Triple Click - EA Goes Private And We Play Ghost of Yōtei

Episode Date: October 2, 2025

Kirk, Jason, and Maddy convene to talk about the big news of the week — Electronic Arts going private as part of a $55 billion leveraged buyout — and what it could mean for the people involved. Then they talk about Ghost of Yotei, the latest PlayStation 5 exclusive and an open-world samurai game about exploring feudal Japan and killing ronin with a sword. It's fun! One More Thing:Kirk: Baby StepsMaddy: Drop Dead Gorgeous (1999)Jason: One Battle After Another (2025)LINKS:“How Private Equity Destroys the Companies You Depend On” - The Culture Study Podcast w/ Megan Greenwell: https://culturestudypod.substack.com/p/how-private-equity-destroys-the-companiesSupport Triple Click: http://maximumfun.org/joinAll-New 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

If I had a dollar for every time this year, I've played a video game about a woman with a blade on a quest for revenge against a powerful foe. I would have at least $4. Welcome to Triple Click where we bring the games to you. This week we're talking not about Silk Song or Hades 2 or even A.C. Shadows. We're talking about Ghost of Yote, the PS5's big new revenge epic. There's a lot to talk about. So let's get into it. I'm Kirk Hamilton.

I'm Maddie Myers. And I'm Jason Shire. Hello. Hello. Hello, my friends. Welcome back again. We're still here. Nice to see you.

Nice to see you both. We are back again making our favorite video game podcast to make. I mean, the only video game podcast is our favorite. Yeah, it's my favorite for sure. I've been secretly making another video game podcast. But it's like way worse. Well, and also it's not published online. It's just for me.

I was realizing that either of you could be making another video game podcast and that would actually be cool and I would listen to it. But at the moment, the three of us only make triple click. And this is one of my favorite things to do each week. We love making it and we love making it for all of you. And we really appreciate all of you who support the creation of this show. Of course, we are only listeners supported. We don't sell ads.

Really nice thing about making this show. So we don't have to worry about ads. I tell you what, I've been listening to this is some like hour-long podcasts lately. When they sell ads on an hour-long podcast, there are so many ads. Like, I love podcasts. I love all my colleagues who make hour-long podcasts. There are some really great ones. But wow.

I get they've got to make a living. But it can really, like, it can really distract you. It's also very dangerous at, you guys know that, right? Because people who are driving have to, like, Phenigna with the skip ahead. But honestly, I don't know if you're basing that on, like, some. I don't know. It sounds real to me. I could imagine they're being an article.

No, Kirk, I'm basing it on personal experience. Yes. Because no, it's the same for me. I also do this where I'm trying to skip the ad. There's certain things I have heard again and again, too, and I'm like, I can't stand to hear this again. These are all things we don't do to you here at triple click. We're keeping you safe.

No, we are pro-driving safety. We want you to keep your eyes on the road and just listen to the podcast. So we make this show with no ads, other than, of course, some maximum fun promos, which are different each week and support our network. Yeah, people might skip through the promos. Yeah, well, you know. If you're skipping through the promos, that's fine. You do you, but please don't do it while you're driving.

Be careful. Anyways, Maximum Fun is our network. We do run promos for other shows because we love being part of Max Fun. If you want to join the network and support our show, go to Maximum Fun. org slash join. And of course, if you are a member, you get access to monthly bonus episodes. We make one every month and have been doing so since we started the show. So there's a ton of them.

Most recently, there was an Aquarina of Time. Beanscast and Coming right up very soon, it'll be like a little at the start of October. because we're recording it at the end of the week, we will be running a Hollow Night Silk Song Beans cast, or Beans cast, as we're going to call it, because there are so many beads spilling all over the floor in that game, and we're going to spoil everything in that game,

talk about it. We've all finished it, or at least rolled credits, and there's a lot to say about all of the hidden stuff in that game. So that's going to be really fun. Anyway, maximum fun.org slash join. All right, so we are going to be talking about Ghost of Yote today, but first we're going to talk about a little bit of news. Jason, what is the?

that news. Yeah, man. Electronic Arts is going private. Some crazy news that broke last Friday and took over my weekend. I had to work over the weekend handling some stuff on this. So the long and short of it is that a consortium of investors, which includes Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund, Jared Kushner, son-in-law of the president, and Silver Lake, a private equity firm, is buying EA for $55 billion. They are funding, it's funded by an equity of about $36 billion and debt of about $20 billion. And it is a leveraged buyout, which means that the debt is actually going to go on E.A's books. Essentially, they are buying EA with EA.

And it's crazy news. It'll be a while before we see how things shake out with it. But leverage buyouts have a spotty history to say the least. A lot of people know about what happened to Toys R Us, which was bought out in a leverage buyout in, I believe 2005, something like that a while ago. And eventually just drowned in debt payments and when bankrupt as a result. Joanne's Fabrics is another high profile example. There have been a lot of them over the years. So these are highly risky moves to make these.

LBOs, leveraged buyouts. So a lot to unpack there, but my immediate reaction was like, oh, my God, this is going to lead to a lot of cost cutting because these LBOs always do. And cost cutting means layoffs, among other things, which is a scary proposition. So this news, I mean, normally news of like a company going from being publicly traded and having to deal with the pressures of Wall Street and quarterly goals and pleasing shareholders every year, for them to go private. Some can be a freeing thing. Often you hear about something like that.

You're like, oh, okay, cool. Now that they can be more innovative and creative and they don't have to kind of follow those short-term pressures. But in this case, they will have the extreme pressure of $20 billion in debt hanging over them. So, yeah, man, we'll be talking about this more as the months come, it's expected to close in the next six to nine months. So at some point in next year, and man, it's going to be wild. It's wild that leverage buyouts can even exist at all

as a concept. Like, you can buy something and pay for it with debt. It just doesn't make any sense to make. Yeah, not entirely with debt. You have to, as part of a leveraged buyout, they're like different, the amount, it's called like the amount that you leverage is the debt. And that you have to put up some level of equity. So I can't just be like, hey, I'm going to buy Activision by paying for it. Yeah. But yes, but it is a crazy proposition. It's very appealing to banks.

Like, J.P. Morgan is financing this debt. And it's appealing to them because they get some very, very nice underwriting fees. And also the debt is, it's what's called junk debt typically. Bloomberg reported that this is expected to be single be rated debt, which means that it's a junk debt. which means it's very risky and speculative. And so that means that the interest rates can be very high, which is, again, if you're the bankers and you're collecting on this interest,

then it's good for you. Yeah, it's good for you. Usually what happens is like a JP Morgan will sell it. And the debt markets, there's a whole giant kind of financial apparatus called the debt market where a lot of this stuff is played around with, which is why sometimes I think normal people might have some insight into this because if you have a mortgage, a lot of times your mortgage might get sold to some other company and you'll just be told like, hey, your mortgage belongs to this market now.

And these are the new terms. Well, no, no, no. They can't change your terms. If you're on a fixed term mortgage, like a 30-year mortgage, they can't, which is one nice thing about America. In other countries, mortgages tend to be more like variable. I believe in Canada, it's more of a variable system. Here in America, we have a nice system, which is like you put down, you sign a 30-year

mortgage, you get the same terms for 30 years, no matter what, other than like your taxes going up. But, yeah, but this debt, it's very appealing to the bankers. And the bankers will definitely come out ahead. EA shareholders, including a lot of employees, to be fair, will come out ahead because they'll be getting $210 per share, which is a big premium on, I think, before the rumors of all this started, it was trading 150 or 160, something like that. So pretty big premium on the shares.

