Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
MacGuffins 'r' Us! (Dead Space: Catalyst Part 2)
6 Plays10 months ago
This has to be it. The low point right? There is nothing remotely interesting about this book aside from the anger that it stirs inside of me like small, tiny star. But that would be impossible because as we know if I had a star inside of me then it would consume me, and also Doc Ock would not be able to contol it with his tentacles. The power of a star in the palm of his hands. What did HE know?
Anyway, maybe we can just watch Spider-Man 2 next episode instead.
Our SocialsFollow us at patreon.com/pixellitpod and hop into our Discord!
Blue Sky: https://bsky.app/profile/pixellitpod.com
Instagram: https://instagram.com/pixellitpod
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Podcast Theme
00:00:00
Speaker
Oh, big time.
00:00:01
Speaker
The only way you could amp up the witch factors if they cast Stevie Nicks.
00:00:05
Speaker
Like that's as far as they could have gone.
00:00:09
Speaker
Yeah.
00:00:10
Speaker
And you know who else cast Stevie Nicks?
00:00:13
Speaker
Who's that?
Podcast Introduction and Today's Topic
00:00:14
Speaker
Hey there, everybody.
00:00:14
Speaker
Welcome back to Pixel It.
00:00:15
Speaker
My name is Kevin.
00:00:16
Speaker
With me as always is Finn on today's show.
00:00:18
Speaker
I'm going to stumble through talking about Dead Space Catalyst a little bit more because God damn, this is might be the worst book we've ever read.
00:00:25
Speaker
Could you guys tell that we really, for anyone who gets the pre-show talk, this is probably the longest it's ever gone.
00:00:35
Speaker
We talked for 20 minutes before.
00:00:38
Speaker
Normally I go about 10 minutes, but this is a solid near 20 minutes of just like, I don't want to talk about this stupid book.
00:00:44
Speaker
That's exactly it.
00:00:45
Speaker
Without saying it, that's exactly why we couldn't.
00:00:49
Speaker
Just like, no, no, I don't want to.
00:00:53
Speaker
It's just, and I was telling Kevin this before the show started.
00:00:57
Speaker
I am...
00:00:58
Speaker
I let myself believe, you know, FNAF, which had been one of the worst books we'd read, or at least in the running, really pulled out of the nosedive.
00:01:09
Speaker
It really learned something from its previous iterations.
00:01:14
Speaker
That's one of the benefits you get from having the same author.
00:01:17
Speaker
And as I mentioned in the last episode, I respect FNAF.
00:01:20
Speaker
this author actually as a horror writer.
00:01:22
Speaker
So, you know, you'd think he'd like look at it and go, Oh, okay.
00:01:26
Speaker
I know what I need to do or make some kind of change.
00:01:31
Speaker
It's, it's the same shit.
00:01:34
Speaker
Yeah.
00:01:34
Speaker
I think the reason why I categorically might put it as the worst book we've ever read, because the first one was bad.
00:01:40
Speaker
And the second one is just bad.
00:01:44
Speaker
pretty much the same goddamn book with the, uh, pieces rotated a little bit.
00:01:50
Speaker
Yeah.
00:01:51
Speaker
Uh, it's, it's not underwater anymore.
00:01:53
Speaker
It's in space.
00:01:55
Speaker
Uh, we're off of earth.
00:01:56
Speaker
We're in outer space, but it's the same bullshit.
00:02:00
Speaker
Um, and here's the thing.
Community Engagement and Promotions
00:02:03
Speaker
here's one thing I'm going to tell you, and that is patreon.com slash pixel at pod.
00:02:09
Speaker
I think you should really head over there.
00:02:11
Speaker
It's a wonderful website.
00:02:13
Speaker
You can go there and you can join us for free or $1, $5 or $10 each gets you a little bit more stuff.
00:02:21
Speaker
$5.
00:02:21
Speaker
You get that, you get that bonus episode that we were just talking about at the beginning of the show and $10 gets you that also.
00:02:28
Speaker
Yeah.
00:02:30
Speaker
You're getting your name shouted out in the episode.
00:02:32
Speaker
And to that end, I got a shout out.
00:02:34
Speaker
Jesus loves you.
00:02:35
Speaker
Kyle Seaman, Ruthless Mudder, Middle of Things, Sigma Sal, Chet Beaks, Dummy Thick, and Friendly Friend.
00:02:44
Speaker
Thank you so much for being a friend.
00:02:46
Speaker
PixelitPod.com or Patreon.com slash PixelitPod.
00:02:50
Speaker
That'll get you there.
00:02:51
Speaker
And go ahead and join the Discord from there because you know what?
00:02:55
Speaker
We have a lovely Discord filled with lovely people.
00:02:57
Speaker
Sure.
00:02:59
Speaker
So let's put the body in the marsh because.
00:03:01
Speaker
Oh, let's.
00:03:03
Speaker
Why should we ruin our fun, Kevin?
00:03:05
Speaker
Why?
00:03:05
Speaker
Why?
00:03:06
Speaker
Why?
00:03:07
Speaker
And so, Phil, what do you play?
00:03:10
Speaker
Just straight into it.
00:03:12
Speaker
That's what the people really want.
00:03:19
Speaker
Uh, God, yeah, so if I'm remembering correctly where we left off, there it is.
Plot Development: Aspera and Prison Life
00:03:30
Speaker
not Istvan, the other guy, Genji, the other brother, had just heard from Henry about Aspera.
00:03:38
Speaker
That's where his brother is being kept.
00:03:40
Speaker
And then Genji's like, but Aspera, I'd never heard of that before.
00:03:47
Speaker
It could have been, what if it was Hasbero?
00:03:51
Speaker
And, okay.
00:03:53
Speaker
Anyway.
00:03:54
Speaker
Anyway.
00:03:56
Speaker
He's just like thinking out loud for this is an entire chapter.
00:04:00
Speaker
It's it's a it's a chapter that is half a page long.
00:04:03
Speaker
And it's just just Genji being like, I've never heard of that before.
00:04:09
Speaker
It couldn't be real.
00:04:10
Speaker
It couldn't be real.
00:04:11
Speaker
Yeah.
00:04:11
Speaker
Yeah.
00:04:13
Speaker
Uh, so yeah, then we get back over to Istvan and he is just in the prison and he's just like zoning out.
00:04:25
Speaker
He's disassociating, he's seeing things.
00:04:28
Speaker
And, uh, then eventually he snaps out of it and he meets the other cellmates, uh,
00:04:36
Speaker
They all have names.
00:04:37
Speaker
It doesn't really matter what their names are because they have no distinguishing characteristics aside from their names.
00:04:46
Speaker
There's a guy named Waldron.
00:04:48
Speaker
There's a guy named Bill.
00:04:50
Speaker
But all these guys are political prisoners, quote unquote, like Istvan.
00:04:54
Speaker
They're not like the real violent types.
00:04:57
Speaker
They were just...
00:05:00
Speaker
They were just the non-MAGA folk.
00:05:03
Speaker
Yeah.
00:05:05
Speaker
The non-redcaps.
00:05:06
Speaker
Now that Trump is in office.
00:05:07
Speaker
Well, he's not in yet.
00:05:10
Speaker
Well, yeah, no, he's not in yet, but we will continue pixel it from prison.
00:05:15
Speaker
Just in case.
00:05:16
Speaker
I just it's important that you people know that we will fight for you.
00:05:20
Speaker
This is this is our act of rebellion.
00:05:22
Speaker
This is our act of rebellion.
00:05:24
Speaker
Hashtag resist.
00:05:28
Speaker
That's got to be more effective than what most liberals are out there doing.
00:05:33
Speaker
They're posting.
00:05:34
Speaker
God bless them.
00:05:35
Speaker
They're posting through it.
00:05:36
Speaker
God damn it.
00:05:37
Speaker
They're posting.
00:05:39
Speaker
You heard Nancy Pelosi basically said to Bernie Sanders, like, well, that wasn't very nice, Bernie.
00:05:46
Speaker
That's that.
00:05:46
Speaker
I don't respect that.
00:05:48
Speaker
Like, Bernie, you've never won a primary.
00:05:51
Speaker
And and I don't think you want to go down that route with Bernie Sanders about him not winning the primary for president.
00:05:58
Speaker
Fucking read the room.
00:06:00
Speaker
Read the room, Nancy.
00:06:03
Speaker
Anyway.
00:06:04
Speaker
Anyhow.
00:06:05
Speaker
He meets his friends and he starts talking about they start talking about how they could break out, break out of prison.
00:06:16
Speaker
But the people who are there, the other guards or the other prisoners are like, I don't think you can.
00:06:21
Speaker
Well, then we're in space.
00:06:25
Speaker
I think this whole space thing is really going to fuck that plan up.
00:06:28
Speaker
So yeah.
00:06:28
Speaker
Yeah.
00:06:30
Speaker
Meanwhile, now we're in chapter
Character Experiences and Conflicts
00:06:33
Speaker
17.
00:06:33
Speaker
We cut out to a ship above the planet.
00:06:37
Speaker
This is the ship that Grotter is on.
00:06:40
Speaker
Remember Grotter?
00:06:41
Speaker
Grotter.
00:06:42
Speaker
Great name.
00:06:42
Speaker
Great name.
00:06:44
Speaker
We miss you, Grotter.
00:06:46
Speaker
We miss you, Grotter.
00:06:47
Speaker
That's about it.
