Triple Click - Triple Play: Marvel's Spider-Man 2

Episode Date: October 19, 2023

With great power comes... something something. Jason, Maddy, and Kirk put on their spidersuits and get their senses tingling for a dive into the new PS5 exclusive Spider-Man 2. They talk about the game's strengths, its weaknesses, and just how incredible it all looks.One More Thing:Kirk: Zodiac (2007)Maddy: The Golden BachelorJason: Final Fantasy VII RebirthLINKS:Blank Check’s Zodiac episode with Leslye Headland: https://soundcloud.com/griffin-and-david-present/zodiac-with-leslye-headlandSupport 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

This is my gift. This is my curse. Who am I? I'm a podcaster. Welcome to Trip Glick where we bring the games to you. Today we are talking about Insomniac's Spider-Man 2, a new game for the PlayStation 5 that we all been playing. Let's swing around New York and talk about it.

I'm Jason Shrier. I'm Kirk Hamilton. And I'm Maddie Myers. Hello. Hey, welcome back. Made it back. The three of us. Swinging in.

Three of us. Is that anything? We're swinging in? Hey, do you guys don't hear a funny story? I do. Always. So this weekend, a couple of friends and I, me and three other friends, we have this kind of yearly tradition. Every year we just go for a couple nights to a casino nearby and just like do a boys weekend. And this weekend, we went to a nearby casino.

And one of part of our tradition is that like at night after dinner, like after we're done gambling, whatever, we'll go up and play Mario Party. Mario parties are go-to-game. So I brought my switch. planning on playing Super Mario Super Mario Party Superstars, which is the latest one. Really good game. But then we realized the TV at the hotel, like, did not let you access the output. We couldn't move it.

The worst. So we went downstairs. We went downstairs. We were like, what's the deal? Like, can we do this? Can we move it? Can we get an extension? Can we rent the conference room?

Because this is the most important thing. They were like, no. So we went to Walmart and we bought a TV and we brought it back to the hotel. to the hotel. And we set it up. We realized we didn't have a screwdriver to plug in, to, like, screw in the stand. So we had to lean it against. This is how cheap TVs are now that that was like a logical thing to do next.

We leaned it against the TV and like put a towel down. So in case it fell, it would just lay in on the towels. You leaned a TV against the TV? Is this what you said? We played Mario Party. And then on Sunday morning, as we were leaving, we went back to Walmart, returned the TV, and then went home. And it was one of the best calls we've ever made.

This is the video game version of the guitar center rental where you break your guitar on tour and then you buy a guitar for the show and then return it. Or buy it by a dress for just one really fancy event and then return it. It's that, but with gaming. If you would like to hear more stories like that and or help support us if we decide to buy TVs in the future, you should become a supporter of Triple Click, which is a listener. Your max fund dollars at work. fun. And actually it was on someone else's credit card, so I didn't have to deal with them. We actually did, we did a four-person rock paper scissors tournament to determine who would have to put it on their credit card. Right, of course. We broke it or something. You know, rock paper scissors tournament, pretty fun.

Yeah, you could have just been doing that instead of Mario Party, just for hours. Surprisingly fun game for how simple it is. Mario Party, Superstar is actually really good. I've got to say, after some weak recent Mario Party entries, this is like a return to form. If you want to help us make this show possible, go to maximum fun.org slash join, become a member of our network, maximum fun. Sign up for just a few dollars a month. You not only make the show possible, you also get access to our monthly bonus episodes, including episodes on Zelda, the last of us, all sorts of cool stuff we've done over the past few years,

and a bunch of cool stuff to come. This month we have an episode that we're calling The Hunt for Best October. That's right. We're hunting it. I'll leave it at the tantalizing tease there. But we've also got cool stuff. We've got planned. We'll probably do a beans cast at some point soon on the game we're talking about today, among other things. So become the members today. Once again, maximum fun.org slash join. All right. Kirk, what are we talking about today? We're talking about Spider-Man too. I'm making my web hands. No one can see it. You guys can see it. I'm doing the web hands. I can see your web hands. Yeah. Oh my God. Madie. actual webs. Okay. Can I just say, Kirk, I'm sure you have like a paragraph prepared, but I just want to say

real quick, it's really funny that Peter Parker has to wear those two matching metal bracelets everywhere he goes, even when he's wearing like a t-shirt and nobody in his regular life is like, hey, Pete, what's up with these matching metal bracelets that you just live strong, man? He just live strong. He just like that's cool looking, but it's just kind of interesting that at no point in his life has anybody like, you know, take those off. It's like a really bold choice.

I went to the ERAs tour, I got my friendship bracelets, you know. I just have been sort of wearing him ever since. That's how he gets away with it. He has these really subtle matching bracelets. Anyway, over to you, Kirk. Spider-Man 2 is a sequel to Spider-Man. It's also a sequel to Spider-Man, Miles Morales. In it, you play as Spider-Man and also as Spider-Man Miles Morales.

Will these two Spider-Men muster the strength and resolve to survive a devious alien symbiote to defeat a private army of Far Cry dudes? and foil the theft of funk legend Clyde's Doublefield's drums. Yes, obviously they will, but it will probably be fun to play as them while they do it. Spider-Man 2 features an expanded New York City, now featuring Brooklyn and Queens, as well as a hugely expanded cast of characters. Uri Lowenthal and Najee Jeter returned to play Peter and Miles, with Laura Bailey returning as Mary Jane Watson,

another musical score by John Paisano, and, of course, some other fun performances as well that we will not be spoiling. We've each played a lot of the game. I have finished. Jason's almost done. Maddie is somewhere in the first act. We're all playing on PlayStation 5 codes provided by Sony. And just for kind of spoilers sakes, we're not going to get into too many specifics

because there's some fun stuff to discover in this game, and it's just now coming out. So we'll be talking about the basics, some stuff in the first act, the gist, what we think of it. You have web shooters. We're going to talk about that. Yeah, spoilers. There's webs in this game. You got bracelets. Yeah, so we've been playing this game.

It's pretty fun. I have some criticisms and some things that I like about it. That's how I feel. All right, podcast over. Well, we did it again, folks. Yeah, let's go to one more thing. It's got good stuff. Let's take a break.

Got two Spider-Man in it. Spider's Man. Spider-Man's. We've actually talked about this at work at Spider-Man's. But, yeah, Jason, go ahead. What did you do? Sure. I mean, my overall thoughts.

So, yeah, I'm almost finished. I'm like up to the home stretch, I believe. I like it a lot. I think it's a good game. I also have some criticisms, namely the combat, which gets pretty tedious after a while. But there's a lot I really like about it. I mean, the thing that strikes me most about it is, like, how polished everything is, how well-executed everything is.

And so what I mean by that is, like, a good example is the storytelling. The story, I actually, I am not that impressed by it. It's very just kind of what you would expect from a Spider-Man story. There aren't a lot of surprises. There isn't a lot of like, oh, man, like this is going in a direction. I didn't expect, at least up until the point where I'm at now, which, again, is pretty close. Like, there could be some mind-boggling twists at the very end of the game. I haven't gotten there yet, but I'm very close to the end.

