Triple Click - Silksong, Metal Gear Solid, Mafia, And More

Episode Date: August 28, 2025

Jason, Kirk, and Maddy react to the news that Silksong will be out very soon, then talk about some of the games they've been playing, including Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater, Mafia: The Old Country, and more.One More Thing:Kirk: Alien: EarthMaddy: King of the Hill (2025)Jason: CrosscodeLINKS:Brett Douville’s podcast, Dev Game Club: https://www.devgameclub.com/Jason’s interview with Team CherrySupport Triple Click: http://maximumfun.org/joinAll-New Triple Click Merch!! https://maxfunstore.com/search?q=triple+click&options%5Bprefix%5D=lastJoin the Triple Click Discord: http://discord.gg/tripleclickpodTriple Click Ethics Policy: https://maximumfun.org/triple-click-ethics-policy/ Happy MaxFunDrive! Right now is the best time to start a membership to support your favorite shows. Learn more and join at https://maximumfun.org/jointripleclick 🚀  SUPPORT TRIPLE CLICK:Join Maximum Fun | Buy TC Merch💬 JOIN THE TRIPLE CLICK DISCORD🎮 Triple Click Ethics Policy📱 SOCIALS | @tripleclickpodInstagram | YouTube | TikTok | Twitch

Snake, are you trying to save your game? If you're interested in games, you might try listening to a podcast called Triple Click. This is Triple Click, where we bring the games to you, such as Metal Gear Solid Delta Snake Eater, which we all played, plus some other games like Mafia, the Old Country, Wagotabie, and Gears of War Reloaded. I'm Maddie Myers. I'm Jason Schreier. And I'm Kirk Hamilton and hello. Hello.

Hello, my friends. We're back. Dental plan. Kirk needs braces. Dental plan. Kirk needs braces. I got braces. I'm finally fixing my teeth. I'll be able to chew food for the first time in many years. I'm excited about it. Congratulations. I can't believe we're revealing this on the show. I wasn't sure if we were supposed to talk about it. I mean, it's so personal. It's so intimate to reveal that Kirk has braces. People can't see him. It's so intimate that I have these things on my team that everyone can see. Extremely. The listener can't see them. The listener doesn't know. But if the listener did want to learn even more about us than they ordinarily could, then they might want to get access to a monthly bonus episode. And there's only one way to do that. And that would be to become a MaxFund member. You got to go to Maximumfund.org slash join. And then you get our monthly bonus episodes.

Some of those are about our personal lives. We did a deep question one a while back. But usually it's us spilling the beans, aka spoiling, a game we all played or a show we all watched or a movie. And this one that's coming up next is actually going to be a beans cast for Ocarina of Time, which we have all played and almost have all beaten, completed, seen Gannon's Castle, saved Zelda from his clutches, etc. So we're going to talk about it and everything that happens in between.

And we should say that will be out a little bit into September. Yeah, that's true. It'll be like a couple days into September. But it's coming. It's coming soon. And it'll be worth it. It'll be worth it. Maximfund.org slash join is where you would go to become a member.

And it's very much worth not only the weight, but becoming a part of our wonderful network of supporters. Because that's how we do what we do. And then we have something a little special to present today. Jason, you want to explain what that is? Bing. Kirk here, just with a little note, something that you've probably noticed is that there is some construction going on on Maddie's building during this episode. I added it around most of it. It shouldn't be too much of an issue, but you will hear some sawing, some hammering.

You will hear some sounds. It's going to be okay. There's not too much of it. So sorry about that. And hopefully it will not be an issue next week. But I just wanted to give you a heads up that that's what you're hearing. All right, here's Jason. Bing.

Yeah, one thing on Akrona real quick is that we're not going to be doing another episode in the main feat. So this is going to be our next big thing is that's talking fully about the entire game after we've all finished it. it will be exclusive to bonus subscriber or to max fund subscribers supporters of the show for a little while I think at some point we'll throw it on the main feed maybe in a few months so if people want to hear that whole discussion it won't be paywall permanently but but it will be it will go first to people who support the show yeah a couple of things we should talk about up top first of all a couple weeks ago we were talking about AI, which is always always a fun topic to wade into. So fun. By fun topic, you mean a huge mistake. Yeah. No, it was fine. No, I'm kidding. I think we had

actually a really interesting conversation about it. No, it will, this will not be the last time. Because unlike, like previous, there have been some fads in the past that have kind of been flashes in the pan, NFTs, Metaverse, etc. This has some traction. This has some staying power. We will be talking about it more in the future and hopefully approaching it with a, nuance kind of like, fair-minded approach, I don't know, without being afraid to kind of talk trash about the shit that doesn't work and all the mistakes that make.

But hopefully bringing some nuance in the conversation. Yeah, yeah, I think so. All that said, a couple weeks ago we were talking about it, and I kind of got in over my skis, is that the expression where I was talking some, I made the mistake of talking about things instead of asking people about things, which I'm much better at doing.

And so I was talking to a buddy of ours, front of the show, Brett Duvill, and he was like, hey, let me kind of correct and clear up a few things about the way AI works when it writes code and how it takes code from, how it takes ideas from all of the internet, the way that a lot of these AI programs work,

where they're just kind of stealing data from all across the internet, and how it kind of funnels that into the code that you see output it on screen. So we actually got Brett to record a brief, clip, which we will play right now. Here is Brett. Hello, Brett Duvill here, long-time video game programmer and currently the technical director of Twin Suns Corp, also co-hosts of the Dev Game Club podcast. I just wanted to

briefly comment on Jason's remarks about generative AI creation of code in last week's mailbag. It's inaccurate to say that code generation by LLMs just follows the rules of C+++, in fact, LLMs generate code in the same way as they generate a natural language like English, by a predictive next token approach, that is, by generating the next word-like object. Often it generates uninspiring but functional code, just as it tends to generate uninspiring but functional English. In experimenting with LLMs as an aid decoding, I found them helpful to give me a starting point because they have digested large APIs, which are the interfaces programmers use to use other programmers' code. Once I have that starting point, I'll use that to find either the documentation

I need or to browse for the source code directly. While it might give me a good general idea of where to look, it's often wrong in the specifics, and it can fall prey to some of the same sorts of errors that it does in other domains, such as hallucinations. As an experiment, earlier this year I used an LLM to create a pretty specific tool in Python inside the Unreal Engine. I'd like that hour or two back, for sure, not just because it kept getting things wrong, but because if I had done it myself, I would have come out with another problem-solving tool in my bag, because that's what engineering actually is. Solving problems, not writing code. Writing code is just one of the tools. tools. And this is what I worry about most in wide-scale adoption of LLMs to generate code. They

will lead to a workforce who lack the mental tools to evaluate what is generated. We already have a problem with software quality and security, and LLMs seem likely to make that problem much worse because they've been trained on that poor quality code and will be evaluated by people who can't write or even conceive of better code. I hate the idea of losing a generation of young programmers who would be better served by mentors. When it comes to games, programming is one part of the creative collaboration that leads to fun. If I can wax a little poetic, it's part of what makes games human, another voice in our little chorus that makes our art. Just as a reader, I can't imagine being interested in a novel written by an LLM. As a small

G gamer, I'm not interested in playing games with parts of its humanity removed. Thanks for the podcast. It remains a highlight of my week. I look forward to your next East Coast live show. Please stay out of any spider mansions until then. Thank you, Brett. Thanks for clearing that up. Thanks, Brett. In the future, we will just bring on people who are smarter than us instead of trying to do these things ourselves. It's usually a good idea.

