Triple Click - Triple Play: Tunic

Episode Date: April 21, 2022

Maddy, Jason, and Kirk talk about one of this year's hit indie games, Tunic, a Zelda-like adventure filled with mystery and cute foxes. But does it live up to the hype? Or is the bouncy combat too frustrating to make Tunic quite the gem that Triple Click hoped it would be?One More Thing: Kirk: Advanced Steam Deck (or, more like StReam Deck)Maddy: Kirby and the Forgotten LandJason: Better Call SaulLinks:Excerpt from the Tunic soundtrack by Lifeformed x Janice Kwan: https://lifeformed.bandcamp.com/album/tunic-original-game-soundtrackMoonlight PC Streaming: https://moonlight-stream.orgChiaki PlayStation Remote Play: https://sr.ht/~thestr4ng3r/chiaki/Support Triple Click: http://maximumfun.org/joinBuy a Triple Click t-shirt: https://topatoco.com/collections/maximum-fun/products/maxf-tc-tclogo-shJoin the Triple Click Discord: http://discord.gg/tripleclickpodTriple Click Ethics Policy: https://maximumfun.org/triple-click-ethics-policy/ Happy MaxFunDrive! Right now is the best time to start a membership to support your favorite shows. Learn more and join at https://maximumfun.org/jointripleclick 🚀  SUPPORT TRIPLE CLICK:Join Maximum Fun | Buy TC Merch💬 JOIN THE TRIPLE CLICK DISCORD🎮 Triple Click Ethics Policy📱 SOCIALS | @tripleclickpodInstagram | YouTube | TikTok | Twitch

This week is Passover, so I thought I'd share some trivia. There were 10 plagues that hit Egypt in biblical times, including blood, frogs, and no more Triple Click. Welcome to Triple Click, where we bring the games to you. This week we were talking about Tunic, a new Zelda-like game in which you explore a big world and bounce off enemies in really weird combat. I'm Jason Shrier. I'm Kirk Hamilton. And I'm Maddie Myers. Hello.

Hello. Hello, my friends. Hello. Hello, it's us. For another week. Another week of Triple Click. We're back, back in our little home offices, back off the stage without the roaring crowd in front of us.

We're no longer performing live. Thank goodness. You know, back at home. Yeah, I feel like that live energy is missing from this episode. The rush of the crowd in front of us. Isn't it kind of funny that there was live energy, even though we were just streaming online? Interesting. So maybe we should do another live event then, Jason.

Oh, maybe we should. It sounds like you guys are saying we should stream something next week. Yeah. I would be into that. I mean, just speaking for myself. I think so. Why don't you suggest a time and a game week? Just off the top of my head here.

Why don't we stream next Thursday night? What is that? April 28th. I'm pulling up by my calendar. At 8 p.m. Eastern and we'll play Destiny 2, the Witch Queen. What else would be playing? What on earth else would we play? That all totally works for me.

Because it's the Max Fun Drive next week. So we got a... Well, we would even have a special reason to do it. Wow, that really lines up perfectly. And hey, you know what? If you are curious, like, what's up with this Max Fund drive thing? The reason that we have a drive every single year is because we are part of Max Fun, which is a cool podcast network that allows us to be entirely supported by listeners

and contributions from all of you out there to help make this podcast happen, which means that we do not have any ads or sponsorships or, I don't know, what, like, people trying to sell you toasters or whatever. Razor blades, toasters, none of those things. Vapes. And the reason that we were able to do that is because of all you find people. So if you would like to be part of the zeitgeist and help us support the show, go to maximum fund.org slash join.

And in addition to just like feeling like you were really making the show happen, You also get a bonus episode every single month, including a new one coming next week on Horizon Forbidden West. We are going to dive into that game, spoil the story, and really just spill all the beans. And I do just want to say that I mistakenly said that was coming out this week last week. So if you're feeling like, am I going crazy or did Kirk say that that would already be out? I did say that and I was wrong. And it's coming out on the 25th. So that's when the Horizon Forbidden West Beans will be out.

But then you went in and edited the episode, right? So people might really feel like they're going crazy if they listen to it before the edit and then after the edit. And they're like, wait a minute. Did Kirk just change what he said? Wow. When you edit a podcast, it creates a fork in time and you just have to reconcile the two timelines forever more. That's what that Loki show is about. It's about podcasts being edited.

It really is just about podcasts. Oh, and mostly going around and fixing podcasts. He's just really a podcast producer when it comes down to it. So all that said, yeah, so you'll get your Horizon For Vidden West. spoiler episode and we also have tons and tons of bonus content every single month we add to the archives so really every single month your membership becomes more and more valuable your max fun subscription becomes more valuable wow that's so true so like if you wanted to then during max one drive you could increase your membership amount hypothetically because of how much more valuable the membership's

getting you could also get some cool stuff yeah people will hear about that during the ad break and next week when the drug is actually going on i'm just so excited i'm just so excited to play destiny too with my friend. That's true. Oh, my God. Oh, man. All right. So excited to reinstall Destiny 2. All that said, Maddie, what are we talking about today? We're talking about a video game called Tunic that all of us played. It was my one more thing a couple weeks ago and now it will be the dominant force in our conversation here today. Finally, the gloves come off. We talk about tunic. We talk about how cute the little fox is. We talk talk about why the little fox that you play as is dressed exactly like Lincoln Legend of Zelda,

but this isn't a legend of Zelda game. It just feels a heck of a lot like a legend of Zelda game with some Dark Souls-esque design in it and also a whole lot of puzzles and exploration and some combat that I wasn't a fan of. I talked about that in my One More Thing segment. I talked about the various difficulty settings in this game and I'm sure we're going to get into all of that. But since I've talked about it before, I want to hear from the two of you about two this delightful little indie game, mostly made by one person. And I guess I should also say it's PC and Xbox only, but it's on Game Pass. So what's your excuse? Kirk, what did you think about this game? I'm still playing it. So I've beaten a couple of major bosses, got the first

gem and sort of on my path through the adventure, but I'm still working my way through it. And I'm, you know, I have an interesting relationship with this game. I would say I'll get to a lot of particulars because it's a very thought-provoking and provocative game in a lot of ways. But I would say that generally I admire this game more than I love this game. I really admire it. I think it's a pretty incredible work in a lot of a ways, but I don't love it. I just don't find myself feeling that like, man, I can't wait to see what's next. I really just want to experience this and I want to go back and play it.

I don't find myself drawn to it. And that's probably for a few different reasons. But that's kind of where I'm at. Admire it, but don't love it. Okay. Jason, how about you? I keep sort of like how the main character and tunic bounces off enemies quite often. I keep bouncing off this game. I feel like it really doesn't want me to like it as much as I want to like it.

