaker
Right.
00:18:15
Speaker
So what I'm saying here is clearly...
00:18:19
Speaker
Me being an A++ prepper, you know, anarchist lunatic.
00:18:26
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?
Discussion of 'Minecraft the Island' by Max Brooks
00:18:45
Speaker
He did not.
00:18:45
Speaker
He didn't.
00:18:49
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.
00:18:56
Speaker
Yes.
00:18:57
Speaker
Timothy, Timothy, Timothy, Timothy Delahond.
00:19:00
Speaker
So, by the way, I am not reading the book.
00:19:04
Speaker
I'm listening to it, and I think that might be making...
00:19:10
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.
00:19:21
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.
00:19:28
Speaker
It could work.
00:19:30
Speaker
And he makes it work.
00:19:32
Speaker
It is a lot more interesting because I listen to it.
00:19:36
Speaker
And then when I did my notes, I was rereading chunks of it.
00:19:40
Speaker
And I was like, oh, there's something missing here.
00:19:45
Speaker
It's Jack Black.
00:19:46
Speaker
It's Jack Black.
00:19:47
Speaker
It's the je ne sais quoi.
00:19:51
Speaker
Quoi Jack Black.
00:19:52
Speaker
Quoi Jack Black.
00:19:54
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:56
Speaker
Genesee Jack Black.
00:19:58
Speaker
Genesee Jacques.
00:20:01
Speaker
Jacques Black.
00:20:02
Speaker
Jacques Noir.
00:20:03
Speaker
Yeah, there you go, Jacques Noir.
00:20:08
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.
00:20:25
Speaker
Mm hmm.
00:20:26
Speaker
So we which is a very zombie survival survival guide kind of thing to say, to be honest.
00:20:32
Speaker
Right.
00:20:33
Speaker
It's in the same same vein.
00:20:36
Speaker
Chapter one is titled Never Give Up.
00:20:38
Speaker
And we start in media res as the character who has no name is.
00:20:44
Speaker
And I started calling this character Steve.
00:20:47
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,
00:21:03
Speaker
Anyway, it's Steve.
00:21:05
Speaker
He's in the middle of the ocean and he's drowning and kicking his way back up to the surface.
00:21:10
Speaker
And he gets to fresh air and he's stunned when he sees the sun and it's square.
00:21:16
Speaker
And he has no memory of his life.
00:21:18
Speaker
He doesn't even know how he got here.
00:21:20
Speaker
He's just in the water and he begins to swim to the west of
00:21:28
Speaker
by following the clouds.
00:21:29
Speaker
And at some point he has an altercation with a squid and the squid is all blocky.
00:21:34
Speaker
And he's like, ah, this is so weird.
00:21:35
Speaker
But the squid swims away.
00:21:38
Speaker
So he keeps swimming West and he comes upon land after swimming for a while.
00:21:43
Speaker
And Steve comes ashore, and he notices that everything is cubes.
00:21:48
Speaker
All around me is cubes.
00:21:51
Speaker
What's in the box?
00:21:52
Speaker
Cubes.
00:21:52
Speaker
Cubes.
00:21:54
Speaker
And it must be, he thinks that he must be having, he has some sort of head wound.
00:21:59
Speaker
Hey, it's the munchkin.
00:22:01
Speaker
Hey.
00:22:02
Speaker
Hello.
00:22:03
Speaker
She couldn't go.
00:22:05
Speaker
She had to come right back.
00:22:07
Speaker
She had to come right back into the show.
00:22:09
Speaker
That's how good this show is, people.
00:22:10
Speaker
That's how good it is.
00:22:15
Speaker
Love you.
00:22:19
Speaker
So...
00:22:22
Speaker
Or was I?
00:22:24
Speaker
Oh.
00:22:25
Speaker
He thinks he's had a head wound.
00:22:27
Speaker
He thinks he has a head wound.
00:22:28
Speaker
Which is actually pretty, they do that pretty funny.
00:22:32
Speaker
They do that pretty funny.
00:22:33
Speaker
They're pretty funny about how they roll with that.
00:22:36
Speaker
I got a kick out of that.
00:22:37
Speaker
Yeah, it must be the massive head wound that I have.
00:22:40
Speaker
Because he notices that his hands are also squares.
00:22:44
Speaker
And that he can't open his hands.
00:22:46
Speaker
They're just these little blocks at the end of his arms.
00:22:52
Speaker
It's a very literal interpretation of all this.
00:22:57
Speaker
We are getting hyper literal.
00:22:59
Speaker
He is and he has a meltdown over his newfound form and he is snapped.
00:23:06
Speaker
He's grounded and snapped back to realization by the fact that he is hungry.
00:23:12
Speaker
Yes.
00:23:12
Speaker
And then he looks around and he discovers that he has a backpack, an inventory, and he starts discovering how he can interact with the world by punching blocks.
00:23:23
Speaker
And he also experiments with eating things.
00:23:25
Speaker
But he discovers that his hand will only let him eat things that are actually edible.
00:23:32
Speaker
Eventually, he finds an apple and he eats it, satiating his hunger, and he learns a valuable lesson.
00:23:38
Speaker
Never give up.
00:23:41
Speaker
Right.
00:23:41
Speaker
That's the end of chapter one.
00:23:42
Speaker
That's it.
00:23:43
Speaker
Yeah.
00:23:44
Speaker
That's it.
00:23:45
Speaker
Okay.
00:23:46
Speaker
Chapter two, panic drowns thought.
00:23:50
Speaker
Hmm.
00:23:51
Speaker
Hmm.
00:23:52
Speaker
Take a sip of my Diet Coke there.
00:23:54
Speaker
Yeah.
00:23:54
Speaker
Just give yourself a minute.
00:23:55
Speaker
Give yourself a minute.
00:23:56
Speaker
Give myself a minute because panic drowns thought.
00:23:58
Speaker
Yes, exactly.
00:23:59
Speaker
You got to take your time.
00:24:01
Speaker
You got to take your time.
00:24:02
Speaker
Yeah.
00:24:02
Speaker
Yeah.
00:24:03
Speaker
Steve discovers that he can stack like objects in his inventory.
00:24:08
Speaker
He also meets a cow and he also accidentally punches a sheep.
00:24:16
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.
00:24:26
Speaker
And he can hear the zombie grumbling outside.
00:24:28
Speaker
He realizes that none of this is a dream and that he needs to learn how to survive and that panic drowns thought.
00:24:35
Speaker
And that's the end of chapter two.
00:24:36
Speaker
I mean, nothing else really happens.
00:24:38
Speaker
I mean, that's, yeah.
00:24:40
Speaker
That's pretty much it.
00:24:42
Speaker
Chapter three is titled Don't Assume Anything.
00:24:45
Speaker
Steve realizes that he heals pretty fast once he eats another apple.
00:24:49
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.
