Transcript
Speaker: I would have to, I would have to, I think that would be worth a try at that point.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Just to see.
Speaker: Just to see.
Speaker: You know what else is empty?
Speaker: What's that?
Speaker: Hey there, everybody.
Speaker: Welcome back to Pixel It.
Speaker: My name is Kevin.
Speaker: With me as always is Phil on today's show, part two of Minecraft, the island by Max Brooks.
Speaker: Narrated by Jack Black.
Speaker: There's also another.
Speaker: You could actually get the book narrated by somebody else, too.
Speaker: I actually found a free version of it on YouTube, and it has been left alone because normally they're going to be all over it.
Speaker: I think it's been left alone based entirely on the fact that it is being narrated by what appears to be a 10 year old.
Speaker: And they're doing really good.
Speaker: Like, that's the thing.
Speaker: It's actually pretty decent.
Speaker: And the kid or somebody the kid knew has, like, piped in Minecraft music in the background and all that shit.
Speaker: It's pretty charming.
Speaker: It is still a very, very boring book.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But the kid's doing the kid's not Jack Black, but he's doing his best.
Speaker: It's so for this for the island.
Speaker: There is there's one version.
Speaker: There's a male narrator, which is Jack Black and a female narrator, Samira Wiley.
Speaker: That's interesting.
Speaker: I wonder why that is.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, and Samira Wiley, if you don't know her, you know her, you've seen her before.
Speaker: She was Poussey, Washington in Orange is the New Black.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: She's terrific.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: She's great.
Speaker: So she is, she provides a version of the island as well.
Speaker: I think because the island was the first one that they put out, they're like, ah, we're going full bore.
Speaker: They clearly put a lot behind this thing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And then the other two, I think we talked to, we actually didn't talk about it in the other episode.
Speaker: The other two books are narrated by Sean Astin.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: The other two in the Max Brooks trilogy are narrated by Sean Astin.
Speaker: So they have higher ratings than the island does.
Speaker: I spent a lot of time thinking about, as I was wrapping up my reading for this, I spent a lot of time thinking, this is just the beginning of a trilogy.
Speaker: And so theoretically, this has to go somewhere because right now this is just like first person narrative.
Speaker: It's like it's a journal entry for somebody's actual play of Minecraft, and they have never played Minecraft before.
Speaker: And they're role playing somebody who like they're they're role playing themselves basically in this world.
Speaker: That is what this is.
Speaker: So I'm like, but this is a trilogy.
Speaker: This has to go someplace.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: I have no idea where that place is.
Speaker: No idea.
Speaker: But OK.
Speaker: Maybe it maybe at some place I was I had a thought and I was holding on to it till you were done.
Speaker: And then my dog jumped off the bed next to me.
Speaker: And then I looked back.
Speaker: And after I looked back from looking at him, I lost my thought.
Speaker: But I'm going to let him out of my office.
Speaker: Hold on.
Speaker: Yeah, go for it.
Speaker: Go for it.
Speaker: Yes, April and Camilla have just arrived home and Brighton just absolutely needed to leave the office right now.
Speaker: Needs to be there, needs to be there, damn it.
Speaker: To see them as they come in.
Speaker: Thing again.
Speaker: There we go.
Speaker: You did the thing again.
Speaker: It's the space bar.
Speaker: If I hit the space bar, I pop out.
Speaker: Oh.
Speaker: I'm going to put my keyboard nice and safely away.
Speaker: Push that keyboard away.
Speaker: Right over here.
Speaker: You go right there.
Speaker: Oh, I remember what it was.
Speaker: What's the name?
Speaker: Isn't there a specific type of book?
Speaker: It's not a specific type of book.
Speaker: It's a style of writing, and I feel like there's a specific word for it.
Speaker: that this is where it's like told through journal entries or letters or something like that.
Speaker: Epistolary.
Speaker: Epistolary.
Speaker: There we go.
Speaker: I knew it.
Speaker: I was like, I knew it's in there somewhere.
Speaker: It's like Dracula or isn't Frankenstein epistolary as well?
Speaker: Actually, I think it is.
Speaker: I think they're both epistolary.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And so is into the mountains of madness.
Speaker: A lot of early formative horror was written in that style.
Speaker: It was a very popular style there for a while.
Speaker: It was recounting the events
Speaker: rather than living through them.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Which is, which is, I mean, very effective for, for, especially for, I mean, I don't know if, you know what, I don't know if it's effective or if it's just because of what it is, what I associate with that time period.
Speaker: But it like, it's, it just feels right for Victorian and turn of the century shit.
Speaker: The pulp era, stuff like that.
Speaker: It feels appropriate.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, if you were trying to ape that era of horror, then I think it would make most sense to write it in an epistolary format, where it's letters or... Which is funny because a lot of horror video games
Speaker: in terms of their narrative are also told incredibly epistolary because you're finding the notes and you're reading logs and things like that in order to be filled in on the actual plot.
Speaker: That's a really good point, actually.
Speaker: There's a real argument you can make for video games
Speaker: basically resurrecting something of a dead, it's not a genre, I don't think, but like style.
Speaker: Because it's a stereotype now, the idea of you go in and you get audio logs and journal entries and stuff.
Speaker: And that's a very good point.
Speaker: I hadn't thought about that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Look at me.
Speaker: We make good points on this show.
Speaker: We make good points.
Speaker: We could video essay if we wanted to.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But we don't.
Speaker: Yeah, because we respect you too much, H-Bomber guy.
Speaker: I could dethrone him if I wanted to.
Speaker: You could.
Speaker: I could, but I'm not going to because I because you know what?
Speaker: I'm happy in my little corner of the Internet because you know what?
Speaker: I'm a little I'm a little too sleepy to.
Speaker: Yes, I'm also 41.
Speaker: And that does make a difference.
