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S7 E2: Two Hours Long...
90 Plays10 months ago
Our first ep in our new format, we cover all the latest news and our reviews of popular movies, tv shows and video games, all while reviewing some awesome Aussie craft beer!
Beers Reviewed This Episode:
- Maggie Island Brewing - Holiday XPA - 4.5%
- Rusty Penny Brewing - Coffee Coconut Pale Ale - 5.8%
- Garage Project - Chipper - Hazy Pale - 5.0%
- Freshwater Brewing - Freshie Hazy - Hazy Pale - 4.4%
- BrewDog - Hop Fiction - Hazy Pale - 4.0%
- Big Shed - People's Brew - NEIPA - 6.5%
- Brouwerij Boon w\ Mikkeller - Frederiksdal Oude - Lambic - 6.5%
- Yulli's Brews - Amanda Mandarin IPA - 6.7%
- Waitoa - Firstlight - NEIPA - 6.7%
- The Grifter Brewing - Big Sur - IPA - 6.7%
- Bright Brewery - M.I.A. I.P.A. - 6.5%
- Waitoa - Afterglow - NEIPA - 6.7%
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Transcript
Remote Recording Challenges
00:00:29
Speaker
Welcome back to Pixels and Points, our second episode for 2024. And we're back to a remote recording because I live far too far away. And I'm sick as a dog. And Tom's sick as a dog. So yeah, we definitely don't. And you both gave up the opportunity to give my house shit. I'm surprised. Why?
00:00:49
Speaker
We're back to remote because Pete's house sucks. No, your house was fine last time. I didn't even get cat hair all the way up into my sinuses that time. Proud of you, proud of you. Loki was headbutting my microphone for three quarters of the episode. So we are here. I am Dan. I'm here with the very hot and feverish Thomas. Like a cowbell. What?
00:01:20
Speaker
I got the fever, fever for more cowbell. Made just as much sense the second time for me. No, I agree. Me too. It's a really, it's been a long, long, long, long, deep YouTube cut of an SNL skit. It's, okay. Christopher Walken wanting more cowbell. Nevermind. Whatever. Fuck off. I've got a fever. Fucking dicks. Gone back to my sippy cup.
New Podcast Format & Focus
00:01:46
Speaker
And Pete. Hi.
00:01:48
Speaker
B, just off a fantastic phone call you've just had. We're into changing the mood, getting it all revved up to go into some hopefully good news. I have actually still haven't read the news. Yeah, this is a little bit of sad news in there, but you know. New format. Did I say new format? New format. New year, new format. We're going to try it. See how it goes.
00:02:13
Speaker
Yeah, so we're trying to keep the episodes a little shorter, just down to like the two hour mark or so. We're doing well so far. Sure. Sure. We'll see how we go. So we're not going to do a big deal. We're not going to make a big deal out of trailers. We'll do a couple that stand out, but they're going to have to stand out, stand out. It's not going to be everything going on, but we are going to spend more time and focus and energy bringing you the latest pop culture news.
00:02:39
Speaker
My goal would be this would be the place that you go to get your pop culture news. So that requires us to actually do some research, but we'll do that. And yes, and obviously we'll talk about the shit that we watch and the reviews and stuff. And eventually I'll turn my PlayStation on again and we can talk about what I've been planning.
00:02:59
Speaker
And just so there's no delusion at home, I do not do any research. Tom and Pete do all the research and fill out the run sheet that we have, which is quite substantial at times. And I come in and put about two lines in the shit that only is specific to me. So yeah.
00:03:17
Speaker
But in that saying, Dan does review way more like watching content than I do. So, you know, it's, it's balances. And then Pete does all the editing and everything else. So there you go. Well, I wouldn't say well oiled. We're an oiled machine. It always, it always just makes me think of you a little bit as Ron Burgundy. I'm pretty sure if we changed the, the, the fucking run sheet script to say, fuck you, San Diego, you'd probably read straight off the sheet.
00:03:47
Speaker
Fuck yourself, San Diego.
Craft Beer Tasting
00:03:50
Speaker
Great film. And we're drinking beers. Despite my favor, fuck it. Alcohol is going to fix me. God, I need this beer.
00:03:59
Speaker
Well, I've cracked my beer, and I'm halfway through it, so I'll start, get it out of the way. I'm having the second of the Maggie Island Brewery beers that Emma brought home for me from Magnetic Island. I'm having their Holiday XBA. I wanted something nice and light. That's a nice label. Yeah, it was the same one for their other one as well.
00:04:21
Speaker
It's simple, clean, nothing over the top. And they think it hides how badly labeled it's lined up, but it's black on black. Yeah. Um, it is a, uh, four and a half percent, uh, XBA. It pause a little bit, a little bit like hazing there, not too much. It's not trying to be hazy at all. Um, and it's, it's got a nice little hop hit to it. It's very much.
00:04:47
Speaker
This is perfect for this kind of humid weather that we're having right now. This is really nice and easy going. Um, it is refreshing in the way that, you know, an XBA should be. Um, and it's got a decent little hop hit to it. Um, I don't know if it says it does. Yeah. Why, why TD Koharu and Ruaka all New Zealand hops. There you go. Um,
Industry Layoffs & Oscars Discussion
00:05:10
Speaker
yeah, this is it.
00:05:12
Speaker
I thought he said why titty to start with. I got excited. I was about to answer, but you changed it. Yes, whatever I said. My brain worked good now. Yes. Yeah, really, really nice. I'm going to give that a solid four. Four to start. Well done. Cool. I'll let you fill in your own stats in the run sheet, please. Yes, chef. Dan. Your own stats.
00:05:38
Speaker
going to do homework while recording these days. I have Rusty, Rusty, Rusty Penny Brewing from Penrith. I have the coffee and coconut pale ale at 5.8% alcohol. It is not a clean and simple label, but still a nice label. Like it's, it is a coffee bean sitting under a coconut tree on an island, drinking
00:06:04
Speaker
a cocktail out of a coconut. It's done with the Underground Coffee Roasters, which I'm assuming is another Penrith company, Penrith City. By the way, Rusty Penny, fucking brilliant barbecue. Like, it has got to be some of the best barbecue food in Sydney, like just absolutely fantastic if you're ever out at the brewery. It's great. Underground Roasters are a Penrith roastery.
00:06:32
Speaker
It's great. The coffee is really dominant on the nose. You get some real roast character, like real pungent roast coffee character to it. There's a little bit of green bean character there as well. The beer itself has a tinge of some crystal, tinge of some crystal malts in there that'll give it a little bit of color, but also gives it a tiny bit of caramel and sweetness on the palate.
00:07:02
Speaker
And then the coconut is absolutely done to the perfect level. It's not overpowering. The coffee is the hero of this beer. And the coconut just rolls through and it's that... Is it actual coconut, did they say? Or is it like... No, it just says fusion of coffee and coconut. It doesn't actually say what they used. It's coconut adjacent extract, Tom.
00:07:27
Speaker
It's not, no, well, Sabros, Sabros a hop that can keep coconut character. It's the one that puts the line. I was being a dick, but you ruin my joke when you fucking explain it like I said. Well, it wasn't much of a joke. So that's why I had to explain like you're serious. Faces joke. It's going to be one of those, right? We're not even 10 minutes in.
00:07:49
Speaker
I was, you always have to question coffee in pale beers. I was about to say it's unusual to hear coffee as a core note in a pale beer. And the coffee is 100% the hero in this beer. The beer, the underlying beer is really well made. It's super clean. There's no faults to it. The bitterness level is really right for everything else. Like it just
00:08:15
Speaker
the coffee, you get the coffee and then the other flavors kind of just taper through and just just hold on the palate as well. I think this is an exceptional beer. Yeah, nice. And I chose it from the first one because I really needed the caffeine. And then I decided after I did that little intro, I probably don't need caffeine as well. But we'll see how the rest of the night goes. I think this is a solid 475. Yeah, wow. Nice.
00:08:44
Speaker
Is there nice? It's, it's one of those ones that I'd love to have another one, but I know I probably wouldn't sleep for two days if I did have another one because the coffee is that strong. So it kind of shoots yourself in the foot there a little bit. You want to sell a lot, but you can't sell like nobody's going to buy a case of this. Yeah, that's a four pack movie. Do a smaller run of it. Maybe that's for sensitive people like the, like you went that are sensitive to caffeine. I mean,
00:09:14
Speaker
There are some pretty- I just had a large can of mother and I'll sleep like a baby at like 10.30. Ew, yucky. Yucky juice. Sorry, it was the sugar free version. Leave me alone. Um, so I'm drinking, uh, Garros Projects Chipper. Hazy paper. Yeah.
00:09:35
Speaker
I was very disorganized and I had to stop into a large chain to buy my craft beer and I was impressed. One that shall not be new. Yeah, exactly. It's actually really darn good. It's 5%. So I thought I'd start pretty light. I think I've got a couple of six and a half to deal with later. It's a New Zealand.
00:10:00
Speaker
Hazy pale. I mean, I get a lot of tropical juice flavors out of it. I get orange pith at the end, which is really cool because it's kind of textured nicely and it's not for me anyway. It's unusual to get orange pith as opposed to something like grapefruit where it's got a lot more tartness to it at the end there.
00:10:20
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it's it's described as it's described as the way that I got in trouble at the very beginning of our podcast recording days for describing every fucking beer, which is easy to drink. That's how they describe it on untapped. So that was slightly worrying because you've been in trouble for a lot of things over the years. So I didn't know that was very true, but I edited all out. So would have been fine. Yeah, I'm going to give that a four.
00:10:49
Speaker
Nice, nice. Well above average. So I'll start. Yeah. I'm quite happy with that. I don't know. I would suspect that it was.
Game Development Insights
00:11:00
Speaker
I did feel like a complete asshole and at the same time took pleasure, which I guess describes me to a T really. I was an asshole and took pleasure in being an asshole of ruining four cardboard, four packs for my bees. Oh, they were cardboard. You put it in the chat. No, I didn't register they were cardboard. Yeah.
00:11:19
Speaker
If you can advertise this, yeah, if you can advertise the singles price, then I'm going to buy a fucking single when it suits me, man. Hey, now, now you've just lined up three more singles for somebody else to buy, so it's fine. Yeah, exactly. And then she pulls out a, she pulls out the tetra top thing and starts clipping them together. I'm not actually, I've got to put in a backpack, so can you undo that? Oh, sorry. Sorry, I'm the asshole, so good. Anywho, should we kick off with some music? You're right, Tommy, you look like you're...
00:11:45
Speaker
considering life choices or something to argue, right? I've got my R2D2 sippy cup and I'm happy.
00:11:52
Speaker
Cool. Well, you can kick off with some news when you're, when you're ready in your own time, Tom. We interrupt this broadcast with some breaking news from the front. In my own time. I really want to talk about this. Power world. This is, I don't know if you guys have seen this like in any of like news coming up. I've been keeping a little eye on this. It's Pokemon with guns. It's the dumbest fucking concept.
00:12:15
Speaker
But I love it. I'm absolutely I think it's hilarious. It's a look it's it's it's suffered a lot of heat online for some of the character model designs for the monsters they've created in the sense that they are literally like people have gone through the characters and some of them are pure reskins of Pokemon like characters.
00:12:36
Speaker
And it's just like, oh, okay, Nintendo is known for not letting that slide. Apparently all Nintendo have done have gone. So someone tried to release, it wasn't the company behind Power World, a company tried to release a mod so you could put actual Pokemon monsters into it. Nintendo shut that down pretty damn quickly. Otherwise they've been like, yep, okay, go have your fun. It's, I don't think people are going to confuse this.
00:13:05
Speaker
with what we're selling. There's, there's minimal weaponry in, in Pokemon, like some, you know, Blastoise always had his cannons coming out the shell, but, you know, generally there's not, there's, they're not made of like, they're not little mice with Gatling guns. Like that's the concept here. It's little mice and sheep with Gatling guns. And then you run around the island and you do everything else the same, but that's about it. Um,
00:13:30
Speaker
It's been out for five days, seven million sales across Steam and Xbox. That's crazy. Yeah. Right. Because obviously people have been like, this is batshit crazy. I need to check this out. They just announced as well that they've released their little roadmap for going forward. Look, they're putting a lot of work behind it. Like it's not just the cheap ripoff that I think everyone thought it was at first. Like the studio is actually like,
00:13:54
Speaker
Yeah cool like the concepts not that different to what pokemon is but you know that was when pokemon was out on tv and you know when i was younger there was digimon was the almost the exact ripoff and i was like there's always been something the monster catching creator i guess monster hunter kind of falls in that that realm too and you know that's been massively successful.
00:14:14
Speaker
So, yeah, look, they've got a roadmap for the next few months. They're developing PvP and game bosses. The big one, which it's good to see, is Steam slash Xbox Crossplay. So if you don't have Steam, but you've got the Microsoft on your PC, you can play it through that or download it on your Xbox. And then, yeah, they're going to keep creating new
00:14:34
Speaker
locations, islands, they call them and a bunch of new creatures, too. So I'm just I'm happy to watch it, happy to watch it grow, happy to see what happens to it. But it's, yeah, look, it's it's it makes me laugh. I think it's fucking hilarious. I was like, what kind of, you know, acid fueled fever dream did they come up with?
00:14:55
Speaker
Would love to have been in that development room when whatever they were taking was the result is yeah. Here you go give Pikachu a clock and see what. So my friend Kelvin got suggested this game on steam. So he put in our chat similar games to you've played and on Steam sort of lists. Yeah.
00:15:18
Speaker
similar games, Satisfactory and Valheim were what he threw up and he said, that's dangerous. The only games that sucked me in more than these two was Space Engineers. He's got 98 hours on Satisfactory and 132 hours on Valheim. I reckon my, actually, I'll find out maybe throughout the course of this episode, my dad played the shit out of Satisfactory. I reckon he'd have at least 500 hours clocked up and I'm not exaggerating.
00:15:48
Speaker
Yeah, I think hell's only been playing it for like, maybe a year or so. So we'll get Tom lost his thoughts.
00:15:57
Speaker
He looks better like that. Yeah. So yeah, Kel, Kel was contemplating whether, whether he should delve in on the power world or not. Oh, we have lights. Jesus Christ. It came back bright. Um, nice. And Dom's completely distracted himself. These are your news, man.
00:16:24
Speaker
Whatever. No, this is serious stuff and this is sad. So this is the bit of the sad news. So gaming industry is unfortunately being hit by a massive hit of layoffs. And this sucks because, you know, on top of what we talked about a few weeks ago with development studios being hacked, then you got massive studios having to lay off a whole bunch of people. Like Unity, the guys, you know, they're behind like some massive games, there's a software company behind that. 1800 people. Like that's a lot of people losing their job. That's a lot of people.
00:16:54
Speaker
They did so most of the where I got this stuff from, they did actually have like percentages. That's like it was 12% of their like total staff. But still, that's still 1800 people that and it's just after Christmas. Like, it's not a good time. Well, I mean, it's never a good time. But you know, it's still it's, you know, feels a bit shit that it's happening to them.
00:17:15
Speaker
And then some other big companies like twitch that was five hundred people they had to lay off the thunder full group that are out of sweden and they had a hundred but that was still like thirty percent of their employees and discord a hundred and seventy and then riot games did five hundred and thirty. The other one was other ones lost boys interactive which is from their part of gearbox interactive.
00:17:39
Speaker
They said they lost a sizable portion of its 400 employees, but they hadn't said how many. And that sucks. It's not good. It's one of those instances where you'd hope that those guys, people find jobs. You've got to think that pool of people can't actually be that big.
00:17:59
Speaker
I know there's a reasonable amount of games that come out, but you so often hear about these games coming out that a couple of devs or one dev doing it. I mean, you look at.
00:18:10
Speaker
Um, seven days to die that we, me and my friends have chucked a whole bunch of hours into like one devil or something like that doing that. Like it's just, it can't be that big a pool. You also don't know what these people did, right? So obviously, for unity to have laid off 1800 employees, they've got to have, you know, five, 6,000 staff, I would presume at least.
00:18:33
Speaker
And that's a fuckload of people in HR and accounting. They did say it was across a vast spectrum of departments in those gaming companies. Yeah, I guess my brain just goes to the artist sitting in front of a computer. Yeah, totally.
00:18:50
Speaker
Totally. Making an animation for a game. That's where my brain goes. I don't think of these. And this isn't a slag in any way, shape, or form. I don't think of these companies as needing accountants, as needing HR people, as needing all of this. Oh, I think if Activision's shown us one thing over the last few years, the one thing that gaming companies needs is HR departments.
00:19:16
Speaker
And look, and to be fair, Dan, I only said what I said because I jumped to the exact same conclusion when I was looking for work last Christmas, where I was hearing, you know, Microsoft had laid off 10,000 employees in Australia alone. And it was when all of the blue chip tech companies were dumping fuckloads of stuff. I think Apple was the only one that didn't out of any blue chip company. Google had shed 15,000 worldwide. The
00:19:43
Speaker
The company formerly known as Twitter had shared a bunch and I'm sitting there going, and I'm looking for fucking work. I'm never going to find a job with 10,000, you know, 50,000 people. But then I started reading the stats and it's like, there's a shitload in, you know, people in culture and PR and finance and accounting and all the rest of it. So, yeah. Some of those bullshit areas. Yeah. Some of those guys that make posters and forget to put the name on. Well, they put Goose instead of Goza.
00:20:16
Speaker
Fuck that made me laugh. Sorry, sorry. A bit of a bit of an Aussie in joke there. There's a Drink West company that did a beer, a wine and something goes up with a, and they sold it off to a hotel and the hotel's Instagram post was lime and such and such
Indiana Jones Game Details
00:20:34
Speaker
goose with an extra O in there. So yes, I apologize. Pete can probably pull that Instagram post. I will don't worry on screen. Thank you.
00:20:39
Speaker
Just a silly boost, yeah.
00:20:43
Speaker
I'm pretty sure you actually posted it to our chat. So I've got a copy of it. I did. Yes. Yeah. But yes, no, it's, uh, it's one of those things that maybe, you know, next time you, you're going to look for a game, go buy it straight from, if you can, like through some, like buy a physical copy rather than get it through a subscription service. Isn't that an interesting topic to bring up later on? Yeah. But potentially yes.
00:21:14
Speaker
Yes, Chef. Oscar nominations. The Oscars are out. I don't really give a flying fuck, but people do care about these things. They watch movies. I watch a movie occasionally. It's fun. You should try it sometime. The biggest one I think that everyone's gone on about has been the snubs. Greta Goig and Margot Robbie were not given any nominations for their roles in Barbie, which I can't comment on because I haven't seen the film. But I've spoken to a lot of people who have seen it, and they're like,
00:21:33
Speaker
I may have forgotten something that we have spoken about.