It's a game that I keep hearing cool things about and has a lot of mystery and secrets, which I really enjoy in video games, but I'm just not enjoying the act of playing the game. And I think the main reason for that is, is that it doesn't feel very good for me to play. Like, I just do not enjoy the combat or the movement or really anything about the way that this game feels, which is unfortunate because I enjoy the aesthetics and the concept of it all.

Mm-hmm. And the concept revolves mostly around this idea of a secret language and an instruction manual. So there's not... So eventually words in the game do get translated into English or English letters or whatever letters you're reading the game in, but they're mostly written in glyphs.

So like street signs are written in this mysterious language. And you are collecting pages of an instruction manual. So I guess you are a character in a video game in a video game. I try not to think about that part too hard because it's a little bit of a brain teaser. Like you yourself are in the instruction manual. Like your character is pictured in the manual itself, like reacting to things in the manual, but also you're physically holding the book. manual? It's very trippy, man. But the manual is written in these mysterious glyphs and shows you what to do,

and you can sort of figure it out from context clues. But also, over time, you'll learn, the manual will translate itself as you discover more and more about what to do. I mean, that's sort of, I would say, the main conceit of the game that people describe as surprising and interesting. And then sort of secondary to that exploration and puzzles in general. And then I have yet to meet anyone who loves the combat in this game. I've at least met people who can bear the combat in this game. But it's mostly the instruction manual that people seem to. Yeah.

So I think that manual is definitely the coolest part of this game. And it's the thing that it's the best idea. It's the big original idea. And when people talk about this game, that's the thing they talk about because it's a really, really cool thing. And it's portray like it's, you know, delivered in the game in an amazing way, where when you press the select button or whatever back on the left one, when you press that button, you know, you zoom out to this

beautiful looking, beautifully illustrated manual that just moves and looks so great. And you're also zoomed out of the screen of the game, which is behind the manual and presented as though it's on like a CRT TV, you know, back in whenever the early 90s and like you're playing a Zelda game back then. And so, like you said, there's a kind of a layer within the game, like the game exists within a layer within the game itself. And it doesn't seem like that's explored that much. So for the most part, the experience of playing the game for me has just been like, no, this is just a game that you're playing and there's this extra little puzzle on top of it. And that's actually where I think the game is sort of, the balance is a little bit off.

I think that the balance is too far toward, you're just playing a Dark Souls inspired, Zelda-inspired game. and not quite enough toward this extra layer and the, you know, the manual and all of those puzzles. Right. Yeah. It would be cool if there was a story. Like I wouldn't necessarily say this game has a story and I've beaten it. It's more just a world that you explore and you learn more about it as you explore it. And the other piece of it that I thought was interesting is that during the review period, the developer for the game had a discord that was for reviewers to join if they wanted to. And they could get access to a fully translated version. of the manual if they wanted it. Oh, that's interesting. Because I think the main person who developed it, Andrew Schultes, I don't know, but I'm guessing he was concerned, like, oh, what if people can't beat it? What if this whole instruction manual idea doesn't work?

I want to make sure these pages are available. But the people who had access to that manual were like, it actually ruins the game. I mean, this is all anecdotal, but for them, at least, it ruins the game to have access to all the English pages right away because the whole point of the game is actually to discover what the symbols mean, whereas the manual, if it were written in English, would just tell you, like, this button's jump, here's how you level up your character, like, here's every single page of every map you could possibly find, and here's every single type of enemy, and how you fight them and what you do against them, and here's how you unlock every single door.

Like, there's really nothing interesting about that. So actually having the manual is a detriment which is weird to me because I think this game is attempting to mimic the experience of playing a game from Japan, for example, and you're an American who doesn't speak Japanese and you are just trying to guess at what the manual includes. But in that scenario, ideally, if you could understand the manual, it would not ruin the game for you. Whereas in this instance, the game is itself learning the manual, you know? Well, because it's not just a manual. it's like a walkthrough. That's a better way of thinking about it rather than just as an manual. Although I think that like something that one of the reasons that I'm bouncing off of this

is because so much of it is up to the point where it doesn't even tell you where you're collecting a bunch of items and stuff and it doesn't even tell you what all of those do, but they're limited. So you're kind of not even encouraged to experiment with them because they all have these numbers next to them. And so you're like, oh, I don't want to waste this. What if I need it later? So you don't know what they do.

so you're just hoarding them. At least I have this personal experience. And so you're just like, oh, I was out here trying everything. Yeah, this looks like food. I'm going to try eating it. I see a number next to it and I'm like, oh, this is limited. I should hang on to this until I need it.

What if I run into a quest that requires it or a door that needs me to use it to open it or something like that. But yeah, but that's not, I mean, I think that that's not my biggest issue of the game, but that is certainly something that I found a little frustrating. Yeah. So just. talking about it on this level, right? This kind of high level, high concept level. Yeah. It's so interesting what he's trying and often succeeding to do. I mean, doing this

balancing act between, you know, the information that is presented to you, which there's a lot of information if you knew how to decode it, and then your experience playing the game, and then how while playing the game, you'll have these moments where you realize what something in the manual means, or you'll return to the manual after playing a bit and sort of have a little epiphany. That's amazing. And the fact that that works ever is really remarkable, because that's got to be so hard to do. I was reflecting on this when I solved something before I think the game expected me to, and it actually then kind of messed up the rhythm between those two sources of information, the game and the manual. Like I was, so I was up, I guess after like the first major boss that you beat, you then get a page from

the manual, and that explains to you a really important move. And that's how to pray, which is something that it's right there. I mean, you can just hold down the A button and then you pray, and then that, like, causes all kinds of things to happen in the world. But if you don't know to do that, you wouldn't have even really tried to just stand still holding down the A button unless you did what I did, which is just experiment with buttons and, like, you know, just try everything. And I tried that, and I figured out you could pray. And then I was like, oh, well, this probably does something. And then I had already kind of worked out that you can access, like you can activate these big pillars when you go pray in front of them. And there's this whole area that's down in the

water kind of to the south where there's all these towers you have to raise and the towers power up these lines that then you're maddie is nodding of course because if you play this game you know what i'm describing and i had gone down there and already figured all that out and then the big thing that i unlocked after beating the first boss was a page in the journal or in the manual that explained okay this is how you pray and this is what it can do and so i was like well wait a minute okay so clearly i'm supposed to know that this is like that this information is supposed to unlock a new area for me, but I already knew this, and I've known this for a long time, so I'm not actually really sure where I'm supposed to go or, like, what gate this information

