Triple Click - Triple Play: Half-Life 2

Episode Date: August 19, 2021

It's finally time: Jason, Maddy, and Kirk pick up their gravity guns and move around some cardboard boxes so they can climb into Half-Life 2. The gang talks about the pros and cons of Valve's classic shooter, how the game holds up in 2021, the G-Man, the graphics, the setpieces, the nauseating vehicles, and oh so much more!One More Thing: Kirk: Reservation DogsMaddy: Leverage: RedemptionJason: FantasianLinks:The Wikipedia entry on hitscan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HitscanHalf-LIfe 2 Combine Radio Chatter collection by RescoeZ: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SindqGenIhkKali Simmons’ recaps of Reservation Dogs: https://www.vulture.com/article/reservation-dogs-series-premiere-recap-season-1-episode-1-fckin-rez-dogs.htmlSupport Triple Click: http://maximumfun.org/joinJoin 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

Welcome to Triple Click. You have chosen or been chosen to relocate to one of our finest remaining podcasts. Welcome to Triple Click where we bring the games to you. Today we are picking up our shotguns and blasting our way through headcrafts in City 17. That is right. It is time to talk half life too. I'm Jason Trier. I'm Kirk Hamilton. And I'm Maddie Myers. And we are back. It's awesome. for another episode. We're totally back. Look at us. Hello, hello, hello. My friends, welcome back to City 17.

You have chosen or Ben chosen to listen to our podcast. Today is a very exciting episode. Should we try to speak like the G-man? I don't even think I can imitate that guy. It's very hard. It's not the way you think it would be. Shrier. The right man in the wrong place can make all the different.

difference in the world. So wake up, Mr. Freeman. Wake up and smell the ashes. Gross. If you want to hear more lovely banter like this, and if you want to hear extra banter like this, every single month, hey, you should become a max fun member.

As a reminder, Triple Click is entirely supported by you, the listeners. We don't have ads. We just have listener support. And to support us, all you have to do is go to maximum fund.org slash join and become a member for as little as $5 a month. You will get a monthly bonus episode, including this month we are doing a big old beans cast. We were spilling the beans on Mythic Quest, the TV show on Apple TV about video games, about a video game developer and auteur who has some issues. So we'll be diving into that. that'll be a fun one. And then next month, I guess we can say now, since we're talking about

Half-Life-2 today. So today we were talking about all of Half-Life 2. And Kirk, you'll give a big old spoiler warning when it's time. But we are also all playing Half-Life 2 episode 1 and episode two, which will be our Beans cast for September. So anyone who's playing along with us, you have until the end of September to finish episode 1 and episode 2. And Half-Live 2. Like if you're not done yet and you don't want to listen to this episode yet, and you just want to listen everything at the same time. You can do that. That is true, yes.

We'll be diving in. And all that said, Kirk, you want to take us away into Half-Life-Two mode? Sure. I guess first I have to do a big old spoiler warning, which sounds like this. This is a spoiler warning for Half-Life 2. Yeah, you need to like amplify your voice. You need to make some post-effects in there. You need to create some sort of specific music effect that only plays there and was written

specifically for that moment to just underscore it in pure half half life two fashion so many perfect little interstitial music sections my god the music i'm always so excited when we have an episode based on our predictions and like the conclusion of like that because people wait all year for the predictions starting to figure out this is the episode the second episode of the or well the second part of of our predictions back is now coming to fruition. I know. Congratulations, Kirk. Yeah, so let me talk everybody through this.

This is, yeah, this is my victory lap, I guess. Well, I guess we both took a victory lap together. What happens when people tie? Do they both do the victory lap? Like neck and neck and they cross at the same time? Yeah, but they have to be holding hands. They have to be exactly like. I don't know.

I just know I'm the loser, but whatever. Maddie just watched this, Jason and I did one more laugh while holding hands. Kirk and I saying we are the champions. It feels as though I'm the one who also ran the marathon though, so I feel like I don't know a victory lap is quite the right way to put this. Sitting on the couch lap, anyway. Well, regardless, Jason and I tied in our predictions last year. That meant that first Maddie and I both had to play through Final Fantasy 6,

which we did and discussed a great length on this show already this year. And now we've all played. through HalfLife 2, one of my favorite games of all time, and now we're going to talk about it. So I'm really excited about this, because this is a game that I love, that I've replayed many times since I first played it actually in 2007, not when it came out in 2004. It was released on PC in 2004, but it came to consoles in 2007 as part of the Orange Box. That was when I played it because I was kind of like not playing video games from maybe 03 to 07, and then I got an Xbox 360 and was like, oh, yeah, I love Half-Life. I'm going to play Half-Life too. And then ever since then, I've replayed it many times.

So this game, geez, people have been playing through it on the Triple Click Discord. It's been fun watching people's very all-over-the-place reactions to this game from, you know, 17 years ago now. It's quite an experience. We're going to spoil the whole thing up to the end of the base game. But I'm just curious right off the bat. What are your overall impressions? Jason, why don't you go first? Oh, man.

Okay. So I have never played this. game unlike Maddie who had. And so it was really interesting. So I guess I should say, I mean, overall, I thought it was a cool game. I liked it. It certainly wasn't boring. There were parts that really dragged for me, especially the vehicle parts because I was

like getting motion sick while I played and they lasted too long. But overall, I liked it. I really enjoyed it. I was really impressed by the way it looked and sounded and even felt. I mean, the combat, the shooting obviously is not quite what we've come to expect. from shooters today. But in general, I came away impressed. Like, it doesn't feel like a 17-year-old game,

especially in the way it looks. And the spectacle and like the set pieces in the background. And I know that's like that one of the things that Half-Life 2 really innovated was just having these giant, like the striders walking as you're like crossing through City 17 and like the explosions all in the background. And just like having this great storytelling potential in the background. Between that and the physics.

I just came away really impressed by it in a lot of ways. But also, I mean, in other ways, it does feel like it's little past its prime. For sure. We'll get into that. And so it's tough to really say like, oh my God, this is a masterpiece the way I might have if I had played it in 2004. But overall, really enjoyed my time with this game, I would say. Maddie, what did you think? Yeah, so I did technically play it many years ago, but I had almost no memory of it. And I was telling Kirk, I feel like I just kind of grouped it together with a lot of alien shooting games that I played around that same time.

