Get Played - Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance with Brendan James

Episode Date: September 23, 2024

Brendan James (Blowback podcast) joins Matt, Heather and Nick to discuss the 2013 Metal Gear spin-off game Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. They talk about it's departure from stealth to action based blade-mode combat, how this game spawned tons of memes, how this game stacks up against the rest of the series and more. Check out Blowback Season 5. This month's We Play, You Play: Astro Bot! Follow us on Twitter and Instagram @getplayedpod. Music by Ben Prunty benpruntymusic.com. Art by Duck Brigade duckbrigade.com. Check out our Anime watch-along podcast Get Anime'd and our complete Get Played, How Did This Get Played? and Premium DLC back catalogue only on patreon.com/getplayed. Join us on our Discord server here: https://discord.gg/getplayed Wanna leave us a voicemail? Call 616-2-PLAYED (616-275-2933) or write us an email at [e-mail] Advertise on Get Played via Gumball.fmSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Shelby van Pelt. Find what piques your imagination. Sign up for a free 30-day Audible trial and your first audio book is free. Visit audible.ca to sign up. All right, team, look, I know we're very close to shipping this game here. The title is a big issue right now. It's been rejected. It was originally going to be Metal Gear Solid Rising. It's a no at corporate. So we have to, we gotta just retitle this bad boy.

So we're taking any and all pitches. What do you guys got? All right, so I wanna have that sense of action, that intensity, that conflict. So my pitch is Metal Gear Rising Retrovolution, which is like retribution and revolution. Oh, okay, okay. Retrovolution.

Retrovolution. I'm just gonna say that that's a confusing word. Okay, okay, okay. That's tough to hear. It's a good first pitch though. I actually have something that's a little bit, you know, kind of maybe like a pitch on that pitch. Retributaliation.

Metal gear rising, retributaliation. So it's like, it's retribution and retaliation. Yeah. Those are, and those in some ways are a similar word. Yeah, I think the same word, like synonyms. But you put them together and it's like an extreme version. So it's just a little redundant, I think, to have the,onyms. Hmm. You put them together, and it's like an extreme version So it's just a little redundant. I think to have the it's just it doesn't work All right, all right. I like sticking with Metal Gear Rising though, but I think we can go further than metal Metal Gear Rising

Aggressination Just aggression and assassination. That's really good. Aggressination. Look, that is really good, but I just know that they're never gonna go for something like that. Who is they? Corporate? Corporate. Aren't we corporate?

Like every time we have these conversations. We're creative. Okay, okay, okay. I will never, you'll never see me wearing a suit. Okay, we gotta convince corporate. All right, all right. How about this, uh, Metal Gear Rising. Payback, oh shackle-lacka.

Is that a real one? Kinda like an NBA Jam sorta take. Yeah, okay, you know, I get it. It just doesn't, it's not really cohesive with the Metal Gear brand, you know. Alright. What else you got? Metal Gear Solid Recompensect, which is recompensence an insect. That's pretty good.

How about this? Metal Gear Rising, homo-cycle of violent but deadly. Could you give me that one again? Homo-cycle of violent but deadly. So it's like homicide? Yeah, but cycle of violence. Cycle of violence. But silent but deadly. Silent but deadly. So it's like homicide? Yeah, but cycle of violence. But silent but deadly.

Like a fart? Well yeah, but I mean it's not a fart thing. Metal Gear Rising A Nalohor So that's I just want to be really careful with this one. I just want to be

extremely careful with this one. Well I want to be extremely careful with this one. Well, I'm thinking about how we're like taking a taking like a sword to the cannon. So that's annihilation and lore. That's good. Okay. Annihil-horror. I was just really worried about what the two parts were. How about this?

See if this sets off any red flags. Metal Gear Rising. Diarrhea Assassin. We know that we can't do that one. You know that we can't put Diarrhea. Because the A becomes A in Assassin. Assassin, yeah. I know that this is like ultimately

a futile and thankless task. It makes me want to get some sort of revenge against corporate, but I just don't know if I have the like the vengeance within me to Wait, what did you say? I said that I don't have the vengeance within me to enact But you also said you also said revenge Revenge And vengeance

Revenge Wait, wait, wait Hold on Revenge Vengeance Revenge Vengeance. Revenge? Vengeance. What about Venge-gen-gents? Like that? Metal Gear Rising Venge-en-gents. Coming soon. We enter blade mode and battle a nanomachine-enhanced US Senator as we discuss much-memed Metal Gear spin-off Metal Gear Rising Revengeance, this week on Get Played, your one-stop show for good games, bad games, and every game

in between. It's time to get played. I'm your host, Heather Ann Campbell, along with my fellow host, Nick Weiger. That's me, Nick Weiger. I'm here with our third host, Matt Apodaca. Hello, everyone. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the premiere of Video Game Podcast, where I'm very excited

about this week's episode, because we're talking about a game in the Konami Pantheon, developed and produced by Platinum Games, it's Metal Gear Rising Revengeance. Yeah, I mean, one of the all-time great subtitles. We'll get into it, but it's, you know, there's a lot to discuss here. This is a game that came out in 2013

that has had a resurgence in recent years because- You mean a revengeance. A revengeance, thank you, Heather. Thank you for resurgence in recent years because... You mean a revengeance. A revengeance. Thank you, Heather. Thank you for the correction in recent years. Partly because it is once again, you know what, another Kojima affiliated game that has been kind of prescient about our political reality. We'll get into that one second.

I do have a couple quick announcements. First off, our producer, Rochelle Chen, Ranch is back after a Fortnite absence. Nice to see you, Rochelle. Good to be back Wait, wait, wait, you weren't playing fortnight this whole time. You were gone, right? Yeah. I was sorry. What the hell? What fortnight skin are you using these days still Eminem? No, I'm not using Eminem anymore. I'm back to a generic anime character called the Yugi. Yeah, that's a good choice Another announcement real quick. Welcome back, Ratchet. Yeah.

You gonna ask me ever that question? What Fortnite skin are you using? I use the Terminator. I know it's either Terminator or Xenomorph. No. I use Ivor when I'm not Terminator. Okay, sorry, I apologize. Those are my two. Also one is, didn't you use the Xenomorph at a certain point?

Yeah, when I first started playing the game. Okay. But it's weird to see that the Xenomorph holding a gun is what I've decided. It's really asynchronous. It's the same as Buff Peter Griffin holding a gun. It's just like what is going on here. So that another announcement-

Thank you for asking Nick. That meant a lot to me. Of course. Another announcement next week's, Matt, what Fortnite skin have you been using? I don't really play it anymore. Yeah, me neither. Another announcement, next week's episode we will be doing a we play you play on

Astro bot the new ps5 platformer that we all have a lot of thoughts on we've all been playing We're like why not let's just do an episode about it So that'll be coming next week if you want to play along and you want to join in on that right now I want to introduce our guest he co--hosts Blowback, a podcast about the history of the American Empire. Season five, Cambodia is available now at blowback.show. Brendan James is here. Hi, Brendan. Hi, everybody. Thanks for having me. Thanks so much for making time for us. Congrats on season five. Very excited for it. I'm a big fan of the show. The work you all do is really, really impressive and I think necessary. So,

work y'all do is really, really impressive and I think necessary. So God bless you. On that note, we went to you and we asked you about some things that we could possibly discuss today. And one of the things you mentioned was a name I had not heard in a long time, Gex the Gecko. Yeah.

Did you play Gex back in the day? I remember when I was on Doughboys, we got into a loop of, I reminded you that Dana Gould played Gex, he was the voice of Gex. That's right, that's what it was. Yeah, we talked about, because we're talking about Banjo-Kazooie and then we ended up talking about a bunch of like nostalgic video games and yes, the Dana Gould Gex connection came up.

But then you said Dana Gould was Gex and I said Dana Gould was Gex and then you said it again and I said it again and it just became this sort of mantra of this like soothing, soothing fact about like that game from 1997. But yeah, I played all of those. I played the first one, which was the side scroller on the PS1, and then the second one where he's like a secret agent,

and then the third one where they basically do that again. And they're not good, but I miss them. I miss him. It was that interesting era and Heather, you maybe remember this as well, but like this post Sonic the Hedgehog era of mascot games where everyone was like, well, we should come up with our new kind of edgy mascot. We had, of course we've talked about Bubsy Bobcat at length on here, but there's also Arrow the Acrobat.

Yeah, Gex was an Earthworm Jim was part of that. Glogger Man. Gluver? Gluver, yes, Gluver very much so. And then... Yeah, and then Conker's Bad Fur Day became the ultimate expression of that. Yes.