00:21:44
Speaker
Look, it's a pretty in terms of the directors, one of the guys I spoke to today, he was saying it's pretty stacked in terms of directors, so it sucks. But, you know, this is unfortunately what the Oscars is. It's not, you know, it's a bunch of old dudes deciding what people, what movies they think are the best.
00:22:02
Speaker
It's a PR campaign thing though. Oh, that too. So how much money you spend on a campaign to win the war? Gaps hottest 100. The other one was, I still haven't seen Saltburn, but I've heard so many people talk about it. Barry Kean. Kean? Kean. Yep. Manilow. Barry Manilow. Barry Manilow's role in, no. Barry Kean's role in Saltburn apparently is amazing. Not one to watch. Not amazing enough though, apparently.
00:22:30
Speaker
Well, yeah, is that I liked it. I did like that Paul Giamatti did get a nod for his role in Holdovers, which the film I particularly enjoyed. So that was good to see. The cool ones, though, the ones that I did like, John Williams is now the oldest person to receive an Oscars nomination for his soundtrack for Indiana Jones. So 91, he's the oldest person. He is also I thought this was a cool stat. He is five nominations away from the most nominations
00:23:00
Speaker
for an individual at the Oscars. The person who has he's on 54, the person on 59 is Walt Disney himself. Wow. Yeah, that's that's pretty big fee for one composer. The other good news about John Williams is I posted this chat very early on in the year, but he has said that he's no plans of actually retiring. He's done it. He's done a Brady and come back. He's on that one. So
00:23:25
Speaker
John Farnham. Yeah, John Williams farewell to a 2029 sign me up. The other cool one is Godzilla minus one was nominated for best visual effects. And that's the first time a Godzilla film has ever been nominated. So yeah, can't wait to watch that film. I miss you. But I'm excited for it. And that's I think, Pete, you're up. I need I need sippy cup.
00:23:51
Speaker
You're a batter a batter a batter a batter my so my dad just came back and said he has just over two thousand hours in satisfactory. Two thousand hours. He's been playing it since it was first released. I was gonna say he probably doesn't play anything else but two hours. He plays Guild Wars 2 with my mum all day.
00:24:11
Speaker
Oh, my mom, my mom never, never really touched computers when we were kids growing up playing every game under the sun. Yeah. And then for some reason, when dad retired, they just started playing video games and
00:24:24
Speaker
That's what they do. I really hope your mum kicks his ass in Guild Wars 2. God, that is 83 days worth of playing Satisfactory. Yeah, it's probably over the space of like five or six years. It's not a new game. I'm guessing to your dad then the game is Satisfactory. But still.
00:24:43
Speaker
Oh God. And it is a resource gathering and manufacturing game. So some of those hours, I don't know, but some of those hours might be where he's left his laptop on in the background while he's watching TV. He's doing the rubber banding. He's doing the rubber band. Got it.
Superman Legacy Casting
00:25:01
Speaker
It's a valid tactic, bro. Don't go be like that.
00:25:07
Speaker
Not a valid vasectomy pathway though CD Projekt Red, I think we have the rubber banding method, no? CD Projekt Red. We have talked about the Witcher 4.
00:25:20
Speaker
Yeah, right. Dance doing home jobs. It's Dr. Nick. So we have talked about Witcher 4 production. I didn't actually realize that Polaris is the codename for a whole new trilogy of games. It's not the codename for the first of the new trilogy, it's the whole trilogy.
00:25:37
Speaker
So clearly that's covering it. They've stated that they'll have 400 devs, at least 400 developers slated to be hired by mid-2024, now that they've entered primary production phase. They did a study, interestingly, on AI and how it might help them improve their development path and basically came back after this focus group and said they
00:26:01
Speaker
We'll look to leverage AI tools to help them improve certain processes throughout the development cycle, but it's never going to replace people for them, which I think for that particular studio is fucking phenomenally good news for us because they are a studio who are well known for making narrative driven content the king of the game. Yes, it is the selling point. Meanwhile, they plan to have 80 staff at least working on the sequel to Cyberpunk by the end of the year. I don't think we've talked about a sequel to Cyberpunk.
00:26:30
Speaker
Unreal 5. They're moving everything. They're moving everything to Unreal 5. They're ditching Red Engine, and they're doing the Witcher sequels and Cyberpunk 2 in Unreal 5, which I think is a fantastic move. I can totally agree. Totally agree. They don't have to buggerize around on the back end with the, like, optimizing. Let's focus on game content. That's again, you do, we know,
00:26:57
Speaker
And they obviously know they do this well. So let's use an engine that is there, let somebody else develop the engine, and let's just fucking roll with it. And I think that's a fucking fantastic view to have. Yeah, agreed. Totally agree.
00:27:12
Speaker
Yeah, dad just came out because I went back to him in 2000, and he does rubber band. Not all playing would leave the game running, likes to build factories and set up train networks. He's running in short hand because he knows we're recording. I've seen some of his train networks. They're pretty fucking impressive. Oh, I've seen some satisfactory stuff and it's incredible that somebody has built that in the game. Yeah. Like just the
00:27:34
Speaker
the mind that it takes to use the bits and pieces that you're given to do that in the game. It's fucking not. Well, it's basically a, it's like Minecraft. That's the attraction to Minecraft, which is a game I've actually never played. But it's funny because I was describing the building and mining and manufacturing engine in Starfield and database was basically laughing at me. It's like, yeah, no fucking try satisfactory, man. That's how that shit works. Yeah. Take your trainer's wheels off and come and play satisfactory on easy mode.
00:28:04
Speaker
Yeah, Dan's game of 2023, the day before, developers, fantastic, sorry, fantastic, are now claiming that it wasn't their fault that the game fell apart. They blame content creators and influencers instead for giving negative reviews and criticism after the game was released.
00:28:23
Speaker
That is just fantastic. Like, that is just- Pun intended? That wasn't, but let's roll with it. That is just the biggest deflection and- Cop out, man. And it's a cop out, but it's- I think it goes further than a cop out. It just shows that-
00:28:44
Speaker
You are so egotistical that you can't just go, you know what? We fucked up. We fucked up. Yeah, I would say narcissistic. It's just the impossibility to hear information that shows that you're the problem.
00:29:04
Speaker
They just, it's just, they, they flat out said, I mean, this was supposed to be a survival MMO game. And when it finally released or launched on December, it was the first week of December. I have it in my memory that it was the second of December. It might not have been, um, that it didn't actually have any of, it wasn't a survival MMO at all. It was more like a, what do they call it? Um, it was an extraction shooter.
00:29:27
Speaker
Yes, an extraction shooter, which is a totally different type of game. And so they didn't deliver on the fucking promise, notwithstanding all of the blatant plagiarism. And so for them to turn around and blame fucking content creators, like of all of the reasons to hide behind too, a bunch of fucking 12 year olds doing ridiculous TikTok dance in public is not the place to lay blame for a development studio
Indie Game Trailer Impressions
00:29:50
Speaker
fucking up a video game.
00:29:52
Speaker
This is going to be- 7th of December it was. 46 days it was alive. I'm going to say that this is going to be one of those, and I've called it before, this is going to be the gift that keeps giving. This is going to come up continuously for years. I don't remember which one's the good, the yin or the yang, but this is going to be the yin or the yang to the Leroy Jenkins joke.
00:30:19
Speaker
Like, it's going to be the thought, is it a day before? Is it a Leroy Jenkins? Like, that is, that is, that is, it's par. Like, it's going to be... Well, yeah, when you really fuck something up, you're like, ah, fuck, I've day before it. Yeah. Absolutely. Which will roughly translate to blame the fucking 12 year old in the next room. Yeah.
00:30:41
Speaker
Yeah, I'm right. Yeah, he just said he says as long as those Pete, you're going to have to you're going to have to set your marker here because as long as those don't get any more money from this shit, like, no, they had to refund all sales. They did good because they don't deserve because they've stuck in sense. Even if you bought the even if you bought the game and you still had a copy of it, you could go in. But now 46 days is when they shut down the service. So you actually can't get online to play it anymore.
00:31:08
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. I think if you had a copy still and you tried to build it up, it just wouldn't. Was one of the other games you mentioned on Kelvin's List Space Engineers? Valheim. Oh yeah, so Kel loved Space Engineers. He's built some really great stuff. I haven't seen it, but he's told me about how it all works. Yeah, so he's got 200 plus hours in that, and then Valheim has played a shitload of as well. Yeah. That's just his shtick, those types of games. Man, I want to be retired like your dad.
00:31:38
Speaker
Yeah. Down in the, down the deep south of New South Wales where it's never this fucking hot. I want to be, I want to be a mix of your dad and my dad. Your dad plays video games all day. My dad drinks like a bottle of gin a day and he's still kicking it like 60. Yeah. Healthy as an ox. Yeah. 70 something. He's like, he's got type two diabetes. So I wouldn't say healthy as an ox, but he wears a compression sock on his left leg every day, just so he doesn't lose it. But I mean. But his hail is your point. He's happy.
00:32:08
Speaker
Yeah, you guys remember the omni-directional treadmill, the VR treadmill in Ready Player One? So a dude at Disney has invented the real world version of it and it is legit. So he's demonstrated the technology was actually being inducted into some innovation
00:32:29
Speaker
award like Hall of Fame. Yeah, but the only downside of this, Pete, is now it's going to see the demise of watching old people try VR and running headfirst into walls. Pulling every cable out with them. Or punching TV off the wall.
00:32:45
Speaker
Yeah, or punching the TV. Yeah, that's the other one that you frequently see. But, you know, so these guys are like, they didn't show any running, but the claims that it can handle running. But they're walking in the spot. And these these are flat rollers. So it doesn't look like a series of fucking wheels. They're flat rollers somehow. And as he's walking, these rollers are pushing him back to the center of this this panel. It's like a real life Star Trek fucking holodeck.
00:33:14
Speaker
You stick HR, HR, VR goggles on and. HR goggles on? Yeah. Oh, Pete, these HR Geiger world. I do not want to see that world of big, using alien vaginas. We just put a tube in it, man. There's a tube in the ass and the tube in the vag. And now we've got a HR Geiger image. Yeah.
00:33:35
Speaker
Tell me I'm wrong. Tell me I'm wrong. It's a Geiger image. It definitely is. We can't call you on that one. Superman Legacy. We talked about it. We were late to the park. Speaking of aliens.
00:33:49
Speaker
Well, I was late to the party on Superman Legacy because I was announcing that they had cast Superman, but they'd actually cast him like fucking nine months ago. I obviously was very sick when you guys recorded that tankness episode. And I was sitting there in my car to or from work. I don't know which one it was, but I'm like that that fucking named him. Like he's there. There's there's an actor already, guys. Like I can't text you guys and it's not live. So it doesn't matter if I text you.
00:34:19
Speaker
Yeah. Cornswear. Because I used to do that to you guys. I'd be like, I'm listening to the park. Oh, you got this wrong. Oh, you also got this wrong. You're a bunch of fucking noobs. Um, they've, they've actually cast almost everyone. Uh, and I got to say I'm actually really, I'm digging the lineup. I think, uh, so Nicholas Holt as Lex Luther, I didn't recognize the name, but when I looked him up, he's fucking perfect for Lex. This Holt's great.
00:34:43
Speaker
He's in Renfield, which I still need to watch. He was based in X-Men. You know what I'm like with names, right? Oh, you're fucking terrible. Yeah. Nathan Fillion is green as fucking Guy Gardner. Is that officially done, though? I thought that was a big old rumor. Is that officially being cast? Yes. So that's that's been Nathan Fillion as Guy Gardner has been something that people have been calling before for probably decade, 10 years. Yeah.
00:35:10
Speaker
It's been one of those, one of those things, but I still stand by my call last episode. It needs to be the Reacher dude. But anyway. Yeah. Yeah. Alan Richton. Alan Richton. Yeah. Everyone seemed to be Batman now. No, we talked about that last episode and yeah, no. Um,
00:35:27
Speaker
So the person that they haven't cast or the character they haven't cast is Supergirl. They have now started screen tests and they've narrowed it down to two. Meg Donnelly, who has voiced Supergirl in a few things, but Justice League Crisis on Infinite Earths part one is a recent animated movie that she voiced her for. And she's in the Disney's zombies movies. It looks aimed at like teens, so I've certainly not seen it. Are you sure?
00:35:54
Speaker
Yeah, very. She looks very classic. Like she looks like the classic super girl. And then the second person they're choosing between is her and Millie Alcock or Alcock, who played the young Rainera Targaryen in House of the Dragon recently. She's a very striking looking actress. She's Australian too. She is Australian. So it's going to be interesting to see which direction they kind of fall here because Millie
00:36:24
Speaker
It just looks distinctive. There's something about it that's just unusual. Yeah. So, yeah, I gotta be. But I like the rest of the cast. You know what? She looks very much like, so I have a Batman tattoo on my leg and Mike Turner is the artist.
00:36:48
Speaker
Uh, unfortunately he passed away because I was very much hoping that he would appear at a Aussie comic con or something. So you can show him the, showing him his artwork on my leg. Um, but the, the Aussie Millie. Orcock. Orcock. Um, looks very much like, um,
00:37:14
Speaker
Mike Turner's version of Supergirl. Okay. Yeah, right. I think she'd work. I really do. But she would just be an un- she would not be the classical Supergirl, like blonde, blue-eyed. Well, she is blonde. All American. Well, is she naturally blonde? Because I've- look, in House of the Dragon, she's fucking white-haired, obviously. And she's brunette in some other shit that I've seen.
00:37:35
Speaker
I think if you punch Mike Turner, Supergirl into Google, you'll get. I just stopped it. If you punch Mike, my head went somewhere else. I don't know. There's something about the way her chin is like. She's a very distinctive. Yeah. Very distinctive jawline.
00:37:59
Speaker
I just think that she really, really does the Mike Turner, like obviously Mike Turner's Supergirl anatomy is, she's rail thin, is not, is not realistic. But I think the facial features, the blonde tear, the blue eyes, I think, I think she really nails that Mike Turner Supergirl look. This is pre new 52. I'm presuming these are well before. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I mean, Mike, Superman versus Batman.
00:38:29
Speaker
Oh, right. Batman versus Superman, the comic run, colon Supergirl was a great fantastic comic. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Unrealistic early 2000s artwork, but a fucking fantastic run of comic books. You can get in a trade paperback or graphic novel and Darkseid corrupts Supergirl Kara at the very start of the graphic novel.
00:38:55
Speaker
Cara ends up on earth and they don't have an animated movie i was gonna say i don't know the story line i just not sure which media i consumed it yet so they really cut it down for the movie with dinner and i don't know yeah maybe that's my favorite favorite cartoon medium.
00:39:11
Speaker
And I mean, it's it's got one of the most badass Batman moments in it where like Batman confronts Darkseid on Acropolis because they go to rescue Kara and Batman confronts Darkseid and goes look you give her back or I have planted bombs and
00:39:29
Speaker
across the entire planet that if you do not do this, I will detonate the entire thing and kill us all. And Darkside just walks up to him and goes, you know what? If it had been the Kryptonian, I wouldn't have believed it, but you know what? Fuck you. Okay, I believe you. Here she is.
00:39:49
Speaker
Yep, I've definitely read that panel. It's the most badass Batman moment ever put to fucking ever put to media. Abrams has confirmed that they're still in development of the parallel Elseworld Superman, where they cast a black Superman.
00:40:08
Speaker
Yeah so that's that's still happening as well which i think would be really interesting. The author coats he wrote a bunch of really good comics yep. Yeah i saw an article i didn't click on it i don't know why i didn't click on it where they were like they were asking gun if it was still able to develop it.
00:40:28
Speaker
Yeah, so he's confirmed that that's still in development. They have also said in this one that Superman Legacy, they're going in an interesting new different direction for the suit. 23 is the black Superman. Okay.
00:40:42
Speaker
I've never seen the black Superman in comic. I'm really interested to see if they've muted the outfit any, or if they've made it brighter or changed the color palette any. Because obviously you get different contrasts with the change in color of skin. I'd just be interested to see what they did with the design. The design's quite different. There's been a few iterations of it, and I've seen quite a few, but the image I saw today on the article looked really like the injustice Superman suit.
00:41:12
Speaker
With that, the high collar, the high collar. Yeah, I was going to say a popped, yeah. Well, that's a new 52 Superman was the popped collar. Big S, so he's got the, God, what was the... That's the symbol for hope, Dan. It's not an S. The kingdom comes like a river. It's like a river. Kingdom come, kingdom come Superman. So it's the S is very much like the kingdom come Superman. And yeah.
00:41:42
Speaker
Cool. Cool. This is shaping up to be another three hour episode. I was just thinking as you two, as you two are fucking ranting about Superman suits in your 30 minute, two hour episode, everyone, two hour episode. Just time. Wait, wait. Where do you get to the end with your, are you winning son? And here's the 54 games I played this week. Um, I wish, I wish.
00:42:04
Speaker
Someone's driving a car somewhere. Oh, this is fucking this is great. This is great. It's just a fun. I don't know that it is. It's not real. It is real. So, Sony drove a car on stage. Sony and Honda have paired up. They're working on a new mobility software called Ophela. Hey, Ophela. Yeah, I'm with Dan on this one.
00:42:30
Speaker
Anyway, they drove a car on stage using a dual sense controller. And I was like, that's just, that's fun. That's just developers going, you know what? No, that's going to get someone killed. Look, I'm telling you now. They said it was a gag. Okay.
00:42:47
Speaker
Also, I drive better in a dual sense than I do with a steering wheel when I play games. Obviously, I'm- But the damage model is a lot better in real life Tom. Hey man, this is asking for trouble when people start playing Doom on their fucking like their nav man in the center console.
00:43:05
Speaker
And they're driving the car with the fucking controller as well. For two seconds, forget you're not playing Doom. Well, no, because Sony's already thought about this because you can't you can't pay your Sony headphones to two things at once. You've got to pay it once. You can only pay it to the car or to the center console. You could be listening to the Doom soundtrack while driving though. Don't do that either. Do not do that.
00:43:30
Speaker
No from experience. I'll never forget getting into my car after and after playing hours and hours of Project Gotham Racing when I was much, much younger. And I'm telling you now, if I wasn't in a shitbox lantern with an engine capacity less than my bottles of milk, I would have killed myself. So, yeah, that's just all kinds of bad.
