Triple Click - Triple Play: God of War Ragnarök

Episode Date: November 10, 2022

It's got gods! It's got war! It's even got an umlaut. But how is God of War Ragnarök, as a game? Jason, Kirk and Maddy discuss.One More Thing: Maddy:  Marvel SnapKirk: Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of HopeJason: Weird: The Al Yankovic StoryLinks:Kirk’s Strong Songs episode on Weird Al’s “The Biggest Ball of Twine in Minnesota”: https://strongsongspodcast.com/episode/the-biggest-ball-of-twine-in-minnesota-by-weird-al-yankovicSupport Triple Click: http://maximumfun.org/joinBuy a Triple Click t-shirt: https://topatoco.com/collections/maximum-fun/products/maxf-tc-tclogo-shJoin the Triple Click Discord: http://discord.gg/tripleclickpodTriple Click Ethics Policy: https://maximumfun.org/triple-click-ethics-policy/ Happy MaxFunDrive! Right now is the best time to start a membership to support your favorite shows. Learn more and join at https://maximumfun.org/jointripleclick 🚀  SUPPORT TRIPLE CLICK:Join Maximum Fun | Buy TC Merch💬 JOIN THE TRIPLE CLICK DISCORD🎮 Triple Click Ethics Policy📱 SOCIALS | @tripleclickpodInstagram | YouTube | TikTok | Twitch

They say that to the man with the hammer, everything looks like a nail. Well, to the god with an axe and a pair of chaos blaze, everything looks like an enemy to be brutally murdered. Welcome to Triple Click, where we bring the games to you. This week we're talking about the new PlayStation exclusive God of War Ragnarok, from the overhaul of combat to the newly elaborate puzzles to the expanded cast of characters. We'll start in Midgard, but who knows where we'll end up? Let's get into it.

I'm Kirk Hamilton. I'm Maddie Myers. And I'm Jason Schreier. Hello. Hello. Pick up your blades of chaos and get ready to slash apart some demons. Pick up your frozen axes. Does the axe have a name? Leviathan X. It took me way too long to figure out that the chains on your arms are from the blades of chaos.

I'm sure he had scars from them. I thought Kratos was just wearing chains because it was like a cool like, you know, goth look. Well, one of the games is called Chains of Sparta. So, yes, the chains are very symbolic for Cretus. He has scars on his forearms from them, and he has to put them back on. I've learned a lot about Cranos this week. I know everything there is to know. We're going to talk about Cretus.

We're going to be talking about Cretus a lot this month. So, Triple Click is a listener-supported show, as you all probably know. We don't have ads. We don't have corporate sponsors. Nobody has input into what we talk about. Not even us. We just, it's a total chaos podcast. We leave it up to the fates, to the norns.

They just tell us what to do. The little demons on our shoulder just tell us what to do. Yeah, we just see a series of murals and we're like, I guess that's what the episode is. I guess that's it. We just follow prophecy. Prophecy. Tripbook like this week shall be. The podcast that was prophesized.

And we really appreciate the support from all of you out there who are maximum fun members. And if you want to become a member of maximum fun, you can support our wonderful independent podcast network. You can support our show. and you can also get access to bonus episodes of TripleClick that we make every month. So to do that, you go to Maximumfund.org slash join. Once you become a member, even at the lowest tier, you get sent a link for an RSS feed, for a bonus podcast feed that has all this Maximum Fun podcast stuff in there, including these monthly episodes from us.

And our new episode, the one for this month, is actually going to be about the game that we're talking about today, God of War Ragnarach. But it will be a beans cast in which we spill the beans, and we talk about the whole story because we're not going to be spoiling everything. Obviously, this game is just out and two of us haven't even finished it. But there's a ton of bonus stuff

that you can listen to if you become a member. So please become a member and support our show, maximum fun.org slash join. That episode is going to drop at the end of this month, right, Kirk? Yes. That will be at the end of November. So people have a couple of weeks to play to.

Yes, yes. Only a couple of weeks, but hey, that's how long it took me. But, I mean, once the beans cast is out, you have to listen to it immediately. You cannot. That's right. You have to finish the game by then. That's right.

Yes. Yes. Cool. So anyways, yeah, become a member. All right. So I have a quick story that I wanted to tell the two of you before we talk about God of War. Please. This is a wild moment that I just wanted to sort of mark and chronicle on the show.

So over the weekend in Portland, Oregon, there was a power substation fire that caused a big power outage in my part of town in southeast Portland. So for about six hours, we didn't have power. We were at some friend's house, another part of town. So we didn't know that the power was out. So we come home and everything is dark and we're like, oh, wow, our whole block is dark. I guess the power's at. And we come in and APA, our golden retriever is very anxiously awaiting us. And she's very nervous because she's like, what happened, everything got quiet.

The power went out. So a little bit freaked out. Okay. So the power comes back on later that night. And then we're kind of hanging out a couple of days later, a couple of days past, sort of talk about it some, whatever, like life goes on. And then Emily is heading out for the night last night to go visit a friend to just go hang out with a friend. And Appa, of course, is never happy when one of us leaves the house. And so Emily's getting ready to leave.

And she's like, don't worry, Appa, I'll be back. We always come back. And I'm like, yeah, we always come back. I was like, even when the power goes out, we come back. And the power goes out immediately as I said that sentence. Talk about prophecy. It was a moment of prophecy. So I only mentioned it on the show because it was one of those things.

It was crazy. And Emily was a witness. So we both just sat there for a second in the pitch dark realizing what it just happened. And I'm sure that both of you have had moments like this where just an impossible coincidence happens, some freak moment of timing where something like that happens. And I'm sure that a lot of listeners have as well. I forget them eventually, but I know I've had two or three over the course of my life. And that was one.

It was really crazy. And I just wanted to kind of market and use this as a forum to record that that happened because it really was super nuts. I mean, I was like, even if the power goes out, boom, we're in darkness. And it was like, what? Like the power just went out. So it's pretty wild. Have you considered that you might be Atreus and you're just witnessing the future? It was.

There's definitely a moment that felt sort of myth. Or Angerboda, I guess, right? Who are the soothsayers? Yeah, you're a giant. Yeah, you're a giant. At least part giant. You're seeing the future, yes. I am tall, though, as we've learned, you don't have to be told.

to be tall. You don't have to be tall to be a giant. And that's something I've learned about the giants and God of War. So I've learned a lot about God of War. I think really that's a matter we should all have in life. You don't have to be tall to be a giant. Think about it. It is. It sounds like a bumper sticker. It does. Would the bumper sticker say think about it? Elypsies, think about it. It's like, what am I thinking about?

I would say that bumper sticker. Yeah. Or a bumper sticker that just says think about it. That probably is a moment. Let that sink in. Yeah. So I guess with that level of depth already in place, we are ready to talk about a prestige video game, folks. We're going to get into fimbled winter. I'm going to talk about it.

