Triple Click - The Leftover Video Games Of Fall

Episode Date: November 26, 2020

Maddy, Kirk, and Jason celebrate Thanksgiving in the best way possible: Leftovers. This week, the gang talks about all of the fall video games they haven't had a chance to analyze on previous episodes, including Demon's Souls, NBA 2K21, Yakuza Like A Dragon, Spider-Man: Miles Morales, and much, much more.One More Thing:Kirk: Star Wars SquadronsMaddy: The Diary of Anne FrankJason: The Queen’s GambitLinks: Join the Triple Click Discord: http://discord.gg/tripleclickpodTriple Click Ethics Policy: https://maximumfun.org/triple-click-ethics-policy/Support Triple Click: http://maximumfun.org/join 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

It's Thanksgiving, so we thought we'd celebrate by commemorating the best part of the holiday. The leftovers. Welcome to Triple Click where we bring the games to you. Today we are talking about the leftover games of fall 2020. Some of the games we haven't had a chance to talk about on the show, like Demon Souls, NBA 2K, and Spider-Man Miles Morales. I'm Jason Shire. I'm Kirk Hamilton. And I'm Maddie Myers.

And we are back for another episode. Hello, my friends. And welcome back to Triple Click. And hey, if you like Triple Click, you know what else you would like becoming a member of maximum fun and therefore supporting. I think you would like that. Triple Click. If you become a member today, you will get access to a whole bunch of bonus episodes, including the one we are about to put up next week, which is a spoiler cast, a beans cast on Mel Brooks movies. movies in particular,

Spaceballs, Blazing Saddles, and Young Frankenstein. But you can also go back and listen to Beans cast on Horizon Zero Dawn and Final Fantasy 7 remake and all sorts of other

Cool stuff. I was going to say you could listen to us. Call the Duty Modern Warfare. Have lots of takes about the last of us. Yes, yes, yes. In order to subscribe,

in order to become a member, you can go to Maximumfund.org slash join and sign up there. Also, I think people should do that. I agree with you. I agree. I agree.

Also, as always, you can reach us to triple click at maximum fun.org. And you can sign up for the Discord, our official Discord chat, which is thriving, at Discord. Discord.org.org. Slash triple click pod. And there's a link for that in the show notes, too, of course. Yes, fun times. Okay. So, all that said, this week, we decided to do something a little bit different.

So for this segment, we are going to get into, we are going to get down and dirty with the games of this fall because we realize there are a ton of games we've done we've talked about a few of them and one more things and we did a triple play on assassins's creed last week but there are too many games for us to handle like an individual episode so this is going to be the big uh uh super sampler like you know how you go to a diner and you can get like an appetizer sampler that's like a little bit of the wings a little bit of the nachos a little bit of jalapeno poppers this is this is that episode let's call this the the appetizer sampler of fall video games. games. Sure, that makes sense to me. That's kind of how I felt playing all of these games too.

First of all, before we get started, quick disclosure, all of these games, unless otherwise noted, all of these games that we're about to talk about, we have gotten codes for, we've gotten for free from the publishers in question. So just keep that in mind as we are discussing them. So first of all, I want to talk about something that is kind of a follow-up to something we've been talking about, which is the next-gen consoles. So as you guys know, I have been playing both the PS5 and Xbox Series X for a few weeks now. I got them both early from Microsoft and from Sony. Almost a month, right? I feel like you've had these for a little while. Yep. And my original reaction, my initial gut response to both of them was, wait. Like, there's no need to get one now.

These consoles will be here next year. Don't fret if you didn't get one because they're impossible to find. Or if you don't have the money for one, don't worry about it. Don't stress. But I will say, I kind of expected that I would be playing them both for, like, the review period, and then I would just kind of jump right back into the PC. But I have been using the PlayStation 5 a lot. And I've been, it's becoming, like, I wouldn't say my default platform, but, like, it's becoming so nice to use for a variety of reasons. And one of those reasons is that it has demon souls on it.

And, man, I've become obsessed with demons souls, so. Souls, which is the PS5 exclusive. This is a PS5 remake of an old Atlas PS3 game. And while I hadn't played it really before writing the review, because they sent out codes for that, Sony sent out codes for that, just like the day that the console came out or the day before the console came out, I've recently started jumping into it.

And, man, it is brilliant and beautiful and super satisfying in the way that Souls games are, that Soulsborn Securo games are, where like you get to a new level and you learn it and you explore it and you eventually get mastery over the level and then you fight the boss and you throw throw everything you can against the boss over and over again until they finally fall down um so this is the the original you described this as an atlas game but that was published by atlas this is a from software game and this is the original software game and this is the original software game and this is the first of course of course it's a firm software game um miazaki the genius it's it's really the original souls game because this came before dark souls and the dark souls trilogy and it came before bloodborn this was kind of the original of this, this era of from software, although it was inspired by some, some older, older stuff, like Kingsfield. Yeah, I'm looking for the Kingsfield remake.

The King's Field remake, yeah, that'll be fun. But yeah, I really, really like it. It's funny. There's a lot of, I played Dark Souls 3 in the past, and there's a lot of Dark Souls 3, so coming back to this is kind of an interesting, interesting transition. But yeah, I mean, the structure of it is really cool. It's very nonlinear. you can go between a bunch of worlds in any order you want. So if you get stuck on a boss in one place, you can just go like somewhere else and try that for a while, which I've been doing. It's gorgeous.

It's like one of those games that is like, oh, man, like this, this PS5 can do some really cool stuff and keep it running at 60 frames a second the whole time. You see like dragons flying in the air and they look ridiculous. They're just like this, like there's one area of the game that's an island, a stormy island, and it just looks incredible. Yeah, I've just been really impressed and really enjoying my time with this game. I don't think either of you have played it, right?