00:06:48
Speaker
Yeah.
00:06:49
Speaker
It's from the perspective of Ensign Halley, or Technician Halley, who also seems to be affected by whatever's going on on the planet.
00:07:03
Speaker
She's getting headaches at random times.
00:07:07
Speaker
There's this guy, Ensign Orthor, who's
00:07:13
Speaker
We have names that are pronounceable.
00:07:15
Speaker
Jesus Christ.
00:07:17
Speaker
Just none of them.
00:07:18
Speaker
None of it's the, I, I have no problem with the little creativity, but give us a bill now and then for Christ's sake.
00:07:25
Speaker
God damn it.
00:07:27
Speaker
Anyway, Orthor is a real creep creeperton and he's a unitologist and is like, Hey, uh,
00:07:35
Speaker
what's, uh, what's your number?
00:07:37
Speaker
And she's like, get away from me or with her.
00:07:40
Speaker
Um, anyway, she has, she's getting headaches and then Grotter's like, yeah, go ahead, take a, take a break.
00:07:46
Speaker
And, uh, while she's on a break, she starts like sketching something on her vid pad and Grotter sees it.
00:07:54
Speaker
And he's like, what's this?
00:07:56
Speaker
Um, what the fuck is this?
00:07:58
Speaker
And it's like a bunch of equations and a drawing of a marker or something like that.
00:08:02
Speaker
Um,
00:08:03
Speaker
And he's like, don't show this to anybody.
00:08:05
Speaker
Only me.
00:08:06
Speaker
I want you to send me all the drawings you make.
00:08:10
Speaker
So weird.
00:08:11
Speaker
It's like, it's, it's like, it's a real, like, I need an adult moment.
00:08:15
Speaker
Despite the fact that these are both adults.
00:08:17
Speaker
It's very creepy.
00:08:19
Speaker
Chapter 18, we got Dr. Bryden, who is a dyed-in-the-wool unitologist.
00:08:27
Speaker
He really wants everybody to... That's all you... You know what?
00:08:30
Speaker
The unitologists just want basically the end of... You ever see the movie Society?
00:08:37
Speaker
No, I want to.
00:08:38
Speaker
I have never seen it, though.
00:08:39
Speaker
Yeah.
00:08:40
Speaker
Yeah.
00:08:40
Speaker
Yeah.
00:08:41
Speaker
Looks crazy.
00:08:42
Speaker
It's got some real intense body horror stuff in it.
00:08:46
Speaker
Basically, they just the goal of unitology is the ending to society.
00:08:51
Speaker
And a flesh orgy, a flesh orgy.
00:08:57
Speaker
Yes.
00:08:57
Speaker
So basically society and the substance would make a good.
00:09:05
Speaker
Oh, double feature.
00:09:06
Speaker
Double feature.
00:09:06
Speaker
Yeah.
00:09:07
Speaker
Yeah.
00:09:08
Speaker
I've never even seen society.
00:09:10
Speaker
I've seen enough because I live in this age.
00:09:12
Speaker
And yeah, yeah, it'll be good.
00:09:16
Speaker
So the Dr. Brian is annoyed at a technician who fails to report the marker pulse.
00:09:27
Speaker
And he's like, incompetence.
00:09:29
Speaker
I should.
00:09:30
Speaker
I felt it before you even reported it.
00:09:33
Speaker
Do I have to do everything around here?
00:09:38
Speaker
There's another doctor named Dr. Callie.
00:09:42
Speaker
Callie.
00:09:42
Speaker
What's her?
00:09:43
Speaker
Callie Dexter.
00:09:45
Speaker
That's a good name.
00:09:46
Speaker
I appreciate that one.
00:09:47
Speaker
I liked that one.
00:09:48
Speaker
That was a good name.
00:09:48
Speaker
Callie Dexter, he hates her because she is not a believer.
00:09:53
Speaker
She is a just the facts man type of doctor where she doesn't want to care about your feelings, your little headaches, Bryden.
00:10:05
Speaker
She just wants the data.
00:10:07
Speaker
And Bryden's like, but the great ending of society.
00:10:12
Speaker
And Callie's like, could you stop talking about a movie that's 300 years old?
00:10:16
Speaker
Just enough.
00:10:17
Speaker
Yeah.
00:10:18
Speaker
No one saw it.
00:10:19
Speaker
So anyway, they analyze the vectors.
00:10:29
Speaker
Moving on.
00:10:29
Speaker
Chapter 19.
00:10:30
Speaker
If you guys can't figure it out, it's really exciting at this point.
00:10:36
Speaker
It's really exciting.
00:10:36
Speaker
They got the grant.
00:10:38
Speaker
Yeah.
00:10:40
Speaker
That was a honestly that for those of you don't know what we're talking about and haven't listened to the first dead space book, you need to listen in for the they got the grant moment.
00:10:51
Speaker
That was a turning point for this show.
00:10:53
Speaker
I really feel like that was like a when we really hit our stride was they got the grant.
00:10:59
Speaker
Something got set in stone on that day is all I'm saying.
00:11:04
Speaker
And there's a scene from Parks and Recreation where Leslie Knope is talking about, like, some presentation.
00:11:12
Speaker
And every time I see that scene now, I just think of Dead Space Martyr.
00:11:16
Speaker
Yeah.
00:11:16
Speaker
Because she goes, guess what?
00:11:19
Speaker
We got the Gramp.
00:11:21
Speaker
Yeah.
00:11:21
Speaker
I mean, Grant.
00:11:22
Speaker
Yeah.
00:11:24
Speaker
It's so dumb.
00:11:26
Speaker
Guys.
00:11:28
Speaker
Guys, it's so dumb.
00:11:30
Speaker
Istvan, chapter 19.
00:11:31
Speaker
Istvan is like seeing, like, I don't, okay, this is the thing that pisses me off about this book, all right?
00:11:38
Speaker
So chapter 19 is a lot of Istvan in the other world seeing things.
00:11:44
Speaker
And the words we're getting are shapes.
00:11:47
Speaker
We're like, well, what fucking shape?
00:11:50
Speaker
Yeah.
00:11:50
Speaker
Yeah.
00:11:51
Speaker
Use your words, buddy.
00:11:53
Speaker
Yeah, you're literally being paid to do that.
00:11:56
Speaker
Like, there's shapes and there's boiling.
00:11:59
Speaker
It is the least effective version of some sort of Lovecraftian prose that I have ever seen.
00:12:11
Speaker
Like, there is no sense of terror or urgency in these words.
00:12:16
Speaker
It's like he's seeing things and then there's a human face and
00:12:21
Speaker
And it's kind of I wouldn't even say it's going through the motions.
00:12:25
Speaker
It's just it's like a piss poor imitation of what should be happening.
00:12:30
Speaker
Like, yeah, so weird.
00:12:32
Speaker
Basically, the long and short of it is the marker is trying to find out a way to communicate to Istvan in a way that makes sense for Istvan's brain.
00:12:42
Speaker
So it's trying a bunch of things, including various shapes and faces and all that stuff.
00:12:48
Speaker
What I just summarized is the next 40 pages of this book before we actually get to pay dirt on that.
00:12:55
Speaker
But it is really dumb.
00:13:00
Speaker
It just goes on and on.
00:13:01
Speaker
It goes on and on.
00:13:03
Speaker
We get more of the other guys, Bill and Waldron, being like, hey, what's going on with this guy over here?
00:13:12
Speaker
Chapter 20, we're back with the supposed main character, Jensi, who has figured out what Aspera is and that there's a prison on there named Hell, that there's something called Operation Aspera.
00:13:29
Speaker
And he's just like making a making a plan.
00:13:32
Speaker
And he's working with him.
00:13:33
Speaker
Some guys named Swanson and Talbot.
00:13:38
Speaker
They're like also they're like freight driver guys.
00:13:43
Speaker
So he he's he meets Swanson and is like trying to get on the ship that he knows is going to.
00:13:49
Speaker
Yeah.
00:13:52
Speaker
is going to Aspera and Swanson's like, nah, there's no, there's no spots on the ship.
00:13:58
Speaker
Um, and he tries to, um, he, he's like, well, what if a spot opens up?
00:14:05
Speaker
And then like Talbot, he kills Talbot, Talbot, Jensey does.
00:14:10
Speaker
It wasn't like totally intention to intentional.
00:14:12
Speaker
I think he was that he, he accidentally like, uh,
00:14:19
Speaker
I think he accidentally overdoses Talbot.
00:14:22
Speaker
Oh, is that what?
00:14:23
Speaker
I didn't understand what the fuck was going on.
00:14:25
Speaker
Talbot has a heart attack while he, while Gen Z is trying to scare him out of going on the front.
00:14:33
Speaker
Okay.
00:14:34
Speaker
All right.
00:14:35
Speaker
I'm so glad you real.
00:14:36
Speaker
I did not.
00:14:38
Speaker
admittedly I've been reading through one bloodshot eye lately.
00:14:42
Speaker
And, but I, I was like, okay, I guess Kevin's going to go into that later.
00:14:47
Speaker
Like, yeah.
00:14:48
Speaker
So Gen Z like goes in with a baklava on and, and like, is like, good.
00:14:55
Speaker
Don't go on the ship.
00:14:57
Speaker
I'm Batman.
00:14:57
Speaker
And Talbot fucking dies of a heart attack.
00:15:01
Speaker
Jesus Christ.