But, yeah, for employees, I'm certainly worried. could you put EA in context for people listening like if there are some people who maybe don't know exactly what to think of when they think of EA like what games does EA make yeah man I've been doing this all week on like financial radio and Bloomberg TV but now you can do it for the gamers now I can do it for the gamers right pretend I'm a public radio interviewer yeah EA I mean for people who don't know EA was founded in 1982 it's been around for 43 years so it's one of the stalwarts of the gaming industry, despite its kind of up and down reputation over the years. It makes a lot of sports games, Madden and EA Sports FC, which used to be called FIFA. Their soccer games, so football and football. And it also makes the battlefield games. There's a new battlefield coming out in just a few days, which makes this very strange timing.

The Sims, yeah, that's another their kind of cultural institutions. Yeah, yeah, yeah, the Sims is a big one. Dragon Age, Mass Effect for people who are. into the BioRer games. Of course, they make anthem. They are... That's their biggest title. All the anthem heads up there.

And yeah, a bunch of other stuff. Skate they just came out with. They used to make a lot more games. If you ever look at the history of EA, in the early 2000s, they were releasing dozens of games a year, but they have consolidated. One way to think I'll share is a crazy stat,

which I had known, but was really thinking about in the context of why this deal happened, which is that in the last fiscal year, which ended in March, the end of March of this year, EA's revenue was 75% from live services. 75% of EA's revenue came from live services, meaning micro-transactions,

in-game payments for stuff like FIFA and Apex Legends and Madden and so on and so forth. 75%. This used to be a business of like making a product and selling it to people. is a business of making a product and getting people to spend money within that product, which I think is pretty wild. And I think that's why it's kind of, it's appealing for a private equity takeover, in this case, Saudi Arabia slash private equity takeover, because live service revenue, I think, is more predictable than product revenue where you're just like selling a game and hoping it's a hit and putting a big investment into it. Live service is a little bit more dependable. But yeah,

I mean, there's a lot to unpack here. Yeah, if I could make a recommendation for anyone who is interested in private equity and wants to know more about it, there is an episode of the Culture Study podcast from June that I listened to. This is Anne Helen Peterson's podcast that she just has a variety of guests on to talk about whatever. And this time she had on Megan Greenwell, who is actually a former colleague of ours. She was the editor-in-chief of Deadspin. And she has a book out about private equity. and she came on that podcast to just talk about it.

And I found it really helpful because while I know what private equity is sort of, I found I didn't really listening to the conversation. Like they explained the difference between venture capital and private equity. And even that conversation was like really helpful for me. And then they also got into just, you know, I mean, Megan wrote a whole book about it. So it's all about private equity, how it works, the types of businesses that it buys, and also just the sheer scope of private equity's influence in our culture, like in America, like so many things in the medical establishment.

I'm seeing it a lot in music, a lot of small, like instrument makers or just kind of smaller musical companies are getting bought by private equity. So it's like spreading and spreading and spreading. It's a really widespread thing and kind of good to understand. And then, of course, also you will understand the context of what's going on with EA a little bit better. So I recommend that. We'll link to it in show notes. Yeah, although it's worth noting here that the biggest stakeholder in the future private EA is going to be Saudi Arabia.

So this isn't a typical private equity deal where it's a company swooping in, seeing an investment opportunity, seeing an opportunity to maybe sell assets or do a quick turnaround and try to sell a struggling company, as has happened with our former digs, quote-to-go media. Sure. And so I don't know if this is like there's really no precedent for this. We really don't know it's going to happen. I think it's safe to say there will be cost cutting. I just, we have no idea what the scale is going to be. We have no idea what Saudi Arabia wants to do with EA. They've been making a lot of investments in other gaming companies. In fact, they already had a 10% stake in EA before this. They had bought up 10% of EA's shares. So this is just them kind of like basically getting more shares in EA. And they're also very, into esports, they're very into sports plays, they've been doing a lot of golf stuff. And of course, they're very controversial because of Saudi Arabia's, I mean, there are all sorts of allegations and accusations and Saudi Arabia's human rights record and the story about the journalist from the Washington Post. I mean, there's a lot, again, a lot to unpack here. But one thing we can say for sure is that EA will look very different a year from now than it does today.

Yeah, I don't even have a prediction as to what it could look like, though. It just doesn't seem ideal to me for this to be something that would happen to a major game company. It's very, very crazy. But anyway, let's talk about a video game. Kirk, what are we talking about? We are going to talk about Ghost of Yotae. This is a new PlayStation 5 exclusive from Sucker Punch. It is a lot like Ghost of Tsushima, which came out in 2020.

Can I just pause for a second? Video Game Studio names are so bizarre. The way that you casually just say, oh, from Sucker Punch, yeah. Sucker Punch, actually, I think, is a great name. It has a really good rhythm to it. If we're doing our name, our Spider Mansion name critique, I think Sucker Punch, very memorable. It's really fun to say. It has, like, a good rhythm.

It's solid. I give Sucker Punch in A. It's pretty solid. Ghost of Yote. Not bad either while we're here. No, not bad. Also, fun to say, ghost of is a good sort of premise. And I appreciate that it's not called like Ghost of Tsushima.

Two. I don't know, you know, Ghost of Sushima, Yote Edition. Yeah, that would be teasing. Since, of course, it is in a new region. Yeah, so this is a sequel of sorts to Ghost of Sushima, though it's really just a separate game in the same, you know, world and with the same systems and in the same kind of approach. It tells the story of a woman named Atsu, who is seeking revenge in medieval Japan.

She's in the Ezo region, is that how it's pronounced, the Azo region. In northern Japan, this is the region with, like, Hokkaido and some other kind of regions of Japan that you might have seen in various video games or movies. Or if you've visited, of course, you may have been there. But it's a little more remote. It's a little more rustic. And it's kind of portrayed in this game as a frontier, a kind of lawless frontier where one clan of samurai are trying to kind of impose law and order, but it's still very much like the realms, like realms of warlords.

and there's not really any law. And Atsu's family is murdered by a group of, I guess, warlords called the Yotai Six. They're each a little bit different. You know, each of them wears a different mask and has a different kind of whole deal. And she swears revenge and sets off after them. And, of course, this then lays out very neatly onto an open world video game, which is what Ghost of Yotai is. You will ride your horse across beautiful vistas.

You will upgrade Atsu and learn. abilities, get new weapons, you'll get kind of all of the familiar weapons of a samurai or a ninja video game, and you will kill so many guys. Man, everyone in this game just, like, they all just want to throw down. They don't want to talk, they want to die. So you will kill a lot of people. Yeah, every time you meet anyone, they're like, could you just kill me? Could we enter a fighting cutscene?

They're like, I was going to claim this bounty. And you're like, okay, cool. And they're like, no, how about I fight you to the death? You're like, well, okay. Sometimes you can pay them to go away, which I don't know why anyone would do that since it's very easy to just kill them. That is true. I have killed. I have bought off some people to save their lives, to save them from themselves. Oh, I guess you're the one of the people who would do that. Yeah, you're madamey. I guess I did it once. I'm not sure if I would have killed the guy. He was training at a bamboo stand and he didn't want to get out of the way.