is supposed to unlock, because I've already unlocked it so long ago. And then that led me to just be kind of confused, and I spent a really long time. Shouldn't have been so good at the game, Kirk. You joke, but it's possible to sequence break in this game in a way that upsets the balance between, like, the two information sources. And I actually think that makes what the game is pulling off more impressive because it's so hard to hit that balance and it does hit that balance a lot like I think that that's the coolest thing that it's doing and it does it so consistently that's that's really impressive even though it doesn't always work well that's interesting so I wonder what if it had been something a little more arcane than just holding a like you had to hold

a and R and L at the same time or something like that because thinking about other games that kind of require you to that are just based on knowledge and like you you have you don't need a specific tool to do something, to unlock something, just knowledge. Outer Wilds is a kind of ore example of this. And in Outer Wilds, I mean, I don't think anyone is like accidentally discovering how to how to solve those puzzles with the quantum box, the quantum moves. No, but people are. So there are some things in Outer Wilds that aren't that way. But I was thinking about this in relation to Outer Wilds because there are things like there's a, there's one area that you spend forever getting to in Outer Wilds through this really treacherous, super wild path

that it's all this jumping and gravity stuff. And then you get there and you finally activate the thing. And then you realize you can just leave and it just takes you out through this little door that you could have like access so easily. You just couldn't see it from where you were standing. Yeah, that's not exactly what I'm talking about. No, no, but I mean, there's lots of stuff like that. I don't know.

I've talked to plenty of people who've played out of wilds who have been like, I solved this whole puzzle. But I'm saying I guess, but I think there are ways to do it. Okay, but that's just besides the point. I think regardless, it's always interesting when something is like, is based on your knowledge, rather. It's like a tool that is unlocked by your brain space. And The Witness is another perfect example of a game that does all this sort of thing

where, like, the entire game can be playable at any point without unlocking anything. It's just based on what you know or what you don't know. And I think that's a cool way to design games in general. Right. I think that it is actually relevant, the Outer Wilds point, just because the way that that game arranges information is very different from the way that Tunic arranges information. And I think that because Tunic has so much stuff in it, it's so dense, and there's so much

repeating stuff. I mean, there are towers that you pray in front of all over the place, that when you learn, okay, now I can pray in front of a tower and it'll cause something to happen, it's hard to know what to do with that information, where without or wild, so often the thing that you're learning, it's very clear what you're supposed to do with any given piece of information. And that's one reason that it's a harder balance that Tunic is trying to hit, because there's all this video game literacy that's sort of assumed when you're playing just the Zelda

game, which is what you spend like 85% of your time doing. And that's also, I think, the game's biggest flaw is that the actual Zelda game within this game isn't really that great. It's like not the fun thing. It's not the reason that I'm there. The combat, like you said, I don't really like it. The story, like there's no story. So I'm a little like, it's kind of chilly in a certain way. And I'm not, I don't feel like I'm being drawn along. And so I'm really just in it for that high level stuff. Yeah. Yeah. So, okay, I want to talk about that, the combat specifically, because I've spent a lot of time thinking and we've spent a lot of time talking about why Eldon Rings Open World is so special and so great, and there are a lot of reasons behind that,

but really, none of that would be relevant at all if it didn't feel so good to fight monsters in that game, which is the core loop of what you're doing the whole time. And so it's more, it's exciting to explore the open world because you get to go fight more things, and that feels amazing. Whereas in this game, I have no desire to, explore really because fighting things is so boring and feels so bad. And there are certain things, there's certain, like, even small design things that I as just kind of like an armchair video game player who's like, hmm, I don't know about this design. I'm noticing. And one of them is that like one of the main enemies that you're fighting is this knight with a sword and a shield.

And essentially their hit points are set up such that it takes you four hits to kill them. but your sequence of attacks is three attacks. So it's never like you fill a sequence and take out an enemy and it's satisfying. It's always you do a sequence, then you have to back up and then hit them one more time with the first attack in your sequence to kill them. And that is so frustrating. And I'm sure you can upgrade your attack and get it down to less than you're open. And it's just, it makes it feel so unfun. And then on top of that, you have this difficulty that is just ramped up super high to the point where it's just unpleasant.

at least for me, to fight and keep dying over and over again. And it's not like, I don't know, I say that after complimenting Eldon Ring, but I think the difficulty of that feels less arbitrary and less unfair than it does in this. And you combine that with like the bouncy floating feeling and just not really feeling that enjoyable to explore and maneuver through the world. And I don't know, it adds up to a world that while I'm intrigued by some of these concepts and the hidden paths and ladders and the instruction manual stuff, all the stuff that you guys have been complimenting,

I just have no desire to continue playing. By the way, for context, I just rang the second Watchtower bell, so the eastern and the western ones. Oh, okay. So I'm a little far than Europe. Yeah, I'm not super far, but I just have no interest in continuing. It feels like the game is designed to resist me. And I also, I should say, there's, as Manny mentioned last time,

there's a no fail mode that you can turn on and it basically just means you're invincible, like you won't take health damage. And that also feels super frustrating for me and not pleasant because it makes it, you still have to fight enemies, otherwise they chase you and make it so you can't get past them because they chase you forever and surround you.

Which is very und Dark Souls, by the way. And I mentioned that when I was talking about Tunic as well as what I would actually see is its main flaw, is the fact that enemies don't ever give you a break and you don't have certain attack patterns that you can recognize, in them. Like if you step back far enough from an enemy in Darsels or really Eldon Ring, whatever, anything in that sort of familial grouping, they'll kind of step back also and be like, okay,

you're not bugging me anymore. I'm not going to bug you. And that completely changes how those games feel. Like you can really take a break from a fight. That's why there's no pause button because you step away literally in game to pause. But in this game, you can't, there's a pause button And thank goodness, because it just will go on forever if you don't kill every single guy you ever agro. And that is irritating. I totally agree. But just to finish the thought, the no fail mode, it just feels like it takes it too far. And there's no real happy medium between no fail mode and the punishing difficulty of the main game.

And that again just contributes to this feeling of like, I'm looking at this game and it looks very pleasant and it sounds very pleasant. But it doesn't feel very pleasant. And that is unfortunate because I wish I liked it more. Yeah, I wish there was, I wish it was automatically set significantly easier because I think any situation where you have just one person making a game, you can't concentrate on everything. Like, it's not going to feel as good as Hades or Dark Souls or any other, like, game we could mention with Incredible Combat that has been fine-tuned by dozens, hundreds, however many people. It's not going to be the same. But that's fine. You just make a game easier and focus on the stuff you like, you know?

