Triple Click - Triple Play: Resident Evil 2 (2019)

Episode Date: August 1, 2024

Kirk won last year's predictions bet, so it's time to play the Resident Evil 2 remake! The Triple Click gang makes their way through the police station, gets chased by Mr. X, and screams a lot of obscenities in a gross sewer.One More Thing:Kirk: The OperatorMaddy: The Lord of the Rings Extended EditionsJason: Long Island Compromise (Taffy Brodesser-Akner)LINKS:https://www.polygon.com/lord-of-the-rings/22811800/gollum-lord-of-the-rings-actor-andy-serkis-weta-digitalPreorder Jason’s Book! https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/jason-schreier/play-nice/9781538725429/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

Here's a joke. What was the vice presidential candidate's favorite type of games? Couch Co-off. Welcome to Triple Click where we bring the games to you. Today we are talking about Resident Evil 2, the remake. We get into the horror, the Mr. X of it all, and of course, those annoying sewer levels. I'm Jason Shrier. I'm Kirk Hamilton. And I'm Maddie Myers.

Hello. Hello. Hello. Hello. Hello, hello, my friends. Or as Claire Redfield might say, what the fuck? Oh, you bastards.

This guy again. This guy again. We are back for another episode. I'm very excited to talk about this game we've all been playing. But first, I should let the fine folks out there know that we are a listener-supported podcast. That is right. We are entirely funded by all of you out there listening to our show. and you can of course help us make the show possible by going to maximum fun.org

slash join him becoming a member of the Maximum Fun Network. In addition to making the show possible, you also get monthly bonus episodes released by us, including when we just put out, are we about to put out, Kirk? Is it out yet? I know it's out. It's out. It's out currently out. Love that.

About the Christopher Nolan movie's Inception and Tenet. really fun good at really really solid really really fun episode a Nolan cast we had a lot of fun with that yeah and yeah you can you can also get a bunch of old backlog of bonus ups which is growing every month as is what happens when you do something every month it turns out you create more of it so it's just a never-ending fountain of bonus content yeah every month seems infrequent but then you do that for a few years and suddenly you have lots and lots of whatever it is you were doing it's pretty cool. The value for members just keeps going up every single month. So true. So yeah, go become a member today, maximum fund.org, slash join. And that is it for housekeeping. So, Kirk, I will let you

take us away for this week's episode. All right. So at long last, we are going to talk about Resident Evil 2, the 2019 remake of a 1998 game that we have played through at least the first half of because I won the bet, our predictions bet, last year in a tiebreaker, a very exciting, down to the wire nail biter. I pulled it out at the last minute and won and that was the game that I picked. Thanks to the e-sports coach of the year. That's right. That's right.

Yeah. So again, I think that that's like a misunderstanding of the data because you could really say it's thanks to any of the, you know, any one point that I got. That's true, but it's so much more fun to be like this. You did get that right. Category that we all took random stabs at, you were. Yeah, yeah. I had a good feeling about it.

So here we are. We are playing Resident Evil to remake. This is a game that I really love. I didn't pick it because of any great personal connection that I have to Resident Evil or anything. I just loved this game when I played it, and I knew the two of you hadn't played it. And I just wanted you to because I think it's great. And that it would be fun to talk about. So, you know, I don't have like any big grand agenda here.

just think this is a really cool game. I mean, that's a great agenda to have. I don't know. I feel like we've been doing a bet for enough years in a row that the agendas have been fulfilled at this point. And now we're just trying to pick cool video games that we think would be fun to talk about on the show. So here we are.

Which I fully support. I think this is a good approach for us going forward. Absolutely. But that's just me. I mean, I loved replaying Claire's section of this game. I thought it was great. That's what we're talking about in this episode. We're going to spoil stuff for that.

if you care, I doubt anybody does. And at some point here in the near future, we will also be playing through the rest of it since we've got momentum going. You know, the Leon's second playthrough is pretty short, so I think we'll just finish this thing out. But for now, it is Claire's play-through that we're talking about. I know how I feel about it, but I'm curious

with the two of you thought. Jason, why don't you go first? Yeah, I don't know. I'm still kind of formulating my opinions on it. It's a cool game. I like a lot about it. That said, I think if not for this bet, I probably wouldn't have played through the whole thing,

But I guess that's the benefit of this bet in this podcast is getting to explore. And you hadn't played through it, right? Why would you go back and play a 2019 game now? Right, sure. But I was never really into Resident Evil games. Like I enjoyed Resident Evil 4 back in the day. But I was never really into the camp of it all and the tone and the kind of the, I'm not really a hard guy. So the Mr. X stuff really doesn't do much for me.

But yeah, but playing this game, it was interesting. I like a lot of stuff about it. I like the way that the levels are all interconnected in interesting ways, and you really get to know them as you play through, especially the police station, which is really cool. Sewers, not so much. I like the kind of the resource management of it all, having to make educated decisions about what to keep on you

and what to keep in your storage box and what weapons to use and whether to spend all the time backtracking to go, get secret weapons or go unlock doors that you are now suddenly able to unlock after a few hours into the game. Yeah, I like a lot of stuff about it. I guess for me, the story really did so little for me and is so kind of hokey that really just kind of, I think if I were to play a game like this on my own for fun, it would really be because I wanted to see how the story would play out. And so with this, it was just so nonsensical that I was like, okay, whatever. Like, I feel no compelling desire to see this game through. But I do like a lot of stuff about it. It's gorgeous.

It's the sound design is really cool. There's just a lot, it has a lot going for it. I really enjoyed a lot of aspects of it. Especially the laboratory towards the end was a really, really cool dungeon, for lack of a better word, level. Nice. Yeah, we'll get into all of that and into those particulars. But Maddie, First, let's hear from you. What did you think of this play through? Kind of the opposite of Jason on each individual term. I like horror despite also being very afraid of it.

So I love and hate Mr. X and everything about him. And this game is based on a game I've already played before. I played the original Resident Evil. I really like Resident Evil. I really like the camp specifically. I think it's really funny and weird. And the way that these characters talk makes me laugh pretty much every time. So that for me is the selling point of the experience.

It was very funny to hear Jason give his breakdown and be like, okay, yeah, that's like exactly the opposite of how I feel. But I will say the original Resident Evil 2, I don't think is that scary. I think it's very campy and silly, and that's something I find very endearing about it. But this game is much more just straightforwardly scary. And it's also more realistic looking and it kind of takes advantage of sound. design and other things that the original game doesn't really have going for it. It makes the puzzles a lot more complex. It's a longer game.