And I was like, can I just go? I don't want to wait for you. And instead of fighting him, I paid him because it was not that much. money and it seemed like the nice thing to do. I would pay him so I didn't have to do the bamboo mini game again. I like the bamboo video. Let's get to do it. Let's talk about this game. We've all been playing it. You know, I think it's actually pretty fun. Maddie, what do you think? I agree. It's actually pretty fun. I'm definitely curious, Kirk, for your Ghost of Sashima take on it, but personally, I'm coming in having played none of that game at all. This is my only ghost game. So anything I'm comparing it to is just other third person action games and games where you call a horse, you know, like a korena of time, a game where you call a horse and right across some planes.

It's a lot like that. Much, much prettier. I'm really digging this game. Yeah, actually, another good comparison. You play an instrument in this game. You play the shamisen. And I really like that mechanic. There are a lot of just individuated mechanics in this game.

And I don't know how. necessary, all of them are, but I've just kind of been enjoying leaning into them, in part because this game is so different from what I was just playing, which was Silk Song, where you're like, you're just move, move, move all the time. This game has moments where you just sit down and meditate and that's like part of the game, or you play the Shamasan and you're just watching yourself play an instrument. You learn different songs. They have different utilities, but really, I'm just enjoying the songs. This is a vibes game, I would say. That's my take after. I'm only about 10 hours in, not sure how long it is, but it's very vibesy. Yes, every person I run into is

essentially asking me to kill them. I think plot wise, it's a little, it's, I am enjoying the plot. I don't think the plot is super complicated, but I'm digging it. It's a classic revenge story, but mostly I'm liking the vibes. I like how beautiful it is, and I like just the music and sound design of the game and the sword fighting. I'm really into the sword fighting design. I could take or leave the color-coded specialized attacks. But the baseline sword-fighting mechanics, I think, are cool and interesting and more complicated than I expected them to be as compared to like a classic sword and board type of a fighting in like a Dark Souls or what have you.

This one is like, you got to learn to use a katana, pay attention, and then you learn how to use two katanas. So yeah, I'm digging it. I'm not too far, but I'm digging it so far. Nice. Jason, how are you finding it? Maddie, you're saying you don't want another game where if someone's glinting red, then you can't block them. You know, glinting blue, then you can.

This game does introduce the yellow attack. That's true. That's a new one. It's got a third color. They're going to disarm you and then you have to run around. The primary colors are all here, red, blue, and yellow. And what will the attacks correspond with? Who can say?

Not great for colorblind players, from what I hear. I hope they patch in some other alternative for that. Oh, is there no option? There's apparently no option. Usually Sony has a lot of accessibility, but I hadn't actually checked. I know. That surprised me too, so I figured I'd note it. It doesn't bother me, but apparently it is an issue for people who can't tell the difference between those attacks.

And it really does matter. Like, you need to do a different action in response to each color. Yeah. So I used to call, there's a series, there's a Japanese RPG series called Tales of, Tales of, Tales of, and then it's a bunch of different games, like different kind of weird, proper nouns, tales of Aries, whatever it is. I used to call them the kind of the fast food of video games because they often, they were always the same. There was this like the same kind of food, but sometimes you're just in the mood for them and you want to just like gobble down some fast food of JRPGs, basically. I think this kind of feels like the fast food of like AAA open world games in that I'm playing it. It feels like it's like comforting in some ways.

It doesn't feel particularly new or innovative. It feels like I played this game a thousand times before. but also it's very well made and I appreciate it for what it is and yes it is a fun video game and I think if you out there are in the mood for just like a AAA open world samurai game like you can't do much worse than this it's just that I keep having this nagging feeling that like okay everything I am doing in this game I just have played before in other AAA games and I think that the it also is a real victim of timing because Assassin's Creed shadows came out in March and it is for all intents of purposes, the same video game. You play as a woman ninja who is seeking revenge for her parents' deaths at the hand of these masked warlords and you have to go and find them and kill them. Obviously, there are differences, but still, it's just like, I think one of the reasons

goes to Tsushima was really enjoyable and cool and felt like a breath of fresh air is that there weren't a lot of big AAA open world games or any AAA open world games set in feudal Japan at that point. And now we have a lot of them. And so getting a sequel to that is kind of like more of the same. That said, I mean, like I said, it's a very one-like game. It's very pretty. There's a lot to like about it. There are a lot of like fiddly mechanics, as you alluded to, that I don't like, including having to flip mushrooms or start fires with the motion controller. You can skip that in fact. I know, I know, I know. But I mean, I'm just looking at it as what it is.

I'm not going to, like, of course, you can go into the menu and set your own toggles and skip mini games or whatever, but like I'm just trying to assess what I have played so far. And those I could do without the bamboo button meshing I could definitely do without. But like I said, I'm not sure you can skip those. I think you have to be the bamboo. I think if you fail enough times, it'll let you skip it. Speaking, not, not that I would know. Not that I would ever fail.

But yeah, I mean, more of the same, but enjoy. and well-made and fun, and I'm sure seeing through that, I'm not going to play much more of this, but I'm sure people who are into it will, like, get a lot out of it. Yeah, so to give my own impressions, I am enjoying it. I'm actually enjoying it more and more the more I play, which is something that I remember being true of Ghosts of Tsushima as well. And Jason, you played Tsushima, right, since I know Maddie has not. Yeah, I played, I think, the first half. Basically, I played up until you get your uncle Is it your uncle, right?

And that kind of that big main fortress, the first island I played through it. Yeah, it's one of those games where you complete the first island and then the second island opens up and it's like, do it again. It's the Far Cry 2, as I call it. Yeah, so this game is structured very differently and I really think it's an improvement. So something that Ghost of Sushima introduced a little later on was a DLC area called Iki Island. And that was really cool. That was a huge improvement over Ghost of Tsushima, I thought. It just added a lot of interesting gameplay, new enemy types that forced you to change up how you were approaching a fight,

give you some horseback maneuvers that were sort of cool that carry over to this game, and some other abilities that they continue and give you the option of using in Ghost of Yota. And I feel like Iiki Island provided a framework that they're using in Ghost of Yotai, Because in this game, you start out in a kind of, I don't know, just open area, like a kind of one region of the world. And that's where Atsu's home is and there's a little inn where you can get bounties. And you start to go around and you find little side quests to do. And the way that you explore this game to explain it to people is similar to Tsushima in that there's no mini map. And if you want to go somewhere, you can call it up on the map.

Yeah, this is something that I like. You can call up the big map and set a waypoint. But if you do so, that causes the wind to guide you in that direction. So then you swipe on the touchpad, on the dual sense controller, and the wind pushes out in front of you. It's very nice looking and kind of a cool way to keep you up in the game. Like your eyes are up in the game instead of looking down at a map in the corner of your screen. Yeah, I like it. Also, sometimes little gold birds appear, and the birds are very funny.

They look kind of like remote-controlled drone birds because they really want to get their attention. That is the wind when it comes to subtle environmental clues as to where you should go next. I like what they're going for. Yeah. I appreciate the thought, but it's a little heavy-handed. But the wind, I think, is pretty good. Even when it's really, really gusting, I still feel like the vibe is good. And it's nice that there is a sort of an implication that the wind is at Sue's mother.

Like there's in her flashbacks that her mother is like, I will always be on the wind with you or something. And I like that, too. Like, the wind is guiding her on this quest that she's on. So you explore this kind of main region and it kind of seems like, okay, this is just going to be like this is sushi. But then you go to the first secondary region because you're following these leads. It's kind of set up like a mystery story because each of these people you're hunting down is wearing a mask when they kill your family. So you don't know who they are. And you're kind of like, Atsu is constantly interrogating people or like asking, there are friendly people.

