Triple Click - Triple Play: Marvel's Midnight Suns

Episode Date: December 15, 2022

Sometimes you've just gotta play video games with Iron Man to unlock new cards that let you destroy Hydra, you know? This week, the TC gang dives into Marvel's Midnight Suns, a new game from XCOM developers Firaxis that could have also been called Marvel's Three Houses. Kirk, Maddy, and Jason talk about the elaborate combat system, the wide-ranging cast of superheroes, and whether or not you can smooch Wolverine. (You cannot.)One More Thing: Kirk: Interview With The VampireMaddy: White Lotus season 2Jason: Chained EchoesLinks:Support Triple Click: http://maximumfun.org/joinBuy Triple Click Merch: https://maxfunstore.com/search?q=triple+click&options%5Bprefix%5D=lastJoin the Triple Click Discord: http://discord.gg/tripleclickpodTriple Click Ethics Policy: https://maximumfun.org/triple-click-ethics-policy/ Happy MaxFunDrive! Right now is the best time to start a membership to support your favorite shows. Learn more and join at https://maximumfun.org/jointripleclick 🚀  SUPPORT TRIPLE CLICK:Join Maximum Fun | Buy TC Merch💬 JOIN THE TRIPLE CLICK DISCORD🎮 Triple Click Ethics Policy📱 SOCIALS | @tripleclickpodInstagram | YouTube | TikTok | Twitch

Did you know this? Have you heard about this? The Game Awards apparently has commercials now. They're called the Game Awards. Welcome to Triple Click where we bring the games to you. This week we are talking about Marvel's Midnight Suns, a fantastic new game from the creators of X-Coc. I'm Jason Shrier. I'm Kirk Hamilton. And I'm Maddie Myers. Hello. Hey, hello to Movie.

We made it back here again. My friend. We made it. It was an adventure. It was a close call, but we made it. We made it through the Game Awards. We did. We survived them.

We survived Bill Clinton Guy. We survived the Keely Hype Fest. We survived. Hades 2 getting announced. That's true. That's exciting. Some other stuff got announced, but I don't remember any of it. He survived me being reminded that Hozier is a guy and not a band.

That's right. Despite the fact that I said he was a band. It's a guy. It's a guy. I should know that. I answered a question about him on Strongsong. Is it Hozier or Hozier? Hozier? Oh, yeah.

Is it Hozier? I thought it was Hozier. I'm not sure. Oh, no. It's almost like we watched a show where people said his name out loud. I missed that point in then I'll issue a correction next week. Did I tell you guys I was like, I was like an hour late for the show because I was driving. I was in Santa Monica and it took me 20 minutes to get there and then an hour and a half to

get back because L.A. traffic is weird. LA traffic. Let's talk about. Let's get into it. I really get into it. I was like, I might as well just watch for my hotel room. So it turns out I flew out to LA to watch the Game Wars from my hotel. That's funny.

It takes me back to E3 where we'd fly to E3 and then watch the press conferences on our laptop. Exactly. But then I wound up at the bar afterwards, so it was worth it. Which is the point of going. Right. As you've said many times, that's the real reason to go. It's so funny. Man, people like, I won't say who, but just seeing like people who, gaming people know,

like famous executives getting toasted and I'm just like rambling at the Game Awards. I shouldn't because it's rude but it was just extremely funny to see some of that stuff at the Game Wars at the Marriott. So it wasn't Jeff Keely getting utterly blasted

and just telling you a lot of embarrassing stories about his childhood? That's not who it was. I don't think he was there. I imagine that after the Game Wars Keeley just goes to hang out with Kojima in a private hotel room somewhere. That's the real hang. is the Keeley hang, the post party at

Keeley's suite. The Keeley, Kojima Hange. They have like a secret IMAX theater and his parents like open the heated curtain and they're like welcome son and son's friend. But no, I did see a lot of a lot of cool people. Some triple click fans at the Marriott came up

and said hi. So they were fans of the show that's always fun. Were they also drunk video game executives who just happened to be fans? They would not. But that would have been hilarious. That would have been extremely enjoyable because then they would be listening to this right now and be like, come on, Jason, you're blowing up my spot here. But you're not. You're being so polite. You're not sure. You're being very discreet.

And yeah, to those, to those of you out there who, like, were wondering just why someone came up and interrupted the show at the end of it, check out mine and Maddie's articles about that dude. Do we? But I guess people can check out our attempts to answer that. I can tell you exactly why. He's like an annoying Jewish teenager. And I mean, speaking from experience. That's exactly, it was like the type of random, everyone thought it was an anti-Semitic thing, but I really don't think that it was. I don't even. I think it was just him saying something

random, because random inside jokes are hilarious when you're 15. And like, this is the type of thing that some of my friends, maybe me, would have like found the funniest thing in the world at 15 years old. Like getting out stage, pretending you have an Israeli accent and going, yeah, Bill Clinton, it would have been

like, we would just find that hysterical. Do you think maybe the pandemic also has caused 15-year-olds to be even more cringe-worthy? More brainworms? I just wonder about that. I thought about that a lot where I was like, the other times this kid had done like a ton of YouTube videos were pre-pandemic. And then a couple years went by. And now this is what he's doing.

The world has changed. It's a changed world. Everything's different. And now we're out here telling really strange jokes. And people don't know what to make of it. And still talking about this kid. Hey, aren't we a listener-supported podcast, Jason? Are we?

Sorry, Kirk. Just one more quick thought. Oh, my God. I really, sorry, Kirk. I just want to say, I really actually appreciate that people want to defend anti-Semitism, but sometimes a dumb, random kid is just a dumb, random kid. That was something that came out of it. Okay, yes, we are a listener-supported.

They want to defend against anti-Semitism, you mean. Right. Yes, fight against, sorry. I really appreciate that sometimes people want to fight against, defend people from anti-Semitism. Semitism fight against anti-Semitism. But yeah, sometimes a dumb kid is just a dumb kid.

And, like, yeah, he spoke Hebrew. I was like, At me de Berri-Rit. And he was like, no, I don't speak Hebrew. So what's a website that people could go to if they wanted to support triple-click, Jason? So anyway, we are a listener-supported show. If you want to hear us talk more about our adventures through Los Angeles traffic, you can become a member too and help us make this show possible.