Speaker: That saying is right in a four hour video or whatever.
Speaker: Just that's a young man's game.
Speaker: I got that.
Speaker: That's a young man's game with whose whose income is based entirely on the video.
Speaker: It's like that's not that's not me.
Speaker: I can't do it.
Speaker: I might write an essay, but I'm making a video out of that now.
Speaker: I'm like, no, I wrote the I wrote to write the essay.
Speaker: I I'm writing I write two paragraph book reviews every week for our for our people.
Speaker: And and that is the extent of my extra time for this shit.
Speaker: This is that's that's that's it for me.
Speaker: I if anyone's ever I'm proud of the video essays I've done.
Speaker: I'm I'm I'm always going to leave them up.
Speaker: I love when people comment on them and stuff like that.
Speaker: I'm not I'm not.
Speaker: there is no way I'm going back to that.
Speaker: Short of like me, like having some sort of windfall that just falls in my lap and I can do whatever the fuck I want, then I'll consider it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Right after I'm done swimming in a pool of money, then we'll talk.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, I'm Scrooge McDuck and pretty much the first thing I do.
Speaker: Pantsless with a top hat, of course.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Body in the marsh.
Speaker: Body in the marsh.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: I don't believe it.
Speaker: What can't you believe?
Speaker: Be forewarned, brave listeners.
Speaker: This book has already started to wane on the amount of notes that I feel like I can take on it because it is so, so repetitive.
Speaker: But I don't, as I said before, I don't know how many notes you could possibly take on this.
Speaker: Yeah, it's like I could summarize what happens in two sentences.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: To be honest.
Speaker: Last week must have been...
Speaker: That has to have been one of the shortest actual episodes we've ever done.
Speaker: It was not.
Speaker: It was.
Speaker: Well, it still went over an hour.
Speaker: Well, I mean, shortest for the meat of the book.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: If we're talking about the actual content where we're talking about the book.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: By that, it was probably one of the shorter episodes.
Speaker: the shorter ones.
Speaker: And this one might even be even shorter because it's not out of lack of trying.
Speaker: You gave, I'm reading this book too.
Speaker: You, you, you told us everything we needed to know.
Speaker: You know what it is?
Speaker: It feels like every chapter is a full house episode.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: He learns a lesson by the end.
Speaker: He learns a lesson at the end of each chapter.
Speaker: It's a morality play is really what it comes down to.
Speaker: And Danny Tanner is just, you know, saying, hey there, kiddo, you got a plan to keep yourself alive.
Speaker: You got to try.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You got to try harder than I did in that Danny Tanner impression.
Speaker: I'll tell you what, I don't have a Bob Saget and I'm not sure anybody does.
Speaker: I don't think there is.
Speaker: Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker: The only way I can pay homage to Bob Saget is by doing a take on the aristocrats.
Speaker: And I'm not doing that on the show.
Speaker: Just about anything I could do to pay tribute to Bob Saget would get me landed in prison.
Speaker: I love the man very much, but I'm not going back to jail for him.
Speaker: That's just all there is to it.
Speaker: You know, at work, we do our event at the JW Marriott and the Bob Saget died in the Ritz that is on the same property.
Speaker: Oh, wow.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's pretty cool.
Speaker: That's pretty cool.
Speaker: You know what I mean?
Speaker: I could get haunted.
Speaker: I could get haunted.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Why not?
Speaker: I could also get haunted.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I've got, I've got, I've told you about my cursed object, right?
Speaker: Which one is that?
Speaker: When I was in France for a wine trip, they took us through this catacomb in St.
Speaker: Emion in the second century castle.
Speaker: And I took a rock with me.
Speaker: that I found in the thing.
Speaker: And on closer observation, it looked like it was like part of foundation or something like that.
Speaker: It looked like actual, like a building piece.
Speaker: And I was like, this is somebody's grave.
Speaker: This is a piece of somebody's grave.
Speaker: And I'm being lay haunted, possibly.
Speaker: But then the ghost says, but I am lay tired.
Speaker: I'm lay tired.
Speaker: Then take a nap.
Speaker: It's been fun.
Speaker: Then fire the missiles.
Speaker: Then fire the missiles.
Speaker: Oh, man.
Speaker: We are dating ourselves today, ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker: That was relevant to us.
Speaker: That was like fresh and relevant.
Speaker: Chapter eight is titled The Way.
Speaker: Steve Jack Black creates a system called The Way, which is plan, prepare, and prioritize.
Speaker: And oh my God, is this like some sort of Six Sigma or management course hidden in a kid's book on Minecraft.
Speaker: He spends time in a newly dugout observation room watching monsters at night and figures out that they can't really aggro on him through the glass.
Speaker: Steve sees a skeleton for the first time and that when it's killed, it drops a bow and arrow.
Speaker: And he adds two more steps to the way, which are practice and patience.
Speaker: He discovers these while he's talking to the cow as he figures out what he needs to do next, which is making more torches.
Speaker: The next day while digging, he discovers that sand is one of the things that follows gravity in this world.
Speaker: And he nearly gets crushed to death.
Speaker: He eventually finds a bunch of coal and iron.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: That was chapter eight.
Speaker: That's chapter eight.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: Just going to take a long sip of my soda.
Speaker: Yeah, just really.
Speaker: Mm-mm-mm.
Speaker: Chapter nine, friends keep you sane.
Speaker: Jack Black figures out how to make a bucket and shears and is miffed that he can't figure anything else out to do with the iron.
Speaker: He then realizes he's on the verge of starvation because his breath smells bad.
Speaker: He gets some wheat, but he can't make anything out of it.
Speaker: until he realizes that he might need more wheat.
Speaker: And when he gets outside, he puts together that he hasn't been watering the crops because the one near the water is the one that grew first.
