Triple Click - Will Ready Player One Ever Be Real?

Episode Date: January 20, 2022

Will the metaverse of Ready Player One ever exist in our world? Has a bad ending ever ruined a video game? And just how does one get into Monster Hunter? This week, Jason, Kirk, and Maddy open up the listener mailbag and answer some of YOUR questions on all sorts of things.(Note: We recorded this episode BEFORE Tuesday's bombshell news that Microsoft is buying Activision!)One More Thing: Kirk: Free GuyMaddy: Death NoteJason: Don’t Look UpLinks:Tips for Suikoden II: https://kotaku.com/tips-for-playing-suikoden-and-suikoden-ii-1670446047Polygon’s honestly very good (no bias) tips for Monster Hunter Rise: https://www.polygon.com/monster-hunter-rise-guide/22348967/weapons-armor-wirebug-wyvern-riding-best-controller-beginners-tips-tricksMH: Rise Longsword tutorial by Arekkz Gaming, whose MH videos are all excellent: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jscDTUOHdw&t=2sSupport 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

What do you do when you have more questions than answers? If there are questions about video games, we got you. Welcome to Triple Click, where we bring the games to you. This week, we open up the listener mailbag, answering questions about the future of the Metaverse, playing games on easy mode, bad endings that ruin the game, and more. I'm Maddie Myers. I'm Jason Shire.

And I'm Kirk Hamilton, and hi there. Hello. It's us. It's us. It's us. It's us. It's another episode. of triple click. Happy January.

Clickety click, click, click, as I always say, every week, except when I don't, which is most of the time. That's your catchphrase. Yeah. Mani Myers, clickety click, click, click, click. If you think that catchphrase owns and you've thought that every single time I've said it,

which has been more times than I could possibly count, definitely not just the ones, you might, you might want to think about supporting the show by becoming a max fun member. from our good old network Maximum Fun and if you went to Maximumfund.org slash join you could become a member

and you would get a monthly bonus episode and this month it'd be it feel like you get an extra one because we released a beans cast about the Matrix Resurrections and all three prior Matrix movies kind of early, a little bit early on the January beans cast this month.

A little bit of early beans. Yeah just because you know people are talking Matrix already. We just wanted to get our take out there. Well, it's hot, hot beans on the fire, but there's so many other beans in the backlog. And, yeah, so maximum fun.org slash join. You should check it out.

Check out some bonus odes. And one other bit of really cool info. Can't wait for this. We are all playing Sweetcoated to, because some of us, two of us, me and Kirk, lost a bet, to one, Mr. Jason Shrub, And so we are going to get through the first chunk of the game for our February 17th episode.

And the first chunk, Jason, do you want to describe what you would characterize as the first chunk of Sweet Kodin 2 for the listeners who are playing along? Yeah. So a couple of things. First of all, I'm actually, I'm going to write up like a brief guide with some tips and also info on the missable characters, characters that you have to recruit at specific times or else you can never get them. Maybe you shouldn't call them missable characters because that makes it sound like they can be. missed, but you mean the opposite, correct? Like characters that you don't want to miss by accident. No, I mean miscible characters in that you can miss them as opposed to everything else. You can go and get any time you watch. Missible is a warning here. It's not something that's saying

you have permission to miss them. It's not miscible as a permission. It's miscible as a cautionary, cautionary adjective. You could call them miss risks, but it doesn't really roll off the tongueway as well. I like that. That sounds really hard to say. A couple of things. I'll be putting together a brief guide and tips for you guys. And I'll probably drop it in the Discord. We have a great little Discord channel where we're talking about So you couldn't and I'll try to figure out if I can get it in the show notes at some point. But there's also, I already actually did one for Kataku,

which I will put in the show notes a while back. It's just a little bit dated because it's from 2014. But yeah, so we will be playing up until at least the point where you got your own castle. Spoilers, you get your own castle in this game. In real life too, so I'm looking forward to that. You mail you one. It's about the first I don't know, eight hours

depending how fast you play and that's what we will be talking about. Jason claimed before the call he could get there in two hours so how hard could it be? That's what I'm telling myself in the mirror every day. Maddie, there's actually a side quest in this game that you can

only get if you get to a certain point with under 12 hours. on your play clock. So it's actually you can, you can zip through this game. But anyway, so you go into Triple Play Part 1, February 17th,

that's when we will start kicking off our video game club for the year playing the best JRPG ever made. Very exciting. So without further ado, let's get to this week's episode, shall we? Let's. Yeah, let's do it.

We shall. This week, we are opening up the old listener question bag. We got a giant bag. Full of question. Listener question bag. Yeah, it's not a mail bag. Because mail, that's out of date.

This is electronic mail we're talking about here. We were trying to get a mail bag, but then U.S. Postal Service Commissioner Louis Louis DeJoy destroyed the USB. So we can't get a mailbag anymore. That's the only reason we use an email address for this. It's just because of the USPS struggles. Otherwise, we would have a PO box. No, I have a bag full of mail.

You guys can see it on camera, of course. It has, for some reason, it has a dollar sign, like a dollar figure on the front. Most bags just have a dollar sign on them. Well, yeah. And it only has like five emails printed out, like really specifically selected ones. Jason's printer ran out of ink. The truth is, I sold this bag from the bank, and I'm just going to see it. All right, let's get to it.

We have lots of burning questions that got through. As always, you can reach us with your own questions at triple click at maximum fund.org. we can't respond to every single email we get but we do do our best to read every single one and every single question goes in our in our bag in fact a couple of these questions that I have pulled out for us today are two years old they're from 2020 so uh it is even if you don't get your question read uh quickly it might you might get a read a couple years from now so never stop listening to this podcast you just got to stick with you can't if you've ever emailed us you're on the hook now

It's the truth. Bing! Hello, everybody. It's Kirk here. I am editing the episode on Tuesday, January 18th, and I just wanted to note that we recorded this episode a little bit earlier this week. We recorded it before the weekend, actually, because Jason Schreier was traveling, which means that we recorded this before the absolute whopper of a news story hit

that Microsoft purchased Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion, which is pretty wild. I'm, you know, probably the least qualified of the three. of us to talk about industry, punditry and analysis. But even I know that is a really big purchase. Good Lord. So anyways, we're not going to talk about it on this episode, but we'll probably discuss it some next week. And I just wanted to acknowledge that that is, you know, like the biggest games industry news story of the year and maybe ever. And I didn't want people to listen and think, why aren't they talking about this huge thing that happened. So that's why we recorded it before that happened, but we will probably discuss it next week. All right, back to the show.