Like just make it a little easier. And then you can have a hardcore mode for people who happen to vibe really hard with Tuneit combat. I didn't mind just turning off the difficulty because I don't really care if something matters or not. I guess emotionally, that's not an issue for me. I'm just like,

whatever, this fight's hard. I'm not going to pay attention to the fact that my health bar is infinite right now. I'm just going to fight normally, quote unquote, and not think about it, but just never be stopped by the fact that I might die. Well,

it's not just that. The lack of tension annoys me a little bit too, but unlike you, the lack of attention does annoy me. But also, you still have to fight everything. And then it just becomes super tedious because you're still running into all these monsters on your path, especially when you're backtracking and trying to explore the world. It just makes exploration just not very fun because, like I said, it just doesn't feel good to be hitting enemies in this game. Right.

So I think that there are a couple of interesting comparison points to this game. I think that Souls games are very interesting, but actually the most interesting comparison for me has been Death Store, which is a game made by two people so that a little bit undercuts the idea that a small team can't make a game with good combat. Well, that is 100% more people. That's a great point. So the thing about Death Store is, so I went back and played this some while I was playing Tunic. And Death Store is fun primarily as a combat game. It has really, really good combat. and it was wild how quickly I found myself just playing the game for the joy of the combat.

And I was rocking it, too. I was actually kind of surprised at how well I was doing. Maybe it's a lot of Eldon Ring, or maybe it's even Tunic, but I was like totally killing it. And the games are very, very similar looking. They're isometric. They even have these little, like, you know, they kind of feel like dioramas that the characters are moving around in. And yet, everything in Death's Door feels great, and everything in Tunic feels a little too slower, a little too wobbly, or a little too weird. And it's a very good thing for me as someone who's never made a video game and I don't quite have the language for the kinds of delays and the pulses and the rhythms and the ways that these games can feel.

Like I know what feels good and I know what doesn't feel good. And playing those two games helps me really tune into that in a way that I think is really cool. And I also do think, I really want to underline what you said earlier, Maddie, about aggrowing enemies. Literally at the door to my office, there is an enemy from Tunic. and he followed me, he's been following me since yesterday because I ran past him and was trying to get just to the next area and he's just following me.

Wow. He's going to sneak up on you during this call and we're going to have to tell you. He's going to come in and I'm going to have to finally deal with him because the agro in this game is so incredible. But it's wild how that one thing changes everything. It does.

And it helps me come to my conclusion that I actually think this game would have benefited from not being a soul's life. I agree completely. It should have just been a Zelda game. Don't make it a Souls game if you don't reward backtracking and repeating things over and over and running past every single enemy to get to whatever you're trying to find. So Death's Door is not a Soulslike. And that was the thing that I'd actually forgotten when I went back to play it. It's not a Soulslike. I got killed in one part and then I just died. And like I respawned back at the beginning of the level and I could go do whatever I wanted.

And it's funny because in Tunic, when you die, you leave a little ghost that you have to go and get, but it's just got some coins. Like, it's not a big deal. You're not really losing a whole lot. You lose some coins if you die. But there is a punishment for death. And there is that feeling of like, well, I guess I got to go get my coins. Like, even though it doesn't really matter, it's not as dramatic as something.

It matters later because you can use the coins to level up and get stronger, which I get the sense neither of you has gotten that far. But I also see what you're saying. Like the fact that it's not really clear why you should care is a significant. problem, especially in the early game. It's like, how many coins do I really need? I think Kirk's point is more that it's like a small amount and it doesn't really matter. Well, that too. I'm leveling up in the game. I've been leveling up. I know coins are valuable. It's, it's, you don't lose that many coins. It isn't like in Dark Souls where you lose all of your

experience points and you have a really strong incentive to go back. It's that you, you know, you lose a little bit. And the journey to get back to what you lost is really unpleasant because of the aggrowing thing. And so it's kind of a, it's a really good little case study and how all of the specific elements of a Souls game play a role in making that experience work as well as it does. And it's not always the things that you think. Like when people describe what makes a Souls game good, it's always like, well, the combat's really good. It's like really fair, you know, the enemies have the same abilities you do, whatever, and these other specific things.

But rarely do people talk about the agro rules in Souls, which actually, as it turns out, as Tunic demonstrates, are a huge part of why it works because if you have to get back somewhere and you died and you lost all this, you know, you have to go cover all this ground. If you can just kind of run through it once you know where to go, it makes it a way more fun and, like, fluid experience over the long term. Where in Tunic, it's such a problem for this game that every time I died, I was like, oh, my God. Like, I have to go all this way through all these dudes,

and they're going to follow me the entire way to the point where this dude is outside of my door. Can you hear him? He's like, he's beating on my door with the store. Thank you. Yeah. Feed me. But does Death's Door have puzzles like this game does? because I do really like finding secret doors in this game.

It's my favorite thing. It does have some puzzles. So it has puzzles, but it's not the same kind of thing. And there's certainly not the high level thing. And that's, it's okay because that's not what Death Store is trying to do. And it's really the strength of Tunic. And that's going all the way back to what I was saying at the beginning. That's where I think the tunics balances off.

Where playing a game like Inscription is a good example for this. So there's a balance with a game like inscription and a game like Tunic where there's a meta layer and then a game within a game layer. And you have to hit, the game has to hit the right balance to keep it interesting and kind of lean into whatever it's doing best. And I think inscription does a good job, but it also, it's like variable through that game. And the times when it's really leaning more into the game part are the times where it drags a

little bit and the times where it's really out into the like galaxy brain crazy meta stuff is when it's most interesting. I think that would also have been true for Tunic and that Tunic just, the difficulty, the focus on like all of these systems and the combat. and how involved and intricate and demanding it is. Like, it's all just a little too much when there's this amazing higher level that it could have just, like, lived in a little bit more. Yeah, I really agree.

I would have liked it if instead, well, the game, I think a game should just be easier in terms of its combat and way more forgiving because then you can really focus on the part that I do still think is neat, which is finding all these hidden passageways. Like, I just got super into just combing through every single room once you clear it. And I just wouldn't leave until I was certain. I had found every possible thing in each area, which is just a pleasant sensation.

It's like the same reason I enjoy House Flipper or anything else in that genre where I'm just like, let me tidy up this area. Let me make sure I've found every single little thing in here. Okay, I did. Now I can leave. And that sensation was so pleasant to me that I really liked the game, even though I probably spent a higher percentage of my time playing it not enjoying what was happening, which is weird. It's just that it happened to scratch a certain discovery itch.

And any time I figured out how to do something that would open up a new area, like that's Legend of Zelda shit, but it's also Metroid shit, like getting the grappling hook and being like, oh, sick, now I can finally like use this to grapple off of all these points in the game that I didn't realize were grapple points, but now I know they're grapple points. And now I can visually see them in a different way. And the whole world is open to me in a way that I didn't ever know before.