00:24:58
Speaker
And then suddenly the zombie groans a different groan and stops.
00:25:02
Speaker
And then Steve breaks out of his little dirt tomb and he sees that it's morning again.
00:25:07
Speaker
The zombie is gone and the only thing that's left over is a stench.
00:25:11
Speaker
and a piece of zombie meat laying on the ground, and he collects it.
00:25:16
Speaker
Yes.
00:25:16
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.
00:25:31
Speaker
Yeah.
00:25:32
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.
00:25:41
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.
00:25:49
Speaker
He discovers crafting and he makes a club.
00:25:52
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.
00:26:00
Speaker
Yes, yes.
00:26:02
Speaker
And by the way, Kevin is being literal.
00:26:03
Speaker
He literally says these things.
00:26:05
Speaker
He's not, this is not like an example of silly things.
00:26:08
Speaker
This is literally what he says.
00:26:10
Speaker
He literally starts saying me strong, me have weapon, me have club.
00:26:14
Speaker
It's, yeah.
00:26:17
Speaker
And it's not a club.
00:26:18
Speaker
It's not a club.
00:26:18
Speaker
It's just a stick that you get from crafting.
00:26:22
Speaker
Yeah.
00:26:22
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.
00:26:32
Speaker
So he decides to take that boat, put it in the water, and sail away.
00:26:35
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.
00:26:44
Speaker
He doesn't have any food, and he begrudgingly finds his way back to the island.
00:26:49
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.
00:26:58
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.
Steve's Adventures and Challenges in Minecraft
00:27:08
Speaker
That's the end of chapter three.
00:27:09
Speaker
Yeah, it clips along, people.
00:27:12
Speaker
This book clips along.
00:27:14
Speaker
It's not very long.
00:27:15
Speaker
It clips along.
00:27:18
Speaker
Chapter four, details make the difference.
00:27:21
Speaker
Steve has to hurry and build some sort of coverage.
00:27:24
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.
00:27:31
Speaker
Steve watches a zombie attack the door, which begins to splinter and crack, but it never actually breaks.
00:27:36
Speaker
And he realizes that the zombie can't break the door, much like Steve can't break a rock with his bare hands.
00:27:44
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.
00:27:54
Speaker
He makes a shovel and then a hoe, and then he makes a wooden pickaxe, followed quickly by a stone pickaxe.
00:28:03
Speaker
That's the end of chapter four.
00:28:06
Speaker
And products and services?
00:28:09
Speaker
How about that?
00:28:10
Speaker
Yeah, why not?
00:28:12
Speaker
Why not?
00:28:12
Speaker
And we're back.
00:28:13
Speaker
We're clipping along with this book.
00:28:24
Speaker
Chapter five, be grateful for what you have.
00:28:28
Speaker
Be grateful.
00:28:30
Speaker
Be grateful.
00:28:31
Speaker
With the morning sun killing the zombies, Steve goes to work with his new tools, planting seeds.
00:28:37
Speaker
One of the chickens lays an egg and he investigates it.
00:28:41
Speaker
But suddenly...
00:28:43
Speaker
A creeper shows up and blows up, throwing Steve into a lagoon.
00:28:48
Speaker
He swims back and he's very wounded.
00:28:50
Speaker
And he finds that a cow and two chickens have died from the explosion.
00:28:54
Speaker
And he picks up their meat that was left behind.
00:28:57
Speaker
He's out of food and he can't heal unless he can eat.
00:29:02
Speaker
So he eats an apple, but that's not enough.
00:29:05
Speaker
So out of desperation, what does Steve do but eat a
00:29:12
Speaker
Raw chicken.
00:29:15
Speaker
Meat.
00:29:18
Speaker
Which is delicious and healthy.
00:29:21
Speaker
And we all know that.
00:29:22
Speaker
But we all know.
00:29:24
Speaker
Not always pleasant.
00:29:27
Speaker
I'm having flashbacks.
00:29:28
Speaker
So, OK, there was this time.
00:29:33
Speaker
There was this time when my parents were out of town and
00:29:38
Speaker
And it was just me and my brother.
00:29:39
Speaker
Oh, no.
00:29:40
Speaker
My brother was... I think he was in college at the time.
00:29:46
Speaker
And I was in high school.
00:29:50
Speaker
And they had left, like, a whole chicken for us.
00:29:56
Speaker
They left the instructions.
00:29:58
Speaker
And they're like, yeah, you just put it in the oven for this long.
00:30:03
Speaker
Take it out after this many minutes.
00:30:05
Speaker
So...
00:30:08
Speaker
My brother put it in and we set the timer.
00:30:11
Speaker
Yada, yada, yada.
00:30:12
Speaker
Take it out.
00:30:13
Speaker
Looks cooked from the outside.
00:30:18
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.
00:30:38
Speaker
Sure.
00:30:39
Speaker
When it's fully cooked,
00:30:40
Speaker
They don't just pop off.
00:30:41
Speaker
And when it's raw, they don't just pop off.
00:30:43
Speaker
There's an in-between state of matter with the chicken meat.
00:30:47
Speaker
Yeah.
00:30:47
Speaker
Where it's just slime.
00:30:49
Speaker
Yeah.
00:30:50
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
00:30:53
Speaker
Where it's just cold chicken now heated up.
00:30:57
Speaker
It is not cooked chicken.
00:30:58
Speaker
Yeah.
00:30:59
Speaker
So the chicken's doing this and we're taking it and the meat is just sliding right off the bones.
00:31:06
Speaker
And my brother and I were like, wow, the meat's sliding right off the bones.
00:31:10
Speaker
We must have just, we must have cooked this really well.
00:31:14
Speaker
We must have nailed the shit out of this.
00:31:16
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:31:18
Speaker
Chicken was still, was still, it was still not cooked.
00:31:22
Speaker
Lovely.
00:31:22
Speaker
We ate it.
00:31:23
Speaker
It's not cooked.
00:31:26
Speaker
Jesus Christ.
00:31:28
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.
00:31:43
Speaker
It's the real deal is what you're saying.
00:31:45
Speaker
It's the real deal.
00:31:47
Speaker
Got it honestly.
00:31:48
Speaker
Yeah.
00:31:49
Speaker
Yeah.
00:31:49
Speaker
I got it.
00:31:50
Speaker
I've been there.
00:31:52
Speaker
Just remember, I can still hear it in my head.
00:31:54
Speaker
My brother's saying, but look, it's falling off the bone.
00:31:57
Speaker
Right.
00:32:00
Speaker
Chicken is is one of those first things before you know how to cook.
00:32:04
Speaker
It is it's it might as well be fish in terms of how intimidating it can be.
00:32:12
Speaker
So, yeah.
00:32:14
Speaker
Yeah.
00:32:14
Speaker
Yeah.
00:32:15
Speaker
I just don't I don't recommend anyone cooks any sort of bird without a meat thermometer.