But yeah, Gex, I like those, that was a... I remember him being particularly annoying. Maybe I'm wrong about that was a, I remember him being particularly annoying. Yes. Maybe I'm wrong about that. They tried to sort of, he was closer to the conqueror side of things where he had like risque, you know, stuff for the adults,

I guess. Right. He would, but they tried to give him a catchphrase, which was, it's tail time. Because he has a tail, I guess. Like, it isn't even the most- I have that as a tramp step on my back For some people it really caught on obviously but even as a kid, I'm like like he would he would like make little quips about like

Jerry Garcia and like don't don't go to his his cocktail party cuz you'll Like drink an acid drink or something It was like stuff that was flying fully over the heads of the Nine and ten year olds who were playing Gex. I guess yes. Yeah the 40 year old game developers It was like references that were meaningful to them not that they're funny. No, Dana. No no no Yeah, it wasn't the Simpsons. It wasn't the Simpsons writers room writing the Gex copy I don't think right so that would be a completely different history gecks would be known as one of the funniest things ever And I am comforted by that it is Dana Gould though for some reason I do like that

He is what yeah, I was like he is kind of a poochie in a sense so Dexes yeah, very much so I think Simpsons thing is so weird because I just I remember like being like Dex's, yeah, very much so. I think Simpson's thing is so weird because I remember being 11 and laughing at a joke about Gourvy Doll, a man I did not know who he was, or what the, but just the way it was presented on the show,

I was like, oh, that's a funny punchline. I used to watch reruns of Late Night with Conan O'Brien, and Abe Vigoda was a frequent character on that show. And I thought he was so funny, but I had no idea who he was. Like I didn't know, he was just like an old man that they would wheel out. Yeah, but he's like a sitcom star.

He knows how to turn a joke. Like he's just a great performer, but yeah, he just was kind of brought out as like a living prop. And I think part of it is like obviously he was doing funny stuff But like half of the joke is look at a pagoda's here, and I was like I guess that's cool I don't know who this fucking old guy is, but I love it It's like mystery sign that was a mystery science theater 3000 for me where I mean half of those jokes for a nine-year-old

They're talking about they were talking about like Reagan and the Contras. They were talking about, you know, Al Gore and stuff. And I laughed because I knew they had set it up well and executed it well without knowing whatever the substance was. And that's the- That show is a miracle. It is. It is probably still my favorite show of all time. So, you know. I was going to say that I don't have a lot of experience in the arena that you're describing, but my similar experience is that the very first anime

I ever watched, Project Echo, was a parody of other anime. Wow. And I had no idea that it was parody, so I was just like, wow, this is fun and funny, and I didn't know that these were specific references. I was just having a good time That was a huge part. I think of the Austin Powers audience I think there were a lot of people who did not understand that Austin Powers was a parody of like not just

Not just like James Bond obviously, but like in like Flint all these like classic like British spy movies They just had they had no context for it. I learned it's still funny though I learned that like four years ago. Yeah, I had no idea I thought they were just like he just made up a guy and like made up all this stuff a gold member. That's funny Yeah, that's hilarious. I love it. Goldfinger. What the fuck that sucks Okay, I also want to ask about the the odd world franchise because these are games I have played I played specifically odd world Abe's and Abe's Exodus, which were the first two 2D games.

And then there was the Xbox one. I didn't play the shooter. I don't know if you played that one, but there was the game with me. I think it was Munch's Odyssey. Munch's Odyssey was the Xbox first one in 3D. And then Stranger's Wrath was like a kind of third-person adventure action one that I never played. I never played that one.

I did play all the ones you just said. The best ones are the first two. Yeah, really good. And then realizing all the games I suggested to you are like pre-1999 games. Like I don't think I have any cred past that year, except for the Metal Gear series maybe, but, and Resident Evil.

But the later ones, they kind of remastered the early ones and then they came out like 30 years later with a sequel, an official sequel called Soulstorm, and I played that, and it was quite good. So, you know, show Oddworld some love, everyone out there, and go buy their new game or newish game. Abe's still kickin'. Oddworld was one of those games that was,

if I'm not misremembering, was in the vein of the original Prince of Persia, flashback out of this world. Wasn't it like kind of a intricate, semi-puzzle, two-dimensional side-scroller? It was like a puzzle platformer, precision platformer, and you had to go through a series of screens. There were a lot of like,

so you were an enslaved factory worker in this dystopian, alien reality, and a lot of it was recruiting other of your allies to help you solve puzzles. You saved other factory workers. Yeah, upright machinery. That's what was so neat about it, at least to me as a kid, like you didn't have any weapons, you didn't kill anybody.

You could eventually like kind of rig things up to kill your enemies, but you were just supposed to save people. That was like your points. It wasn't how many people you killed, it was how many people you saved. And it had a good sense of humor. It's actually weirdly kind of presaging avatar in a way, because you're a blue guy. Oh, sure. And you're in this, you're fighting this industrial evil kind of like exploitative species. But

it was, it was really fun. And, and it was kind of one of the first game, I think was a launch title for the PS1 and had really gorgeous cutscenes that integrated well into the gameplay. As much as Final Fantasy VII and indeed Metal Gear kind of got credit for that, I think Oddworld was sort of doing a lot of that before many others. Yeah, definitely not at that tier of popularity. No, no. But a game I remember really enjoying. And yeah, I thought that they were just gonna kind of keep making them.

But I think that the developer, I actually is Oddworld Inhabitants. I mean, is that who made the Soulstorm? Yeah. I guess so. I think they like got back together or something, or it was sort of kickstarted in some way. I should mess around with the new one because because I have heard that it is good, and I did enjoy the original. But yeah, the character design that you mentioned

is just like a big part of what's so appealing about it. Like they're really, really cool looking. Like your main character, Abe, in the first couple is like really cool, and then the evil aliens also have like a really cool look to them. Yeah, the slug executive, they're like little slugs, they got big shoulder pad suits and. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

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Heather at Get Dash Blade sent you. Enhance your everyday with VIA. ["Get Dash Blade"] Do you have, because like as someone who operates so much, you know, professionally, like you're exploring and researching the political sphere, you're so conscious of, you know, the evils that exist in the world. Do you have any, like does that color,

like, because I sometimes feel that, and I'm not someone who's plugged in or is knowledgeable as you, but like if I'm playing like a historical strategy game, I'm sometimes like so hyper-conscious of like, oh, well this is a game where like colonization and conquest is like a gameplay mechanic. I know a lot of people feel that playing,

I don't play shooters, but a lot of people playing military first-person shooters are like, this is kind of weird, because this product is just kind of propaganda, and what my player character is doing in this is actually pretty horrendous. Do you ever have those feelings about video games or inactive experiences?

If anyone's interested, on a blowback, you know, video game crossover, that's a fun episode back in season one. But no, I, you know, I, the only games I can really say I ever felt queasy about with that, because I am a believer in, you know, there's a way to enjoy nasty things in art or culture without, you know, believing in their moral value in the real world. I do think the Call of Duty games gross me out.

Yeah. They're just, you know, maybe I also think they're art fun, so that's why I'm making the, I'm picking them. But, God, there's some just vile stuff in those games And and then Oliver North is in them. It's just it's so they really just like Went for it, so that's the only one that comes to mind for me because I talk about strategy games Like I loved Starcraft as a kid. Yeah, I never of course that's in space that hasn't happened yet, but But the but I never played like command and conquer or the other ones Of course, that's in space. That hasn't happened yet. But I never played Command and Conquer or the other ones.

I don't know a lot. I basically know all the games you've said and none other, no others. So I didn't really explore maybe some of the other more nasty real world references when I was playing games as a kid. When I got my Sega Master System, the first game my parents gave me

was a game called Aztec Adventure, which I have an image of right here. Oh yeah, I remember the game. A traditional. God, that iPad is so nice. Thank you so much. Just seeing that screen right now, I was like, that's so nice.

Thank you. Yeah, Heather's got the best tablet in the room. Anyway. That fucking sucks. Anyway, so the got the best tablet in the room. And it fucking sucks. Anyway, so the core mechanic of Aztec Adventure was that you were like a Spanish colonist, or is that what you'd call a colonizer? And there would be like all these like Aztec soldiers

that were like dogs and cats and bunnies, but they were still soldiers. Right. And in order to progress through the level, you could throw money at them until they would join your side and attack their friends. And so your goal going through the game would be to assemble a small small collection like a party of bribed locals who would then help you slaughter their their their villages and

As a kid you were just like yahoo yay I gotta throw I gotta throw money at these guys and then as an adult you're like what the fuck is that kids game? That's that's a nightmare. Sounds like edutainment to me. Yeah, that's crazy. Yeah. Yeah, it's a, look, a lot of this stuff is a nightmare. But you are, Brendan, there are some games

that you do know very well, and those are the Metal Gear games. I mean, I'm curious about Kojima games in general. Did you ever mess around with Death Stranding or a game like Snatcher back in the day? Did those ever connect with you? I haven't played the Snatcher stuff. I have only played, other than the Metal Gear series,

I have only played Death Stranding. And I was late to it, because that came out during COVID, right? It was another one of his prophetic. Yeah, right before it. His prophetic moments. Because I didn't get to Metal Gear. I'm relatively new to Metal Gear itself, all things considered, until after the pandemic.

Because during lockdown, or after lockdown, I got an Xbox during lockdown because I was like, well, if I'm going to regress, this is probably the time to do it. I'm going to buy a video game system. Because I hadn't played video games since I was like, well, if I'm going to regress, this is probably the time to do it. I'm going to buy a video game system. Because I hadn't played video games since I was a kid. I did not play them in high school. All the best games are coming out. Resident Evil 4 is coming out. Halo 2 is coming out.

