Triple Click - God of War, Gotham Knights, and More Fall Games

Episode Date: October 27, 2022

This week, Triple Click planned to do a Triple Play on Gotham Knights... but it's just such a bummer. So instead, the gang talks about all the games they've been playing this fall, from the big (God of War Ragnarok) to the small (The Case of the Golden Idol) and everything in between.Games discussed: Gotham Knights, God of War Ragnarok, Star Ocean The Divine Force, The Case of the Golden Idol, Persona 5, Bayonetta 3, The Legend of Heroes: Trails from Zero, A Plague Tale: Requiem, Mario & Rabbids Sparks of Hope, Tactics Ogre Reborn, NBA 2K23One More Thing: Kirk: Unlock!Maddy: Derry GirlsJason: The New York JetsLinks:Maddy’s Bayonetta 3 Review: https://www.polygon.com/reviews/23421409/bayonetta-3-review-platinumgames-nintendo-switchA Reddit Thread on Persona 5 Steam Deck Text: https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comments/y9xjxu/persona_5_the_royal_pixelated_text/Support Triple Click: http://maximumfun.org/joinBuy a Triple Click t-shirt: https://topatoco.com/collections/maximum-fun/products/maxf-tc-tclogo-shJoin 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

These are the games we deserve, but not the ones we need right now. So we'll play them because they can take it. Welcome to TripleClick, where we bring the games to you. And that's quite a few games this week. From Gotham Knights to God of War Ragnarok, Bayoneta 3, Mario Plus Rabbid, Sparks of Hope, more games than I can fit into this little intro. I'm Maddie Myers. I'm Jason Schreier.

And I'm Kirk Hamilton and hello. Hello. Hello, hello. It's us. Hello. It's us again. My friends. Nice to see you. Nice to see you both. I'm so excited. I'm excited to talk about the Mario movie. And you know why we're going to talk about the Mario movie? We are on the Max Fund Network and we're listeners supported and we like to record a little bonus episodes. And if you were interested in hearing us talk about Mario, you could go to Maximumfund.org slash join and you could become a member for a mere five bucks a month.

And then you could listen to that and also a bunch of other old episodes where we spill the beans about video games we played. We did one about Horizon Forbidden West. We did an Eldon Ring one. We did one about Call of Duty modern warfare once. We've done a diehard one. I was just creating this session for this Mario movie one we're going to record. And it's the 30th bonus episode. So you will have 30 bonus episodes to listen to.

if you become a member. That's sick. That's really special. That's really something special. So Maximumfund.org slash join. You can listen to that. I love the Mario movie and I'm so excited that I made Kirk watch it

for the first time and Jason for the second time. I'm excited about that too. But enough about that. We got to talk about video games, y'all. There's so many video games out and we simply couldn't decide which one to talk about today. So Jason, what are we doing instead? Well, we could. Well, so we did decide.

We did. Do you want to give the backstory on this? Originally, yeah, originally today was this week was going to be a triple play on the video game Gotham Knights, but we all kind of realize that Gotham Knights is kind of a bummer. So we decided that instead we're going to do a big fall game's ballout where we talk about a ton of the games we've all been playing this fall. Some of them we've all played, or we're all playing. Some of them, just a couple of us have played. And some of us, some of them just one of us have played. So we're just going to go through at Big Less.

We're going to talk a little bit about Gotham Knights, but then we're going to get into some other games because I just feel like 40 minutes of talking about just Gotham Nights to just bum us all out at this point. Unfortunately. So I'm going to read something for both of you that I saw in my podcast feed. And I want to say that I saw this in my podcast feed over the weekend after we had made this decision. So our friends at the Besties, wonderful video game podcast, they make a show. And their most recent episode is called A Desperate Dive Into the Grubes. grab bag. And the episode description starts thusly. Look,

we were going to do Gotham nights this week, but we realized no one wanted to hear an hour-long dunk fest. Join us as we pivot to talking about a bunch of good games instead, with just a little dunking for good measure. That is so funny. So we are not the only ones that ran into this problem and made this decision. I think it was partly that we all wanted to stop

playing it. I played more of Gotham nights than I would have liked to, dear listeners. But, you know... We'll get into it. We'll get into it when we get started. But, you Yeah, it's funny because besties, we have a lot of crossover between our listeners and the besties. And we're good friends with them all. So it's pretty funny that we both independently made the same decision.

So, yes, we're going to be talking about the fall games. And yeah, let's start with Gotham Nights. Maddie, you sounded like you had something to say. So why don't we start off by talking a little bit about Gotham Nights, which I believe all three of us have at least dabbled in. So, Maddie, what's your take on Gotham Nights? I've played a few hours of it. So this is an open world game set in Gotham Nights. Gotham, where you can play as four different characters who aren't Batman because there's a

seven-hour cutscene at the beginning of the game in which Batman dies. And they really make it clear to you that he's like super dead. And you get to watch the whole funeral and like hear all the hymns. J.K., the cutscene is very long, though. It's quite long, notably long. And then you get to pick between playing as Nightwing, Batgirl, Red Hood, or Robin. And you can keep to keep switching throughout the game, which is probably the most ambitious aspect of this game is the fact that there's slightly different dialogue, no matter who you pick, mission to mission, and different, I don't know how the story shake, whether the story shakes out any differently in the end, but there are quite a few differences in the dialogue, at least. And it's an open world that feels

extremely empty to me. I'm curious how you two feel about it, but I really, I played a lot of very samey, missions. I fought some freaks and some mobsters. Those are actual enemy names, not just me insulting the enemies in this game by calling them freaks. And I mostly played his Red Hood because he had some lines about not liking cops. And I just thought that he was very funny. So I kind of stuck with him, even though I didn't really enjoy playing as him, but I thought some of his dialogue was pretty funny. And I was just trying to keep myself motivated. You do have to avoid a lot of cops. You do. You do have to avoid a lot of cops in this game. Yeah, I've only played a smidgin a little bit, like a couple of hours, a few missions.

