Fire Escape Cast #110

On this week's episode of Fire Escape, Dan is finally able to talk about Death Stranding 2, Mike is getting even more into Expedition 33, and Mary doesn't know any French.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:09):
It is so goddamn hot here.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
We're in a bubble.

Speaker 3 (00:15):
Is that the start?

Speaker 1 (00:16):
That the start? I guess we could start. I don't
want to start with the weather, that's the start. I don't
want to start with me whining too late about the weather.
Oh you're always whining, always whining. Not more interesting things
than the weather, though. But here we are, it's across.
There is a sultry day here.

Speaker 4 (00:34):
Same as the weather outside. About one hundred and ten,
and we are back at it with another episode.

Speaker 1 (00:42):
That's Mike, Is this how I talk? Is that how
I sound to other people?

Speaker 3 (00:46):
I thought it was actually you? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (00:48):
Oh?

Speaker 4 (00:48):
Here here with Dan, Hello, hi, and I'm Mary here
as always, with another episode of fire Escape cast, giving
you all of your hot gaming takes, just like the weather.

Speaker 2 (01:01):
That.

Speaker 3 (01:02):
Do we do hot gaming? I don't think we do
hot gaming takes?

Speaker 1 (01:04):
Do hot games?

Speaker 2 (01:05):
I think so?

Speaker 1 (01:06):
Do we?

Speaker 5 (01:07):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:07):
My my opinion's always straight down the middle. I never Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:10):
We just look at the Metacritic and we decide how
we feel.

Speaker 2 (01:12):
Yeah, it's exactly is good.

Speaker 3 (01:16):
Yes, it is well.

Speaker 1 (01:17):
That two is fine.

Speaker 3 (01:19):
I think it's good. Oh shit, I'm gonna get fired
from fire Escape.

Speaker 1 (01:23):
Damn. Outside the norm we don't do. Yeah, devices, I
knew a.

Speaker 3 (01:26):
Guy back in the day. I won't name anyone, Mike,
you'll probably know who would be like reviewing a game,
and during the review period he'd be like, Oh, this
sucks so bad. This game sucks so bad. You can
come check this out. Come look how bad this game is.
Come look how bad this game is. And then he
would hear from other like reviewers and stuff that everyone
was like liking it, and the scorer would go for
like the draft would go from like a six out
of ten to like nine point five out of ten.

(01:48):
It turns out everyone likes it. I don't want to,
you know, make any waves here.

Speaker 1 (01:51):
I honestly, there's like two people I could think of.

Speaker 3 (01:54):
You're right about one of them.

Speaker 1 (01:56):
I'm sure, Ah, god, the uh the Middle East? Right now? No,
I'm just joking where you're talking about device and takes.

Speaker 3 (02:05):
Yeah, we got a lot of days before this goes up.
Who knows what the situation is then, but.

Speaker 1 (02:09):
Yeah, yeah, there's I at a certain point I realized
and this is not I'm not trying to like blow
smoke up my own ass, because I also I would
initially when I was first reviewing games. I would have,
you know, thoughts on the game as I'm playing it,
and then talk to other people. And when those situations
where I'm like, what the fuck are we playing the
same game? Yeah, I would definitely feel like, am I dumb?

(02:31):
Do I have bad taste in games? I'm new to
all this, But like later on, like especially in my
Polygon tenure, when I really didn't give a fuck with
other well, I gave a fuck what other reviewers thought,
but not in so far as it influenced my opinion.
I'd barely talk to people until reviews went up.

Speaker 3 (02:47):
There are times, there are special games where in the
pre release period, you know, people I haven't talked to
in a while will reach out and text me the
holy shit are you playing? This is one of the
best games ever. It happened with Brett the Wild, happened
with elden Ring, and it happened with blue Print, and
most recently of just people being like, you're playing is right?
We have to talk about it?

Speaker 1 (03:04):
Yeah? Yeah, I remember. There was a point and I
won't even name the It might have been game Spot,
it might have been Polygon, but there was a game
that highly anticipated first party and during the review period,
like several higher ranking members of the staff were like,

(03:25):
we need to have stories ready to go, Like how
did this even make it to market in this state?
Like who made? Who made these design decisions? And reviews
start hitting and everybody's loving it, and like these people
like just stopped, like just at like once the reviews
were up, they they just stopped bringing those ideas to
the table, Like I think they realized they might have
been like going too hard into the negative direction.

Speaker 3 (03:45):
Oh sure, which funny to me, as long as you
can back it up, Like I don't know, I think
about like I got some crap for my Mario Party
Jamboree review was like definitely on the very very low
end of what people were saying. And I look back
in my review that was for a game Spot. I
look at that now, I know the series, I know
what I'm talking about, and my points are all very
salient and this is a yeah, I have no problem

(04:06):
with that.

Speaker 1 (04:06):
So yeah, I remember the funny one. For me. The
first time I really got heat for a review, I
did Gears Ultimate Edition for Xbox One or Series X
Xbox one, the remaster of the original Gears game, and
Jeff Gersmen back in the day when the game first
came out for game Spot had given it a nine
out of ten. I gave the remaster it might have

(04:29):
been a six, it might have been a seven out
of ten. And people were like, so the remaster of
a game gets how did it get like drop three
points since it originally released, like from the same outlet,
and then.

Speaker 3 (04:42):
The dumbest sh first like six reasons that's a dumb idea.

Speaker 1 (04:46):
So I was like, oh, we're different people, A and B. Games,
like more than any other medium, tend to age poorly,
and we're how many years after was this like eleven
years after the game came out? And then the funniest
part was when Gersman himself for Giant Bomb put up
a review and it was also like six or seven
out of ten.

Speaker 3 (05:05):
It was like a two out of five or something
like a person.

Speaker 1 (05:09):
Who loved it back then. I also loved it back then.
I still liked the game quite a bit.

Speaker 4 (05:12):
Well so loud because he's Jeff Gersmith, that's right.

Speaker 3 (05:16):
This is why Mike got fired from GameSpot.

Speaker 1 (05:17):
So yeah, I gave the remaster way too low a score,
and yeah.

Speaker 4 (05:22):
I find it interesting as someone who didn't review. I
reviewed a couple games during my time, but that's not
what I That wasn't my job. My job was to
edit your guys's words into a video review.

Speaker 2 (05:33):
That was my job, right, And so a lot of
times I.

Speaker 4 (05:35):
Would be looking up visuals that helped support your claims
right that something was working or something was missing the mark.
And it was always really interesting to me when I
was like searching through the footage to make sure that
I could support your points, because when you're especially if
you're saying something negative, if the video doesn't back up

(05:58):
what you're saying properly, it can come back to haunt you,
or the comments will be like that's not even like
a good uh, that's not like a really good example
of it, Like I don't agree with them. And so
there was a lot of pressure on video editors as
well to make sure that you felt like you were
getting the proper review footage that you needed to back
up your points saliently and make you feel really good.

(06:20):
I think I did a Final Fantasy, a very unpopular
Final Fantasy game. It was the one that like you
had to do it in like a certain amount of
time to beat it. A lot of people didn't like,
it doesn't matter which one it was, I'm gonna say twelve. Anyway,
it wasn't very popular, and I was like scouring through
this footage to make sure that every time Chris Waters

(06:41):
said this game just kept going like it just wouldn't stop,
that I had these like long stretches of dialogue to
make it seem basically like as boring as he felt
when he played it. And that was a joy to
me to make sure, but a lot of pressure to
make sure that you guys always felt like you were
getting the review quality you wanted in your videos.

Speaker 3 (07:03):
Yeah, that's something that really helped with like the era
of consoles having the share button and things like that,
because then it's like something fucked up canna happen, like
a bug or something, and you can be like, okay,
let me capture the last three minutes of that, and
then you know, you can use that whether it's a
social post or in part of a video review or
something like see this is the shit I'm talking about.

Speaker 1 (07:21):
Yeah, and then there's also to the counterpoint when you
people I think are savvy enough now and it's like
video reviews are so ubiquitous that people can see bullshit
on YouTube, Like when someone's not doing what Mary is
and doing their due diligence, it's easy to see when
they might have I don't want to say they fabricated
and the footage like edit it. I just say, like

(07:43):
sort of acted in the game in a way to
support the script, almost having edited not as many as Mary,
but my own fair share of video reviews, and like
it feels a bit like they're kind of using the
gameplay to support the script in a way that I
don't actually think is indicative of the game. If it
comes to mind, I just know I see it. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

(08:04):
I liked our process. It could definitely get At first,
it was a bit of a strain on reviewers because
we were already you know, like just trying to get
through a game and have our thoughts down for that
editorial piece. But then I think GameSpot there were some
growing pains and getting everybody on board with capturing and
like not just learning the tools, which I think are
incredibly necessary, but just having those extra muscle memory down

(08:29):
path while you're reviewing a game, which again I think
was very useful in the long run. But I remember
at the at first it was like this is all.
This is all inside baseball. I don't know how much people care.
I just remember, like you know, going on.

Speaker 2 (08:39):
I think it's fascinating.

Speaker 4 (08:41):
I think it's fascinating because people so quickly say like, oh, yeah,
you guys like worked there, you must have reviewed games.
But they had a long drawn out process because we
had a lot of integrity as our sites like you can't.
We had a lot of systems, We had a lot
of checkups and follow throughs. I mean, it's amazing how
many review like edits a review, a game review went
through before it actually was shipped. And the same thing

(09:03):
with the video review. It took a long time to
get those things out.

Speaker 3 (09:06):
You know who's great at the video review stuff is
or video like like text to video stuff is one
judge Jake Decker, because you know, there were a few
times I got to work with him on that type
stuff when I would write something for game Spot and
I like went to that Metal Gear Solid three trip
and I told Jake, I was like, hey, I know
you guys want to get a video out of this,
but like here's like they didn't give a lot of
b roll. Here is like you're a trailer and here

(09:27):
is like eight screenshots and my thing, if I read
it out is going to be like nine minutes long.
He's like, nah, I got it, and you taught YouTube.
Now if you look up like the meddal gear solid
three delta thing that I narrate, like, Jake cut that
all together and he made it work with like nothing
to work with. So it's definitely a skill that a
few people are very good at.

Speaker 4 (09:44):
He's okay, fine, Jake's very good. I think there's there
is an art to making sure you feel supported. The
very few games that I reviewed, I reviewed Stardu Valley.
I think I cut my own video and I was
like really excited about that, and it was really fun
to have like full control outside of like how much

(10:06):
of my words were obviously.

Speaker 2 (10:09):
Edited by our editor.

Speaker 4 (10:11):
In chief at the time, Peter Brown, or at least
Reviews editor, who like was meticulous with the way you
could say something, and I'm a dingus. Like the way
I would say something was often like, man, it's really
cool that you could just walk around town and like
talk to anyone you know, including like the guy who
works at the bar, the person who's like a homeless
like down the street, and he like everything out.

Speaker 1 (10:33):
Try try. Social fabric is fragile in Starger Valley.

Speaker 2 (10:39):
And you are just so thoughtful.

Speaker 1 (10:42):
And you must be the spider swallowing up the trapped flies.

Speaker 3 (10:50):
It's about the American dream writ large.

Speaker 1 (10:52):
I was gonna say, I don't know why I'm making
like Pete never did stuff like that.

Speaker 2 (10:56):
No, he Pete was awesome.

Speaker 4 (10:58):
But I think you are right in this sense that
like I would write a bunch of drivel and he
would read, he would help me formulate it in a
way that sounds made me sound really smart.

Speaker 2 (11:06):
So when you read that review.

Speaker 4 (11:08):
That's not If you compare my Stardoo Valley review to
my top five or ten games that I'm allowed to
write for Giant Bomb every year, there is a stark
contrast with what I was allowed to say in my
Stardo Valley review, which is heavily edited and curated and
make sure that it fits the mark, whereas my top
ten literally you guys didn't edit anything.

Speaker 2 (11:30):
There's typos in that shit.

Speaker 4 (11:32):
I'm just like, this game is so fucking rad with
like multiple a's, and you allow me to have it in.

Speaker 2 (11:37):
My top ten Giant Bomb games of the year.

Speaker 3 (11:40):
It's that's going to change now that I own the company.

Speaker 2 (11:43):
It's not you let me be stupider, all of you worse.

Speaker 3 (11:47):
No, absolutely not.

Speaker 1 (11:49):
Dan's gonna come down fucking iron fist on your typo
ridden insanity.

Speaker 4 (11:54):
The social fabric of our society in twenty twenty five
only allows us to say so many games that can
really truly articulate what it is to be mad.

Speaker 1 (12:05):
Death Stranding two is an encapsulation of the post truth
era in ways few games and few creators have ever
been able to suggest. I am but I am but
a passenger looking through the foggy window at the passing
countryside with the Doppler effect of the screams of dead
American ghosts.

Speaker 3 (12:24):
He's still got it.

Speaker 2 (12:25):
I know why it did not make my top five.

Speaker 1 (12:28):
That's why I hate this game.

Speaker 3 (12:33):
Yeah, when I reviewed de Stranding the first one, I
just said it sucks ship, but.

Speaker 1 (12:38):
I really did not like it.

Speaker 3 (12:39):
Or for the first one, I didn't review it. We
were just doing uh. I just talked on a podcast
about it.

Speaker 1 (12:46):
Yeah, we met fucking Kojima himself at a Death Stranding
event and both of us just immediately launched into talking
about how much we liked Snake Eater.

Speaker 2 (12:57):
What a nice way to avoid the day.

Speaker 3 (13:00):
But now I like it, so now I can suck
up to them.

Speaker 1 (13:03):
Yeah, we'll get we'll get to training to uh. Of
course during the game section, we've been talking a lot
about games. But Mary, I'm curious how uh you're gallivanting
through France one, thanks for asking.

Speaker 4 (13:16):
This is my second time in France ever for work.
This was now the first time I went was for
Twitch con Paris. Obviously in Paris. This time I went
to can which is south France. I've never been south
of Is it called south of France.

Speaker 1 (13:34):
In the south of France?

Speaker 3 (13:35):
Yes, Paris, that's the one I know. Paris is north
Ocean and.

Speaker 2 (13:40):
It's crazy because no, it's not.

Speaker 4 (13:41):
It's completely landlocked and like, uh not not France Paris.
Uh no, I know what you mean, Paris in general.
Thank you, because I don't know that much about Europe.
I'm like still learning as I'm like figuring this out.

Speaker 1 (13:56):
All the older cities around rivers, not all of them,
but there are many cities. Or Minneapolis is too, but.

Speaker 4 (14:03):
France isn't that big. It's like, you know, they're kind
of like states, and.

Speaker 3 (14:08):
The state is France the most like well in size,
just overall all categories.

Speaker 4 (14:15):
It takes about seven hours to get through it. So
I like, I don't know, like all of New.

Speaker 3 (14:21):
York takes about Okay, So France is just like New York.

Speaker 2 (14:23):
You're saying, yeah, same okay, same people, same wine.

Speaker 1 (14:27):
Okay.

Speaker 4 (14:28):
Anyway, So I went to the French Riviera into can
for a festival called can Leon and I.

Speaker 2 (14:36):
Worked at booth. So this is like such a surreal
concept to me.

Speaker 4 (14:40):
But a lot of in France and there, Yeah, I
felt like one Honestly, it was like ninety five degrees.

Speaker 2 (14:46):
I was wearing like.

Speaker 4 (14:47):
The smallest clothes I was allowed to professionally get away
with because it's so fucking hot.

Speaker 2 (14:52):
It was like a real like heavy heat too.

Speaker 4 (14:55):
Just because you're like on the you know, ocean side. Anyway,
it was just human and sticky. It was it was
rough anyway. A lot of business people go to uh
it's like mostly like ad stuff and you'd see like
lots of other businesses.

Speaker 3 (15:10):
So a peloton was there, My peloton instructors were instagramming
from pairs if it's a.

Speaker 4 (15:15):
Big business, right, like Meadow was there? Uh what Instagram
was there? Well, I guess that's the same company.

Speaker 1 (15:25):
It sounds almost like a south By Southwest kind of thing,
the way that's evolved.

Speaker 2 (15:29):
Yeah, Pinterest was there, and so Amazon was.