Bing. Maddie, why don't you go first and read us this first one? Sure. So Aaron writes, Do you think we will ever see VR and haptic accessories approaching the level of ready player one in our lifetime? Sorry I used that shitty book and movie as a reference, but it's the best example of what I'm driving at. I just turned 40 last week and my impending mortality has me thinking of things that I may never experience. I'm just going to pause and say, I guess Aaron's turning 42 this year. Happy birthday to Aaron.

Yeah, this is turned 20, 20. Anyway, Aaron continues. Real immersive, outstanding VR is one of those things. Will we get HD visuals with no cords or our own hands and fingers in our games and 360-degree treadmills in the next 30 years? Can I spend my sunset years in a nursing home lost in a believable virtual world? I think it'd be pretty funny if that technology came to fruition in 20 years or so, but all you could play on it was Skyrim, and it's just still Skyrim.

That would still be great, though, is the, thing, you know, wouldn't be that bad. Skyrim 50th anniversary. That would be cool. I've played Skyrim in VR. It's pretty good. Yeah, I do think, well, let me think. How to answer this question.

It's kind of funny because this question is from two years ago, and some of this technology has already kind of happened in that the Oculus Quest, the Quest 2, is playable wirelessly from a gaming PC, and they've added the ability to do hand tracking just with that kind of cheap or inexpensive heads. set. They just announced PSVR2, which is very powerful from when I gather from the specs. There's all these, like, you know, the really powerful ones like the Valve Index are pretty mighty. They can do a lot of stuff. And of course, Facebook has since announced that they're a Metaverse company and Investors. Right. Right. So in 30 years, I mean, 30 years ago, it was

1992. So, like, yeah, I think in 30 years, a lot of stuff is going to happen. even though I think that our vision of what it's going to look like is incomplete because it always is. We never really know what's going to happen in 30 years. And I think thinking of it as in terms of like VR like today, but better, like isn't actually how it's going to be, right? Because that's never how it is. So I'm not, you know, a sci-fi author and I don't quite have the imagination to think of what it will look like. But I do, you know, I've been around long enough to know that it will probably just be very different. And I do think that some of the stuff in Ready Player 1, like for all of its faults as a story, it is a very enthusiastic envisioning of like what really incredible virtual reality could be like.

But there are these sort of questions that it raises that it doesn't really answer. There are logistical questions, especially in that movie, which I actually think is kind of, it's like a B minus, but it's sort of a fun movie. But like there are questions in that movie when you're watching, you're like, wait a minute, what? Like, because they're just, you'll see them. One of the funniest scenes in that movie is when there's this epic war going on. Did the two of you see this movie? No, but I did see the truth. So I'm familiar with the epic war.

This is Steven Spielberg's, you know, adaptation of this book. And there's a scene, yeah, the book is from around then the movie is only a few years old. Yeah, I think the book is 2011. That's why that year is in my head. And it's, there's just a part in it, like near the end where there's a huge war happening. and all of these people are like fighting on both sides and the actual battle is like sweet because it's like Freddie Kruger and the Iron Giant

and you know everybody's dressed up as their favorite whatever and they're all doing battle and it's kind of like Fortnite but like it looks super vivid and real because it's CG movie and then it just cuts to like the real world and it really kind of feels like for a minute the movie is just making fun of everybody because it shows them all and they're all like wearing their headsets

and they're like just like in their offices like waving around looking like you do when you play VR looking like dorks And then it cuts back to the action and it's this super exciting action. But it raises all these questions of like, okay, but wait a minute, how are they moving around through the space? Because they're sitting in their offices and yet in the game they're like jumping around hundreds of feet. So there's like a lot of sort of geographic and tracking questions that are raised and never answered. And I don't really know, you know, like when Aaron asked about 360 degree treadmills, I've used those.

Those exist. Like they would always be demoing them at GDC like back when VR was first. coming out whenever that was five or six years ago. And they're kind of clunky and they don't really work. And then it's like, okay, well, can you hang yourself up in like a Vitruvian man gyroscope where you're like moving things? I don't know. Like or haptic suits where there's resistance so it can like simulate walking and, you know,

I don't know. There's a scene in Ready Player 1 where a guy gets kicked in the crotch and his suit like kicks him in the crotch because they're simulating it. And I'm like, I don't think I would want that technology. Yeah, I feel like you could just put out that part of the suit so that that wouldn't be a concern for you. Yeah, remove the boot to the crotch feature. Yeah, maybe like, yeah, safety on the, on the crotch region of the suit.

But maybe that's considered cheating and it's like immoral to cut out the part of your crotch and you have to just be ethical in online games and just accept whomever might kick you. What if you just move your body, like, twist your torso a little bit so you can't really get kicked in the car. It depends on the server that you're on. You can go on the, like, full crotch vulnerability servers. I mean, we joke, but like, I do feel like that is the reality of 30 years, is that it's like just weird stuff, sex stuff we can't even imagine, but also like weird arguments like about like how you can have advertising or like political campaigns in VR.

Like I feel like we've already seen that unfold in like Fortnite and Animal Crossing and Second Life it's been going on for years. Like there's real estate agents that work in Second Life and sell virtual spaces and like that whole labor of virtual worlds thing is so. fascinating to me. It is absolutely not what Ready Player One is about. Ready Player One's about the fantasy of it all, but I think that's what the future of it looks like is much more weird, mundane problems and drama, you know? Yeah. Ready Player One's side, I mean, this is, we don't need to get sidetracked on Ready Player One, but it does sidestep a lot of the most interesting questions about this stuff by making the Oasis is what it was, it's called the metaverse in that fictional world, is this like idyllic place created by this guy who like kept it totally free from

influence and advertising. So it's just like, we're just going to make this as simple as possible so we can just tell this hero's story. We're actually, like, right, like, the reality is going to be way more complicated. Can I raise a point related to something else that Aaron mentioned, which is just playing video games as we get older. As a person now in my 40s, I think about this more and more. And, like, I'm skeptical.

Like, I've thought about this in the past. I've thought, man, it's going to be cool when I'm old because I can just, like, play video games in the retirement home. and that'll be sweet. But then I think about how bad video games are with accessibility in general and how as you get older your body does deteriorate in these ways and things that were easy for you to do when you were younger get harder. You know, I've noticed tendon stuff with my hands when I'm playing

and I'm having stuff. I'm playing, you know, like a video game with a lot of QTEs in it where you have to tap the button. And I really like won't do it with my thumb anymore because I need to like preserve my thumb for playing guitar because that alone hurts it. And I'm like tapping it with my index finger and just realizing that a lot of these games aren't very accessible. And I have my doubts that VR is going to be appropriately accessible for older people by the time we're older and we want to be doing it.

