Puzzle Me Pivotal

Did we have some fun though? Remember with the left? What was I doing to the fire and I said we got it? We're going to the left.

And then I was all we pretended we were going to murder you. And that's great. Ladies and gentlemen! Ladies and gentlemen!

Are you ready? Are you ready? Get ready? No.

Get ready. Hello everyone. Welcome to Pivotal. I'm Mario Ponzio.

And I am Andy Berry. So let's just jump right into it with two new album releases. The second one we'll talk about is the one we reviewed last week, the new Japanese breakfast album that Andy thought was a huge discovery of his, even though Japanese breakfast has been in DC for years. For me only.

I didn't say they're not popular. They're new to me. Oh yeah. Fair enough.

Fair enough. However, the first one that we're going to discuss is an album I was not aware of. From an artist I don't particularly follow. That being I said I love you first by the couple Selena Gomez and producer Benny Blanco.

I always wonder if I want to preface anything about these albums that we discussed. I just want to actually review them. I guess there's really nothing to preface. They are an engaged couple.

This is her first studio album since 2020. She had a solo release in 2020. Don't you think she's ever present? Okay.

Since then. She's only released six albums and two albums and maybe seven albums. She has an EP, extended play from 2015. I don't know if she has any other EP's, but for somebody who has such a prodigious place in the culture for music.

I'm surprised that she doesn't have as many releases as she has. Expect it that she would. They are of course kind of the top. I guess you want to go.

I sort of want to go into like what's your experience with Selena Gomez? I am very little experience with Selena Gomez whatsoever in terms of her music. In terms of her acting, I saw the first season of Only Murders in the building. I wasn't really familiar with her music.

Never watched Wizards. Wave from your place, Whizzer. Disney show, right? I don't know.

It was Whizzer's. It was Whizzer's. Wave from your place. I had seen Spring Breakers when she was in.

I saw the dead. Don't die. I saw the first Hotel Transylvania. So I've seen Selena for acting roles.

I unfortunately saw Amelia Perez. I didn't think she was a bad part of Amelia Perez. I thought she was trying her hardest with that. With that, this great solo movie.

The Bomb of the film. I said, read all forget. And here we are still talking about it. I'm the one obsessed with John Jock-a-Dard.

Yeah, I wasn't too familiar with her. I wasn't that familiar with Benny Blanco's production. Because a lot of the artists that he directly seems to work with are not really in my wheelhouse. What about you, Andy?

So I know Selena Gomez just from the Ubra of pop culture, but I couldn't name you one of her songs. Never really listened to her. I watched all of Murs in the building. I think she's great.

I liked her in Spring Breakers too. But and Benny Blanco, I know from the TV show, Dave. And also I think he produced a bunch of Kesha early. And I'm a big Kesha fan.

So other than that, I don't have a ton of experience with him. And I watched some of his cooking show with Madison. Yeah, I did. I did.

I did. I'm the bear. But I really didn't. I haven't really dug into Selena's desire for you, really.

And I don't know about you, but this album kind of blew me away. I really, really liked it. I did not think I would. And it feels like a fully, like, it feels fully realized to me.

It feels like a full, I haven't just turned this on. It was the one song whenever I put it on. I was through and I really like, it kind of tells a story, I think. And I really enjoyed it.

Absolutely. There's an intentionality with its production that kind of permeates throughout this entire album. There's those interstitials that are kind of like joke parts of it, or kind of dialogue parts of it, you know, those little 32nd quips or skits that I don't really enjoy. But there's definitely a set, see or flow, an intentionality that you saw earlier in the year from the weekend, starting to get to where I think, I'm going to get to where I was a much more deliberate, bombastic production.

I'm not necessarily in love with this album. I really enjoy it. One of the kind of comments that I read through Reddit was that it felt like an album where two people are having a lot of fun together in the studio and just kind of like going through that experience together and having a lot of fun. And that's what this kind of album feels like, even though it feels kind of early on with that idea of heartbreak and that kind of finding love and finding that person you're going to be with, obviously Blanco and Gomez are engaged.

Like that is definitely the story throughout it. But I think what works sincerely well, you know, with that heartbreak and the struggles within it is just the fact that you can tell the two of them are having a lot of fun. You could see that Blanco's bringing back the production quite often in order to kind of like Gomez's vocal shine. I did not realize she was had solid of a vocalist.

She kind of like really blew me away with how solidly she could hit different sort of, you know, octaves and images. Yeah, her range is kind of impressive. Yeah, it's really impressive. There's some stuff I don't necessarily love in this.

I don't kind of love the Charlie XCX, Hyper Pop-inspired, Lewis Flame song. But that entire run from Don't Want to Cry to Sunset Boulevard in Cowboys is a great like three-song run in there. I think all three of those songs are really great. I think that final song, The Scared of Love You, which I've worked with with Phineas Bocannal, you know, for being the known for his production work mostly with Billy Eilish and another musical artist, but two-time Oscar winner, multiple-time Grammy winner.

I think that's a great ending sort of short song, but it really punctuates the story of the album. But I think I don't think it's a major achievement in terms of blowing my socks away or blowing my socks off, I should say, because that's the correct way of saying that statement. But I'm blown away too. It's okay.

I guess regardless, the socks are off your feet. I had a lot of fun with it. I really enjoyed it. I don't necessarily emotionally connect to it.

I was never really kind of truly blown away, but I had a lot of fun. And it feels like they're having fun. Yeah, so I, yeah, like the first thing I thought when I listened to this all the way through, I'm like, this is a love letter that they're writing to each other. And I found that pretty awesome.

And a lot of these songs felt super personal. And I really, like the first time I listened to this, I started to tear up on some of these songs because they just felt super raw and really emotional. They really hit me. Maybe I'm just a little bitch, but I kind of love love and it really hit me.

And I'm really happy for them. I hate them for it. But I'll be honest, this is my favorite album I've listened to new album this year so far. It's not all that close.

I like the very sound of it. The songs go in all different places. I like her Spanish songs she does. I like the Charlie X-X style songs.

I don't know what this is. But I'll just trust it. With them, I guess. Yeah.

Yeah. And then I also, I just love those later songs. Like you said, the Sunset Boulevard, don't want to cry. Cowboy, those are also, I think they're awesome.

So I just really, let me away, I almost think I should go listen to some of the songs so we can go into another music and I might do that and see if that's us. It makes me do. Yeah. I agree with that entire idea of a love letter to one another.

There's always a speculation argument about how much the internet culture of idiots and FOMA sort of opinion of that's a subreddit of idiots. Of Benny Blanco is just this parasocial aspect that people have with celebrity relationships and the worthiness of particular partners. Because it does, some of it might feel like that's like the fence of it, but that just might be my reading into it. But it does feel mostly like a raw and true love letter to one another.

And I think that is exemplified heavily in terms of, not only like Gomez's lyrics, but in terms of the fact that Blanco's production, which is from some of the, I'm not super familiar with some of the songs I listen to just to get an idea of what Blanco usually does, are a little more bombastic. This one feels a lot more pulled back and in a supportive sort of role to what Gomez can do vocally. I think it's don't want to cry. It has that big disco finish that's really cool in terms of production.

Yeah. That one right here sounds so hard. That's all pretty hard. So where Blanco does kind of like shine in terms of production.

And he's not doing a lot of complex things, but I think it's cool. Like this is a really pulled back album. Definitely not my favorite. It's still ranked fourth in terms of the albums I've heard of this year.

But I've liked four albums of the five I've really given a true deep dive listen to so far. What's the one not the take the gray or? My number one is forget tomorrow. No, I said what one of your, you didn't really care for?

No, that's so close to what's number two. My last one is mayhem. Really? I was retocking on this.

I wasn't too enthralled. Yeah, I mean, it's still growing on me. Like they're doing some abracadabra during the watch of basketball game. And I was just like, I was getting into it again.

I was like, you're in nephew's baptism. That's my ass off. That would have been funny. But yeah, I like that album quite a bit too.

Honestly, all the album we've done on this podcast has been pretty solid. Tamekrae is probably the least. The next one we're going to talk about here is probably real close to this one in my favorite. So the year two.

And that album is the follow up to 2021 breakout album for this and Jubilee. Rami nominated album. Right? The police so because the album is amazing.

This is Japanese breakfast for Melacolibranettes and Sad Women. This is the fourth studio album from Japanese breakfast, famously led by Michelle Zoner, who kind of rose to prominence, not only with Jubilee, but with her autobiography crying at Hmart from a few years ago. Great. If you haven't read that novel yet, I won't say novel.

We've never read that autobiography yet. It details her mother's sickness with cancer and kind of how she dealt with that in a relationship with her mother, especially balancing kind of American and Korean ideas and the closeness she felt through food. It's a great, great autobiography. One of the best ones I've read.

I don't know if it's a memoir, not necessarily an autobiography, but a memoir. Definitely lives up to its title. It is fully a gloomy sort of album through and through. It has a lot of darker, I don't want to say necessarily gothic, but gloomy, I think, is the right word, Carrie.

You can just say Mel and Gully. I think that Carrie's right. I enjoy this. I just am a Japanese breakfast guy.

I particularly enjoy this because I think the third track on the song, Honeywater, is probably my favorite song of the year so far. Between that sports car and taking me back to LA, but I think Honeywater probably wins it for just this epic finish to that song, that this very big indie flourish that I know, this is the band I've seen live twice and I know when I see them live again, hopefully this year during the tour. I know that song's going to hit on a live performance. That's the thing I really enjoy about Japanese breakfast.

Not only just Michelle's honor, but her husband, Peter Bradley, who's part of the band, and Craig Hendricks, I don't know how much Devin Craig has to do with it, but I think he's part of it. It's a real unified sort of work. It's a real unified sound. It does carry a lot of emotions through the way it kind of sonically does sort of things.

I don't necessarily, like I said, I'm not necessarily a lyrics guy through and through, but you don't necessarily need to be focusing as much on the lyrics in this album for it to resonate with you because I think the arrangement of what you're doing in the music punctuates the emotions you want to feel. I think there's a couple misses on this album. I think Winter in LA kind of stinks as a song. I'm not the biggest fan of men and bars.

That collaboration with Jeff Bridges, which is hilarious, but I think overall that song, those two songs don't necessarily fit the tone of what the rest of the album's doing, especially Winter in LA. It does have this weird sort of Christmas vibe to it that, I don't know, it just does, it feels like it stands out in a bad way on the album. But overall, it's a really solid concept that's carried through with an incredible precision. And like I said, that song, Honeywater, for me, a song can carry an album pretty heavily.

And this is already a good album. I don't think it necessarily reaches levels that I found with Jubilee, but Honeywater does a lot of heavy lifting in terms of just being this real big badass sound. Yeah, so I'm like you mentioned, I'm new to Japanese breakfast. So I've just recently started listening to them, it kind of popped up out of nowhere.

Became a big fan, now I wish I would have seen them in concert like you had, but I haven't. And I'm a quite, turning in quite a big fan. I actually, I've listened to this album more than anything probably that we've talked about, because this is like a nice, I'll just put it on a loop because it's just like good background music. And this, it's melon-cholic, but it's also just, it's kind of relaxing at the same time.

And I am a lyrics guy, I think the lyrics in this are wonderful. And they go really, really well with the arrangements. I just wanted more of it. I know albums aren't super long these days, but I just want more of these songs.

I mean, I have their whole back catalog list, which is what goes into right when I'm done with this album. And this might end up being my favorite album by the end of the year, at least it might sneak up tomorrow, but really, really big fan. And I'm enjoying going through their back catalog. So I'd like to see them if they come through Chicago.

While they're doing three days in Chicago, April 30th May 1st and May 2nd, the Salt Shed tickets are around $70, so not bad for GA. Yeah. I believe that's a weekend. So Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.

I think it was OK. That's all we stuff. But we'll see. But I like the album quite a bit.

Maybe you can maybe get it from the other side. Yeah, no, it's a solid album. I mean, it's definitely, like I said, Ellen Cauley's Gothic album. So don't expect, I think, I mean, Honeywater, sorry.