Burr, it's cold in here. There must be some God of War Ragnarach in the atmosphere. I tried to write a Kirk Hamilton-esque introduction to God of War Ragnarok. We'll see how I did here. God of War Ragnarok is a sequel to God of War, the award-winning 2018 soft reboot of the 2000s era action game series about an ancient Greek demigod named Cretus who kills his dad Zeus and then the entire rest of the Greek pantheon. The original God of War games were a product of their time in the best and worst ways. Corny dialogue, big set pieces, sex mini games, and a muscle-bound hero defined by his rage and the dead wife and child he got tricked into murdering. God of War 2018 takes place hundreds of years later.

Kratos remarried, but this wife died too. They had a kid named Atreus. So Kratos is a sad single dad now. The father-son duo are in Norway, having pivoted from murdering Greek gods to murdering Norse gods, but not because they want to. Even though it is really fun to do combat in these games, Kratos is there to remind us that war is very serious.

And doing murders is not a means to an end unless it's nine different elves in front of a chess, in which case it's fine. Ragnarok picks up three years later with more fun combat and father-son vibes, except Atreus has aged up from 11 to 14. Kratos is still over 1,000 and he is starting to look it. Some of the Norse gods are mad at our heroes,

and some of them are surprisingly not mad. Kratos and Atreus spend most of this game agonizing about various prophecies they've seen about themselves. There is a lot of talking. I didn't play God of War 2018, and I do not recommend playing Ragnarok if you haven't done that. I did beat Ragnarok, though, and I have now watched a lot of God of War 2018 cutscenes.

Jason and Kirk, Let's talk about this game, which is huge and unwieldy and very, very sequally. Jason, how much of this game did you play? And what do you think about it so far? I actually love it. I am really enjoying it. It feels to me a lot like the 2018 game, which I really enjoyed, except it feels like everything is just bigger and better and more approved and iterated upon.

So, for example, one of the big complaints about the 2018 game was a lack of enemy variety. And this game is just like, hey, you wanted enemy variety. We'll give you enemy variety. Or like a lack of bosses. And this game is like, we'll give you 40 bosses in the first like hour. So yeah, I'm really enjoying it. I love the combat system. I think it's really cool.

I love some of the new twists they've added. And I really love Richard Schiff as Odin, who is just a runaway, like scene stealer. He even gets his very own like West Wing style walk-in talk, which is just incredible. I'm really enjoying this game. I just want to make a quick comment, by the way, a little bit of context for people out there. So the last game was directed by Corey Barlog at Sony, Santa Monica, who we had on our podcast, actually, had on Cotechus split screen a few years ago. This game is not directed by Barlog. It's directed by a guy named Eric Williams. And most people don't know who that is, but I actually do

because when I was researching for my most recent book, Press Reset, one of the kind of characters, starring characters in the book is a guy named Joe Kedara, who worked at Big Huge Games, the makers of kingdoms of Amalore Reckoning and was purchased by 38 studios and unceremoniously shut down. A whole story there. You got to read Pressure Set to learn about it. But anyway, Joe told me that his mentor is a guy named Eric Williams, who is this like long time combat consultant. So he worked on all the God of War games as like a combat designer. And he has also done a ton of consulting to other game studios out there on how to make really, really good combat. Like that's his specialty. It's making really, really good combat. So it is no

surprised that with him as director of this game, the combat is just incredible and feels in many ways better than the last game. So yeah, my thoughts are, I love it. I think it's really cool. I'm probably like, I'm guessing like 75% of the way through the main story and I've done a few of the side quests, not all of them yet, but I want to do all of them. I've done some optional fights, optional boss fights, which are awesome. And yeah, I love it. I think it's great. Cool. How about you, Kirk? Yeah, I like it. I generally, am pretty positive on it. I'm reserving judgment on the story,

since I'm probably about 40 to 50% of the way through. And we should say that we're all playing review copies that we got sent by Sony. So we've had this game for like a week and a half or something like that. And it's a big game. It's really big. I feel similarly to this as I felt about

I feel similarly about this as I felt about Horizon Forbidden West in a few different ways. It's really big. I'm playing it on the PS and it's a really sequel-y-sequel in a way that I suppose makes sense now that I could have expected going in, but I'm impressed by just how thick it is immediately in the events of the 2018 game. And for that matter, in the events of the original trilogy, there's a lot of, there's much more discussion of Cretus's life in Greece,

which is cool because it's kind of fun on multiple levels. It's fun if you've played those games to hear people talk. about the stuff that he pulled, especially in God of War II, which has a pretty banana story. But it's also fun to hear these characters react to stories that they hear as he's like, well, yeah, I went, you know, and like killed the fate so that I could rewind time and use their power to kill my father's zoos. And people are like, what? Because, you know, compared to the stuff, he does, he does some wild stuff in these games.

But in those original games, it got pretty crazy. He does. And so do many of the other characters. So who are they to judge? But yeah, it is funny to hear them talk about it. So I like playing it. I mean, I think that it's also similar to Horizon Forbidden West. Just moment to moment.

I mean, it's a big old crowd pleaser game. It's got really, really good combat, ridiculously good combat. I'm so impressed with their combat team. It makes sense, Jason, that the game's director has a background in combat because as good as the combat in the 2018 game was, it's just we can get into it in a little bit, but just the degree to which they've blown out each specific element of combat

and then sort of compensated for that with enemy design and encounter design is incredible. I mean, it's like top, top, top shelf stuff. The puzzles are cool, they're fun, they break things up, they're okay, but they're not my favorite. Some of them I like more than others. Some are better than others, yeah. And then the story I like

at times, and then at times I'm not totally sure. Like I said, I'm not finished. I think it's at its best when it's dealing with change, regret, and atonement. Those are the three kind of themes that come up a lot, especially in the beginning, where characters are dealing with the fact that they are different people now than they used to be and that they have done bad things in the past and they have to kind of accept the fact that they caused harm and that you can't just make it better by going and doing another mission that fixes the thing you did bad the first time. And of course, Kratos is the king of that.

This is built into his character because he is just like this walking slaughter factory for the first three games. in this series. And now he is, of course, a pretty different character and has grown a lot. But then Atreus is also dealing with things they did in the last game. I think that stuff is really interesting. Yeah, well, that's to that point. That's a really important thing because I think a lot of people,

certainly I, after the last game, was like, wait, are we just not going to deal with the repercussions of, like, Atreus murdering Modi and, like, him just stabbing the guy out of rage? Because that... There's a little kid. He's like a little kid, and he goes full rage mode and is like, I'm a god. there's no consequences for my actions.

I'm going to do murder. It's a wild scene that I watched on YouTube. So that's dealt with in the context of like Cretus and Atreus, like Atreus having a tantrum and Cratus kind of bringing him back. But it's never really dealt with in terms of him having repercussions for that action. So they are definitely addressed in this game. So yeah, I like that a lot. There's a similar storyline that deals with it is the return to Alphheim,

which happens fairly early in the game. In the first game, you go to Alphheim, which is the realm of the elves. and pretty quickly begin fighting dark elves because the dark elves appear to have won a war and are slaughtering their remaining light elves. And it's this very one-sided situation. And Kratos sort of cautions Atreus at the time. You don't know what happened here.