Talking about, you know, your Metroid Primes, your halos, et cetera. And I just didn't really, it didn't stand out a ton for me. I don't think I ever played the first half-wife. I didn't play the episodes. I wasn't one of those people who got super into the lore. I didn't really see myself as a half-life person. So it's actually really fun to play it again now with more of a critical eye and also more of an educated, eye to kind of diss my past self and notice some of the game design smarts on display here.

Because, I mean, famously, the game forces you to look around the room to figure out where you're supposed to go rather than guiding you in any other type of way. There's a lot of subtle clues about where you're supposed to go. There aren't arrows on the ground pointing you from objective to objective. I did get lost periodically, but I figured it out. And I appreciated a game that was trying really hard to just kind of show me where I'm supposed to go based on environmental cues. I mentioned the music as a joke up top. But that I really, really noticed this time, all the individual music stings and cues.

I loved so much. And just really appreciated the artistry of the whole thing as a cohesive whole that I don't really know what it's about. I'm kind of hoping Kirk can, like, tell us the lore. I tried to pay attention this time. And I was like, it just has a certain vibe. And like I kind of just went along for the ride of it all and was like, I don't really know what's going on. I know I'm kind of like a Jesus figure and that's fine with me. But I don't, I don't really need to know what's going on.

You know what I mean? You're the free man. The free man. And the free man, man. And that's enough. You know, it just, it evokes that horror vibe and that stress without necessarily needing to give you like a huge lore dump or a bunch of like Skyrim books you're picking up and reading about everything that's going on. And I really enjoyed that.

I enjoyed the restraint. Yeah, there no cutscenes. Yeah, yeah, no cutscenes as well. One of the things that really struck me about this game is how it all feels like it's just one straight path, one adventure. And there are no cuts. There are no, other than like the weird source loading messages, there are no loading screens. Yeah, there are a lot of loading screens in that way. But yeah.

In that way. But even that, I kind of like that because it never takes you out. Like, you never, your eyes never leave the screen. So when it says loading, you're just still staring at the same place. So it's not even as obtrusive as like a big black loading screen with like Gordon running around the animus would be. That would suck. Yeah. And there would be an animus.

And the G man's face would be like really huge in front of the screen also. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know what it made me think of? It made me think of how God of Orr, the most recent one, they made a whole big show about how there were no camera cuts. But like really, this game has no camera cuts. No camera cuts. Yeah.

I guess when it's first person, it's a little bit different, but still, like, I thought that was pretty striking. I agree. And it makes it so much more noticeable at the end when you do have some moments where control is taken away from you where, like, all your weapons are removed and you have to just watch them get destroyed. And then you're, like, following, I can't remember the female doctor's name into that room. Kirk knows all the character names. Yeah. Yeah. Or when you're in the, you're trapped in the little thing. Yeah. to just listen to Brain monologing.

I loved it. I loved it. I mean, I love the fact that, like, you see those things come up to you, the little weird canisters that you step in at the end. Let's talk about the end of the game right away. And you're like, well, I guess I'm going to press E. The only thing I ever do in this game is Pressy. So I guess I may as well press E in this instance as well.

And it's like there's so few things you can do, which is very dark-soulesy and the way that I super enjoy. Again, it's about the restraint of it all. And finding a way to make something really tight in artistic and cohesive within those restraints of the time. And I liked it. I liked it a lot. Yeah, I mean, it's hard for me to tease out my feelings playing at this most recent time with all the other times that I've played it.

Though, you know, the feeling when you watch a movie with a friend who's never seen it and you get to kind of see it through their eyes, I was always imagining the two of you playing it and sort of, you know, I had some fresh eyes when I was playing it, and that was pretty fun. Maddie, you mentioned the ride of it all. I was definitely struck by how this game feels like a ride, like an amusement park experience where it's so carefully designed even in the parts where you're given freedom, it's really, you know, you're given freedom as a release from the last section you were just in

where there wasn't as much freedom. So even the freedom is something that you're being given as a contrast to something that was just happening. And it really is remarkable the way that the game moves its pacing between these like puzzles sequences where things kind of calmed down into these really tense breakneck action sequences. Big, gun fights, especially toward the end, it's like practically a Call of Duty game. Also, there are these horror sequences, most notably Ravenholm, but many other parts throughout the game where suddenly you fall into a basement and then the lights go out and you, right, you hear a dark, keening tone and suddenly you realize, oh crap, I get my shotgun out

because now I'm going to be fighting zombies for the next, maybe only 10, 15 minutes before I'm thrown back out into the street. This happens particularly through anti-citizen 1 and Fala Friedman toward the end. It's funny you mentioned Call of Duty because I like drew a very, after playing modern warfare last summer, I drew a very straight line from this to modern warfare. Yes. Yep. Yep. You can really see, and we'll talk about this more, I think, because it's so interesting to look at this game's place in video game history, because you can see the ideas that they had making this game that were carried on in games, in subsequent games, but also the ideas that weren't carried on, there were some things that really struck me

playing this game, and also from Half-Life One. It's very similar to Half-Life One. It's very similar to Half-Live one in a lot of ways. And the thing you were both talking about, which is that this whole game is presented in a first person perspective with no breaks for cutscenes. Every cutscene happens in engine in this game, which is very different from Half-Life one. There's these like fully animated characters in particular, Alex Vance, who's kind of like the number one sort of, she's almost the protagonist. I would maybe make the argument that Alex Vance winds up being the protagonist of Half-Life because Gordon is a silent avatar and he's a character, but it's almost played for laughs. he doesn't talk. And he's like a symbol in some ways. And Alex is a person. She's a person. And she's

like this emotive character walking around and talking and reacting to what's happening. She expresses horror when scary or bad things happen. She gets excited. She helps you out. She's always kind of there. She says leave the talking to me, Gordon. Right. There's definitely a lot of jokes there. And then she becomes more, as you'll see in the episode, she becomes even more of a character until finally the most recent Half-Life game is the VR game, Half-Life Alex, in which Alex is the main character. and it kind of feels like that trajectory has always been there that she would become the protagonist. But really, you're just kind of this camera moving through an action movie

and watching things around you. And it's so interesting playing a game like this that's so unlike so many games after this. I mean, Bioshock does the same kind of thing where there aren't cutscenes. You can see the DNA also in Call of Duty, the way you mentioned, Jason, the Wolfenstein games, those machine games. They pick up some things. But no one quite does it this way.

And no one quite does it like the original half-life either. And that's one of the things that was so revolutionary about those games. So it is really, I don't know, I really liked playing a game from 2004. Did you notice, for example, there are no upgrades in this game. You don't get gear that you think used to like make your guns better. No, it's just like, now you have a new gun. Have fun using it. I kind of liked that, though.