It could well be that it's this kind of frustrating thing where it's like, well, we could be doing it, but it's just like not really that easy to use. Well, I guess the fantasy is that it would be easy to use. And it's just you put a headset on and like, I mean, the connect might be the closest piece of. technology we've seen to what the future could look like, but that has become something else entirely. And didn't really have a super effective use for

games, but maybe when it comes to the metaverse, maybe we could see more stuff like that popping up. I don't know. I tend to actually agree with your one of your earlier points, Kirk, where you feel like we're just going into this blind and we just don't even know what we don't know about what the future could

look like. I was just thinking about how in 2003, when I got my first cell phone, like my little flip phone thing, and I was using it to like text people in high school and stuff and it was the coolest thing ever. It never even occurred to me that like, oh man, I wish I could have email and internet on this thing. But then along comes the iPhone and that's the most revolutionary device of the century. And that just changes everything. And a camera everywhere. Right. Everything. Everything. Camera internet. Everything. Every single person has a camera and the internet and the internet. And

instant social media ways to share everything they see. So that just wouldn't have even been something I would have fantasized about at the time. And I think sometimes like even the most imaginative sci-fi writers aren't really, like can't really fathom what the pace of technology is going to look like and what the future is going to look like. So yeah, I don't know. I don't really think that like the ready player one existence is what it's going to be. And then again, I also think that like a lot of this metaverse talk is people finding solutions to problems that don't really exist as opposed to finding these tools that like wow solve problems that we didn't even know we had and I think like

Facebook going all in on this idea of the metaverse is just like very unappealing to a lot of people like I don't think a lot of people want to go into a world where they're like in VR all day in the metaverse taking meetings from their virtual offices yeah yeah I don't really want to right I think that if you if you think of it in terms of of of it being like this VR world that we're all sort of imagining a shared VR space, that maybe it's not something that people want. I can see Facebook just thinking, okay, this area is ripe for the kind of invention that is like an iPhone, like for something that is the thing that we don't realize we want.

And so we're just going to kind of start doing development in it because this kind of a virtual space could lead to whatever it is, you know, whatever the thing is that in 10 years, we're like, oh, yeah, like when Facebook talked about, meta and the metaverse, we were like, oh, I don't want that, but we hadn't thought of X thing that's so-and-so introduced. That's something, it's like, oh, this is sweet. Like, everybody would want to do this. And that does seem kind of possible with this technology.

All right. Let's keep going. Kirk, you want to take this next one? Sure. This comes from Corso 1212. Corzo writes, during quarantine, I found myself returning to a lot of games, particularly RPGs, that I either didn't like the first time around or never previously finished. One main thing I've been doing differently, however, is I've been setting the games on Easy.

Not only have I been able to play through and experience more games this way, my enjoyment of them has changed for the better as well. A younger version of me would never dream of this, but now I'm finding more and more that I start new games on Easy while leaving the higher difficulties for replays or a series I'm already familiar with. I'm curious how you all view difficulty settings. Has your opinion about Easy Mode changed over the years? Have you ever returned to a game and played it on a lower setting

and found that you enjoy it more that way and why do we apply guilt and shame into dropping the difficulty to get through particularly challenging parts? I have done this when I hate a game and have to play it, or like I hate a part of a game and want to play through it. I was playing, do you guys remember that game

13 Sentinels that I talked about a couple years ago? Yes, yeah. I benefited from easy. Yeah, so that was a game where like the visual novel, there was a visual novel component, and then an RTS component, and the visual novel part was what was really, appealing about the game. The RTS part super sucked. And so I said that to easy and just blazed through

it because it was terrible. And I've also done that with like games I was reviewing where I was just like I don't want to play any more of this. I'm going to drop it to easy. Yeah, I've done that too. I've even done it for this show for Guardians of the Galaxy. I dropped it to easy to get further in the story because I was like, I want to get further in this game. I want to know what happens. But I'm not enjoying the combat. It's really repetitive. The boss fights. I didn't find fun in that game. I don't need to go on and on, but like it's a situation where, you know, I'm trying to play more of something. And especially when I'm editing stories about at work about games that have stories, it can be useful to just play through something and see everything. And there's something different about playing through something as opposed to just watching the cutscenes online too, because then at least I have some sense of how the game works, even if I'm playing the easiest possible version of it.

I'm trying to remember if I knocked Halo down to Easy at various points to get through parts of it. that game wasn't too hard for me, so possibly not. But I've done things like that, especially if I'm covering something for work or if I just want to get through it. And I don't have shame about it just to speak to the part of Corsos email about that. I used to have shame about it as well when I was younger. I couldn't have ever imagined doing that. I never would have done it even for games I was reviewing professionally early in my career. I would be playing everything at the very least on normal or hard.

and that was like I would be priding myself on that, which now I'm like, what the fuck was I do? Like what? But also back then, games did not often include the option that is almost standard now, which is changing the difficulty setting at any time. And like 10 years ago, even five years ago, I feel like it was relatively uncommon for that to be an option. And nowadays you can flip it around and that rules.

Like I love that that's standard now. And it makes it less of an intense decision at the beginning of a, game where you're like, am I normal, quote unquote? What is normal? Who can truly say what I'm going to feel about this video game when I'm 10 hours in? And that's nice. I like that. Yeah, there is the thing when you're a game reviewer and the way it especially used to be where you feel this sort of pressure where if you didn't play it on hard or whatever, if you're not good at the game, then people are going to question your opinion on it. And then the more established, at least the more established I became, the less I cared because I was like, whatever, man.

I'm good at this. I know what I'm doing. People know to trust me. Two games that I... I'd be returnal in seven dead. Exactly. Well, Kirk's playing everything on very hard. So, like, for him, it's like bumping it down the hard.

Right. For him, it's dropping it to hard. There are games that I like that are hard, that I enjoy the difficulty. Though a game like Guardians of the Galaxy is a great example of a game where it's like, I just don't think this is all that fun. I don't like the way that it's designed that much. So who cares, I like the story. And there are games that I kick it down to easy because I think it actually makes the game

work better narratively and just a more fun experience. Two examples are the Wolfenstein series, machine games, Wolfenstein games, especially the New Order. That game is really fun on Easy, where if you play it on normal, it's kind of weird. BJ Blascovitz is kind of squishy on normal. You can't actually just run into a room and just like destroy everybody in the way that the game

kind of wants you to, but you never really can. You're taking cover a lot in that game because you get killed pretty quickly. And it's fun. I mean, it's like a great, it's well designed, but playing it on easy. You're just this Nazi murder machine, and it's fun. And I actually have found that is true of the Doom games, the newer Doom games as well. Those games are really fun on the harder level.

