Fire Escape Cast #104

Summary

Fire Escape Cast #104 Summary

Episode Overview

In Episode #104 of Fire Escape Cast, released on April 7, 2025, hosts Mike Mahardy, Mary Kish, and guest Drew Scanlon delve into a variety of topics encompassing personal updates, video games, film critiques, and listener interactions. The episode is a dynamic blend of insightful discussions, humorous banter, and engaging storytelling, offering both regular listeners and newcomers a comprehensive look into the hosts' interests and experiences.

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1. Welcome and Guest Introduction

[00:13] The episode kicks off with Mike Mahardy welcoming listeners back to Fire Escape Cast. He introduces his co-host, Mary Kish, and their guest, Drew Scanlon.

Mike Mahardy: "Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the Fire Escape cast. It is episode 104. I'm Mike Mahardy. As always, here with Mary Kish."

Drew Scanlon: "That's me."

Mike provides a brief background on Drew, highlighting his history with Giant Bomb, the founding of Clothmap on Patreon, and his engaging video content focused on video games and travel. He humorously references Drew as the “blinking white guy from the gif,” clarifying with Drew about a potential on-air appearance.

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2. Personal Updates and Life Changes

[01:43] Mike shares that Dan Reichert was traveling in New York, causing him to miss the recording. Mary Kish reveals a recent mishap with her home’s electrical system due to new solar panel installations, resulting in a temporary shift to a less equipped recording setup.

Mary Kish:
"We got solar panels on the roof, which is good. Should be really helpful for the environment and our bills. But the final step is that they have to reset all of the electricity in the house so that they can switch it on. In the process, it might have short-circuited my computer, which I usually record on."

Mary humorously likens the situation to typical E3 broadcasts, emphasizing her mistake in attempting to reset her system during a live recording.

Mike Mahardy:
"And so the idea that I thought that today was the day that I could reset my computer during recording is like a slap on my face. I am so silly for doing. I know better. I know better than to do this."

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3. Drew Scanlon’s Professional Journey

[08:38] Drew discusses his professional trajectory post-Giant Bomb, including his venture into travel shows with Clothmap and his tenure at Digital Eclipse, a video game developer known for interactive documentaries like "Atari 50" and the "Karateka Collection." Drew shares his transition to working with Mary Kish’s team, appreciating the collaborative environment and the blend of former game press and TV professionals.

Drew Reichert:
"Real talk, Mary has created a really incredible team and it's great to work there."

Mary elaborates on building a team with a strong background in game media, highlighting their shared understanding of live production dynamics and the ability to handle diverse meetings and partnerships.

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4. Mike’s Milestones: Irish Citizenship and Wine Studies

[04:08] Mike announces his recent approval for Irish citizenship, a significant personal milestone connected to his heritage through his grandfather from County Mayo. He humorously remarks on the bureaucratic challenges faced during the application process, including discovering discrepancies in his grandfather’s birth records.

Mike Mahardy:
"I have to say, though, we all know this, especially anyone who's ever done... you never update your system before a major event... I just know better than to do this."

He reflects on the benefits of Irish citizenship, particularly the advantage of EU citizenship, which allows for work and travel flexibility within Europe. Mike also shares his ongoing pursuit of wine education through the Wine & Spirit Education Trust (WSET) Level 3 course, discussing its relevance to potential future endeavors in wine importing, sales, or academia.

Mike Mahardy:
"Alright. I'll be done in a... We're recording this. On the 4th. I'll be done May 1st. I'll take my test and then I'll find out whether I pass like a month after that."

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5. Exploring Ham Radio and Licenses

[24:11] The conversation shifts to ham radio, with Drew revealing that he holds a ham radio license up to Level 2. The hosts discuss the technicalities and applications of ham radio, including its use in emergency responses and the challenges associated with transmitting legally. Mary shares her playful experiences with walkie-talkies, highlighting the nostalgic and practical aspects of short-range communication.

Mary Kish:
"But, you should not drink and fly."

The trio humorously debates the practicality and potential risks of unauthorized transmissions, emphasizing the importance of adhering to regulations to avoid legal repercussions.

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6. In-Depth Video Game Discussions

6.1. Assassin’s Creed Shadows

[38:11] Mike Mahardy shares his enthusiasm for Assassin’s Creed Shadows, contrasting it with his lukewarm reception of Valhalla. He praises the game’s aesthetic, color palette, and character design, particularly enjoying the new ninja character, Naoe.