We just need to get the light of Alphheim so that we can recharge. You know, whatever, they need the fast travel system to start working. So they're there for one reason. And Kratos is like, we don't want to get involved in this. They wind up getting involved. They even kill this really important. dark elf leader. And the whole time it's not really, you know, you're fighting these guys because they're in your way. And then when he dies, he says, you've done a horrible thing in killing

me. Like, you have done something awful and you don't even understand what you did. This game deals with that. And I think that's cool. Like, there's a lot of stuff like that. There's a Mimira side quest earlier that I think is really neat because we get a lot of Mimera's backstory in the first game, but we don't really get him dealing with the fact that he was Odin's right hand for so long and did so much harm to so many people. So I think that that's cool. and it's dealt with in a good way. I'm a little less into it when they start getting into prophecy. Just because prophecy as a narrative device is, I don't know,

like you can do it well, I guess, but it's also just so easy to fall into a lot of different tropes. And one of the big tropes that this game falls into that just I have become allergic to over the last five years is the trope of one person knowing something that they won't tell someone else. And then the entire conflict between those characters comes from that, which is happening quite a bit at the moment.

But then again, want to get too much more into it since this is more beans cast stuff and I am curious where this is all going but I'm certainly enjoying the story I mean like you Jason I love watching Toby Ziegler walk and talk and then stand at a desk ranting all the actors are great I don't know the guy's name who plays Thor he's great but he's wonderful Christopher Judge is so good as Kratos he gets to say what was the thing he just said I'm not afraid of

death he's like death can have me when it earns me I was like hell yeah like you get so many lines like that Thor is Ryan Hurst, who's also Ryan Hurst, he's so good. He's got a great grumbly voice. Really, really, a lot of great actors in this. A lot of very funny lines from Thor early on.

I really enjoyed that super early boss fight with Thor where he makes fun of you and calls you a bad father. Even as someone who hadn't played the 2018 game and just kind of knew the broad strokes, I was like, this seems earned, this seems fair to me. I had just been watching Cratos

be real cranky towards Atreus right before that. Only I'm fair. Because Thor is like the universe's worst father. Well, but that's how it starts is that the two of them, it's like two dads shit talking each other. And like that is hilarious as a boss fight concept. It's also funny for me to learn that apparently there weren't many boss fights in the original game

because there are so many really spectacular ones in this game. And I mean that as a compliment, but also just in the pure sense of the word spectacle. There are definitely boss fights that are really bringing it in terms of phases and just, oh, now we're fighting again, but in a totally different arena in a different way, and I need to use something different. And that's fun. There are a couple of those in the first game. Yeah, in the first game, there's a moment where you fight a dragon.

Yeah, the Thunder Dragon, yeah. And it's this moment in the game where they really lean into the fact that this is basically a single take game. They've cheated in a couple clever ways in the sequel. but it's a game where the camera is designed to appear as though it is just following in one continuous take. So we never zoom out to a big wide shot as Cratos takes down a dragon. In the first game, there's this moment where you run up a dragon's back and around and over its maw and like stab it through the teeth in midair.

And it's amazing. And it's just the feeling of, I think I've talked about this other show before, the camera goes in with him. And it's like a handheld camera moving. and it's a cutscene. I mean, it's seamlessly folded into gameplay, but you're not controlling him, but it's this feeling of, oh, shit, we're going in, which, especially having played the first three games,

you spend so much time zoomed way out in those games where Cratos is the size of a bug, and he's fighting some hydra that takes up the whole screen. So here to be so up close to his shoulder is cool. And in this game, yeah, they're doing that a lot. There are some, man, one of the early boss fight, not super early, I guess maybe a third of the way into the game. You know what I'm talking about this huge, like,

dragon thing that you fight. Just unbelievable, like multi-phase fight where it keeps doing these extended, seamless cutscenes where the camera follows him into all this wild stuff. I mean, they're really delivering on the spectacle. That is certainly true. It's amazing. The camera makes me think,

Maddie, you haven't given your overall impression, so I'll throw it to you in a second, but that camera makes me think about how it's still remarkable. I still can't believe that in 2018, they managed to transform this story about a cartoon character getting mad at people into like a prestige drama. type of story and it really is it has the pathos it has emotional weight like it made me emotional

at points and how it continues to and i'm sure will at the end so i think what a trick what a like slight of hand to do that with god of war of all series to turn it into like this just high high quality like HBO level like prestige game series anyway mattie what are your overall impressions you still have in charon well i you've finished the game right i have finished the game I just went ahead and plowed all the way through it because I was already playing it. And I just kind of got in the groove and finished it. You know how it is with an open world. Yeah, I wish I loved it more, but I didn't hate it.

I think I described it as a B or a B plus to you guys. I'm so hesitant to rank games in that type of way, but that's really how I feel about it. It feels very uneven to me. so I'm really curious what you two are going to think of the overall story when we get to the beans part of things because there are some story beats that super worked for me. And then there are some where I'm like, I just don't know why this is in the game. And I don't know that it should be in the game. And that is frustrating because you're spending so much time with the characters.

And if you end up feeling like that time was wasted for any reason, that can be really frustrating. But then it also means that the story moments that feel like they pay off, like you spend a whole lot of time with somebody and then you see it pay off. It feels more rewarding, especially in a game where you really feel like you fought through something with someone else or as someone else. That's the kind of thing that can really work. I realize I'm being extremely vague, but it's it is what it is. I also think that in a year where Elgin Ring truly captured my heart, it's kind of tricky for me to love this combat as much as I, wanted to, but I also think part of that is the fault of people promising me that the God of War combat would be the star of the show. So I went in with really high expectations. And I would say

that combat is fun. And I'm enjoying it. I enjoyed it, past tense. But it's no, it's no from soft game. You know what I'm saying? So I don't know. I like it. It's a totally different things. They have a totally different thing. They have very different rhythms. I mean, in God of War, in God of War, you can win by button mashing. You can't beat Eldon Ring by button mashing. But in God of war, part of, you're kind of like, you have to create challenges for yourself. Can I beat these guys as quickly as possible?

How can I do this with Flourish? Because like if you want, you can just like throw the axe at something until it dies and just block a bunch. Or you can just like mash the blades of chaos. But if you're really getting into it and you do like, all right, I'm going to freeze this guy with the axe and switch to the blades. of chaos and light them on fire to do extra damage. And then I'm going to do this combo.

And if you like really go through the skill tree and you're like, you really have to, it rewards you if you pay a lot of attention to like the skills and remember the combos. Kind of like a fighting game. Right. Or like Bayonetta almost. I think that, I mean, I sort of, it grew on me as time went on. And there were definitely moments when I was like switching between weapons and really

loving it. I never loved the Perry system in this game. But eventually I did get this amulet power up that made the Dodge Roll more powerful and after that I started to really dig dodging around and rolling around more. I always felt like the role was a little bit too short prior to that moment and that was frustrating to me because as people may recall by the end of Eldon Ring, I had went from being a Perry person to a Dodge person and now I'm like, what this game's making me a Perry person again? What am I doing here?

You gotta go play Bloodboring. This is truly just me being nitpicky. I really did enjoy it. It's just that it would be very difficult for me to usurp Eldon Rings, the feel of an axe in Elton Ring in any way to me. I don't know. Yeah, I mean, I'm not going to fall into the morass of comparing this with Holden Ring because I agree that they're... No, it's fine. I mean, it's a valid comparison. They are both recent games with good combat, but it's doing something very different.