Speaker: So he dumps water on the crops with the bucket, but that doesn't work and it actually washes the crop away and the seeds.
Speaker: And he gets mad at it and he hurls the bucket into the ocean.
Speaker: And he then swims out in the ocean and he gets the bucket back and he thinks about drinking seawater.
Speaker: And he's like, no, I need to find something else to drink.
Speaker: And he drinks.
Speaker: He then sees the cow and he's like, oh, cows make milk.
Speaker: And then he realizes the Minecraft world, you just have to shove a bucket out of cow and it fills up with milk.
Speaker: So then he drinks the milk and it's glorious until he realizes that it didn't do anything.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: It didn't feed his hunger or anything.
Speaker: So he looks at the cow and he considers killing the cow until the cow is like, well, why don't you try the zombie meat?
Speaker: The cow doesn't actually say any of these things.
Speaker: No, not in so many words.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: But the cow says moo and then that's translated to a suggestion.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Which, by the way, I find to be genuinely funny.
Speaker: That is a running gag that we get.
Speaker: I'm going to give him full credit as dull of a book as this is.
Speaker: He has this running gag where he is talking to the cow and the cow says moo.
Speaker: And he like it's kind of like the Wayne's World gag where he's speaking Cantonese or something like that.
Speaker: And someone says,
Speaker: like a single syllable word in that language.
Speaker: And the translation is like a paragraph of closed captioning.
Speaker: It's kind of like that.
Speaker: And I dig that it goes a little far.
Speaker: They keep doing it, but I'm going to give them full credit for a genuinely funny joke.
Speaker: Was James Hong played the dad in that?
Speaker: He sure was.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: He sure was.
Speaker: One of his 510 roles.
Speaker: Five million roles.
Speaker: Like, Jesus Christ.
Speaker: I say 510.
Speaker: That actually might be undercutting it.
Speaker: That might be undercutting it.
Speaker: I saw a video with James Hong recently, and...
Speaker: Motherfucker is like 97 and the spryest man alive.
Speaker: He was like stretching and he was the coolest man.
Speaker: He was a cool guy.
Speaker: Still is a cool guy.
Speaker: Oh, I thought he died.
Speaker: He didn't die dead.
Speaker: Oh my God.
Speaker: Even cooler than Jesus.
Speaker: James Hong is very much alive.
Speaker: I thought he died.
Speaker: Oh, he just did.
Speaker: He just did Kung Fu Panda four.
Speaker: with Jack Black.
Speaker: The last thing I saw him in was everything, everywhere, all at once.
Speaker: No, he probably has a thousand.
Speaker: That motherfucker is 95 years old.
Speaker: How many credits does he have just in 2024?
Speaker: I'm going to find out.
Speaker: Hold on.
Speaker: Let's see.
Speaker: He has three so far.
Speaker: Look at this guy's fucking career.
Speaker: He's got a TV series.
Speaker: He's got Gremlins, Secrets of the Mogwai coming out.
Speaker: Oh, shit.
Speaker: He was in the Tenacious D video for Hit Me Baby One More Time.
Speaker: He has I mean, if you count if you count television, which actually dwarfs his movie credits by a lot.
Speaker: Yeah, no, I might I might sincerely have undercut him.
Speaker: In a big way.
Speaker: Oh, right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He has 462 credits, but TV credits get counted as one on IMDb.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So, so yeah.
Speaker: So we're, okay.
Speaker: That's holy shit.
Speaker: That was crazy.
Speaker: God damn, man.
Speaker: That man's out of career.
Speaker: That guy's cool as hell.
Speaker: Yeah, he is.
Speaker: He has been at it since.
Speaker: 19.
Speaker: Jesus Christ.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: My dad was two years old and this motherfucker was, was in his first roles.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: That's, that is amazing.
Speaker: Where was I?
Speaker: James Hong is, is cool dude with all that stuff.
Speaker: This is now a James Hong podcast.
Speaker: We're going to start discovering the works of James Hong.
Speaker: And honestly, we will be going for decades if we try, if we tried.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: There's, there's no end in sight.
Speaker: We don't know it.
Speaker: We don't know if he's ever going to die.
Speaker: We don't know that for a fact.
Speaker: We don't know that.
Speaker: He was the guy in Big Trouble in Little China.
Speaker: That guy was immortal.
Speaker: I doubt very much he's going anywhere.
Speaker: I just, I can't.
Speaker: Yeah, no, he's still, he's, I can't believe.
Speaker: The fact that you even pointed out, the fact that I thought he was dead and you had to point out that he's alive.
Speaker: He's still alive.
Speaker: That convinces me that he's not going anywhere.
Speaker: That's ridiculous.
Speaker: Uh...
Speaker: So he considers killing the cow and then has a meltdown about the concept of killing it because it's super sad and the cow is his only friend.
Speaker: The cow then inspires Jack Black to eat the zombie meat and then wash it down with milk and that heals him.
Speaker: So the zombie meat poisons him initially, but then he drinks the milk and it flushes out the poison and it acts as regular food.
Speaker: And then he gets a full health.
Speaker: He gets the full food bar.
Speaker: Then he gets a full health bar.
Speaker: And the cow forgives him.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker: He moves.
Speaker: He moves and he can tell that that's him for the move.
Speaker: Forgiveness.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Forgiveness.
Speaker: Moo.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: Chapter 10.
Speaker: Nothing clears the mind like sleep.
Speaker: Steve Black plants the seeds next to the water.
Speaker: And that's what helps them grow.
Speaker: He figures this out while hunting a squid, and he fails at that.
Speaker: He gets a bow from a skeleton, but it still doesn't help him kill the squid.
Speaker: He shears the sheep and builds a bed and sleeps for the first time since this book started.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: He forgot about the sleep thing.
Speaker: Yep, and that's the end of chapter 10.