But my immediate impression of the game was that it felt very much like a game as a service, a game like Avengers or Anthem or Destiny where there's a ton of padding that's designed to get you to keep playing for a while. And then I was texting a little bit with our old boss, Stephen Totillo, who said that there's like this big loot system that is also designed in similar ways. So, but the catch, the weird part is there's no microtransactions. Usually a game like that would have cosmetic microtransactions of some sort that you could buy in order to keep you paying as well as playing.

So I reached out to someone who worked on the game from the beginning and they told me that there were never plans for microtransactions. So I was like, hmm, this is a real headscatcher. So I guess it was just, this is just the design from the get-go. And yeah, I'm a little bit confused at it. Maybe it's a lot more fun if you're playing co-op. I haven't had a chance to try that. But after a couple hours, I felt like, okay, I've seen all this game has to offer.

The big thing for me is that the combat just isn't even as fun as like the games that came out 12 years ago, 13 years ago, like Arkham Asylum came out 13 years ago and has much more satisfying combat than this. I don't even think there are like counters. Like you can parry and then there's just like no counter in it, which is a weird. weird thing. Spider-Man, Archibite, all these games just have way more satisfying combat. So yeah, it was a dreary experience for me. There I think is a parry system. At least Red Hood has one. He's the guy I'm most familiar with because I didn't really play the other three that much. But he has a pretty

good, it's not quite a parry, but you can swap into using his pistol as like a long-range attack and that worked pretty well. But the problem for him is that because he's such a melee-focused character if he gets surrounded, he can die pretty easily because he's just in a constant punching fight, whereas I think it's Robin who has like a teleportation ability. The other characters have much better movement abilities, whereas Red Hood is like a big clunky steel-toed boots, melee guy. So I found that difficult and unfun, but I just sort of forced it to work with my own sense of patience and devotion to this podcast, I was like, I got to find a way to make Red Hood work.

And then I stopped. Thank you for your devotion to triple quick, Maddie. Who did you play as Kirk? I mostly played as Bat Girl. I played a few hours, so similar to you, Jason. And I should say I'm coming into this as a big fan of the Arkham games and actually also an apologist. Too, yeah.

Yeah, for Origins. I really like that as well, which was development. by the same studio. I don't know how many of the same people, but had, I think, an unfair reputation as the off-brand, you know, non-rock-steady Batman game, and I actually like that game quite a bit. I think it's got some interesting stuff going on. And I read our friend Cameron Kunzelman's review at Polygon where he basically says there's a pretty good little story in here. If you just play the story, he seemed to like it. It's pretty cool. There's some neat stuff that happens. And then it's just you have to get through this combat system and a lot of this action RPG

stuff. And yeah, I don't know what to make of the combat system. I feel like I would have to play a lot more to really understand it on its own terms. It's very different than the Arkham combat system. And at least at first, my impression of it is it does not welcome you in because it doesn't really have the same goals. Man, I remember playing Arkham Asylum. It's wild that that was, yeah, 2009, is that right? It's 13 years ago. I remember playing that, and there's the first scene where the dudes break out of their cells and you have to clear a room. And from minute one, the combat feels incredible in that game. And that was the moment where everyone realized that they were going to make a good bad man game. And then, of course, that game exceeded expectations in so many ways. But that first fight is just

kind of shocking in how smooth and fun and how instantly it gets you into a flow state. And then they developed that combat system. I mean, so I played the hell out of Arkham Night. I re-reviewed that for Kotaku. I, like, 100% of the game. The combat system in that game is so, complicated and interesting despite the fact that, well, I guess you have all the gadgets, so that complexifies your moveset, but really it's just kind of an attack button and a counter button, and I guess jump. And you just are flying around, you know, constantly just chaining together attacks and counters and parries and like combos and all this cool stuff that you can do, especially when you get good at it. This game, it might get there. It might be this thing where

you unlock all the stuff that you need and all the moves that you get. I know there are a lot of unlocks that change combat. But it just seems like it's designed more to be limited and challenging where you have to really pick your moves. And then you have to rely on certain things that you've unlocked in order to get through a difficult fight, which is just a different kind of game. And for me anyways, I don't like it as much. And maybe I'm just overly, you know, I'm overly fond of the earlier games and it's hard not to compare them. But yeah, I just don't, from what I played of the combat, I didn't like it as much. I don't like not having a counter. I don't like just dodging. I didn't like the way it moves. It just moves a little stiffly. It just doesn't

have that flow state that Rock City's combat system managed to get. And then Maddie to the open world, I agree that the open world is just very strange. I mean, I watched this digital foundry video where they put Arkham Knights side by side with Gotham Knights. And it's wild how this game that came out in 2015, seven years ago. I mean, granted, it's one of the most amazing looking video games ever, but it looks amazing. The art direction, the lighting, it's raining and there's just fog everywhere and these spotlights

and zeppelins in the sky. It looks like Gotham City. And this Gotham City, once you stop and think about it, you're just on this little motorcycle and it just looks like Saints Row or something. Like, it just looks like a generic city, which is a huge failing for an open world Gotham City video game.

The motorcycle feels bad to me as well. Yeah, it's not a good Not a good motorcycle. You can't glide until you unlock the glide ability, which is also super grindy. Yeah. So, Arkham Origins came out in 2013. So this is nine years later. Along the way, they had a couple of canceled projects, canceled Suicide Squad game.

Not clear. I'm actually not 100% sure, like, if that wound up moving to Rock City or if Rock City just started their own suicide squad game, I'm not 100% sure what happened there. But they had their own canceled Suicide Squad game. Cancel Damien Wayne game, which is. I guess Batman's son or something like that. Oh, I thought we're saying like Damon Wayans.

Damon Wayans, yes. Canceled Damon Wayans game. Damon Wayans got canceled. I don't know if you heard. They dug up his old tweets and they were problematic. No, Damon Wayne's in happy endings. Damon Wayne's Jr. is one of the best characters. I'd probably play a Damon Wayne game.

Personal favorite show. I might play Damien Wayne game. And one more quick thing. One more quick thing before we move on is the investigation system where you have to like. Oh my God. It's so funny. Oh, my God. What is the world? What is going on in that?

