Triple Click - Does Perfect Dark Hold Up In 2023?

Episode Date: March 16, 2023

It's time to follow Maddy's wishes and play Perfect Dark, the 2000 Nintendo 64 shooter (remastered for Xbox in 2010) developed by Rare. We put on our Joanna Dark night-vision goggles and shoot our way through office buildings and alien labyrinths. How does it feel to play Perfect Dark today? Is the lack of checkpoints too much of a challenge? And just what is up with Elvis?One More Thing: Kirk: De-Inverting my BrainMaddy: Clue: Treachery at Tudor MansionJason: Paul T. GoldmanLinks: Featuring tracks from Perfect Dark (2000) by Grant KirkhopeThe jump Cate Archer in No One Lives Forever (2000) and in No One LIves Forever 2 (2002), which also added facial animation and lip-synching.Tell us why you like Triple Click! Email [e-mail] or leave us a message at [phone]. Triple Click LIVE IN BROOKLYN, May 18th: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/triple-click-live-tickets-513213584647Support Triple Click: http://maximumfun.org/joinBuy Triple Click Merch: https://maxfunstore.com/search?q=triple+click&options%5Bprefix%5D=lastJoin the Triple Click Discord: http://discord.gg/tripleclickpodTriple Click Ethics Policy: https://maximumfun.org/triple-click-ethics-policy/ Happy MaxFunDrive! Right now is the best time to start a membership to support your favorite shows. Learn more and join at https://maximumfun.org/jointripleclick 🚀  SUPPORT TRIPLE CLICK:Join Maximum Fun | Buy TC Merch💬 JOIN THE TRIPLE CLICK DISCORD🎮 Triple Click Ethics Policy📱 SOCIALS | @tripleclickpodInstagram | YouTube | TikTok | Twitch

She's perfect and she's dark. That's why we call her flawless shaded. Welcome to Tripoclick where we bring the games to you. Today we are talking about an N64 game that Maddie made us all play called Perfect Dark. Do we like it? Do we hate it? What do we think? Let's discuss. I'm Jason Shrier. I'm Kirk Hamilton. And I'm Maddie Myers.

Hello. Hey, my friends. Hello. Should we be playing cool spy music in the background on this one? That's like all I've been listening to for weeks now. Yeah, I called up Grant Kirk Hope. I was like, could you write us some music for our episode? I am very excited because next week I get to see Kirk Hamilton for the first time in person in like four years.

Isn't that crazy? In years. That's crazy. Nothing makes you realize the toll that the pandemic took to then making plans like that. Yeah, the three of us have not seen each other since Katakis was. screen live in early 2019. Yeah, that was last time the three of us saw each other. That's crazy.

Wow. Although we see each other again on video calls every week. Yes, we will see each other again. At another live show on May 18th, we will all be in New York. Speaking of it, you can buy tickets right now, still available. You can buy physical tickets to see us in Brooklyn or digital tickets to see us live

on Twitch, which is very exciting. It is exciting. I'm glad that I will see you at GDC next week because otherwise it would be setting a weird precedent if the only time that we saw one another live was for live shows of our podcast. But the precedent's there for Maddie. That's the only time we see Maddie live is live shows. I guess that's true. We'll be true forever.

No, it won't. Hey, did you guys know that Max Fund Drive is coming real soon? So soon. Next week even. Next week. And so that is very exciting. We are a, of course, listener-supported podcast. and we are able to make this keep happening

because of all of you find MaxFund members out there and if you become a MaxFund member during Max Fun Drive, which starts next week, you get a lot of cool stuff, including bonus episodes from us every single month. Can we say what we're talking? Let's say what we're talking about this month, our March bonus episode. We are going to dive into the last of us on HBO, which is going to be a fun conversation.

All of them are going to get spilled. There is so much. There's so much to say. I'm very excited for that conversation. It's going to be fascinating. We're also looking for audience statements on why you love triple click in your triple click stories for Max Fun Drive. So we'll include the details on that.

There's an email or a phone number where you can leave a message. And if you want to join, go to Maxblentphone.org. But we would recommend you actually wait until next week. If you want to be a member, just wait. You'll get cooler stuff. Just hold your fire for a week. Yeah, you'll be good. You'll be good.

And then, Kirk, you have a thing to share before Maddie starts us off with the topic of today. I do have a very brief thing that I just wanted to mark that happened this week at the Academy Awards. I didn't actually watch the Academy Awards, but I caught up after the fact. I was very happy to see all of the winners, a whole bunch of very deserving folks from largely from everything everywhere all at once. A movie I loved. But there was one thing that happened during the ceremony that I just feel that we should mark on this podcast. And that was that there was an exclusive trailer reveal. at the Academy Awards.

A world premiere. There was a world premiere. Jeff Keeley came out on stage. No, just kidding. That didn't happen. Two of the stars of The Little Mermaid came out on stage to show a trailer for an upcoming Disney movie. And I just saw that after the fact and thought it was really funny. As much as we've talked about, oh, if only the Game Awards could be a little more classy like the Oscars.

Unfortunately, I think things are going to go the other way. Yes, the Oscars are going to become a little bit more commercial like the Game Award. I don't think we've said that. I think the Oscars are the most boring thing on the planet. Yeah, which is why they need a Twitch live chat, you know, people saying poggers throughout for the winners, et cetera. They need emojis. They need more instantaneous racism, et cetera, et cetera. They need all that stuff in there for the Oscars to really be modern.

Keeley also tweeted shortly afterwards saying imitation is the sincerest form of flatter. Oh, did he? He did do that. He did do that. Oh, that's very funny. Keeley is a funny guy. I got to say he's a funny guy. He is.

He knows how to seize the moment, capitalize on the conversation. But let's get into our conversation. Speaking of seizing the moment, take us away. Yeah, seizing the moment, the game that everyone's talking about. Yeah, it's everywhere right now. You know why? Because it's 2023. The year in which this game was set, it's called Perfect Dark.

It's called Perfect Dark. Oh, yeah, yeah. Didn't it seem really like a really true to the moment? Doesn't it seem like it should have been intentional? Like I should have chosen this as a game that the three of us would play in 20203 because it's set in the futuristic world of 2023. Complete coincidence, had no clue. Just thought it would be a fun first-person shooter

for all three of us to play because I won a little bet that the three of us have. If you don't know what that is because you're a new listener, well, you can go all the way back and listen to our video game predictions episodes and you'll get the gist. So I made Kirk and Jason play Perfect Dark,

and I will say, I did play this game, not when it first came out, It came out in May 2000 for the Nintendo 64. I didn't actually have an N64 for what it's worth. I did play Golden Eye a lot at a friend's house. This game was a spiritual sequel to Golden Eye. Lots of similarities with Golden Eye.