00:15:03
Speaker
And he's like, well, that's one way to not have the guy on the ship.
00:15:06
Speaker
Well, that happens.
00:15:07
Speaker
Okay.
00:15:08
Speaker
And now Gen
Significant Events and Consequences
00:15:09
Speaker
Z has like gets interviewed to be to have an opening on the shift ship because Talbot's unavailable now, apparently.
00:15:21
Speaker
That's that's you.
00:15:22
Speaker
You mark my words.
00:15:23
Speaker
That's in the future for getting jobs.
00:15:25
Speaker
That is going to happen.
00:15:26
Speaker
Yeah.
00:15:27
Speaker
Someone's up for a job you like, and it's just going to be expected that you try to try their life.
00:15:32
Speaker
Yeah.
00:15:32
Speaker
That's just going to be, there's going to be an insurance, uh, that they sell for it.
00:15:37
Speaker
Um, I'm really looking for Trump to really flex flexes, uh, back to the future part two muscles.
00:15:46
Speaker
Um, I really want to see, uh, some peak Biff Tannen energy.
00:15:52
Speaker
It's coming.
00:15:53
Speaker
I got a, I got a, I got a good slash bad feeling about this.
00:15:57
Speaker
Uh,
00:15:59
Speaker
And Elon Musk just like walking around and going the easy way.
00:16:08
Speaker
The easy way.
00:16:12
Speaker
Am I cool and relevant yet, guys?
00:16:14
Speaker
Yeah, just keep doing it.
00:16:15
Speaker
You're doing great.
00:16:16
Speaker
Just keep doing it.
00:16:17
Speaker
Keep going.
00:16:18
Speaker
I'm sure this time it's going to work.
00:16:20
Speaker
Just keep going.
00:16:21
Speaker
I'm fine.
00:16:22
Speaker
God fucking idiot.
00:16:24
Speaker
God, yeah.
00:16:28
Speaker
He... Anyway.
00:16:30
Speaker
We haven't really addressed it totally, but...
00:16:35
Speaker
Obviously, if you're listening to this, you know that Donald J. Trump won the election.
00:16:41
Speaker
He's a piece of shit.
00:16:42
Speaker
If you don't agree with that, you can go ahead and unsubscribe.
00:16:47
Speaker
He's a literal fucking monster.
00:16:51
Speaker
Not that like, listen, I don't like the Democrats that much.
00:16:55
Speaker
I'm a leftist.
00:16:56
Speaker
They're Democrats are like mealy mouth.
00:16:59
Speaker
We can't win things because we are like focus testing what would work the best.
00:17:06
Speaker
Meanwhile, they're losing.
00:17:07
Speaker
So the Republicans are like, maybe we should just kill everybody.
00:17:11
Speaker
And people are, are cheering for that.
00:17:13
Speaker
Um, so in insert, uh, uh, the hippie, uh, the beatnik parents of Flanders saying, uh, we we've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas.
00:17:22
Speaker
That's,
00:17:24
Speaker
That's the Democratic Party.
00:17:29
Speaker
Yeah.
00:17:30
Speaker
What was this?
00:17:31
Speaker
That Simpsons bit?
Humor and Cultural Commentary
00:17:34
Speaker
I just said it.
00:17:35
Speaker
It was the beatniks.
00:17:35
Speaker
No, no, no.
00:17:37
Speaker
The other Simpsons, Simpsons Republican convention.
00:17:43
Speaker
Oh, oh, oh, yeah.
00:17:46
Speaker
Yeah, for the Democrats and the Republicans.
00:17:49
Speaker
Republican convention inside.
00:17:51
Speaker
The banner says, we want what's worse for everyone.
00:17:53
Speaker
We're just plain evil.
00:17:55
Speaker
And the Democratic convention inside.
00:17:57
Speaker
We hate our life.
00:17:57
Speaker
We hate life and ourselves.
00:17:59
Speaker
We can't govern.
00:18:01
Speaker
So good.
00:18:06
Speaker
It's funny cause it's true.
00:18:09
Speaker
It's funny cause it's true.
00:18:11
Speaker
Yeah.
00:18:11
Speaker
So hooray.
00:18:13
Speaker
Everything's working out so well.
00:18:16
Speaker
Everybody's coming up.
00:18:17
Speaker
Millhouse.
00:18:20
Speaker
to keep the Simpsons and presidential because Richard Milhouse Nixon.
00:18:27
Speaker
Hey there.
00:18:28
Speaker
Ah, there you go.
00:18:29
Speaker
There it is.
00:18:30
Speaker
There it is.
00:18:31
Speaker
There it is.
00:18:32
Speaker
There it is.
00:18:33
Speaker
There it is.
00:18:33
Speaker
There it is.
00:18:35
Speaker
Chapter 21, more Istvan bullshit.
00:18:39
Speaker
He's, he's going back and forth between the veil and not the veil.
00:18:46
Speaker
He starts calling the other world, the veil.
00:18:48
Speaker
And he's,
00:18:50
Speaker
At one point, he sees his mother's face.
00:18:52
Speaker
At another point, he sees Fisher, who is the politician he killed, that guy's face.
00:18:59
Speaker
The other prisoners are like, what's, why is he doing this?
00:19:03
Speaker
What the fuck is going on?
00:19:06
Speaker
And yeah, they need to, they need to like help him because he's, he'll just suddenly sit there.
00:19:16
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:20
Speaker
Then a prisoner named Khan kills himself with a fork.
00:19:26
Speaker
He stabs himself in the arm with a fork a bunch of times and then in the throat.
00:19:29
Speaker
Yeah, he just keeps going that way.
00:19:31
Speaker
Yeah, he stabbed himself in the throat.
00:19:32
Speaker
Yeah, I remember that.
00:19:33
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:33
Speaker
That was something at least.
00:19:37
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:38
Speaker
Meanwhile,
00:19:40
Speaker
We got Henry back, Henry Wondre, and he is like basically doing the security oversight for the prison and is really hating his job.
00:19:50
Speaker
He was doing the monitor work when the guy killed himself and, you know, they're not – he's not happy about that.
00:20:00
Speaker
No.
00:20:04
Speaker
He's had better days.
00:20:05
Speaker
Apparently they've turned the morgue in the prison into an interrogation room.
00:20:11
Speaker
Oh, that's right.
00:20:12
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:20:12
Speaker
He's asking the guy in charge, what do I tell them to do with the body?
00:20:17
Speaker
Should they incinerate it?
00:20:18
Speaker
And the guy's like, no, keep it.
00:20:20
Speaker
And he's like, where?
00:20:21
Speaker
And they're like, well, we don't have a morgue anymore.
00:20:24
Speaker
And the guy's like, put it in the refrigerator.
00:20:29
Speaker
It's actually just bizarre enough that I was like, okay, that one.
00:20:33
Speaker
I appreciate this moment.
00:20:35
Speaker
That moment, the level of like just really knowing bureaucracy and how pointless and stupid it is.
00:20:41
Speaker
I was like, okay, you know what?
00:20:43
Speaker
Fair point.
00:20:43
Speaker
Fair point to you on that one.
00:20:45
Speaker
That's pretty good.
00:20:46
Speaker
Pretty good.
00:20:48
Speaker
Yeah.
00:20:48
Speaker
So and that was Grotter, by the way, who told him to put it in the refrigerator.
00:20:55
Speaker
Grotter, by the way, has gets one interesting characteristic here where he fucks with Henry's head by calling him the wrong name constantly.
00:21:05
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
00:21:05
Speaker
Yeah.
00:21:06
Speaker
Just that classic, like just mean kid shit.
00:21:10
Speaker
Yeah.
00:21:11
Speaker
So, uh, meanwhile, chapter 23, Grotter is telling Ensign Haley to just keep drawing, keep drawing your shit.
00:21:20
Speaker
And she can't, she keeps drawing, but she can't make him happy.
00:21:25
Speaker
Um,
00:21:25
Speaker
And he's getting really upset that he is not she is not drawing the marker like one of his French girls is very upset about this.
00:21:35
Speaker
And then eventually another pulse comes from the marker and she starts drawing again and gives him something.
00:21:47
Speaker
Chapter 24, Istvan is now talking to Khan and is able to communicate directly with the marker, so to speak.
00:21:59
Speaker
Khan being the guy who dead.
00:22:00
Speaker
Chapter 25, Dr. Dexter and Bryden have found the vectors.
00:22:05
Speaker
Yay.
00:22:14
Speaker
They found the vectors and they know where it is that they need to go to the penal colony.
00:22:20
Speaker
And they're going to Bryden's going to be like, I'm going to get the permission from the commander.
00:22:27
Speaker
And Dexter's like, yeah, good.
00:22:31
Speaker
We really should follow this.
00:22:34
Speaker
The strict, you know, rules of governance here.
00:22:37
Speaker
It's it's it's what the people crave in their science fiction horror novel.
00:22:42
Speaker
Brondo.
00:22:43
Speaker
It's what the people crave.
00:22:46
Speaker
It's what the readers crave.
00:22:48
Speaker
It's what the readers crave.
00:22:50
Speaker
Sweet Christmas.
00:22:52
Speaker
Oh, God.
00:22:53
Speaker
Goddamn.
00:22:56
Speaker
Yeah.
00:22:57
Speaker
So also his mother is talking to him as well.
00:23:02
Speaker
Sure.
00:23:03
Speaker
As the marker.
00:23:05
Speaker
None of it is important.
