Triple Click - Hades 2, Keeper, Ball x Pit, and More Fall Games

Episode Date: October 23, 2025

It's time for a video-game grab bag as the Triple Click gang talks about some of the games they've been playing recently. They dive into Double Fine's Keeper, the new indie sensation Ball X Pit, Supergiant's Hades 2, and Absolum. Also they get derailed by the term "friendslop."One More Thing:Kirk: The Diplomat (Netflix)Maddy: The Venture Bros. (2004-2018)Jason: Workhorse (Caroline Palmer)LINKS:Support Triple Click: http://maximumfun.org/joinBuy Some 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

I am a lighthouse worn by the weather and the waves. I keep my lamp lit, and sometimes when I need to, I grow legs. Welcome to Triple Click, and if you got that reference, we can be friends. This week we're doing a fall games grab bag with discussion of Ball X Pit, Hades 2, Absalom, and Double Finds lovely new walking lighthouse game Keeper. Let's get into it. I'm Kirk Hamilton. I'm Maddie Myers.

And I'm Jason Shire. Hello. Hello. Hello, my friends. I was at Barnes & Noble over the weekend with my son. It took him to Barnes & Noble. Barnes & Nobles, actually. That's what Amanda says.

Oh, my God. I can't stand that. Barnes & Noble over the weekend with my son, my 3-year-old son, I took him there, and I let him get this book that plays truck noises. And then on the way home, I was listening to a podcast in the front while he was reading his book in the back. And as these guys were talking about football or whatever, it kept getting punctuated by, like, fire engine and police car noises.

And it just made me think, I think next time since Kirk, you so meticulously edit our podcast, I think you should just stick in random like fire truck noises. I think you just make a fascinating. Because our listeners aren't getting pulled over enough. And we want to simulate the experience. Well, because they're, well, Maddie, because they're not skipping ads on our show. Of course not. They would never do that. They never skip anything. How many episodes can we say that there are no ads when there are in fact promos that play every episode?

Those aren't ads. Come on. How many episodes in a row? I think we're at five now. Maybe we can go for six. We go for a half a dozen episodes in a row where we can say there are no ads. Listen, I said nothing about ads. It's not my phone. None of those shows are paying us, so they're not ads as far as I'm concerned. That is true. My check from John Hodgman got lost in the mail or something. Yeah, we're not a soundboard podcast. I don't have a soundboard set up, but I could set what up. I actually used the soundboard app for our live show. It was incredibly useful as a live tool on my iPad to, like, make synth sounds play and to make the little wheels spinning sound. I could have a soundboard. We could have awuga horns and hype horns. You could add in all of the silk song sound effects, which is what our gamer nights have become punctuated with because my friend Tyler has a soundboard with all of the bug exclamations and periodically when we're playing a different game.

Instead of Bing, it'll say, Jesus. Exactly. or the flea is the main one plays all the time. It's pretty good. So consider that. If you would like to support

me buying a soundboard app in order to play a lot of dumb sound effects into our podcast, you could become a maximum fun member at a maximum fund.org slash join and you could either support that or you could write in and be like, I'm a member and I absolutely don't want you to start doing that.

Make your voice heard from way or another. We are, of course, a listener-supported show. That's how you support it. us at maximum fun.org slash join and you become part of our network and support all the other shows on it as well. And you get access to monthly bonus episodes that we record for our members. Most recently, you will hear the Hollow Night Silk Song Beans cast. And this month, we're actually going to do something kind of interesting. We're going to rewatch Indie Game, the movie, the 2012

documentary that was such a big deal at the time. And we all kind of thought it might be interesting to watch it now all these years later, 13 years later, and see what we make of it. And what the games industry was like then, what the world of indie games was like then compared to what it's like now. So that'll be up this month. But of course, there are tons and tons of bonus episodes, and we really appreciate everybody who supports this show. Oh, and we have all this merch. We haven't mentioned merch in a little while, but we also have a bunch of new Triple Click merch. It's coming up on the holidays. So this is a good time to buy the Triple Click fan in your life, some merch. We're adding some new stuff to the store in the near future, but really there's already a ton of new stuff in the store.

So go check out the MaxFun Store for triple-click merch. There's a link for that down in the show notes. All right. Well, we've got a lot of video games to talk about today, so let's get into it. Yeah, we got a whole video game grab bag of games that have come out over the last few weeks that we've been playing and would like to talk about. Let's start with the latest game from Double Fine, best known for the Double Fine documentary psychotasy. of course. It's best known for.

On this podcast, it's best known for that. So Keeper is a new video game from Double Fine. It is a game about a walking lighthouse. Because that, of course it is. And she has a bird and he, it, they go on a lovely little adventure. And Keeper is directed and designed by Lee Petty, long time Double Fine employee. and we've all been playing it. What do you guys think?

I love it. I completed it, actually. And I will say it's not very long. It's about 10 hours. I loved it. I loved every minute of it. This game is dialogue-free, beautiful to look at, beautiful to listen to, and you just wander around this wonderful mystical world as a lighthouse.

you're kind of playing as the light on the lighthouse, I would say. That's the main thing you have control over. And the light has different powers. It can kind of unlock or unleash different things. If you focus its beam at certain objects or strange trees or vines or things that look like esophageal passages. There's all kinds of bizarre landscapes in this super colorful world that you're exploring and keeping. paper and I just, I couldn't put it down. I loved it and I enjoyed every minute of it. And I, I really recommend it to anybody who likes a just dialogue-free environmental puzzles only game, kind of like

Coon was a game I was comparing it to, which has slightly more complex environmental puzzles, I would say, but similar energy. Yeah, I was going to say, I almost feel like comparing it to Cancun does it a little bit of a disservice. Cacoon is a more elaborate puzzle game. This is more of a playable painting is how I would describe it. The puzzles in this game are not even really puzzles. You just kind of like look at things and move some things around every once in a while. It's not really a puzzle game. It's like you said, it's a vibes game.

It reminds me of journey or even like a little bit more, a little bit reminiscent of like limbo or inside just because you are walking in a single direction, like a single path, linear path through this big artistic world and just kind of. soaking in the sights and sounds along the way. I've played a bunch too. I'm surprised it took you 10 hours to beat. I feel like it's less than that. There's a bit in the middle where I got kind of stuck as to what to do,

which admittedly could have just put me. So that kind of took me a bit. But I don't know. Your mileage may vary. Most of the time I agree, Jason. The puzzles are very easy. But there are like a couple sections where I was like, I actually don't know where I'm supposed to go next.

But hey, that could just be Maddie directionally challenged Myers. kicking it again. Yeah, for what it's worth, how long to beat on this is pretty squarely at five hours. Fair enough. And I think I've seen that before. It's about a five hour. Yeah, five hours is. But listen, guys, I don't know what my play clock is.

I might have just stood up and walked away and a couple points. Who can remember how long we spend playing a game these days? Yeah, and I think to stay on the journey comparison, that's also the game that it reminds me of. I really like this game as well. I'm not quite finished, but I'm near to the end and have really been enjoying it. I think it's such a confident game. It's so beautiful looking. The soundtrack is really great, too, composed by longtime double-fine composer David Earle. All the sound design is interesting. It's a little bit removed from you because you're kind of looking down on this little diorama, and all of the sound feels like there's kind of a filter of it or something. It feels kind of remote in a way that I think is really ambient and kind of interesting. But it's a lovely score. It's all this kind of guitar. stringed instrument stuff, but also a lot of weird kind of percussive electronic stuff. I don't know.