Like, what? I was like trying to figure out, are there actually hints at this or is it just random guessing and checking? Because like it just seems like random guessing unless I'm really missing something. I've asked around and I know of no one yet who has figured out if there is a way to solve the mysteries in Gothen Mites other than guessing. So if it is there. Can I take a crack at explaining this? Is this worth explaining? Because I'm sure some people don't know what this is. Basically, you just have to match some things together. Like you have a, you're looking at this big tableau of objects and you have to match some objects with some other objects and solve the puzzle. Except it's just random guessing and checking. Especially in the way of playing Case of the Golden Idol, which we'll talk about a little bit later. It's so weird to like jump into this like terrible investigation thing. Anyway, we should move on. Do you have one more thought before we move on, one more got them and I saw? No, I do. do think that those in that investigation looked beautiful the first one that I played it was really

nice a nice set and nice art direction and then just a befuddling design of the puzzle I was I was I don't know who came up with that or what the goal was so yeah we can move on anyways I just very weird I just think it's really great that when you beat up guys they drop clues as like little sonic rings and they're like little collectibles it's just clues I don't know what that means but I like picking them up anyway Bing. Kirk here is I edit the episode. We are about to talk about God of War, Ragnarok, which is a game that isn't out yet, which we don't normally do. And it's far enough in advance that I thought I would give those of you who don't want to hear any plot details about this game at all. A spoiler warning. So if you just want to skip that section, it's pretty short. We just talk about the opening hours. We're embargoed on most of it. So it's pretty not a lot of plot details. But there's a little bit there. So anyone who wants to skip it, skip ahead to 19 minutes 34 seconds. That's 19 minutes 34 seconds. Okay, here we go. Bing! Let's jump into a game. Now that we've talked about a bad combat game, let's jump into an amazing combat game

with God of War Ragnarok, which is a game that comes out in a couple weeks. We've all been playing early access thanks to codes provided by PlayStation, and we can't really talk too much about it. And in fact, we're going to do a triple play of this in a couple weeks to hold off our proper impressions then. But just real quick, since we are allowed to talk

about the first few hours of the game, and we've all been playing it. I figured we'd jump in just to go first. I think it's amazing. It feels like it picks up right where the first game left off in a lot of good ways. And I am really enjoying it. Really enjoying the combat, really enjoying the story, really enjoying everything about it. What about you guys?

Any thoughts? I like those chaos blades. So this is my first time playing this. And I was really expecting to like this axe that I've heard so much about. And you know what? I'm shocking the world. I'm all about those chaos blades. They're so nice.

I feel like which Ninja Turtle has the nunchucks? I don't know. I feel like a Ninja Turtle. Yeah, Michelangelo, of course. Painter of the Sistine Chapel. How could I forget? That's who I feel like.

And you know that the, so a big twist. So Cretos in the first games, the original trilogy, I guess there's more than three, but I think of it as a trilogy, use those blades. That was his primary weapon, though, of course, he got many more. And then in the first game, you start with the axe,

and you only have the axe for the first third of the game. The first game of this saga. You can't say the first God of War game anymore. Yes. Yes, the 2018 game. You only had the X. And then there's this big moment where it's basically, you know,

Lord help me, but it's back to the old me. And he goes and he gets his chaos blades. It's really cool. It's done really well. It's amazing. And you get to see the chaos blades from that over the shoulder perspective, which you've never really seen since the earlier games were asymmetric. That's perfect.

That's wonderful. I love it. I love the chaos blades. When they've made them better, I actually really like that you start with them because you just have this basic combat set where you have the blades and you have the frost.

So it's fire and ice. You could say it as a song of... Song of ice and fire? Truly. So you have those two things unlocked from the beginning. So they've designed, they've redesigned the combat somewhat around that, which I think is cool.

You can freeze an enemy, and then if you hit a freeze enemy or a frozen enemy with flame, it does extra damage and vice versa. There are skills that are, It's meant to be, like, serendipitous there. Or you're swapping between the weapons, and that's pretty cool. So I appreciate that.

And they've just made the blades of chaos. It feels to me just a little more viable and better, because in the 2018 game, I'm guessing I'm not alone in this. I didn't really use the blades except when someone was frozen and was resistant to the axe. Just because the axe is so fun and you can throw it and it has that door thing. It's so subjective, though. Like, they feel so different that I could really understand somebody favoring one or the other. Well, right.

but I think they have retooled them and given them better abilities in this sequel. Like, I think that the blades are a stronger weapon and I am at least finding myself using them way more because the Scorpion move,

which did exist in the first game is super cool where you pull people over to you. But also you can hit a guy. There's a ability to unlock where you hit a guy and then you go flying over to him, which is sick and increases you immobility. So there's cool stuff like that.

They're really good at friction. These designers are really good at those pauses, those moments of like tension, works very well with the controller. I like the new thing where you hold down triangle to charge up your axe and freeze it. A lot of stuff like that. I'll say that the opening hours feel very familiar.

I'm sure that's on purpose. It just feels like a kind of a rehash of the 2018 game which I've just recently been playing on PC. But that's okay. I like that game. So yeah, I'm into it. I'm very curious about the story and I think we'll have a lot more to say

once we've really like gotten to the main meat of the game and played through the story. Yeah, I mean, I think we can't really talk about what happens after the first. kind of big region you do, which is Fartleheim, the land of the dwarves. But yeah, I mean, things are definitely, I'm past that now and things are

definitely feeling different. So yeah, I agree with you, Kirk, that the opening hours feel, even the first fight when Thor comes to your house is a mirror image of the first fight in the last game, which is Balder coming in your house and three phases and like jumping all over the place. It's very similar.

Although Thor and Odin, oh my God, Toby Ziegler coming up. like showing up as Odin is pretty incredible. Yeah, I feel like people's Odin reactions will depend on whether they've seen the West Wing or not. It's really just, are you going to see Odin as Toby Ziegler?

Or are you going to be like, oh, this voice actor is pretty good? What else is he? This guy seems pretty incredible. Like, after watching the West Wing just being like, this is the God of God's. This is the Allfather God of Or. It's just so funny. Anyway, we'll get more into this in a couple of weeks

when we dive into the game more extensive Let's do a couple more. Just real quick, I've been playing a game called Star Ocean, the Divine Force, and by I've been playing, I mean, I just checked it out for two seconds. It's another Star Ocean game. It's weird how Square Enix just has this kind of like C-tier series that has just gotten, it's really weird. Star Ocean is this series of action JRPs that are sci-fi but also fantasy.