00:32:21
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:32:25
Speaker
It takes a certain level of confidence that maybe some people just don't have.
00:32:30
Speaker
Yeah.
00:32:31
Speaker
It's understandable.
00:32:33
Speaker
It's understandable.
00:32:34
Speaker
A chicken will kill you.
00:32:36
Speaker
A chicken will kill you.
00:32:37
Speaker
Yeah.
00:32:39
Speaker
So he throws up naturally.
00:32:41
Speaker
He gets nauseous.
00:32:43
Speaker
And then he decides, okay, well, what do I have left?
00:32:46
Speaker
He has a raw steak.
00:32:48
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.
00:33:03
Speaker
It's like it's a it is a chasm of difference.
00:33:06
Speaker
Huge, huge difference.
00:33:08
Speaker
There is there are so many dishes which include raw beef that.
00:33:14
Speaker
like you got your beef tartare, you got others.
00:33:19
Speaker
I can name one.
00:33:21
Speaker
You have others.
00:33:23
Speaker
You're just rare steak, like just really rare steak.
00:33:27
Speaker
I mean, just really rare steak.
00:33:28
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.
00:33:37
Speaker
So he's like, this should be fine.
00:33:40
Speaker
And it was.
00:33:41
Speaker
So there you go.
00:33:42
Speaker
There you go.
00:33:44
Speaker
There you go.
00:33:48
Speaker
Probably doesn't taste as good.
00:33:51
Speaker
No, I mean, definitely not.
00:33:54
Speaker
You want to add a little seasoning?
00:33:56
Speaker
Something.
00:33:57
Speaker
Just a little searing on the outside.
00:34:00
Speaker
Anything, really.
00:34:01
Speaker
I'm not a blue.
00:34:02
Speaker
I don't like it blue.
00:34:04
Speaker
I don't like it.
00:34:05
Speaker
No, I'm not a big fan.
00:34:07
Speaker
I like rare, but medium rare, please.
00:34:11
Speaker
Something.
00:34:12
Speaker
Medium rare.
00:34:13
Speaker
Yeah.
00:34:14
Speaker
A little salt on there.
00:34:15
Speaker
Maybe a little pepper.
00:34:17
Speaker
So this reminds me of the time that we were at a steakhouse with our friend Ian.
00:34:21
Speaker
And...
00:34:26
Speaker
So exactly what story you're going to tell.
00:34:30
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.
00:34:43
Speaker
So my dad is going to be paying for this whole dinner because that's just how he rolls with this stuff.
00:34:49
Speaker
And it was very generous.
00:34:50
Speaker
And it was, cause it was a, it was a nice place.
00:34:53
Speaker
Yeah, it was a nice place.
00:34:58
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.
00:35:12
Speaker
And the last one was the most expensive steak.
00:35:16
Speaker
It was a Wagyu, yeah.
00:35:17
Speaker
It was a Wagyu.
00:35:18
Speaker
It was like $200.
00:35:19
Speaker
Yeah.
00:35:23
Speaker
And I'm going to give him credit because I always interpret it because he came in after we'd been there.
00:35:30
Speaker
We had settled in.
00:35:32
Speaker
We already had our meals.
00:35:35
Speaker
And he was just sitting in.
00:35:36
Speaker
And your dad's like, just order something.
00:35:38
Speaker
And I always interpreted it as he just wanted to.
00:35:42
Speaker
He didn't want to make a fuss.
00:35:44
Speaker
He didn't want to.
00:35:46
Speaker
Read the menu.
00:35:47
Speaker
Cause they were like, we could, you could take a look at the menu.
00:35:49
Speaker
And he was like, Oh no, no, just, and I think he just wanted to order something.
00:35:52
Speaker
It's a, it's the special.
00:35:54
Speaker
It's fine.
00:35:55
Speaker
Yeah.
00:35:55
Speaker
The special and the special is like the most, it just, it just so happened.
00:35:59
Speaker
Yeah.
00:36:00
Speaker
that it was about the most expensive thing.
00:36:03
Speaker
It was a wag you cut a beef flown in from Japan that morning.
00:36:08
Speaker
Right.
00:36:09
Speaker
It just... And your dad is a class act and said, right on.
00:36:17
Speaker
And just like I offered.
00:36:19
Speaker
So he, you know, no one said a thing.
00:36:23
Speaker
And I was waiting for at least...
00:36:26
Speaker
you and me with him later when we were all hanging out and stuff, someone to bring it up.
00:36:31
Speaker
I was like, but it's not going to be me.
00:36:32
Speaker
I'm not going to say that.
00:36:34
Speaker
Cause I just met him at this point.
00:36:35
Speaker
You'd known him longer.
00:36:37
Speaker
Yeah.
00:36:37
Speaker
I was like, I'm not going to bring this up.
00:36:38
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?
00:36:46
Speaker
Yeah.
00:36:52
Speaker
Oh my God, that was amazing.
00:36:54
Speaker
There's one of two Ian-centric stories that night.
00:36:58
Speaker
The second one is much shorter, but it's the waiter holding the pepper grinder up to Ian.
00:37:07
Speaker
And Ian looking at the waiter and saying, yes, that's very nice.
00:37:10
Speaker
Yes.
00:37:14
Speaker
He's like, uh-huh.
00:37:16
Speaker
That's a very nice thing you have there.
00:37:17
Speaker
That's very nice.
00:37:18
Speaker
It's pepper, honey.
00:37:19
Speaker
Like, what do you want?
00:37:21
Speaker
He's asking me, what pepper?
00:37:24
Speaker
Oh, which also, I mean, that feeds into an explanation as to why, how this all happened.
00:37:31
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, Ian, I love Ian.
00:37:33
Speaker
He's great.
00:37:34
Speaker
Oh, he's a beautiful person.
00:37:35
Speaker
But his steak is going to be from the Sizzler, not from, you know, the whatever place we were at in Philadelphia.
00:37:43
Speaker
Capital Grill or whatever it was.
00:37:46
Speaker
It was at least a Capitol Grill or a Capitol Grill level restaurant.
00:37:50
Speaker
Right, right.
00:37:54
Speaker
Yeah, it was it was a lovely meal.
00:37:56
Speaker
Best tomahawk chop I've ever friggin eaten.
00:38:01
Speaker
It was it was terrific.
00:38:02
Speaker
It was a great meal.
00:38:03
Speaker
That was a fun weekend.
00:38:04
Speaker
We were there for a fun week.
00:38:07
Speaker
We had such a good time.
00:38:08
Speaker
We need to do that again.
00:38:10
Speaker
I know.
00:38:11
Speaker
I know.
00:38:14
Speaker
Anyway.
00:38:14
Speaker
Anyway, surviving in a cube world.
00:38:18
Speaker
Surviving in a cube world.
00:38:20
Speaker
How could one do it?