Is the Sonic has the biggest flourish? So do not go into this album expecting sort of the pop thorishes that Jubilee had, or the energy or kind of the faster PPM speed that Jubilee had at parts. This is not a dance album in the least that maybe the celebratory nature of Jubilee had. This is kind of in conjunction with Jubilee, the Yang music.

It's like a movie music. Like absolutely. Jubilee was different. It's a vibe.

Jubilee has this. I don't want to say manic energy because I want to say manic, but it's definitely a joyous energy to Jubilee by the name of the album itself, whereas for Melancholy Burnett is saying what they are delivering, what the album titles are saying is all I'm saying. So don't expect sort of that vorocous nature that Jubilee had. But if you're a fan of, they're first two albums kind of fan of blend of those sort of songs.

So if you're used already to those sort of that intentionality with the music and those more somber songs that they've had in the past. So this is a different producer than Jubilee. So that might have something to do with it. I don't know.

I don't know. I don't know. Does it make it, does? I mean, I could see like the perfume genus influence maybe slightly in a production here, but I don't think this is heavily built upon what that band's intentions were for the album.

And I find Michelle's honor to very much have a tight, she seems like just from interviews and everything. She sees that a tight control on delivering a vision. So I don't think it was the producer that played as much of an influence, maybe switch producers to reach that vibe as you said that they wanted to do less than the producer had influence on it. That's mostly what I meant.

Yeah. I think they're just a very intentional band. In the same way that something like the national is an intentional band or LCD sound system. The album band that popped in my head has like a real intentionality to like what their sound is trying to produce in terms like that indie sort of scene.

So yeah, I think it works totally though. It's a good album. And you know, Japanese breakfast is not necessarily fully your style. I would encourage anybody who's a fan of music to just give that song, Honeywater or listen, because that is I think transcends sort of the thing that Japanese breakfast or indie bands in general typically does to just being a really well-produced well-arranged piece of music that delivers in terms of a sort of kinetic energy at its end.

Like I think that might for me be their defining song. While Andy has restarted every video game segment over the past two episodes, let's go back into our dive of about considering I have seen you make it now to the fourth world of that game, Godwin's Gate, Godwin's something. A tusk. I, Godwin's tusk.

I meanwhile, a few days after discussing how I had it touched that game in several weeks, have now beat it. I beat it in, as I showed you yesterday, 28 hours. I can only assume you have twice as much time, maybe more in that game than I have. I will not say too much about how that finish goes because I assume you're still in the tusk region, that volcanic after world feeling.

It feels kind of like the nether realm of Mortal Kombat. So I won't spoil too much. There is one more section of that game that you go into that's a little more linear and pushes you in a certain direction. Yeah.

So as we talked on our original review of this game, I play video games differently than you, especially when it comes to a game like this. It's fine. You can give me as much as you want. I'm going to explore this game because these guys design this game and I want to see every inch of it that I can.

And this game is made for people that want to explore because there is a lot in here. And I enjoy just finding even if it's a shitty chest, I like going to figure out how to get to it and find where it's at and do all these puzzles. And yeah, am I almost four days into this? Yes, I am.

And I'm trying to drag it off as I can because I know once I'm done, I'm done and I like hanging out in this world. So I'm having a good time. I'm overpowered. So like no one can really kill me and it's pretty great.

What you take as a criticism, I am merely saying has a different play style, maybe jokingly. It sounds like a criticism. And I think that's kind of a strength of this game. In contrast to the game I will mention next that I've had a solo play of, haven't beaten yet.

I enjoyed the fact that I was able to kind of see everything I wanted to see in the world of the game. You know, I did almost every side mission. I think I missed one or two. I did not see every dungeon.

It's not open every chest, but I was able to experience the story and what most of the direct story dialogue driven story that the game had to offer in the 28 hours. You, however, you know, have been approaching the game in a more sort of and the I guess way kind of enjoying and ingesting the world. I'm very directive driven, but this game never lost that sort of speed. I do enjoy the fact that kind of the end game pushes you towards the finish.

Really kind of says like this is the moment that you're speeding towards the end. And it really kind of directs you down that line because there is a sense of urgency to it. I believe a lot of these RPGs of the fallout or elder scrolls nature have what could be a world ending sort of catastrophe has a bit of a languishing melodic tone to it. Whereas, you know, once kind of the pieces fall in the place here, you're propelled towards the end.

But before then you're kind of allowed to linger to the ambient thing if you want or to play the game in the data style that I want to do. And I think my overall review of this is just it is an incredibly small game. It's my number two game so far of the year. I have not like Kingdom come deliverance to get because that's going to be a large experience for a hundred hour game.

I do want to play it because I've only heard ravishing praise from it from the three people I know who played it. They all adore it with almost little criticism. So I have not played that yet. I will never play Monster Hunter as a wild because I do not enjoy that game.

But so, you know, those two majorly well reviewed games exist out there. The other one, my number one is the third great review game of the year, which we'll talk about soon. But the thing I enjoy about this is that it does match the style of play. It does allow you to both experience that ambient sort of way or in that directive sort of play.

And I believe a lesser game would prioritize one over the other. And really, I appreciate games that often forward to find crowd. You know, it's not for me. I just won't look at it.

You know, I'm never going to play a Xenoblade game. I'm not really going to do a deep dive into a Final Fantasy sort of experience because those are not for me. But I also really have an appreciation for games that allow a very play style. And I think of Valve does that in space.

Yeah. And like I said, I mostly just roll around. I just want to explore the whole map because of map unveil itself with like a cloud sort of thing. So it's like if I see a bottle for it's there.

Yeah. So I like I'm I want to go uncover that. The funny thing about it is like I will go into a new world and I will you know, you know, get all those on bounties. I'll kill the bounties before I even get to the city to collect the oldest stumble upon like those bases and just kill them.

And when I go find that I can claim a bounty right away. And like we talked about like that, yes, if you're I accidentally disabled like a terrorist attack that was going on that apparently happened in your game, but didn't have in mind do they found them in a cave and I killed them all first. And it was, I don't know, I think it's kind of cool that, you know, the game can change just by doing different ways you play it. So yeah, that was something I was actually going to mention the if you're attack in the game.

If you're just playing the side quests that were at least the ones that were presented to me. And you're just playing the main missions. I think if yours kind of on the rails to be destroyed and that's kind of a major driving point of the rest of the game that I experienced. And you said that you just happened upon this cake and I asked you, because they were playing trying to play split fiction.

I asked you like, oh, so did you get destroyed in your game? And you said, no, and I was like, well, how'd you prevent it? You just said I discovered a cave. And I don't know if there's maybe a side mission I missed because a lot of side missions are kind of just layered out throughout the map.

I uncovered what I thought was the entirety of all the maps. There was just some caves I didn't go into or maybe there's parts of the caves I didn't see because I never actually saw was that an actual dungeon they got to go into? If I remember, I didn't go into it like intentionally. It was like, I just stumbled upon these guys and it was like an island.

I was like, what are you doing here? And they're being all coy up about it. And then it's like, so like it gave me the chance to just like attack, because they were going to kill me because I uncovered their plans and we had to all fight it out. So I think it was just a cave in the wall.

And I just I know there's like a hole in the floor and I end up like underneath the city because they were underneath the city and that's how it blows up. So I found their base under there where they were storing all the explosives. So it was a green and all are between this two. Okay.

So yeah, so I guess it wasn't a definitive maybe it wasn't a definitive dungeon. So yeah, that's that's if that is just like a random stumbling upon that you could defeat that sort of major pivotal game moment. That's that's just incredible. Yeah, because I was satisfied with the story.

I was satisfied with the fact that if you were destroyed and that being driving action for some of the side characters that repelled them towards the goals of the game made logical sense in terms of the story. But the fact that you settled upon such a game changing moment by accident is fun. It's a really kind of incredible sort of I don't want to say Easter egg, but it's a really incredible reward for those players who want to experience it the way you have been playing it. Yeah, and I think it's cool because all the dialogue from that point on it did refer to that.

Like I can't believe you uncovered that plan and I feel like the major like fork in the story where like you can go down different paths. So it's cool. You did it differently because I was curious how it would play out if I let it blow up once I found out that I stopped it. So because a lot of people were driven to a settlements outside of town that kind of created secondary settlements or they even moved to the city and scattered the Shatter scrape and remember that town is called my head.

Now you don't either. But third board they trap board. So yeah, that's a pivotal moment in the game and you know I get to look into it before we start podcasting today. But if that just happens to be something stumbled upon either I assume maybe there has to be some sort of guidance through letters at the very least like some of the letters you might pick up.

Probably I don't read those all either because it's a lot of reading every time of them and I'll so if there's anything important usually your companions will mention it so that's I'm like they'll read it and let me know. But there's like there's also like there is one that I went into where you could choose to blow up the mine or not. You know I think that's in third board. Like remember you could.

Oh yeah. Where the spiders and the spiders nest and where they're trying to like gather the materials for additional fights. Yeah. We're opening up the mine again for the argon or whatever.

Yes. So yeah. So yeah. I did too but I blew it up without making everyone mad.

I said it was like an accident. Oh I did as well. I said. Yeah.

But if you don't do that everyone gets pissed off so it's like they were suspicious in my playthrough. They were suspicious but I had because I'm playing with the high intellect or whatever so they can like lie around people if I want to. I don't usually lie in the game but sometimes I do and it's fun. My character was dumb as fuck.

My character is a might force. So yeah I did the arcane scholar is my one so. A lot of the sword and shield guy and you were you're a wizard wand. Nope.

Nope. I don't. You're a double sword. A double sword.

But how's intellect help you there? It allows me to. It looks a lot of magic leveling right. I don't know.

It helps me through my dialogue so I can usually I usually try to figure out how to talk to the dialogue without fighting people. Well I just think so. The nice thing about the might is it'll give you later dialogue options to just scare people into submission. Yeah.

That's how I play that game. Yeah I try to talk through it because I think it's fun but past few times I've had to just kill people which is fine. But I like trying to see if I can get through it. No I pretty often was able to escape fights just by being so overpowered with my might because my might was at 10 or whatever the highest level was.

They would just back off because I'd say you know what I can do to you. And they would go yes yes I do. And they would be like I don't like this but I'll do it. Yeah I'm trying to be like the benevolent envoy so everyone like hates me but then I like try to do stuff for people and they start to like me and I do it for free and stuff.

So you know I'm just I don't know I like playing the game that way I'm weird. I definitely played my character as being a major fan of the living lands being there as an envoy but just completely giving up the kingdom and just going like you know what these living lands people are great that's why I played my role. Oh I'm too. So I'm tagginistic gets like a rote.

I was antagonistic against the emperor who sent me. Unfortunately the one thing I'll say is like the final game option didn't really provide the option that I thought made sense for my character. Yeah. I'm excited several ideas to do something.

No that's not spoiling anything honestly. And the I what was presented to me did not match up with what I felt my character would do. It's it's fine. I don't know I'm enjoying this show this game.

I I won't play I thought about playing it again is a different way but I think I put too many hours into where I'm just gonna stop when I'm done with it but I am I'm gonna finish this game because I love it. It's a what and done for me. I do know that they are preparing to do DLC for it. I was just so I think I'll see comes out I will buy it and play the DLC.

I didn't tell you this because of my game style. I found a a large chunk of map that is just barren that I was able to access where you can get around the entire map without doing everything but it looks like it was supposed to be something or it might be a DLC stuff area later because it's like it's fully laid out but there's just nothing there. No enemies the plants no anything to pick up and I just got there by jumping on things they jump like an idiot and I find ways through things and I just like ran around it was fun so I uncovered more of the map than I think you're supposed to so I was kind of cool. No wonder if that's maybe intended for DLC image.