Speaker: Chapter 11, Courage is a full-time job.
Speaker: The next morning, he re-shears the sheep because the...
Speaker: Wool already grew back and tries to figure out how to make a fishing pole with, first with the cotton, and then he realizes that it's with silk that he needs.
Speaker: So he needs to kill another spider.
Speaker: So he goes out and he kills a spider and he gets the silk and then he builds a fishing pole and he starts fishing.
Speaker: And he learns something about courage along the way after catching a fish and cooking it and eating it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's the end of chapter 11.
Speaker: He learned something again.
Speaker: I have more notes about the worlds of power books.
Speaker: I mean, yes.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, they made stronger choices.
Speaker: They were terrible choices.
Speaker: They're terrible choices, but they're a choice.
Speaker: But they're choices.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Chapter 12.
Speaker: Risk and reward.
Speaker: My notes are getting less frequent.
Speaker: Something feels wrong.
Speaker: Itchy.
Speaker: Tasty.
Speaker: Itchy tasty.
Speaker: Epistolary.
Speaker: Resident Evil.
Speaker: I mean, there it is.
Speaker: There it is.
Speaker: While fishing, he picks up some shoes and then gets the idea for armor.
Speaker: While mining for more iron, he finds redstone, which he uses to make a redstone torch and is very disappointed in it.
Speaker: I can confirm redstone torches suck at being torches in Minecraft.
Speaker: Now, I'm sure there's some reason why they're good, but they provide, like, no light.
Speaker: Don't come for us, people.
Speaker: We don't care.
Speaker: Don't come for us, people.
Speaker: I don't.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: He finally realizes how to make a sword after all this time with iron.
Speaker: Even though he could have made a sword with wood or stone, he finally figures it out with iron and he tested out on a little crab monster that's been scuttling about.
Speaker: So he goes down to the caves and he gets attacked by some skelly men and he learns that they can spawn in caves whenever, which I feel like a lesson he's learned.
Speaker: It's like a lesson he's learned like five times now.
Speaker: Yeah, he keeps learning it over and over again in one way, shape or form.
Speaker: And at this point, I'm like, come on, buddy, you really need to extrapolate some information here.
Speaker: Keeps forgetting he like in real life, he was playing the game and he fell asleep.
Speaker: And the next day he forgot half the shit he learned.
Speaker: So, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Chapter 13.
Speaker: when the world changes.
Speaker: Steve Jack realizes that he can use the bones from the skeletons that he killed to make the plants grow better.
Speaker: And then he gets seeds, which he can feed the animals and that makes them bone.
Speaker: Makes them bone?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Bone.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: As in make the sweet, sweet lovin' to produce a baby chick.
Speaker: And in Minecraft, that's just like some hearts pop up above their head and then poof, there's a baby.
Speaker: There's a baby.
Speaker: There's a baby.
Speaker: Thank God.
Speaker: I don't think I can handle any of that shit with a square penis.
Speaker: That's just a bummer.
Speaker: Like a shark.
Speaker: Yeah, we're an echidna.
Speaker: There's a shark.
Speaker: Oh, an echidna.
Speaker: No, they have four heads to their penis.
Speaker: That's what I'm thinking of.
Speaker: Four heads to the penis.
Speaker: Yes, yes.
Speaker: Which I'm intrigued.
Speaker: Square penis.
Speaker: Oh, you are just, you are a brave man, Kevin.
Speaker: Brave man.
Speaker: You know, I got a, now the stretching weights I don't need.
Speaker: Anyway.
Speaker: Amazon.com link to squared end penis stretching weight will allow you to engorge yourself more and get larger all around.
Speaker: Don't buy it.
Speaker: Don't buy it.
Speaker: That's not how the body works.
Speaker: You're going to fuck your dick up.
Speaker: Don't do it.
Speaker: You're going to break it.
Speaker: You're going to break it.
Speaker: God gave you your penis for a reason.
Speaker: Be cool.
Speaker: Be cool.
Speaker: Be cool, honey bunny.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So.
Speaker: He gives it to the chickens and he gives it to the sheep.
Speaker: And now he gets a new chicken and a new sheep.
Speaker: And then there's no other cow for cow to mate with.
Speaker: Because if you remember in an earlier chapter, the other cow got blown up by a creeper.
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: I forgot about that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So the cow lost its mate.
Speaker: Oh, I didn't think about that.
Speaker: I didn't consider the long term ramifications.
Speaker: Long term ramifications.
Speaker: It's sad, isn't it?
Speaker: Yeah, it's got heart.
Speaker: They've got heart.
Speaker: They've got heart.
Speaker: He comes up with a scheme to breed more and more chickens to slaughter them and get their feathers and meat to which cow is not too happy about the idea.
Speaker: This is not a cow that is under the employ of Chick-fil-A.
Speaker: This cow is an ally.
Speaker: Yeah, just because you're not thinking about me specifically doesn't mean that it doesn't hurt my sense of moral justice.
Speaker: We stan a cow ally.
Speaker: Because meat is murder, according to cow.
Speaker: According to cow.
Speaker: According to cow.
Speaker: We stan a cow lie.
Speaker: We stan a cow.
Speaker: We stand a conscientious cow, you know?
Speaker: Conscientious cow, exactly.
Speaker: I can't say much more than that.
Speaker: And you know what?
Speaker: Nor should you.
Speaker: You're good.
Speaker: Jack Black is like, yeah, I can just, I can make these, I can make all these chickens get together.
Speaker: I can make them fuck.
Speaker: They can, they can, they can fuck the chickens and then there'll be feathers and there's meat for me to eat.
Speaker: And then, so basically he's just breeding chickens now.
Speaker: Yeah, he's doing Farmville, basically.
Speaker: He's doing Farmville.
