Transcript
Speaker: Exactly. like if you're going to do it there, do it outside away from the windows where your mother can't hear you. That's, that's, that's the rule for so many things in this house. So she can't hear you murdering things. Right.
Speaker: it's And it's, and I would put you on the outside or just take, through yeah, yeah. And he knows at this point too, it's hilarious. He growls at me because he thinks I'm trying to take the mouse from him, which I am not.
Speaker: Um, But, you know, he he runs ahead of me and I like open the door and i go outside. that he And he goes so and just shoot shoots out into the night. and it And it was snowing today. So he like leaves this trail of little cat paws in the snow and and and he's gone in the darkness with his kill. It's it's amazing. man You know who else has gone in the darkness with his kill?
Speaker: Who's that? Hey, everybody. Welcome back to Fixlet. My name is Kevin. With me, as always, is Phil on today's show. Part two of Tex Murphy. a Murder under a murder moon. and Killers of the flower moon. Now, that's inviting too many comparisons. Wow. Well, this that this book invites its own comparisons. Like, don't you bring up a good movie? I'm going to bring up a lot of good movies and do it for you. Thank you very much.
Speaker: Oh God, your other cat in the background. Ripley's just kind of sitting in the background. Like, well, guess I missed the action. She, she will, she will kill. She got one of the four mice that she, that, that got into the house. Oh, but, but she is way more lazy about it, which is the if you know, it'll make perfect sense. um I think Jonesy criticizes her for ah not having, ah you know,
Speaker: go power ah when it comes down to it. Jonesy's a straight up mean murderer. yeah He's just like, ah oh, look, I'm not aware that that is alive. um Yeah. And if you're interested in finding out what we're talking about, go to patreon.com. And if you if you had go join our Patreon for $5 or more, ah you can listen to the bonus episode ah in which this week there was an incident where Jonesy in the background while Phil and I were talking was killing a mouse. So, yeah you know...
Speaker: This one's worth it for the month at least, guys. For the month at least, it's worth Five bucks. That's worth it. Five bucks. $10 gets your name shouted out in every episode.
Speaker: And you know you would think I would have like the list memorized at this point, but I don't. And I have to pull up the text document, which I did, and the names are, and you are hiding, song 85, Jesus loves you, Coliseum and Ruthless, Mudder, Middle Thing, Sigma, South, Sanguine, Flatulence, Shia Lude, Chet Beaks, Dummy Thick, and Friendly Friend. Thank you so much for being a friend.
Speaker: Patreon.com slash PixelitPod.
Speaker: Do it today.
Speaker: yeah How pregnant can i make that boss? it's ah that that That pause has seven babies inside of it. Seven wriggling babies. And I mean babies and not fetuses. They should have been born months ago.
Speaker: Months ago. They're in there with snorkels and shit. Like, it's this is unnatural. Yeah. un naturaltural the It's unnatural. the ah or The umbilical cord has been detached.
Speaker: They've just set up a tent. They set up a tent and they're camping out. It's real Yellow Jacket situation in there. It's fucked. It's really fucked. It's powered by propane. It's just it's a bad situation.
Speaker: Oh, God. We're feeling punchy tonight. And I think it's because of Texas Tex Murphy. ah Yeah, that must be it.
Speaker: Really, really doing ah doing his damnedest to make us hate him. And also, world's laziest PI. We're going to get into it. We're going to put the... Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. We're going to put the body in the marsh.
Speaker: Yeah, come on Marshies, let's Marsh that body. It's kind of like I was trying to encourage them on like an exercise program. Come on, Marshy. That's our next project. Oh, that's our project. If you guys, if enough of you join the top tier, Kevin and I will release a exercise video a la Jazzercise of the 80s and 90s. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah. And what is enough of you? We'll know when enough of you have signed up. Yeah. We'll just, we'll feel it in our hearts. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. Okay. let's Let's get on with it. Let's marsh this body. um When I tell you to dump a body in the marsh, you dump them in the marsh.
Speaker: We are at chapter 13. So if for those of us ah just joining in, are our our beloved PI Tex just watched a video of his old mentor, ah the Colonel, ah being interrogated and ah beaten up, possibly killed.
Speaker: ah Possibly killed out of his home. Possibly killed. they're They're pretty lax with like Colonel. Like he goes back and forth a lot between the Colonel's dead and Colonel's missing, probably dead and be like, i yeah, I'm going to get into that eventually because it bothered me after a while. um So chapter 13, Tex finds an old picture of Colonel with one hot mama. ah He still takes the time to criticize her looks, though. ah like She's kind of basically he says she's got ah like resting bitch face essentially yeah and implies that maybe she had some work done.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. ah It's like, but he's still like, but he's so like still hot, you know? She's hot. No harm, no foul. ah Yeah. which Which happens a ton in this section. and I'm going to call him out on it. um he When he first sees her, he goes, so the colonel has found himself a little play thing.
Speaker: Right. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's gross. um It doesn't stop being gross folks. And I am, I'm not approved by any stretch of the imagination and and sexuality in Tex Avery land under a killing moon. ah Boy bothers me. um So yeah,
Speaker: He does some research with the ah local graveyard shift slob at the police station. and did Were you missing some fat phobia in your book? Because boy, how does chapter 13 have it?
Speaker: Boy, oh boy. He's eating donuts. But don't worry, guys. They're diet donuts. ah It's just bad. It's just 10 grams of fiber in these, these diet donuts.
Speaker: That seems like a lot. ah Well, have youve heard i think 40 is like your, your 40. How many grams do you, are you supposed to eat today? Something like that. I think, I think that's 40 or 50. Have you ever eaten those like smart sweets? The, the, the, the, like the sugar-free candies that, yeah.
Speaker: Those things, I really love them. And I think my body's gotten used to it now because it's not really an issue anymore. It's not leaking out of your ass. Well, when me and Emily first, Emily will not touch them because after the first time we ate some, ah it like she was up all night with like cramps in her stomach. It was fucking killing her. And I just shit my central nervous system out. ah to But eventually i was like, I'm going to keep eating these fake Sour Patch Kids. I have diabetes and, and, and and now I'm good. and The cafeteria at work occasionally has them. And so I'll be like, fine. um So it's not so bad, but yeah, they, they provide like 25% of your daily fiber. And even, even with it, not causing me intense distress pain wise, I'm still over in my cubicle, like creating a goddamn war crime of of gas. Yeah.
Speaker: ah I have had so many days where my manager was walking past and I was like, don't come up to me, don't come up to me, don't come up to me, go, go, go, keep going. Oh, thank God. Just because- yeah ah You don't want to be. I'm going to hurt her and I don't want her i She doesn't deserve that. She doesn't deserve thes are the things that come out of my body. and the The healing eau de toilette.
Speaker: Right. in In many ways. It's more like eau de toilet. Am I right, gamers? Hey. So, ah yeah. Yeah. So, i imagine even if it is like quarter of your thing. It's still going to, he's still, the guy is still, yeah I mean, I know what's up because I eat the mission. Uh, uh, you ever have the mission tortillas, the car. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Really good. Like you can, those are good.