One of the thing we should talk about before we start getting into the games of August, the games we've been playing recently. I'm vibrating over here. Cuck is like buzzing. Cuck is sounding like a little bug. Yeah, yeah. Seven years ago, a podcast called Kataku Splittaker. screen started getting into a little game called Hallow Night and I think got a lot of people into it along the way and somewhere in there, somewhere in the last seven years, it has become

like a bona fide cultural phenomena. Hollow Night's sequel, Silk Song, is coming out next week. It was just announced while we were on vacation. NBD. It's coming out next week. Who cares? Can we just sit with that sentence? Hollinite Slick Song is coming out next week.

That's a true sentence that you just said on our podcast. Finally. It's not a shadow drop. We had thought that it might be because the switch version of Hollow Night was shadow drops. So we thought to see what might be. It was not. We've even predicted in the past at various points year over year.

We've predicted. I'm glad it's not a shadow drop. This is perfect. Having two weeks to get really excited. Because shadow drops can be kind of stressful. You're like, oh, God, I guess I have to go play this right now. You're in the middle of something. This way we have just enough time to get excited.

but it's so soon that it feels like it's right around the club. Yeah, I'm so excited that I actually went and replayed like the first hour of Hollow Night Up, which is great. Playing Hornet and you can beat Hornet and be like, now I'm really getting in the mood by watching her moves in this first boss fight. She's so cool. She like stunts over and over in that fight. It's very exciting.

I actually, I spoke to Team Cherry's co-founders, William Palin and Ari Gibson a couple weeks ago for a story on Bloomberg, and was very pleasantly surprised when I talked to them because I reached out to them And I was like, hey, do you guys want to talk about the development of Silk Song? It's been so long. And they were like, yeah, let's chat. And so we set up a video call and I was chatting with them. And I was so shocked when they were like, yeah, there were no issues.

Like, we just had a really good time making this game. It was just super fun to work on. It's so funny, you know, I interviewed those two guys for Kotaku's split screen way back in the day. And reading your interview, which is wonderful, and people should go read it. We'll link it in show notes. Just reminded me of that interview too, where at the time as well, then it wasn't quite, I'm talking to the guys behind this cultural phenomenon, but it was, I'm talking to the people who made this unbelievable work of game design brilliance that I loved. And it was just striking how they're like these chill dudes in Adelaide just hanging out, making games for fun, and then they just happen to make a masterpiece.

It's very funny. I mean, I'm like watching them. We're on a Google video call, and like the backgrounds of their office are just like these ugly avocado colored walls. there's no art. Like they don't do anything. They were telling me, they don't do anything. Well, at least Ari doesn't do anything but work on this game. Like he just goes home and then comes into the office and works on this game.

William has kids, so he does do other things that doesn't work on the game. But he also is just like, so they're both so devoted to it. And the key is that they both have so much fun. Like the process of making the art is so enjoyable to them, which I think is not the case for a lot of artists, even great artists and great writers and great musicians. the process can be torturous for a lot of people. But for them, and they almost seemed in shock when they told me, they were like somehow we've stumbled upon this development methodology

that is just so joyful for us. And we don't know how we did it. And we don't want to change the formula in any way by adding people or changing how we do things because we don't want to ruin the fun for ourselves. You can tell that. I mean, having that conversation, I left thinking, oh my God, Silksong is going to be just as good as holiday,

if not better, because they just have so much fun making this thing that that's got to be channeled into the final product. It was a really fun conversation to have. And yeah, it was a cool process. And heartening. Yeah, I couldn't believe that they just paid no attention to the fandom, which is such a correct choice across the board. They just don't care. They're just not online. They're not brainwormed. They're not on social media. It's so healthy. And I love that for them. And I think that's part of why they probably had such a joyful time making it because the pressure's off if you're just ignoring that and you're like, okay, great. The fans are anticipating the game. It'll be out when it's out. Like, what a healthy

mentality. I kind of can't believe it. And I'm a little jealous, you know? Maybe we could all take a page out of their book and embrace that. Embrace that. Well, so they told me specifically, they said, we made Hollow Night just kind of shut away in our little cave just working on it without outside kind of input. And we wanted the same thing for Silk Song, because again, we didn't want to ruin that. formula that worked so well for us the last time, and we don't want to ruin what's so enjoyable for us. That's one aspect of it. The other aspect is it is that, like, we'll get into this more in the next couple weeks as we really dive into Hollow Night and Silk Song. But I think it's, it's really interesting that it didn't become a meme, it didn't become this phenomenon until, like,

the last two or three years. Before that, it was just like a beloved game and the sequel people were really excited about. But just for a point of comparison, at Gamescom last week in Cologne, Germany, the big gaming convention, there was a demo of Silksanga, and people were waiting online for two, three hours just to play this like 20-minute demo. At E3, 2019, there was also a demo, including, I think it had one region that was the same as like the gamescom ones, there's similar stuff in it. And that demo, I remember standing there and I could just walk onto it. Nobody was playing it.

Like, it was cool. The hype is built. It wasn't quite like this. Yeah. We'll get into that more next week because I think that's a really. it's really fascinating to kind of trace that phenomenon and figure out how it happens. So we'll talk about that more down the road. But the point I'm making is that for Team Cherry, for those guys, if they're mostly offline,

they might not even realize. Or like maybe it's kind of still hasn't really dawned upon them how big a phenomenon it's become. Yeah. Because when you created something like that, you can't totally know what it's like for someone to play it. I mean, the experience of playing Hollow Night was so dense and complex and involved, and it became such a big part of my life for the whole time I was playing it.

If you made all of that, you just can never have that experience. So in a very real way, they can't understand what it's like for the people who love the game. And the other thing they told me that kind of cements that theory that I have that like this hype only really started relatively recently is that in, so they said publicly in 2019, when they announced Silk Song, Hollow Night had sold something like 2.8 million copies in February of 2019 when they announced it. This is an insane number that you're about to say. As of a couple weeks ago, it is sold 15 million. So that's about 13 million have been sold in or sorry, about 12 million have been sold in the last six years, like since in the years after. So that essentially means that for fifths, 80% of Hollow Night sales came after the Silk Song announcement, which kind of again plays into the this idea that like this game really only became this like it was a very popular very successful

game when silksang was announced but now it is a cultural phenomenon now it is this incredible beast of a thing one of the most popular indie games of all time anyway we'll talk more about that next week but it is very exciting it's interesting and yeah we're all excited to play it i expected to be more hollow night but just like bigger and better and more elaborate and a different a faster main character. It's going to be super cool. All right. Let's talk about some video games we can play and have been playing as of right now. We're going to get into a video game roundup for some August games because there's some cool stuff that has come out in the last few weeks that we haven't talked about much. Let's start with Metal Gear Solid Delta. Konami's new remake slash remaster of Metal Gear Solid 3.

This is made with Konami and Virtuous. And it is essentially a remake. recreation of Metal Gear Solid 3 with brand spanking new beautiful graphics, PS5 level graphics, 2025 caliber graphics. And also, most importantly, you can play with what essentially feels like Metal Gear Solid 5's gameplay in that it is like third person, twin stick, control the camera with one stick, and it kind of feels like a normal action game. As opposed to the original Metal Gear Solid 3, which was like a top down, just kind of really not the most pleasant game to play,

was fixed with its kind of subsequent release, which I believe is called subsistence, Metal Gear Solid 3 Subsistence, which gave you another camera option, like a third-person camera option, which made it much more pleasant to play. But still, it wasn't quite like this. Now it feels more like a modern game,

a modern version of Metal Gear Solid. I think all three of us have been playing it. What do you guys think? I'll go first. So this is actually my first time playing any Metal Gear game at all. Oh, interesting. Oh, that's cool. It's a good first one.

Have maybe forgotten. It's fine. I've mentioned before. This is like one of my notorious gaming blind spots. I really did not know that. So, yeah, if you mentioned it, I have forgotten. Yeah, I totally. Well, Maddie, there hasn't been a new one since we've been podcasting.

So it makes sense. Maybe that's why. It's true. It's true. So maybe that's why. And it's not that I haven't read about them, watch cutscenes of them. Of course. You can't really avoid them.