That's great. It felt so utilitarian to just be like, well, eventually I'm going to find another kind of gun. And then that'll be that. That's as far as that goes. It'll have a secondary fire maybe. That'll be kind of fun. I mean, okay, getting the gravity gun, I know it's not technically an upgrade, but it does completely change everything in an awesome way.

It's like getting a portal gun, essentially. It was also fun, by the way, to have so recently played Portal 1 and 2 before playing this. And then seeing that influence in this game, which I had totally forgotten about. I mean, it's not like I didn't know that Portal was, you know, made to be set in the Half-Life universe after the fact, after they came up with the Central Old Design. But it just was so fun to see that and see all those connections there. And just the way the robots look and be like, oh, that's going to influence. The turrets, the way the turrets, like shoot in the air when you put them down.

Exactly. It's really fun. It's fun. Are we half-life fans now? We're kind of half-life fans now. Yeah. I'm into it. I'm excited.

I'm excited to play episode one and two. The thing that was, I feel like the beginning of the game is kind of a drag. I wish that it had started with you getting the gravity gun and like jumping into like Ravenholm. because that is really when the game really took off for me. I mean, yes, but I like this long, slow build actually. And I like how creepy the opening, the very beginning is where you're on the train. I love that part. And like talking to all the people in the camp and how unnerving that is.

And you're like, what is happening? What's with this weird city? But then you're right. It does kind of lag a little bit. Well, then you have the jet boat for like 40 hours. I know. So, yeah. The vehicles just did not do it for me.

My God. Yeah. Okay. Jason and I both get motion sick. And so Jason and I were just commiserating together over the jet boat and also the vehicle, the car that you drive. The car. Yeah, the buggy.

And both of those are so long. Both of those sequences are just way too long. I think they are long if you are nauseated. They may not actually be that long. But if you are nauseated for 100% of them, they feel like they're both six hours long. So I'll say, and I remember thinking this the very first time that I played it, I do think that water hazard, which is the boat level at the beginning, is just too long. Like, it's like 40% too long.

I think that every time I'm playing it, I'm like, okay, I'm ready for this to be over. Because like you say, Jason, when you get the gravity gun, then you meet dog. Dog is awesome, the big robot. There's all the stuff that happens. And then you get thrown into Ravenholm and it's like, whoa, like the game really takes off. Right. Though the buildup to it is really interesting. I think, and I don't know the numbers here, but given the fact that this was, this was like the hugest thing

when this game came out, it was so anticipated. I think they were safely betting that people were just going to play through this. They weren't that worried about attrition in the early hours. They're like, I think people are going to keep going. And so they could kind of pace it out a little bit more, but I don't know for sure. But the rest of the game is so perfectly paced that it feels like it's kind of like a, it just feels like a miss. Like I feel like if they could do it all over again. It's an odd oversight and kind of the exception that proves the rule.

I want to talk some about the story because you mentioned the setup at the beginning. And I was struck right off the bat. So you come in on a train, which this is kind of an homage to Half-Life One. If you don't do anything else, it's worth playing the first 20 minutes of Half-Life One, because it's this long tram ride where you ride down through Black Mesa, which is the name of the facility. You're now then going to have to fight your way out of. You ride all the way from the beginning down.

I actually did watch this cutscene on YouTube ahead of time because I was like, doesn't this, isn't this familiar to me? It's really cool. I don't know. It's definitely worth checking out the cutscene though. Anyway, continue. Especially for a 98. And again, not a cutscene, really, right?

Because you're in first-person, and you're just looking around. Well, you're right, you're right. I shouldn't say it. I watched a let's play of somebody pretending. It was the Half-Life film on YouTube, which many people have edited together. One of it has that kind of amusement park feeling where there's always something cool in your line of vision that you're looking at, but you're in this card as you move. And the train begins similarly. And then I just, from the very beginning, the dialogue from the people who are waiting.

There's this one woman. She's like, is this the last train? Like, they said he'd be on the train, but he's not here. And it's like, it's so scary. Like, this immediate sense of this sort of terrifying, authoritarian, alien-occupied city. The Dr. Breen up on the screen talking to, you know, the famous Welcome to City 17 monologue. Welcome. Welcome to City 17.

You have chosen or been chosen to relocate to one of our finest remaining open centers. But this stuff, it's all I thought. Not so much of City 17 that I connected to establish my administration here. In the Citadel so thoughtfully provided by all of that. All of that, the energy is so strong, and I'd say it's funny. Like, I know what happens in this game. I guess I know, like, I know what the basic alien, like, species are and how they kind of interact, like how the Vordagons become good guys and stuff.

But I couldn't tell you a bunch of deep half-life lore. because it's pretty, I think it's pretty opaque. It's pretty nebulous. It's left ambiguous. And I think that's like a point in the game's favor. Like almost everyone, I think, just experiences it as, well, it's clear who the bad guys are. It's kind of clear what's going on. They're like, you know, they're assimilating us like genetically into their, you know, fighting force.

That's why they're called the combine and that's sort of what's going on here. But past that, I mean, it's pretty moment to moment. It's like, these guys seem nice. Bernie seems cool. Eli Vance is a nice guy. Alex is obviously a good guy. Let's help them. And that's kind of the whole story. Yeah, it doesn't really matter beyond that. It's more about the vibe. It feels like than it is the story. And it's more about experiencing things, things getting thrown at you. Yeah, it's also interesting, though, because there are multiple scientists in this game who you don't really know what they're studying or what they're discovering. And, like, that's interesting for a science fiction game where, like, I don't know, we just played mass.

effect together and like everything is explained to the hilt in that game it's like the game is named after the fast travel that you do which everyone will tell you and there's also like an encyclopedia and game that you can read about literally every species it's like the polar opposite of half life two no shortage of lore or i'm like okay like yeah Eli vance is inventing a teleporter i don't totally know why exactly or like what it's being used for or like why it didn't really work the first time they use it in like a kind of terrifying visceral way where like you go to the wrong spot. And then everybody's like, oh, that was crazy. Whatever.

Anyway, Gordon, like, go do some other stuff. And you're just like, what the fuck's happening? And then like you get somewhere else. You get the gravity gun. And everybody's like, oh, yeah, we just have this gun that can pick up literally anything in the world. But it's fine. And like Alex just calls it a toy.