Speaker 4 (15:31):
There, and they have booths for all of Amazon's companies,
which is a part of Amazon.

Speaker 2 (15:37):
So I actually worked the booth.

Speaker 4 (15:39):
My job, very booth babe ish honestly, was to explain
what twitches to a lot of people who still don't
know what twitches.

Speaker 2 (15:49):
And then we had them do.

Speaker 4 (15:51):
A personality quiz which we connected to a keychain that
was of emotes, and then we would give them these
key chains and it was extremely popular. We had like
lines down around other not as good booths to get
our cool keychains. But what I found interesting was so
many people I would say, hey, do you know anything

(16:12):
about Twitch and they would say to me, like verbatim, no,
but my.

Speaker 2 (16:15):
Kids are on it.

Speaker 4 (16:16):
And I was like, okay, well let me explain to
you what your kids are watching, and then I'm gonna
give you a keychain that you will undoubtedly give your
children like these.

Speaker 3 (16:25):
And they probably about it. Yeah, they were.

Speaker 4 (16:28):
They were doing the personality quiz specifically with their children
in mind.

Speaker 2 (16:31):
They could get the keychain they thought their kids would want.

Speaker 4 (16:33):
So it was like all like swag for kids, which
I found kind of fascinating. But it was like my
understanding of this process was just like making good with
people explaining WHI which wasn't and keeping it in their
heads because there's a lot of ad deals going on.
I guess at this place where people are buying ad
space and and you know, making money.

Speaker 2 (16:53):
So that's kind of like was my role.

Speaker 4 (16:55):
But the airbnb I was at didn't have anything to
have soap, it didn't have lotion, and so I went
to store to buy all that stuff.

Speaker 2 (17:01):
I don't speak a.

Speaker 4 (17:02):
Lick of French nothing, so I just bought soap that
looked like Dove soap, and I bought lotion that was
like in a brown bottle, and it looked fine to me,
and I was putting it on every day. And three
days into the event, everyone was like, Mary, you look.

Speaker 2 (17:19):
So tan, and this French sun like.

Speaker 3 (17:26):
The sun.

Speaker 2 (17:28):
It must be the French sun.

Speaker 1 (17:29):
It's not a different planet in Star Wars.

Speaker 4 (17:32):
And then when I was like, I didn't understand it,
but I looked amazing.

Speaker 2 (17:34):
I was so tan.

Speaker 4 (17:35):
And then I was like shaking people's hands and I
realized the webbing of my fingers was like black, and
I was like, that is so odd that my hands
are like a different color, like they're almost like severely dark.
I was like, maybe you're something wrong with my skin
or I'm eating bad food or something. And so finally

(17:56):
my roommate speaks French and I just show to the
bottle and I said, lotion is this and she was like, oh,
this is self tanner lotion. You've been self tanning every
day in France for the past four days and that's
why I looked so dark.

Speaker 3 (18:09):
How long does that take to like do you take
a shower and that's gone or how long does that
stick around?

Speaker 4 (18:13):
I thought that it would be gone in a shower,
but I was very like, I mean I've been showering
and look at the webs.

Speaker 3 (18:18):
Of mynn but yeah, that was way darker there.

Speaker 4 (18:22):
Actually, yeah, so dark you guys like that, that's what
your whole body looked like.

Speaker 2 (18:27):
It was incredible.

Speaker 4 (18:28):
I was very dark in most of the photos that
I took, and I was like, oh my god, I
look so tann from but I was literally never in
the sun never.

Speaker 2 (18:39):
So I'm an idiot and I bought self tanning lotion.

Speaker 1 (18:43):
It happens, I uh in France. Amanda was just finishing
getting ready, so I popped down in saw Mir to
a grocery store to get like sunscreen, et cetera. I
know the general words for some, but I ended up
getting like instead of sun block, I got like the
sun accentuating like oil. Oh no, I mean well, I

(19:07):
mean once I applied it, I knew exactly I got
the wrong thing. I didn't do like several days of it,
but like I knew right away the sun. Yeah, they
have a really good one. Yeah, they have a better one.
And rank Europeans sons Mary, Oh you mean.

Speaker 4 (19:23):
The different countries, yeah, Spain, Italy.

Speaker 1 (19:28):
Italy's third, Yes, whoa, I thought we wouldn't have hot takes.

Speaker 2 (19:35):
And then I'm gonna go all the way down to
the bottom. London very fair.

Speaker 3 (19:40):
Yeah yeah rarely yeah yeah, oh.

Speaker 1 (19:42):
You rarely see that one. Yeah that's that's that's all.
That's only on like the cool that's only on the
paste list. We laughed.

Speaker 2 (19:49):
But as you can clearly see, some places have better sun.

Speaker 1 (19:53):
Yeah. I actually came back with some of the pan
I was. We were in Ireland for ten days. It
poured the first day and then we got the most gorgeous,
like seventy three and sonny for most of the trip,
and I came back with like, at least my face
got color and you can ask if what you can,
I'm not lying. It was sunny. We got a photo
at a pub called The Swan. John Lynch is the

(20:15):
Swan in Dublin, and I posted it. There was a
photo like we were outside like pub culture obviously spilling
onto the street and we were having a few last
pints on our last night there, if memory serves, And
then a Firescape listener was like, oh, that's me in
the background. I thought that was you, but didn't know
why you'd be in Dublin. I was like, yeah, you
should come say hi.

Speaker 2 (20:36):
But it's impossible that you could have been there, so
he didn't say anything.

Speaker 1 (20:41):
That's funny, but France sounds it looked rad were you
you were in, Like you went up through like the country,
you stopped at like a chateau for a bit.

Speaker 2 (20:52):
I did, so I was curious.

Speaker 4 (20:54):
I assume you've been to all of France and you
know where I was. But I went to a all
town called Cigarette and I've been calling it Cigarette.

Speaker 1 (21:05):
Yeah that sounds good. No, I have not been to
all of France. I've been to like up up and
down the west coast Paris several times, and then below
Paris in the center of the country. But I haven't
been to like Provence or the south of France, or
Leon or Burgundy, Champagne, et cetera.

Speaker 2 (21:24):
I drove up through all of them. I tried out
the crine for Champagne, and I didn't pull over. I
didn't pull over.

Speaker 1 (21:31):
I was like, we're going Champagne. Champagne's a quick hop
from Paris, just east of it. No, I like northeast
of it. Actually, I'm not.

Speaker 4 (21:40):
A huge champagne person, although I do love an apparel spirts,
which I think includes champagne. But I find champagne by
itself kind of it always gives me a hangover.

Speaker 3 (21:50):
I have it with mimosas. I had some of those
last week.

Speaker 2 (21:52):
I love a mimosa in the morning.

Speaker 3 (21:54):
They're great.

Speaker 2 (21:55):
Yes, I think so too.

Speaker 3 (21:57):
Yeah, it's purely a morning thing for me. But yeah,
you're not.

Speaker 2 (22:00):
Taking the bait.

Speaker 1 (22:02):
No, what's the bait? You don't You wouldn't use champagne
in those, you use prosecco.

Speaker 3 (22:09):
Oh, I've never actually made one. Yeah, Hey, we.

Speaker 1 (22:12):
Just combine orange juice and prosecco.

Speaker 3 (22:14):
Oh, I thought it was in champagne the whole time.

Speaker 1 (22:17):
It's sparkling wine, but you could. You could sensibly use champagne,
for sure. I just don't think immediately if you're getting
it at.

Speaker 2 (22:22):
A restaurant, comes the wine.

Speaker 1 (22:24):
No, no, no, just purely from a price point. Most restaurants
would be losing money if they did that with champagne
when they could be doing prosecco, which is much cheaper.
I'm not trying to be a dick about I'm saying
it was most likely proscco, but you could do it
with champagne.

Speaker 3 (22:36):
I assume you are right about this.

Speaker 4 (22:38):
I am, yes, right, But you're also speaking to like
when I grew up, when when you clink glasses of
sparkling wine you say, oh, champagne.

Speaker 1 (22:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (22:48):
The first fucking time in my life I heard someone
say the word prosecco was when we had the Australians
come over for ETH three and one of the Australians
asked for a glass of prosecco and I was like,
what's that and they were like, it's sparkling wine, and
I was like, oh, champagne.

Speaker 1 (23:09):
And they were like, No, Australians have a pretty good
base for wine knowledge I have found. I mean, I
know the country has a gross wine, like a lot
of it, but yeah, I know.

Speaker 4 (23:19):
I always assumed that sparkling wine was champagne growing up.

Speaker 1 (23:22):
I never no, I did too. It's like xerox, frisbee,
those words that become kind of synonymous with the thing
itself to the point where they overtake the actual word
or whatever. I get it. I was just saying, like
if you if I'm a restaurant and I have bottles
of champagne, they're always going to be more almost always
going to be more expensive than prosecco, or Germany has
zecked or Spain has kava. It's just like, you make

(23:45):
more money off than the most of my pouring prosecco the.

Speaker 4 (23:49):
Cheapest and other news of fancy culture. I got a
tooth gem?

Speaker 1 (23:53):
What is that tooth gem? It's oh, it's exactly what
it sounds like.

Speaker 3 (23:58):
Oh what the hell? What am I looking that here?
Whoa what are these French dentists doing? What the fuck
is this brown woman tooth gem?

Speaker 2 (24:09):
And she has a gem on her tooth?

Speaker 3 (24:11):
Three months dan Oh Okay, so they're not like damaging
your tooth at all to do that, right, No, it's.

Speaker 2 (24:17):
Not like drilling a hole in your tooth.

Speaker 4 (24:19):
It's it's probably done with like the same dental concrete
that they used to.

Speaker 2 (24:24):
Put on your braces.

Speaker 4 (24:25):
Though, Okay, I went to an after party, so can
is kind of like known not just for like these
like interesting day booths where you like meet and make
money deals, big big money deals, but at the very
end there's always like these big parties where like Odessa
or like dip low play. And I went to one
of these parties and just there was like a fucking

(24:46):
lady in the corner doing tooth gems. And I was
with the CEO of our company Twitch and and I
was like, yeah, I was with.

Speaker 3 (24:59):
Use the spaceship when you do these.

Speaker 2 (25:00):
No, okay, don't let me have ship.

Speaker 1 (25:03):
And there's a tooth gem. He's in the middle of
his Italian wedding. He hopped up to France and tooth gem.

Speaker 2 (25:09):
Came back and we and we both got toothjem.

Speaker 1 (25:12):
He got every tooth done covered.

Speaker 2 (25:13):
It like braces.

Speaker 1 (25:15):
Making out with him be like a cat.

Speaker 4 (25:18):
I panicked though, I was like because I think you're
supposed to get him like on your main teeth so
that it's like really obvious when you smile. But I
was like, no, I got it on the lower canine.
That way, I can like show it off, but if
I don't want to, it doesn't show.

Speaker 2 (25:32):
But it's three months and what I assume.

Speaker 4 (25:34):
Happens is one day I'll be talking and I'll just
be like, look and I'll just swam.

Speaker 3 (25:38):
It's not like a cyanide tooth or anything. Though, right,
you're fine to swallow it.

Speaker 4 (25:42):
I don't think it's gonna kill you, but I do
think I'll have to like poop it out eventually.

Speaker 3 (25:47):
If it's a tiny little thing, that should be fine.

Speaker 2 (25:49):
I think it's pretty small. I don't.

Speaker 4 (25:51):
I think you can barely tell that it exists.

Speaker 3 (25:54):
I can't really see it.

Speaker 4 (25:55):
Yeah, I had to like kind of get it is weird.
I like, I like touch it with my topung a lot.
I'll like recognize it just like a it'd be like
having one brace, not braces, but just one brace on
one of your teeth and you're kind of like, what
is that?

Speaker 2 (26:09):
Like I touch it a lot, and I noticed it
a lot.

Speaker 3 (26:12):
But sure, any like it changed to your bite or
anything like the whole time I was doing like the
visiline stuff and everything, like every time it shifts or
something doesn't bite downright or is different, it's like you
super notice that.

Speaker 2 (26:21):
You know, Yeah, it's weird to fuck with your mouth.

Speaker 4 (26:24):
I do think it's like probably something the kids are
getting into, right, Like when we were growing up. I
think it was like super valuable, at least for the girls.
It was like you gotta get your belly button pierce.
Like that's like what a lot of kids were doing, right.
It was like the way to alter yourself. I actually
think that a tooth gem is way better because you
just swallow it in three months and it's no must,

(26:47):
no fuss.

Speaker 3 (26:47):
It's like you can do a belly button ring too, though, no.

Speaker 4 (26:50):
Because you well, yes, but you always have like a
little hole in there, ye.

Speaker 1 (26:57):
Ring.

Speaker 2 (26:57):
But you have a whole option.

Speaker 3 (26:59):
Yeah, same thing.

Speaker 2 (27:02):
I'm just talking one day and I swallowed my belly
button ring.

Speaker 1 (27:06):
You look like you look like Joe Pesci from Home Alone. Yeah,
don't worry hands tweet, Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4 (27:17):
It's a it's it's a funny thing to get, like,
it is just such a funny thing to acquire on
a work trip, especially on a work trip, and I
can't tell you any work trip where I have acquired
like an alteration to my body aesthetically, uh, because that's

(27:38):
never occurred. But at this very particular party, they were
doing all sorts of like strange alterations, temporary tattoos, hair
gems and tooth gems and so like I just got.

Speaker 3 (27:48):
One hair temporary aspect of that probably makes that an
easier sell, for sure.

Speaker 2 (27:53):
It is. It is a cell but months right, like well,
let's temper. Yeah, like a temporary.

Speaker 4 (28:00):
Tattoo of like like a snake on your face, but
it's three.

Speaker 3 (28:04):
Months, not face for three months. No, I would do
a stupid temporary tattoo somewhere like arm or something like that,
even something super stupid. You know, that's temporary. It's as
long as you can kind of show it when you
want to. I was doing the opposite of trapesing about
Europe my trip. My last one was kans Midwest Lake culture,

(28:25):
which I think is very different than European trade shows
and stuff. It's is this just like a Midwest Lake
culture thing where it's every fucking bar is it's the
wet spot, it's the hungry beaver. It's the slippery leaster.
It's like eat him run, and it's like, you know,
it's just like everything's just like the lamest innu window
you've ever heard, and everyone thinks it's the funniest thing

(28:48):
in the world. Yes, is this just a Midwest thing?

Speaker 1 (28:50):
No, that's that's I mean, Okay, Central New York might
as well be the Midwest. So I can't really tell
you whether it is or isn't it.

Speaker 3 (28:55):
Okay, Okay, I just know like the ozarcs and like
cans and stuff and everything. I guess I'd go to
a lot of lakes in Minnesota's West coast.

Speaker 1 (29:01):
It's not West Coast as well, has stuff like that
in the like vacation beach here, Lake Lake Country, for sure.

Speaker 3 (29:07):
What is it about drinking near a lake that makes
people come up with lame sex puns?

Speaker 1 (29:12):
I think it's just like Lake Kisch kind of like
that's their idea of like humor.

Speaker 3 (29:18):
As we don't dig ourselves too seriously.

Speaker 1 (29:20):
Yeah, it's like Kiki bars have their own version of
that kind of humor. And then I think Lake Country
gets that in a different way and it's a lot
of innuendo.

Speaker 3 (29:30):
Got youah boy, certain certain type at those Midwest lake places.
It's just there's a real active disdain for people from
you know, the coasts or certain cities and things like
I swear I go home and I just feel like
everyone thinks I'm know, I'm Chomsky. Like it's just like wow, yeah,

(29:51):
many people are saying this.

Speaker 1 (29:52):
Yeah, both Marx brothers combined.

Speaker 3 (29:55):
Yeah, but it's just like even like just every little
thing has to be like, hey, fuck those people on
the coast right where it's like here we're having cowboy caviar.
It's like they like all their fancy caviar, but ours
is shitty because we don't care. And it's just like
this weird, like I don't know, there's just this.

Speaker 2 (30:09):
Weird, distained anti culture, but like the.

