Triple Click - Triple Play: Dead Space Remake

Episode Date: February 9, 2023

Maddy, Kirk, and Jason board the USG Ishimura and figure out that not all is as it seems. And the Dead Space remake is pretty damn good.One More Thing: Kirk: Hitman FreelancerMaddy: Animorphs #1 - The InvasionJason: All Good People Here (by Ashley Flowers)Links: https://www.polygon.com/guides/23585108/is-dead-space-scary-remake-jump-scareshttps://www.polygon.com/23588490/animorphs-book-pdf-audiobook-graphic-novel-movie-k-a-applegateTriple Click LIVE IN BROOKLYN, May 18th: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/triple-click-live-tickets-513213584647Support Triple Click: http://maximumfun.org/joinBuy 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

They say that in space, no one can hear you scream. But in southeast Portland, when you're playing horror games with your window open, I'm pretty sure that everyone can hear you scream. Welcome to Triple Click, where we bring the games to you. This week we're talking about Dead Space remake, a game that proves that sometimes 15 years and a fresh coat of paint is really all you need. This engine centerfuge isn't going to fire itself, so let's suit up and get into it. I'm Kirk Hamilton.

I'm Maddie Myers. And I'm Jason Schreier. Hello. Hello. Hello, my friend. Hello to both of you. Welcome back. Hello to all the listeners out there in the world.

Every single one. They can all hear me right now. I hope it's wonderful. We're broadcasting live. And guess what? If you listen to the end of last week's episode and you've been just like waiting eagerly to find out what the game we're going to talk about today. Right. Yes. Now you get to find out.

Clifhanger. It's true. It's right there in the episode title in your podcast player. Also, we should say that we are recording this before the Nintendo. direct that hits on Wednesday night the day before the episode was live so if like Silk Song is announced and that's this is

we're not freaking out right now because of that. That's why we're not freaking out about that. Yes, exactly. I feel like if they announced Silk Song I will scream loud enough to be heard in a podcast that I recorded the day before. Ah, some interdimensional time travel screaming. It would be an

interdimensional hype scream. Yeah. I can I've heard much of this. That's a real gamer moment. Interdimensional hype scream. That does sound like a long title of like a cool infinite runner that came out in like 2013. It does. It does. Or a dating sim.

For like a mid-2000s rock album. Yeah. Totally. Interdimensional hype scream. That's good. So Kirk. Okay, I guess I have to tell us about some things. We are a listener-supported show.

And that means that all of you wonderful listeners out there support us. us making this show. You bear with us when we forget that it was our turn to mention the fact that we're a listener-supported show, and we really appreciate that. So if you go to maximum fun.org slash join, you can become a member of maximum fun. That allows you to support the creation of triple-click, but it also gets you bonus episodes of a bunch of different maximum fun shows, including our show, which we do every month. We make a new bonus episode. There are so many of them to listen to. And if you just pay $5 a month, you can listen to all of them. At the same time, from multiple devices.

You can just play them all at once. It'll be really confusing. That would be really disorienting. It'll just be like layers and layers of sound. You can go in whatever order you want, though. That's true. That is true. That is true.

But if you do, if you play them all at once while watching Dark Side of the Moon, then you can, right. It's a secret message. Shit's crazy. You've got to listen to some of them backwards. But we're not going to tell you which ones. You have to figure it out on your... It's a puzzle.

It's a big puzzle. So anyways, Matt, Maximumfund.org. Join, become a member. We really appreciate all of you out there who support the creation of our show. That's how we don't have ads. That's how we make the exact show that we want to make. And that's thanks to all of you.

So thanks so much for being members and supporting the creation of this show. All right. We've kept the people in suspense long enough. Maddie, what are we talking about this week? They're freaking out right now. And they should keep freaking out for the entire rest of the episode because we are talking about dead space. Oh, yeah.

Elaborate music sting. violins are freaking screaming right now and Necromorph just jumped out of event right behind you there's always event behind you always no matter where you are there's a ventilation on the issue muras there's so many fans blowing on you you need some good compressor coils you need a really

good HVAC system I bet they use I bet they don't use oil I bet they use like real heat pump like some high elaborate post pandemic futuristic game it is the 26th century. So, like, they really learned from the pandemic in this game, and they were like, we got to get all these events.

And then that was their downfall. There was a bit of a pandemic on the ship, and they didn't contain it very well. Yeah, I guess it wasn't that ventilated. In Kurt's style, I wrote a statement. I don't want to make any big promises here. I'm not going to do this every time. I feel like I have done this for the past couple, but I just did it for fun this time. It's a good best practice.

So it's the 26th century. Space travel has been perfect. affected and humans are exploring the galaxy to mine other planets for resources. You're Isaac Clark, an engineer on a repair mission for the USG Ishaemura, a mining ship with a thousand souls on board, including Clark's girlfriend Nicole, one of the ship's doctors. When Clark and his colleagues fly up to the USG Ishamura, it looks abandoned. With no one to aid their landing, they crash into the docking bay and start exploring the ship. It doesn't take long for them to learn that the entire human crew of the Ishamura has been infected

by a virus that transforms them into necromorphs with massive claw hands and sometimes other bizarre appendages depending on which type of necromorph because this is a video game and there are multiple types of necromorphs. Anyway, headshots don't work, so cut off their limbs. Isaac and his crewmates split up to explore and figure out a way to escape this ship and its many horrors. Throughout it all, Isaac is determined to find his girlfriend Nicole, whom he believes must have survived somehow. So I will start by saying I played this game when it first came out in 2008. And it was scary then, although I will say I have much stronger memories of Dead Space 2,

specifically the I poke scene, not least because I wrote an article about that scene for Polygon and that scene is so memorable. But we don't need to get into that here. Eventually, we'll do a Dead Space remake episode many years from now and we can talk about it then. So the original Dead Space came out in 2008. It was developed by an EA studio called EA Redward Shores, which then retroactively got called Visceral Games after Dead Space was wildly successful. It's a third-person shooter, by the way.

You're pretty much just in one space. They add in some more Metroidvania elements for this remake, which came out in January 2023 by Motive Studio, different team, also published by EA, but different set of folks making this one. And I've played several hours of the remake. I'm on Chapter 4. I will finish it, but I find it extremely scary. So I have to take a lot of breaks. And I want to hear from you to how far you are. And Kirk, why don't we start with you?

I know you played the original as well. Yeah, I played the original Dead Space. I didn't finish it, but I played more than I've played. Now, I'm in act four as well of the remake, which is very familiar because I remember the original one like it was yesterday. day. I'd say that one of the best things I can say about this remake is that playing it, I have erased my memory of what Dead Space looked and played like in 2008. And now when I think about it, I'm just like, yeah, it looked like this. I mean, I'm basically just playing Dead Space. Because it's pretty true to the original, at least in terms of overall content, even though I know

there are some changes, it feels like Dead Space, even though, of course, it looks like a modern video game and not like an Xbox 360 game. So I played probably two-thirds of the original and didn't finish it for reasons that I'll talk about in a second or a little later I guess. Then later I reviewed Dead Space 2 for Paste Magazine.