And like one of the other scientists is like pissed at her for saying that. And it's like, well, what are the stakes of this exactly? and like you don't know, but you know they're really high because everybody's really stressed out. And that's just interesting for a science fiction game to not really know what the tech is that everybody's working on or where it came from or who's harnessing it or why. And like, that's not important to you really. Also, you're a physicist and you have military prowess. Don't worry about it. And that's a really funny thing.

This is kind of the fact that it's Half-Life 2, I think, informs a lot of this stuff. And that's because, like, Eli Vance and Dr. Kleiner, the kind of two main friendly scientists. Dr. Kleiner rules. He's the best. With his head crab, Hetty, what, Hedley? It's like a Hedley Lamar, not Hedley. Hedley Lamar, of course, is the name. Who appears at the end after the credits.

Yes, she does. Amazing. Pre-Marvel post-credit scene for Hedley Lamar. So those were technically characters in Half-Life One, but not really. There were just, like, some generic scientist models. that gets strewn around Black Mesa. I mean, that's a 1998 game, and there was this huge quantum leap in graphics technology

in that period of time. So games from 2004 look like pretty modern, and games from 98, like when you play Half-Life 1 without any mods or don't play Black Mesa or anything, it's like, oh, this is pretty old-looking. It looks pretty rough. Yeah, it's PS1 versus PS2, which I think is a useful frame of reference.

So that difference is huge. Actually, I always use No One Lives Forever One and Two, but nobody can play those games. But it is interesting to look at how different, like, Kate Archer looks in the first game versus the second. Anyways. So they didn't really flesh it out in the first game either. I think they were researching portal technology, like, which is sort of funny given that portal came to happen. And then you were, like, in the lab, in the test chamber, and you open this portal that, like, breaks reality and the aliens pour through it.

And that's where the invasion begins in Half-Life One. So I think they're portal researchers. But again, right. Like, who really invented the gravity gun? How does the gravity gun work? And even how does the gravity gum become this incredible supercharged turbo weapon at the end just because it happens to interact weirdly with a security system? Yeah, it got zapped, you know? It got it got zapped with video game powers and now it's an even cooler gravity gun.

And that's all you need to know, right? Like that's kind of what's so great about this game. It's like, whatever, I don't need to know it. It grabs dudes from across the room and lets me throw them. And it grabs these little beams of light that are being used as an energy source and those beams are really good to shoot at guys. and stuff, and they'll destroy a reactor if you need it to. Perfect. You know what's cool about those globes, actually, is those are the same things that are the alt-fire on the combine assault rifle that causes the same effect.

I did think they looked the same as that, but you're right, of course they would be the same. Yeah, and they set enemies on fire, like they burn enemies to death. Or they cause them to disintegrate or whatever. They disintegrate them, yeah. That final level is so, it reminded me of control, although, of course, control would take its influence from this game. But it felt so powerful to just be like blast in dudes. It's like the only time this game really lets you go full power fantasy with anything is when the gravity gun gets its upgrade.

And you're just like, pow, pow! I'm killing these guys. It reminded me of a destiny raid. The Citadel is like destiny raid-ish. Yeah. Combined with the oldest house, for sure. Right. I mean, yeah.

And Control certainly borrowed a lot from both Half-Life 1 and Half-Life 2. I mean, Half-Life 1 in the way that it's this government facility, it really gave me those. vibes. Yeah. I love that last level. That trick of giving you a super powered weapon, because you can kind of just coast through that level. Yeah. It's meant to just be this great release. I think is really cool. And there's like hell stations everywhere you turn around and you don't worry about anything. Your energy gets turbocharged, right? I enjoy that a lot. So yeah, I guess we can talk a little more about the gameplay, because I am curious what the two of you made of the combat. Jason, you mentioned some that you kind of thought it was a little like Call of Duty and that also

that it didn't totally feel modern to you, like a modern shooter in some ways. I'm curious what else you made of the combat in the game. Yeah, I mean, the reticle isn't great, and, like, the shooting isn't super precise. What reticle, am I right? Yeah, yeah. And, like, you can zoom in,

but then you can't shoot while zooming in, which drove me crazy when I was using, like, the crossbow. I stopped even using the zoom ever, because I was like, this is so stupid. And the crossbow has, like, nine arrows or something. It's like some absurdly low number and I was like this isn't even useful. The crossbow is amazing as a sniper rifle, but only as a sniper rifle. It is amazing.

No, it's great. But like it's hard to, it's hard to use precisely in the way that like other games have better sniper rifles. Yes. Yeah, it felt very, it felt very, I don't know, soft to me in a way that I didn't love. I did enjoy the shotgun and that's actually what I use most of the game because it was fun to get up close. I didn't discover. So this is a little embarrassing. I was playing on a controller, and I know Kirk, you hate that, but I was.

I played the game with a controller the first couple times on Xbox. Okay. It's fine with the moment. And I didn't realize. I've never done it. And I am judging you. Continue. Oh, okay, good.

I didn't realize, well, this will make you judge you even more. I didn't realize there was a sprint button until like. Oh, wow. Oh, boy. I'm not judging you. I'm pitying you. Yeah. Yeah.

That will affect your take on the combat probably. Yeah. It's a very fast game and you want to be moving. Like, I run through every end. refight just I'm flying around those battlefields. There's like a stamina bar, Dark Souls style. I compare everything to Dark Souls now.

Well, it's not, well, hold on. The stamina bar, it's not a, it's like your Augs power the same one the Flashlet uses. But it's not like I knew that. Well, I didn't know there was a sprint because because I liked everything I tried. I guess I didn't think to use the right and left bumper at all. I was just using like all the face buttons and then clicking in the

joysticks. Anyway, I didn't realize it until later in the game. But once I realized it, it was like, oh man, I can run in and shock out people in the face. Yeah. So I did that a lot. That I enjoyed. But in general, the combat, yeah, didn't really feel too great to me. It also feels like, yeah, I don't know. I didn't love the balance of like Gordon's health versus the amount of damage you didn't. Like sometimes it felt like there were times when I would be in an encounter and it felt like I was just invincible. And then there were times when it

felt like I was just going to die in two seconds. And it just felt like something was off about the balance of the way that enemies did damage to you. But yeah, I mean, for the most part, I liked it. I liked shooting down the helicopters or the laser site and having to keep the laser way long time. Yeah, that was really good. Yeah. Great design on those.