Mike Mahardy:
"I really enjoy this game. It's the most excited I've been to get back to playing in Assassin's Creed since Origins."

Mary Kish:
"They found a good way to put it in the story so that it feels real."

6.2. Forever Winter

[50:38] Drew introduces Forever Winter, an extraction shooter in Early Access, likening its tense, punishing gameplay to titles like Helldivers and PUBG. He describes the game's setting inspired by The Terminator’s future war scenes, emphasizing its challenging mechanics and community-driven development.

Drew Reichert:
"They overhauled the way that the water system works. It used to deplete even when you weren't playing the game. That was really divisive. They just updated that. To not do that."

6.3. Blueprints

[58:05] Mary introduces Blueprints, a narrative-driven exploration game likened to Gone Home and What Remains of Edith Finch. She details the game's intricate mechanics involving room combinations, item management, and environmental storytelling. Mary expresses deep engagement with the game’s puzzles, lore, and the rewarding nature of self-discovery within the game world.

Mary Kish:
"One of the most rewarding experiences I've ever had. I figured it out, and it was one of the most rewarding experiences I've ever had."

She marvels at the game's design, noting its unique blend of roguelike elements and rich narrative, making it a standout title she plans to discuss extensively in future episodes.

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7. Listener Emails and Debates

7.1. Mario 64 vs. Diablo 2 Debate

[95:00] The hosts address an email from Darian of Toronto, who argues that Diablo 2 holds more historical importance in gaming than Mario 64. Darian praises Diablo 2 for its influence on loot systems, skill trees, and replayability across genres.

Darian from Toronto:
"What's 64's legacy? More Marios and 3D platformers become a niche genre for dinosaurs. Meanwhile, Diablo has infected every game of every genre with its randomly generated loot, skill trees, and repeatable, endless gameplay."

Mary defends her stance on Diablo 2, highlighting its innovative systems and enduring impact on the gaming industry. The discussion becomes lively as Mike humorously dismisses Mary’s preference for Mario 64, maintaining his position but acknowledging the validity of Darian’s points.

Mary Kish:
"I think like there was these monumental things that Diablo did ahead of its time that everybody was like, write that down, write that down. And now we all do it. And that's why I feel like it really was a contender."

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8. Film Critiques and Discussions

8.1. M. Night Shyamalan’s Filmography

The conversation shifts to film, specifically critiquing director M. Night Shyamalan’s body of work. Mary Kish praises his earlier films like The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable, while expressing disappointment with later projects like The Happening. The hosts debate the merits and shortcomings of his storytelling and directorial choices, reflecting on personal experiences and iconic scenes.

Mary Kish:
"I find all of his late stage movies to be bad in the best way possible. He kind of plays a game of if this, then what?"

Mike Mahardy:
"Unbreakable was the peak. That was it. And then it was all downhill after that, I think."

8.2. Other Directors and Films

Drew adds his perspective on directors like Paul Verhoeven and Roland Emmerich, recognizing their contributions to both critically acclaimed and commercially successful films. The hosts exchange favorite and least favorite movies, sharing nostalgic memories and humorous anecdotes about iconic film moments.

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9. Promotions and Upcoming Projects

[118:09] Drew highlights his Formula One podcast, now renamed "Shift F1," discussing the intense drama and competitive nature of the sport. He encourages listeners interested in motorsports to check out their inaugural episode, which serves as an onboarding session for newcomers.

Drew Reichert:
"It's like a soap opera. That's why we love it."

Mary Kish mentions her ongoing Twitch streams, where she often plays games prior to discussing them on the podcast, creating a synergistic relationship between her streaming and podcasting activities.

[121:38] Mike promotes the podcast’s Patreon, emphasizing benefits such as ad-free audio, video episodes, and exclusive bonus content. He also teases upcoming content, including co-op gameplay sessions and collaborations.

Mike Mahardy:
"If you're not a patron and you want to be, you can go get ad-free versions of the audio episodes. You can go get video versions of all the episodes. You can also get access to our bonus videos."