It was when I was first getting into writing about games and because I was reviewing it, I had to finish it and loved it. That was also why I completed Dead Space 2 because I was reviewing it for the Phoenix. Go on. And if you don't finish it, you don't get the eyeball scene. You also don't get the...

It's kind of a chore of the final mission of Dead Space 2 if memory serves. You're getting chased by that big, unkillable beafer, and it just goes on and on and on. And I remember it being very hard. Anyways, loved that game and really, really, just really enjoyed it and realized at that time, I think, that I loved Dead Space. And then, of course, was pretty disappointed by Dead Space 3. And then really just over the next decade came to really love and appreciate a lot of things about horror video games that I didn't in 2008. So it's really cool going back and playing this game again, basically,

and kind of reflecting on all of the ways that I've changed and all the things about it that I love now that I found, that I liked in 2008, but I found pretty intense and scary and kind of, you know, I couldn't really stick with it because I just wanted to go play something more relaxing. Now I'm much more of a junkie for this sort of intense, you know, pressure cooker that this game puts you through. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Jason, how about you? So I am a newcomer to this entire franchise for, I think, a pretty good reason that I'll explain in a second. I am playing this Dead Space for the first time, really my first time playing any Dead Space game. And I'm up to Chapter 2, I think I played a couple of hours. I'm like, I just got a pulse rifle. I'm up in the medical bay looking for the captain's body and stuff like that. So the reason that I haven't played

any Dead Space and probably won't play much more of this is because this is just totally not a genre I care about or find interesting or exciting. Just sci-fi horror shooter games where like you're just kind of shooting a bunch of aliens are just not

for me unless there's some other kind of either another cerebral element involved or like I don't know something else to kind of grasp on to the way they're There has been in some of the games. Just two culture, just a man of culture and sophistication. There were more books in Dead Space.

No, it's not that. If this was, if this is like a fantasy action game, it would probably be totally my jam. It's just that sci-fi horror just isn't my thing. That said, I really appreciated it and how well-made it is and how slick everything looks and feels. It's gorgeous. It's like definitely up there. I'm playing on PS5. It's up there with one of the most gorgeous, with the most gorgeous games I've played ever.

it looks really cool I like getting to like stomp on the xenomorphs and slashing there's a stomp button that's a very important part of this game plasma cutter is cool the faces all look good the dialogue so like everything about it is just

extremely competently made and I really appreciate it it's just not my thing at all and I don't know I think there's a place in everybody's heart for games that they appreciate and find to be very competently made but just have no interests or desire to play.

It's totally my thing. I mean, I love and hate horror in equal measure. Alien is one of my favorite movies of all time, obviously, because I love Metroid. But Metroid is like, okay, what if we took Alien and we made it not scary and you're like the most powerful person ever and you're just slowly walking around becoming even more powerful while you fight the aliens. And this game is, of course, the opposite of that. And it's more like, okay, so you're on an abandoned space station, something horrible has happened,

but there isn't just one alien. There's like a thousand of them. And also there are people that you know, in some cases, who have been transformed into this other being. And there are a variety of ways that they sneak up on you that I find very effective. Kirk, I know you're just an old hand at horror now. So none of this probably even scares you. But just the fact that they have extremely long arms and therefore the first thing you see when they sneak up on you is their very long claw. There's just something about that that is like the worst slash the best.

It's like being inside of a claw machine. It's just like, I don't even know. I can't put it into English words. I can only scream. Jason, I do like that this is the basically. the stuffed animal perspective of being in a claw machine. That is kind of what it feels like. It's a claw descending at you at all times.

The claws is coming towards you. Yeah, this is an old hat for me. Actually, I am struck by how awesome the necromorphs are. What an incredible bad guy for a horror game. They're scarier than anything I can think of in any horror game that I've played, honestly. Because they're so nightmarish-looking. The way they come at you is so hard to deal with. There's a reason that this game gives you a weapon to slow them.

down and then allows you to, you know, which allows you to kind of carve their limbs off, which is the central mechanic of this game, is you have to cut the limbs off of necromorphs. Or if you really know what you're doing, you cut one limb off, then grab it with your kinesisus gun and then throw the limb back at the necromorpe, which is like the crucial loop. Yes, and winds up being very crucial for me. Anyways, I keep running out of ammo. Well, you're probably playing it on like whatever dangerously hard for. No, I'm just playing on normal. No, no.

I'm not that hardcore. I'm just playing on normal. I think it's really well designed. You have to understand. We all think of you as seven death hamlets. I know. That's true. You just accepted this.

Fair enough. Fair enough. I've earned my reputation as an elite gamer. No, I think the Necromorphs are amazing. I mean, all these years later, they're still cooler looking monsters than I've seen in almost any game. And they also dovetail really well with the level design and the environment design in this game, which has always been strong. The Ishimura is a horrifying ship. It's wild to think about.

going and working and living on that thing for years or whatever in deep space. Yeah, even before it's dilapidated and destroy it and you have to like... Presumably, it's less terrifying. Yeah, it was probably fairly normal. The lights are on. I've been down in the engine room and it's

pretty much like you're in the belly of a... I mean, the engine room of anything is going to be scary. Engine room is scary. It would be so funny if they did a DLC of the Ishimura that was just like super normal. Like the lights are on. Like the tram actually works. Like everything about it is like beautiful and gorgeous.

just to see what it's like, you know? By the way, fun fact, Ishimura means stone village in Japanese. Oh, nice. I don't know why it's called the, I don't know if that's related to the plot at all, but it's a good name. So specifically the way that it dovetails with the design is that there are lots of spindly little spikes and other things around in the environment. And a lot of times you can't see and you have to aim to see because then Isaac's flashlight shines. And the lighting effects, of course, especially with modern technology. are very impressive. So you're always casting shadows everywhere. And so many of the shadows that you cast are big spiky arms, basically.

So I don't remember this in the first game. I think this might just be something that they're more capable of doing now. But a lot of it is the fact that your shadow is so tall in so many instances, just due to the lighting placement. Like they'll just be some weird light bulb on the ground for some reason so that you can have an absurdly tall shadow and you just see your own shadow out of the corner of your eye. And you're like, is that a freaking air vent with a guy jumping out of it at me? But no, it's just your own shadow. And the other thing I wanted to shout out that's kind of similar to the shadow, and this was just pure luck on my part because I looked up the cutscene later to see if it was timed this way. But there's this moment on the bridge. You go back to the docking bay at one point pretty early on. Jason, you've probably gone past this at least, where you go back to the bridge and you, like,

you know, meet the person who was stuck back on the ship waiting for you. and then of course she dies because everybody dies. This is a horror game. And then you're like heading back out off the bridge again. And there's this screen really far away from you at the end of the bridge that is showing like a promotional video of like the crew of the Ishimura. Do you guys remember this? So like there's this really creepy zoom in on like all the faces of the people of the Ishimura. And like I for some reason like I was shooting at a necromorph like right in front of that screen.