I mean, the feel of this game, to me, it has such a kind of bouncing. see grippy feeling, there's so much of that sticky friction to this game, the way that you're attached to and bouncing off of other combatants in an arena, and the design of the arenas. I really, like, I wrote down a bunch of examples here of ways that this game elaborates on ideas that were in the original. And it feels to me as more like Doom Eternal than anything. So anyone who played Doom Eternal, there's a lot of similarities between this game and Doom eternal. All right, so like you, so in the first game, you, when you hold down right trigger, you chop. You do a big vertical chop, and it's a finishing move on a lot of enemies, but for

some, it's not, and it just kind of hits them. In this game, when you hold down the right trigger, you do a horizontal sweeping chop, and the horizontal sweeping chop hits smaller enemies, and then you spin them around and you can throw them at other enemies. So there's suddenly this new layer to it. Or in this game, it's possible to stun, to knock someone down so that the R3, like click, like a button appears over them, but it's not red, it's only, it's gold. So in the first game, in the 2018 game, when it was red, that meant it was time to do a finishing move,

and you do a finishing move on a dude. When it's gold in this game, it's not a finishing move. It's like a stunner where you knock them back. So that also adds a new layer. So an enemy can have a ton of health and you stun them. There's so much more stuff like that. Everything is like that. There are a variety of shields.

So you don't just have this one shield. You can get a heavy shield that charges up as people hit it, and then you double tap the left shoulder button and you do like this big area of effect like slam. Or you can get a parry shield that's really good for parrying. And if you parry, then you get a special counter. Or there's other ones. There's one if you hold it down and it charges up. Eventually you get back the original shield that you had and that's what I'm using now.

So there's all these options for shielding. And then there are all these different kinds of attacks. There's not just yellow and red attacks. There's blue attacks. And blue attacks can be interrupted with a shield bash. Also, there's like a fast moving climb. So you can use the blades of chaos to climb up to a higher level really quickly. And a lot of fights take place on these multi-tiered arenas,

which never happened in the first game. That just wasn't a thing. So now you're like climbing up, jumping across gaps and jumping back down. And when you're in the air and you hit attack, you do like this massive ground pound. So you can pull yourself up, grab a guy. You can use a blades of chaos move that pulls you across the platform you're on to the next person, jump down to the ground. I mean, it's so much more.

complicated. And the objects, there are objects everywhere they can throw it. And I mean, there's a lot of stuff. Yes, there are also objects. So it's so much more elaborate, so much more complicated than the first game. And that might not be everyone's cup of tea. Like, Doom Eternal actually isn't totally my cup of tea. I really like Doom 2016 and Doom Eternal gets a little too complicated. This I'm really liking. But that kind of design and like fitting yourself into something that feels like this big sort of ping pong obstacle course of violence kind of thing, like a bouncy house of violence, is just very, very different than something like Eldon Ring, which is so much more about caution. And so I, and Bayonetta even,

which is more like dancing and flayed all three of. And so I feel like in terms of a game that has combat where you're like a ping pong ball that's stylishly bouncing around and you get to decide how you want to take down each enemy. Like Bayonetta is such a different beast than this game. And so in my head, this is occupying a weird. space where I like just finished playing all three bayonettas and then started this up. And it's probably just hitting me in a weird way where I'm like, this is a little more Eldon ring, but it's also a little more Horizon Forbidden West and Zero Dawn. And it just doesn't didn't quite click with me as much as I wanted it to.

And so much of that is like the personal preference of a rhythm of the way that you fight in a game. And it's something kind of ineffable where I'm just like, I don't know why I never quite got into the rhythm of this one compared to Bayesian. But I totally get how someone could or would and would be like, this is it. This is the rhythm in the way that people even have certain Frumsoft games where they're like, I love Dark Souls 2, hate one or whatever, because of just minute differences and like how long it takes to Perry or whatever. That's the nuclear take.

Does anyone say I love Dark Souls 2 and I hate one? They're out there. I'm sure they are. No, yeah, I will just say, though, as someone who I'm just coming to this, as someone who liked God of War, 2018. and recently played it. Here's more of it. Here's way more of it.

Yeah. It's not even just way more of it. It's like a ridiculously more elaborate and thoughtful and creative and interesting system. And I think it's incredibly good. Like I really am impressed by it. So I'll just throw that out there. That's sort of where I'm coming from and that I am super impressed by combat more than anything else in the game. Though liking the game overall, like I said.

It is, it is violent. I'm not sure how I feel about how much blood and gore there is in this game. It's really, really violent. Yeah. I've been playing this on the TV, actually. I hadn't played a console game on the TV in a long time, but I've moved my PS5 out in the living room. I'm surprised you're not playing it on the Steam deck.

I know. Well, I've been playing some on the Steam deck. That's kind of part of the move. It's a whole thing. Okay. Also, you know, can I say the Sony headphones around that they've got going, the built-in headphones round is really good. Like, I used to be all like, oh, you've got to get the Goldie decoder in the special film.

You can just plug headphones into that thing, and it works. You don't need the Sony headphones. headphones or anything. It's really good. Anyways, no, I'm playing on the TV. Suddenly, he's out there with me a lot, and it's just having someone else in the room with you while he played this game just gives you that perspective where you think, what does the person sitting next to me think of this? And in this game, so often I'm just like absolutely vivisecting people. There's a thing from the first game. It's the Wolverkill that's back in this game.

Most of the enemies from the first game are back. Wolvers are these kind of werewolf dudes. And when you do the right stick, click, kill, he like grabs them, punches them, grabs their jaw, and then rips their jaw, peels the bottom of their face off, like fully down their torso, like basically rips them open. It's so unbelievably violent. And I agree. Super strength for you. God likes to write. A lot of times I'm laughing because I'm like, wow.

But it is very violent. And there are definitely times, especially against some of the animal enemies where I'm like, this is just brutally killing a big dog, basically. It's so funny. It feels incongruous of the story because the story, which we should talk about a little bit, is all about Cratos kind of renouncing war, which he tried to do in the 2018 game but wasn't quite successful at. And now it's him like doubling down on that, wanting to protect Atreus, like wanting to flee combat,

wanting to not get into Ragnarach, wanting to not fight any more gods. Yet when he does fight enemies, he's just kind of ripping them apart, literally piece by piece, just like mauling them to death. So it is pretty funny. Like one second, they'll be like, No, Atreus, we cannot go to war. And then he's like,

I mean, I would say it's contradictory, but I also think it intentionally isn't. Like, you are supposed to understand that Cretus himself is uncomfortable with the fact that this is his life, and he'll repeatedly say that. And it's why he's always like,

I don't want to get involved in all these petty disputes. And it's sort of frustrating to be around a character who keeps saying that and keeps being like, I would like to not advance the plot forward. I would like to stay home and not do any of this. That is a tough thing. And it's sort of related to the point that Kirk made earlier

about how it's tricky to have characters talking about a prophecy where it's like either they're trying to prevent it or like they have some agonizing to do about it. And like that's very difficult to be around in a game where you're like, but I would like to advance the plot though. And Ragnarok's in the title. everything. So I think we're probably going to get to that at some point. And I know the beats of that story. So like, how much longer do I have to wait before we can kick off some of that sick

Ragnarok action, you know? And the game starts with Fimble Winter, which is this period of like endless cold and snow and winter and like really screws up all the different realms of the Norse mythology. And it's supposed to set up, right? It's supposed to happen only right before Ragnaract. So yeah. That's right. I want to talk about the ensemble cast because this game does interesting things of that. So why don't we actually, let's put a pin in this, or put a marker here, because we're going to spoil something mechanical that happens in the first few hours. This might be a nice little surprise for people, so I want to give people a fair warning. If you don't want to know anything about Ragnarok, about God of War Ragnarok, skip ahead.