00:38:21
Speaker
Huh.
00:38:22
Speaker
While starving, Steve accidentally figures out how to make a furnace and begins to cook food.
00:38:30
Speaker
And chapter six is titled Overconfidence.
00:38:34
Speaker
Steve accidentally figures a lot of accidental discoveries.
00:38:38
Speaker
Yeah.
00:38:39
Speaker
Serendipitous shit.
00:38:40
Speaker
Serendipity.
00:38:42
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.
00:38:48
Speaker
It becomes...
00:38:50
Speaker
And he puts it into the wall and realizes he wanted on a different wall so he could look at his garden.
00:38:55
Speaker
But instead of becoming a block when he breaks it, it's just broken.
00:38:59
Speaker
You can't.
00:39:00
Speaker
When glass breaks in the Minecraft world, it's broken.
00:39:03
Speaker
It's just broken.
00:39:05
Speaker
So he decides to risk going out into the night to get more sand.
00:39:09
Speaker
But as he's gathering it.
00:39:11
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.
00:39:21
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.
00:39:32
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:35
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.
00:39:42
Speaker
And while he has light, he tries figuring out a torch, which he does eventually.
00:39:47
Speaker
And he also discovers that torches don't run out like a furnace does.
00:39:51
Speaker
You can just put a torch on the wall and it stays up.
00:39:54
Speaker
It stays.
00:39:54
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:55
Speaker
Pretty handy, honestly.
00:39:56
Speaker
It's pretty handy.
00:39:57
Speaker
Yeah, torches are the MVP of early game Minecraft.
00:40:00
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
00:40:01
Speaker
As the sun rises, Steve says he's done being afraid of the dark.
00:40:08
Speaker
Chapter 7, Take Life in Steps.
00:40:12
Speaker
While tending to his garden, Steve is attacked by a spider and it hurts his leg.
00:40:16
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.
Hosts' Thoughts on the Book
00:40:23
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.
00:40:33
Speaker
Steve starts cutting down trees in desperation to find some sort of food, but finds nothing.
00:40:39
Speaker
And then he accidentally punches a chicken.
00:40:41
Speaker
And the cow comes back to calm him down.
00:40:44
Speaker
Steve realizes that he needs to calm down and take life in steps.
00:40:48
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.
00:41:02
Speaker
So that is the first third of this book.
00:41:07
Speaker
That's it.
00:41:07
Speaker
That's 90 pages, by the way.
00:41:10
Speaker
Now, mind you, the reading level for this book is pretty, is relatively low.
00:41:16
Speaker
Oh, absolutely.
00:41:17
Speaker
Yeah.
00:41:17
Speaker
Yeah.
00:41:18
Speaker
Still, Phil, what are your thoughts so far?
00:41:21
Speaker
I kind of hate it.
00:41:25
Speaker
On one hand, on one hand, um,
00:41:28
Speaker
We have talked about books in the past on this show that were very I'm playing the game and writing about it.
00:41:36
Speaker
This is the crowned king of games that I'm playing and I'm writing about it.
00:41:43
Speaker
You can literally in your mind's eye see middle aged Max Brooks playing this game going, huh, I can build a thing.
00:41:54
Speaker
He puts the controller down.
00:41:55
Speaker
He goes to his notebook, writes out.
00:41:58
Speaker
It's like literally moment for moment how that works.
00:42:03
Speaker
And on one hand, there is a there is a small level of self-awareness to that fact.
00:42:09
Speaker
Sure.
00:42:10
Speaker
Which is which is funny, which is which is funny.
00:42:14
Speaker
He can be very funny in this.
00:42:15
Speaker
Some, you know, Mel Brooks, big surprise.
00:42:18
Speaker
Yeah.
00:42:19
Speaker
Yeah, he's been funny before.
00:42:21
Speaker
Yeah, funny guy.
00:42:22
Speaker
He can be funny.
00:42:24
Speaker
But it's also so low effort that right now it's driving me crazy.
00:42:33
Speaker
On one hand, it's an interesting perspective on this whole thing.
00:42:37
Speaker
Because I thought I was like, well, this is, you know, it's Minecraft.
00:42:41
Speaker
So you create it.
00:42:43
Speaker
They made Telltale Games did this where you have a whole adventure that is an adventure in and of itself.
00:42:50
Speaker
It just happens to take place in the Minecraft universe.
00:42:54
Speaker
So we don't need to get to, we don't have to get into the fact that everything's a cube.
00:43:01
Speaker
Not really.
00:43:02
Speaker
But we have.
00:43:06
Speaker
Okay.
00:43:07
Speaker
We have gotten into the fact that this is a person from the real world.
00:43:12
Speaker
Ostensibly in another universe.
00:43:17
Speaker
Yes.
00:43:17
Speaker
Yes.
00:43:18
Speaker
In a very gamey, video gamey universe.
00:43:23
Speaker
And it's so I think I am enjoying it more simply because I'm listening to Jack Black perform it.
00:43:32
Speaker
I can only imagine.
00:43:33
Speaker
I imagine that makes it a lot better.
00:43:35
Speaker
Yeah.
00:43:36
Speaker
Yeah.
00:43:36
Speaker
But yeah, I agree.
00:43:38
Speaker
I think.
00:43:39
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.
00:43:52
Speaker
So the goal was to like, Hey, I'm just going to,
00:43:56
Speaker
capture basically everybody's first experience in Minecraft.
00:44:00
Speaker
This is literally if you were the first time you played Minecraft, you probably went through this stuff and it's designed.
00:44:08
Speaker
It's supposed to be relatable.
Writing Styles and Tangents
00:44:10
Speaker
Yes.
00:44:11
Speaker
Yes.
00:44:12
Speaker
That being said, it's just like it's just a little bit too.
00:44:17
Speaker
Oh, we're really going beat by beat of everything you're doing.
00:44:22
Speaker
Yeah.
00:44:22
Speaker
Yeah.
00:44:23
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.
00:44:34
Speaker
There's not really a plot.
00:44:36
Speaker
I mean, I compare it to like one of the books my daughter read for school last year is Charlotte's Web.
00:44:44
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
00:44:44
Speaker
Yeah.
00:44:45
Speaker
Which has a lot of interesting things happening in it.
00:44:48
Speaker
And it was written by E.B.
00:44:52
Speaker
White and E.B.
00:44:53
Speaker
White had a fetish for grammar.
00:44:55
Speaker
Yeah.
00:45:00
Speaker
Wrote a whole goddamn book on it.
00:45:01
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:45:03
Speaker
Not a long book, but a book.
00:45:05
Speaker
But a book.
00:45:06
Speaker
And if you are a writer, you have read it.
00:45:09
Speaker
If you're a writer and you haven't read it, you probably need to.
00:45:13
Speaker
You should.
00:45:14
Speaker
You should.
00:45:15
Speaker
That's half of Stephen King's on writing, just telling you to get out.