I think it is something they cut out they were planning to use. Or was cause it's one or the other so like I don't know I think it's cool I if there's DLC I'm definitely pumped for that so yeah I love it I still love it and when I finish it I will give you my final thoughts. Moving on to a game I put 10 or so hours into so far it is meant to be a 30 or so hour game so I would say I am midway through the second act of this game which is divided into three acts prologue three acts and epilogue so I'd say I'm probably nearing the midpoint of the game just because my play style is rushing it that is the who knows the 14th major installment in the Assassin's Creed series the sequel of 2023's Assassin's Creed Mirage a game I can play I can play any of the major RPG assassin games I haven't actually played in the Assassin's Creed game since one of the NZO games from Assassin's Creed 2 not necessarily Assassin's Creed 2 but the sequel games with him it is Assassin's Creed Shadows. For years people have been begging Ubisoft to move from Europe and from the American colonies where they spent most of their time exploring into Japan because Japan seemed like the perfect setting for an Assassin's Creed game a game built upon stealth close quarters combat and physicality and there was a I believe a 2D platformer Assassin's Creed game that took place in Japan but wasn't a mainline series game and finally after I believe this is 918 years I think the first Assassin's Creed game came out in 2007 maybe 2008 they had finally gone to Japan it is 1581 16th century feudal Japan a man who is a servant the slave of a Portuguese Jesuit priest arrives in Japan to negotiate with a warlord possibly you could say a warlord of this region of Japan in order to allow the passage of his Catholic priest throughout the land the this warlord Oda allows it if he can take this bodyguard who he sees a fighting spirit in under his wing that is loud he is renamed Yasuke and becomes one of his greatest warriors Oda is seeking peace throughout the lands and one of the ways in which he is seeking peace is by the strolling regions and the strolling groups of people including the Iga people which includes Nagato and his one of the heads of this region and his daughter Neo I'm brutalizing this pronunciations of these names so I apologize to any of our Japanese listeners or or waifu fans who know Japanese in this assault um their their town my ghost town is raised they flew out and you discover that Nagato the father was kind of a part of this clan which ties back into the assassins and the assassins versus templores sort of overstory that exists throughout the Assassin's Creed series it's a story I couldn't give less of a shit about I think the entire meta story not meta story necessarily the overarching narrative of this future conflict between templores and assassins leading to the end of the world is one of the dumbest fucking ways to do exposition in order to just play games they're like this game is set in this particular time of history and you play an assassin assassinating people that's the easter I would just I would get rid of that and just make it about assassins assassinating people and maybe there's this group that's fighting against them but you know people love it so I'll go fuck myself she discovers I was part of this group and she's got protects its box I don't know it's in the box I assume it's one of the apples of Eden which is a big part of the game I don't know yet it's a big but gothan in the story it is stolen from this mass man she goes and reclaims it kills the man there but as she is escaping she is caught by this group of 14 other mass men who break her leg beat her up and her father comes to save her and her father is struck down and murdered and killed and this now is a tale of revenge she is going against the main plot of this game she is going against these 14 mass assassins mass killers she's going to take him down she is led on a path she believes that Oda this warlord was the ruler of them this horseman who is the the brain leader of this group of assassins I don't say assassins because assassins are the good guys this group of evil people it turns out she was misled it was this other guy who leads to the killing Oda she doesn't necessarily kill Oda Oda can it's supukka supuku and Yasuka who has been dedicated himself to Oda in a sense because they see that there's a camaraderie between them they see each other as equals it's not a slave master sort of relationship it is a master apprentice sort of relationship he but also sees the fact that she has that hidden blade which is a signal of the game and she has his own oath to that blade and also to defending the name of this man who was evil in his own right but had some weird honor and now they team up together and you play as both roles trying to cleanse Japan of this overarching group of enemies I am about 40% of the way through killing these people and I will say this I am having a fun time I am having more fun with this game than I expected from what I've heard from the reviews of previous assassins free games kind of like the complaints I've heard from previous assassins free games the assassins free vahala has a major complaint that's 120 hours long to really get through the game because you have to do almost everything that's required of you and all those things are repetitive I don't necessarily know I have played it I know unity had some complaints because of the way errors and technical issues are just kind of the tedious nature of these games I'm having fun but I do see the argument and the complaint against how this game can become tedious at punts it is a gigantic gigantic map that is locked under a large fog of war that is slightly uncovered from going to these highway points these highway points that can work has fast travel points or you can purchase other fast travel points which I find to be a little too restrictive for my tastes because the traveling is not very fast you can ride on horseback or you can run but it's still a gigantic map and a lot of this is requiring to go from one side of map to another and even if you're going to a fast travel point that is the nearest fast travel point you can find you're still looking at maybe a five minute ride to your destination this also features one of my least favorite mechanics in that the entire map is open to you from the start but regions are locked underneath a tier level you know it has RPG elements I wouldn't necessarily call them RPG it's definitely more of an action game but it is impossible to defeat enemies that are on a decently higher tier than you you're gonna get one hit killed you're gonna do no damage to them I always find that annoying I would much rather have a game like a vow did where it kind of guides you to each new level incrementally as the story is told about this have a that have like especially the beginning if you weren't strong enough it would give you like a icon in front of the bad guy where you're probably not strong enough to be them you should I run I mean I don't have any more overboard this game does has well but I feel as though there's parts of it that are too early on that kind of leads you to start parts of the game and the only way you can do this you can get to it is by doing side objectives some of those side objectives are a bit repetitive some of them are but my biggest issue with this game is the map is too large and the fast travel points are too spread out or if they're not too spread out you have to purchase the fast travel points if there's no Eagle Vision whatever those things are called waypoints and you're not making a lot of money early on and there's things you have to do with like high-out improvement that I don't find necessarily interesting and that's a bummer because I think the story of this game is really fun it's definitely a thing a lot from Kiarasawa and Quentin Tarantino like this is Tori Nando's character in this so yeah it's fully inspired by Kill like has Kill Bill influences really heavily eight influences and supremely a lot of Kiarasawa influences but the story moves that I paste and there's there are really solid moments that are morally gray moments that I think work exceptionally in terms of presenting people as villains like the Oda character and even your heroes as you know as has villainous at points when you see kind of the devastation they might rot through their own bloodthirst and I think captures it in a way that feels to me this is going to be controversial in a way that feels to me a little more authentic nuanced and novel than the way that last of us part two did in terms of its revenge will only lead to more bloodshed I think Neil Druckman kind of has the nuance of a hammer whereas this is definitely a popcorn story so it doesn't necessarily present itself with nuance or as high art but I think it does itself so in that way it presents those sort of themes in a more authentic genuine way and the story's fun I think the combat wow simplistic is enjoyable it's a beautiful game to behold the movement and the parkour aspects of it are continuing to be great I'm not really having any issues there's some camera issues when you're inside of a building where the camera no matter how you move it you're kind of just going blind there are issues at nighttime with brightness where I had to even if I have the brightness all the way turned up it is nearly impossible to see even if I have lit all the flames around to you know you could extinguish flames to kind of like hide and play stuffy if I put all the flames to give myself light sources I still don't really see where I am I can't see a staircase so yeah there's definitely those technical issues my biggest issue however though is the artificial kind of inflation of game running time by just movement I do not want to spend 40 percent of my game time running to a fun 10 minutes of combat or a fun interesting cutscene I wish there was a lot more thought put into the fast travel there's not a lot enough also going on that will distract you I think like a game like Red Dead Redemption 2 which doesn't have as many fast travel points and it also has a slower movement at least has enough interesting things going on in the world around you to make that fun while you're moving throughout the map this oftentimes just is appealing to the beauty of what you're seeing because there's changing seasons which is great so you have like Snowfall or changing leaves there's two different elements to each season which is it was really cool so you have eight different sort of visual pallets that play a role in this game which is which is great but it's not enough to propel me towards the towards finishing the game I'm going to give it time I think my odds of finishing this are about 50-50 I don't necessarily know if that's a criticism of the game I think it is slightly because of the fact that I do just wish there was the ability to I don't know just just cut slightly down on the need to move to the next objective or at least to bunch your objectives together depending on the story in one area and then move it on to the next area and we thought about just exploring everything in between the areas and then you could find all the shit they enjoyed the map I could get give yourself a half hour between objectives and go explore it's fun yeah but you understand like exploring this entire map will take hours would take a good eight to ten hours don't threaten me with a good time Mario this is something I think I could see you enjoying I don't know how much this game is it's not it's a result yeah yeah I doubt it will it's gonna be soft though so it'll probably be like ten bucks within six months yeah I'll let you know if there's a really cheap sale for it I'll see you enjoying this uh yeah I think it's a really good story uh if you're playing this game play it on immersion mode the English I played it initially with English voice acting that's very still did it's not intended to be played that way I don't think at all and once I switched to I've never played a single set I don't know your history like I've never played a single Assassin's Creed game um I just like being stealthy he's never been like my uh I'm more of a you know Leroy Jenkins sort of player in in game so I like I don't well there's a decent amount of mortality I don't want to sneak around I still want there's a decent amount of verticality which can help in terms and and movement like there's a grappling capability which I like to jump in do a couple kills do a couple fights and then sneak and then once you know the shits on you can sneak out for a bit get away and then come back in you can also there's difficulty adjustments which can make that much easier I wouldn't necessarily say you have to play this bully has a stealth the two characters are very different so the yasuka character is is much more of a tank but as slower overall he's slower the move he has less bird capability to get very because less bird cali there's an achievement literally for getting like to a high point with him is it a switch between them like but so yeah you know my mapper can you do it like whenever you want it takes what you want it takes a while to unlock him like you have to get through the first act of the game but once you do that you can just immediately switch between two players so for the first like eight to ten hours of the game you're going to be stuck with just typically her um but once you get past that first act it will it opens up to play as both players and you can just switch them on the fly like whenever you need to or is there like a yeah i don't know if there's a lot of fun to be on but there was there is literally as long as you're not in like active combat you can just open up your character sheet and switch there and you'll go to a loading screen really quickly and then load into that character being there is that a mechanic that they've had in these before where you're two different characters or is that new to this i believe it was like i said i have only played assassin's creed through the last part of assassin's creed to like that nzo series of three games brotherhood maybe and those were all single protagonists but i do believe the one that's set in victorian england which was possibly unity but i was either i can't remember if unity is the one in paris but there's one set of victorian england which i think was a brother and sister and that allowed you to play as a two different characters i don't know how switching back and forth work there all right i was just curious i don't but there has been previous games that had two protagonists yes okay i just don't know how to have a switching work in those games you know if it was like you're directed by the mission you're playing as or if it was on the fly uh overall if you if you enjoy us i think definitely if you had a good time with bahala origins our games in that series uh especially rpg aspect series of the games you know that post assassin's greed black flag element you'll enjoy this tremendously if you're a player like andy who enjoys exploration you'll probably enjoy it as well if you're a player like me who's propelled mostly by story i think the verdict's still out there all right well i might try it out someday all right switching topics to film we have two films we're gonna talk about today before we move on to our number eight the first film is the new feature from van bert and robert alson who directed a film i was pretty enamored with when it came out in i believe 2018 villains the make-a-mod ro bill scarzgaard film this is the action comedy starring jack quaid and amor mid thunder and ray nichlson good duo of uh nephobe babies in that this film no trio because amor mid thunder's father i think is also an actor so true of nephobe babies which i don't have any opinion of whatsoever if you can act you can act it is nova cane you don't have a gluten tendi hey hey man you okay jack quaid plays nathan cane a kind of recluse lock-in with really not a lot of friends who spends most of his time playing online video games he is the assistant manager of a san diego credit union and he just so happens to suffer from seba which is a congenital insensitivity to pain he cannot feel pain he cannot feel hot or cold typically the lifespan of a person that has this is going to be very low so he has lived a very heavily sheltered life because once his parents found out they he had this they they sheltered him you could see the signs throughout the house when he's preparing the tennis balls on doors or corners the marker on the shower so the thing doesn't get too hot and he doesn't eat solid foods because he might not realize that he is choking the death he has adambered with a new teller sherry margrave played by an mid thunder who he has an interest in and that interest is reciprocated she invites him out for lunch he just gets himself a milkshake and she's like try