Kirk's going to come Bing in here with the timestamp for one more thing. So you can skip to that. Bing! Kirk here with the timestamp for one more thing. If you want to just skip over any other story discussion of this game. That timestamp is 47 minutes 35 seconds. That's 47 minutes 35 seconds. Okay, back to the show. Bing! Okay, so, spoiler warning. You've been warned. Here you are. Let's actually, let's give people a little bit longer since we run into the thing where we give the warning and then we immediately

I was going to just keep talking. I'm drawing it out even more then because I really don't want to just come out with the spoiler. So God of War 2018 was very much a game about Cretos and Atreus and to a lesser extent, Mimir, and there were other characters, but they did not play pivotal roles in the story, other than, like, giving you occasional side quests. This game is very much an ensemble story to the point where you actually wind up playing as Atreus, and that's a cool little thing that happens towards the beginning of the game. You suddenly get control of him with his bow and his special abilities, and he has some cool special abilities in this game that I won't

get into, but you also, like, kind of expanding on that further, you also get different companions along the way. So, for example, early in the game, Atreus sneaks off and is with Sindri, accompanied by Sindri, and suddenly the square button, instead of having Atreus shoot arrows, has Sindri throwing things at enemies. So that's a cool little twist. Yeah, it's a cool little twist that really changes up the gameplay. And it makes for some interesting story stuff, because instead of Atreus just like having a tantrum and you being like, Kratos trying to calm him down, you actually, actually play as Atreus when he's like sneaking off in the night and doing things against his father's wishes, which leads to a lot of cool story stuff. It leads to eventually Atreus and Kratos

kind of having to reckon with that, which was one of my favorite scenes of the game, which happens a little bit later, and that they're like confronting some of the tensions that led to Atreus going off and sneaking off on his own. But it's also really fun to play because there's a lot of periods where you're just switching between the two of them and Atreus has his own storyline and own adventure. Like you mentioned earlier, Maddie, Atreus is a teenager in this game. And it's cool because you get to play as him, like, kind of having his own metaphorical puberty as metaphorical, like, teenage adolescents, like growing up moments. And that's pretty cool, I think. I've enjoyed that aspect of the game quite a bit. Yeah, I really liked playing as Atreus. I like him a lot better.

As people may recall, I'm allergic to dad games. And so the very beginning of this game, when Kratos was being super cranky, I was like, I don't know if I'm. I'm going to make it. This is, this is rough for me. But then when you switch to Atreus, I was like, I know, but part of that is because Atreus is so different, that it automatically shakes up how you would feel in those moments. I mean, he's a child, but also he's, he's perky, he's innocent. I know his sense of humor has been kind of hit or miss with some of the members of Polygon staff, but personally, I found him very endearing. Enduring than Cratos.

So I really liked spending time with him. And I also liked how he felt to play. I felt combat a little better as Cretos for, or as Atreus rather than Cretus for whatever bizarre reason. I just really vibed with the way that he felt. And just enjoyed it. I thought it was really cool. And like a nice way to show that he's becoming his own person independent of Cretos. He's learning his own godlike persona as Loki apparently.

And that is illustrated through. him being playable. Like that's, that's gameplay meets story in a very concrete way that works. Yeah, I like playing as him okay. I think Cretus is more fun to play just because Atraeus basically has the bow. He kind of controls a lot like Aloi from Horizon for 50s, which is fine, but Kratos is a pretty distinct thing. And the combat is the most flushed out combat encounters all take place with Cratos. The Atreus stuff feels more like these cool narrative chapters that are kind of standing on their own. But it is fun when you get to shoot robot dinosaurs

and their armor comes off and the chase is like, yeah. And then he collects their material. There's weak spots. No, none of that happens. No, but I do like playing as him and I like what it does for the narrative because, you know, a story this long, this is a long game. I mean, I'm like halfway through or something

and I've played a ton of it, especially if you're doing side stuff, which this is also similar to Horizon in that there are different teams. of side stuff and the side quests that are called favors, which everyone will, I'm sure, learn on their own. But those ones are basically story quests, very similar to how in Horizon forbidden West. Which is funny, because favors makes you think of like little things that you're going off to do for a thing. Right. But they're very much not. It's similar to how in Forbidden West,

you'll do a quest with a major character and get this whole thing about their backstory and their relationship with Cratos or whatever. Like, it really sort of flushes things out. So those are basically mandatory or as I see them as considered as part of the main story. So there's a lot of game here. And if you have a game that long, it's just hard to tell a story for that long from one perspective. It's why so many games just do better when they have, you know, multiple point of view characters in addition to just a bigger ensemble, which this game also has. So yeah, it's just nice. It's fun. There's a scene earlier on where Atreus is climbing and talking to himself. My favorite. He is having an argument with an imagined

version of Kratos, and then the imagined version of Kratos makes a pretty good point. And he's like, well, okay, that's a good point. We put it that way. And it's good. Because it's actually tied in with the thing I don't like, which is Atreus not wanting to tell Kratos things, and then that leading to conflict. It's sort of the opposite.

It's fun to see him, seeing things from his father's perspective and communicating even with an imagined version of him. And I wish they were able to stick with that. I understand. It's like a really easy storytelling trope to go to because it just builds conflict in between the main characters. But that is a little annoying. And I'll say that to the writing on Atreus, this whole thing has more of a Marvel kid

energy. This whole game kind of feels marvel-y in a way that just because I'm a little sick of Marvel makes me be like, man, more of what kind of Marvel quips? But broadly I agree that I think he's pretty well written and pretty well-active. And like, he's just, he's not as compelling a character to me as Cretus just because Christopher Judge and Cratus, there's just something in the way he gives that performance that's very distinct. It just feels like it's this big thing where Atreus is a little more like Oh yeah, it's like the teen who wants to go and find his

You know, he's got cool powers and wants to go meet new people and have an adventure But it's nice to play as somebody who wants the story to move forward and is like being an active agent for the story Like one of you was saying that it's kind of frustrating that Kratos is like No, let's not do this I don't want to do this You need a Traus in that story to be the one who's like no we have to do this because I know this and this and this and so I'm gonna go do it and kind of keep the story moving along. Yeah, I actually didn't feel like the writing was too marvely and I felt like Traus was actually

a Traus is actually very real. He feels like a 14 year old and a 14 year old can be annoying and maybe too quippy and too snarky. But like that's how 14 year old stops. Sure, it's all like the joking between him and Sindry the way that they're always kind of yelling jokes to one another. Like it's fine and it's... I mean, but those are two jokey characters.