Go to maximum fund.org slash join and sign up today. and you will also get bonus content because we make a bonus episode every month for all of our loyal subscribers, members, including we are about to do one that has been requested by a couple of people out there. And when we are very excited to put up on the bonus feed, which is a spoiler cast, a beans cast on the show and or Star Wars and Door. We will be doing a Beanscast. It will run at the end of December. and we are very excited for you all to hear it. We're also very excited to talk about it. So that'll be fun.

Once again, become a member. Go to maximum fun.org slash join. Also, one quick thing before we get started is one quick programming note is that next week, we will be taking the week off for the holidays because we believe in vacations. We like to take two weeks off a year, pretty much. So as a kind of special treat for all of you listeners out there, a little holiday present, we will be making a

bonus episode available to everyone on the main feed. So look out for that. If you've already listened to all the bonus episodes, then fantastic. You get to listen to it again. And then you can wait another week for us to come back. So we will not be doing a regular episode next week.

We will be back with normal stuff starting the following week. And I believe it is time for us to start with our end-of-year content. So games of a year. And then we capture that. We're going to do predictions. We're going to revisit last year's predictions.

The most anticipated episode of the year, according to the triple-click awards. That is true. That is true. Okay, let's move on. Maddie, what are we talking about today? We all played a video game. It's called Marvel's Midnight Suns, and it is Xcom, but with Marvel heroes. And it's made by the Xcom folks themselves.

It's made by Faraxis. It's published by 2K. And I love Marvel. Everyone knows this. However, I went into Marvel's Midnight Sun's extremely skeptical. I am feeling a little weary of Marvel video games these days. We have talked about Marvel's Avengers on this show. We have talked about Guardians of the Galaxy. I made Marvel Snap my one more thing. I will admit I'm not playing Marvel Snap anymore.

Got a little burned out on it. Not the fault of Marvel Comics, but just feel like there's a lot of Marvel in my life right now. So heading into Midnight Suns, even though I really love X-Com and I really love a lot of the things that this game ends up doing and I should have been excited for. I was very skeptical. However, I am of only a few hours in it and I am loving it. I think that it is pretty funny. There's some somewhat cringeworthy jokes in here we can talk about. There's some slightly repetitive dialogue that I noticed. But I'm laughing out loud more at this game than I was at Guardians of the Galaxy and the card game mechanic that is in this, which is very different from Xcom, and we can get into that, is so freaking fun and so cool. And chaining together different

kinds of attacks actually reminds me a little bit of Marvel Snap in a good way. We can get into that too. So I know you two are also kind of tired of Marvel stuff, but I'm very curious to hear how this one hit you. So, Kirk, how long have you been playing this? And what do you think about it so far? I really, really like this game. I've played a lot now, a pretty fair amount, maybe 10 hours or 11 hours. So I'm pretty far into the story, pretty far into the game. I've unlocked a bunch of heroes. I guess the most recent hero I unlocked was Captain America. And Wolverine turned up for a little bit as well, to give people a sense of where I am in the story. So there's still much more to unlock. But I'm into the meat of the tactical game where I'm unlocking lots of cards and upgrading them and starting to

build loadouts and figure out all the ways that the heroes synergize and that kind of thing, which is where the game really comes into its own. It takes a few hours to get going, because there's a lot going on in this game. And yeah, I really, really, really like the tactical strategy part of it. And I'm finding the writing and story part to be charming and fun as well. It's nice. It's like a ground-level version of the base management in X-com. And the one thing I'm not as wild about is just how much micromanagement there is in the base. I think there's just kind of too much where I have to go around and do all my chores before I get to go play again. It works for the rhythm of the game, but there's just a little too much of that stuff, too many things to go and

decode and unlock in between each mission. So I like the story and I like that rhythm. They just kind of overdid it with all of those microsystems. But overall, I really like this game. I'm going to keep playing it after this episode. I'm super into it. Every time I'm playing it, I'm having a blast. It's a fantastic game. It shouldn't be a surprise because I love Xcom and I love for access, but they did it again. This game is really fun. Jason, how about you? Yeah, I also really like it. It feels less like Marvel X-GOM than I expected,

and more like Marvel, like, X-GOM slash persona slash Harry Potter. Fire emblem, three houses. Yeah, Marvel Three Houses. Marvel's Three Houses. So, yeah, I really into it. I really like everything that you guys both mentioned. I really like how many systems there are. Like, it's so interesting.

It feels like there's going to be so much more depth that I'm still unlocking. But I'm only a few hours. in, I just unlocked Spider-Man, so I'm not super far in just yet, but I've gotten to the point where it feels like there's just like no end to the number of systems I'm going to unlock. It's like, oh, I have to hunt for magical items around the campus. Oh, I have spell powers for some reason too. And all this stuff, it just keeps building on itself. And I'm very curious to see what I'll learn next, what new systems I'll be unlocking next. That said, it also kind of feels like a low budget game in some ways. It can be kind of janky. There's some weird bugs

during one like mission opening sequence. It was like three dudes and one of them was just in his underwear for some reason marching. So it's just like, he's feeling himself. Yeah, he's, he's feeling good. I mean, he looks good. So I get it. But it's like three guys marching and like it's a serious like slow mo combat intro and one of them is just in his underwear. So it's kind of janky. That's amazing. One huge, huge flaw is that you cannot pause cutscenes, which for those of us who are parents and are interrupted constantly. I'm not a parent, but it's really bothering me.

Even if you're not a parent, yep. Sometimes people want to refill their glass of water. For Axis, I am begging you. I am begging. I tweeted about this and the executive producer treated at me being like, yeah, we're going to try to make that. It's got to be in an update. I'm sure by the, I hope by the time people listen.

This is going to be such a moot point because the lack of pause button is so noticeable. And yet it is my only significant complaint. It's really bad. And even on PlayStation, I'm playing on PlayStation 5 on a code provided by 2K. And you can't like going to the home screen, which I thought might be a solution, doesn't, like, they give still runs, even when you need that. So there's literally no way to pause it other than like going into rest mode in the middle of the cut scene, which is not practical.

I'm playing on PC on via steam. And similarly, if you alt tab out of the game, it continues. It does make it so that you can't hear it anymore, but the dialogue is continuing. Cutscings are continuing. There's nothing you can do. So you cannot see, miss it all. And just in other ways, too, it feels a little janky. It feels a little low budget.