I mean, I liked 2016 more than the whatever the sequel is called, though I gather the sequel is actually really good on hard difficulties if you're good at it because it's so complex. But it's pretty fun to play those games on easy because you're just the Doom Slayer. You just are like, whatever, man. I'm just going to blast through these levels. And there's such a fun exploration component to those games and finding all the little. hidden secrets in every level. It just changes the focus of the game, and it actually makes combat really fun. So I think that some games really benefit from that, too.

And I agree, Maddie, I really like that games make it possible to change the difficulty. And I like when games don't tie, even achievements to that because I don't care about achievements, but there's still just something, it's a vestige of that, like, well, if you kick it down to normal, you can't get the special achievement because you're a quitter, and I don't like that. So I appreciate when they're just like, whatever, do whatever you want, play however you want. It's fine. Yeah, no more guilt and shame for changing the difficulty. Please, yes.

We have enough of that in the rest of our lives. Even the concept, even the way that we, the verbiage we use here, the language we use here to describe like knocking it down to a lower difficulty, a lower difficulty. Like even that is kind of like it has this interesting. Higher and lower. We should say knocking it down to a better difficulty. I played it on the worst difficulty. Yeah, as opposed to the best one, the one that feels. feels the best. Yeah, that's how I like to play games.

Let's keep going. I'll read this next one. This is from Kath. Kath says, I was listening to your beans cast about the MCU for Max Fun members. Hint hint to any other listener. And Jason, and Jason didn't like the Falcon and the Winter Soldier because of its ending made me think about video games. I adored until the end. And then it soured the experience. So here's my question for you. Do you have the same experience with any other games? games, either AAA or indie, where you adored the story, but the ending was not a good experience and gave you a bad memory of it. Yes, absolutely. I will answer this because I have one that comes to mind immediately. Kirk, do you know what I'm thinking of? Yes. Pray, the video game

pray, which is the game I adored until the ending and really the last chunk of the game, the last act, the last quarter of the game where suddenly it turns from a game where you can like approach every problem in any way you want and sneak around and be stealthy and hack and just do things in whatever way you want to like this enemy horde swarming at you like you have to you have to fight them to survive type of game and then the ending itself has such a stupid twist that I just like said are you kidding me at my screen after I saw that but yeah that whole last chunk of the game really soured what was otherwise an incredible experience for me. I have a bunch. Like I talked about it on the show a bit, but Death Loop was one where

we talked about the pre-ending as well. I didn't like the twist in Death Loop. I wrote about it at Polygon. I will not spoil the twist here, but I just, I didn't think it worked. And then it kind of, it was tough because I enjoyed so much about like the first 90% of that game. And I think I put it on my honorable mention in our in our Games of the Year episode, because I still thought a lot of it was really cool. But I was very disappointed in the ending. and it made me a lot less excited about like the prospect of DLC and other stories in that world because I was just like, I don't know about this. But another example is Spider-Man Miles Morales.

The ending really didn't work for me. And I maybe it'll be out by the time we publish this. I don't know. I wrote an essay about why I didn't like the ending of that game literally a year ago and never published it. And I keep meaning to put it up. Maybe people could peer pressure me end up putting it up. You should because I want to read it just because I remember thinking the story to that game was pretty good, and I'm very interested in reading your take. The end just didn't work for me for a bunch of reasons, and everything up to that I really liked.

But there were like a couple specific plot choices they made at the end that I didn't like. I guess I'm kind of remembering how it ended, and I can see that. I'm sure if you read the essay, you'd be like, oh, right. And then you'd agree with me 100%. Because, like, I'm so smart and you would like be totally convinced on there. No, I think I would be, and I don't remember. The story for that game kind of went in, when here and out the other. It's also fine if people love the ending.

I could see how someone would, I mean, it's, I don't know, I'm answering Cass question. And then the other one that's like an obvious one and doesn't quite fit Kath's question, but comes to mind is Biashok Infinite, where I feel like more just the first half of that game has some really strong ideas and some really cool stuff that it introduces about, like, how Elizabeth's tears through reality work. And then it just really goes off the rails. And like, especially the ending, I was like, what is going on here? Which again, I will not spoil some of the twists in that game just in case there's a listener out there who wants to give it a shot.

But, oh boy, some of those twists. Yeah. No thank you. It's a funny one that was one of that I was going to say as well because it isn't just like the ending itself, which is a lot to keep track up to begin with. But it's right. It's just the way that the game kind of spirals toward it, which is I would also say a complaint. I would level at The Last of Us part, too, at least for me, it was a game that really starts strong and seems to be very,

very compelling and interesting and well put together. And then as it just keeps going and going and going, and eventually it's like, this should have ended already. I mean, the first Bioshock kind of feels that way, too, where it actually would have had a sensational ending if it had just ended, you know, upon your first meeting with that very important character and a big reveal. And then, of course, there's this extra ending that doesn't ruin the game.

I'm not really like the game. game or the ending, sorry, ruined the thing for me kind of a person, especially with video games. Though, I mean, I'm sure there are examples, but a lot of times I'm like, you know, I really liked this game, like Death Loop, didn't love the ending, but like I've loved this game, so I don't really care. And a lot of times actually, I'm kind of, I'll feel the other way, I'm just seeing Horizon Zero Dawn as in the later question. And that's a game where that just comes to mind as a game where it didn't need to have a good ending. I kind of didn't expected to. And then I thought I had a really lovely great ending. And I was like, so pleasantly

surprised by the ending that it actually really sealed the game together for me as a much greater experience than I think I had expected going in. I've actually been thinking about that ending a lot recently because the new one is about to come out and that game ends with like some cool teases for like what could be to come. But I'm also like, how are they going to follow it up? Because I really liked the ending. So I feel like they have a challenge there, which is following up that story and I'm excited to see what they do. But yeah, that's almost like the opposite problem where I agree. I really like the ending so much that it's like, oh, we're going to do this again? Oh, okay. We're back. All right. I can't pull that magic trick twice. So they've got to do

something new. Yeah. Yeah. Let's keep going. Maddie. You want to read this next one? Sure. So Tom writes, big fan of the show. Got a question. Thanks so much, Tom. Should have skipped that part. Tom continues. How do you get back into a complex game that you played some of, but then set aside? Over the holidays, I've been trying to resume some games that I played partway through earlier in the year, like Death Loop and Horizon Zero Dawn, but in both cases, I found returning to the game overwhelming and confusing. I'd forgotten the story points, the characters, the controls, and the mechanics. Though games sometimes have tutorial information in the menus to refresh your memory or quest logs where you can recap the story, they're rarely enough to help you properly get to grips with a game again.