You could probably beat the original in a couple hours if you knew where everything was. You could certainly speed run it in less time than that. And it's interesting to see a modernized version of what I see as like a classic camp horror game. So for me, I got a lot of enjoyment out of it. And I also appreciated the push to play it because I knew I would be really. scared of it and I don't think I would have played through all of it if we hadn't had the bet. And also, I really appreciate the invention of the Steam deck because although I did play some of this game on my computer with headphones like fully ensconced and like freaked out,

I also for some of the scariest sections was like, I'm just going to play this on the steam deck with like something else on the TV so I'm not fully paying attention to how scared I am. And that really helped me get through like especially the Mr. X chunk where we can talk about it. I was losing my mind at certain points of. that and I was like, I need to take a break from this. But yeah, I had a great time. We can talk about Mr. X specifically because, yeah, I think he's a really big part of this game. But yeah, let's keep it to broad impressions for now. Yeah, I found playing this, this is the second time that I've played through this game. I'm playing it in the same order. Ideally, I guess I should have picked Leon

first since the first time I played this, I played Claire first. And I think it's a little bit different depending on who you have as your first and second play-through. But so it goes, I'm just replaying it the exact same way that I played it the first time and playing through it as Claire. And yeah, I really liked it. I think what I like about this game most is the way that it sort of gradually unfolds, like the way that the experience stacks on top of itself and it grows more and more complex and it sort of then introduces new elements in a really graduated way that just keeps the game exciting and new, like engaging in new ways from start to finish.

I think I really admire that about it, and it hits a sweet spot for me as a Resident Evil game. I've played not every Resident Evil game, but I played a lot of them. I played through Seven, and then Village, played through some of the Resident Evil 3 remake, and of course we played through a lot of the Resident Evil 4 remake when we talked about it last year. And I think this is it for me. This is the closest to an ideal Resident Evil experience that I've ever had, because it doesn't lean too hard into action, it doesn't go too hard into like,

like it's very organic. The level design is really organic. I love the police station and that feeling of unlocking and sort of mastering and gradually opening up the level. And then the moment when you return to it later from the sewer is also, I think, just really, really cool.

And I love that feeling. And that's something that's been missing for me from the more recent ones, from Seven and Village, where they have those, it's more like a, you know, there's like a central hub and then you go to a little domain of a different boss.

And there's like a bunch of domains. And each one is like a little Resident Evil level that you gradually unlock. I really like the more ambitious approach that Two has or that this remake in particular has with the police station and all the unlocking that you just keep coming back to this one big area. So I find that just the exploration and the unlocking to be so satisfying. And I found that to be even more of the case this time. So that's probably my favorite thing about it. That makes sense as an Resident Evil experience. I mean, for me, it's the original Resident Evil One, but for almost the exact same reasons you described, that Resident Evil 2 also kind of iterates on, but expands slightly.

Like, the first game is just a haunted house game. There's zombies in the house, but you're just exploring one specific mansion and, you know, there's jump scares throughout. And you're trying to figure out, why are there zombies in the first place? Who created them? Et cetera, et cetera. And the story plays out accordingly. But it's in a confined space. and that I find is just to me like classic Resident Evil and is really a fun idea for a game.

It's a fun puzzle series where everything has to be really specific to just this one place. Like that's a unique challenge that the latter day Resident Evil's just don't engage with. They just go ahead and are like, zombies are everywhere. They're all over the different parts of the world. You're going to be out in wide open areas running around and the great outdoors fighting zombies, which is just a wildly different experience than being in a tight hallway or like a tiny room where you're like trying to maneuver around and there's some or several zombies or creepy beings who are coming at you and the sound design is all in your face and ears and everything. It's just that is resident evil to me. So I do agree with you there.

Like that plus I have to solve puzzles but I have to do it in a high stress environment. Those are like peak resident evil experiences to me. Yeah, I remember. So again, I played Resident Evil 4 way back in the day on the GameCube. I played through all of it. And it's way more of an action game. You don't backtrack at all in that game. You're just going from a bit.

Tiny bit. Oh, okay. So this is based on the remake. This is based on memory of 20 years. Yeah, of course. It is still way more open, though. You are correct. But yeah, I remember it feeling more like a traditional, like you're going from place to place,

like any other kind of action game in that. era that would just kind of the what was interesting to me about it again was sort of like what was interesting to me about this the kind of the resource management and the survival aspect of it all was interesting but also it was just a kind of a fun zombie shooting experience and then with this this is a little different I like this style better I like the puzzles I like the safes and the the numbers and the codes everywhere and trying to figure out I really enjoyed in the laboratory having to figure out that the the code union need is on the bottom of the DNA thing because I was stumped for a little bit. I was like,

where is this freaking like, I only have the code? What's the deal here? And I might, I should go look through my inventory and see what the deal is. That was a fun, fun little moment to go through. And that, that to me, that stuff is really enjoyable. I really like that aspect of it. And I think it's really improved. That sense is really heightened by that interlocking level design where you're just an hour or two later, you might uncover a shortcut that unlocks a door that you were wondering about, like, way at the beginning of the game. And that, that to me is really cool. Um, I really enjoyed that. But like, why do we have to go to friggin sewers and fight those monsters in the sewers? I mean, come on, man. Like, you really have to go to a sewer.

Yeah, we do. Yeah. Um, as, as Claire says, what did Claire, what does Claire say when you go in there? It's like, I smell like shit. Literally. Yeah. Just like, no, I'm going to smell like literal shit or whatever she says. Yeah. Just incredible writing. I like the line later. I like the line later where she slides down, you slide down a kind of causeway or whatever, like a waterway, and then you land back where you start it. And she says something, a lot of lines of like, seriously, again? Yeah, it's great. She's a very relatable horror protagonist.

The graphical upgrade in this game is remarkable. And I think that the sewer is like that just the way that like actual sewage gets on her clothes and on her skin and stuff is really gross, but really effective. It really sells the idea that she is just trudging through sewage during this whole part. You can almost smell it. It's really gross, but kind of effective. But I want to stay on level exploration a little bit more just because there is something I actually didn't find the first time to this game that I discovered this time where when you return to the police station, which is kind of optional. I think you can kind of miss that.

I mean, I guess it would be kind of hard to miss. From the sewers you're talking about? Because you return from the parking garage also. So there are multiple times. Oh, yeah. Yeah, you can. Yeah. Yes.

Oh, yeah. You definitely. I mean, you have to from the parking garage. But in the sewers, you're kind of going through this really long circuitous route where you're climbing ladders and then you're in one room and then you climb another. And you get pretty far from a safe point, at least I kind of did. And I started getting nervous. Like, where am I? And I'm in this big sort of underground basement staircase.

Yeah. Yeah, it is a soul's feeling. And actually, just to mention it here, just because it's not a huge point we need to dwell on. But this has always been something that Souls has borrowed from Resident Evil. For sure. While people treat this as though it's a soul's. design idea, really Resident Evil was doing the same thing with like locked doors. Yeah. And then, oh, I'm here.

