Triple Click - What's The Deal With... Paper Mario?

Episode Date: July 23, 2020

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You ever wonder what's inside one of those toads hats? I like to think it's another toad just waiting for the chance to come out and strike. Welcome to Triple Click where we bring the games to you. Today we are talking about Paper Mario and what the deal is with it. Thanks to the new game, The Origami King. We're all pretty excited, so let's get to it, shall we? I'm Jason Trier. I'm Maddie Myers.

And I'm Kirk Hamilton. And here we are for today. Hello. We are. On another week, it's very nice to see both of you. It is lovely to see you both. It is. It is extremely hot here, just seeing you now.

Oh, it's hot here too. It's like 100 degrees in New York City. I just turned off the air conditioner so that we could record without air conditioner noise, and I'm going to be slowly growing hotter over the course of the episode so listeners can know that if I get grumpier toward the end of the episode, it's because I'm sweating more and more. That's the reason. It's going to be a hot up.

Hot, hot up. It's going to be a hot up. So it is Maximum Fun Drive, and it's my turn to tell everybody about why that's cool and what that means. So Max Fun Drive this year is going on for the next few weeks. It ends in early August, and it is the opportunity for all of the podcast that are published under the Maximum Fun umbrella, of which, of course, Triple Click is one, to kind of reach out to listeners and ask for your support because Maximum Fun is a listener-supported network and is made possible entirely by listeners, which as the one person on our show who has completely switched to like listeners supported work,

all the work that I do is supported by people is a really, really cool thing. And I am like hugely in favor of this model in general. And it's cool to see it working in a whole lot of different ways. And I think it's really cool that it works for maximum fun as well. Like it's very neat to be. Gotta get those burritos, Kirk. It's true. It's true.

I got to keep the family in burritos. Mainly Appa eats the burritos now. we just, she steals them off of our plates. So, basically, the way that it works is you can pledge $5, $10, $20. There are people who pledge even more than that. Most people obviously stay down in the $5 or $10 range. That's where I usually am as well when I support various, various things. And we really appreciate everybody who signs up.

If you sign up during maximum fund drive to go at $10, you get a really cool pin. Yes. If you go at $20, you get a whole cool, like, pouch that I'll talk about. about a little bit later in the show. That pin, though, really cool. The pin is the best thing. I am excited to get a pin. Did you know that I'm a backer of our show?

I am a maximum fun number and I support triple-cloges. It's just a circle that goes all the way back to yourself. And that circle is a really cool triple-click pin. That's what the circle is. That's true. It's going to get me a pin. It's going to get me a pit at the end of all of this. So far we've heard that a lot of people have signed up and we really appreciate it.

So anyways, I'll give you a longer pitch later in the episode. but thanks so much to everybody who's signed up. And also thanks to everybody who liked last week's episode. That wasn't necessarily tied to being a maximum fun drive thing, like the music episode that we did, but that was a lot of fun and people really liked it. We got a lot of positive feedback. I did see people like on the subreddit and on Twitter,

some people who were like, I just wanted a normal episode. So we're not going to do that all the time or anything. Like I get why if you just want to hear us talk, that's still the normal show. That was a special thing. But it was very fun to do. And I'm glad that the people who liked it liked it. Last thing, we're going to do a stream. We mentioned this at the end of last episode,

but Maddie Jason and I are going to stream video games together in honor of Max Fun Drive. The details are on our social media, specifically our Twitter at Triple ClickPod, and I'm also going to save those details now, and they'll be in the show notes. The game we will be streaming is Destiny 2. Because what else was it going to be? What else would we possibly stream? Number one Destiny 2 fancast. What else can we mindlessly play while mainly shooting the shit? Shooting the shit, well, shooting the aliens. The funny thing is that none of us have played Destiny

a month, so this will be really interesting. I played it the other day, actually. You played more recently than Jason and I. Yeah, I haven't played a month. To anybody who's like a newcomer to this show, Jason and I used to be hardcore destiny addicts. And I never was. And Maddie never was.

And then we lapsed quite some time ago more than a year ago and haven't really played. So this will be interesting. It'll be like coming home again when your home has been rearranged and all the guns aren't as good as they used to be. So that is going to be happening on our new Twitch channel, which is Triple ClickPod, of course. And that will be this Friday, July 24th at 4 p.m. Pacific, 7 p.m. Eastern.

Again, that is Triple ClickPod on Twitch this Friday, July 24th, 4 p.m. Pacific, 7 p.m. Eastern for some Destiny 2 with the three of us. It's going to be really fun. And we hope that you come by. All right. So let's get to it, shall we? For this week, we are doing a What's the Deal with? What's the deal? And what's the deal with is when we try to explain to you what the deal is with a certain topic or game series. In this case, we are talking about what is the deal with Paper Mario? Because last Friday, a brand new Paper Mario game came out. It sure did.

Big summer release. Not a lot of big Nintendo games this year, but this was the second of them. Yeah, this is it. This is the Nintendo game. Here we are. Yeah, there's nothing else announced for this year. I'm guessing COVID has put them in a little bit of a spot where they don't want to announce things until they're sure they can happen. But anyway, Paper Mario. Let's talk about Paper Mario, shall we?

Yeah, man. Before we even get to the new game, which is called Paper Mario the Origami King, just came out for Switch. I think we should zoom out a little bit and talk about a little bit and talk about the history of Paper Mario. Because Paper Mario is a really interesting series. A lot of video game series over the years stay the same, like Call of Duty, for example. doesn't change very much between iterations. I mean, war never changes, Jason. That's true.

So Call of Duty also does not change. Some series change drastically, like, say, Assassin's Creed, which turned from, like, a stealth action game to, like, a straight-up Witcher 3 RPG series. And some of those series, some series that change kind of isolate fans along the way, or at the very least polarized fans along the way. And Paper Mario is one of those series.

Because the Paper Mario series started, Actually, really, to look at the origin of this, we go all the way back to 1996 when a game called Super Mario RPG came out. Have either you guys played this game, Super Mario RPG? I haven't, but I'm familiar. I have played it. Jason, you and I played it together. We did play it together. Yes, you enjoyed it, right? I remember you digging it when we played on the... Yeah, I mean, it kind of had a nice classic. You were forced to enjoy it, right? You did, right?

We kind of had some old 90s g-r-r-gg bullshit, but yeah, I enjoyed it. Yeah, definitely an old game. So that game kind of blew minds when it came out Because until then, like the Mario, you think of obviously the Mario platformers And Mario had done like some sports games There was Mario Kart and such But there was nothing like this

And so this was actually square back then Which was the maker of Final Fantasy, of course They made this RPG with Mario character So it was kind of It was the first game to introduce humor To the Mario series. Like all the writing was really clever There were a lot of jokes and puns

And really funny characters in it And it was it was the first, like, combination of Mario and Nintendo creatures and characters and RPG. So, like, you're going around as Mario and you jump on a Gumba, and instead of just squashing it, you enter turn-based combat with the Gumba. And there's, like, items and stats and levels, and it's just straight-up RPG. It was crazy. Yeah, it kind of introduced the whole idea, which this series and also the Mario and Luigi series explore, of just, like, an actual narrative game set in the Mario universe.