In the case of Death Loop, I think I'm simply too confused and I'm not sure I'll pick it up again. Do you guys have any rituals or tricks to get back into games that you've left by the wayside? Yeah, I do. My ritual is I load it up, I stare at it, and then I turn it off. Do you do that enough times? Yeah, eventually you just kind of threw osmosis, you remember it, and it's as though you never left. This happens to me all the time. I wrote this article for Kotaku forever ago about Rise of the Tomb Raider because I had this happened to me where I had set the game down and then picked it back up.

and it was right before one of those sort of uncharted-esque, like QTE sequences, where Lara has to run across a bunch of collapsing things. And she runs and you jump and you run and it's collapsing. And then the last jump is too far. And you have to throw your grappling hook. And like it, because there's like a little white, you know, it's like whatever, the grappling hook areas are special. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

There's a little sparkly doorway that you have to enter. A grappling hook region. And I just didn't remember because I hadn't played. did in a while. So I just, I played through the sequence like 15 times and she just kept dying on these like spikes too because that game has like brutal death animations. And I was like, what is, what am I missing? And I finally went and like scroll around and like a let's play on YouTube until I found it. I was like, oh, the crampling hook. Right. So I've had this happen a lot. I don't know there's a good answer for it. This man, um, death loop is probably really tough to get

back into. God of war this happened to me recently. I was like, I'm going to play that on PS5 at 60 frames per second in my new game plus. And it's like all these combos are unlocked in combat. And I was like, how does what is, how do I play this? And I kind of just couldn't get back in the rhythm. That happened to me too, Kirk. And I keep thinking about starting a new game without new game plus. Right.

I think the new game plus, yes, I think that would. And I think that actually that is the advice that I would give to Tom is. If you want to get back into the game, don't start over, just start over and start from the beginning. Keep your save where it is. But I would say play the first hour of the game again. Like, if you really want to play it, you know, if you're like, damn, I think I would have liked this, but I've kind of lost the groove. If you play the first hour again, you'll probably play through the tutorials, kind of get back in the zone.

Remember what's going on with the story. You'll be like, okay, I kind of remember this now. And then try loading up your save that's farther along, and that'll probably help. That's a good idea. That's good advice. Yeah, I like that. I find that it's just really hard to go back to one of these games after you've lost your momentum. And that's why I, and I'm sure many of the listeners out there,

have just like an entire library of unfinished games because you you start playing something, you're into it, you play 10, 15 hours of it, and then something else comes along that you're really excited about and so you move on to that and you just never go back. And then you have that little voice inside your head that's like, hey, I really liked playing such and such. Tales of a Rise. I should go and play more of that, but you just never do. Well, at least with Horizon Zero Dawn, you could set it to easy and then you could switch it back also. Just saying, Well, with Horizon Zero Done, it helps if you remember that you can actually slow down time. Oh, my God.

Don't remind me. Don't remind me. But actually, for real, though, it is nice that you can slow down time. That's true. That's kind of like the equivalent of Jason not sprinting in half-life. Maddie not remembering about slow-mo. No, I don't think it's the equivalent. We all have our face.

Similar. Yes, yes, absolutely. Kirk, you can take this next one. All right. This comes from Peter. Peter writes, hello, Kirk, Maddie, and Jason. Hi, Peter. Peter writes, I was talking to a friend the other day about gaming terminology that people use, and that often makes no sense.

I personally find the word campaign irritating when used to describe a game's story mode. To my mind, that word does not fit there. When I hear campaign, I picture someone holding up protest signs or trying to get voted into local government. That's very civic-minded of you, Peter. Peter writes, I've got others as well, but I'm interested to see if there are any accepted gaming terms that any of you find annoying or ill-fitting. I have a few. I wrote down a few. I love this question.

I have so many. It's amazing. I just want to say it's so funny that Peter thinks that when hearing the word campaign because I don't. I instead think of a military campaign every single time. Which is where it comes from. Correct. But it's now in so many games that don't have anything to do with the military. So I think of it as a call of duty thing because I think that maybe the game that popularized it

are one of the first iterations of the word campaign where it makes sense, I guess, even though it's really corny. But anytime it's in like, I don't know, like if I were talking about like the chickery campaign, like that would sound absurd for a game. Right. No, it is kind of cruel. It's only really used when specifying like versus multiplayer. Like I'm playing a campaign versus. So it has to be a game that has a multiplayer mode that is prominent in some way. So like the Halo campaign, the Call Duty campaign. You wouldn't say the Chickory campaign because it doesn't have a multiplayer. It's true. There should be a multiplayer for chicory though. That would be awesome. But anyway. It is, it's just a weird one because it could just be called the story mode. And the fact that it's called the campaign really is just a call of dutyism because it's like, well, you're playing through the whatever military campaign of World War II Eastern Front or something. And it's not applicable or it just, it is a very odd one. I was thinking about beat, which I think is one that we use with video games, like beating a video game.

And Maddie, I know that you're, I wanted to ask you. I know you're very fond of using the term beat. I think you do it. Because the listeners have pointed out that I say it even in, situations where it makes no sense to refer to a game. I feel like you kind of do it on purpose, right? Like it's a little bit arch the way that you use it. Oh, no, really?

I was kind of assumed it was a little ironic. That's very kind of you to assume that. Yeah, no, I've been doing it ironically. I've been using this stupid term for my entire life as a bit, and it's definitely not just a bad habit I'm skill in. Yeah, you'll use it for like, I don't know, like life is strange. You'll be like, I beat life is strange. It's like, did you beat the game really?

Yeah, I did. Maddie, every single negative quality, you should. just say is a bit. I'm doing it. It's a joke. Every single. Me like putting off cleaning the bathroom for just another week more. It's like a fun.

It's ironic. Like, who would expect that of me? Yeah. Okay. Can I give you guys some terms that I hate to death? Okay. One is going gold because it doesn't make sense anymore. So I hate it when anybody uses it.

It doesn't, it doesn't even. In today's modern day, like the concept of printing a dick version doesn't even. Especially given how unfinished games are when they go gold. Yeah. Two is the word engine, which has become so skewed as to have lost all meaning. And it's just using so many different. How do you feel about gameplay, by the way? Because that one is one that I'm like, if I can get a writer to use any other word, I will make them.