Like realizing where you are. Yeah. It's kind of like a FireLink Shrine Elevator moment. When you realize, oh, this is that same staircase that I came down way, way earlier before I, you know, had the first boss fight. And now I'm just going back up. And here I am. And now I have this tool, this like crank handle or whatever that can open up the door. I can get back into the police station. And then you have that wonderful feeling of being in the police station without Mr. X. And you can just go and explore and pick up anything that you missed and just kind of, there's no zombies really left. There's like a couple at the windows.

And that is actually something that I really like about the police station is that it does sort of change. And there's a nice feeling like there is a zombie apocalypse going on outside and they're always trying to get in. So you have to board up. I'm not sure if you can board up every window. But the more windows you board up, the more zombies you keep out. And then sometimes you'll be like, well, I guess a zombie came through that window so it's fine. but then many hours later you'll return to that hallway and oh nope another zombie comes or multiple yeah it's yeah it's just they just keep coming man it's true it gives it a nice

feeling of like tower defense but just to explain the thing that i found that i didn't know was there that i'm not sure if the two have you found wondering if you did there's an extra role of film that you find it's kind of hard to spot it's right behind whatever it is like there's like a main item that you pick up in the desk but there's this hidden roll of film that is behind behind another item. You develop the film and then it shows two hiding spaces in the police station. Did either of you find this? I don't think so. It's not ringing a bell at all. I got rid of most of the film for ammo space. It's really cool. So you can only get it when you go back to the police station after the sewers. And then it's just a photo of two desks and you have to do a kind of, it's like a little test of your knowledge of the police station. So one of the desks has a flag in the background. the Star's Office desk. So one of them is that one.

And then there's another desk that I think is like in the East Wing or something. And each one of them just has like an upgrade for, I think one is for that spark shot. It's some weapon, some ammo for that. So it's like things you'd only need later in the game. But what it really functioned for for me was just a fun little final exam that I had no idea was even in the game. And just led me to like, you know, feel even more in control. Like I really knew the map and I could look at it and say, oh, I know where that desk is.

I can go find it. And I thought that was a cool little touch. Yeah, that is really cool. I don't think I ever discovered that. And I thought I found every roll of film. So I don't know. It's very easy to miss. Like, you have to notice it in the back of the drawer really to pick it up.

Like it almost doesn't highlight correctly in the UI. You just have to kind of, for me anyways, I just saw it there. And I was like, wait a minute, that looks like a roll of film. And then just was pressing A and I picked it up. And then I went and developed it. And I had no idea what it was. Like, I hadn't seen it the first time through it. Yeah.

It's funny. I thought maybe you were just doing a really elaborate. build it up to the role of film that just has a cute photo of Rebecca Chambers for no reason at all. It's like, wow, Kirk's really taking a long time to talk about one of the sillier things in this video game. But no, there was an actual role of film that was useful that I didn't find. Yeah, I feel like I agree with you on the level design. It's just hard for me to divorce it from the emotional component of the different stages of the police station for me. So like the first stage where you're just starting to unlock things where Marvin is still human and he's not a zombie yet.

and Mr. X isn't there yet is like one type of scary for me because I spent that entire time being like, I know Mr. X is going to be in this game. I don't know when Mr. X is going to be in this game, but I know from the original game that he shows up around the time of the helicopter crash. And I like know where that happens in the original game. But then that really threw me because that isn't quite when he shows up, although that is where he shows up. So basically like that entire time, I was just in a constant state of dread, which is, of course, exactly how you're supposed to feel during that portion of the game.

And by the time Marvin comes to zombie, it's like, okay, everything's just terrible now. And Mr. X can even follow you all the way into the main hall, which I didn't realize because I was like, oh, I feel like he probably can't follow me into save points. The main hall feels like a really safe place up to then. Like nothing bad really happens there, even though it's really big.

But then once Marvin goes zombie mode, it's almost like that's concurrent with the idea of even that area. no longer being safe anymore. And I thought that was like an interesting, just emotional parallel. I'm not sure if that always happens at the same time for everyone, but it did for me. So I thought it was really effective that I was like gunning down Marvin at the same time as Mr. X was like suddenly showing up.

And I was like, ah, the main hell sucks now. I hate it here. I hate everything. And then you sort of enter the middle chunk of the game where just Mr. X can show up at any time. Terrible. But you still have to explore the police station. And then after you're out with Mr. X,

Then the last third of the game is almost like you're super powered Claire. And you're like, I don't even care anymore. I'm emotionally dead inside. I'm jaded and I'm a total badass. And I have like a ton of guns. And I have like picked up all the little fanny packs or whatever they're called. So I like have more space than I did before. And like the game is still hard.

But also like I'm totally going to save Sherry and everything's going to be okay. So those are kind of like my three emotional tears of playing Resident Evil 2 that I thought were really effective and work with each return to the police station. So you're saying you went through the hero's journey. Yes. And over the course of this video. I did. It worked for me.

I think, yeah. I think that that's very common, Maddie, like that arc, yeah, is about how it goes for everybody. Mm-hmm. I think Mr. X wouldn't work as well if you didn't, again, if you didn't get that opportunity to go back to the police station and explore everything without him, because then it would be super frustrating, like, oh, God, I have to restart this game if I want to explore everything and I'm never going to get to explore everything with all this new stuff that I've

gotten because I always have this fucking beast chasing me. But the fact that you can then get rid of him and then go back and explore to your heart's content, I think, is what makes the mechanic work because you have kind of, you've experienced the good and the bad and you've experienced, or you've experienced what it's like to explore with him and what it's like to explore without him and then you get to get rid of him and then have your peace and actually, get to see stuff. Yeah, it feels good. Yeah, so let's talk a little more about Mr. X

just because he is, I think, the defining element of this game. For sure. It's the thing I always think of when I think of the game. Even playing it the second time, Maddie, I was... It's funny because he's not a huge part of, like, the overall experience.

Or the original game. I guess he's so memorable that he just stands out to you. Yeah. Well, and because mechanically, he's unlike anything else in the game. He's this unstoppable predator that stresses you out so hard when he's stomping around and is constantly interrupting you,

where so much of the way that I play this game is about feeling in control, where I save so many times. I don't care about my grade. I'm not trying to do minimal saves. I will go back and save at every possible opportunity. I never need to. I never die in this, especially this time through.

Because I'm like really, at this point, I'm doing, I know what I'm doing. And like I mentioned last week, I use that infinite knife sometimes to just take out zombies. So I never run out of ammo. It's totally fine. Yeah.