Maybe they were throwing so much into this game that it wasn't quite possible to polish everything to the level they wanted to. But even just like walking around feels a little bit clunky, having to like pick up items. there's something about it that feels a little bit off. But that's said, I mean, so far that hasn't detracted from me really enjoying this game. And I think the only thing that might stop me from, like, playing more and eventually finishing it, is just that there's so many other games that are either coming out or that I've codes for that I'm just very excited for that might distract me. But yes, I really, I really like it.

I'm into it. It feels a little more rushed to me. Like, it's just not quite finished. It came in really hot. Having played a lot of it, there's just a lot of rough edges. Things like transitions between cutscenes and the world where the music keeps playing for a second, or during the loading screen, you hear a moment of ambient audio and then it goes away. Those kind of telltale signs that you learn from years playing of video games indicate that the game is just kind of held together loosely in some ways.

And it seems to me less of a budget issue and more that it's a really ambitious game. There's a ton of stuff in it. There's third-person exploration and Mass Effect-like dialogue and this overhead, you know, isometric combat view. There's really elaborate combat animations that are super cool when you pull off a super move or throw people around the battlefield. So there's a lot of animation. There's a lot of cutscenes. There's a lot, lot in it, even though it doesn't look super high poly and high res.

It just seems to me like getting all of that stuff to hold together was very difficult. And they just haven't quite got it there yet. I feel pretty sure that this game will feel very different in a month or two after it's gotten a bunch more updates. I would love to play this on Steam Deck, for example. but the Steam Deck version doesn't really work just because they didn't finish it, even though this game would work so well on Steam Deck, it's perfect for that kind of thing,

which is just another indicator that they'd love to have done it. They just had to, you know, prioritize some things over other things. And it's also a huge game. I've seen estimates that it can be 60 hours or even longer than that, which is wild to me, given that there's so much story in this game. I just assumed I'd be looking at like a 30-hour experience or less than that. I'm also sort of mentally comparing it to stuff like Marvel's Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy, which were closer to that. But the idea of having a 60-hour story game about these Marvel characters is surprising to me.

I guess it's worth noting that my personal compliments for the story are actually compliments of character writing and character moments. I don't think the overarching story is that interesting so far. Maybe I'll think that later. but mainly what I'm enjoying is the ensemble cast feel that a lot of these other games have struggled to nail, which is so important with a superhero game. And this is something I was thinking about with God of War Ragnarok as well, where if you have that many characters on the board, how do you develop all of them? And this game, I mean, it's not perfect, but I did really feel hanging out with each character like there was unique dialogue. that fit each of them, according to who I know them to be from the comics. Really cool to see some of my more obscure faves in there.

I love magic in X-Men comics. She's Colossus' sister. People might know Colossus from the movies at the very least. And she's really freaking cool. And she's a major, major part of this game. Like, not just a phoned-in character who's only kind of there. She's constantly there. And I have her on my team now because I'm so into her portals.

and all the combos that you can do with her portals. She's basically like shell in terms of her power set. She can like create portals and throw dudes through them at other dudes. And it's freaking awesome. But also to have her be, you know, sarcastic and talking about her traumatized Soviet Russian childhood and all that stuff is very fun to see as well. And I don't know. I'm just, I'm loving the fact that this is an actual ensemble cast.

Yet you get to pick which members of the ensemble you want to. be a part of your lineup, which I feel like that almost never works. And I'm kind of waiting for it to break, you know? It actually just gets better, at least in what I've played. So to explain the narrative setup of this game to people, the idea is that it's kind of a, it's like a Marvel world. It's not the MCU, but it's similar. There's a lot of the jokes and the characterizations are kind of similar, especially Tony Stark. Oh, yeah. So there are Avengers, then there are Midnight Suns, these two groups of heroes that sort of wind up being thrown together when Lilith, who's this super powerful witch, who worked with Agatha Harkness, who, anyone watching the MCU knows from Wanda Vision, and Wanda Maximoff, who was also involved.

And she kind of like vanishes at the beginning and is taken by Lilith. And so they all have to team up to fight against Lilith. So basically, there's just this world ending super witch who's going to kill everybody. And then they have to team up. And then your character is the hunter who's a made-up character, who is the son or daughter. Or yeah, you're right. I'm just assuming it's Lilith's daughter. What am I saying?

I guess you could be a son if you want. Yes. It's a sexist money Myers over here. It's a classic Miss Andrew. You could be a son or a daughter. Although I think they refer to you as they, no matter what you do. You do, which is kind of neat. It is cool.

So you've been asleep for 300 years. I'm playing as a daughter. It's cool and also saves money because you want to write two different lines. So it's win-win. Yeah. What's been cool about the narrative so far is that because they've built in a friendship system where you hang out with people and you become better friends with them and that makes them more powerful in combat, there's more depth to the social dynamics of the superhero team-up

than in something like Marvel's Avengers. And I think that, it winds up getting at what makes superhero team-up stories and especially the X-Men cool is because there's conflict and strife between different characters. And that has really become a thing in this story. There's this division in the superhero team between the Avengers and the Midnight Suns. The Midnight Suns are younger. They're their own group. They've been doing. doing their own thing. They're more goth. They're much more goth. They're more magic and weird stuff. The Avengers, it's like, Dr. Strange and Iron Man. They're older. They're squared. They know everything. Right. And they have their own team and their own, their own, their own history and their own

bag is constantly saying, okay, boomer, anytime Tony says anything. And it's great. We love it. So that really is the dynamic. And crucially, you can become worse friends with people. You can screw up your friendship with different characters. So this becomes an issue that an initial point of conflict is Wanda Maximoff. So Scarlett, which has vanished and been taken by Lilith, and all the Midnight Suns are super upset about that because they are really good friends with her. And the Avengers have their own stuff to worry about. Like Stephen Strange is really worried about the Sanctorum, which has also been taken.

So everyone's kind of concerned with their own things and kind of judging one another. They're like, oh, these Avengers don't care about Wanda. No one cares about Wanda, what the hell? and you wind up like, you know, getting in the middle of that and sometimes pissing people off and watching them argue. And those dynamics are really fun, especially because they're mechanically expressed. Like you see that little minus two on the heart on the friendship when you give the wrong answer, and it's kind of a bummer.

And I really like that. I also really like magic, just another example of how this works. When you're hanging out with magic, she says to you, you know what I really like about you is that you know when to just shut up and listen. And then you can choose your response, and one of your responses can be say nothing. And if you pick that, you get more friendship points. And then you have to kind of file that away and remember what kind of person she is in your future responses to her.