Speaker 3 (30:12):
Proud like anti culture thing, which is why I love
going and getting drinking shitty beers on a lake and everything.
But it's just like, I don't know, everything's gotten. I
don't know if it was always this way, but it
just feels like everything's just a little more. It's a
lot of flags, a lot of weirdly aggressive stuff. But
you know, hung out with the family, it was it
was a good time. Got to drive a golf cart
around for a while, so that was good.

Speaker 1 (30:32):
It does seem to be getting more intense every time
I go home, like that kind of resentment trip on
the shoulder and like yeah, different different world, like I've heard. Yeah,
but I have those friends who are like, oh, sorry,
this isn't a shutting oof to Pop. I'm like, dude,
I will still drink you onto the table with bud
lights to this day, don't. That is why.

Speaker 3 (30:50):
No matter how far you go into wine, Mic, no
matter how deep you go down this wine hole.

Speaker 2 (30:56):
That piece of shit is still really in there.

Speaker 1 (30:58):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (30:59):
I will give you shit, I will give you ship
for the stuff, but you are still that dumb mess.
In fact, I shotguned my second beer ever because I
lost mini golf at the lake and I was thinking
to you, Mike was like, this is the second time
I've ever done this, And Mike taught me how to
do this many many years ago, because yeah, you are
that dumb ass is there and you don't look down
your nose of that one bit.

Speaker 1 (31:18):
So you got videos of me sprinting and diving into
trash cans, like not far from where I live right
now at all.

Speaker 3 (31:24):
Yeah, Yeah, no, I deeply respect that.

Speaker 1 (31:27):
Yeah, every time I go home, people are like I
was like, I I love a bud Light. I'm not, well,
I'm not going to actually like like the taste. Of course,
that's beside the point. At that point, like I'll drink them,
but a blue light there's nothing better. It's it's blue light,
the bat blue light, Guinness wine in that or PBR
on a hot smoke a peeb no this weekend.

Speaker 4 (31:50):
Yeah, I really do like them, and to this day,
even here in my hometown, PBR is like one of
the more affordable drinks you can get, and I I
love like after a long day, especially on a hot day,
having cold PBR and fries like that is my go to.

Speaker 2 (32:07):
So like it's still in there.

Speaker 3 (32:09):
I got to say, I don't think I'm in any
way a snob, but because like any shitty beer, Like
I just drank nothing but Milwaukee's Best Light and I'll
do that to this day, whatever shitty beer you give me,
I'll drink it.

Speaker 2 (32:19):
Whatever somebody sends you too.

Speaker 4 (32:21):
I think the way to your heart is just for
people to send you things and then you'll be like,
I love brand.

Speaker 2 (32:26):
You know what you would have loved can Leon. It
was essentially brand Fest.

Speaker 1 (32:32):
It was.

Speaker 2 (32:32):
That was all it was.

Speaker 3 (32:33):
I I disagree there because the beers that I've gotten
for free. I had the thing with bud Light in Connecticut,
and I got the thing with Utipils here, and I
genuinely like both of those. I don't even work with
bud Light anymore, but I still say I like, but
like no. But I'm about to say there is a
beer I tried that I did not like, maybe for
the first time. Quick Trip. Do you know the brand
Quick Trip? Not the one everyone thinks they know it,
but it's yeah, but it's the Midwest, like Red Sign.

Speaker 1 (32:57):
Mike.

Speaker 3 (32:57):
You might have seen it because you spent some time, Yes,
everywhere in the Midwest, and I love Quick Trip. They
got great tiketos and and like all sorts of great
stuff there. But apparently they introduced their own beer called
quentin Time, and there was a bunch of that at
the lake and I drank some Quinton Time, and uh,
it ain't good at all. They had nothing. It was

(33:18):
a lot of Quittin Time and like one of the
Kelsey's beers garage beer or something. Yeah, that's the one
I shotguned. Was Travis Kelsey's beer.

Speaker 1 (33:27):
That's the only way.

Speaker 3 (33:27):
Jason Kelsey, who's the Kansas City one. Travis Okay, I
think Travis Kelsey has a beer called.

Speaker 2 (33:33):
You're not the same guy there.

Speaker 3 (33:35):
They both have beards.

Speaker 1 (33:37):
Now. His brother, Jason kelce was a center for the
Philadelphia Eagles, and Travis Kelcey is the tight end for
the Kansasity Chiefs.

Speaker 3 (33:45):
But they're both all over the place. Yes, Oh, it's
co owned by both Kelsey brothers.

Speaker 1 (33:50):
That's what it is. I don't mind, and I don't
like the Eagles whatsoever. Fuck them.

Speaker 3 (33:55):
That beer was fine. The Kelseys have a better beer
than Quick Trip, but yeah, it's all very.

Speaker 1 (34:00):
I'd be worried if they didn't because Quick Trip, if
memory serves, was kind of like we had like nice
and easy Cumberland farms, munches, you know, a gas station,
but meat's like not quite not bodega at all, but
like mini grocery store with like rollers and hot dogs

(34:20):
and ship. Yeah, beer caves they always got it. It's
always a beer cave. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (34:24):
Roadside, you know, very You're on a road trip going
down I thirty five and you stop and get some
bullshit to refuel.

Speaker 1 (34:29):
Yeah, I don't I don't miss driving, really, but I
do miss like hot summer nights with my body, like
fourteen years ago. Not that like not, I'm not talking.
I'm still talking after high school, like college years, when
I went back for a couple of years, Like when
it's hot as ship and you get out and you
walk into that like walk in beer cave and you're
just there for the temperature and you walk out, maybe

(34:50):
a couple of Molson's, maybe a few the Bats, and
it's just a it's a great, great rest of night
because because you have shitty beer.

Speaker 3 (35:01):
I mean, that was that was my move. When I
worked at the liquor store. You know, a couple comes in.
You know it's a college liquor store, I probably told us,
but like it's usually just college gypshits coming in a
game day buying a cheap beer. But you'd occasionally see
a thirty thirty something couple coming in and they would
go to the wine section and oh no, they're gonna
ask me a question about wine. And that's when I
hide in the freezer until they leave.

Speaker 1 (35:20):
It's my entire job at the bars, people coming in
and asking for wine recommendations.

Speaker 3 (35:24):
I had the Yeah, imagine.

Speaker 2 (35:28):
If I'll be right back with your recommendation, sir.

Speaker 1 (35:32):
You're just peering between the cases. Are yet?

Speaker 3 (35:34):
Are they gone yet?

Speaker 1 (35:35):
There's a painting in the corner where the eye holes
cut out that Dad's watching them through.

Speaker 3 (35:41):
It's just the paintings in Kansas.

Speaker 2 (35:42):
No, dude, you know what I like buzzballs?

Speaker 3 (35:46):
Ooh, what flavor?

Speaker 2 (35:49):
I like the green one?

Speaker 3 (35:50):
That's okay, that's the one we had. Have you seen
the giant ones that are like two leaders.

Speaker 2 (35:55):
Yeah, I've seen the giant ones.

Speaker 3 (35:56):
That's the one we had.

Speaker 2 (35:57):
The cream ones that are like made of milk.

Speaker 1 (36:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (36:01):
We we went to the Airbnb for a giant bomb
Summer Games Fest place and there was a fridge that
didn't work in a garage and we opened it up
and there was a two liter green buzzball in there
from god knows when. And I'll be damned if we
did not kill that thing. Jan fucking Edward forty hands
that thing and taped it to his hands and was
going around. I had my video on my phone of
him going around to a bunch of games media people

(36:23):
who are kneeling on the floor as he is like
a communion ritual, and he's pouring the green buzzball into
everyone's mouth and we killed the thing. I poured it
on a fucking burger and ate it. I would green buzzball?

Speaker 1 (36:34):
Is it green apple? I'm assuming no.

Speaker 3 (36:36):
It was like a weird tequila. It was. It was bad.
It was, and I made the extra bad.

Speaker 2 (36:41):
It was margarita.

Speaker 3 (36:43):
Oh that I think that might have been it.

Speaker 2 (36:44):
I think that's what it is.

Speaker 4 (36:45):
The color is a better way to describe it than
the flavor profile.

Speaker 1 (36:49):
Jolly Rancher.

Speaker 2 (36:50):
The way buzzballs work exactly.

Speaker 4 (36:52):
You're just having orange or blue, but you're not really
having like a flavor.

Speaker 2 (37:00):
It's it's a pixie stick.

Speaker 3 (37:02):
Dude with they get to drink which with a hard.

Speaker 2 (37:05):
Clicker in it. It's it's great. We used to, uh.

Speaker 4 (37:08):
I went on a work trip one where we got
the buzzballs, and then we watched the James Bond one
that is about the gambling casino Royal Casino Royale, and
you know how like in that one he gets trapped
and they tie him to a chair and.

Speaker 3 (37:26):
Yeah, and they hit his balls for a while. That's
not great.

Speaker 2 (37:31):
You have to drink a buzz ball every time the
balls get hit.

Speaker 3 (37:33):
Full buzzball, every ball hit no, just like a wig. Okay,
that's such a short scene. Like, that's not a drinking game.
But I think of a drinking game. It's one that like, oh,
throughout this movie, they're gonna say this word a bunch
and you drink every time they say it. There's only
like one ball torture scene in Casino Royale.

Speaker 4 (37:49):
Name a movie with more balls than Dan.

Speaker 3 (37:52):
More balls balls, pop Star has more dick. Yeah, no,
that's not what I more balls. Oh you don't see
his balls props are now? You just see the dick
rubbing against the window.

Speaker 1 (38:07):
Right, Okay, so ball references not fucking waiting, which Dan
made me watching his basement.

Speaker 3 (38:15):
I didn't make you to doctor Ryan from the chat.

Speaker 1 (38:17):
Maybe I've never even seen this plugging in a salamander
infested basement.

Speaker 3 (38:22):
And it was still waiting the sequel to waiting those movies.

Speaker 1 (38:27):
I am so ashamed I ever found that funny when
I was like fucking fifteen.

Speaker 2 (38:32):
It's so embarrassing either. But I was a waiter, so
like I was like, I get it.

Speaker 3 (38:38):
You know Joe Dirt the dog who has the big
saggy balls and it gets frozen to the deck and
they have to use dispatch to let it get his
balls off the deck.

Speaker 1 (38:47):
Joe Dirt has a lot of balls balls movie. Other
than that, though, I think.

Speaker 3 (38:52):
What if Joe Dirt holds up? I like Joe Dirt
a lot back in the day.

Speaker 1 (38:58):
Brandy is it Brandy? Yes?

Speaker 3 (39:01):
His sister Brittany m and Brittany Uh yes, Howard Brittany.

Speaker 1 (39:06):
Yeah. She went on to be in a few things.
She was a Jo durt too. She was the cousin.
She was a cousin as a guest star in one
episode of that seventy show, and then she was also
she played a recurring character whose very name is Her
name's Carmen, but the gang and it's always Sonny has
a nickname for her, which I'm not going to repeat here,
but people who watch the show know what I'm talking about.

Speaker 3 (39:27):
Yeah, Brittany Daniel Yeah, no, always sung in Philadelphia. Yeah,
JODRT two beautiful Loser, Loser white Chicks, all the stars
are here. Cheaper by the Dozen Yeah that eighties. Holy shit, I've.

Speaker 1 (39:39):
Seen Cheaper by the dozen way more times than I
care to admit. Why who is she in Cheaper by doesn't?
Was she a sister?

Speaker 3 (39:43):
Now she's Basketball Diaries what the fuck?

Speaker 1 (39:46):
Okay, Oh, that's way higher clout than most of her
other stuff.

Speaker 3 (39:51):
No, she has an identical twin sister.

Speaker 1 (39:54):
Oh does she really?

Speaker 3 (39:57):
Yeah? What's her name, Cynthia Daniel?

Speaker 1 (40:00):
Maybe it's her and other stuff I've been seeing.

Speaker 3 (40:02):
It could be she's also an actress and looks exactly
like her.

Speaker 1 (40:05):
So I've jaded to two different people.

Speaker 3 (40:08):
I don't think that's how it works. There are two
different people. Don't know if the other one's been in
ones that you've seen.

Speaker 1 (40:16):
I've had one more person in my spank bank than
I thought this whole time.

Speaker 2 (40:21):
This whole time, there's.

Speaker 1 (40:23):
Limited space in there. I'm very selective. Do you guys
want to talk about it? Oh? I didn't talk about
Ireland yet. Yeah, Ireland's fucking awesome. I miss it. We started,
we did three days in Dublin, drove rented a car
and Dublin, drove down to Cork City and then drove
up the Wild Atlantic Way to Galway and then drove

(40:44):
across the country back to Dublin. Unreal. We got phenomenal
weather seven days out of ten. The other times I
like rain a lot, but I was glad it was
not rained the whole time. My wife does not like rain,
but she was being a champ in case it did rain.
It did not. We stayed on a houseboat in Galway
in the bay we.

Speaker 3 (41:00):
Saw that the picture of the houseboat so awesome.

Speaker 1 (41:02):
Like funnily enough. Man and I always talk about when
we finally I've never been to Amsterdam. She has when I,
when I finally go to Amsterdam, I want to spend
at least a night on one of the houseboats there.
This boat was a refurbished Amsterdam barge houseboat that like
they used to use on the river there, canal whatever,
what have you. So we stayed there. That was great.

(41:26):
We did two nights on the boat. I would not
do any more than that. No, it was big enough
where it was like basically half of it was beached.
But there she the airbnb owner, she's a Portuguese like captain.
She owns two other boats that are moored right with it.
So if you wanted, if you are going to Ireland
with like a group of six people, you could rent

(41:48):
out each boat and have a little like Armada party
if you wanted. You're not supposed to have parties there,
but it was it was super cool. Galway is awesome.
Gallway felt more. Galway's the smallest city we stayed in,
and it felt more like a vacation where like people
from Ireland were going there for the weekend, but super

(42:09):
like gorgeous beaches around there, pubs. The whole trip was amazing,
tons of good Spanish food. I knew Ireland and Spain
have this relationship going back centuries from trade routes, but
like all the top Us places we went to were unreal.
I think most of our favorite food was Spanish while
we were there. But Dan I had a meal there

(42:30):
that I think maybe my favorite meal the whole ten days.
I think you'd both like it, but Dan, you especially.
I was like, holy shit, this is like I feel
like the if fire Escape ever goes to Dublin, we
need to go to this place called Spitalfields. It's a pub. However,
they are famous for like they do really good pies,
like pot pies. They have this thing called a kakaaliki pie,

(42:54):
which is just a kakaalaky pie. It's just slang for
a chicken and leaks like big green onions to be reductive.
But they come.

Speaker 4 (43:02):
It's like a bar that Dan would have found in
one of his towns.

Speaker 3 (43:10):
No, that was the leaky cock it.

Speaker 1 (43:13):
Yeah, they danced around it a bit in Dublin, but yeah,
but no, it comes in it's like it's perfectly like
brown top to this, like braided pie unreal. And then
you also we got beef stuffed Parker House rolls before
it as well. It was like short slow cooked, like
braised short ribs inside a Parker House roll. Unreal. If

(43:36):
you haven't been to Spital if you've been, if you're
going to Dublin a point, go to Spidal Fields and
also like just a good pub in general. The whole
Amanda and I try to go to the like botanical
garden or whatever is closest wherever we go. We did
it in Paris. Paris has like Luxembourg gardens and then
we've done stuff like that. But in Dublin went to
the Botanical garden, one of our favorites. It was massive gorge.

(44:00):
They had like tons of different spots. They had a
greenhouse full of palms from like South Africa and Africa
and Australia. They had the cactie from the American Southwest.
They had basically everything and people were awesome. I love Dublin.
I liked Cork City a lot. It grew on me.
It actually weirdly reminded me of San Francisco after a bit. Geographically,

(44:23):
we didn't realize how hilly it was till we got
into town and it basically straddles the River Lee. So
we went into a few pubs along like the tourist area.
We're like, all right, I feel like we've seen Cork City.
And then we climbed Saint Patrick's Hill found a field
which kind of reminds me of this park where near
where I used to live in San Francisco, where you
could see a ton of the city. I was like, oh,
it's like twelve hills here with houses and schools and

(44:46):
stuff on it. So I would have liked an extra
day in Cork City compared to what we had. But
Galway was amazing too, But yeah, Dublin was like really
up ended my expectations. I was just expecting the pub culture,
which was absolutely the and we had a blast with it.
But so much good food, really cool people, walkable, easy
to get around, they take care of every single like

(45:07):
little park. So well, yeah, loved Ireland. Will absolutely go
back nice.