But you're just saving compulsively. That's great. And then, yeah, when the helicopter crashes, just like you, Maddie, I'm like, okay, right, I know that when you first see him, it's when he pushes the helicopter out of the way. Like, that's his first appearance. I know it's not as early as I think, because I remember that from the first time, having a similar reaction to you and thinking, oh, God, it's going to be any time. I've got to really be sure to take care of as much as possible before I trigger him,

but I don't know what the invisible line is I'm going to cross where he'll come. out. And then this time I think I at least remember that it's when you put the fire out in the helicopter. So before that, I was sure to just go and kind of collect everything that I could. But yeah, I think that Mr. X is a very, very cool mechanic even while when I'm playing, I hate him because he's so stressful. But I think that like when you look at him in the overall flow of the game, it's really neat because they give you kind of a lot of time to explore, to go through the whole, you know, every floor of the police station to learn all the routes that connect you from one place to another, to like get really good at getting through that West Wing and the West Office and getting to that dark room,

which is a safe place from him. He never goes in there. Any place that's too narrow where you couldn't logically evade him. I kind of started to realize that over time where I was like, oh, if the room is too narrow, he can't get in. So he's going to just wait from the outside or he's just going to respawn somewhere else. It's very helpful. to kind of meta game in a little bit. Yes. But, you know, so you learn all of these paths. And then right when you're feeling pretty good, you're feeling pretty in control, it unloads this new thing on you. And suddenly there's this guy

stalking you and you have to start really thinking about like pathways through the levels. When before it didn't really matter. Like going back the long way, whatever, there's no zombies left. I killed them all. This is fine. Now going back the long way is dicey. But if Mr. X is ahead of you, you just have to do that. Like sometimes, you know, you're going through the locker room through that hole in the locker room wall. That's sort of where it always happens to me, where the stars office is. And I get to that hallway. And then I hear that incredible sound design. I think the best sound design move in this whole game is when his footsteps go from the muffled low frequencies just through the wall to suddenly he's come through the door and you can hear the high frequencies

as well. And you hear the like, kind of higher, more present stomping. And you're like, oh, shit, he's right here somewhere and you need to just turn around. And I think that feeling, it's really cool once you've mastered the levels because you can, I just pause, you can pause and look at the map. I do love that. You can pause any freaking time, which makes the game a lot less scary.

Like I was thinking it was going to obey like Dark Souls rules where when I looked at the map, I wasn't going to be able to evade him. You know what I mean? But actually, looking at the map is also a pause. So you can just look at the map for as long as you want and just be like,

how am I going to get out of here? Exactly. What's my course back to the dark room basically? Yeah. Which really, I mean, that really, takes away any need to learn the levels, Kirk, to your point, I was going to bring that up earlier. You're talking, I never felt like I got to know where every single, like, all the connections and intersections and always because I was looking at the map so much in the same way that I do

when I'm playing a bloodborn or something like that. And I can't. There is no map to pause and look at it. So I don't know if it's necessarily a detriment or positive and negative. I wouldn't describe it as either. It's just kind of a different way of approaching game. And in this case, I don't feel like I really got to know the rooms and how they're all connected because of the map and because of because pulling up the map just pauses everything. And I don't have to think about it anymore. So you were like a person using GPS and never learning directions through anything. You were just constantly using the map and leading on it. Yeah.

I mean, I don't, I don't mean to suggest, right, that you have to fully memorize everything the way that you would in a dark souls. But I do have a sense of just where I can go and what pathways are available. to me. Like if I'm upstairs, I at least remember, oh yeah, okay, this is going to connect through to the main hallway, so I can totally lose him if I go straight. Or, oh, he's coming from ahead of me, that means I'm just going to have to go back down the stairs. Like, I just sort of memorize

some basic pathways. And I find that to be a pretty good amount of scary. There are definitely lots of other horror games. I mean, alien isolation comes to mind. Alien isolation is like Mr. X on steroids. He can kill you at any save point, or the alien, it can

kill you at any save point. It drops out of the ceiling. Like you don't hear it coming and then suddenly it's right next to you. I'm not sure there's anywhere that it won't go in that game. And the whole game, it's hunting you. Or I mean, the final 80% of that game

it's hunting you. So it's like if Mr. X were a game. And I find that game, I played the whole thing. I reviewed it for Kataku, but I find that game too stressful. Like that is not fun. So I actually like how many advantages

Resident Evil 2 really gives you. Like once Mr. X is in play, you kind of realize, oh, okay. Like, even if you're, he's in the same room with me, I can get away from him usually. I can like kite him around some shelves. He's pretty slow. Like that kind of comforted me over time. Like especially after I'd been knocked out by him a few times and I was like, okay, fine. I'm used to what that is, whatever. But then you start to notice how slow he is and that you can actually evade it a lot of the time.

Like your run speed is not bad. But I will also say, I don't know how often this happens, but for me it happened at least twice where I would turn a corner and I would see Mr. X, but he was not facing me. And I thought that was really cool, that like, I could sneak up on him sometimes and then be like, oh, he's here. I'm just going to turn around and go do something else. I don't know what it's going to be because I had a plan. But yeah, why can't I get the jump on him? The game doesn't let me do that at all. But I did think that was really cool. And I think it was very alien isolation ask that he has, I don't know that it's fully independent. Like, I don't think he is just always spawned in the game and always existing somewhere. It's like a little more massive.

magical than that. I think that he is actually. Oh, really? Yeah. I might actually be. I'm not positive. I'm not sure. I don't know. People have sort of run down his AI. Yeah, I was reading about this. So a game designer kind of did whatever, used dev tools or something to check it out. And apparently he is absolutely in the game and he's hunting. He gets a speed boost when you're not in the same room as him,

which is why he can catch up to you so much quicker than he can actually walk. But it is not met like he is actually chasing you from that makes sense. Just much quicker when he's not in your line of sight. Right. Yeah, I think it's, I think what works about Mr. X and what makes him kind of a useful change or a fun change in pace rather than an infuriating kind of component of the game is just how limited a portion of the game where you're actually being chased by him it is.

Most of the time you're not being chased by this dude. Most of the time you can do the standard gameplay. that you can do at the beginning where you're exploring and solving puzzles and you can kind of, you don't have to be moving at a speedy clip because if you were, this game would suck. Like, it would not be fun to play this entire game being chased by something the way, I mean, I've never played alien isolation, but I cannot imagine having much fun in a game where I'm just constantly being chased by something. It's very stressful.

I think it works really well, just that you encounter him just in this one kind of contained section of the game and then you get the catharsis of seeing him get eviscerated. And then you get to come back and yeah, it's just, it's too bad that you don't get to. I guess you get to fight him in the next playthrough, but it's too bad you don't get to take him out this time. Oh yeah. I mean, so yeah, that's something worth bearing in mind is that the second playthrough has a lot more Mr. X and in kind of unpredictable appearances.