It's got a really nice vibe. So anyways, that was such a defining factor of journey, of course, was Austin Wintery's score to that game. And it was such a kind of audio, visual, musical journey. This game feels that way, too. And it's so confident. I think one thing about this game that strikes me is it feels like a game made by people who have been making games together for a long time, which is the case.

Lee Petty, of course, the director. He was like stacking way back in the day. That was his Amnesia Fortnite game. He's an art lead originally, so his games always have really interesting visual style. But also J.P. Le Breton was a designer on this. He's been a double fine since I've been aware of Double Fine. And actually, another one of the designers is Asif, Siddiqui, from the... Famous from the Double Fine documentary.

Yes, previously a cameraman who then became a designer. So there are people working on this game who've just been there a long time, and it has that feeling of coherence to it. And then it's, the design is, yes, it is kind of a puzzle game. I think you've, you've both accurately described the mechanics. What it is for me is a game of constant surprises. And I think in that way it's also like journey, it's always transforming. It's not what it looks like, at least. You hear that it's a game about a walking lighthouse and you see these trailers where the lighthouse is kind of moving along and it's a beautiful, weird looking world, and you have a light beam and you think, okay, this is just going to be what the game is. And then it

totally changes. And then it changes again. And then again, like, it is constantly shape-shifting and introducing these new acts. And each act is surprising. And that's actually something that does also, yeah, remind me of play dead games, of limbo and of inside. That's exactly why I made the inside comparison, because, yeah, I'm very reminiscent of that game where you're just kind of, you're walking through these areas and you think you've got to feel for the game and then things just change. Take a total 180, total left. It's not about like developing one mechanical idea, a whole bunch of different ways. It's like introducing whole new things that you're doing with each kind of, you know, hour or so that you play. Yeah, which is interesting. It's kind of a

unique way of making games because most games, I feel like, um, want to pat out playtime by creating these mechanics that you can then play around with in different ways. Like, oh, here's an outpost. You're going to learn how to conquer that outpost with combat and stealth and whatever. And then you're going to do that a dozen more times throughout the game. Yeah, why are we clearing Goblins and Keeper. Right, exactly. Clearing goblins to do a light beam.

First you blind them with your light and then you sneak up and you press the button for the May Lake. No, there's nothing like that. This is a very different type of game. I mean, of course, it's like we don't really have to get into the commercial side of it all, but for a lot of people out there who are price conscious,

you might look at something like this and be like, man, I don't want to spend $30, which is a price point on a five-hour kind of artistic playable walking simulator, especially when something like Silk Song is 20 hours, and I get a lot more enjoyment hours out of that. So it's kind of, you have to kind of figure that calculus, I guess, when you're considering whether to check out this game. The other thing I'll say is that it's on Xbox Game Pass. So that, I think, it feels like one of those games that really is,

is designed for a service like Game Pass, where if you're a subscriber anyway, you can just kind of check it out. I don't know, yeah, I'm going to spend a weekend playing this. Hell yeah. I should note, of course, in the price discussion that all three of us got early copies from Microsoft, and so we didn't have to pay for it. And I think if I personally, if I were weighing over, like, am I going to spend $30 in this kind of five-hour, like, beautiful walking simulator? I might say yes. I don't know. It's hard for me to say, but a lot of people are price conscious these days, so it's worth noting. Yeah, it's worth noting. You know, if it's kind of a bummer. Yeah, it's on Xbox and PC, by the way, which I appreciate. Like some GamePass games are only

on Xbox, but I played this on my PC, which made it look awesome. Yeah, I mean, yeah, I'm just really glad this game exists. I mean, games like this just don't get made that much anymore for a lot of reasons, many of which are pretty depressing. And it's really nice playing something, this creative and this just confident in what it wants to be. So I really am just, it's nice that someone managed to make something like this in 2025. Let's talk about another game that I picked up a couple of days ago and have been kind of

obsessed with. It's called Ball X-Pitt. I don't know how you're supposed to pronounce that. Is it Ball Times Pit? Is it Ball versus Pit? Ball-cross-pit? It's actually 1,000 times resist. Right. A thousand times pit. And Ball X-Pit is a fascinating game. It's kind of, it's best described as a cross between breakout, which is that old game where you have a paddle and you're hitting a ball to break bricks at the top of the screen. Across between that, between breakout and vampire survivors. So just like vampire survivors, you are playing through a series of levels where you get to level up your character in each of these levels and select from upgrades that make your

character more powerful. Your character are autofires. I guess in this you can toggle the auto fire off, but for the most part, your character are autofires and takes out enemies and you level them up to watch the numbers go up and you pick different abilities that will destroy things in more creative ways. Except in this, instead of just kind of shooting, you're actually hitting balls like you wouldn't break out, which adds a lot of charm to it. It's an extremely addictive game.

It's very dangerous. It's one of those, I'm playing it on my Steam deck, and it's one of those where if I take it into the bathroom in the morning, my leg will fall asleep because I'll be sitting there for so long. My wife knocking on the door being like, Jason, what's going on in here? But yeah, but I'm really enjoying. it. It's really fun. There's also a whole base building section that I'll talk about in a sec. But yeah, what do you guys think of Ball X-Pitt? Yeah, it's pretty fun. The base building part is kind of like

loop hero too. If people remember that game, which is another kind of loop-based game that has like, you go out, you fight, you get resources from fighting and then you come back. The visual style too. Yeah, it reminded me of loop hero so much that I was like, is this made by the loop hero developers? It's not. But I'm sure there's a influence there. Nothing wrong with that. I lost several days of my life to Loop Hero. But so you build a base. And similarly, when you're collecting resources at the base, you're careening the collection

off of the walls and the way that you do with the balls or firing mechanism when you are in the fighting mode. And that's the fun part, really. Like, instead of just shooting straight up when you're out on the fields fighting, you can angle your attacks and get the balls to bounce off. the walls and hit the encroaching enemies at various angles and try to hit as many at the same time as possible. And you get tons and tons of power-ups as time goes on. And it becomes extremely satisfying. And eventually you're just an unstoppable killing machine. And it's, I mean, that part's like

vampire survivors. You haven't played a ton, right? Yeah, I'm only a couple hours in. So, okay. So, uh, and a couple hours in like normal person means like one hour, right? You can't get lost in this game. So the reason that this has more longevity than loop hero, in my opinion, is that as you go, you unlock new characters that you can play as, and each of the characters you play as has a different ability. And some of them, the further you get in the game, have completely drastically game-changing abilities. There's also one building that you get in the base building section, about halfway through the game, maybe a little earlier, that lets you take out two characters at once. And then a large part of the game, once you get that building, which really transforms the entire game, a lot of the game becomes synergizing and figuring out, okay, these two characters can work really well together.

If I also then get this upgrade and then that upgrade and those can fuse together and do this thing. And so a lot of it. Very balotra. Yeah, it is, there is a little, or any rogue like really is kind of like a big part of that. And so to your point, yes, you are building an unstoppable killing machine. That is ultimately the end game. It just, you can do that in more interesting. ways as you play further on into the game. I also, I was a little bit like, oh yeah, this is kind of

loop here-ish. I wonder if I'll bounce off this game, no pun intended, early. But the more I played, the more I actually found that it's really, really quite fun. And then it gets into this one, a couple of hilarious characters that I won't spoil because it's fun to discover them, but they make you question why you're playing this game and also laugh very hard. And there's some funny, some good comedy in this one. Kirk, what do you think of Ball? Ball Times Pit? It's good to hear that there are some decisions that you have to start making later in the game. Yeah. You know, I'm, I don't know, I've played for an hour.