00:43:50
Speaker
You did the next piece of news. Oh, wait a minute. Wait a minute. That is, that is, that is cool. I do very much like that. He drove a car with his, with the fucking dual sense. It was just a bit of fun, but it was also, it was their statement on creative uses of technology. And like the dude went into mobility purposes. This is not, this is not going to be a thing. He was like, very much disclaimer. Yeah. This is, this is, yeah. Oh, it's a hundred percent going to be a thing. Well, if they're going to drive, if they're going to driverless like, yeah.
00:44:20
Speaker
But why would you not allow paraplegic to drive a car with a fucking dual sense? If that's what they're used to and they can drive it that way, why not? What different control measures is there for someone using one method over another one? Considering you can buy motorbikes right now that are set up for one hand or other hand,
00:44:43
Speaker
And I think one leg or other leg too, so they've got ways of dealing with the brake or the gear shifted being relocated to a different control arm area. So why not? For the new generation, maybe not for us old farts, but for the new generation, it absolutely makes perfect sense to make driving a car with a fucking game controller.
00:45:04
Speaker
Absolutely perfect. In fact, they should change it to just a fucking iPhone 36 or whatever. Shoot. Drive with Candy Crush. Bon did that in, uh, he drove it off the roof. He's using his phone. Yeah. Next one. This is old news, but it's new for us.
00:45:22
Speaker
Oh, no, I just put it in there because I didn't I just didn't know how much you wanted to pad out this section, but I don't think we need to. I think we can skip that one because we don't need to talk about Rebel Moon anymore. The only one that pissed me off. Yeah, this pissed me off too. This fucking Ubisoft wants you to be comfortable with not owning your physical media.
00:45:44
Speaker
And they want you to be comfortable with digital media. They didn't say physical media. They want you to be not comfortable owning your media. They were reminding people of what we were talking about several episodes ago, which is that you have never owned your movies, your TV shows or your video games. You've only ever owned a temporary license that can revoke at any time they want. So you're now they're now talking about you need to be comfortable having a subscription. And if we want to remove that game you're playing from
00:46:10
Speaker
like a Netflix movie. Suck my fat cock. We're going to take this off for the next 12 months. You can't play it for the next 12 months. Too fucking bad. It's like, no, I'm sorry, Pete. That's all right. My bad. I knew it was coming to be honest. No, if I buy that media.
00:46:29
Speaker
That is mine. And I still want and we've spoken about this many a times, especially when it came around Disney not doing physical copies and they're only releasing physical copies of The Mandalorian in the US, which I plan to hunt down while I'm in there in Boston.
00:46:48
Speaker
That it's just bullshit is absolute bullshit. You cannot take something that somebody's paid for away. If they've if they're. This has been on the cards, Dan, since they were forcing you to have an online subscription to PlayStation Network or Xbox Live for a single player game. And I've argued this from day dark. Yeah. Like it's crap. Oh, yeah. I saw that. Not DRS. That's from.
00:47:17
Speaker
Yeah, I remember that whole thing. It's bullshit. It's absolute bullshit. And like, we need to go as a community against this. Indie games, I guess. Indie games that don't have the ability to
00:47:34
Speaker
produce physical media and the only way you can pay and support these devs is through buying them through digital media. Fucking do it. You need to support these people being creative and buying and they're more, these indie devs are more creative than the Ubisoft people. And this is not ragging shit on people that are creating stuff at Ubisoft. This is ragging shit on the management decisions of Ubisoft, not the people creating the content.
00:48:02
Speaker
They cannot do this. And we need to, as a community, stand up and go, no, we will not buy your shit. No, we will not subscribe to your shit because we want to own this stuff and we want to play it on our terms, not your terms. And you can go get fucked. I only want to pay you once. That's the resounding message, right? We've had to pay $110, $120 for premium AAA titles at release for a while. I know it's come down
00:48:29
Speaker
read more over the last couple of years, but it got pretty fucking high at one stage. I'm only going to pay once. If you want more of my money, then invest more time in and sell me a DLC, but fucking sell it to me with, you know, Valkyrie being free, for example, like you've got to pitch it to me. You have to earn my fucking money. That was the point. You mean Valhalla, but Valhalla, sorry. Yeah. You fight the Valkyries. There's Valkyries in Valhalla, but yeah.
00:48:57
Speaker
But, you know, you have to earn my fucking dollar. Yeah. You earned 120 of them when I bought your goddamn game. Like, I'm not going to pay you a monthly subscription after that point on top. And if you want a monthly subscription, be innovative. Innovative. And constantly be creating new content for it. If you want to do something that is worth subscribing to, that's going to be updated and a proper
00:49:27
Speaker
And I say this in a very shit term, live service game that is going to be good and have something that is worth coming to, then yes, people will subscribe and you will win. But if you want to just fucking drip feed this same fucking dirty fucking swamp water that you want to just like throw a little bit of clean water in every now and then and then just feed it to us again. No, fuck you.
00:49:54
Speaker
Well, I think that I think the big thing comes down to what you were just talking about is stop moving everything to a live service model. It's not going to stop, though. We're not the target audience anyway. I know. That's the problem with the world. But that's that's that's that's a real that's, I think, a real thing. Like it speaks to people that didn't. I didn't put in the news, but I don't know if you guys saw that the Suicide Squad from Rocksteady has announced its first DLC is a Joker.
00:50:19
Speaker
it made me want the game even less. The first playable character that they released announced. The first playable character that they released announced. The first playable character that they released announced. The first playable character that they released announced. The first playable character that they released announced. The first playable character that they released announced. The first playable character that they released announced. The first playable character that they released announced. The first playable character that they released announced. The first playable character that they released announced. The first playable character that they released announced. The first playable character that they released announced.
00:50:43
Speaker
Golf nights. Yes. And watching the way that they were talking about and how like trying to sound excited where they were about it. And I was like, it looks a fucking horrible, and be nauseating the way that they're constantly flipping around that I was like, Oh, I don't really get motion sickness. But I think I might if I played that game for more than half an hour. Like, anyway, I think we should solve this major fucking dumpster fire with another beer. Excellent. I'm gonna pay. We got we got 10 minutes left before break.
00:51:14
Speaker
What are you drinking? No, no, no, Dan doesn't. Thimbalini doesn't. What are you drinking, Tom? I'm having a beer from the Northern Beaches, Freshwater's Freshy Hazy.
00:51:24
Speaker
Freshy hazy. Freshy hazy. It is a 4.4% hazy pale ale. Again, I'm just kind of keeping it light tonight because I'm not that well mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually. Yeah, look, it's tropical citrus. It pours a nice cloudy hazy. It's not too thick. It's still nice and light. It's enjoyable.
00:51:51
Speaker
I don't, this is definitely not a way of saying it in a bad way. And I don't think they're ripping it off, but it really is something that I would give. This is the kind of hazy pale I'd give to the person who comes up and says, I only drink stone and wood. Like fucking have this then. Like it's not a clone in any way. It's not a, not a clone. It is their own beer. It is very much different to a stone and wood, but it is, it is one of those, like, this is the kind of hazy pale that you would give to someone who's like, I'm not sure. I've only really had this. And you go, cool. This is, this is a great little.
00:52:21
Speaker
gateway drug gateway drug. We love that term in the beer community. Yeah. Um, yeah, it's, it's, it's got, yeah, really nice, uh, tropical citrus night. Um, it's lingers a little bit. It's not too lingering around, around the palette. Um, otherwise that it's not that much more remarkable, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. This is a beer that you can probably have a four pack off and be very happy of. Yeah, cool.
00:52:47
Speaker
And I'm going to give that a 4.25. That is very nice.
00:52:53
Speaker
I'll give Dan a chance to actually fucking poorly alone try his so I'm drinking brew dogs hot fiction hazy pale Lovely bright pink can jumps off the off there the the shelf. Yeah Yeah, it's good. I mean to 4% hazy pale So it's it's you know pretty light on which is exactly what you want on our hot summer's day It's a lawnmower beer. I think is a really good way to put it It's not
00:53:21
Speaker
Loud, if you like. It's exactly what you want out of a lower ABV hazy pale. Description, it's, you know, fruity, juicy, action-packed, hazy pale ale starring an unforgettable ensemble cast of hops, barley, and oats. Expect steamy tropical scenes, fruity performances, all backed up with a soft malt soundtrack.
00:53:44
Speaker
And that's pretty much- That was the biggest load of fucking wank I've heard in a long time. Really? In a long time? With the shit that you fucking read? Really? Yeah, I know. I read some pretty bad beer descriptions, but fuck. That was, yep. Well done, Broodog. Look, it's- That's why I didn't read the back of this can.
00:54:04
Speaker
Yeah, I hear you. Look, this is inoffensive. It's got a bit of tropical juice in it. I'm getting pineapple notes out of it, like pineapple juice notes out of it, but it's not too loud. It's quite thin, but then I suspect that's just because it's four percent. And so exactly what you'd probably want out of something you're going to drink a six pack of in a session. And therefore I would describe it as sessionable. I'm going to give it a four. Yeah, I'm going to go with a four.
00:54:32
Speaker
Dan, did you have a big dog beard? Look like a big dog beard. Nope. Darkest beard I've ever seen. Was it in a black can at least? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That's what I saw. Very cool. I have Big Shed Brewing from South Australia, People's Brew. It's their hazy New Zealand IPA.
00:54:52
Speaker
Oh God, sorry. White's really bad. Get me up to the screen. Oh, it's very, very silver in the middle there. Yeah. Yeah. The, uh, the, uh, 6.5. Okay. Sorry. Uh, it's a very sort of Soviet era, uh, label, the people's, the people's brew. Um, so before we get to the beer, I want to voice my opinion on the label. Uh, I like the artwork. I love this, this kind of retro.
00:55:21
Speaker
this retro sort of stuff. I mean, Fallout does it all the time with this, this, this kind of style of artwork. I think it's really well done. Fuck people. If you're going to have a label that meets at the back, one meets at the back, but the artwork doesn't align. If it's meant to be, if it's meant to be a 360 fucking artwork, make it a 360 artwork, make it a line at the back and continue on.
00:55:49
Speaker
I'm nitpicking. That's a ridiculous thing to say, but it's just... But here we are at Pixels and Pints, and that's all we say in this ridiculous shit. Yeah, I know. So what was the style? Sorry, it was a hazy... It's a hazy NZIPA. Okay. That's what I'm craving. I'm craving diesel. Yeah, it's not super hazy. You guys want to gap fill for a sec while I...
00:56:13
Speaker
Sure. I was going to say I'm just, I don't know why, but I was craving a, a nice, easily New Zealand hop backed IPA. And I just couldn't find one in the mass chain that I happened to be in. I was going to put in a really obscure Thomas the Tank Engine reference there, but I'm glad I did. Fat cunt, fat controller. Not bleeping it. You can eat a dick.
00:56:35
Speaker
Yeah, that's probably a good one to leave in. I think that's, it definitely has that character, Pete. This has been sitting out for a little too long. And I mean, the hop character is great. It is really, it's got that easily funky New Zealand hop character to it. And the fact that it's been sitting out for what now 30 or 40 minutes. I had, I had it in a vehicle, a very old Australian brewery vehicle to keep it kind of cold.
00:57:06
Speaker
For 40 minutes on what is probably 28 degrees in my study here, it's an incredibly well-made beer. The base beer on it is super clean. There's no faults to it. There's no oxidization to it.
00:57:21
Speaker
The bitterness is really bang on for that New Zealand hop character to hold that funk all the way through. When I say funk, I don't mean super funk, but you've got that background blue cheese character from those New Zealand hop characters and that diesel-y, not like sniffing. And this is going to sound ridiculous to people that don't drink these beers. You haven't even said it and I already know it's going to sound ridiculous.
00:57:49
Speaker
What's that? Cause I heard sniffing. More diesel. Like that when you're talking about these diesel-y characters, it's not overpowering. It's not like smelling a petrol station. It's a very faint whiff, but a very pleasant.
00:58:05
Speaker
whiff of that diesel-y funk and it's really well blended. It's an oil more than anything, like it's got an oil note to it, yeah. And I would actually have liked to have drunk this a little bit colder because I think that character, it would be more like the lawnmower beer. It would have been more
00:58:28
Speaker
wanky term here, quaffable. It would have been really smashable. It would have been really, hey, I want to just, I want to just fucking keep drinking. I want to cough the ish.
00:58:41
Speaker
I can't quite do it because the stem of my glass is a little too big, but... That's all right. I can. Let me cough, of course. It's a really nice product. A really, really good beer outside of my bitchiness about the labelling. A really good label and a really nice New Zealand beer. A really good label for 75% of it.
00:59:06
Speaker
But yeah, I wouldn't call it a New Zealand hazy IPA. I would call it a New Zealand hazy. No, it's not super hazy. And I wouldn't necessarily ping it in that IPA category other than the alcohol content. But it's a very, very nice beer. And if you want something New Zealand, fucking grab it. Cool. So we have about five minutes left in our first hour and we need to get through some trailers. I'm going to talk really quickly.
00:59:37
Speaker
So we had Xbox January developer direct conference. They showed a bunch of new trailers. Fumbled at the start. Bunch of new trailers. Shut up. Including some... It really reminds me of gameplay of Avowed. Have you seen the Avowed gameplay? It looks exactly like Storm.
00:59:59
Speaker
It looks like a toy. I disagree. It looks like a God she version of Scott between Skyrim and Harry Potter. Yes. Yes. That's what I got. You know, you guys might never have played it, but it looks like a modern version of say Hexen might and magic. Dark Messiah. I was waiting in my magic. Dark Messiah was my memory.
01:00:22
Speaker
Fucking fantastic game i think so your kelvin got me on to it back in the day might have been so we actually know it was public hell because me and kelvin always on that fantasy games it was great it was like it's super dodgy these days but i'm not saying it's my online or a ultima guy before i play about if it was if i had the system to play i think i'm on i never use it.
01:00:47
Speaker
Since you Skyrim and Howard all I got was my magic Doc Messiah I was waiting to kick people on despite walls you can walk up to that like you were climbing like the ledge going up a cliff like up a mountain and you were coming like a guard was just innocently standing on the edge of this.
01:01:05
Speaker
treacherous pathway, you would walk up behind him and the kick mechanic in that game, look it up when you get on YouTube later on. Oh, it was 100%. It was the Spartan kick before the Spartan kick was a thing because you would just walk up behind these dudes and you would just boot them and they would go about five meters before they started to fall.
01:01:27
Speaker
And it was the most realistic and overpowered kick system in a game. But the the actual aesthetic of it absolutely screamed my magic dark massage me. And it was I love that game. So I thought it looked really good. It's it look, it's going to be interesting to see how it plays out. They've talked about game mechanics where I mean, look, every fucking RPG says, you know, the outcome of your quest will directly affect the world around you.
01:01:52
Speaker
Literally every fucking RPG developer has said that in the last 10 years, but they did talk about some interesting moral choices. They said that they've put a focus on ambiguity.
01:02:02
Speaker
in terms of morals, so everything's kind of morally ambiguous in quests. I know Witcher does a fucking brilliant job of that, so they're going to have, they got some competition. Well, Dark Messiah, my magic Dark Messiah, you were literally the bad guy. You were the Dark Messiah. Yeah. Yep. Um, and the other thing was they've, they've placed a focus on very, making it very easy to respec your character.
01:02:23
Speaker
So you're not locked into sword and board or, you know, and pistols. They've got fucking jewel wielding pistols, like flintlock pistols. So it's going to be interesting to see, you know, it might be a mishmash of genres and not work, or it might be brilliant. So we go back to the moral system of Fable where you either got demon horns or a halo.
01:02:41
Speaker
Let's go back to this. It's been a few of those games. Plain and simple. That was, yeah, there was a Korean, a South Korean, I don't know, I didn't really need to specify that it was South Korean because we don't get a lot of video games from North Korea. You guys, I get all my video games from North Korea. It was a South Korean MMORPG during the next, the North Korean, the North Korean hail the rocket man.
01:03:06
Speaker
Anyway, Indie was the other one that came out and the Great Circle gameplay teaser was released showing a first-person Indie game with third-person cutscenes. There was a lot of discussion around whether this was... I read more into that. They did say it'd be third-person for some of the traversal scenes as well.
01:03:23
Speaker
Yeah, which is which is very much makes sense, which is in line with what I've said further on, which is it does include uncharted style puzzle mechanics to traverse. And so those traversals would need to be in third person. That's kind of a Tomb Raider kind of mechanic the way that I read it. Lots of shooting mechanics, fisticuffs and his whip. I did see one scene where he he managed to prevent a bullet from damaging him with his whip, which I found a little eyebrow raising in a bad way. It was seconds, but I saw that too.
01:03:52
Speaker
Also, that plane jump was the most unrealistic plane. Yeah. But that was very Wolfenstein. Yes. Yeah. So in development from machine games who brought us the last four Wolfenstein games. So there was three normal ones and one other one. Yeah. I didn't play any of the Wolfenstein's yet. So I just want to jump in. So the first like I had a lot to say in the group about the whether I think it should be first or third. The the mishmash of both.
01:04:22
Speaker
My only complaint about Deus Ex, the human revolution, human evolution, whatever it was, was the cutting between first person shooting and third person cover mechanics. And it throws you out because your center of gravity with the screen changes. Yeah, because suddenly you're over your own shoulder again.
01:04:48
Speaker
Yeah, that's exactly it. And one of those things in the indie trailer was him whipping to a point, swinging down, dropping down to a soldier and then cutting back to first person, punching that guy and then going straight into the other guy. It does not work like that because you're
01:05:07
Speaker
Let me rephrase that. My brain does not work. No, I agree. My center of gravity is looking this way when we're swinging. And then we're looking at that way when we're coming. I'm going to angle and then Australia. But there's a lot of latitude that video game developers have in the way that they re-center their screen and how long they take. And there's some micro adjustments that, you know, they might be able to adjust for it. You just don't know how it's going to play out. If it's, it could be jarring or it could be quite
01:05:34
Speaker
Honestly, I would just, if I was in charge of that studio, I'd be like, why aren't we doing this just third person? If I was in charge of that studio, I wouldn't have sold myself to Microsoft and we'd still have a fucking PlayStation version of the game. Cause fuck you. This game was being developed for all platforms and then Bethesda sold to MS and dropped PlayStation support.
01:05:56
Speaker
Sorry to interrupt your rant there Pete. I'm going back to what Tom said. It's third person, I completely agree. I think third person is the way they should have gone with it, but pick one. If you want to go first person, you know first person works. Fucking mirror's edge.