Not everyone wants to die. And when you talk to a friendly person, she'll say, hey, tell me about the Yote Six. I want to know about the Oni. or tell me about the Kitsune. Yeah, the Kitsune, which is the other, those are the kind of two first ones that you're asking about. So pretty soon people will say, well, the only is that he's up in these fields. So if you go to this northern region, you'll, you know, you'll be in his area. So that's where I've been exploring.

And it turns out you go to a region and the regions are actually all very different. And they feel each one feels a little more like its own little Iki Island. It's this kind of self-contained area. there's a long story quest that's very involved. The one up in the plains where I'm looking for the ony is actually really cool. I won't spoil stuff in it, but there's like major story revelations and we're meeting really cool characters and it's kind of going and going and going. It's really an involved multi-chapter story that's pretty unpredictable and really well done,

like really well acted and well done. A fun little twist, yeah, in that one. That's what I'm in the middle of too, Kirk. Yeah. And it's kind of, and it also like has a theme. So this area is kind of the fire island. Like the Onee are like the fire clan. They're really, they all wear masks and they're the demons and they kind of light everything on fire.

So you're fighting fire enemies and there are all these specialized enemy types where like throwing bombs and using fire. And you also unlock new abilities, some really good ones that use fire. So the whole story is like revolving around fire and fire abilities. So if you go and follow the Katsune, that's like in the frozen north. And I believe that's more of a like a shi. Shinobi, like ninja hidden, like there's codes that you have to decipher. You're trying to figure out where things are. And I think you're unlocking a different type of ability.

And the region has its own kind of identity. So I actually really like this approach. The more that I've played through this Oney region, the more I've felt like I'm in a really distinct and cool part of the game. And I really like that. It's actually made me want to just keep going because I'm getting some really cool abilities. I'm like enmeshed in this whole little mini story. And then I'll finish it and go back to that.

the main area and then I'll go do the Katsune mission. So I think that structure is actually an improvement over Tsushima. Yeah, I also do like the story so far. I think we're all around the same spot so we can all kind of say what we think of it. I'm not going to spoil it, but I do like the story and the, I've kind of noticed like, oh, this is a game I can't play while watching TV. It's way better when it's like on the big screen. I'm playing it with the Japanese voice acting and subtitles. So I'm just fully ensconced having to really pay attention. And I'm, I really appreciate a game like that. I feel like it's been a minute since I played a game where I really had to lock in

and just be like, okay, let me actually remember what's going on and follow who each of these characters is. I don't know that it's so strong that I'm like, oh, it's practically a TV show. But it is strong enough that it's hooked me. And I'm like, I'm interested in finding out what's going to happen next. And I will also probably continue playing and see what the rest of the characters and areas are like too because I'm rooting for Atsu. I will also say, since we've kind of started comparing it to Assassin's Creed Shadows, I think that something that you'd only know if you bother to play this

and that I appreciate is that Atsu is a pretty different character from Noway. Like, Noway has this really like high emotion, intensity, like she's angry at everyone all the time and lashes out at them and she's impulsive at first and she's she kind of refuses to work with people. Atsu's more like, like the Ice Queen. And also there's some kind of magical realism elements to this game, whereby she's kind of capitalizing on this idea that she's a literal ghost and like encouraging that superstition and other people. But also I, because it's a video game and she's so powerful and has some of these great attacks, I've kind of wondered as the player, like it almost feels like some of this is real. And she has this wolf that follows her around and is much kinder

to her than any wolf in real life would ever be. And so I do kind of like, like that this game just has a really different tone and energy from AC shadows that distinguishes it, especially just in the story and characters. But again, I feel like if you didn't play them, why would you know that? I wonder if it will turn out that the wolf is the spirit of your parents following you around. Maybe that's your dad and your mom's the wind. I don't know. Who does the brother get to be? They've kind of already implied. The wolves are like the protectors of is, like that's sort of how she describes them. So I think it's a little more like her connection to the natural world, since the natural world plays a big role in this game. You run into the wolf too during that cut

scene where you're still a child and Lord Saito attacks the wolf and like that's kind of like your early foreshadowing that something's off about him because like the wolf is a good thing and why would he attack a wolf? And I kind of appreciated that. I mean it's again, not that deep, but I was into it. Let's say on the Assassin's Creed Shadows comparison a little bit. I actually think that it is interesting how the games are similar and different. They are very similar in the setup. Actually, that's the strongest similarity. Yes.

The very first cut scene. Yeah, there's like a fire in the background and there's a group of people wearing masks. And then, you know, the main character puts those people on a board and is like, I'm going to kill you all one at a time. I mean, that is very similar. But the games are very different, too. And this was true of Tsushima as well, that it looked like an Assassin's Creed. It had some Assassin's Creed like qualities. A mix of stealth in action, outposts that you take down, repeated side quests, you know, a historical setting.

But as a game, and let's just stay with Yote here, it is much simpler. It's especially as a stealth game, far simpler game. This is just like, you know, you go into an encampment, you can sneak around and kill everybody. It's kind of fun. Like, it's pretty easy to do. The AI is not super strong. But there are not a lot of systems at play here. I went back and played some shadows over the weekends just to compare and contrast.

And shadows is this like incredibly complicated game. There's so much going on. You're in a, you know, like whatever, an enemy fort sneaking around. And I mean, there are just, there are all these options that you have, all of these tools. There's so much like the layers of enemy awareness are so much more complicated. You can be seen. You can hide. It just feels like way, way more involved.

And then you get in a fight and there's also a lot more going on, in part because there are two protagonists. So you're sort of meant to be switching between Yasuke and Nowe and kind of like melee combat samurai or stealthy ninja. And you can fight as either or you can kind of sneak as either, but not really. Where in Ghost of Yote, like it's just Atsu and she is very much, I would say much more of a combat like warrior than she is a sort of sneaky ninja, even though you're given tools to do that. And so it's just a much more straightforward game that's much more than designed around this combat system that is itself like a lot more of a kind of, I think it's more fun than shadows, like the actual just sword fighting. And it's really just designed to be this like

sword fighting system. Well, to be fair, there are, so there's a skill tree system, of course, because it's AAA comfort food once again. And there are different kind of stealth tools you can unlock. I'm not sure how elaborate they get, but for example, I was doing some sneaking in one area and there was a big dude that I could only do critical damage to with the stealth strike. I couldn't kill him. And then I unlocked an ability that is like, now you can stealth kill brutes like these big dudes. So now I was able to go and do that. There's another ability that lets you take out two dudes at once with your stealth.

So it does give you a few more options. But yes, you're right. It's not as elaborate as shadows. Yeah, I don't mean to suggest that there are no stealth options, just that it is a far more pared down stealth game, in particular with how enemy awareness works. and just how you're kind of meant to do it. Like, you're kind of meant to walk in

and challenge guys to a fight. Yeah. And this is a carryover mechanic. Katana's blazing. When you're walking around, even when you're sneaking, there'll be a big button prompt that is like, standoff like it wants me to. Yes. Yeah.

And this is a carryover from Tsushima because a big part of the plot of Ghost of Tsushima was that Jin, the protagonist, was a samurai. And that he saw the sneaking and the stealth killing as dishonorable. And like a big part of the story, the first, like the whole, really a big part of his character arc in the game is him transforming into the ghosts of Tsushima, who's this, like, mythic figure who also fights dirty and sneaks around and kills people. And it's him sort of both becoming disillusioned with, like, the samurai code and setting that aside and just changing as a character and, like, embracing this brutality he didn't know that he had to or didn't want to.