Speaker: They're like, you know, and they're, but they're fucking loaded up with fiber is, yeah there it is dene they are dense with fiber. Um, but it'd like, yeah, I'll have a wrap for, for lunch. Um,
Speaker: um And, you know, i throw the I throw the turkey and I throw the the little bit cheese on there and I wrap it up and I eat it and like, I'll have another one. Bam. And then like an hour later, I'm like,
Speaker: about to destroy this bathroom yeah yeah they're gonna they're gonna wonder why they've had to replace the tank so many times this is not going well uh courtesy flushes later yeah god it choked that thing uh so pinch it off at the pass i can't i can't it just keeps coming Have you ever, sorry, one last distraction. Have you ever heard the Reddit, seen seen the Reddit post about the poop knife?
Speaker: No, but I'm imagining something and I want to know if I'm right. So basically there's this guy who realized that not everybody else had a poop knife and what a poop knife was, was a knife that was hanging up next to the toilet where you took it and you, you, you, because the plumbing was old, you had to like cut up the,
Speaker: Oh, sweet Jesus. Okay. Yeah. All right. I was worried that's where we were going. Oh, my God. Yeah. um so So he doesn't literally choke the pipes.
Speaker: Yeah. Oh my God. This is, this is, this is a gross episode. We're making a gross episode. I love it. it's a gross episode. here for it. It's a gross book. You can, if you just Google it, you'll find it. There's a post on the, mut on the subreddit called the museum of Reddit, um where you can see the text of the original post that has since been deleted.
Speaker: Um, That's pretty amazing. I mean, that's why, you know, that's why they call it. That's why the internet exists, folks. No, that's that is the one of the blessings of the internet. That is that is why it's there.
Speaker: ah So he try he gets basically he gets ah this this ah sweet young things address ah from the graveyard shift slob. her name is Milan Milan. by the way. Yes, Milan. And and and i'm going to I'm going to put it out there. Hit us up on Blue Sky and guess how you think ah the name Milan is spelled. And I bet you money you're wrong.
Speaker: So he he before he leaves, he asks him ah to do him a solid and send ah detectives to investigate ah the Countess Rainier's empty house. ah Check it out and and give it the ah the ah the actual PD once over. Yep. ah So chapter 14, Tex goes home with some bourbon.
Speaker: ah He checks his messages, one from Elena Moore, the mutant racist and nearly jailbait little sister of his ex yeah that he very bravely walked away from when he found out she was racist.
Speaker: um He spends a whole goddamn chapter wondering how people go on. um That is. Yeah. Just like drinking and smoking and thinking.
Speaker: Right. How do people get up in the morning? um Which, look, that's totally fair. I've done that. Yeah. i've I'm sure Kevin's done. Kevin doesn't smoke or drink, but I'm sure he's done some variation on that. Sure. um But we didn't fill 10 pages with our rudimentary.
Speaker: I wonder how they do that. like this This is peak like ah telling and not showing of just like, you could do this and also advance the plot. There's ways that you can kind of intertwine his issues with living And his investigation, you could make the two sing and harmonize together. Right.
Speaker: But you're not doing that. You're literally just sitting there and laying some pipe about... some of the organizations in the world. And why do I have to get up at 4 a.m.? m You know, stuff like that. it's it's It's the guy, our author can't walk and chew bubble gum at the same time, metaphorically speaking. It's it and it wastes a lot of time.
Speaker: um Chapter 15, Tex ogles Chelsea some more and goes to see Milan toad. That's another one. Yeah, Chelsea Bando was a rare dame, the kind that could hold her own with anyone, as well as turn a man's knees into jelly.
Speaker: Longish blonde hair, blue eyes, a perfect smile, and the kind of voice that curled your toes. Every dope in the neighborhood had the odds for Chelsea, but she seemed to think she was just one of the guys.
Speaker: Unfortunately, she had all those curvy parts that contradicted her. Once again, curvy parts. This guy has this guy has the understanding and appreciation for sex that the the Lonely Island does in the song. I just had sex. Like it's that kind of like boobies.
Speaker: It's it's so fucking simultaneously Steve Carell's character in 40 year old virgin. Right, right. It's just, it's, it's so dumb. um This, and and once again, I'm going to make it very clear. i I am not criticizing him necessarily for him being a sexist per se. ah If you, if you've read Raymond Chandler, if you've read the old, you know, hard boiled detective noir pulp shit, ah it's not always great when it comes to women and how it treats women, but you move past it because it's part of the genre and because it's, or or at least I do ah because it's part of the genre and because it because,
Speaker: Chandler, for example, Dashiell Hammett, all those people were goddamn good writers. And there's something to that. ah And it also informs the character. It forms you on the character, who that person is, what their motivations are. This is just like a 12 year old boy, like grappling with a budding in seldom.
Speaker: Like he just, it's, it's, it's, he's three months away from joining 8chan. It's like really, really bad. um Yeah, calling them femoids. Exactly. Femoids. Whatever, however you say that. I've never actually heard the word said out loud.
Speaker: A femoid. If ContraPoints ah ah says it right, then it's femoids. ah Or Natalie, I guess her name is. Anyway, ah so he goes to see Milan Toad. What a great name that is. I'm sure it just... It just rings with beauty.
Speaker: ah She is a, ah she's prostitute from the picture. That's he's, he's ah been assuming she's a prostitute. yeah She and the Colonel, we're going to run away together, I guess. And she's very sad.
Speaker: um She gives him one of current the Colonel's old notebooks and Tex finds a picture of the statuette that he stole inside. um And this is where brought in my notes. I wrote, why do they keep insisting that the Colonel is dead?
Speaker: ah We don't actually – he very hard says he's dead. He is dead right at this point. Now, later, he will kind of go back and forth on this a little bit, right which makes me wonder about – because we we were talking about how – the author – ah added to these books before releasing them ah when he re-released them. Sure. ah So it makes me wonder if that's part of it, but he goes back and forth, but sometimes he just straight up says that he's dead. And other times he says, well, he might be dead.
Speaker: um And it makes me wonder if they're trying to force us into thinking, just accepting that the Colonel's dead for some sort of gotcha moment. Right. So I guess we'll find out eventually. He was never dead. Right. Right. And if that's what it is, I'm going to be, it's like, yeah, I, I pretty much from the beginning, I'm just wanting to be known now that if, when he finds him, he is in fact dead.
Speaker: i I will be shocked. I will be genuine. I won't know what to do with myself. Right. Uh, Chapter 16. ah He finds and he's got a newspaper clipping from the a notebook that says that the statuette was recently unearthed in Berlin and is very mysterious. We get a lot. of Yeah. Yeah. All that. Yeah.
Speaker: He finds another code in the notebook. I'm not going to go into the tedium of him trying out all these. Like he describes all the different ways that anybody with a word puzzle works.
Speaker: would go through. I'm not saying this isn't what we do to, to figure out a puzzle, but it's like, it's like watching your aunt go through the word jumble in paper and like go through all this and you have to listen to her list all the steps and you're just like just fucking anyway.