I haven't. I wouldn't... I played some of the original. I appreciate it the way I'm sure Kirk would if he only had a PS5. I don't know. If you care. I'm curious about whether,

since this is the only game on this huge list that we have, that I'm not able to play because I don't have a PS5. I'm actually curious whether when you either fall out of love with this game, or just beat it if you'll keep playing the PS5 only because like

cyberpunk is going to come out and that's probably going to run better on PC and etc and then like what even is there so that this game is the game certainly hearing you and some of our souls fan friends talking about it makes me think oh this would be fun to play even though I know that I don't have time to play because these games just take so much time to play but yeah I mean it looks great every time I see footage of this game on Twitter, I think, wow, that's a very handsome video game. Yes. I just played through this stage, this world that was like this prison, this like gothic prison full of like Cthulhu tentacle monster guards and like different, like you go through, it's a maze,

it's structured very cool in a very cool, like intricate way. And you can open each cell as you find keys to open each cell. And some of the cells have items in them. And some of them have these prisoners that might attack you or might not. And there's a lot of just cool stuff that it does of this game. Yeah, I mean, to your point, I was also playing Assassin's Creed Valhalla for a while. I played that at first on the Xbox, then switch to the BS5 because I prefer the PS5 controller. And normally I would be playing a game like that on PC because it runs at 60 frames a second on PC or more than that on PC. But because it's running at 60 frames a second on the PS5 and the Xbox, I just stuck with that. There are also some things I really like about.

the PS5 and just a quick digression because I want to get into more games. But I really like how snappy it is to get into games. It feels much faster than like loading a game from my hard drive on my PC. I really like that it can be a suspend mode so I can put the PlayStation in rest mode and then just like jump right into a game, which was also true of the PS4. But because everything loads up so much faster than the PS4 did, it just feels a lot a lot quicker, a lot snappier. And then the biggest thing is just the controller, which just we've talked about in the past and just has all these bells and whistles that I'm still not sick of. Still just feels very good in my hands in a way that other controllers don't. Yeah, I mean, I've been playing other games on the PS5.

Bug Snacks, for example, which is ridiculous. Kirk, you were playing a bunch of this too, right? Yeah, I've played through that of like an hour. So I'm playing this one on PC. And it's good. I hear it is weird and it goes unexpected places and I haven't had a whole time of time to get to it but I do appreciate the fact that this game gave us the bunger

and that I know say bunger, bunger, bunger, bunger, bunger all the time and then that alone has been, you know, it's enriched my life if I don't even go back to it but I do expect that I'll go back to play it just because I like this kind of game like this kind of a puzzle game where you have to figure out how to manipulate multiple like live elements like AI-driven things and trick them. It's sort of why I like Hitman games and Emergent Sims, and it has that quality,

in addition to being cute and charming and funny and all of that. Yes. Maddie, are you interested in Bugstacks at all? I am, but it is not a game on this list that I have played because this is a long list of games that we're about to get to. Yeah, well, I just wanted to bring up Bug Snacks because it's another one of those games where it's like, I could be playing on this MPC, but I'm playing it on the PS5, and I'm just drawn to the PS5,

and it has all this haptic feedback stuff. The controller stuff, like it's sounding like a camera when you click the button, all that stuff. When I play bug snacks, I will play it on the PS5 for that exact reason because the controller rules. Yeah, I'm curious about the drivers. Or they're like, Steam has added support for it, like whether there's going to be universal support for that controller on PC. So that in the future when people play bug snacks on PC with a dual sense controller, they get all those bells and whistles. And I guess we'll have to see. Yeah, that would be like one of those things where it's like, oh, yeah.

the PC remains like the best place to play everything. Yeah, that would be one of those things where like here's a weird like half edited stub Wikipedia post that explains the only games that do work with it when half of them don't and it's this huge pain in the ass. You know, like we've been playing games long enough to know how this will or this will possibly go. Yes, yes, yes. Maddie, you would also like about Pugs and X that it has a lot of like really good queer relationships and like fun, fun characters.

It's just nice that kids game will do that. that these days. And it does it in a very like, it's very, it's not very on a scale from like the most subtle storytelling to like overwatch. It's like it's on the side. It's on the subtle spectrum and it's handled really, really cool. Got it. What, Maddie, what on this list are you playing? Are you into? Well, I was just playing some yakuza like a dragon. Oh man. This is my first yakuza game. And I'm really enjoying it so far. I'm only a few hours in, which is, the case for every game I will talk about on this episode. This is the king of episodes where we're all only a few hours into a video game, and we're

making grand proclamations. It's the super sampler. It's, you just take, you take a couple of wings here, a couple of poppers here. I'm loving it. So, so Yakuza is like the peaking duck on the sampler, because that's what the characters have just tried and failed to get in the... They're very into peaking duck. It's true.

They are, and they may want some. Yeah, can you explain a little bit about what this game is? So it's a huge open world game. It's part of the Yakuza series, which is a series of games that are basically Japanese soap operas, but open world games, really, really long cutscenes and very weird quests and mini games. And you just walk around a huge city and experience life as a yakuza, as a gang member. And you're, I don't know. So this one has Ichabon, who's a new protagonist for the series.

I'm not familiar with any other yakuza game, so Ichibon is the only guy I know, and I love him. He is pure and overly excitable and gets angry about dumb things, but is extremely endearing as a character so far, which is, from what I understand, the type of cocktail that many yakuza protagonists and characters have. And I don't know, it's fun and funny and sad. And I think that also sums up the vibe of a lot of yakuza in that it is about, male feelings but not in an annoying way? I don't know. I'm digging it. I don't know if I'm going to be able to beat it though because it's a huge open world RPG and there's so many other games on this list that are also huge open world RPGs that have pacing problems. I mean these are all the complaints I've heard about yakuza like a dragon is like oh it's going to drag there's going to be a whole bunch of extra quest that you have to do to get past a certain point. You have to earn a whole bunch of money at a certain point in the game. Hard to imagine a video game being too long.

I know. I'm just already looking ahead to that. But until then, I'm really enjoying walking around. You guys ever walk around in a game instead of running? I'm really digging that in Yakuza. It just feels like the closest experience that I can have to walking around in an actual city. I was doing this in Assassin's Creed Valhalla a bit, just walking around.

But Yakuza is set in a modern city. So walking around and I have surround sound. my living room because I'm really cool and like feeling the city noise around me I don't know it was really hitting the spot for me I did this once I had a whole concept that I was going to do where I was going to walk all the way around Grand Theft Auto 5 and I did most of it highly recommend doing that it's incredible if you go really slow because of especially the sound the sound design and that game is wild and then you just hear and see so many things yakuza has a similar thing where you're walking by a store and you hear the the background noise of the store like karaoke

bar, restaurant, whatever, and you just feel everything around you all the time and people talking. It feels amazing. Yeah. I always associate, it's funny, it is a big open world game, but it is not big in the way that Grand Theft Auto 5 does. It's just comparison point is. I've always thought of Yakuza as a very rich and dense series. And I played zero.