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10. Closing Remarks

As the episode wraps up, the hosts thank Drew Scanlon for his participation and recap the highlights of the discussion. They encourage listeners to subscribe to the Patreon for additional content and tease future episodes featuring more in-depth discussions on video games, films, and other interests.

Mike Mahardy:
"We will be back in two weeks with our 105th episode. Thanks, everybody, for joining. Until then, have a good time."

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Notable Quotes:

• Mary Kish [02:02]:
  "It's just like, this is like... this is a slap on my face. I am so silly for doing."

• Mike Mahardy [04:05]:
  "Maybe, maybe somewhere way down there."

• Drew Reichert [10:14]:
  "Mary has created a really incredible team and it's great to work there."

• Mary Kish [58:30]:
  "They found a good way to put it in the story so that it feels real."

• Darian from Toronto [95:00]:
  "What's 64's legacy? More Marios and 3D platformers become a niche genre for dinosaurs. Meanwhile, Diablo has infected every game of every genre with its randomly generated loot, skill trees, and repeatable, endless gameplay."

• Mary Kish [108:35]:
  "Rob Zombie's House of a Thousand Corpses is brilliant. It's so good."

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Conclusion

Episode #104 of Fire Escape Cast offers a rich tapestry of personal updates, in-depth discussions on emerging and classic video games, passionate debates on film and game legacy, and engaging interactions with listeners. The hosts' camaraderie and diverse interests create an inviting atmosphere, making the episode both informative and entertaining. Whether you're a long-time follower or a newcomer, this episode provides valuable insights and plenty of engaging content to explore.

Transcript

[Mike Mahardy]

Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the Fire Escape cast. It is episode 104. I'm Mike Mahardy. As always, here with Mary Kish.

[Mary Kish]

Hey, I'm here.

[Mike Mahardy]

And Dan Reichert.

[Dan Reichert]

Hi, it's me, Dan Reichert. Metal Gear.

[Mike Mahardy]

That's close enough. That's actually not Dan Reichert. And you.

[Dan Reichert]

Is that why you invited me? Just you needed someone else who knew about Metal Gear.

[Mike Mahardy]

I just needed someone who could do a semi decent Dan impression. Have you done one before? I'm Dan Rer. Oh, that's better than mine. Mine. Mine. Mine's usually, like, mediocre compared to that.

[Mary Kish]

I liked his first one when he just said Metal Gear.

[Dan Reichert]

To be fair, I am. I'm impersonating Dan's wife. Impersonating Dan.

[Mary Kish]

Metal Gear.

[Dan Reichert]

Metal Gear. Farting.

[Mike Mahardy]

Metal Gear farting. Mario. Mario. Mario. Yeah, yeah, that covers it.

[Mary Kish]

That's Drew Scanlon. Thanks, Drew.

[Mike Mahardy]

Thanks for being here.

[Dan Reichert]

Yes, that's Drew Scanlon.

[Mike Mahardy]

A lot of people listening to the show will undoubtedly know who he is. But for those of you who might not, Drew is a former staple of the Giant Bomb staff. Back in the heyday of the site, you did a lot of stuff for Giant Bomb west specifically, but you also founded Clothmap on Patreon, did a lot of awesome videos about video games, about travel. Kind of the overlap between them, but also separately, really cool stuff. I guess the very non video game in tune. People might know him as blinking white guy from the gif. I did ask him before the recording. I was like, are you sick of that? Or should I mention it? But yes, that is Drew Scanlon.

[Dan Reichert]

That's me.

[Mike Mahardy]

Dan was traveling in New York this week. I did not get the chance to see him. But yeah, it was a crazy week for everybody. Mary, people watching on the video version will notice she's not in her usual office. She.

[Mary Kish]

I probably sound different too.

[Mike Mahardy]

She short circuited her entire electrical board at the house. Explain it one more time to me.

[Mary Kish]

So we have. We. We got solar panels on the roof, which is good. Should be really helpful for the environment and our bills. But the final step is that they have to, like, essentially reset all of the electricity in the house so that they can switch it to on. And in the process of doing that, it might have short circuited my computer, which I usually record on. So I'm recording from a laptop with my really sad blue Yeti mic and a Logitech webcam. So totally different setup. I probably sound not as good. I apologize. I have to say, though, we all know this, especially anyone who's ever done. E3 major broadcasting. You never update your system before a major event. You just don't. You avoid all updates. You do not reset, you do not reboot, and you just pray, and that's it. And the idea that I thought that today was the day that I could reset my computer during recording is. This is like. This is a slap on my face. I am so silly for doing. I know better. I know better than to do this.