Speaker 3 (45:14):
I have to check that out sometimes that like right
off the coast of United Kingdom or Britain or England
or island whatever.

Speaker 1 (45:20):
That island is the island, okay, let me get this.
The island itself is.

Speaker 3 (45:26):
Britain, okay, but the country England and Wales and Scotland
are all on that island, right correct, And then all
of that's the United Kingdom.

Speaker 1 (45:36):
No, the United Kingdom also includes stuff like the Isle
of Man, which is I believe between Britain and Ireland
and Northern Ireland. So Northern Ireland is basically across from
like Glasgow in Scotland. I want to say, I might
be mixing up the latitudes there, but yeah. So Dublin's
on the east coast of Ireland. It looks at like

(45:57):
Liverpool basically if you're looking straight at the not that
you could see it at least I don't think you can,
but yeah, But then London is on the opposite side
of England looking at Mainland Europe like France.

Speaker 3 (46:12):
I guess, so just not a crazy flight like you've
gone to England. It's probably it's pretty much.

Speaker 1 (46:17):
Like that Dublin took. I mean, going coming back is
always a bit longer, but going there it was six hours.
They probably did it like five and a half, super
easy flight. And then Dublin itself. We got on the
Dublin's got it figured out. We got off the plane,
we got onto Dublin Express. It's the airport shuttle that

(46:38):
brings you to the city. Like the people in the
lines were like, hey, where are you staying in Dublin?
And I told them. They're like, okay. You can see
them doing like this, the mapping in their head. They're like,
all right, you want to get off at this stop,
off the seven eighty four, and there's three buses that
pull up, and you get on the seven eighty four
and you get off at the stop they told you
it's like fifteen minutes on a bus from the airport
to the city center.

Speaker 3 (46:57):
Oh nice.

Speaker 1 (46:58):
Yeah, it was awesome. And then on the way back,
saying like, okay, here's a bus you want to get on,
and they get you to the airport in like fifteen minutes.
Oh nice. Yeah, phenomenal. Not at all like any of
the airports near here in New York.

Speaker 2 (47:11):
Yeah, dude, the airports suck.

Speaker 1 (47:15):
We need to do a like a we should do
a like find an excuse to do a fire escape
Dublin meetup, and.

Speaker 3 (47:24):
I want to just do another meetup period. That one
we did was great.

Speaker 1 (47:27):
I think it was good.

Speaker 2 (47:28):
We had a good time.

Speaker 4 (47:29):
I think they're fun to do and you get to
like meet really interesting and like lovely people.

Speaker 2 (47:34):
I think like that is a joy to do.

Speaker 4 (47:36):
But I think it's always nice to try and do
one in an area where you wouldn't expect that you
could do it.

Speaker 2 (47:42):
I think min Max does that quite well. Or there's
just be like.

Speaker 4 (47:45):
We're in this wild down We're going to do a meetup,
And I think that that's a really lovely thing to
do for not just the listeners, but for everybody just
to be able to meet each other, right, Like listeners
want to meet other fans of the show too, so
that's really exciting to do.

Speaker 1 (48:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (48:01):
I think it was Drew Scanalon and Patrick Klippik did
one in Raykovic when they went out there for Giant
Bomb many years ago, And like I do like the
idea of like, you know, fans in a place that
they would never expect that like, oh, these guys are
gonna have a meet up here like that that is
a fun thing.

Speaker 1 (48:13):
Yeah, m hm, we should plan something. I'd about to
do it.

Speaker 3 (48:17):
I would like that.

Speaker 1 (48:18):
I don't want to drink catinup at this one, though. No.

Speaker 3 (48:21):
I will be in New York in about a month,
so we should talk about that. Mike, all right, yeah,
let's do it very briefly. But I'd like to see you,
yeah for sure.

Speaker 1 (48:27):
Right, you want to talk about video games? Yeah, okay.
Reviews are officially out for Death Stranding two. They have
been for some time. But Dan, you've been playing it
a lot. You went to Kojima Productions a couple months
ago at this point, played a lot of it September
a few months. Was it that long ago?

Speaker 3 (48:45):
I thought so?

Speaker 1 (48:46):
No, not at all. This was like two months ago
when you kept telling us that you were there, was it?

Speaker 3 (48:51):
Oh yeah, it wasn't that long. What the fuck am
I thinking of?

Speaker 1 (48:54):
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (48:55):
No, September was the Nintendo Museum. No, yeah, I went
more recently too.

Speaker 1 (48:58):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (48:58):
Yeah, that's right. Yeah, yeah, sorry, I get all these
cool trips in Japan.

Speaker 1 (49:02):
Yeah, yeah, it was.

Speaker 4 (49:03):
You're always confusing which time you're sucking at the teat
of these Diehionese developers. But tell us a little bit
about Death Stranding too.

Speaker 3 (49:13):
I talked about a bit after I played my thirty
hour preview and I was in personal Academa.

Speaker 1 (49:17):
Production thirty hours I did.

Speaker 3 (49:20):
But you know the thing is, it's like I kind
of got the sense it would be this way when
I played it the first time. Is that like, all right,
it's Akadema game. There's a lot of talking, there's a
lot of cutscenes, and like you know, every time you
go back and deliver something, a holograms like there you saying, wow,
look at this, you really these diapers are in great condition.
And so I was able to skip through all that
this time. So I was able to in about I
would say, ten or twelve hours, get past or get

(49:42):
up to like the thirty hour mark or release that
level of progress. So burn through that pretty quick. And
also it's just a fun game to play. The mechanics
are great, so there really wasn't even an issue with
that of me being like, god, damn, I do this
all again. You know, a lot of games I would
not like that. But it's a tremendous game. It is fantastic.

(50:02):
It is this in blueprints easily for my Game of
the Year contender, for my personal number one. You know,
I haven't been desperating too. Yet I think I'm like
right at the end, my PlayStation thing says that I'm
like eighty something percent in right now. But it's just
in an industry where it's like, I don't know, when
you've played a lot of video games, a lot of
video games tend to do the same things, and you know,

(50:25):
some can incrementally make things better or different or whatever
push something forward, but it's rare that you're just constantly
surprised by something. And I do feel like with this game.
It's just there were so many times where I'd get
a higher porter rank with some you know guy, and
he'd be like, hey, check this out. I'm giving this
to you, and it's a rubber pizza that you can

(50:45):
use and it'll you can fold it up and put
it in your grenade pouch and you can throw pizzas
at guys now. And I'm like, oh, okay, I didn't
expect that, or you know, just a fun little moment
with doll Man.

Speaker 1 (50:55):
You know.

Speaker 3 (50:55):
By the way, I'm not going to spoil a huge
story points here, but like, if you've worried about like
mechanics and items and things like that, I will probably
be talking about that type of stuff or little surprises
just there's it is just dripping with personality, and I
can't help but think when I play it that like
it's using that Decima engine that Horizon uses, and Horizon
Horizon's a great example of the thing I was talking

(51:16):
about before of like, look, it's a good game, but
it's so just like yeah, on a technical level, on
so many like obviously so many talent people worked on this,
but it's not surprising me in any way. You know,
when I play through a Horizon game, it's like, yeah, okay,
this is all very impressive, but this sure is a
video game. This is an open world video game. This
is using that incredible technology and also just having this
like really weird, uncompromising vision of what Kajema wants this

(51:41):
thing to be, which is what he's always done. And
it is surprising me all the time. And you know,
even fifty hours in on this run, you know, plus
the thirty before, it is just every once day I'll
get a new item and like, oh, it's a fucking
cyber coffin that I can surf on and I can
like accelerate. So I'm basically like have a noboard basically
made out of a coffin that I can surf on

(52:03):
up these mountains and stuff and carry stuff, and I
can use it to like jump into if I want
to do stealthy stuff, and it'll take me into the
tar under the ground and then I can stun bomb
and come out and kill guys, and just there's just
so many weird items and like aesthetic pieces and stuff
like that that you can equip. There's just a lot
of surprises in this game. In fact, I played it
on my birthday. I played it on the morning of

(52:25):
my birthday. I went down it got a couple hours
for work, and you frequently go back to the Magell
and your home ship, and I went in there and
instead of taking me to the private room, Sam was
kind of like he walked into the bridge and I
saw it was all dark, and el Fanning's character was
like ducking behind a chair, and I was like, what
the fuck is going on here? And then Dollman, the
fucking puppet drops down from the ceiling and he's like

(52:46):
happy birthday, and I was like what, And all of
a sudden, all the lights come on. Fucking Norman Ritas
and George Miller, the director of Mad Max, and fucking
all these actions and stuff like lay us dud and
everyone's coming out looking at the camera, just breaking the
fourth wall with confetti cannons and they shot him at
the camera, which is a little insensitive considering SCons my

(53:07):
recent history. Yeah, and the fucking puppet and they sang
happy birthday to me and like totally breaking the fourth wall.
The villain Troy Baker Higgs comes out with a fucking
pizza and he's like walking out with a pizza looking
at the camera like happy birthday. Here's someone like shows
me a pizza. And then and then the fucking mannequin
robot pops up and spills the pizza and they're like
god damn it. And it's just this silly, silly little

(53:30):
scene that I don't know if anyone else has really
seen this, because I don't know they're playing it on
their birthday pre released like I was. But I was
just like smiling, like, goddamn it, what a funny little thing.
I just did not see this coming at all. And
it's just that personality is all over this fucking game,
on top of it just being a top tier open
world action game to play with anything that like you
might have liked from the first game. The delivery stuff

(53:52):
is all very fun and everything again, but it's just
like it's more of a big fun toy sandbox than ever,
and I adore it. I think it's I think it's
fucking great a narrative.

Speaker 1 (54:02):
If it was that, I asked, well, no, no, no, sorry, continue.

Speaker 3 (54:05):
Oh I'm just gonna say, like, if look the narrative,
it's nonsense, Like I never thought that was the strongest
point of the first game, where it's just like, look,
this is a bunch of just terms and weird ideas
and things like that don't quite follow everything. I'm impressed
by the technical stuff, but whatever, It's better this time
just because there's way more scenes of like this group
of like this weirdos on your ship that are all
kind of like talking to each other and befriending each

(54:27):
other and kind of like camaraderie type stuff. So it
is better with that stuff this time around. But I
would not go in expecting this to be like, look,
Metal Gear felt like nonsense to a lot of people,
but like there actually was kind of this like epic
tale being told throughout those games. This is the needles
more on the side of nonsense on this one, but
it's still whenever it cuts thee started, I was never like, uh,

(54:48):
here we go again. It's just nonsense. But it's fun
to watch, you know.

Speaker 1 (54:53):
Yeah, I was gonna say the it was the emerging gameplay,
like the systems, kind of like you finding the story
in the first game, that was to me the most
entertaining part, And this sounds like it's leaning even harder
into like open world immersive sim kind of shit, like
with different tools to be playing around with.

Speaker 3 (55:09):
Yeah, there are just so many times that like, I'm
trying to do something, you know, I have so many
tools at my disposal, and you know, you'll approach a
bandit base or something and you'll have an idea of like, Okay,
what if I like an immersive sim, you know, like
a Dishonored or something. You'll okay, well, here's my plan
with this, and it will inevitably go awry at least
fear me. And then you've got to kind of like
figure out a way around this. And they give you
so many tools to make it silly and fun and exciting.

(55:33):
I would recommend watching the quick look that we recorded
today should be up definitely by the time this podcast
comes out for Giant Bomb. Showed off a lot there's
a lot of those moments where I'm like trying one
thing and I have to switch to another. I also
showed off a really cool kind of like boss battle
lead up at the end of the quick look.

Speaker 1 (55:50):
It's just a.

Speaker 4 (55:50):
Really battles Like are they also about like utilizing mechanics.

Speaker 3 (55:54):
Or a lot of them, Like some of them are
similar to the ones in the first game where it's
like you're just in the over world and there's just
a bunch of fucking tar everywhere and it's like a
big robot or a BT or something and you're shooting
weak spots. Some of them are like that, and then
some of them are a little more interesting. We're in
the first game. I had the Mads Mickelson one, so
where it was kind of removed a bit from Yeah,
I was trench warfare. It was like different wars. It

(56:15):
was like this was World War One, this one's Vietnam,
this one's you know this or this or that. There
is a different character. You've seen him in the trailers.
It's the solid snack guy Neil, and you know he's
a big focus of some of these flashbacks and story
things this time, and like he kind of has that
Mad's Michelson roll this time of like, oh, Okay, I'm
in a different place. What is this place? Who is
this guy? And that's still kind of unfolding where I'm

(56:37):
at in the game now, and it's it's intriguing, but
you know, it's all still just very abstract feeling. But
it's very very cool the way everything is directed and presented.

Speaker 1 (56:46):
I asked this as someone who really liked the excruciating
minuchhe of like shifting my balance just so to not
topple stuff. I know a lot of people found the
on ramp of that to be too long in the
first that's stranding to get to the actual really cool
action stuff where you see everything kind of come together.
Does it get there more quickly in this game or
is it still pretty plotting early on.

Speaker 3 (57:08):
One thousand percent?

Speaker 1 (57:09):
It is.

Speaker 3 (57:09):
That is one of the big strengths of this game.
Like I've had a lot of people ask me, like,
if I didn't play the first one, or I didn't
love the first one, you know, can I just jump
into this? And I think, yeah, I tell people, like
watch a explainer video, watch like some twenty minute thing
on YouTube. It kind of a basic idea of it,
and this one drops you in really really quick. I
remember the first one. There's a lot of like Norman
Radius crying in the rain and meeting layas to do

(57:30):
and all this stuff and trying to like a lot
of exposition about what time fall rain is and the
Chiro network and all this. It's this kind of just
gets into it, like right at the beginning, it's just like, hey,
you're with your baby, get back home. And then there's
just a bunch of really cool you know, music and avalanches,
and you know, there's a lot more like weather effects
and windstorms and earthquakes and stuff this time around, So

(57:51):
it gets into it much much quicker.

Speaker 1 (57:54):
Oh yeah, someone was telling me this game's weather effects.
It does a bunch of different cool weather effects that
are feeling like actually like next gen or of like
they didn't expand because I told them not to tell
me too much, but they said there's some stuff it's
doing with weather that actually makes it feel like new. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (58:12):
I mean a lot of games have had like weather
cycles where it's like okay, now it's raining. Now it's
not this one. Like there are times you're going across
a desert, and it's not like a scripted thing or whatever.
It's just like, hey, I'm trying to the side mission
out there in the desert. And you're walking and you're like, hey,
I'm being fine. I got in a battery. I'll be okay,
I got enough stamina. And then you'll see, like from
way far in the distance, like this red sandstorm coming
in your way, and you'll like hear Norman readers be like,

(58:34):
oh that doesn't look good. It's like, oh shit, and
like so you're kind of like looking at your map,
like I'm still about six hundred meters from there, and
that looks like a big fucking storm coming this way,
and before you know what, just everything's red and there's lightning,
and it's just like fuck. You're just trying to like,
you know, get to the place you're delivering things. Could
you get in a lot of cyber coffin for shelter. Well,
this here's the thing, Mike. The cyber coffin only works

(58:56):
on the when you're on the chiral network. So if
you're delivering to a place that you've attack too yet,
you can't utilize the tar currents on your coffin board.

Speaker 1 (59:04):
I'm embarrassed, Are there anyway? Merry?

Speaker 4 (59:07):
Game of the Year is the new biomes or like
things that are you finder, like fast is a larger world?

Speaker 3 (59:13):
Is Mexico in Australia a biome?

Speaker 1 (59:18):
Well Australia has every biome.

Speaker 3 (59:20):
Yeah, Mexico from Mexico and Australia.

Speaker 1 (59:24):
Oh my god, so Australia. It's a lot of yeah,
so oh okay. So destreating one was.

Speaker 3 (59:29):
Like America, You're connecting America.

Speaker 1 (59:33):
The first section of the game that like ended up
feeling the prologue after was like DC.