And so far have not been super surprised or really that impressed by the story. But I am impressed by the execution of it. The cutscenes look incredible. The voice acting is phenomenal. The performances. is the kind of the granular writing, the line by line writing, is really, really good. It's all just like incredibly charming and entertaining and fun to watch. I've never been bored by any of the storytelling, despite finding it to be a very rote story. Same with just like brawling and

gliding around the city and swinging around the city. It all just like is so well executed that you just kind of find yourself sitting, at least I just kind of find myself sitting back and just getting mesmerized by how good everything looks and how good everything feels to play. In performance mode, it just runs at this incredible, stable 60 frames a second that just is constantly good looking. It just is never not amazing looking as a video game and amazing sounding and amazing feeling. It just is a really just AAA experience in a nutshell, even if the actual nitty-gritty mechanics of it all can get a little tedious. And then one other thing I'll say is that I actually really appreciate how much they've

improved the open world stuff, the exploration, the activities you're doing. That was definitely one of the weaknesses of the first game was that a lot of that stuff was pretty much collect-a-thon city. And here it's a lot more interesting. There are a lot more meaty side quests, like multi-part side quests that take you on really interesting journeys and stories, and I was really impressed by that, and I'm really impressed by the traversal and exploration in general, even if they don't let you go to my hometown of Westchester, which is very sad.

Visit the X-Men. Do you need an X-Men game to go to Westchester in New York? Maybe Wolverine. Maybe that'll be a lot. Actually, that's a really good point. It looks like that game's in Madrepoor, but Logan goes to Westchester every now and then, grudgingly, but he does do it. Go to visit Rudies and check out some good times.

Yeah, Kirk. Nice. If you get an X-Men persona game set in the house, then you know what you're going to like go and make some ice cream with Bobby or whatever. Why did you bring this up? This is like totally derailing me. I just want to talk about that. I mean, that's basically Midnight Sons, right? It kind of is that game owns and everyone should play Marvel's Midnight Sons. But also like Jason, I'm really enjoying Spider-Man too. I'm curious about what the criticisms are because you two are further than I am, and I feel like I've just been having a great time with my six hours of Spider-Man 2. I'm at what, Mission 12 out of 31, so I'm really in the sweet spot. I've done a couple

missions where I'm like, I don't know if that needed to be there. That was real silly. But I had a fantastic time, even during each of those moments where I was like, not really sure why this is happening, but I'm loving it. It's ridiculous. There's a lot of mini-games in this game, but I'm sure we'll we'll get into, like, science mini-games. And, like, there's a part where you go to Coney Island and you play a whole bunch of games at Coney Island. A highlight. A highlight of a game.

This game is very much, like, what if you could play games in a game? This Spider-Man, too, is really into that. But also, this version of Spider-Man and his world, their world, I should say, Peter and Miles' world, take some really clear lessons from the previous two Spider-Man games. And some of the really harsh critiques that I've had of those games are overturned in this one in notable ways. Like, for example, I talked a lot about the depiction of the police in Spider-Man 1 when I was playing that for PC semi-recently when it came out on PC in the remastered form. And that game I just find really, really tough to play again now because it's so corny. Like Peter is so just, I don't know, he's really into the police, but in a way that doesn't make sense for a kid who grew up in Queens.

And this game, it's like a completely different version of Peter. Like he completely works with Miles. They use their community policing app that's developed by Miles's friend, Ganky, in the Miles Morales game. And I know that that is going to like be a plot line later. I know some wild spoilers, like about the police characters, but it seems like the team really thought about that. And they were like, what would happen if this version of Peter Parker met Miles and

Genki and started to work with them and had these characters of color who are from a different background and are introducing Peter to these other tools for community policing, what would that be like? And this game is actually illustrating what that would look like. And it's also showing a lot more different kinds of emergency services beyond just beat cops. It's got like a ton of storylines about first responders, firefighters, just other people around the city. And then on top of that, everything you do to interact with the city is no longer just violence. Like in past games, it's been like, okay, every time you turn a around, people are robbing an ATM. Like, that was like the joke we were telling. We were like,

out every freaking street corner, there's a, there's a holdup, there's a mugging. But in this world, you're taking photographs, like it's brought back like Peter Parker's love of photography. That's a huge part of the game now that he loves his city and he cares about, the people in it. And you're like collecting things that play a role in learning about the characters of the game, whether it's Uncle Aaron or the Sandman guy. I can't remember his name. Those are like part of the collection mechanics is learning more about some of the villains slash previous villains. It just feels like a really thoughtful take on how to explore a world and introduce some of the tension of Spider-Man as a guy who wants to actually help his city and be a responsible

superhero and not a corrupt one. Like that's always a Spider-Man story. And this game feels like it's actually trying to navigate that in a way that I think Miles Morales started to. and Spider-Man 1 was just kind of like, I don't know, what if it was cool? And you, like, flipped around New York. And I just, it's been really cool to see that evolve.

The photography stuff is like so New York. Clearly they got some New Yorkers to do this thing. I mean, one of my favorites is you actually, like, so the way the photography system works is like, you have this assignment from a photo editor who is like, go around and take all these pictures of iconic landmarks. And there's so many cool little New York references. My favorite is the timekeeper,

which is an end. NYU tradition. So I went to NYU, New York University, which is in Washington, around Washington Square Park. And there was always this guy named the timekeeper who was like carrying a bunch of watches and shouting what time classes start. It's like an NYU tradition. Unfortunately, he died, I believe, in 2012 or 2013. But like when I was there, which was before then, he was just like this institution. And the fact that they have him in this game, it's such a specific New York thing that is so cool. And the game is just full of those, which is just very cool to see as a a New Yorker. It's like legit fun to set up photos that actually look good. And having that be something

that unlocks fast travel and gets me experience points feels way better than just being like, time to go pick up some more faceless criminals again so that I can get the fast travel point. It's very different. There are a lot of faceless criminals in New York. I enjoyed a... I'm still committing homicides. Like, it's happening. I'm out here. I don't know about that, but there are some fun side quests where there are just a bunch of big dudes with sort of ski masks on her or like bandanas over their faces just sitting around doing bad deeds doing crimes doing crimes yeah like you do yeah so i like this game i find it very likable um it's just super easy to play i finished it like i said a little while ago it's just a very playable game i kind of

cruised through it um i didn't love it but i did like it i find it to be a remarkable technical achievement but probably not as remarkable of an artistic one just as i don't know a work of interactive storytelling as a comic book video game, I just kind of find it to be, it falls short for me in some ways overall that it bummed me out a little bit or that I just sort of wish had been a little more shorn up, a little more confident, a little bit more ambitious. So I guess I'll start with just the technical part of it because I think this game is just so amazing to look at and to play that that alone makes it very easy to recommend. Like, for anyone with a PlayStation 5 who wants to play a game that looks like a movie, this is a really good one of those.

I actually played a lot of this game in fidelity mode and not in performance mode, which is unusual for me. I almost always play in 60 frames per second. But for this game, I just found it starts in fidelity mode, running at 30, and the opening set piece is so incredible looking. It's this massive set piece that you play through. And at 30 FPS, I was playing on our TV, which I also don't always do with the PlayStation. I usually play on a monitor. So I was playing on the TV in the living room, and it just looked like a movie. I was playing with Emily.

Shout out to last week's episode of just sort of playing through a movie-like game with your partner. This is a good one for that, I would say. It's very TV-show-like movie-like. It is, though, once you start fighting, it becomes less interesting to watch. And that's one of my criticisms of the game. The bosses, yeah, are so long. We'll get to that. The boss fights are so lengthy.

So it starts really amazing. It's amazing looking. And then, yeah, you start getting into fights. And then soon you're just like, pow, pow, pow, fighting your 75th dude. And Emily was like, okay, I'm going to go get some dessert or something. I want to go do some work. Yeah.

So back to the technical stuff, though. This game sounds incredible. The surround sound mixed in this is totally sick. I played a lot with headphones with the special like Sony headphones surround, which is really incredible. There's some stuff going on with timbreal, like environmental mixing that they're doing that has to just be. because they control the audio codec.