And like, so as a result, there was always this honorable option because a samurai would just walk in and say, like, come fight me. like that's how we do things, or at least in the game's presentation of this honor code. And in this game, that's not really like Atsu's deal. Like Atsu is very much like, I will kill anyone in any way that I can from the start. But she still has that. They still have that mechanic, which can be a fun way to go. You know, you get this showdown where you like wait and the other guy is like waiting. And then the minute he attacks, you attack and it fills up your focus gauge.

So you're kind of ready to do a bunch of special moves. And I got to say, like at first I was kind of frustrated by the combat because I just didn't have any good abilities unlocked. But the more I'm played, like, I have a bunch of cool abilities unlocked, and there are a lot more to go. And, like, the weapons each have their own skill trees, and also, Atsu has several skill trees that are just, like, combat-related. And the more you're, like, getting slow-moes on a perfect block or perfect dodge, or you have, like, I have a bunch of really cool katana abilities now. I can disarm guys. You know, I have slow-mo on my bow, so I'm, like, headshotting guys. And it really is very fun. Like, it's a very dynamic, um, um,

and just like punchy, good feeling combat system. Yeah, definitely starts out weak and gets better. So in Goswit Tsushima, there was this like system of stances where different stances that you could switch to would be more or less effective on different types of enemies. It was cool in theory, although it was a little bit unwieldy to actually use in practice, at least for me. I mean, maybe better gamers were better at it.

No, I kind of felt the same way. It was fine, like, but it just felt a little, like, fiddley. A little clunky. Yeah. In this, it's a similar sort of system in that you're still like holding R2 and then picking one of the face buttons. But instead of switching these stances and trying to remember like, oh, stone stance works with this guy. You're actually switching weapons. So like at first you have just a katana, then you get two katanas and you get other stuff too. And each of those works, uh, works better depending on the enemy you're fighting. And it's much easier to remember like, oh, switch to dual katanas to fight this spear dude,

than it is to remember, oh, water stance is effective against this spear dude. So I find that to be a much better system. And yeah, you're totally right. And I think that, like, people who start out the game and maybe, like, don't get any upgrades or don't do any side stuff or don't explore a lot, we'll find the combat to be very repetitive. But, yeah, it definitely gets better the more you go. Yeah, the weapons are also just really fun.

I mean, the spear that I've got in the second area of the airy is just a really fun weapon it has a super long reach. The heavy attack, you like plant it in the ground and then pull vault and like double kick a guy. And like there's just really, it's a very different move set from, you know, a katana and the moves I've unlocked for that. And then yeah, as you play, you get points to unlock even more moves for each one. And then yeah, they're each kind of matched against a weapon type. Yeah, I'm about to get the spear. I'm excited for that. Yeah, you make it sound cool. It is cool. Yeah, that sounds awesome. I also like any ability tree that has like a slow mo on perfect block or peri situation. It's very bayoneta, but it's also kind of like

Arkham Asylum or whatever. Like you remember like Batman like speeding up and slowing down and how cool that felt? There's just something about that in combat, any type of melee combat where it just makes you feel really, really cool and powerful because your your person can just slow down and be like, and now the perfect shot or slice in Atsu's case. It feels great. So yeah, and I totally agree. the stealth I haven't super been using. There have been like a couple moments when I've been like, I'm going to sell through this and see what it's like. But yes, it super encourages you to press that standoff button.

And also, I assume this is in Ghost of Sushima, too. It encourages you to like switch the camera angle when you enter into standoff mode. And so you like, you are the cinematographer of your own battles sometimes. And it's corny, but I enjoy that as well. Like just suddenly you're in an overhead shot or whatever it is. and you're like, oh, the battle's going to be so epic, even though you're just fighting some random guy who's, like, guarding a gate somewhere

and doesn't know what's going to hit him. It's fun. Some guy who wants money or else that. Some guy who would have happily taken 20 bucks just to get out of your way, but you're like, no, now we're fighting, and the Shamasan is playing in the background. I must direct a Quentin Tarantino movie while slaughtering you. It's all happening.

There are these cinematic modes in the game as well. There's like Curasaro mode, which I think is in black and white, and I think there's like a Takashi-Mike mode that I haven't messed with. I haven't really messed with those. I think they're kind of for fun. Those seem a little much even for me, but I am enjoying. There's a pretty good photo mode as well in this game. I don't know if you've played with that at all, but I've been enjoying that too.

It's fantastic. It's similar to, it was the same in Gosa Sushima where you activate it, but the wind keeps blowing. Because we should really underline. This game is really beautiful. It isn't just a nice looking video game. It is absurd. Like on a nice 4K TV with HDR. lighting the mountain Mount Yote which is in the background of a lot of the game is so it looks just

better than any mountain I've ever seen. It looks great. So there are a lot of really breathtaking vistas in this game. Are you guys playing in the graphics mode or performance mode? Oh, performance all the way. Okay, good. It's still interesting. On a base PS5.

I'm sure on the, I know that on the PS5 pro you get some bells and whistles, which will be a nice justification for anyone who bought one of those. Kirk, it's so funny you just said that for a second. I just had this moment of like, oh my God, that's a thing. Like, I totally forgot that exists in the first place. Yeah, it's very much for a subset of gamers that I do not fall into. But I know that it adds the ray tracing and whatever and get 60 frames per second. But no, I'm playing in performance.

By the way, this game, it's coming out an interesting time because the PlayStation 5 just had to raise prices due to tariffs. And this is a PlayStation 5 exclusive. Yeah, for now, which of course we know eventually will come to PC and I'm sure it'll do well there. It'll look great on that. Yeah, one other thing I want to kind of underline or something that you, said Maddie that I agree with and kind of want to expand on a little. You talked about leaning into some of the systems. There are a lot of systems in this game and you don't always have to lean into them. I can tell that there were people who wanted to make this a little bit more

immersive, a little bit more frictional where like maybe you couldn't fast travel. Since now, if you've been somewhere, you can just fast travel there instantly on the map. I was kind of shocked by that, by the way. I was like, I thought you were going to make me ride my horse around way more video game. But nope, nope. Nope. There's a camp system, as Jason mentioned there, you have to start the fire. And then you realize there's a little hold X to skip prompt in the corner. And I was like, oh, I will be skipping these cooking mini games from now and out. That comes later.

You have to do it a bunch of times. I did it one time. You have to do it once, I think, first at least. Anyways, you do some of this, like, camp stuff. Oh, well, you also have to do that, like, during quests and stuff is the starting the fire. And you can't see this. It's gimmicky. It's silly.

Use the motion controls, whatever. Flip the fish over to cook it properly. But when you're in camp also, you can practice shamazon. You can, I don't know, you can do a variety of things. But also vendors will come to your camp. And it's kind of cool. They'll, like, come walking in. And it's, hey, it's the lady who sells me bows and arrows.

And she's just walking around, apparently. So here she is. And then she hangs out in camp and I can buy stuff from her. And that system is actually really cool. And given the frontier vibe, you can imagine one version of this game or a designed idea, a designed version of this game being like, oh yeah, you have to camp, and that's how you get vendors to come to you, and there's no fast travel, and it's all kind of you're following the wind and you're exploring and finding stuff.

But because I can just fast travel to any inner town, and then all the vendors are there, I just do that instead. So there's a little bit of, you need to kind of lean into some of these systems in order to make the game the kind of best version of itself. Similarly, in combat, like bows are really overpowered in combat. I cleared one outpost where I was trying to do stealth and I got spotted. And it was a ton of dudes chasing me. So I just ran in circles around a building just waiting for the slow-mo to recharge on my bow. And then I would just headshot one of them. And then I'd run away.