He doesn't just appear at the same times for Leon. And then he plays a bigger role in the later acts for Leon, as we'll see when we get to that part of the game. And actually, like, plays a bigger role at the very end as well. So, like, Mr. X winds up actually being a primary antagonist and nemesis of the whole game. Got it. In a way that becomes a lot clear after the second place. Is his deal explained? Like, do you understand?

Like, do you get to figure out what? I think so. At some point, I think you learn. Not that anything in this game, like, that all kind of do. Why are you playing Resident Evil for a lore explanation? Because you're not going to get it. I am not. But I do.

I want to talk about William. I want to talk about that more because, okay, so I did not expect this game to have the same boss fight like five times. I know, right? All throughout the game. Something that like I thought fighting him was super cool and popping his eyes was incredibly satisfying and watching him turn red and slowly go down. And also the different ways in which you have to fight him, like having to knock him off

the train. I really like all the fun. The platform. Oh yeah, yeah. I know. I like him a lot too. But something that always threw me is that like in most games when you beat a boss, you get kind of the sound cue or like maybe the music will stop while he plays while he goes through his death animation or like something will happen to kind of make you feel like, oh, okay, you bought him. In this game, that does not happen. It's always so weird because it seems like he's, I don't know, changing into a new transformation phase. But then he just collapses on the ground and you're like, am I done? now. I feel like that's the point though, which I guess, well, that's what I was getting now, which is I guess it's intended because he just never actually dies until you

finally take him out of the very end. But still, it was a little disconcerting, which I thought was really interesting, kind of a very different way of encountering, of a game handling boss fights. It was just kind of one long boss fight that drags out through the entire game, and so you never get that sense of kind of,

I don't know, victory and completion of the music cues changing and you actually watching him explode or disintegrate or something like that. Nope, he just keeps coming back. We'll wait until we finish the second player. Sure. Yeah, that's true. We need to see the true ending.

I mean, we did see in the final credits of the Claire Redfield version. We see like a little peak that maybe William Birkin isn't really dead, which I was just like, all right. Of course he's not. I mean, every time I see this guy, I'm like, he's never going to die. He's going to be back. But the G virus, man. Yeah, it takes a lot.

powerful. I mean, who wouldn't want to become a human bio weapon who's pretty dim-witted? It just seems great. I totally get why he injected himself with that. That's just scientist's goals right there. His motivation, total sense, totally logical, just classic resident evil stuff, injecting yourself with something. I don't know. They all do it. Yeah, a scientist injecting himself with something, okay, I buy that more than Claire, like, spending her entire life rescuing Sherry, this girl who she's met for like two minutes before being like you are now my purpose in life she just gave up on like on the mission to like go and reunite with her brother and instead she's just like hey i'm gonna go i'm gonna go i'm gonna go well she finds out pretty early that chris is gone she finds a note from chris that's like i'm out of the country yeah right but i mean i would think that she was gonna go chase him wherever he is instead she's just like nope i'm just gonna spend i'm gonna sacrifice my life many many times she's a hero she's a hero she's a hero She sees a kid in danger. Yeah, I mean, anybody who she meets over the course of any Claire Redfield game,

or really, I think this is true of every Resident Evil protagonist in general. If they meet somebody who isn't a zombie yet, they're going to be like, I'm going to do everything to save you. I mean, you could say the same about the very beginning of the game. When Leon and Claire meet, they immediately are like... Yeah, they fall in love in a second. I don't know that they do. The next time they see each other than... I actually think Resident Evil games are weirdly non-sexual in a certain way that I find endearing.

Yeah. But they flirt. they do but that's as far as it ever goes I find it very endearing she they meet each other for two seconds and the next time Claire is like oh good to see your face again Leon like we're BFFs now it is very bizarre

it's how they all are I think it's very cute we gotta stop meeting like this exactly we gotta stop meeting like this and then Sherry uh sharing her mom die in a horrific way and then two seconds later she's like Claire's my mom now Claire I'm so glad that I bet you let's be fair Her mom is pretty terrible. Yeah, it's true.

Yeah. Her parents are pretty inhumane. Wait, so I want to talk a little more about these boss fights because I have a couple thoughts on them that I want to share. Yeah, go for it. So I really, I really like the progression of the boss fights in this game and was caught completely by surprise the second time on the first boss fight, the same as I was the first time. I feel like that first boss fight comes out of nowhere and I love the way that it

jumps out at you. Yes. you first go underneath you, you get the three seals, open up, go into the sort of basement area. And then the first thing you have to do is a boss fight. There haven't been any boss fights in the game to that point. And it doesn't really signpost it, that way that Resident Evil tends to where you see a room that has like a bunch of shotgun shells and healing herbs or whatever. And you're like, oh, I'm feeling pretty equipped right now. Right.

So I always fall into that fight with like just my gun and one healing item. And I have to kind of scrounge for materials in that room while you're constantly running away from him. And I really like that fight. I think it's really well balanced because it almost feels designed for that. Like it's designed for you not to have every piece of equipment because you maybe weren't ready for it to happen. The second fight is probably my least favorite because I just find the timing on swinging that, that like, whatever it is. Yeah, the crane cargo thing. Yeah.

Yeah. I just find that a little weird and stressful. Like it always kind of works out. But I just, I don't know, like it's a little bit mechanically funky. But you can stun him. I enjoyed that because you can stun him like at the perfect time. It's all about the timing of it. Yeah.

It's hard though. I guess and if you do a lot of damage to him, it makes him fall after like one fewer swings. Anyways, it's a little bit frustrating sometimes. The fight that I love and the moment that I love so much is at the end when Claire basically says, nah, I got this. He steps onto the elevator just bristling with guns. And she like shrugs her shoulders in this totally like swaggy way. I've seen it all by now.

She's just like totally like Commando Claire ready to fight. No, I got this. You should take your up against. I have a pretty damn good idea. Never you do. Don't stop until it's finished. Trust me. This?

It's my time. Like I'm gonna just gonna, I'm sick at this guy. I'm gonna go wreck him. And then that whole fight I just find very, very fun where you're running around and he's throwing things at you. And then of course that final fight, the very final fight with the mini gun, I think is also really incredible. Every time, I guess I've done that fight twice, and there's a sort of similar fight with Leon, every time I do those fights, I'm struck by how they're not easy mode. They don't

just give you an infinite minigone that can just clean the end, the boss up. Like, there's always this feeling that I'm running out of everything. Like, I really come down to it in that fight. I use all the minigone bullets. I shoot pretty accurately, like I'm shooting eyeballs the whole time, but then I don't have any bullets left. I'm like going through every weapon that I've got left. I'm using like acid rounds in my grenade launcher and then I'm like shooting all my guns. The clock is ticking. Right. And like I don't have any healing items left and I'm kind of limping and I'm running around and

cutting him. I don't know how they do that or if maybe there's some sort of dynamic difficulty because I know Resident Evil games have done that before where they like get harder or easier depending on how many items you have or you get better drops. Yeah. And they make sure he has enough health so that it's always the final 10 seconds or so that you finally get him. Yeah.