As much as there is a narrative to a traditional Mario game, there kind of isn't. And you just sort of imagine what things are. But these games have dialogue. Like you go around and talk to people. There are towns. You get a sense that it isn't just this weird series of kingdoms that Mario has to jump through in pursuit of like saving the princess. It's like a community, a world where like even the villains that you fight are creatures

that live in it and they all have inner lives and motivations. And it's kind of a mind-blowing idea. that totally shouldn't have worked or like did not necessarily need to work. Yeah, no, it's totally mind-buck. And then to your point about dialogue, Mario's only character who doesn't actually talk. Right. He's the silent protagonist. He's a silent protagonist because they don't want Mario to talk.

And in Super Mario RPG, it's actually done to hilarious comedic effect because sometimes he'll have to explain what has happened to characters. And to do this, he'll do all these pantomiming and you'll just watch him jump around and run around it. And he'll transform into the characters that he's panamining. phantomiving. So like you'll see Mario just like morph into Bowser and be like, rah, and then turn into Mario again. It's very cute. But anyway, so this game was beloved. It was awesome. There was even like an optional little boss that was like a final fantasy villain that didn't actually exist. And it was this crazy thing where it was this creature called collects. And when you fought him, the final

fantasy music that Kirk talked about last week played, you got like final fantasy battle music. But it led people to wonder, like, was there really a collects in a final fantasy game? But it turned out it wasn't. It was like a totally fake, made-up thing for this. But it surprised a lot of players because back then a lot of the Final Fantasy games hadn't even come out in the U.S. So like people thought, oh, is this like a reference to one of the Japanese Final Fantasy games we hadn't played? But anyway, I digress. So after Super Mario RPG, Square and Nintendo had kind of a divorce because Square went with PlayStation and Final Fantasy and they went to CD-ROMs while Nintendo stuck with cartridges for the N64. So Nintendo said, hey, we're going to do our own thing. And they started

a game called Paper Mario, which takes Mario and makes him flat like paper, and that is the subject of all sorts of goofs over the course of the game. Yeah, tell me a little bit about this, Jason. Was there a reason? I have only played this most recent Paper Mario game, Origami King, which I love and which we will talk about in a little bit. But why is Mario paper? There's no explanation. No, there's never an explanation as far as I can remember for why he's paper. It's more just that in this world, like, you just accept that he's paper, and the game plays around with that, and like, he can fit through things. And the original games, yeah, they made a lot more jokes in the original games about him being paper and flat. I mean, there's plenty of jokes

in the new one. Yeah, there's always tons of jokes. Yeah, like 2D versus 3D, like there's a lot of potential there, I guess. Is the idea here that the paper universe is a sort of, that we're talking a multiverse theory of Mario Worlds, and that actually this universe is a slightly skewery, different one than the one that we play through in the main games and that is why. Yeah, so that's confirmed in a game that came later in the series called Mario and Luigi Paper Jam. Ah, okay, so you're going to get to that. No, I won't get to that today, actually, because... Oh, okay.

That's in a lengthy multi-part documentary series. That'll be in part three of this ongoing series. A little bit more context is that after Paper Mario, another series came along, which was called Mario and Luigi, which was the handheld RPG series. So that came to... Game Boy, Advance, I believe, was a... was the first one was Game Boy Advanced Mario Luigi Superstar Saga and the DS and 3DS. And so those games were a totally different world.

And then Mario and Luigi paper jam stuck them both together. That was like the multiverse colliding because you have Mario and Luigi and then you also have Paper Mario joining the fray and like they interact and all sorts of hijinks ensue from there. But yes, in this universe, Paper Mario is just paper. All the characters in a lot of the games, all the characters are just paper and everybody just accepts that. Like that's the universe that they live in, in which they are paper. Anyway, this first Paper Mario and then the second one, Paper Mario, the Thousand-Year Door,

which came out for the GameCube in 2004, those were both traditional RPGs. Thousand-year-Dore especially is beloved because it had this fantastic story and a great cast of characters. So by traditional RPG, do you mean you have like an inventory and party members and an overworld and random encounters? And levels, most importantly. Levels are the big thing that kind of went away over time. But yeah, companions are a big thing because one of the things that people love so much about Super Mario RPG is you could have all these great companions, Gino and Malo, were the two new ones they added, and they were beloved, but also Princess Peach could join you, and Bowser could join you the first time that we ever saw Bowser as like an ally in battle and stuff. So that was pretty cool. And then, yeah, so Paper Mario in Thousand Year Door took this concept and like evolved it further.

Then in 2007, we got a weird game called Super Paper Mario. I don't know if you guys remember this, but actually, do you guys remember, I'm sure, the indie game Fez and the concept of morphing from like two-dimensional to 3-D and you kind of like revolve the world around? So Super Paper Mario actually came out with this mechanic before Fez even did. This was the one I played, by the way. As Paper Mario, you could rotate the world from 2D to 3-D and like find secrets and do all sorts of crazy mind-warping things.

Maddie, did you like this game when you played it? I actually did. And it is a game that Paper Mario. fans dislike. Am I right about that? I liked it because I didn't know any better, any which way. And I remember thinking that the 2D and 3D mechanics were really fun. I mean, this was 2007. So I was still in college. I was an intern at the Phoenix, as I recall. So I was not a professional game critic yet, but I was like imagining that someday I would be. I think I like wrote some bad blog posts about this that were probably never published anywhere. That's how you break into video game journalism.

You know, I was an unpaid intern. It's. It's fine. It was dubiously ethical. But the main thing I remember about this game was that there was a lot of really fun Princess Peach stuff in there. I remember a scene. Well, you'd play as her in interval characters. There would be like intermissions. He'd play as her, which is cool in and of itself, especially for a Mario game. Although certainly, it's not the first time you can play as Peach in a game, but I remember enjoying that aspect of it. And I remember there was also a moment, and this was, we're talking in 2007, so I'm sure I'm misremembering this scene with Peach. But my memory of it was that she gets kidnapped at some point. by some type of villainous toad character or whatever. And you, the player, get to choose a series of dialogue options for her. And I remember choosing the ones where she's playing along with her captor. And at the time, being annoyed by it and being like, oh, I feel like I have to choose these because I want Peach to be able to get out of here. Like, this sucks so bad that I have to choose these options, but I guess I don't know

what else to do. And if you do that, Peach will throw a fit and, like, break the fourth wall and be like, I don't want to do this anymore. And it's like the most personality peach ever has, although I've always argued that like the Super Smash Brothers peach with the frying pan is like the true version of peach in my eyes. But I mean, this version of Peach also has that same energy. So like clearly this is the version of Peach that I would enjoy. If I were to actually go back and play these games, I'd probably love her. So shout out to Peach in this.