Speaker: There's a whole routine sequence until one day he wakes up with a tingling hand for some reason.
Speaker: And all the mobs are harder to kill.
Speaker: And he gets the idea to build a shield.
Speaker: They never explain the tingling hand.
Speaker: There's something with his butt, too.
Speaker: Like his butt's asleep or something along those lines.
Speaker: I didn't get it.
Speaker: I think it's his rump.
Speaker: They say his rump.
Speaker: Rump.
Speaker: It's weird.
Speaker: Rump.
Speaker: It's weird.
Speaker: I don't recommend it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Chapter 14, always be aware of your surroundings.
Speaker: So while down in a cavern, Steve is fighting a zombie with his new shield that he builds.
Speaker: And he's getting the hang of it.
Speaker: But him and the zombie accidentally fall deeper down into the mine.
Speaker: And he tracks the zombie to a waterfall.
Speaker: But that waterfall is going into a pit of lava.
Speaker: The water is cooling the lava and making black stone.
Speaker: And he goes down there and he's like, this is really cool stone.
Speaker: And then the zombie pushes him into the lava.
Speaker: And he describes how his skin is melting and all of his nerves are burning and all that stuff.
Speaker: And he gets out and he fights the zombie and kills it.
Speaker: And then he eats some bread to heal.
Speaker: And he learns a new lesson.
Speaker: That's right, Ripley.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Learns a new lesson.
Speaker: Fuck zombies up.
Speaker: Yeah, that's right, buddy.
Speaker: The new lesson, always be aware of your surroundings.
Speaker: That's it.
Speaker: That's all I got.
Speaker: That's it.
Speaker: So, Phil, what do you think of the book so far?
Speaker: I hate this book so much.
Speaker: This is just it just the the the description of the death, I think, and the cow jokes are the extent of the creative endeavors of this.
Speaker: But this is this is I'm not a Twitch streamer guy.
Speaker: I don't watch a lot of Twitch streams.
Speaker: I just don't I can't really get into it.
Speaker: This is like watching someone report what a Twitch streamer did in a fictional style.
Speaker: And there's...
Speaker: Actually, the funny thing is the situation with the cow and the cow saying boo and translating it is a clever idea, but it kind of shows an overarching problem where there's no one for him to interact with.
Speaker: This is this is and he's not doing enough to make it worth watching.
Speaker: This isn't alone.
Speaker: You know what I mean?
Speaker: Like it's, it's, it, there's no, there's no real tension.
Speaker: Not really.
Speaker: Like you get it here and there with like, Oh, should I kill this cow?
Speaker: And, but even like, even like being shot with arrows and being thrown into lava and stuff, just, it doesn't feel like there's anything at stake.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Something about it feels deflated on every level.
Speaker: Like I'm not,
Speaker: There's nothing there.
Speaker: And yeah, it feels like this is meant to be like the fictional equivalent of a comedian who doesn't really have any jokes, but just reminds you of things that happened in the eighties or the nineties or something, you know?
Speaker: Like, remember that show we all used to watch?
Speaker: How dare you come for Jerry Seinfeld like that?
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, it's just not really very entertaining, but I can actually see where a kid who plays a ton of Minecraft would, I don't know, get like some sort of- Enjoy it in a way because it's like, oh yeah, I like Minecraft and this reminds me of me playing Minecraft.
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: Which is like, at that point, it's like, then just fucking-
Speaker: Play Minecraft.
Speaker: Like, Jesus Christ.
Speaker: I mean, if a kid, yeah, I would say if it gets a kid reading, then more power to the book.
Speaker: Yeah, you know what?
Speaker: You're right.
Speaker: Fair enough.
Speaker: That's a good point.
Speaker: But I think on a separate level, it's, okay, this is a warm-up book.
Speaker: Now let's get you reading something new.
Speaker: And this is funny because I have never been so insistent when we've read the first book in a series that we are going to read the second or the third one because I need to know –
Speaker: how he handles that.
Speaker: Cause if, if, if Max Brooks, if you're right, you're right.
Speaker: If Max Brooks uses this as a like foot in the door kind of situation and gets us going.
Speaker: And then in second one and the third one introduces plot and character and complications and, and all kinds of shit like that, then I will give him full fucking credit for that.
Speaker: Uh, uh, uh, fine holiday fun.
Speaker: Great job, Mr. Brooks.
Speaker: Uh, uh, but, um,
Speaker: But yeah, I just, this, it's boring me to tears.
Speaker: It just is.
Speaker: And it's not for me.
Speaker: That's the thing.
Speaker: It's clearly not for me.
Speaker: Not for me.
Speaker: I find it's weird.
Speaker: I am finding that my least favorite category of bad book that we read are the ones that are boring.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Because here's the thing.
Speaker: Five Nights at Freddy's.
Speaker: Terrible.
Speaker: Terrible.
Speaker: I wouldn't call them boring necessarily.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: Weird and nonsensical decisions.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Convoluted to shit sometimes.
Speaker: Convoluted to shit.
Speaker: How the hell did we get here?
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But I can enjoy that.
Speaker: I can enjoy that while it also drives me bananas.
Speaker: But this is just like, it's not even provoking me.
Speaker: No, yes, that's exactly the word.
Speaker: I keep coming back to the Dead Space books in our book.
Speaker: You know, that we read.
Speaker: And I guess, and might be reading another one.
Speaker: Maybe.
Speaker: Maybe.
Speaker: I keep coming back to that because I, when I think of a book that pissed us off, I cut my brain immediately cuts to that book.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Ladies and gentlemen, if you are relatively new here and you want to hear me and Kevin, who are normally pretty pleasant, agreeable fellows, if you want to hear us get ultra salty, go back and listen to the Dead Space.
Speaker: It was in our first year.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: We got really salty over Dead Space.
Speaker: I don't regret it whatsoever.