Speaker: ah I just thought of the the scene from new girl where ah Nick is talking about how he he wrote when he wrote his his like his book the first time. And he's like, I put a word search on page six. And then he goes, good luck finding anything. There's no words, you idiots. yeah yeah Him being a novelist is one of the best parts about that whole show. I fucking...
Speaker: it it was this It was this well that never stopped giving water. I absolutely loved it. Writers write. They don't read. man.
Speaker: ye
Speaker: So, all right. Long story short, he he solves the puzzle and finds out that the colonel was planning on meeting someone the next night at a club called the landmine.
Speaker: ah What a fucking name for a club. Okay. Yeah. I immediately started thinking like, is that, I wonder if that's queer slang. Like that has to, I doubt very much that it is actually. But like, if I heard of a bar yeah downtown that was called the landmine, I'd is that a,
Speaker: h Like so have to I would have to ask some of my friends. I'm like, is this a term? I don't know how this works. yeah Cause I am that guy. I am this elder millennial cishet white man at the office who works with a bunch of queer Xennial kids who are just adorable. And I adore them. And I will just walk up to them instead of like Googling something. I'll say, so, someone said that they were gooning over something. Can you explain that to me? And they're like, Oh Jesus Christ, dad. ah
Speaker: What's a gooner? What's a gooner? Tell me about that ah with illustrations, please. ah Yeah. So that's what I search ah on my web browser at work to find out. more Exactly. And that's why I don't, because i'm like oh like god I don't know what any of this shit is. And I don't, I don't trust that I'm not being watched at all times. Yeah. ah So that, but that is the role that I fill at work. I'm very proud of it.
Speaker: ah So, Chapter 17, the next day, Tex is refreshed. He goes through what I believe he refers to as an 18-hour coma and wakes up feeling good. Yeah, fine. That's what I need after daylight savings time. Dude, absolutely. This week has been just the – Oh, my Every year, it gets worse. I get older, and daylight savings time gets worse. It gets worse. And I remember being younger and like the middle aged people I knew complaining about it. was it's not that. Why is everyone bitching so much? It's one hour. And now there and I'm like, oh.
Speaker: I'm in my forties and I'm like, fuck you. Oh, it's all different now. It's all different. ah Yeah. So he's, he's wearing his cologne. He's feeling good. He's, he's, he's snazzily dressed. He's, he's, he's probably took a shower for once.
Speaker: And he goes to a diner and oh my God, it's four or five more pages of him just shooting the shit and eating again and describing the weird fucking food that he's eating. And it's not talking with the guy. It calls him Moif.
Speaker: Yeah. Moif. Like ah we live in San Francisco. Like, what why are you talking that Where's the accent coming from? Hey, Moif. Hey, Moif. What the fuck?
Speaker: ah He's so it's it's it's just more weird food ah that I guess is meant to be funny. And it just isn't. um The chapter ends with a ah what are you gay joke ah because he's checking the classifieds and he's going through the man for man classifieds men seeking men.
Speaker: Yeah. And that he's and real. Yeah. He's looking for clues on this thing. And he makes a point. And um but I said this before. He he does a real. He's like, hey, not that there's anything wrong with it. I think that's fine. I think that's totally fine. But it's weird. Right. It's that kind of thing. It's very peak. It's the Seinfeld.
Speaker: yeah Like we can point and laugh at it as long as we say not that there's anything wrong with it. Right. That's exactly what it is. It's, it's, it's very late nineties coded. There's, there's a a lot that's like, it's like, this is about as accepting as, as, as we can get at this point.
Speaker: yeah So he leaves chapter 18. Oh my God. We spend pages watching this guy take in a double feature of noir movies that are way better than this book.
Speaker: Stop inviting comparison to your shitty book with way better works of art. You're yeah just asking for trouble. It's nuts.
Speaker: ah And it goes on. We literally just sit and watch this guy waste an afternoon. Yeah. There's it's i I texted Phil earlier like there's a moment at which ah we already covered it but where he gets an address right and it's like the next thing should be he's at the address right.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. He gets the address, he's knocking on the door. Instead, there's like an intervening chapter between him getting the address and him going to the address of nothing happening. And that's, that is this book's fatal flaw.
Speaker: Well, one of them. Oh, yeah. Yeah. and It's not even fatal flaws. It's more like cardinal sins. um This book is going to hell. what is this This book is going straight to hell, straight to the bottom, straight to hell. ah yeah So, yeah, mashed up.
Speaker: ah Yeah, it's bad. ah so After he's done, his old poor, sad, schlubby cop friend contacts him to say that they didn't find anything. They didn't even find a single ah fingerprint. ah And that's kind of suspicious in and of itself. And he points out that Interpol is investigating the colonel's disappearance.
Speaker: o and Sandwiched in between their investigations looking for Carmen Sandiego. Right, exactly. Welcome to Acme. ah i I always love when Interpol gets a promotion in terms of what it's good for um in in media because ah ah as a kid, they saw I always thought, like oh, inter the international police, they can go anywhere. They're like super secret agents. like And he talks about how Interpol, when it started, was like a database thing for criminals for international. And it's like,
Speaker: for the most part, that's still what it is today. Right. Right. theyre He kind of, he kind of like, he kind of like tries to give them the benefit of the doubt. and it's like, well, in the 2040, maybe there'll be more than that. It's like, well, the internet falls under Interpol's jurisdiction and everything happens on the internet. So Interpol is now the, basically the law.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. And I'm like, okay, sure. If you say so, that's that's a cute notion. Wouldn't that be nice? um So...
Speaker: We got all that. ah Chapter 19. He is at the landmine. We get a rehash of the tired. I like all music except for rap and country. and Except instead of country, he's talking about techno ah because they're playing rap and techno. And it literally sounds like your vaguely racist uncle talking about. I just don't understand what they're saying. and Do they have to cuss so much? And it's just the lyrics suck. And it's just just. Just say you don't like black people. And he also says that about country as well. At some point, I forget where, but yeah, yeah he's just it's, it's more of the, I don't understand this world. I'm born in the wrong time. tech No, more like texts. No.
Speaker: Text. Oh, that's good. That's good. That should be on the cover of this. That's on the cover. Kevin of Pixel. li i would I want to buy these books and just and then rebind them with our own quotes for for my bookshelf.
Speaker: I feel like that would be a fun side project. That's that's what we what we what we I'll take it one step further. What we need to do is ah start binding and releasing everything.
Speaker: our annotated versions of these books. Yes. Where it's like we've got, we we put footnotes and notes in the margins and stuff like that. i just, I just bought how to like ah bind, ah bind books, like a instruction manual for April.
Speaker: um That's fun. ah Or how how to bind them or how to like removal and old cover and binding and read redo it if it's like falling apart. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker: So, yeah, that's cool. That was yeah that was one of my first jobs when I was 16. A lawyer hired me ah because you he to literally be his bookkeeper because he had.
Speaker: a basement that he'd converted into a library and literally tens of thousands of books. And a lot of them were very old and made of leather. And he showed me how to wax ah the leather, the leather covers and stuff. And so I would just sit there and the best part about the job, it would be like two or three hours after school or something.