The frying pan comes from Super Mario RPG. Yeah, I should play it clearly. Well, so this peach is the same as the Smash Brothers. It's the lineage of the Paper Mario Super RPG. So that's why you like you like her so much. It's like if we're talking about the multiverse, like this is the peach. Right, right. This is the verity peach, let's call her.

The good peach. Yeah. Or like the snarky peach who like doesn't take shit from anybody, which in my mind is the best, the best version of her. I feel like there's a little bit of that in a lot of different versions of Peach, right? I'm thinking of the end of Super Mario Odyssey. There should be. There's kind of like Peach tends to stick up for herself in various ways despite always being such a trope.

Yeah, and I mean Mario Odyssey is great. We've talked about that on the show as well. Yes, we sure have. But back to you, Jason. So to your point earlier about people not liking it. So this was a game that did away with turn-based battles, and it just became a platformer again, which was kind of weird. You still had levels.

So can you restate the name of this one? I'm trying to keep track of this for listeners? This is Super Paper Mario, which came out for the Wii in 2007. And so this got rid of turn-based combat, which was very weird at the time. And instead, you would just jump on enemies. bunch of times and knock their hit points down. So it still had that level of RPG, that RPG element specifically like hit points and you still had hit points unlike a traditional Mario game where you just like have a power up or you don't. But it became a platformer, which was strange. And not

everybody loved that, even though it still had a lot of things you would love about a paper Mario game, which is like going to new worlds and interesting characters and hilarious dialogue. One of the kind of overarching themes is that every one of these games is hilarious and just written so well. Okay, so then we moved to 2012 when a game called Paper Mario's Sticker Star came out for the 3DS. This was kind of like, this is, this is, I would say, the low point for the series. This is a game that really experimented with like adventure game, trial and error mechanics. And like every battle, you had to use these cards to use abilities. And they were all finite.

And then to beat bosses, you had to have certain cards that would like weaken them. But sometimes you might not even have a card at that point in the game. and there was trial and error involved, so you could wind up using your most valuable cards when you didn't actually need them and wasting them. And it was all just kind of a mess. It was a mess of a design. It was like the rare, huge miss from Nintendo

in terms of like design that was inelegant and clunky and not fun to play. So my memory of this is that the next year was the first year I would play a game like this, which was when Mario and Luigi Dream Team came out, also on the 3DS. And I really liked that game and thought that it was cool, but I also didn't understand even really the distinction between Paper Mario and Mario and Luigi

because it seemed odd that there were two Nintendo series that were both exploring very similar territory in terms of the story and the tone. Like it was also very funny and lots of puns and you walked around and talked to characters and it was kind of an RPG. And like it just seemed kind of weird, though I gather that at some point here Alpha Dream declared bankruptcy and shut down, the studio that made Mario and Luigi. Yeah, that's much later. But Dream Team, so Dream Team is a straight-up RPG.

The Mario Luigi series haven't diverged from like their core. They're all RPGs, turn-based combat, levels, stats, equipment. They all have different gimmicks. So Paper Mario is more experimental. The Paper Mario and Sticker Star specifically is just totally out there like basically an adventure game is the best way to think of it. So like in Paper Mario or Sticker Star you're fighting battles but instead of actually like you don't get anything from the battles.

And this is one of the things that really drove people crazy is because you didn't get experience or gold or anything, all you would get was more. cards and you would wind up wasting more cards than you actually got in a battle, it became more, it made more sense to just avoid battles entirely because there was no incentive to actually fight them. And it was, it just made for an unpleasant playing experience. That just sounds like it wasn't a good game. But would Nintendo's rationale then for making the paper Mario series less RPG-ish be that because Mario and Luigi exists and is this game, they now have room to experiment with the other series. Otherwise, the series just become redundant and you're getting two

Mario and Luigi RPGs like every other year. That at least kind of makes sense, I guess. It could be. I mean, at first, the distinction with them was that Mario Luigi was on handheld and Paper Mario was on console. I thought you were going to say the distinction was that Paper Mario is made of paper. That's also an important distinction. Paper Luigi, that's ridiculous.

I mean, what are we even saying? And Luigi is always, there's always, like, in that series, I know we're not talking about that series, but Luigi is always there and there's always some mechanic. Like, in Dream Team, Luigi goes to sleep and Mario goes, like, inner space inside him and fights within his dreams, Inception style. And, like, that's... Well, so in those games, Luigi's always a party member. In these games, Luigi is always off on his own adventure

that you, like, hear about hilariously, like, once in a while and he comes back, and he's like, oh, Mario, you'll never believe what just happen. In a thousand-year door, it's particularly brilliant the way it's constructed because he'll just go off on these giant tangents talking about these epic adventures he had, and you'll just hear about them every chapter. It's a new one, like, a new time hearing from him. Anyway, so then we get to Paper Mario Color Splash, which was 2016, and I actually didn't play this one, so I don't know a lot about it. But from what I've heard, it was very similar to Sickra Star and that the writing was hilarious, but the combat was like very trial and error, like not as fun as it used to be back in the day.

And now we get to today. So Paper Mario, the Origami King came out last week. And it doesn't really return to form. It just does things differently again. So what is form? I guess by form, I just mean the original. too. And so kind of like the battle among fans is this whole tradition versus innovation thing. And everybody, a lot of fans, I shouldn't say everybody, but a lot of fans have wanted the series to go

back to Thousand Year Door because Thousand Year Door is still the most critically claimed, the most beloved of all of these games. It was fantastic. And so a lot of fans are like, why can't we have that again? If people wanted to play a Thousand Year Door now, how would they play a Thousand Year Door? It might be in the Wii Shop. It might be in the Wii Shop. I don't know. But unless you have a GameCube, there isn't an easy way to play it now. Anyway, so let's get to today's game, the new game that just came out, because I played a bunch of it. Yeah, I want to talk about Origami King. Yeah, so Paperware of the Orgami King, still very much, well, so we still have turn-based battles, still have hilarious dialogue, still have hit points, still no levels.