It's not like Cratos is out there being like, oh, they fly now. I'm comparing it to some things that the 2018 game did where like, you know, the first five or six hours of the 2018 game is this really strong statement. And I get that it's like you can't do that again, but it's this almost silent series of events with just this with dad and boy walking through the woods. And it's pretty interesting and powerful. And the way that that game slowly builds to things is also like is really, compelling to me anyways, the 2018 game. When you first unlock the Bifrost and open up the travel portal, it's like crazy because you haven't seen anything like that because the first five hours

of the game are just walking through snowfields and fighting Drager. And I get that that's also kind of repetitive and like nowhere near as cool as the stuff that happens in the first five hours of this game. But they're kind of sacrificing the one thing by having it just immediately be, okay, everyone's here, we're all joking around. There's lots of big dinner table scenes where everyone's sitting and talking and you know, it's a lot of jokes and references and conversation. It's cool. It's just a different thing. That's character development. It's like people who have grown over the course. I think it's like it's helpful. You made this point earlier, Kirk, that this is a very sequel-y sequel.

It's really helpful to think of this, I think, as like a part two of a story. Like rather than, it's ironic that The Last of Us Part Two was called Part Two because that felt like less of a part two than this does. Like this feels like you could play God of War 2018 and go straight into this and it would feel like, The last of us part two really feels like a part two as well. All of these Sony sequels are really concerned. We're not talking about less. The point being that like this is like they could stitch together this game and have the camera like still stay and it would just go straight into the. Like it doesn't feel it feels like and a lot of that character stuff that you're describing is just like development from the previous game that is just carried over.

And I think that's like, like Atraeus and Sinji have known each other for years. And they've apparently like it's set up that they've been going on the. these outings together for years. So like of course they're going to joke around and make quips to each other. Like they're not traveling in this unfamiliar world with strangers anymore, the way that like, and it's set up that at the beginning of the 2018 game, Kratos and Atreus are essentially strangers. Like they barely know each other. So there's a lot of, I think, just development that has happened that I think you have to consider. And actually I think that's part of what makes the story so strong, at least for me, is that like the Kratos we're

seeing here is still, it's pretty different from the Kratos in 2018. And even the across, like, along the course of this game, the cratos I'm seeing right now, as I'm playing, like, 75% of the way in is very different than the cratos I saw at the beginning of this game. And I think that doesn't often happen in video games. Like, you look at a lot of main characters and they haven't changed very much over the course of the game, other than, like, watching their levels go up and their skill trees go up. So I think that is tested into the strength of the storytelling here. And so one of the reasons I really love it.

Yeah, I mean, I think that's true in terms of the pacing of this story. But it's just very chatty. It's a very chatty. It is. This is just chatty, chatty, chat. It took me a while to get used to how much talking there is in it, because I'm very used to listening to a podcast when I play an open world video game. You absolutely cannot listen to a podcast while playing this video game because Mimir is actually

podcasting for you. Mimir has a lot to say, and he has a whole show that he does about Norse mythology, and you are going to be tuning in. And like, once I kind of got on board with you. that and I feel like it took me, I don't know, five to ten hours before I was like, this is just a game where everyone will constantly be speaking. And I just have to accept that if I'm playing this game, it's like a TV show. Like it, it is, there's constantly, constantly talking. I think one of the reasons for that is that Mimir's stories were just

a highlight of the first game. Like they were awesome. And so yeah, I mean, but that's one example. It's like there's plenty of quest where Mere is not present and somebody else will be talking the entire time. And it won't be Kratos because that is not that guy's deal. But somebody else will be talking the entire time. And it's just a matter of who. Don't you think it's interesting, though? It's not like it's bad. Like, it's always fascinating stories, I think.

I mean, sometimes... But I'm also into mythology, so I... Well, I like the mythology part of it. There were pieces of this where I just feel like the fact that I didn't play the 2018 game really hurt me. Because there were so many moments

where I was like, I don't know who they're talking about. Because, like, I don't know who those characters are. And I don't mean, like, I don't know the... in the mythology because a lot of times I did, but I didn't know who they were in the larger scope of the game. Like, it wasn't until I looked up who Thor's kids were and understood like, oh, okay, they died in like a weird way. And like the whole situation with Balder and like Freya's feelings on the matter, I really didn't understand the full import of that entire situation

until like pretty far into the game when I started being like, I need to look some stuff up. because I'm really, like, this stuff is not resonating with me. So I do feel like in that sense, I am a cautionary tale because I'm like, I just wasn't as emotionally attached to certain things that happened in this game as I would have preferred to be. And I think that's probably how people felt with Horizon Forbidden West, too. Like, that's a game where there was a really emotional first chapter that was about, like, motherhood and Aloi trying to figure out who she was as a person and, like, who her mother was and, like,

what really happened in her life. And then to have the second game be about all these other characters that she meets along the way, it's like, well, why would I care about any of this? You don't even know who this person is or like what her journey was. And I kind of feel like I screwed myself in some ways by doing it this way. So yeah. And the recap is not sufficient. No, recap is real bad. The recap is not good at all. So, yeah. Well, that's useful. I mean, people listening along, assuming they didn't skip ahead of the times at the timestamp earlier, I think. Well, I mean, word of advice. Yeah, well, a good word of advice. Go play. If you haven't played 2018, go play that before you play this. Mm-hmm. Or watch it like a TV show, the way I watched the Uncharging games before we did that episode.

That can be fun. Good idea. So I guess we'll leave it there. This game, sequel to the West Wing. You got to check all that out before you play it. The West Wing, Ragnarok. And with that, we'll be back in a second with one more thing. Hi, I'm Jackie Cation.

Hello, I'm Lori Kilmerton. We do a podcast called The Jackie and Lori Show, and you could listen to it anytime you want it because there's hundreds of episodes. Yeah, I mean, we've been doing comedy forever and we should both quit. So why don't you listen to about the campaign before we leave this not only terrible business, but this awful world. And find out why we can't. It's because we love it so. Jackie and Lori Show. Every week, you're on maximum fun.org. Hi, it's Jesse Thorne, the founder of Maximum Fun. I am breaking into this programming to say thank you to MaxFund's members.

Your purchases in this year's post-Maxfund Drive patch sale raised over $50,000 for Trans Lifeline. Maybe you already know about the good work that Trans Lifeline does. If you don't, they're a trans-run organization that offers direct emotional and financial support to trans people in crisis. If you want to learn more about the work Translifeline does or support them further, go to translifeline.org. Thanks for supporting maximum fun. Thanks for supporting Translifeline. And thanks for being awesome people who want to do good in the world.

And we are back. It's time for one more thing. I'm going to go first because I don't have a lot of deep thoughts to say because I played a game that doesn't inspire deep thoughts, but inspires a lot of positive energy in me. And that game is called Marvel Snap. It is a free game that I'm playing on my iPhone. I think it's available for Android 2.

It was made by at least one former Harstone developer, Ben Brod, who I interviewed way back in the day when he was still working on Harstone. Several. It was made by several. Yes. I don't know any of the names of any of the other ones. There's only one I've ever met. And it is Ben Brode left Blizzard along with other people and founded a studio.