But I was really looking forward to finally play. playing this and it's so weird. It's such a weird video game. I just want to say playing dust draining one and two didn't prepare me for how extraordinarily strange this video game was going to be or even years upon years of people telling me how weird the game was going to be. I am laughing at it a lot. It has moments in it that feel like slapsic comedy to me. How far are you? I just beat the pain, which is like the big hornet guy, really annoying boss fight. But I did it, baby. Use those grenades, figured it out. Oscelot is a fully crazy character. And that boss fight that you have with him where you're both on two cliffs, he juggles his revolvers for, I don't know, three minutes.

I'm going to say three minutes. I was laughing. I was like, this is like Austin Powers or something. Like it feels like a parody of a Bond movie, not like anything that would really happen in a Bond movie. And I don't know, it's kind of blowing my mind how funny the game is. I just, I really wasn't expecting that. I'm enjoying it a lot. But I kind of thought it would be a little more self-serious and that there'd be goofy moments, but not what it is. Not what I expect it. Do you, are you familiar with the end that boss fight?

Do you know anything about it? I mean, I was just introduced to him as a character. So no. That was the scene I was just playing through before we started. He gets wheeled out in the wheelchair. No, you haven't spoiled anything. Well, you see him in the helicopter and stuff. He's around when the cobra unit is first introduced.

He's around. I've seen him and I know he's dead, question mark. And then he's saving all of his energy for the battlefields, according to the boss, the greatest character in the game. I won't say anything else. You're in for some interesting stuff. I'll update you too. I'm going to keep playing.

it because again, I do feel like this is a blind spot that's worth filling for me, and it's so much sillier and more fun than I expected it to be. I really thought it was going to be more serious than this, but I'm having a really great time. And the actual combat, which there's barely any of, I'm really just watching cutscenes like so far anyway. Maybe there's more stuff later on, but it's kind of just like a funny TV show that I'm watching with Solid Snake, world's most awkward man and I love him and I want to protect him. I think Metal Gear Solid 4 was like renown at the time because it had like an 80 minute like cutscene. Oh boy. I bet. 80 minutes of solid cutscenes. Kirk, what's your take on Middle Gear Solid Delta? It's so good. I'm impressed by this

remake and yeah, I have a lot of thoughts on it. I share your sentiment, Maddie. I have played this game or at least started this game several times. Only the subsistence version. the version with a third person camera, and they kept re-releasing it. I think I played it on Vita, then I played it on 3DS. There kept being this promise that, oh, you're finally going to like this. Like, I'm finally going to be able to play this because I am really used to modern controls and just can't get used to some of the way the shooting and aiming worked, for example. And because these games are so complex and have so many systems and menus and little,

all this micromanaging that you need to be doing. Yeah, we can get into that. controls are important. And so getting your head around all of that is just, it was always hard for me to get my head around all of that when I was playing with these controls that didn't feel intuitive to me. So I never really got that far. You know, I've gotten past the prolog and into the main game a few times. But now I do think I'm going to play this whole game because I have played, I played a lot of two just on a friend's PS2. I played all the way through four. That was the first metal gear that I played, which is an insane first metal gear to play. but I just sort of played it. I had no idea what the hell was going on. I mean, aren't they all insane? I don't know. No, Maddie, you're actually in the perfect place.

Well, Metal Gear Solid 3, on the Metal Gear Solid timeline, Metal Gear Solid 3 is the first one. Well, this is the first one. It is chronologically the first. So it's an origin story. And Boss is not the same as Snake. Like, they're not the same character,

even though they're voiced by David Hater, and they're called Snake at various points. They are different characters. You are playing Big Boss, who get, to correct me if I'm wrong Jason, but this character in Metal Gear 3 is also the main character of the Phantom Pain or at least

sort of is in the Phantom Pain. Yeah, sort of. I guess it's more complicated than that but like it's kind of the same guy. There's an old snake and a new snake and they look similar but one of them is actually old snake is in form. No, old snake is the difficult. I shouldn't try to have any input here.

I don't know anything. It's an older version of solid snake. But there's like chronologically, It's like Peace Walker comes after this And then is that right that Metal Gear 5 comes Like Metal Gear 4 is the last one chronologically Yeah I think Metal Gear 2 is before 4

This is really reminding me of like when I try to explain X-Men comics to people It's like not Well let me wait let me actually say what I think that the timeline Yeah you're right Kirk Well you just is dead Metal Gear 4 is the last one And that is the end as it stands

Metal Gear 2 comes before 4 one comes before two, then five comes before one, and then Peace Walker, and then three is the very first one. So this is like the origin story of Boston. So when, you know, when the boss gives him her headband and he puts on the headband, like this is all origin story stuff. Yeah, it felt very origin story. Okay. So the actual game, I think that it's so cool. It is so funny. I'm much more used to the style of play because I played so much Metal Gear 5. and have just, I'm kind of like in the rhythms of it now. It is like slapstick comedy. It's so silly. I save scum a lot and just reload.

I remember the loading times being really long on three, and it kind of punished you for screwing up, and it didn't really make it possible to retry, even though it's really easy to screw up. And I'm just, I'm kind of amazed at it. It's so systemic. It's so complicated. I need to interrupt you there because punish snake is actually a different type.

And we're not talking about. I'm not going to be confused with naked snake, who isn't the same as this snake when I take off his shirt. No, this snake actually is naked snake. Oh, he is naked snake. He is at the beginning, yeah. That's his co-knit. And there's truly naked snake when you take his shirt off. And then that actually really helps his camouflage.

Well, no, then he's naked naked snake. Right, naked snake. Not to be confused with half naked snake who he turns up in peace. This is the kind of humor in the game as well. Like, we're joking, but like the game is that self-aware of how silly it is. I think it is. Yeah, I'm not joking at all. It's completely.

No, Jason's just telling us actual facts about metal gear. Just facts. So yeah, anyways, I could talk much more. I think we should get into the gameplay systems and the complexity of it, the simulation. I love it. Yeah, tell us what you think of the simulations and the game play system. Oh, it's so cool. There's all this.

There's so much experimentation. It gives you so much time and space to just mess around, you know, find different ways around things. I was reading just in a review. They said that if you blow up the. food in an enemy base, then later the guards will be hungry, and so they'll be less attentive. There's so much stuff like that in this game. And the more you play, the more you realize just how reactive it is and how complex the simulation is. And while it is a lot of cutscenes,

it's also this incredibly complex world filled with, you know, reactive systems and hidden systems. And it feels like you're discovering these little mysteries as you play. And I love that. It's so delightful. Yeah, it's notable. I think five was my favorite in terms of the gameplay. Yes, easily for me as well. But five, but it is really strikingly different, I think, because five is a lot more about kind of scouting out an outpost, sneaking around, taking our guards, finding a way inside, infiltrating quietly, and basically being like, I don't know, a James Bond type, like a super spy. The other ones, including three, are also about being a super spy, but there's a lot more kind of

strangeness than how you interact with the world because you're not like going around and infiltrating bases. You're kind of more like going on this linear path that'll take you through bases and take you through different areas and different fortresses and stuff. You have to seek around guards and do some of the same sort of things, but in a different,

a much different rhythm than kind of the, all right, we're in base, we're going on a mission, take out this alpost, go back to base, go on another mission, etc. And yeah, there's, therefore, there's a lot more room for that kind of experimentation for using porno mags to distract guards or like hiding in your stupid little cardboard box and taking advantage of camouflage and stuff.