So it's carrying on that tradition, no level ups. And the battles themselves are very interesting because this time around, basically the way each battle unfolds is you get into an encounter with an enemy, you enter a separate screen as if you're a turn-based. battle and then you see a series of concentric rings it almost looks like a dartboard on the screen and the enemies will be placed all across the the rings and you have to rotate the rings to arrange the enemies in specific lineup so you can hit them with your jumps or with your hammers and you have a limited amount of time and a limited number of moves in which to do this so basically every battle is like a little puzzle some of them can get pretty repetitive but as you go on like some of them can actually be super tough and like require a lot of brain bending to do and

and then boss battles are another thing entirely, whole another mechanic entirely, but the main point that I'm making here is this is yet another wacky, wild, out there experiment as opposed to like turn-based combat, the way that fans might have wanted it to be the old school, like level up, you get stronger every level, etc., etc. So, Kirk, you've been playing a couple hours. I've been playing longer than you, but I'm curious to hear your thoughts first. I love this game. I think it's great.

So Nintendo sent me a code, and it's interesting coming to a series like this, and I felt this way about Dream Team as well, where I knew that there was a lot of history and I knew people had feelings about it because I read Chris Kohler's review at Kataku and it was clear reading it. You know, he knows Nintendo's super cold, kind of like you do, Jason.

He's like a Mario expert, yeah. Right, and so reading the review, I was like, this review reads to me like the take of someone who deeply understands all of the various, like, inner conflicts between each game and the things that fans wanted and didn't want. And, like, that was, it was interesting in that way reading it, but I was like, I wonder what I'll think of this game just playing it. And just playing it with no expectations or desire for it to be a turn-based game.

Frankly, I don't need another turn-based, like, RPG? There's a billion of that. Like, this game is weird. Like, the comment in it is weird. And I gather that's kind of the weakest part. It's at least the thing I've found maybe the least interesting in the game so far. Just because it gets so repetitive after a lot. Yeah, it's like not very hard, and that's fine.

That's not really why I'm playing it. Oh, it gets hard. Yeah, I've heard that sometimes it gets challenging. What I like about it is just that it's hilarious. The music is great. The vibe is really funny. I mean, this is a game where you get to hit Toad with a hammer just over and over and over again. Like there's a central mechanic of collecting Toads, and every time you need to save Toad,

you have to like somehow or other kind of hit Toad. And I'm down with that because Toad is pretty annoying. Well, so there are Toads, they're like hundreds of toads, like hidden in places throughout the world. They're like the collectible. And that's one of the side games like to go around and collect them. And then every time you collect. one, or every time you rescue one, they have some hilarious, like, often fourth wall breaking. Like, the guy, one of the, I think there's, there's a couple of people who, like, consistently

write these paper Mario games, and whatever Nintendo is paying them should be doubled because they're very funny. They're just doing such good work. So, the narrative premise of this game is that Mario and Luigi are going to Peach's Castle for a party, you'll be shocked to hear, and then it doesn't go well. And that's because there's an origami festival happening, and, like, the origami king shows up who's this like jerk with an emo haircut, like little origami dude. And he starts folding everybody into origami.

And then there is now a distinction in this paper kingdom where the enemies are all origami folded versions of themselves. And the good guys are flat paper. And so you can now distinguish. You'll meet gumbas who are flat paper. And they'll be like, oh, Mario, like, oh, man, you probably like smashed a bunch of my friends, but I'm going to work with you right now because this origami thing is a problem. and that's sort of the narrative.

Meanwhile, you walk around, this really reminds me of Terraway, actually, the Vita and PS4 game, Media Molecules game, which is a cool game, and I didn't realize, probably owes more to Paper Mario than I had realized playing it. I don't know if this was always a mechanic, but in this game, you go around collecting confetti, and it's one of the, just,

this game is so pleasing to play in this physical way. Like, you have a hammer, you can hit stuff with it, like I mentioned, you can hit Toads. You can also hit trees, and you hit a tree, like confetti, colorful, scraps, paper will just fall from it. And then you just run around and like automatically hoover them up. And it's so pleasing in that Nintendo way. It just feels really nice to play it. It's so colorful is great music playing. And then you're just picking up confetti and then you're kind of

fixing the world. There's like ripped out sections of this paper world and you have to throw confetti on to them and then fix it. And just doing that, I mean, picking up confetti and then throwing it on the ground and having it fill in holes is very satisfying. Like in a kind of basic gamer way. How far are you in the game park? I'm like in Toad Town, I guess, so I fought the first big Gumba. Okay, so very early. Okay. Yeah, I'm very, very early.

Okay. So you haven't even gotten to, like, the premise of the game, the streamers, right? Like, you haven't started... The streamers, well, I'm assuming that you have to, like, cut each of those streamers because they took the castle away, but no. Yeah, so I'm very curious to hear your take on it, like, in a few hours since you've, like, gotten further and gotten into, like, the bulk of the game. But, yeah, no, it's delightful.

I love it also. I'm of two minds, because part of me, love... loves the thousand-year door. Like, that game is amazing. And it's amazing because, or in large part, because of all the companions you get and, like, the way that it escalates combat. And I should say, by the way, when I talk about the turn-based combat in these games, all of these games have some sort of gimmick to their turn-based combat. Usually it's, like, the time tits, like, sort of like the way that Bear Mario or the Origami King has, where you have to press A at a certain time when you're jumping on enemies. So all these games have some sort of element

like that, even the RPGs with, like, the traditional RPGs. They still had, like, the timed hit stuff. But yeah, I really love that game. But on the other hand, I'm all for like Nintendo taking risks and innovating any game developers, like trying crazy new things and seeing what sticks. And Sticker Star didn't stick for me, although that game was so charming and hilarious. So like I fell for it regardless, despite all the frustrating design decisions. But this game is really clicking for me and I'm really enjoying it. The problem is that it's really, really long from what I can tell so far. And the battles can get pretty repetitive, which is kind of like an overall problem with a lot of games. But they feel especially, it's especially compounded with this one because

you have to go through a lot of different actions. You can't just like mash the A button. So you'll see the same sort of patterns start to appear. And you'll be like, okay, doing this again, like pressing this, rotating the circle. Okay, now I also have to jump on the enemies or hit him with a hammer. And it just takes a long time. So it can feel pretty tedious. But the charm and the dialogue and the hilarity of it all kind of makes up for that. And the music, I really like to shout out the music. I mean, the sequence where you wake up this old tree and he becomes young again, and like his backup singers all start singing, and the whole world comes to life,

and all this music starts playing. I mean, I just walked over a Soulfedge Bridge where it's like, what is it, it's like, do Doremi Fasola, don't mind me, and like every time you go over it, it's like, and then it'll do like Solfedge in reverse, and it actually plays the notes when you walk over it. There's all this wonderful little Nintendo detail stuff in this game. Yeah, I was curious about the composers. It looks like it's a bunch of composers, according to Wikipedia.