It's their own audio software. It allows them to just do stuff where you'll hear a sound, like a voice echoing off of metal in a half-finished building. And it just sounds exactly right, and it's kind of crazy. Bing, Kirk here, as I'm editing the episode, I realize that it sounds maybe a little like I'm talking about using special, like, expensive Sony headphones or something. But I'm just talking about plugging headphones into the PS5 controller

and using Sony's headphone surround software. So something you can do with any set of headphones just plugged into the controller. Just wanted to make that clear. Okay, back to the show. Bing! So it sounds great. It looks amazing. It looks great at performance mode too.

The lighting, the performance, it like runs super, super smoothly. They've just got this totally dialed in, and it was very cool to play a game like that. One of the thing that I'll mention is I played this a little bit on my monitor, which is 120 hertz monitor. If you play this game at Fidelity mode on a 120 hertz screen, it runs at 4.2. 40 frames per second, which is pretty amazing and kind of a great middle ground because I think the cutscenes look kind of weird at 60, where everyone looks very real and it looks like a movie. But I actually think 40, it like plays much more smoothly and yet still doesn't quite have that too real like soap opera effect that 60 frames can have.

So that's kind of a neat little technical thing that they considered in this game. There's so much stuff like that. So many accessibility options that I really appreciated. My thumb, my right thumb has really just been bothering me the last few years. I really struggle with these controller games where you just mash, mash, mash, mash, mash the face buttons. I got one of those Sony, what's it called?

The dual sense edge. Oh, the edge, yeah. The dual sense edge, which has under buttons. I bought it specifically as an accessibility thing because I can program two of the face buttons to under buttons because my thumb just can't do it. And then I really appreciated this game lets you turn off. You constantly have to mash the square button

but you can actually just turn that off into settings. There's a lot of stuff like that that I think is really considered. Yeah, you can just hold it. I did that immediately when you told me about it and it really improves. I don't like having a match. I mean, QTEs, I've turned them off entirely at this point and I've loving it. The accessibility. I mean, that whole menu is incredible.

It's so many. And this is something that Sony deserves loads of credit for because it's all of their games, their first-party games. They really go out of their way to have tons of options. There's tons of difficulty options, which I also appreciated because I actually found the game to be too difficult. and kind of a slog. Being able to adjust

just some parts of the difficulty down to easy without just making it too easy was really cool. Something I just want to note on the technical end and then I'll throw it to you to talk more about

like the comment and stuff that I don't like. But on the technical end, I think it's worth noting in this video game industry where a lot of companies are being asked to return to office because of concerns over QA

and bugs and technical problems and all sorts of other stuff. Insomniac is fully remote. They allow people to work from anywhere. A lot of the people who worked on this game. We're working from all over the country and all over the world. And so I think this kind of holds up as like an example of how you can still make super polished games remotely.

Yeah, it's remarkable. I mean, they have it pretty, pretty dialed in, I would say. Just as an end user playing the product, it seems really well put together. And yeah, I mean, I can start getting into some of the things that left me a little wanting. And we can just talk about them. I mean, it doesn't have to be like me monologuing about my opinions forever. I think in terms of the story overall, so this is the story of this guy Craven the Hunter who turns up and is really just a video game plot device. Like, he's kind of there so that he can bring back a bunch of Spider-Man villains and kind of just have a bunch of an army of dudes. What if I got together a bunch of villains? No, that's not fair.

He has a real motivation. That's not fair. I won't say what it is because it's interesting. To me, at least, like, he did nothing for me as a character. I did not care about Craven the Hunter as a person. Well, there's a difference between he did nothing for me and he didn't have a motivation. There's a difference between those two things. I'll say, though, as somebody who hasn't gotten to it yet, it is kind of frustrating that I'm still like,

so why is Craven bringing all the villains to Manhattan? Because that seems really weird. Like, weird thing you do. It's made very clear. All right. His story is very clear. Just as villains go, he's fairly weak, I would say. And some of this is just me.

I just can't keep from comparing this game to Arkham Knight or something like Arkham Night. It has a similar amount going on to Rock City's Arkham Night. This is a 2015 game that closed out their Batman series. And they just, Insomniaq is not operating on the level of Rocksteady. They just aren't. Like in terms of vision, in terms of ingenuity, in terms of writing, in terms of just like set piece design and overall narrative design, Arkham Knight for anyone who hasn't played it in a while. Like, if you go back to that game, it still feels like just revolutionary.

So does Arkham City. So does Arkham Asylum. So I just, I kind of wish this game. Some of that is source of material. It's worth noting here. I don't really think so. No, man. There's some good Spider-Man comics out there.

I think if they were just as, they could have been just as creative with things like, I don't know. There's a sequence in Arkham Night where you're flying around and then Manbat comes out of nowhere. And it's this, like, shocking moment where this bat jumps into your face. And they're constantly doing stuff like that. that surprising you, having the Joker jumped out. That's like shot composition, timing, set piece composition stuff that you're talking about, not just story, too. It's narratives, it's design, it's like vision, it's, it's, uh, chutzpah.

It's, the game has this sort of drive. Thank you. Yeah. This desire to like surprise and delight you that I don't always feel with Spider-Man. It feels much more by the numbers. I think the Venom storyline, we're not going to get into specifics, but it just feels like, okay, we've seen this before. Like, this was Spider-Man 3, the Ramey movie.

Like this is in the animated series. This is in the comics. We've seen it. And it just kind of feels like they're changing some things up, but they're mostly just going through the motions. And time and again in the story, I guess I kept feeling like I was missing conversations. Like they were rushing through things and people weren't communicating.

A character will learn a major piece of information about another character and they'll never really talk about it. They'll just move on because the plot has to keep happening. And I think that that just left me feeling a little like, okay, this is like watching a cartoon. where as a kid I would have watched this cartoon and thought to myself, wait a minute, why didn't so-and-so talk to so-and-so? Why didn't they have a conversation? And then I would just think, well, whatever, it doesn't really matter.

And that's kind of the way it goes with the story. Even while there are lots of wonderful performances, there's some really great moments, there's some really cool set pieces, and everyone is doing their best. It's just kind of missing something for me in terms of the writing and the overall, like, ambition of the story. Yeah, I agree with that take. And that's what I was kind of saying before with the execution, just kind of like almost masking that stuff or at least like letting you, putting you on such a roller coaster. Because it's fine. Right. The whole time I was like, this is fine. Like I'm having a good time. And it's so pretty. Right. Right. Right. Yeah. And I think because it's so pretty and dazzling and just

constantly just throwing cool technical stuff at you, I think you can, you're almost like misled and to about that stuff. But yes, I mean, when we do a Beanskast on this game, when we do a deeper dive into the story, I think a lot of things will just kind of fall apart. And I already I was texting you about some of the more ridiculous parts of it and some of the things that really frustrated me about the story. Were you texting

how Mary Jane has to be on the quote-unquote front page of a website? Because that part made me feel crazy. That is definitely a strange. Yeah, well, this is an alternate reality. I was like, at least talk to me about concurrence, M.J. Talk to me about something I understand.

I don't know if you know this, but Brian Inter, the creative directory of this game used to be a journalist at a time when magazines actually mattered and when there were front pages. So maybe that's related. Maybe they haven't brought in any modern journalists. I mean, maybe, but I love the, I love J.J. Jonah Jameson's podcast and the fact that he's like this Joe Rogan-esque figure. Like, they've updated some things. Alex Jones. Yeah, Alex Jones. I guess it's probably a closer analog for him?