And yeah, I think it's the type of game where you could just kind of play it as like a run and gun game where you're just like shooting everybody with your twink gun. And I think that makes it a way less enjoyable experience. You really have to be willing to just kind of dig into it. And there are a lot of people out there who get really into playing in like full-on ghosts self-mode where it's like you die if you get caught once or something like that. And the game really gives you all these tools to allow you to do that, like all the different elaborate camouflage systems and like all the other crazy things you can do like

Kirk described. It's super cool. And yeah, some of the best boss fights that I remember from that era, including the aforementioned the end, which I won't say anything about, because many I'm very excited for you to experience that. It's really fascinating. And then, yeah, a story that is just kind of like defies comprehension, but also is a lot of fun to watch unfold, I would say. You know, I am finding the story that broad strokes of it, easier to comprehend this time than in any past time that I've played the game. Well, it is until you get to the late

game twists and then it's like, oh, this person is a triple agent for this person. And that's when things get off the rails a little bit. Right. I guess I just mean the historical setup that it's like Khrushchev trying to head off this internal coup attempt basically. And he's working with Johnson and they have to have disavowal. Like the whole diplomacy aspect of the story is actually like pretty easy to follow if you have. I think I just have a little bit more knowledge of Cold War geopolitics than I did the last time that I played this. And it's neat.

It's actually a really neat setup for a story. And then almost it makes it funnier that once you get into it, it becomes, man, Maddie, your description of it as a parody of a Bond film is perfect. I mean, all the way through and including the like totally ridiculous and gross, just like ogling of Eva, the way that this game is like so sexist. It's really funny that the opening, there's like opening text in the menu. It says warning, this game objectifies the shit out of the female characters, basically. It's so many words.

It's like that Disney Plus warning where it's like this is a product of its time. people. Yeah. Like, we are leaving it as it is. Then also there's so much science fiction stuff in this game. Like, yeah, Khrushchev is a character. There is the like Cold War machinations. But like, this is also a game where a guy has hornets at his command, like as a superpower. And like, I watched a cutscene where there was like a ghost guy and like, I don't know who that guy is yet. He was there. And like, things are just occurring. And I'm just a long for the ride. It's not like just a Bond film with like obvious like maybe there's a little sci-fi with like a pen that turns into a gun or something like things that couldn't really exist.

This is like, okay, it starts off that way, but then it immediately becomes completely ludicrous as to how any of these people could even exist or what their, what any of their deal is. I've like, multiple people are already double agents and I'm already like, I don't really understand why that's happening. So I'm glad to hear from Jason that that's going to continue. Because that's already comedic to me. It's like, why? No one has any accents. Everyone has an American accent, but all of them work for like six other countries.

It's such a like blender pastiche kind of thing. Like it really feels like we know that Kojima is media obsessed and is a sponge, you know, that he's watched a billion movies and read all this manga and comics and books. And like he just digest all this stuff. And it feels like someone just did that, you know, watched every Bond movie ever, every Cold War thriller ever, read a million of these books and histories, and then just like spat it out into the most crazy, just this huge blended disaster

that that's so interesting at all times and like so funny and kind of overwhelming and bizarre. And then got a good, a team of game developers together and they like made a really like interesting, cool stealth game to tie it all together. I don't know, there are not other video games like this. I mean, this, you know, we'll talk about other games we've been playing, but picking this up.

they're nothing like this. I was like, whoa, this is a thousand times more interesting than the last game I was playing. Yeah, the characters are obsessed with movies too. Like, they talk about movies constantly. Paramedic is always telling Snake about her favorite movies. But also, like, the Colonel Zero or whatever his name is is really into movies too. I was just watching a cutscene where he was lambasting snake for not liking James Bond movies enough. I'm like, they just, they just list off movies they're into for like 10 minutes, like just full on conference. When you're just trying to save the game, man. I know. I know.

You can't save the game. You can see, playing this, you can see why Kojima and Metal Gear Solid has been so discussed and debated. Yeah, beloved and mocked. Maddie, yeah, I'm very, I'm curious to hear your thoughts as you keep playing. Let's talk about a couple other games. So Mafia, the old country, is another game that came out this month. And in stark contrast to Metal Gear Solid 3,

this might be the most straightforward like all of it's right down the middle all of its cards on the table type of game I played a chunk of this very slow start very pretty game very slow game

very good performances very as the kids might say mid game in a lot of ways they really like knife fights and making you do them and other kinds of mechanics that you've seen a million times in other games It's very much just kind of like, you know, if Kojima games are like a bunch of movies just dropped into a blender and then just like poured into a cup for you, this is kind of like a bunch of PS2 games like dropped into a blender and then poured into a cup for you.

Maybe PS3. Yeah, maybe yeah. Graphic-wise like PS5 level, but like mechanically. It's like a cover shooter, you know, so there's. Sure, I guess the cover the shooters came later. Yeah, that's true. The stealth is kind of the last of us. It feels kind of PS3. Yeah, you're right. You're right. You're right.

But like this is very much, this is a game that does absolutely nothing that you've, you've, haven't seen a million times in other games before. Pleasant on the eyes, pleasant to look at, pleasant to drive a ride around on these horses. Very inoffensive type of game. $50, so it feels it's like very much marketed as a discount game. I don't know. It's an interesting one. What do you two think of Mafia, the old country?

I haven't played this one, so it's all you, Kirk. Oh, okay. It's all me. Yeah, I've played a chunk of this as well. I'm up to the kind of actual meat of the game like I'm starting to shoot people, I guess. And that was actually where I kind of tapped out. I was like, okay, I got it. And not just in terms of the gameplay, but the story too. And I think that's for me at least the thing that isn't grabbing me. Like you said, Jason, it is anchored by very strong performances. Hanger 13, who I think was started to make Mafia 3 and made that game, which is, I think actually a really cool game in a lot of ways it has some flaws, but one of the things that makes Mafia 3 remarkable is the acting, the writing, the story, and the cutscenes. And so this game carries that tradition forward. But at the same time, Mafia 3, if we go to their first game or their first mafia game that the studio made,

I mean, that's a game about a black Vietnam veteran who returned in the 1960s to basically New Orleans. and it's told, did either if you play Mafia 3 at all? Yeah. Or do you remember it? You did. It's told in documentary style. So you're seeing interviews with people who are older and are remembering what happened. And so you get these interstitial interviews that are really striking, really well, performed.

And they look like, you know, they are believable. And they're telling you like, okay, well, here's what happened. Well, I remember this. Well, no one will forget the night that this. And then it flashes back to you playing through it. And then the story is this like. really interesting, you know, unusual and unpredictable story that feels like very vibrant and very in a particular place in history, in American history. It's about a lot of like really important

and interesting cultural topics. And it loses its way because it's too much. Like it goes, there's a ton of side quests and like you drive around the city. There's like a million repetitive things that you can do. Well, there's a grind. There are a lot of points where you have to like grind through these districts. And it's about conquering territory. It's like one of those Godfather type games where you have to work with different factions and then you just do repetitive side quest forever to conquer the map and eventually take it over. And like it just lose, like I didn't finish it. I think I went and watched the end just to see how it ended. But the story was like, kept me going in that game for sure. And the issue that I'm running into with the old country, which is

set in Sicily around the turn of the century in like 1904, 1905, Sicily is a actually really interesting historical backdrop. There's a lot about Sicily that I didn't know. My sister was actually just they are visiting and was telling me like how Sicily is like very much this place unto itself. It is like separate from Italian history and has its own whole culture and history. And it's very tied in with organized crime. And there's a lot of really interesting stuff that has happened there and continues to happen. So it's not like a bad setting. But everything in this story is so familiar.

Every guy that you meet, it's like one of those guys from a mafia. Okay, there's the Don, the aging Don who is honorable, but ruthless. There's his lieutenant who's the guy training you who's very dapper, but you're not sure if you can trust him. There's the fuck-up nephew who's like a hothead and is always getting into trouble. And you can tell there's going to be tension with you and Enzo, your character, who's like this new kid who kind of gets thrown in with them. And of course, there's the beautiful daughter who Enzo immediately they've like fallen love even though they barely have even talked. And of course that's going to be an issue because she shouldn't be talking to the lowly farmhand.