Yeah, a lot of these games have big teams. The composer for Mario Luigi is the legendary Yokushima Mora, who just does all sorts of incredible stuff. I remember feeling that way about Dream Team, too, where it was, I never finished it. I played a lot. I remember playing, like, 30 hours or something, and I was on some mountain. I don't know how close I was to the end, honestly, because it just kept going and going and going, and I was like, okay. These games tend to drag. Yeah, that's the thing.

They tend to be a little bit too long. But yeah, no, I'm really enjoying it. And if people are wondering, like, oh, should I play this? I think it's a game that I certainly recommend from what I played so far, especially if you just like clever writing. And then what I was going to say before was that it's actually surprised me with like how poignant it can be. Like there's a scene that I just watched a couple hours ago in terms of game time

that like was actually emotionally effective, almost more than The Last of Us 2 was for me. But we'll get to that. Like, I didn't think that I would care so much about, like, a crazy emotional thing that happened in a game that's, like, a joke that's, like, entirely, like, making fun of everything and just silly stuff, like, smashing toads with hammers. Like, I didn't think I would actually care about something that happened. Sometimes those are the things that sneak up on you. Exactly. The games that don't take themselves too seriously can also, like, hit you with a gun punch and emotional gut punch. But, yeah, no, I am enjoying this game and recommend it.

Maddie, you should check it out. I should. It sounds like I would enjoy it for the same reason I enjoyed Super Paper Mario because I have no preconceived notions about what it would be. And I don't have some long history with this series. So I could just enjoy it the way Kirk is, which is ideal. Right. It's just like an aesthetically delightful game. Just a cool game.

Just a cool Mario game. Yeah. All right. This Toad says, why don't we take a break? And then we will back with one more toad. Okay, Jason Maddie, this is normally where we put promos for other Max Fun shows. but of course instead, because Max Fun Drive is going on, we are going to talk a little bit more about Max Fun Drive,

and I'm going to read an email we got from a listener. This is from Marcus, who wrote, I just recently got into listening to podcasts due to both the pandemic and my new baby, both things that have led to greater degrees of social isolation. I tried out a number of game-focused shows before I found yours, and I appreciate your experiences, insights, opinions, and ability to cover a topic in under two hours. In honor of your crew and the Max Fun Drive,

I have tripled my monthly donation. Good work. So that rules. Thanks so much, Marcus. That's so kind. Extremely kind of you. And we appreciate it. And I would like to say just on what Marcus is saying that I listen to a lot of podcasts

and I kind of find that social thing pretty helpful right now. Like just in that, you know, I think everybody. Hearing people talk. Yeah, hearing people talk and hang out. And I actually also value talking to the two of you each week. Because we work on the show There's like a lot of work that goes into this show And we're planning and we're doing a lot of DMing

Just being like what should we talk about blah blah blah But then when we actually get ready to record the show It's just nice to actually talk Like I always come away from recording sessions Maybe I'm being really cheesy right now But I always come away from recording sessions Being like well that was really fun It was fun to talk to my friends Maddie and Jason

For a little yeah it's a good conversation So I get that out of this show And because people support us making it We get to do that as well So it's nice to hear that our conversations are also helpful for listeners. So if you sign up for Max Fund Drive, you can get some rewards. I'm going to detail those rewards right now.

We already mentioned the pin. The pin is very cool. That's if you go to $10 a month. If you go to $20 a month or more, you get the special Max Fund gift. It is a game pack this year, which is fitting since it's Triple Click's first. That's right.

Celebrating. It really is celebrating us. You get a custom dice set and a custom deck of playing cards with Max Fun designs on them. There's like little Easter eggs for each show. So as much as we want you to support Triple Click, also there's like a lot of good shows on Max Fun. And the more of them you listen to,

the more you'll appreciate that deck of cards. You could even get it. And then if you get into Max Fun shows like other shows down the road, you'll be like, oh, that's what that joke on the Jack of Diamonds was about. Like it was this card. This show's joke. So anyways, you can find out more about how to do all of this, of course, at Maximumfund.org slash join.

and there is one other new feature that they've just added. They were kind of troubleshooting this for a while, and they just got it up and working. And this is called boosting. So if you're already a supporter and you want to help us just a little bit more, which would be awesome, you don't, and you're like, well, I want to help a little bit more, but I don't want to jump to the next tier.

Yeah, like maybe you can't go all the way from 20 to 35, for example, or the specific tiers that are listed. Right. It used to be you had to stick to the tiers. Now you can just, like, boost your level a little bit if you just want to help out a little bit more. That would be super cool. And if you do that or if you sign up, it's just really above and beyond. And we really appreciate it. And of course, if you can't donate, then that's totally fine.

Like, we see it's in the middle of pandemic. But do us a favor. Do this a solid. And share the show with your friends. If you like it, just tell everybody you know, put it on your social media feed. Just tell your buds, go spam people on being like, hey, listen to Triple Click or else. What we want is for you to lose friends. We want to lose all of your friends.

Alienate everyone you know by talking only about Triple Clifold Clare. your triple-click zealotry. That's what we're really looking for. No, but that is very true. And of course, we know that a lot of people are in like uncertain times right now. We are too. So we appreciate your support and also any way that that support takes shape, we appreciate it. So yeah, thanks everybody. And one more time, maximum fun.org slash join. And we are back, Kirk. Maddie, it is time, as always, for one more toad. Kirk, what is your one more toad of this week? So Jason, my one more toad this week is actually brought to you by Mr. Jason Schreier himself. Oh, my gosh.

It is a Bloomberg Business Week article. Cool, I read this, yeah. By Mr. Jason Trayor that we have all read about Ubisoft. And it is a pretty galling and terrible tale of a lot of bad behavior at Ubisoft at this massive video game publisher that has been trickling out on Twitter for quite a while. Trickling is maybe the wrong word. Exploding on Twitter is maybe a little more accurate. This is definitely something that has been happening and has been in the consciousness.

And also been reported by some sites, Kataku. Ethan and Kataku had a really good article about it. Yeah, yeah. Ethan, Ethan Gatch wrote a story. And a big shout out to the French journalist at Liberation, the French newspaper, among others, who Mediaorama was another one, who have just really just done some incredible reporting on this stuff.

So, yeah, this is a story that we have talked about on the show a couple episodes ago, just this, the broader Me Too movement happening in games, or like the latest movement, the kind of ongoing the symphony of Me Too in gaming that is apparently necessary and yeah

it definitely followed that trajectory of sort of social media to more reporting to more reporting Jason I'd say your piece is pretty comprehensive it covers a whole lot of the people

who were named on Twitter and has some pretty terrible stories geez one of the stories is about Maxine Beland who's a guy who I interviewed at Katakku like this is one of the people where you go to these press events

and you talk to someone and he just seems like this guy who's like the creative director of a game and then later, you hear these horrible stories. And it's just, I guess I bring it up because I feel like we're all learning how to navigate this tricky sort of just tension that is increasingly clear as we learn more about bad

workplace practices at game development studios. This one feels a little different to me in part because I have such a familiarity with Ubisoft games. I've been playing so many of their games for so many years. I really like a lot of their games. And partly because your story has these specific stories of the ways. that the games were changed because of the behavior of these men at the top. Do you want to specify a little bit for people?