Is it a podcast that J. Jonah Jameson does? Unclear. Because it kind of just pops on like a video. It does. I guess Dan, there's the Danica. Oh my God. There was this moment where Danica has this. She's like, I got this really exciting interview lined up for you today.

And she asked two questions and then is like, that's it. And she's so funny. She like sets up this incredible thing. I love it. It's like, are they constantly streaming live onto some sort of TikTok adjacent platform? And like at any moment, Jay Jonah Jameson could just pop up and be like, and another thing about Spider-Ry. ran. I can't fucking stand that guy.

I'm like, they're just supposed to keep it rolling at all times just to see when he's going to start talking to you. Just constant food. That bothers me less than MJ talking about the front page of website. I can't explain why. So let's talk a little bit more about the gameplay and specifically about the parts of the game that those podcasts slash radio slash question mark sequence is a company which is navigating the city because I think that's the thing this game does so brilliantly and is really

it's like the reason to play the game. I mean, when you see. footage of this game. You see footage of Spider-Man swinging between skyscrapers and it looks unbelievable and it really feels unbelievable to play as well. The dual sense implementation, the way the webs

feel on your triggers, wonderful. You now have the ability to glide. Yes. Similar to Batman actually. That's incredible. I was shocked by how good it feels. It works than I would have thought it would. I thought it was going to feel extraneous and annoying. Nope, it rules. You can just

fly over the water whenever you you want to and it feels great. Yeah, in fact, that's probably why they did it because you needed to be able to travel between the water. They did a good job with it and I think they've done a great job of balancing freedom and restriction. The Arkham games actually do a great job with gliding as well and they give you those upgrades if I'm remembering correctly where you're gliding and you can grapple on to a building

and then pull Batman over it and he gets like a speed boost. It's the same kind of thing where they gamify the act of building up speed. They've done a great job of that here. They've taken some inspiration there. And some inspiration from like just cause, actually, from those games. Any game that's about flying has to introduce some sort of limitation. You can't just be Superman because then you're just cruising around and it's sort of boring. You're just steering.

It's like a, becomes a flight simulator. So in this game, you have to manage your momentum. In the case of getting across the river, you have to get into these wind tunnels that you learn to spot as you're flying. And then once you get into one, your AR, whatever, they have very advanced spider suits in this game. Your AR system and your suit shows you these rings. I've got a lot of questions about who's paying for all that, by the way. That's the way. Ozcorp, I guess.

Tony Stark isn't present in this world to, like, pay the bills on all these spidey spider things that come out of Peter Smith? Genki just does it for free, man. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, he's just, he's resourceful, you know. Or maybe Norman pays for it. Anyways, that stuff is really fun. I totally agree. Getting around is great.

And then as you upgrade your traversal skills, it just becomes more and more fun. Yeah, you get skills. You can jump in the air. It fits so well with those abilities from the first game, like the ability to point jump where you time your jump off of a point and you get a big boost. I love it. Or you can hit X in midair and you pull yourself forward. If you do that while you're flying, you pull yourself forward even more.

And one other thing I want to mention that's really exciting that I bet some people don't know about is there's a setting in the menus that you can adjust that's called, it's something like web swinging assist. and it starts set to 10, and you can turn it all the way to zero. And what it's doing is it's keeping you moving, basically, when you're web swinging. So if you turn it all the way off, you can kind of mess up your web swings. Like you don't, you have to get your momentum right when you're going around a corner, or you have to use those cornering abilities that you unlock.

Or if you have your web, if you start it too late and it goes too long, you just kind of hit the ground and start running. And so you have to just jump again. So you can kind of screw up your web swinging more if you turn that off. And I find it very fun. I was mostly doing it, doing side stuff, but I love that they added it. It makes it feel just the physics feel a little less forgiving in a way that I sometimes didn't love in the first two games where it felt just a little like the minute you hold down the right trigger, you're kind of just flying like the physics change and you just are off the ground. Like it's a little less like that.

And I really dig that anyways. And I think there are probably some people out there who will feel similarly. And of course, you can then put it back to 10 or anywhere in between in like. find a sweet spot that you like. So I recommend anyone playing it. Check that setting out. It's very cool. And as you're exploring, there's definitely, there's more interesting stuff to find. I mean, Maddie, you mentioned like being able to take photos and other non-violent stuff. There's a lot of like random mini games that are kind of hit or miss. One thing that I really enjoyed and appreciated was there's like this segment called blinds where you find these little tiny mini-bases called

Hunter Blinds. And once you clear out one of those, you start to, you start to, you unlock a piece of information about a hunter base that's in the area. And so once you unlock three or four of these blinds, you clear out three or four of these blinds, you'll find the base. And then you have to go clear out the base. And the base has a few more puzzles and different layers and more elaborate enemies. And it's really, really cool. It's a really fun system that, again, just makes things more interesting as you're exploring than the previous game did, which actually gets to one of the things that I think we all wanted to talk about, which is the combat. One of the things that I really enjoy about these bases and

blinds is that you can do them all by stealth. And so there are kind of two ways to clear out encounters in this game. One is by brawling and one is by sneaking. And in sneaking, sneaking is what I really enjoy. In sneaking, it's sort of like the first game in that you can kind of glide up from above, you can hang out on different perch points from above and take out enemies and you have to wait for them to be out of, like, so that no other enemies can see them. them before you can really grab them and either jump on them or like kind of use your webs to propel them up in the air and and like fasten them to a wall. And that's a really fun system.

You can kind of like you can distract enemies to get them away and you have to kind of pick off enemies one by one. In this game there's actually a new mechanic called the the web line that I think is borrowed from the Arkham games. Yeah. Pretty overpowered because you can do it anywhere. You can create these suspension bridges, but super fun. I don't mind that it's overpowered because the self is so much more fun than the actual combat, which gets so tedious.

Enemies take way too long to die. You can't target enemies, so you can't actually, and some of the enemies, like the heavies and the melee enemies, you have to like use specific abilities or counters and stuff to take them down. But because it's just so many of them at a time and you can't target lock individual ones, it just winds up becoming chaos. It's just not super fun. It's very monotonous. And there are just so many enemies that come at you and just waves and waves and waves that it's just not nearly as good as stealth. And so I always found myself really disappointed when I got to an encounter or a story mission. And it was like, now you can't sneak around.

You have to fight enemies this time. Yeah. I agree stealth is a lot more rewarding. It's not always as fun for me. Like I like it when I can just brawl. Like if I accidentally break stealth, I like it. when that's rewarding and fun too. So I feel like I kept making that mistake in this game and being like, oh, whatever,

I'll just brawl it out. And then I would be like, oh, no, this sucks. I need to reload the checkpoint and just do stealth because this is really, really unfun. It just, it feels like the classic problem where if developers work on a series of games for too long, they get super freaking good at the video game and they just like are having a great time adding more and more enemies and more and more abilities and complications. Like, I'm not far enough in the game yet to know, but some of my coworkers have already been complaining about, like, just how many moves you have by the end and not even remembering what they all are, like, to the point where you're not even using them all, because you're just like, I don't even know what they are anymore. I've learned too many moves. And also, there's so many different enemy types that you're just like, can I just fight like three guys and like do it in a cool way? Like, I know how to do that, you know? Yeah, this is an issue that, for what it's worth, since I've been comparing them, the Arkham games also ran into where as they grow more complex and you get more and more enemy types and then more counters to those specific enemy types attacks, you have so much to keep track of that it becomes difficult, at least for me.