Speaker: And it would give me enough money to like, you know, go out to the diner with my girlfriend or something like that. And write the best part about it though, was yeah I was only ever really working for like the first hour and a half. And then i would see a book that I thought was really interesting and I'd kind of flip through it and he would see me doing that and he'd go, Oh, let me tell you about this book. And he would like, just tell me all. And we just sit there and explain who this guy was to me and who this author was. And and like, Oh, that's awesome. All is, it was the,
Speaker: best i feel like half the time when i'm watching jeopardy or i just chirp in in general with some sort of bit of trivia some random knowledge i know from this my mom right i think so my mom is very quick to say where did you learn that and i and i'll and i'll have to admit that i have no idea i'm like that's some of this stuff that i know and i have to i have to believe that that was a huge huge part of it this um This reasonably well-read lawyer who paid a high schooler to just cle keep his books clean.
Speaker: That was it. Literal books. He was a lawyer ah who had no children, yeah who had married later in life. and and just And every day I'd meet him at his office, which was in the back of his wife's mystery novel a bookshop.
Speaker: And that's so cool. It's so cool. And there would always be at least three packages of books that he had, that had been delivered that day. And and we would go and and open those books and put them where they belonged. And I would get to working on whatever was happening, ah whatever needed wax. And ah that was, i that was a, that was a very, very cool job for ah a bookish 16 year old. I really enjoyed that. Yeah. um That's awesome So anyway, yeah. Oh yeah. It was great.
Speaker: ah So we get another. oh God. He sees two girls that I wrote down in the notes very quick. The amount of time he spends talking about these women's appearance. I assumed that these were going to be characters, that these were going to be the people he was meeting. No.
Speaker: Just a couple of chuck cut just couple of bitches over there that he's looking at and judging ah yeah because they don't. the One of them is a little fat. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
Speaker: And one of them's got bad skin. i'm sure it's not her fault. It's that shit. and And it's just so annoying. They don't hold up to his fucking beauty standards. it's like, look, you took a shower today for the first time in three weeks. Don't don't yeah don't judge these girls. I don't want to hear it. yeah It's constant. I just imagine him smelling like shit.
Speaker: Oh, God. Yes. Oh, God. Yeah, it's bad. It's it because he's never not smoking. This is also the way that he ah measures time, which could be a clever conceit. It could be an interesting thing if you say, all right, two cigarettes later, I was doing if you did. But it was it's done so kind of sloppily and haphazardly and it's just not interesting. Right.
Speaker: Anyway, ah it's just he if it wasn't so frequently, there's no chapter where he isn't like judging someone's looks. It's not just describing the person. It's just like him. Like he might as well at the end of it go. I give her a seven like that. He might mine as well. Yeah. It's just start rating people out of 10.
Speaker: um And then this book just like, ah then the the next chapter is like, it devolves kind of like in Resident Evil, like the one guy where he he got infected and each journal entry is is worse than last. And it ends up itchy tasty. It's that except he it's just like, ah it's just like a per a brief descriptor and like seven, a brief descriptor. And that's just the rest of the book. Yeah. Face seven titty six, like something like that. It just, it's bad. um Anyway, ah he meets his contact. Who's just this kid. um And he just, he doesn't play his, this is somebody that he knows the Colonel was supposed to meet. He doesn't know anything about this guy. He doesn't know anything about his motivations for being there, why he was going to meet the Colonel. And he just gives up his full motivation for being there. immediately he just throws his cards down the table he says hey look the colonel might be dead ah doesn't get coy he doesn't try to like get some information out of the kid just tells him immediately and and fortunately i guess the guy's on his side uh he's from capricorn the uh uh the uh you should, you know, I'll sit UCLA, uh, uh, ACLU, uh, ACLU for, for mutants.
Speaker: Right. Right. And, uh, world. And he, he basically expresses paranoia and nervousness because, uh, every outside of the bombing that blew up their building, anyone who survived it, ah they keep ah ending up dead. So there's like ah a concentrated attack everyone. There's a conspiracy afoot. Maybe Tex will solve it.
Speaker: Maybe. I don't really have high hopes for Tex. I don't. I i don't either. i don't even. i You know what I think? I think it's going to resolve either way without his input.
Speaker: Probably. it It does seem that way. It feels like it's going that way. where where it did it and it It only gets worse as this part goes on. You're right. it like It does feel like someone else. It's that episode of The Simpsons where yeah the the non-Bart, non-Lisa solve the problem off camera. Right. Or it's kind of like ah ah or like it's like a ah very, very, very shitty version of Chinatown.
Speaker: Yeah, sure. Where the, where kind of Jake Giddes' involvement really didn't contribute anything. And in fact, just got some people killed. Right. Right. He's just, he's just there to to help us see the story. That's all. ah Yeah. So this poor kid ah is, and it he the, the chapter ends ah with him asking him about the winter chip. And the kid says, yeah,
Speaker: how do you know about the winter chip? but but boom let's the Oh yeah, the winter chip thing. i was like, what the fuck's the winter chip? Oh right. we miss it Okay, moving on. Yeah, we don't know. they're on yeah ah So chapter 20, excuse me.
Speaker: We find out that this was supposed to be a handoff of this winter chip, which has something to do ah with the anti-mutant eugenics plan. ah So Tex gives him some garbage advice because he's like, I'm nervous. I'm thinking about going back to L.A. And he's like, no, you'll die in l L.A. Do you have any family? And he goes, yeah, I got family in Ohio. He goes, you should probably go back to your family. He's like, yeah, get them killed, too. Great idea, Tex. That's fantastic. Perfect. um Great. Good thinking.
Speaker: His name's Dubois, by the way. And Dubois leaves and is immediately, immediately disappeared. He's gone right away. He steps out of the bar and a group of guys hop out of a panel van, put a black bag over his head, throw him in and screech off into the night. It's amazing how how quickly that happens. It's just like Tex could, it was, it was no help to him at all.
Speaker: ah It's embarrassing. In fact, ah and a group of them ah enter the bar clearly looking for him or somebody else. And so Tex runs over ah to the the table with the girls. He flirts with a fat girl ah to evade notice from goons. And he does the thing that all shitty guys do where,
Speaker: Like he's like, well, she's fat, you know, but like, I don't care. I like, I don't, I like fat girls. Fat girls are fine. ah It's just, it's just, you know, they always end up with, with losers, you know, it's real bad for them, you know, and it's da, da. And then like, he, he like fakes being interested. And when he realizes he can get away, he just, he just says like something like, don't, don't settle for some creep. Like he's, yeah. but Don't settle us for some creep like me or whatever. Fucking hero. Fucking hero. You're our hero, Tex. my God. Oh, what a great dude. um
Speaker: He escapes to his apartment ah where the speeder outside waiting for him and a beautiful woman in the in the speeder tells him to get him. ah Chapter 21.
Speaker: ah They fly away and we get a... Fucking Delta Airlines joke. ah yeah yeah yeah Somebody had too many Atlanta layovers.
Speaker: Jesus Christ. And for those of you. All right. So there was that this was the i don't know how as most of my life, ah the whole. slogan the jingle for Delta airlines was we love to fly and it shows.