I haven't read this one. Yeah, so I'll break a couple of them down, and they're just the ones that struck me because it's a series I'm very familiar with, and this is the Assassin's Creed series. So this guy at the top, how do you pronounce his last name? Hasquitt? Serge Hasquit, who is like the creative big cheese

at Ubisoft for basically since time immemorial, he's been there forever, and is the person who green lights or red lights any creative decision, basically in any game. And because of him, essentially, based on your reporting, Jason, they were going to be female leads in several of the Assassin's Creed games that I've really liked. And as a result of his feedback in part, and I'm sure other people's feedback as well, are people doing what they think.

Him and the marketing department, important to know. That was just diminished and diminished and diminished, which is wild. Specifically, Aya was meant to take over as the lead of Assassin's Creed Origins, which is wild, having reviewed that game. There's such a weird thing that happens halfway through that game where it splits up, And Aya seems like she's about to become the main character, but then she kind of doesn't. And there's like this playable sequence where you play as her. And I was like, she's always dressed as an assassin.

And she's a rad character. And I kept being like, oh, we're going to. And she seems, she has the personality of the assassin's so much more than Bayek does. I love Bayek as a character. But she has the cold-blooded killer mentality that you would think would be the protagonist's mentality. Yeah. So Bayak was supposed to die and then Ayah was supposed to take over. Right. Which makes so much more sense.

And I think back when I was reviewing that game, because it was before anyone had played it. And I kept thinking, this dude is going to die and Aya is going to take over. And then it just kind of didn't quite happen. And it so makes sense that just her role got reduced and reduced and reduced until you had these weird playable sections as her. So that's one example. Another is the way that Jacob Fry became the dominant character in Assassin's Creed Syndicate. And Evie Fry, her role in the story was reduced, which again, you can split between the two of them. Evie Fry is a rad character and Jacob Fry kind of sucks.

And I've always felt that way. And now looking at it, I'm like, like, this game that I still think is an under-euvre. game, like Syndicate I really, really like. I like it because of Evie Fry. She's so freaking cool. It's a great performance. She's a great character. She could have been a more major character.

And then, of course, the biggest one is that Cassandra was meant to be the only playable character in AC Odyssey. Which also feels correct to me. Yes, because she's like the good character. Like, she's like her brother's fine, I guess, but like, what's the same, Alexios? But no, it's a Cassandra's game. And it just, it really, I don't know, it's made me feel much more conflicted about all of these games.

looking back on them, I'm like, man, these all could have been so much better. And it's when you're playing a game and then you're realizing, oh, this art that I'm experiencing, you're playing compromised art that was compromised for the same reason that all these people were hurt. So it's like across the board, this just sucks. And I think that that, I don't know, I think that's tough to deal with. Like, that's really something that I'm going to be chewing on for a long time. Yeah, that's an interesting point. And it's something that we'll certainly have to talk about when work as we're covering games.

I've never been really in favor of, like, boycotting a game because of the work practices around it. but all three of us are incredibly excited for Assassin's Creed, Valhalla. I know, but I've been feeling weird about it for weeks now. Yeah, I agree. I agree. I'm sure you guys are too. Definitely. But in general, I feel like these games are made by thousands of people, most of whom are good people who are proud of their work and want it to be talked about.

Absolutely. And I still feel that way about Assassin's Creed. It's just that seeing all these ways that the game itself was fucked up because of these same shitty dudes that were also mistreating people, it sucks. Like it really sucks. It super sucks. So two things here. And by the way, to your point, Kirk, it's not, a lot of that came from the marketing department

within Ubisoft Paris as well. So it's not just like, that stuff wasn't one person's decision. But the one person's surge, he is certainly, I mean, so two points I want to make. One is that as far as like the overall story, the kind of crux of my story and the takeaway that I certainly had while I was reporting it is that all of these things everybody at Ubisoft knew about four years and years and years. like Tommy Francois, who was one of the guys who's been named in the most stories, everybody at the Ubersop Paris office knew about his behavior,

according to a lot of the people that I spoke to. So any sort of like, I mean, that says a lot of different things about the way that UBesoft has or hasn't tried to deal with it. And, I mean, figuring out, like, over the past few weeks, a lot of these stories have come out and people have been like, oh my God, like people are horrified. And then it's even more horrifying when you realize that, like, people all knew about it and they just like were either complacent or let it happen and man a lot of

a lot of things that unravel there but it kind of speaks to the power of a systemic problem to stay in place i mean we all know about problems in america right like and those continue like they're you feel kind of powerless a lot of well eventually they become normalized and i got an interesting email today from someone uh who was like yeah we just like we you kind of accept it just being here you're just like oh yeah it's like these people are just going to behave that way and it just becomes part of, it just becomes part of the DNA. And yeah, that is something that like, all of us, I think, could watch out for in our own lives and workplaces. It's like, what are the things that you've kind of normalized and internalized that are actually, when you

zoom out and think about them, are kind of screwed up. But the other thing I wanted to talk about, and I think this is kind of a broader point is Serge himself had such a position of power at this company. And the reason he did is because of merit or perceived merit, which is that he was the person who was perceived as, like, creating all these blockbuster hits, the Assassin's Creed. He, like, was overseeing all of these games. He assessed in creeds and far cries and watchdogs of the world, overseeing the open world formula that worked so well for Ubisoft and obviously became well trod and, like, hackneyed over time. But I think that when you put anyone in this position of being the ultimate authority for a company like that, like having that much power,

like, things are going to go wrong. It just feels like nobody should have the power to be like the one person at the company who is deciding what games live and what games die and it's just like it's like king making and I think any structure that involves one person at the top having to go around and review games and approve or deny of them is is always going to cause all sorts of problems for all sorts of reasons in addition to like stifling creativity which is something that I hopefully plan to report on a little bit more about like the actual stifled creativity aspect of this whole thing all right mattie what is your one more thing one more toad sorry stick with the bit Maddie what is your one more toad

My One More Toad is that I have been playing the first Halo game. I also played a little bit of Destiny 2. And, you know, I talked about playing the Master Chief Collection like way back in the split screen days, I think. I talked about how I was playing Halo Reach, like back in December. And I was like, oh, it's going to be so cool to go back and replay all the halos. Have you guys played Halo? Did you play it at the time or at any other point? Oh, I played it at the time.