I'm like I have eight bullets left and I'm just like shooting and then I beat him. And I love that. Sounds like you guys need to get good. Jason killed him with 10 minutes to go. I killed him with like five minutes left and still had mini gun and ammo. Oh, it wasn't a time thing for me. Both times it's been an ammo thing. Like I have plenty of time, but I'm always kind of just down to no ammo left of any of the guns.

Well, you just say if you just, yeah, I still, I had still a mini gun and ammo left because I just only aim for the eye. See, that's what I did to do. You can't just like that. Well, that's what I did too. I don't know. Maybe I'm just bad. but for whatever reason, I have always had the experience

of running out of him. Sounds like I'm the seven-death seven-death-striars. He's not even scared of Resident Evil. He doesn't even care. Mr. X doesn't do anything for him. Like you said at the beginning, it's fine, he's good.

I felt I was like definitely down to the last second in that fight for sure. I was scrambling. And I'm sure I was not always hitting his eyes. It's always been a very effective experience for me. I was freaking out. I really find it to be very cool. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, even though the story is really dumb, I also still really like, I mean, I think before you see William Burke in the very first time, I think you see Sherry first, right? Like you see her running away or you at least know about her. She's like, he's down here, you know, he's going to get you too. Yeah. And so then you kind of have this weird sense of like every time something hits the fan with Sherry, this guy shows up. And like at a certain point, you start being like, what's up with that? I mean, even in the original game, they do it pretty as in so far. any late 90s video game does anything well pacing wise. They do a pretty good job of like making it clear. Like something's up with this before being like, oh, it's her dad. That's really weird. I mean, yeah, I guess I would say wish the story were better, but I actually don't. I think it rules that it's so dumb.

I think it's like perfectly exactly right. And like Annette being like a terrible mom who just like has no idea what she's doing. I find all of it like hilarious in the way that a horror movie can be where it's like, Why are any of the characters making the decisions they're making? We haven't even talked about Chief Irons. He's like a comedically horrible person. Like, why is he the way that he is? It's not justified at all.

Nothing like a grown man who calls a nine-year-old girl a bitch. Yeah, it's like, why are you terrible? Like, there's no motivation or justification for that. It's just like comedically horrible people. And you're playing as like the most morally pure possible young woman who just happens to be ridiculously good at mastering every firearm and that's not really explained. Like, she's just really good at it. Her brother's a cop, so good enough, I guess.

She's just really good at everything. The skills were transferred by Asmosis. Yeah. I do find the story to be pretty cool or at least like pretty easy to follow. And it gets fleshed out. A lot of the umbrella side of things, if I recall correctly, gets fleshed out in the second playthrough by Ada Wong, who turns up and has like a whole little side thing with Leon. because Ada Wong is like, what, she's like an intelligence operative or something.

So she's there on her own mission. And it starts to get more into the machinations of the umbrella corp and the different factions within it that were, you know, like what was actually going on at the Nest's research facility and, you know, like kind of explaining this, the way that this narrative, the way that this happened, like the way that the Raccoon City incident happened. Yeah. And I think that's, I think it's cool how it kind of mirrors the like actual physical progression through the levels.

Like as you go deeper. deeper and deeper. You get closer to the truth of what really happened until you finally find the tape of the umbrella like special ops team trying to take the G virus back, but then he injects himself and you sort of see what happens at the very core of it. Like that's the heart of the story. The fact that the moment to moment story beats and the performances are a little weird. Yeah, I'm inclined to agree, Maddie, that I think it just feels like a pretty like C-tier horror movie that I would just sort of gladly watch on the weekend. Like it just sort of has that kind of energy, like where people just do dumb things. And that's okay. Like, it doesn't really matter.

And I guess I also say that as someone who's never really found the broader Resident Evil lore to be all that compelling or interesting. Like, I can't keep my viruses straight. I don't know a C virus from a G virus from a T virus or whatever. Though I did learn, I didn't actually know this, that Sherry turns up, she grows up and is in Resident Evil 6. She is like, comes back and she has like regenerative capabilities because she was infected with the G-Rite as a kid, which I think is just really funny. It is funny. That's one I haven't played, so I also didn't realize she came back.

But I too Googled Sherry and was like, whatever happened, all Sherry Birkin, does she turn out all right? Apparently she's in the Resident Evil game I didn't play. I guess I'll have to check it out. She lived, folks. We gave an adult. Yeah, we'll see. We'll see if they ever remake RE5 or RE6.

I don't know if they will. I don't either. We'll see. Resident Evil 6, definitely the, least liked Resident Evil game. Although Resident Evil 5 also pretty widely hated, they've kind of hit the wall here. Yeah, for kind of different reasons, I guess. I think that even like diehard Resident Evil fans don't like Resident Evil 6.

And then 7 is kind of like a return to form. And then now we're in the present day. And like an establishment of the new formula. Yes. You know, maybe we can talk a little bit more about this on a future episode. For now, this has been a lot of fun. We are going to go and finish the second playthrough, which is a lot shorter, but very exciting and has some fun revelations and gameplay sequences.

We'll talk about that in the future. And yeah, we'll talk a little more about Resident Evil more broadly in an upcoming episode, I think. But for now, this was really fun. I'm glad I got the two of you to play through this game. And now we have this shared frame of reference. So fun. We didn't even talk about the electrician who was obsessed with chess, but everybody will just have to play the game to find out about all those cool puzzles

designed by an electrician who really likes chess. Great puzzles. I like that they felt the need to explain it. That they did explain. It was great. They did. It really helped my immersion. All right, let's take a break, and then we'll be back for one more thing.

Alison Brie was the star of the Netflix series Glow. Being a gorgeous lady of wrestling isn't easy, especially when it's time to get in the ring. Wrestling is so interesting in that you can't do anything halfway. Okay, so now it's time to run at that woman's body and dive over her head first. Like you can't do that halfway. You can't do that in slow motion. Allison Bree on tights and fights.

Max Funn's Perfect Wrestling Podcast. Available now. And if you don't listen, I'll see you in the ring. This is Biz, and this is the final season of One Bad Mother, a comedy podcast about parenting. This is going to be a year of celebrating all that makes this podcast and this community magical. I'm so glad that I found your podcast. I just cannot thank you enough for just being the voice of reason as I'm trying to figure all of this out.