And this is the game that they made. I guess they made some type of deal with Marvel and they made a card game. So I am not really a card game person. I played a bit of Harstone. Liked it fine. Played a bit of magic when I was a kid. Was never super into it. Marvel Snap is like a card game for people who don't think they're that into card games.

Probably the most impressive thing about it is the way that it disguises it. tutorial as game. And I love that in any game, but especially a card game where there are a whole lot of rules to learn. So they really let you learn those rules by playing games. And they make you think you're playing against real people, but you're actually playing a series of staged games that feel real. Yep.

It's very cleverly done, though. And you get to build up your deck and learn about each different kind of card. and eventually you're playing against real people, but by then, fingers crossed, you've learned how to play. So also, y'all know, I read a lot of Marvel comics. I wouldn't say that's a requirement or even a benefit in Marvel Snap. Like, it's just, if you're sick of Marvel stuff like Kirk, I think you might actually still really get a kick out of this video game.

Because this is a game where there's a whole bunch of weird little guys from Marvel. Like, this is not a game where they're introducing you to like the mole. multiverse and like, I don't know, Nick Fury's walking out telling you that you get to meet Iron Man. This is not that. This is a game where you're like getting a moniker Rambo card right out of the gate and like characters that probably, if you haven't read comics, you don't know who they are. There's like jokes about Mr. Sinister's Cloning Lab and like Krakawa and like X-Men comics shit, not Marvel movie shit, which is very fun for me as somebody who likes comics, but also fun for

people who are sick of Marvel movies and are just enjoying a cool card game that happens to have Marvel stuff as the premise for each of these cards. It does mean that if you really want to get into Marvel lore and like enjoy a story or something like that, this is not the game for you. It's really purely mechanical in a card game and like each of the cards like has one ability or are a couple different kinds of abilities that reflect whatever the character's superpower is. But it's not about that really, if that makes sense. That's, it's not like, oh, I'm going to build an X-Men deck and it's going to like take on the Avengers deck.

Like, that's not even remotely it. It's like a whole bunch of, like for no reason the Hulk and the Abomination are working together with Iron Man, because that's the deck I built. You know what I'm saying? Like, it's not, there's no plot reason why any of this would happen. It's purely mechanical fun times. And also kind of getting to learn about some weird. little guys who are in Marvel comics that maybe you haven't heard of and that part can be pretty

fun as well. Little guys. Yeah, I've been playing a bunch too. Just to describe it real quick. It's like there are three battlefields and you place cards and you have six turns. It's very snappy to put it up. Really quick rounds. Yeah. It's kind of, it's very reminiscent of Gwen. So basically your goal is to control at least two of the three battlefields. And so you do this by like putting cards down and you kind of have to anticipate where your opponent's doing and they're all sorts of strategies because a lot of the cards work in conjunction with one another. So it's really, it's one of those games that is like, this is a cliche, but simple to learn and then really difficult to master. There's so many different variations and things that can happen. The

battlefields all have their own special abilities. The cards all have special abilities. It's really, really cool. I've been playing it. And they designed it really smartly in that as you play, the more and more you play, the more cards you've got, which would make you think that, like, players who have been playing forever, like, might have an unfair advantage. So what they did was they separated, they put you in kind of like a tiered system of pools. And so your pool is based on like how far you've made, how much progress you made it in the game so far. And therefore, how many cards you've made. So like if you're in pool one, you might have worse cards than the people on pool four,

but you don't have to worry about them because you're never going to have to play them. So it's really smart. And those guys are, I mean, yes, this is Ben Brod is one of the creators essentially of Heartstone. And you can tell he's got design. shops, man. And that whole team at second dinner is just incredibly talented. A lot of Ex-Blizzard people and a lot of people from other companies just super, super

smart and talented folks over there. Yeah. The game's really addictive, though. You don't have to spend any money on it at all, but like the design choices in it really make you want to keep playing it forever and ever. And I'm kind of like glad that it's not also

monetized, but that's a whole separate conversation. It is monetized, but yes, it's very It's not like monetized in a way where they're making me pay money in order to get cards. You can very easily get them without doing that. But you cannot easily stop playing the game. That is not easy to do once you start. So I will warn you that it will take over your life. It's all we talk about it, Pauling on now.

But it's so low impact. It's so low impact because you can play a match in like literally like five minutes. And so it's really good. it's like even faster matches than Heartstone, I would say. So it's not, maybe it'll take over your life if you get really into it, but it's very low impact. It's the type of thing you can play on the toilet. You play a match and then you move on with the day.

All right. So Kirk, what's your one more thing? My one more thing is a game called Mario Plus Rabbids Sparks of Hope, which I've been playing on the Nintendo Switch and is really good. It's really fun. And I really just want to shout out one thing that this game does that I think is revolutionary, and that's the way that it handles turn-based movement. It's so cool and so smart. It's just one of those ideas that I think has, it's probably been done in some tactics game or

other, maybe, I don't know, there's a few I can think of that I think do something like this, but the way that it works is you can freely move around the battlefield during your turn. I'm going to explain what that made. So Mario Plus Rabbits Sparks of Hope, sequel to Mario Plus Rabbits Kingdom Battle, which was this unlikely, but very good X-com-like turn-based strategy games starring the cast of the Mario games and the Ubisoft Rabbids, who are really, they are just minions.

Everyone describes it as minions, but they're just minions. Man, the level of DreamWorks humor in this game, man, it's like every action sequence has a super slow-mo where they're like, as a thing goes flying by them. It's every visual gang. They like take a chip out of a bag in slow-mo,

and like eat the chip and that's not a slow-mo. Yep. It has every gag you've ever seen in one of the sort of B-tier children's movies. But it kind of works tonally for me. I sort of think it's funny. Like I think rabid peach is funny. Anyways. Low-brow Kirk Hamilton over here.

It's like, it's not like. Sometimes humor doesn't have to be deep, you know? It's just fine because it's not why I'm playing. Sometimes a fart joke is a good fart joke. Yeah, it's not why I'm playing the game, but it is just sort of, it somehow fits in a way that I don't even really have words for it, I haven't put enough thought into. But anyways, yeah, it's this weird mashed up world where you're playing as Mario and Luigi, but then they're also rabid versions of all of them. And this is a game made by Ubisoft.

They somehow got permission from Nintendo to take Mario and give him a gun and put him in a turn-based ex-com-like game. I still don't know how that happened. Someone won a late-night poker game at GDC or something to make this happen. And then the games are great. The first one was great. And this one is really, I mean, really very, very good. I ran into a difficulty wall with the first game and stopped playing because it's actually pretty hard. It got pretty hard for me.

I played a lot of it, though. I'm going to play a lot of this, too. I'm really into it. I've played maybe three or four hours. So I'm kind of past the first act into the optional stuff and the second act. And what's so cool about this game, this one thing that I just want to call out is the way that it handles movement. So you're on a grid with your team and their team. And it's like X-com.