And then I just killed them all. And also you can pick up and throw weapons, which is like incredibly powerful. It's like basically a one-hick kill. It's so powerful. It's like a one-and-kill. Yeah. It isn't always. But like with most regular enemies it is, especially at first. So I was like just grabbing swords and throwing and running.

And I like never fought anyone. And I killed like 20 guys this way. So you can do kind of silly stuff like that. I'd say even more so in this game than some other games that kind of really punish you if you try to break them in that way. This game lets you. But if you just lean into it and just have a big sword fight with a bunch of guys and really just try to play well, it'll be challenging, but it'll also be pretty fun. And I actually am finding that I might kick the difficulty up, which was something I did in Tsushima as well. Because once you're doing that, you really will be challenged by fights and have to start cooking food to get bonus.

and like leaning into some of the other systems that they've put in place. So it's a game that kind of gives back what you put into it, even though it is, in the end, it is just like, you know, a very pleasing, maybe in Jason's words, somewhat fast foody open world game. Like, it's just one of those. But you can get more out of it and have a more particular experience. I want to be clear, that's not a derogatory thing by any way.

I guess you. It's just kind of like AAA. It almost reminds me in some ways this game was way worse. But do you remember when we talked about Days Gone and we were just like, this is AAA the video game? It's just like a checklist of everything you need for a AAA game. I think this is better, better made in several ways, especially the writing. But it's just along that line of just like another open world. A lot of these PlayStation games are similar to Ubisoft games and that they just hit the checklist.

Yeah, and I've been finding that kind of nice, especially after finishing Silk song and like needing something that's just a little more like, here, just come have fun. Yeah, a little, it's going to be really pretty. You're going to have a good time. Yeah, come have fun. Watch some cool cut scenes. It's a good. Yeah, it's, yeah, that's a really good. It's good.

These are two games to bounce back and forth between because one is like, you must focus and, like, be patient and get pattern, like, master pattern recognition. And the other is just like, yeah, just chill and samurai Japan and watch a revenge story come to life. Yeah, it's, and of course, there are a million, like, difficulty settings in Guse of Yote. So you could just, like, play with combat. like super easy if you wanted to. Right. I don't really recommend that though. No, no, no.

But if you wanted, if you're like, man, after Silk Song, I just want to freeze through something. I really just want to kill every guy instantly. No judgment. I was really having that experience where I was like, this is just nice. And now I'm actually to the point where I've got enough skills that I'm like, okay, now I kind of want to engage my brain a little bit more. But what's nice is that you can get it to do that as well. So, yeah, I'm digging it.

It really, it's just these big PlayStation. open world games. You know, I, I tend to just like them. Like, they're very likable. They're designed to be liked by the maximum number of people. And I find this one to be, it's a pleasing one. It's really lovely looking and pretty fun to play. So yeah. All right, well, let's take a break and then we will come back for one more thing. Hey, it's Sue the subway train. Hey, guess what, Sue? I just inherited a game show. And I have to continue it because there are people out there who like to curl up into a ball and listen to it. Yeah, it's a podcast where listeners submit game show ideas for others to play on air.

Well, it is. In fact, the dumber the better. Right, right, it's called Dr. Game Show. Some curled up balls consider it a tradition, while others call it a train wreck. No, not you, Sue, it's Dr. Game Show. If you're the sort that likes to listen to people competing for refrigerator magnets, then curl up into a ball and listen to Dr. Game Show. every other Wednesday maximum fun.org. Are you a five-star batty?

If you answered yes, then Black People Love Paramore is the podcast for you. Contrary to the title, we are not a podcast about the band Paramore. Black People Love Paramore is a pop culture show about the common and uncommon interests of black people in order to help us feel a little bit more scene. We are your co-hosts, Sequoia Holmes, Jewel Vicker.

And Ryan Graham. And in each episode, we dissect one pop culture topic that mainstream media doesn't associate with the black people, but we know that we like. We get into topics like Gingerill, the Golden Girls, Black Romance, Uno, and so much more. Tune in every other Thursday to the podcast that's dedicated to helping black people feel more seen.

Find Black People Love Paramore on Maximum Fun.org or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, we are back for one more thing. Jason, how about you go first? What's your one more thing? First of all, I hope nobody got into a car accident and skipping through the premise with you. Oh, my God.

Nobody skipped any of them. Not that you should skip through the promise. If you did, stop listening. Just focus on emergency response. I watched a movie. I went to the movies and saw a film, saw a picture, as Martin Scorsese would say, called one battle after another.

And as I think I mentioned this a couple of years ago, and I went to see Killers of the Flower Moon. But most of the time when I go to the movies, it's to see one of the new Marvel flicks. So it's like, it's fun. It's nice to go and see a movie and be like, oh, so this is what a movie is like. Yeah, I follow that way to see sinners.

It was like, oh, right, an original movie. Really good movie. This is directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, stars Leo DiCaprio, and Sean Penn, Ben, Benicio del Toro, and the wonderfully named Chase Infinity, who plays Leo's daughter in the movie. And it's a really fun, just like wild story that just like has a lot of fantastic performances.

I almost, I don't want to say much about it because it's fun to just kind of watch it unfold, but essentially it's about this guy who is a Washington, up ex-revolutionary who has to find his daughter. And I'll just kind of leave it at that. But one thing I will say, because this is kind of the highlight of the film, is that I suspect that Sean Penn is going to get an Oscar for his role as the character Stephen Lockjaw, who is this kind of embarrassing looking and acting Army General who is responsible, almost sort of like an ice

general who is responsible for like rounding up immigrants and monitoring them and all sorts of other just kind of like police state almost like fascist in this movie stuff and his performance the way he moves and the way he talks and the way he acts is just

so insane that it's just you can't stop watching him. He really steals the movie and this is a movie with a lot of good performances but he steals every scene he's in. The way he looks and the way he moves, like his gait in this movie is just so compelling. You almost have to watch it just to see this performance because, yeah, I expect it will be an Oscar-winning one. It's almost, it's the kind of transformation that is like reminiscent of

Heath Ledger's Joker transformation where you're just watching this and you're like, oh my God, this is another level of character performance. And it's almost, it's worth watching the movie just for him. But yeah, very fun movie. I really, enjoyed it. Benicio del Toro also steals a bunch of scenes as this kind of like, um, sensei who, uh, has some, some kind of some tricks up his sleeve and, uh, very enjoyable moments where like he, he's part of this community of, um, of Hispanic immigrants and he's protecting them in a lot of ways. And he, he gets a lot of phone calls and like, a lot of, has a lot of conversations of people. And they're always speaking to him in Spanish and he's always

speaking back to them in English, which is a, uh, very realistic depiction. of what it's like for a lot of families where like one person is speaking, like my grandma all the time speaks to me in Hebrew and I'll like respond or in English. It's a very realistic depiction of like some like multi-generational families where like one person is culturally,

or one person's native language is different, which I thought was a cool little detail. But yeah, just an extremely fun movie all around, I would say. And Sean Penn is just wild. Yeah, I really want to see this movie. I'm excited for it's good it's gotten a lot of hype and I think the hype is maybe a little overblown. I wasn't like oh my god this has changed my life like this is not I didn't watch it and come away being like this is an all time classic movie or anything like that. But yeah no it's extremely fun.

It's just like it's just a captivating. It's a little bit long. It's like two hours and 20 minutes which I think I think it could have been cut down a little bit. But it's fun. It's just very fun. Nice. Yeah, I want to see it. They're showing it in 70 millimeters at the high.