Speaker: And it's probably the meanest we ever got about a book.
Speaker: It was absolutely, maybe to this day, the meanest.
Speaker: Because we try to keep it from getting too personal, from getting too, but we just felt personally attacked.
Speaker: I think the only thing I can compare it to is Kevin's reaction to the Dark Souls book.
Speaker: Dark Souls book.
Speaker: Which attacked him personally.
Speaker: Physically.
Speaker: And I think it was the, for Dark Souls, it's the extra level of bad and Michael Stackpole being a writer who I previously enjoyed.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And respect.
Speaker: And respect.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, and that's the thing.
Speaker: I'd rather read,
Speaker: a book like that, that actually actively pisses me off because it's making choices.
Speaker: This is just piddling along.
Speaker: I don't, I just, I feel like kids, kids lit and, and you can say it's for kids, but kids deserve better than this.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know, like, like you've got Lewis Carroll and, and fucking like all, all a number of children's writers who have plot lines and stories and complicated.
Speaker: And this is, this is just, this is,
Speaker: Kids deserve better than this.
Speaker: We can't just.
Speaker: You got Robert Heinlein, you know?
Speaker: Yeah, of course.
Speaker: Of course.
Speaker: If you enjoyed this, you might enjoy fascism in space.
Speaker: You know, what was the Robert Heinlein book that was recommended in?
Speaker: It was, it was Strangers in a Strange Land, I think.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: I think it was Stranger in a Strange Land.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I don't think it was.
Speaker: I don't think it was Starship Troopers.
Speaker: It was not Starship Troopers.
Speaker: I don't think it was that on the nose.
Speaker: I think it was Stranger in a Strange Land.
Speaker: God damn, that cracked me up.
Speaker: We had that man on our show.
Speaker: I love this show so much.
Speaker: Not Robert Heinlein.
Speaker: Not Robert Heinlein.
Speaker: But no, but FX9 Seth Godin was on the show and he was the one responsible for the recommendation of a Robert Heinlein book to children at the end of one of the FX9 books.
Speaker: That cracks me.
Speaker: I love that man.
Speaker: We should get him back on the show.
Speaker: We should.
Speaker: We should follow up with him.
Speaker: I know he's not.
Speaker: I don't know how he's not doing a lot of pod.
Speaker: That was actually the really cool thing about him being on our show is that was in a year where he wasn't doing a lot of podcast appearances and he chose to talk to us.
Speaker: Yeah, it was really very nice of him.
Speaker: It was crazy.
Speaker: It was just a wonderful, wonderful time.
Speaker: We've gotten to talk to so many cool people.
Speaker: So many cool cats.
Speaker: We should get Robert Heinlein on the show.
Speaker: We should give it a shot, at least.
Speaker: We should give it a shot.
Speaker: I mean, I do have- Just because he's dead doesn't mean that's worth stopping.
Speaker: Where do you think he is?
Speaker: Oh, hell, without question.
Speaker: Yeah, okay.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, there's there's no writer author in the 1950s.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: That's exactly what I was going to say.
Speaker: You are not.
Speaker: No, you're not in the good place.
Speaker: Harlan Ellison.
Speaker: Harlan Ellison is in double, triple hell.
Speaker: There's no question about it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I and I can only hope that I get to be his neighbor.
Speaker: That's that's.
Speaker: That's all I've got to look forward to that.
Speaker: The only, none of, we're not going to heaven.
Speaker: And, and I can only, I can only look forward to the fact that most of my friends are going to be there too.
Speaker: So triple, triple hell with Harlan Ellison.
Speaker: That's our next podcast.
Speaker: Triple hell with Harlan Ellison.
Speaker: So, Phil, I have one question for you.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: What are you playing?
Speaker: Oh, well, I pulled the trigger and started playing the full version of Crypt Master.
Speaker: Oh, okay.
Speaker: Love it.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: I know you were enamored with the demo, so.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: I love the art design.
Speaker: I love, I like typing games that really, I played a lot of typing game of the dead or whatever it was called.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Typing, typing of the dead.
Speaker: Typing of the dead.
Speaker: I get a kick out of that as a format, as a style of game.
Speaker: And this does a really fun job of making it,
Speaker: about more than just that, though there are riddles and and very funny dialogue.
Speaker: And the art is stupid, beautiful for it being black and white.
Speaker: It is it is absolutely one of the prettier games I've played.
Speaker: And it's so simple in that sense.
Speaker: It's weird.
Speaker: And I wouldn't even call it pretty.
Speaker: I would just I would call it's I would say it's it's beautiful.
Speaker: It's very striking art.
Speaker: It's well-made, striking, intense artwork.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: And I'm just, I'm tickled pink with this game.
Speaker: It is, you know, after the demo, it doesn't drop off in level of quality.
Speaker: It was just, it's fantastic.
Speaker: I love the voiceover work.
Speaker: It's just very clever.
Speaker: I like the idea of unlocking the
Speaker: uh, your abilities and your characters, pasts and stuff like that through this collection of letters that, that a letter is a reward.
Speaker: Um, you know, you're not getting experience or gold or something you're getting, you get to pick a letter or two, uh, to maybe try and help you guess.
Speaker: And if I wanted to, I could go online and there would be a full list of all these and I could just like cheese these guys.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You could
Speaker: cheese all the spells, but it's like, eh.
Speaker: That'd be fine, but I'm having so much fun doing it the organic way.
Speaker: It's not even occurring to me to do that.
Speaker: So that's one that I've been playing a lot in addition to my usual Thousand Year Door and The Hunter.
Speaker: Those are kind of the standbys and Bellatro.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I played a couple of demos.
Speaker: Ooh.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: I played Hexarchy.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Which is, this came out last year, I think.
Speaker: And it's a 4X deck builder.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So it's two things I really like.