We can get into that. But the version of it that I did play was on the Xbox 360. It was remastered. It looks a lot better, although to our 2023 eyes, perhaps it doesn't. It looks a lot better in the 2010 version, which I played. and I believe I played all of it in co-op, or at the very least switching controllers back and forth with a roommate at the time,

which made the game a lot easier for me. And I know that I played it on at least the medium and I think the hardest difficulty, which meant that this time around when I played it on easy, I was like, wow, this is a totally different game because each of the three difficulty settings actually change the objectives in every single mission. So before I talk to you to about your experiences, I'll just kind of quickly go over the plot of the game.

So this is a mission-based, I know, right? My thoughts and prayers are with you as you embark on this adventure. They lost me at Elvis. I don't know why. Elvis, greatest character in the game. So you play as Joanna Dark, who's sort of James Bond alike, but she's engaged in what I would call corporate espionage, although it's sort of ill-defined, because she also works with various

governments around the world, seemingly. She works for the... She works for the corporate agent, I think. She works for the Carrington Institute. She has a British accent. So you might think maybe she works for MI6, but as far as we know, she does not. So she goes on various missions.

She kills a heck of a lot of people. It's almost like she was developed in the UK, and so she has a British accent. Or it's almost like she's a gender-swapped, sexy version of James Bond. Not to say James Bond isn't sexy as well, but he doesn't wear a cat suit with a zipper like that. And it is also a science fiction story. About halfway through the game, you find out that aliens are real and that that is a huge part of the spy mission that you're on. Up till then, it's mostly just sci-fi tech.

There's an AI doctor that you have to save in the very first mission, for example. But yeah, it gets increasingly bizarre over time. there's an alien character named Elvis. That might be a reference to men in black. I don't know. There's a lot of weird jokes in here. But I want to hear from you, too. Was this the first time each of you played it?

Jason, why don't we start with you? Yeah, so this is my first time playing Perfect Dark to kind of set the context here. Rare, of course, the developer also made Golden Eye, as you mentioned. I played a bunch of Golden Eye back in the day on in 64, mostly co-op or a split screen with people, not co-op, competitive split screen with people, which is always fun. I remember odd job always having the advantage because he was shorter than everybody else. I believe that was the thing and like the

height was the only real difference. But anyway, and there was like no odd job games where people would play with like a rule like no one can play his odd job. I remember that. Or you'd have to do all slaps or like just the big head mode for example. They're all kinds of silly modes. This game has silly modes you can unlock as well. There's like small mode and big head and so on. All golden. Guns was another silly mode. But anyway, this is my first time playing perfect dark in any capacity. And yeah, I mean, it was a tough one for me to grapple with today for a few reasons. One is that the controls and the shooting are just not fun by modern standards.

They were back then for sure. And I can attest to that playing golden eye. But like if you ever try to play golden nine today, it is a tough hand. to use Maddie's words for describing C-cutton, too. It is a tough hang. It is a tough hang. The reticle doesn't quite move along with the stick for whatever reason. It just doesn't quite work.

It just doesn't feel great. There is this game, at least I was, I switched to easy mode for reasons I'll get into in a second, but with easy mode, at least there's an auto aim that helps and makes it feel a little more palatable. But still, it's not particularly fun. I expected it to be a lot more stealthy than it was. Instead, it's more of a run-and-gun shooter. I expected to be using like the spy gear a lot more than I was, but was not. You're not much of a spy, though.

On the third, the third mission was really tough for me, or third level, whatever it was. Basically the end part of the, the, the, the, the, the, anodyne, what is it, Danodine? Datadine. Datadine, that, that building, the third part of that, was. was pretty rough for me because the helicopter knocks down all your health and there's no way to restore health in this game. And I had a really tough time with the lack of checkpoints and the fact that you had to start from the beginning every single time. When I switched to Easy, it was a lot more pleasant to breeze through the whole thing. But then I felt like I was really lacking the proper experience. And then you can't switch back to Easy once you beat one level as easy.

You can't switch to Medium for the next level, which is annoying. Yeah, it's really tough and tough to grapple with today, I think, by modern standards for those reasons. The story is whatever. That's kind of incomprehensible. But yeah, that third mission, I mean, that really spoke to some of the problems I had with the game because at the beginning, there's a timer and the whole building is dark. And you can put on your night vision goggles and kind of sneak around, which I thought was really cool. But then as soon as I opened, I could take out the first guy without a problem. But then as soon as I opened the next door to get to the second guy, he just started shooting at me.

And there was no stealth whatsoever. And the walkthrough I was using, because you pretty much need a walkthrough, recommended that I like open the door from the corner of the room. And I tried to do that. And it was just, he just kept seeing me and shooting at me, which is very frustrating because I was like, oh, cool, I could do some stealth stuff. But like, again, it just didn't work. And then the final thing I'll say is that the objective system is just complete nonsense. like the fact that you can just randomly fail objectives and have to restart the mission. And again, the lack of checkpoints really hurts that.

I wanted to explore this game as if it were, as each level was like a hitman level and I could like complete missions with different ways and play around with it and have that kind of sandboxy feel where I was doing more stealth and playing with gadgets in more ways. But the lack of checkpoints and the fact that once you fail, you just have to start from the beginning again, just make that impossible. And so, yeah, I got to say I did not really enjoy the experience of playing this game, unfortunately. Kirk, how about you? Yeah, I thought this game is really interesting. A little bit of a torturous experience at times

for reasons that, you know, I think we all experienced than anybody playing a long experience. The lack of checkpoints is a big one, like Jason says, the fact that you can fail, you know, some of your objectives and have to start over. So I played through the whole game on special agent difficulty except for the final final mission, which I finally just bumped down to Agent because, like you said, Jason, there were no missions after that. So I was like, all right, I don't care anymore. And it was late last night and I was tired.

And that mission is lengthy, difficult. And then there's a really tough boss at the end. And if you die to the boss, you have to do the whole mission again. The whole thing again. Yes. Classic. The checkpoint issue. So I think this game is fascinating, though.

I mean, I think it shows a lot of the literacy that designers of console games had not yet built into the controller-based game style, especially when you compare it to a couple of other 2000 games or games from the year 2000. DeusX, which came out in 2000, and No One Lives Forever, which came out in 2000. DeiSX is really, I mean, kind of similar to Perfect Dark in some ways, you can tell that the people designing both games

were playing with the same ideas. There are moments in Perfect Dark where you get that kind of emergent, you know, immersive Sim design style. The Chicago level is kind of that way. where it feels a little like the AI can be played with. I was reading in the walkthrough that I believe we all read, an IGN walkthrough, they said that if you go into this club, one of your options is to disarm people.

If you switch to unarmed combat, you can disarm the guards, and then the guards will go and run away from you, and they'll open a door that only they can open. But when they open that door, you can follow them in, and there's a hidden weapon in there. So there's stuff like that that does be like something that would be present in DASX in particular. But of course, DeusX has a quicksave system and is built around the whole idea of an actual world that you can experiment with and reload your saves and go back. And it's much, much more complex and simulated because it's a PC game and it's in the sort of looking glass lineage of System Shock and Thief and those games, where this game still largely feels like an arcade game made for the Nintendo 64, which of course it is, even though it has some of those elements in there.