00:23:07
Speaker
It's just that's the thing.
00:23:08
Speaker
None of what the marker fucking says is ever important.
00:23:11
Speaker
It's just dumb, pseudo riddle bullshit.
00:23:16
Speaker
OK, it's just like you should do this or you should do that.
00:23:19
Speaker
And blah, blah, blah.
00:23:20
Speaker
The marker told him to kill the guy like this is all part of it.
00:23:23
Speaker
Right.
00:23:23
Speaker
The marker told him to kill the guy earlier.
00:23:26
Speaker
So you'd end up here like the marker.
00:23:29
Speaker
I don't give a fucking shit about the marker.
00:23:32
Speaker
Like this is the mistake of these books and I think of later Dead Space games is that the marker is not the thing anyone cares about.
00:23:42
Speaker
No.
00:23:43
Speaker
It is a MacGuffin.
00:23:44
Speaker
Yeah.
00:23:45
Speaker
That causes a problem, not the thing to be all consumed by.
00:23:50
Speaker
It's like, oh, my God, it's like it's missing the forest for the trees.
00:23:57
Speaker
in a huge way.
00:23:58
Speaker
And we're on, we're halfway through this goddamn book and nary a necromorph to be found.
00:24:04
Speaker
Nothing, nothing.
00:24:05
Speaker
At least in the first book, there was one that was like on the beach.
00:24:11
Speaker
One of those like breather kind of balloon pulsey guys.
00:24:14
Speaker
Like, and it was, and they treated it with the, you know, the attitude of like a Bigfoot sighting, which was actually kind of interesting.
00:24:23
Speaker
Right.
00:24:23
Speaker
Uh, uh, uh, uh,
00:24:25
Speaker
this doesn't even have that.
00:24:26
Speaker
We haven't even dealt with that.
00:24:28
Speaker
It's just your standard issue, like vague psychic shit, which just bores me to tears.
00:24:35
Speaker
I just, I, I couldn't care less.
00:24:37
Speaker
I really couldn't, I could try, but it'd be hard.
00:24:40
Speaker
Yeah.
00:24:40
Speaker
So Grotter tells Henry that he has to let the, um, scientists come in to the base and do their, their studies.
00:24:49
Speaker
And Henry's like, I don't want to.
00:24:52
Speaker
And Grotter's like, well, you're gonna.
00:24:54
Speaker
And he's like, all right, fine.
00:24:57
Speaker
And he explains everything to the guards and all that stuff.
00:25:02
Speaker
Meanwhile, Chapter 28, we're back with Gen Z and he's hanging out.
00:25:08
Speaker
Oh, oh, oh.
00:25:11
Speaker
Hello.
00:25:12
Speaker
Hello.
00:25:15
Speaker
How you doing, kid?
00:25:21
Speaker
How you doing, kid?
00:25:23
Speaker
I'm doing good.
00:25:24
Speaker
Good.
00:25:25
Speaker
I can hear you yelling.
00:25:28
Speaker
This book is upsetting me and your dad.
00:25:32
Speaker
It's very bad.
00:25:32
Speaker
Yeah.
00:25:33
Speaker
It's a very bad book.
00:25:35
Speaker
And we're expressing our frustration through the power of podcasting.
00:25:43
Speaker
Because that's the only way we can pretend anyone will listen to it and care.
00:25:47
Speaker
Okay, can you just quiet down a bit?
00:25:51
Speaker
Oh, oh, I see.
00:25:54
Speaker
The kid basically came in and gave you the verbal equivalent of banging the broom on the ceiling and telling you to turn your rock and roll music down.
00:26:03
Speaker
She told me to turn the rock and roll music down.
00:26:05
Speaker
So I'll try to do that.
00:26:06
Speaker
I'll try to keep the rock and roll music down.
00:26:08
Speaker
Worth a shot.
00:26:08
Speaker
It's worth a shot.
00:26:10
Speaker
Uh, Gen Z is talking to Swanson, yada, yada, yada.
00:26:15
Speaker
Uh, and there's, they're, they're talking, he's getting drunk with Swanson and the, uh,
00:26:21
Speaker
the captain and they're finding out about Aspera and etc.
00:26:29
Speaker
It's like basically re-explaining everything we the reader already know but just to a character who doesn't know.
00:26:35
Speaker
Yeah that's basically that's what's happening in this scene.
00:26:38
Speaker
I really think that they were like, I bet the readers totally fucking forgotten what brought us to this point.
00:26:44
Speaker
Anyway, let's just, let's just go for it, which is honestly a fair assumption.
00:26:48
Speaker
Fair assumption, but also it doesn't help anything.
00:26:53
Speaker
No, make your book more interesting.
00:26:55
Speaker
Do that.
00:26:55
Speaker
Do that instead.
00:26:56
Speaker
Do that.
00:26:56
Speaker
Yeah.
00:26:58
Speaker
Meanwhile, Bryden and Dexter are talking to Henry and they're like, and Henry's like, what are you, what are you doing?
00:27:04
Speaker
And Bryden and Dexter, like, we're looking for something.
00:27:09
Speaker
And Henry mentions how the prisoners are not dangerous, but recently they've been acting a little bit more.
00:27:15
Speaker
And Bryden grills Henry on being a unitologist.
00:27:21
Speaker
And Henry's like, oh, my God, stop.
00:27:23
Speaker
That's true.
00:27:26
Speaker
So they set up all their equipment and, you know, they're ready to go to figure out where the marker is on this planet.
00:27:37
Speaker
And then Istvan is talking with The Voice and talking about Convergence, talking about that society movie.
00:27:47
Speaker
And...
00:27:53
Speaker
Uh, so basically what happens is, um, there's another, like, um, uh, another guy like kills himself or something like that.
00:28:06
Speaker
Um, and the alarm goes off and the voice tells Istvan to just, just stay right there.
00:28:12
Speaker
Just like hang out.
00:28:14
Speaker
And then the guards come out and the scientists come out and they find out that the signal is coming from where Istvan was sitting and they start digging and they start digging with a laser gun.
00:28:31
Speaker
big old laser beam until it burns out.
00:28:34
Speaker
And one of the engineers is like, oh, well, we could get one of these drills.
00:28:40
Speaker
And Bryden is like, well, get the drill.
00:28:43
Speaker
And the engineer's like, well, we don't have one.
00:28:45
Speaker
And Bryden's like.
00:28:48
Speaker
Great.
00:28:48
Speaker
Great.
00:28:50
Speaker
This conversation is going really, really well.
00:28:52
Speaker
This book is a series of people having conversations of nobody yes-anding anyone.
00:28:59
Speaker
Nobody.
00:28:59
Speaker
There's no sense of just clipping this story along.
00:29:05
Speaker
I'm aware that in real life, this is how people talk.
00:29:10
Speaker
I'm aware that in real life, this is what happens.
00:29:13
Speaker
I just do not care.
00:29:15
Speaker
And I can't believe that you do either, unless you just try to pad the...
00:29:19
Speaker
have the length.
00:29:20
Speaker
But this book, I know we got a weird PDF version of it, but this one's got to be way shorter than the first one.
00:29:26
Speaker
I remember the first one being really, really long.
00:29:30
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know.
00:29:31
Speaker
I mean, we're reading off the PDF version.
00:29:33
Speaker
I'd have to convert it into like regular 250 words per page.
00:29:39
Speaker
But anyway, they figure out that the signal wasn't coming from the spot of the floor, but it was actually coming from Istvan.
Thriller Elements and Criticisms
00:29:49
Speaker
Istvan is the vector to the marker, not the...
00:29:54
Speaker
not the floor where they were digging.
00:29:58
Speaker
Don't worry about it.
00:29:59
Speaker
Why?
00:29:59
Speaker
Dun, dun, dun.
00:30:01
Speaker
That's the end of part three.
00:30:04
Speaker
And that's all we're talking about it.
00:30:05
Speaker
We're not talking anymore about this book today.
00:30:09
Speaker
And we're done.
00:30:10
Speaker
So what'd you think, Phil?
00:30:13
Speaker
I just, I just, I just don't know how somebody looks at the source material of dead space.
00:30:23
Speaker
and says, I'm going to make this like this could, this could be, I'm going to make this book and it's going to be so bureaucratic.
00:30:33
Speaker
Right?
00:30:33
Speaker
Yeah.
00:30:34
Speaker
It's like, this could be any kind of like political thriller with a slightly occult bent.
00:30:44
Speaker
Yeah.
00:30:46
Speaker
It deals with the same styles of MacGuffins.
00:30:48
Speaker
It deals all the same tropes.
00:30:50
Speaker
So why let's just, just,
00:30:53
Speaker
not even an interesting political thriller.
00:30:55
Speaker
No, no.
00:30:56
Speaker
Yeah, not a good one.
00:30:58
Speaker
But it's like it's all the same.
00:31:00
Speaker
This is all it would take to make this into an airport paperback is a couple of tweaks.
00:31:10
Speaker
I don't know how you play through the first 10 minutes of Dead Space and say, oh, I need to make this book.
00:31:19
Speaker
Yeah, just don't.
00:31:21
Speaker
I'm at a loss for how that even happens.
00:31:24
Speaker
Like the only thing I can understand is if they were, if the author was like requested to write something like, all right, well, we need to really flesh out the lore of the marker.
00:31:37
Speaker
Right.
00:31:38
Speaker
But this isn't even like the lore of the marker.