So you're moving around. you're taking cover, you're shooting, you're going into Overwatch to get people when they move. A lot of similarities to X-Com. But the way that you move is you can freely move around the field during your turn, and until you shoot your weapon, you're not committed to staying in one place. So you have, like right now, say you have three characters, like early in the game, three characters on your team. That means you can run them all around equally,

and you can actually use them to boost one another's movement and throw the other characters around, and then just go back to the character you were just moving, and move them some more and move them over somewhere else, then go to another character and move them up. The freedom that it gives you to move around and to get new positions on your enemies feels genuinely revolutionary.

I've played a lot of these kinds of games. We've played a ton of X-com and X-com too. And there's just something really stressful about the fact that you have to commit to your movement in those games, and then once you've moved, you're there, and then you kind of figure out what you're going to do. It's so much more relaxing without actually really removing any of the strategy because you still have to commit when you're going to shoot. It's just a different

way of thinking of turn-based combat. And anyone who's played the game, I'm sure, really understands why it feels so revolutionary. And if you haven't, you might not. But I just want to say, like, that is a brilliant idea. I don't know who had that idea. But it's so cool to see a type of game this old get a new idea like that and that makes it feel really different and really exciting. So I think this game is great. I mean, I'm really impressed with it so far. And I'm definitely going to keep playing it. So that's Mario and Rabbit. Sparks of Hope. I'll probably have more thoughts on it if I keep playing it. But yeah, I'm liking it even more

than I thought that I would. Kirk, I hope you also play Tactics Oger Reborn, which I've been playing. Oh, I'm absolutely going to play that. Yes. It's the opposite. It's like the most traditional grid-based system, but it's so well done. Yeah, I mean, from what I remember of Tactics Ogre, right, it's really classic and a lot of the formula that

Sparks of Hope is kind of breaking. But that's cool too. I mean, I'll play them both for sure. Cool. All right, Jason. You're up. Yeah, I'll go quick. I watched a movie over the weekend called Weird. Al Yankovitch story. I watched this too. This is, of course, a biopic of Weird Al Yankovic, and he comes out at the beginning.

100% factual. He starts off the movie by him giving a little intro that is like, this is all 100% real. Enjoy my biopic. It is, it goes off the rails. Oh, is it not 100% real? Weird Al would lie to us? Not only is it, if you watch a trailer, you probably know that this is like a complete fictionalization and parody, like, most ridiculous thing.

But it's like, it goes so far off the rails, you won't expect how far it goes. If you've seen UHF, which is Weird Al's movie from like ages ago. 1989. 1989, yeah, which I watched as a kid and loved, was obsessed with that. I was obsessed with shouting, you get nothing. Absolutely nothing. I was, if you've watched that movie, this almost, this feels like a successor to that. like 30 something years later, 33 years later, it's like a sequel to UHF.

It is. I tried to watch UHF not that long ago and actually found it pretty insufferable and loved it as a kid. When you're a kid, it's different. It's similar, but it does feel like a modern comedy and is not insufferable. Yeah, there's even stuff in here. He even finds like a subtle way to be like, hey, I've actually written some songs that were kind of shitty and I'm going to address that in this. It's done very subtly. It's not something that like that where he's like preachy about it or anything.

But it almost, it feels like a movie that in addition to being a great movie on its own, in addition to going totally off the rails in the best possible way, it's it also like is just very like anti-toxic. It just feels very like wholesome and like very much like like the fact that it even addresses something in that way. It's just a great movie. It's just a great film. A lot of positive masculinity in this movie. Yeah.

There's a lot of dudes just supporting dudes. It's just supporting dudes in it, which I appreciate it. Weird really has that energy, like, in his own life, too, which is why I feel like he would make a movie like this. And Daniel Radcliffe, the star of this, also does. And he's incredible. He's the reason to watch the movie. Short King, Daniel Radcliffe.

Yes. If nothing else, Daniel Radcliffe is so committed and is so fun in this movie. I mean, like, he just totally goes for it. And it's kind of amazing to me, the way that he keeps going out of his way to, like, make movies that are about accepting yourself and being who you are, just given that he's Harry Potter and he's sort of spoken out about J.K. Rowling's transphobic views. All of that, like, just that subtext always exists with him. Yeah.

And he's not even like he's consciously leaning into it. It's just there. And it's really neat to see him become this actor that he's becoming. He's so great in the movie. He's the best thing in it. He's so good. I'm glad he's just doing weird comedies now. But Evan Rachel Wood also, Evan Rachel Wood plays Winana, who is his star and she is fantastic.

Fantastic. They have a wild relationship in this. Yes, this is a fantastic version of banana. And there's a whole host of like celebrity cameos. There's this one party scene where it's just like cameo after cameo. You have to like pause to even figure out who's who. And like it's just amazing. Like they clearly just got a bunch of their comedian friends to be in this movie.

And it's just so well done. I just enjoyed it so much. I was cracking up at so many things. There's even a montage that he does at the end. And I won't spoil what happens, but what he did was, like, he starts off the montage with, like, normal pictures of him as a child, the way that, like, a biopic would do where it's like, after the movie play ends, we'll show you the real person, like a montage of photos of the real person. But then he gets into Photoshop versions of himself doing the things that are fictionalized in the movie. It's just so perfect. It's really so weird out.

And, like, some of the jokes that hit or miss in that weird owl way where there's, like, some things that are corny or, like, don't land 100%. of the time, same with UHF, but man, it's just, it's just so funny. I just enjoyed it so much. It's just so silly. I just kept, I think I said to my wife, who could not finish it, she, like, left in the middle of it. I said to her multiple times, like, this is so silly. Like, this is just the silliest thing I've ever seen.

Yeah. Yeah, I really liked it. The two things I will add. One is that the song that plays during the credits, the new Weird Al song, is this total banger. It's just great. It's in 7-4. It's called Now You Know, and it's about how Now You Know about his life.

It does, and it keeps going and going. It has a really great ending. And then also, I will just say to anyone listening to this, that there is a recent episode of Strong Songs about the biggest ball of twine in Minnesota, the song off the UHF soundtrack, which the full title of that is UHF, original motion picture soundtrack and other stuff, because it's also just a bunch of Weird Al songs. So I just did a whole huge deep dive into that song and I spent a lot of time listening to Weird Al lately. And he is really great. He is a singular musician. And I have a lot of respect for him.

He's incredible. It's worth noting, I think, that UHF, I believe, introduced Michael Richards, aka Cosmo Kramer to the world. An early Michael Richards. Wow. Yeah, it is one of his first role. So that's to UH. Yeah, UHS, definitely some things haven't aged while there, including, like, some stereotypes. So constantly, like, in your face and loud. I was like, this is like watching 1980s Saturday morning cartoons, which of course is what it's. doing. Yes, I loved it as a kid. But if I was a kid when this movie came out, I would just be obsessed. I would watch this 10 times if I was a kid right now, like watching this movie.

Anyway, Weird Al, I think as the Simpsons once said, he who no longer enjoys Weird Al, no longer enjoys life. I think that's a good way. That was a homoerousin quote. That seems totally accurate. Well, we've done it again. Another episode for the books, folks. Go beat that video game. You got to go beat it.

Go do it. Listener, you too. And then go to Maximumfund.org slash join. And you know what to do after that. Well, see you next week. See you guys next week. See you next week. Bye.

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