And I enjoyed the striders also. Yeah, the striders were also really fun. Shooting rockets at anything is always really fun, just full stop. It is funny, though, because I played Counterstrike for so long that playing anything that's even somewhat like it to me just feels correct in a fundamental way. That isn't even to say I think it's good. I don't know that it is. And there are still moments in the game where I agree with you, Jason, where like I felt weirdly strong or weirdly vulnerable or like there were just a few too many guys or a few too few guys in some areas. And I was just like,

okay, like that was weirdly easy or weirdly hard. But just in general, like, straight for ground corners, the weird crouch jumping, the fact that you have to like jump, the puzzle design being jumping on stupid stuff that it looks like you can't jump on just feels so 2004 to me in just a core like PC games way, that it was just like going back to something very comforting to me. Like that plus the combat, I just was like, yes, like this is what life was in 2004. You jumped on a rock that you didn't really. look like you're supposed to jump on it, but you are, and that actually is where you're supposed to go. And that's Half-Life, too. And that is what it was like to be a PC gamer in the

2000s. Yeah. It's a good vibe. I really, like, I'm so used to the flow of combat in this game that I find it extremely pleasurable and fun to just play through gunfights. I definitely feel you, Jason, on the damage thing where there are times where it's like, whoa, like, why the hell that I just get totally aced? Usually with some explosion or something that just knocks my health way down. I'm not sure if Gordon takes headshot damage or not, but it could be something like that. But there are times where it's like, whoa. And there's a little bit of save scumminess to this game, which I don't mind because I don't mind playing that way. But there are totally times where I'm like, I'm going to rush this, you know, machine gun encampment. I'm just going to save it first

and we're going to do this a few times. But I do find there's so many decisions made by the developers of this game that are just made evident in the act of playing it. Like I'm always running into little decisions. So the results of little decisions that someone made, I was talking with someone in the triple-click Discord about the gameplay balance. And they were saying that they thought the submachine gun, which is kind of one of the primary guns that you get,

was too weak. They're like, I wish that it killed guys a little bit faster. I don't actually agree because if it killed people faster, the game would feel more like Call of Duty. And I think that the toughness of the enemies is a big part of why the balance of combat in this game works.

So there are guns in this game. that can kill enemies really quickly. But they are all limited in some way. So, like, the shotgun, you really kind of have to use the double-barreled shot, but that goes through your ammo pretty quick. Or the handgun, the revolt, the Magnum. Yeah, yeah, the Magum.

That's a pretty great gun, but the ammo is very, very limited. Or, like, you were talking about the crossbow, but that thing fires really slow, but it's great from a distance. So if you're going to use something, like I use that combine assault rifle, is one of the coolest guns.

Yeah, I was going to say, that one is pretty overpowered, though. Well, but its range isn't great. But if you're running and you're moving as fast as I usually do in these fights, you just run people over with it. And you can run out of ammo, but that gun is so fun. Also, the reload animation on that, where, like, it just goes, and it, like, replaces that tiny little cartridge. I think that's so, there's so many little touches like that. But anyways, I was really struck by the way that combat pushes you around.

There are some mods to this game. I'm forgetting what the big one is called. There's this total overhaul mod where they change it so that the enemy attacks are all, like projectile-based, weapons, like they're no longer hit scan. And that's really a striking thing about this game that does make it feel like Call of Duty, which hit scan weapons are what your guns usually are in games like this, but enemy guns usually aren't. And that's when the bullet fires.

There's no actual bullet. It just, like, tags you with the bullet instantly. This is my best description for listeners. It's sort of any time that you just click on something and it just gets hit, that was a hit-scan shot. And a projectile is like you shoot it and it actually moves through the air so you can dodge it. Like in Destiny, the enemies all have non-examined. hit scan weapons, so they'll shoot at you, and it's like a laser beam that you can get out of the way,

but your guns are hit scan, so it gives you this advantage. In Half-Life 2, the enemies largely have hit-scan weapons, so like you're just getting nailed by guys if you're out of cover, and you have to move so fast, and I find that to really work. Like, I was really impressed by some of those outdoor fights when you're on City 17 in the car. Like, it'll be like a couple of barns and a shed and kind of a house, and you'll be kind of really frantically running across the street and in-between and like into cover and out and you're getting shot from one guy and you hear a guy coming around there. And I really, I really did find that enjoyable. But again, it's like the sixth time that I've played the game.

So I'm just so familiar with it at this point that I'm not sure. You know, it's very interesting to hear from people who are a little less familiar with it. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I feel like instead I just always felt like tense and kind of stressed out, but in a fun way. Yeah, it's stressful. Very stressful game. And like I didn't really know why. And I feel like you just finally explained to me why.

it feels that way and it's because just every blow is significantly more immediate. I mean, but we can also talk about Ravenholm and like I think it was like, right, then it's also a horror game that's stressful in a different way. Okay, I just want to say right out of the gate, I think

the head crabs are actually really cute and I don't think they're scary at all. I love them. Okay, wait, even the black head crabs? Even the black head crabs. Wow. You're tough. I'm impressed. They sound like my cat. My cat is, he is a eunuch, He was fixed as a kitten, so he has a really high, squeaky little meow, and the head crabs really sound like him.

So I actually thought they were really cute. That said, anytime I'm walking down a dark hallway, really in any context, I'm not a fan of it at all. And I don't like jump scares. And I don't like walking and seeing a tree where part of a body part is hanging from the tree. I don't care for that. I'm not interested in that. I don't like walking into a room and seeing a bunch of body parts and a half light. Anything along those lines, I'm like, I don't like what's happening here.

I don't care for this. I'm really stressed out. I want to leave. I'm not interested in this. I'm more like any kind of ambient horror. I'm like, and then I just get really freaked out. But the head crabs I think are adorable.

But Maddie, but Maddie, do you like picking up a razor blade with your gravity gun and using it to decapitate enemies? I do love that. That was my favorite part of the game. That was so fun. Or like lining up a whole bunch of them and firing it down. Yeah, and just firing a freaking...

endlessly good. Buzz saw and a bunch of guys. Talk about the decisions. Like, that's one of those. decisions, right, where it's like, here's the gravity gun and now we're going to throw you into a totally new environment where there's nothing but traps and like blades everywhere that you can use this cool thing. There's no lights on.

Right, you're not going to have enough ammo. There's one weird guy yelling at you from the roof. Yeah, that guy was awesome. As it turns out. Yeah, I'm glad that he just is there for Ravenholm and then you never see him again. I'm glad that they never brought him back. I know. I liked that too.

Yeah. He is a priest, though. A lot of religious overtones in this game. Anyway. Oh, well, yeah. I mean, you're Jesus. Yeah. Somebody has to be.