It's really fun playing it because I can kind of see the way that games have converged. And now, you know, console PC doesn't mean anything. But it really did back then. There were significant differences in the approach to design, in the controls, the approach to interface. Like the interface in DSX is not great. It's very complicated. It's like if you've played that or System Shock 2. It's bananas.

It's like a whole operating system. But there's a ton of stuff you can do. Where I found the user interface in this game to be, I mean, big guys. styling funny almost in how ridiculous it is. But it's called Perfect Menu. Do you not think it's a perfect menu? I guess they've got me there. What can I say to that?

I found that very cute. Very like Mortal Kombat asked to just call things perfect within Perfect Dark. You mean how Mortal Kombat spells everything with a K? Precisely, yes. Like to just have sort of a gimmick in here where people also call Joanna Dark Perfect as one of her code names. Because she was such a skilled trainee. Of course. And the game itself is perfect.

But no concerns. Right, of course. So you call up your inventory with the left shoulder button, and this sort of cloud of words appears in front of you. And then you have to move a cursor onto one of those words in order to select anything from a different overlay, like an infrared sensor or a new weapon or a disguise. I mean, it's just your whole inventory is there in a kind of word cloud. But there is no consistent way unless I couldn't find it. And there is. I don't think so.

Okay, there is no consistent way to select things. You can't, like, cycle through with the D-pad even, for example, where it's just each time you click the D-pad, it goes to the next one. You just have to use the thumbstick and kind of feel it. So it's like the hardest part of the game. Furthermore, and I will just call this out, is one of the only truly unforgivable things that happened to me when I was playing this game. One mission requires you to infiltrate some base.

I'm trying to remember which, oh, I think it's the Chicago. Is the area 51 base or? Oh, okay, sure. No, I think it's the Chicago base. Anyways, you have to get a scientist costume and put it on. And so, you know, you go through the level, run into the locker room. There's a guy there. You murder him in cold blood because you can't make –

You don't have to kill all the innocent guys. You murder this guy. He drops this costume, and I pick it up, and I'm like, okay, I guess I picked up the costume. So then I haven't read every line of the walkthrough, so I, like, go to the door where the guy's going to let me through with the costume. Nope. He spots me, and I fail. I'm starting kills you. Because you need to select the costume, see, in order to put it on.

Now, you say that as though that is an easy thing to do, but I think, okay, maybe I need to select the costume. So I watch a walkthrough. There's a video I've got running. This is because the text walkthrough from IGN contains sentences like this one that I wrote down. Quote, return to the small side ramp that you passed earlier just past the blue-green doors. These are the kinds of instructions you have to give in a game where every single room and every wall looks the exact same as every other room and every other. other wall. So there are a lot of times reading the walkthrough where he's like, go left, go down the ramp, the ramp from before. I'm like, oh man, I haven't been paying close enough attention.

So anyways, there's a video walkthrough, which is easier. I watch him, he kills the scientist, picks up the outfit, goes into his inventory, and it says lab clothes right there in the inventory, he selects that, she puts it on, he goes unarmed, and then he goes through the door, and I'm like, oh, I have to equip it. So I go do the thing, kill the guard, or sorry, kill the scientist, pick up the outfit, open up my inventory. Lab clothes are nowhere to be seen. They are not in my inventory. So I'm like, well, okay, maybe I'm wearing it.

I go and I fail the mission again. Then I'm Googling and I find on GameFax, there is a thread about this because I'm not the only one to run into this. And as it turns out, there's only so much room in the WordCloud of your inventory and it doesn't show you everything that you're carrying if you carry too many items. So you have to hit the select button to bring up your inventory, your goals, which is all I thought that was. Turns out you can actually go left and right in those menus, and you can go to your inventory

screen, which shows your full inventory. Then you have to press the select button on the lab clothes in your inventory. It doesn't actually tell you you've selected it. So then you just have to leave that menu, and then you see that she's wearing it if you were paying attention. So that's pretty bad. So anyways, that was a long story. But I think it's very interesting, all the ways this game falls short, in addition to the

ways that it is interesting. And we can talk about them more in detail as we go. But yeah, this was a rough hang, but also very interesting. Yeah, I promise I was not elaborately pranking you guys. I had such good memories of this game, but I am capable of admitting when something doesn't hold up. And I would say this doesn't, but I also found it really fascinating to revisit as a historical object. And also as a challenge of just UI design, game design, storytelling. I mean, everything about it, I'm like, I've played games that have done all of the above

better than this, but I understand why I was impressed by this, even in 2010, which in 2010, it's an old game, but I also played its sequel, Perfect Dark Zero around that time, which is a bit more user-friendly. And I was playing, you know, Metroid Prime around then, also from similar time period, early 2000s era. And I've been playing that again lately. So I have a lot of patience for some old games that require a walkthrough. But this one, yeah, it's, I don't know. I apologize, but also it was only the game to havers long. So I feel like it was fine.

I think it was really interesting. It was good for you guys. You ate your vegetables. It was interesting for me, like I said, to play it in the context of the PC games I came up playing. Because this period of time was a really fruitful time for game development. So Half-Life comes out in 1998. Maybe I'll make that a bet game sometime. I know I made the two of you play through Half-Life, too.

Oh, yeah. I'd play the first one, though. Half-life is itself very, very interesting. And just a couple years before this, but on a whole other level in terms of storytelling and design. But playing with some of the same ideas, alien warfare, you know, the kind of emergent stuff, but a largely linear shooter. Then in 2000, No One Loose Forever comes out. I love that game. I've talked about it many times.

And by 2002, that's when No One Loz Forever 2 comes out. The graphical differences between those two games are super wild. You go from totally flat, what do you call this style of face where it's just like a person's face? Just a polygon? Yeah, it's like a Max Payne style is what the characters look like even in this 2010 version where it's just like a flat face that doesn't move and then words come out of it. And it's called painting on a pumpkin. Right. It's kind of what it looks like stretching a photo.

Printed out on a piece of paper and then you like bend the piece of paper around. around your face, like as though that's a mask. That's what every character in this game looks like. Right. It has a kind of paper-maché craft look. Or Max Payne is a good comparison because Max Payne had what Sam Lake's face is like on Max Payne. It's like a photo of him grimacing, but it looks very strange. So that style of game, just to put that in context.

So this is in the year 2000. In 2002, Kate Archer is a star of knowing this forever. It's worth looking up. Maybe we can find a link somewhere to see what she looks like. two years later, she has like a fully animated face. Her eyes are opening and closing. Her mouth is, she's like expressing and moving. And it was amazing looking.

This is just a couple of years later because 3D processing came so far so quickly. And then by 2004, Half-Life 2 comes out and you've got Alex Vance, like, talking to you and like fully emoting in glorious 3D. So this is just like a six-year period of time. Like it's like the amount of time since, like it's less than the amount of time since the PlayStation 4 came out. So it was really, things were really happening. fast and I think it was cool to play a game from this moment in that time period. Yeah, I also think this is a point where the 2D games from this particular era of late 90s, early 2000s, have aged so much better than 20s. Oh my God, yeah.