So like usually you play as like some sort of space captain or, or soldier who lands on a planet where they don't understand space and they're like in medieval times. And so there's some like clash there between the fantasy and the sci-fi. And this game is no exception. It just feels like another Star Ocean game and not in the best of ways. So I'm not sure how much more I'm going to play in case people out there are wondering about the new Star Ocean. But I do think we should talk about Case of the Golden Idol, which was my one more thing. Last week, I said it was one of my favorite games of the year. Kirk, you have now been playing it. What's your take? It's one of my favorite games of the year.

All right. All right. I knew it. It's so good. Oh, it's so good. So this is, this is an honest to goodness entry in the din-like genre, which is a style of genre that I'm trying to get to catch on. A din-like. I like that. That's good. It's a din-like. Over-din-like. Like, din is not Stand-al-Lis. But see, we don't call it a dark Souls-like. We call it a Souls-like. I think Din-like works. And Rogue-like.

It needs to be one syllable. But Din has too many meanings on its own, I feel like. So does Souls. People know what it means. I'm sticking with Din-like. So this game rules. Jason described it some in his one more thing. The minute, I mean, the minute I saw that Lucas Pope,

designer of Return of the Over-Den, or soul creator of Return of the Oberden, had given it his stamp of approval. I was like, well, I'm definitely going to play this. And playing it, yeah, this is a game that, seems very clearly inspired by Oberdeen. It structures its mysteries similarly moment to moment, though the overall structure of the game is very different, and I think very, very clever. To just give you the gist, it plays out as a series of frozen vignettes. So in the way that

Return of the Oberdine, to kind of describe that for anyone who hasn't played it, that game also was you would activate a moment in time, and then you're just in this freeze frame, three-dimensional space where someone's being shot and in the background three people are watching and you just can walk around the scene and observe everyone as they're frozen in time. And that's how you gather clues and information and kind of piece together the mystery. This game does the same thing, only instead of it being, I mean, it's kind of one big mystery, but they're much more self-contained. So it'll be chapter one and the very first chapter, just to explain it, is a guy is pushing

another guy off of a cliff. They're somewhere in the middle of the ocean on some bluff, you know, with a storm in the background. The guy is saying something and it's frozen. So the one guy is falling off the cliff and the other guy pushed him. Their backpacks are sitting over next to them. And then you can just click around the scene so you can look into the backpacks. If you click on a guy, you see him saying one line. I think it's like, I know what you did is what the one guy is saying. And then you can look at he's got like something in his pocket and a note that's like their contract. And you start to read this stuff and put it together. And as you do that, you pull out words. So you'll look at a note and the note has the

name, dear Mr. Johnson, and you click Johnson, and then that appears in your sort of action bar that you get. I know Jason described some of this last week. And then your goal is to eventually piece together a sentence that's provided for you in your inventory screen or in your thought screen, which is basically blank, pushed blank off the cliff because blank at blank promised blank. And that's like, and you have to figure out which of these words that I've collected fits where and how do I tell that story? And then also who's who and basically what's going on. And then once you do that, it tells you, okay, here's what happened. And then you go to the next chapter, which is a whole new place, at a house or whatever, and you keep going from place to place.

And then it follows this golden idol and tells this whole story of this family and these secret societies and all of this stuff. I mean, it gets really complex. But it's all very subtle and it's all done through possessions. People are holding in clues and, you know, inferences you make based on where someone is standing or what they're wearing or what they say or even who was in a previous scene and it gets more and more complex as you play. I've played through like five of them.

I just played it through a very complicated one. And actually I'm playing this with Emily on the couch. We've plugged the steam deck into the TV and are using a controller, and that works pretty well. Which one did you just play with? Playthrough? The one with the four servants quarters stacked up over on the right.

It's the first really complicated one. It was very good. And there's like, oh, I won't say more. There's a lot of good stuff in that one. So this game rules. So what's especially cool about this game is that it takes place over the course of decades. And each episode feels like its own self-contained story. But the more you play, the more you realize how connected they all are.

And then at the end, you're like, wow, holy crap, this was all connected the whole time. And you see how the story all fits together. And then you get this really cool epilogue moment that is like, oh, we're going to fill in some blanks for you here. And it's just all brilliant. It's like brilliantly crafted and constructed. brilliant game. Maddie, you're going to love it too. Are they all murders?

Or is it a different kind of mystery? So far, they have been murders. Every single episode is a death. Okay. Well, I'm against death, so that's going to be. Yes, you are. I know. You've always been trying to find...

I'm in favor of living, personally. Well, you've been trying to find the secret to immortality for a long time, which I understandable. That's a different game. We already talked about that game. Yeah, they're all deaths, but like, you... don't just have to figure out how they die. You also bring out other stuff. Got it.

Motives and the interested parties. Who's too? You have to figure out why things, certain things happen. And if they're all connected, there's an overarching story that's sort of dulled to you as you go. Towards the end, you're figuring out multiple things at the same time. It gets really complex and fascinating and you'll see. It's awesome.

It sounds red. Okay, let's move on. I see Persona 5 PC. Kirk, is that you? That is me. I just wanted to report a. couple of things. Well, we just haven't talked about it enough. Yeah, because I know we talked about it last week, but I've been playing the PC version specifically on Steam Deck, and I just wanted to

tell two very quick stories. First of all, the game runs really well on Steam Deck, if anyone is curious, it looks amazing, but there's an aliasing issue where, like, the text looks a little bit funky, and there is kind of a way to fix it or to make it look better. You just have to change it to 16 by 9 instead of 16 by 10 and, like, change the resolution that it's running in in Steam. I'm not going to tell you how to do it, but I'm going to tell you that there's a way to do it. And if you look that up, like there's Reddit posts that explain it's not hard, you can make it look a little better. First thing I wanted to say, as a little PSA. The second PSA is that I didn't know this was possible, but it is possible to convert a PS4

save game into a save file that will work on PC, which is exactly what I did or I got someone on Reddit to do for me for this game. So long I've been playing this game on PS5 is the PS4 version. I put 90 hours in and I'm right up to the place where Royals new stuff comes in. And I was like, man, I'm getting here just as the PC version comes out and I could be playing this on Steam Deck and like just putting it to sleep on Steam Deck. I'm going on a trip this weekend. I could just take it with. But I can't start the game over because I do not have time. And then it turns out there is actually a way to do this.