Speaker 3 (59:38):
To You're starting on the East Coast and then there's
that huge open thing and it's like Midwest.

Speaker 1 (59:43):
The big lake in the center. Yeah, and then lake
yeah yeah, and then you get across over the.

Speaker 3 (59:49):
The Rockies and stuff. Yeah yeah, it's similar. So yeah,
the first like i'd say, like eight hours is Mexico
and then you travel via the plate gate to Australia.
Play play o K it's the tectonic plates or something
in the chiral network make a big gate and then
like these crazy monk cult guys have a whole ritual
around it, and then if you walk through it, you
kind of go through a LSD trip and then you

(01:00:11):
wind up in Australia.

Speaker 1 (01:00:13):
Yeah. Yeah, I have this game downloaded right now and
I'm fucking ready to go.

Speaker 3 (01:00:19):
It's it has a very strong start. I think, like, like,
you know, so much of it is just that Kajima
factor and like the music and everything, and right at
the beginning when you're just kind of walking over these
mountains and it's you know, the rocks are tumbling down,
it's playing this wood Kid song and it's just like,
oh boy, no one really does it quite like this,
you know.

Speaker 4 (01:00:35):
Yeah, people did really like the music in the first one.
In fact, there were bands discovered in the first one.

Speaker 3 (01:00:40):
Low Roar was a big one.

Speaker 2 (01:00:41):
Yeah, Sick is going to be a big one in
this as well.

Speaker 1 (01:00:44):
Helen Darren's like step son, didn't he put the sound?
Yeah he did a lot of it.

Speaker 3 (01:00:48):
Yeah for the first one. Yeah, this one has fucking
awesome music and it's all like it's no one I've
heard of before. But now I'm like, shit, yeah, okay,
some of this Woodkid stuff is really good and it's
all extremely fitting and it's a really good game to
just turn off all the lights and get a little
high and just sink into And yeah, I think it
will be polarizing to some, but I think it's gonna

(01:01:10):
be less so than the first time because, like, people
kind of know what the deal is with death stranding now,
and this isn't reinventing the wheel, it's just doing it
all a lot better.

Speaker 2 (01:01:18):
I think, do you need to play the first one
to play the second one?

Speaker 3 (01:01:21):
I don't think you do. I'd say just watch the
explainer and uh get in. I mean in a perfect world, sure,
but like not everyone can play through a fifty to
sixty hour game.

Speaker 2 (01:01:29):
Will you understand the story if you haven't played the
first one?

Speaker 1 (01:01:32):
You're not going to understand a story if you have. Yeah, yeah,
I was gonna say, Dan, like I don't.

Speaker 3 (01:01:38):
Hello's heard we're talking about death stranding.

Speaker 1 (01:01:40):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:01:40):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:01:41):
Did you tell him about the rubber pizza? Yeah? Do
you tell him about the gay mice? Well?

Speaker 3 (01:01:48):
Well no, the pizza stuff. You know, you learn pizza
kun do. I helped the man open up his pizza
chef thing in Australia and he taught me pizza coun do,
so I can now do like spinning psycho crushers pizza
dough flying out of me and Whirlwind kicks with pizza
dough and now the rubber pizza. Yeah, you got to
like get the balance perfect and you throw a fucking
pizza at a ghost mech and you're good to go.

(01:02:10):
Sounds it's a good video game.

Speaker 1 (01:02:12):
It sounds I'm excited because, like, just like a review
that's Stranding one got so death Stranding one. I love
the like slow ramp up to all the really cool
shit when like bandits are chasing you and you're using
all the tools at your disposal and then you're like
trying to figure out how the fuck to get across
a ravine and someone left a ladder for you at

(01:02:34):
the perfect moment. But like when I was recommending it
to people, I was like, eh, it's really slow going.
I don't know if it's worth like diving into the
fact that they get to it more quickly. Now to
that really cool overlapping system emerging gameplay scenarios is exciting, and.

Speaker 3 (01:02:48):
He just goes so full Kajima. It's just like, Okay,
I went to this weapons factory to pick something up
and oops, Okay, Troy Baker pops up in a red
coffin from the ground and he's got clown makeup and
a robot suit and he's quoting talking Heads Lee while
playing a like weaponized guitar at me that shoots light
and bolts, and it's yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:03:04):
There's talking Heads involved.

Speaker 3 (01:03:06):
Yeah, it doesn't think it's in the trailers, like same
as it ever was.

Speaker 1 (01:03:08):
Like yeah, oh my god. Yeah, I've like purposely not
watched trailer stuff as much as I can. Ye, my
favorite fan of all time. I know. I just got
David Burn tickets for New York on October October tenth
or something. We're going to see him in some of
the people he played with for American Utopia. But I
can't wait to see Troy Baker doing imagine if they

(01:03:29):
did the Giant suit dance.

Speaker 3 (01:03:31):
It just Higgs has this giants. Yeah. Yeah, it's just
a fucking cool game. I really love it and I'm
really glad I gave it another shot and that we
gave it Game of the Year for the Director's cut,
and we'll do it again for On the Beach this year.

Speaker 1 (01:03:44):
Yeah, I can't wait.

Speaker 3 (01:03:46):
DEAs Stranding Banansa, Mary, I'll.

Speaker 1 (01:03:49):
Ask about your games. I'm gonna I want to talk
a little bit more about Expedition thirty three, even if
it kills us. The more I play that game, the
more I'm really liking it a lot, And that game
starts off extremely The fact that that game starts so
strong and just keeps getting better generally speaking throughout it
despite my hang ups, no mini map is still annoying

(01:04:09):
despite the lore reason for it. I get it. There
are still some points where I do think they overwhelm
you with too many new items to mess around with,
but I guess I can't complain about that because the
picto's and the way that those interact with the weapons
you're getting and the weapon upgrade system. Everything just comes
together so well in that game, And there are several

(01:04:31):
things that have really started to impress me that I appreciate.
For one, the game is pretty content to let you
just fly through if you're not interested in talking to
every town's person and getting the lore dump from them.

Speaker 3 (01:04:44):
Really okay, however.

Speaker 1 (01:04:46):
Oh yeah, like the well that was actually a complain
of mine the very beginning of the game, when they're
setting up this thing called the Gomage, which is the
central conceit to the story that makes it work. If
you're not talking to everybody on the way to that,
and they do not make you There are some they're
like two two main characters they make you talk to,
but there are a lot of side characters you could
talk to that would say like, oh, it's the gomage.

(01:05:06):
It happens every year. It's always scary, but we've just
you know, it's kind of a fact of life. It's just,
you know, deaths inevitable. Why freak out if you're gonna
die at thirty three as opposed to fifty five whatever.
They don't force you into talking to any of these people, see,
you can just kind of breeze through it. I get
a lot out of talking to a few of them,
much like you would in a Zelda game. It's like, oh,
they just told me something that's actually useful about this
item that I found it's not. And also the they're

(01:05:28):
pretty brief most of the time when I talk to
these people. I appreciate that Sandlands Sandfall, the studio is
not forcing me to but if I want the lore,
like I want to learn more about gesturals, these weird
Kokiri esque woodland creatures than I can. But I also

(01:05:48):
do think that the like blend of that dark soul's
pattern recognition with the turn based tactics. They do really
cool stuff with that throughout the game. And also, I
believe I have every character now possible that I can.
You can only have three in a fight at once,

(01:06:09):
but you can have like five. I believe in the
game there might be one more. I'm not sure I
have five. Every single character feels like they were pulled
from a different RPG, like they all they all function
so differently that it's like you're using a whole new
combat system with each one. I got the character cl

(01:06:30):
she has the scythe and the cards. She's kind of
like Gambit from X Men. She her system. It took
me a while to wrap my head around because you're
trying to gain cards basically, but gaining them will give
you sun points, but then spending them will give you
moon points, and you kind of want to keep those
balanced because then you stay in Twilight, which is when

(01:06:52):
she just does like plus fifty percent damage, so you're
kind of balancing that stuff out as her. But then
you go back to Mile and she's all about different
stances like neo or whatever, and Okay, I want to
be in defensive stance so I can use the thing
where the sword shoots up out of the ground like
up their ass, and then that'll bring me back into

(01:07:12):
virtuoso stance, where with this particular sword I do plus
two hundred percent damage. The sword just happens to be
a katana with like fucking purple laser lights down the middle.
But then if I go into offensive stance, I can
do fire damage and then oh right, lun her attacks.
This ice attack will do more damage if the character's
already on fire, and then if I hit a flaming

(01:07:34):
character with the ice, I'll generate an earth tint, which
will then make this fire attack more powerful against all
the enemies. So it's like the way that they synergize
such vastly different characters is incredibly impressive. That's not even
to mention the fact that if you are good enough
at timing the peries, the jumps, the counter attacks, the dodges,

(01:07:55):
much like you could ostensibly beat Marget in elden Ring
with a level one character, if you're that good, you
can beat a lot of these bosses mini bosses before
you're technically ready. But much like something like elden Ring,
the option is there to grind to kind of tailor
the difficulty to how you want it to be. So

(01:08:17):
I'm just like, I guess the more I play Expedition
thirty three, the more I kind of see like the
overall picture come into focus, and it impresses me more
and more. I still don't think it's perfect by any means.
I really I do think this level design gets a
bit too complex in a game where there is no
mini map. And then I also think the game is
really has problems. What's the word I'm even looking for.

(01:08:39):
Like someone a colleague became a narrative designer and they
were saying like, there's a difference between level design and
writing and narrative design. Narrative design, at least at the
studio they were at, was very much about contextualizing your
mission in a way that made the mission itself feel important.
Like in Diablo three, the narrative desig at. I don't

(01:09:01):
know how Blizzard works, but for instance, using Diablo to three,
the narrative designer wouldn't be the one right in the dialogue.
They wouldn't be the one designing the actual area. It'd
be like, how do we contextualize this mission? Oh, this
skeleton king lost his skull and we need to go
get it back and then this thing happens along the way.
I think Expedition thirty three has problems with that sometimes,
where even when I'm playing for longer sessions, like if

(01:09:23):
I've been playing for three hours, I'll kind of and
maybe it's just my short term attention span, but I
don't think it is. Because I've been playing for three
hours and like synergizing and theory crafting different stuff, I'll
forget what I was even like what they wanted me
to do at all, And you can't really check until
you go out to the overworld. There might be a
way you can that I have not found in the menus.

(01:09:46):
There just is not much narrative info for me to
reference to remind myself what I'm even supposed to be
like doing. And that's just kind of exacerbated threefold when
I come back to the game after a trip away
in Ireland and I haven't played, so I'm like, what
the fuck was I? Oh, right, this is kind of
and then I'm just end up like wandering this gestural

(01:10:08):
village or whatever, trying to find the one character that
will point me in the direction because there's no real
like logbook that I've found. But yeah, I like that
game quite a bit. It's one of my favorite games
of the year so far. If you're into turn based
games you haven't tried it, definitely do it. But if
you're not into turn based games, see if those real
time elements kind of do it for you enough that

(01:10:31):
you could get into the turn based aspects, but I
don't know. Just similar to the way Damna was talking
about Destraainting two and different biomes in the world's like
Expedition thirty three has such creative world design, like you're
in this like you're in a coral reef, but it's
not underwater.

Speaker 4 (01:10:47):
The underwater world is really cool because you're not swimming.

Speaker 1 (01:10:51):
Yeah, and then the stone Stone Wave cliffs basically look
like the Cliffs of More in Ireland, which is probably
why they like It's funny. I played those before I
went to Ireland. Just like Super High cliff Sides, there's
like Ferris Wheels destroyed Ferris Wheels down below you from
amusement parks and stuff. Really really inventive game. Like I'm
so glad it's done so well because like that is

(01:11:12):
a studio I want to keep working and getting paid
and doing their thing.

Speaker 3 (01:11:17):
It's definitely. It's definitely something that I intend on getting it,
Like as soon as there's a little I'm gonna check
this out because I feel like this is the RPG
I could get into, like the turn based ARPG I
can get into based on here, what I've seen, bank play,
what I've seen everyone whose tastes their respect says, it
seems like it's something very very special and I'm really
looking forward to it.

Speaker 1 (01:11:37):
I think you'll appreciate it. Like right from the bat,
they've got this huge fucking premise they really need to
get across. They're not forcing you to talk to everybody
who was like, oh man, the gomage is about to happen.
Here's what it is. Even though I know you know,
but let's talk about it. It's like no, like you
could rush through a bunch of past a bunch of characters,
and all of a sudden, like this giant in the
distance paints a new number on this huge like like

(01:11:59):
plank and then all of a sudden, a bunch of
people disappear, like WHOA, I should have talked to those people.
But yeah, they're not forcing you. Every once in a while,
like it'll it'll fade, the screen will zoom out to
a cut scene when you go into a new area.
And but that's kind of the extent of it. And
the game's getting funny, not like not super laugh out
loud funny, but I have snickered a few times. There's

(01:12:22):
a couple of the character Eska Mary, have you gotten
an Ska yet? Yes? Him and his I did laugh
fairly hard because this game is also extremely French. But Ska,
who sounds like Javier Bardem, is like talking about He's like,
I need this, I need this. It's a very co
gema ask. He's like, I need I have a bunch
of different pet rocks, and I can't do this without that.

(01:12:44):
I can't fly without this pet rock. I can't swim
you to the paintress without this one. He's like, I'm
missing Flory, my pet rock that lets me swim. You
know who's taking it, The man who lives over there
in that cave, my arch nemesis, Francois. Then you go
and you have to go fight Francois needs this turtle
who shirts shoots fucking ice laser beams. Okay, yeah, it's

(01:13:04):
really dumb. Uh. Yeah, I don't know the game. It's
just funny that the way when you're talking about dest
Raining too is like you could be describing some like
some sections in an Expedition thirty three obviously very very
different kinds of games, but I don't know. It feels
like the developers at a certain point were like, we've
kind of created a world in which anything goes, so
why not just do anything? And it works really well. Yeah.

(01:13:27):
I like that game a lot. That's that's my main
focus now. I kind of want to finish that because
I've heard it's.

Speaker 2 (01:13:33):
Not close you think, I think further do you have
to go?

Speaker 4 (01:13:36):
I feel like when you have all the characters, you
have to be pretty close.

Speaker 1 (01:13:39):
Yeah. My save file says twenty three hours, so I've
heard people say they beat it in like thirty which
like was was also another reason for me to dive in.
I'm like, a fucking Turn Basis RPG I could beat
in thirty hours, that's hell, yeah, let's do it. So
I think I'm going to finish that before I truly
just absorb myself in Stranding, because I don't want to

(01:14:01):
like sell either game short by not devoting myself to it.

Speaker 3 (01:14:05):
Same and I can definitely tell that Expedition thirty three
is going to be talked about a lot on both
here and Giant Bombs Game of the Year, so I'm
going to need to need to play it, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:14:13):
If only just to like at least have some like
context for why another game is doing something X or
why better than that? Yeah, it's I I think it
might grab you in a way, a way that like
even I was like, no, Dan, you wouldn't like metaphor,
But like, I think this has a better chance at least.
I'm curious what you think. Mary, you played more? Uh

(01:14:37):
what was the name of the game, Pistilo. Oh, yeah,
you both played it, but Mary you played more.

Speaker 3 (01:14:42):
Mary's played.

Speaker 4 (01:14:43):
Yeah, I'm really liking it. I think I'm almost I'm
getting there. My plan is to complete Pipistrello. I've decided
it actually is quite good.

Speaker 2 (01:14:52):
Now.

Speaker 4 (01:14:52):
Some of this is within the constraints that I've been
traveling so much. I've been playing it on Steam Deck
on the plane, and it's just such a great plane game.

Speaker 2 (01:15:03):
It's very easy to pick up.

Speaker 4 (01:15:05):
You can go anywhere you want, but there's like certain
directions you need to go in order to like get
certain things accomplished. I mean, I really enjoyed the second
boss area.

Speaker 2 (01:15:16):
You like go into.

Speaker 4 (01:15:19):
A construction site and you have to get all the
proper documentation.

Speaker 2 (01:15:24):
They're like, you don't, Mikey, you don't have your documentation.