I just kind of play while we're watching TV. If we're watching something that doesn't require a lot of attention, like Great British Bake Off or whatever, it's kind of on, and then I'm mostly focused on this game. And yeah, I mean, it's fun. It's so lizard brain. It's so, you know, just the pleasure of just watching things explode, especially once you finally get a good build going,

just because you're, like, shooting balls, everywhere and like, you know, they're, you know, you're, so it's this kind of advancing army of skeletons that you're fighting. And they're all in these little boxes, which is just kind of funny, like they all kind of got in sleds and then they're coming toward you. And of course, like later, there are some creatures that aren't, but at least in the early goings, it's just a bunch of boxes, but sometimes there's a big box and that's got a big boy in it, and you need to spend more time and more balls destroying that, that box and that big boy. And, you know, it's frustrating at first, just like any roguelike, because you're dying and you're not

totally sure how you're supposed to get better, and then you start getting some better drops and better items, and then you unlock some better characters, and pretty soon, you know, you're making a ton of progress and, like, easily clearing the first boss, second boss, and so on. And it has that same kind of exciting treadmill lizard brain satisfaction, but at the same time, in the early, you know, a couple hours I've played, there have not been a lot of decisions to make. there is like moment to moment gameplay that's very satisfying like the feeling of moving you know there's some skill to it you can kind of catch your balls as they come back so you can then fire them off faster so there is some kind of you can't just kind of mindlessly play it even though it starts to feel kind of mindless after a while but at the same time i don't know like i guess i'm so it's such a contrast with something like kingdom come deliverance which i'm playing right now and i'm so in i'm like so deep in that game and it's this game that i'm like it's really like engaging my brain and I'm like thinking and listening to people talk and like having these kind of

deep complex decisions that I'm having to make all the time. And then to play something that's just pure, just good time feeling, pump it straight into your brain and then just kind of watch the numbers go up and the balls fly around and the things explode. I guess it partly goes to show how different video games can be from one another. But also it, compared to something a little more in line with it, like Balatro, for example. You know, that game just so quickly gets you into the decisions, and I think what made that game so fun for me as a roguelike is that it is all decisions. Like, even, you know, there's just so much strategy. There are so many choices. You're always in the shop. You're always thinking about your build. You're always adjusting and improvising and reacting and

reacting and making new decisions. And this game is so much purer than that. And that's fine. It's like a great toilet game. Great game for a second screen when you're watching TV, which, you know, for me, Balatro is much more engrossing and I wouldn't really be able to do that to multitask. But it's definitely more that kind of an experience. Just a very pure experience. So a couple of things. First of all, I don't want to oversell the decision making. It's not like, it's nothing like Volatra.

Like it's still, it's still very much a lizard brain game. You were still like even once you are making more character decisions and thinking a little bit more about synergies, you are still very much just smashing things. It's in that line of your vampire survival. It's the vampire. Exactly. The same way.

Exactly. Second thing is, it's, yes, it's the perfect TV watching game. It's very funny, Kirk,

to hear that. It's funny how much differently your brain works than mine, because I can play Bellatro

and lots of other things while watching TV as well. I have actually played most of Bellatro while watching TV.

But yes, so this is also the perfect like loaded up on your Steam deck and they'll probably bring it to phones. I don't think

it's on phones yet, but perfect phone game. It does feel like it should be a phone. Yeah. In the sense that it's like a second screen game and a toilet game. Yeah. Oh yeah. Very much. Yeah. It's in that lineage of vampire survivors. And yes, if you like watching numbers go up, this is for you. Yeah, man, I don't want to spoil this thing that happens. That's fine. Don't spoil it. Yeah. Okay. It's just, it's a good joke. It is funny, though. Like, I will say there's like kind of some light comedy that I've seen even

early on that I really enjoy. Like, instead of clicking okay on dialogue boxes, you'll either say, cool, or, whoa, which usually fits the moment. And I appreciate that. It's such a small thing to change that in a game, but it immediately clued me into the kind of humor that this game was going to have. And I really appreciated that. There's just some light touches throughout that add a tone of, this is very silly.

Like, even just the opening, like the place. you are is called instead of Babylon it's ball bilon and I just was immediately like this is good this is very very silly. Just kind of enter the gungeon-ish like where it's this world that's built around balls. Yeah, the punny stuff. Yeah, it's good stuff. And yeah, and some of that I will say that to the game's credits, some of the characters that you unlock really do drastically change the way the game is played. I'll give you a couple of examples of early ones without spoiling some of the fun late game surprises, but like a couple of early ones. There's one that removes all of the baby balls. So in this game, you get your kind of big special balls, which are ones that you can

pick from. So you start with one special of a ball. And then as you level up, you can pick like a fireball or an ice ball or a vampire ball that heals you over time and stuff like that. And so, you have four of those, at least at the beginning of the game, four max, and then a bunch of little baby balls that you'll shoot out. So there's one character that only shoots out the big balls and doesn't shoot out baby balls. So you have to like really think about kind of your placement and catching them. Yes, Kirk is laughing because he is a seven year old. You just keep talking about big balls and I'm laughing about it. Hey man. I wasn't going to say anything. I was going to let the audience just snicker to themselves. I can't imagine what I don't even. You got baby balls and you

got your big balls. I think baby balls is funnier than I mean that's part of the tongue and cheek of this whole thing is that it keeps saying baby balls. Yeah, it's fun. It's funny. It's funny. We're all seven when we play this game. Anyway, so there's one character that you only shoot the big balls. Man, okay, yes, yes. We can't talk about it anymore now. Sorry, I've ruined it. I've ruined it.

No, no, explain this character and their big balls. And another character, just as another example, another character, their balls, God, I can't. You ruined it. Another character, their balls come from the top of the screen instead of from them. And so, like, that makes you think about the game at all. whole new way. That one is really hard to use. There's another that is twins and they each shoot out balls and it's like double as many balls but have to control each of them. You know, you can use them kind of like like they move based on where the stick moves. They'll move in parallel

to each other. Yeah. So you just have to, there's a lot more creative stuff that you get to experiment with later on. And then also the other big part of it, just like vampire survivors, is the kind of the fusions of abilities in figuring out which of these balls go best together and then which of the passive abilities go best together and how you can take out a level because the levels get pretty tough later on. That's true. And that is actually an early choice in the game that when you get these like, what is it called fission or fusion?

You get a fusion reactor and then you can choose from that fusion reactor whether you want to upgrade your levels, which is called fission or combine two balls. which is called fusion, or the next step, which is evolution, which takes two balls and puts them together to create something totally new that has ultra-powerful abilities. And yes, to your point, that is like the decision-making, you're doing a lot. And at the beginning, it seems pretty simple because you're just like, okay, yeah, I'm going to smash these balls together. And then, but later on, you have to actually think a little bit more because you only have a limited number of balls that you can use. And so you have to be a little bit more strategic.

Again, it is still very much watching things explode, watching numbers go up. But there is a little bit of strategy. It's not on a scale. It's like kind of closer to vampire survivors than Balatro or Slay the Spire or other roguelikes. But it is a little bit more strategy focused than vampire survivors. You know, speaking of that, have either of you played Megabonk or have you installed that game, are you aware of it?