And actually think about the conversation, you know, that you're having with each character, which is really fun. Given that, to me, by and large, the triumph of this game is the tactical combat. Oh, yeah. This social stuff is actually really fun and engaging. It's a nice change of pace. Yeah, it's straight out of persona where you get the best bonuses if you, and also it impacts your combat because the more, you just, you develop with someone the better what is it you got special

cards with them or you unlock more moves is that yeah you unlock more moves they get better but it is different from persona in that persona is a one way you know trip basically I know you can screw up dating but it's mostly you just become better and better friends as you level up where this is more you know it's more in flux

and so it feels a little more actually social oh well what I was referring to specifically is that you have dialogue options and some give you boost to the social link meter and others don't or others give you lesser boosts. So you do have to make the best decisions based on what you know of the character. Right. Just in this game, you can actually choose badly and go backwards. Right. You can lose progress, which makes it even more interesting. It adds a little more

depth to it. Yeah, that's for sure. Do you guys think if Dr. Strange was a homophobic senator, would he live in the sanctum Santorum? Yeah. Wow. That's a deep cut. That's where Senator Kelly lives. Folks, that's one for the X-Men fans out there. Everybody. Making a note to edit out Jason's sweaty joke that's 23 minutes. Oh my gosh. Yeah, it's funny to talk so much about the social links because I feel like we could just talk about the combat for 30 minutes and that could be the entire episode. So I guess we have to get to it.

So here's how that part of it works. I had assumed heading into this game that you would pick your team every time and perhaps you do that later in the game. But largely you don't have that many choices at first. You're given certain characters who are key to each story-related situation that you're in. And at first, you haven't recruited everybody yet. And they start you off with Dr. Strange and Iron Man and then Blade pretty soon after that, which I liked, by the way, because at first I was like, Dr. Strange and Iron Man,

I know these freaking guys from the MCU. Am I going to be hanging out with MCU guys this whole game? And then they throw Blade in, which is very fun. And Blade is also the best in this game. Delightful. But first you're starting out really 101 level. You're with Tony Stark. Everybody's feeling safe and normal.

And you learn the combat. So you have a deck of cards for each individual character, but when you're playing through a battle, each different characters' cards from their respective decks can be shuffled in for you to choose. And I believe you get three card plays per turn. And you can also get a couple redraws if you want to just throw a card back in the pile and get a different one.

And those cards can correspond to an attack or something that can be chained with something else or some sort of status buff or healing or whatever. And the really fun part is basically those chained attacks and comboing with other characters, but that doesn't happen until significantly later. So at first you're just learning about this most basic concept of using attack cards, many of which also have knockback, which allows you to hit one guy into another guy, essentially. That's like the most... Feels so good every time you do it.

Way to describe that. And yes, it feels freaking amazing. It's really fun. And using these cards and paying attention to how many plays you have, getting the most out of those plays, is more important, I would say, than positioning is in some ways. It's not quite like X-Com where I remember your position. on the battlefield being extremely important to every encounter, and obviously you have to keep an eye on player health as well.

But at least in this game, thus far, the math of it all relates more to selecting attacks and planning out which character is going to do what, as opposed to really considering where they are on the battlefield. But that might change. Kirk, you look like you have something to say. I do. So, yes, position matters, but in a very different way from X-Com, because there's no cover in this game. You're superheroes. Superheroes don't take cover. That's right. There's no cover. So the combat in this gets right to the action and it feels like the moment in XCOM or XCOM 2, where the shit is hit the fan, you're in a good position and it's gunfight time and like stuff is going off,

the most exciting part without all the setup and the tactics, which I do like in XCOM, but it's also cool to not have that here. And then position starts to matter because there's a lot of area of effect attacks, there's a lot of stacked attacks. You want to be within range of different people for different attacks. So you start to think much more offensively about position. It's less about where don't I want to be, even though that also becomes an issue, like, a bomb is going to drop next turn here, so you need to get everybody out of here.

But it's more about where do I want to put the enemy, because you can be so offensive because you have so many moves. So an example of this, as you play, especially like once you get into it, kind of to where I am, you start to build decks that really have all these synergies built into them. And each turn, you're really sitting there and, like, mapping out a really complex and satisfying turn. And there's not really any probability like an X-com where you can just miss an attack. That doesn't happen.

When you play an attack card, you just attack. And with a lot of the minions, if you attack them, they die. Or they're knocked out. I love the chaos. This is a side note, but the fact that it says, K.O. When, like, Nico will, like, knock someone down and, like, suck their soul out of their body and into herself. And it's like, K.O. Or Blade, like, shoots a guy with a machine gun and then stabs.

Yeah. It's just a knockout. Maybe it stands for Killed Off. Killed obviously. Who has a line? No, it's not. Because Captain Marvel has a line at one point after you've K-Oed a bunch of guys.

I think it's her where she's like, I wonder what the retention rate is on Hydra. And I was like, Carol, they're dead. We are murdering them. They're dead, Carol. So to explain a little bit of like a turn and how a turn might work with a kind of more advanced deck, so you draw and you have three cards to play,

but there are quick attacks. And a quick attack, if it knocks a dude out, you get that card play back. but you don't get the card back. So you could do two quick attacks and get the card playbacks. You still have three plays and a smaller hand. Then you can play a card that Dr. Strange has that redraws your two most recent attacks

and get those two quick attacks back. So now you have those back in your hand and you can do two more quick attacks for free and not lose any cards. That's the kind of thing you start to do early on. Then later, so magic can do an ability that pulls a whole bunch of dudes into one area. So you pull them all right next to something.

Then she drops a portal that makes it so that, if you hit the boss, the boss is going to fly through the portal and crash into those dudes. If he does that, he's going to do enough damage to those guys that Spider-Man's sort of chain attack will be able to knock them out. So you plan this out so that first magic pulls the dudes together, she drops a portal, then you have her go and do a knock-back attack on the boss who flies through to all the dudes, and then Spider-Man has this upgraded ability that chains all four of those guys now that their health is lower and knocks them out.

So it keeps getting more complex like that. Soon you can start using redraws to power up certain cards. So instead of redrawing, you just add another ability to it. I have one card. It's called patience, and it's for the hunter. It's really overpowered, but it rules. It costs six heroism points, which you build up for basic attacks to cast, which is like a lot, but it gets cheaper each turn.