But Enzo can't help himself. And so all of these storylines are so familiar. And they're all well done. And if this were just a Netflix series or something and I was just kind of watching it, it'd be like, oh, okay, cool. I know where this is going, whatever, I'll put it on. But something about having it be a game. I know this game isn't too long, but it's just long enough.

It makes me feel impatient in that way that I have started to feel when I'm playing a story or reading a book where the story is just kind of wrote. This happens to me with Brandon Sanderson, actually. I've talked about him a few times on the show. So as much as I enjoy his books, he's great at writing action. It's always worth, the juice is always worth the squeeze in the end. There are long stretches of those books where I'm like, I know where this is going. This guy isn't going to die.

He's eventually going to be redeemed. Like, these two are going to meet and fall in love. There's going to be a love triangle. Like, you can just see what he's setting up so clearly that then I just start to feel impatient. I'm like, can we just get to the thing that I know is going to happen? And I'm feeling that with this game as well, where I just felt impatient. Okay, I know basically where this is all going to go. why am I actually even doing this?

Yeah. It does feel like a shadow of a godfather, like one of those, like a picture of the godfather. Yeah. The Polaroid is kind of like only half printed. It's been photocopied multiple times. Exactly. And like Mafia has always, you know,

played with the pastiche of mafia movies. But at the same time, Mafia 3 was such a shot in the arm. It was such an interesting story. And then I don't know. I recently watched Miller's Crossing I've been watching a bunch of Cohen brothers movies because they're talking about the Coens on blank check. And some friends and I watched Miller's Crossing, which is a gangster pastiche.

And like that's an example of what you can do with gangster pastiche if you really have vision and know what you're doing. And obviously the Coens are a very high bar. Like it's a high, it's hard to compare a game to a Cohen Brothers film. But at the same time, this same studio did make Mafia 3, which was closer to that. It felt fresh and it felt surprising. And in some ways this game actually reminds me of Red Dead Red Dead 2, probably because of how it looks. Because, yeah, that sequence that you probably just did

where you're shooting the bandits just feels like the beginning of Red Dead 2 where you have to go and shoot the dudes. It's like identical and like the gunplay, the covers. The whole setting looks exactly the same. And the horses also. Yeah, that's it. And it's really beautiful. And in a way where you do just marvel at the beauty of the natural world in this game

in the way that I would in Red Dead too. Yeah. And then a big difference is in the narrative setup. And I think this is kind of an, this was a thought I had playing it that is, that I now will be keeping in mind when I think about this kind of story. The beginning as a nobody who is, you know, like an indentured slave, basically, in a mine just working, you know, until he dies, who barely escapes and then is thrown in with this new family and works his way up, that's a familiar framework for a video game because it lets you grow more and more powerful and take on more and more responsibilities. What's so cool about Red Dead 2 is that it begins, you're a lieutenant in this existing group. And it's such a better beginning in Red Dead 2 because there's all these preexisting relationships. Your character has preexisting relationships with everybody. It's very complex.

There's a lot of show don't tell. You're watching as each of these dynamics begins to play out and you figure out, okay, what's the deal with this guy? What's the deal with this lady? Oh, they're married, but what's that about? And you kind of watch it grow. And as a result, you really become comfortable in the story. and it just feels much more interesting and nuanced, where when you're beginning out and you're playing this kind of very familiar narrative

where you're nobody and you're getting to know people and then everyone kind of just feels more like a trope, it just isn't as interesting. And I think, I don't know, like, if you're going to take a pastiche in the way that Miller's Crossing does as well, it's very interesting to begin it in a different place or focus on a different kind of character. Miller's Crossing, again, is about a lieutenant,

a very mysterious lieutenant who's the guy behind the guy and it throws you right into the action. But because you're in the middle of these pre-existing relationships, it's a much more immediately interesting story than beginning you as the fish out of water who doesn't know anybody. And yeah, and I was just struck by that playing it.

You also immediately have the mystery hook of like what went wrong in red debt too, what went wrong in this like this heist that went awry and they all allude to that. Yeah, and you can really tell the story of relationships. You know, the relationship between Arthur and Dutch and Arthur and John is so interesting.

In Miller's Crossing, that is a movie that is about the relationship between these two men, the mafia leader and his second in command, Gabriel Burns' character. And in the end, it's like a very subtle and interesting story about friendship, kind of, because they have this very long-standing relationship. And mafia, the old country, just can't really have that because your oldest friend dies in the prologue, and then your Enzo doesn't know anybody in the game. And so there is no time to really believe in.

any of these relationships. Like the love story, I'm like, okay, he said one thing to her that kind of caught her fancy and now she's willing to, like, risk his life and he's willing to throw it all away. I don't know, like, it just is a much harder thing to do to build relationships with that framework. Yeah, a couple of thoughts on Mafia before we move on. One is that I appreciate that this game is smaller in scope than a lot of games and isn't trying to do everything as kind of as wrote as a lot of the gameplay is. And I would have appreciated it if it was like fewer knife stabbings and shootouts and sneaking and something else that was original

even if it was like just talking or something some sort of mechanic that brought something new to the table I would appreciate that. I still I think it's a good thing that it's not trying to do the skill tree and the crafting and the open world and all the other kind of checklist The rosary skill tree like there is kind of Sure but it's it's not

quite like the building getting experience so you can upgrade your jump by 10% You really cruise through it. It just you just go in it. It's almost like watching a movie and the other And also that they're selling it for 50 bucks. They're saying this is like, this is kind of a discounted title. Which quick side note, by the way, the day that I came out, there was an earnings call

where Take 2 CEO, the CEO of the company that makes this game, Strauss-Zelnick, he said something about how like customers will only buy great games. Good is the new bad and great is the new good or something like that. And like games can no longer be good, which is hilarious that I came out the same day as they're just kind of like, here's our good but not great game. Mafia. Good is the new bad. Anyway, the other thing is just a little bit of context here is that Hangar 13 is very much

not the same Hangar 13 that made Mafia 3. That seems evident. Most of those people are gone. Have been laid off over the years. They've had a lot of canceled projects. They've opened new studios in, I think they opened a new studio in Brighton in the UK. And then they also absorbed like 2K Czech Czech Czech. And so they have a lot of this game was made there in the UK and in the Czech Republic.

And I think they still have a small. presence in Nevada, California, where Inger 13 was originally based, but it's a different makeup, this studio. And they had a lot of canceled games over the last few years, including like an attempt to do a Mafia 4. I think they, if I remember correctly, they were going to do something in like Vegas in the 70s. I did a big report on this for Kataku a few years ago. They also were working on this big like superhero game that they got canceled. Hayden Blackman, who was the studio head and the founder, or not the But he was the studio head and like the lead on Mafia 3.

He left the studio. So very different studio. This feels like they're kind of like, we're going to shift something game and then hopefully springboard from there into something more ambitious sort of thing. So maybe if we do see this lead, this become kind of a side story. And then we see a Mafia 4 that maybe takes more ambitious swings, especially mechanically. I think that would be cool to see. Because there's a lot of stuff you could do with mob mechanics.

like have your lead character go to a therapist and you have to navigate your conversation topics with that therapist and your lead character takes his daughter to look at colleges and sees a guy that he needs to kill always care. I don't know you guys are talking about. It sounds really bad though. But no, I feel like there's so much you could explore with the mafia game that hopefully they do in the future. Let's try to hit on a couple more games really quick.

I played a game that I don't think you two have called Wago Tabi. that just came to Steam a couple of weeks ago. Man, this game is so cool. I played like 25 hours of this game at all. Wow. How did you have time? Wow. Okay.

This is a game. Well, this is a game about learning Japanese, and it's a game that teaches you to learn Japanese, and it immerses you. And it's kind of like, it's a little bit of a janky game. It's kind of Pokemon-ish. You're walking around this world, 2D, Pokemon-style graphics.