There are some very few cases where I will allow gameplay. But most of the time people say it when they just mean game. game or I did something? Like how some other verb can go there. Kind of a way of distinguishing between the thing you do versus the story you are told, but also like a less relevant distinction. It's a useful concept, but there is certainly better language you can use than game. And then the one other one, this is more of a game criticism thing,

but really I see it a lot in game conversations, is the word bombastic, which nobody knows what this means. Jason's valid pet pee. Oh, is that the one people are using? Okay, so the word bombastic, what the word bombastic actually means is speaking in flowery tones. It's like what you would use to describe a politician like using high-flutin language, like saying things that mean nothing, puffery, essentially. The way it's used in the video game world is to mean the explosive. The word bombastic has absolutely nothing to do with explosions or cinematics or anything. It's too late, man.

Do you get mad at people who say literally? Is this like that for you? No, no, no, no, no. I believe, no, Maddie, I believe very strongly, actually, that language evolves and language changes and, like, words change meaning. But Bumbastic, like, there's absolutely no, it's only, like, game critics that use it to describe, like, the latest Call of Duty. Like, this, this Call of Duty trailer is Bumbastic. I feel like I've seen some Marvel movies called Bombastic at this point. It's not just game people.

It's, okay. It's not like, it's not so broadly used in a way that, like, literally is where it can be adopted to another. use. It's just people using it wrong. Like, it's not a word that should fit there. But, okay, let me challenge you on that because I understand that they're using it incorrectly and that is not the definition. However, it sounds so right that you could almost honestly make an argument that because the word bomb bast is so evocative of explosions, that it could just change to mean that, even though I understand your complaint. It's got the word bomb in it right at the beginning and then it's like ass which is like bomb blast it's like you're saying bomblastic you're saying that and and that's what it means maybe we should invent a new word that is bomblastic and that

word means explosive uh-huh the actual problem is that in 1995 the musical artist shaggy released his third studio album boombastic which included a song called bombastic about uh mr bombastic which really is what started this whole Right. Noted game critic Shaggy Because as Jason said before The only people who make this mistake are game critics And we can all agree that's true So that's really where the problem originated

It's interesting we're going back to that. So now is the song Mr. Bombastic About a gentleman who regularly exaggerates And speaks using overly Highfaluton language Flowery language? No, it is about a woman who calls Shaggy, the narrator of the song, Mr. Bombastic, Mr. Boombastic.

That can mean anything. Right. Is he saying that's a cool thing to be called, or is she being like, dude, you're so bombastic, chill. Shaggy doesn't know what the word means, but she actually was criticizing his manner. There's some self-criticism. You have to do some artistic interpretation here,

but I can read you a couple of lyrics. Boombastic, tell me fantastic. touch me on my back she called Mr. Romantic. Tell me fantastic. I'm bum bad. You get the gist of it. It's kind of a fun word to rhyme with. I get where Shaggy's coming from.

Yeah, it's a fun word to use. It's a fun word. I understand why people misuse it. It's a good word. It should mean explosive. I'm sure I've misused it. And I have no regrets. That's my stance on this.

I never have because Jason has been telling me about this for like seven years. And I've internalized it. Well, Kirk, you are the reason why I say, cliched instead of cliche which I don't know why I'm still doing it because it's in dictionaries now like I need to move on but like you told me that one early on and like cliched

is the adjective form of cliche and I still I still fix that every time for no reason I think no reason there's nothing wrong with being correct even if love to be a little bit of a pettit about something really specific it can be fun you're a professional editor you should be it's your prerogative

all right let's let's squeeze in one little more bombastic question before we go. Ryan says, Hi, Triple Glick, I was wondering if you could do a monster hunter episode. I've never played any of the games, but I keep hearing about how great they are

and people really seem to enjoy them. Any advice for newcomers of the franchise would be a plus. Well, we are not going to do a monster hunter episode. Well, that's a grand proclamation. Kirk can put it as his bet game at some point and force us to do one. That would be tough. No, because I wouldn't make you play a game that's like 100 hours. But Kirk can give us some advice.

on how to get into Monster Hunter. Yeah, give us some advice. So I can give Ryan some advice as someone who was not into Monster Hunter and then became into Monster Hunter with World. And this is especially applicable I bet because RISE is now out on PC and Rise is really, really good. Monster Hunter Rise, which was on Switch before and is fantastic on Switch. I would prefer playing it on Switch because it's great on Switch, but it is also on PC now. I'm sure some people are seeing it and thinking, hmm, kind of want to play that, especially I'm sure it'll be on Steam Sale later this year. So my advice is, is this is a game that becomes very, very fun once you know how it works.

So if you want to get into it, there is always a demo. Download the demo, but the demo isn't really going to sell you because it's going to throw you into the deep end and you're just going to go fight a monster. And you'll be like, I'm like, this sucks. Like I have this sword, but it's so slow. And I don't, this combat is so weird and hard and I feel so like lethargic and what the hell. So you got to put a little bit of work in. So, you know, it is a game where like you have to learn a few things before you will appreciate.

it, but then once you do that, it becomes very fun to, like, learn more. So my advice would be there are some tutorial videos. Pick a weapon, like the long sword. It's a really cool one, especially in Rise. It has a super cool moveset. And you're going to want to learn just the basic combos of that weapon. And to do that, watch a YouTube video. There are some that I watched.

I'll link, I forget the name of the YouTube channel right now, but I'll link this in the show notes. Just watch the long sword video. It's like 10 minutes, and the guy will just go through all the different combos you can do, and then just go to the training room and, like, do those for a little while. And also, I will say to shout out Maddie's publication, that Russ Frustick, our friend from the besties, got into Monster Hunter Rise, and that was his first one. And he wrote some posts for Polygon that are very helpful about, like, how to get into.