So you get it in your hand, and usually on the story missions, there's going to be a boss at some point. So if you get it early on, you're like, okay, I'm just leaving this in my hand. And in the second phase, the boss is going to come out, and this is going to cost nothing. and it does like a billion points of damage. So there's all these layers of strategy that are revealing themselves and I'm still only like 10 hours in. So it's this really rich and rewarding

and fun system, like system of systems that they've put together. I'm so impressed by it. And we haven't even talked about that. Items and stuff are the environmental attacks and stuff like that. Like Maddie, to your point, I actually think movement is in positioning

is important when it comes to that stuff. Like you got X number of moves, a turn, and you can move your characters around. Sometimes there are like objects that are falling. The one mission I did, they were like, I think it was Venom who was throwing things at the battlefield. So you have to kind of move your guys out of the way. And so you do have to think about like, okay, I only have one move, but all three of my characters are in danger. So I'm going to use an attack for this guy.

So he gets out of the way and attack for this guy. And then I'll move him using the one move that I have. So there is a lot of strategy on that side of things. And then there are also all these like objects around the environment that you can use to knock out enemies. So you have to do a lot of planning in terms of like, okay, I'm going to use this object on this guy, but that'll only damage him. It won't kill him. So then I'm going to knock this other quick guy or easily like one hit kill guy into another guy. And yeah, a lot of strategy in this game, which is really cool.

And that lets you watch things like Wolverine picking up a stack of newspapers and throwing them into a guy's face, which is always funny to me. Very important. It's very silly. You're right. I guess positioning does matter, but in a way that feels so different from XCOM that it's hard. to even think about it. It's just very different. Because, as Kirk said, all of the characters are so powerful that it's more just a matter

of figuring out where to aim each bowling ball. Because like almost everyone is a powerhouse in a different way. So you're kind of like setting up the shot so that you can hit the most pins or the right pins for whatever you want. And that's really fun. It's cool to play a game where you just don't die that often. And usually it's pretty easy to prevent the characters from dying. so far for me. I can see how this game could get significantly harder. And it's also pretty

difficult for me to imagine what it's going to be like when I have even more characters because so far I only have a few and I like them all and I'm already sad that I can't spend time with them all and fight with them all. But I can't imagine a version of this where there's like six different characters on the battlefield. Because there is already a lot of waiting in the game of watching animations happen. So you take three out for each mission and eventually there are side missions where you can take any combination of three and leave the hunter behind

though the hunter's so powerful that I always bring her with. You can take three, there's always going to be three heroes in every fight. And then in story missions there's usually one or two designated or there's like a hole because you're going to get introduced to a new hero, you know, Wolverine turns up when Sabreto turns up and then you get Wolverine

and you get to do that fight. And they do a good job of some of the things that XCOM did. sort of modified versions. For example, characters can get wounded, which is cool because it's like an Xcom where it's a persistent thing. If you take too much damage in a fight, the character gets a wound, which then manifests as you start getting wound cards in your deck that you draw into your hand at the beginning of the turn. And they don't do anything, they're just cards. So you have to get rid of them. So it basically loses you one card.

So it's kind of this debuff that you have. And they need to heal back at base. So that is similar to Xcom. You can still take them out into the field, though. And it's not like Xcom where there's perma death or you have to wait forever because someone's grievously wounded. Like, it's not like that. It's just a little disincentive to take too much damage. But then when that happens, you're like, well, all right, I haven't taken Blade out in a while. So, you know, I've been relying on Spider-Man because he's really good. So he's wounded, so I guess I've got to take out Blade next time. And it kind of encourages you to rotate.

And then the more you play, at least I've gotten really used to each of these characters, because they each kind of fill different roles. There's the characters who are good at sort of chaining attacks. Wolverine is like that. Spider-Man is like that. There's the tanky characters, Captain Marvel, Captain America, Wolverine to a lesser extent. There's kind of damage dealing. So you start to, like, figure out which roles everyone fits in.

And part of the fun of the game is taking out different teams and just seeing what works. Because they're all really good so far. There's no weak characters. I like having everyone on my team. Yeah. At first I was like, man, wait, I found out there are only like 15 or 16 characters you can actually play as, which is such a small number compared to like a normal strategy game. but yeah, I think thinking of this in terms of,

kind of in different terms is helpful, with different framing is helpful. And I think having a three-person party makes it clear that like, oh, okay, this is a pretty limited selection. And yeah, so far I am really enjoying all of the heroes. I wish there was perma death. And then if a character died,

then someone else from the comics would step up to replace them. So, like, Peter Parker dies and Miles Morales comes in. I'm the new Spider-Man. It's like everyone has to be an alternate for that same character. though so that they don't have designed to many different versions of the same power set. That'd be funny. That'd be funny. Alternate to say, hey, I'm Miles Morellis.

Now I'm Iron Man. I have the exact same moves. Yeah, no. But yeah, no, I'm enjoying the kind of the creative comboing too, although I've just kind of fallen in love with Captain Marvel's moves set, and I'm just using her all the time to just track everything. She's really great. I feel like the Fire Emblem Three Houses comparison is probably the best one in terms of just how many

characters there are, as opposed to something like an excom where it's like, oh, 15, that doesn't feel like enough. But it is enough if you think about it in terms of how at the beginning of three houses, I think the sensation every player has is how am I possibly going to get to know every single one of the students in my class? And by the end of it, you do somehow. You keep them all straight. They all have really distinctive personalities. Well, part of it is that it's like 60 to 80 hour game. That's right. It's just a long, long game. Yes, much like this game apparently is. Maddie, I think your bowling pin analogy is very apt because it does often feel like you're bowling with these characters. It's annoying.

It's annoying when you get a split. And it's like, oh, there's a guy over here and a guy over here. I can't knock on each other or whatever. It's like bowling except you can fall in love with your bowling balls and like take them on dates and stuff. I don't know if the hunter gets to romance anyone. I know that other characters have crushes on each other and the hunter can kind of be a match. but I'm not actually sure if you get to date any. I think there might not be.

I think you might just be friends. I'm in phel and platonic love. Well, that's true. You become quite fond of your bowling balls. Yeah, exactly. Your bowling balls, you can hang out with your bowling balls. You take them on a walk. It gives that great feeling that XCOM gives as well of just being, of I am a genius.