Speaker: Right. They had a little song for it and everything. And, and they're flying off and tech says something like, Oh, that's fine. I love to fly. And the pilot turns his head and the way ah in my head, it happens. It's like straight up exorcist style. Like his head just like turns a full 180 degrees, stares him in the eye and says, and it shows.
Speaker: And i I, if I had a physical copy of this book, like, like a paper, to throw I would have thrown it. I was so pissed. There was something about that shit joke that I was the final straw for me. I could not. what's amazing, what's amazing about all this is, and I just had to check this. So this is assuming that Delta didn't change its tagline. Right. Right.
Speaker: For, at this point, 60 goddamn years. Right. Because they they started using We Love to Fly and It shows in 1987. Okay. Yeah. they change it to ready When You Are.
Speaker: 1994, you'll love the way we fly, which is a little too men's warehouse. A little bit. little bit you love How gravelly was the voice that said that? Yeah, that guy.
Speaker: That guy. You want to talk about a smoker? Yeah, you know he got forced out of men's warehouse and he was the founder. you the Of course, I don't know anything about Was he forced out for like Papa John's reasons? Papa John's. I ate 40 pizzas in 40 days. Oh.
Speaker: If you haven't seen the Papa John's interview ah where he's like, he's like just so he's got the pizza sweats. He is just and he's just his voice has gone from like the normal speaking voice that he had in the commercials to like, there's going reckoning coming.
Speaker: yeah It's like, it's so bad when you, you know, you she found out that like he, he, he got let go. Cause all these, this racist shit that he was saying. And, and it's like, oh yeah, absolutely. Fucking force him out. That's great. ah It's the closest I've ever come in a situation like that where I'm like, oh my God, someone please help him.
Speaker: Like, like yeah there was no schadenfreude to be had. it was just like, somebody help him. Like he's there's something wrong. Like yeah this guy is not doing okay. Anyway, anyway a Agent Johnson and Johnson from... Agent Johnson and Johnson.
Speaker: ah No relations pick him up and they make a Delta Airlines joke. Yeah, I've got it my notes here. We got a fucking airline ah Delta Airlines joke. Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you.
Speaker: um Turns out they're Interpol. or answerol Interpol. Tex speculates um on what a lovely chest that the woman in this pair could have. He does not see her chest.
Speaker: He can't see her chest. He cannot... But he speculates
Speaker: about what a lovely chest she could have. And I'm sure he is half a chub, but only half because of all the whiskey.
Speaker: It's like when you when you can't you don't have enough ah you don't have enough ammunition to be fully sexist, so you have to invent. You have to invent. Imagine something.
Speaker: Schrodinger's boobies.
Speaker: That's exactly it. Oh, my God. I'm making myself hoarse. I'm so pissed off
Speaker: It's going to a good episode. ah This is going to be the first of two interrogations that he gets from these people where we as the readers learn nothing.
Speaker: Yeah. He just reports to them what we have already learned as an audience. yeah It is a useless interrogation. They drop him off and as they speed away into the night, ah he realizes that they never showed him their badges.
Speaker: Maybe they're not in a pool. i don't know. ah right Chapter 22. Tex goes to ah the local university to meet this professor who Du Bois had mentioned earlier, ah who's connected with all of this. This is where we're going to get into some Lovecraft territory here. This felt very fast Lovecraft. Just jam it in.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. Just throw on it in. Oh, yeah, yeah. with Jesus Christ, we spend too much time just with the niceties of shaking hands. This is where I realized that every scene where he meets someone. one we write out all the minutiae a minutia of like, we shook hands. Hi, nice to meet you. Nice to meet you as well. And it's it's constant and it's completely unnecessary. This book was written, it feels like it was written, they he started writing it at 10 o'clock the night before it was due and needed to hit a minimum page count.
Speaker: Yes. So... Yeah, that's just what this book feels like. is is yeah is he was He was doing some expert padding here. Just really padding the shit out of it.
Speaker: i I totally agree. i have a theory. I'm not going to test this theory because I have a life, ah but I have a theory that if I really sat down with this thing, I could turn it into a short story, not a novella, not a novelette, a short story, and it would probably still be pretty bad, ah but at least it would be cohesive and it wouldn't fully waste our time. um Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker: So the professor recognizes this statuette and offers to tell him about it, but promises it will be something that he'll never forget.
Speaker: And he'll stay up all night thinking about it. And it's going to break his brain. well Oh shit. It's an info hazard. Oh no. And I sort of doubt it. And in chapter 23, Uh,
Speaker: ah
Speaker: That's all. That's all you really need know. i'll I'll tell you more, but that's all you need to know. Chapter 23, we find out the statuette belonged to an ancient group of eugenicists, basically. Yeah. um From way back when race really wasn't even a thing, um who have been influencing history and waiting for something.
Speaker: Roko's Baskalisk. Yeah. Yeah. but we got Probably something like that. Yeah. ah the The statuette might be a focal point for an evil ritual that they want to do That's it.
Speaker: That's also not break his brain. Yeah. Oh yeah. Nazis are involved. And that was what was going to make him wake up screaming every night that he would never have a good night's sleep ever again. Yeah, because I God damn it. I can't believe I told you that story. I've ruined your life.
Speaker: I've ruined you, man. Damn me. Damn me. guy an Elite storytelling of tall tales of of of Nazis and old timey Nazis and classical Nazis.
Speaker: don't know, man. It just seems like just seems like basic. Yeah. hydra shit to me and italian nazis which are fascists right yeah yeah i don't know man just i don't know standard gerbils bullshit fascists are only fascists if they come from the fascist region of italy otherwise they're just sparkling nazis sparkling nazis yes It's good.
Speaker: It's a good meme. It's good. It's an older meme, but it checks out. It's good. Oh, God, we're almost done. ah Chapter 24. He meets with Lowell Percival, who, if you remember from last episode, was the person he was trying to meet with when he met Elena, the mutant racist.
Speaker: um And he asks this guy, he's this like this this weird, he made me think of Ross Perot. He's just this kind of like weird little billionaire of a man. yeah um They have history. I don't remember if they explain why. like They know each other, and I can't remember if that's brought up or how that is even relevant.
Speaker: um We basically get nowhere about the statuette. He basically just says, yeah, i wanted the statuette. I wanted to, I wanted to buy it, but I didn't get to buy it. Okay, great. Yeah. um Thanks. He leaves and on his way out, um he agrees to another drink with Elena, ah quote unquote, so he can get some more info. But he also still kind of like implies that it's like, well, I don't know, man. Maybe if I have a few drinks, I'll be able to look past the racism, get my dick wet. don't know. Maybe I can i can make my pee pee hard again. hmm.
Speaker: And as he drives away in the background, the building explodes, which is weird because that means that in this book, something happened.
Speaker: It happened. All right. And i feel like that's kind of out of character for what we've been doing with this book so far. Yeah.
Speaker: Stex goes home to sleep. ah He's woken by Interpol again. ah Interpol with big ah scare quotes around it. Interpol.
Speaker: Interpol. ah One of whom tells him kind of out of the blue, he says he tells him that PTSD ah that he's, oh, you got some PTSD, huh? Yeah, it'll pass. It'll pass.