I'm missing all of it. And then in college, I kind of screwed around with maybe a Wii game here or there in the dorm room or whatever, but I didn't play it myself. So it was only a couple years ago, with the pandemic, I started playing. And that's when I started playing Metal Gear. So then Death Stranding, I got to,

and I really enjoyed it. I hated the sections where you had to shoot stuff. I felt like it felt like it was, you had to like find Mads Mikkelsen and shoot him in the head five times Right and then run away again And it felt like a weirdly like felt like the studio demanded that he put in a stealth section For like I don't know Kojima

Trademark reasons, and I didn't like that, but I loved the rest of the game, and I'm excited for the second one Yeah, it's I mean I thought it was an awesome experience. I did take some time to warm up to it. I know you're talking about those little interlude chapters or like they're not gameplay wise, they're not the funnest part of the game, but I think story wise they tie in pretty well. But we're all huge Death Stranding fans here.

I mean, it's like, I don't know, it's kind of Pete Kojima in a lot of ways. Yeah, it's a phenomenal experience. And also, you know, playing it, so I think I started playing it December 2019, so I was done with it as pandemic came down, but then was just like, what is happening? What, how is this, I just finished this thing.

Like the moment we started like cheering for delivery people, I was like, I feel like I've gone mad. Yeah, you're just thinking about like, thanks Sam, you're a hero for delivering all this manga. Also, it was the sound, because it was the most recent game I had finished, it was the soundtrack that I listened to

when I was taking a walk on the abandoned streets of Los Angeles. I'm almost positive we talked about this on the podcast because we had the same experience. I remember that, walking around with earbuds and listening to the Death Stranding soundtrack where they're just like, no one is out. People who are out are wearing masks outside

because no one knew what we were supposed to be doing. And then yeah, it's exactly, I felt like I could Just yell I'm Sam I built one of those big lobby garages that people could you know heal in and and bring their motorcycle into just so You know when I got my treats, you know, it was yeah Everyone went everyone wins, you know That's just

doing your part all right well one more question for you Brandon a question for the room actually is what are you playing what are you playing hi is me the resident evil merchant and I'm always here asking the same question every week what are you playing? Snakewiger, what are you playing? You seem especially haggard this week. Are you alright? I've got too many jobs right now. Oh boy, yeah, you've got to streamline. You have more than one job?

Yeah, I've got four jobs. Four? Four jobs. You're not paying the bills with just selling stuff under your trench coat. No, no, no. I guess my thought was his only job was this. So his job as a merchant is one. This is the second one. Two.

Okay, so two additional jobs. I finally got a job at La Colombe, the coffee shop. And my final job is I'm a washer at Crossroads. So Crossroads is a secondhand clothing store where you can donate or sell items to the store and then you can buy them. And that was what was attractive about this place for me. Well, you're also-

And I was like, oh, I'm buying and selling, I get it. What are you buying? What are you selling? It's your trade. But you're also talking about stuff that's within walking distance of the headgum studio. So I feel like you're just spending time in a room. Yeah, I like to keep it local.

So I've got too many jobs, I'm working around the clock. Not to dox myself, but a little too close to my house There isn't an evil merchant. We had an agreement. I know where Nick lives. I have no idea where you live You'll never find me always sounds like a threat when you say it. I'll answer your question, which is Resident Evil Merchant I've been playing this game 80 days. This is developed by my ankle and this was released back in 2014 This is one of those games that got a bunch of Game of the Year praise from like the New Yorker, you know, like a bunch of non-gaming publications, which for me as someone who like plays a lot of games, like I'm always like a little skeptical of like this is like

going to be like kind of like a like a mist, if you will, like a game for non-gamers. But it is really cool. It is a narrative game that is based on the Jules Verne novel, as you might infer from the title, with a little bit of more steampunk to it. I'm playing it on iOS, but it is on Steam, it's on Switch, it's on every platform at this point. It's been ported everywhere. And the highlight is just first off the quality of the writing.

It's very, very high. It's like a... It's up there with some of the better written games, the choice-based narrative games that are out there, but also just the quantity of language. I'll just read a little bit from The Guardian piece about it. Meg Jayanth was the lead writer on this, and this is an excerpt from The Guardian. The journey described in Jules Verne's Around the World in 80 Days is complete in a little over 60,000 words.

80 Days, the game by contrast, contains more than half a million words. Although you have to play many times before you read them all, the average full playthrough exposes you to about 2% of the game's available text. So it is just a daunting sort of thing. It's, you know, I'm a few hours into it, but it's like 50 hours to not complete one playthrough, but basically to see all the game's content. There's just an enormous amount within it. But it's a really cool game, I'm gonna keep playing it.

And part of what I like about it is that Inkle uses their in-house engine, the Ink Engine, is now open source and free to use for everybody so people can develop their own games with it, which, I don't know, it's just nice when a developer does that. But yeah, 80 days, that's what I've been playing. I love to hear this. I love it when every time Nick brings up a game

and it's like, I haven't heard about this. It's not on my radar and it sounds fascinating, but also ultimately not for me. Yeah, I'm always thinking I'm constantly playing games that Heather would hate. But I love hearing about them. Oh, okay. In a way, it's kind of like you're my Twitch stream

to games that I would never actually enjoy. I do, for some reason, the story of around the world in 80 days, to me, that's one of the great stories. I love it. I love the idea of trying to go around the world in 80 days. It's pretty good. It's funny that there used to be a time

when going around the world was like a huge, a huge. Circumnavigating the globe was the daunting prospect. Challenging somebody to a race that big is funny to me. I don't know, don't take this the wrong way. This sounds like something Trump might be saying right now in his speech in a rally. I just love 80 days. No one could do 80 days now. We used to do 80 days, days now what we're doing. We're so stupid I just love the idea of like him getting in a loop about about a hundred around the world in 80 days

I can hear it Sorry, I do I do unfortunately Think and talk exactly like him. Yeah, I can tell I can tell. I can tell. I can tell. I can tell. I can tell. I can tell.

I can tell. I can tell. I can tell. I can tell. I can tell. I can tell. I can tell. I can tell.

I can tell. I can tell. I can tell. I can tell. I can tell. I can tell. I can tell. I can tell.

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Rules and restrictions may apply. Matt, what are you playing? I'll tell you what I'm playing. Well, you'll hear about what I'm really playing next week when we talk about Astro Bot. I can't get enough Astro Bot. I have lots to say about it and I'll have a lot to say about it when we talk next week. But I found out recently as of a few days ago that my family no longer was in possession of my original PlayStation 1. Wow.

And I don't know what happened. I don't know what happened. I don't know what happened. a few days ago that my family no longer was in possession of my original PlayStation 1. And I don't know what happened. I don't know what happened to that. I have my PlayStation 2, everything else beyond that. But for some reason I didn't travel, I didn't leave the home of my PlayStation 1. I just assumed it was gonna be there safe for the rest of my life and I dig it up one day when I'm like going through some stuff over there whatever like oh look. It's my PlayStation 1 nowhere in the house nowhere on the properties It's gone So what do I do I go to eBay and I fucking write this wrong and I get a I get I don't get the original

Model which it was what I had, but I got the the redesigned PS one. That's a slick piece of hardware It's so I'll go as far to say it's cute. It's a cute little boy It's a cute little guy. I Love it. I had no way of Knowing if it worked because I don't have a TV With the red yellow or white cables, but I did buy an adapter. I I do have access to a CRT that I just don't have in my home I'd love to hear that man just don't have in my home.

I love to hear that, Matt. You have to know how much I love to hear that. Thank you. It's in my fiance's parents' house, but I just don't have space for it. But I bought an adapter because I needed to make sure this worked. I bought two games for it, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1, which is due to arrive,

and Crash Team Racing, because those are two of my favorite ones about two controllers I was like oh, these are like sort of I don't know what I'm gonna bust this out I don't know what the plan is yeah, I just know that I needed to have this no I get it and I booted it Up I was looking it it came with a memory card and a controller So I'm like what's on this memory card is there anything on this memory card thinking there'd be nothing on it I I was delightfully Incorrect there were some save files on it for Resident Evil 2 for siphon filter for for croc Speaking of oh, yeah shitty mascot Rayman crash to

Star Wars Jedi battles, I think it's called, and then there were three character saves for Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3, but on the save files you can see what they named their characters, and I'm just gonna read what the characters' names were, or what the saves were saved as.

I'll go from less bad to most bad. Okay, great. as I'll go from less bad to most bad okay great alcoholica which I'm gonna assume was like a custom character yeah Bucky Bucky which I'm gonna guess was a Bucky Lassic save and then finally the first one that caught my eye Tony cock bit And that's That's why I think eBay is the most magical website we have Because this came from another person on earth. This is a Metal Gear related episode, so I'm picturing Psycho Mantis in the first game. Reading, ah, I see you've been playing as Tony Cock, bitch!

Put your controller on the ground! It was pretty alarming. I don't know if everything came from the same person, the console, the controller, the memory card, but as one package, it was quite a steal. 60 bucks for all three of those. Hey, there you go. So not bad. Would have been free if my family respected me at all, but that's it for me.