I didn't finish it. These games are hard to finish. They're very long, and they always reach a point where you're kind of like, wow, we're still going. You're like, I get it. Yeah. And like there tends to be, or like, you know, extraneous plot elements, sort of like you're mentioning, hearing about in like a dragon. But yeah, I started it as well. And I can tell I need to just block aside some time to play it because it's really a life sim. It has that kind of persona quality where you're just going around in this little part of town, you know, meeting everybody and engaging all these little side quests. And like it makes this rich little neighborhood that you're a part of. And I, yeah, I'm really digging it too. The detail. It's just such an interesting.

aesthetic mix of old-fashioned where, you know, these games started on the PS2, and there's always these elements that look dated. But then there will be some graphical thing that's the most incredible thing you've ever seen. I think I was talking about Twitter was there's this animation early on where the protagonist eats a piece of bread. And it is the most incredible bread I've ever seen in a video game. He like puts it in his mouth and then pulls it and the bread like pulls apart in this perfect little spiral and you see like the like fibers of the bread tearing and it's just ridiculous, where sometimes you're playing the game, and the animations are really stiff,

and everyone's just sort of, you know, it looks sort of old. So it's just this really cool mix of extreme detail and sort of old-fashioned video game aesthetics, and I really like that about it. And also this game is turn-based, we should at least mention, right? That it's instead of the other ones who are kind of a beat-em-up. Yes, it is, which is different from other Yakuza games. I have no point of comparison, but it is like a party-based RPG.

Like, you recruit people over time. It's real-time turn-based. moving around. It's like Mario and Luigi or something. It's not real time. Like there's turns. Yeah, there's turns. Well, it's real time in the sense that you can still move around while you're doing your

turns as opposed to like standing in a line like dragging class. Right, right, right. But if you haven't like hit the block button, for example, you will get attacked and you can't hit it part way through. You have to decide if you're going to guard or not or attack or not. Which is like Kirk said, very Mario and Luigi-esque. Yeah, well, so real quick on an Assassin Street Val Hall. which we went in depth on last week.

I finished it since last week, which is why I've been playing a bunch of demon souls. Super fucking long. Man, that came is way too long. As I said, Leslie. What was your playtime in the end? Do you remember? It was like 60-something hours.

So this is to complete all the kingdoms and the order. So, okay. So there's the main quest, the kingdom's quest, which I did. And then that has its own ending. And then there are a bunch of other things you can do afterwards. epilocks almost. And then there's also the supernatural side of things, the Odin stuff, which I couldn't actually finish because I hit a game blocking bug in it. Like I mentioned last

week, this is one of the buggyest games I've ever played. And there's like a quest that I can't actually do because I left this one area in the middle of the quest, the mitten or something. If you're playing a game and you get to Yotenheim, don't leave the mitten in the middle of a quest. But anyway, I left it. Couldn't get back in. Apparently it's a known bug. So I can't actually finish that part of it. But I looked up what happens because it connects to the whole thing. And the way that it works is there's one main ending that kind of makes more sense if you played through the supernatural stuff. So I actually recommend playing through the supernatural stuff before you beat the main kingdom's

quest and see what happens at the end of the game. It's pretty, pretty good. It's pretty mind-blowing, especially if you played old Assassin's Creed games. There's some stuff in there that ties into the old stuff. And then the other whole third thing is just like Assassin's Creed off. Odyssey, there's a whole order quest line where you have to go around and assassinate members of the order. And that is fun. The ending of that is kind of disappointing.

I mean, it's cool. It's just a little underwhelming compared to the ending of the last games quest line. But yeah, I don't want to get too in depth on that game. Oh, yeah. I will say, can I just add that I'm really liking the structure? I think this one has taken a really cool structure in the every, I've done a bunch of kingdoms since we talked last week. And each one is a great little story. They've all been really good.

it feels like I'm reading a short story collection of different sized short stories. And this game, I'd say, more, less so even than Odyssey, just does not really feel like it has an overarching story. I know that it does, but it's very backburnered. And so they really can focus on these individual little short stories with the same protagonists cycling through. And it's working for me. I'm really liking a lot of those games stories. Which is very much like a Nordic mythology, Viking story type thing, like having these little sagas and adventures and stuff like that. Lends itself to an open world game. The overarching story does get a little more intense towards the end, though, and it gets really interesting.

Yeah, great game. I wish it wasn't so buggy, but I guess that's the problem with them. I mean, it'll launch alongside a console in the middle of the pandemic. A couple more games I wanted to talk about. First of all, there's a game called 13 Sentinels Aegis Rim. Have either of you guys played this game? No. I haven't, but I edited a story about it at Polygon about all the spoilers.

Oh, no. I know the twist ending and it sounds really freaking cool and I'm having a little bit sad that I edited that story because I would like to play the game. I will not say what the twist is because I kind of wish I didn't know it. Okay, so I played a couple hours of this game a while back when I first came out. This game is only on PlayStation 4, we should say. So it's only on PS4. So this is a new game from Vanillaware, who are the makers of like Dragons Crown and Odin's Fear and a bunch of like action beat them up. This is a visual novel combined with like a real-time strategy game.

So the real-time strategy game part of it is very weird and feels nailed down and like not nailed on, like tacked on and like not very interesting. The visual novel is really the highlight of the game. But for me like playing the first couple of hours, the prologues of the game, the characters all kind of blended together. They throw all these characters at you at once. I couldn't tell them apart because they all have, I mean, to my American sensibilities, use it's a bunch of Japanese names and they can be a little complicated to remember if you're not used to remember Japanese names. And they all just kind of like, none of them stood out to me that

the way that like a Dangan Rompah, which does the same thing, throws a bunch of characters at you at once with Japanese names, but like makes them all memorable. This game did not do that. So I was pretty underwhelmed. But then I started seeing people I respect giving it all this critical acclaim. Oh yeah. It's become a huge cult favorite. Maddie's boss, Chris Plant. It says it's like the best game of the year. So I'm like, okay, maybe I should give this another shot. We also got a couple emails from listeners about it. So I'm going to give this game another shot. I'm going to play it on PS5 because it's backwards compatible. So you can just play it right on there. I'm going to play it too, even though I know what happens. Yes. Yeah, man. So I'm sad that you

had to spoil yourself, but such as the downside of being a video games editor for Polygon.com. I know, every now and then it happens. I also wanted to tell funny story because I've been checking out the sports games on next-gen consoles, because those are always a good way to see, like, the ultra-realistic graphics and sweat. I played a little bit of Madden. We both did. It's not even on this list,

but you had talked about that joke where a character is like, you're not playing with enough heart, and then the other character is, like, I have a congenital heart defect, which honestly, like, so ridiculous. That dialogue exchange alone

should skyrocket Madden NFL 21 to the game of the year. Like, it's already great. It's already perfect. I agree. You don't need to play the game anymore after you get to that. We've come a long way from Longshot, the mode that you and I both liked. We did.