I think maybe Ryan Gilliam also wrote some, but you guys have some good tips posts. Oh, yeah. There's some very useful Monster Rise post from Ryan and Russ. You want to link a couple in the show notes? Yeah, we'll link those in the show notes as well. And I would say, like, just if you can get yourself into the headspace to do a little bit of at work up front and like learn that stuff. The game is so fun once you learn just kind of the basics of one weapon and then maybe

some wirebug tricks, all just kind of button combos and stuff. And then you'll kind of go from there, start customizing your inventory, whatever, and then you kind of get into it. But that's the thing is getting over that first hump. Cool. Cool. All right. On that note, thank you again to everyone who wrote in questions and to all the questions

that we read today. Let's take a break. And then we will be back with one more thing. I'm John Moe. My show Depresh Mode is all about mental health. And this week, I talk with Amanda Knox. She spent four years in an Italian prison for a murder she didn't commit. That's a lot of trauma. And she's okay talking about it. If I touch on something that you'd rather not get into, just say so will cut the whole exchange out. But it also seems like you're pretty open about a lot of things. Yeah, yeah. I am having trouble imagining anything that you could talk to me about. I know. I know. What are we going to throw Amanda Knott's with? Depress Mode with John Moe, only on maximum fun. For over a decade, Max FunCon has been an incredible weekend of learning, connecting,

and laughing with folks in the Max Fun community. And, if all goes according to plan, the last regularly scheduled Max FunCon will take place in Lake Arrowhead from June 3rd to June 5th, 2022. We have a very limited number of tickets remaining. To make them available to the maximum number of people, we'll be opening our waitlist for tickets on January 23rd at 5 p.m. Pacific. That'll be your chance to be first in line to purchase tickets, and we'll go down the wait list until we're at capacity. More details at maxfuncon.com, and mark your calendars for Sunday, January 23rd

at 5 p.m. Pacific. And we are back for one more thing. Maddie, why don't you kick us off with your one more thing? Sure. So it's not Dark Souls, but it could have been, which was also true last week. I'm just saying that. I know that's not part of this, but I just want everyone to know that I'm still playing Dark Souls and I'm not talking about it because I'm a nice person who doesn't want to talk about Dark Souls every single week. And instead, I'm going to talk about the anime Death Note from 2006, which I saw the pilot episode of Death Note, probably around 2006. And I thought it was really cool and really sophisticated and awesome and badass. And I was like, great pilot. I'd love to watch the rest of this show. Never got around to it. Watch people cosplay as characters from Death Note for the next 10 years in my life

going to anime conventions and kind of felt like I got the gist, learned a lot of spoilers, kind of was like, okay, yeah, sure. It's like I've seen Death Note at this point. Moved on. And then this week, I just had been talking at work with some people about anime, and I was like, you know, I'd love something to watch just in the background of doing various things that I don't need to pay a ton of attention to. Death Note is, it's so great.

It's so perfect for this. It's got a great dub. I know Dubs versus Subs is like a whole thing. If you want to watch it with the subtitles, that's chill. But I think the dub is pretty good. It's pretty fun and it's great for background laundry folding. Yeah, I was going to say, can't watch the subtitles in the background. Do you guys know anything about the show?

Do you want to know the premise real quick? Yes. Go ahead and tell us the premise. A high school student who is poised to become a serial killer in terms of what his psychology is, is the main character of the show. And a spooky devil guy in the underworld drops his death note, drops his death notebook by accident. And he is a comical character who is basically the sidekick of the lead for the entirety

of the show. And the lead finds that death notebook, the death note, if you will. And every time he writes down somebody's name in the book, which contains instructions on how to do this, that person will die. And it turns out that he can specify exactly how and when they will die. So he starts out in the pilot episode, only killing criminals and being very moral and very, like, terrifying, lawful. Right, like Dexter Morgan.

Right, yeah. Like Dexter, yes. Except then, before long, things get out of control and this incredible, like, almost Sherlock Holmes-esque figure L, who is aware of, like, supernatural beings somehow, decides to get on the case and follow him and figure it out. And the entire thing is a cat and mouse. There's so much, like, gay shipping of these two male characters, understandably. because there's just endless, like,

they're constantly one step ahead of each other at all times, and they have great chemistry. And also, every episode is L setting up a series of events that would absolutely make it so that light is caught, light being the main character, and then light improbably somehow figuring out how to not be caught through an even more absurd series of events that you could never possibly guess.

Betty, no wonder you like this. It's billions. It's great. It's billions. It's billions, it's billions, but it's much more childish and silly and corny and, like, soapy than billions because it's from, you know, 15 years ago. And it just, it allows itself to be very soapy in a way that I think in 2006 was really impressive to 16-year-olds, which valid, been there. But to a 35-year-old, I find hilarious and, like, really charming and fun to watch. So, yeah, I recommend it.

Death Note, it's an anime. I'm watching it on Funimation through a subscription. It is not free, sadly. Nice. How about somebody else goes? Jason, you want to go next? Yes, I will go next. My one more thing is a movie called Don't Look Up, which is a new Netflix movie that people have probably heard of.

Heard of it. It's directed by Adam McKay, stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence. And I thought it was fine, I guess. Sort of what I've been hearing. It seems to be the take. It wasn't really that impressive. I was hoping for something, I don't know, maybe a little more biting, maybe a little more interesting. It's just kind of like a ho-hum satire that's like, look, people don't.

So the premise is that like it's all a metaphor for climate change and the premise is that this meteor is discovered. It's about to crash into the earth and kill everybody. And shocker, some people don't believe in it and don't take it seriously. And there's like a bunch of like Patriot YouTubers who are like, there is no such thing as a comet. Like, it's not going to, and, and essentially it's just like a send up of everything, all things climate change slash pandemic. It sounds so fun. Yeah. And it's like, it's not.

I love to think about people denying the existence of either like a pandemic or like planetary collapse. It's my favorite vibe. It's sort of, it's got that problem where it's where that a lot of comedy has just had during the Trump era where it's just how do you satirize something that's just this. absurd and how do you even have effective satire when you're talking about people who just like don't believe in the fabric of reality like don't believe in truth. Which is like sad to me. It's not funny. It's like sad. Anyway, I think I saw that they wrote most of the movie before COVID and then when COVID was happening or they had a version of it written and they were working on it and then they kept being like, oh my God, like this stuff in our script is like literally happening. We need to

make the script even more absurd. But I feel like if anything, that's like a sign that it doesn't work. And it's like, oh no, the movie we wrote as a joke is not real. It's too real. It's just, it doesn't work because it's not that absurd. It's not that. It's not very funny. It's like the jokes mostly miss. Leo de Cabrio is great because he's always great.

And he acts his heart out in the movie. And he's very fun as this kind of slumpy scientist character who, who like gets tempted by celebrity and gets tempted to like follow fame and fortune, even if it means abandoning science. And so there's some good stuff in there. But, like, in general, this is a movie that you can very easily skip. But it's also, if you have nothing else to watch and you're, like, just browsing Netflix, like, no reason not to watch it.

It's just that, like, I don't know, I've liked Adam and Kay's other stuff better. I really like The Big Short, for example. And whereas this did not work for me quite as well. I even liked Vice better than this, even though that had its own kind of issues. But, yeah, this did not work for me quite as well. Yeah, I kind of liked Vice. I thought it was interesting. I never watched it.