And like as soon as it died, that absurd zoom in on all the faces happened, like right as it was dropping. And I was like, oh my God, there's a million of them. I'm going to freaking die. Like I was like panicking at like a promotional video of human beings. And then I was like, whoa, that's so cool. Because technically all of those people are my enemies that I'm fighting. It's just that they've all been transformed. And I was like, oh, that's so freaking perfect.

Like this environmental storytelling is so sick. And then I looked it up and I'm like, no, there's just a coincidence that that happened. be like the way that that particular video was lined up in that moment. And it's like one of the scariest visual things that happened. I mean, this game and it just unfolded that way because of the game kind of setting up something that could happen that way. That's super cool. That's video game storytelling. Hell yeah. It's pretty cool. I'm finding that the headspace that this game puts you in, this sort of emotional contour of it. The headspace. Is that intentional?

Dead space. Three, headspace. The headspace that this game puts you in is, remarkable and kind of different from your average zombie or even horror game because of the sort of cosmic nature of the threat of the horror. It is this is kind of a zombie game, but it's also really is bringing in this cosmic element that to me at least has always felt. It's really Bloodbourne. This is a Bloodbourne remake. It is kind of Blood-Born-esque, yeah. Well, yeah. I mean, like, so it's borrowing from some of the same influences Blood-Born. the same kinds of cosmic horror. Lovecraftian.

Yes. Well, yeah, it's Lovecraft, but it's Lovecraft at this point is so diluted down through subsequent influences. Really, the influence in this game that I detect the strongest is Event Horizon. Have either of you seen Event Horizon? No, but I'm familiar. So this is a 1997 movie directed by Paul W.S. Anderson. I went and saw it memorably with a French exchange student who was staying with me in high school. Oh, oh la la.

I don't know why I went to see. see this movie. I didn't go see horror movies in the theater a lot. I really can't remember. I think I liked the Michael Crichton novel sphere and it looked kind of like sphere. So I was like, yeah, sure, let's go to Event Horizon. So Event Horizon is a horrifying movie. I love it. I think it's one of my favorite horror movies just because it's deeply, deeply terrifying. I've always found it to be very, very scary. And the story is very similar. I think it's a mining ship, or a salvage ship out in the middle of nowhere, goes silent, and then a rescue crew arrives on the ship and is like, well, what happened here?

And they walk into, again, like the most horrifying looking ship, even leaving aside any monsters or anything scary, just this gothic, like sarcophagus in space, which is very similar to the Ishimura. And then, of course, something horrible has happened, but it's different than alien. Because an alien, what's happened is there's basically an animal on the ship. That's all alien is. It's just the xenomorph is just an dangerous panther, you know? Yeah, it's just a being from elsewhere that's brought in.

Lose tiger in the zoo. Yeah, it's a loose tiger. It just happens to be very scary looking. Where in the case of Vent Horizon, they were, they like went through a black hole, I think, to try to travel somewhere, and they accidentally jumped dimensions to hell. And they went to actual hell, and then they brought hell back with them, and there's like a portal to hell. So the things that are coming after the heroes are way more abstract and weird and kind of, you know, there's more insanity and more horrible, like, body mutilation, people

ripping themselves apart and, like, really disturbing imagery that goes way beyond, you know, basically a space bear rips you apart, and the camera work makes it scary. And that's what's happening here, too, is there's this marker that connects everything. There are these whispers, and the necromorce are this kind of fundamentally mysterious force. They're networked together. There's something animating them, but it's never totally clear. And I know some of that has explained in parts of Dead Space 3 are like, books or something that I haven't read. And like the comic and so long. Yeah. The midi-chlorians of this

universe. No, it's actually the extended universe is pretty cool. But go. It is. No, there's, there's plenty of good storytelling in Dead Space. But in this game, at least, it's not really explored, but it is much more than just, oh, there's a virus that turns people into zombies. It's, there's something more there. There's something deeper and more mysterious and kind of farther back from our ordinary experience. I think that's an important part of the vibe of the game. That's the part that I found really scary, too, is just the idea that this marker could infect you, but in a way that a virus couldn't, it infects your mind. And you start seeing visions. Like, I mean, Jason, I know you're not that far, but you probably

already read like some emails or, you know, voice logs or whatever where people talk about seeing visions and, oh, like, I hear something in the gears, but there's nobody down there. And the idea that that would be some of the early symptoms of you becoming a claw hand guy, it just makes it so much scarier because it's like, oh, you just, you can't escape this, this. And it also becomes sort of a religious phenomenon as well. And they get more into that in the second game where people are like worshipping the markers and it's like, yeah, the moment that I enjoyed was walking into a hallway and seeing a dude just banging his head against the wall. Very famous moment. Classic Dead Space is, yeah, the psychological horror of it all is a lot

more disturbing than really the animal. Kirk, I think that's a salient point. Because the idea of like an animal trapped with you is scary, but like the idea of something trapped in your brain is a lot scarier. Yeah. It's like not this external force that you can just do away with, but this internal thing. And that's what makes pandemics so scary and viruses so scary. And it's also what makes something like this so scary.

Mm-hmm. And also what can make like an extremist religion so scary and like a conspiracy and like the idea of a conspiracy. is he taking over people that you know and you not being able to help them. I mean, I think the second game delves up deeper into the idea of that as an additional layer of horror. And it's why I'm pretty excited that one assumes EA will remake the second game, too, because this first version of the remake adds in more story than the first game originally

had. And I really like all the additions. And I can tell they're like building on the sort of religious elements. and the conspiracy element of the horror as well. And that part freaks me out, but I'm so impressed by the way that it freaks me out. And I really, I really respect it. I'm, like, very into the way that they've incorporated that theme. Yeah, I mean, the second game has Isaac as the main character again.

And historically, so in 2008, Isaac did not talk in the original game. And as a result, he was kind of a non-character, which worked fine for the game, really, for what it was. and they haven't actually had to change that much to turn him into a talking character who takes his helmet off sometimes and has a face but because I know where the story is going well he talks but it's not like he's really

you know I don't know like he's not Nathan Drake like he he does talk but he doesn't talk as much as he might and in the second game he is a very present force in the story and it's all about he's the sole survivor of the Ishimura and so the second game

deals with that a lot and he is like losing his mind and is being pursued by the ghosts of characters from the first game and seeing like horrifying visions. So there's way more of that psychological horror, which is kind of the, if we're staying in video game land, it's kind of the Silent Hill to the Resident Evil. You know, if those are the two schools of video game horror, where one is more psychological and one is more just, there's a monster coming at you, it allows them to have a little more of that.