00:45:18
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.
00:45:26
Speaker
My dad got me Strunk and White as a stocking stuffer when I was in the eighth goddamn grade.
00:45:32
Speaker
He, cause he was like, oh, Phil's a writer.
00:45:34
Speaker
He better get this stinker under his belt.
00:45:38
Speaker
Jesus, he was he was I never thanked him for that.
00:45:41
Speaker
Like you got me ahead of it.
00:45:42
Speaker
So that's nice.
00:45:43
Speaker
He got you ahead of it.
00:45:44
Speaker
You got to rip the bandaid off at some point and read.
00:45:47
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:45:48
Speaker
Because absolutely everything Stephen King says, which is don't use any words other than said is from elements of style.
00:45:59
Speaker
Yeah.
00:46:00
Speaker
Avoid the adverbs.
00:46:01
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:46:02
Speaker
Avoid the adverbs.
00:46:03
Speaker
Yeah.
00:46:04
Speaker
Don't put more words.
00:46:06
Speaker
It's great advice.
00:46:06
Speaker
It's like you cut out any words in a sentence that aren't don't do not need to be there.
00:46:12
Speaker
It's simple advice, but you got to imagine when Strunk and White wrote wrote this.
00:46:20
Speaker
I imagine it was the 1950s that they – Yeah, it has to have been.
00:46:24
Speaker
Yeah, sure.
00:46:25
Speaker
Elements of style.
00:46:28
Speaker
It's got – I want to say 1956, but it's – that is not the elements of style I'm talking about, Google.
00:46:38
Speaker
Jesus Christ.
00:46:39
Speaker
Yeah.
00:46:42
Speaker
It went to fashion style, I'm assuming.
00:46:43
Speaker
It went to home decor.
00:46:45
Speaker
And I was like, oh, come on now.
00:46:48
Speaker
You suck.
00:46:50
Speaker
Google.
00:46:52
Speaker
Style.
00:46:55
Speaker
This is.
00:46:56
Speaker
It's been published so many times that.
00:46:58
Speaker
Wow, 1920.
00:46:58
Speaker
1920.
00:46:58
Speaker
All right.
00:46:58
Speaker
How does that make sense?
00:47:04
Speaker
Yeah, 1920.
00:47:05
Speaker
Holy shit.
00:47:06
Speaker
Oh, Strunk wrote the original one by themselves in 1918 and then 1920.
00:47:14
Speaker
And then E.B.
00:47:15
Speaker
White came in in 1959 and updated it and it became Strunk and White.
00:47:20
Speaker
Okay.
00:47:21
Speaker
That makes a lot of sense.
00:47:22
Speaker
Okay.
00:47:22
Speaker
Great, great, great.
00:47:23
Speaker
Okay.
00:47:24
Speaker
So it was just Strunk's elements of style and E.B.
00:47:27
Speaker
White's like, let's fix some of these things.
00:47:29
Speaker
Yeah.
00:47:30
Speaker
But I can imagine- Things change.
00:47:31
Speaker
Things change.
00:47:32
Speaker
But I can imagine in the first half of the 1900s, you had some purple ass prose out there.
00:47:42
Speaker
Oh, yes.
00:47:44
Speaker
I think that might have been the only kind of prose that existed.
00:47:48
Speaker
You red bride's head revisited.
00:47:49
Speaker
I mean, my God.
00:47:51
Speaker
I could just imagine Strunk sitting there trying to read Lovecraft and being like, oh,
00:47:57
Speaker
Stop.
00:47:58
Speaker
Just put it down.
00:47:59
Speaker
Just put it down.
00:48:00
Speaker
Don't do that to yourself, Strunk.
00:48:03
Speaker
Jesus.
00:48:04
Speaker
To my dear colleague.
00:48:07
Speaker
Writing a letter.
00:48:08
Speaker
Those people were getting paid by the word.
00:48:11
Speaker
So, yeah.
00:48:14
Speaker
That's how Scientology happens when you pay a motherfucker by the word.
00:48:19
Speaker
Yeah.
00:48:19
Speaker
You pay one sci-fi writer by the word and Tom Cruise is jumping on a couch.
00:48:24
Speaker
You get the worst religion ever.
00:48:26
Speaker
And there are a lot of bad ones, as it turns out.
00:48:30
Speaker
There's a lot of bad ones, but yeah.
00:48:34
Speaker
So where's Shelley Miscavige?
00:48:35
Speaker
I don't know.
00:48:38
Speaker
I imagine there's got to be a Scientology listener to this.
00:48:41
Speaker
We're back.
00:48:42
Speaker
We're pivoting the subject matter of the show until Shelley is found.
00:48:46
Speaker
Until Shelley Miscavige is found.
00:48:48
Speaker
Until there's justice.
00:48:50
Speaker
The Pixel Lit podcast is now called Justice for Shelley.
00:48:54
Speaker
And you're just going to have to join us on this ride.
00:48:58
Speaker
She is last seen in public August 2007.
00:49:01
Speaker
I'm just making sure that she hasn't been seen since then.
00:49:10
Speaker
Yeah, no, I think she's... She's a ghost, man.
00:49:15
Speaker
She's a ghost.
00:49:17
Speaker
There's no way.
00:49:18
Speaker
No.
00:49:18
Speaker
And even if you see her alive, that is just... That's not her anymore.
00:49:24
Speaker
Yeah, that's just David Miscavige puppeting her with a stick or something like that.
00:49:29
Speaker
Yeah, the longest marionette strings known to man.
00:49:32
Speaker
The longest marionette strings known to man.
00:49:35
Speaker
Yeah.
00:49:37
Speaker
That got weird.
00:49:40
Speaker
On this show?
00:49:41
Speaker
Never.
00:49:42
Speaker
Never.
00:49:45
Speaker
Come now.
00:49:47
Speaker
Phil, I got one question for you then.
00:49:48
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:49:50
Speaker
What are you playing?
00:49:52
Speaker
Oh, I'm glad you asked.
00:49:55
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,
00:50:04
Speaker
the games that will chill me out.
00:50:07
Speaker
And that's what I need now.
Phil's Gaming Experiences
00:50:10
Speaker
And so just right off the bat, I have been playing more Star Wars The Old Republic, just kind of like fucking...
00:50:19
Speaker
Like sleepwalking through it.
00:50:22
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.
00:50:34
Speaker
Shit like that.
00:50:37
Speaker
I have not gotten to the new DLC.
00:50:39
Speaker
I probably never will.
00:50:40
Speaker
That's fine.
00:50:43
Speaker
I have invested about six hours into The Hunter Call of the Wild.
00:50:49
Speaker
This is my new relaxation game.
00:50:53
Speaker
It is so strange.
00:50:54
Speaker
I never imagined this would be the game for me.
00:50:56
Speaker
You know, like I said, I got it for like $1.50 on sale.