Thank you and cheers to your incredible show and the vision you had to provide this space for all of us. This is still a show about life after giving life. And yes, there will be swears. You can find us on maximum fun.org. And as always, you are doing a great job. And we are back for one more thing. you go first. What's your one more thing? My one more my thing is a book called Long Island Compromise by Taffy Brodasser Ackner. This is a much-hyped book. You've probably seen it on the

in the front of Barnes & Noble. In my local Barnes & Noble, there's a massive table with copies all over it. And for good reason. It's a really good book. Probably my favorite book of the year so far. Wow. So this is by the author of a book called Fleischman Is in Trouble, which was then adapted. into a TV series starring Jesse Eisenberg. And she has this new book. And it is the premise is about this wealthy family on Long Island in a fictional town on Long Island, whose patriarch, who's the father of the family is kidnapped and held for ransom for five days and then returned after the ransom is paid.

And that happens in the 80s, 1980 or something like that. cut to almost 40 years later, his children, his three children and the rest of his family are kind of dealing with their own lives and the trauma of that encounter is kind of haunting their lives. And then the book follows. Kind of the three main characters are the three children, his three children, which are one of them is a

Hollywood screenwriter who is really into drugs in BDSM and goes on a whole wild ride. The other is this kind of ball. This guy, the oldest child, is this ball of neuroses and anxieties, and his story is explained. And then the third is this woman who is trying to resist the family at any, at every cause, like giving away a horror money and kind of becoming this union agitator and so on and so forth. And following their stories is extremely fun and extremely relatable to anyone. who has their own kind of, I don't know, history of trauma in their family.

And it's a very Jewish book. It's got a lot of the family's Jewish, and it explores a lot of Jewish themes in a whole variety of ways. But most of all, it explores the kind of the inherited trauma of being Jewish and being a descendant of Holocaust survivors, as most Jews are today. And that, to me, is really interesting and very relatable. But even beyond that, it's just got so many interesting kind of ideas. and stories, and it's really, really good. I just really enjoyed reading the kind of the wild

stories of this dysfunctional family and their horrible lives and how horrible they become as a result of that. And it was just extremely entertaining and captivating. Highly recommend it. Yeah, once again, it's called Long Island Compromise. Even the title of the book is an amazing joke that you have to kind of read the book to really appreciate. But I really enjoyed it. And I really enjoyed the book. It's just a great book. It's a great story. It's got some mystery. It's got a lot of humor. It's got a lot of just relatable human foibles and faults. And I think most people really enjoy it. Cool. Sounds good. Sounds awesome. Yeah. I love her writing and we'll read it at some point, I'm sure. Maddie, what is your one more thing? So I've been rewatching the Lord of the Rings extended editions like their TV show, which I really recommend if anybody wants to just relive their teenage years. and an extreme bout of nostalgia that I was so much stronger.

Yeah, or their whatever childhood, whatever year in your life that I just assume every one of our listeners has already seen these. Everybody was a teen when Lord of their ends came out. You know, everyone's exactly like me and everyone has the same opinions I do, which are the correct ones. I don't know what you're talking about. Anyway, if you want to relive watching them, whatever point you did. Or if you want to watch them for the first time, I guess this is a weird way to do it. But when I was a teenager, I kept like trying to watch them all in a whack or whatever. Like, I'd be like, okay, Saturday.

Like, let's all just watch all the extended editions. Exhausting. I mean, I love them. But I don't know that that's actually the best way to engage with them. So I've just kind of been doing this thing where, like, on lunch breaks for the past couple weeks, I've just been watching part of them. And I'll just find a good stopping point at like 30 minutes in or 45 minutes in somewhere in there and be like, all right, that was my episode of the Lord of the Rings extended edition.

And it has been so fun and such an uplifting way to spend my lunch breaks that I really can't recommend it enough. I loved these movies so much as a teenager. And they've really brought me back to that time and all the memories of that time, mostly just the positive ones of really liking these movies. And yeah, I don't know. They're great. They're really cool. Vigo Mortensen, still really great.

Still the guy that I pictured in my head when people say Aragorn. I think it's like the most perfect casting of all time, possibly. It's incredible how well the CGI has aged. I know. That's the other thing. I really can't believe it. Like, I'm finally up to Return of the King and I'm almost done. So I've just watched like the Shalob, the spider sequence.

Disgusting. Like just viscerally gross. Like talk about incredibly gross, scary sound design. That whole part. Like, I don't know how they did it. Just made slurping noises into a microphone for 10 minutes. I don't know. It's incredible.

that combined with how scary she looks is really, really impressive. And also just Ghalam is a work of art. We have a really good article on Polygon that I guess I can send to Kirk for the show notes about how they animated Gullum at the time. And it's fascinating. Like they couldn't do mocap the way that we do it now because it hadn't been invented yet. So they would be like watching Andy Circus's visual performance and then having to recreate it visually like from scratch essentially.

You get what I'm saying? Because they didn't have all of the same capability. that we have now. So, like, watching Ghalm and the pathos that they're able to elicit with his little faces and, like, how much you kind of love and despise him at the same time, it's just, I don't know, I found it so much more impressive having read that article. And I just, I really recommend it. It's wild how well all of it holds up and how good all the performances are. Also, I recommend looking at how old everybody was in the movie, because most of the actors are, like, ages 18 to 22. And that's, like, crazy to me. Like, lived.

Tyler was 22. She's killing it every second. Elijah Wood 18 years old. Nuts. Nuts. Yeah, they came out 23 years ago. It's pretty wild. It's so wild. Yeah, really good. They really hold up. Also, Howard Shores scoring, man. One of the all-time... Yeah, I also,

this is like, I'm spending my lunch breaks crying regularly because they're just Howard Shores' music just like really gets me. And I'm just like, oh my God, is Frodo going to be okay? I know Frodo's going to be okay. But you get it. It's iconic. It's beautiful stuff. so many good motifs in the score.

Yes, yes. Perfect. It's just amazing. Cool. Yeah, I love those movies. I've watched them many times. I think I still own them on DVD and would just watch them. Yeah, those DVDs where they're both double-sided and the extended edition is one side. I think you flip them. I think you flip them.

I think they're like in the little books. I think the Return of the King extended edition is too long. I think the theatrical return of the King is fine. It's like three hours. It doesn't need another 25 minutes or whatever. Yeah, there's like a lot of stuff with the ends. Like, it adds something to the story, but at a certain point, you're like, I get it. I got it.