Like, that's always exciting. but it is really bogged down by the fact that it's kind of pretending to be a dark souls and it just shouldn't be pretending to be dark souls because it's not one maddie did you ever play fez i did i did enjoy fez yeah so that's that's that's a game that yeah this this game feels very inspired by it does but fez was a game that benefited by not having any combat in it and i agree i wonder if tunic would be a better game if it was if it had zero combat and it was just around exploring this world and finding hidden things and puzzles and unlocking this instruction manual over time.

I think that's part of it. And I think there's also, so the music in this game, the composers, to shout them out is life formed in Janice Kwan, two composers. Love it. Really beautiful music. And I remember, Fez also, Disaster Pieces soundtrack for that game is legendary, a really beautiful soundtrack. And they're kind of similar.

I feel like there's a, you can kind of hear the influence from the one to the other. It's a similar stylistic thing. Right. There's a hidden language in Fez that you learn over the course of playing it, and eventually you can kind of read it over time, and that discovery feels really awesome in that game. Like, just the idea of a game having a hidden language, I feel like Fez. I don't know if it was the first.

Please don't write in. I'm sure it's not. But it was certainly a notable and influential example of the game doing that. So on multiple levels, you can kind of see this influence. Fez is another game that I actually admired but never loved. So I guess there's a similarity there, and it's interesting for me, at least, to try to tease out what the similarity is because they're very different games in a lot of ways. Both games, I mean, there's some talking in Fez and there's really so, it's such a quiet game

tunic. It's so, there's really no talking because there's this, it's not in this, it's like in this glyph language, at least at first, that it's, it's so abstract that that makes it kind of hard to find something to grab onto. I don't know, maybe that's it. Yeah, I think that's part of it. I think it's hard to grab onto things because everything bounces every time. And you don't have the grappling hook yet. So that's like a huge issue. That's true. It would be easier with a grappling hook.

I mean, even when I say like, oh, there's no story, I'm not sure how you would implement something like a story into this world where you don't speak the language. But also, I feel like you could do it. Like visual storytelling, silent film, it's a thing. There's ways to signpost certain parts of the world. And I also feel like there's probably stuff I'm missing, which reminds me something you were saying earlier, Kirk, about like, oh, I always. unlocked the ability to pray before I got the page, but that meant I didn't know where I was

supposed to go next. That happened to me constantly in Tunic, even as someone who I'm pretty sure I unlocked everything in the correct order. I still would often get a page and be like, I don't know what this means or like I don't recognize where I'm supposed to go. And it was some of the few things that I actually did look up because there were moments when I was like, I feel like I've explored every area. Combat sucks, so I don't feel like re-exploring any of them and finding the like door I missed or whatever. So just tell me where to go next. And then I would just use a walkthrough for purely that,

like the very beginning of a new area. And I'd be fine from there. And that also feels like a story and writing problem because it's like there's no characters there to tell you you need to do these things in this order or collect these gems in this order or whatever. Go to this place because legend foretells that a hero will go to the tall mountain

after they've collected these other two things. all the stuff Link gets to hear every day. So he knows what order he's supposed to do everything in. And this game doesn't have that. There is that cutscene at the beginning. At the beginning, you like get teleported to some weird worlds. And there's like a big alien creature. There's mysterious ghostly foxes and they kind of help you out minimally.

But there's just, it's not quite enough for me. But it's too bad because I actually really like a lot of the exploration and puzzles in this game. And yet I can also understand why someone would not play it anymore and why you two may or may not ever play it again after we finish this. Yeah, I wonder if I will. I really think that it's so cool. I mean, I'm very happy that games like this come out and that Andrew Shaldius was able to like follow his muse and make this crazy thing.

I mean, this is an incredible achievement for a primarily one-person team to make. And it's also just, it's most cool. It's at its best when it's the least like other games. And it suffers the most when it's trying to be like other games. And I think that is like the thing that I take away from it. It's that especially now when we're living in the era of the Souls game where so many things borrow from Souls, you know, for every game like Hollow Knight that takes a lot of things from Souls

and does it really well and makes it work, there are games like Tunic where I just wind up questioning. Like, you know, I know that Souls is really cool, but this game would have been better without it. And that actually the original ideas that this is playing with are the best things about it. And that's actually a really cool thing. Like it would be kind of a bummer

if it were the reverse. You know, if it was like a slick game that's trying to do all these cool, weird things that don't work. Though I suppose it's equally frustrating both ways. Yeah, definitely. All right. Well, that's Tunic.

Maybe he'll make a sequel that'll be taking some of the best ideas and turning it into something great. And you know what it'll be called. It'll be called Tunic. That's right. Name is right there. Can't wait.

On that note, let's take a break. We'll be back with one more thing. Max Fund Drive 2022 starts in just one week. Monday, April 25th. We'll have exclusive Max Fun Drive gifts, awesome episodes, bonus content, and you know what else? You'll just have to tune in.

We have some tricks up our sleeve. Sleeves? Tricks? Is it plural? We'll catch you next week, the greatest time to support the podcasts you love. Max Fund Drive starts on Monday, April 25th. Don't miss it.

If you're sick of constantly arguing with the people closest to you about topics that really aren't going to change the world, we're here to take that stress off of your shoulders. We take care of it for you on we got this with Mark and Hal. That's right, Hal. If you have a subjective question that you want answered objectively once and for all time for all of the people of the world, questions like, who's the best?

Disney villain, Mac or PC, or should you put ketchup on a hot dog? That's why we're here. Yes, I get that these are the biggest question of our time. And we're often joined by special guests like Nathan Phileon, Orlando Jones, and Paget Brewster. So let Mark and Howe take care of it for you on We Got This with Mark and How weekly on Maximum Fun. Kirk, did you kill that tunic monster? Yeah, I had to go take care of him. He was just...

Cool. It was one of those little guys that shoots laser bolts at you. What about those frigging towers? is, ugh, those are the worst. I don't like those. I don't like anybody with a shield. The laser beam shooters. So at least I have the, like, I have the, you got a spell that you can kill those

dudes with really easily. But man, I was fighting the first boss. We're still talking about Tunic. Well, anyway, we're back for one more thing. Sorry. Kirk, why don't you go first? Because I'm sure you have a lot to say. And I want to hear it.

Yeah, I guess I do. So I've been playing more with the steam deck, which I talked about as my one more thing last week. And I've been getting into the more like advanced Steam deck stuff, which I've been talking with some folks about in the Triple Click Discord. It's been kind of fun and I'm sort of learning a lot about just about game streaming in particular and about the various capabilities that the Steam deck has outside of just installing games on it through Steam and playing them.

And it's been fun. It's really underlined how this device at the moment is super a device for people. who like tweaking things. And where part of the fun, like for me right now, the fun is, can I get X thing to work on the Steam Deck? And then can I get it to work like in the game mode where it's like the really slick version of it and it comes up like another game?