And they certainly have a lot more in the sequel. But the fact that they're bringing some of that back into the first game, just it's nice. it like it changes the mix up a little bit. Did either of you guys play the Callisto Protocol? No, I watched some videos of it and just didn't really make time for it. Yeah, it seems like it got pretty middling reviews, but it was just interesting to see that a spiritual successor to Dead Space,

directed by Glenn Schofield, who was one of the designers, one of the leads on the original games, that came out at the same time as this big Dead Space remake, but people seem much, much more intrigued and interested in and into the Dead Space remake. It just sounds like the Callisto Protocol didn't have that sort of, it's not even secret sauce, just that sauce that Dead Space has, where the way that, the way the animations and the combat encounters and the design of the levels all work together and the weapon designs, like, it makes for a really amazing gameplay cocktail.

Okay, so I was talking about how horror is dread and panic. It's kind of these two feelings. and a good horror game mixes the two. And we've talked a lot about the dread, right? That's the sort of the feeling of oppressive fear. It's scary. You know something's coming, especially in this game because it's so formulaic. You know when a necromorph comes at you from the front, there's going to be one behind you.

You walk into a room. There's a whole bunch of explosive canisters everywhere, and you think, oh, shit, here we go. So you kind of, you're dreading what's coming next, right? They put you in that mind space really effectively. This game does panic really well. The panicked fights in this game are incredible. Partly because of the enemy design, which we've talked about, the limbs are really hard to aim at. They always are moving in unpredictable ways.

You're like, yeah, like trying to. You can't just kind of unload on them in the way that you want to because you have to save your ammo. And then always, always when there's a monster coming at you from the front, there's a monster coming at you from behind. And you just learn to know that and you can almost feel it behind you. Like when you're taking the time to aim, it's like, I just know that fuckers behind me and I got to get the shot off and figure out what I'm going to do next. and it's just it's a million little things it's the magic of gameplay design and it's not easy to do I mean it's been 15 years since dead space came out and the only games I really played that feel like are dead space two like parts of dead space three do you think Kirk do you think that the music

cue always happening when there's a necromath morph coming at you do you think that like has any impact on the whole dread and horror thing do you think it takes away from the surprise when like the music goes all off and then you know that you're not to be attacked. And once you kill them all that music goes away and you get to just vibe and silence Maddie, I was reading your

article about how to make the game less scary which is a great article, a genre of article that I love. Oh, interesting. Okay, we should like that in the show. Yeah. And one of my tips was don't turn the music off. Because if you turn it off there's actually, I was reading multiple threads of people who had done that and were like it makes the game so much scarier because you never have any idea when the necromorphs are coming or when you're done,

most importantly. Because they can keep coming and you don't know and you only can rely on visual cues and usually you can't hear them coming. They're just in the freaking vents everywhere you go. They're just waiting for you to walk by so they can zip out and get you. So I think it's interesting. I mean, I think it's a choice. The music is an early warning system. It really is. The more you play, the more, even if you're not consciously aware of it, it just you start hearing the music and you're like, okay, here we go, you know. But there are all sorts of keys.

Like I was saying, you know, if you walk into a room, first off, you're playing dead space, so you're going to be attacked by necrumorfs. Like, this is just not going to be a peaceful jaunt down the hallway. But also, you know, but I'm simply trying to collect a key card. I'm simply walking down the hallway. Well, I'm just wondering.

I mean, I guess Maddie, you just answered my question because I was wondering if that music takes away from the impact of the horror of them coming at you and the surprise of them coming at you. It adds to the impact because it's specific. It's a specific thing they're going for. They don't want you to feel surprised. They want you to know what's coming

and to feel the tension ratcheting up, which this game does on every single, you know, vector that they can. The environmental design, the level design, the story, the pacing. You're constantly feeling like you're like put, you feel the pressure coming and coming and then the music stops and it releases and you know you can kind of take a breath. I think that it's all part of them. giving you that experience. They need to give you those signals because they're not trying to

surprise you. The jump scares aren't, you know, it's not trying to like come out of nowhere like a movie jump scare where it's a shiny, you know, happy sunny day and then, oh, like something scary happens. Like that, they just can't do that and so they don't try to. And I'd offer alien isolation as a comparison point because that game doesn't do that where you'll just be walking around and you don't know if the alien is going to drop out of a ceiling vent one room over from you because the game isn't structured the same way. There's this sort of artificial intelligence driving the alien. It's always sort of hunting you.

But it's not a scripted scare, the way that Dead Space is constantly scripted. So it can be more random, and it does make you jump or feel that, you know, sinking feeling of, oh, God, now I have to deal with this alien, you know, in addition to whatever else I was dealing with. A very, very different feeling than playing Dead Space. And one that, that's a context I actually didn't have when I was playing the game in 2008. And now that I've played alien isolation, it gives me a whole different appreciation for the way this game is designed and for what it's doing. And there is also at least one difference between Dead Space One and the remake that we're talking about, where there is a slight amount of randomness now, which I don't know if you noticed this Kirk.

But in one, as far as I know, every jump scare, as it were, was planned. Like each necromorph would be in a certain place and the same place every time if you replay the level. Whereas in this game, there are differences. So if you replay parts of it, it might jump out of a different vent, for example, or in a slightly different order or at a different time. I think the number of enemies is the same. There have only been a couple missions I've replayed out of curiosity just to be like, where are they going to come out this time? And there are definitely differences. And there are also just rooms where a certain number of necromorphs are going to attack you no matter what.

Like there's going to be certain types or what have you. But they did randomize it slightly, which I think adds, I mean, it's just delicious frosting to me. Like everything they added, I'm like, this is actually really good. And I was actually pretty skeptical about this remake going in. Like hearing that Isaac would talk, for example, I was like, well, that could be terrible. And like that they were adding more story. I'm like, what's to add? And now here I am, like, watching these videos and being like, oh, my God, these guys are going to die.

I'm so worried about my friends. I don't know. I really dig it. like everything that they've added so far. I'm really finding that the balance, just the game balance is really good. I've multiple times found myself having exactly the amount

of ammunition that I needed to survive a fight. And I'm wondering if just how you were talking about the sort of slightly varying enemy placements, I wonder if they're doing something similar to, I know Resident Evil 4 does this, where it adapts the difficulty to how you're doing and it

drops different amounts of health and ammo based on where you are. So you always have like enough to make it through depending on the difficulty. Yeah. Because it's remarkable, like two or three fights. I've been really the thing where I'm stomping and kind of frantically looking for something that I can throw because I have almost no ammunition left and I kill the last necromorph with my very last bullet. And I mean, I know they're designing it so that it works that way. It's not an accident that that's happening and that it's happening consistently. But it's remarkable in the moment to just experience it because it feels just so scrappy and natural.

and sort of organic. I also wanted to mention the content warning system. I would guess you too are not using it, but I think it's really cool. So I just wanted to shout out that it's another thing about the remake that I really am liking. So there are a couple things they've added. One of them is just to put text on the screen that warns you about the nature of the graphic violence that you're about to see. And it's like super subtle. I was worried it was going to be like some big pop-up that was like, get ready.

a guy's going to bash his head into the wall and then he's going to fall over and die. And it's not like that at all. It's very subtle. It's like top right of the screen, I believe. And it just tells you like, you know, self-depictions of self-harm or whatever is applicable to the scenario. And you can tune it out or not. I mean, you can also decide whether or not to turn it on in the first place.