Hollywood theater here in Portland, and I think that would be a really fun way to see it. That's where I saw Sinners as well. And there's nothing like seeing an original movie with a crowd at the theater. Yeah, who knew? It's like a thing people like to do. Maybe they should put out more of those. Yeah, man. Well, I don't know. Apparently the box office has been pretty bleak, so I don't know if it's a thing that. Oh, for this? That's too bad. Sinners was a hit, which was nice. Yeah, yeah. It's like it had a budget of like a hundred something million and the box office has been much slower than that. I don't know. I'm not a box office. I guess P.T. Anderson

gets a few bounces, so hopefully he'll get another shot. Well, but also, I mean, I think if it wins best picture, then breaking even at the box office is a little less important, I think, for Hollywood studios. Yeah, we'll have to see. Maddie, what is your one more thing? Mine is also a movie, but a much older movie that I had never

seen before, and it's called Drop Dead Gorgeous. This is like a cult classic movie about beauty pageant. And the reason I watched this is because it's actually the first movie that Amy Adams was ever in. And I started listening to this podcast called Chasing Amy Adams, which is a very funny podcast title because they're not watching Chasing Amy. They're just watching every single Amy Adams movie.

It's just a joke. And so I was like, oh, I want to check out this podcast. I love Amy Adams. It's a delightful podcast. and I had to watch Drop Dead Gorgeous in order to even listen to the show because I was like, I don't want to spoil this for myself.

I got to check out the first ever Amy performance. And she's incredible in this. So she was just a young person, like, living in Minnesota. Like, this was not filmed in Hollywood. And she just did the audition and got the role as this. She plays, like, the kind of slutty, parentheses, complimentary cheerleader in this movie. She's so funny.

She's electric in this film. You can't take your eyes off of her. What is Drop Dead Gorgeous, maybe? I bet that some listeners won't even know what it is. So explain what it is. Yeah, I guess I have to explain this. So, again, it's about a pageant. It's about a beauty pageant.

But it is an extremely dark comedy whereby... So Kirsten Dunst is a star of this. And she's the beauty pageant girl that you're rooting for all along to win. It's clear that she should win. I mean, I was rooting for Denise Richards the entire movie. But Denise Richards. is the mean girl, the rich girl in town, daughter of Kirstie Ali, and the two of them play

these just unhinged performances. They're the richest family in the small town, and they have a complete chokehold on the beauty pageant, and Denise Richards is going to win no matter what, and also all of the other contestants start mysteriously dying in a series of bizarre accidents, many of which seem like they're probably aimed at Kirsten Dunst's character, of course, since she's the favorite. And eventually, you know, it all comes to a head at the end. But you really got to get on board for some dark comedy. And I think at the time, people just didn't understand what this movie was.

And I also think in 1999, the whole, like, women aren't funny thing was more of a cultural mainst. Whereas watching it now, this movie's hilarious. And like, every actress in it, including the little baby Kirsten Dunst. And I even liked Denise Richards' performance in this, honestly. She's so weird in this movie. created it. It's like maybe her best performance. I think it kind of is. They kind of have an argument on the Chasing Amy podcast, well, not an argument, but like a debate as to whether she's acting badly on purpose at various points. And I would say she is. The fact that she dances with a life-sized Christ on the cross.

Yes. Like that alone makes this her greatest performance. In the talent show. I don't know. It's, it's iconic. It's a very funny movie, very weird movie. And Amy Adams is incredible in it. So yeah, Drop Dead Gorgeous. I watched it on some terrible streaming site with ads that's called like Plex or something. But I'm sure there's better ways to watch it than the way I did. You could probably pay money to rent it and get a better version. But I went with what was there. I recommend it really good movie. Yeah, we actually watched this movie with my nieces when they were in town just recently. We were looking, we kind of watched Clueless. We were looking for some other sort of similar movies. Yeah, I mean, it's, it was, there were definitely things in it that have not age. or they at least feel kind of 90s-ish, like people should know that going in. And it's a pretty mean-spirited movie. It's presented as a documentary, which I'm not sure if you mentioned. That's true.

It's a mockumentary style. Yeah. I actually saw this movie when it first came out. I saw it in theaters. I thought it was very funny, so I don't know about people not getting it, but I thought it was hilarious when I first saw it. It apparently did badly at the time.

I mean, they detail all of that on the podcast, which kind of helped me put it in context. Nice. Yeah, it's kind of not fish nor foul. But it is really funny. and I do, yeah, the fact, like some of the visuals in it, I realized just how memorable it was, because I hadn't thought about it in whatever, you know, 20 years or something, 15 years. And just some of the visuals in it are so memorable.

And some of the lines, it's just a very, very funny and very Midwestern movie in some ways. So I'm glad that you watched it. It's a weird little cult classic. All right, well, I'm going to go last. Before I save my one more thing, which is a game, a couple, I just wanted to add a couple of updates. It's really just one up there. Oh, here we go. Kirk Campbellton.

Yeah, yeah. A couple of people asked about this in the Discord. So I had mentioned Alien Earth, the FX show, Noah Holly's new alien show. That was my one more thing a little while ago. I'd watched the first few episodes. And I was like, man, this show is super great. And some people were like, what do you think of it now that it's ended? And I still think it was a pretty fun show.

But I do have to say that it's gone from, it's an A, this is going to be the best thing ever, which is how I felt after the first couple episodes, to, okay, there was some kind of silly stuff in there. It was still fun. Timothy Aliphant was great. This had some cool ideas. It was a fun, kind of interesting, weird show, but also pretty goofy at times. And there were things about it where I was like, I don't know if I would have made that choice. So by the end, I was a little more like, this is maybe a B for me. So I just wanted to mention that as a kind of complete, to give a complete opinion of the show, since I had only seen a few episodes when I made it my one more thing and figured I would mention that for anyone else who watched the show. Fun show to

talk about, though. There's a lot going on in it. And, you know, I like shows that take big swings. So anyways, my one more thing is the new game from Bennett Fottie and a couple other developers called Baby Steps, which I'm sure some of our listeners will have heard of and some might not have. I wound up playing this game with a friend of mine who he was actually over to just watch some movies and hang out. And then we didn't have time to watch movies for reasons he had to go take care of something. So we had a little bit of time. And I'm like, well, I had this game Baby Steps installed. You want to try it?

And so we put it on and had so much fun playing it together. So Bennett Fadi, the principal architect of Baby Steps, is best known as the creator of Quap and getting over it. He makes games that I have seen referred to as fumblecore. The idea is that they are very, very difficult to play. And that's kind of, that's the game. Yeah, that's the point. That's what makes them funny. Well, specifically difficult to walk, right?

Like, that's always the concept. To move, yeah. To move. Yeah, to move. Yeah, to move. Yeah, movement is difficult. Right. And so Baby Steps really explores that. I think in a way that is so interesting, so fun. I've taken to just watching videos of this game now because it's so much fun to watch. So in Baby Steps, there is actually a narrative, which was not something that I realized. I noticed he said, fun to watch and not fun to play. But, yeah, it's going to.

But it is. But it's fun to play. And it's also fun to watch, and that actually leads to the best way to play it, which I'll get into in a second. So first off, this game has a story. I have not actually really played getting over it. I played some quap. I don't remember that having a story. It doesn't really. But in Baby Steps, it starts out.