Because the 3D games, like, they're really just first, I mean, Mario 64 generally considered to be like the piticle of 3D platform or the first big 3D platform and really a game that kind of launched a 3D revolution in games. That was, what, 96 or so? So this is really just four years after that. People are still learning how to understand 3D spaces and 3D level design and stuff. And I bet if a level designer in 2023 looked at this game, they would just find so many, like, horrifying, like, principles violated. A non-level designing saxophone player had the same feeling in 2020. I think one of the most frustrating things is just, like, how many dead ends? there are, which is generally not something you want in level design. Or secret doors, just straight

up secret doors that look identical to a wall. Well, those, I mean, that is a different problem. I think that's closer to the problem of like the objectives and everything being opaque and just never really defined. Like a game will tell, that each level will tell you, like go and find the scientist's uniform, go and sabotage the weapon and never explain what that means, explain anything about it. There's no map. I think that the games like Dea is, are an interesting comparison because Deo-6 came out the same year and I think that does a better job of kind of signaling to you what you have to do. I mean, there were a lot of games these days. I mean, Diablo 2 came out this year. There are a lot of games that have waypoints and mini-maps and

quest markers and stuff like that. It's not like this stuff was was obsolete at this point. It's just the decisions they made for this particular game. But yeah, as far as the 3D level design, just the dead ends, the fact that every room looks the same in so many of these areas. Like especially, I think Area 51 is probably the worst of them all because every single door looks the same. I'd say that's the most frustrating part of the game in the number of it. It's very frustrating. And at least for me, it was the one that took me the longest to beat this time around. I can't remember back in the day, which one I found hardest.

But this one, Area 51 was the worst. I think because I was using the walkthrough the least because I was too cocky, there's a part where you have to carry around an explosive box. and really the best way to beat that part is to just leave it at the very beginning of the level, kill every guy in the level and then go back to the box. But I kept Cockerly being like, come on, I'm pretty good at shooting. I can just shoot these guys before they shoot the box. No, no, you can't. Why did I think I could do that?

Yeah, I don't know. Okay, so some of those moments are pretty cool. I remember having a pretty cool moment where I like learned the layout of a level and was like, oh, okay, now I'm getting it. It's just that like the game doesn't give you a chance to. enjoy that because as soon as you die, like there's no checkpoint. And making things worse, and again, the reason that I switched to easy where I basically couldn't die. And that was the only way I made it through this game. Like, I would not have played through this whole game. And there

are almost no objectives in easy mode. Yeah, and there are fewer objectives, which actually is a little but whatever. The thing that's probably most frustrating is that there's no way to regain your health. So you have to think of it as like, in addition to trying to understand the objectives, trying to and learn the levels. You were also thinking of it in terms of survival mechanics. It feels almost like a rogue like. Yeah, which is so annoying.

And where the shields are. So there's shields around, which adds some points to your health. And if you remember where those are, which, I mean, that's kind of what I enjoyed about playing it this time around was the hitman aspect of it or even the Dark Souls aspect of it

where I would just remember a level by the time I was extremely close to beating it. And I would just enter that brain zone of not being annoyed when I died and knowing that I could do it extremely quickly the following time around and just completely maximizing every aspect of the play

where I'd be like, okay, this is the best gun for every scenario. I know exactly where the shields are. I'm just going to defeat the level as quickly as possible, which is really like the fun way of playing this game. Yeah, which would be fun if the objectives are spelled out. If things were clearly marked, if the design was better,

if a lot of things were done right, that would be a really fun way to play the game. And I'm sure it was in 2000. I mean, this game is highly regarded. It's, critically acclaimed. Oh, sure. I mean, back then. I'll also add, like I mentioned playing it in co-op for a reason. This was a lot more fun with someone else. Yeah, I can totally imagine that too. Even switching controllers back and forth, like between two people, we could both remember where each item was, where the secret doors were. So even playing on perfect dark difficulty in 2010, I remember being pretty easy, which is part of why I didn't feel bad.

about selecting this game in 2023, but then playing it by myself and also being old, tired, and not having the reaction speeds I had 13 years ago, I guess. I just was like, wow, this is freaking hard and I don't remember anything anymore. Like, I think my tolerance or memory was higher back then, or perhaps just I was used to playing games of this kind. Like, in this time period, I was also playing a ludicrous amount of gray shooters on every platform imaginable. So like the idea of everything looking the same and some hallways or dead ends just didn't frustrate me in 2010 the way that it does now. So that's another difference. I just didn't notice

those issues in the same way that I do today. Yeah, I can imagine this being a really fun game for someone who only has a Nintendo 64 and just has this one game. And then you get into that repetition loop that you're talking about, Maddie, because I think it's really cool that they designed this game to have the sort of additive approach to objectives. The objectives are cool. Once you know what they are, like you said, Maddie, you can just fly through the level. And while as frustrated as I was that there were no checkpoints, that also meant that I got really fast. Like in Area 51, I could clear that warehouse out so fast, run through with the bomb, so fast, get to the annoying, blonde contact guy, so fast, you know, get back. And I died at the very end of that mission a couple

of times. I believe that was when I sent you the message in the middle of the night of these Area 51 missions are trying my patience. But even so, the repetition was, you know, I could see how if you just had this game, you're mostly playing multiplayer with your friends, and then you'd be like, okay, let's go through a mission. And then you're just screwing around through missions over and over again. That'd be pretty fun. I remember having the same experience with Golden Eye a few years earlier. And also that game had these cool set piece, you know, James Bondi's story missions that I remember

playing and be like, oh, this isn't very fun, especially because of the time I was like playing Half-Life. and, you know, then later playing DeaSX. Like, I was playing, I will say, much, much better games on PC. Right. Whereas I was playing Halo. So, you know. Well, in Halo, actually, I was going to mention that earlier, not to get sidetracked

from my own train of thought. But Halo is an interesting one to mention because Halo also brought some new first-person control ideas to consoles. And it's another one, I think, to include in this whole, this, like, kind of magical six-year time frame. Yep, yep. And also has really big levels where sometimes you're running around and not entirely sure where to go, but it's a little better at navigating you. That's true. It's a little bit undirected in some ways.

Yeah, it's, it's interesting. The Golden Eye thing, I think you make an astute point, whereas, yeah, I think Golden and I had two really things really going for it. One is that it was so true to the movie that if you were like a big James Bond fan and you were watching the movie, you're like, oh, this is so cool. Like I get to follow this all. Yeah, the Arctic Bay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, or like the tanker and the hangar. Fighting on the dish of the satellite. Yeah, the dish. I remember the missions all had just those one word names,

like, hangar, like bridge, whatever it was. And the second thing, of course, was multiplayer, which really there had been nothing like that on the consoles where you could have this, like, amazing, this like really cool. I won't say amazing, because even then it felt a little kind of busted, but like split screen, like competitive, shooting with your friends.