Yeah, I'm aware of it. It's like 3D vampire survivors. Right. It's just that it's, I think, doing pretty well too. and is, I gather, very fun. I haven't installed and haven't had a chance to play it. But just the fact that this game, that game, which is right 3D vampire survivors,

and Paul X. Pitt, which is vampire survivors, you know, combined with another game type. Like, that's just kind of funny that the vampire survivor's subgenre is really flourishing. And I don't know. It isn't every day that you see the birth of a new subgenre, which we did see with vampire survivors. And it's kind of been borne out by all these other survivors-type games.

And now we're just like in a world where that a type of game and we're getting all these variants. I think that's kind of a cool thing to mark and to realize that that happened. And now we're kind of in the aftermath. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, that's interesting. It's kind of like when Fall Guys came out and then we started seeing a bunch of like party games that were kind of like in that vein.

Was that? Was Fall Guys friend slop? Did that kick off the Friends Slop? I think so. Yeah, I think so. Among Us, Fall Guys. Kind of. Yeah, it was that era. Yeah, Among Us and Fallists.

Is Among Us Friend Slop? That's also a good question. question. I wouldn't say it is, I mean, do we have to define friend slop for the listener? Yeah, go ahead. What is what is friends slop? It's derogatory for a reason. People use it to describe a kind of cooperative or friends requiring game. Some of you play with friends, but that it's kind of forgettable, hence the slop moniker. And like seems kind of cheaply made. Yeah, cheaply made, rushed out. Is a good example of Fred. Do you remember chained together the game where you're trying to climb a really crazy obstacle course in your chain together. So if one of you falls, you all fall. I feel like that game, like it looks like it was just thrown together in Gary's mod or whatever. I don't know if it was, but I think the quintessential

type of friend slop is a game that looks kind of low effort, but then it's very, very fun. And then people just like to play it together and they don't care that it doesn't look amazing. Is it peak? Is Peek the one that, like, inspired this? I think Peek started the conversation where it's like, yeah, it's fun for a few sessions and then maybe the Friends Group moves on and plays something else. I think Peak is really fun. But I see why somebody might apply that moniker to it. especially if they don't like it that much. I don't know.

Isn't Peek kind of like beautiful looking and not actually low effort looking like it has art design? It is. I mean, this is the thing about putting slop at the ends of everything. That's not what this episode's about, but it is something that people online have come to do. So what are we going to call this genre, vampire survivor slop? Survivor Slop. I think it's a Survivor's like or something like that. which is awful, but then we have Soulslake and Metroidvania, those already exists and they're

terrible too. So we're not above giving things bad names. Yeah, having you heard of people calling those like Dodge Slop though, like or Dodge Roll Slop or whatever? It's funny how people have really come up with ways to describe Soulslakes in a derogatory way. So it's funny, this is a bit of a deep cut, but back in the day in the late 90s, in the StarCraft 1 map, uh, custom map scene. There was this genre of games. This is, of course, where mobas came from, because Aeon of Strife was the first ever moba, and that eventually turned into Dota, which spawned the whole genre. There was this other kind of genre of games called, like, mass attacks, and what would happen is, like, you would start with, like, a single character, and then eventually you would spawn a few more,

and then a few more, and then a few more, and eventually you'd have this entire blob of an army that you would then send to attack another army, a little bit different than vampire survivors, but similar in the sense that you were watching these numbers go up. But the fun part about this genre was that it was always themed around some like pop culture reference. So there was Simpsons Madness was one of them.

And each player would be like Homer Simpson, Lisa Simpson, Martin, Martin Simpson, whoever. And then you would watch that character, your upgrade over time, and then you'd get more of them and more powerful ones. It was kind of similar to Vampire Survivor

and that you weren't really making decisions. You're just kind of throwing things, and watching numbers, destroying enemies, kind of the opposite of vampire survivors, and that you're controlling the hoard instead of the individual. Right. Like these auto battalers, like autochess and other auto battalers, where the fun is just setting up the battle and then you just watch it play out according to the parameters that you input. Also, yeah, the Final Fantasy 12's combat system is kind of the same sort of thing where the fun is setting up. Yeah, the gambit system. You're setting up these machines

and then just watching them unfold. Anyway, ball ex-pit, I am really enjoying it just as a mindless. like time killing game. It's a lot of fun to play. Yeah, just while watching TV. Perfect TV watching game. Next up, Hades 2. We haven't done an episode about this, but I think the three of us have played a little bit more.

So we should talk a little bit more. This is, of course, the sequel to Hades. We talked about it a little bit as a warmer thing a couple weeks ago, but haven't done a super deep dive into it. Tell me what you guys think of Hades 2. I would say my problem with Hades, Hades 2 is that Hades 1 was too good of the game. And almost everything that I feel about Hades 2 is, in my mind anyway, being compared to Hades 1. And that's very difficult because Hades 1

is extraordinary. And I think Hades 2 is good. I think it's a good game. It's just not in my mind quite as good as Hades 1, except that it's still good. It's just the... that it is unfortunately the sequel to a game that I think is one of the all-time best games in terms of storytelling, pacing, gameplay innovation, the entire conceit, the anachronisms, and like the fun of having like a gun in a game about Greek gods and the entire premise of fighting through the underworld, like list goes on. I think Hades one is just extraordinarily clever. And Hades 2 is just a reflection, a refraction of,

a lot of the things about Hades 1 that I loved, and I wish it were just slightly better than it is, but I've played a lot of it. I've beaten Kronos multiple times. I have seen a ton of the story out here romancing nemesis or trying to. I don't know. I just have mixed feelings about it, and I think a lot of them have to do with just how much,

how much I was just really impressed by Hades 1 and the characters in it and how Hades 2 just doesn't quite grab me the same way. But what do you two think about it? It's so funny, isn't it? I mean, so I've played more since I made it my one more thing, have gotten further. And yeah, I mean, part of it is just that I've gotten into playing other games and so I've sort of lost steam on it. But there's definitely something there and it feels both totally unfair.

You know, it's unfair to say this excellent game. is not totally holding my attention just because, you know, another excellent game made by the same people came before it. But that is the case. And that's just, that is kind of the risk of making a sequel. You know, this is the first time that Super Giant has ever made a sequel. And I mean, it's kind of got the downside of making a sequel now. Like, you can see why it was so cool that they didn't make sequels before. No matter what, you know, even a game like Pire, which I think was their most divisive game, even that game, even that game, was really interesting. And, you know, and I think actually has been in retrospect sort of re-evaluated and some people have kind of come around on it. Yeah, I would agree. But, you know, every one of their games, just you had that feeling of newness. You didn't know what to expect. And not just from the story, but from the mechanics. And there is just this familiarity with Hades, too. And even though, like I said in my one more thing, when I talked about this previously,

I barely played this game. I played enough for us to kind of talk about it when it first came out in early access. And then I held off thinking, okay, I'm going to totally go in at 1.0. And that's what I've been doing. And I think that's a good way to play it. But it still has the same feeling of familiarity. Like the rhythms, you know, the tone, the way the characters talk. Yeah, certainly the, yeah, the gameplay rhythms, the boons, the just the dialogue rhythms, the music, the whole thing of like the way it feels. It's like if you imagine the game as a big drum solo, like the places that the drums are hit. Like, they just kind of are in the same places. And that's familiar and cool. And, like, worked really well with Hades. But it just does also have that familiarity, which when I'm playing a game,

I mean, actually, like, I started playing Absalom, which is the next thing we're going to talk about, but kind of deserves to be talked about at the same time as Hades, because it is also a rogue-like, or rogue-light. It is also with a really, a beautiful, striking animated style in a really fleshed-out world. But because it's different, it's a different world. I am not familiar. with where this story is going. It's also a beat-em-up. It's a different style of game. It's something I've never really done in a roguelike.