I played the whole game in co-op with my friend Sam. back in college and I was... Best way to play. That was like already into PC first person shooters. Like I was not impressed really because I was like, I've done this. But it was cool to play it on a console and the split screen was fun. I've only played Halo multiplayer, which will become an interesting conversation topic later this year when Infinite comes out

because I've never played a Halo single player campaign. Right, whereas I've played all of them. I think I missed Halo 4. I didn't finish 4. Yeah, I've played all the other ones. You played ODST, right? Because I never played that one. ODST.

So anyway, I've decided to go back and play Halo 1. And, you know, it's not great. So I'm really struggling with this one because I'm like, is this just that Halo was always like this? It's so repetitious. And so I've kind of entered this headspace with it where it reminds me a little bit of how, I've talked many times on this show about how I watch sitcoms when I'm falling asleep or like, while I'm doing other things, I'll like put on a sitcom in the background and you're not really paying attention to it. That is what Halo 1 is like for me, but it's like the sitcom of games.

Like you're just going through an infinite hallway or you're like driving a ward hog through an infinite green grassy knoll and like you're just shooting a million of the same alien just forever and ever. And it is wild to me that games used to be like this and we accepted it. Like it is wild how many of the exact same alien you shoot in HALO. Well your mind is so blown by so by like the graphics and the way it feels to play. And I thought the cutscenes were really cool. Well, also the fact that it was like, this was the first console shooter, right? Like, this is the first time they did a shooter with joysticks. And so that already blew people's minds. Well, I mean, golden nine. Oh, right. That was, yeah. The learning the twin stick controls,

like all of that was, was, I remember being a big learning curve for me and being like super stubborn and being like, I'm going to have to learn how to do this. And I have like this whole sense memory of learning that. And I associate that with Halo. And the weird floaty Halo jump. Like even that, I'm like, this jump might suck ass, but like we've just accepted that it's part of Halo now. And so now it's in destiny for heck's sake. We have these floating jumps in all these, Halo likes, because it was in Halo and so jumps need to be floaty in space. And playing it again, though, it's not, nothing happens in this game. So I don't know. I'm going to keep going, I guess, but I might just skip ahead to Halo 3 because like everybody on the Halo

subreddit has just been like posting totally sick gift. of like replaying other Halo games and I'm like maybe I just shouldn't have started with one because everybody's amped about Halo Infinite and I kind of am but I mostly am just like I just want to feel what it was like to like Halo and I don't know which Halo to play in order to fully remember that I definitely remember feeling that way even when it came out when I played it which was probably like maybe a year later it was like 2001 or two or something when I played it but like the Half Life had come out a few years before that and Half Life is like like on a completely other level as a single player shooter.

Like, it's every level is interesting. And there's, I mean, I guess there's like some repetitive stuff that feels old fashion now, but it basically holds up. And when you play, Hey,ler, right, you're like, are you doing like the cartographer levels? There are these levels where we're just literally in a dark hallway. Yep. And you just keep going. And I remember, I was playing with my friend.

So it was fun because we were like drinking beer and talking. Yeah, you just shoot the shit with your friend. Yeah. But it was just over and over just the flood. Like, just coming at us. And I was like, this has been going on forever. or like, when is something going to happen in this game? Nothing really does happen is the thing.

I don't think anything really happens. But, you know, you put on a podcast and you just shoot some aliens. You just watch your video game sitcom. I get it. That makes sense. Yeah. Anyway, that's what's up with me. What have you been doing, Jason?

So my one more toad is The Last of Us, part two. Cool. Okay, so first of all, we are going to be doing a massive spoiler beans cast that I believe will be published this coming Monday for MaxFund members. So if you are a member, you will get that in your feed. But I did want to talk about it a little bit for all subscribers, not just members, because I know people have been wondering, now that all three of us have finished it, you guys have both talked about your final thoughts.

I will talk about my final thoughts. No spoilers coming here. But kind of overall, man, I don't know why this is controversial to say, but that game is way too long. and I actually think that I actually think it really detracted from my enjoyment of the game and I think I would have liked it a lot more

if it wasn't so friggin long I got to the point where in the second half of the game I won't spoil but like after the first part happens anyone has played it knows exactly what I'm talking about like the second part I turned the difficulty to easy and was just like I'm just going to run through everything

because I just don't feel like doing this anymore like the encounters were so repetitive especially the zombie encounters where I really just did not give a shit about what I was doing. Or like, who needs to stab more zombies and sneak around and fight more quickers? It just got so boring. The tension was all gone. Obviously, there's no tension when I'm playing on easy.

But like, even before then, I just had no interest in it anymore. So I think the story is really interesting. And I'm glad that they made this, like, stab at, ambitious stab at, like, saying something and doing some interesting stuff. And the perspective changes are really fascinating to me. And I was totally hooked by a lot of that stuff. And obviously this game is incredible looking and like the production values are out of this world and it's just a treat to like watch and explore. And I loved some of the quieter moments like the museum and the aquarium and there's a lot of cool stuff in there, a lot of great character moments and interactions.

Seeing that stadium for the first time just like walking up to it and like seeing what they had done with it all was awesome. But in the end, I mean, I just don't really think I liked it. And I think that's mostly because it was so long. Like, I think the story would have just been a lot more interesting to me. And we'll get into, on the Beanskast, when we can actually spoil the story. We can talk a little bit more about, like, what it means and what the developers were trying to say, what the writers were trying to say. But, like, as far as the game itself and just the experience of playing it, because it took so friggin long,

and it just felt so frigging padded. And by the end of, like, the first half, I was like, okay, I'm ready for this to be over. And then there was just an entire second half to it all. And it's just, I think a large part of that is the pacing in that like you set off to play a game and you have a specific goal in mind where it's like, okay, I'm going to get revenge on this person for doing this thing. And then you get to that point and then there's a whole other half of a game left. Right, right, right, yeah. Man, it's just rough to play. Yeah, it, um, a thing that I've noticed, I've been playing a little bit on New Game Plus, probably to talk about it more with you guys to replay the beginning part.

Just because I thought that would be interesting. And once I'd finished it, I do really think, the difficulty settings in this game are pretty incredible. Like, I've been tweaking them a lot and just you mentioning playing it on Easy made me think of this. It's so cool the way that it works. I wish more games had this type of fine-tunable. I hope they do.