We did. We've gone downhill since then. So yeah, so there's that. I was playing some MDA and it's fun. I was playing some NBA 2K21, which also has like a My Career mode where you build your own player and take him to the top. I named my character De Brickashaugh Goldberg because I really like just, I really like the name Debrichashaw after my favorite Jets player, Debrichaw, Ferguson and I felt like he should be Jewish. So it's a de Brickisha Goldberg. Sure. And so, so I have been playing in this My Career mode. I'm skipping all the cutscenes,

so I have no idea what any of it means or what's happening. But, um, but it's really fun to play. I don't know if either of you have played a 2K game or like the My Career mode, but what's really fun and addictive about it is that like as you're playing, you will be instantly graded on how well you perform. If you take a bad shot, you'll like lose points. If you take a good shot, you'll gain points. You make a good pass. You, you set up in a, a teammate with a good screen or something like that. Or you play defense well. You'll keep racking up points.

And it can be really gratifying to play, like to get those endorphine rush of like watching your, your player's grade climb up, climb up the ranks as you play. It's pretty cool. But sadly, the announcers, I guess part of the plot is that your player is the son of some other

well-known players. So the announcers call you junior the whole time. Which is sad because I wanted the announcers to call my guy to Brickishel Goldberg. like I feel like he deserves that. And it looks good too. Looks realistic. And yet another game that has like the haptic feedback controller stuff on the PS5.

I've got to say. Oh yeah. I bet it does. Kirk, what about you? What are you playing from this list? Anything you want to talk about? I have been playing some Spider-Man Miles Morales on PS4.

Me too. Not on the PS5. I'm sorry for laughing. I'm not sure if the copy I have will work on PS5 if I eventually get a PS5. that stuff is always so confusing. I don't know if that has a free upgrade or not. It's extremely complicated because there's like backwards compatible. It doesn't matter.

Less interesting for our listeners than anything else. I like it. It's, it's a good game. It's really charming. I guess we should say that our friend Evan Narciss was a story consultant on this game. We had him on the podcast a little while ago. That's right.

And so I guess that maybe biases me. I don't think it does. I like the game. It's fun in the same way that the original, Spider-Man game, Insomniacs, PS4 Spider-Man game is fun. It's also not totally my favorite thing for the same reasons.

It's really just I don't love combat in these games. It's good, but it's not Arkham good, just because there's just a kind of spring... It's very similar. That's why you're doing the comparison, I'm sure. But there's such a springiness to it and, yeah, it's clearly influenced by Arkham because it's so counter-heavy.

It's so about mobility and building up combos, that same way that Arkham does. It's just, Spider-Man is so fast and fights are spread out over such large spaces that a lot of the time you're dealing with ranged attacks coming from places that you can't see because the game is having to tell you with this little line that you then dodge. There's just there's something to that rhythm of like flying around that just I never quite get in the pocket. And it's partly me. I'm sure that some of those people who make those montage videos on Twitter are incredible at this and whatever. But like for me it just doesn't, that doesn't feel right.

But then anytime this game just lets you swing through the city, it just feels like a miracle. It feels like the friggin, like, second coming on my PlayStation. I'm sitting there just being like, this is the thing that I would show anyone who wanted to see how cool video games look now. I would just be like, this is a video game that you're watching right now. And you're not even playing it at 60 frames a second. That's pretty wild. I think this game is actually fine at 30, honestly. Like, I really do.

I think the original one was as well. That's because you haven't tried it at 60. No, I played a lot of games at both. I feel the same way about Horizon Zero Dawn. We've talked about this. I really think that it's well, it's well engineered for 30, and it runs with really smooth frame pacing, and it just, it works fine.

It looks like a movie. It's good. It's easy to play. Yeah, I've heard the PS4 version of this game is great. It's just like the last one. So anybody who's listening and doesn't have a PS5, which is probably most of our listeners, you should still enjoy this video game.

I hear it's quite good on PS4. And Miles is so cool. The story is, the story is so great. It's so charming. Well, he's so not. That's adorable. That's the charm. He's so not cool. Oh, I mean, yeah, I mean cool in the true, in the true meaning of the word. Yeah, yeah, no, very fun game. Have you, you guys haven't beaten it yet, have you?

No, no. Only a few hours, Jason, that's the thing we have a show. Can we just say really quick how freaking cool the first two hours specifically are in Spider-Man Wiles Burles? It's so cool. Like, they do shut you into a tutorial mission kind of a dealie after you complete that, But it's so rare that I play a video game where you feel that good that quickly and also that powerful. And they show you how to do each move as you're doing this big splashy cinematic fight. Like playing those first couple hours, I was like, I'm sure this game is going to let me down eventually. But this freaking rules.

Like this is the coolest shit I've ever seen. I'm like charging through a mall on the back of rhino and like dodging people and then saving a baby in a stroller. And then like, oh, there's Spider-Man is my buddy. and he's helping me out. And then there's like a dramatic thing where maybe he's something bad is going to happen. I don't know. It just ruled and it had the pacing of a movie that you play,

which is like what these action games always freaking promise you, but it almost never equates to that in any meaningful way. And I really feel like Miles Morales nailed it. Even if the rest of the game is not that great, I'm like, well, they got the first two hours. Like they really nailed it. It reminds me of there's the one sequence in the original Spider-Man

where you're chasing that helicopter, and then eventually you have to, like, you knock the helicopter down and then you have to catch it in between those two buildings as it's falling. And it's just another one of those, like, outrageously cool, like, multi-step set pieces where you're, like, going down the street,

chasing something, and then you're fighting on the outside of a helicopter, and then, like, it's like a cinematic, seamlessly going to gameplay, and then a quick time the thing as you, like, and you're just like, oh, my God. That is a good shit, yeah. Yeah, yeah, I agree. That whole rhino sequence was just gangbusters.