Speaker 1 (01:15:27):
Where are you?

Speaker 4 (01:15:28):
So you're like getting your documentations that you can go
down to this layer. I'm getting the coolest upgrades to
my yo yo. It is like they are puzzles, dude.
Like it is getting to the point now where I
am walking across water. I am able to jump backwards
over three blocks based on things that I've learned in

(01:15:49):
a crude over the time, So all this stuff that
I previously was like, oh my gosh, that's an upgrade,
but I can't get to it because it's past water
or it's like past this like cavernous area I can
get past. I can do it now, and it's really cool,
just like in any Metroidvania, being able to go back
and get all the upgrades and all the bonuses because
my character is so mobile now, I'm so strong and

(01:16:11):
I've been doing all these upgrades. The upgrade system for
anyone who missed the last time we talked about this game,
Pistrella has this I think, really cool upgrade system.

Speaker 2 (01:16:20):
Where you essentially borrow an upgrade.

Speaker 4 (01:16:23):
Let's say the upgrade is that your yoyo attack is
stronger now, but it costs one thousand dollars. Until you
pay off your debt, you have one less attack power.

Speaker 2 (01:16:35):
And every dollar you accrue is split in half.

Speaker 4 (01:16:40):
Half of it goes to your bank where you just
get to have it to spend, and the other half
goes to paying off your debt. Once you pay off
your debt, all of the negative effects are gone and
you get to keep your positive benefit forever. I've got
like twelve positive benefits right now.

Speaker 3 (01:16:55):
And it feels great too, because like when you're getting
your coins and stuff after your defeat enemies, it's like
it's not like a undred percent is going towards paying
off dead Like okay, I'm increasing my wallet, but I'm
also paying this off, and as soon as it's paid off,
it's like, oh, hell, yeah, now I got the thing.
No downside, this is great.

Speaker 2 (01:17:08):
There's no downside. I mean it's really fun. I've also been.

Speaker 4 (01:17:11):
Buying uh so you can find badges and you can
also find blueprints. I find this a bit silly that
you can't just find badges but essentially take the blueprints
back to a person and they turn it into a badge.
Badge system is very similar to Hollow Night. You essentially
have a certain amount of pins that you can assign,
but you can pay to have a badge have its

(01:17:35):
amounts reduced, and which I do for every one of
my badges because it's a benefit, it's a boon.

Speaker 3 (01:17:40):
And you can increase like the amount of your pips too, right,
like you're overall Like, yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:17:44):
Those are also found in the world. They're also upgrades,
as is the amount of hearts that you have. You
have to find heart containers. If you find eight heart containers,
which I find such an obscure like random number, you
get a permanent heart added. Same thing with your little
badge pins. You can find them in the world. I
think for every two badge pins you find, you increase

(01:18:05):
the amount of badges you can have, and it's it
just is really rewarding. I'm so much stronger than the
last time I talked to you about this game, like
I've I've accomplished so much in this game. I still
find the world very whimsical and light and funny and cheeky,
and the side characters say the funniest, stupidest things, Like
I really have enjoyed going to the different areas and

(01:18:29):
I talk to all the side characters and hear all
their dumb dialogue.

Speaker 2 (01:18:32):
It's it's cheeky and funny.

Speaker 4 (01:18:34):
I actually think a lot of heart went into this game,
and I think it's quite good, especially for like an
indie ass indie game. I think they I think they
nailed it. So I'm I'm just loving Pipastrello.

Speaker 3 (01:18:46):
It's really good. I can tell I like it enough
after playing like two or three hours on scheme that
I'm mainly traveling with my switch to now, so I
got a code for the switch one. It's like, all right,
well I'll start over. I'm like enjoying the moment to
moment enough on this that Yeah, it's kind of become
a playing game for me.

Speaker 4 (01:19:01):
Yeah, to me, this is like one I'll be playing
until I complete it.

Speaker 2 (01:19:04):
This is a completer for me. But again, I do
think that it is.

Speaker 4 (01:19:09):
There is a part of me that would have played
Expedition thirty three if it wasn't for how much travel
I've been doing. I'm actually not sure if I could
play Expedition thirty three on a steam Deck.

Speaker 2 (01:19:20):
If I could, I probably would.

Speaker 3 (01:19:22):
I've heard it's not great. I was talking to people
that were doing that, and it's like, I guess the
like input lag type stuff is a problem for the
perrying and all that.

Speaker 2 (01:19:28):
Oh, yeah, you don't game steam Deck.

Speaker 1 (01:19:31):
Yeah, that Perry's punishing to begin with the window.

Speaker 4 (01:19:34):
Yes, yeah, it's brutal and you will literally die if
you cannot dodge properly in that game, like you'd been
doing the same boss fights like one hundred times.

Speaker 1 (01:19:41):
Yeah, for sure. But also today there was a fucking
I like, I perfectly created this party in which like
I waited on purpose, I skipped a turn on purpose
to try to kill a character with a counter attack
because my counter attack did more damage to burning characters
and then also her ice sword, her ice sythe did

(01:20:02):
more damage to uh what was it marked characters and
I had just marked it with another counter attack and
then it fucking did like the entire health bar. It's
really good anyway, Sorry, I want to h those.

Speaker 2 (01:20:17):
Little caveats and you get to like kill a bom.

Speaker 1 (01:20:20):
It was like, it was like, what do you want
to call it? Fucking uh our game of the year
last year? Why am I the name in miniature in
a turn based games like oh man, they let me
break it. One other detail I forgot to mention, they
warn you there's an option in the menu or in
the menu at the beginning of the game or on

(01:20:41):
the character man either like just so you know, you
can toggle off, you can keep, you can toggle it
to default costumes and cut scenes, or you can use
whatever costume they have attached. But there may just be
unintended tonal shifts. So there's one where they run into
someone like I don't want to spoil too much, but
like basically several different parties thought the other one was dead,

(01:21:04):
and finally they meet up and it's this really like
emotional reunion because this one woman like thought she was
the last one alive and final she's she's like reuniting
with with Gustave and whatnot, the protagonists, and then everybody's like,
we need to we really need to get going, and
then they just they can't like bring themselves to move on,

(01:21:26):
even though they know they need to, because it's like
the weight of its hitting them. And all of a sudden,
Luna comes out from off screen with a baguette slung
over her shoulder, and red rim sunglasses. She's like, guys,
we need to go, and then I was like, oh,
that's what they were talking about. It's really good.

Speaker 3 (01:21:42):
I extremely have that in Destrainting too as well, because
it's like I'm wearing like Elton John starglasses and Norman
Rita's and like a giant camel hat that has like
bladders of water so in the desert, I don't overheat.
It's like someone's like delivering a baby and screaming, and
Norman Rita's and his camel hats there.

Speaker 1 (01:21:58):
You know, it's amazing.

Speaker 4 (01:22:00):
I feel like in that game there's like so much
separation of reality that you just allow it.

Speaker 2 (01:22:07):
But there's a lot of just like crying four so funny.

Speaker 3 (01:22:11):
Yeah, but like it's so earnest with the weirdness that
it's like here's this extremely earnest scene with like crying
and babies and peril and stuff, and here's Norman Renis
wearing a camel and it's like, Okay, sure.

Speaker 1 (01:22:22):
Day, you said you're traveling with your switch. Are you
still playing a lot of World Tour Mario?

Speaker 3 (01:22:26):
I am, and yeah, I had the big family test
this weekend with the local multiplayer and everything because that's
always the thing with Mario Karts, like that is the
great uniter of you know, casual gamers and hardcore gamers, like, okay,
everyone can get together and place some Mario card And
did that with several groups of people while I was home,
and resounding success. People absolutely loved it. It's a great time.

(01:22:49):
The camera thing. Everyone finds the camera thing fun when
you can see everyone's head above their cards and everything.
I found the Knockout Tour is very very popular. Everybody
I showed it to that doesn't really keep up with
the game and it was just like, oh shit, that's
a really cool idea. But yeah, it's like I feel
like people that have played a million of these games
and podcasts and stuff about it, like there have been

(01:23:10):
complaints about Mario Kart being underwhelming or whatever. I have
not felt that, and certainly the people that just occasionally
play a Mario Kard game have all been like, oh,
this is awesome, Like we just had a great, great time,
like at the lake, hooking up a switch at night,
having some beers and playing. It's great for that, and
Knockout Tour is a blast. There was one night I
was just hanging out with Kayla and everybody had gone

(01:23:31):
to bed and we were just like each had our
switch to is out, and we told my discord like, hey,
here's the room code. Just a bunch of people jumped in.
We weren't streaming or anything. We were just playing, and
like in between races we'd talked shit and the discord
and stuff, and it was just like, man, we played
for like four hours or something and just had an
absolute blash. Me and Kayles sitting on the couch playing
this game, and like, it's a good fucking Mario Kart.

(01:23:52):
I do love the Switch too. I understand that it's
not like the most loaded launch lineup or anything like that,
but Mario Kart's great loving it, and you know, Donkey
Kong's right around the corner. I'm certainly pleased with the
Switch too.

Speaker 4 (01:24:04):
There will be more Switch games that I am not
worried about. I think like you're an early adopter, and
because you are such a fan of Mario Kart, I
think it makes a lot of sense for you. I
also think it's completely reasonable for other people to hold
off until sure there's more games, But I think for you,
your truth is is that it's totally acceptable reason to

(01:24:25):
get it now.

Speaker 3 (01:24:26):
Oh, anyone who's saying, like, I don't want to spend
five hundred if you get the bundle with tax, it's
like five hundred and fifty dollars for Switch to and
Mario Kart. And it's like if someone's like, I like
Mario Kart, fine, but I would all wait a little
bit before I spend five hundred and fifty dollars. Yes,
obviously completely understand that. But for me, I really love
Mario Kart and I just don't see it as a

(01:24:46):
disappointed Like I've heard people describe it as a disappointing
launch game, and I see it as like kind of
a killer app, like if you love Mario Kart and
you've got the money to spend, Like, certainly not disappointed
with this.

Speaker 2 (01:24:58):
They launched the first Switch with a Zelda or.

Speaker 3 (01:25:01):
My crazy first Switch launch with Breath of the Wild,
which is insane, and it was also released on we
You at the same.

Speaker 4 (01:25:06):
Time comparatively, and you know, that's maybe where some of
that disappointments coming from, because if you weren't playing Breath
of the Wild when that came out, you were fucking
absolutely missing out on the best game ever.

Speaker 2 (01:25:20):
And that's just not the case this time.

Speaker 3 (01:25:21):
As much as I love Mario Kart World, it does
not remotely compare to just the crater that that Breath
the Wild left, like that was an industry changing game.

Speaker 2 (01:25:30):
Year, game of all time.

Speaker 3 (01:25:32):
I mean, yes, it's probably like the best game ever.
So like in the first year of the original Switch,
we had Breath of the Wild Mario Kart eight Deluxe,
which was just a better version of Mario Kart ninety
six tracks, which is no, no, no, It took time
for a deluxe round, gotcha. They added that later with
the Switch Online expansion pack thing, But then Mario w
Otis was that year two, So twenty seventeen it was
like Breath the Wild, Switch Mario Ottissey, Mario Kart A Deluxe.

(01:25:56):
It was just unreal, Like best launch yer maybe ever
for a console. So by no means is the Switch
to meeting that not by long shot? I mean, I
guess we still have the rest of the year. Donkey
Kong is great. Who knows what's for the holiday Metroid.
It looks like a really solid year. But like Switch
one's first year was legendary, so don't mean to put
it on that pedestal, but mariok Art World's really fucking fun.

Speaker 2 (01:26:21):
I got one last one for you.

Speaker 1 (01:26:24):
Is it a fishing game?

Speaker 2 (01:26:25):
It is a fishing game.

Speaker 1 (01:26:27):
Is it cozy?

Speaker 2 (01:26:28):
It's cozy. It's called cast in Chill. Look it up.
It is stunning, stunningly gorgeous.

Speaker 1 (01:26:39):
Oh yeah, graphic style.

Speaker 3 (01:26:42):
I was wondering if it was in chill like toys
r Us and it is a lowercase end.

Speaker 2 (01:26:47):
And yeah, it is so.

Speaker 1 (01:26:51):
Like da.

Speaker 2 (01:26:53):
Yes, I think Dave the Diver is like for going on.
This is simple.

Speaker 1 (01:26:57):
The reflection on the water is crazy looking for ape it.

Speaker 2 (01:27:01):
And they do a good job with adding no I.

Speaker 1 (01:27:03):
Mean sorry, I'm being reductive like pixelated art style.

Speaker 3 (01:27:07):
Sure, yeah, they.

Speaker 4 (01:27:09):
Do a good job with adding a lot of nature elements.
So while you're fishing on this river.

Speaker 1 (01:27:14):
Damn, that's really good booking.

Speaker 4 (01:27:16):
Ducks will swim or fly by. Sometimes there's deer in
the forest. There's lots of like little secrets that make
you feel like you're in a living, breathing world. But
you essentially fish, and as you fish, you sell your fish.
For the very beginning, you're selling your fish for like
five dollars a fish, and you use the money to

(01:27:36):
upgrade everything your rod, your line, your lores, the strength
which you need for bigger fish deeper in the lake,
and then eventually your boat, how many fish you can
carry back, and ultimately different lakes that you can swim
in different environments. Yeah, it's it's but it's so cozy.

(01:28:02):
It's like not scary at all. You cast with A,
it's very simple, and you reel with A. You can
redrop your line if you need to, but ultimately, like
I'm basically just throwing my line in and like hoping
a fish grabs it. There's some minor games with the fish.
If they're really strong, they can actually pull away and
break your lines. You have to be careful with like

(01:28:22):
how quickly you reel them in. But I mean, like,
you guys, this is like, this is such a sleepy, calm,
zen relaxing game. I bought this because I was working.
I was so like, you know, it's stressful working in
another country. I don't fucking speak French. I wanted a
game that allowed me to unwind after a long work

(01:28:46):
day and fall asleep, and that is exactly what this is.

Speaker 2 (01:28:49):
I fell asleep playing this game in a good way,
if that makes sense.

Speaker 1 (01:28:52):
Yeah, is it.

Speaker 3 (01:28:53):
What do you in a level of like fishing complexity, how
would you compare it to like the stardew system.

Speaker 4 (01:28:58):
Right, I mean Starduo has that mini game of like
making sure that you can keep it within that bar.
That doesn't have any of this stuff. It is just
simply like the fish is pulling, pull back. If it
pulls too hard, you can break your lines. You need
to let it go sometimes and then.

Speaker 2 (01:29:11):
Bring it in. There's no mini game, there's no bar.

Speaker 4 (01:29:15):
It's just reel in the fish as best as you can,
and again when you lose the fish, you just fucking
cast again. Like it's super casual. It does have a
what do you call it a dossier? It has like
a book of every fish you've ever caught. So when
you catch a new type of fish, when you break
a record for your biggest fish ever, you get like

(01:29:36):
a little star being like you broke your record.

Speaker 2 (01:29:38):
You know this one's a fourteen bounder. That's crazy.

Speaker 4 (01:29:41):
So you're like, it's really calm, you guys. This is
like probably one of the chillest games.

Speaker 1 (01:29:46):
Oh.

Speaker 4 (01:29:47):
Also, I just have to mention your boat has a
dog in it, and every time you successfully catch a fish,
he gives you a little heart because he loves you
and you're so good at catching fish.

Speaker 3 (01:29:58):
The picture I pulled up it does like you can
pet the dog with the mouse cursor.

Speaker 4 (01:30:02):
Yes, it's it's so sweet, you guys. It's it's just
a relaxing fishing game. There's no muss, there's no fuss,
there's no friendship system, there's no.

Speaker 5 (01:30:11):
Uh.

Speaker 4 (01:30:12):
Their dialogue between you and the fishermen is so simple.
If you come back with really small fish, he's like.

Speaker 2 (01:30:17):
What did you go? What'd you do?

Speaker 4 (01:30:19):
Go to a guppy farm and you're like, shut the
fuck up, you old bitch, and then you like buy
better lures.

Speaker 2 (01:30:25):
You get like.

Speaker 4 (01:30:26):
Big ass bass fishes and the guys like what what
a haul?