As you walk around encounters will get the exclamation, or NPCs will get the exclamation point on their head and they'll encounter you and, like, start a conversation. And there are all these different mechanics for, like, teaching you new words and new grammatical kind of concepts and sentences. And as the game goes on and on, it gets more complicated. And the English is essentially replaced to Japanese and you eventually have to, like, be reading the entire thing in Japanese.

It's really cool. It's, it's, you have to kind of know hiragana and katakana, so like the basic, the letters, um, to actually get started. So you have to do that before you. you start playing. But then you can start, you can just kind of jump in and start learning the language right away. I highly recommend it. It's like one of the best techniques I've seen for actually learning it because it makes it a lot of fun to just kind of immerse yourself and go and speak to people and try to understand what they're saying. And it uses a lot of the same tools that like a

duo lingo will use where like it'll read a sentence out loud and you have to you have to write like pick from these little word clumps and put it in the right order. Or like you have to spell out a kanji or whatever it is. And it does a lot of that kind of like repetition as a technique. And it works really, really well. I really like it. I have a few nipicks here and there, but I won't get into that other than to say that if you are interested in learning Japanese or you are learning Japanese, it's called Wagotabi. You should check it out. I'm really enjoying it. It's really cool. It's very much for beginners. I think that it's only, so it's the game as constructed right now is only a limited amount of the language and it has like two big worlds,

two big regions of Japan that you can explore. And then the developers are planning on updating it over time with more and more and more as time goes on. But right now it'll teach you, I don't know, 150 conji or something like that, a bunch of grammatical like particles and other kind of concepts. And so it is very useful. I've really enjoyed it. But don't expect to go into that and like learn some advanced Japanese or anything like that. It's very much a beginner level. tool but if you are interested in learning Japanese i think it's super cool really enjoyed it yeah it sounds good attainment one more game yeah it's attainment man remember that was a dirty word i feel like we made a whole episode of man yeah we did yeah we did wow uh one more game mattie yeah so

i played gears of war reloaded which is a new remaster of the very first years of war which came out in 2006 and uh they did remaster this game in 2015. And at that point, they put it out for the Xbox one and Windows PCs. But the Windows port was really, really bad. And also, it was only on the Microsoft store. And you couldn't mod it. Like, they did a lot of things to make it a real walled garden that were very unpopular. And also, it didn't run very well, but you couldn't even mod it to make it any good. And most importantly, it's never been on PlayStation. Gears of War Reloaded. I got a PS5 code. and I played this whole game on my PS5,

which was very weird because I played Gears of War I won a billion times on my Xbox 360 when it came out back then. And I don't know, there's just a sense memory thing with the Xbox controller for me in this game. So I had to get over that. But, you know, a couple hours in, it was like, you know, just playing Gears of War again. And it looks great.

It's 4K, very pretty. It's very funny to see like an upscaled version of a very cartoon. art style, like kind of a notoriously cartoonish art style. The guys in this game are very muscular, like to an absurd inhuman degree, I would say. They don't have necks. They look kind of like orcs, and they're kind of fighting guys that look like orcs and are a very similar build to them. This was kind of notable even at the time as like a big macho game, like to the endth degree that people thought it was silly even then. And it is silly. But it's pretty fun.

I still think it's really fun. The interesting thing about this game to me, though, is what I said, which is that it has crossplay now. It's also going to be on Steam. So you can crossplay this game across all those platforms, which is a pretty wild move for Microsoft. They're increasingly taking things that were their notable exclusives. This was like a console war era game. Like it was only on the Xbox for the first year. and then it was only on Windows PCs for ages and ages and ages.

And it's just kind of interesting to me that they're taking that out of storage and putting it on the PlayStation and Steam. And also that next year, for the 20-year anniversary, I suppose, they're putting out that prolog game that's like the beginning of Marcus Phoenix and Dom Santiago's story together. E-Day. Oh, the new one. Yeah.

And like clearly they're putting this game out so that people play it and they kind of get the story of those two as extraordinarily minimal. as it is in Gears of War I. Just call it a story is. The world building is pretty cool, though. I don't know. I've always appreciated it. It is cool. I really like the world building. I do feel like the games get a lot better as they go. I've always said that. I really do think that. And I thought Gears of War 5, was pretty criminally underrated. I really like that game. I think they get pretty good. Four is the one that's kind of weak. But two and three, very good. Regardless, I think that's why they put this out. the people play the first one and then play E-Day. But like, I don't know. I don't know who's going to play

E-Day besides me, obviously. I'm not sure if like the Gen Z audience even really understands what this game is. And like a lot of it is like post-9-11 commentary. There's like a whole, like there's a fake fuel source in the game called Emulsion. And there's like no blood for emulsion graffiti everywhere. Like Cliff Blizzinsky talked about this at the time. He's like the guy that made the first few Gears of War games. And he was like, yeah, it's a 9-11 metaphor. and it's about like kind of the endless war on terror that was in the early 2000s. Like I don't know if that metaphor is still obvious now. I'm genuinely curious like how this is going to go over with people who aren't me

and didn't grow up with this game in the context that it was in. Well, like the commentary on Bush era America may be lost on some people, but it is a game where you have a machine with a chainsaw on it. And you play big, beefy guys and everything is goopy and gooey and full of guts. And you just bust up in piñatas of blood. out everywhere. I mean, it is still fun and still kind of singular in terms of its gameplay. So I would imagine if the new one plays like that, and in particular if the new one has a really good and fleshed out Horde mode, which is something they added in Gears of War II, you know, this will

wet people's appetite. I know Gears 1 does not have a Horde mode, but that was the thing in Gears 2 that really turned Gers of War into a multiplayer phenomenon because Horde mode was incredibly fun. Now Horde mode is like a very common thing in a lot of video games, but it was pretty fresh in years too. And if they make a really fun one for EDA, I could see that catching on just as easily as anything else. And there's still some fun multiplayer modes in this one, even though there isn't horde mode yet. They kind of preserve an amber some of the original modes. And one of the ones that they added for the 2015 version is this specific 2V2 mode that's really fun. And since the whole game is about you finding a partner, basically. And like, it's all about two guys face in the world. And

like the other characters you meet, Cole and Baird, who are kind of like your other two guys, they're also best friends. Like, it's a big, like, when two guys are friends, nothing can stop them, the video game. Like, so having a two v2 mode. We're always saying that here on triple- We're always saying that, and so is Cliff Blasinski in these video games. So having that mode there, it makes a lot of sense and it's very fun. I mean, as far as who would play this, PlayStation owners who have never had a nice box, so finally get to play years of of War. That is really interesting. And that's worth it for them, I think. Yeah. It's, it's wild that, I mean, if you had said three years ago, there's going to be a new Gears of War coming to PlayStation. We would have been like, whoa. You know, and it is, I'm not sure if you mentioned this, Maddie, but it's also a split-screen game that you can do the whole story through together. And that's really fun. I mean, that's how I played through, I think, Gears 1 and 2 and 3. I think I played most of these games. I did too. Either, you know, playing remotely with someone in chat or on the same screen in the same room, which is very Very, very fun. So fun. It does have that. And not many games do that anymore. So that's a pretty cool thing to give people. It was really a huge part of the game, too. Like I played this by myself for the review period and it was fine. But like it's so much more fun with a partner. It's really designed for that. Yeah, you split up. Yeah. They have a lot of moments where you split up with intention and like you have to shoot a guy while your partner does something or vice versa. Playing split fiction. Yes. Split fiction is borrowing ideas from gears.

of war, and they're evolving them, but it's the same idea. It's like one of the early examples of that. And I think co-op games have kind of had a resurgence in recent years. And the success of Joseph Ferris' games have been a testament to that. The people enjoy that still. And they like just sitting on the couch playing a game with somebody. And this game celebrates that very much so. Gears War.