It was so good. Yeah, it rolled. The contrast between Miles as this brand new Spider-Man to Spider-Man at the first game where he was like a veteran and had been doing it for five, six, seven years is cool. And yeah, a really fun story and interesting. I also haven't finished it yet, but I will at some point. Yeah, it's not super long. So I love the things on this list. It feels pretty achievable to me.

I'm like, yeah, I can probably knock that out this week at least, you know? So that's great. I want to talk about a couple more games that we haven't actually played. One, there's a new Call of Duty. it features Ronald Reagan. All about Reagan. It's called Call of Duty Reagan. Yeah.

Oh man, could you imagine if you played as Reagan? What if you had to play as Reagan and like navigate his dementia? The mods are coming, man. People are going to make those mods. Can't wait to see Reagan doing some version. Do you ever play as Reagan? In one of the zombies modes where you play as the presidents, I think that maybe you do play as Reagan.

I feel like JFK was in the original. I don't know if you played as him. Sounds about right. You did. You did. He was just there. No, you play it as there's like in one of the zombies mode, I think in Black Ops. I played this and I don't remember this, but I'm sure I played as JFK.

But it's important that video games not be political. Well, Call of Duty has not made that pretense. As you well know, Jason. I would actually say that playing as like Nixon and JFK and Reagan in a zombies game is actually not political. It's actually a political. Or no, it is political. It's just centrist. I like, I don't know what it's saying.

It contains political figures. Um, Bing, Kirk here from the future. Just wanted to say that in Black Op zombies, you could play as JFK, and you could play as Dick Nixon. You could also play as Robert McNamara and Fidel Castro. You could not, however, play as Ronald Reagan. Also, I want to take the opportunity to mention a game that I forgot to mention on this episode, but have been playing a little bit of called the Pathless, which is Giant Squids' new game, and is pretty cool. It's like an archery game where you fly around really quickly and shoot little targets,

and you have a bird that you can pet, and it's a nice game. So just wanted to mention that game because we're doing the sampler platter, but I left a crucial little chicken nugget off of the sampler platter. Okay, back to the show. Bing! Anyway, none of us have played that, though I kind of want to. And also none of us, Maddie, I'm surprised that you have not played, Kingdom Hearts Melody of Memory, which is a brand new Kingdom Hearts game. I have a game. That's like a rhythm music game, right? It's like a music.

Yeah, it is a rhythm game. Apparently it's a pretty fun rhythm game that has Kingdom Hearts recap cutscenes. sprinkled throughout it for now real reason. But there's new Kingdom Hearts cut scenes also, right? Barely any. Barely any at all. That's not a good reason to play the game at all. Fair enough. Okay. I will say... It's not high on my priority list, even as a Kingdom Hearts fan. Fair enough. It's probably fun, though. I hear it's fun. I will say I really enjoy the theater rhythm Final Fantasy games for the 3DS. Those were really fun, like rhythm, Final Fantasy games. I couldn't get into those, but I know you liked them. Yeah, I mean, you have to, like, be really into the Final Fantasy games and the music and the one app.

Sounds like a similar vibe. Rhythm game gameplay wasn't doing it for me. One other game that we haven't talked about on this show is Hyrule Warriors Age of Calamity. I played some of those. Prequel to Breath of the Wild. It is a Musu game, which means it's like a Dynasty Warriors style slashing giant mobs of enemies type of game. And I don't really have a lot to say about this because I played like two missions and was like, this is so friggin' boring. I do not want to play anymore.

Kirk, do you have more thoughts than that? I mean, it's not really my kind of game. I didn't find it boring. I thought it was crazy, kind of. I mean, it's like a game. Well, like one of my favorite games of all time, Breath of the Wild, now has this prequel game built in the same, with the exact same art style and the same characters

set as like a prequel slash maybe parallel timeline thing or something. And then there's all like just, it feels like really fan service. from the very beginning in a way that and I just like characters that were like beloved really minor characters in Breath of the Wild turn up right off the bat in this one and

I don't know like I'm I'm probably not going to play a whole ton of it just because like this kind of game I don't know I don't find it that interesting but it's pretty wild I mean by boring what you just said like the premise isn't boring the gameplay itself is boring like running around

yeah but I mean the experience of playing and I did not find boring as much as like the gameplay was kind of mindless I was laughing and kind of just like, this is a trip. Like, this is cool. Like, I was fine with it when I was playing it. Sure, but that's just the novelty of it, of it all of like throwing 10 bombs at once at like these giant hordes of mama's actual gameplay. But yeah, I mean, I just didn't, I found it very stale.

I just was, these Dinosauru style games are just so uninteresting to me that I just bounce right off them. And yes, even when it's like a game in the same world that's continuing the story of one of my favorite games of the decades. I just have no interest in playing more, so I don't really have a lot to say about that. Any other final thoughts on fall games from YouTube before we move on to one more thing? I just want to say I really want to play Fuser and Tetris Effect connected as well. I have not played either of them, but I would like to.

I have Fusor downloaded, and I want to play. This is Harmonix's new mashup game, and I haven't played it either. I liked DJ Hero. I only played a little bit of that game, but I thought it was really clever. It's not good, but it's like almost good. and Fuser apparently is like the next rung on the ladder of like it also has some problems from what I hear with the DJ concept that it's doing. But like it's closer to what you want it to be. And I don't know. I just think I'm going to enjoy it when I get to it. Just the fact that Harmonics made rock band VR the most incredible music game that no one will ever play will always make me love Harmonics. That game is bonkers. And like I bet you that like one out of every 500 listeners of this episode will have played it. And like no. one even does what it is. And like, Fuser feels very niche as well. And yeah, I want to check it on. And I love Tetris effect. So I'd love to check out the updated one. Yeah, maybe we'll talk about those on future apps.