01:06:14
Speaker
was a the most disorientating and vomiting juicing when you started to play it. First person wall running, but I thought it was great. I loved it. Oh, that was that. I don't know if I ever told you guys there was a game that I played that I only lasted five minutes and I deleted it from my library. It was ghost runner. No, it was ghost runner. Oh, see, I've got that. I'm going to play it because I think I hated it. I turn, I turn, I literally, if I had a CD, I would have snapped it. I was like, this is stupid.
01:06:42
Speaker
I hate you. I don't know this meteor either. Fuck you. Sorry. No, I just think that you pick one because the jarring, the jarring, the jarring movement to go from third to first and back again is I like the cinematic view of third person and I understand where they're going with it. And I hope it's great. And once again, I love machine games. I've loved the first two Wolfenstein's. I haven't played the third.
01:07:12
Speaker
I think they're really great at what they do and really contained areas. I'm fucking glad it's a linear story. It needs to be a linear focus story. All the movies have been linear focus stories. Point A to point B to point C to point D. Literally a red line from point A to point C.
01:07:32
Speaker
Quite literally. So I love that that's what it's going to be. And absolutely hats off to these guys that have done the Wolfenstein games and they create incredible cinematic moments in their first-person views. So I just wish they would have stuck to that. I just think the whip mechanic looks really odd in the first person.
01:07:54
Speaker
I don't know. It just, it really throws me what's in the trailer. It made me think of a bad VR presentation. Yeah, possibly. Yeah. I like the idea of chucking something extra in like that, that is character orientated. But I, I, now that you've said that, that's what the oddity for me was looking at that was a, a weird cringe VR. Hey, let's flick the move controller out like that. Yeah. Yeah.
01:08:23
Speaker
or the Wii controller. So anyway, I was going to rush through that section, but... Hey, some things are worth talking about, motherfucker. Yeah, games that we'll never play because we don't own fucking Xboxes, motherfucker. Hey, I got a PC and it'll play it. You can play it on PC, yeah. I just want to, I'm going to rip through these. So I watched Netflix Avatar. Wait, wait, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, pull back, asshole.
01:08:48
Speaker
You bought a fucking Xbox to play Starfield. You own an Xbox. You have no right to make that call. Absolutely no. If I had spent 15 minutes talking about it. No, no, no, no. You absolutely no.
01:09:05
Speaker
fucking stands to stand there and say, we don't own the platform as a platform. Tom is the only one that can make that fucking call because you and me both have a platform that can run it. So you shut the fuck up and you don't edit any of this out. I'm not going to. Troy Baker is voicing Indiana Jones.
01:09:24
Speaker
That was the last little piece. Sorry, Tom. I actually was going to say, I thought Troy's voice was pretty good. Yeah, I agree. I didn't mind the character model they had for Indy though as well. I thought it was pretty okay. His teeth were weird. There was too many dark spots. Hey, at least it's not a Ubisoft title where their head turns inside out. He had a lot of red wine before that scene. That's why he had all the red stains in his teeth. It was just, he had a nice bottle of Merlot just before he got on the flight.
01:09:52
Speaker
That's exactly what it looks like, Tom. That's exactly it. Apparently it's set between... So this is going to be Todd Howard claiming this. It's set between Temple of Doom and Raiders of the Lost Ark, because he's had this idea in his head for years and years and years, and it's all his idea and blah, blah, blah, wank, wank, wank. It sounds like a rebel moon.
01:10:12
Speaker
I don't, I can't say that. There was another indie game on the, there was an indie game on the Wii. I remember ages and ages ago. And I think it was meant to be the similar thing. It was set sometime between the first and the third movie. And it was just, it was, but it was the thing. It was the same thing. It was like, you're meant to use the, the Wiimote to crack the whip. And it was horrible. Continue as you were. I never, I did own a Wii. I just, I should. Yeah.
01:10:38
Speaker
I think on that trailer's peak. No, no, no. I think we're going to take a break. We're going to have to, I'm going to cut some of that content out and not talk about it until next episode. It's supposed to be getting shorter. So thoughts, Tom, are you going to, are you going to fight me or are we going to break? The dictator has decided. Well, who am I to, who am I to oppose Dr. Doom over here? Indiana Jones and the staff of Kings. So Tom fucking dead still stuck on Andy.
01:11:06
Speaker
It's the 25 minute topic. You named the dog Indy? Yes, we quite literally named the dog Indy. You fucking do. Absolutely literally named the dog Indy.
01:11:20
Speaker
All right, let's cut the trailers. Leave it all in. Oh, yeah. No, it's not going anywhere, man. I'm reminded of my Charlemagne. Hey, he is like gravity. Oh, he's a little.
01:11:46
Speaker
And we're back. I'm leaving that in. Yeah. Yeah. Leave it in. No context.
01:11:56
Speaker
Who's got a beer to talk about? Oh, I, I have some, I have some theater around mine.
Humorous Beer Anecdotes
01:12:03
Speaker
So, uh, shall we start with this? Um, uh, I was really hoping, really hoping you were going to do the proper pop and it was going to smash into your glass cabinet. It was going to bounce around the room.
01:12:18
Speaker
Comic style. But instead, one of the manliest men I know, who literally forges shit in his garage when he's got free time, makes the girliest sound that I've ever heard when popping that fucking bottle. I would honestly have made the exact same noise. It was extremely pleasurable, so I'm not ashamed of any noises I made popping that cork. You know what? Oh yeah, the cork smells nice too.
01:12:44
Speaker
This is a delightful gift I was given to by a very good friend of mine, Jason, that owns Mixtape Brewing. This is Michaela, a collaboration with Oud Creek in Belgium. It's a six and a half percent. That's some big dogs right there. Yeah.
01:13:06
Speaker
Yeah, swinging some big balls there. And you know what, I haven't even drunk this, but the room just smells like sweet cherries and raspberries and all those goods, Christmasy fruit or cold Christmasy fruit. On that note, we should probably do a little shout out to mix up some precious, the second birthday recently, or they come up to two years at the miracle site. So congratulations to those guys. Yeah. I just got a feature article in in crafty. Yeah.
01:13:35
Speaker
I mean, I can't find your beer because I mean, the way that you described it, I don't know. I'm sure it's my fault and I'm blaming you, but I heard. Fonda finish. Let me. Fonda finish. Fonda finish. I'll find it. It's all good. Thank you. F-O-E-D-E-R finish.
01:14:02
Speaker
It's a... Boda? Foda finish then? Boda finish? Boda finish? Fodas are the massive barrels. F-I-N-I-S-H No, one less N, Pete.
01:14:16
Speaker
But yeah, photos are beaders technically? Yeah, they're the massive barrels, like, yes, like a Solera system. So, Freda Riksdal, Oud, Krik, Fühde, Finnish, from Brouwerij Bün, collaboration with Michaela. Please do that again. That's a sound line I made. Oh, it's a good one. I like that.
01:14:39
Speaker
It's like phenomenal. It's, it is one of those beers that it's just, it's one of those beers that if you're in the industry, you just go, yeah, you know, but you can't because these people have so much. Hundreds of years. Yeah. Incredible. It's the, the depth of a fruit flavor that
01:15:06
Speaker
Very light, beautiful tartness that is there is something that's sort of, you know what, I'm going to regret saying these things, but it's lightly effervescent on the tongue, which brings out more of the fruit character through your whole nasal cavity. Like a fruit tinker. But no, that is like a horrible. Oh, it's being purposely reductive. Yeah, good.
01:15:35
Speaker
It's it's not even one of those beers worth rating because it is phenomenal on its own scale. It's it's phenomenal on its own. It's phenomenal compared to anything else. It's just you can't rate this something out of five because it's not even can.
01:15:58
Speaker
But, but it's not even, it's, it's worth more than five. It's, I'm literally, so, so because I did a little beer pop up during the episodes, I'm just going to put out a five Dan jizzed. That's, that's how it's going to be ranked. I would do, I would use the Yago from Aladdin on a scale of one to 10. You are 11. You didn't hear my question because I muted myself like an idiot. So whoever watches that video gets to see me go,
01:16:28
Speaker
But I was asking, was the fruits, what you were talking about, the, the, the F of essence of the fruit, is that from the, is that like, cause it's high, more highly carbonated in any way, shape or form? No, it's not. It's, it's, it's clearly, oh God, and this is just beautiful and I hope I can get it before it fades out. But that, that is such a dense foam on there. It's, it's champagne, proper champagne like foam. So it's.
01:16:56
Speaker
And this is me not having read any of the bottle or anything like that, but it feels naturally carbonated. They're super fine bubbles. They're not forced carbonated bubbles, which are larger, which, which kind of bites. They have a carbonic bite, a naturally carbonated product, whether it's proper champagne, not talking sparkling wine, but talking proper champagne.
01:17:22
Speaker
has a lighter and much less carbonic acidic bite to the carbonation that's in it. And it is very epinescent, but it's very fine bubble epivescent, which that stone fruit character just bursts. It's incredible. It's an absolutely phenomenally made product. That's awesome.
01:17:55
Speaker
You're making me miss the... Oh, what was it?
01:18:01
Speaker
What's the famous book, uh, about the underage girl who was in Lolita. Thank you. It was a goose Island age. It was barrel aged cherry. It was a very good lambic that was fucking spectacular. And gosh, I miss it. Um, I will go next if that's okay, Tom, please. Uh, I'm drinking Yuli's brews, Amanda, which is a Mandarin IPA.
01:18:26
Speaker
Have you tried this, Dan? It's not bad. It's all right. I used to brew it. I used to brew this recipe because I knew obviously you'd brewed a lot of Uli's beers, but I don't know which ones you have. If I see that orange decal on tap, I go straight for it. If there's eight new beers I've never tried before, I'm like, holy, Amanda's on tap? Fuck yeah, let's go. It's a man Louise love.
01:18:51
Speaker
Amanda. It's one of Louisa's favourite IPAs on that board. So before Yuleys had their brewery, they contract brewed and we were lucky enough to be one of the breweries or one of the main breweries that they contract brewed with.
01:19:08
Speaker
we brewed the first iteration of Amanda. And the amount of frustration and fuckery that came around brewing that beer was incredible because they were peeling mandarins and juicing mandarins and sterilizing the juice in Cointreau before they poured them into the vessel. And some of this
01:19:34
Speaker
skull fuckery probably not the right term but some of this fuckery ended up further on to their process later on down the track and I'm very good friends with the guys from the Ullies and they were like enough of this shit we need to streamline this like we cannot continue to be peeling fucking mandarins by hand
01:19:55
Speaker
Not sustainable. This shit needs to be streamlined. So they streamlined it down the track, like six to 12 months after they built their brewery. And it was quite funny to see that beer in its evolution. But still, Amanda, I love it. Yeah, I don't think I've tried. Look, I've tried shit tons of Ulysses Brews mainly because you bring me Ulysses Brews quite frequently and used to. Don't anymore because we haven't brewed for them for a couple of years. And they're also a mainstay.
01:20:21
Speaker
Yeah, true. They're also, they were a mainstay at bar 89, which is sadly now closed. So, yeah, we got a lot of the dollies. We've tried a lot of the dollies on the podcast as well. This is excellent. This is right up my alley for a very bitter IPA. And I'm not a big fan of big bitterness, but this one hits in the right spots. Shit loads of men are in. Obviously you've talked about the process and now I know why. There's fuck loads of actual men are in there.
01:20:50
Speaker
I just really like the dry finish against the real tart bitterness. I don't have tarts, probably not the right word, but the the acidity of the bitterness, the bitterness of the business is great. I'm just going to stick to simple words. I think that's a that's a really good.
01:21:12
Speaker
I don't want to see, say simplification because I don't want to make it sound like it's simple, but I think that's a very good, like I couldn't, I would have probably said exactly the same thing. I think it's a very good articulation of what it's like. Yeah. Um, they said orange peel the cure. You said contre. You definitely get notes of that too. I can't say contre. So it's a proprietary brand. Yeah, I get it. Um, it's some Frenchy fuck shit.
01:21:43
Speaker
But it's, um, but you definitely get the liqueur hit as like, not liqueur hit, but you get those, those notes. It's got its own flavor prep. Yeah. Tell you everyone a good margarita. Contro. Yeah. Cop that your dogs. I'm going to give that a four and a half. That's excellent. I'm really pleased with that. I save anything above four and a half, uh, stouts and cherry fucking goose islands that I missed.
01:22:07
Speaker
Anyway, Tom, I'm drinking a new brewery for the podcast. Um, I'm the first time I've seen these guys in Australia as well. So they're from NZ. They're a white tower. Um, brewing, uh, if it helps, there you go. Uh, this is the first light, which is the, um, a tail rower hazy. Did I do good? I was close. I was close.
01:22:32
Speaker
So these guys, I've just been looking up because I'd never heard of them before. I literally stumbled into, I was walking just before and I was like, oh, I might, I had a few beers in my fridge with a big IABV.
Netflix's Avatar & Spaceman Film
01:22:42
Speaker
So I wanted to get something. So I took just for the walk up the bottle shop and walked in, saw these, they've got two of them now, but bright cans, similar design, really stood off the shelf and I grabbed them. And I just looked them up. So they're an independent brewer from,
01:23:00
Speaker
I have been home and I try to tell you down in in wellington and so yeah I have a yeah they've obviously just come over or found someone to take them over to australia so I'm a lot of sellers apparently cuz a lot of that listed as the
01:23:18
Speaker
The cell is on untapped. Yes. Yes. That is where I got them, Pete. Thank you. I was trying to avoid saying that, but they were the only place I thought we were giving shit to mass mass. Yeah. Different change, though. Different. Are they, though? Look at my individuals. No, they're not. Yeah, they're both cold.
01:23:39
Speaker
But hey, they're bringing in some good stuff. So there you go. Find a picture, sell it instead. Sorry, I steadily clicked my camera. Sorry. But this is really nice. This is, it's also relatively, it's not relatively fresh, depending how long they put it. If they put a year, if they put nine months on it, it says best before 20th of the 6th, 24. I don't know if they, they don't have a package set on there.
01:24:03
Speaker
But look, it pours really nice. It's still really juicy. It's got all those classic NZ Hazy hits to it. They've used Kahatu, Nectaron, and Ruaka. They've also added a touch of Motowaker and Nelson Southern. So yeah, you go five hops they've chucked in that brew. And it's got a bit of hot burn through it. There is a bit right at the back. But otherwise, it's a really nice melon, slightly pithy taste to it.
01:24:33
Speaker
But yeah, it's great. I would hope that we'd see some more of this stuff. I just looked on a quick look online at their website about some of the other beers they have out and sometimes sound pretty good. So like, I'd hope that they'd get some more footage over here.
01:24:51
Speaker
I don't know why, but the name First Light and Afterglow, which is another one of their b's, I really like those names. That's the second b I've got is the Afterglow. I just, I don't know why, but just something about those two, two names, I just really like that. Because you're dirty, Pete, and you just associate all that shit with sex.
01:25:09
Speaker
Okay. I mean, I'm not saying that you're wrong subconsciously. Maybe that's true. So I got them both because they're both hazies and I literally put, I got that and I looked at the names and I was like, sunrise and sunset.
01:25:25
Speaker
Sure, let's talk about- But what I got from First Light was more like kayaks on the ocean during sunrise, but I mean, you know. Yes, that thing I often do that I would associate that to- Hey, I have kayaks in the ocean at sunset, so fuck you very much. You said sunrise. Anyway, moving on for our 15 minute fucking review out of five. Yas.
01:25:53
Speaker
Yeah, that's another solid four. The hot burn is starting to get to me a little bit.
01:26:04
Speaker
Yeah, by the end of it. And it's a 440 mil can. And yeah, I think it's maybe a one hop too many. Come back to four guys. You don't think it's just the 6.7 because it's it's fairly I mean, it's not high, but it's not low either. No, no, no, it's it's hot burn or not a baby. Yeah, it's my baby, but it's it's definitely like
01:26:24
Speaker
I don't know how great the air it's, I mean, it wouldn't be really green, but it's, it's definitely, it's that hot Bernie wafer that I get from when you have something that's like, this needs a little bit of time. Yep. It's just too many, too many hops in there. It's still good. It's just, I know I would only have that these, these two cans. I wouldn't, I wouldn't have a four pack of these. Okay.
01:26:46
Speaker
So we're going to move on to some trailers. Look, you know, this is our first of the new format. We're going to have to mess with some timing and start to figure out how we can get to a two hour episode because this is definitely not going to be one of them. And we're not doing trailer trash, but we did have some trailers, which is.
01:26:59
Speaker
Well, we're not going to break down the trailers. We're just going to tell you basically what they're about and we think you should check them out. Yeah. And if you do, good on you. If you don't, fuck yeah. Fuck yeah. Immediately stop listing. Just kidding. Netflix Avatar Last Airbender.
01:27:16
Speaker
I didn't mind the look of this one. It's looking promising. It's looking promising. Yeah, it seemed to, because the first, the movie from a few years ago was pretty tragic. Pretty average, yeah. The fucking Shyamalan movie. Yeah. Like, why? Why? Why? This one looks a little bit closer to the, the, I was gonna say anime then, but. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The animated series, the anime series. Yeah. Looked pretty good. I just love
01:27:46
Speaker
uh, Eastern culture represented well through a Western lens that my brain can actually wrap itself around. Well, it's the same with, yeah. So like I said that I'm good friends with the guys who do the gateway to anime podcast. And they, I was talking to some of them about it and they, they said that they were looking really looking forward to this in the same way. They really looked forward to the Netflix one piece, uh, live action they've done, but compared to how they felt disappointed by cowboy bebop, whereas I really enjoyed cowboy bebop.
01:28:15
Speaker
Um, yeah, I really liked, I really liked the way they did that and that, you know, they're the experts for the same reason. Do you think that I like the way that I phrase that was, I was pretty selective in the way that I said that I like Eastern culture represented through a Western lens because my brain needs to wrap itself around it. Whereas if I go back to some famous.
01:28:36
Speaker
uh, manga movies or manga based movies and anime movies. I just don't get it. Like it's cool. Like as someone, so I think let's use cover as the perfect example. So I've watched the entire anime series that's available. Um, and then I've watched the live action series and they leave a pretty significant character in the anime series out of the live action because I don't think it translates well to what like what you'd said. Like it doesn't translate well in a Western lens.
01:29:06
Speaker
Yeah, I'm going to make pretty significant changes to something like Battle Angel, a leader from the original anime to the Spielberg. Was it Spielberg? I think I want to say that it might be the movie, but that's very much a westernized version of retelling of the story.
01:29:22
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, it's because it's it's it's not and this is not in a bad way at all. It's just that sometimes the anime is just to go. They go absolutely batshit crazy. And it's like even if you're really following attention, if you blink it, you sometimes blink and miss and they say, why the fuck are we doing that? Like, OK, sure. And it's one of the things they talk about with the one piece in terms of like the fighting style in the anime of the lead character.