And I think we all have to say that we're speaking for our own experiences here because I'm sure there are people, right, who can learn all these skills. And I bet watching someone... People who aren't old like us. Yeah, they can actually remember. remember all the abilities? I don't know. They're probably geniuses. There are people who can and I'm sure it's really fun to watch them play and they can shred their way through it. I'm sure there are people at Insomniac who can do that. And yeah, this game does make me feel old in some ways because I don't feel good at it. I feel kind of slow and tired. If Kirk doesn't feel good

at a game, we have no chance. This was terrifying when Kirk had the game and was playing it before Jason and I were. Jason and I were straight up panicking in the discord. We were like, if Kirk can't play this. What's going to happen to us? You kid, but I'm not really that great at games or anything. So it's just, so I didn't love the combat in Spider-Man 2018. I didn't love the combat in Miles Morales. So I've never loved the combat in these games. So there we go, I guess. It's never quite been my thing. My gripes are mainly that the encounters go on a little too long. Enemies have a little too much health, which was nice, something that I could adjust in the specific difficulty settings, which I did do, and that was really great.

My biggest gripe is with situational awareness. I find I don't love playing a melee game where I'm fighting so many enemies that there are ranged enemies significantly out of my field of vision in multiple, you know, like surrounding me in 360 degrees. And so I'm regularly seeing what is in this game reflected by a red beam of light, which is a shot incoming that you have to dodge. So a lot of the game is you're fighting and you're looking at whoever you're punching and then you're looking at. at Peter or Miles to see if the white spider sense is going to become red, and that's the time you dodge. So, okay, you're kind of watching that, but then sometimes it's a bullet because there's someone off-screen shooting at you. You want to target those guys, especially if you're up in the air, because you can pull them up to you. So I'm trying to get my web to target them, but as you mentioned, Jason, there's no real targeting,

and the targeting is doing its best, but you're fighting like 15 guys at once. And so it's very hard to target the right guy. Sometimes you'll target a heavy who you can't even pull up to you. to you. And then this game adds a new system, which is a Perry system, which would be very cool and feels great when it works. But it was one thing too many for me where an enemy comes in and suddenly they're the one with the indicator. It's this gold indicator that then becomes red when it's time for you to hit the shoulder button in Perry. But that's not on Peter. That's somewhere else. But it looks similar enough that I typically dodge. And once you dodge an incoming

attack, you can't actually dodge those attacks so you get hit by them. And I just found, all of this stuff I'm describing is something that I think once people play the game, they'll at least understand what I'm saying, that for me anyways, it's all kind of the wrong ingredients at the wrong levels, and it never really clicked with me. And I felt that way before, too. So this has just always been something about my tastes in video game combat, I guess. No, I'm with you. It's a little too much. I was constantly dodging because the other part of that is that there are blue indicators when you have to dodge, and you can't parry. The only way to get out of something is to dodge. And so you find yourself kind of reflexively dodging a lot. But

then you dodge at the wrong time and you get hit. And it's very frustrating when you're trying to dodge out of a range attack, but then a melee attack is like, yeah, it's just not a great, it's messy. It's chaotic and messy. And I should add also, I've tried this in both performance mode and fidelity. Performance is a little bit easier for me because you just get twice as much visual information. So, you know, when I was really having a hard time, I'd sometimes switch. It made it better, but I still don't totally love it.

And they also struggle with level design. I think they bite off more than they can chew, especially in. in some indoor spaces that occur in story missions, where you're like inside of a really amazing looking indoor space, but Spider-Man just doesn't do very well in a fight indoors. He really needs that verticality. The minute there are walls, I would find myself hitting a wall,

then the camera would kind of go nuts, and I wouldn't be able to see what was happening for a few crucial seconds. And, I mean, I could go on. There's, like, other specific things about the combat that I would sort of nitpick with, but I think it'll just be a different thing for different people. And if you liked the combat in the first two games, you'll be fine here.

Like, it's, it's a lot more of that. I mean, I agree, but the parry is new. Like, I did like the combat in the first two games for what it's worth. And this is a series that has really encouraged me to learn how to dodge. Like, that is how the whole game has worked for a very long time. And it was, and still is, at least in my current state of playing the game, a stumbling block for me to even remember that I'm supposed to parry at all. Because I'm just like, this is a game where I dodge.

What are you talking about? I dodge and I cross triangle. to bring people closer to me. And those are the main maneuvers that I have spatially to get closer far away from people. And I don't even know what you mean. There's no pari in this game. And that's hard.

That's like an entirely new, different thing to think about in a game that is already quite complicated without that. The other part of this is that everything takes longer than it needs to. Every single encounter, you'll be like, okay, defeated these enemies, and then another wave will come in.

And then another wave will come in. You hear the cars. It's always some cars pull up. Always cars. Cars with like turrets that you have to like take off with your webs. And this is particularly, yeah, the robots. And then this is particularly egregious, although there is a great cyclist of the robot dog. This is particularly egregious with the boss fights.

Every single boss fight. It's like, so one of the criticisms of the first games, one of the widespread criticisms was that the bosses were too easy and simple and just fell kind of flat. In this, it's like they tried to swing. and the totally opposite, like the pendulum has swung the other way, because now they're too long, too tedious, too many phases. Every single boss has like a little icon on the bottom of their health bar that represents that they actually have three, like, health bars,

and you have to get through all three, and it's just such a pain. They all take way longer than they should. I started fighting the lizard boss, which is one of the first ones that you fight, the first major bosses that you fight, and I felt like my kids had, like, aged four years in between, when I started and when I came to. It's just like...

Well, they had. Man. You have like a Rip Van Winkle beard. Yeah, I got. It just felt like I started and the sun was out and then I finished and it was like, oh my God, it's the next day. It really just like took so long. Yeah, that holds to the end. Really, the final act

of the game is almost a boss rush. Like, it's just a series of boss fights that I certainly was, you know, it wasn't like I was rushing through the game. I had plenty of time. I was sort of playing at my leisure, but I did feel toward the end, I want to see what happens, but like, my God, how many times, you know, the moment, Jason, yeah, that you describe where there's always some sort of interstitial cutscene and then you square off again

and they're health birthful again and then you do it again and then there's another cutscene and then you square off again. And then, well, then you have to chase them. You have to like chase them around the streets and then do a whole like flipping and targeting and then there's another frigging. Yeah. And like, you know, that, yeah, so there's some pacing stuff there where the game is so pleasing so much of the time. And I do want to stress, I really just like had a good time playing

it. Yeah. While we are complaining about some things about it, and there were some things, I was kind of surprised reading a few reviews that I didn't see more people mentioning. You know, there are things that I certainly felt pretty consistently throughout the game. These pacing issues, the fights going on a little too long, even with the adjusted difficulty. And some of that is related to leveling up and how powerful my characters are. And I wondered if, you know, I actually found a lot of the side stuff to be fairly tedious and There are these, the app side quests, I guess is what you would call them, where they're like story side quests that focus on side characters.

Those are really lovely. You can kind of tell which ones are going to have the most meat to them. But a lot of times you're doing like a prowler layer. You're just going and kind of scanning a building until you find a thing and then you move it and then you crawl in and you pick something up and then you find another one. And I like how a lot of them tend, they like, if you do four or five of them, then you open some new challenge that's kind of cool. like you mentioned, the Hunter Blinds.

But most of them are kind of tedious. There's a lot of those mini games where you're doing, like, science. You're, like, blowing up molecules. And it just feels so silly. Like, it feels like something from a 2002, you know, like a PlayStation. Yeah, I don't like any of the science mini games. I'll say it. I mean, they tried.