I love this thing that I figured out. When I'm looking at the field and I finally am like, okay, I just need to get this guy's shield down so that the thing in the truck becomes unguarded so I can get it. How do I do that? I'm like, wait, if I throw this guy here, then this, will explode and this will come and you start to do the math and then you're like yeah and then you start to do it and because there aren't any probabilities it doesn't have that frustrated feeling you get in X-com where it's like your sniper misses the 95% shot and you have to

reload the save you know because you're being you're a degenerate save scummer there's no saves scumping at this you just do the thing and it works you don't need to yeah and it really does mimic the feeling of those really crisp umccccccccccule fight scenes where every single character is doing something and it's like hawkies catching an arrow that he then bounces off of a building and throws to Tony who carries it somewhere else. I don't know. You know, you guys know what I'm talking about. I don't need to invent of my scene. The animations are really,

the animations are great. The attacks look super cool. It's always, you know, even the attacks on your guys, a lot of times a boss will uppercut Spider-Man and he goes flying across the wall into the, you know, across the map into the wall. It's great. It has that superheroic feel. I suspect

that if they ever make an ex-com three, they will not have any randomness in it because it feels like so many games have come out since then that have that are just more elegantly designed and don't have randomness this as an example into the breach is another example and there's so many examples of like strategy where it's just like I think in general strategy games just feel better when you screwed up like if you screw up it's because you screwed up it's not because the game decided that your 5% chance of missing activated I wonder I mean like in Mario and Rabbids or fantastic game the new one

there's still, you know, 50% chance hit on cover and you can miss and hit. Like, there are still probabilities. Okay, but that's a little different because that, and I know Xcon, they play around with it based on shot distance and stuff like that. But in that game, you can't just flat out miss a shot. Right. Yeah. I mean, in XCOM, it's always been a meme, right?

That, like, sometimes because it's the actual randomness and not like a kind of computer weighted randomness, it's like actually, oh, yes, you are going to miss this, like, point like shot. So, I don't know. Maybe they'll play around with randomness. is a design concept, but do it a little bit differently. Either way, I think that, like, in general, randomness feels like kind of a relic of the early days.

And a game like this shows perfectly why. It's like you can still have a lot of challenge without having the randomness involved. The card system is just so smart. I mean, I've played... I know there are games like this that exist, but I've never played one, and I haven't played a thing like this,

where especially the fact that you're drawing from a unified deck. So a game like Sentinels of the Multiverse, which I've talked about a few times, a tabletop superhero card game, works similarly to this. It's a card-based Avengers knock-off game where you play these superhero archetypes. You have cards that you draw out of your deck, but it's cooperative and everyone's controlling a different character. To take that and turn it into a single-player thing where you just have a hand of cards that are these complementary cards from your characters, I just, I don't know. I mean, this is why I don't make video games, and people at Forexas who are really good at making video games do.

It's so smart. And apparently they started out making this game like X-Com. They were thinking, okay, well, we'll take X-com and we'll do a Marvel version of it, and then it wasn't that fun. And then you can kind of imagine them sitting around and be like, all right, we've got to find the fun, you know, what's this going to be? And then someone, they kind of come up with the system. And it's just cool to see that.

Well, the game that has come out that was pivotal here is Slavis Fire, which is basically the system. If you'd ever play that, that game is essentially it's a dungeon crawler, RPG with like card-based mechanics and you can use those cards to break the game and there are a lot of cool creative combos you can do and it is essentially this, except this is taking that

and applying it to a position-based tactical game more or so than like a term-based RPG but still that I mean it's so coincidence that I believe I don't so XCOM 2 came out in 2016 so safe to say they started making that in the next year or two after that

Slade the Spire came out I believe it was in early access. I'm not 100% sure when it started, but it came out according to Steam in January of 2019. So it's easy to imagine the timeline there of people playing that game and being like, well, we got it. This is what we're doing. Yeah. One similar game that there's no way they were influenced by is Marvel Snap, which is a weird comparison for me to make maybe on its face, but I'll explain why. I mean, of course, it's also a Marvel game, but it's, I would say that's not even close to the only similarity. So that game has three locations on the board where you play each of your cards and those locations have area effects essentially on each of your cards.

So it's tactical in that sense. And the other similarity is you're building your own deck. Every single card is a hero in each hero. And that game only has one ability that they're able to use. But the fact that you are playing those ability cards and watching them unfold and that you can have those heroes work together and synergize on certain locations. or have certain kinds of attacks that create absurd bonus multipliers. I mean, that's the most fun you can have with Marvel Snap is figuring out which characters work well together,

especially at a specific location or under a certain circumstance against certain villains where you get some ridiculous number that allows you to just defeat everything like a Hulkified monster. And it feels great. I mean, that is a very similar feeling. I just, the reason why I didn't stick with Marvel Snap, even though I actually really enjoyed that feeling and loved how obscure some of the characters were and the art is great.

It's just, you know, different types of classic Marvel art. You love your hifter. Of course. I mean, I can't help it. But throughout I kept being like the best part of Marvel Comics is not actually the cool attacks and who would win of it all. It's the story. It's the character drama. It's like the poignancy of these relationships. And having a superhero team, it's like having a rock band.

Everybody's going to fight with each other except something great is going to come out of it. you hope or maybe not. And that is what's fun about reading the comics. And that is what Midnight Suns actually manages to deliver while also having extremely satisfying card-based mechanics. And it just feels like a weird coincidence that those two games came out at like the same time. And I remember playing Marvel Snap and being like,

oh, I know Midnight Suns is going to be kind of card-based. Is it going to feel really bad after this game? And if anything, it feels like the answer to anyone who played Marvel Snap and was like, I kind of want a story with like character drama though. It's this game. This is the game that you wanted. Marvel Snap is a little more pure. Yes.

And it's so simple. The rounds are so short, which is great. Compared to World of Warcraft. If you want World Warcraft, you play more, uh, in its sense. If you want Heartstone, you play Marvel Sack. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Marvel Snap is your toilet game. It's your commute game. This is more of like a sit down on the computer and play a game. Yes. Yes. And you know, I think this game is pretty funny. I mean, maybe this is just me. being old and a dork.