Speaker: I don't think that's how that works. Like, Yes, with medication therapy and all that. Yeah, it'll it'll you know yeah you'll get better. But Jesus Christ, christ i don't think that's how it works. It's not a hangover, man. you know You just need a plate of eggs. You'll be fine. it'll You'll be fine.
Speaker: It'll get over. ah Just got to shit it out. ah yeah Shit of PTSD? I wish that would be kind of amazing. That would almost be that would almost make it worth it.
Speaker: ah like You know, I had a real bad case of PTSD. Clogged the toilet. Needed the needed the shit knife. Needed the poop knife to really cut out that shit. Needed the poop knife for the PTSD. We got it out.
Speaker: We got it out. And and i'm I'm all better now. so um they ah They ask him some questions. And once again, we learn nothing.
Speaker: Nothing at all. And this is what Kevin was talking about earlier when he was saying, like, it feels like this is going to be solved by other people because these scenes with him in Interpol, it just feels like he is informing the actual heroes that who are going like they're going off and the, and like the first camera team is like going with them, you know, and like were they're going to get like this full, you know, exciting movie.
Speaker: ah but yeah So I don't know what the hell the point of that was, but okay. Yeah. ah The colonel's girlfriend calls ah Milan and she shows him a new classified ad.
Speaker: ah And ah again, I'm not going to get into all the details of this puzzle shit, but yeah he he goes down this classified ad rabbit hole that gets him to the library ah because he quote unquote didn't pay his internet bill this month. ah Sick. Sick.
Speaker: ah He falls asleep at the library and dreams that Elena gives him the answer to one of the riddles. um And it suggests that the colonel was meeting with ah genetic research systems.
Speaker: Oh, yeah. Chapter 26, we go down another really boring rabbit hole. This is in a boring book, the most boring part of the book. Like we're literally just learning about like some light history on some corporations. Right. Yeah.
Speaker: Pages later, we find out that Genetic Research Systems is a subsidiary of Lowell Percival Enterprises, ah which, yeah, I wrote here, which is anticlimactic after five pages of describing the reference desk at a library. Yeah.
Speaker: These people are involved somehow. ah So he heads over to their headquarters, which is locked and he ah and and basically abandoned. um He uses – all right, all right, okay, all right. This is important.
Speaker: This is actually – we get an actual funny joke here. And i i want to I want to be completely fair and point that out ah here.
Speaker: Basically, once again, we get a moment where he like he's like, I had to think of a way of breaking into this place. And cigarettes. Basically, he describes cigarettes the way Popeye would describe his can of spinach. Yeah. like And you can even imagine him like lighting the cigarette and likes it helps him think. He's like, the nicotine helps me And he'd hear,
Speaker: like smoking this thing down to the filter. The nicotine. is It gets fills his lungs. Right, right. And he gets this like light bulb and he goes, I got it. And he reaches down, picks up a rock and throws it at the window. Yeah.
Speaker: and it's And it's reinforced glass. It just bounces off the window. and He goes, shit. Okay. ah Plan two. I'm going to give them full credit. That was a funny fucking joke. I actually laughed at that joke.
Speaker: um So he he he breaks into the roof, basically. ah The place is entirely abandoned. ah We go through some more puzzle bullshit, and he finds a hidden hard drive ah that he hopes will have ah the information it needs to crack open this case.
Speaker: ah So he takes it back to his apartment where he is attacked by an anonymous so-and-so. End of chapter. End of part two.
Speaker: Part two is over. Yay. Kevin. Yeah. are you feeling about Tex Avery? Bad. no
Speaker: ah Yeah. Yeah. This is a hard one. This is this is a hard one. This is bad.
Speaker: This episode was already so delayed. yeah And I still finished the reading a few hours ago. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah. this is ah This is a rough book. um And it's like... It's it's ah very intricate in its badness because it's like a pile of shit being supported by so like matchsticks somehow.
Speaker: And there's like... ah a flame a candle nearby threatening to to spark the matchsticks ah but it never does because that would be something happening yeah so you just have to deal with it the smell from the pile of shit and the mixing with the smell of the candle that you got from one of those candle stores yeah and not one of the good ones Not one of the good ones. The name of the candle is something like Sierra memories. Yeah.
Speaker: And it smells of blue. rains so you're just sitting there and yet you just have to deal with it. And that's this book is you just have to deal with the fact that the character is written to be immensely unlikable, not a strike on its own, but in the context of everything else where the book constantly invites comparisons to better material and And also, he's not a very not very good at his job.
Speaker: And also, we' just reading constantly the minutia everyday life with Tex Murphy. And goddamn, do I not want to be in his everyday life?
Speaker: Right. is like it's it's It's written like, it's is this book written by Dare? Yeah. Is it written by people who are trying to get you to not smoke and drink? um it's It's written by like, you know, the people in in the musical Chicago. It's like when Roxy Hart says ah in that song, well, when the lawyer, ah Billy Flynn says, stay away from jazz and liquor. Yeah. yeah
Speaker: That's our author. yeah yeah Stay away from jazz and liquor. like ah It's true. it's and the boys who play for fun.
Speaker: Yeah. Well, that's that would be I would suggest that that's text, but he's not having any fun. ah And I would and it's not even like his life is so depressing ah that it's hard to read like a Bukowski novel or something like that. It's like because that would require some level of pathos. Yeah. Yeah. bukaki novel Exactly. I feel like Bukowski would have been very interested in that.
Speaker: i think he would have I think he would have been ah intrigued. Intrigued. ah To say the very least, he would have written 14 books of poetry about it, which is low for him.
Speaker: Maybe an essay. Maybe an essay or two. Yeah. No, I agree. it's This is true... this is a true the food here sucks and the portions are so small kind of situation. it's like whats what's important is not that Tex is bad at his job.
Speaker: ah What's important is that he's unlikable and our author is not a good writer. Yeah. So that's fun. so So anyway, ah yeah that that's done, Kevin, I have ah one ah final question to ask you. Thank God.
Speaker: yes What are you playing? in oh what am I playing over here? I got to have video games and I'm a copy. Scroll button.
Speaker: I got my scroll button and my you or not cheat is grounded. um Your email. Email. ah um So, okay. I pretty much, am I feel like I talked about Resident Evil Requiem last time. Did I talk about? Yeah. Okay. I talked about, I i beat it. it i beat the whole, the did dan the dang game and I've been going back to it off and on ah just to, just to do an extra playthrough and and all that fun stuff. And I know, like I know there's a story expansion,
Speaker: DLC on the roadmap for it and also another game mode. I'm assuming the ah the extra game mode is going to be a mercenaries as you do.
Speaker: um And if I was to make my bets, it's going to be Leon and... ah Leon, one of the villains, maybe two of the villains, and Hunk.
Speaker: I'm just guessing, is if if the the game is any indication. But anyway, yeah, Resident Evil Requiem, still love it. It's a good game. I'm also, I played and beat this game called Horipolent.
Speaker: I saw that you were playing that. That looks interesting. How did you like that? So I wrote a review of it. um So i'll just I'll just read what I wrote down.