There are a lot of bespoke mechanics. Remember the rhythm thing at Coney Island? So many silly. I don't want to talk about the rhythm game at Coney Island. So a lot of that stuff is necessary to level up because you have to go do. those side quests. I think if you're properly playing the game, whatever that means, you're doing a lot of those side quests because you want to be getting all the materials that you need to unlock the six billion upgrades that you have because you have skill upgrades

that you get for leveling up. But then you spend tech parts and advanced tech parts and city points and eight different currencies that you get from all the different side quests in order to like do more damage, have more health, you know, have more focus bars. Focus bars are really important because you use them to heal. Yeah, the bosses would actually be easy if you unlocked all of Uncle Aaron's little puzzles. So if you did all the side quests before those final boss rushes, they would probably feel significantly less kind of extended, or at least they might. Possibly.

I don't know because I didn't do it. I'm going to have to do that before I keep going. It might be worth it. There's only so much you can change, though, because I know what you mean about, like, interrupting cutscenes and, like, having to do a series of mechanical hoops to get through a boss fight. Like, even if the boss itself is really taking your hits, no problem, it. You're still going to have to get through multiple phases, and that can be tiring, no matter what.

Yeah, so there's just there are some, I guess I have some gripes with it. Even while it is a big-hearted game, I think. Like, it really is this game that loves its characters. It has great vibes. Everyone's so friendly. It really does. It has a number of really wonderful story sequences, like non-combat story sequences, I think, that are really neat. And I mean that in the most complimentary possible way.

A lot of it just feels like dudes rock type of vibes. And it's like the opposite of men will do X or Y instead of going to therapy. Like that's the opposite of what this game is doing. This game is like Peter pointing at the camera and going, remember guys, it's okay to go to therapy. Like that is like the conclusion of every mission somehow. And it's like really sweet. So just in terms of the overall atmosphere of it, it's very cozy feeling. Like we've kind of made fun of some of the mini-game.

but there's also a lot of bespoke interactive elements that are very pleasant. Like, you ride your bike with Harry to your old high school, and then you, like, have this sort of flashback sequence that I thought was really fun. I don't know that it has much narrative payoff overall. Did it need to be there narratively? I don't know, but I had a great time, you know? Like, it's just good vibes, and it made me be like, oh, Peter and Harry are friends.

They have so many memories together. And that's meaningful, too, to have something like that in a game that just gives you a really good feeling. And overall, the game is really good at giving you, a good feeling, even if that feeling is kind of ephemeral. Yeah, no, I agree with you. I think it gets Spider-Man pretty right in a way that we talked to, we've been critical of the past games in, especially like Spider-Man working with the cops so closely, being

a little bit more of a force of authority in the city. In this game, he very much isn't and feels more like a part of the neighborhood. And Miles certainly feels like a part of his neighborhood. I joked at the beginning about Clyde Siblefield. There's a really great music side quest that anybody playing the game will be like, Oh, well, Kirk must have loved this quest. There's a lot of cool stuff with Miles in his neighborhood. And honestly, actually, just to shout out Miles,

Najee Jeter does a great job as Miles. I think Miles as a character in this game is really great. I loved the Miles standalone story. I liked it more than the original game. And I think this whole game, I wanted more Miles. I appreciated this. You could do a lot of the side stuff as Miles. And the Venom storyline, I mean, that's Peter's storyline.

So, like, it focuses on Peter, and Harry are kind of, of one of the most important relationships in the game, Peter and MJ. You get more of them than you do of Miles and Miles and Haley, who I love. So I just wanted a little more Miles, and I hope that we'll get more Miles in the future, because I think he's a great character, and this game really underlined that for me as well. Yeah, I agree. I really liked the Miles stuff, but Peter was, I think, a little more bearable to me in this game. All the performances are excellent.

Erie Lowenthal is great. Laura Bailey is great. MJ got a glow up for this game. She looks completely different than she did in the game. the last game. It's a little bit, it's kind of weird how they keep changing how everybody looks. I don't even know, like, I don't really know, I don't even have an opinion about any of the different looks. It's just weird that they always like, quit changing it. Just pick up face and like, it's fine, just stick with it. I never, I still don't really understand it. Peter's,

Peter's new face is good. He looks like to Amal and it's, it's good. It works. Yeah, it's fine. It's fine. It's just that he's always different. And I'm like, who are you? I also found, I find Harry, this Harry, to be really interesting, because he's, he's, he's so different than James Franco's Harry in the movies, but he still feels like a good just kind of version of the character that's just like an interesting new twist on it, almost like a Shakespearean play, how you could perform

like a totally different version of a character. I'd say that's a good way to describe a lot about this game and about Spider-Man in general, just how it's become this remix, this constantly, you know, multiversal remix version of itself. This feels like yet another one of those. I think it'll be something that'll be fun to get into with spoilers once we've all played it. And I think that we all will and we'll do a beans cast on this a little ways down the road.

I did. Yeah. I got one thing I'll say that isn't a spoiler, but just kind of like obliquely, like very, speaking in very vague terms, I was hoping that they would do something different, that felt different, more different with the Venom storyline than the ones we've seen before. Yeah. Yeah. I just was like, why isn't it more like the Tom Hardy version?

That's what, that's my main point so far. No, it's funny because I do, I do love Venom now. now that I've seen that movie. I know. It's nothing like that, actually. Yeah, yeah. That would have been cool, though. All right, well, we will talk about this game more down the road for sure.

In the meantime, let's take a break and then come back for one more thing. Hi, I'm Bickram Chatterjee, the CEO of Maximum Fun, and I'm here with my fellow worker owner. Marissa Flakspart, producer. This week for Co-October will be highlighting other co-ops who work in the arts. The past few years have been challenging for all kinds of creators. industries. We at Max Fund believe that co-ops are better suited to meet these challenges, and there are a lot of other companies who feel the same way. So all this week on our social media and website, we'll be sharing interviews with some of our fellow co-ops. And head to our YouTube

channel, Friday, October 20th, where I'll be talking with worker owners from Defector and Stocksy about their co-ops and why the model works for them. And next week is volunteer week. Learn how you can participate in that and get details on exclusive merch, our live streams, and other co-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-P-O-R. All right, class, tomorrow's exam will cover the science of perfect pitch, the history of pride flags and speed-running video games. Any questions? Ah, yes, you in the back.

Uh-oh, what is this? It's the podcast, let's learn everything. Where we learn about science and a bit of everything else. My name's Tom. I study cognitive and computer science, but I'll also be a lot. your teacher for intermediate emojis. My name's Caroline and I did my master's in biodiversity conservation, and I'll be teaching you intro to things the British Museum stole. My name's Ella.

I did a PhD in stem cell biology, so obviously I'll be teaching you the history of fan fiction. Class meets every other Thursday on maximum fun. So do I still get credit for this? No. Obviously not. No. It's a podcast. And we're back for one more thing.

Maddie, you go first. Okay. My one more thing is a television show called The Golden Bachelor. Hell yeah. Only has three episodes so far, and Deena and I are completely obsessed with it and highly recommend it. This is very much a we hate watch the Bachelor household. We have a lot of rules around when we stop watching The Bachelor because it stopped being fun and started getting too real and we got too angry at it. Each season we'll be like, are we going to watch The Bachelor?

Is hate watching it actually fun? Is it just making us angry? It's straight people. We have to have these conversations at our house all the time. Golden Bachelor? Not so. So here's the rules of Golden Bachelor. Everybody is 60 years old and over.