00:31:40
Speaker
This is just like.
00:31:43
Speaker
Like you could do all that.
00:31:44
Speaker
You can do all that in the middle of action.
00:31:49
Speaker
You know, like Dead Space, the first Dead Space, right?
00:31:53
Speaker
You are on an emergency tech vessel that lands on a planet cracker, which by the way, we haven't even, we're not even getting into the really interesting part of the Dead Space, like the parts of the Dead Space universe that are wild is that they have fucking ships.
Exploring the Dead Space Universe
00:32:11
Speaker
that just crack planets in half so that they can be mined like that kind of stuff.
00:32:17
Speaker
You know what I mean?
00:32:18
Speaker
There's a whole, there's a whole alien inspired blue collar space wage slave kind of story going on there.
00:32:27
Speaker
That's really cool.
00:32:28
Speaker
Yeah.
00:32:30
Speaker
Like you said, in the midst of all this shooting and action stuff, you could still have, I think of Dead Space 2, which I mean, largely people consider that to be the best one, right?
00:32:40
Speaker
Right.
00:32:41
Speaker
Where they cut into so many fascinating facets of where this all comes from and how it happens and the past of it while putting you in great danger for pretty much the entire game.
00:32:59
Speaker
Yeah.
00:32:59
Speaker
I think I want to play that game again.
00:33:01
Speaker
Yeah.
00:33:01
Speaker
Is, is it dead space two where you start out?
00:33:04
Speaker
You're like strapped to a table and some guy is like, I'm going to get you out of here.
00:33:08
Speaker
And then he gets like stabbed through the back of the head.
00:33:10
Speaker
Yeah.
00:33:10
Speaker
Yeah.
00:33:10
Speaker
That was into a necromorph.
00:33:12
Speaker
Yeah.
00:33:13
Speaker
Yeah.
00:33:13
Speaker
Like just, just, yeah, that was it.
00:33:15
Speaker
That was the one.
00:33:16
Speaker
Holy shit.
00:33:16
Speaker
That's right.
00:33:17
Speaker
Yeah.
00:33:18
Speaker
Oh my God.
00:33:20
Speaker
So good.
00:33:22
Speaker
That was a really good one.
00:33:23
Speaker
The third one sucked, but here's the thing.
00:33:25
Speaker
Here's the thing.
00:33:26
Speaker
The third dead space game was still better than these books.
00:33:30
Speaker
Yeah.
00:33:31
Speaker
Because it's still recognizably dead space.
00:33:34
Speaker
Yeah.
00:33:35
Speaker
You know, this is, this is, I think I said this last episode, there's no way that a person who,
00:33:43
Speaker
Without being told what franchise this is based on, a couple, you wouldn't even need that many black bars, just a little redaction here and there and ask that person, what game franchise do you think that this is based on?
00:33:58
Speaker
There's no way they say Dead Space.
00:34:01
Speaker
Yeah.
00:34:02
Speaker
It's unrecognizable.
00:34:04
Speaker
Right.
00:34:05
Speaker
Yeah, it's it's rough stuff.
00:34:08
Speaker
And I think the yeah, it just makes me think of the books and how fast they get into the heart, the meat of the action and still manage to communicate ideas about and concepts about what's going on.
00:34:23
Speaker
Just like that, the first game, you know, you land on the ship.
00:34:28
Speaker
It's like, everything's fine.
00:34:29
Speaker
And then power goes out.
00:34:31
Speaker
There's a lockdown and you're separated from the rest of the crew.
00:34:34
Speaker
And now you're fucked and you got to get, you know, backtrack your way through the ship, you know, it's just, it's so engaging and, and right off the bat, it doesn't waste any time.
00:34:47
Speaker
It gets right into it and it does it in a smart way.
00:34:51
Speaker
It's not a, it's not,
00:34:55
Speaker
There is lore to be had there.
00:34:56
Speaker
There is.
00:34:57
Speaker
I know it's a silly action horror game, but there is a lot that you can glean from it.
00:35:03
Speaker
And it's like, I don't know.
00:35:05
Speaker
You ever heard of that book?
00:35:06
Speaker
I don't remember what it was called.
00:35:07
Speaker
The book that some guy wrote that never uses the letter E.
00:35:15
Speaker
There's a book out there.
00:35:16
Speaker
It's like a novel.
00:35:16
Speaker
It's a full length novel that some guy wrote without using the letter E. I believe that's which one it was.
00:35:25
Speaker
It's one of the letters both.
00:35:26
Speaker
And
00:35:28
Speaker
And I guess it's just kind of like this exercise to show what's possible when you have those kind of limitations.
00:35:35
Speaker
I feel this almost feels like someone's like, oh, you like Dead Space?
00:35:39
Speaker
All right.
00:35:40
Speaker
I challenge you to write two novels about the Dead Space world that do not resemble Dead Space in any fucking way, shape or form, just as an experiment.
00:35:50
Speaker
Just give it a shot.
00:35:51
Speaker
Yeah.
00:35:51
Speaker
Right.
00:35:52
Speaker
That's the only explanation I could come up with for this.
00:35:55
Speaker
Right.
00:35:56
Speaker
This is one of those books that we do read a fair amount of out of print books on this.
00:36:02
Speaker
And sometimes it's out of print.
00:36:03
Speaker
You're like, oh, man, I wonder why that's out of print.
00:36:06
Speaker
This is not one of those.
00:36:07
Speaker
Yeah.
00:36:08
Speaker
This is out of print for a very, very good reason.
00:36:11
Speaker
So it seems like there's a book called Roundabout.
00:36:17
Speaker
that doesn't use the letter E that's like gone viral on TikTok or something like that.
00:36:22
Speaker
Oh.
00:36:22
Speaker
But there's a book called Gadsby from 1939 that also does not use the letter E. Gadsby.
00:36:33
Speaker
That's the one I was thinking.
00:36:35
Speaker
Yeah, 1939, Ernest Vincent Wright.
00:36:37
Speaker
Okay, yeah.
00:36:39
Speaker
The 50,000 word novel without the letter E. Okay.
00:36:45
Speaker
not the longest novel in the world, but pretty goddamn long for never getting to use E. Yeah.
00:36:49
Speaker
Yeah.
00:36:50
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
00:36:51
Speaker
So yeah.
00:36:53
Speaker
So there it is.
00:36:53
Speaker
Gatsby.
00:36:54
Speaker
Good.
00:36:54
Speaker
I'd rather be reading that.
00:36:56
Speaker
I'd rather be reading Gatsby or or the great Gatsby.
00:37:00
Speaker
Oh, sure.
00:37:01
Speaker
Sure.
00:37:01
Speaker
I don't really like that one.
00:37:04
Speaker
Or, you know, what is it?
00:37:09
Speaker
Was I thinking of vile bodies?
00:37:14
Speaker
by Evelyn Waugh or I don't know what this is.
00:37:20
Speaker
No, I'm just going on 19, you know, early, early, early 20th century books at this point.
00:37:26
Speaker
Anything, anything.
00:37:30
Speaker
Well, Evelyn Waugh, it's, it's, um, what was it?
00:37:33
Speaker
Even law.
00:37:33
Speaker
Even law.
00:37:34
Speaker
They're like, uh, cause I remember what's it, what movie was that where, uh,
00:37:40
Speaker
The girl goes, I check in under the name Evelyn Waugh.
00:37:44
Speaker
And Scarlett Johansson responds, it's Evelyn Waugh.
00:37:48
Speaker
He's a man.
00:37:49
Speaker
That's right.
00:37:51
Speaker
That's right.
00:37:52
Speaker
Lost in translation.
00:37:53
Speaker
Lost in translation.
00:37:58
Speaker
Oh God.
00:38:00
Speaker
Anyway, Phil, what are you playing?
00:38:04
Speaker
Oh, well, I think the big one for me, I'm still playing a lot of UFO
Game Reviews and Impressions
00:38:10
Speaker
50.
00:38:10
Speaker
I finally beat and cherried Grimstone.
00:38:15
Speaker
Nice.
00:38:16
Speaker
Yeah.
00:38:16
Speaker
Yeah.
00:38:17
Speaker
I really enjoyed it.
00:38:18
Speaker
It was way longer than I thought it was going to be.
00:38:21
Speaker
Yeah.
00:38:21
Speaker
It was like a 10 hour game, man.
00:38:23
Speaker
And it wasn't.
00:38:24
Speaker
And here's the thing.
00:38:25
Speaker
It's old school, final fantasy style.
00:38:27
Speaker
So you think grindy, grindy, but I didn't actually spend any time just wandering around places, trying to build up shit.
00:38:36
Speaker
It just naturally had, it just naturally happened as I went along.
00:38:39
Speaker
I was just naturally building up the right way.
00:38:41
Speaker
Um, yeah.
00:38:43
Speaker
It's a very friendly game in that sense.
00:38:45
Speaker
And the world that you're in is fucking bizarre.
00:38:48
Speaker
It's literally cowboys in hell.
00:38:50
Speaker
Like it's, it's, it's so strange.
00:38:53
Speaker
Yeah.
00:38:54
Speaker
I love the concept and they don't get into it a lot, but basically the idea between behind Grimstone is that a part of the American West fell into hell and
00:39:09
Speaker
not just like a town or whatever, but like a whole land is now in hell.
00:39:15
Speaker
That's Texas.
00:39:16
Speaker
It's like a, yeah.