[Mike Mahardy]

Have you learned nothing from Icarus? Yeah. You said right before you decided to do it, you're like, this is a terrible idea. And then we see you load up from a different room of the house, like, yep, something bad happened.

[Mary Kish]

I knew it.

[Mike Mahardy]

It's working.

[Mary Kish]

I knew this would happen. We have a lot of changes at the same time, at least. So. So we're minus a Dan, but we've added a Drew, which is a pro.

[Mike Mahardy]

And yeah, again, if you're watching the video version, Drew and I are not brothers who dress the same.

[Dan Reichert]

Just the white guy uniform.

[Mike Mahardy]

Yep. Yep. I don't have a gift, though. I'll find my.

[Dan Reichert]

Give it time.

[Mike Mahardy]

Yeah, I'll find time in the limelight somehow. I was saying to Drew that my grandma's maiden name is Scanlan, but I don't think it's the. I mean, it's not like a common name, but I don't think it's like, ultra rare. So maybe, maybe somewhere way down there.

[Dan Reichert]

I mean, how many Irish people are there? There's probably not many. Not that many.

[Mike Mahardy]

It's not like they're known back in the day for having way too many kids or anything, but. So there's probably isolated pockets of them around the world. Speaking of, also a war. Quick, not warning. That sounded ominous. But if I have to leave Suddenly for like 30 seconds, I told Drew and Mary it's because I have my official Ireland EU citizenship papers on the way. I got approved. I think I told Dan and Mary a few times that I was applying for that because my grandpa was born there. So they opened that up to. Through foreign births department. So I have to go sign for them. If my buzzer rings, I'm a fourth floor walk up. I'll be like surfing down the handrail to go sign for those. But I'll be back momentarily. You two can just vamp. But yeah. And then we're going to Ireland. I'm going. For the first time, I figured I owed it to them to visit because I'm going to be a citizen. It's the least I could do.

[Mary Kish]

Yeah, don't you have to like, put foot on soil before they consider you a citizen. What's going on here?

[Mike Mahardy]

No birthright. Yeah, it was a really, really painful, like, paperwork experience. Quite a lot of notarizing and tracking down. I had to. I sent in a copy of my birth certificate and my grandpa's and his death certificate. He was however, well, a. They're like, just because this is notarized, we need an original. Maybe in my ignorance, this is the first time I realized you could get new birth certificates. I just assumed, like, you were fucked if you lost your original one. So I sent in my original and I had to track down. I had to go to. I forget what the name of the department is in the Irish government, but basically had to tell them, hey, this is my grandpa. Here's where he was born. Here's his birthday. It turned out he was actually born three months sooner than the birthday we've been celebrating. We celebrated his whole life because he lived on a farm outside of Castlebar in County Mayo on the west coast of Ireland. So his parents just never got the chance, didn't get the chance to bring him in and get a birth certificate until he was like three months old because it was a big deal to like bring the family into town. So that caused the hiccup because they're like, we have Michael Joseph Ruane, but he was born in January of this year. I was like, that's not him. He had a huge family. There's probably another Michael Joseph ruin in the area. And then I asked my mom, she's like, oh, no, I think that's probably him. We just celebrated his official birthday his whole life. What. What's going on in this country?

[Dan Reichert]

Of the two, why would you pick the one that the government says is your birthday?

[Mike Mahardy]

I think it, like made things simpler in terms of like actual milestones legally throughout his life, like, like driving and so I really don't know. It's just funny to me. I said the same thing. Like, why wouldn't we. He was such this like Catholic dude. Why wouldn't we have celebrated his like quote unquote, God given birthday or whatever? But no, we went by Ireland. So yeah, I'll have. Irish citizenship is pretty great because specifically the Republic of Ireland, you get EU citizenship. They did not secede. However, there's also, and I forget the exact name. They have an agreement with the uk as I understand it. I could also live and work in the UK through this, like, sister country agreement. I just don't think I'd be. I wouldn't be a citizen, but you kind of get the best of both worlds if you're an Irish citizen. So very happy about that. Also, you know, I've. My wife and I talk about living maybe in Europe for a bit for various reasons. Maybe, you know, it's.