this cherry pie and he says i can't because i have this issue the seba this disease disease those all disease when she gets in the try to cherry pie and he does and he loves it and she invites him out to an art show he goes he meets up with an old bully from middle school where he got the name named idkain because his name is Nathan Cain and he can't contain and sherry plucks over that bully with some hot sauce that you know Nathan Cain can't can't sense the uh capis capis on it and they go capis on they go home together and they share a torrid love of light of love making like it only soon together which actually looked up to the fact that people see but people see but experience pleasure yes i guess i guess i guess i guess i would just i would just not look that up so thank you for the pain for me it is it is different centers of the brain uh that respond to pain and hot and cold versus that respond to pleasure all right the credit union the next day on christmas eve is accosted by a trio of bank robbers who kill Nathan's manager and who whisk away with sherry has their hostage and Nathan Cain and the throes of love of finding you know that love at first sight and also because it's amber mid thunder so we can all understand he goes and chases them down and through a series of misadventures where he has various fight scenes um that should disable him through the pain he is able to fight through it because he doesn't experience pain and gets eventually to the hideout where he discovers that the head villain and sherry our brother and sister met sherry was somewhat in on this she didn't realize that it was going to come to violence again we can realize that right Nicholson's character has has killed people before so you maybe make sherry a little less of a likable character in a way that she can't like him i mean clearly not in his but maybe likable would be the the proper way of expressing that but amber mid thunder is kind of charisma overwhelms that in this film to make her likable again eventually you know the feet Simon who is Marie Nicholson's lead psychotic sociopathic bank robber sherry is set to jail Nathan of course is given house arrest and probation because he has killed several people but there are romance and when sherry leaves prison you know you can only assume that they will continue on with their romance i had a fun time with this i think it's enjoyable i think it is heavily carried by it's four it's three it's four lee likable two leads at least like yeah so jack wait jack queen and amber mid thunder are just charisma bombs and charisma machines um i think jack queen is is eminently always likable in the roles he's doing and he's done also a good job of playing off that likability with companion and scream by playing you know the incel inversion of that he's got that role in lock that is his bread and butter right now and i i love it like he's killing it doing all of it so and i never seen reservation boys dogs reservation dogs so i'm only familiar with amber mid thunder from prey where she's uh stonewton cold badass in that movie that movie's fucking tremendous uh she's playing a very different role here she still gets a little bit of a badass action scene at the end i kind of hope that she was gonna be on the kill simon at the end and have like the final fight scene personally uh but she's still but she's able to be like charismatic draw the charisma and chemistry between the two leads is on splay raine nickleson as simon is chewing through that scenery as this diabolic insane villain but also somewhat still likable in in just in just his villain like he he has this level like his level villainous that it's funny yes exactly he's the best way i could describe his performance is he reminds me of tommy lee jones in under siege the original under siege i don't think i've ever seen the original i had a lot it's been a long time but yeah but it's such a so diving or what dand stevans is doing at the end of abigail so diving into the oh yeah hundreds i could definitely see dance even playing that character yeah but because of the fact that he's like so committed to the absurdity of this of this of evil sort of evil you know like really just taking glee and killing his manager yeah gives no fucks uh or are killing matt luscious character it's it's not the character not likable it's raine niggleson that likable and check up uh back alone who i like i was like i love skig about lee yeah he's he's mad in those and he's great like he's he plays the same character as he doesn't know but i love it so he does a good job i love him being around so outside of amber mid thunder who's definitely been a character an actress i've seen playing now two very different roles everyone is playing what i've seen so far the roles that they're most accustomed to yeah doing it with that's right really a really sound sort of lock yeah even matt wall she's doing his matt wall she's thinking it's great like i i don't want to do anything else so even maybe greebles is kind of playing like i'm not too like i know i've seen her before i can't name the boobies i've seen her in i've thought my head what am i seeing her in she was an upgrade upgrade she's playing her upgrade character she's literally playing the cop character from upgrade again that's what i remember from um yeah she's doing that same thing it's but it works i think yeah uh burkin ulsen are really least from villains i never saw a significant other um or an ever saw a sequence too or segway from segway i saw a first take line i don't see any of their other movies though so but like villains is is once again you know make them on roll and that's good i should actually yeah i feel scarred definitely playing like kind of these roles that you kind of expect in the play and doing it in a way that's like to the at the gree who else is in villains um bill scarred and we can't really read every donovan and here's eduick here's eduick yeah every donovan's kind of playing that big kind of plays like these i don't say big roles but kind of like this mysterious you know you know from berm notice uh from his parts in saccario and and zaldado mostly kind of playing like these mysterious sort of roles that have a lot of intrigue behind them he's doing that again uh he does that again in villains so i think those two directors are really good at getting the performance out of their actors that those actors are most apt to do i think this moves a little too long maybe it drags a bit it's almost two hours i think it could have been cut down to a tight a hundred minutes there's maybe a hundred there's maybe 10 minutes that could have been trimmed from here and there it takes a little bit for that first act to end to get us to the driving you know to the bank robbery i'm not in because i haven't talked on this movie at all yet sorry uh because i i like this movie more than you did so i just wanted to just put in my own two cents because you're you're saying everything you're saying is right and i don't disagree but that's a lot of reasons why i like the movie quite a bit um i i mean full disclosure i watched this somewhat buzz because i went out for st patrick's day and then went and watched this and i think that's almost the perfect way to see this movie because movie was a blast um i was probably the one laughing aloud in the theater because i thought everything was fucking hilarious and i could not get over how good like i just had a good time i didn't think it was too long um it is a hundred ten minutes which i think that's you could cut ten minutes out but i don't think it's really changing much for you um everyone is infinitely likable um it's not gonna be on my top like movie of the year list but this is going to be a top movie i recommend people that want to have a good time watch movie this year so because i don't think there's anything wrong with it it's just a good movie it's not that surprising there's that one twist that you said with the brother and sister and that's about it yeah it's a twist you could i could call it from the trailer but that's it doesn't matter because it's just it's just i thought i thought i needed other for this movie and i was i was not looking forward to watching this movie and so i was like super pleasantly surprised and i should quit like being skeptical of jack wade because apparently he just is a crowd pleaser at all everything he does so um as we said is s-r so yeah he fully owns his necrobates status and just says i wouldn't continue getting rolls if i'm not wasn't doing a good enough job which is i mean his mom is one of the most likeable people ever in hollywood too so i think he gets that from her too instead it's not yeah but megg ryan is one of the most like beloved people in hollywood so i mean as dad was until like as dad started to feel like a quasi-grift uh and his own little bit he just did he just did he just well the uncle we couldn't forget i guess i guess that's quite only did the ragan movie you can tell he's a conservative probably but it doesn't really matter that much yeah no i think i agree with you i think i was just bringing it in the one point of it maybe being a bit too long but i do agree it's perfect movie to watch stoned or drunk or buzz just it's pretty long i think everyone could do it so some people might get is a little like can be a little gross i guess but i don't think it's ever like too realistic where it's gonna like actually gross anyone out you know like if you're like squeamish about like injuries and stuff but yeah i don't know if it's fairly negative i could see for anyone i don't think it's necessarily crazy violent i think the most violent scene is the breaking of his finger to get the his thumb right or spinky pinky or thumb to get all the um the cuffs near the end it's your run of the mill sort of or rated violence it's definitely played more for comedy like the injuries he's receiving and i never think those injuries are too grotesque i love you know when he gets uh unfortunately this was really in the trailer but it's a concern and uh and oh the the spike ball in his back is like ball where he just turns and goes wah wah wah or you know what he's like being tortured and his response to it like those are things that are slightly ruined in the trailer but yeah i would have been able to hold them alone for apps that they were doing i wish i didn't see those in the trailer because those were really fun yeah but i overall have a fun time it's a fun movie and i do think everyone's doing their job and i think it just it works it's it's like you said it's not going to be near the top of my list it's not going to have any contention in any categories it will be right there solidly in the middle it's the roadhouse experience for me you know it's it's a better movie than roadhouse yeah that was one of my most fun movies last year but yeah this is better than roadhouse yeah but this is this this fits that roadhouse sort of silk i agree and if we had a list of you could cut this out the most attractive women in movie so far that should let's move it would win that i almost made the joke of like if i had more brilliant um categories it would definitely top it the second film we're going to discuss is the second film of this year we're not even a quarter of the way through the year but as the second film of the year from prolific director steven soderberg i think if you're ever going to use the term proific director i think takishi meaki in japan and steven soderberg or part of the two directors i'd say like these motherfuckers in the modern era are making a lot of movies take a break guys it is the spy no i i i i i i i i i i i i i i was a spy thriller black bag did you masturbate this morning oh good the embarrassing personal questions not early yes or no one ever possible please yeah i've been looking forward to this did you masturbate this morning no in that time are you sitting down yes are the lights on in this room yes are you now in the city of westman's day no do you enjoy toast very much yes or no yes have you ever physically assaulted a significant other during an argument oh you know i have again yes or no yes enthusiastically black bag opens up with um michael fastburt bender playing george woodhouse as a am i four i'm guessing some sort of m i five and i six one of those numbers yeah we got there um as a i mean we are very about what his role is and i could never actually find an answer list because i'm looking it up but he works there and he's somewhat higher up we would say i would say all the teles officers will say intelligents officers um but he's he meets up with um uh who what was meacham meacham geustoff scarz guard to the other scarz guard um and he tells him that there is a mole that has stolen a very important mcguffin and is selling it to russians um and his wife is one of the suspects along with two or four other people who are both couples and michael fastbender invites that his wife is kate blanche i didn't say that invites marissa bella tamburk um and we harris and rejesh on page for dinner and he he poisons them well not poison them he doses them with whatever that is that truth serum is that real i don't i went to look that up and and kind of it goes from there this is a a tight narrative i don't there's not like a lot to spoil with this except for like who is the actual mole which is a interesting reveal but this is a heavily dialogue driven like a plot driven like it's very intricately woven story that it's almost hard to say anything is wrong with this movie it's beautiful to look at it's snappy it does not not wait for you um because the dialogue goes quick and if you're not on a level you're gonna miss some stuff but and i i i i i love this movie yeah for me this film seems like john lakar got in a car and agatha christy also got in a car and they're driving down the highway the british countryside they're both going too fast and those cars collided into each other both authors were fine except they're both dead now but not from the car crash from old age the ghosts were driving the car so they're fine and those those two cars merged and created this film uh this is the agatha christy who done it mixed with the john lakar tinker taylor soldier spy or you know the other spy thrillers um of lakar is known for and it is an incredibly eloquent film a tight 90 this is 94 minutes is a running time but it's probably without credits an 85 minute film i was gonna say though like i was like i was shocked not not in a bad way i'm like that had to be longer because there is so much packed into this there's so much character development so many twists and turns i'm like this had to be like a two-hour movie and when i got out i'm like what it's still so early it surprised me in a good way like i was gripped the whole time yeah it's a movie with with a high energy with an incredibly fast pace that does not that you know it's rowing in crick it's throwing incredible amounts of exposition at you but is doing so in a way that those naturalistic and guide you there are a lot of things you're going to miss on a first viewing that will probably subsoquently on future viewing to become more apparent or unveil more of a story to you but is not so obtuse or um packed that you lose the threat of the narrative once you get to that finale where everything's revealed and they describe the ways in which he did george deduced you know how things how the stories were and how they interact in a very percolate or rogue sort of way or miss marbles or whatever you didn't want to say that i did not feel that it was gimmicked or that it was subtrefused you know there is obviously the hidden bag is sort of answer of the photographs from the bank but that is called back to you know early on when it says like oh you could never because we don't work with animar and he says all of you know the right people you do so you know even that's paid um yeah i don't think there's any holes in this yeah that's one piece of evidence where you could say like oh you don't have you know george had knowledge that we didn't have but i still think once the narrative reaches the point where the reveal is it's done you can logically guide yourself how it was done but and the red herrings in which exist um are also sound because i knew by the time i got to that finale i was like there's one person i know is definitively not involved in this like i still there's two people i thought weren't involved in it but one person i knew definitively wasn't involved and that person just so happened to be the one called out for not being involved and i was like oh that person could have been influenced by the outside source because i did call one of the conspirators or earlier on just because of some lines of dialogue but the overall sort of reveal was satisfying but is also it's satisfying in both the ways that it narratively makes sense but also reflecting on the movie you can see how it did guide you that