01:29:47
Speaker
monkey manky. It's not monkey, but it's it's something like that. And he he's like, almost like Mr. Fantastic, or dude from Street Fighter Mortal Kombat. He's like that. Yeah, he's that kind of like stretchy in the way he like fights in it. But that's hard to, like most people look at that and they're like, it's a live action thing. I don't get why you're doing that. And then you lose a bunch of your viewers. But I think in the one piece in the one piece thing, they did it in a way that was still
01:30:16
Speaker
good enough for a lot of the animators. It was stylistic, but I have read some criticism. Yeah, but then you look at it from through purely Western ends of not understanding the anime or the manga behind it and they go, okay, it translates well enough. It's like a little bit out. It's a more out there kind of world that they're creating. But Avatar has such a massive following in the West as it is.
01:30:40
Speaker
Anyway, because it was on Nickelodeon. So many kids grew up with it. People, I think they're in their mid 20s now. They grew up watching that in their Saturday morning cartoons or their cartoons before school. So I think it's looking good. And if they can go from all accounts, if they can go down the same road they've done with the One Piece and be a bit
01:31:00
Speaker
like, be more faithful to it. Especially in terms of casting, like, yeah, it's good. The criticism I read that was leveled at One Piece was more that the dynamism of the way that it's drawn doesn't translate very well to live action TV. And it's not through-
01:31:17
Speaker
not necessarily through fault. You'd have to be a, it's not, and this is the other thing. The criticism was that it wouldn't have been impossible to better translate it onto film, but you'd have to be a pretty smart cinematographer to pull it off.
01:31:31
Speaker
Yeah. So anyway, I'm not going to talk about Monolith. It's just, it's an interesting looking trailer. I think it's, I think it's a good, it's a good, it's a good three piece to go there. Monolith, Spaceman and Constellation, they're all cosmic horror. They're all psychological, sci-fi horror.
01:31:50
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And starting with Monolith because it is probably the least traditional science fiction in the sense that it's not set in space, it's set on Earth, but obviously alien artifacts are fucking with people's heads and it's a bit of a conspiracy theory turned out to be real. Kind of what I got from the quick trailer watch. That looks interesting. I think it looks good. I think it's I think that I think that trailer is
01:32:15
Speaker
So many, yes, exactly. So many trailers these days. And I stop trailers sometimes half to three quarters of the way through because I'm like, you're fucking showing me too much. I don't want to see this. Like, you've pinged that wolf in the first 30 seconds.
01:32:32
Speaker
But also half those things they do in some of those trailers and you're like, you're showing me too much. And then you get actually through the series and you're like, I never saw that cut. I never saw that scene or that moment. Like they read Herring trailers a lot more to hook people in, I think these days. Definitely with the major blockbusters. We don't call them out for. Yeah. Major blockbusters. Yes. But I think the smaller indie sort of stuff. No, I think they do. They do clever cuts like this.
01:32:59
Speaker
Mm. Yeah. In my opinion. Moving on to the next one, which was Spaceman, directed by Johan. Johan, I'm assuming that's going to be a Johan ring. Johan. Johan, yep. Starring Adam Sandler, Kerry, Mulligan and Paul Danno.
01:33:22
Speaker
I'm really interested to see how this plays out. So it depicts Adam Sandler as an astronaut flying solo in a ship to save mankind. It doesn't really explain why. Again, it didn't go into too much detail. I think actually the trailer did a really good job, again, of giving you enough information without giving away the plot. He's on a ship for some reason, the same man saved mankind for some reason. He's alone. He misses his pregnant wife. And then
01:33:48
Speaker
Some entity starts talking to him. You don't know if it's really there or not. It's depicted as a massive spider. Yeah, it's depicted as a massive spider. So you've got arachnophobia, maybe not the film for you, and starts communicating with him through memories of his wife, which I thought was quite interesting. This is going to be, I'm excited more about watching to see if Adam Sandler is going to pull off dramatic. He will.
01:34:15
Speaker
Yeah, so I mean, he's already proven that with the Diamond film. I didn't like that film. I couldn't get through it. I watched the first. I'm not saying it's bad, like it wasn't poorly written, directed, acted. I just struggled with the story. Yeah, I think that's what I think that was right. I just really struggled with the story. But yeah, there's been a lot of uncut gems, uncut gems. Yeah.
01:34:39
Speaker
There's been a lot of of comedian and wacky comedians who have pulled off. In a few things, he is chillingly good. Um, Steve Carell in, um, uh, Foxcatcher, which I've, I've heard really good things about, but I actually haven't watched all the way through. Um, but he was brilliant. I've seen, I've seen Steve Carell in a bunch of serious roles and it's just like,
01:35:05
Speaker
It's just it's so jarring when you think about my last thing with jim carrier you think about how zany and wacky is when he's trying to do the riddler or whatever you like that's probably the worst example of you know yeah but then you're married against like number twenty three. It's just like.
01:35:25
Speaker
Oh no the funny guy's sad and now oh no no god no it's like it's really that jarring you expecting to be so wacky and zany and then when you see that other side of me like oh shit. I'm not sure that it is though and this is one of the interesting points you look at Robin Williams in Goodwill Hunting. Sad isolated.
01:35:46
Speaker
dealing with psychological trauma by being a counselor. Jim Carrey's roles, they're dealing with some dark psychological depression. Will Ferrell, Stranger Than Fiction, not so much. Doesn't really fit that kind of model. And then Steve Carell. So Steve Carell, the performance I was talking mainly about was in The Morning Show.
01:36:12
Speaker
the Apple Plus Me Too TV series, which is brilliantly performed by Jennifer Aniston and Steve Carell, who are both comedians. But Steve Carell was the perpetrator of
01:36:25
Speaker
misogynistic behavior and, you know, using his position for sexual favors and that sort of thing. And he did a, like the actor did a brilliant job of portraying the complexity of that particular character's written narrative around those things. He was clearly an evil guy, but evil that he didn't think he was evil. Like most good, well-written bad guys, he didn't think he was the bad guy.
01:36:50
Speaker
And he betrays that excellently. He wasn't the one dimensional evil dude. No, no, he wasn't out there to hurt anyone. He, you know, Seth Rogen in Steve Jobs, very different kind of serious role, but he did a fucking bang up job. I don't know if you've seen that film. I thought it was excellent. So I'm really excited to see Adam Sandler and see if he pulls it off. The end.
01:37:15
Speaker
No further questions, your honor. That felt like I'd been talking too long or better then. Apple Plus constellation. Another Cosmic Horror.
01:37:25
Speaker
Oh, change the record. Thing goes wrong on Space Station. Thing goes wrong on Space Station. Alternate dimensions. Someone is someone who they aren't. I mean, yeah, it's the standard going mad after coming back from Space Story, isn't it? Yeah.
01:37:48
Speaker
Or, or maybe she was changed by some entity she met along the way. Or maybe she's in a world that's not hers. I mean, who knows? I mean, there's, there's a lot of if butts and what, or, or there is something there that was talking to her while she was up there. I mean, same as Spaceman. I mean, we don't really know from those trailers. They were both quite very well, quite well cut. I don't actually think they were as good a cut as the Monolith trailer. Um, I think they thought,
01:38:17
Speaker
maybe not showed too much, but they could have been 20 or 30 seconds shorter to hold suspense. But yeah, three cosmic horrors coming out, man.
01:38:28
Speaker
Let's rock this shit. Let's bring cosmic horror back to the 20, 2024, we're still in the 21st century. Yep. We've still got a lot of years to go to the 22nd century. I don't think we're going to be talking around the 22nd century. Well, you never know. No, we will. We'll be future armor heads by then, just in the gloves. The heads in the jar. Yeah. The last thing, just one other thing that just reminded me, it's Space Man. And this will go for Constellation, I think, as maybe not Monolith.
01:38:58
Speaker
We've already seen drama and relationship style drama in a science fiction film work super well interstellar is one of the most accoladed movies come out in the last 10-15 years in terms of a sci-fi it looks like space man was very much on that same wavelength it is.
01:39:17
Speaker
They're communicating through happy memories of his wife as a way of kind of depicting the sadness and isolation. So at first, piano string books and everything. We'll see how it plays out. Yeah. So I think I like Interstellar, but Interstellar to me was more hard sci-fi and Spaceman definitely leans into that cosmic horror side.
01:39:42
Speaker
Yeah. I don't disagree with that statement. Not kind of what I meant, but I think I don't disagree. Maybe it's more Donnie Darko than it is Interstellar. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's a good call. Different parallel. Yeah. Cool. All right. We'll leave it there. And I think you've got some bone to pick, Tom.
Sun and Bone Game Introduction
01:40:01
Speaker
Oh, do I ever? Oh, do I ever? That's a big way. Oh, fuck me.
01:40:08
Speaker
No, that was the worst one here. It is good because it's bad. Yeah, no, no, that was... I don't even know what I talk about this anymore. My work here is done. Anyway, I watched the trailer, it was pretty dumb, but you know, nothing as dumb as that fucking segue.
01:40:30
Speaker
No, sun and bone. Have you ever wanted to watch cowboys or play? Sorry, it's a game. It's game trailer for a game coming out. It is Think Doom, but cowboys versus dinosaurs. Turok with guns. Turok had guns. Turok had guns. Turok had guns. It was, no, it's the fast paced action of, it's based off Doom 2016 and like,
01:40:58
Speaker
This is this is not a slide of the developers of this game, but it is a Doom 2016 clone. But I think we need more of them because I've been thoroughly good ones. And this is a good one. This is a terrible game. No, it's a good match. We need it. We need a tour agreement, please. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. Remember that that hand.
01:41:17
Speaker
Call thing you through. Fuck yeah. No, no, but this is this is this is period piece as well. So it's like adding that extra element into it because you think of like them holding like a classic cowboy cocking rifle shotgun thing like that when you've got Raptors running at you.
01:41:34
Speaker
Holy shit. Holy shit. I think it's actually like alternate dimensions. And then he gets, yeah, we don't know. We, it's again, the trailer misleading, uh, red herrings everywhere. Um, but that could be to trap the dinosaurs in cause they like fish.
01:41:49
Speaker
Um, yeah, it looks, it looks fun. It looks, it looks like, as we'll talk about in, I'm sure Dan will talk about, about Evil West. It looks dumb fun. Dumb fun. Yeah. That was, I was, I didn't know whether to bring it up now or bring it up later, but yeah, it looks, it looks like Evil West first person with dinosaurs.
01:42:09
Speaker
Yeah, it's a, it's a, it's a doom clone. Look, go check it out. Uh, you know, add it to something on your, uh, if you got like a wish list or something, the games you want to look at going, I'm definitely at it to mine. And when it finally gets released, uh, I think they had a release that I didn't look it up, but, um, yeah, when it, when it comes out, I'll definitely be grabbing it and I will talk about it. Uh, I'm sure in a future body boy.
01:42:33
Speaker
Cool. Anyway. All right. We're out of the first half halfway through the second half. Yay. Well done. I think I need a break. Um, so we're going to do some quick reviews. Uh, reach our season two straight out of the, out of the, uh, Oh yeah. I really need to start. I need to start right around doing season two just isn't what reaching far enough.
TV Show Critiques & Excitement
01:42:58
Speaker
We're going to see, you gave me that shit about my bad segue and then you come out with that. Um, I don't, I don't think that was a segue. That was just bad puns on reach. The thing that made. He doesn't have a flip head toothbrush. Let's put it that way. The thing that made season one. He's waiting for the clouds and he missed. Give me something up a cup.
01:43:21
Speaker
The thing that made season one great wasn't there in season two. It went from hyper violent.
01:43:29
Speaker
lone wolf coolness, right? And his backstory is part of what made him cool. He was the super fucking MP detective guy. He can take on 50 guys in a fight and come out on top and in a believable, ultra violent kind of way. And it gets away with a lot of what it gets away. He survives a lot of the shit that he survives because he's just outrageously machismo. Machismo? That's a word. I just realized who he needs to play. He needs to play the doom guy.
01:44:00
Speaker
Yeah, that would fucking work. Sorry. Anyway, that scene that you talked about, Dan, where he realized someone was being robbed and drove a car into them to stop it. That's what made Reacher season one brilliant. He was like that all the way through. He didn't act alone. He had people around him, but they weren't.
01:44:23
Speaker
There were people that he collected throughout the course of the story unfolding. They weren't old school friends. They weren't, he wasn't in a group. The second season he's with all these old MPs. And so it ended up being kind of a generic. Got the band back together. Special forces acting illegally on US soil show that we've seen a million times before. And whilst it was still violent. Yeah. What are we going to say, Dan?
01:44:52
Speaker
No, I clicked the hand off instead of the mute. Okay. This is my first time in an office meeting. I'm sorry, I put my hand up. I didn't mean to put my hand up.
01:45:09
Speaker
Let's say after 111 episodes, I'm glad that we've developed that casual professionalism. Um, not that I can fucking talk yet. I just reached a season two for me, just didn't hit the way that the first one did. Uh, it also didn't hit the way that either of the two reach a movies with Tom Cruise here. He's still a fucking beefcake. He's still very physical throughout, but now that he's with his team of special forces, it just becomes a generic kind of military esque TV show.
01:45:38
Speaker
So has he, is this like, do you know if they're going to go, is there a region season three coming? I don't know. I genuinely don't know what I, what I, what I did read after the story lead to like maybe the team turns on him and then he has to take them all down. Like, no, nothing like that. The story itself was okay. Um.
01:45:57
Speaker
I'm still going to check it out. Like I'm keen to watch it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's definitely watch season one. Start with season two. See what you think. I just found it just, it just didn't hit the way that the first one did. I wanted more. That's a shame. I wanted more realistic violence. I just worked out who a second person he can play. He can play fucking Leto in the Witcher. Can I get through my fucking review?
01:46:24
Speaker
I'll mute myself. You won't. You'll put your hand up again or you'll turn your camera off. Yeah. No, I just look, the season one was fucking brilliant. Season two wasn't bad, but it was kind of generic and it just didn't have the same goodness that the first one did.
01:46:40
Speaker
Um, uh, the other thing I just want to say quickly is I finally want to talk to me, Dan. It was excellent. It was excellent. So I'm very glad that I was your horror one. Yeah. Yeah. That was the Australian horror. We talked about last step or so. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and I, I was kind of on the fence about whether or not I was going to invest the time to rewatch it. I wanted to, after our last conversation and I'm so, I think it's good. You did. I'm glad you did. Cause yeah, the, the, it was, uh,
01:47:10
Speaker
And, you know, it felt a bit not Pete for you to talk about how you just casually watch some like, yeah, like horror film that you probably need to pay attention to. I was like, that's.
01:47:21
Speaker
What was going on, Pete? And you know what? I bet I got all of the... I needed a snorkel at the time. That's what he needed. He needed a snorkel with a camera. I got all of the... With a camera. Yeah, that's a Periscope. Damn. Snorkel with a camera. Oh, it's a Periscope. Yeah. Yeah, you're right. You didn't know, but you needed a snorkel and a camera. Potentially. Yeah. Just, yeah.
01:47:43
Speaker
Or like a poof. Like a footstool. They're still good poofs, yeah? Yep. I could have used one of those too. I'm not sure, but yes. We know what I'm talking about, though. Yes, an ottoman. There you go. An ottoman's a big square. You don't need an empire, Pete. You just need to watch the fucking film.
01:48:02
Speaker
Anyway, I'm really glad I watched it. It, you know, it, it was excellent. It turned out that the only moments I had seen before that were the ultraviolet moments without any of the context. And it really, it's such a different film when you ground that violence. It's amazing what context does to ultraviolet scene. Anyway, over to Dan. Context to a 13 year old bashing his head against a fucking sink. Yeah. Spoilers bro. Spoilers. I'll never watch it, but spoilers. Yeah.
01:48:32
Speaker
Oh, where would you watch it? It's fucking great, man. Anyway. It's like Death on a Stick out there, mate. Death on a Stick. True Detective Season 4, Night Country. So it's just True Detective Night Country? Yeah, I think so. Season 4. Direct Link to Season 1. Oh, awesome. I think. I think. I'm sure. I'm pretty sure. No, someone told me this today because we were talking about it. I was talking about it with my wife, and he's like, yeah, no, Direct Link to Season 1. And then when it's because of this, but I don't want to go further into it. And I was like, well, maybe you should shut up right now.
01:49:02
Speaker
OK, well, I only thought of this this morning and then messaged Louise saying, hmm, I'm pretty sure this is the same as season one. And she's gone. That's a good point. So, yeah, so two two episodes are out in its weekly weekly drop. So by the time this comes out, probably three episodes. I don't have to have what season three, do I? No, no, no, no, no, no. Season three, because I just watched season three.
01:49:27
Speaker
We'll get to Season 3. Season 4, it's great. It's set in the Arctic at a... Fuck, what is that country up there? Alaska. That's not a country, but carry on. Oh, past a state. There we go, a state. In its 30 days of nights, it starts literally with the sun setting in its 30 days of nights. From the very first opening scene, you go,
01:49:57
Speaker
This is not right. There is something not right happening here from the first 45 seconds. You know what? If there was a little glimmering under the noise, like in the background, that would have been pretty cool. But first 30 seconds, you know, something's not right. It's and then it's the sunset on the 30 days of night. And then it's this little town. Jodie Foster is the head of the police in that
01:50:22
Speaker
That little town. And then it's a really tight community. You have small stories of individual characters. Everybody knows my love of small stories. Uh, small stories. Cause the way you're describing it, it's really starting to sound like, um, uh, the vampire, um, yeah, 30 days of night. The, the, the, the one we watched the vampire in the seaside village.
01:50:49
Speaker
Seaside. I'll find it. I'll find it. Okay. Yeah, sorry. Why? Yeah, it's gonna bug me now. Yeah, it is gonna bug me. I'll find it. So it's small stories, individual characters, really, we're two, we're literally two episodes in and the main characters and some of the side characters are really well fleshed out. It's, it's fantastic. It has, uh,
01:51:14
Speaker
absolutely homage to The Thing, which is a John Carpenter movie, which is a cosmic horror. There is a scientific outpost, which is what is in The Thing. And when Jodie Foster is there, she walks in front of a TV screen and there on the shelf for an absolute split second is the DVD of The Thing.