There's this app that lets you do it. That's wild. That lets you convert save files, which is so cool. So now I have my save on Steam Deck and it makes me very happy. So I'm going to finish the game on Steam Deck and I'm excited about it. Very nice. That's great. Bayonetta 3.

Maddie, tell us about Bayonetta 3. Yeah, so I'm the only one who played this. I'm kind of glad I didn't make you two do a triple play of it, although I was so excited about this game. I really considered making everyone play it. I'm going to play it. This is a tough one. So I recently replayed Bayonetta 1 and 2.

I played them when they came out, loved them. I know they're controversial games. They're very sexual games. And a lot of people feel really uncomfortable about how Bayonetta is sometimes, presented as a sex object and sometimes presented as sort of a heroine in her own right. And the game really vacillates a lot between those presentations. And I think people have just kind of, people like me have just kind of found ways to look past the parts they don't like and enjoy Bayaneda despite that. It helps the combat's really freaking fun. Like the way that

combos work in those games is so satisfying to me. And Baynana 3 really brings back all the combat stuff. I really, really like, and it adds in this whole new mechanic where Bayaneda can summon demons, and the demons are actually really slow. Like normally she's got like lightning fast combat. She's always dodging. She's always putting other people in slow-mo so she can move even faster than them. And in this game, you have to kind of get used to the really varied pace of these huge clunky demons who are like, boom, boom, boom. And you have to like kind of get in the rhythm of how slow their attacks are.

but I found that really fun, really different, really cool. And there's like a new character in this named Viola. I thought she was really funny. But then over the course of the game, I was like, I'm pretty sure they're setting up a plot here that I'm not going to like, but I hope I'm wrong. And I wasn't wrong. And I tried to write a review explaining why I didn't like the overarching plot of the game,

but it was really hard to do because I, I don't want to spoil people in a review, but also the way that everything ends in the game is so weird and bad that I like would have wanted to know if it were me as a reader reading a review. So it's just always a really tricky place to be in. I know you two have been in this position before too when you're reviewing games and you're like, this game has a really weird part or like a weird ending and I can't talk about it because I don't want to spoil it or it's in the embargo or both. And I need to like find a way to vaguely. explain to the reader, like, you might really hate something that happens in this, but I don't want to tell you what specifically. We'll link your review on the show notes, because I think your review makes it pretty clear what happens without just like spelling it out. At least I inferred it pretty quickly.

I feel like people have inferred the main thing, but there's more that I didn't even bother getting into. And so after the embargo is up, which actually won't even be until a day after this episode drops, I'm going to try to write a story that goes into more detail. And I'm sure other people are too, because I feel like this game, it makes some weird narrative choices. But Bayne is always out here starting conversations and stirring up controversies. So in some ways, I feel like we should have known. Baynetta three would be no different. And that there would be a whole new round of critical essays from people about what they think about her and what she does or doesn't represent. So that'll be

fun. A couple of weeks ago, you were talking about this and I was like, more like, gay Annetta, but now I feel like I have to be like more like not gay and heteronormative Aneta. More like straightaneta. More like Luca Aneta. Right. Too bad. Unfortunately.

At least the action is fun still. It is. And you know, there are some boss fights in this game that are so freaking cool that it's sad. It's like hard when a game does this to you where you're like, okay, but there are parts of that were so fun, though. I just don't ever want to see those story beats play out again. So I guess I can ever replay this game. Oh, well.

Yeah, that sounds super frustrating. All right, let's talk about a few more games. Real quick, I've been, I'm still playing a bunch of The Legend of Heroes Trails to zero, which is a big meaty JRP. You were liking it, right? I won't get super into it just because it was my One More Thing a couple of weeks ago. But if you're looking for just like a nice, comforted, like epic sprawling jirpoogee with like really good dialogue really fun term-based combat really good

characters really good story etc etc this is a game for you and really good music the legend of heroes trails to zero and if you're curious about the trail series it's basically unfolds in like a bunch of different chunks like almost subseries there's the sky subseries there's a cold steel sub-series and now there's zero which is a duology so it's this and then a second part that's coming out in march And from what I played to zero stuff, I love it. I'm a good 15 hours into it or so, maybe 20 hours and really enjoying it on my Switch. So, worth checking out to those of you out there looking for a cool new JRP.

Next up we have a Plague Tale Requiem. Is this you, Kirk? Got to be. Yeah, this is me. I've been playing this one. So I play the Rats game. The first game. This is the Rats game.

They add some new Varmints to this one, but this is the sequel to the Rats game, a Plague Tail in this one. Innocence. Mice and guinea pigs and ferrets and... Apostoles. It's a sea of ferrets. A whole new. So I played through the first game in this now series, apparently, called, like I said,

Plague Tale Innocence and really liked it. I thought it was just hard to describe in a certain way. It filled this niche where it's a beautiful looking, fun, linear third-person stealth action set piece-oriented game. Story game, right? Yeah. Yeah, it has the kind of pacing of like early Resident Evil or a Half-Life where you're kind of moving between really tense and then like weird supernatural puzzle and then stealth action and then long story sequence and on and on and on. It is, the first game's really cool and then the notable thing about it was the rats. The sequel picks up the story right where the first game ended and continues. So just to describe really

quickly what this setting is and what it's about. You play as kind of two children, a young woman and a younger boy. You're mostly her. She's probably like 13 or 14 years old. He's like six or seven. And you're in medieval France, basically. Though as it turns out, you're in a version of medieval France that's got some supernatural stuff going on. It's mostly just a really gritty, violent, dangerous medieval world. But then there is also a supernatural plague where seas of rats appear out of nowhere and just devour people. And that's the plague in the title. So the first game is pretty wild.