Brendan, what are you playing? Well, you guys might be about to make some news here on the show actually, because I recently finished my first ever FromSoft Souls type game. Wow! I've never played one of those before, and I had a blast. It was Bloodborne. I started with Bloodborne. Wow! Wow, I love it and I You know, I'm sure this is a well well-worn story for people who play but you know the first first couple hours I'm like, I'm gonna give this another day and if I get past the first area

I'll be amazed, you know And and if I don't I'm just going to put it down and and that's that and then you know flash forward It was like two weeks later. I found every boss. I did the whole DLC I was loving it loving it loving it, and I'm only worried now that None of the others are gonna quite scratch the itch that the specific system of blood-borne did but I I absolutely had a blast so it was awesome Do you have any plans to play you know go on and play you know? Oh gee dark souls or Elden ring or securo or anything so we'll get I guess you know it

It was weird because I wanted to next play securo But then we were going to play metal gear rising and they're both sword games right and I started to read I did start playing both But I started to like fuck up in one because I was using the system of the other and because they're kind of different Obviously very much. So yeah, and so I just put sick I put sec or away so I could give the best performance for this show with the Game, but I want to get back to sec or oh because I was enjoying it as well Yeah, I love sec or oh sec or oh, so I I finished sec or oh but I want to get back to Sekiro because I was enjoying it as well.

Yeah, I love Sekiro. Sekiro, so I finished Sekiro, this was a thing I'd been meaning to do and I finally got around to it last year and I just had an absolute blast with it. But I also like, you know, I only recently got around to finally finishing Elden Ring and I'm going through the DLC now.

I mean, I think what you're describing is like a pretty common experience to a lot of people with FromSoft games of just like maybe taking a while to warm up to them. But once you do, it's like nothing else. It's just, I know that there's, you know, maybe there's other games where the combat is more essential. Like I get the feeling that FromSoft is about the exploration

and the level design and things like that and the world-building But I really did start to dig the like waltz You know of the combat where you you retreat and then you swing back and they get their moment But you have to know the rhythm of like the enemy and I had never really played a game like that I you know, we've just discussed I haven't played a game past the year 1996 So I don't really I wasn't aware of what's addicting about these these games and so Yeah, it every time you kind of feel like a god for beating the last boss the game just kind of gets that much more

Difficult going forward and you're never totally cruising or comfortable. It's always a really lovely challenge So yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna sink my teeth into Sekiro and then maybe Elden Ring after that. I love it. Heather, what are you playing? Well, I've been playing this month's We Play, You Play, Astrobot. And since I want to save my thoughts about Astrobot until next week's episode, instead, I'd like to share an interview that dropped today with Tetsu Nomura

about Kingdom Hearts 5? which one is it? 4, Kingdom Hearts 4. Because there are some interesting- Matt's face was very displeased when you said 5 instead of 4. Well, here's- I was just worried that I skipped one. Here's what confused me about it,

is because he calls this, in the interview, Kingdom Hearts 13, because it is the 13th game of Kingdom Hearts. Oh, sure, okay. So I was like, wait, which one is it again? Anyway, there's a couple of nuggets. It's sorry, like actually number 12 was memory bliss remembered, re-remembered for Nokia N-Gage.

There's some interesting tidbits in the interviews, and I'm not gonna read the whole thing, but one of them is, the question is, in the Kingdom Hearts series, there are so many foreshadowing elements that span the series, so how do you keep track of those? No more answers. As I've mentioned previously, I write a lot in my notes,

but I also make sure the staff remember, and I like watching videos. So I watch play through videos and reviews on YouTube. Basically, rather than looking back on my notes, but I also make sure the staff remember. And I like watching videos. So I watch play through videos and reviews on YouTube. Basically, rather than looking back on my notes, I make sure the staff remembers what happened in past titles. So what Nomura is stating in this answer is that he's watching the same Kingdom Hearts lore videos

that we watch when we are trying to make sense of the Kingdom Hearts series. And it's informing what he thinks about it. Yeah, he also, he talks about there is a brand new mobile game that's going to be coming out called Kingdom Hearts Missing Link. And that the two of these things are a new entry point, Kingdom Hearts 4 and Kingdom Hearts Missing Link are going to be new entry points into the series

so you don't have to know any of the canon of the rest of the series in order to jump right in. He also says that this is a prequel to all of these games and that he is so interested in retiring soon. Here, I'll read the... Maybe I can read this reply. I only have a few years left until I retire, and it's looking like will I retire or will I finish the series first?

I'm making Kingdom Hearts 4 with the intention of it being a story that leads to the conclusion. So he's eyeing the end game on Kingdom Hearts 4 with the intention of it being a story that leads to the conclusion. So he's eyeing the end game on Kingdom Hearts after what, 22 years as of today, since the first one came out. Anyway, I thought it was a really interesting interview. It was in today's, as I record, what is this? It's September 18th interview in Young Jump.

And there's a bunch of translations of it online and you should check them out. This is not a news broadcast. Is he really, yeah, it's not a news broadcast. Is he really approaching retirement age? I just looked up, he's 53, he's not that old. Yeah, but these games,, they take so fucking long. If he's gonna do like two more games.

Oh, I see what you're saying. Yeah, that's like 12 years in the future by the time they come out. So if he's gonna do two more games, Kingdom Hearts 4 and Kingdom Hearts 5, then that takes him to retirement age, which is wild. Yeah. All right, let's talk about Metal Gear Rising Revengeance.

As Heather mentioned, 2013 developed by Platinum Games, Bayonetta, Nier Automata, some of their more famous games. This was a Kojima supervised spin-off of Metal Gear focused on combat as opposed to stealth, mostly sword combat, though there are some other armaments. It follows as a player character Metal Gear Solid 2 and 4's Raiden as a blade wielding cyber soldier battling sinister

private military corporations who are working to extract the brains of children to build a cyborg army. I wanna read a little bit from an interview on platinumgames.com that came out in 2013 with the scenario writer, Etsu Tamari, from Metal Gear Rising Revengeance. He writes, "'Even if a game has a good story,

"'if the gameplay sucks, it's shit. "'Making gameplay interesting requires a repeating process "'of creating something and tearing it down. "'For example, the game's maps might look interesting "'on paper, but once you try working them "'into the game itself, you realize they're boring. "'That happens a lot. "'Written you try working them into the game itself, you realize they're boring. That happens a lot. Written plans will never convey how the game truly feels,

and as such, will never be an indication as to whether or not a game is actually fun. And I think that's important, because this game fucking rocks. It's really fun. And there was some skepticism pre-release, I remember, of this game, and people were just kind of like,

what is this thing? And it looks kind of like a dumb half-assed spin-off. But then it comes out and everyone's like, oh, we like this. And it actually felt like it developed a cult fandom. You sold very well, sold two million copies, but then like developed this cult fandom that was like advocating for it and had it grow in popularity over time. I actually bought this on Steam sale, I want to say a couple of years ago, but I'd never actually played it. I just saw it was like, you know, whatever, $4.99 or whatever, on deep discount. I was like, oh, I want to play this someday. And so this episode ended up being

an excuse to get into this game. And I will say, yeah, I think it's super fun. Brendan, you mentioned that you're a big fan of the Metal Gear franchise, but this is a fairly recent thing for you. What was your entry point to the franchise? What was the first Metal Gear game you played? So a couple years ago, I started with Snake Eater because I somewhat naively thought, this will all make more sense if I start the chronology. Right, sure. You know. Um, and it took me a second,

but I then became addicted. And I went, so I went from, I played the whole series. The only one I haven't played before getting to this one, which I had not, is Survive, which I have no plans to play. Yeah. Yeah. That did seem like a kind of soulless, you know, afterthought. But yeah, so I went in with Snake Eater, which maybe, I don't know, is still my favorite.

And then I did, you know, Peace Walker 5, 1, 2, and then 4. I got a PS3 so that I could play Metal Gear Solid 4. Go rocks. And I did enjoy 4 very much. I actually replayed 4 after playing Rising because I scratched the itch. So this was, I didn't know what to think about this one because I'm not a guy who plays like hack and slash games and I knew it was a big departure, but I really enjoyed it.

I thought it was fun. I thought the story was, I was kind of ready for it to be sort of half-baked Kojima stuff in a way that wasn't satisfying, but I thought the story was fun. If anything, it just surprised me how short it was. It felt like I finished it in like four hours. And I actually forgot whether or not I played it as the days led up to this show.

I was like, oh, God, I got to make sure I play that game before I go on Get Played. I'm like, oh, wait, no, I did play that game. I finished that game. So it just flew by for me, but that's a good sign. Yeah, it's a pretty brief campaign. I didn't actually finish it myself. I played through it, a good chunk of it.