direction and how the other two the other red herring aspect of it that sort of the sub-sort of plot aspect of it also made sense and also became revealed so it did not feel duplicous yeah i i didn't mention um pure spross and as everyone's boss as arthur stiglets so who didn't look like pure sprossing at all i don't know if he didn't or is he or is he just like old he's he's getting he's getting pretty old um yeah i was very happy with this there's a very the very end i thought it was kind of fast-endred cape lanchegging way with a bunch of money which i thought was kind of the hint hint at the end player but um i couldn't get really get a good read on that when i was looking up the internet that's how i felt that they're gonna go grab that seven million euro that we're in that in that bank account yeah i got kind of that feeling as well but that's you know because she was always concerned about money the whole time and i'm like and then it kind of wraps up that kind of thing at the end i know i i i guess i'm terrified you don't um yeah so this is my day to cope with his pluriprex screenwriter he's had his ups and his downs his ups being Jurassic park and panic room his downs being recently indianne jones in the dial of destiny and the mummy remake with tom grooves but he is working in all cylinders he wrote kimmy which is my last favorite um swordberg movie so yeah he also got the original mission impossible oh which has uh similar sort of intrigue levels has this but i think this is much more masterfully done because i think there are aspects of mission impossible that either feel too hand-oldy or feel so out of the blue and that's a false paul pryon pama that you know they don't necessarily work into a tight package i've seen a decent handful of sort of work movies and this will probably be a contentious opinion as a person who's not a fan of sex lives and videotapes traffic or erin brockovich but likes his later work i really loved it on the same like Logan Lucky pans down this is my favorite soda bird film easily so this would be i was actually a little surprised because it felt like i mean because it was so tight maybe not but it felt like it was adapted from something but for this to be an original story was i thought kind of impressive um yeah it is it really is because when i left the theater i looked at i'm like i wonder who wrote that book that i was based on and nope it wasn't anything i this has to be one of copes better written scripts i don't know how much soda bird had to be and was involved with any of it but um it was good i liked it no i absolutely agree i i mean obviously this is this is going to be um it's anything from the spy thriller novels correct but we've done it mystery novels but i i got some um uh knives out from this a little bit too and there's like there's there's a lot of good stuff in this like it comes from in it's uh it it works all the way around in this there's going to be up for my original screenplay it's going to be it's like i had a hard time feeling it's not going to be yeah retalk about novocaine will not be a contender in our top 10 this is easily going to be a contender in my top 10 um i cannot it's gonna be a hard one for this to be knocked out it's gonna have to be an incredible year for this to be knocked i think it just is running all cylinders the editing has reset is incredibly tight we inferred just by how short this film is the screen plays incredible the directions that standing all of your lead five lead performances here are so resoundingly well done there's incredible chemistry especially in risa a bellow see i like risa bellow i like her kind of like um stone face her naivete yeah here's her stone face naivete uh interest but also naivete into the world of intelligence officers uh but i will particularly call out and you know nobody here is doing for page is doing but tom burk is fucking incredible in this yeah tom burk is killing it and everything he does so yeah he's becoming like he's starting to look like or like older or some most yeah he is but just in terms like the full of his face that's so funny that's one of my other parts of that he said they said they said the exact same thing like he looks like or some well he's acting like or some well he's like that's not the first time i heard that this weekend that's one i like but one of the hardest things i think to do is to betray drunk and to betray a drunk and when he is drunk at the first dinner both drunk and under and rubbed he does such an outstanding job of that and of carrying this tension this uneasiness but still a confidence to that uneasiness and just this flippancy you know like all these people are bastards in their own ways uh in terms of like their personal life you know you could say that kaffrin and george are sociopathic in some ways george is giving off neurodivergence there's also one of the one of the sweetest characters i've ever seen but yeah basically like a neuroloved guy but he's playing his killer act like character it's it's same character but he's like refined it a little bit more um but it's a beautiful love story between the two yeah but the love story was i i really enjoyed there's there's there's almost nothing bad to say about this movie oh it's great that literally is nothing florissa's so jealous of that love story and is desperately wants to fuck george and he is not having any of it uh i think works to to such an incredible degree so the only thing is sism i heard about this movie is people didn't like like how they had to reveal george's backstory like with his dad and stuff like that that didn't really take me out of it at all i i mean i thought it made sense yeah i don't think it's i don't think it's necessarily a big point it just trying to drive so how much he doesn't like liars liars how much he'll go to that degree to you know uncover that and it's kind of a moment to to pinpoint and drive out the animosity that exists between george and tom burks freddy um for you know freddy being passed up for that promotion which i guess he gets um and yeah i think i think it works from a plot point uh the my biggest criticism of this movie is i think from a cinematography standpoint it's fine whatever filter they're using creaks is kind of like smudged um that's sort of very experimenting though you know yeah it is it doesn't it just doesn't look good like it's it's i thought it made it look pretty sleek i don't know i like i kind of liked it see i thought when it was a dark scene and you had a focus on points of light the smeared effect to those lights was distracting it a lot of people Chris i scream for for cinematography for him it's like filter or lens on the camera that makes everything appear smudged which is true like somebody put a thumbprint on it and there's points of this movie that aren't in more ambient lighting where you know there's there's definitely focal light sources uh that was distracting to me because i kind of look at the light source to be like that is streaky and that bugs me so i think it made my glasses were smudged and i didn't know this so i'll put that on me your glasses were smudged so they actually look cohesive um i don't know i don't know if he continues to shoot on iphone technique with this probably not i assume i don't know if he like it was no i don't think so this this felt pretty yeah i think this was that was my one criticism this movie was just it's not the prettiest movie to look at i thought i thought it was a gorgeous movie so i don't know it's to each their own um i just sort of make everything look so sleek and polished and i felt like this was that but then there were some like rough around the edges but i thought that gave it some realism and i i don't know this this this movie worked for me and right now it's my second favorite of the year there's a chance it's gonna keep rising the more i think about it the more if i watch it again so um i i do love it uh it i think you're right it might be my favorite slipper movie um it's gonna it's up there for sure are we done here because i got people to see i'm done being patient give me a name or i'll cut your balls off and sell them to a crogan jorab jorab to lead toria in the 800 bucks he's unconscious no need to wake him up i think welcome back last week i had a discussion about kind of the experience i had coming in from a game series of games that were kind of based around military extremism to an extent or military glorification and leading into kind of a story experience that kind of changed by views or maybe feel a little at odds with my previous experiences with those style games my number eight this week is not doing that it is not a pivotal change in my viewing of games it is a more traditional sort of discovery of a very popular genre of games that it existed for decades at that point in very famous forms in very noted forms that i never really responded with and that is the rpg one of my worst gaming experiences took place in the late 90s when i had that playstation one of the games my parents bought for me was final fantasy seven nope how i said in the previous episode i never had a memory card for my original playstation so i decided that i was going to try to beat final fantasy seven without ever turning off my console without moving away from my console well moving away from my console but never turning it off never being able to save it but i was going to beat it in one sitting one one continuous sort of approach to the game and i either my parents bought it for me on accident they thought it was a flight simulator game but don't know how they ever thought it was a flight simulator game i believe they were told it was some sort of flight simulator game but that is the craziest fucking thing i've ever heard and it was christmas break i believe this was 1998 and i sat down eight o'clock in the morning started playing final fantasy seven i was not at all enjoying it i was not a turn-based guy i down the game other than look at i didn't care about the characters or the story or the setting this is not a criticism of final fantasy seven it's more just a statement on the fact that those sorts of games that jrpgs never been a thing i respond to i believe those are jrpgs i finally was able to play persona five years later and be the first jrpg that i ever had like a joyous experience with but that's a sense of i sat down and i was walking the morning started playing final fantasy seven kept playing it kept playing it and we were going to a christmas lighting ceremony in the capital of devada karzen city at seven o'clock so if i'm a mom called me out at around six thirty the press to go and then i turned off my console knowing i was losing the save on purpose because i had hated the experience with it and at that christmas tree lighting ceremony all i could do was sit there as the caroler was going as the cookie was in my hand and the hot chocolate was being drank with it and go i wasted and this is this is 12 year old me i wasted 14 hours of my life no 10 hours of my life playing a game i hated and i've now lost all progress but i don't care because i'm never going back to that game again i fucking hate rpgs i decided at that age then locked it in locked it down fuck this game and i still say to this day i respect the final fantasy that entire series i know people love it i know it is a profound series in terms of what it does but i will not probably ever pick up another final fantasy game final fantasy seven remakes kind of look interesting because they're more action rpgs but i have such a contentious experience with that game that i shunned that entire jrpg experience until i finally played persona five which i still think is too long and i still only played through a fifth of it but i had an overall decent time with it i played but i'll say like i'm not a big final fantasy game but i pretty sure i played through final fantasy two all the way through and maybe three when they're those were super nintendo and pc but since then i haven't touched them because i think they're mostly PlayStation since then so yes i think they've all been PlayStation like Final Fantasy 14 the multiplayer online game got over to xbox and maybe computers and i know like the rebirth and some of the final fantasy games are not a pc because steven and place my best friend as a child had Final Fantasy 7 and the game looked fucking sweet i like watching him play it but i like because then they have like a ton of disc dude they didn't have a few discs to it or like yeah so i got what i got what i looked it up afterwards the next day i thought that was near the end of disc one like i was able to rush through it so quickly but but but you didn't have a safe card so if you change the disc out you would have not been able to play it you could change discs without the safeguards of it okay so it would keep the memory still between that second you turned off the console you wouldn't remember it i think that was one of the first games that was muffle disc so that's all three disc game three discs that's what i was looking up later i found that there was like a 60 hour experience um i still don't know how i was able to get through that first almost day entire first disc in 10 hours that was well we already discussed your how you play a game so that all checks out i was trying to run away from every fight that i could uh i'm sure i would have been super under levels right you know that that's what happened the first time i played Final Fantasy 2 i kept running and then all of a sudden i had no i couldn't be at anybody to i'm like god damn it let me give you the option to run away from every fight like it's a bad bad sign but it's like but we're still yeah keep on me sorry sorry sorry i shut off rpgs from there around the time where i got my xbox 360 i had still completely askewed rpgs of any kind i had played finally uh fallout three i believe it was probably if i'd fall out three and i kind of enjoyed my experience with that game yeah it was fall out three i played elder scrolls uh blivian um i enjoyed my time with both of those games but there's still something missing from it because at that time i was much more of kind of visual guy like i definitely wanted graphics you know and so i did it super respond to those games um i love Skyrim and i do like fallout four but for some reason fall out three and a blivian never did anything i really hoping a blivian could set remake that's rumored but so anyhow i just i just always would i saw rpg this pit in my stomach just formed itself into a tight concrete ball and then bialware released a game called mass effect 2007 i said i got my system in 2007 so i was going crazy buying as many games as i could because i was finally catching up with the pantheon of games that are available to me i believe this is released it's released in the same month as called duty four um you know 2007 is kind of an insane year of games for xbox and i played the original aspect i got through it i it was an rpg i could tell that it was an rpg i don't know i said that like brokobama i could tell it was an rpg but i enjoyed the story there was definitely some weird hiccups there is some real tedious missions there is this make-o-car infantry truck that you drive that is the most tedious thing in the world to transverse the map with and it the tank controls of this thing were just fucking horrendous but for some reason that story drove me forward because it was interesting because the story is about this intergalactic conflict in which humans discover this technology these sort of portals that are of a called that you know drive people through interstellar space they are called i forgot to call oh we call mass relays you know mass effect mass relays mass relays that kind of send you through intersare space that are created by this a long gone species of aliens that have been wiped out by these things called the reapers which are synthetic and organic creatures that every 50,000 years they come and wipe out a lot of advanced civilization we eventually learn in mass effect three why that is but you know that this attack of the reapers is and it is a trilogy of games and mass effect one was the kind of stalwart starting point of this story that was going to be this long three game gorgeous epic for its time visually and the first game i think is kind of a mess from a combat standpoint from a mission stance standpoint from somewhat of a narrative standpoint it's weirdly kind of loose but i got through it in 2010 there is mass effect two and this interesting concept that your save from mass effect one will carry over to mass effect two and the decisions you made in mass effect one will have an influence on mass effect two and i'm like well you know what i'm interested i did necessarily have the funnest time with mass effect because of some of the you know technical aspects of it some decision matrices that they chose and some of the loose ends of the