01:51:39
Speaker
And she walks in front of it and then that's it. Like I was waiting for her to step aside and for them to like blatantly show it. But there's like, it must be a tenth of a second and she walks in front of it. If you don't know what that cover looks like, you are not seeing it and you're not picking up on that. But it's an absolute homage to the thing. And it's a
01:52:02
Speaker
Within this context of the first two episodes, it's a cosmic horror in the dark cold of Alaska. And that absolutely tickles my funny bone. Like that is all the wonderful things of people going crazy because we as humans aren't meant to live in the dark. We are meant to have the light and the dark and we're meant to sleep in circadian rhythms and everything like that. So Tom's got his hand up.
01:52:29
Speaker
What would you like mass? Midnight mass. Oh, midnight mass. Yes. Where the fuck did we get so fucking refined that we're putting our hands off the floor? Sorry. Oh, well, that keeps popping me up and down. Wow. That's good. So I, the two episodes in and I am hooked and I am thinking about it the days after I watch an episode, which is why I'm waiting after catching up on season three. And I want to get
01:52:53
Speaker
I know that Emma and I all want it cause we smashed through season three. Like, you know, me, I've the last however long I've really struggled to get into TV series talking three nights. We went through the entire season, season three. I couldn't get into season three. Oh, I watched the first. Really? Season two was the bad one. Yeah. I think season two, I agree. Season two is the one in LA season three is the one with Masha Hala Lee and it's set in Arkansas.
01:53:20
Speaker
And it's set in Arkansas, so it's like back to like season one in terms like that. Yeah. Yeah. And it's crazy. It's the one that said, are you thinking about that with Vince Vaughn? That's season two. No, I enjoyed season two thoroughly. Oh, yeah. Sure.
01:53:40
Speaker
You're wrong. You just flat out wrong. Just put your fucking hand up when you're ready to talk, bitch. I didn't hate season two. I really didn't. I think season two had its place, but I think it was really lacking. If they had gone to season three, that sounds dumb. If they'd skipped to season three. If they'd gone to the story that was season three after season one,
01:54:09
Speaker
I get what you're trying to say. Yeah. Yes. I thought it was good. And I really liked season two as a separate story, but it didn't have the same feel. Yes. Didn't have that supernatural feel. So even though season three actually didn't have anything supernatural in it, which was, yeah, it was, it was just season three was just so well acted across three time periods.
01:54:35
Speaker
Imagine how fucked up these actors are, splitting their brains in three ways. Yeah. And good jumps in time periods too, like not too sizable that they couldn't act off one another. Yeah. Yeah.
01:54:49
Speaker
Yeah, I just I couldn't get into it. I'll give it another go because I really want to see it. And like I thoroughly enjoyed the first season. It was fucking brilliant. Season one is some of the best television that has. And it came at a time where we thought if you thought you. Yeah. And when you thought about like a cop TV show, like a cop based TV show, you'd be like, oh, this is going to be.
01:55:10
Speaker
Oh, I'm sure. Yeah. Well, you say that, but was it not necessarily the invention of the FBI and the invention of the cons. Mine Hunter. Mine Hunter. Mine Hunter was fucking brilliant. And I likened that to season one of True Detective. Yeah, absolutely. I know it's, I know there's not direct parallels, Dan. It's just, I could see you shaking your head at me, but, but in terms of that era, it was that well acted. They were discovering what the fuck was going on as they went.
01:55:38
Speaker
Oh, that's the aspects that I really enjoyed. I just, getting it. Oh, we smashed her. We smashed her season three and I thought the time element this time was.
01:55:48
Speaker
was cool. I thought that the way that they did it with like, you know, you'd see the guy from his character from the 90s turn and a door would be open that necessarily wouldn't be open. But if you 10 seconds before that in the scene, it would have been the dude from modern day in 2015, who would have just opened the door and looked in the room and then he goes, Oh, shit, why is that door open? It's kind of like,
01:56:10
Speaker
I thought I didn't know if there was going to be they were trying to push more of that like time jumping like it was all connected kind of things they they talked about it when the wife was talking about the poetry and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, but it was just like you said like the the like without giving too much away you think it's gonna be more supernatural than it is at the end and it does leave you hanging. But then I thought that like the last scene really like
01:56:38
Speaker
Don't give anything away in this but like the last scene of kind of like it harken back to that time thing it's such a big way that made me go hang on and like it's it's just like wait what what just happened that entire season going back to that last like like kind of last shot.
01:56:56
Speaker
Um, but now it's made me like fully back on board with the true detective thing. I'm so keen to get into season four, but I know I'm just going to need a dump of episodes because we're going to sit there and be like, yeah, we've got four hours. Let's watch the first four. Like we've waited, you know, four weeks and then we're going to have to wait another couple of weeks. And then, yeah, it's going to be, yeah. I love for something like this, the anticipation, something that is
01:57:23
Speaker
I love a well thought out detective story, but the only thing I love more than a well thought out detective story is a well thought out supernatural detective story. Like that absolutely tickles my fancy to no end. Like it's just, it's something that is
01:57:42
Speaker
If it's something that's just on our plane and you can go, oh, yeah, well, some fucking crazy did that or XYZ. But if you start going, well, was it this or was it that? And like season four might turn out to be nothing. Yeah. But it might, it might, they might really spin it back to real world sort of stuff. But yeah, we're two episodes in and it's set in, because it's set in Alaska and half the cast is Inuit.
01:58:09
Speaker
I think. I don't want to misspeak here. I don't know what the indigenous people of Alaska are called, but I think they're Inuits. That is their culture and they talk a lot about their myths and what could potentially be.
01:58:27
Speaker
that ties into it. And I find that sort of mythology tied into a detective story. And plus, I know nothing about the indigenous stories of that area. And so I find that incredibly interesting and engaging.
01:58:44
Speaker
So I'm wobbling. I hope it's only about eight episodes. I don't actually know how long it is. I'm assuming it would be. Every other season has been about eight. Yeah. Yeah. So I think eight could be the absolute pinnacle for this because man, they've laid the fucking groundwork in the first two really well. Excellent. Excitement.
01:59:07
Speaker
That's good because your next note means nothing. Nothing. Yeah. I was meant to ask the ways in the break what we watched because I can't remember it. There was something good that we watched, but I can't remember. Must have been pretty good. I'm going to talk for two seconds about one of the dumbest Christmas films I've ever watched that was highly entertaining. So I finally sat down and watched Violent Night with David Harbour and John Leguizamo and a bunch of other people. And obviously it is Santa Claus is a drunk.
01:59:37
Speaker
And he goes to this house to deliver a present to a lovely little girl who's one of the few on the nice list. Santa's obviously a bit sad. He's portrayed in this film as he's kind of like, kids are just greedy. They just want video games. They don't want, you know,
01:59:54
Speaker
They don't, they, as soon as they unwrap their first present, they want the next three. This is the 2022 film. I thought we were going to be talking about Silent Night, which was the Joel Kinnaman film recently released. Yeah, well. I was wrong. No, no, no. I was just, I'm, I'm sorry. I'm interrupting you to exclaim my surprise. Oh, okay. Yeah, no. Was it 2022?
02:00:14
Speaker
Yes. Oh, really? There you go. It sat on my Netflix for a year then before I finally watched it. Anyway, it's it's Santa gets this house and then he gets this mercenaries trying to take this very, very rich family's money. And then he decides to go, you know what? Fuck it. I'm going to say this little girl, but I'm going to go back to my Norse ways as Nickamund the Red, which was his Norse Viking name. He had Skull Crusher, his hammer.
02:00:44
Speaker
And then it's just David Harbour in a Santa suit with a- With a sledgehammer. With a sledgehammer going to fucking town. Five stars. Five fucking stars. Yeah. No, actually, no, I take one star off because the Christmas music really fucking annoying. I can't stand Christmas carols. Yeah.
02:01:03
Speaker
No, and it's one of those things that's like, I still want to watch Silent Night with Joel Kinnaman. I've unfortunately heard reviews of it that it's not as good as we would hope, but I want to take my own judgment of that. I watched this the other night. I, you know, as I had dinner, I sat down and was like, fuck, I'm going to have it. I'm going to sit down, have dinner, have a beer and watch this. I was at the house myself.
02:01:24
Speaker
It was two hours. I had a fucking laugh in some scenes. Some of the, some of the gory kills made me go, Ooh, which is always a good sign. Yeah. Whenever you watch something that's like over the top gore and you go, Ooh. And then there was a, there's a moment about three quarters of the way through the film where they've already talked about home alone in the film, but then they really homage it with, um, with traps and it's.
02:01:54
Speaker
possibly the best little segment of the film of a little girl pulling off some rather deadly home alone traps. And that's the moment when I went, hmm, hmm, hmm. Nice.
02:02:09
Speaker
Dan saying something that- Yeah, you're talking about violent night, right? Yes. Not silent night. Yes. That's why I just did the same thing. Which is why I wrote violent night, not silent night. I really liked violent night. I thought it was heaps of fun. I haven't seen it. Yeah. Look, if you get through the- Favorite harbor is a drunken, drunken Santa. Fantastic. I really wanted them to explore more of the Norse element though. I thought that was like the really cool scenes where they did Eddic Wund the Red and Skull Crusher.
02:02:38
Speaker
Yeah, and then some particularly creative kills like really up there with some of the more... Who the fuck thinks of some of these fucking things? There's some twisted individuals out there, but yeah. Look, two hours long, check it out.
02:02:58
Speaker
Noice. And John Leglizamo. Leglizamo, yep. Oh man, he just... As Mr. Scrooge. Man, he just fucking chews up the screen, doesn't he? Like, he's just fantastic. He just... I just... Anything that he's... The rest of the cast is... Yeah, some nice-ish. They were fine. They were fine. It took me forever to picture the son, the main son. He's the main bad guy in Cowboy Bebop. He's the long-haired.
02:03:24
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah. I took forever for me to pick him, but then I was like, Oh, that's where you're from. Yeah. Back John, like it was almost does just doesn't do enough these days, but I guess he doesn't have to. No, he's made his cash. He's got that. He's got all that Baz Luhmann, Romeo and Juliet money. Should we move on to our fourth beer? I should. That was a long bow to draw. Yeah. Yeah. The cat of nine or what was he called? Something like that.
02:03:52
Speaker
Juliet's cousin. We have to often remind people that that was actually Shakespeare, that film. Yeah. He was Juliet's cousin. No? Have you not seen it, Peter? Oh, come on. Oh, wow, Pete.
02:04:05
Speaker
What movie am I not seeing? Baz Roman's Romeo and Juliet with Leonardo DiCaprio. I don't remember. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I have seen it. The retelling. Yes. And I know. Oh, the retelling. I think everything that's been made for the last 150 years is a retelling thing. No, no, no, no, no. Stop. I have seen the Bell Shakespeare Company tell the tell like show the original play that Shakespeare wrote or maybe it was Shakespeare, maybe it was the guy who stole it from.
02:04:35
Speaker
But Baz Luhrmann rewrote Shakespeare and modernized it and changed the fucking story. That's why I call it a retelling. So the one that you saw had no lines changed whatsoever. It was an absolutely... Where art thou fight? Where art thou Romeo?
Film Review: Violent Night
02:04:50
Speaker
Yes! It was written in fucking English too. It's not like it was a written translation. We're not talking about ancient Aramaic in the Bible and we're misinterpreted. I do love the one line you picked to use as your evidence. Where art thou Romeo? Was one of the most famous ones.
02:05:07
Speaker
I didn't do fucking gang show growing up. So I don't know. Cause I was never in the fucking play. All I'm saying is it was a true to form version as opposed to Romeo and Juliet, the movie, which was publicly like critically acclaimed for modernizing the story, but it did take a lot of modern. It has guns in it for fuck sake. I don't think there's any evidence that there wasn't a young hearts run free moment in the original Shakespeare show.
02:05:34
Speaker
There is no historical evidence. Where the doves cry. Anyway, before we start fucking acid etching our gold pistols, we're going to move the fuck onto our fourth beer. I'm spending seven hours fucking editing. I guarantee you that the original cast of Romeo and Juliet were on pingers the entire time. Yeah.
02:06:00
Speaker
I think for the next episode I might be on fucking pingers. The acid itching the guns with the acid I like. This beer that I'm drinking is Grifter Brewing Co's Big Sur. I'm going to be... Big Sur? 6.7% ABV. That is one of the great Australian West Coast IPAs. One of the greats.
02:06:29
Speaker
And it is, it's, it doesn't try to be anything that it's not. It's a, it's a big, it's not overly boozy, but it's a big, big ABV West coast IPA. It's nice and dry. It's got a decent bitterness. It's lower than fucking Amanda.
02:06:45
Speaker
but then everything's going to lower than Amanda. I don't know what the ABV is, but I'm going to guess it's like a 40 to 45. It's great. It's 40 to 45 ABV. Uh, IBU. Talking about business. Um, Amanda was like 50. Yeah. Cause Amanda's apparently 50 or 51 somewhere in that space. But yeah, no, I'm putting this under Amanda, but not a mile away from it. Um, yeah, no, it's brilliant.
02:07:14
Speaker
What Dan? That was a big cop. Yeah. Let's just move on. It's great. I'm going to, I'm going to keep it simple and give it a fucking, I'm giving it a full twinked. Oh good. Yeah. I'm going to give it a four. Nice. Tom. No, Dan. I'm having to have my first sip. I want another little sip of it, please.
02:07:44
Speaker
I've almost finished, so I've got my MIA IPA from Brightbury. It's fine. It's a bit, it tastes to me a little bit old. I have had this can in here for about 30 fucking minutes, so I probably could have looked at the date that is incredibly tiny on the bottom of the fucking can. Look at this. Look at this. Look, how is that fucking shit legal?
02:08:07
Speaker
I don't know. Your camera keeps coming out for me. Anyway, whatever. Yeah, no, I can't read it. It's got a little age on it, but it's still got some hot character to it. So got some caramelised malt character to the body of it. It's a six percent ish, six and a half percent. It's OK.
02:08:36
Speaker
What? This is why I say that, say to you guys, can you put it, fill in your own fucking details and you, I have to rewind the tape 30 times to fucking get. Okay. These are the, these are the five attributes that I care about for the video. We've been doing this for long enough. I'm never entering my own details. I know.
02:08:53
Speaker
You are the transcriber. Yeah, I know. I'm an enabler in this particular case. No, that's exactly it. We are far too long in this relationship for me to start entering my own shit in there, right? Yeah. Sometimes I do. And then you go in and change them. So that's fine. Yeah, because I've got to link it back to the untapped. Otherwise I can't tag it.
02:09:12
Speaker
And why, why fucking even say you put your own shit in if you're only going to have to change it to find it on untap. No, no, no, no. But I've got to write down enough information that I can find it. Yeah. So out of five, Dan. So you have to get enough coherent information out of me in the first place to be able to put it on.
02:09:29
Speaker
I can't wait for you to intro this episode for the fucking Instagram short after this. Oh shit. Yeah. I have to do this one. I'm going to go. You need to tag that one because that was 100% not me. I need to go and get another beer. Um, uh, you know what? The age, the age on it. I don't know how old it is, but there is definitely some age on it as it warms up. It's getting worse. Uh, but.
02:09:59
Speaker
Yeah, three to five. That's unfortunate. I'm pretty sure MIA IPA is part of their core as well. So are you judging it on it as tasted or as you are pretty sure it would have tasted when it was fresh?
02:10:14
Speaker
A little from column A, a little from column B. I know I can see what they were going for, and then I can see what it is now. So I'm going. Yeah. Let's meet somewhere. You're unable to read the best before? It's fucking tiny, man. Like the month, the month is fine. It is the... Oh, shit. That's upside down. It's the year one picked about.
02:10:36
Speaker
It's the ninth it's that will die the day is fine the day is the nine and then the month of the year blend into each other right okay because i'm just trying to you know if you know that it's fucking a past its best before them. What are we going for the money so let me know this is not useful information for us.
02:10:55
Speaker
You can say how dark it is on the end of the day. Yeah, no, it's tragically bad. For those listening at home, the audio descriptive version of this episode, Dan was holding up a illegible can to the screen. Yeah. To the camera. Tom, are you ready? Because I can't pack this much longer because Dan's going a little crazy on me here.
02:11:16
Speaker
How we bring it in when the finish I'm having the second year I had from white or this is the afterglow said the hazy IPA nice bright yellow can with the kind of like wavy. Lavery kind of look to it same as the purple on the other side look I had my first sip and I went.
02:11:35
Speaker
Oh, passion fruit? Nah, Citra. And then I looked at the back and it just says Citra. I was like, oh, good. Did not lie. No, it's just one of those ones like, now knowing really what Citra tastes like, it just, it's, it's so.
02:11:50
Speaker
like we said it's the cheat code of hops and it's like sometimes it's just a little bit too overpowering and i think it's the same in this case it just tastes like those citrusy orange juicy flavors it says it's got moto ache mosaic and simco in there i'm not getting the dankness i would hope to get from mosaic and simco through that um it's that said though it's not unpleasant it is what you would expect from a hazy ipa it's just
02:12:15
Speaker
It's the old IDGF cheat code thrown in there for the Citra. So yeah, look, I'm going to give it a four because it is really like the body of it's quite nice. It's quite thick. It doesn't look as thick as you probably think it is, but it really tastes. It's got that mouth full of looks like fucking Paciona from where I'm sitting, man.
02:12:35
Speaker
Yeah, obviously, I think I've got a bit of a dirty glass now, so the head's not retaining anymore. I didn't wash my glass out in the break and that's my fault because I'm an absolute idiot. But yeah, look, it's enjoyable. And like I said, I'd love to see some more of the beers from these guys in different styles as well. I know they do some lagers and I would like to see if they do some stouts.
02:12:55
Speaker
just in their sale as if they have any, I didn't look through their website long enough. I'm going to enjoy the rest of it. It's, I didn't say it's 6.7% as well, which I think is the same as the other one. Yeah. So I almost think there might be like, I would imagine they're like a code or dual release.
02:13:12
Speaker
Hey, we got two really kind of different tasting, hazy things. Yeah. Would have been if I, if I'd done a bit more, if I hadn't just discovered them this afternoon, I probably would have saved a bit of each in two glasses just to taste them as a contrast and compare kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. Good. Why so? Um, yeah, I've got them through vintage sellers. Um, okay. I didn't, and I'm proud of it. Um, I'm glad to see them over here. I would like to see some more of their beers though. So let's hope they bring some more of their range out. Yeah.