I want this to start a trend where games difficulty settings are more like change the game to be the kind of game you want it to be as opposed to just one difficulty setting. Because like I do like playing it or I like playing it on the harder settings. Like I think it works pretty well. But there are things about it that I. don't like as much, it's pretty punishing. So I found that this nice balance, to explain to people who haven't played this game, you can adjust how much damage enemies do, or how easily they spot you, or how much, you know, like your teammate, AI teammates, like how helpful they are, or how

often you find materials. And I've found that a really nice difficulty is actually playing on normal, but with much rarer scavenging materials, because then you're like really at the edges of your inventory in every fight, and it feels much more fraught, because it's pretty tough even on normal. And I really like that about it. Like I think that that feature, it's like one of a lot of accessibility features in this game that are pretty incredible. So like you said, I mean, narrative stuff is its own thing. But the production and the way that it was made, it was made with so much care on so many levels. That's pretty cool. Yeah. So as far as the story, just kind of like broad thoughts, um, Ellie's motivations made no sense to me and reading criticism afterwards helped me feel

less alone about that because the entire time I was wondering like, what the fuck are you doing? I mean, probably my biggest complaint, especially playing it again on New Game Plus. It's even clearer to me that that's a problem that I have with it. Rob's acne and vice, if you're interested in reading a spoiler take, had a really good take on this that helped kind of crystallize a lot of my thoughts. Yeah, we should link that. I like to story a lot. Yeah, which we will put that in the show notes.

I really enjoyed that piece because it just, yeah, it helped elucidate a lot what I was thinking anyway. But yeah, it just, a lot of it bugged me. A lot of the game bugged me. And I think that the lane really ruined everything. But yeah, a lot of that. bug me too. And there is a lot I liked about it. By the end, I did wind up liking Abby. I think it's a really, I think in terms of like the actual dialogue, it's really well written and

interesting and keeps you captivated. Lord Bailey is just great. And she's a great job. Yeah, the performances are really great. The acting is very good. Yeah. I mean, it's, yeah, I've said all these things before and I'm about to say them again on the Beanscast, but the moment to moment dialogue in the game is so great that it makes me so much sadder. the overarching structure of the game does not make any sense to me. Because if you isolate individual moments of the game, I'm enjoying them in a vacuum. But if you put them together in the order that they're in, the pacing does not work and the overall story does not work. And that is said.

So here's a radical idea. I'm going to end on a radical idea. I was just texting with a friend about the game. And I was like, I finished it. Here are my thoughts. And we both agreed on our. radical suggestion, which is that this game would have been better. The Lost of Us Part 2 would have been better with no zombie fights at all.

And like, like kept, you keep the zombie setting because it's important to the story for this to be a post-apocalyptic world or whatever, but like no, no zombie encounters would have been such a better game. It would have still hit the points that they were going for with all the killing and violence and blah. I mean, arguably, but I feel like that's one of my complaints, though, is that this is a game set in a zombie apocalypse that seems thoroughly disinterested in the fact that it's that post-zombie apocalypse.

But that's... Exactly. That's why it shouldn't have been there. It should have just been part of the backdrop. Why not just make a different game then at that point? Like, why even make it a Last of Us game? Yeah, so I say, like, just make it a Western. Because it's a sequel to the first game.

Well, in the first game, the zombies were really important for a lot of reasons. But like, and this is, the whole point of this game is continuing off the final choice that Joel made at the end of the Last of Us one. It's a very spicy take. I would need a little longer to think about that extremely spicy take to know whether I actually think that would work. I think I enjoyed the combat a little bit more than you did, Jason. Yeah, I like it a lot.

Which is very subjective. Yeah, I really did not enjoy it. I actually enjoyed fighting the zombies. And for me, that was almost like a reprieve from some of the emotional. From brutally murdering people. Where I was like, God, I don't want to have to keep killing these humans. That's so funny. For me, it was the opposite. I was so, God.

And every time Ellie dies, like having to watch her get ripped apart, like in some gruesome way, it's just so unpleasant to play. I found all the zombies that's just super unpleasant. At least with the people, this is kind of awful for me to say, but at least of the people, I feel like I know what you're going to say it. I want you to really think twice about saying it. No, what am I? Well, I was going to say, every time you killed one of them, they would shout their names, and I thought that was hilarious and not sad at all.

So that's what I was going to say. What did you think I was going to say? Something like that. Oh, okay. Yeah. Basically, I preferred killing the human beings. Well, with the humans, like it was... I preferred killing the dogs.

That was what I really loved. it when they screamed out in pain when I killed them. It was more that... I know what you're saying. I mean, I'm giving you shit. I know what you're saying. I'm playing Ghost of Tsushima right now, and I actually, I keep thinking about how awful it is

that I'm just slaughtering these humans. That's a whole other point. We can talk about violence in games another time, the brutal slaughtering of humans another time. But just in all seriousness, them screaming out the names became such a punchline for me because it was so repetitive and got to the point where it's funny for me

that it actually made it. help you disassociate. Brighter, like breezier than the zombie. Yeah, I get that. I mean, it wasn't bad, but there were certainly other things that were so serious that I did disassociate a bit and, like, find them funny when I wasn't supposed to. Yeah, again, I would consider that a failing. Like, if your game is so sad that I start, like, removing myself from it and finding it funny, then something, something's gone a little wrong.

That's exactly the point that I'm making. Yep. Yeah. Okay. So why don't we say goodbye here? Of course, we will talk more about The Last of Us part to you. If you are a Max Fun member on Monday, you will, will get the beans cast in your Max Fund bonus subscription feed.

But before we say goodbye, Kirk, what else? Yeah. Well, as listeners may or may not have forgotten since I just recently mentioned it, it is Max Fun Drive, and that is going on. You all know the drill. You heard me talk about it already, so I'm not going to go on super long here. But we really hope that you will consider becoming a member during Max Fun Drive. We really appreciate it.

Everyone at Max Fun really appreciates it. And you can find out more at Maximumfund.org slash join. Plus you'll get a Beanscast. every month. Yeah, come on. You get a beans cast every month, and you can, in honor of Max Fund Drive, come to our stream on Friday.

Yeah, come watch us play Destiny. Infos in the show notes, we're going to play Destiny, it's going to be fun. Pop into chat, ask us a question, we'll just be kind of hanging out, and it'll be a good time for all of us while we deal with social isolation to hang out with one another.

So we'll see you all then. Yay. See you Friday. Yeah, see you Friday. Bye. Triple Click is produced by Jason Schreier, Maddie Myers, and me, Kirk Hamilton. I added and mix the show and also wrote our theme music.

Our show art is by Tom DJ. Triple Click is a proud member of the Maximum Fun Podcast Network. And if you like our show, we hope you'll head over to Maximumfund.org and consider becoming a member. Doing so helps support us and gets you access to an exclusive triple click episode each month. Find us online at triple clickpodcast.com, on Twitter at Triple ClickPod. And send email to triple click at Maximumfund.org. Thanks for listening.

See you next time. Maximumfund.org. Comedy and Culture Artist-owned Audience Supported