And I have never seen a reality show where this is the case ever. I love it. And it's incredible. So the guy who is the Bachelor, I mean, anytime you cast a Bachelor or Bachelor, you really got to think about their charisma, the Riz, if you will, it has to be extremely high. Or the entire season fails. It has to be 18 or higher. It has to be 18 or higher. No jokes. Get those dice out, folks. Get those character sheets out. It's got to be real freaking high because otherwise you are not going to believe that 16 people all want to date this person. You have to really want that for them. And you also have to like them. So they cast it the perfect bachelor. He's amazing. He's a widower. You're rooting for him. You cry when he tells the story. It's like the beginning of up levels of crying. You're going to be crying when you watch the beginning of the Golden Bachelor. But you're going to stick with it because then you're going to meet a

series of older women who are the greatest women on this planet and you're going to be so upset that all of them can't win. There's like 75 year old women who are so hilarious. So the other thing about The Bachelor that is normally terrible is that everyone is 22 years old. And it's hard to root for a 22 year old. I mean, I've been 22. We all have and you're like, you've never dated anyone. I wouldn't root for myself. You don't know what a relationship is. You shouldn't be getting married. Like, what is going on here? Like, no offense to those 22 year olds listening right now. Sorry. Okay. Maybe you met the one and you're very lucky. It's very statistically unlikely, but it certainly does happen. But on The Bachelor, you're just like, is this the way you should be dating? Like, it's got to be a hate watch, you know? You guys all get it. And the listeners get it too. Everyone unanimously agrees with me on this. But on The Golden Bachelor, you're like, everybody on this show has not only been in a relationship, they've probably been in multiple relationships. They've been married for decades. Several of them have either been through a divorce or their widows. They're very freaking experience. and their vocabularies, top-notch.

There's nobody on this show that is like using the word intangible incorrectly or like doing other things that you're like, why am I watching this show? Is this deleting my brain cells? You're like having actual intelligent conversations with other 70 or 60-year-old women about what it's like to be at that age. I don't know. It's fascinating.

I've never seen a reality show like this before. I know The Bachelor is a very conservative franchise and they're always like, how do we mix it up? I actually think they nailed it this time. And I think more people should watch this. I like it a lot. It's really good. The Golden Bachelor.

You will cry, though. You will. I haven't seen it, but I heard about it and I love the idea. And I'm glad to hear that it's good. It's great. But you'll laugh. You'll laugh as well because it's amazing. Well, Jason's is exciting and I want to hear about it.

So I'm going to actually go first so I can get mine out of the way because mine is kind of short. Mine is the movie Zodiac, the David Fincher film from 2007. I've never seen this. Should I watch this movie? Yes. Yes. You should. It's really, really good. Is this about Ted Cruz?

Well, allegedly. But no, the textual film is not. He's not mentioned. So the reason that I watched this movie was that my beloved boys at Blank Check with Griffin and David are doing a series on David Fincher. And it's been really interesting, of course, a director who was a pretty seminal director, I think, for a lot of people of our generation, the director of Fight Club, the director of, well, Panic. but also the director of Seven. And I'd say Seven is the most interesting comparison point for Zodiac, 2007 film that he made that upon listening to the episode, I realized I'd only seen it once and really needed to see it

again. So their episode has an amazing guest, who is a woman that I had never actually heard of, or at least her name didn't register to me. Her name is Leslie Headland. She's a writer and a director, and she wrote and directed a movie called Sleeping with Other people that I haven't seen but have heard as good. But she was also a co-creator of Russian doll, and she's the showrunner for that upcoming High Republic show, the Star Wars show about the High Republic. So she's a director and a writer. She really knows her stuff. And at the start of

this episode about Zodiac, all three of them are like one of the five greatest American films ever made. Like all three just said it flat out. And these are people who have seen every movie ever. And I was like, really? I barely, like I remember watching it and thinking it was interesting in 2007, I didn't know anything. But I haven't seen it since then. So I was like, all right. So I paused the episode and went and watched the movie. It's like a two hour, 50 minute movie.

You dropped everything you were doing immediately. I really kind of did. Well, I just was like, well, whatever. I watched it that night. Kirk doesn't, Kirk is a freelancer. He can do it everyone. I can make my own schedule. And it really is an incredible movie.

And then really an incredible accompaniment to this podcast episode as well. Their conversation about it has been very, very interesting. Just to hear a director, a special. especially like Headland talking about how incredible so many of the things that Fincher did in this film were, the way he used digital film, which was pretty new at the time, and the way he made it look a certain way, how incredible looking it is, how his meticulous approach to shooting scenes where he shoots scenes like 60 times, got really incredible energy out of it. It's a really cool movie, and it really isn't what I remembered. What I remember from Zodiac is there's one scene in it. There's a murderer pretty early on where they depict one of the Zodiac. murders by a lake. Anyone who's seen the movie already knows the scene I'm talking about

because it's like the scariest thing I've ever seen in a movie. And it remains the most chilling murder I've ever seen in a movie. And watching it again was scary all over again. And that is so memorable that I kind of had forgotten what the movie is really about. It's the story of these three men. It's Mark Ruffalo, Jake Jillenhall, and Robert Downey Jr. And Robert Downey Jr. is a crime reporter. Mark Ruffalo is a S.F. Detective. And Jake Jillen Hall is a cartoonist at the newspaper who would go on to write the book Zodiac and who just became obsessed with the Zodiac killer. And it's really the story of how this thing happened where this guy claimed to have killed people and wrote these letters to the newspaper in the late 60s and

early 70s and how the obsession with that case like kind of destroyed everyone. And they never caught him. They never found out what was going on. And as a result, it's kind of the opposite of Seven where Seven's this movie that, like, makes the, you know, the serial killer is this great genius who devises this master mousetrap that, like, catches everyone and goes according to this Baroque plan where he even gets the detective in the end, and it's like all perfect because he's this super genius. And instead, this movie is, like, only based on the facts, you only see what's been documented in the Zodiac killing, so you don't actually see much of them. And you never even know, like, what Zodiac was doing or, like, what his plan was. It was all kind of random. Like, who really knows? And it's instead about the people who became obsessed with figuring this out and just found this mystery and couldn't solve it.

And it winds up feeling like this, like it was predicting the true crime wave. Like Jake Gyllenhaal's character, especially in the second half of the movie, he becomes like a Reddit mystery detective guy. Like it's the 70s, so he doesn't have Reddit. But it's just like that. He's sitting there being like going through cold case files and trying to figure out maybe it was this guy, maybe it was that guy. And his whole life falls apart. Anyways, it really is an amazing movie. I was really just taken with it.

I think it's totally worth watching for anyone who either didn't see it or saw it a long time ago and doesn't remember it. Totally worth checking out. And that episode of Blank Check with Leslie Headland is really amazing as well. So I wanted to recommend that. I feel like I should watch it because I haven't seen it, but Social Network and Gone Girl are like two of my favorite movies ever. So I feel like I would like it.

Yeah. Yeah, they go in at the beginning. And they're like, a lot of people say Finchers, Masterwork, is the social network and all three of them are like it's zodiac like zodiac's the one and i am inclined to agree as much as i do like the social network as well um all right so that's me jason what is your one more more thing yeah so i played final fantasy seven rebirth the sequel to final fantasy seven remake there was a preview event in new york last week i went and played a couple hours of the game or more like an hour of the game and then went and sat down with the director and spoke to him for a bit for my

for an interview that'll be up on Bloomberg on Friday. So check that out when it hits. Fascinating dude, by the way, very charismatic. And he's, like, in his 40s. He was in middle school when Final Fantasy 7 came out. So he's, like, playing this as a fan, which I think, find, or he's directing this as a fan, which I find fascinating. Kind of makes sense when you played.