Speaker: Haripalind is tough game for me to review. There's something compulsive about clickers that I've decided is not my bag. That being said, this game has several other things going for it, namely the aesthetic setting and non-idle clicker puzzles that take place in various rooms of the adventure.
Speaker: In fact, I would go so far as to say is the game, try the game out based simply on that. ah My own critiques of the game and perhaps of the clicker idler genre, ah though, rest on the combat segments where the only way through is to outpace the damage done by enemies by such a wide margin that in later parts of the run, you barely have time to appreciate the artwork of some of the horrific monsters.
Speaker: There's another universe where this game was more of a straightforward dungeon crawler. But I digress. If you're into clickers and idle games, this is for you. And perhaps even if you aren't and just want some fantasy horror in your life.
Speaker: um So aesthetically, really cool. um the i i This is like... I've never really played a a clicker before.
Speaker: um Not like one of the ones where you know you're building things up and all that stuff. um So this was an introduction to it. And there is something compulsive to the way the game kind of treats the gameplay.
Speaker: And i was like, yeah, I don't think i I like this because I kind of get there's two things. I was two of two minds. as was kind of bored of the ah compulsive elements of it. But then I was still intrigued by the mythos and the puzzles because there's actual puzzles in the game that you have to solve.
Speaker: um to act to win the game, so to speak. um And I beat it. i I got through it and I i beat the game. um And it's actually, it's it's a bummer. Everything's a bummer about the game.
Speaker: um You're basically a knight who wakes up in a dungeon You don't know who you are or have any memories of what happened before. And you find a god in the dungeon who's like, yeah, just, you know, fight your way through the dungeon and see what happens.
Speaker: um And then that god offers you you to be reborn. So you can you can, like, use the the, basically the blood of the monsters you killed, called Hemolith,
Speaker: to be reborn anew with greater strength and all that stuff um which is a fascinating like element. And I was like, God damn it. I actually had notes for a story like this that I wanted to write as well of like an adventurer stuck in a dungeon and having to fight his way back out instead of fighting his way into the dungeon. Still probably going to write it. Don't you love when that happens? Yeah, yeah. I'm still going to write it. I was like, okay, well, I could just avoid this stuff.
Speaker: Yeah. These specific story elements. Yeah. ah Really creepy ah enemy design and and the NPCs in it are or just horrific looking.
Speaker: um and ah But it's just kind of dragged down by in the nature of what it is. i still gave it a thumbs up, but that's kind of where I landed on it. Yeah.
Speaker: Otherwise, I've been playing Esoteric Ebb, which is a game. It's a really good game, and it might be one of my games of the year. might or well it's definitely going to be one of my games of the year. I just don't know where it falls on the list. um It is a Dungeons & Dragons-inspired CRPG, but it is it is Disco Elysium.
Speaker: Look at this! Wow. Yes. ah Everybody go out and check out Esoteric Eb. If you're looking for a game that scratches the itch of ah Disco Elysium, this is Esoteric Eb is that. You play as a cleric who has been ah who wakes up in a morgue after being ambushed the night before and thrown off a bridge and into the water. um And you have to find your spellbook, um much like
Speaker: ah are ah much like our character in Disco Elysium has to find his gun and badge. Your spellbook has gone missing. You do find it relatively quickly, though. That's the main difference. um And you're there in this town. You've been sent to investigate the bombing of a tea shop while the ah there's an election going on in this city.
Speaker: Um, and so there's like, so it's, the game is so political and it gets into gender stuff and it's amazing. Um, you and you, so you're a cleric, so you learn cleric spells like, you know, healing touch, um, uh, necrotic touch, uh, and like, uh,
Speaker: The spell that I've used most often is Grease. um Okay. Oh, yeah, Grease, Is this actual D&D? It's a lot of, like... like I'm afraid Watsi might have something to say about some of these things, but, yeah, it's a lot of d and literal D&D spells. um Fantastic, okay.
Speaker: And I would 100%... hundred percent jaren Go check it out. there's There's an amazing moment, and maybe it's spoilers, but I'll just kind of plow through it. there's a You get jumped by an assassin, and if you have if you found the spell Grease and memorized it, right and you have it like if you have it prepared as a prepared spell, you can deal with the assassin easily because he jumps at you and he's like, it's like you and him and you're on a bridge.
Speaker: um So you cast grease and he slips and falls off the bridge and you can just like go, go about your day. And there's like, There's a million ways that there's like a bunch of ways that that could have happened. But if you just happen to have have picked up grease and had it prepared, you can deal with this guy easily. And then it happens again later and I still had grease prepared. so I was like, I try it again.
Speaker: And he slipped and fell down a hill.
Speaker: I love that. That's hilarious. um But yeah. And also your skills are, ah they like talk to you in your head, basically the, or your characteristics.
Speaker: um So ah the, every, like a lot of dialogue will be met with like passive roles of your characteristics. So you'll have like strength failure and then strength will say something like unhelpful in this situation. Yeah. But then wisdom might say something helpful or or charisma or what have you. um So I'm playing a guy, I'm playing a cleric who is very charismatic, not much else.
Speaker: yeah um And that has gotten me into trouble a lot because I've ah i've had saving throws I had to go into death saving throws like four or five times in the game.
Speaker: One of which was because I tried to pet a giant seagull and it didn't take kindly to that. One of which is because I tried to interrogate a giant crab and it also didn't take kindly to that.
Speaker: And a third time is I walked head first into... This one actually killed me. I walked right into gelatinous cube. Oh, yeah, that'll do it. That's that'll do it. That's a that's a sure thing every time.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. And for a level one cleric ah walking into a gelatinous cube is like you take bajillion damage and be like, well, I only got six hit points. So. So, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah. that's Fantastic. This is this looks really, really good. I'm going to try this one out. esoteric ebb. ah Not enough people are playing it. I see everybody has it on their wish list um that a lot of people who I know ah have it on their wish list. ah Everybody on that wish, i see you just added it. Yep. Everybody should go and buy Esoteric Ebb because i think more people need to play it. It's got it it's up to nearly 2,000 reviews for and it's been out it's been out for less than 10 days.
Speaker: Okay, yeah. Sounds like it's doing pretty good. Overwhelmingly positive. Yeah.
Speaker: The one of the the review that just popped up for me, many games have tried to be Planescape Torment. Many games have tried to be a successor to Disco Elysium. This game is a successor to Planescape Torment and Disco Elysium.
Speaker: Which is amazing. um Yeah, that's yeah, this looks great. This looks like a lot of fun. Yeah, yeah. So ah what else? Let me see if I've been playing anything else.
Speaker: do ah Oh, Slay the Spire 2. Oh, yeah, yeah. I bounced off of Slay the Spire 1. I don't know why. i was like, I'll give Slay the Spire 2 a shot. And I've been playing it. I'm like, oh, OK, I get it.
Speaker: It's a roguelike deck builder. And it's you can just sit there and end up playing it forever. It's it's ah because it's on ah iOS. It is my work game that I opened literally have five or 600 hours logged because it's just always playing in the background on my phone. and in In the first one.