There's nothing else like it. And perfect arc, I mean, to be fair, to this game, we didn't play any of the multiplayer, either co-op, like you mentioned, Maddie. And you can absolutely imagine it being the same. It was great. Yeah, which I think yes. Yes. In 2000, if you had an NCC4, you hang out after school with a bunch of buddies and play

the shit out of this game. You'd already bought extra controllers because you had 007 so you were ready for another game like that. No, yeah, it totally fits in that context. Yeah, and when you're on your own, you just play Majoris Mask or somewhere like that, something that's like a, which came out the same year too. So yeah, I mean, I do think that this game does have some things going for it there. but like, yeah, revisiting the single-player missions in 20-23 is tough.

One thing I will say, another kind of positive thing I'll say is that playing this game actually got me pretty excited for whatever the next perfect dark that is being developed by Microsoft right now. The initiative and Crystal Dynamics are working on that. That's a pretty exciting prospect, especially if they make it feel more like a spy game and less like a run-in-gun shooter. Because, yeah, I mean, I think that was the biggest disappointment for me that I I came in expecting much more of a spy game than it actually was.

Did you enjoy? I really enjoyed the early missions. Some of the missions are even called stealth. Yeah. And then Joanna's voiceover. Shooting everybody. It definitely feels as though I know this game had sort of torture development. So Martin Hollis started out directing this game, who was the director of Golden Eye.

I've met him a couple of times. By the way, he is a lovely man. And just like, he was one of the first people I ever met in game development. I remember it was at a GDC. And I was like, wait, this guy directed GoldenEye. And it was that feeling of, whoa, I played that game as a kid, and this is the guy who directed it. He's a really thoughtful guy anyways. He was responsible, I think, or at least he and the people who was working with were responsible for a lot of the basic decisions around this game.

Then he left kind of halfway through. You can definitely tell, or it seems to me that there were some decisions made at various points that required them to square some circles that didn't really want to be squared. The way that Joanna is like, okay, I'm sneaking in. And then you go around the corner and she starts blasting, right? Anyway, started blasting. And then she's like, okay, ready opening the door. He was like, so anyway, started blasting. Right, so she really likes to start blasting.

And that disconnect is present throughout the game. Her voiceover a lot of times implies that there was maybe a stealthier game at some point that she could have been in. And instead, they're like, I, we can't make this work. But maybe it wasn't very fun. And they were like, we just know. how to have her shoot at the guys. Like there's a couple moments where like she has to like crawl across a catwalk and like look down a vent into a room and like over here a conversation for one of the cutscenes where she's sneaking around. Like there's a few moments that yes, in theory,

you're sneaking in order to advance the story or she has the cam spy. Is that what that tool is called? Which you barely have to use. Yeah. You use it in a couple early missions and then it becomes almost completely irrelevant. It's it feels like there are some vestiges of a much stealthier game here. But I mean, we haven't brought this up yet, but I guess I should say, like, the real reason I liked this game in 2010 is because you play as a female character. Like, it really was just that simple for me at the time in much the same way that I liked Metroid, which luckily is a better franchise.

Like, that paid off for me a lot more, I would say. But this game, like, just bare minimum, I was, at least in 2010, I was like, hey, it might not be good, but I don't really care. because I get to play as a cool lady, and I don't really get to do that in Halo, so here we are. And, like, I'm not saying Joanna's a well-defined character. She's not.

But it was a big deal to me back then, you know? Yeah, no, it's why I really would love for you to play Nomemos Forever sometime. I think I would like it a lot, yeah. What makes that game remarkable is you're not only playing a female lead. You're Kate Archer, who's this sort of 60s super spy, but the story is about workplace sexism and her over-execism, and her overcoming all of these boorish dudes. And there are all these twists and subversions.

Because it's set in the 60s, right? Yes. And so there's like direct references to the women's liberation movement. And even like there are all these things in her job that are designed to kind of make her feel, you know, to remind her that she's a woman. There's a whole sequence in that game where you have to do call signs with people. You know, the eagle flies at midnight. She's knife cuts the butter. But instead they're all designed as pickup lines.

So she has to pick up the phone. And the guy on the other end will be like, if I told you you had a great body, would you hold it against me? That's not what they're a little more clever than that. But it's like that. Sure. Yeah.

And she has to put up with this environment. Yes. But it calls that out. And she keeps being like, who the, like she keeps referencing the fact that some idiot wrote these things. They never even say who wrote them. But there's a lot of stuff like that. So it's a much better written game.

And that is something I would not hold against this game. In the end, the absurdity of it is endearing. I agree. But, wow, like, the story does not connect or make any sense. Well, it's, it would be a little more fun if they just gave you a little bit more of it. I'm going to, here. I know. I'm going to put an image into our chat, and I want one of you.

Okay, Jason, I want you to describe the picture that I just put into chat for our listeners as best you can. So, okay, so you are holding some sort of gun in your right hand. you're standing in a hallway that looks like a futuristic, like, alien-type hallway. And there is a little gray alien in front of you. He looks like kind of the classic gray alien with the big bald head. Huge forehead. He's holding two guns and wearing a vest that is an American flag vest with red and white stripes and the stars. And some sneakers.

Don't forget those sneakers. And on the back of that vest, it says Elvis. And he has performed in a voice that I can only do. describe as someone in the office could kind of do a Yoda impression. That is also what it reminded me of is like a Yoda. You do your Yoda impression. I'm alive. I thought I'd be chopped up like the elders by now.

You're from the institute, aren't you? I recognize you from before. You helped me. Thank you. I'm Agent Dark or Joanna, if you'd prefer. Well, Joanna, I'm protector one. But you can call me Elvis. So the voice acting this game is...

No, all of the voice acting in this game. Even, like, Joanna's probably the one that seems the most like it was probably an actor, but so many of them seem like they just grabbed someone from the office. And even for the time period, again, to compare this to no one that's forever, like there are actors in that game. They are funny. They are doing bits. They are reading lines of dialogue.

It feels like you're like watching a cartoon. This is wild. It feels like almost like a mod that was made in the office. They literally are people from the office, by the way. I don't, Joanna, I believe, is an actual voice actor, actual, whatever that means. But I, Mr. Blonde, I believe is the actor I looked into because I was like, what else is this guy in? And he just, his other credits are working on video games, being a game designer. And I was like, okay, cool.

You know what? Right. So he makes games. He does not act in. So he was, in fact, a guy working at the office, one assumes, and got to record some voice lines. So you're right, Kirk. That's true. So just like, when, Jason, when you mentioned the.

the new one that's coming out, something that would be fun would be to take some of the broad strokes of this absurd story that starts as corporate espionage and becomes a proxy battle between aliens and whatever. And like turn that into something, put a little more meat on the bones. Like flesh it out, have some fun with it. This feels so slap shot, slipshod so much of the time that it's kind of a disappointment. It has something to it that seems like it could be interesting because the story is so minimal. And so corny at the same time that you're like, well, I don't really understand what's going on. But the voice acting is very funny. And everybody only says about three sentences total.