And the other thing that you can do that I've done mostly to make the game less scary for myself is that you can blur out some of the extreme violence that happens. Oh, really? And that just adds like a blurry box over stuff, which I find funny, which helps me be less scared. Or in other scenes where Isaac is present for the scene, they basically just blur out everything else that's happening besides Isaac. So it just looks like he's escaping from like a hurricane briefly.

And then after the scene is over, it fades away. And you can just see a bunch of dead bodies in the room and be like, okay, cool. Those people all got killed. It's pretty well done. This is in line with the content filter conversation. We were having an episode or two ago. That's really cool that they do that. Well, so that's, okay, so that, I mean, we don't have to go on a whole tangent about this,

but that makes for a more interesting philosophical debate because this is added by not the original creators of the game. We were talking about it, like the blood filter and stuff. We were talking about something that would be added by the creators is something that is added later by different people working on the remake. So interesting debate there too. Yeah. Although I wouldn't call it censorship per se because it's not like you aren't still participating in the scene. You're just blurring it out. It's an optional.

It's also optional. So this is like whatever. Censorship is definitely not the word that I would use. It's also kind of like turning the brightness way up, which I've been known to do on games that are too dark and scary. It doesn't really help with this game because it's so dark that even turning up the brightness doesn't really achieve anything at all. or like turning down just the fidelity of the graphics overall to you know play quake better or whatever like to just make it look like a bunch of pixels and that's it i suppose you could do that if you wanted to make dead space a really weird cerebral experience for yourself so a couple of things that struck me again uh just as a non kind of fan but someone who's appreciating this for the art that it is one thing i liked and one thing i didn't like i'll start with the thing i didn't like the thing i didn't like the thing i didn't like is um the upgrading system. It just seemed kind of superfluous and nonsensical.

Very 2008. Yeah, extremely 2008. The thing I really liked is the UI and the way that like the doors, like the way that the, your, your button appears and it's like continue question mark, go in, refill, save station. And the way that your menu opens up kind of diagetically within the world, I think it's all really cool and very much adds to the experience of like this scary world where you can't take yourself out of it for even a second. Even opening the menu doesn't take you out of the issue more. You're stuck on this thing, man. It's stuck. That was groundbreaking. All of that. The

U.X stuff was groundbreaking at the time. Yeah. And the health bar is on your body. Yeah, the health bar on your backpack. Yeah. Also really cool. Yeah. So cool. This was the first game I had ever seen that did that. The lack of markers and stuff. I bet Kirk Kirk really. They made a big deal out of it when it came out that that was like one of their stated goals. Yeah. I really liked that. And I had forgotten. and how much I liked it, despite obsessing about it at the time. And then playing this game again, I was like, oh, yeah, the health bar is on your body and also your little stasis charge up is on your body. The other piece of it that I like is just as I was thinking to myself, wow, it's crazy

that I have this stasis power, like this time stopping power. Like, I guess in the 26th century, humans just discover time stopping power. And then as I was having that thought, I was walking by a poster that was advertising the use of it. And it was like, oh, you know, here's the discovery of this. And I was like, yeah, all right, Dead Space. You were thinking maybe I'd be questioning this. And you explained to me that this is a technological innovation and this isn't just

magic video game powers. This is actually explained by the world. Yeah, I mean, that's straight out of System Shock too, which no doubt inspired the hell out of this game. Oh, yeah. And Half-Life. I mean, Kirk, I'll tee you up if you want to talk about Half-Life for a second. You can.

I'll allow it. I appreciated playing this after replaying Half-Life, too, with the two of you, where this game has a lot in common with Half-Life, but, I mean, System Shop, absolutely, in System Shock, too. And then even Biocococ, which, granted, came out a year before this game, so they were in development at the same time. But you can see how a whole school of game designers came up playing System Shock and Half-Life and took some of those ideas and translated them into, you know,

a slightly more streamlined, console-friendly kind of game design, which is definitely what this is. There are so many parts of this game that feel like Half-Life. There's a part early on where you walk into. a room and there's a scientist on the other side of some glass who then gets eaten by a monster, which just happens multiple times at the beginning of the first half-life. It happens multiple times in the game. It's not just one part. You are behind glass several times watching other people get eaten by next one.

Which is very 2008. I mean, there are things in this that just make me nostalgic for that period of game design. It just, it feels very much like Bioshock, which the second one does too. But also, I think the remake aspect of this is really interesting because we're kind of learning, right? I mean, between this and the Demon Souls remake, that there's a lot of meat on those bones of that sort of mid, late 2000s era of video game where if you just take something that's pretty close to the original, gussy it up, make it look really, really nice, maybe fine tune the controls, add some quality of life stuff. You've got a stew going. You've got a stew going. It just feels like we're going to keep bringing this back and I'm fine with it. Do you have any dream? Okay, let's all pick a dream, or late 2000.

mid to late 2000s remake game I would like to see. They're already rebooting perfect dark. I feel like I've already achieved what I wanted. I just have to wait for it. Well, no, I thought it was a sequel. I thought the perfect jerk they're working on is more than a sequel. I mean, I just want Far Cry 2. Yeah, or Far Cry 2.

What about Red Dead one? I would like to see that. Yeah, but they made Red Dead 2. Yeah, I would like to see that like with just the same gameplay as Red Dead 2. I've seen some discussion among people who are theorizing that motive will remake Dead Space 2. But then, of course, in that conversation, there are always people saying, well, maybe they should just make their own Dead Space game. Like, I think the Dead Space Fans' dream is a remake of Dead Space 2 just because it's a beloved, very good game. And then a new version of Dead Space 3 that just rewrites the story of Dead Space 3.

Because that game is pretty dire. like it ruins a bunch of characters. It has a totally bananas ending. It's worth looking up the ending to Dead Space 2. It is. It's never play. Also, I don't, I'm not going to spoil it, but like this game does make some changes to the ending of Dead Space 1, which suggests that maybe they will change some plot things in Dead Space 2. And I just looked it up because I wanted to know where it was going to go.

And I've already played the original game. So it's fine. I don't really consider a spoiler at this point for myself personally. And so I am kind of curious. If they were to quote unquote remake Dead Space 2, they could still keep in some of the best parts of it, but also change the story and tee up a completely different version of Dead Space 3, which is sort of a fun way to approach a remake. It's kind of Final Fantasy 7 remake style, where you end up going in a different direction by the end than what was expected.