Even though I'm garbage at it and haven't gotten very far, and don't even know if I'll stick with it because I don't actually really like 2D beat-em-ups, I'm immediately hooked by it just because it's new. And I don't know. Like, I think that is telling me as much about my bias toward novelty as anything else. And I think maybe a lot of people feel that way. Like, it does not feel fair to hold against Hades II that it is familiar because it is also excellent. and yet, you know, me at least with my like embarrassment of choices for video games,

I find myself drawn to other things because they are new and surprising to me. I think it's the type of genre that is just very easy to burn out on, especially when it's so similar to the first game. I was thinking about this because Hades 2 came out just a couple weeks after the release of another sequel that we were all enamored of, of course, in Silksong. And Silk Song was a sequel to Hollow Night in many ways have the exact same rhythms as Hollow Night. But we all loved it. and Kirk and I both really loved Hollow Night as well, and we still loved Silk Song.

Mattie, you played less of Hollow Night, but you also loved Silk Song. And I think the main reason for, I mean, they're very different types of games, but I think one of the main reasons for that is that in Silk Song, every level is handcrafted and you're not kind of seeing the same thing multiple times, except when you're doing boss runs. In Hades 2, when you start, when you crack open that game, you kind of know every time you descend to a new sub-level, even if you're going up, which they've added to this game to kind of switch things up in this one,

you're still, you still know you're going to be seeing that level over and over and over again. And a large part of the appeal with the first game was like figuring out how to build a character and synergize, kind of like what I was describing of Ball X Pitt, where you're making a lot of interesting decisions along the way. But it's, I also feel like we all played so much of that first game that we already got that and kind of burnt out on it. And so it's not shocking to me that, at least for me, that I burnt out or that I bounced off of Hades II just because of the sheer amount of Hades 1 I played. And the thought of just doing that all over again is just not grabbing me. You know, this is making me have a related idea that I'll just throw in there because I'm having a thought and I'm going to articulate it. You're having a thought and you're going to articulate it.

Welcome to the triple quick, ladies and gentlemen. So Jason, you guessed it on Chris Plants show post games a couple weeks ago. And you were talking about this problem with there being too many games. And then on the follow-up, the second part of this two-part series he's doing, he had Simon Carlos on, who is a longtime game journalist turned consultant. He runs a game discoverability consultancy where he kind of helps people with discoverability and getting their games discovered. And it's an interesting conversation.

And part of what he articulates is that when you're trying to sell, a new game. You're not just up against the competition of like the other new games that are out, but you're up against the backlog. And the fact that there have been so many thousands of games released every month or whatever on Steam, it's a problem this month, but it's just as big of a problem that all of the months leading up to this month have also had thousands of games. And so, you know, some of the most popular games are games from like 2017, 2018, that people are still playing. And then he just kind of offhandedly said, you know, it's also hard to sell a new Assassin's Creed game, when there are like six other Assassin's Creed games that are much

cheaper and that people may already have that are pretty much just as fun, or that some people even like better, you know, someone might review the new Assassin's Creed and say, yeah, it's really cool, but actually I think Odyssey is a better game. And you may have Odyssey. It was probably on sale for like $4.99, you know, last holiday season. So why would you pay $70 for Shadows? And I just thought, these are all thoughts I've kind of abstractly had, I guess, but like hearing them articulated that way was really helpful. And in, you know, in terms of this conversation, Hades 2, it's, it's that same feeling of like, well, we have Hades 1 at home. Hades 1 still exists. And like for me, it's partly that I put, you know, 60 hours or whatever into Hades as well. And I just feel like I got so

much out of it that like doing it again, even though it's really good, it just feels like, well, but my body is full of Hades. Like I had all these hours of my mind in engaging with this, these rhythms and these systems and this game and this world and this story that like to just do it again just it feels kind of exhausting to me and it i don't know and it is interesting to think about why that isn't the case with silksong as you as you mentioned and that's a very good observation that like the kind of less remarkable quality of any given room in hades because it's procedurally generated is probably a big part of that or at least a part of it well but also the fact that you have to keep repeating the same zones over and over again and kind of going into it

By the way, to your point, I mean, Hades 2 is a massive hit, like right now as we speak it as 33,000 concurrent players on scene. Yes, correct. Sorry, that should, we should be clear that, yeah, I'm not talking about its sales. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're talking about you personally. Yes, yes, yes. And who knows how many of these people like got. I'm sure there are tons of people out there who like were really into Hades and they're also really into Hades and maybe they've found reasons to connect to it. The characters. Well, clearly, right? It's selling really well. Yes, exactly. And it is an excellent, excellent game. It's an excellent game. Yeah.

And I just think that like there's something about even psychologically, even the back of your head opening up this game and knowing the number of hours you're going to have to spend doing the same things over and over again. Maddie, you got to Kronos. You must have seen that first subzone so many friggin times, right? And it's kind of, you have to be willing to accept that in a way. And you kind of in a way that you don't have to think about when you're playing something like Silk Song or another kind of bespoke game.

Yeah. And you have to beat Kronos multiple times to get to the true ending. I've also gotten to the top of Olympus. Another thing I'm going to have to do multiple times in this game if I want to see the quote unquote true ending, which I, yeah, I mean, I will say that's something that Hades 2 does have going for it is compared to Hades one. It's kind of my main thing that I'm like, I appreciate this, is that when I got sick of and I did get sick of going against Kronos, I would just switch and do Olympus for a while. And then when I got sick of Olympus, I would go back and do chronos. And I, that's how I got to the top or bottom of both of those multiple times is because I

just would switch off as I got tired of each of them. And they are fairly different areas. But the fact that that's a concern is, I mean, it's, it's tough. It's a tough thing about the way the game is assigned. But I, I also think there are some other things about the game that I think are probably not grabbing you to. Like, we're all talking about how excellent the game is and it is fun. Like, there's still some fundamentals of Hades 1 that are here too and they're still great. But I do think the story is just not as strong here and that the characters don't immediately grab you. And that's sad to me in part because I'm just personally biased in the sense that I was like,

oh, awesome. I get to play a female character in this one. I'm going to be Zagrius's sister. That's going to be so cool. I think Malinawee rather is not as interesting of a character as Zagrius. She's very one note. And Zagrius was like a really well-rounded character. I don't know why that is exactly.

I've spent a ton of time with her. And I feel like she's often a cipher to me. And I don't know her that well, which is kind of odd. And also the, I think some of that was the interplay between Zagrius and his dad, Hades, and the fact that you got to talk to Hades himself, who's, of course, the final boss of the game Hades, every time. in between runs and building that rapport between those two characters was so important. Whereas in Hades 2, the conflict is so much bigger.

Like, you're fighting against time itself, and it's almost like the stakes are too high. And that makes it feel like it matters less, ironically, and like it's less personal. Whereas in Hades 1, it was deeply personal and kind of petty and ridiculous at times that Zagrius was doing what he was doing. but that's what made him an interesting character, whereas Mel is like master chief-esque. She's like, I must follow my orders. I must do my task over and over. And I'm, I don't know, there's something missing there.