Who knows? Oh, and I played a little bit of Pikmin 3 deluxe. I've never played a pigment before. That'll be my one more thing, I think, a little later. That game rules. But I mean, everyone knows that game rules. Yeah, it's one of those that's like sitting on my switch waiting to be played, and I just haven't had time to just like really, really chew into it. There's one more fall game that I'm really interested in, which. Yeah, it's one of those. which is immortal Phoenix Rising, aka gods and monsters. So I'll be checking that out in the near future and talk about it also. AKA a Weth of the Brile, which I'm very much looking for.

Oh, God. Jesus. Kirk. I don't know. I just switched two letters and like it's kind of the same. You could, I mean, you could come up with something clever, like, breath of the mild or something like that. Yeah, but is it mild?

We don't know that it's mild yet. I don't want to, I don't want to get so many preconcessions. We'll brainstorm. Let's brainstorm. I'll turn a little bit on this one. We'll workshop. Let's take this one back to the workshop. All right, why do we take a quick break and then we'll be back for one more thing.

Hi, I'm Jackie Cation. Hi, I'm Lori Kilmartin. And we have a podcast called The Jackie and Laurie Show. Who are you, Lori Kilmartin? Oh, my God. So much pressure. I'm a stand-up of a new stand-up since 1987. I'm a writer for Conan.

I've written a couple books. Have a couple CDs out. Have a special out. Who are you, Jackie? Well, I, too, am a stand-up comic since 1984. and I do the road like a maniac and don't have a cool writing job, but I have four albums out working on a new album. We talk about stand-up.

We talk about all the different parts of stand-up comedy. So that's the Jackie and Laurie show, and you should subscribe on Maximum Fun if you want to hear that. And I would encourage you not to. Hey, friends, Jesse here, the founder of Maximum Fun, and I have some really great news to share with you. This year has brought a lot of changes for all of us. And one tradition that we were grateful to be able to hold on to is our annual pin sale to benefit

charity. This year, through your generosity and love of pins, you helped raise $95,400 for give directly. If you're a member and you bought pins, they'll ship in January. In the meantime, your support will provide direct cash relief to families impacted by COVID-19 across the United States. Even in this incredibly tough year, the Max Fund community remains extremely. extraordinarily kind. And whether or not you bought pins, you can continue to help by heading to give directly.org. And as always, thank you. And we are back, Kirk Maddie, it is time for one more thing. Uno more thing. Uno mass. That's the extent of my Spanish is uno one, one more thing. Good job. You should call this one more once, which is a reference that I will explain

on our Mel Brooks Beans cast leader. Let's try it one more once. That's a good teaser for members only. You have to subscribe if you want to hear what Kirk mentioned just said. Kirk, why don't you give it to us? Give us your one more once. My one more once, let's do it. One more once is Star Wars Squadrons,

another fall game that we didn't talk about on the earlier segment, but I already did as a one more thing once and am now back playing because it finally works with my virtual reality setup. And I also played a bunch of it on a screen as well. And I have a kind of more thorough take on this game, though I haven't finished it yet.

This game is really good. It kind of had a difficult run on PC. It had some technical issues that people were pretty upset about, even though I think a lot of people just had a good time with it. But they've been patching it a lot and updating it a lot and releasing big new fixes. They've been sort of doing that really consistent, update thing with, it seems to me, like, good communication. They released a whole big update with

like updated virtual reality stuff. And at the same time, Oculus updated their like link software and brought it out of beta. And for whatever reason, now, when I play the game, this is the Steam version of the game with an Oculus Quest 2. It works great. So this game really rules. It's really, really cool. It's the kind of Star Wars game I hope we get more of, just like what you I'm going to call it Jedi. I want to say Jedi Fallen Order. But that wasn't it. Yes, Jedi Fallen Order.

These names all kind of blend together. Just like Jedi Fallen Order was when that came out, it just feels like a good single player, Star Wars, dog fighting game that is deeper than I would have thought. Like the Sim level of it is actually pretty rich. And when you're in the ship, particularly when you're in VR, you're in the cockpit, the cockpit is like completely fully realized and everything in it reacts.

the way that it would in that ship. And because you're fighting on two sides of this conflict, you're like, fine Thai interceptors and Thai fighters and also X-Wings and A-wings. And the ships are all really different, and you get this feel for each of their cockpits. And I think if you really get into the multiplayer, because there's competitive multiplayer in this game, that's kind of when you get really good. But man, I mean, even playing it on a screen, and I'm playing with a hothass, so with a like stick and throttle, which is a fun way to play, I think. Even just on the screen it was cool. And then of course in VR, you just, in some ways it feels a little bit like every VR game that I've played has been building up to this game, or has been, like,

the first VR game I played, I got like a dev kit to a Oculus Rift and played a bunch of Elite Dangerous. And that game was in beta and the dev kit was a dev kit. And it was still this feeling of like, okay, what I really want to be doing that was like flying an X-wing against like a Star Destroyer. Like, and this is cool. But it was. But it was still. It's just a feeling of like, like, It's not quite that. And so now I get to finally do that. And there's just a thing that happens when you play a space flying game in VR where you're like, you know, you're shooting at a tie fighter and then it like wings up above you

and you look up and like follow it over through the roof of your cockpit and you're like pulling the stick back and following it with your eyes like and turning your head all around. And it's just a thing that is crazy. Like it's an experience that never stops being awesome. So this game is really cool. I think the people who worked on it did a great job. They seem excited.

They're releasing unplanned DLC for it. There's like B-wings are coming to the game. So it's nice to see a good Star Wars game that's getting like unexpected post-release support and that people generally seem into and that I certainly have had a lot of fun with. So I have two fun facts about this game. First of all, the director of this game is a guy named Ian Frazier, who is actually featured pretty prominently in a chapter of my new book, Press for Set, We're in a Recovering in the video game industry. He had a pretty lead role at Big Huge Games, which was the maker of kingdoms of Amor.