Speaker: Yeah, the first one. this that i haven't yeah if I don't know if the second, if if honestly, if they put the second one on iOS, then I'll i'll get it. i don't think um It's not the kind of thing I want on my computer. It's like you said, I just i don't want to just sit there and this isn't the game. i want to sit there right and click through all day.
Speaker: ah But on my phone, while i and while I'm you know getting some shit done, that's perfect. Or pooping. So we'll see. for poop or what's it's It's your pooping game. yeah Yeah, exactly. Exactly. yeah that that would be That would be perfect. ah So yeah, i'm I'm looking out for it. it's a good yeah the The original is is deeply addictive. So yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker: um So that's what I've been playing. Phil, ah what are you playing? oh ah well, I beat Braid. ah That was like, it's funny because it's good.
Speaker: ah But i I remember beating it and getting the twist at the end and going, oh, this is peak early twenty ten s Indie games are kind of the darling right now. People are still yeah getting used to the idea of the auteur indie game and all that shit. Like this is this is this is that. Like I can see why ah when this came out at the time it came out that everyone was like, whoa, you know, but it's. Yeah.
Speaker: It very much shows its age. <unk> right it's it's It's a clever game. it's ah you know The puzzles are interesting and and ah and the artwork's lovely. ah The message and the story is is very hackneyed and kind of... Yeah, well, you really can really... i mean, it's Jonathan Blow.
Speaker: Right, right. ah Just to... Big old asshole. And that's the thing. I tried very hard to to ah separate ah from that in terms of it. ah But it's even even if you even if you don't i think in terms of of the person himself, ah in the end, you're like, okay. this like This game is going to go from suck to blow.
Speaker: This is very dramatic. You're very deep. ah Good job. ah So it's it was i'm glad i've I'm glad I played it. It was one of those blind spots for me um ah that I was was like, i I really need to sit down and play this game. Yeah. So I'm glad I did it. But it's like, whatever.
Speaker: I played a bunch of demos. None of them really blew my mind. So I'll just go through them pretty quick. I played i played ah the Lovish demo. i think I think that of the ones that I played was my favorite. That was cute. I could see myself sitting down and playing that. that was That was cute. I enjoyed that.
Speaker: ah Just challenging enough. Just retro enough. i I could see myself playing the full game of that. Yeah. um I played how many dudes, ah the demo for that, um which basically takes the argument of like, would you rather fight one, you know, horse ah like ah what is it like a horse sized duck or a hundred duck sized horses or something like that it's basically that thought experiment and you're building up a team of just random dudes and they all have different abilities like you've got you've got your vampire dudes and you've got your medic dudes and um it's cute and it's like oh that's hilarious and and it and it's
Speaker: it kept my interest for like 20 minutes before i was like so this is this is just this is it huh okay okay fine that's just that's that's that's great um it was just it was like a cute idea that that just kept going um So that one didn't blow me away. I played Wanderburg.
Speaker: ah This was an interesting one. It's kind of like ah almost like a ah bullet hell or a bullet heaven rather ah kind of thing where you are a castle on wheels. You're like a town on wheels. Yeah. And as you defeat other towns and towns on wheels, you like build new parts of yourself and add things like archers and catapults and and just build up ah and basically go as long as you can. Interesting yeah ah concept. It's fun. The aesthetic's good. There's fun there's a game like that last year.
Speaker: ah it was Except you you just went up and down. I'm trying to remember the name of it.
Speaker: Yeah. Oh, Carry Up. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And then I played the demo for Replaced, which um is one of your side scroller adventure, you know, ah kind of games like ah Limbo and and stuff like that. right But it's got a retro cyberpunk kind of vibe to it. It's very Blade Runner. It's it's got the replicant. kind You're basically a replicant running for your life. Right. name
Speaker: ah The demo has a lot of the same stuff you've done. If you've played inside, for example, where it's like you're ah you're hiding from the the spotlight. So you got a time you're running from this cover to this cover just right. it's right i'm I'm not trying to put it down. It's just it's just I've done it. And yes and it's it feels good to play. it's It's got a great style to it. and if that's what ah and And honestly, when it comes to that sort of thing, that's That's enough. So I think this is, it's probably going to do pretty well if you ask me. Sure. It's it's nice to see a cyber punky kind of thing for that. Yeah. um
Speaker: The other one that I've played, those are the demos I played. Now, the curveball for the week, ah is I was going through my backlog of like, all right, what games do I need to play? I need to play some. I need i really need i really want to tear down some of these games and just know that I i play them. Right. They're not just gathering dust in my Steam library. Right. Yeah.
Speaker: And couple of years back, I played the demo and then bought the game for a Model Builder. I don't remember this. I remember you talking talking about it.
Speaker: Yeah. And it's it's it's it's like a sim, you know, your you've got your grandpa dies and leaves you this kick-ass hobby studio in the basement. Right. And you get models and you put them together and you paint them and you can sell them commission and everything like that. And when I bought the game, I remember playing it for a little bit and being like, all right, this is fun.
Speaker: fun, I guess. But as a actual model builder, ah it I can't help but wonder why I'm playing this and not just building a model. Why am I not just building the models that I know I still have to to build and paint?
Speaker: Exactly. and and And I put it in for a refund. And so cut to two years later and I'm going through ah thing. It turns out I did not put it in for a refund. I i did not.
Speaker: And I went, oh, shit, I still actually own this game. ah And I just got on my laptop and I was like, it seems like the kind of thing to have on your laptop. Let's let's let's give this another whirl. I am. I am. I am.
Speaker: actually really enjoying it. You're building models. I'm building models. I'm selling them on on fake eBay. um Especially, i think I think for me, I'm enjoying it just enough. There's a level to it where if you wanted to, you could get really involved with the airbrushing and the drybrushing and the dip. They they give you everything.
Speaker: You can do everything ah that you can do ah with a regular model in real life. ah Just, you know, it's it's through a computer. um And you can do well in the game by just kind of going through the motions, like to get the highest score, you just need to paint this section, this color and put this together that way. And it's just going through the motions.
Speaker: Uh, and it doesn't have to be a work of art and you'll still get a good score. Right. Um, but i could see people like getting real you can get real close in there like the old paint where like you could get into like the bits like like like the little uh it's that level of of involved and i am not doing that in the slightest i'm just going through the motions and enjoying i put together this weird spider walk Walker ah sci-fi model. and and and And I was just like, fill it with color and put the pieces together while we watch another YouTube video about how nell Ned Fulmer fucked up his life. And and that's going to my evening. And that's...
Speaker: fine. ah And I'm, God damn it. I'm enjoying it. yeah it's It's fun. you're You're putting together a World War II submarine one minute and then painting like a fantasy, you know, ah dwarf cleric the next.
Speaker: um It's relaxing in all the right ways. ah Now that I have it on like a portable kind of thing, like a laptop, I get it now. it yeah there's there's There's something to that. I just bought Mugenics. I haven't played that at all yet, but this looks like it's going to be my cup of insane.
Speaker: Yeah. Looking forward to that. Hopefully I'll have something to talk about with that next week. But that's me. All right. um Awesome. son Yeah. So ah thank you all for listening, watching and listening and listen, watching.
Speaker: ah That's watching for those of you who like a good portmanteau. and
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Speaker: night.