So I feel like if I knew a little more, I would either be laughing more or it would be an actual spy thriller. But it never quite becomes either one of those. Something I think worth noting is a little bit more context here. Kirk, you've talked about some of the PC games that had come out around this time, Half Life, No One Lives Forever, Day of Sex. this was a time when the consoles, the games you'd play on each console were very different. It's not like today where you're pretty much getting everything on PlayStation and Xbox or whatever. Switch is a little different, but still.

This was a time when everything you'd get on PlayStation 1 was very different than anything you'd get on N64, and then soon to be Xbox was pretty different. So on the PlayStation, at this point, you had Metal Gear Solid, which came out of 1998, and really, I think, blows this out of the water in a lot of ways. That game, don't get me wrong, the game has not aged well. And if you're going to replay it today, you should play the Twin Sakes version, which is a lot better. Or like the 3DS version, which have updated the controls and stuff. But even at the time, that game had proper voice acting.

That game had a story that was a lot, definitely bonkers. Well, I wouldn't say easier to follow. It was definitely bonkers. But it was a lot, it was a lot meatier than this. Like, there was interesting ideas explored. There weren't a lot of other, this game is not like exploring DARPA and the ethics. of the DARPA commissioner and stuff like that. This game doesn't really have a thought in its head, honestly.

No. This game is maybe about on the level of a Halo 1. We're like replaying Halo 1 fairly recently. I was like, wow, there's not a lot to this. I think the point that I'm making here is that like if you, not to get into console wars here, but I think if you were playing games on the N64. No, you're saying Xbox gamers are stupid.

It's okay. I was one. I think if you were playing games on the N64, at this point, and only the N64, you didn't have anything else to compare this to, which I think explains why, like, you might have gotten really into this game a lot more, as opposed to if you were dabbling with PC games and PlayStation games too, then it might have been like, oh, this doesn't really have the same sort of heft to it as some of these other games that I'm playing, especially if you were playing PC stuff at the time. Yeah, I mean, this era is the reason

that the joke about the PC Master Race exists. It's not actually the later era where PC has have slightly better graphics. It was this era where there was a thing where me and my friends who played PC games would play games like this and be like, um, have you guys like played half-life though? Like do you realize what video games are doing over on PC? Because this is like not there. This is stuff that was happening 10 years ago on PC. So it really is like that is where that disconnect kind of was at its most pronounced. Yeah. But on console you could play as a woman. I don't know. I mean, it's like, you can play known this forever. I mean, it's like, I mean, I was out of your playing some Metroid.

Yeah, or if you were on PlayStation, you had Tomb Raider a few years earlier. True. Which was on PC also, right? Yeah, I think of it as a PC. Yeah, yeah, at some point. I would say the thing that you really are getting with this kind of a game is the split-screen multiplayer thing. For me, that was the draw that I loved playing. I put up with the Golden Eye controls, even though I knew, oh, I could be playing whatever.

It was so fun to play with my friends on TV that that was the thing. Yeah, because you don't have that on PC at all. back then. Right. Unless you have a land party. This was like peak that era for me socially. So I played Counterstrike.

I mean, that was the PC game I was very into. And we did a lot of land parties. But also, the reason I had an Xbox 360 was because pretty much all the multiplayer gaming I was doing in this time period was in person. It was all fighting games and it was all this kind of thing where I was like, let's all play perfect dart together. Let's all play Gears of War together.

Or Halo together before that. etc. Like that was my life. I was doing that with Diablo too on PC. Yep, sure. Of course. Same. Yeah. We talked about that back in the Diablo episode as well. Like almost everything I was doing in the sort of 2005 to 2015 era was in person multiplayer gaming. And playing this again made me kind of miss that a little bit. Yeah. Playing perfect dark alone in my office. I was like, you know what? I should invite some people over for some Super Smash brothers. Like remember those days? Remember that time? That was cool. If only we were having an in-person live show in a couple of months where we can place what's being in. Maybe we'll put a projector up and play some perfect dark at the N-64. Can we make that happen?

Let's look into that. Maybe we'll make something like that happen. Yeah, right after Tears of the Kingdom comes out, we will be playing Golda-Nine. Maybe after the show. We'll set up a smash. We'll set up Smash Brothers for everybody to play after the show. We'll look and do it. People can line up and challenge us in Smash Brothers after the show.

Oh, my goodness. Okay. Well, on that note, I guess we can pack it in. I don't know that I recommend playing Perfect Dark in 2020. Even though that's the year in which it's set, but I really enjoyed revisiting it. No, but we will definitely play the new one whenever that comes up. I'm glad that we all played this one because it means we're all going to appreciate the new one so much more when it finally comes out. Oh, absolutely. I'm very glad I feel. Even if it's just a one-to-one remaster of this game, but they just add in checkpoints, that'd be great. Honestly, can they just fix it? Anyway, let's take a little break and then be back with one more thing. Max and Carrey 3 beef and dairy all day. Max Fun Drive. Hey, chef, we got another one. Another Max Fun Drive.

People know it's the best time to support the shows they love. You tell them I'll meetup days back? Sure did. They wanted to know about the live streams, though. Those are finishing up right now. We can even send one out on the first night, March 20th. March 20th, chef. I'll give him a heads up.

They also wanted the limited time thank you gifts for new and upgrading members. Yep. And we got some fresh episodes ready to go too. All right. We got exciting live streams, meetup day, fresh episodes, limited time gifts. Oh, and Boko. Yeah.

Okay, let them know that Max Fund Drive, 2020 will be ready on March 20th, and it'll only be two weeks. Two weeks, Chef! Max Fund Drive starts on March 20th for just two weeks. Order up. Shoot, I forgot their water. And now a live reading from Rachel's Poetry Corner.

Elephants, thereamins, Clifton, Neopets, Porstrips, Jepts, Coly Goals, Skittles, Squirrels, and the Mole. Celery Chopsticks, Pumpernickel, A Case of You by Joni Mitchell. Lullabies, Tidey, the More You Know, All of these things on our Wonderful show. All these things and more. Wait for you on Wonderful. Every Wednesday on Maximumfund.org or wherever you download podcasts. We are back. Kirk, why don't you go first?

Sure, my one more thing is a brief A classic Kirk one more thing. I can just tell. This is Maddie reacting to what I've written in our show. Yes. Yeah, so this is the beginning of a process that I will just sort of mark, and I'm kind of marking things on this episode. And then I'll check in a little later to see how it's going.

I am going to try to train myself to play games with a controller, without inverting the y-axis on the right thumbstick. So I am inspired by Chris Plant, our friend of the show, Besties, co-host, Chris Plant, who was just talking about this on an episode of The Besties, talking about how his son and he have been trading the controller when playing games, and he is an inverter. He inverts the y-axis on the right thumbstick, much like I always did. There are a lot of reasons for that. It is a whole separate topic.