02:13:41
Speaker
Nice. Did I give it a score? That's just good. You gave it a four out of five. Excellent. Well done, Tom. You did everything you needed to do there. You did. I'm going to call my mum and tell her I did everything right. Hey mum. Dan, are you winning, sir? He's pouring a beer and he can't touch the unmute button. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I was muted. I was doing it politely. Yes. Yes. Yes. I'm winning. So, so I'm not,
02:14:10
Speaker
I've chewed up enough time on this episode. You don't need to hear me talk too much. No, not you. Yeah, not me. Listen, we're about to enter the 30 minute fucking Tom Arkey winning sun session. No, we're not. We're not. No, really? We're not. No, no. I'm just ribbing you. Don't get off. So, how about you go and fucking sit on this. Ooh, what is that? It's my little Thor hammer bottle opener. You can hammer me till I'm Thor. Carry on, Dan.
02:14:39
Speaker
This is going to be me chewing up Tom's 30 minutes because Evil West is not a perfect game, right? Evil West is a third person shooter on the PlayStation, Xbox, PC. It looks like the game that was two games before Red Dead Redemption.
02:15:01
Speaker
Yeah. So it is a video game. It is not, it is, but no, but no, but it is a video game. It is not, it is not a random redemption. It's not winning any awards for anything. So narrative, uh, whatever. Like it looks pretty, the level design is basic. It's autumn school. It's God of war. The fucking coin up shooter, to be honest. So what evil West gets right is fucking balance.
02:15:30
Speaker
Evil West, the balance in this game is fucking amazing. It is absolutely pinpoint precision perfect. Unless you're talking about the color saturation.
02:15:43
Speaker
Oh, no, I'm not talking about it. I just wanted to make that clear because that's well off for that. Yeah, it is. It picks it. It picks a color palette for a level and then it sticks with it. Oh, it sticks with it. Yeah. But the the balance of this game is amazing. So you start off as a vampire hunter.
02:16:04
Speaker
in the Old West and you go out and you- and some of the lore behind this is fantastic. I mean, vampires are called sanguines. I don't know whether it has some French terminology to- Sanguines, it's blood, isn't it? No. Yes. And to exsanguinate something is to drink all its blood. So spiders consume their prey by exsanguinating them.
02:16:29
Speaker
Oh, okay. Well, there you go. Sanguisines are what they do. How many people do you think have been killed directly from Mr. Mosquito drinking them like a thick shake? It's actually a very, very interesting, a very interesting comment because they refer to the Sanguisines, the vampires as ticks or leeches. Yeah, right. How many leeches have you heard kill causing death? I mean, ticks, yes.
02:16:58
Speaker
But, leeches. They go ticks, leeches, vampires. They were used to medicine up until the mid 1800s. They were. Yes. This is fucking the indie episode. So, I mean, you go through this as just, it's just a, it's just a fucking video game. You have no preconceptions when you go into this game. It is just a shoot them up. It's a kill the bad guy. Shoot them up, mash them up. Video game. Yep. Roll hard.
02:17:25
Speaker
But as you go through and the level design doesn't change, you go through a bit of a level as a little bit of exploration, you go into a combat zone, which is clearly defined. You then go into a little bit of exploration, maybe a puzzle into a clearly defined combat zone, into a little bit of exploration, into a boss fight. That is how... Was there a puzzle at any stage?
02:17:49
Speaker
Well, yes, in terms of. I played a long time ago, but yeah. Shoot this and make this fall. Oh, yeah. Okay. Yes. So there was, and I mean, this is the methodology across all of the levels, but the balance, the balance of this game is phenomenal. So you fight what you would classify as a mini boss in the third level.
02:18:15
Speaker
And you go, God damn, that mini boss was hard. You might die once or twice on normal difficulty. That's what I'm playing. You might die once or twice fighting this mini boss in the third level. Then on the sixth level, they'll throw two of those mini bosses and a couple of other baddies at you in one arena.
02:18:40
Speaker
Health has not increased. You don't increase your health through upgrades in this game. Your health stays, your amount of health stays the same unless later on in the game you buy an upgrade that increases at once. You get some small bits and pieces that enhance your combat ability through this level. And as you get to these harder
02:19:07
Speaker
mini bosses, you need to use every tool in your arsenal to beat them. Like it teaches you to, it gives you the tools to use later on as a combined combat option to beat these mini bosses and big bosses.
02:19:26
Speaker
Yeah. So I think the balance in this game is amazing. Like I'm now at the point where I've unlocked the entire skill tree. So I think I've only got one or two levels left in the game and I'm at the end. And I'm now at the point where I'm in an arena and I have four or five, what I would have called mini bosses early game, all there together.
02:19:52
Speaker
And I will die maybe two, three, four times before I beat these guys all in this little arena. And then you'll come up against the boss of that area, that boss of that level. And you'll get your ass handed to you on normal difficulty two or three times without making the slightest dent in the boss's bar. But then you go, okay, well, I know what they do now. I know their pattern and I know how to dodge and how to attack.
02:20:21
Speaker
I don't know. It is kind of in the sense that you, you learn, you need to dodge at certain times and you learn their attack. You learn the patterns. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that the balance. Wait till you play it on evil mode. Yeah, no, thanks. I just, I just think the balance of the whole thing is fantastic. I mean, you get to the end of something like God of War and even my most beloved game, the Witcher three or the Witcher series.
02:20:50
Speaker
you get to any of those Witcher games and you're god-like by the time you finish it. Even worse, I'm almost at the end of the game. I'm still getting my arse kicked by a boss. I'm still getting my arse kicked by mini bosses. I will get overpowered because I've used the wrong ability at the wrong time. I think just how they trickle feed all of the upgrades and there is no side missions.
02:21:19
Speaker
It's a real throwback to the PS2 God of War. Even God of War 3 on the PS3 and Ascension that came after that. It's that style of gameplay where you are in a boss fight, but you have to kill something to gain health back. And that's the thing, because they do throw fodder into your thing to kill it, compared to say Witcher 3, where it's like, oh god, I'm dead again. Fuck.
02:21:45
Speaker
Where am I daddy? Um, but yeah, no, it's like a dog that got rid of link. Papa. Um, yeah, but no, it's, it's that can you hear me?
02:21:57
Speaker
Oh God. Fucking random episode. But it's that kind of thing of like, where you have to, you need those enemies to come in midway. So you have to time them. You have to time them so you can get your health back when you need it compared to where you have a bunch of health potions to go through and stuff.
02:22:16
Speaker
So it's also paid like the your there's only like two of two of your abilities that actually recharge over time. All the rest of your abilities recharge through moving forward through attack. So they recharged through you doing melee attacks against the enemy. So if you're not fighting forward,
02:22:37
Speaker
you're not recharging your abilities to then be able to use to defeat the boss. So if you're not physically moving forward, and I mean literally physically moving into the boss, you're not able to recharge your abilities that will then ultimately let you defeat the boss. I was coming up against bosses where I would take an eighth of their bar off their health the first four times that I fought them.
02:23:06
Speaker
And I'm like, no, come on, like you can fucking do this. But it wasn't. They weren't fights where I was going. Fuck this. I'm out.
02:23:16
Speaker
They were like, you know what? I can do this. You're enjoying it.
Gaming Challenges & Boss Designs
02:23:19
Speaker
You're enjoying the challenge. I can see the pattern and I can move forward in this. I know the abilities that they've given me in the character because they've made me use them and I can see where they want me to use them in this fight. So I'm going to move forward. And then all of a sudden you've got the boss down to three quarters health and you die and go, you know what? That was fucking close. I'm going to get him next time. And you know what? You get him next time.
02:23:46
Speaker
Like, and that to me is perfect balance. Like, kick my ass two or three times because you're doing something different to everything that came before in the two or three hours. And you're keeping me interested. You know what? I want to get to the end of the next level because I want to see what the next box does to me. It's really good game design. Yeah.
02:24:06
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's brilliant game design. We are going to not do this during the podcast episode, but the three of us are going to sit down at some point. We're going to talk about my favorite boss design as a reference point for these types of conversations, because I find this really interesting and you're making me want to play the game because of it.
02:24:27
Speaker
Um, and I want to play Elden Ring for the same reason. It's, it's all about, what are you giving me that weird look for, Tom? No one wants to hear shit. Okay. What are you talking about? No, sorry. I'm just, I, I've just, yeah, I have spoken way too much about world of Warcraft over the years on the podcast. Um, but.
02:24:48
Speaker
When we talk about boss mechanics, to me, my platinum standard is my memories of certain boss fights. And in fact, I would actually love to sit down with you guys at some point when we've got some time. And I'll take you through three or four boss fights with like a quick YouTube video of the mechanic to actually defeat it. And you can see how vastly different they are, even though they're sequential bosses. Sounds like a perfect fucking Uplightly episode. What are you talking about?
02:25:13
Speaker
Yeah, but no one wants to hear about fucking my memories of World of Warcraft from 15 fucking years ago, man. Like you guys do because you're my friends and you kind of... They normally don't want to hear what we're talking about, so you know, that's fine. Anyway, it's also very visual. I have to argue with that because...
02:25:33
Speaker
One, I played World of Warcraft for about 10 seconds in comparison to you. But this is active. This is an active first person. You don't have anybody else there supporting. I'm not saying it's exactly the same. I'm just saying when you talk about having to learn the mechanics of each boss in order to defeat it and game design forcing you to adapt to the situation.
02:25:59
Speaker
and to learn through death. Or just think slightly out of the comfortable way you've been playing through the level previously. I think that's a really good thing as well. And I think what I found most from this game was
02:26:11
Speaker
I know I was learning the pattern of the boss, but I wasn't consciously learning the pattern of the boss. I was learning the mechanics of the game and then I beat the boss through learning and going, you know what, fuck, do this. Like dodge here, do that, bang, shoot this. Okay. You know, and it lifts its arms like that. It's going to do this. So you need to double roll as opposed to a single roll.
02:26:40
Speaker
Yeah, and it was a very subconscious muscle memory. Muscle memory. But I didn't know I knew those muscle memory things before I needed them.
02:26:57
Speaker
That's very funny you say that because mine was so I remember been doing Eva West. Mine was so active to remember which way I had to go depending on, depending on certain bosses. Have you done the old man boss yet? Yes. Yeah. That guy is particular. I was just like, I had to remember, I had to almost visualize, remember what he was going to do. So I knew which way to go and which way to dodge. That was the Valkyrie fights for me in God of War. My brain doesn't work. Oh yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
02:27:27
Speaker
I don't, and this is why I have an issue that I would really love to play Elden Ring and Lies of P, but I don't remember things like that. I play on instinct. I don't play on memory or what's in front of me. I just go,
02:27:48
Speaker
But you defeated the Valkyrie Queen. I mean, the Valkyrie Queen was an amalgamation of the mechanics that you'd been introduced to through the other 12, I want to say. Valkyries that you'd already defeated before that. And some of them were a piece of piss and some of them were fucking steamrolled you a few times before you defeated them. But you had to learn the patterns at a subliminal level.
02:28:09
Speaker
to be able to get to be able to get through them because it was so fucking fast. And then by the time you got to the Valkyrie Queen, everything she threw you'd seen before, you'd just never seen them all thrown at you at once. And yeah, I understand the concept of it, but I don't. The way I work when I play things isn't, here's my visual cue to do this. Okay. Like that is not the way I do things. I just go.
02:28:38
Speaker
This is what I do. Like my muscle memory works different from my visual cortex. Yep. Yep. I understand exactly what you're saying. You are, yeah, you're driving the controller independently to a thought process. Yeah. So it's all subconscious. I can't read a game guide and when they go, oh, when she does this going to Valkyrie Queen. Down diagonal ride.
02:29:04
Speaker
Yeah, I don't, that doesn't compute with me. Like it is like, I know it or I don't know it. And if I haven't done it earlier on, then I don't know it. And that's why I think Evil West does so well in its basic mechanics that it forces you to be able to understand these things going forward.
02:29:25
Speaker
talk basically nothing about the game, but it's, it's a visual thing. Yeah. I think you have. Yeah, you did. Definitely did. Yeah. Old, old way. Especially for a game. Well, I've already reviewed it earlier in an earlier episode as well. So like, I think I, I really focused on, I remember when I did, I really focused on the color and the setting and how that really threw me, but, um, it's good to hear your side, especially on the combat side of it.
02:29:51
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's a really interesting conversation. All that 6.7 is hitting. Good. Who's winning next, Thomas? Well, Pete's not. Let's just put that out there. But I'm not losing either. You're not participating. He's getting a DNF. Did not finish. Oh yeah, no participation. But you know what?
Discovering New Game Interactions
02:30:14
Speaker
I'm still seeing footage on
02:30:18
Speaker
Reddit of engagements, fights and quests and characters in BG3 that I never met. Or variations. I wanted to ask you about this.
02:30:30
Speaker
I saw a thing about when you meet the vampire man with the nice hair, the gray hair. What's his name? Who won the fucking, who won the, what's his name? Astarian? Astarian is the character's name. Did you do the, have you ever done the thing where you, if you attack him before- Become the vampire lord? No, no, you attack him when you first meet him, you attack him before he gets a chance to see you and then you raise him.
02:30:58
Speaker
No, different dialogue. If you want, I'll send you the link. This is what I mean. Like I'm still discovering so much content of characters that I know and love that are very, very, very fucking dark if you put them in the right circumstances.
02:31:23
Speaker
I'm not saying any of them a goody-goody two shoes but I mean like, there's you meet towards the end of the game I think acts you actually made her in I think act one but,
02:31:34
Speaker
You can have, you have a lot of quest, um, there's a lot of tie into her storyline and she's, she drives some of the narrative in the second and third acts. Um, but she, and if you play your cards, right? She ends up being a companion in your camp. She's never been, she's never a good companion. She's still a fucking demon from hell, but she's in your camp and you can interact with her. You can actually have a romantic encounter with it too. It's tasty. Yeah. Is that the red chick?
02:32:02
Speaker
Yes with with fucking demon wings and yeah she's actually- I only know about her from a clip where they use the Danny DeVito from It's Always Sunny and they put him into Baldur's Great Three. That's such a horrible fucking meme because it's so badly cut and yet it's still hilarious. It's horribly cut but it's fucking hilarious. It turns out she you somehow can turn her into a fucking vampire like she's already a demon spawn from hell so this encounters
02:32:31
Speaker
You know, I've played the game through twice and I tried to do everything I could do in a playthrough. I used completely different characters on my second run through than my first, and yet there's so much content that I haven't seen and it's materially different. It's not like I tweaked the skin here and I had a different dialogue option there. It is completely fucking different.
02:32:53
Speaker
Yeah, the one I was talking about was a different dialogue. It was like two small pieces of dialogue for when you made a star, and if you manage to kill him and he doesn't see you, and then you revive him, or if you kill him and he watches you kill him before he gets to attack, and then you revive him. I know the engagement that you're talking about now. I thought it was really cool that you
Nostalgia in Gaming
02:33:16
Speaker
could do that. And it's the most basic example of their gaming system. Fuck you.
02:33:24
Speaker
I don't even know how I started. Someone fed me the fucking line. Screw you. Yeah. That's the most basic example of the game system, Tom, and the complexity of the quests, because that happens in the first 10 minutes of the game. And it's not a result of the million permutations of other decisions you've already made. At that point, that's one or two decisions will lead to like 11 different outcomes with one character interaction. So it's a good example. Anyway, Tom, are you winning, son?
02:33:53
Speaker
I am. I am. I'm dual consoling again, still. So I've. At the same time, now that would be fucking impressive. You're willing. You're willing. I am. She's got a switch in one hand and a fucking, a dual sense. A dual sense three in one hand, a dual sense, or dual shock three, sorry, in one hand and a dual sense in the other. Uh, no, no. So I am, I'm currently doing the thing which I will probably envision doing for the next year. Um, that I'm playing the PS3 and the PS5 simultaneously, depending on, you know, if anyone wants a TV, then I'm like, oh,
02:34:21
Speaker
be in the front room. See you later. Don't contact me for the six hours. Going back and playing Force Unleashed 1, I've been having the time of my life going through. I had to do a bunch of like the really grindy things of kill 500 people using this force power. I was like, ah, cool. I remember that grind. So I just had to churn through like the first level, but it's also I got
02:34:41
Speaker
I tried to do the first level as many different ways in terms of how i approached each combat thing so i had fun with it i'm so that's cool i'm just gonna finish the hard mode i forgot how fucking harsh stock is. If you guys remember the shock to fight on the stock.
02:35:00
Speaker
Yeah, cool. So at one point if you get her in, I think if you win the force, the lightsaber combat, like you had to mash square to win the lightsaber combat. Yeah, the duel. Then he grabs her by the Lekku and swings her around and slams her. I was like, holy shit, man. 2009 was wild.
02:35:23
Speaker
You can do that. Wow. Yeah, it's cool. I love Sam. We were like, obviously, he's such a great voice actor and a great like body actor as well for those things. So yeah, really enjoying that going back through the super hard, the hardest mode, the Sith Master mode. Oh, God, I've had my ass handed to me by the bosses so far.
02:35:48
Speaker
Do you need to play through that to get the plat? Yeah, you do. Then I've done it. I just don't recall. It's worth it though. But it's getting the same thing of really thinking outside the square. The second level, you're in the trash Jedi temple and you fight the little dude on the thing. I could not defeat it. I spent about six hours sitting here. I was about to throw the controller through the TV. I haven't raised that hard in a long time and I was like, wow,
02:36:17
Speaker
We've been really like coddled, coddled the last like five years, six years, like, oh, and that's why I'm really enjoying going back to the PS3, being like, fuck yeah, games used to absolutely, absolutely ruin you if they really wanted to.
02:36:33
Speaker
Oh, Tom, you go back before that. Oh, yeah. Obviously. Yeah. But oh, yeah. Yeah. But I'm on a console that I'm, you know, going back to. But it was just like even things like that and just really thinking like, OK, cool. This is where I am at the story. This is the powers I have. What can I do? And almost light bulb going on. It's like, oh, yeah. OK, so the dude's got a metal arm thing. He's he's like gets paralyzed by force lightning.
02:37:01
Speaker
I can pick him up while he's paralyzed by force lightning and just throw him. So I did that. Beat him in 10 minutes. Fucking caught this, you piece of shit. So there's a there's a daily whole thread running on Reddit that I've been tracking for the last five, four or five days. Yeah. This is in context. So it's the 20 most badass characters in gaming. And it's been really interesting to read people's votes and their comments and all the discussion around all this. That'd be pretty
02:37:28
Speaker
It's such a good bit. So we're up to day five. I was the first time I weighed into the debate today and I cast my vote for Starkiller. But so far we've got Kratos from the original God of War, Master Chief from Halo. Not my, wouldn't have been my opinion. Not by a long fucking shot. He's not very hard ass. Jesus. No, it's nice. Doomguy. Light the candles. Light the candles.