And then I watched a playthrough of this. But I am going to finish it after this record, like later on, myself, I played through it, a good chunk of it, and then I watched a play through of this. But I am going to finish it after this record later on because I do want to just play it through to the end. I just found the combat super kinetic and super engaging. And Heather, the quote, yeah, you used to tee things up. I was just like, it felt like, and maybe this is a platinum game things in general, but it felt like they were so focused on making sure the combat system felt good and was engaging, because that's definitely

what I got out of it. Yeah, Platinum Games was founded by Shinji Mikami at Sushi Inaba and Hideki Kamiya in 2006. And a lot of the Platinum games franchises like Bayonetta are focused on that extremely tight very responsive combat and so this this is just one more showcase of that kind of specialization from the from the company so you're that we should mention that Brendan's username on the video chat is a venom punished Brendan

Which we're all enjoying but this this game has no shortage of You know a coat like metal gear kind of names. We get jet stream Sam Mistral sundowner monsoon But I think the the character that everyone from this, and certainly was my entry point to this, is the main bad guy, Senator Armstrong, who you see a lot of Senator Armstrong memes continually recirculating, particularly like in the era of Trump. It became a big like, look, this character said, make America great again before Trump did, back in 2013 or whatever.

That was a big thing. but Senator Armstrong is great I mean it's just like a super buff senator who's like charged up with nanomachines and is like effectively invincible is he's great he looks like I'm Craig T. Nelson to me he looks like coach very much so and that made me like him. I wanted Dauber to be his psychic. Metal Gear Dauber. But yeah, no, it was really fun. By the way, I don't know if we were recording yet, but there was a blowback season five Cambodia Metal Gear Rising crossover, which is Monsoon.

And I do use this clip in the first episode Monsoon the boss who like you know can like make his body parts split up. Yeah says something like I learned About life from penom pen and I think he's referencing the killing fields there Wow, which is slightly in bad taste Yeah, I mean I actually don't care about that. These games are so off the wall. So he says, yeah, he name checks Cambodia in the game. Wow.

There's another monsoon quote that I roughly transcribed. Free will is a myth. We are all pawns controlled by an even greater force. Memes. But given- Show me the lie. Given that this game has had this meme resurgence in the last 11 years since it was published,

and I think if you're at home and you haven't played this game and you're not, you know, habitually online, what we're saying is there is a speech by a bad guy in this game who is a senator where he he doesn't hint at the phrase make America great again. He shouts it in all caps as the thunderous conclusion to a speech he's given about how he's going to transform the United States of America and the presidency into a Darwinian free for all where people will become empowered to fight each other

in their own private warfare, which is what fucking happened. It's like a libertarian like, you know, wet dream of like, let's have everybody, this will be survival of the fittest, this will be a true meritocracy, only the strong will survive and thrive. But like, for this game to come out in 2013,

and obviously Make America Great Again was a Ronald Reagan slogan, so it wasn't like it poofed out of nowhere. But for this game to come out in 2013, and then Trump to use that as his campaign slogan in 2015, get elected in 2016, and then we're off to the races with basically the plan from this game. Of course, this is cited as another piece of evidence

in Kojima's like sort of prescience, even though he's not directly involved with the writing of this game. Yeah, I don't know how involved he was exactly. I mean, he was overseeing development and then it got handed off to Platinum, but it's certainly like a thing that he has endorsed and like said there should be a sequel for it.

I don't know if it's gonna happen, but yeah, it definitely feels, even if it's not coming directly from him, like it is part of the Kojima. Kojima verse? Yeah, the Kojima aesthetic, the Kojima philosophy. The aura, it has his aura. Yeah, very much so.

Kojima, I've seen what you've done for others. Please think of something good happening to me so that it can happen, please, please. You'll just see your PS1 outside your door tomorrow. It's back. Podcaster Matt Appadaka, I've seen you on television. In the future.

Oh cool, okay, great. You mentioned the, you mentioned the, you mentioned Monsoon and yeah, the body can kind of like fragment and display into a bunch of different pieces I mean, this is another thing that I think this makes this game feel very metal gear Even though it is a spinoff is like the character design and the boss design because like there's also It's Mistral right? Mistral has the

The familiars that are the orbs with the hands that walk around and then the hands Graft onto her and then the hands graft onto her and then she has like a bunch of like spider hands. It's just like, this is just like a crazy, you know, anime character design, but also makes for like, just like a really cool visual and a fun fight. It evoked a fragile's redesign

in Death Stranding 2's trailer for me because she has those gloves that are hanging over her shoulders that light cigarettes for or whatever. And I was like, oh man, I've seen this aesthetic more recently. Right.

Yeah, there's a visual language of Metal Gear that they did a very good job tapping into. Where again, I was kind of wondering, you know, is this gonna hit the way the other games do? And it's not like quite, you know, in the universe of the other games, but it doesn't really try to be. It's just taking enough from what made

those other games recognizably Metal Gear and then goes, you know, it's obviously in the future, and all the other stories have been concluded, so it's starting new. And I love the, but it also takes, there's Metal Gear Rays in the game, there's the little fucking three armed guys that are from Metal Gear Solid 4.

So it carries over some just enough stuff so that it feels like contiguous with all the Kojima games. And I think they did a great job at that. Brendan, how do you feel about Raiden in general? Cause I remember, you know, I played, I played Metal Gear Solid 1 on PlayStation 1, I got Metal Gear Solid 2, I pre-ordered that, played that at launch on PlayStation 2, and that was a game that had a big backlash at the time because everyone's like, I want to be Solid Snake

again, wait, why do I have to be this whiny guy Raiden? But then they kind of like reinvented Raiden in 4, and then, you know, that version of Raiden, this kind of cyborg, badass, is the player character here. I mean, do you have any feelings toward this character, any connection towards him? Well, so because I played the second one fully, so much later than its release, 20 years later, I already knew that you played as Raiden. I didn't realize you actually briefly did play as Snake

in the beginning. So I could see why people kind of felt like it was a bait and switch, but I liked that he did that. I thought it was smart what they did. Like in four, four is such a beautiful mess that throw Raiden in, give him a new cool look and design, and it did tee up this game to have him feel fully re-realized, re-ven-gen-ced, re-realized,

whatever you wanna say, because it just works. Because it also, on a character level, he was the rookie in Two who didn't know anything about the evils of the world. He'd only played in VR or whatever. They keep saying, like, this isn't VR. And then he starts actually getting a taste for blood, and he becomes Jack the Ripper. That's a cool arc.

I guess he was a child soldier, so I take back what I said about how he never tasted the real combat before. But he definitely was like an innocent, you know, who obviously offscreen gets corrupted by the time he gets to four, or he gets a taste of reality. Yeah, and he's definitely like, despite his child soldier backstory,

he is like, you know, presented his fresh meat in two. And he is like, this is like his first real mission. Yeah, the thing I remember because and Heather, I don't know if you if you had the demo, but I what I remember is I had the so I bought the game zone of the enders, which was another Kojima game, a mech game that was all right. But it came with the main attraction is that it came with the the demo disc for Metal Gear Solid 2, which was just the tanker section, the snake, the entire snake part of the game.

And you play that and it's like an incredible level. Like it's the tanker mission is so, so good. And it's like two hours of gameplay. I played that over and over again on the demo disc. And then when the so that's partly why when the final game comes out, everyone's like, oh, there's gonna be so much more snake is like, oh, wait, no, I played all the snake that's in the entire game. Yeah, but to your point, what you're saying, looking back on it now and when we revisited

Metal Gear Solid 2 and we talked about it on the podcast, I was like, I love that choice now. At the time, I wasn't someone complaining about it online, but I was a little bit let down. But looking back on it, it was like, oh wait, no, of course, that's such an awesome artistic, you know, a way to handle this. Yeah, the only thing it did is it kind of, for me, it bummed me out is that Five's twist is such a hollow imitation of that,

where at the end you realize it's a body double. I, like, you already did that with Raiden, you know? But Five has a lot of problems in the story level, obviously. I don't think, I ignore, I ignore that Venom Snake bullshit. Even though my name is punished, Brendan, in this chat, I ignore the fucking Venom Snake thing. You're big boss in that game,

I don't care who Venom Snake is. But Raiden, yeah, I thought it was neat. Even though the tanker section is probably still my favorite part of the game. Here's part of like going back to how it that it feels to play and this is this is like almost Childishly simple what I'm gonna say But I think just like a part of part of why this is this game works So well and has such a big fandom is it feels great to run around and there's in fact like a special running around mode

Yeah, and it feels great to use the sword yeah ninja ninja run ninja Mode is good blade mode is really really good It's like I cuz I I'll say that like when we were talking about doing this and we had kicked it around in the past before too I I was under the impression that it was bad that like that people didn't like this and I Bought it on Xbox impression that it was bad that like that people didn't like this and I Bought it on Xbox Like I was playing it on my Xbox series s within like five minutes I was like this game fucking rules. It is so good and so fun And it's just that stuff is just like it's that you know you get to cut shit up

Yeah, you chop it to cut you get to cut shit up. Yeah, you chop You get to chop people up human beings by choosing horizontal or vertical slice Yes, it rules and then you slice and then you see the pieces Fly off in the direction that you selected. It's that's very that's just good stuff, and it makes a good meat sound Yeah, yeah, really really good, and you know I love stealth games That's just good stuff. And it makes a good meat sound. Yeah, yeah, really, really good. And I love stealth games, I love the Metal Gear games, I like crawling around, I love using a silencer or whatever, I love using CQC.