But he's always kind of thought that was really interesting and really liked inverting that He's a little different and inverts the thumbsick and, like, talking about it with people. But his son, when playing the game, the same game, is like, what, like, can't get his head around it? Because why would you? It's a totally, it's a way, it's a ridiculous way to play video games. So he's been training himself to play with a regular style, you know, press the thumbstick up, and your look goes up, press it down, the camera goes down. And he said it took him like two months, but that he did it and that his brain kind of learned the new way of doing things. So I'm going to try doing the same thing.

not for any real reason. I do not share the controller with my golden retriever and give her controller every time to time. I think she wouldn't really understand it whether it was inverted or not inverted. But I just think this would be kind of a fun thing to try to do. He said in that episode that it feels a little more natural to not be inverted, which makes sense

if only because when you invert the y-axis but not the x-axis, it's just a little bit weird that one axis is regular and one isn't. So anyways, I've been trying it. And I played perfect dark with regular controls. And not a bad game, actually. Because of the auto aim, you can kind of be a little loose with the aiming, and it's good for just sort of moving the camera.

But I'm going to stick with it. I'm going to see how it goes. And I will report back in a little bit to see if I'm able to do it. Really, it's just I want to try to make my brain do new things, because I think that's just healthy to try, hey, can my brain relearn a skill that's kind of a, you know, not a super important life skill, but just something that I do a lot. So we'll see.

I'll maybe talk about it a little more once I've been doing it for longer and have a little more experience with different games that it's easier or harder on. But I'm giving it a shot if anyone out there wants to try with me. Let me know how it goes for you. And yeah, I will let you both and listeners know how it goes. I hope it works. I have tried it, but never in as concerted an effort as I expect you will be. The main time I had to try was for Dangan Rompah, which does not have the option to invert controls, but it's not a game where you really. really need to be inverted.

You can kind of get through it. And I never got used to it. So I just was like, I guess, I guess I'm fated to be a controller inverter. But maybe not. I think if you, Kirk, do you have like a time frame that you're going to like try to. Yeah, it sounds like a couple months? A couple months. Yeah, I think it'll kind of depend.

I'm going to do it on, I'm like playing through some death stranding and some games that are like that where it's less arcadey. And certainly a game like Resident Evil, which I'll probably play with a mouse and keyboard, would be a lot harder since you have to really precisely aim and it's very stressful. And the more subconscious the aiming is, the more stressed I am in thinking about things, the more likely it is that will start falling into muscle memory. It really is interesting how your brain has conscious and muscle, like, types of memory. Where a conscious memory is, okay, I'm thinking about this.

I'm moving my thumb like I would move a mouse. I'm thinking about it. But then when things get intense and I need to aim at someone and they're really close to me, I'm not thinking I'm in automatic pilot mode. and that's when my thumb just starts going into inverted mode because it's a different part of your brain, I think, that internalizes things. Learning a musical instrument is actually similar to this where things become ingrained in your muscles

and then you'll be able to play something that you learned 20 years ago and you're like, whoa, it's like my fingers are moving on their own because you're kind of accessing a different part of your memory that feels as though it is your muscles doing it, even though, of course, it's your brain. Next you have to de-invert all your chords and scales. Right after starting guitar left-handed. Yeah, that would be kind of the equivalent. Kirk, have you ever tried to arm aim with the mouse as opposed to aiming with your wrist?

I guess I'm making an assumption that you aim by moving your wrist rather than moving your entire arm in the esports fashion. Right, right. Like lowering the DPI and moving in bigger motions. And moving your entire arm back and forth to aim. I know that's more accurate. I've seen that people who do that. I've played with it a little bit, but it's, I'm, you know, I never really got to that point. I've thought about switching.

If I do, I will talk about it on the show, but I'm a little afraid to make the jump. But then what if I became really? good at games. I think it'd be interesting. I mean, I really like this kind of stuff. Like, these kinds of little tests and challenges for your brain are really cool. Yeah. All right, I'll go next. So I played a board game called Clue, Treachery at Tudor Mansion. And it's, it's Clue, but it's an escape room board game, but it's Clue. So Dean and I played this together. This is a cooperative board game. You can only play it once. There are several other escape room type games in the Clue series. I got free copies of three of them, including this one, and I've only played this one so far.

So it's card-based, and you also navigate around a board that is a Tudor Mansion, and you also are still selecting which characters from Clue you want to be. I got to be Miss Scarlett, et cetera. And you're solving a mystery while also trying to escape the mansion. So this was how I found out that Dina had never seen the movie Clue, and then I forced her to watch the movie Clue. Man, one plus two plus one plus two. Very important and hilarious because the plot of treachery at Tudor Mansion is the plot of the movie Clue. Oh, hell yeah. Oh, I have to play this.

Yes. One of my favorite movies. Is there like a real answer? There's a real answer. There's a real answer. So as people who've seen the movie Clue know, there is, well, I would consider the final section of the movie. It should be the true answer. But there are multiple endings in the movie.

And in this game, there is just one real answer. that is not the same as the movie, so you definitely don't know who did it. And also they invented one character for the game, not that that's related to who did it. So please don't overinterpret that. They just invented another person who's there. I honestly don't know why. I feel like it could have been the same cast of characters. It's not a singing telegram.

But it's fine. That would have been great, actually. But no, it's not the singing telegram. So this was very fun. We've gotten pretty into playing Escape Academy together, which Kirk recommended a while back. Oh, hell yeah. That makes me happy. And also playing various escape room games in board game fashion. And I generally recommend treachery at Trudey Mansion, especially if you have a partner who has never seen the movie Clue because it's just more fun that way.

But I'll also say it's pretty easy. It's definitely easier than Escape Academy. Definitely easier than some of the other escape room games we've played, easier than the Hunt to Killer games, which I've also recommended on this show. I should say the games recommended for ages 10 and up. So if you have a 10-year-old who doesn't really mind murder generally and isn't scared of that kind of concept and is willing to get on board for the mystery shenanigans, it's a very kid-friendly game. There's a lot of kind of clue movie-esque humor in the cards, which took a little getting used to because I'm honestly more used to like adult-themed, sophisticated escape room games. So kind of getting on board for some really goofball humor antics in the cards was a little bit of rejiggering that we both had to. do, but I generally recommend it.

And we pass it on to some friends who also like escape room games. So yeah, if that sounds right for you, especially if you've got a kid who likes this kind of thing, Clue, treachery, a Tudor Mansion, very fun escape room board game. Kind of like movie Clue. Jason, what's your one more thing?

Oh, man. Okay. My one more thing is a TV show, a limited series on Peacock. No, sorry. Yes. On Peacock. You had it. called Paul T. Goldman. And Paul T. Goldman is about a guy named Paul Finkelman, who goes by the name Paul T. Goldman.

What? Okay. All right. And that is the first of many deceptions that this guy may or may not be pulling. So the premise of the show is that this guy, Paul, wrote a book called duplicity about that he says it's a true story about this woman who he married and then turned out to be a con artist. conned him out of a bunch of money and then turned out to be part of a crazy underground sex ring that was like taking children and selling them as sex workers or something like that. And he, after writing this book, which he self-published, he tweets at 100 film directors, trying to get one of them to make a movie based on a screenplay he wrote based on this book. And one of these directors, Jason Wallamer, bites and says, hey, I'm interested in,

making your movie. Wallenir, right? Wallener. Yes, Wallenor. That's what I said. I thought he said Mur. And he spends the next 10 years from about 2012 until about 2022, both doing a mix of kind of like a documentary and a recreation. So he's both interviewing Paul T. Goodman in various forms, following him around with cameras and Goldman. Goldman. And he's both interviewing Paul T. Goldman in various forms, following him around in the camera, getting him doing kind of studio interviews, and also recreating scenes using actors, including Paul playing himself, from this screenplay that Paul has written. And as the show goes on, you start to wonder, hey, how much of this is the truth? Is this really a true story?