story but i'll give mass effect to a shot and the reviews start coming out and said all of the issues you had with mass effect one have been streamlined all of the complaints you had that make-o you're no longer driving constantly around these fast empty spaces the mission progression is different these stories have consequence your decisions have a consequence there's these atresies in which things get diverged and divulged and i was like interesting so i popped it in and i was like let me play this let me give it a couple hours till i feel over two days three days i spent 30 hours in mass effect two which i know i am not a 10 hour per day sort of gamer like i can play a game for like four hours typically four or five hours i know you can i'm all those guys who after five hours i kind of start i played i played sassan screech atos the other day for like three hours during the day because it was raining outside and even then like when stop raining i went out for a walk i was like i feel gross that i played for the long i always have this like weird sense of guilt but oh i do do but i still do it but my experience in mass effect two completely was a dynamic shift in how i view games all right i saw that the decisions i made in mass effect one mattered and then playing through mass effect two you are recruiting this team of people who are possibly going to be your friends possibly going to be loyal to you you could possibly romance some of them you could choose if you're a man or a woman god god forgive you know you could play as a gay character as a miss uh it was a full-blooded definitive rpg game where the narrative but switch and it leads all up to the central stunning set piece of a suicide quotation marks mission in which every person could potentially die if you haven't built up your ship's defenses enough you know the ship could be destroyed have you not got loyal enough to a certain person they could die if you're not loyal enough to everybody everybody could die and so i went up to suicide mission and there was two characters two heavy characters i played through this game who were prominent parts of it there was this character named veranda who was a part of this contingency this radical group of people led by bartin sean in a great role play a secondary antagonist who's only dedicated to the survival of the humans and is excusing all the other alien races that are there and jack who is this other woman who is this kind of prisoner you said like martin sheen that martin sheen okay martin she's secondary antagonist that's one so as veranda who's a part of this group that like prioritizes you know they are very um what's the term i'm looking for you only care about humankind anthros centric yeah anthro centric would be the term i guess you'd say right xenophobic i mean actually actually literally xenophobic in the terms of aliens um but well ethnocentric would be an ethnic group anthro centric would say human sure yeah you're right so you're right human kind you're right cuz anthal you're right and you know jack is this like kind of like prisoner wild card tattoos everywhere fall pad then like the romance between like the two of them could be a big pickle thing and like when he comes up romance stuff in games like i'm fucking so weirdo and i love romance in games and so i was like all in on this jack romance because you give me a tattooed person who's kind of a rebel like i'm gonna go for that every time and i would spend half-life spent hours building up the loyalty to the rest of my team because i was driven by the story driven by these characters i built up the defenses of my ship because i wanted to make sure that seft green survived because he's playing the ship captain he's not the ship captain but he's playing your pilot joker i want to can't kill seft green so so jack's got a uh rearipply sort of vibe so i get it now for you um but there comes a pivotal point in the game where you have to side with one to two uh because they're two very dynamic people with very contrasting opinions jucks that pose against one another and i was fully invested in the rpg elements because it's such a heavily story heavily divided like heavy story in terms of a building narrative characters that side of jack and it made veranda angry and veranda was no longer loyal to me but she was like the best ship made i had and there's another side mission i could have done that to regain her loyalty but i was like you know what fuck her like she's being a piece of shit and she's like all she cares about is humans and like my shepherd shepherd being your lead your your player character does care about like the survival of the galaxy against this this horde so i'm not gonna like help her out because like yeah she's showing some changes in her personality but fuck her fuck this like i want her to be mad at me because i want to realize she's wrong but she's also really good at what she does so there's a final big mission where you gotta choose the p-3 and i take with me you and of course i'm like jack stay back you know obviously uh 19 year old me playing the uh dumb ass white knight um but like veranda's got to go in a couple years or people i know like two i think are militaristically the best suited for this quote unquote suicide mission and it goes swimmingly because i built up loyalty with everyone i think it's this last climatic thing there's this big explosion and a piece of metal falls on veranda and she fucking dies and when a character is dead in these games they're dead like there's an entire mass effect three story of veranda but that ain't the experience i had never beat veranda because i didn't have that much about it but all that side story is not there because she is dead because she was not i was not loyal to her she was not loyal to me there's some divide that existed in that mission that caused the hesitation that led to that character's death now i sat there and i was like that feels like that shit is that okay i wanted her to change i didn't want her to die then i beat the game and i sat there and i was like that was fucking incredible like i really sat into the role of commander shepherd and first time ever i was like i'm not thinking the way i would think i'm thinking the way i think he would think i'm building up these defenses because i care about these characters that i played for these 30 hours of it i'm building up a loyalty because i want to make sure they're happy not because i want them to survive at the best ending because i want to make sure they're happy i'm gonna build up these right defenses and these right traits because i want to get that there and then when i finished i was like holy shit i actually enjoy rpgs because i never felt that attachment to cloud i don't necessarily feel that attachment to the jrpg strand maybe because it's like a cultural thing uh you know it's like that weird there's a cultural divide on the very western sort of minded person i guess but i felt uniquely and intimately attached to the people here and i felt uniquely and intimately attached to shepherd and played the role of shepherd even going against some of the decision matrices that i'd usually choose because i think of course i would i as a player would want the best ending so i would have knowingly no bad it was a risk that this character could die would have probably done that second loyalty mission still side of the jack but then that second mission just to ensure that that loyalty was brought back up with Miranda to make sure she survived but i was like that would betray the character i've been played and that was a fork in the road for me where now we could talk about a vald we could talk about these rpg games that we've talked about you know yeah i mean short time i understood i understood what a roleplay the way you're talking about this gate this gate is all i feel about about because i never like i'm not a big rpg guy there's one on my list it's very high um we'll talk about that in several months um but i've never really gotten an rpgs really but about like i feel like i'm that character and i'm making decisions on purpose even though i'm i'm mostly like fucking around but whenever i get into like the dialogue stuff like i'm like thinking through all the options and how what what i would actually do or what my character would actually do depending on where i'm at and that's cool like i i've never experienced this in a game before till about okay so so i get what you're saying yeah and honestly like for i'd shunned the this entire element of games um i think my initial response to fallout three and elder swole's oblivion beyond like graphically not loving it was because i had this hesitancy seeing numbers go up um you know and and just having that bad memory that that really pivotal memory like i could almost say final fantasy seven could be a pivotal game for me because it did lock me out for so long and just generally being a non-gamer at that point from those sorts of games and there was mass effect too that made me realize like no you know like it is a narrative that i can kind of wrap my mind around um if it is something where i can like the emotional affect of the storytelling is in line with what i'm used to from the media i've consumed which i thought you know at that point was almost all western media european and never i've never myself still used this day i have some korean and japanese films that i love i'm still not like a big eastern media consumer i don't like anime um there's just something there's there's something i don't necessarily know what it is but there's something i just don't respond to with that so i never gotten to pokemon never gotten to any of those sorts of games like talking about you know what i was saying like dying of waiting safe oh you said pokemon i just said oh yeah pokemon i was saying i said pokemon are dynasty warriors or any of those kind of games are kind of like really heavily based in eastern cool or at least analyze a culture at least that come from the east um just don't connect with me in a certain way i don't know necessarily why that is no i i i get it i i wasn't really into it either i had my best friend growing up the same when i watched um uh play final fantasy he he kind of that stuff and kind of like gate like showed it to me i never like he watched dragon ball ginshin i never got into that but then there's a few things he would do and i would like oh i kind of get it i like how this is going so i'm like not huge into it but there's some stuff that kind of appeals to me so like i get to hear some i respond like the miamoto miamoto i'm not gating as saying right now mama does the gating video game designers and yeah who am i thinking i'm not i'm not gating as saying right now the um studio jibbly director my mind's in video game mode not in director mode jibbly uh not not curious solid uh no whatever this is a brain fart moment yeah cut all this out call this out now i'm keeping it the mind neighbor tote a row director i only help this out because this is bad this is me is aki it is me i damn it yeah i know i respond to like a bazaki movies even those it was tough for me to get into like i was still like uh afraid of those until he actually sat down and watched them so i feel like they still have a bit of like a western influence like so a disney influence i don't think so those are really heavy anime but you you don't you've never really watched too much anime so yeah i was never well i've tried to watch anime i just never been able to get into like eight i saw episode of dragon ball hated it i tried to watch attack on titan hated it uh i don't know i like it was a one punch man guy i like they only really got into it and pokemon i got into that's it i like some like some of pokemon but i was fully in a bat and the anime series and superman the animated series were installed guy and i've gotten into one piece recently because i like that live action one on Netflix so yeah no i just i never did like cowboy bebop i couldn't get into um i like a live action when they did because they canceled it there is i think one not bebop movie there was a lupin there's one loop in the third movie that i liked but it was a me exactly movie again so i just i just never really responded to that uh and i so obviously i'm not criticizing games like final fantasy or the atlas rpg jrpgs or any of the other jrpgs that came in just nintendo stuff there's a lot of like like zelda is heavily influenced by that culture but it's more westernized probably so still made by eastern japanese designers um but so i i i completely askewed and completely cut myself off from this entire series of games and mass effect like like whether it was from an eastern developer or from a western developer you know like completely avoided anything that Bethesda was doing except for you know pre-experiences with elder with oblivion and this was developed by a Canadian so you got that yeah this is by aware which is Canadian and i think it's out dead but the case he hunts in a lady designed this game that's cool and not know that no here uh but this opened up the world to me and you know i went back and and got into the Bethesda games back in the fall out three never before three still haven't gotten in the blue because the blue games just ugly but then sky room came out and i was super in the sky room i was super in the fall at four which which sky room are you playing all of them are they view 11 11 11 baby got that first day it came out xbox 360 not made on my samsung fridge uh oh yeah oh like this i'd mix that up so it's sky it's elder stroll sky room yeah that yeah so that that can remind me a lot of about dude by the way i never finished it it's like a heavier version of about yeah like they're obsidian made new vegas like they made a variation and outer worlds is similar it's based sort of version of obsidian and but that's that make very similar style rpgs action rpgs okay and now an action rpgs probably one of my favorite genre of games and i have mass effect i still think mass effect is the best game to do it in terms of your decisions in terms of an rpg like there's obviously episodic games and adventure games i'll talk about later i think your decisions matter more or more at least may at least have a more interesting fulfilling sort of story aspect to him but in terms of these action rpgs and the combat in this game is fun it's solid it's much more streamlined it's it's faster so those hiccups that kind of drove me away from the original mass effect were completely erased by mass effect too uh that and all i cared about there was a story i was driven by helping like roommates and because i care because the writing was so solid and the decisions i'm making felt like it had such consequence and it completely shifted how i viewed the entire huge genre of games that now like clear obscure x-edition 33 which is coming out next month from a french designer is a turn-based rpg a style of game i just do not respond to but i'm super excited for it then i have mass effect too to thank for that awesome and they haven't made a new one of these since 2017 but there is a lot in development so it's it's an ea issue um yeah it's a long mass effect the drama i played were a bit myself it just did not be like mass effect i just my mass effect three i was so kind of out of that world um it's just a bummer that this equals didn't live up because like we'll see i'm like i played when i played the mass effect through still good i just kind of was distracted by other games at that point sure um i think the criticism of mass effect three's ending just because i watched like the ending of it but i just knew i was never gonna be able like really get into what mass effect through is doing just because my taste had evolved by that point um i don't really see the criticism i can see it be a little disappointing but i think it's like all gamers do they fucking over blow every opinion they have because it's still a younger medium so they want the full wish fulfillment so it's something slightly as i go their way they get mad hmm i like i know that it's great it's great it's great cool i would suggest a man it's never played those um you can probably still skip there's there's the mass effect legendary edition on game pass uh or ea whatever but you get it through game pass because i've attached it into game pass so you can probably say if one there's i believe if you start on mass effect two there's some things you can be like what would you have chosen if this happened and it kind of guides the story uh but i do think mass effect two is something that like universally people would enjoy still to this day awesome and that was your number eight correct seven where we at one versus one hundred stack ops the line mass effect two we'll be right back in a minute and these number eight this was a triumph i'm making a note here huge success it's hard to overstate my satisfaction how about