00:39:17
Speaker
Texas fell into hell.
00:39:19
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:20
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:20
Speaker
That's spoilers.
00:39:21
Speaker
It's Texas.
00:39:23
Speaker
It's, and it's, and you, and you go and you fight God at the end of it.
00:39:28
Speaker
And it's just, it's,
00:39:30
Speaker
Truly, that's what we were talking about last episode, where it was like these games are very distinctly
00:39:39
Speaker
8-bit Nintendo games from the eighties, but there's a lot of stuff in there that just wouldn't exist in those days.
00:39:48
Speaker
Right.
00:39:48
Speaker
And that's what keeps it fresh.
00:39:50
Speaker
And part of that isn't just the mechanics and stuff.
00:39:52
Speaker
It's storylines like this, where this is a distinctly 21st century storyline.
00:39:58
Speaker
It's that level of, of like indie video game insanity that you only get from the,
00:40:05
Speaker
you know, video games in this era.
00:40:08
Speaker
Yeah.
00:40:08
Speaker
The God is called Biggin.
00:40:10
Speaker
Biggin.
00:40:12
Speaker
Which is plenty silly.
00:40:15
Speaker
And you find out that the devil actually works for Biggin as just like pretends to be this evil guy just to make people worship Biggin.
00:40:31
Speaker
So yeah, you find and destroy God at the end of Grimstone, which, you know, as you do.
00:40:40
Speaker
I mean, that's that's the I think that's the goal of everybody I know at this point.
00:40:44
Speaker
So it's nice to fantasize every now get a power fantasy of killing God.
00:40:49
Speaker
A power fantasy of killing God with you.
00:40:52
Speaker
You got the guy who can use the the minigun, right?
00:40:56
Speaker
Bull, yeah.
00:40:57
Speaker
Yeah.
00:40:58
Speaker
He's fucking excellent.
00:40:59
Speaker
Yeah, don't... I think I ended up on probably... I don't know.
00:41:05
Speaker
I haven't done the research, but my party layout was fucking great.
00:41:10
Speaker
And this is a coincidence.
00:41:11
Speaker
I did not do research.
00:41:12
Speaker
I ended up with Bull, who's your...
00:41:15
Speaker
Heavy.
00:41:16
Speaker
Yeah.
00:41:17
Speaker
I had Lee, who's this kind of like melee artist kind of character, slashy slashy sort of dude.
00:41:26
Speaker
I had Anne, who is a dancer who does a lot of support abilities that she learns tango and cha cha and stuff like that.
00:41:34
Speaker
Yeah.
00:41:35
Speaker
you know, help your evade and your hit and stuff like that.
00:41:37
Speaker
And it all stacks, by the way, remember it stacks.
00:41:40
Speaker
You can use it several times.
00:41:41
Speaker
Right.
00:41:42
Speaker
Yeah.
00:41:43
Speaker
That helps a lot with the final boss and Umbra, who's like the native American shaman kind of characters who learn stuff from the, from the animals.
00:41:53
Speaker
Yeah.
00:41:54
Speaker
Yeah.
00:41:54
Speaker
And it's, which is another really creative thing.
00:41:57
Speaker
You don't buy his spells.
00:41:58
Speaker
He learns them from animals out in the wilderness, which is cool.
00:42:03
Speaker
Yeah, so my party was the bull.
00:42:09
Speaker
Maria, who was the... She's really good with rifles.
00:42:14
Speaker
Oh, nice.
00:42:15
Speaker
The one-eyed sharpshooter.
00:42:18
Speaker
Doc, who is basically... The cool thing about Doc is that every healing item is more effective, and you can use it twice.
00:42:31
Speaker
Oh, that's cool.
00:42:32
Speaker
So like, if you have a bandage, you use the bandage and then it says half bandage.
00:42:38
Speaker
Oh, that's useful as hell.
00:42:41
Speaker
So Doc makes your healing items more efficient and more powerful.
00:42:46
Speaker
And then I had the dog.
00:42:49
Speaker
Oh, Rufus, Rufus, Rufus, which I, I, I didn't know what was happening.
00:42:53
Speaker
I had to look it up because you start picking up dog treats.
00:42:58
Speaker
Yes.
00:42:58
Speaker
And you can't use them if you don't have them in your party.
00:43:01
Speaker
I was like, what the fuck am I?
00:43:03
Speaker
The dog treats are basically a free level for Rufus.
00:43:06
Speaker
Right.
00:43:07
Speaker
Right.
00:43:07
Speaker
It's really neat.
00:43:08
Speaker
And at the end of the game there, if you have a ton of money left, there's a guy you can go to, to just buy as many dog treats as you want.
00:43:17
Speaker
Yeah.
00:43:18
Speaker
So you can make Rufus really powerful.
00:43:20
Speaker
The only thing with Rufus is you don't control him during a fight.
00:43:24
Speaker
He just goes and does what he's going to do.
00:43:26
Speaker
What he's going to do.
00:43:27
Speaker
Yeah.
00:43:28
Speaker
I, yeah, I really, here's the thing.
00:43:30
Speaker
I have been, I have been playing other UFO 50 games, but yeah,
00:43:36
Speaker
I've mostly been playing this.
00:43:37
Speaker
This has been pretty much.
00:43:39
Speaker
Grimstone got your, yeah, really locked in.
00:43:43
Speaker
95% of my, of my time.
00:43:45
Speaker
Which is wild because you bought a game with 50 games in it.
00:43:48
Speaker
And then there's like a game in those 50 games.
00:43:50
Speaker
That's, you know, a 10, 15 hour JRPG.
00:43:53
Speaker
10, 15 hours.
00:43:54
Speaker
Easily, easily.
00:43:56
Speaker
Yeah, it's it's it's so funny how that works.
00:43:59
Speaker
And and so now I'm just kind of like, OK, I'm going to and I actually have made a point now.
00:44:03
Speaker
I'm doing a little research and I'm trying to find like the ones that are the easiest to cherry just to knock a few more out.
00:44:10
Speaker
And that there's the quibble racing one.
00:44:13
Speaker
Playing that one.
00:44:14
Speaker
Which is a lot of fun.
00:44:16
Speaker
because it's just like, one of the things you can do is just like, you can go into this one menu option where there's a guy who's like, hey, do you want me to like take a bat to one of the knees of the other quibbles?
00:44:29
Speaker
I love it.
00:44:29
Speaker
You need some steroids for your quibble.
00:44:32
Speaker
It's fantastic.
00:44:34
Speaker
It's so much.
00:44:35
Speaker
And that attitude is throughout the game.
00:44:38
Speaker
Throughout all the games.
00:44:40
Speaker
Yeah.
00:44:41
Speaker
Have you played Night Manor?
00:44:42
Speaker
No, that one's coming up.
00:44:44
Speaker
You told me that was one of the first ones you played, right?
00:44:48
Speaker
It's the first one I beat.
00:44:49
Speaker
Oh, okay.
00:44:50
Speaker
Okay.
00:44:50
Speaker
Yeah.
00:44:50
Speaker
Yeah.
00:44:51
Speaker
Yeah.
00:44:51
Speaker
First one I beat and cherried.
00:44:54
Speaker
So, and the cherry, basically the cherry is not that hard.
00:44:57
Speaker
It's just like, there's a midway point to the game where you can beat the game.
00:45:03
Speaker
Cherrying just, you just got to keep going.
00:45:06
Speaker
Like, you have to like do all of the, figure out all the puzzles to cherry it.
00:45:11
Speaker
Oh, right.
00:45:12
Speaker
So that's, that's pretty much it for Night Manor, but it's a good game.
00:45:16
Speaker
Yeah, so that was what I had.
00:45:19
Speaker
Oh, and I but I didn't want to come in and not having played a demo.
00:45:27
Speaker
So I went ahead and played the demo for the Stone of Madness.
00:45:31
Speaker
Okay.
00:45:32
Speaker
Uh, which, uh, which, yeah, yeah.
00:45:34
Speaker
I talked about, yeah.
00:45:35
Speaker
We talked about before it's, it's, it's the same people who did, uh, uh, blasphemous, very, very different game.
00:45:43
Speaker
Very different.
00:45:44
Speaker
And also the blasphemous to DLC just came out, uh, not that long ago.
00:45:50
Speaker
Great.
00:45:50
Speaker
That's all I need.
00:45:52
Speaker
That's right.
00:45:54
Speaker
No, I, but so this is a, it's intensely Spanish.
00:45:58
Speaker
It's intensely Inquisition-esque.
00:46:01
Speaker
You play, they call him a priest, but he's basically a detective.
00:46:07
Speaker
Yeah.
00:46:07
Speaker
And you're in this corrupt world.
00:46:11
Speaker
insane asylum.
00:46:12
Speaker
They treat it like it's like a monastery or something like that, but it's an insane asylum.
00:46:16
Speaker
Yeah.
00:46:16
Speaker
It's that you're surrounded by all these.
00:46:18
Speaker
It's a sanitarium type.
00:46:20
Speaker
Yeah.
00:46:21
Speaker
Yeah.
00:46:21
Speaker
Yeah.
00:46:22
Speaker
And and you've got to sneak out and the game is stealth party based.
00:46:26
Speaker
So you are collecting people as you go along.
00:46:31
Speaker
Everyone has a different group of abilities, but everyone also has a weakness that will fuck with their sanity.
00:46:40
Speaker
Um, which, which ruins things.