Paul sure seems like a character. What's his deal? Is he? Is he, is he, what is he exactly? Whoa, he seems kind of like a jerk. And then there are twists and turns along the way, and it's all made clear. All is made clear by the end. It's sort of like, it's very much like the rehearsal. I was just going to ask that. It's very similar in that it's kind of like a documentary that is like questioning the nature of documentaries

and kind of playing with what's reality and what's not. Although I will say by the end it's a lot clearer what actually happened with this movie, with this series than it is with the rehearsal. It's also got this like crazy compelling character at the middle of it in Paul, who is really just like this very kind of charming, possibly a sociopath dude who is really compelling to watch. And it really, it's an interesting watch because it's at times funny, it's smart, it's challenging sometimes to watch because watching him

kind of do some of the things he does or say some of the things he does can be like tough to watch. And yeah, it's really interesting. interesting and I really recommend it. I highly recommend it to people because I found it really enjoyable and thought-provoking and it's really a work of craft in that like this guy really spent Jason Walleners really spent 10 years piecing this thing together and the reason and they go through this in the series itself. The reason that it took so long is because his his story was rejected and they made a pilot and then there was like they tried to go on Quibi which did not work out. That part is very funny.

And yeah, it's really interesting. And then it winds up getting very meta in the last episode. Paul is shown some of the documentary work that has already been done. And I won't get into all the details because I don't want to spoil the whole thing. But it really, it asks a lot of interesting questions. And we'll leave you thinking about the nature of documentaries, among other things. Yeah, I watched this too and finish it over the weekend. And so Jason, you and I have been texting about it quite a bit.

So Jason Wallin are the director of Borat's subsequent movie film. We should note like he is, this is very much the waters that he likes to play in, this kind of verite. Although he's been working on this one since 2012. So way longer. That was that Borat movie was 2020. I just mean that is indicative of his sort of bent as an artist and as a director. His sensibility. Yeah.

So it has that same kind of feeling where you're not sure who's being pranked and how you feel about it. There are definitely times watching it where I felt great pity for Paul T. Goldman, I guess, as he calls himself, who is a pitiable character and does seem somewhat delusional in that he believes these things that are clearly not true and can't, like, watching him reckon with reality, it's fascinating, but also uncomfortable. There were times where I'm like, I just feel like we're making fun of this guy who has some serious problems. But then there are other times where it's like, this guy is horrible and we're just indulging in his fantasies. So that's also awful. And then there are times where I'm just laughing and laughing because this is so ridiculous that it does a thing that is common to the rehearsal where they will be performing the Hollywood lighting. They'll have the hair light and the mood lighting and the camera lens with the deep focus.

And he'll be like, what are you telling me about the sex ring? She was running it this whole time? And then the next shot will pull out to like a documentary camera pointed at the set where there's like, you know, a thing spraying fake rain on them and like the lighting is all there. people standing around checking their phones. And it was kind of constantly puncturing the fiction that is so obviously a real fiction that he's created. And that stuff is just, it is fascinating. I mean, it really is a work of craft, however complicated I might feel about it at times. Like, in the end, I was like, I'm fine experiencing art that makes me feel a lot of different complicated ways at different times.

I really, yeah, I do recommend people watch it. And it's short, too. It's like six episodes and they're like half an hour each. It's a pretty breezy watch. And you'll probably want to watch the whole thing. once you started. Yeah, the last one is an hour. Some of the best moments are watching the director, Jason

Wallen, are just kind of his reactions to Paul are incredible. Or like the actor who plays the director. There's a lot of stuff where you're like, what am I watching? There is one clear villain to a point where I feel like it actually does a good in exposing them in the form of a psychic who is

really just an unabashed author. Yeah, who like really just like takes this guy's money and lead him on and does some awful things, I think, and is on camera and being interviewed quite a vid and very clearly awful. There's one incredible moment where she talks about how she can channel Abraham Lincoln and she gives quotes from Abraham Lincoln that nobody's heard before and someone talks about how profound they are and then it shows one of the quotes and the quote

is, this is me paraphrasing, but the quote is essentially a great society is made up of good people. Yeah, it's, I was trying to think what it was, and that's, yeah, it's something like that. You're just like, wow. That makes you think, man. Yeah, really profound. Anyway, we shouldn't spoil anymore of this show. Yeah, I want to watch it. You should check it out, Maddie. You'd enjoy it for sure. Paul T. Goldman, it's on Peacock. If you got Peacock to get poker face, you know I do. You know I do. Might as well watch it. We're already watching all a below deck on there. Yeah, I wish it got, I wish it was getting more attention. I feel like it deserves more attention than it's gotten because

it's really interesting and the rehearsal I know resonated a lot of people and I think this will as well. Yeah, I think the rehearsal was big with the journalist sector and this sounds like it would be too for exactly the same reasons. Yeah, but it hasn't really been marketed and Peacock is a tough one to get people on

but yeah, maybe less now. Maybe it could have a, I mean it's fairly recent and because of poker face and then this upcoming seems to be popular. A couple other cool upcoming shows that maybe more people will watch it. Well, I'll watch it and that's going to really tip the scale It will blow up right after that. The triple click bump, the Maddie Myers-Bund.

Yeah, totally. It's not us mentioning it on the show. It's me watching it. Yes, yes. The Maddie-Miris bump. That's definitely what it is. Well, we've done it again. Another app.

We completed Perfect Dark. The bet is complete, folks. Well, one half of the bend is... Now we have to play StarCraft too. Yes, that's true. We do have to play StarCraft too. The humiliations have not yet ended. More multiplayer to come.

Probably over the summer. More ponage. I feel like in July we have kind of a break between the games, so that would be a good time to do it. Yeah, that'll be great. We will. We will. And we'll also talk to each other again next week. So we'll see you then, listeners.

Yeah, see you after Max Fun Drive starts. Bye. Triple Click is produced by Jason Schreier, Maddie Myers, and me, Kirk Hamilton. I edit and mix the show and also wrote our theme music. Our show art is by Tom D.J. Some of the games and products we talked about on this episode may have been sent to us for free for review consideration. You can find a link to our ethics policy in the show notes. Triple Click is a proud member of the Maximum Fun podcast network, and if you like our show,

we hope you'll consider supporting us by becoming a member at Maximumfund.org slash join. Find us on Twitter at triple clickpod, send email the triple click at maximum fun.org and find a link to our discord in the show notes. Thanks for listening. See you next time. Maximumfund.org. Comedy and culture. Artist owned. Audience. Audience supported.