So I think that all the dialogue was improvised. I believe I saw that somewhere or something. It has a very improvisational vibe to it. I think Fadi performed a lot of it. He's Australian. And so there's like this, it has this kind of low-key, absurd Australian energy that actually feels to me like Flight of the Concords. I know that that's a Kiwi show, and I'm sure that some New Zealanders would get very upset at me sort of conflating the

two things, but it has that kind of energy of a kind of muttered, low-key, awkward and unpredictable comedy that I really actually, the writing is very funny. I don't kind of want to explain too much of it because it's fun to be taken by surprise by it to start it and to have these cutscenes playing out that are just incredibly bizarre and very funny. But through a series of events, a guy who is just like lying around in his sweatsuit in his parents' basement suddenly wakes up at the bottom of this huge hill that looks a bit like the Australian outback. It's more of a mountain covered in trails and obstacles and strange things.

You know, really early on you find like carnival. Pieces of a carnival are like buried in the woods, you know, a carousel, like the horses from a carousel are sticking up everywhere. And what it amounts to is a gigantic. obstacle course that you would have to, you know, it looks almost like a national park, like a bunch of trails and weird steps and stairs and ledges and bridges and all kinds of other things that you would have to cross. So, okay, sure, you have to, I guess, get to the top of the mountain. And then you realize that you can't just walk like you didn't walk in a normal

video game. And that's what makes baby steps, baby steps. So you, let me see if I can get this right. By pressing the right trigger, you lift your right foot. By pressing the left trigger, you lift your left foot. If you push the stick forward, your character will lean forward and his momentum will carry him onto whichever foot is picked up if you lean into it correctly. And if you don't, you'll just lean forward until you fall down on the ground. So immediately, if you play a lot of video games, the first thing you will do is just fall on your face. Because in most video games, you just press the left stick forward and you walk forward. And like, that's just how it works. Like your guy takes care of the walking. I'm just telling in which direction to go. In this game,

that is absolutely not the case. And the whole game is just, can you figure out how to make this guy walk like 10 feet in a straight line, let alone up this crazy obstacle course of a mountain? And it's really, really funny. It's incredibly, I mean, it's not frustrating. What's the word?

You will be constantly flummoxed by the, the just mechanical strangeness of it because it's so unlike any video game. It just is this totally analog, really strange thing where you're like watching this character who is hilariously animated and really well animated. He moves his arms. He tries to catch his balance. But he's taking these huge lunges and then tiny little steps.

And then he's slipping to the side and falling. Of course, you never take fall damage or anything. So you're basically like just a big rubber man kind of flopping around. And because he's this kind of bigger guy in a sweatsuit and there's like jiggle physics, so he's like just flopping around and he looks really, really funny. And he's this very hapless character in the cutscenes. The whole feeling of it is basically just this hapless comedy that you're playing a part in. And I have to say to the like watching versus playing, playing this with my friend Sam and handing the controller back and forth and just laughing and laughing and laughing as we watched one another try to just, okay, see if you can get to the top of that rock and then just falling and, you know, all kinds of horrible things are happening to the sky on screen and then handing the controller back.

Okay, I'm going to try it. And then like, wait, wait, wait, no, don't do that. Like, do that. Like the sharing of the controller and of the experience totally made it for us. Like playing it by myself, it would have been funny. I would have been laughing. But playing this with a friend is really the way to go. If you want to do that, like if you have a friend over, it would be fun.

I'd say older kids would probably think this was really funny too. Bing, Kirk here, just updating this episode because, of course, I had not played a whole bunch of baby steps when I made it my one more thing and had this conversation. But it turns out this game actually has some fairly adult content in some of the humor and stuff that I think a lot of parents wouldn't think was appropriate for kids. And, you know, it's just stuff that I hadn't seen yet. So I just wanted to add that note when I'm making this recommendation. You know, I think you should look into what is in the game before you decide if it's something that you think would be appropriate to share with your kids. So, okay, just wanted to mention that. Back to the show.

Bing! But really playing with your friends is the way to go. And I found that very enjoyable. This would also totally just be a fun game to watch like an entertaining streamer play. You could just like watch someone just fail in it. It's a great game to share. I think that is really how I would describe it. And I have not gotten very far, but man, I really like what I've played.

Given the streaming potential and given what I've seen, I think his other, like getting over it was pretty popular on streams. I'm surprised I haven't seen this disgust more. Maybe because it came out in the thick of like September with all these other games. I wonder if that's it. It really was me just grabbing it in this one moment. where in my gaming time, you know, it's, I'm playing Hades 2. I'm playing Gostoviote. I, like, for a long time was finishing Silkson. Like, there were so many other things taking my attention that I had to download it and I was like,

I do want to play that. Our friend Russ Frustick is like wild about it and has been telling me about it. He loves these games. And I think he's gotten really far and played a lot of it. And he kept telling me, oh, man, you've got to play it. It's so great. So I had it in my head, but it was very hard to find the time. And, yeah, it was just being in that circumstance that made it work so well.

So I would have to think that is not helping it, that there are all these other games competing for people's attention. But yeah, it's a lot of fun. I can only imagine how hard it would be to get through the whole game. But also, I think it's a skill you can learn. It isn't, you know, I got better the more I played it. And there are times where you're really in the groove, especially going uphill, because you lean into the hill and your momentum kind of carries you.

And I was like, oh, my God, I'm just walking. I'm doing it. I'm doing it. I'm doing it. And I'd fall. You know, and yeah. And you can really see, like, in Death Stranding in particular, you can see the influence that Fadi has had. I don't know whether Kojima played one of his earlier games, but there is a little bit of that there.

When you're playing Death Stranding, it's that same feeling where, like, the act of traversal becomes interesting because they've added gameplay and friction to it. And I really like that. Like, I think, you know, I mean, the Zelda games, Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom have some of that as well. We're just getting around sort of involves you a little bit more than a game like, for example, Ghost of Yote, where you're kind of just, okay, I got to go this way. I'm going to get on the horse and just press the button. There's not a whole lot for me to do other than collect herbs and stuff. It's not to say one is better than the other, but it is cool to see other game developers experimenting with stuff,

if not on the level of baby steps, at least in that direction. And that's pretty cool. A game where you can't just turn off your brain. You have to be actively participating. No. Very much not. Yeah, and you really have to engage in that physical part of your brain. They're like analog, like, how did my legs need to move?

Which is something we never think about, really? I don't think about it. Well, we're fortunate and not to think about it. Of course. It makes you think of the VR. I think you should leave a sketch where he puts on the VR

and he's like, how do you work the body and he can't breathe? Yeah. How do you work the body? He like forgets to breathe as I recall. Yeah.

We're like, take the headset off and he almost dies. You will feel kind of like Tim Robinson in that sketch in this. You'll be like, how do you work the legs as your guy like falls down a mountain again and again.

So good. So good. Yeah, it's pretty. funny. All right. Well, that is, yeah, that is another episode of Triple Click. Congratulations to us. We did it. Did it again. Made another one. Congratulations. Really patting yourself on the back there. Yeah, congrats. That's Obama giving the medal to himself. Yes, we really deserve a medal for this podcasting performance. Thank you all, as always so much for listening. Our Silk Song Bien's cast will be out ASAP, possibly by the end of the week. We'll see, but within the first

few days of October. And of course, thanks to all of you who are members, and we'll get to check that out. And yeah, we'll see you all next week for another episode of Triple Click. See you next time. 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 DJ. 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. Email us at triple click at maximum fun.org and find links to our merch store and our Discord server in the show notes. Thanks for listening. See you next time. Maximum Fun. A worker-owned network of artist-owned shows. Supported directly by you.