00:46:41
Speaker
And, and so like one of them is he's huge.
00:46:44
Speaker
He's, he can push things that other characters can't, uh, but he's afraid of, of the dark.
00:46:51
Speaker
Right.
00:46:51
Speaker
So whereas other characters, you really want to put out the lights so you could sneak a little better.
00:46:55
Speaker
He's going to suffer for it.
00:46:57
Speaker
Um, so you, uh, and then you've got this one woman who is a straight up assassin, uh, who is happy.
00:47:04
Speaker
Other characters are not really necessarily willing to kill guards or something.
00:47:07
Speaker
Uh,
00:47:08
Speaker
other characters are yeah the the main character guy can't kill like he can't even there's like not even an option right exactly exactly and so so so she doesn't give a shit and she will happily kill uh other people and uh but she's uh but she's afraid of fire so like the the fire scarred her and it will fuck her up uh ultimately and um
00:47:32
Speaker
It's super fun.
00:47:33
Speaker
So you have to put out all the fires that you see for her.
00:47:37
Speaker
Yeah.
00:47:37
Speaker
And some of the some fires there you can't.
00:47:40
Speaker
Right.
00:47:40
Speaker
So you just have to find a way around.
00:47:42
Speaker
It's a very it's a very effective demo.
00:47:44
Speaker
It gets the the mechanics and the story across really well.
00:47:48
Speaker
I'm looking forward to it.
00:47:49
Speaker
Yeah.
00:47:49
Speaker
I think.
00:47:50
Speaker
Yeah.
00:47:50
Speaker
I think the I think the priest guy was he was he's afraid of dead bodies.
00:47:56
Speaker
Yes, it's the dead.
00:47:57
Speaker
Yeah, the dead.
00:47:59
Speaker
Yeah, which is, you know, knowing Blasphemous, knowing the game kitchen.
00:48:03
Speaker
You're going to run into the dead.
00:48:06
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, you're going to run into the dead.
00:48:10
Speaker
It's a pretty art style, very different from the original, from Blasphemous, not the original.
00:48:15
Speaker
The cut scene style is similar to Blasphemous 2.
00:48:20
Speaker
Yes.
00:48:21
Speaker
Yes.
00:48:22
Speaker
And then the the portraits are extremely detailed, like the portraits that you see on the on the game's like cover arts in like for the demo for the Stone of Madness.
00:48:38
Speaker
That's kind of like what you see in the in the game for the portrait art.
00:48:45
Speaker
Yeah.
00:48:45
Speaker
But yeah, it's, they, they have always been good at art style and art direction and that sort of thing that creating a creepy world.
00:48:55
Speaker
It's gonna, it's coming out right now.
00:48:56
Speaker
It's scheduled for the end of January and that's a time when usually,
00:49:00
Speaker
good games aren't necessarily not there aren't a lot of games coming out so yeah it's a good time for indies a lot of times or like smaller releases so we'll see um yeah that could be important yeah yeah same uh but that's that's that's what i've been playing so kevin what have you been playing
00:49:17
Speaker
I have been playing.
00:49:18
Speaker
So I played a little bit of Dragon Age, the Veil Guard, which I need to get back into.
00:49:27
Speaker
It's pretty fun so far.
00:49:29
Speaker
There's it's it's it's what's it?
00:49:34
Speaker
Bioware.
00:49:35
Speaker
And it's like they're.
00:49:37
Speaker
A lot of people said it's like their best game since Mass Effect 2.
00:49:42
Speaker
I am not someone who can speak on that because I have not played any other of their games aside from the Mass Effect trilogy, really.
00:49:51
Speaker
I mean, prior to I played Knights of the Old Republic before that, you know what I mean?
00:49:55
Speaker
Oh, sure.
00:49:56
Speaker
They were a very different company back then.
00:49:57
Speaker
Very different company back then.
00:49:59
Speaker
Yeah.
00:50:00
Speaker
So, yeah, I'm having fun with it so far.
00:50:03
Speaker
I'm playing a rogue, an elf rogue.
00:50:06
Speaker
And when you the dodge, like when you're playing as a rogue and you use the dodge mechanic, it's like like.
00:50:14
Speaker
She like the character like flies like halfway across the screen.
00:50:18
Speaker
And then like sometimes you double tap the button and she'll disappear for a second in a cloud of smoke and then come back.
00:50:24
Speaker
And it's the movement and traversal looks like gives it a lot of fun energy.
00:50:31
Speaker
So I'm enjoying it so far.
00:50:33
Speaker
I've only put a few hours into it.
00:50:35
Speaker
And I know it's a beefy, beefy game.
00:50:38
Speaker
So if I have any hope of beating it before the end of the year, I need to really lock in.
00:50:44
Speaker
Honestly, the main I was busy and you were busy in the first part of the week last week with the wedding.
00:50:51
Speaker
And then I recorded with with a bunch of people that roundtable episode.
00:51:00
Speaker
That came out last Wednesday and then the second half of the week I was busy putting down tiles in my living room.
00:51:06
Speaker
That's kind of why I haven't necessarily played anything anymore of Dragon Age.
00:51:12
Speaker
But you know what I have played is something that it takes a lot less brainpower and that's the Vampire Survival's Ode to Castlevania DLC.
Gaming Industry Trends and Updates
00:51:23
Speaker
Oh, goody, goody.
00:51:25
Speaker
Okay.
00:51:25
Speaker
That has come out.
00:51:26
Speaker
Have you, did you get this yet, Phil, or?
00:51:29
Speaker
Not yet, but it's so, it's everything I've seen about it is that, because I had the same reaction a lot of people did when I saw that.
00:51:37
Speaker
I was like, isn't that redundant?
00:51:38
Speaker
Like, it's already a send up of that.
00:51:41
Speaker
But then you look at everything that's involved and you're like, oh, they're really piling on.
00:51:46
Speaker
So what they did, so for the Castlevania DLC, it adds a level.
00:51:51
Speaker
And it is the largest level in any of the vampires – of any of the vampire survivors' levels.
00:51:55
Speaker
It is the area outside and inside of Dracula's castle modeled loosely after Symphony of the Night, right?
00:52:05
Speaker
And every area has bosses.
00:52:08
Speaker
So in order to progress through the castle, you have to beat bosses.
00:52:11
Speaker
And you get the boss – you spawn the bosses by standing on this little like red sigil that causes the boss –
00:52:18
Speaker
And the bosses are all from the Castlevania games, right?
00:52:23
Speaker
So you have bosses from Symphony of the Night, you have bosses from the DS games, all the fun stuff.
00:52:34
Speaker
And then all the characters it adds.
00:52:36
Speaker
It adds so many characters, including, you know, you got Alucard, you got Richter is there.
00:52:43
Speaker
Richter is actually one of the last ones that you can unlock.
00:52:46
Speaker
He's one of the hardest unlocks based on like based on order, because you kind of have to some characters are only going to be able to be unlocked from like you got to level this weapon up in order to unlock this character.
00:52:57
Speaker
And then you got to level this character's weapon up in order.
00:52:59
Speaker
So Richter, I think, is one of the last ones that you can unlock.
00:53:05
Speaker
Um, but I gotta tell you, um, you're playing through that.
00:53:09
Speaker
You're playing through, you got, you got Alucard or, or Simon, um, running through the vampire survivors countryside and you have, uh, bloody tears or vampire killer, just like fucking wailing in your, your headphones.
00:53:26
Speaker
And you're just like, yeah, buddy, I am here for it.
00:53:31
Speaker
Um,
00:53:33
Speaker
The music is so good and they added there are so many tracks of Castlevania music that it adds to the game as well.
00:53:43
Speaker
Just so many.
00:53:44
Speaker
I want to say like 30 or so songs.
00:53:48
Speaker
That always had such good music.
00:53:52
Speaker
So, yeah, that's necessary.
00:53:53
Speaker
That's awesome.
00:53:54
Speaker
So, yeah, I'm probably going to go back and get the other DLCs that I haven't purchased yet.
00:54:00
Speaker
Like the they did a Contra one, right?
00:54:04
Speaker
I loved that one.
00:54:05
Speaker
I had a lot of fun with that one.
00:54:06
Speaker
Yeah.
00:54:06
Speaker
Yeah.
00:54:07
Speaker
So let's see.
00:54:08
Speaker
What's funny is it seems like Pankal, the developer of Vampire Survivors, actually has a decent relationship now with Konami where Konami is like, yeah, you know, we got Contra, you got Castlevania in there, whatever.
00:54:24
Speaker
Have fun, kids.
00:54:26
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:54:26
Speaker
Have fun, kids.
00:54:29
Speaker
Which is nice.
00:54:29
Speaker
It's nice to see Konami very, like, you know, with the Silent Hill 2 remake, Konami has been gradually inching its way back into the video game space after...
00:54:39
Speaker
a decade of not doing it pretty much at all.
00:54:44
Speaker
They, it was like PT, they had PT and then they, uh, the, the silent Hills, which was going to be the silent Hill game that Hideo Kojima was working on with, uh, with Norman Reedus and Guillermo del Toro.
00:54:57
Speaker
They're like, Nope, we're canceling that.
00:54:58
Speaker
We're actually also just going to make pachinko machines now.
00:55:02
Speaker
Um,
00:55:05
Speaker
Yeah.
00:55:06
Speaker
And now they're slowly inching their way back into the video game space.