you science so my my story on my number eight it's not going to be as detailed or um long as mario's but um it's going to be a common theme in a lot of my pivotal film especially as we move on um this is a game that brought me back to video games um because i've been a gamer like most of my life and this is like a game that got me back into it so um there's a point in my life between 2004 to 2010 where i was in i was in college then grad school and i pretty much only played halo and madden in that period when i graduated i got a job and i was talking to some some guys at my job and he's like i was like i love like zelda i love puzzle games and he told me about this game called portal i'm like what is that never heard of it and he's like oh you can have my copy and this is like 2011 he's like because the new one's coming out this year so he should check this out beforehand so i i'm like all right i'll play he gave it to me and i just i just had a blast playing this game and then when portal two came out it like knocked it literally knocked my socks right off because it's i think it's one of the greatest games ever made so i can do these two the same game he thought they're different games because i played them at the exact same time even though they came out five four five years apart um and portal two just does everything that portal did a bit better with uh the the voice acting with um what his name why am i playing on his name oh Stephen um Stephen for right right yeah merchant merchant yes even president not dealing okay yeah Stephen merchant um although the dark humor the puzzle aspects to it um and i played through these both by myself and then i realized later in life that these are actually well at least the second one is meant to be a co-op game so in several like relationships i've had i played these with um girlfriends and it was also really fun uh it just it's so innovative it's using the the way physics work in this game as a engineer just like it blew my mind how like accurate this actually was made this is made by is valve right so the guys you did do steam this this game just blew my mind and i'm like uh video games have changed since you know cuz i haven't played i think it's like the sports game in halo in like a decade and this this got me back into it my 360 and i started playing more games for the next like five ten years and i took a break and we'll talk about what brought me back in the future but i love portal i played it through a few times i it's just one every time so that initial momentum for the game momentum is a great word to use because it's a very important part of the game yeah uh was it was it the scratching that puzzle solving engineering aspect of your brain like that correct yeah dynamic yeah so because i've been trapped in a classroom i'm just trying to get through grad school with my MBA and then like this kind of got me back into like almost the engineering stuff that i hadn't been doing except for like at my job which it's not funny anymore it was just like the problem solving part and that's what like initially drew me to video games was puzzles and solving things and trying to like get through you know like an abstract way to find your way through a map and this took that all to like the next level and it was i think it's at least portal two specifically is like a near perfect game but it's because you played you played through all portal one first i assume because it's a shorter game it's like two or three hours maybe the original yeah yeah i did not do my four day excursion like i do in my other games nowadays but what yeah that it could be a couple of days and the new one was just coming out so so i like i like to always say you know like i mentioned kind of with Mass Effect that the jack and maranda aspect of it was kind of aha moment i had where kind of everything clicked in my mind that i realized you know i love those sort of things what was that aha moment maybe in terms of the puzzle dynamic assuming that's that's what really you responded to with portal what was that what puzzle was it or what moment was it in the game where it just clicked and that you got so excited for portal two and knew this was kind of the game i was drawing you back in i mean it's probably going to be this probably anyone who loves portal it's the first thing that like really changed the way you think about it again it's the momentum like swinging when you put the hole in the floor and up top and you go boom boom you create the momentum and then you can jump all the way across the place like once i'm like oh shit that thing actually knows how momentum works and how you can actually like control how it works like that was like blew my mind it was but no i was saying it was just so fun cool like that that would you could actually do that so yeah there's like those slight moments of introduction i guess early on that kind of showed you the momentum factor was like that moment the early introduction to it i don't know it's when i realized when i could use it and when i was stuck in a puzzle and i'm like oh that momentum thing light bulb boom put that thing there put that thing there and it walked it's like a green pool of something and we're just like oh shit this game actually like it it works i don't know it's it's hard to like explain just like it creates connections in my brain that like makes me feel accomplished it's how my engineering brain works it's like holy shit i make the moment i responded to this game because i enjoyed i enjoyed these games i find them more funny like i'm drawn more to the story of it because like the driverish humor aspect of this these games and the puzzles necessarily but the one moment i really responded to the puzzles myself that was that momentum was that moment where i discovered i could launch the blue portal launch back out of the orange and as i was falling i could put another blue in there put another one yeah to as i'm still falling to get that increased momentum and yeah i think that that theory of discovery is a real driving point of it which is also tied into like like i love Stanley parable i love those sorts of like kind of kitschy British dry humor it's like the dry like were you did you respond to that at all this because i think a big part of this game is no it was like it's a lot of audio performance the cake is a lot of jacie's i saw me just like it's it's uh i my play it frequently it maybe it may have been one of my most happiest day that beating that game and then that was the ending it's a b laugh so hard portal one uh portal one just the cake is a lie in that song throughout the end it just like the solo life is like what we were doing is like because i was not spoiled because i had no idea the game existed you know four years later so it's someone just like play this and just let me know how it goes and it would just it caught me off guard it was so funny don't expect the boss fight at the end you know yeah it was perfect it was it should be higher than it was probably now the more i talk about it because this is like like an evolution a lot of the things i love about video games um the only thing is i just i came to it you know kind of after it was out and then i mean i have gone back to it several times because it's just a fun game to return because you forget the puzzles and it's fun to just like work your way through it then hear all the funny gags like the steeda merchant and gladdus and everything talking through it like it just and this is a game for anybody it's it's fun no i completely agree with that like i think if you're a not a puzzle person there's something there for you it's wild to me that they've never even thought about doing another one nice not half life sorry they haven't finished i want to ask uh you you said like you went out games and you mentioned this last week that you kind of left gaming you know during that ots late ots early 2010s period while you were going through graduate school you say portal brings you back into gaming how'd you get back into gaming what do you start looking for is it you look like this portal and the puzzle aspect of it that's scratching a part of the problem solving engineering brain uh did that lead you to other games about oak or just kind of like it back in the gaming in general it was gaming in general just because i don't think there are really any games of portals ilk as much um when i end up i did end up buying a nendo we at that time and then i got i started playing some of the zeldas i missed because i again i quit playing for a while so i got back into zelda playing um twilight princess was on there and i had played that quite a bit which has summed up its it's zelda puzzle so i mean it's not as free puzzle as portal but it does scratch that itch but it's also exploration should i have one cell that i really played in love did you play win waker in the set i i'll be honest the only nendo system oh no there's two i never owned a Wii U and i never owned a gamecube so i've been well teleprances was on both was on gamecube right and i don't know it may it may have been but it was on we but there's been a i'm really waiting for a remake to be on switch because that's the first moment of play because i know i would love that game it just isn't possible to get a gamecube right now so so you've you've since then i would say got i don't know consistently back into gaming but you you have more approached gaming regularly since then i would say right yeah and i really never gotten like deep back into like immersive gaming well until about obviously it's been it's been besides like um somebody's out against the tree world about later um but but i i've mostly been kind of tangential gaming for the last couple like probably 15 years except for like like but portal got me back into that it's wanting to play these puzzle sort of like low impact game just kind of not the past the time but to like keep my brain entertained i guess yeah i realize that that games could do that because i i have like a i have a problem like i would play madden for like for like 12 hours when i would be making my own like roster and i'd be like signing players it's not gonna be on my list i'm saying like i would get so into this where i would go forever like i wouldn't even play the game i would simulate the season and i would sign players and like i'll i will play a video game forever i mean man there's an entire genre of football games american or sorry uh football games football manager it's just a manager yeah i know i'm just letting that aspect of it don't think i haven't played it so i'm curious though because you know the puzzle aspect of this was but you respond to scratch that niche to have i know a lot of people that played portal kind of search that out afterwards and they find games um tangentially or otherwise that may be connect there there's the bridge constructor games i don't know if you ever approach those and there's like a portal there's even a portal bridge constructor or you know they find it in you know like me like deck builders the maffy sort of games have you because this was such like a big game in terms of bringing you back in the gaming i kind of know immediately you said you didn't find anything i have you have you since then kind of found games that kind of scratched that same issue because it exists onto an island by itself the puzzle that this game has exists on and i am myself um there is a game or two that do do the same thing which we will talk about so i won't talk about it now gotcha but there's been i am still always in the search for a game that scratches this itch like i've tried like i know you talked about last day like i told you treasure hunter i like that game but it just did not it did not scratch the itch for me um i i've tried some of these indeed some of the any games are actually pretty good i just didn't they're usually too short for me um there's that one game that's really beautiful to look at i forget it's like a puzzle game so like i mean games like the witness or the talus principle fess is similar to that those sorts of like have you had any experience with those sorts of games or no no i mean i'd be i'd welcome suggestions because again i've also i haven't had a xbox until recently thank thank you mario um i've been i've been playing off of nintendo's shit for the last ten years and those are a lot more limited so you said a beautiful one game you're trying to mention you said that beautiful you know what it was about it i know you played it because i saw it on your xbox playlist and i just cannot remember what it was called not a while's no it was sure it's like a five-hour game maybe i'll have to look at it maybe start with an o i can't remember so you think there's there's a reason did you not act so you got back into gaming because of portal so so i i i don't know if that you went back to like the delegates they missed did you think you didn't go back to like because i know a lot of people at fate portal love portal like me mine everyone game i'll talk about drove me to trying out a lot of those games um maybe maybe maybe did it did is there a reason maybe you think you didn't chase out games similar to this uh is it just the fact that you wanted to catch up with what you missed out on or no it so my problem is and i'm going through it right now with about is i like to keep playing games forever and then i i lose sleep and then it messes with my life and so i gotta i gotta be careful with games that i get into because i i love you games that much that i can't stop um that says more about me than anything else but um like i i love you to game but and i want to keep playing until i'm done and until i see everything and i've gotten better at like just like stepping back picking pick my spot especially if i'm like an early ship you know which i'm not right now so i can play about it for as long as i want ladies are you think of cocoon was that the game you think of earlier oh it's driving me i could see the game in my head i do have this question to ask you i don't i probably don't think you've played it uh you're saying you're not really a you said you're not really a first-person shooter guy right no i like like portal is one of my favorite first-person aspect game i guess so have you ever heard of a game called split gate no so split gate is an online shooter a sequel is coming out this year i'm interested if you would be curious about a game like this it's an online shooter similar to something like halo except for the fact that you have portals so you could place the portals to shoot enemies from various angles uh like clearly like portal has had a huge influence on gaming like does do games no no games that are outside your wheelhouse something like a split gate a first-person shooter or ring a shoot i don't want to call it a ring a shooter a first-person yeah i guess it's a ring a shooter um mixing if it mixes in those elements that portal does like it still keeps that momentum of movement in if you want to reach certain spaces do you think that is something that would like be of interest to you in the future or is it just like such this uniquely dynamic game that was built purely for puzzle solving and not has like an addendum to other gameplay um like how do you think you fall there do you think you'd fall on the side of you just want the pure puzzle solving or do you think that entire idea of the puzzle solving uh that's dynamic in a way because it is you're playing as real humans um but there's still a puzzle element to it and a combat element to it like in split gate is that something that would interest you or do you think like okay so about that singular focus on that puzzle i mean i think i could get into that but so what what i guess what my favorite thing is that especially with like a puzzle game and it's kind of how i've made about this way even though it's not meant to be like i want to do my puzzles without having to be killed by somebody um like about i'm so overpowered where bad guys come at me i'll just go kill them in a moment or they're not gonna fuck me up but i just like i like a game where i can't die and i just got a solid puzzle um maybe i die by falling off of too high and then i'll just bring me back like there's won't be on my list but there's like Wario games are so fun because they're just puzzle games you try to walk they're 2d platformers but the goal is just to get through the the level based on like moving things around and like jumping a certain way because you can't die in those games so just like getting to the end and that's all i want and it's like i don't know like i sort of use my brain and not having to like worry about like fighting i think i don't have to so you do appreciate a less tenuous sort of speedy resolution like the majority mask of gaming i should say or there's a definitive timer i've never actually you know fully beat majority mask so i don't know how