And then also just, there's something magical about the like Meg Thanatos-Zagrius romance. Romances, I think that that chemistry is really, really strong. And I think they just really hit a jackpot with coming up with those characters. And the romances in this game, I don't know why, but like just somehow, I mean, I won't spoil all the characters you can romance, but I just, it's not, there's something missing. I don't, I'm not quite sure what it is exactly, but like there's, it's just not quite it. And I think some of that is

because Mel is just a very kind of stayed resolute character. And to compare that with something like Silk Song, it's almost like the opposite, where Hornet is a character in a way that the knight was not. Like, Silk Song is building on Hollow Knights lore and mythos by adding character and adding lore and adding all this background and a voice to this game that previously

didn't have that. And that was something that I thought was amazing about Silk Song and still do. Whereas this game, Hades 2, I'm kind of like searching for those characters that I'm like, oh, these are the ones I'm hanging my hat on and I'm remembering. And I just don't know if they're there for me. But Zagrius is so lovably bratty. He's so lovably braddy.

He's just such a charmer. You can't help but love him. That's a good point. I hadn't thought about that, but Zagrius grabs you right away in Hadesville and you're kind of like, man, who is this little prick? And then Melanoi, yeah, she doesn't really, she has a quest for revenge, but other than that, it's just going to,

and you don't even know what happened for a large chunk of the game. Exactly. And she doesn't know her own family that she's getting revenge for. She's never met them. Yeah. I think that's a very good point about Hades' presence in Hades as well. Like just the fact that he's your dad and he's there all the time and you're always talking to him. Yeah, it's great.

It's a noticeable difference between the two games for sure. Yeah, it's fun. It's also fun that the final boss of the game is just hanging out in your main base. Exactly. It's inherently comical. And it just adds a lightness to it that then can be taken away when Hades 1 has its high stakes moments and those feel more important because the rest of the, the game has such a lighthearted tone and like sometimes a sexy tone, whereas Hades too, the stakes are like, again, really high. It's like life and death and the fate of the world.

And like people are being tortured off screen and you have to save them. Like it's just, it's a really high level of intensity that somehow makes everything feel like it matters less. It's kind of funny how that works. Kirk, you want to talk about Absalom just real quick before we take a break? Yeah, I'll just shout it out. I'm far from an expert. in this game. I kind of described it, but I'll describe it again. It is a beat-em-up roguelight, so it is structured like Streets of Rage or TMNT, and it's made by Guard Crush games who made a recent Streets of Rage games, so they have a lot of experience in this world. So, you know, it looks like an arcade beat-em-up, where your characters are kind of 2D, but they slide around,

you know, up on an X and Y axis, and then you're fighting enemies that sort of move along as well. So it's all about counters and fighting. It feels like a fighting game, honestly, which is part of why I'm not that good at it. Maddie, I would love to know what you think of this game if and when you get a chance to play it. I want to play this. I'll let you know.

It's pretty technical. It's not as technical as street fighter or anything. But you have a lot of moves and you unlock even more as you play. But it is just really cool. I mean, if either of you started or anyone out there listening, has watched a trailer for this game. or started it, it just grabs you. I mean, the art is beautiful. The music is killer. The story set up. It just hits the ground running. You're in the middle of this like really wild conflict.

There's such cool character designs. Just everything feels exciting. You know, you're on a really dangerous quest. The world has kind of ended. There's like horrible enemies everywhere. And you're really motivated to just get cracking and start figuring this thing out. And then for me, the point of tension has been that I'm not very good. However, one thing I will note about Absalom, anyone thinking about playing it is that this game has those variable difficulty sliders that I have come to love so much so you can increase the amount of damage you do and decrease the amount of damage that you take. It's in one of the, I think, accessibility menus. It took me a second to find it. But a listener actually mentioned to me, someone was emailing me about the music, which is

really great, saying, you've got to play this game because the music is so good. And also, there are difficulty sliders. And I think I wouldn't have even known if I hadn't gotten that email. But that is a thing to know is that you can make it a little easier for yourself if you're not great at this kind of game. So I plan to play more. I can't really give like a super strong opinion of the game itself other than to say it makes a hell of a first impression. And it did really stick out to me playing it so soon after Hades too because it's so different and it's a new world and it just it showed me that I at least am kind of hungry for that right now for something new. So very promising seeming game. Yeah, it looks great. I'm going to check it out for sure.

Nice. Yeah, I had dinner with plant a couple of weeks ago in LA and he was raving about it and he was saying it's one of his favorites. Yeah, I think they did maybe a like whole besties episode about it. I haven't listened to it. But I think one of their recent episodes, they talk about it in depth. So I think they've played it a lot if anyone wants to just hear some people talk about it right now. Cool. All right. Why don't we take a break and then we'll be back with one more thing. Moving is the worst. Yeah, but it's exciting too. Our new Maxfund HQ office in downtown LA is actually going to fit all of us in it.

Oh. And the new studio is going to be so nice. Plus, we'll have space for hangouts and events. Yeah, you're right. It's going to be worth it, but boy, is it expensive. Maybe we can get some help. Hmm. Hey, cool, listener.

If you want to get fun stuff and help us move, go to maximum fun.org slash moving day, where you can get vintage merch or buy naming rights of stuff around the office. If you help us move by buying something, we'll invite you over for pizza and beer at our new place. Maximumfund.org slash moving day. If you want to know what's going on in the world of movies, you should be listening to Maximum Film so we can tell you all about it. Okay, but what if you already know what's going on in the world of movies?

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fun.org. And we are back from that not an ad break, no matter what Kirk says. It's time for one more thing. Maddie, start us off. Okay. So I rewatched slash watched a cartoon called The Venture Brothers. And I used that series of verbs because I watched the Venture Brothers when I was in college. And then I kind of stopped. I fell off in like 2009. And they just kept making Venture Brothers. And it kept going all the way to season seven in 2018.

and I never finished watching it. And I really liked this show back in the day, but I wasn't sure if it was going to hold up. And I would say that parts of it do not, and that over time, it gets better. And so I'm not sure if I'd recommend it. What is Venture Brothers? So Venture Brothers is an adult swim television show.

And I say Adult Swim because I feel like it kind of is brothers in arms with like a space ghost or a sea lab, Or that kind of show, except that unlike Space Ghosts and Sea Lab, which are reusing old kind of Hannah-Barbera-style animations to, like, create a funny show with new dubbing and, like, edgy jokes, Venture Brothers imagines, like, wholesale new animation. What if a show like Johnny Quest were real? And then what would those characters be like if they were grown up and they were kind of set in a more grounded reality? And, like, how awful of a person would Johnny Quest be if he grew up and, like, had to. to try to deal with actual conflicts and not just running around in kind of jungles and saving who knows who from who knows what. And that is kind of what the Venture Brothers posits. It posits

a world of protagonists and antagonists, supervillains, but kind of set in a gritty reality. And it's funny. It's a comedy. It's intended to be. But because it started in 2004, you're going to have the characters in the first few seasons using the word gay as a pejorative. But then by the time you get to 2018, you're going to have like multiple openly queer characters and like a pretty weirdly progressive show that like kind of tries to handle the fact that it like sort of introduced queer characters who seems somewhat stereotypical very early on and then kind of makes them more well-rounded. There's a ton of queer content on the show way, way more than I. remembered. And I thought that was kind of fascinating. And part of that is because animation takes such an extraordinarily long time to do. And also because of what is parodying, a lot of these shows kind of scan as homoerotic because they're almost entirely male characters. And like, we're all

kind of familiar with the Hannah-Barbara setup, I think. And like the ambiguously gay duo, of course. I mean, that's what the ambiguously gay duo was lampooning and like the old batmans and spider-man cartoons and so on, like kind of had some homerodicism to them. And Venture Brothers leans into that at times. And then in the later seasons, makes it literal, which is interesting to see. So I don't know if I can recommend this show, but it's been really fascinating for me personally to watch. And it's all on Adult Swim streaming for free. So if for some reason you want to like wander through kind of a history of what edge lord jokes were like from 2004 to 2018, you can do that.