And then, you know, once I get it working, I'm like, okay, cool. Like, I beat the game. So now I'm going to move on to the next game, which is can I get Y thing to work on the Steam Deck? This is more fun than actually playing games. Exactly, exactly. It's like the process has been very fun. Kirk was gleefully texting any pictures of like himself playing persona 5 and yeah

yeah so I got I got PS5 games working and I got PC games streaming as well using two really cool open source apps that I just wanted to tell people about so first of all there's an app called Chiaki that you can install this is I'm sure well known to a lot of people this is an open source remote play app that interfaces with the PS4 or a PS5 and lets you remote play games the way that you would on a PSVita back of the day when people still played PSVitas. But you can also do it on really on any PC or on an Android phone. I know you can just install it there and use a controller and stream games from your PlayStation.

And you can do it on Steam Deck and it works really, really well. I'm like shocked by how well it works. I set it up. It took a little bit of doing and then you have to link it to your PlayStation and to do that. It's a little bit involved. You have to run a script to get this special PlayStation ID that your PS5 has because it's not the same as your login ID. So there's a couple steps that are, it's not hard.

There's totally guides for how to do this online. But it's a little more involved than, you know, just install it. And it works. Like enter your ID and it links. But once it works, man, I mean, this thing streams over Wi-Fi. My PS5 is plugged into my router and then I'm streaming over Wi-Fi. It streams games at 60 frames per second. They look perfect.

And they play great. I'm sure there's some latency, but it's like three milliseconds or something. Like I can't even notice that I was playing Horizon Forbidden West and playing Spider-Man. And it was like fine. I mean, I just was completely just felt like I was playing the game, which is pretty cool. The one thing it doesn't have is it doesn't have rumble, not just like the cool PS5 dual sense rumble, but there's no rumble at all. And so that's been kind of interesting. Like how much do I care about rumble?

So I think it's because the PS5 haptic stuff is just like so complicated. I think that the Steam Deck actually only has haptics and it doesn't do Rumble in the like vibrating bean way that our special guests explained a while ago. It only does this cool haptic thing, but it can simulate Rumble. But when it comes to streaming games, it doesn't get that information via the stream, I think. Like somewhere along the line, like it's not being decoded for the Steam Deck so you don't get any Rumble, which is kind of a bummer for a game like Death Stranding, where like, playing that with the dual sense is so cool because, There's all this unique haptic stuff going on, and the triggers are doing all the weird stuff as you're holding your backpack. So it's kind of a thing to give up. But then I could just sit on the couch and play PS5 games.

And especially for something like, yeah, 13 Sentinels or Persona 5, like those kinds of games. They look great on it. And you can just play it on the Steam deck. So that's pretty cool. Of course, 13 Sentinels has only recently been put on the switch, which is clearly the device it was intended to be on. But let's say you're me, a person who's stupidly bought 13 Sentinels for PlayStation and never. or actually booted it up and doesn't really want to buy it again, that person could just play it on their Steam deck, finally.

Well, and that is kind of the nice thing about the Steam Deck in general is that you don't have to re-buy things on Switch. Like, it makes it easy. Something to be said for that. There's certainly something to be said for that. It's really nice. You can just play, yeah, your whole backlog without waiting two years for the kind of... Right, and in this case, also the games that I have on PS5, like Persona 5,

which I'm, you know, I'm guessing that someday they'll release that, on Steam, just like Persona 4 is out on Steam, but I only have to wait. I can replay Persona 5 if I want to right now. So that's cool. The other thing that I've been using that's also cool is an app called Moonlight, which is an open source streaming, like PC game streaming app that I'm pretty sure this is it, it is Invidia only because it uses the Nvidia game stream technology that the Nvidia Shield uses, you know, a little Nvidia handheld that 15 people somewhere own.

It uses that technology, but it's open source, so you can stream. any device. And it's also really amazing. A thing that I've been really bummed out by with the Steam deck... There's native streaming, though, on the Steam deck. A thing that I've been really bummed out by with the Steam Deck is how the Steam streaming works.

So you can stream natively from any PC on your network that's using Steam. So you can just get right in there, stream a game from your PC in the other room, and play it via Wi-Fi. But, at least for me, I've never had a

experience. Like, it just has not worked. I've played some games. We have the Steam link that plugged into the TV. We played some games that way. But it's never great. And just lately, for whatever reason, it could be settings on mine, but it just like, it doesn't look good. It's always really degraded and blurry looking. There's lots of issues where it'll start getting jutter and latency and, like, kind of glitching out. And it just, it's not an acceptable experience. This is not the case with Moonlight. Moonlight is incredible. I mean, like, I got it working on the Steam deck. I'm streaming from my PC. I'm still doing some kind of fine tuning, but I've been playing cyberpunk this way, because you can play cyberpunk on the Steam deck, and it's okay, like,

it looks all right, it runs a 30 frames per second, but I can play it on my PC at 60 FPS. It looks awesome, and I'm streaming it and just, it looks so good. It plays so great. I mean, it's like running beautifully at 60 FPS. All the, like, cool lighting effects are on and stuff. Works great, and I, like, almost have no problems. Occasionally, like, some kind of connection issue, but nothing like what was happening with Steam. So that's also very very, very. very cool. And Moonlight is another app that you can run on an Android phone or, you know, install on a lot of different things. Kirk, when you were trying to download Moonlight, did you accidentally download La La Land first?

I was wondering what joke you were going to make. And I actually was one step behind you. So good job. That was a good joke. Yes, that is what happened. It was very embarrassing. I actually had Warren Beatty and Annette Benning over to install the game for me. Yeah. So anyways, it's been fun just sort of getting into this, you know, weirder, more tinkery level. Oh, man, I like bought a thing. Here's the thing I didn't know existed that 5% of our listeners are going to think is interesting. If you run a gaming PC, or really any PC that's running through a GPU, if you don't have a monitor turned on and plugged into it, it like won't wake up properly. Like it won't display because it needs to be outputting the signal to a monitor, which has. It's never been an issue because why would it be? But now I want to just wake my PC up and stream cyberpunk from it to the Steam Deck without having to set the monitor that it's plugged into and turn that on. So the way around this is you have to buy, it's called like a dummy HDMI or a dummy displayport connector,

and it just plugs in to your GPU on the back of your PC, and it tells your PC that it's connected to a monitor, but there's no monitor there, which just allows it to sort of be awake. and then you can use it for remote access. Totally didn't know that was a thing. Turns out that's totally a thing. Very easy solution for the problem I've been having. You live and learn. I'm so glad you're troubleshooting all of this.