00:50:59
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,
00:51:07
Speaker
downloadable material and content there.
00:51:10
Speaker
And they're having a publisher or a franchise sale on Steam.
00:51:13
Speaker
And I know it's going to be, yeah.
00:51:16
Speaker
And it's going away tomorrow, I'm assuming, because I think tomorrow the new Steam sale kicks in.
00:51:20
Speaker
Tomorrow the big Steam sale kicks off.
00:51:22
Speaker
So it's going to be.
00:51:24
Speaker
I went ahead and bought a bunch of the DLC for like five bucks.
00:51:29
Speaker
Why not?
00:51:30
Speaker
Why not?
00:51:31
Speaker
I love it because they're basically two different ways to play the game.
00:51:34
Speaker
You can stalk, which is the more active way of playing the game, which is still pretty slow paced and you're
00:51:42
Speaker
tracking through the woods and trying to be quiet and trying not to scare anything off.
00:51:48
Speaker
And I love doing that on certain days.
00:51:52
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.
00:52:04
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.
00:52:16
Speaker
I'm just waiting, man.
00:52:17
Speaker
I read like three chapters of this book just sitting there waiting for a white tail deer to show up.
00:52:23
Speaker
And you know what happened, Kevin?
00:52:26
Speaker
Nothing showed up.
00:52:27
Speaker
Nothing showed up.
00:52:28
Speaker
And it was time well spent because I was in the beautiful opulence of the Pacific Northwest in autumn.
00:52:37
Speaker
And I have no regrets whatsoever.
00:52:39
Speaker
Can't beat that.
00:52:41
Speaker
I love this game.
00:52:43
Speaker
It's so stupid.
00:52:44
Speaker
I love it.
00:52:45
Speaker
And the latest DLC did literally come out last week.
00:52:48
Speaker
That's like in Africa or something.
00:52:50
Speaker
I'm not ready for hunting tigers yet.
00:52:52
Speaker
Yeah.
00:52:53
Speaker
Or whatever it is they got.
00:52:54
Speaker
Yeah.
00:52:55
Speaker
But in terms of newer stuff, I did get and I started playing Bolt Guns DLC.
00:53:05
Speaker
They released the Forges of Corruption.
00:53:08
Speaker
And I played through the first couple episodes.
00:53:11
Speaker
It's just more Bolt Guns.
00:53:13
Speaker
And that's- Did they add more enemies?
00:53:15
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, there are more enemies, more maps, more weapons.
00:53:19
Speaker
I've got a missile launcher, which is super fun.
00:53:23
Speaker
Took out a great unclean one with a goddamn missile launcher and it was super fun.
00:53:29
Speaker
I love this game.
00:53:30
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,
00:53:45
Speaker
clasping your fists together.
00:53:46
Speaker
Yeah.
00:53:47
Speaker
For making Rahul Kohli shout about the emperor.
00:53:50
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:53:51
Speaker
It's it's so much fun.
00:53:53
Speaker
I it's just more of the same for the most part with a few new weapons and a few new bad guys.
00:53:59
Speaker
But that's fine.
00:54:00
Speaker
You know, that's that's that's all it has to be.
00:54:02
Speaker
It doesn't really doesn't require.
00:54:05
Speaker
I was never going to require much more.
00:54:08
Speaker
And it's six bucks.
00:54:09
Speaker
It is.
00:54:10
Speaker
And I think I think it's well worth that.
00:54:12
Speaker
Also, on a side note,
00:54:15
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.
00:54:32
Speaker
And I logged in to play this for the first time earlier this week and immediately got those achievements.
00:54:39
Speaker
Yeah.
00:54:40
Speaker
Oh, that's amazing.
00:54:42
Speaker
Yeah, it says I accomplished them a couple of days ago, but fuck it, I don't care.
00:54:47
Speaker
I got my credits.
00:54:49
Speaker
Take the win.
00:54:50
Speaker
Yeah, I took it.
00:54:50
Speaker
I took it.
00:54:51
Speaker
It's great.
00:54:53
Speaker
I also played the Crow Country demo.
00:54:56
Speaker
Oh, I love Crow Country.
00:54:58
Speaker
I might need to come back to it again and try.
00:55:01
Speaker
I don't know.
00:55:02
Speaker
I'm surprised.
00:55:03
Speaker
It didn't grab me the way I thought it was going to.
00:55:05
Speaker
And this should be a slam dunk for me.
00:55:08
Speaker
It should be a slam dunk.
00:55:09
Speaker
Yeah.
00:55:11
Speaker
Yeah, I love Resident Evil.
00:55:13
Speaker
Signalis was like one of my favorite.
00:55:17
Speaker
I wish I had played that earlier just so I could have put it on my game of the year list in 2022.
00:55:24
Speaker
I might just need to come back to it again, try it again.
00:55:28
Speaker
Because it just didn't give me the oomph.
00:55:32
Speaker
Didn't click.
00:55:33
Speaker
Didn't click, which genuinely shocked me.
00:55:36
Speaker
What does the demo do?
00:55:38
Speaker
What's the demo's...
00:55:41
Speaker
As best as I can tell, it's the opening.
00:55:44
Speaker
You know, I just I didn't go very far.
00:55:47
Speaker
I got in.
00:55:48
Speaker
You go into the theme park.
00:55:51
Speaker
Mm hmm.
00:55:52
Speaker
You get the it is a very funny intro where she's like introducing herself over and over again.
00:55:57
Speaker
It's very funny.
00:55:59
Speaker
Don't forget my name.
00:56:00
Speaker
It's Mara.
00:56:01
Speaker
Don't forget it.
00:56:02
Speaker
You better not forget my name.
00:56:04
Speaker
It's pretty funny.
00:56:07
Speaker
And then and I found a survivor and helped him out and then got into some monster shit.
00:56:12
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.
00:56:24
Speaker
Sure.
00:56:25
Speaker
I think I need to I should give it I'm going to give it another try.
00:56:28
Speaker
Give it another shot because the environments are a lot more varied.
00:56:34
Speaker
Like once you get out of that first area,
00:56:37
Speaker
the environments are very, they're basically like biomes almost.
00:56:41
Speaker
Right.
00:56:42
Speaker
And how different they are because there's one area that's like the back rooms.
00:56:46
Speaker
There's another area that's like Poseidon's adventure.
00:56:49
Speaker
So it's all, you know, decorated with that kind of bullshit.
00:56:53
Speaker
Yeah.
00:56:54
Speaker
There's the theater area.
00:56:55
Speaker
So yeah, give it another shot.
00:56:58
Speaker
I'm going to get another try.
00:56:59
Speaker
Yeah.
00:57:00
Speaker
See if it clicks because Crow Country is one of my favorite games of the year.
00:57:06
Speaker
That's the thing.