It has some really fun moments. A lot of the jokes make me laugh. I don't know. There's an early scene where Lilith appears and she's like, I've finally come for you and Tony Stark is like, it's Gozer. I mean, it's just like a dumb cultural reference, but it made me laugh. There's a lot of lines like that. Some of the edits, the snap edits to reactions. There's a Gabagoo

reference. In the social network thing there's like a gamagoole joke, which there is a gababoole joke. I saw that. I thought of you, Jason. The writers had fun. It's a serious story with real feelings, and there are some actually really nice scenes, but it's also pretty silly, and I kind of just think it's hitting a good frequency. I find the writing pretty cool. One thing I like a character thing that I enjoy is that I'm not sure if this is true for every character, but it's seeming like it might be, that each character has a kind of a nemesis,

super villain who turns up at various points in the story. So Spider-Man and Venom at the beginning is one example, but then Sabretooth and Wolverine, and we're hearing more about magic having some sort of a, you know, nemesis. There are other ones that are kind of spoilers that I won't get into. But, like, it seems as though they're setting it up. So, you know, Venom always escapes and then he comes back. And then there's kind of more fun character banter between him and Spider-Man or the other characters.

And same with Sabretooth and Wolverine. Like, that whole fight is really funny because, you know, Wolverine's so cool. And Sabretooth is such a tryhard and they've been fighting forever. And so I like that kind of nemesis superhero setup that they're giving to each character as well. Yeah, it's really fun. I feel like the only thing. thing that I have mixed feelings about is the fact that the hunter is a completely original character and it feels like a missed opportunity to have not a great character just i don't know

have kitty pride be the character who's a way in or like jubilee or like there's so many like teen girl characters who are often the way in or like the audience stand in in marvel comic stories who are like i just arrived at the x mansion this is a crazy fish out of water situation for me like you have characters in the canon that you could use for this and i i just don't understand why they were like, no, we're going to have you be just a blank slate person. Yeah, and the character, and the hunter herself is a pretty dull character. She's written that way. She's sort of charming.

She's sort of charming. Yeah, she's the straight person in every conversation, but it's not that much fun. It's not very fun. The performance doesn't do a lot for me, no. I was thinking of that too. Okay, I'm glad that you guys are in the same future because I thought, I assumed you guys like the hunter based on our conversation. Not really. What's to like or dislike?

The whole time. She's really good in comment. So I'm playing as the guy and he's also super dull and terrarie and I find myself wishing that I could just go around playing as one of the Marvel characters. Maybe that's what they were going for is kind of like having the Safer. It would almost be better if he was like voiceless and just like a silent protagonist. But then you wouldn't be able to see them interact. So I don't know. But yeah, it's not working super well for me.

Yeah, it's a tough one. The Hunter in general. I feel like maybe they just didn't want it to be seen as like, oh, a Kitty Pride game or, or, what? Wolverine gamer, whoever is the stand in who's like the main character, they didn't want it to be seen that way and they wanted to really emphasize the ensemble, which I think is the right thing to do. It's just that then you have this cipher at the center who's the least interesting person there, which is odd. For me, it's kind of the particular writing of the hunter just isn't, I don't, they made a choice to make the hunter this kind of uptight, old, very old person who is like kind of out of it, you know, fish out of water. Yeah. And she speaks very, you are a very strange young man. Like that's kind of her vibe. And I. it's like, okay, like they don't have to be, you know, Hawk from Dragon Age 2 or whatever. Like, they don't have to be a feisty go-getter, but they could have been a lot of different things. And I don't, I'm not wild about that choice, even though by and large, I mean, it makes room for all the other characters and the other characters are the reason I'm playing anyways.

Totally. Well, I'm definitely going to keep playing this one, really enjoying it. It's a fun video game. I might even play all 60 hours of it. On that note, let's take a little break and be back in a second with one more thing. I'm Jordan Cruciola, the host of feeling scene, where we talk about the movie characters that make us feel seen. And I'm the show's producer, Marissa. Jordan, you've interviewed so many directors, actors, writers, film critics, and I like to play this little game where I take a sip of coffee.

Every time someone says, that's such a great question. That's such a fabulous question. Or they tell you how smart you are. I think that you are rather brilliant. And of course, the big one is when they cry unexpectedly. Unexpectedly. Unexpectedly. Yes.

Jordan, I don't want to cry on your podcast. I wasn't expecting to cry. I mean, it makes me kind of want to cry. Feeling Scene comes out every Thursday on maximum fun.org. Listen already. What are you waiting for? Jordan, that's such a great question. Al Lapland here with breaking news on a revolutionary form of entertainment.

Professional wrestling. For more, we go to our correspondent, Danielle Ranford. Professional wrestling is the craze that's sweeping the nation, featuring Vistakas and colorful costumes. But who can help us make sense of this world of body slams? Lindsay Kelk has the answer. Sources tellers of an amazing podcast called Tides and Fights, filled with discussions of the absurdity of professional wrestling,

plus all the sincerity and hilarity that you could shake a stick at. Listen to the Tides and Fights Podcast every week. Find it on maximum fun or wherever you get your podcasts. And your old-timey radio. We are back with One More Thing. Kirk, I see yours. I'm so excited. Tell me. Tell me more. My One More Thing was your One More Thing, and that is Interview with the Vampire.

Yay. The new version of Interview with the Vampire on AMC, which we just finished watching all seven episodes of. And I really just wanted to say that it's great. I really liked it. It was like way better that I was expecting, even though you said it was good. It wasn't, I don't know, it was just more fun, more interesting. the writers are clearly they got something

it's not just an adaptation it's not just fun gay vampire shit which would have been fine they came in being like we want to tell a story about memory and storytelling and relationships and even you know domestic violence and some other things that sounds

heavy it's kind of a heavy show I guess it's heavy it is pretty heavy it's got some light moments but it's heavy it's got some light moments but it is fairly heavy it's like a much more serious true blood no it's not really that much like true blood blood. Anyways, it was really good. There's not a comparable vampire show or movie to it. It's its own thing.

It's its own thing. And it really makes me interested in re-watching the movie from 1994, which incidentally was nominated for Best Original Score in the 67th Academy Awards, which means that I'm going to be watching it as part of my movie club. So I look forward to Tom Cruise's take on Lestat, which could not possibly be as good as the actor who plays Lestat in this new version. Yeah, Sam Reed, I think is his name. Sam Rude. Kirk, I think next year, you should do a gimmick where you try to make every subsequent one connected to the life. It's probably possible. It's like a Rosetta Stone for All Entertainment of the last 30 years. Yeah, maybe. Anyway, so that's really just my one more thing. It's a great show and I want to second your

recommendation of it. It's really, really cool. Yeah, it's great. Even though you have to get that AMC plus free trial or however you want to go about getting it, I just want to assure people it's worth it, especially since this past week I saw that AMC Studios is having layoffs and like really struggling. That made me sad because I need them to keep making this show. So, Everyone needs to subscribe. Thank you very, very much. Just so we can get a season two. I will go next since I also watched a television show. I finished watching White Lotus season two and I freaking loved it. And I also just wanted to say if you're somebody who tried watching the first season, this is one of those shows. It's kind of like succession and that it's about rich people who are very embarrassing. And there's a lot of secondhand embarrassment involved in season one. There are some very sympathetic characters. Both seasons are set at a different fictional hotel in a high, high traffic tourist destination. So the first season is in Hawaii.