00:55:10
Speaker
But still, I mean, fuck them overall.
00:55:13
Speaker
But, you know, they're inching their way back.
00:55:17
Speaker
So that's good to see because they do have some very memorable characters in their catalog that are, you know, the fans want to see.
00:55:29
Speaker
So they're still bastards, but at least they're still bastards, but they, they have at least they're, you know,
00:55:37
Speaker
at least they're letting people use their properties.
00:55:40
Speaker
You're not going to use it.
00:55:41
Speaker
They had Bloober team make the Silent Hill 2 remake.
00:55:45
Speaker
And if you want to hear my thoughts more on Silent Hill 2 remake, obviously you can go listen to that round table episode.
00:55:50
Speaker
We have, we had a variety of thoughts on, we had a diversity of thought, which is my least favorite saying in the, in the world, because when diverse, when people say diversity of thought, they usually just mean conservative voices are getting amplified.
00:56:04
Speaker
Yes.
00:56:06
Speaker
That's just and so, you know, whatever.
00:56:09
Speaker
But we have a variety of opinions.
00:56:11
Speaker
There we go.
00:56:13
Speaker
On the game, ranging from hot cider, hating it to Pym and Sputnik loving it and me somewhere in the middle.
00:56:23
Speaker
I liked it.
00:56:26
Speaker
And honestly, guys, if you haven't listened to it yet or watched it, it's a it is a hell of a lineup of minds.
00:56:34
Speaker
It's a very cool group of of of content creators, not just Kevin, just a lot of people that we really respect.
00:56:43
Speaker
So it's a very cool group of voices together.
00:56:46
Speaker
Yeah, I really enjoyed it.
00:56:47
Speaker
Yeah, so go and check that out.
00:56:50
Speaker
As for anything else, I've been playing not much else just because after trying to do the tiles, I'm usually tired and then I lay down and I fall asleep and then I wake up and I, you know, cry a little bit about the election and then... Sure.
00:57:10
Speaker
You move on.
00:57:11
Speaker
I move on with my life.
00:57:13
Speaker
There's no room for it anymore, people.
00:57:15
Speaker
It's like Uncle Henry Rollins said, this is what Joe Strummer prepared you for.
00:57:20
Speaker
It's time to be punk.
00:57:23
Speaker
This is all we can do.
00:57:25
Speaker
I won't lie.
00:57:26
Speaker
My family and I discussed the idea of what it would take to leave and everything like that.
00:57:33
Speaker
I'm not the only person to think that.
00:57:36
Speaker
But here's the thing.
00:57:37
Speaker
This is ours, too.
00:57:39
Speaker
This is our country too, goddammit.
00:57:41
Speaker
Goddammit.
00:57:42
Speaker
Yeah.
00:57:43
Speaker
So get real punk with it.
00:57:45
Speaker
We're going to fucking start feeding ourselves.
00:57:48
Speaker
Fuck the grocery stores.
00:57:51
Speaker
We're getting into it.
00:57:53
Speaker
If anything, this kind of... And get out there and protest.
00:57:57
Speaker
Get out there and...
00:57:58
Speaker
Tell them that you will not shut up.
00:58:00
Speaker
You know, that's what they want.
00:58:01
Speaker
They just want you to shut up and don't shut up.
00:58:05
Speaker
Don't ever shut up.
00:58:07
Speaker
If you have the cachet to do it, just keep talking and, you know, we'll keep listening.
00:58:16
Speaker
One more thing, totally unrelated.
00:58:19
Speaker
Steam is releasing a limited edition white version.
00:58:23
Speaker
Steam Deck.
00:58:25
Speaker
It looks sharp.
00:58:26
Speaker
It is a sharp looking little machine there.
00:58:28
Speaker
Available worldwide on November 18th.
00:58:35
Speaker
I think next year is the year I finally break down.
00:58:38
Speaker
Oh, that does look sharp.
00:58:42
Speaker
I think that's next year's the year.
00:58:45
Speaker
It's got the red power button.
00:58:47
Speaker
It's very Super Nintendo coded.
00:58:50
Speaker
Yeah, very much so.
00:58:54
Speaker
I like it.
00:58:55
Speaker
Or PlayStation 1 vibes.
00:58:58
Speaker
I'm getting PlayStation 1.
00:59:00
Speaker
I'm getting like original NES.
00:59:02
Speaker
It's giving PlayStation 1.
00:59:05
Speaker
Yeah, it's giving PlayStation 1.
00:59:07
Speaker
I like it.
00:59:08
Speaker
I just...
00:59:09
Speaker
Yeah, that's pretty cool.
00:59:11
Speaker
Yeah, I just, you know, when you've got a kid now and everything, it's just it's just you're going to have to gauge your time, use it more wisely.
00:59:22
Speaker
There's nothing wrong with that.
00:59:24
Speaker
This is all good.
00:59:25
Speaker
This is all a good thing because my kid fucking rules.
00:59:28
Speaker
But if I can have another hour or two to play a game,
00:59:32
Speaker
while we're all hanging out in the living room or something like that.
00:59:35
Speaker
Yeah, this this gives you that time to now you can just like, you know, chill and watch TV.
00:59:43
Speaker
And, you know, I know I know, Phil, you're you're a two screen.
00:59:47
Speaker
You're a two screener.
00:59:48
Speaker
You know, you tend to have.
00:59:52
Speaker
Either a TV and a phone or a TV and switch, you know, something I'm trying to break myself of because I don't necessarily want that for my kid.
01:00:03
Speaker
But you know how it goes.
01:00:04
Speaker
Yeah.
01:00:04
Speaker
Yeah.
01:00:05
Speaker
I mean, well, yeah.
01:00:06
Speaker
And Graham also might not have ADHD.
01:00:08
Speaker
So well, let's be honest.
01:00:14
Speaker
Let's be honest.
01:00:15
Speaker
He also ended up with blue eyes, which neither me or his mother have.
01:00:18
Speaker
So yeah, miracles happen.
01:00:21
Speaker
Why not?
01:00:22
Speaker
Why not?
01:00:25
Speaker
Oh, God.
01:00:26
Speaker
So that'll do it for tonight's episode.
Closing Remarks and Social Media Engagement
01:00:28
Speaker
Feel free to follow us.
01:00:30
Speaker
I'm just going to say it.
01:00:31
Speaker
Follow us on Blue Sky.
01:00:32
Speaker
Blue Sky has been popping off lately.
01:00:33
Speaker
That is where we are.
01:00:35
Speaker
That is where we are.
01:00:36
Speaker
Blue Sky is the best place.
01:00:38
Speaker
You can find me at Kevin.PixelItPod.com.
01:00:43
Speaker
And Phil is at HeMakesMonsters, right?
01:00:46
Speaker
That's what your handle is.
01:00:47
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's PhilMakesMonsters.
01:00:49
Speaker
PhilMakesMonsters.BSky.com.
01:00:52
Speaker
You think I should know this.
01:00:54
Speaker
And you can find, if you just type at pixelitpod.com, pixelitpod.com on Blue Sky will get you to the main Blue Sky account.
01:01:06
Speaker
And it's wild because there's been like 700,000 new Blue Sky users in the past week.
01:01:11
Speaker
And the level of positivity in there, because I've had mine for a while, but I haven't really been paying all that much attention.
01:01:19
Speaker
And it's like, holy shit.
01:01:20
Speaker
Yeah, no, people are vibing over there.
01:01:23
Speaker
I think a lot of it is because people call it the nuclear block or the hell block that Blue Sky has, where if you block somebody, your presence in anything that they have ever done, quote tweets, mentions, whatever, is gone.
01:01:42
Speaker
You're just removed from everything that they have ever said about you.
01:01:46
Speaker
It's just, you're just, they just...
01:01:48
Speaker
pluck you right out of there.
01:01:49
Speaker
Now, obviously there's still like the photo, the photo tweet, but I think just the idea of like, uh, uh, extreme exceedingly strong block functions, block lists are built into the platform, but so our follow lists.
01:02:05
Speaker
Um, so it's, it's a really neat, uh, it's a really cool place.
01:02:11
Speaker
It's like, Hey, it basically blue sky is like,
01:02:14
Speaker
had Twitter, there was two roads in the woods in front of Twitter.
01:02:19
Speaker
And one was hell.
01:02:22
Speaker
And the other was like, not heaven, but just like a fucking 7-Eleven, you know?
01:02:28
Speaker
Yeah.
01:02:29
Speaker
You can go to the 7-Eleven and hang out with your friends in the parking lot.
01:02:33
Speaker
Um...
01:02:36
Speaker
Get yourself a big gulp, which, hey, by the way, which the big gulp remains one of the best values of anything in the world.
01:02:42
Speaker
Let me tell you.
01:02:43
Speaker
Still good.
01:02:43
Speaker
Still good.
01:02:44
Speaker
Still goddamn good.
01:02:44
Speaker
You go get yourself a big gulp, buddy.
01:02:48
Speaker
But Twitter chose hell and Blue Sky chose 7-Eleven with big gulps.
01:02:53
Speaker
So.
01:02:54
Speaker
Fuck yeah.
01:02:54
Speaker
Fuck yeah.
01:02:56
Speaker
That'll do it for tonight's episode.
01:02:59
Speaker
I think we've, yeah.
01:03:00
Speaker
I think we've covered it.
01:03:00
Speaker
Yeah.
01:03:01
Speaker
Good night.