Speaker: I played through it.
Speaker: It is, it's competent, it's good at what it does, but it is so influenced by Civ, which all 4X are, like, that's face facts.
Speaker: But this is really like Civ.
Speaker: It just happens to use, um...
Speaker: a deck building mechanic to it.
Speaker: And I just for me personally, the introduction of the deck building is not enough to to make it more interesting for me.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: It's it's just not an original take on anything.
Speaker: And I just ultimately it just I didn't find it very interesting.
Speaker: It's got good reviews.
Speaker: And so so obviously there are people out there who disagree.
Speaker: But that one just wasn't for me.
Speaker: I also played a similar game called Dungeons and Degenerate Gamblers.
Speaker: Great title, so I'm in.
Speaker: That's an amazing title.
Speaker: Yeah, great title.
Speaker: And it is very similar to Bellatro.
Speaker: And I wouldn't be surprised if that's exactly what they were trying to do.
Speaker: But it's...
Speaker: Blackjack is the fighting mechanic and you use it to fight people.
Speaker: You're playing cards against them and basically you're aiming for a blackjack or a better hand and the difference in the two hands is the amount of damage you do for them.
Speaker: And if they bust or if you bust, you lose like 20 health or something like something really devastating.
Speaker: It's just a clever idea.
Speaker: And then they worked.
Speaker: You can buy and acquire cards that are not like your normal playing cards.
Speaker: You start with a normal deck of 52 and based on the suit you choose, you get, they have different abilities.
Speaker: For example, I started with the heart suit, which just gives you a little health back every round.
Speaker: And I think that was the easy mode based on what they were saying.
Speaker: I was just trying that out and you can buy and win cards similar in the same way to the way that planet and tarot cards works in Bellatra where they kind of just they have certain abilities and powers and juice you up a little bit.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And I don't know if it was because it was so similar to Bellatro and I already got plenty of that and I don't need more of that in my life right now.
Speaker: Or if it was just it also felt like it also felt like it was a lot all at once.
Speaker: You know, Bellatro kind of like eases you in and these fucks fuckers were like throwing everything at me.
Speaker: immediately and it felt it just felt a little overwhelming um fun art style got that cool pixelated sort of thing which i wish i always like and it's a very self-aware rpg kind of style thing i might come back to it i might uh but that one didn't yeah i'm looking at the screenshots and i'm like this is too much for me to handle
Speaker: It's a lot and they don't ease you in the way that I wish that they would.
Speaker: Yeah, Bellatro was like, it was like, oh, this is simple.
Speaker: Oh, okay.
Speaker: Okay, I'm getting more.
Speaker: Okay, I'm understanding it now.
Speaker: And then 178 hours of playtime later, you're like, what just happened?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Malatro is kind of the definition of that old idea of takes five minutes to learn the rest of your life to master kind of thing.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And this is trying to go almost the opposite route.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Which is, I think, what the problem with a lot of analog games these days are.
Speaker: Games have gotten so complicated, especially if you're playing board games and, you know, that sort of thing.
Speaker: They're so complex.
Speaker: And this gave me a lot of those kind of vibes.
Speaker: I love...
Speaker: I love playing board games, but I hate starting a board game for the first time because I break out the instructions and it's like, and this is probably a pro ZD bit where it's just like, it's like first player gets the blue token and then every other player pulls one card from the stack.
Speaker: They look at the card and then they do not reveal it for the rest of the game.
Speaker: The player with the blue card token then deals five cards to every other player and ten cards to themself.
Speaker: Those ten cards that they deal to themselves are then played onto the play table and the blue token is then flipped in the air and given to the player who calls its heads or tails properly.
Speaker: First call, first serve.
Speaker: Then that player gets to play the first of their five cards.
Speaker: The action on the card is then taken by the player that is counterclockwise to the player who originally had the blue token.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: That's pretty much it.
Speaker: It's just... First player to run around the room wins.
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: And that's the thing.
Speaker: There was a time for both of us where that was awesome.
Speaker: That's what we wanted.
Speaker: It makes me think of like back in the day where if it's not an Elder Scrolls open world game that I'm going to play for 200 hours, no thank you.
Speaker: And I wonder sometimes if it's just age, like you just don't have time for this shit anymore.
Speaker: because I've been looking at my game of the year list and it is mostly games that have been very welcoming to the party.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Very, very welcoming.
Speaker: Very simple, straightforward angles here.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Interesting and fun anyway.
Speaker: But that's what I've got.
Speaker: What about you, Kevin?
Speaker: What are you in plan?
Speaker: I have been playing okay.
Speaker: So there are three games that I've been focusing on the past few days.
Speaker: Back into Elden Ring.
Speaker: So I had to... I beat Elden Ring on the PS5, but I bought the DLC for the PC copy that I had.
Speaker: I didn't realize the PC copy I had did not have a character on it.
Speaker: like barely even started.
Speaker: So I'm on the PC version and I'm like, all right, I am just, I'm just trying to get this guy beefed up.
Speaker: Because I know it's like one of those things like I've explored the entire game.
Speaker: I'm not the entire base game.
Speaker: So I'm just doing what I have to do in the base game right now to get my character leveled up as fast as possible.
Speaker: I know the rune farming spots that I have to do so that it's like, okay, it's going to take me less than 10 hours to get a character that is like end game-ish.
Speaker: You know?
Speaker: And then I'm like, all right, now I can go into the DLC and explore it because I've beaten the game.
Speaker: You know, I've beaten it, I think I've beaten it twice.
Speaker: And I just don't want to, I just don't want to have to go through the entire game again just to play the DLC.
Speaker: So.
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's basically what I did with the Star Wars, the old Republic.
Speaker: I just was like, oh, we're gonna, we're starting from the beginning.