Speaker 1 (01:30:30):
Like?

Speaker 2 (01:30:31):
That's it?

Speaker 4 (01:30:32):
Like, this is a very simple game that does it
quite well if you're open to beautiful style, like pixel
style graphics like this. I mean, this is expertly crafted
and just cordial design. It's it's stunning, very simple cozy
fish game.

Speaker 1 (01:30:50):
Cool.

Speaker 3 (01:30:51):
I love a good fishing game like whether it's it's
simple arcadie stuff for more like a like you know,
dedicated fishing controls. I should check this out.

Speaker 4 (01:30:59):
Yeah, I think it's so sweet, and it's well done,
and I don't think it's getting a lot of I
don't feel like people are going to talk about this game,
so I'm glad.

Speaker 2 (01:31:07):
I am.

Speaker 4 (01:31:08):
I do think it's quite good, so I'm glad. I
hope somebody grabs it from this cool.

Speaker 1 (01:31:14):
All right, do you guys want to do emails? Yeah?
All right? As usual, you can write into firecapcast at
gmail dot com to questions for our show. We got
a bunch since last time. Keep them coming. It helps
us keep it stocked, so we have the pigot the
letter to choose from every time we get in. I
do have one really quick favor I need to ask people.

(01:31:37):
There's been a couple episodes over the last ten or
so where I've mentioned this game, and it's fucking eluding me.
It's like a white whale of a game. And I
have several things I could tell you. I can't. I
don't even know how to search for it. I cannot
find this game that I played and really liked. All
I knew. I want to say it was twenty twenty,

(01:31:58):
twenty twenty one, we'll get twenty. I don't. I don't know.
All I know is it was very colorful. It was
either a metroid Vania or like a two true action game.
But the main thing was you're you're recruiting this big,
like fairly large squad of characters and it's not cute,

(01:32:18):
but it's like color.

Speaker 3 (01:32:19):
Not wild bastards.

Speaker 1 (01:32:20):
No no, no, no way. Wait. Yeah, And the thing was
you could basically have four four characters equipped, and from
what I remember, you have like you hold a trigger
and you press a DP pad direction and it would
swap you to that character really quick.

Speaker 3 (01:32:35):
What's the perspective two two D side like isometric top
side scrolling.

Speaker 1 (01:32:40):
And I can't I don't think it was a Metrodvana.
I might have had Metroidvania light aspects.

Speaker 3 (01:32:45):
But like Beat Them Up is just like a streets Rade.

Speaker 1 (01:32:48):
It was like an action oriented game. Yeah, because each
character you equip again and you're developing a big roster
of characters. You're just traveling across this world.

Speaker 3 (01:32:58):
Nobody saves the world. No that I would know that
that was top down, but it was top down. But yeah, yeah, yeah,
this was before that. That was like two years ago.
I want to say this was four or five.

Speaker 1 (01:33:10):
I don't I remember.

Speaker 3 (01:33:11):
We're doing the show, were we doing this.

Speaker 1 (01:33:15):
It might have even been right before we did the show,
so it was like it could have been twenty.

Speaker 3 (01:33:18):
Twenty early pandemic.

Speaker 1 (01:33:19):
It was twenty nineteen or twenty twenty or twenty one.
I know because I had just moved.

Speaker 3 (01:33:24):
Back to the are you counching? Are you shooting?

Speaker 1 (01:33:26):
Melee? A lot of melee. I want to say. There
was one character who had kind of this like the
conical hat.

Speaker 3 (01:33:35):
Blasphemous. No, no it was.

Speaker 1 (01:33:37):
It wasn't dark. It was like a bright game, even
though it's pretty like fairly violent. I don't even know
how to search for it. I remember really liking it,
and I remember not loving the name. But I played
through the whole thing though, and I don't remember the
last time someone's talked about it. And I've looked through
all my libraries on Steam PlayStation. I think I played

(01:33:59):
it on, so it might be somewhere on Steam. I
just need to go through the fine tooth.

Speaker 3 (01:34:03):
Comb Mainly, is it like a combos? Are you juggling
juggling combos?

Speaker 1 (01:34:06):
Yeah? Yeah, not quite beat them up, but like, yeah,
it's pretty action heavy, but you're going across this really
colorful world, so you're not you know, it's not like
super confined.

Speaker 3 (01:34:17):
Is there an map like overworld map or is it
just like I think so stage to stage.

Speaker 1 (01:34:22):
I think it's I think you're doing a bit of backtracking,
and I just remember, like you have four characters in
your party basically, but you're like swapping between them on
the map to fight, and I remember you could do
it at the press of a deep head, and like
if that if anybody, no, no, no, no, it wasn't like humor,
humor or no sorry, tonally, it was like it even

(01:34:43):
reminds me of the tone that the League of Legend
like Saga games are going for those like one off
games that people are making. If if that's not enough,
I don't know that I'll ever find it. I'll just
need to go through my steam, like.

Speaker 3 (01:34:55):
I'll think about it, and like, now that we put
it out there, I'm sure somebody will.

Speaker 1 (01:34:59):
I played it and I don't even remember the name,
so clearly the name was forgettable. Anyway, if that helps them,
please email fireskap Pass at gmail dot com. It's been
killing me and I want to have more Ragnarok. That's it, Okay,
never mind, I don't need the emails, all right, Dan
Mary usually reads first, but this one specifically for you
from Tim all.

Speaker 3 (01:35:19):
Right, Hi, this is for Dan. I first tried middle
Gear Solid from a demo disc back in the PS
one era, was the Pizza Hut one. Because that's when
I played it, I thought it.

Speaker 1 (01:35:27):
Was super boring.

Speaker 3 (01:35:28):
I never even finished the demo. I haven't played a
minute of a Kajema game since then. I figured I
should at least give it a second try twenty five
years later. I know there are a few collections and
remasters out there. If somebody was picking the middle Gear
Solid games up for the first time, what consoles or
versions would you tell them to get. I have everything,
including a high ENDPC. Thanks Tim from Baldwin. Oh, I
think this is easy. I think you know. If you

(01:35:49):
have everything including a high NPC, I say the Steam
version of the Master Collection Volume one, because that actually
all that plays very well on the Steam deck as well.
That should have kind of that PS one version of
Middle Year Solid. It should have. I don't know if
it's the substance version of MGS two, but it shouldn't matter.
The important thing with three is that is the subsistence

(01:36:11):
version with the camera, which I believe the Master Collection
Volume one has uh, and then you'll have to figure
out how to play four, which that's a whole different thing.
Like I don't know if you have a well, if
you have everything, you have a PS three playing down there,
there's other you know, ways, funky ways you can play
Metal your Solid four. But I just think get Master
Collection Metal Your Solid volume one on Steam and download

(01:36:32):
it to your high end PC and your Steam deck,
and you should be set. I think they did a
pretty good job with that.

Speaker 1 (01:36:37):
That's bluepoint, right, was it.

Speaker 3 (01:36:39):
I think it was.

Speaker 1 (01:36:40):
Yeah, that's about right.

Speaker 3 (01:36:40):
Yeah, so yeah, I have that still someone They've done
a few of those, the HG collections and stuff back
in the day and everything. But I think, you know,
just go ahead and get that one on Steam. Cool.
Thank you, j I love hearing people's thought. Please email
back Tim, because like anyone playing Metal Gear Solid for
the first time now I heard everything, Like I hear
more people say like, oh, it's actually still really fucking cool.

(01:37:01):
Like obviously some like controls and things like that are
a little dated, but like people tend to still really
like Blaneham as old as they are.

Speaker 1 (01:37:07):
Tonally, and just like vibe wise, I think it's still
it still hits really well, Yeah, I'd be curious as well.
Thank you, Tim uh Mary? Do you want to read
this one from Doc Sure?

Speaker 4 (01:37:20):
Greetings everyone. Dan's story about the seven to eleven got
me thinking. I was in New Orleans for my wife's
b day two years ago with her friends. We were
out with a big group of people, drinking, eating, having fun.

Speaker 2 (01:37:31):
We live near Nola.

Speaker 4 (01:37:32):
At the end of the night, I ended up at
the casino with a friend of mine. As the night ended,
we left the casino and I cracked a joke about
my friends coworker looking like Greek Jesus. Apparently he didn't
like this joke and pulled a knife out and held.

Speaker 2 (01:37:46):
It to my neck.

Speaker 4 (01:37:47):
My god, my buddy pulled him off of me and
I pieced out instantly. First and last time I will
hang out with someone I suspect of.

Speaker 2 (01:37:55):
Using coke as well.

Speaker 4 (01:37:57):
Anyway, have you all ever had your death experience or
times you did a hard retrospective on your life after
a major thing happened to you?

Speaker 2 (01:38:06):
Doc Hensla, Well, first, what was the seven eleven story?

Speaker 1 (01:38:09):
I don't remember that you were coming back from a
seven to eleven in LA and the homeless person.

Speaker 3 (01:38:14):
Oh, the recent one. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, sure, okay, seeah.

Speaker 4 (01:38:16):
It could be like any of your seven eleven stories
where you like choked on a hot dog or something like.

Speaker 3 (01:38:21):
No, the closest eleven.

Speaker 1 (01:38:23):
The closest to near death experiences I've had are when
like I see that I'm about to break a bone
in real time and time kind of slows down. That's
happened several times. I also took a ninety eight mile
an hour shot in lacrosse to my lower back that
ruptured the muscles down and fractured my tailbones.

Speaker 3 (01:38:42):
Were you telling me about that? That sounded very bad?

Speaker 1 (01:38:44):
I didn't. I didn't think I was gonna die. But
the pain from my tailbum being fractured for the next
two weeks, the spasms going up my bad. I won't
get too graphic. That made me, honestly that I was like, Oh,
I re examined my whole life, like I don't care
Aboutlacross is my I thought, I did, I'm gonna go
figure things out. Oh what wait a minute, I can

(01:39:04):
get I can make fifty dollars to review a video game,
and then yeah, the rest is history. That is that.

Speaker 3 (01:39:10):
That is something that I think is probably I can't
speak for all sports, but like knowing wrestlers and stuff,
I know, like you know big ee who this guy
who broke his neck on national TV and like talking
to him about it and stuff. It's just like yeah,
like something like that, like a serious, serious injury will
make you reconsider everything for sure, and for good reason.

Speaker 1 (01:39:27):
Yeah, there's been as I also like went over this
dirt ramp we made on my like BMX bike when
I was twelve, and I as I was coming off,
I knew right away I was getting way too much air,
like I was getting actual air, and I did not
know how at all to deal with it. Like I'm
not fucking Matt. What was his name? What was the
BMX the famous one, Matt Kaufman. I'm like, I'm not Matt.

(01:39:50):
I said that out loud in mid air to my friends,
like I'm not Matt. No, I didn't, but like I
fell off my bike and I was like sixteen feet
in the air. I might I don't know, I might
be over so I might be under selling it, but
I knew as I was falling. I consciously it was like, well,
I know I should technically kind of rag doll right
now because I stand more of a chance to not
break anything, and I still broke some stuff, But like

(01:40:12):
I there was a flash where I was like I
might die if I land on my bike the wrong way,
and I was also going downhill after the ramp. It
was a terrible situation that we created for ourselves. Yeah,
it's all like I've been in a couple of minor
car accidents. Those weren't that they weren't scary accidents. It
was more like snow involved stuff.

Speaker 3 (01:40:31):
That's a recurring dream I have, is like there's something
that's like a bike or a something where it's like
I ramp off of something and I'm so high in
the air or I have enough time to think like, oh,
I don't know, I'm fucked. I'm just I'm gonna have
to land here in like ten seconds. I'm super gonna die.
Yeah to metaphor, I feel like the time I most
thought I was going to die was when my friend
was breaking into my place at the knife, which I've

(01:40:52):
surely told that sorry before seemed like I was definitely
going to get stabbed to death for that, and question
saying do you ever do a hard retrospective and changed
things afterwards? H no, we kept one of the bars
after that, So yeah, that was probably the closest to death.

Speaker 1 (01:41:07):
I am.

Speaker 3 (01:41:08):
Yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 4 (01:41:10):
If I've ever had it close to death. I think
the closest is like, and this isn't very close. On
the way home from I think my first Japan trip.
We had such crazy turbulence on that flight that I
actually got out my phone app and like wrote some
drafts of like really it was so fucking bad, and

(01:41:34):
like the guy was like even on the on the
uh speaker, he was like just you guys know, like
this is normal, nothing out of the ordinary. He was
trying to reassure us that it was fine, but it
was just so dippy. I'm talking about where the plane
yea dips and you kind of feel your stomach and

(01:41:55):
a little bit.

Speaker 2 (01:41:57):
It happened all the time, like consistently through the.

Speaker 3 (01:42:01):
Flight, and.

Speaker 1 (01:42:03):
Yes, Francisco, it was hours.

Speaker 4 (01:42:07):
It was hours of like extreme where it got to
the point where I was like writing notes to people,
simple notes, not like you know, not like full retrospectives,
but just like Mom, I love you so much, like
I think about you all the time. I was like
literally like telling people I loved them because it was
freaking me out. That's like it was psychologically fucking with

(01:42:29):
me after hours of turbulence.

Speaker 2 (01:42:31):
I think that's the closest.

Speaker 4 (01:42:32):
I don't think I've ever had someone pull a knife
on me, and I've never like almost died by doing anything.

Speaker 2 (01:42:44):
The closest is like.

Speaker 4 (01:42:45):
I I was a gymnast for many years, you know,
and one time I undercut a pass, like a tumbling pass,
and when I hit I like basically popped like both
of my ankles at the same time. That was very
severe for me, but I was like, I wasn't like this.

Speaker 2 (01:43:02):
Is it my mom? I love her, I'm gonna miss you.

Speaker 4 (01:43:09):
Like I basically was like, fuck, my ankles are fucking shattered,
And I was fine.

Speaker 1 (01:43:15):
Mary's just shouting yates midway through a triple flips, like,
do not.

Speaker 2 (01:43:19):
Go quiet, tell my mom, I love her. Like I
was fine.

Speaker 4 (01:43:25):
But it was an extraordinary pain, and it did ultimately
like alter forever my ability to do gymnastics and like
even my ability to walk to this day, if something
tweaks my ankle wrong, I will just fall over. So
it's like it's been kind of like a permanent change
to my physical being.

Speaker 2 (01:43:46):
But yeah, I'm very fortunate.

Speaker 4 (01:43:48):
I've never been like so sick that I thought, Mike,
something might happen to me. And I've never been as
far as I can remember. Maybe I blocked that memory out,
but like as far as I can remember, like, I
don't think anyone's ever tried.

Speaker 2 (01:43:59):
To like yeat me. So I feel pretty good about that.

Speaker 4 (01:44:04):
But man, I mean I will say even even that
one like flight, when you think you're gonna go, the
first thing that went through my mind was I want
to make sure the people who were like really meaningful
in my life know And I just started thinking about
the things of like how much they mean to me
and how important they were, so that it doesn't just

(01:44:25):
not happen. Like that's what I would do if someone
like if I thought I was gonna die, I think
I would be, like, I gotta call my mom and
tell her she was the best mom.

Speaker 2 (01:44:33):
In the whole world.

Speaker 3 (01:44:34):
I mean that is like not to get dark here,
but like I don't know if you guys have been
to the nine to eleven Museum, but the thing that
obviously it's a very heavy place to go to anyway.

Speaker 2 (01:44:41):
Yeah, people called their family.

Speaker 3 (01:44:43):
That is the thing that like that has stuck with me,
like it's an incredibly effective museum, Like, but there's this
partler where it's like, as you're walking through certain things
where you can pick up phones and you're hearing actual
voicemails from people that were on the flights being like, Hey,
I don't know what's going on. It's not looking good.
I kind of heard there was some stuff going on.
They've got the plane, I see buildings and water, and

(01:45:05):
it's just like, oh my god, Like they were able
to like you know, call with the satellite phones or something.
And hearing the actual like that has been Uh, that's
maybe the most like just kind of gut wrenching, just like,
holy shit. Thing I think I've ever heard is those
voicemail recordings.