But give me a sword, I ain't doing any of that shit, no way. What was crazy to me about revisiting this is that it's been long enough now that I was stunned at the PS3's graphics look, that I was like, oh, I recognize this Xbox 360 PS3 era look as a kind of game, as a kind of look.

It felt like, surprisingly, it was like somebody took a Dreamcast and like turned it up to like 30 or something, like it still has these smooth like building textures and it still looks extremely video gaming. We're now like, we're so obsessed with when you walk through grass, does it deform underneath your feet? And if you step in water,

does the water ripple around your ankles? And at that time, I was surprised how video gamey it felt. And look. It feels like very, you know, like the environments feel like very boxy and very, very contained, but it even lets them focus the detail on the character models and, you know,

versus like these giant sprawling environments. But yeah, you're absolutely right. It feels I'm playing on PC But it feels very much like that a late ps3 game But a ps3 era sort of experience also is crazy because like when I played the last of us when it came out on ps3 Which is also insane that that game came out on ps3. Yeah, I was like, holy shit This is the realest looking fucking game I've ever seen in my life. I can't believe this fucking game. And now you look back at it and you're like,

wow, that looks like a video game. I wonder if I can find, I can't remember if it's computer gaming world or PC gamer, but like there was a 90s cover. The Unreal? The Unreal cover, yeah, yeah. That was next gen. That was next gen magazine, yeah.

Yeah, yeah. There was a cover that was showcasing the Unreal Engine graphics. And on the cover of the next generation magazine. Unreal One, like way back in the day, like the first iteration. Is a guy made out of like maybe six triangles. Like, he's got like a texture of face

that is barely recognizable as like a monstrous face. And then the subtitle, do you have it in front of you, Nick? It's unreal. Yes, this is an actual PC game screenshot. I'll show this to Matt, because I don't think you've seen this. Oh yeah. Rache, have you seen this before?

Can you believe your eyes? Yeah, it is crazy. But that was like super impressive in like what, 1995, whenever this came out? But anyway, all that's to say is that I was surprised how nostalgic I felt for the PS3 look once it was on screen in front of me. I was like, oh man, this was a good era and it's already retro. Like it's two generations old already.

Like if you were playing games on the N64, you would consider NES games retro. So the idea that we're on a PS5 or PS5 Pro and we're playing PS3 or Xbox 360 games, it's like, yeah, this is an old game already. No, this game might have come out when you were 12 and now you're an adult. Fucking crazy.

It's crazy. My childhood. I thought it looked really good. It looks great. Having just played this and four, I thought they both looked really good, but as you're saying, Heather, with that visual style of the era, where it's

not going for hyper-realism, it still impressed me. Just the really polished and detailed look of everybody. Riding looks really cool and shiny, and the cities look futuristic and the art direction's good. I was, yeah, I was really impressed. Yeah, it looks rad. You're absolutely right. I thought the art direction is,

I mean, it's always, I think, pretty stellar in these games. Yeah. Can I say about Raiden's character design real quick? You are first introduced to him. He's in a car, he's wearing a suit, then some like crazy shit happens, and then like he takes off his suit and then to reveal like his like cyborg like body,

and I just think that that's really cool. It is cool, and so he, I'm glad you said that Matt, it is cool. Yeah, he's like. It's cool. He's's like. It's cool. He's like. Unbelievable, his suit. We got the best nano machines.

It reminds me of, it reminded me of the naked gun when he just pulls his collar and the entire suit comes off when he's about to have sex. And then he's just, he's naked, but Raiden is the opposite, He has a cyborg suit on. Yeah, that was hilarious. And again, just this kind of goofy, like that classic Metal Gear goofiness of like,

oh, your cyborg suit somehow fit underneath your Brooks brothers. Yeah. As cool as he looks in that sequence, he gets killed very soon after that. Like his arm gets chopped off on the back of the train. His eye gets cut off. And he comes back looking even cooler.

He has a skull chin strap. Like his bottom of his mouth is metal teeth as if his skull is exposed, which move when he speaks. And the effect is so fucking cool Yes, I was like if this guy was a DJ. I'd be like this is the best club on earth I my thought was if I was brought back to life like that I would have been like just just leave me But that also like you know his his reformed cybernetic body,

his full cyborg, you know, like character model, like introduces like the new gameplay system of now you can like extract health from enemies, which is also like a cool thing of just like being able to harvest as you're, to keep yourself alive as you go. Like I love that shit. We haven't really talked about the sort of general story.

And the general story of this game is that it exists in a time after the Patriots, which are effectively like the Metal Gear Illuminati, have been dispelled. And so warfare is on the decline, and the enemies in this game are trying to jumpstart war again, because war economies are so important to their personal ambitions. And it's, you know, like when you shrink it down into a sentence like that, I can't tell if it sounds insane or totally reasonable.

Well, it's likely that the cold open that we were talking about where he's right in his suit is escorting the president of an unnamed African nation as like a bodyguard. This rival private military corporation carries out this operation to assassinate him to basically you know Like like because we just need to stir the pot a little bit more and this this is leading towards a plot that Senator Armstrong Is ultimately behind to kill the US president in Pakistan under a false flag operation to restart the war on terror

So as if we know that pretense we just like let's just keep it going. You did skip a step, which is during that initial PMC exchange, one of the guys who is on the bad guy side, who's like this super buff, what's his name? Shadow- Sundowner? Sundowner, which also yikes, fucking yikes. Are we talking about Joe Biden, the president? Talk about a prophecy.

He uses two swords that he snaps together into scissors and beheads a guy with it. And it's fucking nuts. So Brennan, being that you are so invested in American Empire and American history, how... Financially, personally, I am invested in all of our holdings. How many of the things in this game did they get right? Like, how much of this actually happened? Well, what, because this was... what does the game take place, 2014? Is that the year? 2018. 2018, okay.

I always forget there's like, because Metal Gear Solid 1 takes place in 2005, even though it came out in 1997, right? Yeah. Okay. No, I thought, I think these games are always impressively literate in the like, you know, historical political zone. And I think they know enough of their stuff to take real world, you know, dial it up by 50, 60 percent for a fun dystopian version of everything.

But the, I mean, geez, the plot about Pakistan, like especially because this game came out in 2013, the dates are flying everywhere, it came out in 2013 and it takes place in 2018, right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's, that shit happens all the time, all across the world. And this was around the time that Blackwater was starting to become, for lack of a better word, a household name. And private military contractors were a very visible and somewhat novel presence

in the war on terror, the Iraq and Afghanistan. We did a whole season about, well, wait, we did Iraq and Afghanistan. We did two seasons. And I think what's great about these games is the kind of real-time reaction and sort of hyper-normalization of these ideas into the Metal Gear universe, where it all scans. Like you said, does this sound reasonable or totally over-the-top? I mean, it's over-the-top because the guy's name is Sundowner and he's, you know, he's like got a giant mech suit on but it's, it's a pretty, it's a pretty good story and I think all these games, however goofy they get, are

to me very, very impressive in how much either Kojima or his team or I guess Platinum Games are trying to, you know, really connect with some of these themes about privatization of the military and the ripple effects across the world and technology. And even they were even talking about AI back then, you know? I love it, I love it. Yeah, it's, and I think that's really well said, and just to add onto that in terms of how over the

top it is, I do feel like that helps it connect with a lot of people who are maybe not... There's no real need to be subtle here, because the reality is so obscene. Just by having a character say, you know, all we are saying is give war a chance. It's like, you know, like, and it just makes it really digestible. I feel like that someone who's playing this game for the sword combat, but is maybe getting like

a little bit of insight into how the world actually works. When there's like a talking dog that's like, We didn't mention the talking dog. PMCs have installed shadow governments inside of deep states in small countries and they're going to destabilize the region. What? What are you saying? Talking dog.

Is it blade? Can I just say Blade Wolf? Yeah, he rocks. Blade Wolf. I can't believe I didn't think of this. Talking to my Gex earlier, I thought that the Blade Wolf looked like Rez, who is the villain from Gex. That was what I couldn't stop thinking of the whole time.

Because he just got like kind of a pointy triangle head. And just look it up. I mean, I know they weren't going for that. But I couldn't help but think he looked like, he looked like Rez. Yeah, the little blade wolf. It was, I liked that we had a little companion. I brought up Rez. Yeah. Yeah, a little bit. Definitely bears some resemblance.

Some resemblance, I think. He was scary. I thought the wolf was scary and creepy looking. Oh, and also by the way, I thought it really, like, it's not as deep as the other Metal Gear games, but I thought a really good moment in this game talking about, you know, how grounded it is, how much it connects with real stuff and real themes.

The bit where you can start to hear the soldiers' thoughts and how they're actually just doing it for a paycheck, or, you know, they're reluctant, they don't even really want to be, I'm not even supposed to be here. You know, like, that, that is, that was almost like Koji Mateer know, like that, that is, that was almost like Kojima-tier for me. I loved that section.