Right. Especially with a video game, you're kind of given the opportunity to do that sort of a corrective, because you can take a lot of the gameplay stuff, the things that people really remembered in. enjoyed. And then you can just change the narrative some ways or other ways because you've, you know, the whole story was already told and it was probably told with some major flaws, just given the way that long-term video game stories tend to be told. So you can kind of return to it, give people the thing that they remember, you know, in this case, shooting the limbs off of necromorphs, and then go in some new directions with the story over time, which is exciting. I mean, it seems like this is doing well. I get the sense that they're going to want

to do this. So as long as people are down to keep reimbableness. making old games or at least are given the freedom to have some satisfaction doing that to you know creative to feel creatively fulfilled doing it I'm all for it yeah me too yeah there are a couple of games from that era that are getting remakes the Witcher 1 from 2007 that's right that game could really use it because I got I've only played a little bit good story but like it's really tough to play that now after playing the Witcher 3 there are rumors of a Metroid prime remake that's a Of course, fingers crossed. Hopefully that got announced like last night or whatever.

Yeah. That's true. Maybe. Perhaps there's modern warfare. Well, that's more of a reboot or whatever you want to call it. And I, just a little bit of a long shot hope here, I would like to see a remake of the 2006 game, 24, The Game, featuring Keeper Settling is Jack Prow. What? I wasn't sure what you were going to say, but I wasn't.

Why didn't you say Dante's Inferno? I'm so confused right now. That's another early. 24 of the game is, of course, in case you're curious, it features most of the voice acting cast is the actors from the show. It is set between seasons two and three. And in fact, it's like, it clears up a cliffhanger. It's 100% canon.

It clears up a cliffhanger from season two, I believe. And why wasn't that the bet game for this year for you, 24 of the video? Because it's hard to play like a PS2 game. these days unless you crack open a PS2. I don't think it's very playable these days. There's also a lost game. I don't know if either of you play that, but you want to talk late 2000. So I'm

looking at the Wikipedia page for that, Jason, and I was about to say Lost via Domas. What about that? Did you play that? Of course I was so obsessed with Lost. And that's a 2008 ass game. The ending of that game was like open up all sorts of mysteries. It was basically like

just to quickly sum it up. You play as this guy. who's like a survivor who's just never seen in the show because like he's on the tail right yeah he's just another guy well no well they're they're they're extras all throughout the show but you just never meet so he's one of the extras and like basically he his wife like either died in the crash right can't find her or whatever like he couldn't save her blah blah blah goes through the game like goes in the hatch like meets lock does all sorts of shit for for a bunch of hours just does it like five seconds after the main cast yeah yeah he gets a compass from ben linus i think with like degrees to leave and he gets on a boat and he leaves the island and when he leaves the island following these degrees he just like has a flash and wakes up again in the exact same position he was in when the game started except the wife he was looking for is like next to him now and then it's like lost and like cliffanger and it was crazy it was ridiculous was the whole game was a dream no it wasn't a dream it was like he changed time but then of course this has nothing that like the show is totally different it's nonsense we're talking about games that

do not need to be remade. That is lost to be a gentleman. I don't know. They should remake the entire sixth season of loss. That's what they should. First the game, then the show. That's talk about a show we should do a beans cast of. Anyway.

Who has the time, Jason? Yeah, really. Anyway, clearly we're done talking about dead space. I think we've really covered it now. It's so good. It's great. I love it. I think people should play it.

I'm psyched they remade it. I'm going to keep playing it. It's really good. It's amazing. We will take a break and be back with one more thing. Oh, Ross. Yeah. Oh, I'm glad I found you in line.

These clouds are really freaking me out. I hate having to stand in line. And boy, what a line. These giraffes do not smell good. No, they do not, and they have such short necks. But I'm hearing we need to get on this arc. We've got to get on the arc. It is about to rain.

Thought is about to destroy humanity. Hey, oh, sorry, sorry. Are you, Noah? Yeah, I know we look like humans. We're podcasters. We are podcasters, so it's different. Have you heard of Ono Ross and Kerry? We investigate spirituality, claims of the paranormal, stuff like that.

And you have a boat and say the world's going to end, so it seems like something for us to check out. We would love to be on the boat. We came two by two. What do you think? Ono Ross and Carrie, available on maximum fun.org. Oh my gosh, hi. I'm Dave Holmes, host of the pop culture trivia podcast Troubled Waters. On Troubled Waters, we play games like motivational speeches.

and it goes a little like this. Riley, give us an improvised motivational speech why people should listen and subscribe to Troubled Waters. I look around this ad and I see a lot of potential to listen to comedians such as Jackie Johnson and Josh Gondelman, and they need you to get out there and listen to them attempt to figure out sound Reba's clues or determine if something is a Game of Thrones character

or a city in Wales. I have chills. I'm going to give you 15 points. All that and so much more on Troubled Waters. find it on maximum fun.org or wherever you choose to listen to podcasts. We are back. I will go first with my One More Thing because it's related to aliens. Oh, okay.

And it is. I am rereading animorphs. I'm not sure how far I'm going to get. But I have begun Animorphs number one, the invasion. I'm happy about this. Is this because we talked about animorphs on typical? It's kind of because you're talking about animorphs. It's kind of because everyone.

because everyone's talking about animorphs lately. And it's also because they have released very slowly since 2020, Scholastic has released audiobook versions of every single animorph's mainline novel, of which they're 54, and they're putting out the 48th book this year. They're not quite done releasing all the audiobooks is what I'm getting at. Most of them are done. Wow. So that's how many hours of listening?

I don't know. A lot. It's going to take me a while. I don't know if I'm... This is why I began my saying I'm not sure how far I'm going to get. But I'm having a really great time. These books are great. I remember loving them as a kid.

I also remember every adult will tell you, oh, they're actually really dark. And like, yeah, they are. That's what they're kids. Like, it's fine. You're going to be okay. And they're about an alien invasion. I'm going to describe the premise of animorphs,

just in case the listener wants to check out animorphs. I've never read animorphs, yeah. I'm happy to hear that. You missed out, Kirk. I know. I was obsessed with Adamarces. I know. We talked about it on show.

They came out once a month. It was crazy. They had a new book every single one. I know. K.A. Alpugate. She was out there. She was writing as fast as she could. Body horror for children.

Her and R. L. Stein. Icons. Anyway. Truly. So aliens land. Glastic Book Fair icon. Aliens land in a group of diverse, adorable teens get their lives shaken up by the discovery that.

Aliens had actually already invaded Earth, kind of like the aliens and peacemaker. If you've seen that show, there's like little bugs in a whole bunch of people's brains controlling them, controlling their thoughts. But the alien that these teenagers run into is actually a friendly alien. He's kind of shaped like a stag and he's blue. And he's like, hey, guys, there's a bunch of really bad bugs controlling people on Earth. And I'm dying. And in my death, I'm going to give you the superpower for the five of you turn into animals. any animal that you touch, you can get its DNA and then learn how to turn a little.

It's a pretty reasonable plan for fighting off an invasion. It's like pick a few kids, let him turn an animal. Listen, this guy's dying. He didn't have any options. I mean, there's so much Lauren Cannon and you wind up with these side books that tell the story from his perspective. And it turns out that these five got, like they weren't coincidentally there. Like there were good reasons. Like he knew what he was doing.

For a real. It's absurd. Anyway, it's incredible. The kids are great. the body horror descriptions are freaking absurd. Like the descriptions of every horrifying alien and then also the descriptions like line by line of a child turning into a dog or whatever.