It's actually good that I don't have a steam deck yet because it means that then when I do have one, it's going to be perfect for me. I'm just going to go straight to you for tips on all this and it'll be really easy. I mean, you can also just use it. You don't have to do anything. Kirk was just describing it.

You can just use it to play your steam games. But all that stuff sounds awesome. And I would have to walk all the way into my office and turn on my computer, if I had this little dummy H-TMI port, I just keep lying on the couch. That part sounds great. And you know, speaking broadly, that is actually true. That right now it is nice that all the weirdos like me who like doing this crap have the steamback. And then, of course, like people who are way beyond me who are on GitHub making their own custom apps and stuff, they all have the thing now and are making it really great.

And they're going to make this stuff all work way better so that when most people who now want to get one because they're like, well, this thing sounds cool. I'm going to pre-order. Pre-orders are out to do, oh, 20, 25. When they get one. By the time you get it, though, it's going to be easy to place we code into. You're going to know exactly what to install to get it set up. Just how you like it. It's true. It's true. Or in my case, I guess, 13 Sentinels. I'm going to avoid buying it twice. And maybe I'll play it this time. Or baby I won't. I don't know. I'll go next because my pick is a pretty good companion to Tunic. And I don't know. Jason didn't put a video game down. So I'm putting. myself second here. I've been playing Kirby in the Forgotten Land. Oh man. How is it? It's delightful. It is not my favorite Kirby game, but I am enjoying it. And it is a Kirby game that is on the switch. And for many people, that is enough to make it perhaps their favorite Kirby game. I still prefer Kirby Planet Robobabot, which I made you two play. And there's also another Kirby game for the

3DS called Kirby Triple Deluxe that I think is great. So I still think both of those games, Robobot and triple deluxe are better games than this one. I just think the level design is more creative. The power-ups are really fascinating. They're constantly coming in. Like remember in Robobot? Like how often you guys would be getting power-ups and being like, oh my God, it's like every time I turn around, there's other abilities to unlock. Kirby and the Forgotten Land, it moves slower than that. And I don't think that's a bad thing. The main thing about it that's super different is that it is 3D and isometric view and there's no lock on. So that's very weird compared to tunic. But it's also Kirby. So even wild mode, which is their version of hard mode, is very, very

easy and you don't need to be dodging attacks or like worrying about whether you're going to survive a level. There's really not a challenge for me. But I still kind of wish there was lock on. and like a little bit of a Dark Souls flavor, even though it's a Kirby game, because playing like an isometric combat heavy game just feels like there should be lock on to me at this point. And I have seen other people talking about this, like the comparisons to Eldon Ring,

mainly because these two games came out at the same time, and there's, if anything, it looks more like near Automata, because it's like Kirby exploring this destroyed world. But he does get some really cool power-ups and swords and, like, armor and stuff that makes him look like an, Eldon Ring character, so the Photoshop's are really adorable. And it is still a game where from time to time, you have to kind of consider your attacks and fight some bosses. So there's occasional similarities spiritually. But mostly it's for me about 100%ing all the puzzles, which is like discovering

all the waddle-dies, figuring out where all the little unlockable items are, combing over every single level and making sure I find every single thing because the combat isn't hard. These are the things about tunic that I liked, but really, I guess I'm just saying I like Kirby in the Forgotten Land because it's doing something on higher level than something like Tunic could do because it's a Nintendo game and it just feels really good to play. So there's that. But oh, also, so this game has mouthful mode. Like I said, there aren't very many different kinds of power-ups in this game. This is the main, main selling point is that Kirby can like inhale an entire car and he can drive around and be a car or he'll like inhale a huge letter O from like a sign like I don't know how to

describe this but anyway he'll be O shaped and he'll be like flowing around but they're very few and far between like there's only like a few mouthful modes like you can inhale a vending machine and then you'll like sort of run into vending machines around the world and be like oh sick I can do the vending machine stuff that is only capable of being done when I inhale this and And that's neat. I wish there was more of it. I wish there was just more of that power-ups galora sensation that the 3DS games offered. But instead it feels almost relaxing in a way that games don't always feel.

And also Kirby still wears a little hat for whatever power up he previously had before he does mouthful mode. So like if he's got a little night helmet on for like the night power up, then the car is wearing a little night helmet. And that's extremely cute. and that makes it worth it. So yeah, I would say if you don't feel like digging out of 3DS and you just want to really enjoy a Kirby game, Kirby and the Forgotten Land, it's really wonderful. I'm enjoying it a lot.

Nice. Yeah, I have it downloaded and I do really want to play it since I'm now a Kirby fan after Planet Robot. And then it was Star Allies. I was looking because I know there was one that was like the kind of maligned Kirby game that no one liked, and I didn't play it. Yeah, it was fine.

I don't think I ever beat it. I feel like Forgotten Land is definitely a step up from that. Like, I'll easily beat it, and I'll enjoy it, but it's also like, I don't know. It's hard to beat those 3DS games for me for whatever reason. I just think the level design on those is really great. And so I'm still out here recommending Kirby 3DS games. You miss that 3D slider, I wish all of your systems can have it.

Right. Yeah. Turn on those glasses free 3D. Just the headache slider, as they call it. God. Yeah. So Jason, what's your one more thing? Well, Kirk and Maddie, the best show.

on television today of the modern era of the past few years. It's not succession. It is not yellow jackets. Although yellow jackets is pretty good as a succession. It is not severance. It is not Ted Loss. It is Better Call Saul, a show that just came back this week, much to my delight and amazement.

And so I wanted to take this time to just kind of preach the gospel, a better call Saul, because there's some of you out there who probably haven't watched it yet. and I want to strongly encourage you to watch this show. So Better Call Saul is a Breaking Bad successor, and it stars a kind of side character from Breaking Bad named Saul Goodman, aka Jimmy McGill. But if you haven't watched Breaking Bad, the show is still incredible and still worth watching

because it is a character study, like unlike anything else I've ever seen on TV. Following the story of Jimmy McGill, this kind of downtrodden lawyer as he becomes Saul Goodman, who is a criminal lawyer. And as they say in Breaking Bad, no, you don't need a criminal lawyer. You need a criminal lawyer.

Sal Gunman is like the sleazyest person on earth and watching Jimmy McGill, who this is, I didn't mention this before, but it's a prequel, which is to Breaking Mad, which is why I said successor and not sequel. It's mostly set before the time of Breaking Mad. And to watch Jimmy Miguel morph into Saul Gunman is just one of the most fascinating things on TV.

And then you add on, top of that, Kim Wexler, who is his kind of companion and girlfriend slash love lover, and then all sorts of interesting crime and legal drama and Mexican drug cartel stuff and all sorts of other great storytelling. And you just have this concoction that is just incredible television. Highly, highly recommend it. The new season just came out. It's incredible so far. First two episodes have been so tense and amazing. And I just love this show. God, I love this show so much. It's so good. I've been watching not the new one, but season five, which just came out on Netflix and I was waiting for, which has been a real reminder of how incredibly good this show is.