It's just a cooler game than you would think. It starts pretty straightforward. It's really gritty and violent and kind of intense. These kids are being hunted by these scary people. It's also kind of there's a lot of stealth. So you're sneaking around. And because of your kids, if you get caught, you just get killed. So it's got that kind of rhythm.

There's a lot of whispering and a lot of. of holding hands. One of the mechanics of this game is that you and your little brother are like holding hands and sneaking and running together, which is just a kind of a different feeling. Yeah, it's not, and they're not cute games, but it is a nice, there's a real intimacy between the protagonists. Yeah. They're very harrowing. Very harrowing. And then there's these rats where you'll be in these sequences where it's dark and everywhere that it's dark, the rats just cover everything, like an ocean of rats. And then the light creates a pool that they can't go in. So then you can imagine all the puzzles that are designed around that where you're holding up a torch and that keeps the rats at bay and that lets you get from point A to point B.

You're trying to light a sconce on the wall. Once you light that, it's a safe spot. You're figuring out puzzles. You're dropping fire in one area to clear out a spot. Or later on, you're like shooting doused, you know, water bullets at guards' torches. So their torches go out and then they just get eaten by the rats. So that's the design of the game. And then there's a bunch of revelations about your little brother.

has power over the rats. It gets super wild. And I would recommend watching at least some of the cutscenes about this story for this game before you play the sequel because the sequel does just pick up from, you know, the place that the first game ends. And unfortunately, so the new game is on Game Pass, but the old game is no longer on Game Pass, which is too bad because this is a great game pass game because it's beautiful looking.

It's like, you know, really, a really cool game. But, you know, it's up against a lot of stiff competition in this. realm in particular, like with God of War coming out, it's another third-person game. Plus it's like 10 hours or something, right? Like it's kind of a medium length. Not super long. Right, which I really like about it, but I would, you know, but I, right, it's like if I had paid for it, maybe I would feel differently. So it's more of the same. It feels the same. It has that same interesting narrative like framing and tone. And I really like that about it. That's what I liked about the first game. The gameplay does not reinvent anything.

The rats are cool, but they're just a puzzle mechanic. It's more of the world, the vibe. It has this particular kind of sad, like, I don't know, like kind of mournful tone, I guess, and it's really gorgeous looking. The art is beautiful looking. The setting just feels a little distinct to me for whatever reason. The heroes are nice. They really like-all-the-rats.

Care about one another? No, but I mean, like, the medieval... It's like medieval France, and it really is gorgeous-looking. Like, it feels like you're, you know, touring medieval France, and that's pretty neat. So anyways, yeah, this is a cool game, and it's on game paths. So, like, that's a fantastic reason to just check it out, especially if you're just looking for kind of a linear thing to just play and enjoy and then end and then move on from. So I really did what I've played of it so far, and I'll probably finish it, you know, maybe a little later or early next year, but pretty cool.

Neat, cool. Yeah. All right, we are almost out of time, so I'm just going to run through really quick three more games that I've been dabbling with. I don't think either of you have played any of these games yet. Not yet. Not yet. I got codes for all of these in advance. I believe all these games.

Yeah, all these games. Yeah, all these games. Yeah. We should mention. So first of all, Mario and Rabbit Sparks of Hope, a sequel to the, uh,

the, um, surprise hit, I would say, Mario and Rabbit's, uh, kingdom battle from a few years ago, which was a surprising combination that worked really well.

This game, I've played a little bit of it, just a, just a smidgin. And so far, it's really cool. It feels very different than the first game because you're no longer on like a tactical grid instead you moving in like turn base uh style instead it's a little bit more of a real time moving around you can kind of like it feels it still feels very excomish um but and it's not

exactly real time but like you can switch back and forth between your two characters and just have them move in this kind of like circular um radius rather than on tiles or or through like space. It feels a little bit different. There's still a lot of cool movement mechanics, like this one battle I played, you're, you are fighting against a bunch of bab bombs and you can dash into a bab bomb to knock it out and then pick it up and throw it at the other bab bombs. So it's got some cool stuff like that. You can set up some cool combos. And as for what I played so far, it seems pretty neat. Although the rabbits do great on you. And also it's kind of like, it's a little bit confusing because the way that this,

the whole premise of these games is that there's rabid versions of all the characters, Mario Rabbit, Luigi Rabbit, Peach Rabbit. Right, right. And you have to remember that like, oh, Mario, normal Mario is like this all-purpose fighter, but Mario Rabbit is like a brawler and they're all very different characters. So it's a little bit confusing there trying to remember it.

But yeah, enjoying from what I played so far. Tactics Oger Reborn. I've been playing a little bit. I'll talk about this more. Probably is one more thing in a couple weeks, but tactics ogre is an incredible. incredible game. Speaking of strategy

RPGs that are awesome, if you ever play like Final Fantasy Tactics or any other kind of Fire Emblemish game, Triangle Strategy, this game is for you, and it's awesome from what I've played so far. The remake is really cool, too. I'll talk about this more another time, but it's essentially

just like a hardcore medieval tactic strategy game. And then last, but not least, or maybe least, I don't know. I've been playing some NBA 2K23. Again, just to have but I dabbled with a story mode a little bit because the story modes of these games always been entertaining. And this one is hilarious because usually the NBA 2K story modes are like, you start off as this high school kid, you go to college, you try to make your way to the NBA.

This game starts you in the NBA draft and you get to pick which team drafts you. But as Adam Silver is calling you up, the NBA commissioner is calling you up to the stage, you get booed. And it turns out your team's fans wanted this other kid. dad. And so the story starts with you being like this object of scoring among your fan base and you have to win them all back by like playing really well. So I'm intrigued. It's got that 2K thing where first of all like you like walk around your apartment or the city between missions and like the walking around feels like you're just like trying to drive a train. Like it's the most clunky thing imaginable. And then also it's got that 2K thing where it's just full of micro transactions and like asking you to spend money at. Every, every possibility. And then the game itself, if you're curious, the 2K gameplay like NBA has not changed at all. I don't think it's changed substantially in years, but it's still, it's a great basketball simulation. So if you're into basketball, you want to set those screens and watch your teammate rank go up every single time you set a screen or like make a pass.