It's streaming for free on this proprietary stream. streaming app that adults swim as. It doesn't appear to be anywhere else. And the streaming app sucks. I'll just go ahead and say that. It's pretty bad. It's not going to keep track of which episodes you have and haven't seen. You're just going to have to remember that. But anyway, the show's called The Venture Brothers. And it's been kind of, it's been like a nostalgia trip for me personally to finally complete it and see all of it. That reminds me of when the only way to watch Avatar The Last Airbender was through the Nickelodeon website. And it was such a disaster. Like it was like their streaming video player and it was such garbage. It's like that. I'm like,

I don't know if there's like rights issues. There's like, I think Netflix has like the first three seasons, but not all of them or something like that. But if you want to just watch it all straight through, you can watch it on this shitty app. So yeah. Nice. Kirk, what's your one more thing? My one more thing was your one more thing a little while ago. And before I say what it is, I actually also want to say that I've been watching both of your one more things from last week. I've, I watched Long Story Short, which is great. That was a great recommendation, Jason. You were, of course, right that I would like it.

Really funny show. And Maddie, we've also been watching, Emily and I have been watching High Potential, which is a good kind of networky show. I've actually been playing Ball Ex Pit when that song. Perfect to play Ball X-Fit. I feel like I already know who the killer is. I'm going to focus on my balls. So my one more thing is The Diplomat, the Netflix show.

I was focusing on his balls. You got to. You got to. The Diplomat, which. which is a Netflix show. Jason, this was your One More Thing. And am I correct that you have not, you're not up to date on this show? You stopped watching at some point?

No, we kind of tapped out in season one at some point. Oh, man. Okay, so that means I get to tell people that The Diplomat is a really good show. Man, I started watching it kind of just, I think I just didn't have anything to watch and thought I'd throw it on, thinking it was just going to be sort of mid. Like one of those, I don't know, Jack Ryan-ish kind of spy shows where it's kind of, in the middle of the road and maybe it has some fun episodes, but it's just something I can kind of put on in the background. No, this show is really, really great. It's really well written.

It's fascinating. It features an amazing lead performance from Carrie Russell. And it's also a show that's actually about diplomacy, which I was not expecting going in and is maybe the most interesting thing about it. So this show, as Jason described, but I will sort of recap. So this is a show run by Deborah Kahn, who came up as a writer on the West Wing in the post-sorkin era, the kind of maligned era of the West Wing. And then she was, I don't know if she was showrunner, but she worked on Homeland. So she's kind of always been in that like government, you know, adjacent procedural slash drama world. And this is very much one of those. Carrie Russell plays a diplomat who is a kind of lifelong behind-the-scenes operator. So she's been focusing in the Middle East and

knows all the players, you know, in Iran and in Baghdad, and she was there during the Gulf War and has been trying to, you know, advocate for peace and, like, help people, you know, whatever, stop killing one another. And she's like this lifelong operative. But she's not an ambassador or like someone who gets in front of cameras. She's like the person in the backrooms, meeting with people trying to arrange, you know, secret meetings and stuff. So then she and her husband are sent to the UK and she is named ambassador to London, which is a really high profile. ambassadorship because she is told in the first episode she's being vetted to replace the vice president because the vice president has a scandal coming it's like been they've learned that like she has you know is funneling money improperly to something very quaint reason for someone to have to step down in office in 2025 but this is a little bit of a parallel timeline in some ways so you kind of just have to go with that so anyways she's being vetted for vice president she has put into this very high profile ambassadorship along with her husband and her husband is also a really famous, well-known ambassador, and she's always kind of been in his shadow in a way,

even though she is this incredibly capable person. And the show is basically about her deciding whether or not she wants to be vice president, deciding whether or not she wants to stay with her husband. They're like on the verge of a divorce at the beginning of the show. They have an incredibly complicated relationship. He is pretty awful in a lot of ways, but is also just a fascinating character. I mean, both of them are. He's played by an actor named Rufus Sewell, who I'm not familiar with. He has incredible chemistry with Carrie Russell. This is the second time after the Americans, she's had just like amazing chemistry with her on-screen husband. And like, God, as much as I want to yell at her at times to be like, oh my God, you need to just

divorce this guy. He is ruining your life. Their relationship is so complicated and fascinating. And they're just, you see how they love one another in this weird way and how they need one another. like professionally, like how in the end, you know, they're making these really important decisions about national security. Thousands of lives are on the line and they have to do what's best. And sometimes that means they have to stay together because if they split up, it would, you know, undermine their goals. So anyways, in this show, man, I mean, it's so well written. It's really well shot, something I will say about the diplomat. Every season looks great. So much TV does not look good anymore. If you watch shows on Netflix, they're overlit.

They're overexposed. They're not just, it doesn't look like anyone behind the camera gave a shit. Like, it looks like they just set up each conversation, and then you just point of the camera people, and they talked. The diplomat, really, they use light, they use shadow, they use interesting camera angles. They're constantly shooting from a distance from up close. They moved to handheld in really interesting times. It just, whoever is the director of photography on a given episode is, like, doing work, and it's appreciated by me anyways. It's fun to watch a show that is mostly people in rooms talking.

and yet it always is beautiful and interesting looking and well shot. So that's yet another thing I like about it. And just, man, it's such a great mix of procedural diplomacy. So much of diplomacy is just can we get this guy in the room with this guy? You know, can we reveal that we know this information at this point? Or will that tell them too much about who told us the information? We know this guy is going to be killed, but we're not totally positive about it. We need to confirm it before we ask someone about it.

Like, there's, it's all that kind of stuff. Kind of sounds like my job. It kind of, well, and that's, I think, why, yeah, any reporter would find it interesting. It's because it's about learning information, confirming information, and figuring out what to do with that information, which I think is what a lot of diplomacy is like. Obviously, it's very heightened. It's very dramatic. It's very dishy and exciting. I don't think that real diplomacy is quite so sexy and fun.

But it's not like one of those shows, like so many of these shows, where it's kind of spycraft and they're doing diplomacy for the first two episodes. and then they're in car chases and they're shooting people. Like, no one's ever shooting at anyone else in this show. And then the only other thing I'll say is that with that said, each season chooses usually one moment to do something outrageous. And then something that would only happen on a TV show happens. And it, like, totally, like, elevates things and makes things get really melodramatic. And that has kept happening through two seasons.

We're now in the third season, which is currently airing. It is so far very strong. I gather that it ends with another something or other. I'm sort of annoyed that everyone's already seen the season in their headlines implying something or other that's maybe controversial, so I don't know. But I'm really enjoying the current season as well. It's just a crackerjack show. It's smart. It expects you to keep up.

It's made for adults. It feels, I don't know, I just haven't seen a show quite like this in a long time. And I love it. I'm really a big fan. So that is my full-throated endorsement of the diplomat on Netflix. One thing you didn't mention, of course, is that the West Wing's Bradley Woodford, aka Josh Lyman and Allison Jenny. aka CJ, are in this show, played pretty big roles in the show.