I know. It's so weird. What's next? A remake of Halo 1 also coming to play? It could happen. It could happen. Microsoft is out here putting things on other consoles. I don't know.

When will Gears of War I be on the Nintendo Switch 2? That's what I'm wondering, folks. Wouldn't that be weird? There's no possible way a remake of Halo 1 will be coming to PlayStation. We heard you, Jason. The next two years. All right, let's take a break. I was going to let it slide by subtly, but, you know,

he always kind of gilded the little. Let's take a break, and then we'll be back with one more thing. On Judge John Hodgman, the courtroom is fake, but the disputes are real. Brian would say, I'm the Gumby as his family. He's just not. Claiming to be Gumby is an ungambi-like claim. No, it's just Gumby and I being are authentic selves. So what's your complaint? Too many sauces?

There are no foods on which to put the sauces. Have we named all the sauces on the top shelf yet? Not even close. You economize when it comes to pants. Truly, it's not about the cleanliness of the panel. Well, why isn't it? This is what I want to know. Judge John Hodgman, fake court, weird cases, real justice. On maximum fun.org, YouTube, and everywhere you get podcasts.

It's hard to explain what Jordan Jesse Goh is about. So I had my kids take a stab at it. Probably weird stuff. You talk about jobs that are annoying. Mm, business. I think you probably learned your lesson. after talking about business a couple of times. Grown-up jokes that I don't understand and there's no pudding making.

All the podcasts are going. Subscribe to Jordan Jesse Go, a comedy show for grownups. And we are back. Kirk Money, it is time for one more thing. Maddie, kick us off. Sure. So there is a brand new season of King of the Hill, which was my one more thing a while back on this show because I had never seen it

and then I watched it and I was kind of shocked by how good it was and how funny it was. This was a show that was on in the 2000s and it's kind of like a Middle America parable like Hank Hills, the patriarch of a family with just one kid, Bobby, and Bobby often subverts heterogender norms and shames his father in various ways

and it's a source of comedy but also it's very sweet show. And a lot of times it's like Hank's conservatism is the butt of the joke and many episodes are him kind of realizing that he should be more forward thinking. And it's a Mike Judge thing, which people probably know Mike Judge from Idiocracy, which is not a very good movie.

But I feel like... Or office space. Yeah, or office space, which is a pretty good movie. But King of the Hill, I feel like is his magnum opus. I really think it's great still. And I still recommend it. And I will say, I don't think you should watch the new season unless you've watched all of King of the Hill.

I know that's a tall order, but it is, even though there's a nine-year time jump, it is like a direct continuation of all the storylines. And the tone is preserved in a way that's remarkable, considering that it's been nine years for the characters. And I'm not sure how many years in real life. It didn't look that up. But roughly that. And it really works. Multiple voice actors have passed away and had to be replaced. And I liked most of the recastings despite that.

and just was really impressed by how realistic the character's new choices feel. Like, it's nine years later. 16 years for real life. That tracks. I felt like it was a very long time. Yeah. But in the show, in the world of the show, it's only been nine years. So they had to invent what each of the characters were doing in that intervening time

and have it make sense for them. And then also do jokes about 2025-era political commentary, which I know people were worried about. and I was too. Like, the show has to, like, talk about COVID. Trump. List goes on. How is it going to achieve that?

I think it's great. I really enjoyed it. There's a episode where Hank Hill gets caught up with a men's rights YouTuber and is sort of briefly taken in by him and, like, kind of thinks he's cool for a bit. And then it sort of ends in total fantasy whereby Hank tells the guy off and, like, the way that you could only hope that Hank Hill would tell off a men's rights guy. It's that sort of thing where it's like what would Hank Hill say in response to kind of modern conservative trends. And it just leaves you with a warm, fuzzy feeling in your heart somehow. I don't know how, but it just does.

So I really recommend it. I recommend the whole show and the new season's great. It's funny. We're talking about South Park, King of the Hill. I know. And just like that, which did the same kind of thing with Sex and the City. Yeah. We're partying like it's the 2000s again.

And we just talked about remakes of Metal Gear 3 and Gears of War. And gears of war. Everything old is new again. And I mean, Mafia of the old country could have come out in like 2007. We are living in the 2000s. We really are. Those were also bad? I don't know.

But we're making do. We're making do. Kirk, what's your one more thing? My one more thing is Alien Earth, the new TV show on Hulu that rocks so hard. I'm in love with it. So we're a lot of people. I think the consensus on this one is that it kicks ass. because, like, if you watch the first episode and don't think it kicks ass, well, I don't know what to tell you it because the first episode kicks so much ass.

This is a new show set in the Alien Universe, show run by Noah Hawley, of course, the showrunner of the Fargo adaptation as well as Legion before that, two great shows. And Fargo, of course, demonstrated his and his, I would say creative partner, Dana Gonzalez, who's an incredible director and is directed. a bunch of episodes of both Fargo and Alien Earth. But his and his team's ability to create a pastiche that is completely believable and yet also feels like its own thing. In the case of Fargo, it was a Cohen brothers pastiche that still really became its own thing and went for whatever, four or five seasons, and they're all really good. The best ones are fantastic.

Even the weakest seasons of Fargo are still worth watching. So he really knows how to take someone else's style and turn it. into something interesting. And of course, Alien very much has its own style. Really, it has its own styles. And what this show is doing is kind of merging the style of Ridley Scott and Alien and also of James Cameron and Aliens. And you're getting this very interesting pastiche of the two that just is really cool

from things on screen that I'm looking at perspective because I think both of those movies are cool, especially Alien, 1979's Alien is an amazing movie and an amazing looking movie with unbelievable vibes. so many little tricks, especially these crossfades that Scott likes to do, where it's a really long crossfade from one image to another, to the point where they're almost superimposed on top of one another. That's very eerie silence in that. You know, Holly and Gonzalez really have a handle on all that stuff. But what makes Alien Earth so good, to me anyways, is actually the narrative set up and the part of the narrative that has nothing to do with aliens. So this is a broadly, it's a show, I think it's eight episodes long.

Critics have already seen the whole thing. Everyone says it's really great, which also fills me with joy, just that people have watched the entire thing and they're like, it's really good because it starts so strong. But it is basically a Wayland-Utani ship, Wayland-Untani, the corporation that, of course, owned the ship in the first alien, is returning to Earth having captured a bunch of xenomorph and xenomorph-adjacent creatures to bring back for research.

for, you know, bio-weapons or something. And the Earth has, this is taking place before, actually, the events of the first alien. The Earth is just controlled by these mega corporations, Wayland-Utani being one of them. There were the five. Now I think there are more. And they've introduced a new corporation in this that is kind of really important. So this ship, of course, the aliens get out and kill everyone. It's like happens in the very beginning.

And the vessel, the Wayland-Utani vessel, crashes into a city somewhere in Asia, which is controlled by. the Prodigy Corporation, which is a new corporation run by this very young man who's kind of like, he walks around in pajamas, he has like messy hair, he looks like almost like a little kid. And he's a trillionaire genius and he runs this company. And what they're doing in Prodigy is they are investing, they're looking into how to transfer consciousness and make people live forever. So it begins with this young girl who's dying from some disease, and then she has transferred into an adult body and takes a new name, and her name is Wendy. And then a bunch of other kids undergo the same process, and they all take on names of the lost boys from Peter Pan. So there's this kind of secretive lab where they have built these artificial people who have the minds of real children who are dying, but now are in fully grown bodies that are like super strong. And they can do all kinds of crazy stuff. So they're able to be like super soldiers, essentially. So this is actually the narrative heart of the show is the.

question of what would it be like for children to be transferred into these super powerful bodies. And then this ship crashes and then, you know, they have to go and they're dispatched to go recover the aliens and things are going to deteriorate from there. But that hook, I think, is really fascinating. And it's led to some great performances. So Wendy is fixated on her brother who thinks she's dead. And her brother, incidentally, is played by Alex Lothar, who played Nemek in Andor, which is also just really fun because this time we're going to save Nemek's life.