[Mary Kish]

There's so much more wine over there. I assume it's. It's the decision. If it was like a pie chart, it would be like, maybe quality of life and then like 90% of it is wine.

[Mike Mahardy]

Let's talk about tariffs, though, how they're affecting us now. Yeah, but it's just a. It's a good thing to have. But now I'll officially be the most Irish person in the games industry, which is nice because I've known I am for a while, but now I have, like, the papers to prove. I don't know who else could potentially challenge.

[Dan Reichert]

There's no one else.

[Mike Mahardy]

No one might say.

[Dan Reichert]

I actually looking forward to you co hosting the Formula One podcast.

[Mike Mahardy]

Yeah. Patreon called yes Clip. And, you know, we'll see how it goes. Make video game documentaries. It'll be fun. No one will. I won't toes with that. Yeah. Well, that's exciting, but that's untapped land. Yep. That's why I'm leaving. I'm leaving suddenly if the bell goes off.

[Mary Kish]

Okay, that's good context. Drew, tell us a little bit about what you've been up to. I feel like, I mean, outside of people who do not listen to the F1 podcast, your Formula One podcast, where you guys talk about speedy race cars, what are you.

[Dan Reichert]

That's right.

[Mary Kish]

What have you been doing?

[Dan Reichert]

Well, gosh, yeah. After Giant Bomb. Thanks for mentioning Cloth Map, Mike. That was my project for three years. I don't think the Patreon is still active anymore. The YouTube channel's still there, if you want. Covid happened, and that made making a travel show very difficult to produce. And so I closed that one down. But, yeah, very proud of that project and what people who supported me allowed me to be able to do. It's really fun. And then from there, I worked for a few years at Digital Eclipse, a video game developer who they do what they call interactive documentaries. So the things like Atari 50 and the Karateka collection, Jeff Minter collection, the most recent Tetris collection, although I didn't work on that. That was really cool. But I realized I missed video. I did some video work over at Digital Eclipse, but I just kind of missed, you know, production and stuff. And so I got a. I reached out and Mary had an opening on her team and so now I work with Mary. Technically Mary's my boss so I work over.

[Mary Kish]

How much do you love it?

[Dan Reichert]

So much. She signs my paychecks.

[Mike Mahardy]

She's very understanding of any mistakes I make. She definitely doesn't fly off the handle, honestly.

[Dan Reichert]

Real talk, Mary has created a really incredible team and it's great to work there.

[Mike Mahardy]

I'm sure you fit in well. I've heard great things about working under.

[Dan Reichert]

Yeah, there's a lot of ex games press people and some TV people and yeah, it's a great crew.

[Mike Mahardy]

I guess this is as good a time as any to mention. I'm actually joining Mary's. No, I'm not.

[Mary Kish]

It's my slow journey to acquire everybody whom I loved working in games and media. It makes sense but it's actually like a good, it's a good group because people who worked in games media have some of that. Just that blue blood work ethic of like we know what it's like to be in the fire and the flames of like a live production. They understand editing and. But also just kind of there's like that fine tune of that and corporal life of like being able to handle like lots of meetings with lots of different partners and parties and people who have lots of different goals and being able to navigate that space. So I think that there's something about people who we worked with back then that just like really get it and it is a good vibe. Everybody on our production crew is like stoked to do live streams with streamers and about games sometimes not games. We recently just did a live stream for April Fools and it was like a Y2K stream. It had nothing to actually I think there was. I think there was one game but other than that, I mean like sometimes it can get really weird there. So it's a strange place. But I'm really glad you're there.

[Dan Reichert]

Yeah, I don't think we're having a lot of fun.

[Mike Mahardy]

I'm trying to remember, have we talked since you went to you met Jack Black for Twitch work?

[Mary Kish]

I don't think we officially talked about it. I think we half talked about it because it was one of those work trips where I was so stressed that I think like it was almost like PTSD bringing it up and I was like, yeah, I did it. And that's not because of Jack Black who's like a saint by the way. He's actually so sweet and lovely. But it's just, it's very stressful to work on a high stakes production with like celebrities and like there was a lot of companies involved in that production. And so I had like, I think like the truth is, is like when you have like six different parties who are like, we all have a different vision for how the stream could go. And, and I am the producer who makes the calls. I was like, great. How do I make as many of you happy as possible without upsetting anybody? And I think that's almost, it's just a very fine line to walk. So I think I walked out of there also. The stream was from 4 to 5 and my flight took off at 7 in LA.