The second season is in Sicily. And totally different hotels each time, except they're both white lotuses, I suppose. But different cast of characters each time. Jennifer Coolidge is the only actor who crosses over. So the first season, I mean, we talked about it on this show. it's a tough hang and it has kind of a bitter sweet emphasis on the bitter ending that is quite sad. It's a very bitter show. I loved it. I loved it. I loved it and I recommend it. But I will say that a bitter show is a good word for it. Yeah. And season two is both more biting and clever and also

not sad in the same way. I would say it's still sad because I don't want people to get the wrong idea. It's still White Lotus. You're still going to end it being like, I don't know what I'm doing with my life. But it's different. It's different. It answers a lot more questions. I love the finale so much. Aubrey Plaza's in it. I love her character. Her character is just incredible. Nice. I don't know. I really, really recommend it, especially if you're somebody who tried season one and you were like, this is a little too sad for me. Season two, totally stand alone. You can just start on up with it and you're fine. You don't need to have seen the first season to get it, quote unquote. And I liked it better than the first season in the end. So yeah, I really recommend

White Lotus. And Jason, close us out. My one more thing is a video game that I played while I was traveling on the switch called Chained Echoes, which I found out about because someone who works for the publisher involved pinged me and was like, hey, we also published Crosscode, which I know you loved. Crosscode was a game I've talked about on the show a lot. Great. You should check out Chain Echoes. And I was like, okay, cool. I'm sold. You have me a cross-code. So this is a game. It's a beautiful 2D RPG inspired by Chrono Trigger, inspired by Super Nintendo stuff, which is often the story for a lot of indie games nowadays. But this is really, really good.

It's primarily made by one guy. It looks beautiful. It sounds beautiful. Has great music. Kirkie would be really into the music. And it's a really, really neat package with some really good ideas that I'll get into in a second. the writing is a little bit off in terms of not in terms of the ideas but in terms of the actual grammar because I believe that the lead writer the the guy the main guy is not a native English speaker and you can tell by playing the game that said it does not mar the experience for me and I am really enjoying it so here's what's cool about it other than the fact that it's like croto trigger meets zeno gears meets like all these other old school jrpgis that I and many other people love and yes, they're a giant robots that you can pilot in the game.

Thank goodness. What's really cool is the combat system. So it's a turn-based combat system with a really, really smart set of mechanics that work well together and make every boss fight feel like its own crazy challenge. So the way it works is, as you are fighting, as you are kind of picking your commands,

there's a gauge on the top left side of the screen. And the gauge is divided into three parts. the first part, which is normal mode, then there's a green bar that is overdrive. And then to the way right, there's a little bar that is red called overheated. And so the way it works is when you're in the normal mode, things are normal. When you're in overdrive, you get stat boost. When you get in overheated, you lose, you take extra damage and you lose stats. This is how my guitar amp works for exactly, exactly. You don't turn it all the way up to 11 for a maximum effect. You want to blow a tube. Well, you take damage if you do, but it's worth sometimes.

So every time you do something in combat, like normal attacks, you move to the right and you get into the green. You get closer to the green. But there are some things you can do that will take you to the left of the gauge and go back to normal. Or if you're in overheated, go to the left. So essentially the way this works is as you're selecting commands, you have to watch that gauge and try to get into the green without going all the way into the red. And then once you're in the green, you start seeing this rotating series of elements. And basically it'll be like, okay, now it's this element's turn. And so that means that when you choose this element, it'll send you way back to the left.

So like as you're going right, right, right, right with your attacks and you're like, oh, no, too far on the right, I'm about to be overheated. You choose one of those abilities and you go to the left. That's cool. But this requires a ton of strategy and forward thinking because it'll be like, oh, man, like I need to heal my party. but if I do that, I'm going to go into overheated mode and then I'll get wrecked as a result of that. So I have to kind of look at the turn order and see, okay, I have this guy going now and then this next guy going and the next guy can heal. So I'm going to make my first guy defend because defending brings me to the left a little bit. So I have enough space that I can heal without overheating.

And you're just constantly thinking about this in addition to balancing your other like normal RPG stuff like, okay, my magic points, my hip points, like keeping everybody healthy, keeping everybody energized. and then you can also swap members and party, which lets you do other kind of cool combo stuff. There's just a lot of systems on top of systems, and it's really, really good. I'm just enjoying the hell out of this game. It kind of came out of nowhere for me as like a surprise late year. There's always one of those, right?

Surprise late year, like game of the year contender. You're like, oh, man, this is really good. Actually, a couple of those have come out recently. We've talked about two of them on this episode. I mean, tactics so great. I'm also playing Final Fantasy 7 Crisis Core, which I'll talk about more in a future, one more thing. or maybe we'll even all talk about it,

but that game's really cool too and interesting in some ways. But yeah, no, it's Chained Echo's really, really good game. I am enjoying the heck out of it and highly recommended to any JRP fan out there, anyone who enjoys Krona Trigger, or just wants to play a beautiful game with rad music and awesome graphics.

Nice. I love those. Or a game where you have to plan ahead a lot. Like if you heard us talking about planning out attacks on the Midnight Sun's part, and you're like, I love that, I want to plan ahead, way more.

It can be quite fun to watch everything unfold correctly. And that's how this episode went. Just a 10 out of 10. We planned it. We planned it and then we executed it flawlessly. We executed it flawlessly. Just a couple of edits. We take our lead.

No, shh. There were no edits. No edits. No edits this week. Just threw the files and lined them up and exported it. Perfect planning. It was perfect. Good job, guys.

We did it. Great. High fives all around. With that, we will see you next. week. No, not next year. Oh, right. Week after. Oh, my God. What am I saying? Okay. It's true. It's another thing Kirk's going to have to edit. We will not

see you next week. We will not. We will see you after that. In two weeks. In two weeks. We're games of the year. We're going to talk about games in the year, baby. It would be very fun. All right. See both of you then. 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. 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. Maximumfun.org. Comedy and culture. Artist-owned. Audience-supported.