It is fun. I have my guy, I think I played in the Vegas Summer League, how my guy score like 35 points. I was like, wow, I'm dominating this Vegas Summer League. Hell yeah. So that was fun. NBA 2K23, you know what you're going to get at this point. But the story seems is making me laugh so far, I will say. All right, let's take a break, unless you guys don't have any other games you haven't listed here, do you? No, I think that's it. Let's take a break and then we'll be back with one more thing. I'm Jesse Thorne. On the next bullseye, our annual Halloween Spectacular.

We'll interview Anna Fabrega from Loso Spookies, Monet Exchange, from Drag Race, and the great R.L. Stein, creator of goosebumps. You know, I don't really get too deep into the real fears. It's a lot safer to do a dummy coming to life. That's on the next bullseye for Maximumfund.org and NPR. Hi, I'm Jesse Thorne, the founder of Maximum Fun, and I have a special announcement. I'm no longer embarrassed by my brother, my brother, and me.

You know, for years, each new episode of this supposed advice show was a fresh insult, a depraved, jumble, of erection jokes, ghost humor, and frankly, this is for the best, very little actionable advice. But now as they enter their twilight years, I'm as surprised as anyone to admit that it's gotten kind of good. Justin, Travis, and Griffin's witticisms are more refined, like a humor column in a fancy magazine, and they hardly ever say Bazinga anymore. So, after you've completely finished listening to every single one of all of our other show, why not join the McElroy brothers every week for my brother my brother and me.

And we are back, Kirk, Maddie. Don't you think that Cretus would be canceled if he was on Twitter? I don't think he would be just canceled for his. I feel like he would be one of those uncancellable people on Twitter where he would just not. Or he would be like. Or he would just go to substack. I think Atreus would have like a shit my dad says account. I don't think Cretus would be on Twitter at all.

That would be enjoyable. Maddie, what's your one more thing? My one more thing is a show on Netflix that's called Dairy Girls, and it is D-E-R-R-Y. It is after the town in Ireland. And there are three seasons of this show, and I have watched all three in a matter of days because this show's great and I'm sad that I'm out of Dairy Girls. It's the best show. It's so funny. I laugh out loud at a lot of shows.

But I laugh out loud multiple times per episode at this show. It's so good. Okay, so it's a sitcom about a bunch of Irish teen girls and one guy who is from England and is the cousin of one of the other, one of the girls and is attending an all girls school because this is set in the 90s during the troubles in Ireland. And his parents and family are worried that he's going to get bullied in an all boys Irish school. So he goes to an all girl's school. It's hilarious. He's a hilarious character. All of the girls, the four girls, are each hilarious.

in their own ways, each have their own little quirks and personality traits. The accents are so thick. Many of the actors on this show aren't actually from Derry, but did have to learn this hyper-specific, really thick accent. And I don't know if they're bringing it or not, but I'm pretty sure they are. The show's created by this woman Lisa McGee, who grew up in Derry, so I can only assume she coached all of them. And this is like a semi-autobiographical show.

But basically you need the subtitles for this show. That's my hot tip. All of the kinds of problems that the teen girls and one boy get into are like very low-stakes sitcom plots. They go to a Catholic school, by the way. So they're like getting up to shenanigans. Like they steal this statue in season two. And like there's really no reason why they would steal it in the first place. And then they have to like come up with all these explanations for what happens to it.

I don't know. It's like that kind of low stakes. but just moment to moment the jokes are so freaking funny. And I don't know, I love it. It made me feel really, really good to watch. So I strongly recommend. I imagine there's some weird, like, sexual attention stuff. Oh, for sure.

Which is one guy there. I mean, you would think, but like, I don't know, they all just make fun of him constantly and are like, you are definitely not an object of attraction for any of us, which, of course, by season three, one might imagine there's some sexual tension as the girls and guy get older. but I don't know mostly it's just funny to hear all the different slang terms and I feel like I'm going to start using the word class as an adjective now like that's so class like all these freaking Irish slang terms from the mid 90s and hearing songs by the cranberries I know nobody knows I can't I can't do it but it's great I really really recommend dairy girls it's so funny I feel like anyone would enjoy it that's my one more thing cool nice Kirk what about you yeah we watched the first part of dairy girls a little while ago I'm going to watch the first part of dairy girls a little while ago I'm going to watch the whole thing. It's so great. I've heard that from several people now, including you,

and that it's really good. My one more thing is a card game called Unlock that I've been playing recently that Emily and I played with another couple that we're friends with a few times, and that is really fun. I've played two games of it, and I thought I'd recommend it on the show. It's basically an escape room in a box kind of a deal. And it's similar to other games that I've talked about, where you, you know, you, what's the one called? Hunt a Killer, those ones? With it, hunt a killer, yeah. Yeah. So those involve big, kind of elaborate one-off, you know, puzzles or mysteries that you have to solve.

With props, little props. Yeah, there's a lot of props. And those are really cool, but they're kind of expensive. The nice thing about Unlock is each mystery, you'd only do it once because, you know, once you've solved it, you've solved it. But it's just a deck of cards. There's a couple little props, but it's pretty much just cards. And the way that you play through it is there's a companion app that you can load up, like on an iPad or whatever, on your phone, and you put it in the middle of the table.

And then you use that to kind of run the game as you do it. And then the cards sort of tell you what to do. So you'll start, like the first card will be the room. And then it'll be a picture of a room on the card. And there will be numbers of, you know, different things. So there's like, you know, the woman in the room and the window and the bed and the closet. And there will be a three and a four and a five. So then you go through, like, everyone kind of, we deal the cards out face down.

And you're like, okay, I need the three card. And you flip that over. a sixth card and you flip that over and soon you have, there's a card and it says close closet door, there's a lock on the door and you kind of look at it and maybe there's a puzzle, maybe there's a code you have to figure out. So it all kind of integrates back in with the app and it's really just laying out cards, studying cards, and trying to figure them out. And it's really fun. It's the same experience. It's that same kind of room escape collaborative puzzle solving experience in a very portable and more affordable package. And there's a million of these at this point,

but you can get a box and that has three in there. And they take about an hour to beat, though the two that we've done took us longer for whatever reason. It was, I guess we're not that good at these kinds of mysteries. Yeah, I think the hunter killer predictions were too short for us too. And we were like, listen, maybe we're not that smart, okay? There were also on each of the two that we've done, there's been one puzzle where I just had to look up the solution.