00:57:06
Speaker
I know I need to give another, because I'm genuinely surprised at how ho-hum it kind of left me feeling.
00:57:14
Speaker
That doesn't make any sense for me.
00:57:17
Speaker
So I'm going to give it another try and see if I can get any further.
00:57:20
Speaker
But that's been the extent
Kevin's Recent Gaming Reviews
00:57:22
Speaker
for me.
00:57:22
Speaker
What about you, Kevin?
00:57:23
Speaker
What have you been playing?
00:57:24
Speaker
I have been playing.
00:57:26
Speaker
So I played, I purchased, played and beat Still Wakes the Deep.
00:57:32
Speaker
Oh, shit.
00:57:32
Speaker
Okay.
00:57:32
Speaker
Which is the new game from Chinese Room.
00:57:33
Speaker
They, um,
00:57:40
Speaker
So Chinese Room, their previous work includes one of the Amnesia games as a machine for pigs, I believe.
00:57:46
Speaker
Yeah.
00:57:47
Speaker
Admittedly, the week, which is your.
00:57:49
Speaker
Yeah.
00:57:50
Speaker
Which I know is your least favorite of the Amnesia titles.
00:57:53
Speaker
It's a good, but it's a good story.
00:57:55
Speaker
I mean, they write a hell of a story.
00:57:57
Speaker
So Chinese Room is very much writing focused and gameplay second.
00:58:04
Speaker
Whereas a lot of the other Amnesia games are very much, they have a lot of gameplay.
00:58:11
Speaker
Like the bunker was.
00:58:13
Speaker
Well, the bunker had more gameplay than any of them.
00:58:16
Speaker
The bunker had the most gameplay of any Amnesia game, but it had interaction.
00:58:24
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
00:58:51
Speaker
Chinese room, that is not the one I want.
00:58:53
Speaker
God damn it, Google.
00:58:59
Speaker
They're not helping me at all today.
00:59:02
Speaker
Why would they?
00:59:02
Speaker
They don't owe you shit.
00:59:04
Speaker
Everyone's gone to the rapture.
00:59:05
Speaker
That's what I was thinking of.
00:59:07
Speaker
Okay, yes.
00:59:08
Speaker
So everyone's gone to the rapture, and they are working on Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines 2?
00:59:16
Speaker
Yes, fingers crossed on that.
00:59:18
Speaker
Fingers crossed on that.
00:59:19
Speaker
That has had a very up and down kind of a production cycle.
00:59:23
Speaker
Oh, and Dear Esther.
00:59:24
Speaker
Dear Esther.
00:59:24
Speaker
Dear Esther.
00:59:26
Speaker
Okay.
00:59:26
Speaker
Okay.
00:59:26
Speaker
I knew it was an E name.
00:59:28
Speaker
Okay.
00:59:29
Speaker
That's why I thought he was fish.
00:59:31
Speaker
Okay.
00:59:31
Speaker
Okay.
00:59:32
Speaker
So Still Wakes the Deep is very much in line with their other walking sim type stuff.
00:59:36
Speaker
It has a lot more, it has a lot of like pseudo platforming in it.
00:59:44
Speaker
So the setting of the game is it's on an oil rig.
00:59:48
Speaker
It's in the 1970s.
00:59:49
Speaker
It's during the height of the international oil crisis that was gripping the entire world at the time.
00:59:57
Speaker
And you are on an oil rig off the coast of Scotland.
01:00:02
Speaker
And you play a guy named Kaz McCleary, who is on the oil rig because he is trying to
01:00:09
Speaker
escape from something that is happening back home.
01:00:12
Speaker
And you get more details about it.
01:00:14
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.
01:00:24
Speaker
That's like the opening of it.
01:00:27
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.
01:00:35
Speaker
What bullshit did you bring to my door?
01:00:39
Speaker
You got to get out of here.
01:00:40
Speaker
You're fired.
01:00:41
Speaker
Get out of here.
01:00:42
Speaker
And as you're going to get on the helicopter, the drill on the oil rig is,
01:00:50
Speaker
hits something and rips it back up.
01:00:58
Speaker
And you are on the helipad at the time.
01:01:01
Speaker
You fall off the rig, but you end up getting pulled back on by a few folks.
01:01:07
Speaker
And that's when shit starts getting...
01:01:10
Speaker
Starts getting weird.
01:01:12
Speaker
And there's colors out of space happening and a lot of purple and glowy and things like that.
01:01:22
Speaker
And it really does turn into
01:01:26
Speaker
The thing meets an oil rig.
01:01:31
Speaker
Okay.
01:01:32
Speaker
Well, shit.
01:01:35
Speaker
Now, the story is great.
01:01:37
Speaker
I really love the story.
01:01:39
Speaker
Gameplay is fine.
01:01:42
Speaker
It costs a lot of money right now.
01:01:44
Speaker
It's like 30 bucks for what amounts to I beat the game in four hours.
01:01:49
Speaker
Okay.
01:01:50
Speaker
Okay.
01:01:50
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.
01:02:04
Speaker
But otherwise, I think it is really fascinating and it's probably going to be on my game of the year list.
01:02:10
Speaker
just based on the strength of its writing alone and the authenticity.
01:02:16
Speaker
That's one of the things I, and I talked to Monty Zander about it.
01:02:20
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
01:02:35
Speaker
this stuff was like the little things that you find in the people's rooms.
01:02:40
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.
01:02:53
Speaker
There's a poster hanging on it.
01:02:55
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.
01:03:05
Speaker
from this time period.
01:03:08
Speaker
And it's very Scottish in terms of dialogue.
01:03:12
Speaker
If you don't have the subtitles on, you will lose what they are talking about because they are speaking full on Scottish.
01:03:21
Speaker
Okay.
01:03:22
Speaker
All right.
01:03:23
Speaker
Good to know.
01:03:25
Speaker
I'm assuming that Iron Brew is everywhere.
01:03:29
Speaker
Sure.
01:03:29
Speaker
Yes.
01:03:30
Speaker
Iron Brew and Lagavulin is... Yeah, absolutely.
01:03:36
Speaker
Lagavulin's Scottish, right?
01:03:38
Speaker
Yeah.
01:03:38
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
01:03:39
Speaker
Scotch.
01:03:40
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely.
01:03:41
Speaker
Yeah.
01:03:41
Speaker
Of course.
01:03:42
Speaker
It is...
01:03:45
Speaker
And all right, so still wakes the deep.
01:03:47
Speaker
That's one thing I've been playing.
01:03:51
Speaker
Another game that I started playing was I finally got started on another crab's treasure.
01:03:58
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.
01:04:04
Speaker
So please hit me.
01:04:05
Speaker
I'm looking.
01:04:06
Speaker
It is.
01:04:06
Speaker
Yes, the demo for it was out last year.
01:04:08
Speaker
It got its full release this year.
01:04:11
Speaker
It is if you took
01:04:14
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.