I was wondering which chapter it would be. Reckoning. And he also was a big part of like the transition from Big Huge Games that I won't get Super into, but he has a pretty prominent role in the book. Don't want to spoil it. And then he worked on the ill-fated Mass Effect Andromeda before he wound up becoming a director once EA. So once Biore Montreal was closed, he moved over to EA Motive, which is in,

also in Montreal, also EA studio in Montreal, and wound up leading this project. Another fun fact is that I've heard, with the caveat that I've not talked to every single person who worked on this game, I've heard from at least a few people who worked on this game that it was like a reasonable production without a ton of like long hours and it wasn't the type of AAA game experience that people have to kill themselves making. And I think one of the big reasons for that is that it's like very focused and knows exactly what it is. Small scope. It's not like a massive AAA open world extravaganza. It's like a $40. Like here's what we're making. Enjoy it or don't enjoy it. It's very specific for a very

specific group of people. And it's just like it's the type of game that is like ideal for for big publishers to be making because it's so specific. Yeah, I would love more games like this. And it shows because like it has all of the glitz and glamour where it matters. When you're in the ship dogfighting with other ships, it looks rad and is great. And then yeah, the cut scene. are mostly just shots of ships with people talking over them. There are characters you talk to in the hangar, but they're all kind of standing still, and they're animated and voice acted and lip sync,

but it's not super elaborate. We're going to make a new Star Wars movie in the cutscenes kind of thing. It's like much, much, much more chill, which is fine because I'm here for the, like, space dog fighting, and that's really great. So that's cool to hear. Right. It's very much, it's, like, not the type of game

that's going to win Game of the Year awards, the way that, like, Las of us 2 and Cyberpunk and these games that do embrace Crunch Culture, are going to compete over it, but it's so focused. And actually, I mean, it's sort of similar production-wise to Hades, which is going to win Game of the Year awards and is one of our favorite games of the year. And it's also a game where, like, its creators have been pretty outspoken about avoiding crunch.

And they clearly came into it with like a very focused direction, a reasonable scope. And just like more, more of these games is just like going to be a pro for everybody. More of these games with like variable pricing. So you don't have to spend $70 on a game that might last you only a few hours. and just like with very specific direction and smaller teams and smaller scopes is that's the only way we can really have a healthier video game industry. But I digress. Maddie, what's your one more thing? Hey, so I reread the Diary of Anne Frank, which is a book that I read as a child like a lot of children in the United States have done. And for whatever reason, in the few weeks before the election,

this book and the idea of it just got really stuck in my brain. That was a very doom time period. Not to say we aren't still constantly facing doom because we are. And we don't have to talk about that here. But just the, you know, the comparisons to the rise of fascism in Germany, we're running pretty hot and heavy during that time period. There's a cloud lifted. It's okay. Like, there's definitely a cloud.

Yeah. There was certainly some moments in there where we were worried that maybe we'd have a totalitarian dictator who, and maybe democracy wouldn't exist anymore. So I was kind of like thinking about the diary Van Frank. And also the idea of being stuck inside. and just the comparisons to it that people make, which I think have typically been pretty glib, actually. And, like, I don't know.

There's plenty of weird statements that people make about the Holocaust and then also very fair comparisons that people make. And so, I don't know. I was thinking about all of that. And then after Biden won't leave my head. I still really want to reread this book and see what I think about it now. So I did that.

And I don't actually recommend anyone do this because it was deeply depressing. I think the only reason why I could, do it was because I at least knew that we weren't about to descend, or at least I really, really hope we're not about to descend into fascism. But I sort of read it at the right time for my brain. And it was a really interesting experience to read as an adult because as a kid, I did not have the capacity to understand what I was reading. And I think a lot of kids don't, unless they've undergone some significant trauma

or just live in a country where that's all around them or what have you, but that wasn't the case for me. So I didn't really have a sense of understanding about what I was reading and what it was really like. But reading it as an adult, it's so much more sad and intense and also good. So if that's a brain experience you want to have, you could do what I did and read the diary of Anne Frank.

But I don't know. No one is me. Why would anyone do this? But I did it. And cool book and very tragic. That seems like a reasonable review of the Diary of Anne Frank. Like it's never going to be like four stars. Unforgettable.

It's always going to be something like that. The Schindler's list of books. No, the Schindler's list of books. Fuck. Yeah. I've actually never read it. Oh, you should read it, Kirk. If you've never read it, I think it's, I guess I'll say that.

If you're a listener who's never read it, you should read it. Yeah. Because there's a reason why people talk about it so much. If you're a listener is one of the 20% of Americans who doesn't believe the Holocaust happened. Well, by all means, I doubt any of them listen to this show. But I would say, I would say the main tragedy of the book is, I mean, I can't pick a main one. But one of the many tragedies of the book is how beautifully written it is and how much Anne Frank wanted to be a writer actually wanted the diary to be published. And she's so good. I don't know. That part of it is really hard. Well, it's actually, I mean, that there's a silver lining there and that if she had survived, maybe nobody would have heard of her as a writer and she's become a legend. I think they would have because she would have been an incredibly good author.

Yeah, we'll never know. That's possible. But she's certainly a legend in the writing. She is. Which I think is what she would have wanted, which is something that feels kind of good and less weird about reading a 13-year-old's diary as being like, well, she actually would have wanted you to read it. You know? Yeah, it's an interesting.

experience. I also read at a kid, it's a very different experience. I think when you're the descendant of Holocaust survivors and you've heard stories about like your, your great aunt hiding in a cave for a year. I'm sure. It's very, it's much more personal. So as a kid, if you're reading it with that context, right, right. I'm sure it's very different for you. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, good, good book. Nice. Jason, what's your, what's your one more thing? Yeah, so my one more thing is the Queen's Gambit, which you guys are talking. about last week. I finished it all. Since last week.

Really good. I feel like more series, just like games, more series should be limited series because there's so much more palatable and I feel like that telling a full story. And I really enjoyed this. It's shot really well. The dialogue's really good. The acting's really good. The characters are great. The lead actress is

phenomenal. But even like Borgov, the Russian chess player who doesn't say anything, is just like so good at like even slight ticks with his face that I just really enjoyed his performance and yeah just really enjoyable show. It made me start like, made me want to play chess a lot. So I've been like playing, playing online against computer chess. Chess is very, it's an interesting game because it's such a game about

planning and about anticipating. And I totally do not. I'm like okay at it, but I don't have like the skills of like being able to anticipate exactly what's going to happen three. four or five moves from now, which I think is kind of necessary if you're going to be a master of chess. And we got to see that in the show with her just like visualizing boards on her ceiling and seeing it all unfold. And I really think, I think that's kind of, I'm sure you can get there with practice. But I also think a lot of it is so innate having that ability to plan that if you're, if you're smart, I feel like you can definitely hit a certain level of chess and you can be decent at it. but like unless you have that skill of like really just anticipation and planning and memorizing,

um, that I think you, you really just can't hit the highest echelons. The article that I linked last week, um, with Gary Kasparov talking about chess. Oh, I haven't read that yet. Oh, you should check it out because it's cool.