It does. I'm like a few shows. Well, it's so funny. It's like him. And then Tutsu you know Mura and Yoshinori Kitase, both of whom worked on the original game. You have this blend of veterans and newcomers, which is fascinating. Anyway, so I played the game.

It was kind of two demos. One was the Nibbleheim flashback with Cloud and Severoth, and the other was a little bit of a little chunk of open world between the coral mines and June on, like the undercity of June on where you hang out with the dolphin and fight a big monster. Oh, yeah. I forgot about the dolphin. Yeah, there's a dolphin. The dolphin is a great moment.

There's like a great. shot of the dolphin and cloud like hugging in this one is great. Oh my god. So, uh, so the Nimelheim flashback is really interesting. It's kind of like a combat tutorial type thing. It seems like that's going to be very early in the game because in in the original it happens right after you leave Mnagar, which is of course where we have left off after Final Fantasy 7 remake. Um, and so, uh, the thing that struck me about it is that cloud acts and looks and feels and talks exactly like Zach in the flashback, which will make sense to anyone who knows the big plottress involving that flashback. But it's so interesting. And I asked the director Hamaguchi about that.

And he was like, yeah, it's interesting because that's what was intended in the original game. But we weren't really able to like show it in the same way that we can now in monographics and voice acting and all this stuff. So it's so interesting that they were able to pull that off assignment. It's just a fascinating little piece of storytelling. But from what I saw in that, pretty short section, but all just very following the same exact path as the original game. Whereas the Junot stuff feels a little bit different in that it's not, it's obviously not like a world map the way. One of the big questions everybody had was, okay, Final Fantasy 7 remake, first part of the game, first act of this three-part trilogy, three-game trilogy, that was all set in Midgar.

So you didn't have to worry about the open world and the world map and how are we going to approach that. And so this game, the big question was, what are they going to do? Are they going to let you explore a massive world map? How is that going to work with HD graphics and this modern recreation that's supposed to feel very real in a way that the kind of stylistic metaphor world map could never feel? And so their approach, I still want to know 100% when the answer is going to be because I didn't get any of the vehicles or vehicles that you're going to get, like the tiny Bronco floating around and like the buggy and stuff.

But none of that was in this demo. But it seems like it's going to be chunks of open world. And that's what this demo was. It was essentially a chunk of open world. So, like, you get out of the quarrel mines and you have this big kind of, there's, like, a big hill, and then you can go down, and then there's a bunch of different, like, areas that you can explore. And a couple of things I thought were noteworthy there. One is that, like, there's a bunch of, like, random stuff that's new, as you might expect from Final Fantasy 7 remake. There's just a ton of new stuff in this game.

It's going to feel very new. Two is that there are no random encounters, and by that I mean there aren't even just like filler encounters. So from what I saw, this chunk of the open world had four different kind of battles that you could fight, and they were all marked on the map as like almost not side quests, but like collectible things, where you get there and then Chadley or not Chadley, someone, some robot or something, I don't know, that's probably explained earlier in the game from this point, gives you like a description of what you're fighting and gives you some objectives to do. It might be like, stagger this enemy

or, like, prevent this enemy from casting a spell. And so each of the four encounters had those kind of objectives. And so it felt a little bit less like a random battle, and filler battle, and more like an actual activity to be doing. And I didn't see any other random encounter. Like, there were no other battles from what I could tell

other than those, which I think is an interesting way to approach a world map where presumably you're going to be fighting all the time in random enemies, if they approach it with like, oh, it's not actually going to be random filler enemy. it's going to be these little activity things. I think that's a really cool way to go about that.

I also, I think they had told us that there'll be more side stuff that we didn't even get to see in this when we play the actual game, but I found a little chokobo farm and some hints of a story going on there. And then I got into the June 9 Under City and had to run and go save Priscilla

like you do in the original from this big water boss thing, which was fine. It was just a water boss. And then the demo ended after that. The combat feels pretty much the same as remake did, which is a good thing. It was good combat system, good kind of blend of like action and turn-based stuff or action and strategy stuff. The one big new mechanic is this system called Synergy, where you can team up with your team-up two characters together to like do some sort of combo attack, which is just kind of like an interesting new wrinkle to the thing.

but other than that, it just feels like more of the same, which is a good thing, I think. Overall came away very, very excited. There was nothing like groundbreaking. I didn't get any hints about like the story changes that are actually going to happen in the final game, which is good. I'll wait for the final game. Yeah, they're not going to show me about that. But yeah, but overall I was, I left super stoked and very excited to see more and play more of it. And yeah, man, I mean, as we've all talked about, I guess it was split screener, like very early triple click.

we started getting, oh, it was a bean, one of our free beans cast, I think was Final Fantasy 7 remake. It was, I think. But yeah, I mean, I was like super skeptical to that, about that game going into it. I was like, why are they breaking up into three parts? Why are they calling a Final Fantasy 7 remake? Like, what the heck is going on here? And then I played through the game and just like you two was totally blown away and was like,

oh, this is, this is not a remake, it's a sequel. They're trying to do something totally new here. This is amazing. I'm so happy that they're doing this. And now I'm just so excited to get my hands on rebirth and play through it all that, yeah, I just can't wait. It's coming out in February, which feels kind of soon, like sooner than anticipated. Which one more quick anecdote I'll share. I asked him to Gucci, I said, we live in a world where like everything is taking six years to make.

Like, this is a game that in the first game, it was all set in Midgar, so you could repeat a lot of assets and stuff. This game, you have like a dozen cities that we're going to explore. And it's a massive open world. like, how did you possibly pull this off in four years? And he gave me an answer that I thought was really interesting, which is he said, team chemistry. Like, we have 80 to 90% of the same people who worked on remake. And so we were able, even though the pandemic started,

just as they were starting to work on this, we were able to do things efficiently because, as an example, if I have a question about something or, like, need something done, I know exactly who to go to and can be like, oh, you know this part of the game. Oh, you are responsible for this. And because they retain that chemistry, and that they retain a lot of the same staff, they were able to do things a lot more quickly and efficiently,

which I thought was really interesting, something that a lot of game studios, I think, undervalue is team chemistry. A bit of a recurring theme lately, the returning team chemistry thing. After Tears of the Kingdom, we had that same conversation, almost like maybe some other studios.

And I mean, playing Spider-Man kind of feels that way too. Yeah, not untrue, not on true. So, yeah, Rebirth, very excited to play that final game, and we're going to be. to talk a lot about that, I'm sure. It'll be our big, our big, our big, for sure.

Yeah, very exciting. Absolutely. All right. Well, this has been another fun episode of Triple Click. Thanks so much, everyone. As always, for listening. Thanks to the two of you

for being my co-hosts. You're both great. You're welcome. And remember, with great power comes something of the podcast ability. There you go. Beautiful. I'll see you both next week.

See you next week. Bye. Triple Click is produced by Jason Schreier Maddie Myers and me Kirk Hamilton I edit and mix the show and also wrote our theme music our show art is by Tom DJ Some of the games and products we talked about on this episode may have been sent to us for free for review consideration

You can find a link to our ethics policy in the show notes Triple Click is a proud member of the Maximum Fun podcast network And if you like our show we hope you'll consider supporting us By becoming a member at maximum fun.org slash join Find us on Twitter at triple click pod send email the triple click at maximum fun.org and find a link to our discord in the show notes. Thanks for listening. See you next time. Maximum Fun. A worker-owned network of artists-owned shows.

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