02:37:52
Speaker
Doomguy and Geralt of Rivia. And so I've, I've put in my, my vote for, yeah, it is interesting to see how it's played out. I've put in my vote for Starkiller for fifth, cause I think he's probably needs to be a little bit higher up. Yeah. Especially him in the first game. I remember the second game, him, especially, but he was more life side. Yeah.
02:38:10
Speaker
He was a lot more emotional as well, and he was dealing with finding out that he was a clone. He's still pretty baseline emotional in the first game. There's more rage, but yeah, you're right. It's on the spectrum of emotion. It's just... Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, I've been really enjoying going back to that. Next, I'll smash out the end. I don't know why, but I never finished the end of AC2.
02:38:32
Speaker
I'll go back and fix that next on the PS3. On the PS5 side of things though, I did power through basically in a day of the Horizon DLC. Burning Shores. Burning Shores. It was a good new area, like the only new monsters they created.
02:38:50
Speaker
things they created, the robot animals, they were okay, they were just more mildly annoying than the other ones. It was the same with frozen wastes in the first game though. It was, it was. They created one new model, which was the essentially the super sized polar bear dinosaur, and then they gave him two different skins, one for the lava, frost claw and the fire claw, yeah.
02:39:14
Speaker
So in this one they've done, you get now, you get the, the bile gut, which is a massive toad. Um, and then you get the subside of that, which is a bunch of like little flies and you can get, you got to kill certain out of them. Um, otherwise it's pretty much the same characters. Uh, I think it's a cool world. I still, I still rate the world and exploring because you played it, haven't you? Yeah, you played it. Well, I haven't played, I haven't played burning shores, but I, I, I.
02:39:39
Speaker
Cool. I'm going to save my big discussion around burning shores for our character development up late. Yeah, cool. Yeah. Good. Because that was one of the characters that I thought that should be involved in that. Yep. I've got a lot of things to say about the character. The story itself. I've got some homework then. Cause I've got to finish, got a wall Valhalla and I've got to finish. Pete, if it helps burning shores, like to get through the story took me all of maybe two days.
02:40:06
Speaker
I'll probably do it tomorrow. Well, I mean, it's the long weekend. Yeah. Oh, you can smash out. You definitely smash out. You can smash out both in a weekend easily. Yeah. Cool. Look, the story was good, but compared.
02:40:17
Speaker
The development of Aloy in this compared to the development of Aloy's character in the whole of Horizon Forbidden West didn't gel well with me. And I think I spoke about it when we first played Forbidden West, which I didn't like the way that they developed Aloy's character. This, they made her character develop as a human person, because let's be honest, she's not really a human person. She's been raised, isolated, all that kind of stuff.
02:40:43
Speaker
Too quick, too quick. And the story is romantic, but I didn't mind that sense of it. I just thought it developed too quickly. Okay. But that said, the way it was acted was very well done. It felt weird in the spaces it should feel weird for someone who hasn't had that kind of connection with human beings before. So awkward. Yeah, the awkwardness felt authentic. Okay.
02:41:11
Speaker
It's a smash smash through that I'm gonna say I'm gonna save it for when I you played it and yeah, I'm really looking for this conversation cuz she's a great character to talk to talk about in the context of development cuz I've really enjoyed what they've done with her as a as a character as a narrative character and the development.
02:41:30
Speaker
In second one, let me down. So, yeah. Okay. It's going to be interesting to talk about that. And then I've done till... Oh, yeah. Yeah. And then I've done today. So, Syndicate, thank you, Pete, for lending me that one. I love the Fry twins. I think they're fun. It's really funny. I want to do Eevee's story missions, but I want to run around as Jacob, purely because I think it's a costume thing. Like,
02:41:58
Speaker
He's got such a badass fucking yeah. The top hat fucking pisses me off. Really? No, no, no. And it's one simple thing. So what I really liked about Jacob's original costume, which was the patchwork coat and he had the Peaky Blinders cap. Yeah, the flat cap.
02:42:17
Speaker
When he put his hood on, he folded up his piggy blindness cap and put it in his pocket. Now he's somehow folding up his top hat and shoving it down his pocket as well. I wish you had the option for that hat. Yeah, if you had that, if I could keep, because I've got the guns thing and coat at the moment, and it's pretty fucking badass, I really like it. But if he's still got to keep the flat cap, I think it just works. It's more immersive in terms of that on the coat.
02:42:42
Speaker
It's been a long time since I've played that game. It's really fun. I think it's also the really, really good environment to have an Assassin's Creed game in terms of Victorian London anything. It's always dark and rainy and miserable. It just fits the ethos. So really liking the, I've done all the Charles Dickens missions. They were very fun. The supernatural side of Victorian London is always a very interesting part of that culture.
02:43:08
Speaker
I thought the gang fights were a good mechanic. The rest of it's fine. I'm running around a big London and I'm having a great old time. It felt more natural because it's the same mechanic as you had in Brotherhood, essentially, where you recruited the Brotherhood and you had to fight the Byzantine Empire. I think it's Byzantines, might have been.
02:43:27
Speaker
Yeah, I'm going to go with that. The Ottoman Empire before that. I felt it was the same mechanic, but it was a lot more natural in Victorian London. The reason as well that I've been choosing to play most of the day-to-day, let's say, day-to-day missions as Jacob as well is because Curse Eevee's costume is so assassin-y and so out there and a bit outlandish. I just feel it really like... Doesn't blend. It doesn't blend. It really pulls you out of that Victorian London thing, but running around as Jacob is a bit fun. Also,
02:43:56
Speaker
Did they consult Hugh Jackman when they decided in the menu when you have the R3 switch between Evie and Jacob and it's the still image of Jacob with the hood down?
02:44:08
Speaker
It's pure, I'll take a photo of it. The Mutton Chops. The Mutton Chops with the face down. It's 2000s X-Men Hugh Jackman. I was like, holy shit, that's Hugh Jackman. You're making me reminisce about that game because it wasn't- It's fun. It's really fun. It was an entry to the series that I was hesitant to play. Also the soundtrack's beautiful. That fiddly violin coming through. If you want to borrow the actual CD, I have the soundtrack for that.
02:44:38
Speaker
I've got it on Spotify. Save it to the library. Yeah. See, back in my day, that was the only way to get the fucking soundtrack back then. Oh, I used to have that. I had the AC4 soundtrack that lived in my car and then some dickhead went through my car and stole the CDs out of the
02:44:57
Speaker
It was a thief with good taste. He stole the God of War soundtracks, the AC-4, Witcher 3 soundtrack that I had. All these game CDs, I'm like, dude, they're not getting you any money at a pawn shop. They didn't have cases. They were just loose. Yeah, but no, it was one of those things. There's the particular track that I love. If you do want to listen to the AC
02:45:26
Speaker
Is it Syndicate soundtrack? I'll find it. It's cobblestones and rooftops. And it's just this beautiful fiddle track that comes through and it goes really high pitched and it's just that's what I picture of Victorian when I listen to anything Victorian London, I want that sound playing. I've actually got the so the collect the collector's edition, deluxe edition, whatever it's called, came with a proper little winder music box. Waltzing on rooftops and cobblestones.
02:45:52
Speaker
Is that not the Victorian track you need to listen to in your daily life?
02:45:57
Speaker
Yeah, I've got a little music box that you turn the thing and the little metal fingers come over the play wheel and from that game and it plays one of the basic riff from one of the tracks in the game. But it's fine. It's a really good Assassin's Creed. It's reinvigorated my love of the Assassin's Creed franchise, actually. When it was fucking good, because it's not good now. So obviously, for those who don't know, I borrowed a couple of Assassin's Creed games off-peak because I haven't played Origins and they played Valhalla and I grabbed Mirage because he was like, I'm not playing any time soon.
02:46:25
Speaker
Um, and then I think the, well, I have AC three, but I never played that. So I, I'm going to do, I'm going to do AC three is great. I missed it. My brother was obsessed with it and I never got the disc off him. Um, but yeah, no, I, I, I will go and play all those. I want to do that. Connor. Is it Connor? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, they reference him pretty heavily. How do I forget fucking actors names that I know and watch last anyway. You know why? Because you play as the character.
02:46:52
Speaker
So I'm a narcissist basically is what you just said. No, no, because I do the same thing. You play and you're involved with the characters because you're passively watching them on the screen. Yes. Yeah. So I want to ask something. This has been, this, I've been, this, this race bar, my, I, when you were talking about, um,
02:47:10
Speaker
of course unleashed. Of course unleashed too.
Cinematic Moments in Gaming
02:47:14
Speaker
Yes. This sparked my my thinking was do you guys miss the uh the
02:47:23
Speaker
The first one was where you dove out of the cloning facility and you were diving down. Camino. You're falling down. It was Camino, was it? And you're, you're dodging TIE fighters. And you're dodging stuff as you're down. Do you guys miss that interrupting part of the story for something that is more... Yes.
02:47:52
Speaker
I do too. I don't know how to describe. Okay. Actually, it's more Arcady. Are you talking? No, it's Arcady. No, no, wait, wait, wait. Are you just talking about those explicit moments where you have to, where you're doing a moment where you're literally like, it's just a chase sequence? Or are you talking about like interrupting for like a QTE?
02:48:11
Speaker
So you interrupt the gameplay and then you have to do a button impress button press. But a meaningful QTE. Like so the run for your life was a meaningful QTE. It was a huge part of the stage you were playing and it played into the story and went into the story and the character.
02:48:29
Speaker
and the development of that character. So Starkiller had to get out of the Cloning Facility, and this was the path that was presented to him to get out of the Cloning Facility. So this is what I'm talking about. Well, you're in jeopardy at that point, though, because you were able to slow play through most of that level, and it gets to certain points during that sequence where you have to move forward. Because you could slow play it as long as... The enemies would keep regenerating until you moved forward.
02:48:59
Speaker
which would be which would trigger scripted respawns. I think of more so as playing Force Unleashed 1, which when you get a boss down to a certain level of health, it goes to a QTE.
02:49:14
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, no, I don't want that. That's not something you missed. Okay, so you're thinking more about like the actual segment, a segment of a level, which is became a platformer for a couple of minutes. I get to a point within a level where I think, can I remind you of my favorite, my favorite one, my favorite one of all time. Cause I know I think it's, it's God of War two and it's the crossing of the bridge.
02:49:37
Speaker
I don't know if anyone else remembers this. There's a moment in God of War 2, you have to cross a bridge and you jump onto the first section and then the bridge starts crumbling. Then you have to QTE your jumps and like hook swings to get over it. And the soundtrack builds up to it and it becomes a cinematic moment. I miss those. That's what I'm talking about, those big cinematic pullback moments which
02:50:00
Speaker
don't take you still have some interaction. You're not just going, cool, put the controller on the passenger for a cut. You're not a passenger for a cut team. But it's a it's a larger picture of what's happening to you. So yes, like the bridge, obviously the bridge crossing you're talking about falling out the window of
02:50:18
Speaker
And that's the big thing. I don't remember any more in Force Unleash. I know there was several rung for you a lot. There's a Cloud City moment when you're running across a bridge and a gunship is behind you and it's blowing up the platforms behind you. So those things exactly. I remember Force Unleash 2 pretty well actually. Looks like it's weird.
02:50:35
Speaker
And you're reminding me. Which are like actual context involved. Yes. You are in the moment involved into it. No, the bullshit QTEs to finish off a boss can go get fucked. Because they just repeat it. Which is every Star Wars game too.
02:50:54
Speaker
Well, that was also the thing of like, you know, that, that became pretty prevalent in the PS3 era. It was like, Hey, QTEs, they're the new thing. And everyone was like, are they not of war? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I just, I just miss that big cinematic moment. No, I'd like thing. I think back to things like, um, pulling down the fucking star destroyer. Well, exactly. I mean, one of the most epic moments of star Wars game, in my opinion,
02:51:22
Speaker
And that's button sensitive. Like you have to put in the input for that. Yeah. Yeah. So, and I just, I just wondered whether you guys miss those things too, because they seem to have a little bit gone. Those big, epic things. There was cinematic, but you had agency. And so you felt engaged as a result. I think, I think arises, horizon's a perfect example of the playing the burning shores. They were seeing that it cut to cinematic moments in certain fights. And you're just like, Oh,
02:51:51
Speaker
Horizon did a decent job for both games on that as well where it does pull back in certain moments, but only for a moment yeah yeah they were they were scripted cutscene moments as opposed to,
02:52:07
Speaker
You controlling the character I remember you were fighting the first. What was the huge creature in Force Unleashed 2 and you're in the arena. It was a rank. Yeah it was bigger than a normal rank or that's what I remembered. And you had to run around the platform and then you were you had to find him on several levels and to me and there were certain sequences where yeah okay there were scripted events and you had to
02:52:32
Speaker
punch him in the face a certain number of times to trigger the next piece. Basic game mechanics. But then it would pull back and you'd have suddenly you're this tiny little fucking dude on this humongous platform. And it gave you this really epic sense of scale. And I really enjoyed that. And I think that's kind of what you're talking about, Dan.
02:52:48
Speaker
Yes, that's exactly what I'm talking about. And I feel that's a little whacking in some of these things. It has been lately, yeah. Certainly. I think the games that we're playing as well have, they've changed in their scale of things, especially God of War is the perfect example where it's become so much more personal.
02:53:04
Speaker
And we're not gonna, let's not touch on fucking Jaffee's fucking comments on it. Good old Jaffal man. Um, and, and he's got his comments, but like, but they, but it's become more personal and even the big set moments, like you're thinking God of War 2018, where you fight is on the ice giants at the, like towards the end, or you fight the dragon, you fought the dragon moment. And it's like.
02:53:28
Speaker
It's an immersive sequence, but it's different from a QTE boss thing where you're just like, it kind of resets. It's like, if you fuck up that immersive sequence, it's like, no, no, no, no. You start from the beginning of that again. You don't get those checkpoints kind of thing. Whereas I think if you think about a lot of the, especially like PlayStation 3 era onwards, the boss QTEs, it's like, I think it forced on me. So I fucked up the first boss.
02:53:55
Speaker
on super hard mode and it just went no no just start again here you go have a lolly you did good go on start again start the qt again it's four buttons but i just miss timed one like you know it's just one of those things where it's just like nah it plays you that an eternal loop and it's just like it kind of takes you out of the game thing where it's like no no you fucked it up you died you start that whole sequence again and like you know you have to get through it and it makes it like a bit more of a like
02:54:22
Speaker
by the end of it, you're like either gripping the controller or, or you go. I am a golden God. Like it's one of those moments where you're just like, I just got through that. Or I am the greatest gaming God that's ever existed. And I demolished you take that, uh, Santa Monica or whoever you are. Yeah.
02:54:46
Speaker
I think we're going to. I was joking about it. Dan's going to ramble. Dan's going to ramble. Yeah, I am. But he's getting sentimental. Let's cut it. Oh, do you have any closing thoughts, Dan? No, my only closing thought was everything you mentioned and the point where God of War Ragnarok finished off on that QTE
02:55:14
Speaker
But it was kind of a QTE heritage where it finished was the Thor fight. You kind of got through that Thor fight at the start and then you kind of didn't get anything. When you fought his sons, I'm pretty sure there was no, that was the first game. Oh, okay. Sorry. My bad. Yeah. So Ragnarok was the end of that, like the Thor fight. You did have a bit of QTE with the Allfather.
02:55:41
Speaker
You had a little bit but it was nothing not as for any challenging and it was never anything within a big fight that was. If you can see the man is not feel as big as that and had impact on like the literal clashing of me all the times yeah.
02:56:00
Speaker
And the Leviathan Axe throws a thunderbolt in situ, like literally throws it in time from where you did that, had that clash for the rest of the game. You could go back and visit it if you wanted. Yeah, definitely. And that was to me was the point of that game where those moments died.
02:56:25
Speaker
And I know that's a big, that's a big call, but that was... Well, they didn't die. They were just left with a lasting memory, but they didn't impact, I guess, the gameplay or story as much as those things. But it's what drives your connection to how epic the character is that you're playing to.
02:56:40
Speaker
But I think, I think that's the thing that's missing from these earlier games is that like you have these, you know, where you had the travel fights. Sorry. You have these QTE interactions or these, these, these, whatever boss, if it's a boss, if it's a, it's a crossing of a bridge or something, but it's like afterwards, it's like, I remember in God of War two, I'm like, I'm pretty sure you can go back and cross that bridge. It was just hard. It just evolved a lot more jumping and swinging. Like, cause you had updated the village cause you have to go back and collect things afterwards. And it was like.
02:57:09
Speaker
Okay. But it's already done it. Yeah. It doesn't, it doesn't, it doesn't really take away from that moment, but it doesn't really add anything to it. Whereas coming back and seeing that frozen Thunderbolt, like lightning bolt Thunderbolt. Um, Thunderbolt. I call it because that's what I call it in mythology. Yeah. Yeah. It's, I'm sorry. I was thinking back to Pokemon. That was a Pikachu move. Um, yeah, but it was just like coming back to see that it like,
02:57:37
Speaker
It held that little more meaning because it was, it was, it didn't really impact your gameplay, but you could just go and spend time there. And it was definitely helped me. Yeah. Yeah. I thought it was that there was a beautiful moment. Absolutely. Yeah. I just, I just miss those. I miss those, those big cinematic. Make me feel.
02:57:59
Speaker
Good and big and big, bigger than what? To the character. Yeah, connected is probably a better term. I mean, make me feel...
02:58:09
Speaker
part of the world and make me feel part of the mythology. Invested, I think is the right word. But invested in the world, not just invested in our world, invested in their world. Yeah, that's what I mean. Like you're invested in the character and their identity and the world that they belong to. Starkiller can jump out of a Kamino window and make it 300 floors down, dodging TIE fighters because he's fucking Starkiller. Yeah.
02:58:37
Speaker
It definitely has reaffirmed my ability that Starkiller should never be canon, because he's too fucking- You said that. He is OP. Starkiller should absolutely be canon. Absolutely not. Absolutely not. No. Mickey and the House of Mouse into a steaming pile of mouse duty. He already did that.
02:59:00
Speaker
15 years ago. I'm giving you guys 15 minutes. 50 minutes later. Here we are. 30 minutes that was Dan. I wasn't pointing fingers. I called it from early. Thank you. Thank you for joining us. If you've managed to survive all the way to the end of our three hour, two hour episode.
02:59:23
Speaker
Hey, so standard timing, well done. Another happy landing. For you? No, it's been good. Any closing thoughts? I don't know, I'm hesitant to even ask. Don't ask that. Okay, thanks for tuning in. Game well, watch well, be well. See you in a couple of weeks.