Speaker 1 (01:45:20):
Yeah, that's the kind of stuff that's like, Yeah, when
you hear someone who knows that the end's coming and
the way that they deal with it, it's like you
have a lot of admiration for how some people handle it,
which is just yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:45:37):
I'd be doing a lot of screaming.

Speaker 1 (01:45:38):
I'd be streaming a lot.

Speaker 4 (01:45:41):
When I broke both my ankles at the same time,
I wasn't like cool at all. I won the cursing
award that year for the most cursing because I would
not stop saying fuck is they like drug me off
the floor.

Speaker 5 (01:45:58):
It was fuck, fuck you, thank you, fuck you too
already said it to you with fuck you mom, fuck fuck.

Speaker 3 (01:46:09):
You my I was I starting to encourage me to
pursue this.

Speaker 2 (01:46:16):
I can't believe he's told me this is a good hobby.

Speaker 1 (01:46:18):
It's been a real fucking asshole of a day. Oh God,
we covered some ground in the last sixty seconds. Yeah, wow,
Well thank you. Uh. Also, I'm embarrassed I said that
poem is Yets. It was Dylan Thomas.

Speaker 3 (01:46:37):
We were judging you, but we weren't gonna say anything.

Speaker 1 (01:46:40):
I'm sorry to the Irish people and the Welsh people
who I offended for that one. I feel bad. Thank
you doc last one. We've gotten some like we've gotten
a bunch like these in the last few years, but
it's been a while, so figured it might actually be
good to re up because more people are traveling to Portland,
New York, et cetera that we haven't told so Hello

(01:47:00):
fire escapers. Mary, my best friend and I are going
to Oregon this summer. Other than bowling and getting our
holes filled holes drilled? What are the must sorry sat there,
other than bowling and getting our holes drilled? What are
the must see and do things in the state and
in Portland? Mike and Dan, my friend and I aren't
traveling to New York City or the woodpecker infested backwards

(01:47:22):
of Minnesota. But still, what do you usually recommend to
people who travel your states and cities? Thanks for escaping
fires for us every two weeks. Alex from Dallas.

Speaker 4 (01:47:31):
When people come to Portland, I usually say, I'm not
going to literally tell you where to go, but there
are so many good, excellent food and drink spots. Specifically,
we're really known for coffee, pizza.

Speaker 2 (01:47:47):
And donuts. I will give you a couple just to
get you started.

Speaker 4 (01:47:51):
But I think what I really want to emphasize is
you don't have to go to the spots.

Speaker 2 (01:47:56):
I'm just saying, like, research those three places.

Speaker 4 (01:48:00):
Because there's infinite amazing places within those three things coffee, pizza,
and donuts, and you will be happy.

Speaker 2 (01:48:09):
For coffee. I really like Soro Sorow Cafe.

Speaker 4 (01:48:11):
They are a like local mom and mom and pop
Japanese style coffee. They do the coffees with like little
like bears or cat faces in the milk. It's adorable
and you can, like literally they're always working there. It's
always like the husband and wife working there. They're so cute.

(01:48:33):
I just adore them. For pizza, I like a pizza shoals.
There's like five dozen different types of pizza. Ranch pizzas
fucking crazy.

Speaker 2 (01:48:44):
It's it's so delicious, and they do make their own
homemade ranch.

Speaker 1 (01:48:49):
Yes. Please.

Speaker 4 (01:48:52):
For donuts, Sesame Donuts is the casual donut place, but
you can also get bougie donuts.

Speaker 2 (01:48:57):
From Blue Star.

Speaker 4 (01:48:58):
Take your pick, and then go to a freaking park
and enjoy the beautiful parks there. And then the other
thing I always recommend is go on a trip through
the Gorge. That's what I always take guests. When Dan
and Mike come, I was like, you're going to the
Gorge and you guys can probably attest. It's one of
the most beautiful places on Earth. No matter where I've traveled,

(01:49:19):
and I've traveled a lot in my years, I'm very fortunate.
I still think the most beautiful place on Earth is
the Gorge, where you can like look at over two
dozen waterfalls and just hang up by the river. It's
stunning and it's just so beautiful. It's it's heaven. It's
heaven on earth, you guys.

Speaker 3 (01:49:38):
Yeah, Awes, it was great.

Speaker 1 (01:49:40):
Every time we turn a corner the view got better.

Speaker 3 (01:49:43):
Also, Portland, like that breakfast place you told us about,
Mary like that, I'm still thinking about those business and
biscuits and gravy I had, and like that was like
the best breakfast I've had.

Speaker 4 (01:49:50):
And for it, I have so many recommendations and a
lot of it depends on like what you ask me, right,
But yeah, Dan, one time is asking me for a
good breakfast place, and I said Pine State Biscuits, and
it was and it is good. It's consistently fucking awesome.

(01:50:10):
So yeah, I'm glad.

Speaker 1 (01:50:12):
Of the biscuits, the grave, all that just incredible, incredible.

Speaker 4 (01:50:14):
It means a lot to me because I have a
lot of pride in this city. I think it really
is amazing. So when people visit me, I'm like, God,
I hope they have a good time. But you and
Bonk and Bank wrote me the nicest, loveliest note. I
don't know if I've ever said this story before, and
I think I just didn't see it for like a
long time.

Speaker 2 (01:50:33):
And when I finally read it.

Speaker 4 (01:50:34):
I was like, this is so meaningful and so sweet,
and I think I told you when you were like, yeah,
I don't think you like responded in a while, and
she thought maybe it was like that she like was
rude or misspoke, and I was like, I am the
worst friend ever, but I just didn't see it for
like weeks. Sometimes I leave messages on red for like weeks.

Speaker 1 (01:50:53):
It's not no, it.

Speaker 3 (01:50:54):
Meant so she loved it, and yeah, that whole trip
meant a lot to us.

Speaker 4 (01:50:57):
So nice when people like say this recommendation or like
whatever is meaningful. So if you go to Portland, it
sounds like you are Alex in Dallas, feel free to.

Speaker 2 (01:51:10):
Like message me what you ended up doing.

Speaker 4 (01:51:12):
I really do love it when someone does take me
up on a recommendation and said, yes, I went to
a park and I had a pizza, shoals or you know,
whatever it is you end up doing. I hope you
enjoy yourself. I adore this town.

Speaker 1 (01:51:26):
Yeah, I would say for New York City, it's like,
I think the thing you can do that not everybody
does because everybody wants to like do all the big
neighborhoods in one day. And if it's their first time.
They want to do Times Square, but then they also
want to pop down and see Wall Street. The thing
you could do that I one of the reasons I
love New York is I'm still stumbling into like little

(01:51:49):
neighborhoods that I have never been in before, and it
becomes my favorite neighborhood. I think New York's individual neighborhoods
have such distinct identities. One thing you can do, if
you have the time, pick one day and then pick
like the West Village or the East Village or Lower
east Side or somewhere in Brooklyn. If you're gonna go
to Green Point or Red Hook or Upper west Side,

(01:52:12):
pick a neighborhood and just make a few reservations there,
find a few bars you want to pop into. I
think it's really fun to get the feel of a
single neighborhood in New York, and you can't really do
that if you're going in for dinner and then then
you're jumping on the subway to go all the way downtown.
Say the West Village, tree lined streets, really like small

(01:52:33):
bars and restaurants, so you could pop into really local feel.
Ignore the fucking West Village girl story from the from
New York Magazine, Like, I hate that kind of person
just as much as most people do when they run
into them in the village. There are a lot of
cool people there, Upper West Sides amazing. Just get like
ensconce yourself in one neighborhood for a day if you
have like a spare Saturday on the trip. I think

(01:52:55):
is how my recommendation for New.

Speaker 3 (01:52:57):
York Minneapolis is weird in that, like it's not like
it's tourist friendly, like you're gonna have a good time,
but it's not like a New York or San Francisco
or something where it's like there's the obvious. If you
go to San Francisco, it's like, Okay, we're gonna go
to lands End. You're gonna go check out this bridge
or this part of town. Like It's Minneapolis, I think
is an amazing place to live. It's maybe not the

(01:53:18):
most obvious, great place to visit for just a few days,
but if you are just visiting for a few days.
Some of my fair of places to go, which I've
taken you guys to some of these, Dario is a
place in Northeast I'm going there tomorrow. It's me and
Bunks anniversary and so we're gonna go tomorrow. It is
my favorite place to eat in the city. It's a
pasta place in Northeast. It's fucking incredible. They have this

(01:53:39):
order the Dopeio get a bunch of different places. Its off.
The Dopio is this weird like pasta thing where it's
like two little pockets and like one of them is
like yeah, like vertical raviolis and it's got like rosemary
and one fold and like ricata and the other and
all these like seasons. It's just it's every I'm like
angry every time I buy it into them, like how
is it this? Fucking yeah? This is the dope always,

(01:54:01):
like my favorite thing that you And they're.

Speaker 1 (01:54:02):
Stamped at the ends with the with the with the metal,
so they like are bound, but there's still the pot
the hole between them so they are separate. Yeah, it's impressive.

Speaker 3 (01:54:10):
It's insane how good of is and just just order
a bunch of plates of appetizers and salads and pasta dishes.
It's so fucking good. Also, if you just want a
good ass burger and fries like Matt's Bar the Juicy.
If you're going to a Juicy Lucy. If you wanna
do the gimmick thing, it's very very good. Go to
Matt's Bar. You guys have had the Juicy Loozy It's delicious.
But I actually think Lions Tap is better. Yeah, it's

(01:54:33):
out in Eden Prairie. I took both you and Jake
there and just all they have is like beer, burgers
and fries and that's it. And it is just so
fucking good, lots of space to sit down everything. It's
very kind of like Divy felis just on the side
of the road it is. Lion's Tap is like my
favorite burger in the city. Breakfast Scramble an Egg is
this place that has incredible breakfast sandwiches and everything. And

(01:54:55):
if you go to Northeast Minneapolis, which is a great
spot if you just want to bar hop and all
that stuff, start a night by going to Spring Street
Tavern and get some spring Wings. I took you both there.
That's where we saw birds and everything. And then you
walk over to Veggas Lounge for some karaoke and some
Northeast afterwards. But yeah, Spring Street Tavern, great Wings, walk
over to Vegas Lounge for karaoke, and then if you
just have like an afternoon. Go to the Chain of Lakes,

(01:55:16):
walk around beautiful beautiful Lakes, A lot of cool stuff
around there. Go to Sebastian Joe's for some ice cream.
But yeah, it's not like the tourist trap type of city.
But if you know where to go, there's just a
million awesome places to eat and explore and walk around
and I just love it.

Speaker 1 (01:55:31):
One last specific recommendation, I talk enough about wine. I
try not to have the podcast, but I do that
I should recommend there's a lot of wine bars in
New York. My personal favorite, which I spend a decent
amount of time at, is called La Company on Center Street.
There are two. There's one in Flat Iron, one down
in Soho on Center Street. Go to the Center Street location.

(01:55:53):
If you go in, I don't think so. Okay, if
you go in on Friday wearing a tropical shirt, you
get five dollars off by the glass wines.

Speaker 3 (01:56:02):
It's a low How do I determine who decides what's tropical?

Speaker 1 (01:56:05):
The GM who is Hawaiian and came up with the idea.

Speaker 3 (01:56:08):
Okay, if I wore my Mario Sunshine shirt.

Speaker 1 (01:56:11):
I remind me what it Yeah, I think Mario.

Speaker 3 (01:56:14):
Well, okay, on the shirt Mario is wearing a Hawaiian shirt.

Speaker 1 (01:56:18):
Yes, I think that would pass, and I think it
would get. The person who instituted Aloha Fridays is also
plays games to the point where I think he would
want a shirt. Yeah, wear Hawaiian shirt on a Friday
in say Hi to Lailah the bartender. It's an awesome place.
Despite the name being the full name being La Compa
de von Son, it is a very down to earth place.
Like I mentioned, wear Hawaiian shirts on Fridays. They do

(01:56:39):
a bunch of like different different turntables. Incredible by the
glass list. If I might be there hanging out, if
you want recommendations on the bottle lists, I'd be happy to.
It's a great spot. It's also a cool, really cool
little pocket of New York between the hectic chaos of
Canal Street and the hectic touristy chaos of Spring Street.
It's like in this little pocket the er if the

(01:57:00):
weather's nice, there's tables outside. It's a really great great
spot with amazing small plates and food. So that's my
specific recommendation, and the staff is all very cool and
will answer any questions you have and share their passion
and they will not be dicks about it. I can
vouch for each and every one.

Speaker 3 (01:57:16):
Of them, and we all live in really cool cities.
We do.

Speaker 1 (01:57:20):
I like it got three different time zones. To that end,
Thank you so much for writing in alex uh. And
with that, that's the end of emails. That's the end
of our episode. That's Firescape cast at gmail dot com.
Please please someone remind you what that game was. It's
been killing He's going to drive me nuts, Dan. I
will say this if it's another clue. I don't think

(01:57:41):
it's a game you would have liked.

Speaker 3 (01:57:44):
Not Wilder myth.

Speaker 1 (01:57:45):
No, no, no, no, no.

Speaker 3 (01:57:46):
That was when you were talking about a lot back
in the day that I didn't play.

Speaker 1 (01:57:49):
No, it was Wildermeth was turn based tactics.

Speaker 3 (01:57:52):
Right, yeah, but it played a side scrolling action game.
What are you talking about.

Speaker 1 (01:57:58):
Act I think it might have been a bit too
cute for you at the time. I got cubes. Yeah,
I mean you've changed at the time. I just wouldn't.
I don't. I don't remember talking to anybody else who
liked it. I think it was a very one off,
like flash in the pan thing people like like I played.
Now I'm going to find Toothcomb through my steamless but

(01:58:18):
that just takes so long. I don't even know what like,
I don't know. I'll figure it out, but if anybody
else knows what it is, like, I loved that game.
I think it was twenty nineteen or twenty twenty because
I was definitely back in the East Coast, but not
for long. So uh, that's it, please tell us. And
then also we have what is today? If you are

(01:58:39):
a next Lander subscriber, we have a new episode of
Mike and Vinnie Destroyed the World where we play co
op to a war Warhammer three evil campaign that is
up on Nextlander Today. New episode to catch up on.
If you're not go be a patron for them. They're
a top tier Top patron tier. You can get access
to those. Next week we'll have our new episode of
Mike and Vinie Save the World here on fire Escape Cast.
If you're already a video to your patron, don't worry

(01:59:01):
about it. That'll be up as scheduled. If you're not
a patron here you can get those. You can get
other bonus episodes. You can get our video versions of
the show. There's another tier you can get add free episodes.
There's another tier you just treat like a tip jar
if you appreciate what we do. Or you could just
stay up today in our patron page enough to pay
anything and it'll tell you when we put up free content,
which we do from time to time. Outside of that, Mary,

(01:59:24):
what do you have going on.

Speaker 2 (01:59:27):
Twitch? Streaming on Mondays?

Speaker 4 (01:59:29):
I had to take two weeks off just because of
so much work and travel, but I'll be back by
the time this episode goes live.

Speaker 1 (01:59:36):
Dan, what about you was a code shifter? I don't
think so.

Speaker 3 (01:59:42):
I'm looking stuff up. Oh what am I doing? GiantBomb
dot com? Check that out or doing a lot of
good stuff up. They're having a lot of fun Blake Club.
Mike is about to Actually, by the time this goes up,
you'll probably have finished Rascal and then I will have
to play Blake Club next. And I don't know what
my next game is. The only thing I've heard it
is they have to research if it's problematic, so I

(02:00:04):
don't know what that means. I'm just hoping it's not
Fugitive Hunter War on Terror because I'm not dressing as
Bin Laden. But yeah, check out gian Bomb dot com
and our YouTube and socials and everything and personal towitch cool.

Speaker 1 (02:00:17):
And also a reminder, we do have merch at Firescape
merch dot com, fire skip castmerch dot com. I don't know,
we'll figure it out. Go to our Insta page. You
can find stuff through there and through our Patreon. Get
some hot threads. All right, Well that's our episode. We
will be back in a couple of weeks with episode
one eleven, and we will be back with more Warhammer

(02:00:38):
next week. Stay up to date. We'll see you then.
Thanks for coming. Bye, thanks bye speak