And I guess you're in ripper mode and you're just like, I don't care. And you slice them up. But it was pretty great. I love that. Yeah, it's like, I mean, I feel like it's almost like like Kojima trope, cause you see that in three, certainly. That's what comes to mind.

The part where you're like walking through the, basically the valley of all these people that you kill. Oh, the sorrow of boss fight, yeah. Yeah, yeah, and like, definitely like that, when it's like all these, whatever, these mercenaries you're killing, and then they're all just like, well, I was a veteran on the street,

and I was missing a limb, and this gave me the opportunity to like, make some money. I make some money, yeah exactly, and you're killing them. It's like, I love that shit. I love the are we the baddies stuff. God, every time I think about that boss fight in Snake Eater, the sorrow where you're just walking down the thing, I think that's one of the coolest things in any game, it's so fucking good.

Because if you do a non-lethal run, you just walk like five feet and you're done Yeah, if you kill you kill people you're fucked. Yeah, I was gonna say I think one of the coolest things I've seen in a game is sort of thematically on topic is when you shoot somebody in last of us too when they say oh My god, John no Call out their friends name and dismay yeah, yeah You son of a bitch! The stuff that parallels the real world, like when you guys talk about this,

I'm not very smart, so when I see something like that happening in real life, I am thinking, oh, this is like Metal Gear, not the other way around, or something from real life. I think oh this is like metal gear not the other way around like something from real life you know I think that works yeah I don't think it matters which which side of it you you come as long as you recognize it it's it's yeah it fucking is metal gear you seen those fucking dogs at like MIT where they're running on the mechanics dogs yeah they're fucking running on

treadmills it's like that's blade wolf that's blade yeah I mean it's fucking or one of the beat one of the Beauty and the Beast from four one, it's like, that's Blade Wolf. That's Blade Wolf. Yeah, it is, yeah. I mean, it's fucking, or one of the Beauty and the Beast from Four, one of them's like a dog lady. Like, that's being made right now, so, Matt, I think you're, if anything, you're on the right side of looking at it. Thank God, and you know, there was plenty of room for you guys to say, no, Matt, you're smart, that's okay.

I thought about it. No. You know what, that's, I'll take that. That's good. That's fine. Matt, you are smart. Thank you very much. You are smart, Matt.

Thanks. I wish I knew more about stuff that was going on. It's bad. All of it's bad. It's bad? Yeah, it's really bad. Oh, I bet you didn't know that. There's no good news.

I subscribed to it because I was like, okay, I'm getting fucking inundated with like, like stress, trauma. I subscribed to a, because I was like, okay, I'm getting fucking inundated with like, stress, trauma, I'm so, like, if I read anything about the environment, I'm like, I'm fucked, I'm fucked, we're all fucked, like, we're not gonna have any fish in five years. So I subscribed to a subreddit that was like Good News.

It's like a Good News subreddit. Who runs it, John Krasinski? The problem is that there's barely anything on the subreddit. Like there's hardly anything that like ever comes up on my feed. Once in a while it'll be like, new kind of spaghetti found. And I'll be like, oh, what is this article?

And I'll be like, oh, this is from the good, this is the best they could do today? Like that's the article? That's to me, I think Nick's pretty interested too. That's pretty interesting. I wanna know about the spaghetti. I barely use it anymore because I it makes me nauseous to be on it, but I on Twitter I have You know you can make a list instead of just the for you obviously not the for you tab or the or the following tab

Yeah And I just I just you know I made a list of like all the people I actually know and like on there So I can just see their stuff And I called it nice world and so on a list of like all the people I actually know and like on there So I can just see their stuff and I called it nice world And so on the top of the on the top my feet I have for you Following and the nice world and I just click on nice world And that's and that's what I see if I live if I'm gonna live on Twitter. I'll just go to nice world You know that's so sure that guy is going to get ousted that I'm just hanging on

I'm just what do you mean that guy the guy? the guy Who bought Twitter. Smilan Schmuck. Oh, you meant to be, okay. Like I'm so- Senator Armstrong. Yeah. See, but the thing is about-

I didn't realize you were talking about Twitter. Guys like that think they're Senator Armstrong and they're fucking not. Oh, yes. He thinks that when he clenches his gut in, he has the nanomachines surrounding his body and he looks awesome. And you know what, if any of these fucks

were actually buff, maybe I would listen to them. I play college ball. I obey them immediately. Not at some Ivy League school, at Texas. So great. I'd vote for him. As he's punching a man on the back of a ship. How cool would it be, I don't care which candidate did it, it would be kind of funnier if it was Trump, but they just show up to the debate in that giant mech from the end of the game.

The podium is like this big and then he's just this giant ass Mac and he's like got a microphone I'm ready to Follow any single person that presents themselves in a functioning man. Yeah, you show up in Metal Gear ray I'm you got my vote. I'm in I'm absolutely campaign donation and yeah, and I'll campaign for you. Oh, yeah I'll be like please please the cyborg needs to lead us you want to show me Scientology's real? Put a mech on, I'm in. Take me to fucking space, I'm down. Jet stream Sam was a bad dude. Pfft. All right, any other thoughts on Nogur Rising Revengeance?

I mean, just a really cool game. I think that anyone who hasn't played it, I mean, I think it's a good one. As Brendan was saying, it's a brief experience. So it's a good one to buy on sale, but it seems to go on sale a lot. But also, I think you can watch some videos of it and get a sense of the tone and the aesthetic and the fun of this world. And I don't know.

I think it's worth at least dipping your toe in the water with this one because it is A very cool experience. Yeah, I guess I had a question for Brendan since you finished it Did you think any of the boss fights lived up to the greatness of? Like the really great boss fights in any of the Metal Gear games. I can't say that It's not that I didn't enjoy them. I thought they were all fun. I think Monsoon was probably my favorite. Senator Armstrong was okay. You really have to do the move where you dodge. You can eventually buy a dodge

from the whatever, Ryden store. And you have to do that with him, I found, because there's just so many of his attacks are unblockable, but No, I wouldn't quite say that although my opinion might be invalid because apparently everyone hates the boss fights in four and I love them And it was like some of the most fun. I've ever had playing games So maybe my boss my boss tastes is is garbage. I don't know it's interesting information. No I I feel like I mean I guess I know I haven't finished for I have a ps3 and a copy of 4 That I guess I should just fucking play it sounds good for is also short

The cutscenes are the cutscenes are like 80% of the game and you know basically right? But but you know I love for that scene at the end with Big Boss and Snake, put a little lump in my throat. Is that your favorite? How do you rank the Metal Gears? No, no, four is a mess. But, um... I love it.

I love all of them. But, okay, this is indulgent, but how would I rank them? I would say, if you're going purely on gameplay, I would say five for me. It's just so intuitive and so creative and fun. You can do so many different things. It streamlines everything that came before. On a story level though, five is like almost non-existent.

And the story of Metal Gear is some of the best parts of Metal Gear, so that's a tricky thing. One is kind of my favorite pure storytelling, but of course the gameplay is a little simple. And so I would say maybe three is the perfect harmony of a great Metal Gear story with some clunkiness, which I actually find kind of charming in the controls and the mechanics.

You know, we don't love going into the menu after every injury and putting fucking You know a stent in our rib or whatever But but it's got enough of both worlds that I think snake eater still remains The goat I like peace Walker. I like to I find to a tad repetitive in the environment It's like the big show I always when I first played it. I thought you'd be going to somewhere else, and you never do but um Yeah, I mean so I'd probably say snake eater is is the ultimate Is the ultimate one? I'm curious how this remake is gonna go

Yeah, me too Seems like they're playing it safe. I'm cautiously optimistic, but yeah, like yeah, yeah, they're playing it safe It could just be just a fresh coat of paint and not bringing nothing new to it of course Well, but but you know though with the because you mentioned Resident Evil earlier and the Resident Evil For remake is like oh, I mean that that's like did you end up playing that primo? Yeah, I played that like three times. Yeah, it's awesome if they and I think that's I would I don't know But I feel like they're looking toward that. Because that was just innovative enough,

but also was very faithful. Yes. So if they're anywhere near the zone of the Resident Evil 4 remake, that would be pretty good. My dream is that they actually will remake Metal Gear 1 and 2. Not solid, but Metal Gear 1 and 2 as a fully, Oh yeah. We'll make will remake metal gear one and two not solid But metal gear one and two as a fully Yeah, you know 3d game because that's where actually solid and big boss fight

And you never actually see that in the solid series It's always just this like off-camera thing that is the foundation of the whole fucking You know legend and it'd be neat to just kind of take that, which I think a remake team could do, maybe, and just flesh it out into one of the solid type games. But I guess we'll see how Snake Eater goes. Yeah, Metal Gear, like not solid. That those games, like the, first off,

the second one, I feel like, was never actually released in North America officially. But those are games that are weirdly not super available. I think there were bonus features on the Metal Gear Solid 3 disc, but. They're in the HD collection. Oh, the HD collection, that's where they are, yeah.