Like that sounds really cool when you're a kid. But as an adult reading it, I'm like, this is horrifying. Yeah, their bones crack. It's like in the magicians. They turn into foxes and it's horrifying. Or they turn into birds and it's like as messed up as that would actually be. Yeah, it's extremely messed up. So yeah, animorphs.

The audiobook is freaking great. Yeah, that's what I was going to ask. All the rest of them will be amazing. So I'm excited. I'm excited to listen to a bunch of animorphs. Jason, I see you also have a book. Wait, I have a quick question. Is there a way to easily just get like a PDF with all of them?

Yes. Like an ebook with all of them. There's an extremely easy way. I actually wrote an article for polygon.com today about this. The PDFs are all available for free on the Animorph subreddit. So you have no excuse not to read them. Is that like legally for a free? Well, KAA Applegate says it's okay and Scholastic hasn't ever.

ever weighed in. So you be the judge of whether it's legal or not. Interesting. Well, I would, I mean, I would like to just chip in a few bucks if she still gets them. But if you want to try before you buy, as it were. Yeah. Well, I just think if there's an easy way to buy it. But I'll look up your article. I'll check it out. Yeah, my one more thing is also a book.

It's a book called All Good People Here by Ashley Flowers, who is a podcaster who wrote this novel. So it turns out podcasters can write books, just so you guys know. Whoa. So the concept of this book is very, it's very, it's very Jillian Flynn, sharp objects. If you guys remember that book slash show. The concept is this woman goes home. She's a journalist.

She goes back to her, she's a journalist in a big city, goes home to her small town in Indiana where, shout out to Kirk, where there was a murder of a small, of a young girl committed 25 years ago. and now there's another kind of like kidnapping slash murder that fits the same profile, and she wants to figure out what's up, but she has personal connections to the case and yada, yada, yada. Very, very sharp objects. And as the story goes, obviously gets more complicated. There are twists and turns. She also has to care for this uncle who has dementia, which is really sad to read about.

I always just sad to read about people with dementia and just watching the portrayal of his illness is really good. And it's just a well-constructed, really interesting, twisty, not so much murder mystery as like bigger picture, small town mystery slash interesting family mystery. And then it ends. And it has possibly the worst ending, top five worst endings I've ever read in a book. Because the ending, and here is where I will get a little bit spoily. I'll try to be vague, but can't be helped at this point. So if you do want to read this book or you are reading this book, now's your chance to press that 15 seconds skip ahead button a few times because I'm going to get a little spoily here. But basically, the way the book ends is you find out the answers to all the mysteries.

That's left completely unambiguous. But the main character is left in a state where you have no idea what's going to happen next. Basically, like her and what turns out to be this villain character get into a scuffle and the villain like, ships her in a basement, and then it ends. And like, you have no idea

what's going to happen next. It feels like, when I read it, I swear to God, I thought there was a chapter missing from my copy of the book and then I went on Goodreads and every single review is like,

what the hell is that ending? And it made me think so much about how, like, I think that like there's a lot, endings are very important in any piece of storytelling and any narrative endings are super important. And I think it's very easy to read an ending

and be like, oh, of course she escaped somehow. She had this happy ending and they all saved the day and they all wound up happily ever after yada yada yada. But like there's something in our brains and the way the stories work that makes that part so so important for the catharsis of it all. Like you want to end a story feeling like there is a resolution and to have an ambiguous ending is just like one of the most frustrating things in the world and could really just like retroactively ruin an entire story for you. And you're like man, I trusted this the storyteller to take me through all the way to the end. And they really just like crash landed that plane. They just like did not stick the landing here. Extremely unsatisfying. So I would not recommend this book.

And like my wife who saw me just kind of like voraciously reading it. I read it all in like a couple of nights. She was like, oh, should I read that? I was like, God, I would have said yes until I got to this ending. And now it's like, no. No, I don't think so. So yeah, bad endings and especially ambiguous endings. because it doesn't always have to be like a positive ending.

It can be a negative ending, but an ambiguous ending is just absolutely the worst. And I think it just drives people crazy. But it gives you an appreciation for when someone does an ambiguous ending that still feels like an ending, which is a thing that people do. Like, you can end with ambiguity. I shouldn't say, I think ambiguity is very powerful and can be used very effectively.

Ambiguous in terms of like if the entire book is about one thing and then that thing is just not like resolved in a status for factory matter or in it's resolved in an ambiguous way, then that's what's frustrating. So the entire book, it's like, what's the best way to put this? I think you trust a book to follow its own rules, to play by its own rules. And when a book feels like it's cheating you at the end, that's when you get really frustrated. So if a book is like, if something is super literary and it's exploring all sorts of different

themes, and it ends on an ambiguous note where you don't know how a character is feeling because you never really knew how they were feeling or you don't know what's going to happen next to someone because that wasn't the point of the book in the first place, then it feels fair and it feels earned and it feels like, oh, okay, cool, this left me with a lot of thinking. Whereas if a book is very kind of pulpy, twist-driven, like we're following this protagonist and her thoughts the entire time,

the whole point of the book is to just kind of propel us along this murder mystery story. And then you get to the end and it just kind of abruptly ends, that's when it feels completely unarmed and unfair. and unsatisfying. So yes, you're right, Kirk. Ambiguity can be very effective and very powerful, but it has to play by the rules of the book and it has to like fit what the book is trying to do, whereas here it absolutely does not. Or if it's going to subvert those rules, then it needs to do so in a way that also feels earned, which this is something is doing. Yeah. I don't, I think it's difficult to do that with ambiguity and with like an ambiguous ending, but, but yes, definitely.

It's possible. It's just not easy. Good to know. All right, Kirk, what about you? Well, I've been playing Hitman, Hitman 3, which has now become Hitman World of Assassination. It's changed names, which is pretty cool. Totally new game. There's a new mode in it called Freelancer that is also very cool and really interesting. I've never really seen anything like this before. So everyone knows I love Hitman. I've played all three of the Hitsman, the recent IEO interactive ones.

I've actually played, gosh, I think every single Hitman game ever made. There may be Hitman 3. I think I maybe didn't play back in the day. These games are really fun. They're a very, they're like my exact kind of stealth game where you can just experiment and they're very systemic and lead to lots of comedy

and just fun, I don't know, sequences of events. So we've talked about Hit Man on the show before. Hit Man 3 came out, what, two years ago, no? Something like that? I think so. I think it was one of our first triple plays on this show. Yeah, we played it, I guess, in our first year. So since then, they've released some stuff

Fio Interactive has released some DLC and expansions for that game, but they've also sort of gradually started bringing all of the Hitman stuff together, and now they've finally taken Hitman's 1 and 2 and fully combined them into Hitman 3, so that if you, it used to be if you owned those games, you could play those levels within Hitman 3, but now if you buy Hitman 3, you just get all of those levels. The whole thing is like one big package. It's still a little bit confusing because, of course, it is that the downfall of Hitman has always been that There's like weird confusing shit like this online requirement that it has that's really frustrating. There's always like something where you're like, this could be the perfect game if you guys just

we get out of your own way. But anyways, it's as simple as it's ever been. You can buy what is now called Hitman World of Assassination and you get, I don't know, 20 levels and every level is so complex and fascinating and intricate that you could play around in it for 20 hours, just figuring out different ways to, you know, take out the different targets and exploit the AI and find secret. in the levels. I mean, there's just so, so much in this game because it's really three full AAA games in one. So what Freelancer is, is a mode that takes advantage of the fact that

all of those levels now exist in one game that you have downloaded. It's a kind of rogue-like game that they have designed on top of all of those levels with a whole new progression system and a whole new everything. I mean, it's just stands alone from the single-player game that you could play. And the way it works is basically you're still age in 47. You start in this safe house that's got a kind of, I don't know. What's the guy's name? Dorian Gray.