Yeah, I wasn't sure whether to mention it. I suppose everyone knows about Alison Janney. She was a surprise to me when she turned up, which she does turn up in season two as the vice president. And it's this very fun moment where you're like, oh, hey, look at that. And she's so great. And her character is so great.

The vice president is a great character. And Allison Janney is killing it. And I will not say who Bradley Whitford is. He is turned up in season three. But it is pretty cool, who he is. And I really loved his first appearance. I haven't gotten to see a lot, a lot from him yet. He's just replaying the dad and Get Out again.

And it's part of the extended Get Out universe. Right, right. Actually, the dad in Get Out was Josh Lyman. He was just retiring. Whoa. Multiverse. My one more thing is a book that I'm reading called Workhorse by Caroline Palmer. It's a brand new book.

And the first thing you notice about this book is that it's like this big. I'm holding my hands pretty far apart. It is a tomb. It is like 550 pages. And the story of this book is really interesting. It's written by this woman who used to be an editor for a very long time at Vogue Magazine. And it is a book about a woman who enters the fashion magazine industry at an unnamed magazine as an assistant or as an editorial assistant in 2001 back when the magazine era was at its kind of luxurious peak and her kind of adventures through over the years at this magazine. And it is an interesting story.

It is just like probably a solid 300 pages longer than it needs to be. There is so many, so much repetitive monologing, and there are so many details that just do not need to be in there. I almost, I like laughed out loud when I read this entire paragraph that was just dedicated to the food items in a catering set in some random little scene that like had nothing to do with the overall story. That aside, despite the bloated length, it almost feels like a video game in that it's just like too much padding, unnecessary amounts of padding. This would be a much better buck if it was like 300 pages instead of 550 or whatever it is. But that said, it's a really fascinating story. The characters are extremely unlikable, which is fun. The main character especially is this kind of conniving, self-serving, just kind of like, What Was Me sort of character. But you wind up brooding for her because she is coming into the...

this world as this kind of average middle to middle upper class suburban girl who like had a comfortable life but it's coming into this world that is full of these um just kind of upper crust people who don't have to work for anything and like are just kind of ushered away to their hampton's houses every weekend uh on their in their in their um private cars and uh take first class travel anywhere they go and uh there's one great quote in the book that is like they know Maine intimately, something like that, I'm paraphrasing badly, but they're emotionally familiar with Maine because they go there for their vacations and ski trips or whatever. And so it's really interesting watching this young girl who turns into a woman who like evolves as she like

tries to navigate this world full of upper crest types and how she schemes and how she like maneuvers and works around it. It's also really interesting seeing this picture. painted of the print journalism era before it all came crashing down. Yeah, that part sounds fascinating. Yeah, well, the luxuries that are just kind of described in this book are pretty out of control. Anytime I hear about them, I'm like, wow, it's crazy how I used to be. Yeah, in this magazine, in their office, they have an entire desk where you go to get petty

cash, and you fill out a forum, and you bring it to this desk, and then they just give you cash. like they print out cash and you can just spend it however you want it's like it's ridiculous they have these gala where they have black cars lined up for people they provide these incredible outfits for all the women involved um they fly people around first class wherever they want stay i'm and they stay in the ritzie hotels they are like um uh ridiculous perks that are coming with this yet at the same time this main character is making $24,000 a year and living in New York city so it's kind of like it's um at one point it's described as this job that you can only take if your family is wealthy enough for you

to be able to take this job, which is one of the reasons so many of the people around her in this book are like upper crest types. And so that that dichotomy is really interesting and watching, again, this woman who is a very bad person and does some really awful things. You kind of sympathize with that because it's all, it's like she convinces you that it's the only way she can get around in this world is by like stealing from people and embezzling and doing all these really bad things. So that's really interesting. And yeah, it's a really fascinating book. I'm enjoying reading it for the most part.

I just wish it was shorter. My goodness. Like an editor really, like for someone who worked in magazines for so long, you would think that maybe after working in magazines where you have such a limited word count for so long, it was just like, okay, here I can spend all the words I want. But it is. I've read a lot of books. And this is one of the more bloated ones that I've seen,

even compared to the like thousand word fantasy novels. At least those are just story. Like those are bloated because it's all story. This is bloated because it's all unnecessary description and monologuing. This sounds like the devil wears product. I know, right? So, okay, so that's the... I have to mention that at least.

So that's the most obvious comparison, but it's not that at all because there's no mean, nasty boss. There's no editor. The editor-in-chief is like, doesn't even have a name in this book. There's no dichotomy between her and a nasty person above her. It's really, if anything, the people above her are just like cold and just like realistic, a lot more realistic than just like cruel depictions of Anna Wintore or whoever. No, this is more, it's more about her and then this kind of triangle of friends that she develops, including this one close friend who is a member of the upper crust and the relationships

that the main character develops with her and then her mother, who used to be a famous actress, and it's got a totally different dynamic. The only thing it has similar with Devilware's Prada is that it's also in a big fashion magazine. God, it's more about class where Devil Wars Prada was a little more about like bosses and girl bossing. Exactly. It's more about class. They're from different eras, you know. And this is more about painting a very specific picture of New York City, the magazine industry, in this era where it was all excess.

And it's fun to read as a reader where you know it's all going to come crashing down. but at the time it's just like ridiculous expenditures. And there's this one cute moment where like this one character is starting a blog and like, hey, could that turn into a company? I guess we'll see how that shows up. It's very curious to see if there's some Gawker parallels that happen there. If one day someone writes the great fiction book about the 2010s digital media. It'll happen.

I would love to read that one. I don't know if it'll be great, but someone will write it. Well, I would love to see a great one because we live through that one. But it's fun reading about an era that we just missed coming into as well. But yeah, I mean, this, it's, again, I would, like, more heartily recommend it if it was 200 pages shorter. But, like, right now I can just say. It's too bad because I want to read it. I might just muscle through it anyway.

The thing, okay, the thing is, even though as I'm reading it, I keep thinking, oh, my God, I wish there was shorter. I wish this would get to some story already instead of all this. is prattling on. It's still fun to read, and it's got, the writing is very, it really pops. Like the writer is exceptional. And the way that Caroline Palmer writes it, it's never boring. It's just like tedious if you can see the distinction. Well, you're kind of wasting my time with this.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. But it's like, this feels like a waste of time, but it's still enjoyable to read for the most part. I could do without there. There are a lot of like fashion brand descriptions and name drops. that I'm just like, I have no idea what any of this means. That's not your thing. Descriptions of clothes, like what everybody's wearing at all times must be described. Seems like the kind of thing Jason Scherer would be into.

Yeah, for real. Here in my triple click sweatshirt. Because you're such a fashion plate, like wearing different stuff. Exactly. Definitely don't wear a sweatshirt every day. Definitely not wearing your triple click sweatshirt over and over. But like even, for the most part, even when it feels tedious and bloated, it's never boring because the writing is good.

and so it's fun to read. So I do recommend it. I do enjoy the book. It's just like it would get a full-throated recommendation if it was shorter and alas. This is why we need to edit-in. Yes, this is why editing. Editing is important.

Yep. All right, that is that for this week's episode. Kirk, Maddie. See you both next week. Yes, I will see you both 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. Email us at triple click at maximumfund.org and find links to our merch store and our Discord server in the show notes. Thanks for listening.

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