Yeah. One of the things, also speaking of light, Maddie, one of the things that also struck me as I was playing this game is how the game kind of uses light to guide you. And like you can always tell where you're supposed to go based on the way that the lights are pointing you.

And there's a lot of just kind of clever game design, magic that is used to kind of steer you in the right direction, even though there's no mini map or check or, or waypoints or anything like that. I thought that was pretty cool. Even when it can be a little, like it can be a little overwhelming. You're like, oh my God, am I going the right way.

I don't know where I am right now because there's no sense of scale. Like there's never any zoom out to show you like what Nova Prospect looks like or like what the map of Ravenholm actually is. And you just kind of have to figure it out even when it all kind of looks the same. I thought it was a very good thing and very cool design, very good effects.

Yeah, yeah. I think shout out to Victor Antonov, who I think famously also was the art. He was like an art consultant, like the consulting art director on Dishonored, but he was the art director on this game and is a big part of that sort of brutalist Eastern European look,

the way that the combine look, that sort of mix of old sort of bombed out cities and weird technology and that the like bioorganics of everything, the way that the airships look kind of like whales and make these weird sea creature sounds. There's so much stuff just in the aesthetics of this game. I assume those were like alien creatures then.

Right, that they had sort of, I think that they had sort of like, yeah, like merged into their army. You get the sense that the combine, whoever they are, like whoever is actually in charge of them are benefactors, you know, who you maybe start to learn more about, but it's very ambiguous. But that there are this kind of almost intergalactic parasite that just goes and like combines different, you know, conquered species into. this weird army that it controls. You kind of get a sense of that when you go through the Combine Fortress. I just want to shout out the Black Headcrafts for a second because I want to talk about sound design. The sound of those things terrifies me. So even if they're not scary on a flat screen, let me tell you, in VR. I'm sure. It's not okay. Like there's so much stuff in Half Life Alex. We'll talk about that more on the Beanscast. But there are just those things are

humongous. They jump right at your face. I mean, there is a part of it. There are some jump scares that are just like you walk into a room that you don't think has anything in it and then a crab leaps right directly in your face. And you hear that horrible hiss. And the thing, another really, there's so much smart stuff like Jason, you mentioned when you shoot a rocket

at one of those airships, you have to move the rocket around to dodge its fire or it'll shoot it down. With the black head crabs, if they hit you, you lose all of your health but one point. But then you get it all back as long. I've never, I don't think I've ever died

from that happening, but it always causes panic. Like, it's this incredible... I've never actually seen another video game do that where there's an enemy that can do that. I've never seen that before. We're like, you lose all your health temporarily, except for one point, and then you get it back. So it's just designed to make you freak out.

And then to make you, like, anytime you're, like, in a fight with two or three things, and you hear one of those things, you're like, oh, shit. Because you have to do that. Kirk, Kirk, don't you remember fighting Kafka when he takes all your health down to one... Adjacentally adjacent right now. That's true, but it's, I mean, it's a little different, but yes, that is true.

It's kind of similar, though, because you go all the way down to one point, which automatically is going to make you be like, oh, yeah, make you kind of freak out. No, it's true. It's a similar idea. Even though, I think they probably are programmed not to attack you immediately after attacking you so that you have time to back up, have a panic attack, and then regroup and be like, okay, okay, I'm shooting at it, I'm shooting at it. And also if you can manage to shoot it as it's just.

something towards you. That's like actually ideal. So it really trains your reflexes because then you can kill it when it's got its mouth open. But good luck. This is a game. I'm sure that like so many essays and videos have been made about the sound design in this game. Yeah, we have to talk about it. It's really brilliant. Just like like the way, the one thing that really stood out to me was the strider death noises. That was like this unique sound. And all sorts of other stuff. Man. And they slouch and kind of trip over themselves a little bit and like shuffle into the ground as they're dying. It's very satisfying because you're like, yeah, I feel like usually, maybe it's because we have critic brain. But I feel like usually when we talk about sound design, it's usually when you notice sound design,

it's because it's something off, something feels off. But in this game, I really noticed a lot of it and was just like, wow, this is really cool. This is really well done. I'd say that it's like a sonic masterpiece. So the sound designer and composer, the sound lead was Kelly Bailey on this game. and he just killed it. I mean, he also, I think, wrote all the music or a lot of the music, which also holds up for 2004.

Like, it's this weird electro kind of house stuff, but it gets me pumped every time it comes in. And it's used so sparsely to use Dark Souls as another comparison. There are a lot of parts of this game where there's no music at all. And then when it comes in, it's time to kick ass. It feels very, like, post the Matrix in terms of, like, the industrial, like, goth. And also, like, people getting plugged into the combine vortex.

or whatever. Like, it does feel very much of that style. Absolutely a compliment. Like, not a bad thing at all. Yes, yes. And it's such, it has such a sonic identity. The sound of the healing devices, that the sound that makes is, like, just burned into my brain. I think that's one of the most iconic sound effects ever created. Also, a thing that I noticed this time that I've noticed before, but I really was just drinking it in is the Combine Radio Chatter. So there's the Overwatch Voice, which is, um,

Ellen McLean, the voice of Gladys, provides the voice of overwatching. You'll just hear her sometimes, like, intruder mark seven in sector five. Document by restrict. And also between her and also with the combine, we'll just hear like, like, six, four times, I'll break, outbreak, outbreak, I'll break, off these guys. It's these weird things where it's a mix of words that makes sense, but then terminology that you don't have context for. And then other times, it's just not, it's not sensical.

It doesn't make any sense. And it's so good. The radio chatter of these like shock troops, right? The like terrifying like sort of Gestapo of the like alien invading. Like they're so well realized because it's like familiar and alien. Like it sounds like police. Like it sounds like a SWAT team that's about to break down your door. But you can't actually understand what they're saying.

I've also never seen a game do that. Again, no one's taken that idea of like intelligible but unintelligible. like mysterious, but familiar. It's so good. I like, I wonder who's, I would like read a whole oral history just of the combine radio chatter from this game because it's like one of the most incredible things. Yeah, it's really creepy. And I never understood what anybody was saying.

I mean, it also fits into what I was saying about how the science fiction of it all. I never felt like I fully understood. But I don't know if Gordon is supposed to understand it either. So that kind of seemed fine to me, like just going everywhere and being like, I don't really know what I'm doing right now. I guess I'll just keep going. Yeah, it kind of makes me like a little, not perplexed, but I don't share the feeling that people have where they're upset by various cliffhangers.