Yeah, I thought it was another movie that was like really just Christian Bale's performance in that movie. He just really takes it to another level. Amy Adams too. Yes, Amy Adams, awesome. Very good in that. I love her and everything. Maybe I'll watch it one day. And then Don't Look Up, Jonah Hill plays this like ridiculous character who is just like,

even his like comedy is like, it's too, I don't know, something's off about it. That's weird because he's so funny. It's like weird that's such a star-studded cast, but it just. I mean, Merrill Streep is in it. There's a million people in it. Yeah, Merrill Street is in it, and she is like, I don't know. It just didn't really work that well for me. But yeah, it is what it is. Kirk, what's your one more thing? So my one more thing was going to be a movie that I just watched called Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Marr, which I loved. And I want to recommend everybody, but I don't want to tell people what it's about because it's just really funny. So I'm actually going to make it a different movie. It is a different movie that I watched that I was much more mixed on, but that is actually also kind of more video game related. because we're clearly, it's funny, all of our one more things for like four episodes

have just been like, here's a show I caught up on in our movie. I could have talked about Dark Souls again. I tried to scare everybody, okay? Maddie is the true gamer among us. I mean, we're gonna be like, we're in the law right now. I know, I know.

We're gonna be in gaming territories soon. We're all pacing ourselves. I'm just sort of laughing. So I watched the movie Free Guy, which... Oh, Ryan Reynolds. Yes, starring Ryan Reynolds. And I was kind of medium on it. It was fine.

It was a fun time. It was diverting. Was it better or worse than Ready Player One? It's funny because it was co-written by Zach Penn, who I think also wrote the Ready Player One adaptation. Cool. I don't think it's different. They're both kind of on the same level for me.

They're both kind of movies that I would just kind of watch if it was on. Like I find Ready Player One plenty watchable of the film. And this movie too, it's like fun. But it's not, it wasn't as good as it could have been because it kind of just didn't pick a lane. It's such a like mashup. I should explain what this movie is. It's a weird movie that doesn't exist because it came out in 20, I think in 2021, mid-pandemic.

But it's a pretty star-studded film. But also, like, I totally forgot about it. I remember seeing a trailer and being like, holy shit, this is like some of the articles I wrote for Katakaku turned into a movie. The premise of this movie is that Ryan Reynolds is an NPC, essentially in GTA Online and a sort of hybrid GTA online Fortnite video game. And it looks like real life. and it's very Lego movie in the setup in that he is just like, woohoo, like gonna go to my job at the bank

where I get held up every day and there's player characters who come through the world and just blow things up and do whatever and he just is like, oh, it's the sunglasses people. And it's Ryan Reynolds doing the kind of cherubic, enthusiastic, goofy thing that he kind of does in Deadpool, like it has a Deadpool vibe, but it's not quite as cynical and self-aware in that way anyways.

And then, of course, he realizes that he's in the game somehow and starts to change and break out of it, So it has its sort of Truman Show-esque. It definitely has that feeling. And it's mixing a whole lot of different ingredients that I like. Like, I love The Truman Show. That movie really holds up too, shockingly well. If you haven't watched it recently, it's a really great movie.

And it gets kind of touching in parts. And it can be, it's kind of a really interesting thing. It is also, interestingly enough, a movie that is about my gonzo prediction for 2022 coming true. It looks like I watched it right after making them. character becoming aware, becoming self-aware. Yeah. And anyways, I don't know, it has Jody Comer in it from Killing Eve, which is pretty cool. It has a great cast.

It really has a lot going for it. It just kind of didn't quite come together into what I wanted it to be. Some of the jokes just try too hard. There's a lot of, like, YouTubers in it, which is pretty funny because it's like, they're all people like Jackseptych guy in Pocahamein. Like, there are people who are big right now, but watching the movie, I was just like, this feels a hundred years old. Like this already feels 100 years old. It's like from last century. It's like becoming dated

as it's coming out even though it isn't dated yet. It's like you can imagine the version of yourself that sees it three years from now and is like, who the fuck is this? Like who are these people? So it's you know, it's a it's an okay movie I thought it's plenty diverting if you want

something to watch. But as a video game movie goes, I felt that it fell far short of the Matrix Reserations, which is maybe the best video, now maybe the best video game movie I've ever seen. It's pretty incredible. It was a high bar that was recently set by that movie. So watching, I was like, ah, this is fine.

But anyways, it's fine. It's plenty fun. I think people would find things to like about it. There's lots of Easter eggs and that kind of thing if you're into that. So pretty fun movie. Lots of video game Easter eggs, like references to games hidden all throughout. I'm sure there's like video game references that I didn't even get. But there's certainly, you know, like a halo tank keeps rolling around in the

background and that kind of thing. you're like, ah, I'm a gamer. I got that one. I know what that is. It's like, it's the matterverse. It's all the references, all the Ready Player One style references shoved into one location. It's nowhere near like that. There's just a few. I mean, it mostly exists on its own logic. And I mean, there's a game development studio that is, it's just, it's funny watching it because you're just like, wow. Like, it just bears no resemblance to how game development works at all, except for, I guess, the fact that there's this like horrible, toxic dude in charge, played by Tycho Waititi,

who's actually not as funny as I wanted him to be. So it's like things about the movie. I'm like, man, I love Tyca, wanted him to be funny. And he's kind of, he's pretty sweaty performance. But mostly it's like just the fantasy logic of movie video game development where they're like on their laptops changing the code. It's kind of like mythic quest, like where they're like things just don't, they don't, they need to work in a way that is unrealistic because who cares?

It's better for the story. But it's sort of fun watching if you know even a little bit about game development. Okay, cool. All right, that is it for this week's episode. We will be back once again next Thursday. Same, same time, same place, same channel. Same podcast. Same triple time.

Same time. Same Maddie catchphrase. Clickety, clickety, clickety, clack. That's right. Clickety click clickety. We'll be back with that. All right. Well, I will see the both of you in a week.

And now for my real catchphrase. Bye. Triple click is produced by. Jason Schreier, Maddie Myers, and me, Kirk Hamilton. I edit and mix the show and also wrote our theme music. Our show art is by Tom DJ. Some of the games and products we talked about on this episode may have been sent to us for free for review consideration.

You can find a link to our ethics policy in the show notes. Triple Click is a proud member of the Maximum Fun Podcast Network, and if you like our show, we hope you'll consider supporting us by becoming a member at Maximumfund.org. Find us on Twitter at triple clickpod. Send email the triple click at 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.