And if I can just add a couple things that I like about it, it's one of the best-looking TV shows I've ever seen. It's absolutely incredible looking. Like every scene, every shot, every... There's so many times watching it now where I'm like, man, they could have done this so much easy. year than they did it, this shot of whatever. It'll just be like a guy standing while a car peels out in front of him, but they get a wide shot where the car is peeling out in front of the actor. And I'm just like, they could have just shown the actor and made a car peeling out sound, but they never ever do that.

It's always like, what's the coolest way we can show this? So it's just like a bunch of brilliant, like, production design. Just brilliant framing. How about that? How far are you into season five now? So we're like four or five episodes in. Okay, so the ants on the ice cream. dream cone at the beginning of episode 3.

Oh, yes. Oh, and the answer is so gross. Yeah, we actually just, we're in the middle of that episode that begins with that. But I will say that the show does connect to Breaking Bad enough that I'm finding myself being like, okay, wait, hang on, and like going back and trying to remember. Because there's a lot of dramatic irony. There's a lot of tiebacks where, like, you know what's going to happen to somebody in Breaking Bad.

And so it's like cooler when you know, oh, that's that guy's nephew, right? because like the whole drug cartel, they're all very, it's kind of a complicated web. Yeah, you do kind of have to watch Breaking Bad, especially for some of the future stuff, because there are some components of the show that take place after the events of Breaking Man. And in this final season, there's going to be even more of that. So yeah, I guess I should say that it's kind of important to know Breaking Bad if you're going to watch this. But like the Jimmy and Kim stuff, which is really the heart of the show, the pulsing heart of the show is this relationship between these two characters that you can appreciate with or without Breaking Man.

Yeah, and I would also even say that I think a lot of people watched Breaking Bad and maybe didn't love it in the end or maybe more mixed on it now than they used to be. And I think that Better Call Saul is the better show in a lot of ways and is really like... By a lot of people, do you just mean yourself? Because I haven't heard that from a lot of people. Oh, no, I think that, like, there are plenty of people who've kind of soured on Breaking Bad. And on like that era of like... Really? Yeah, on that era of like the bad man TV. Like, there's definitely a sort of exhaustion with the way that Breaking Bad...

Just the morality of that show and the protagonist and the story that it told. I think there are plenty of people who sort of are like, oh, yeah, OK, Breaking Mad, kind of an exhausting show. I liked it fine. But I don't know if I'm up for like a spinoff show, Jesus. But actually, the spinoff is so much better. And actually, like, interestingly, like it's an evolution because it's from a different era of TV. And it feels it.

It feels like a much more modern show. And I think it benefits in so many ways for that. That, like, even someone who has kind of liked Breaking Bad Fine and admired the artistry, but is a little like, okay, that's kind of exhausting. I don't know if I want more. They still might like it because it's so, this is so good. Yeah, well, the biggest difference is that Breaking Bad kind of makes its lead female character an obstacle

in its lead male character's path for almost the entire show, whereas Better Call Saul treats them both as the co-protagonists, each with their own journeys and their own ups and downs that often intersect, but sometimes they have nothing to do with each other. And that, I think, is very, very, that difference, I think, really makes a huge impact on. Yeah, that's a more expansive show. I mean, because Michael Mando, like, is an incredible, incredible actor, and his character is, like, so great. So the other thing I was going to mention is that season five, really the end of season four, but season five, really, introduces a character named Lalo, played by Tony Dalton, who people out there might remember Tony Dalton from his brief stint in Hawkeye, where he plays the stepfather, the, the, the, the, the,

what's her name stepfather, the guy who likes swords a lot. Yes. And he is incredible. He is like unbelievably good as Lalo, this charismatic bad guy who comes in and just starts becoming this agent of chaos everywhere. And it is so good. Man, it's a bit of a slow burn as a show.

So it's a show that can be sometimes tough to watch because you'll be watching and five minutes will go by and nothing has happened except just like tense looks on people's faces. But that also I think is part of what makes it so great. Yeah, it rules. It's really good. Man, we could talk about this forever, but it's great. I have like a million more thoughts. And we will on our new Better CallSall podcast. I'll save them. I'll do one more thing when we finish season five. Or maybe we'll do a means cast on it. Maybe. It would have to just be the two of you because I've never watched all Breaking Bad. I'm one of the people who finds it exhausting. But I have thought about watching Better Call Saul just because it sounds cool. You might like it. You'll really like Kim, I will say. Kim is incredible. I think I would like it, period. I really like all the actors on it. So I have certainly had my moments of maybe this is it.

Every time there's a new season and everyone's like, oh, it's great. I'm like, what if I just watch it? Well, this is a final season. I live in society. I know what happens in Breaking Bad. Like, come on. I think you would like it. It's very good.

That might be interesting if I watched it and then I like have that perspective on it. Yeah, I'd love to hear that. I highly recommend it. There's so much in it. It's such a dense, like, literary show. and there's so many, even just like reading recaps after interviews, after this week's episode, just help me pick up on so many things that I had missed or like had him put two and two together. It's just a very, very good show.

In fact, I think it's the closest that I've seen a show to, like, it's the closest comparison I've seen to the wire in the sense that it's just so dense and literary and full of just like fascinating arcs and stories. And you know what to say to me to get me to watch a show. Yeah, yeah, all right. It's all working. Okay, maybe I'll check it out. All right. You know, it's really like, it's really like Metroid. It is.

It's like a Metroidania and Saul as a lawyer. Yeah, Saul gets more power-ups. He gets around. He's always getting missiles. He's always grabbing missiles from Shenzhen. It's always like fighting against sort of a metaphor for himself. That's true. Cool.

All right. Everything you just said is true, except for the missiles. Another episode. It is. We did it. We did it again, folks. We did it again. We will be back to see you next week for the start of Max Fun Drive.

Yeah. And we'll be streaming. And we'll stream Destiny. And we'll be streaming. Mark your calendars. All right. See you. Bye.

Triple Click is produced by Jason Schreier, Maddie Myers, and me, Kirk Hamilton. I edit and mix the show and also wrote our theme music. Our show art is by Tom DJ. Some of the games and products we talked about on this episode may have been sent to us for free for review consideration. You can find a link to our ethics policy in the show notes. Triple Click is a proud member of the Maximum Fun Podcast Network, and if you like our show, we hope you'll consider supporting us by becoming a member at Maximumfund.org slash join.

Find us on Twitter at Triple Clickpods, 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. Maximumfund.org. Comedy and culture. Artist-owned, audience supported.