I swear to God, like Nemek is going to make it this time. Just as for Nemick. Can I ask something? Is this one of the shows where it's like we wanted to tell this story, but we won't get a greenlet unless we stick in the alien IP? No, no, no, no, no, because it's very true to the world of alien. And, like, Alien has always been about synthetic beings. You know, there's always a synth on board.

In this, actually, Timothy Olifant plays the main synth. And he's perfect as playing this because, you know, he's always kind of, of looking at you in a way, like, you don't know whether he's making fun of you or what. Like, he always has this kind of ambiguous vibe to him. It's a little sinister. He's perfect as the, he's kind of their minder. He's like the, I guess, the opair or something for this, you know, this corporation. While then there's this, like, this, like, really unstable genius is this kid who's in charge of everything.

But he's so young and he seems very erratic. So between the two of them, they make for a very interesting pairing. So anyways, Sidney Chandler, who's playing Wendy, goes to get her brother. And we wind up in these very interesting scenes where we know what the alien does, but we don't know what these kids can do because they're very dangerous themselves. And they can go toe to toe with a xenomorph. It's not quite as simple as just the xenomorph kills everything because that's usually what it does. And then there are also all these other creepy crawlies that are horrifying and really cool.

There's a lot of great goop and slime and, you know, viscera all over the place in this. So it gives you that kind of fun alien stuff. But what really winds up being interesting is just watching these performances, particularly as these adult actors pretend to be children and are very good at it. There are just some really charming performances where one example that comes to mind is, you know, this fully grown, very fit, like, guy and soldier outfit is walking, and he's just running his hand along the wall and kind of walking the way that a little kid would. Or the way there's a really wonderful friendship between two of the young boys who are now, of course, you know, soldiers. but they talk, they're like, dude, you swore, you're not supposed to swear. Like, there are these really charming scenes where they're really acting like little kids. And so you throw that into this broader alien adventure horror story.

And it's just really cool. I mean, there's so much going on. Every episode so far that I've watched three has just been provocative and interesting and fun to watch and just really entertaining. There are great needle drops. Every episode ends with like hard rock or metal tune with lyrics that are kind of appropriate to what's going on. Man, I mean, if you want to just watch a show that is entertaining and cool and beautiful looking and really just has a lot going on, I can't think of a better one. So I am all in for Alien Earth.

It is really, really something else. And I highly recommend it. Yeah, it sounds great. I got to watch this. I love Alien. Yeah, man. It's the show. It's on my list.

I still got to watch the most recent season of Fargo. Yeah, that's really good, too. My warmer thing is a video game called Crosscode that I've talked. about in the past. This game came out on 2018. I think I tried to get you guys to play it once for a British's but but did not win. We played like the beginning of it for an app with you once.

I know I did. Way back in the day. The beginning of it? Yeah. Anyway, this game, it's kind of a Zelda-like top-down action RPG and I played it before, played most of it before, but the developers just announced their new game

called Alabaster Dawn and on a whim I was like, man, watching this trailer brings me back. I should replay Crosscode. And so I picked up on my Steam deck and was so absorbed that I wound up playing through the entire thing again, plus the DLC. This game is so good. I think it might be one of my favorite games ever. It's top-down action RPG.

The concept is that you play is this woman Leah, who is sent to this fictional MMO where players create these avatars that kind of like exist in the physical space. and inhabit this world where they like fight monsters and go on quests and stuff. So it is kind of, it is a straightforward action RPG, but it's set within a fictional MMO. So there are a bunch of kind of concepts around it like going on raids and instant dungeons and kind of a lot of other good jokes and hilarious lines of dialogue. Isn't part of it that a character you'll meet also has someone behind them in the real world? Right, right.

There's this sort of second layer to it. Right. So the characters you meet are avatars. Right. Which leads to a lot of. fun writing and ideas. And Leah is her own sort of thing, but like she'll meet this girl. One of the first people you meet is this girl named Emily and you meet her and you start talking to her and she is in France.

And so she jokes about her like being in France. There jokes about her being French and stuff. And then at certain points it'll be like, all right, I got to go. I got to go do some homework or something and she'll log off in the game. And you can like assemble a party by contacting people and asking to join your party. It's a very fun. It plays around with this concept and a really. fun way. But the reason to play it is because the gameplay is just so good. Like the action is really

cool. The puzzles are incredible. Some dungeons in here that are just like these massive works of art like along as good as any Zelda's dungeon. And I say that having just played through most of Ocarena of time, there's some dungeons in here that are as good, if not better than any other, any, any Zelda dungeon. Some incredible puzzles, some of which get a little too intense. And fortunately, there's a toggle that you can set to like slow down the speed of certain things if you're finding the puzzles to be a little bit too annoying. But it's really, really good. It's just a complete package. Like it's hilarious. It's got amazing dialogue. The story is really good. It's got the dungeons. It's got these great boss fights and combat and you're constantly getting new stuff. A lot of the puzzles are solved through one of two ways. One is kind of environmental like verticality like jumping up things and kind of figuring out spatial. awareness. And so like every new region of the game that you get into, you can kind of walk along a path and just get from place to place, or you can go on these kind of side paths and find different,

like, areas where you can jump up and then like hop along these other paths and go on these side paths and find hidden treasures and then like unlock areas that are just kind of like in these that might be five screens away if you follow the right path to get there. And there's a lot of really cool interlocking stuff like that. And then there are also these puzzles. that are like activated with your elemental abilities that you get throughout the game and they play around with those in some really cool ways, including the DLC, which I just be for the first time, which has this final dungeon that is massive and adds this totally new gameplay mechanic that is really, really cool. It's like this orb that reacts to your elemental abilities in different ways. It's very cool. And it just feels, it feels like the kind of that perfect balance between feeling like a retro game.

Like it feels a lot like a Super Nintendo game. but also feeling very modern because it just has the gameplay you would expect from a game that came out in the last few years. It's really good, you guys. You guys would both love it, I think, and I think everybody out there who is into 2D action games would really enjoy it. There's a little bit of grindiness involved, but like, I don't know, if you keep up with side quests and stuff, it's not really a big deal I've found. I just really love it. I think everyone should play. It's called Crosscode. You should check it out. I played a big chunk of this and then wanted to play it on Switch, because

it would be so great in Handhold. And I remember the Switch version had some issues. I think this game was like running an HTML5 or something like that. It is. And then there was an issue with Switch performance, and then that kind of bummed me out. And then I've started it on Steam Deck where it runs beautifully and thought, okay, at some point here, you know, if only Silksong weren't coming in two weeks,

but at some point I think I will play it because I really liked what I played of it. And, you know, hearing you say that, man, it's especially cool to hear that the DLC is particularly great because it's that thing where you can see that the team making the original game have really grown and have all these cool new ideas. And then it just makes you that much more excited for the sequel because, of course, they're going to be exploring all those new ideas in a full game pretty soon. I am very excited for the sequel. The DLC, yeah, it's very much like an expansion that just kind of like adds basically one new zone and then like a big new dungeon. It's not like humongous or anything. the original game is pretty huge on its own.

And yeah, it runs great on the Steam deck. I had to play around with a couple of settings to fix this kind of color over saturation, but it runs great. I mean, I was playing at 90 frames a second the whole time. And yeah, man, it's so good. All right. Let's end it here. Yeah, we've gone long.

Kirk, Maddie, that was a whole lot of video games. And we'll be back next week to talk. about even more. Yeah. I will see both of you then. Yeah. 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 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 show notes. Thanks for listening. See you next time. Maximum Fun. A worker-owned network of artists-owned shows. Supported directly by you.