welcome that timer is you appreciate the ability you appreciate the fact with portal like kind of sit there for a second look at where the ball is bouncing back and forth or where that laser shooting or where that gun to turt shooting and solve it you know i can do a bunch of tests and see how it go like i can kill myself a bunch of times to see where my body splats yeah like i like all that shit not you so that makes a lot of sense like there's no need of urgency there's just that ability of trial and error which would appeal i i'm sure to an engineer's mind yeah and i know that it's not your style i just like that's how my brain works and i just like no it absolutely absolutely i kind of solve it i would call myself more of a global gamer in the sense that i am often willing to meet a game where it is because i like i like portal like my personal opinion on portals i enjoy it i have more fun with the story i'm need maybe i think i appreciate what i play through i didn't beat it yet but i played through a portal one more than my play through a portal two because i think portal two inter and i have only played portal two by myself so maybe the co-op element of it would scratch a better part of my brain um i feel as a portal two is introducing a lot of extra stuff that portal one doesn't have and i find this simplicity of portal one to be a little more eloquent uh that's fair i i just think portal two just like a perfectly like evolved version of it and i don't think it introduces too much um and i think the the additional voice acting just makes it exponentially better yeah and i i think also the fact that like i wasn't even fully aware and portal two is when at 2012 game i was able to be aware of that portal two was cooperative at all so like that changes my entire experience of that game i mean it's arguably the best um cooperative game i would say of all time at least that i've played um but i haven't played solid fiction yet so we have to do that at some point i haven't played portal two that's a co-op yet so maybe we have to play that at some point i mean i like to play with you because if i play with my last ex she was not not great at it she was yelling at me it was not fun i typically don't yell um that's interesting i will not be an ex-years i apologize uh no it's interesting because i i find i definitely appreciate those moments of slowness and being able to figure out puzzle but also i appreciate like urgency with things and it seems as though you don't necessarily want that urgency in your game you don't think with my four days of about it i'm still not done with it yet you don't think i want no urgency well i'm just i'm just curious i was curious to see i like it's a very organic use in a game you love in a style you don't typically respond to no i i you would feel about that i bet i like it it just depends like i be into trying it but i i think why i think it's really curious is um is is the fact that you just have it you just have it you get search up games like it i did i couldn't i couldn't find anything that scratched the same itch um witness just download witness and it's less engineering based and more puzzle solving but it is um i think witnesses on game best it was on game best i don't know if it still is um subliminal is similar to they're both games i would say a perspective like its perspective manipulation okay so with this game out when i was in my law of video games again so yeah and witness i think is i'm curious to see just because you're such a puzzle guy um and it's it's obviously less of a it's less of a physics based puzzle and more of a positional puzzle and more kind of i'm into this i've never heard of this game before but this is like is my like it came out in 2016 so so i was i have like pockets of my life for an individual game so from like 20 like 14 to like recently i wasn't really playing games so like i missed the like most of the last decade yeah i just i just first switched games so i missed most of 2015 to 2020 myself so i understand i got back into it like i was the big games i did play like the pivotal i should say pivotal because it's new to the podcast but the like the monumentous games in those areas i played so i definitely understand but i missed out a lot of like huge indie games that i didn't get back into until the pandemic but i do know i'm curious to see how you like with your response to something like portal how you respond to something like witness because i do think it's less of a story game it's more of an ambient game um the stories you told in the fringes but i do feel as though the people this looks like my wheelhouse i want to play this game really but no i'm just curious i've never even heard of it before i do think the people that loved portal for its trial and error and for its sort of contemplative puzzle solving um love the witness as well and and there's aspects of of the witness uh that i think are big and and maybe go beyond what you think they would do and i'm curious to see what your response to something that would be given your response to the portal given what you said on the portal it was on um the game pass i do not know if it still is uh i got paid for it but i'm probably gonna get it probably like i think like fifteen dollars or so like that oh it's forty bucks oh maybe download it on the computer it's probably cheaper we'll look at it later it's fine um but it's awesome like but those are the type of games i like to play um uh so i want to look up that game that i played because i know you played it it was i watched i i creeped on your your play games listen you played it nobody's having a sexy about it yeah so do you think that like carries through to some of your experiences i mean obviously i don't want to dig too deep into this um given that i know one of these games is gonna be on your list but you know there's there's the puzzle solving aspects of breath of the wild with those shrines right yep the shrine the ball movement sort of things like those puzzles um and the construction elements inters in the kingdom for like the vehicles or whatever do you feel as though having played through those games do you feel the influence from games like portal on that or do you think that's 100 i feel like those games early games influence portal i think portal elevator those games and those came back into the more recent release of those games i feel like they're all playing off of each other so um portal is a nice one it's a nice one big challenge yeah yeah because because Zelda went through a lull of like not great games and we'll talk about it because all this obviously gonna be a huge part of my life um it hit some lulls but i feel like it stole or borrowed from some recent stuff and one of those being portal and making people think or it's like it's maybe not stolen it's by oh yeah sure for sure and i and i i like that quite a bit and i mean i mean there's there's definitively i will spoil slightly a bit of split fiction there is a section of split fiction where you're using portals to i mean you're not creating the portals the portals are already there but you're you're using portals to solve some very simple puzzles but it just shows how much of an impact that game had on the world like in turn like this what it's it's a mod like it feels like a mod of half-life i assume it is 100 percent the first game is can be beat in an hour i haven't been a couple hours i think but probably if you played it a couple times maybe i think you know yeah i mean i'm still only halfway through it um something i played it for an hour or a half but i could tell i'm assuming those 19 puzzles are the full game i forget how many puzzles it is so i'm looking at it as long as i thought it was gonna be but i do know there's like there's the challenge modes with like additional expert puzzles and everything um so yeah no it's still alive i mean whenever that happens yeah it's it's an iconic game that that doesn't like i just i'm so happy that it exists in the world and i would love for it to come back like i would i would i would feel for it to come back i'm curious so after you beat i don't know if you're even remember this after you beat portal 2 what was the next day we beat honestly i probably took a break from games for a while because oh no i started so what i i ended up getting into i met some friends that got into xbox live so i was doing a lot of castle crashers oh i was just playing shit like that for a while so um i was just playing like online game with some friends so i never really i never got into a game for a while until i got my switch and that's we'll come back later in my little list but i was mostly playing castle crashers in the aridoc so talking a lot switch next week my friend our next episode because we're gonna have that switch to direct uh be right before our next episode and i will switch out of switch game up on my list but i don't because they're i already did yeah honestly no i said like that i had that for that next week but i don't i mean they're coming later was there a switch game was one of those in that series released on switch probably not probably a week portal to be you yeah i know that i just wondering if the game that is at your number seven was ever released on switch or uh to switch i could assume six minutes of switch six was not released on switch i don't think so i don't think so but but the the game on my number my number five game was released on switch so i just i was looking at the game as a game online we we talked about this i'll podcast like val has $10 i've never played half-life so um i'm not a first-person shooter guy like you said like i said it is like we can finish off with this but it's it's impressive to me how dynamically influential valve was with three games in terms of future game right um i mean beyond the fact like now they have steam which is you know does it be without the titans of technology of microsoft or sony or nintendo you know feeding the monolith like they are a video game designer that just suddenly owned the biggest software distribution sort of software distribution software software distribution app and steam but like they have half portal counter strike like that's insane counter strike about yeah oh okay they have counter strike and they also have i mean i guess you could focus this off of counter strike but i think it's a little different um like uh we're gonna be the evolution of counter strike team fortress two i don't actually know that game so t fortress two is a character based sort of arena shooter it's plays a heavy influence on games like i think i'm mixed of counter strike and t fortress two is what creates a game like valorant but t fortress two is the reason you have of over marvel rivals those games are pure pantomime i don't say pantomime your evolutions of what valve did with team fortress and i thought they're leffered at dude i forgot about that yeah leffered those those four player co-ops haven't really hit the mark there is remedies doing a three player co-op game which i'd be interested in playing with you um i would also say matt but matt pulled a matt uh we'll see if we play with him um but yeah i think it's i like just to speak of a meta narrative of of valve it's insane that they three games and a variation of counter strikes to create four gigantic um and you could say maybe half-life is an evolution of doom i think that's fair but these are super like important to gaming like they changed gaming all of those games like half-life i think half-life definitively stole that crown from doom there's nothing doom is is doom in what's not kind of like do one thing half-life is is an evolution of that um in terms of its story evolution of story i think it's it's i think it's hard to argue that half-life influence something like call of duty or the metric prying games more than i i mean doom wolfenstein influenced half-life to a good degree but i think half-life was such an evolution that it's hard to say metric prime or call of duty or halo or influenced by doom instead of influenced by half-life because i think they are influenced by half-life because half-life is such a big step up and counter strike creates that arena shooter vibe which then influences called duty uh online play player and also then important night and everything that's huge nowadays so yeah exactly and then portal to a lesser extent but portal brings um to the light these really dynamic puzzle games that you know and i'm in the indie realm i guess but like still huge but again you never played it as a co-op portal to use like one of the most influential influential co-op games of all time well yeah like i guess maybe like that's a bit of a conversation point where you don't really dive into because we talked about that off-stream and maybe like that's a good point to finish on yeah so so like what about the co-op aspect of it like spoke to you it's a it's a it's a communication so you're working with a teammate um and i only do it on one screen because it was xbox 360 that i played it on i guess but it's just like because when you're playing a single player left arm is blue and right arm is orange when you're playing co-op each person has a different color so you got to really communicate and make sure your portals are lining up and you get another right spot and you can actually do a lot more things as a co-op because you can put the portal in different spots further away than you can when you're just playing by yourself it's it's it's uh it's it changed it changed the whole thought process because i was playing like snipper clips and stuff like that but portal 2 is just still the best co-op game i ever played was that the first like real experience you had with a heavy co-op and hip game or yeah i mean i've done like overcooking stuff beforehand but this was the one that i thought was the best i would say it was you're mostly playing with like don video gamers i was playing with girlfriend and were they like heavy like they were that they have like a lot of experience of the game they played games yeah so it wasn't like they were like noobs or anything but it was um it was a it's kind of a bonding experience and i don't know if you felt that when you're playing like split fiction with matt but it is like a you know trying to get into the mind of the other person so you guys can communicate properly and i don't know i i like that that stuff and that's what i like i understand that do you think the co-op aspect of portal 2 plays such a significant role in your enjoyment of it already think it's more the complexity of the puzzles i think it just two different stories it sounds like two different games to me when you're playing co-op and it's in your play i think they're just two different experiences and i think they both work um i just think it's more fun playing with another person because you're you have a uh like a camaraderie kind of shared experience with it it's more fun i like playing stuff as a team more than playing solo if i can no it's my style that makes sense i'm a team player mario you know i'm on board with you that's why i like that's why i sometimes like those exclusively co-op games as you sometimes have to play as a team i mean solo playing fall guys with you and matt like still still good time not much really well play with matt not that he's been banned on xbox for a year technically did that just happen really like yeah i just thought we're just yeah yeah you got banned from who knows i do not have to be a mess whatever but that was fun i've never never been banned from anything either of us because i'm not a asshole well i'm an asshole i'm not scumbag so gonna cut that part out of these heroes you won't yeah okay matt matt's we are i don't care not for sure yeah i can see that cooperative experience though being it was it was moment in helping helping to have the experience yeah so i'll say like my 360 was in storage for like six years and then portal came out it took it out and it got me back like my engagement broke off i'm like what am i gonna do i made friends on on video games i started playing portal and i started playing castle crashers and all those like indie games that xbox was doing it you know it was great it helped me in xbox saves minds in bodies hey sometimes just gotta get out of your head like getting into your head correct not get out of one part of your head getting into a different part of your head i agreed that's the lesson we should take home from today it is you know else you get out of your head handy what's that sometimes it's it's drinking a beer sometimes it's reading the book sometimes it's watching a tv show or a youtube show you watch some good mythical morning i guess or listen to sebrena carpenter listen to some sebrena carpenter or john carpenter the hotter carpenter you know do anything watch consuming media drink beers eat some good food don't have and we'll talk to you next week good night bye