Since episode two famously ends on the cliffhanger, which we'll discuss in the Beans cast, this game also ends on a really profound cliffhanger where the G-man is just like, hi, what's up? I'm not going to tell you what happens next. But I'm going to yoink you on out of this scene. Right, pulling you on out and we'll see what happens. This is a half-life tradition. the game begins out of this morass of sort of weird space and time,

just like the first game ends with you being sucked out of this alien reality by the G-Man. Like, it's always kind of in this weird place where there's a story, but it doesn't resolve and it doesn't need to. So for me, I'm always like, whatever. Whatever happens next is going to be fine. And we'll get to the thing at the end of episode two. It's a pretty profound cliffhanger, but at the same time. Yeah, I mean, it's funny you mentioned that.

I felt hearing about this cliffhanger, this legendary cliffhanger, I always felt there was going to be more story than there actually was. Right. And this is, it's still, I mean, I think that it's as much that people want there to just be more half-life too. Yeah. Than like that it's specifically we need resolution on this one plot point or this one character arc or whatever else is going on. And that makes sense to me. And I think maybe that's what people are expressing when they express upset at the fact that it ended on a cliffhanger is more that it ended.

You just want more. Right, because people want more of it. But yeah, man, I can't believe we're already out of time. I could talk about this game forever. There's like a thousand more. Well, we'll talk about it plenty more on the beans cast next one. There will be a lot more to say on the beans cast. We're going to get into it all.

Or you could just make it your one more thing every single movie for a really long time. Can we just like quickly say Alex Vance is the coolest character like maybe ever in the history of time? She's pretty rad. She's great. She's great as a protagonist too. And the face up, man, the faces look like that could have been a 2020. Pretty impressive. That's pretty remarkable. Yeah.

Yeah. You can really get a sense for how playing that. game in 2004 would have just been like, what? And then like no other games caught up for years. I know. Other than like portal, another pretty great game. Yeah, another, another Valve game. Yeah, it's a good one. So anyways, I'm really glad that you both played it. This was so much fun. We'll have much more to say about it. And of course, there's also a lot of people talking about this still in the triple click Discord, which has been really fun to read. So thanks to everybody listening who played along with us. And yeah, why don't we take a break? And then we'll be back for one more thing.

Hi, I'm Allie Gers. And I'm Julia Prescott. And we're the hosts of Round Springfield. Round Springfield is a Simpsons-adjacent podcast where we talk to Simpsons folks about non-Simpsons things. That's right. So in the past, we've gotten to talk to legendary showrunners and writers like Al Jean, Bill Oakley, Josh Weinstein, Dana Gould, Mike Reese and David X. Cohen. Voice actors like Maurice Lamarge, Maggie Roswell, and Yardley Smith, the voice of Lisa Simpson herself. Hell yeah. So we've been away securing guests for our final five episodes. We won't tell you everybody, but we'll let you know that the last episode is kind of a big deal. We got Matt Grainning.

Homer's dad. We got Homer's dad. Check out new episodes of Round Springfield starting June 21st. On maximum of fun or wherever you get your podcasts. Smell you later. Hey, kid. Your dad tell you about the time he broke Stephen Dorff's nose that the kid's choice of In Dead Pilot Society, scripts that were developed by studios and networks but were never produced are given the table reads they deserve. When I was a kid, I had to spend my Christmas break film in a PSA about angel dust. So yeah, being a kid sucks sometimes. Presented by Andrew Reich and Ben Blacker, Dead Pilot Society twice a month on maximum fun.org.

You know, the show you like, that hobo with the scarf who lives in a magic dumpster? Doctor Who? All right, and we're back for one more thing. Jason, what's your one more thing? My One More Thing is a game called Fantasian. You guys might remember this game because I mentioned it a few months ago when it first came out. It is the new game by Mist Walker, aka the studio by Hironobo Sakaguchi, the creator of Final Fantasy

and the director of many of the old Final Fantasy games. And music in this game is, of course, by the master himself, the Beethoven of video games, Nobuo Ui Matsu. which itself is a reason to play it. But if you guys remember, so basically this game was released in two halves this year. The first half came out in April, the second half came out just last week this August.

If you guys remember, this is an Apple Arcade exclusive, which is why I had been kind of hesitant to jump into it because I generally don't spend a lot of time playing hardcore games on my phone for various reasons. And playing Fantation has reminded me why that is, which I'll get to in a second. But yes, this is a brand new JRPG.

And Miss Walker has been making a lot of games recently that are, like, phone games that aren't quite like the old school JRPGs. This is very much an old school JRPG. And it feels very much like if, no, if, uh, Sakaguchi had stayed at Square and made like a continuation to the PS1 era of Final Fantasy games. This is what it would be like. It also feels a lot like Lost Odyssey and like Last Story, which are hers other games, um, other like console RPGs. But anyway, so it's a JRPG, turn-based combat, a lot of cool mechanics. You can store up random encounters and then fight them all at once instead of fighting them while you're on the battle and while you're on the battlefield. And so there's a lot of cool stuff in it.

The problem, once again, is that it's an Apple arcade exclusive. So if you want to play it, you have to pay $5 a month and continue paying as long as you are playing this game. No indication as of yet that it'll come to any other platforms, which is a shame because it would be pretty perfect on the switch. Although I will say there's some touch controls in the combat that actually work pretty well. and you kind of need to play in a phone for it. But here's the issue. So one of the reasons that the phone is not my ideal place for playing video games, like games that you actually stick to and play for hours at a time

or play for 40 hours or whatever, is that every single time I, like, minimize the Fantasian app and go to another app on my phone, like check my email, suddenly the Fantasian Apple will have closed. Same with like any time my phone is in sleep mode for a while. Suddenly it'll close. It's like a RAM thing. It's like because it's a high end.

game the phone can only keep it at sleep mode for so long but anyway the problem is that this is a game it's an RPG so there's like save points and you lose your progress if like the game goes into sleep mode when you haven't saved for a while having it a checkpoint you lose your progress so it's fortunately there are ample save points throughout the game but it's still such a pain to play on iPhone not to mention like moving around a map while pressing instead of like using buttons and controller is is not not ideal. So I really wish this game would come to Switch or PC or whatever else because it's a real shame for it to be locked away on A, a subscription platform and be a piece of hardware that is not super accommodating. I mean, granted, some people are playing it on like Apple TV or on an iPad

or a MacBook, which I'm sure is much better. But for me, it is not been ideal. But I'm sticking with it because I played a few hours now. And I really, really like it. Like, this game would be in the conversation. Like, there would be a ton of buzz. about it right now if it were on PC and consoles like people would be saying oh my god like this is this is final fantasy like spiritual successor it's awesome you all got to play it um but because it's like locked away in this apple arcade quarantine um it is not getting quite as much buzz as it should but i'm really enjoying it i'm going to keep playing it despite my distaste for the platform it is not nice that's fantasion yeah that makes you want to check it out here there's a few apple arcade games that i've

heard about recently maybe i'll subscribe for a month or two or something so kirk for you i mean this is Uwematsu firing on all cylinders. Like he is everything, every, every, every, every sound, he's never made a bad soundtrack in his life. He's like, does know how. Brilliant guy. Yeah, I mean, his composing levels are just beyond anything. I'm hard to describe. But, um, but this game, yeah, I mean, his soundtrack is, is amazing in this.