And therefore, maybe the Master Collection they just put out, which was just a fucking port of the HD collection from like ten years ago, but yeah Yeah, good games full games proud to say that they didn't get me with that That's like that's like that's an absolute trap made specifically for me, and I didn't write I didn't succumb Am I waiting for a sale you bet? All right, let's do a segment. All right, this is a segment that we've done once before. It's called Bargain Bin, and it's based off of a meme format you may be familiar with,

Brendan. It's basically you have $15 to spend money on these particular things. And the category is games from the year 2018. Okay. And so. So this is the year, not the year this came out, the year this is set in. Yeah, the year this is set in.

Got it. And so there's gonna be a list here that we're gonna present. Okay. Oh, oh, oh, okay. And. Oh, okay. Can you embiggen that at all? I need my peepers.

Okay. Okay, we have four in each category, it looks like. Yeah, there's four in each category. I'm gonna need some help discerning some of these. It looks like we got Red Dead Redemption 2, Spider-Man, Super Smash Brothers Ultimate, and God of War, the PlayStation 4 remake. That's in the $5 category.

$5 tier, $4 Celeste, Hitman, is that two? Hitman 2, Return of the Hovered Inn. Into the Breach, $3, we got Detroit Become Human, Tomb Raider, which Tomb Raider is that? It's Shadow of the Tomb Raider? Octopath traveler and a way out Two dollar fire cry five Darksiders three Astro bots Astro bot rescue mission the rest mission with this is a VR one Yeah, okay, and then just cause four and then for at the one dollar tier we got judgment

We had Sea of Thieves Donut County and Among Us. This is an eclectic mix. Do you imagine you assembled this on your own? I made this one myself. Okay. Yeah, I just Googled games that came out in 2018, and I just kind of made some choices, but I kind of, looking at this, this kind of feels right. This feels pretty good. Don't come for me if you think judgment deserves a,

you know, spot in the $5 area. I made this myself. You can make your own if you want. So, to kick things off, why don't I start? Okay, okay In the $5 tier, this is really really hard because I love all these games so so much And it's actually going to pain me. This is actually gonna hurt me and make me sad Because I love the God of War franchise more than anything. Yeah.

I think I have to go Red Dead Redemption 2 on this, not because I like it more, but because I think it's more bang for my buck. A lot of game. I think there's a lot you can do in there and that's just how I'm going to do it. In the $4 tier, I'm going to go ahead and pick Hitman 2. As I mentioned before before I love the stealth missions I love stealth games and these hitman games Brendan if you haven't played them scratch that Metal Gear itch as well really really fun. I

dabbled I dabbled and I need to go back because I enjoyed it. I think you'd really love it but in particular 3 is really really good in the $3 tier you know I've been looking for an excuse to play Octopath Traveler, so why not for $3? Why not? This is real, right? Yeah, this is real. Look under your seats. You've got Detroit become human. In the number two slot, I am going to go because I have been loving astrobot so much Astrobot rescue mission I have been lightly considering buying a PS VR, but that is insane of course and in number one

look I've bought it a bunch of times Among us baby. I love among us. Yeah cool cool game. Ranch, you gave a laugh of recognition. Did you ever mess around with Among Us? Oh yeah, I love Among Us. Did you get super into it? Yeah, during the pandemic, we would play all the time. Now, you're one of those people who's sneaky good at it, right?

Were you very good at lying? Yeah. Jesus. I was gonna say, Ranch is extremely imposter coded. Fucking terrifying. Can I go next? Yeah, ranch is extremely imposter coded. Fucking terrifying. Can I go next? Yeah, you can go next, Heather. All right, I'm not doing one from each tier,

because we don't have to. You can spend the 15 however you like. So from the $5 category, I'm taking two games, Red Dead Redemption 2 and God of War. Wow. Then I'm jumping all the way down to the $3 tier to get Octopath Traveler, and to the $2 tier to get Astrobot and VR.

Those are my picks. Great picks. Thank you very much. All right, I'll go and I'll let Brendan take it home. Okay, so I'm going to take, here's the thing. Into the Breach was my favorite game of 2018. I think it's perhaps overpriced as an indie game in the $4 tier, that's okay.

I'm not gonna quibble with this, Matt. Thank you for making this bespoke meme. You can make one you're fucking set off. Yeah, I might make one of my own. Maybe price it a little bit less. But I will take Into the Breach. I will take Celeste as well, because that's one of my favorite games of all time,

and I have a Celeste poster in my office. That's $8 of my budget. That leaves me with seven to spend. Boy, I want Return of the Obra Dinn. I would love to have RDR2. None of the $3 games really appeal to me. And honestly, none of the $2 games either. So I think what I'm gonna do is,

let's see, of my $7, I think I will spend $5 on Red Dead Redemption 2. Wow. And that takes me to, am I doing the math here? That's $2 left. $2 left. I'll skip all the way down to the $1 tier and I will grab Judgment.

And I will also grab Sea of Thieves, which is a game I've never played, but you know what? Talking about bang for the buck, that is a game that you can play, but you know what, talking about bang for the buck, that is a game that you can play the shit out of endlessly, and for one buck, why not? Brendan, what do you think? I walk in, I'm buying five copies of Detroit Become Human. And I'm distributing them to my friends and the public

to tell them this will make you think What if what if humans are the real monsters? That's what I'm going to do wow Yeah, no, I tell you what I I would probably just get red dead spider-man and super smash brothers Do you like to try to become human no, I'm kidding I I saw a friend play it and I was like, I mean, I don't know if anyone here liked it I'm not trying to be mean. I just thought it was hilarious. No, of course. No, yeah Detroit become human defenders in the room. Don't worry. Okay. Yeah, it was it was it was funny how bad it was. Yeah, but But I yeah, I will I will buy it

But I, yeah, I will buy it. Actually Noah, my co-host came in one day and he had found a copy of that on the street and he like said, hey, here you go. And I was like, I don't even want this as a joke. Did somebody throw it out their apartment window? Found it on the street? What happened there? You know, you sometimes, there's just stuff out.

You just find stuff sometimes. Yeah stuff out you just find stuff sometimes yeah Sometimes you'll find but I oh I feel like I'd like a full price like a full like a recent game like a retail game Is not something ever found on the ground. I guess that yeah, that's true. Maybe somebody was me was in like a box You know it was like oh sure right? Yeah, you know with like a copy of you know point break or whatever right? Give me that I Was, thanks for picking up fucking this stupid game, I wanted that movie. Yeah. Well, that was, was that Bargain Bin?

Bargain Bin. That was Bargain Bin, and hey, that's this week's Get Played. Our producer is Rachelle Chan. Ranch yard underscore underscore sard. Our music is by Ben Prunty, benpruntymusic.com, who composed the score for Into the Breach. How about that? Art is by Duck Brigade Design, BenPruntyMusic.com, who composed the score for Into the Breach. How about that? Art is by Duck Brigade Design, DuckBrigade.com, and hey, check out our Patreon, patreon.com

slash get played, where you can find our entire pre-headgum back catalog plus ad-free main feed episodes and our Patreon exclusive show, Get Animated. Matt, what's up this week? Oh, this week? We actually don't know yet because there's a poll, as of recording, there's a poll out right now. So either it's going to be Violet Evergarden, it would the first movie which is eternity in the autumn and read all these or we will have been starting Terminator 0 yes, yes, don't don't don't don't yes. Yes. Yes. Yes, please please please so

Go to the polls the polls closed by the time this comes out of course So you'll know on Wednesday exactly what's coming out. But it's either one of those things. Patreon.com slash get played for all of that. And hey, check out blowback.show for Blowback Season 5, Cambodia, available now as of this episode's release. Brendan James, thanks so much for being here.

Please tell everyone about Blowback and anything else you would like to promote. Hey, if you like learning about nasty stuff like coups and assassination attempts and wars and CIA shenanigans, ours is the show for you. We did a season about the Iraq War. We season about the Afghanistan saga. We did a season about the Cuban revolution. And this season is one people have wanted for a long time. You got Nixon and Kissinger. You got the backdrop of the Vietnam War. You got Cambodia. You got the Khmer Rouge. You got Pol Pot.

And we are very proud of it. I'm still editing it at the time of this recording, so I hope it goes well. But it's gonna be good. Go to blowback.show and subscribe. You'll get all the episodes at once and the ad-free back catalog. And one last thing, I promised Matt that I would do a little snake voice,

because I have a little David Hader gene. But I can only do the parts where he eats something when he picks up a ration. So let me think of one of the reactions he gets. Okay. So you eat it and there's a little noise. So let me think of one of the reactions he get Okay So it's a little you eat it and there's a little noise Mmm, I want some more That's really really good. Yeah, thank you But yeah, check out blowback blowback dot show and thank you guys for having me on I had a total blast

I this is so much fun. people should listen to Blowback. It's an awesome show, it's super informative. Kind of, I mean, you're dealing with grim stuff, but for me, part of why I like listening to it is it reminds you that the stuff has kind of always been rotten, and bad stuff and bad actors have always existed, and that's not something that's unique to our time.

And so it just kind of baked into you know the American experiment but it's also just like a really impressive like audio production like it's just like a really well put together show and and and y'all are y'all are doing really great work blow back that show check it out thank you um Nick you got played what the fuck that was a hate gum podcast