But if you don't watch the extended, you don't see that the Sarah, like, Saruman doesn't get resolved. Like, he only dies in the extended edition. You do get to see that boss battle. It's the scenes, there's the scene with the mouth of Soron, that's sort of dumb, where it comes out and talks, and you're like, this need to be there. And the best is the part where, what's her name, Aowen, where she makes soup for Aragorn? Yeah, he hates it. really bad. That's the scene where I'm like, come on. I love it. It's so cute.

I love every scene with Aowen. You can't convince me. I think she's perfect. And I love when she kills the fucking witch king at the end. It's all just girl boss bait made specifically for me. But you're right. The soup scene probably doesn't need to be there. I just don't care. It's just a funny scene. It's a very, it's a very director's cut scene. Yeah, anything, it's funny. Anything with women in it is an addition for like that was not, was not in the book. Women and Ends are not in the book. Oh, you mean not in the book, yeah. Yeah, so anything Ewan is bonus to the story, the original story.

Well, and remember, Fran Walsh and what's her name, Philippa Boyans, both co-wrote those films. So it's like Peter Jackson written, wrote it with, like, women helped write the movies and then expanded and, like, greatly improve many of the female characters from the books, which is one of the really cool things about the trilogy. Yeah, they're so great. Arwin and Aowin hold up well, IMO. They're great. Yeah, they're like non-factors in the book. Yeah. So, yeah, very much added to the films to actually get some female presence.

Oh, man. Okay, okay, okay. We can do a whole. I'm sorry. We do that at some point. Maybe when the show gets its second season, we can do that. Oh, yeah, rings of power. I might watch that next.

No, let's just do the movies. I don't want to watch the show. We can feel that. But yeah, I mean, the movies would be fun to talk about at some point on the show. All right, I'm going to go last. Mine is a game. I'm going to recommend a game to people. And this is a very cool game I've been playing called The Operator, which is a new PC game.

I know it's on Steam. I'm pretty sure that's the only place that it is because it's very much a operating system style like mouse and keyboard PC game. Bing! Just worth mentioning the game is also on gog.com. Bing! But I really like it.

It's made by a studio called Bureau 81. It is a game in which you are an operator for a federal investigation agency. They're called, I believe, the Federal Bureau of Intelligence. No, the Federal Department of Intelligence. There it is. The FDI. That is the name of the federal organization.

Are you sure it's not the federal bureau of control? Mm-hmm. No, well, it's funny because your director's name is Trench. And then the guy that you report to is named Skinner, like the guy from the X-Files. So there's a lot of sort of references to that kind of world, to the X-Files and to control. So you're an operator, meaning that you, like, sit at a desk and take calls from field agents and then give them intelligence and analyze the clues that they're finding and sort of point them in new areas, new places to explore in their investigations.

And I thought it was going to, well, I wasn't sure what to expect going in. I got the sense at first that there were going to be multiple agents, working multiple cases. Pretty quickly, the cases all kind of converge, and it just becomes sort of one big story. This game is really cool. I gather it's pretty short, and a big part of the appeal of it is just going to, in kind of blind and then just playing it and seeing what happens and enjoying the kind of just the feeling of this constantly changing evolving story that you're playing through because you're always interacting with it in new ways you're performing searches you're scrubbing through video data you're

analyzing facial recognition but then like you're getting hacked and you're talking to the hacker and you're trying to like you know find out more about people who have redacted files and then you're kind of going underground and figuring out you're going like behind the scenes and trying to figure things out. And it's just really, really neat. There are some audiovisual flourishes in it that are very cool that I just found surprising and unexpected ways that it illustrates your character's life outside. So I don't want to get too into the story or even really describe some of those things, because I really did find the surprise to be delightful. So I'll just say, I really like it. I think it's a very cool game. It's a pretty linear story-based game, but it has a lot of surprises

and like new mechanics that it introduces. Primarily. though, you are just like in an operating system. Like it comes up and you're like on your desktop at the FDI and you have to like answer calls and then you sort of click through. There's a lot of talking. There's probably like more talking than there really needs to be. All the people you talk to on the phone have like a lot of lines of dialogue and there can just be times where I wish the game is a little quieter. But I generally, I'm like finding the story pretty fun and the act of just figuring out what, you know, how to get the answer that you need is really cool. It reminds me a lot of papers, please. And it also reminds me of

home safety hotline. I'd say those are the two games that I would compare it to. Home Safety Hotline was my one more thing earlier in the year. Another game where you're like a hotline operator with an operating system. That one's like a more kind of weird fiction monsters in my basement. A little funnier. This one is much

more of a kind of government conspiracies and you know like federal cover ups and stuff kind of a story. But pretty similar mechanically. And then Papers Please it really has that feeling of like paperwork of sorting a workspace and looking through an email or like a, you know, instruction manual where you have to find the right thing to, you know, to then tell someone like which step to take or like which door to open or whatever. And so it has that kind of desk organization feeling as well.

Love a good desk shuffling game. Yeah. Like the more you play, the more files you have, like the more case files there are. And sometimes you'll have to reference old case files. You'd be like, oh, I recognize that guy. Like he was in the first case. So it has that feeling too. It's really neat. I think, like, it's a delight. I just think it's really cool. And I believe it's the debut effort from Bureau 81. And I think, I'm hoping it's successful for them. It seems like it's getting, it has, like, a couple thousand steam reviews.

Like, it seems like it's getting a pretty good audience. And I would love to see them take this approach and, like, flesh it out to, like, an even bigger sort of follow-up game where they can kind of have more actual distinct stories and, like, tell a bigger story. Or just, you know, go in a lot of directions that I can imagine this kind of a game going. that this one doesn't quite go in. I think they've kept their scope pretty small, and they've been very smart about it. Like, there's a lot of really clever ways that they build in bigger stuff,

like going and exploring the building that you're in or going home, and those kinds of things, like, without having to render it all and, you know, put it all in the game. But you haven't finished it, right? You're like a good chunk of it? Yeah, I'm like two-thirds of the way done.

It's probably like three or four hours long. I don't think that it's super long. So I'm like two and a half hours in or two hours in, maybe. And I bet there's another hour or two left. Things are very much heating up. in some very delightful ways. No spoilers, but I had an extremely fun and funny and kind of wild experience playing it last night.

Cool. That was really unexpected and cool. So yeah, anyways, that's the operator. It's on Steam. It's a really cool game. If any of that sounds good, just go check it out. You'll watch a trailer. You'll know whether it's the kind of game that you're into, I think.

But I am very much into it and digging it. Cool. And that's that. Cool. Hey, that's another episode of Triple Click. Yeah, did it again. Another one in the can. All right, well, we have a new bonus episode up for members.

If you want to go listen to it, it's a lot of fun. And in the meantime, let's go play some more games. And I'll see the two of you 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.

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