Yeah, yeah. Well, maybe I'll do that and try it out. Maddie, what's here one more thing? Okay, so mine is a TV show called Leverage Redemption, which is a, a, sequel eight years later to the original TV show Leverage, which came out in the 2010s. And it's a prequel. It stars Arthur Morgan. The prequel is Leverage Rising. Uh-huh. Yeah, Leverage Origins is going to come out like 16 years from now. All the actors are really still going to play themselves. Have you two ever watched the original leverage? I feel like it was a

quarantine favorite of many people. No, I think Emily's watched it. It's all, it's, it's pretty fun. So the premise of the original show is the same as the premise of today. It's just that eight years have passed and times have changed. So the premise of the original is that there's a heist in every single episode and I love heists and that alone is like

I know, right? But it's also just light comedic. It has sort of a sitcom vibe despite being about heist. It's about a thief, a grifter, a hacker and a fighter, a guy who punches people basically. Sounds like a team. Sounds like a

Yeah, they're a team. Sounds like my D&D party. Yeah, basically. And they're all under the help of like sort of the brains of the operation in the first show. And then in the second show, that guy leaves and there's a different brains of the operation. But that doesn't really matter. The point is, rich people are always the bad guy of every single episode of the show. The motivation of the characters of the team is simply to screw with extremely rich people.

And it's a pretty political show for its time. but the redemption version of it is so much more amped up on that aspect of it in a very pleasurable way. Like there's like a Martin Screlly stand in, like who they just screw over. And it's like literally Martin Screlly. Like top to bottom, like he has a different name, but it's the same guy. And like everything about his situation is Martin Screlly. And you just watch how they screw with him. And it's so pleasurable.

Sounds very cathartic. It's like Watch Dogs too did the same thing. Yeah. So like if it's also like just funny. and charming. And so, like, if that is the vibe that would help you out in this time when Jeff Bezos rules us all and there's nothing we can do about it, I would recommend watching every single episode of leverage and then also Leverage Redemption, which is the same show again, but now they brought it back because people need more leverage. And it rules. Yeah, this is the show. I'm remembering when you said, Heist, this is the show that Emily has told me about. And she's like, you would love this show. We should watch it as a- honestly really good. Just fun watch. Nice. Oh, yeah, maybe I'll check it out. My one more thing is also a TV show. It is a new FX show called Reservation Dogs.

Have other of you seen this show? Not yet, but I would like to. No, but I keep seeing it mention it. I'm like, wait, Reservoir Dogs? Is this a sequel to Reservoir Dogs? No. Is it an ape of that? No, it's referencing that.

So it's very much of the Buzzy Show right now. I'm sure some people are watching it. I've seen three episodes because there are three episodes. Though I think maybe critics have seen more and it's getting really good reviews. It's a really cool show. So this show is created by Tyco Waititi, who many people probably know. I was the director of the recent Thor movies, but also what we do in the shadows. And that was the TV show that he recently co-created with Jimine Clement.

It's also co-created by Sterland Harjo's Native American filmmaker. The two of them made this show with the goal of making a show that was really about like Native American life on a reservation in Oklahoma. And that's what it's about. And it's really good. I'm really into it for a number of reasons. So it features like the whole cast is indigenous actors, writers, director is so many people working on it. It's a lot of people from the comedy troupe,

the 1491s, who I wasn't familiar with, but now have been watching their stuff. It's a Native American comedy group who Sterling Harjo was a co-creator of that group. And it's great. It's the story of these four teens who are trying to get the money together to leave the reservation in Oklahoma and go out to California. And you find out in the first episode that they're really good friend who is maybe kind of their leader, like the one who held them all together died a year earlier and we don't know why. And so they're like doing crime.

They're kind of like young punks and they're like robin stuff and like it opens with them kind of stealing this truck full of hot chips and then they're kind of selling the chips to people and like trying to raise the money. And so it's like a mix of you know, it's a very funny show.

It's half hour episodes. It's a comedy. But it kind of has that really low key energy where there's a bit of a like surrealist tone. It feels a little bit like Atlanta to me, if anyone listening has watched Atlanta, it kind of has that energy where like... It sounds Fargo-ish also. Yeah, a little. The world is just kind of heightened

in this way. There are like supernatural things that will sort of happen, and then it's just extremely true to Native American life in so many ways that I don't understand, and I'm just finding really interesting and cool to watch. So I want to recommend the show, but I also want to actually recommend

the recaps that Kelly Simmons is writing at Vulture. She's a Native American writer who lives or has lived on a reservation. So her recaps, you know, they recap the show and she's a funny writer and tells the story, but she's also just constantly explaining references and like peppering in who's who, who the actors are, their other projects. It makes the show so much richer even to watch as someone who's just ignorant of so much about Native American life in a way that I wish I weren't. So I'm finding that really educational and cool as well.

And then the show is just a good show with great actors and characters and stories. So it's really, really cool. I'm really into it and I recommend it. So that's called Reservation Dogs. It's on FX. You can also watch it on Hulu if you have Hulu. And it's a great show. So yeah, there you go.

I'm going to watch it. Awesome. It's really good. Yeah, that sounds really good. Yeah. Cool. All right. Well, that's it.

And that's it for now. Anyways, we'll be back with more Half Life 2 next month in the Beans cast. But this was really fun. I'm so glad that you both finished the game. And thanks for listening, everybody. We'll see you all 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 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 to triple click at Maximumfund.org and find a link to our Discord in the show notes. Thanks for listening. Maximumfund.org. Comedy and culture. Artist-owned. Audience-supported.