He talks about the different kinds of chess players and how, um, her character, Beth is that her name, is, is sort of one type and that there were types traditionally, um, who would play in this more like instinctual. Intuitive way. That is a thing. That's not like invented for the show where most, you know, like a lot of chess players, I think play in a more strategic way, but that that was a thing. And that he talks a little bit also about substance abuse and how there were famous chess players who were alcoholics. He's like, these days, I don't think so. He's like, I just don't think it would be possible to do the mental work. And then also places he was like, I don't know of anybody who is like, you know, doing that. But he's like, but back in the day, it was totally a thing. And she is this kind of collected, you know, a

collection of different types of archetypes into this one fictional character. On the limited series thing, I'm totally with you. I've been thinking about how Watchmen was so good because it ended. Yeah, that's another example. I was talking with a friend of ours about how cool it would have been if Westworld had just ended after season one. And I was like, that would have been like a show that everyone talked about still. And it would have been like, man, what a cool season of a show that was.

And it ended with maybe some like teases, but then it just ended instead of being like, and now season two. and it's going to be a weird mess and everyone's going to start not liking it and then season three will be even weirder and now everyone is just like it basically never happened and people don't talk about it.

And so yeah, more limited series. I'm with you on that one. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean, there's just so much content to just consume everywhere that it just feels like having things that are just scoped back

and aren't just bloated for the sake of being bloated. Especially with like your Netflix and Amazon like it's not like a show needs to be syndicated anymore. It needs to be extended versus back. having an ending. I love the ending of this show. I think it's because it's so clearly is just this, the whole thing is such a fantasy, and that's fine. Like, I'm okay with it not being this, like, gritty look at history, and, you know, I didn't get that out of it at all. It's just the fantasy.

It's based on a fictional story. It should be noticed. Right, based on a book. And I like, I like that it ends. I like, and I like that Watchmen ended. And I like, I've been watching a lot of movies lately. We're going to talk about movies on the Beans cast. Like, even comedies, they end. They end. They have endings. And that is just a great feeling. Nothing freaking ends anymore. And it is a really nice one. Love credits.

Love to see those credits roll. And it's just like, boom, finish. Move on to the next thing. You're done. It's a good feeling. Yep, yep, yep. The creators of Better Call Saul, which is my favorite, like,

live ongoing show, announced that it would be over after like this next season, season six, I believe. It's like the most exciting announcement a show runner can make. It's such a cool thing to hear. We are ending it.

Especially after the show has been just like great for a while. And it's just like, okay, we're ending on a high note. They did that with Shira. That actually, that show recently ended. And they were like, we're ending it. And it just ended. And it's like a great ending. And I was like, oh, how nice that this just ended.

So many of those Netflix animated shows don't end, too. And they just kind of always new seasons. So the first time, the first time I ever remember this happening was in the middle of Lost. And it was like season three of Lost. And it was just kind of dragging. And it was one of those things where they were clearly like, it was so hit or miss every week. And they were dragging on all these mysteries and stories and secrets. And there was one episode, Stranger in a strange,

that is like renown as like the worst lost episode. It was like, is that the tattoos episode? Jack getting tattoos in Thailand. Yep, yep, yep, yep. And the teaser for that episode, like if you watched the commercials live beforehand, it was like three big questions will be answered

and there were no questions. It was like, where did Jack get his tattoo? It was literally the question they were referring to. Where did he get his tattoos? So anyway, so shortly after that episode. Fuck lost. Ugh. Why do we talk about lost so much?

We talked about it a lot. No, it was an important TV show. and like for the reason you're saying. I love and I hate loss. We're all traumatized from it. Loss is the destiny of TV. Destiny of TV shows. It is kind of like an important template for a lot that came after.

I thought you meant it's like destiny to like us. Like in the sense that's something we all have to talk about. It is our destiny. Yes, that too. But also no, it is like destiny. It went on for too long. The mysteries, it set up a bunch of mysteries and then never resolved them.

But it served as like a cultural touchstone for like a lot of future, future episode, future media to come in its meaning. You're reminding me that I didn't talk about Beyond Light on this show and I played some of it. We have to end the podcast so I don't talk about it. Oh, man, I forgot to add that to the list. We'll come back to it. I might play a little bit more at some point. I might not. I checked it out. Just to finish what I was saying before, shortly after Stranger in a strange land, which is just unanimously terrible, the creators of loss announced, hey, they actually negotiated with the TV network, which at that point, like in 2000,

2007, whenever it was, TV networks wanted shows to keep going and going forever because they're all cash cows, especially lost. Loss is bringing in so many millions of viewers every week. So they negotiated three more seasons, each like 13 episodes, and then we're done. And it was good and it was a relief. And it just made the show, I mean, the last season of the show is still terrible, but it still help the show. It ended. It ended. It ended. It had Juliet and Sawyer at the vending machine. And come on. It had. it had Juliet and Sawyer at the vending machine. It wasn't all bad. Yeah, there are parts of it that were great. But like the flash sideways and the temple. We don't have to go over the whole finale of life. All right. We'll save it for the Lost Bean's cast.

I bet people really want a Lost Bean's cast. I would do that in a heartbeat. Lost Bean's cast. But then we would have to rewatch all of loss. Yeah. It'd be worth it. All right. So let's say goodbye for this week.

We will be back next week with two episodes for subscribers. On Monday, we'll be posting the Melbrook's Beanscasts to sign up. become a maximum member if you haven't already. And then next week, we will be back for another episode. And because this episode is coming out on Thanksgiving, happy Thanksgiving to those of you who celebrate it. Yeah, and yeah, I'll see you both next week. See you next week.

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

we hope you'll consider supporting us by becoming a member at Maximumfund.org slash join. Find us on Twitter at Triple ClickPod. Send email the triple click at maximum fun.org and find a link to our Discord in the show notes. Thanks for listening. See you next time. Maximum fun.org. Comedy and culture.

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