01:04:31
Speaker
Okay.
01:04:32
Speaker
Okay.
01:04:33
Speaker
One of the things that is fascinating about the game is it has a lot of things that...
01:04:44
Speaker
make it a souls like.
01:04:45
Speaker
And then it has a lot of things that are very unique to it.
01:04:50
Speaker
You got your crab has a fishing hook that he uses as a grappling hook.
01:04:58
Speaker
He uses instead of bonfires, there's like these little moon moon shells that that you can find.
01:05:07
Speaker
There's it's it's
01:05:10
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
01:05:26
Speaker
And then every time you kill a boss, it says pollution scoured.
01:05:36
Speaker
Instead of like great enemy felled or whatever.
01:05:41
Speaker
The noun verb of this game is pollution scoured.
01:05:45
Speaker
It is, and it is really funny.
01:05:49
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.
01:06:01
Speaker
That's cute.
01:06:01
Speaker
I like that.
01:06:02
Speaker
It's got so many cute little touches and so many details.
01:06:07
Speaker
And there's a, I'm playing on regular, the regular mode, which is hard.
01:06:12
Speaker
It does have an assist mode.
01:06:14
Speaker
There's two levels of assist mode, there's story and then there's easy.
01:06:18
Speaker
But if you go to the menu with the accessibility settings,
01:06:23
Speaker
The story mode and the easy mode leave one box unchecked no matter what.
01:06:28
Speaker
You have to manually go put this box on.
01:06:32
Speaker
And the main character's name is Krill.
01:06:36
Speaker
There's a box at the bottom where you check it and it says, give Krill a gun.
01:06:45
Speaker
And when you turn that box on and go back to the game, Krill will just have a just a fucking Glock.
01:06:52
Speaker
And it's giant because he's a hermit crab.
01:06:55
Speaker
Right.
01:06:58
Speaker
It's a normal sized gun, but this is a normal sized gun, but he's a hermit crab.
01:07:03
Speaker
So but it kills everything because it's a gun.
01:07:07
Speaker
Sure.
01:07:09
Speaker
I love to shoot a crab with a gun.
01:07:13
Speaker
Nothing left.
01:07:14
Speaker
Nothing left.
01:07:15
Speaker
So I'm really loving another crab's treasure.
01:07:18
Speaker
There's some difficulty spikes.
01:07:22
Speaker
It is harder in some ways just because you got to get used to the fact that you're
01:07:28
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.
01:07:39
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.
01:07:46
Speaker
I've had like a bottle cap.
01:07:49
Speaker
or a soda can or a coffee cup or something like that.
01:07:56
Speaker
All sorts of things that, you know, a hermit crab could just like sneak into.
01:08:00
Speaker
Yeah.
01:08:02
Speaker
None of them are actual real shells.
01:08:04
Speaker
So, but each shell has its own ability.
01:08:09
Speaker
So you have this ability.
01:08:11
Speaker
Magic in the game is called umami.
01:08:13
Speaker
Okay.
01:08:16
Speaker
And the stat that you level to increase your umami is MSG.
01:08:20
Speaker
Oh, I love it.
01:08:22
Speaker
Of course.
01:08:23
Speaker
Of course.
01:08:26
Speaker
And so each shell gives you a different magic spell, basically.
01:08:30
Speaker
So the soda can shoots at a bunch of little bubbles that go out and attack the enemies.
01:08:38
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.
01:08:47
Speaker
Oh,
01:08:49
Speaker
It's fantastic.
01:08:50
Speaker
There's like a coconut one where you can basically spin like Sonic and then shoot off at an enemy.
01:08:57
Speaker
Oh, I love it.
01:08:59
Speaker
That's fun.
01:09:00
Speaker
That's so interesting.
01:09:02
Speaker
You don't hear about stuff like that with Souls lights.
01:09:05
Speaker
Yeah, it is so colorful and it's so lighthearted.
01:09:09
Speaker
And do you hear the dogs?
01:09:10
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
01:09:12
Speaker
It was urgent.
01:09:14
Speaker
Urgent doggy.
01:09:16
Speaker
Urgent, urgent doggy.
01:09:18
Speaker
So, yeah, it's really colorful.
01:09:19
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.
01:09:30
Speaker
And yeah, I agree.
01:09:31
Speaker
That's that's a pretty, pretty good.
01:09:35
Speaker
Summation of it.
01:09:36
Speaker
That's really charming.
01:09:38
Speaker
I'm so glad you're enjoying it.
01:09:39
Speaker
I just, I remember seeing that and being like, Kevin.
01:09:42
Speaker
Yeah.
01:09:44
Speaker
I love it.
01:09:44
Speaker
She gotta play this.
Closing Remarks and Social Media Encouragement
01:09:46
Speaker
I really like it.
01:09:46
Speaker
I'm glad.
01:09:49
Speaker
That's awesome.
01:09:50
Speaker
But, and you know what?
01:09:53
Speaker
I just want to throw it out there because I subjected myself to it.
01:09:56
Speaker
I watched Argyle.
01:09:59
Speaker
Oh, okay.
01:10:00
Speaker
Okay.
01:10:01
Speaker
How did you find that?
01:10:02
Speaker
It was terrible.
01:10:06
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.
01:10:21
Speaker
I remember watching trailers for it and being like, I just don't know what we're making here.
01:10:25
Speaker
I don't know what the...
01:10:27
Speaker
what the story is like.
01:10:29
Speaker
I don't know what kind of a movie we're looking at here.
01:10:31
Speaker
It was very unclear.
01:10:33
Speaker
It's basically it's not silly enough to do the thing that it's doing.
01:10:38
Speaker
Right.
01:10:39
Speaker
It's so anyway, but that'll do it for tonight's episode.
01:10:46
Speaker
Thank you all so much for listening.
01:10:48
Speaker
Please go follow us on the social medias at Twitter at
01:10:54
Speaker
Blue Sky, Instagram.
01:10:58
Speaker
You can find us all at PixelitPod.
01:11:00
Speaker
If you search PixelitPod in any of those platforms, you will be able to find us.
01:11:07
Speaker
So go ahead and do that.
01:11:08
Speaker
Rate us five stars on the podcast platform of your choice.
01:11:12
Speaker
Share us with a friend.
01:11:13
Speaker
Share us with an enemy or a sea anemone.
01:11:18
Speaker
Hey, tie it back.
01:11:19
Speaker
Hey, now.
01:11:20
Speaker
Or to a co-worker,
01:11:24
Speaker
Or to, I don't know, the ghost that lives in your attic?
01:11:28
Speaker
Yeah.
01:11:29
Speaker
Or a crab with a gun.
01:11:31
Speaker
Or a crab with a gun!
01:11:32
Speaker
That crab has a gun.
01:11:34
Speaker
He's got a gun!
01:11:36
Speaker
He's got a gun!