And each time, I will say to anyone who's going to play this, it's because the solution involved the number on the cards. So it's like there was a sequence in one case where like you flip card 88 and then card 44 and then card 22 and you're supposed to figure out that the next one is supposed to be card 11. And we weren't thinking that four dimensionally. And so we just would have, we just never would have found it if I hadn't looked up. So each time it's been that kind of a solution that stumped us, but we got everything else. And it's really fun. If you're looking for things to do, you know, with, it's really fun.

A group of four is a good group four or five. Yeah, this sounds great. Yeah, it's a fun game. It's called Unlock. It's, you know, low stakes, good times. We've been having a great time with that. Cool. Sounds cool.

Okay, my one more thing is the New York football Jets. I think that it's a, it's, we're about a third of the way into the NFL season, so I think it's time for another NFL story from Jason Shrier. Let me tell you guys about the New York Jets. The New York Jets, as you, you may have gathered over the years are kind of a sad sack team in heaven for a very long time. Last time they won the Super Bowl. Last time they even made the Super Bowl was 1969.

Wow. In my lifetime, they've only been good for like a couple of years. I really, I only started watching football a little bit later in my life. So like around 07.08. And then they had a couple of really good years in 2009, 2010, Rex Ryan era. As some people may remember. But then, since then, they've been terrible. Just straight up atrocious every year.

just another disaster. Disaster coaches, disaster quarterbacks, just a disaster of a team. This year, coming into the season, people expected them to be a disaster. The over under wins total for their season was five and a half. People expected them to win even less than five and half games or more than five and a half games, but that was where the win total was set. In other words, that's Vegas expected them to win around that, because Vegas wants to get an even number of bets on both sides because they take the Vig and that's how they win. So people thought the Jets would be bad. Coming into the season, they even lost their starting

quarterback who got injured on the first play of the preseason, which was ridiculous. Anyway, they come in and then they lose a game and everyone's like, yep, same old Jets. And then we two, they win a game and they win it in a weird way in that they actually come back

in like the most miraculous, unexpected but like a very non-Jets way where they come back from like 1430 in the last two minutes. It was very improbable. It was very improbable is very unjets-like. And then they lose another game. And then they win a game.

And then they win a game. And then they win a game. And then they win another game. And then they win another game. Right now, the New York football Jets are 5 and 2. ESPN's NFL power rankings has them rated as the eighth best team in football right now. Pretty crazy, right? But the Jets,

the Jets are that good because of a guy named Breese Hall, among other things. They have a lot of good talented rookie players, including this guy, Breece Hall who was drafted in an early round pick. I think it was the first round of this year, maybe the second round of this year. Breece Hall turns out to be this like monster beast mode,

like people are saying he's going to be rookie of the air, etc., etc. So it will not shock you to hear that on Sunday, just a couple of days ago, Breece Hall injured his knee, got carded off. Turns out he's out for the whole season. No. Because Jets fans cannot have nice things.

So now the Jets are 5 and 2, but it's a shaky 5-2, without Breece Hall. Still kind of optimistic about this team. I haven't been this excited about a jet steam since like 2015 or something, but it's unfortunate. The flip side of this, the kind of weird twist to all of this is that they had this quarterback named Gino Smith. Gino Smith was this guy. He was kind of seen as a weak quarterback. He was never really good. He had a couple of flashes. He eventually lost his starting job for the craziest reason ever. He got punched in the faced by his own teammate in a locker room over like a $750 debt that he owed that teammate.

And he was knocked out, he broke his jaw and was knocked out of the season for like six weeks and lost the starting job as a result to this guy named Ryan Fitzpatrick. Anyway, the Jetstone of Gina Smith anymore. He went to the Seattle Seahawks and it's like an MVP candidate inexplicably. Everyone's like, oh my God, this can't be happening. This NFL season, just quick last note, this NFL season, the worst quarterbacks in the league are who you may have heard of. Tom Brady, Aaron Rogers, Russell Wilson, like the former, it's the weirdest NFL season I've ever seen

because the former like MVPs and like elite tier are just playing horribly. While these like teams that everybody expected to be the bottom of the bottom, the jets, the giants, the Seahawks are now in the top 10 and like have these amazing winning records. It's kind of fun. It is incredibly fun. It's been fun to bet on because if you're betting against Aaron Rogers and Tom Brady, you can make some money because the spreads.

the lines are always going to be stacked in favor of those guys, even when they're playing poorly. Just because so many people bet on them still because of fandom. Exactly. So their teams, in the betting world, there are teams that, like, the public loves. So, like, the Cowboys, the Public will always love, the Packers, the Chiefs, because they have always been traditionally, like, these powerhouse teams. And so the Sharp betters like to bet against those teams because you might get a couple of extra points on the line that, like, that you shouldn't be getting just because Vegas thinks that more and more people are going to be betting on the beloved public teams.

Anyway, long story short, being a Jets fan means just like subjecting yourself to a series of horrible curses over and over again, even when they see they might be a promising team. And don't get me wrong. I mean, they could still make a playoffs could still be a good team this year. But they lost their best player and it's just really, really sad, you guys, just really, really sad. I'm sorry. I hope they somehow turn it around because I just feel like it would be fun if there was a Jets Super Bowl

in your lifetime. Yeah, I think so. Yeah. I mean, this is a good, the good thing is that all they're really good players are rookies, so they could potentially

have sustained success for some time to come. Although their quarterback is still a problem. Anyway, that's my one more thing, and that's it for this week's episode. That'll do it. Stay tuned for our Mario Brothers

Beanscast very, very soon. Heck yeah. We'll be up on the bonus feed for Max Fun members soon. And otherwise, we will see everybody next week. See you next week. 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. Find us on Twitter at triple click pods. send email the triple click at maximum fun.org and find a link to our Discord in the showdowns. Thanks for listening. See you next time. Maximumfund.org.

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