Speaker: It's just, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, it helped that I did start from the beginning because I knocked some rust off in terms of.
Speaker: Yeah, that's good.
Speaker: getting those iframes and how to cast and how to do all that fun stuff.
Speaker: So I've been back on that.
Speaker: I've been playing Citizen Sleeper.
Speaker: Oh, okay, okay.
Speaker: Which is an interesting little RPG.
Speaker: Citizen Sleeper is the story of your character who is a, what is called a sleeper, who is somebody who's been, their brain has been scanned, their body was like donated to science.
Speaker: but the person isn't dead, so to speak.
Speaker: The brain has been scanned and put into the body of what's called a sleeper, which is kind of like a robot from one of the androids from like Alien or whatever, except it's obvious that you're not human necessarily.
Speaker: So people know right off the bat that you're one of the sleepers.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So you wake up in a space station.
Speaker: You don't really have any memories as to why you are a sleeper or how you got there or what have you.
Speaker: And you just are trying to figure out what's going on on the space station, trying to live.
Speaker: There's like a bounty hunter after you because you are, your body has a tracker in it and the company that owns the sleeper
Speaker: body wants it back so all sorts of things like that it's it's a it's a really cool dice based rpg where you go through actions uh every morning it's a it's a cycle every cycle you start
Speaker: you get assigned six, you have six dice with various numbers on it that you get randomly.
Speaker: So six dice rolls, and then you can use those rolls.
Speaker: So a six means your action will be 100% effective, and then it goes down from there.
Speaker: So like a five is like, okay, it's like 75% effective or 75% positive result, 25% neutral result.
Speaker: And as you go down, it's more likely it's going to be a negative result.
Speaker: So a negative result might hurt you or what have you.
Speaker: So it's really neat.
Speaker: And there's a lot of like branching little branching paths you can take as you're going through the game, depending on what you focus on to explore.
Speaker: So right now I'm a few hours into it and it's very dialogue heavy.
Speaker: Like you're reading a lot.
Speaker: You are reading a lot because you're talking.
Speaker: It's either you're doing an action like hacking into something or
Speaker: doing some work for credits or you're just talking to people.
Speaker: So, but I like it so far.
Speaker: So Citizen Sleeper, I know Kat from Pixel A Day is a big Citizen Sleeper fan.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: So yeah, Citizen Sleeper and one other game and I bought it because it looks cool on the screens and the name reminded me of Aliens.
Speaker: The game is Sulaco.
Speaker: Sulaco?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So that was also the name of the ship in Aliens.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So Sulaco is a first-person shooter built...
Speaker: in the doom engine in gz doom and it is amazing how fast and zippy this game is it is a fast first person game but if you're thinking doom like doom is doom has is is aged right right but this game you know it has the the the
Speaker: the multiple, you can aiming up and down and your character is able to do this like sliding thing and dash and shift and jump and all that stuff.
Speaker: It is amazing.
Speaker: Watch some gameplay of it.
Speaker: I am right now.
Speaker: This looks great.
Speaker: Holy shit.
Speaker: For a game that is designed on the engine that it's on, which is, I guess it's GZ Doom is technically the engine or what have you.
Speaker: It's in early access, but yeah, I love it.
Speaker: And the reviews include John Romero saying Sulaco is really great.
Speaker: Well, that'll tell you everything you need to know.
Speaker: That'll tell you everything that you need to know.
Speaker: The story takes place during a violent invasion of Sulaco, the underground facility that's home to the surviving refugees after the fall of Earth.
Speaker: You play Dawn, an ace security captain who, with her recent promotion and high-level security clearances, is digging deep into the truth behind Sulaco's murky history.
Speaker: Before she can finish her investigation, Sulaco is rocked by explosions and armed invaders.
Speaker: So this looks tight.
Speaker: Yeah, this looks really, really good.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: So I dig it.
Speaker: It is.
Speaker: It is.
Speaker: It is good so far.
Speaker: It's an early access, but hey, it's already got 2000 reviews.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: It's gotten some attention to say the very least.
Speaker: Jesus.
Speaker: Oh, God.
Speaker: That's pretty cool.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So all I put in the back of my head, I hear the phrase Slaco actual.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And that is what I have been playing.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So that'll do it for this episode.
Speaker: What I forgot to do at the beginning of the episode was shout out
Speaker: Our Patreon friendos.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: At patreon.com slash pixel at pod, where you can join us for free.
Speaker: Or the $1 tier lets you read Phil's blog about books.
Speaker: $5 gets you ad-free episodes and the bonus episodes.
Speaker: And $10 gets your name.
Speaker: Shout it out.
Speaker: in the episode.
Speaker: So to that end, Ruthless Mutter, Kyle Seaman, Jesus loves you, and Friendly Friend, thank you for being a friend.
Speaker: Woo!
Speaker: Patreon.com slash PixletPod or PixletPod.com.
Speaker: Either way, that gets you there.
Speaker: Just a reminder, if you haven't already, join our Discord.
Speaker: Please.
Speaker: It's a great place.
Speaker: Bunch of parents and middle-aged people and leftists in there.
Speaker: If that sounds like your bag, then...
Speaker: There's been a lot to talk about lately.
Speaker: There's been a lot to talk about lately.
Speaker: So, yeah.
Speaker: You know, join us to discuss while Rome burns.
Speaker: Please.
Speaker: Bring your fiddle.
Speaker: It'll be fun.
Speaker: Bring your fiddle because we're all fit and win over there.
Speaker: Goddamn right.
Speaker: Otherwise, follow us on all the social medias, the X, the Blue Sky, the Instagrams, Pixlet Pod.
Speaker: We'll get you there and get you all squared up with that.
Speaker: Thank you so much for listening.
Speaker: Have a good night, everybody.
Speaker: Bye.
Speaker: Bye.