No, is that his name from, what's the guy with the painting is a lot of gray? That's different. Oh, Christian Gray. Christian Gray. That's it. I don't know. I've never seen those movies, but I feel like there's a lot of like cement, like expensive looking cement buildings in those movies.

Like 47 has a kind of, you know. I think you're going to talk about like a bunch of sex. Like a BDSM room. No. 47 has a little bit of a billionaire psychopath. Yeah, people are talking about the other architecture in Christian Gray's life. Yeah, so true. Because Christian Gray, that guy kind of seems like a serial killer.

And like, let's be real, 47 kind of a serial killer. Kind of. Actually, yeah. He just is a serial killer. Okay, so anyways, you have this kind of whatever, like cement, subterranean layer. And there's nothing in it, but as you play, you gradually upgrade it. And so that's your kind of permanent... You gradually build your BDSM dungeon.

Yeah. There might be, you do unlock new areas, and I'm sure one of the rooms is right, the BDSM dungeon. I guess. That would make sense. I haven't gotten that far. I mean, he is into costumes. Yeah, he doesn't have, he is into role play. Yeah.

I haven't played all the games, so it's possible that we're just talking about things that have yet to happen. So anyways, you go out on missions. The way that it works is you have like a campaign. It's a whole bunch of missions. And they're kind of, they're broken into chapters. They get longer and more difficult as you go. It's really hard at first. You lose a lot because it's really hard at first.

you lose a lot because it's a, I mean, it is a rogue-like. So the biggest challenge with this game is that you have to deprogram yourself from the way that you play Hitman, or at least I had to because I've played, I don't know, 100 hours of Hitman, and I'm very used to playing it a certain way. And this requires you to play it very differently. So you get, it picks the levels at random. You'll get, for the beginning, it's like three locations around the map. You have to kill a certain number of targets that are assigned procedurally to any of the characters in the level.

So, I mean, they pick them, but it's like could be one of a million people. So you kind of look, all right, well, these are my three locations, Columbia, New York, and Sapienza. So for me, at least, I know some levels better than other levels, but I know them all to different degrees. And I kind of look at it and think, all, well, that sounds good. So then you pick your first destination. It gives you some, like, side objectives. You're going to have to kill two people. You'll get bonus rewards if you, whatever, don't unlock any doors, or if you only kill your target, things like that.

You don't have to follow those, but you can. Basically, you just have to go in, find the person, kill them, and get out. You can't save, which means you can't save scum, which really changes, I would think, the way that most people play Hitman because you screw up a lot in these games. It's actually like, as much as I feel like a silent assassin badass when I play the game, that's because I am cheating and reloading a save whenever I get spotted. Like if you play without that, like, if you've ever played an elusive target in the base game, it's that same feeling where you get one shot. One shot, you can't save. And if you screw up, you know, I mean, there's ways to like quit to desktop really quickly and still get to try it again. but if you're playing honorably, you just lose.

So that happens here, too, and it leads to way more chaos, way more violence, because you're not really getting penalized for collateral damage. Like, you might not get one of those optional goals. But mostly, you kind of just can shoot your way out of something if you're able to and keep going until you get your targets. Or, like, eject early, because if you don't die, you just fail. You know, you don't lose as much stuff as you do if you die. Whatever.

There's a lot of particulars and a lot of metagaming to this to, like, you kind of have to, if you really grind and build up your weapons, you can kind of approach it a certain way, which is true to most roguelikes. There's kind of an optimal way to play. But if you're just playing for fun, it really is a more chaotic and more free-form version of Hitman.

It's probably more fun for someone who's played 100 hours and knows the levels. But even if you haven't and don't, it can be pretty fun once you get your head around the systems. Like if you're Hitman literate and you kind of know what's going to happen, you know, well, I kind of get how the costumes work. I get what it means when someone tells me,

no, you can't come in here. You know, like, they're just these sort of literacies you develop for the game. Once you have those, it's pretty fun and it's free. You know, they just put it out as a free update. And that's really remarkable to me. Like, it's so cool to see someone do this with, you know, these developers have been working on Hitman since I think 2016. So for seven years, they've been making these games. This is so much stuff.

I mean, it's just so much level design and content and, like, just things you can do. And they've managed to take it. And rather than have it be siloed off and released. in a whole weird way. They've pulled it together into this one thing that now everyone can just play. And they've developed a new way of experiencing it all together, which I just think is really cool. I've never seen anything quite like it. It'd be like if Arcane released a game that was Death Loop and both Dishonored games

with all those levels mixed up into a new, like, rogue-like and prey moon crash or something. Or like the Zelda randomizer was official somehow or like the like boss randomizer and Eldon Ring and stuff like that. Right. You get that sense of scope with this where you're just going from one exotic, incredibly well-realized location to another in a way that just doesn't feel like most video games feel because it's really three video games. So it's super cool. If that sounds interesting to anyone out there, I mean, especially if you already own the game, give it a shot. I think you'll have a good time. I've been having a great time with that.

Yeah, it sounds really cool. Those guys are making a James Bond game next, which is... I know. I'm going to play a hell out of that. It's very exciting. It's pretty cool. It's pretty exciting. Well, we did an episode again, folks.

And I guess everybody knew we could do it. We've done it before. But we did do it again. We were pretty established. We were pretty established at this point. Several times in the back. We did it again. And I have a feeling we're going to nail it next time, too.

I sure hope so. I have faith in us. I have a good feeling, too. I'm glad you remember all this times we recorded this podcast. Barely. Barely. Barely, but I do. All right.

We'll see you both next week. See you next week. Yep, see you next week. Bye. Triple Click is produced by Jason Schreier, Maddie Myers, and me, Kirk Hamilton. I edit and mix the show and also wrote our theme music. Our show art is by Tom DJ.

Some of the games and products we talked about on this episode may have been sent to us for free for review consideration. You can find a link to our ethics policy in the show notes. Triple Click is a proud member of the Maximum Fun Podcast Network, and if you like our show, we hope you'll consider supporting us by becoming a member at maximum fun.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. Maximumfund.org. Comedy and culture. Artist owned. Audience, audience supported.