[Mike Mahardy]

That gives me anxiety thinking about.

[Mary Kish]

So like, if you can imagine me like running to a partner and being like, how do you want this stream to go? And they're like, well, they have to mention the movie and they have to mention all these things. And then I run to somebody else and I go, how do you want this to go? And they're like, well, we definitely don't want to mention these things. We don't want to mention the movie. And we're like, okay, well these are polar opposite ideas. And so like I'm, I'm navigating all these people, making sure as many people are happy as possible. And Jack Black, as usual, he like literally walks in. This is true. He like walks in and he's like, what are we doing? Like, how are we going to do this? He's got like this like flighty little fun to him. And I was like, whatever. Like, honestly, like, you're Jack Black. Like we were hoping you'd play Minecraft. He was like, easy. He sits down, he starts logging into his Minecraft account, which is so cute. And I was like, okay, great. He's going to be fun. And we needed to go live. This is the truth about these types of events is that when we, when you have a press junket, you get these people, you get them for a very short amount of time. You get them for like 30 minutes usually and to the T. And so we asked for an hour because that's how long live streams are. And we compromised for 45 minutes. So every minute he's on set is part of his 45 minute obligation to us. And this isn't even up to him. This is the people that have offered us graciously offered us his time. And so I'm like, okay, well we need to get going with the live stream. Like right now, I'm counting down these minutes. And he goes, when are we going live? I have to pee. It's for the good of the stream. And then he just leaps and goes to the bathroom, which is so fair. I'm like trying to be like, really understanding. He leaps back onto the set, literally, he's like a leaper. And he leaps right back into his seat. He's ready to play Minecraft. And he's like, let's go. And that was it. And then we started the stream. And so that's kind of how it happened. But it was this very, like, from the beginning, the middle to the very end, I was like, man, I hope everybody's happy. I hope everybody's having a good time. Jack Black was so funny. He did a great job. He sings and dances and he does high kicks. He's really wild to be around. And when the stream ended, I shook his hand. I said, thank you so much. He said, I had a great time. I love playing Minecraft. I said, awesome. I grabbed my suitcase, I shook the production person's hand, I shook three other business partners hands. I got in a car, I went through LA traffic for 50 minutes. I got to the airport at 5:55 and I went through security and I boarded at 6:25. And they stopped boarding at 6:30.

[Mike Mahardy]

Nice.

[Mary Kish]

And that was that.

[Mike Mahardy]

Oh my God.

[Mary Kish]

And then I think I passed out on the way, like on the flight. And I was just. I can't believe I was able to pull that off. My dog is. I have a dog sitter usually when I have to go on work trips, but they couldn't stay that night. And so I was like, I have to get home tonight for the dog. So I had like all these different priorities. But, you know, we threaded the needle. We like made it work on that one. But that's probably like one of the craziest live stream experiences I've ever had. Honest to God.

[Mike Mahardy]

Yeah. Because I would have been in SF with Lexi. Well, not there with him, but we were both in a. GDC was that week.

[Mary Kish]

GDC was that week.

[Dan Reichert]

That's right. Okay.

[Mike Mahardy]

Yeah, perfect. Perfect storm. I was just telling Drew before this, my schedule this week has been kind of a shit show.

[Mary Kish]

I'm glad you made time for us though. I mean, I know that like, between this and wine learning and uh, being a cat dad, I mean, your schedule must be like, packed.

[Mike Mahardy]

Yeah, I'm.

[Dan Reichert]

I'm wine learning.

[Mike Mahardy]

Wine learning is a good portion for this level. I'll be done in a. We're recording this. What? On the 4th. I'll be done May 1st. Well, I'll take my test and then I'll find Out whether I pass like a month after that.

[Dan Reichert]

So this is the actual. If you pass this, you will be a sommelier?

[Mike Mahardy]

No. So this I'm taking, this is the WSET classes. It's a school in London, Wine and spirits education. Trust. If you wanted to go more service side, which maybe at some point in my life I'll actually go the sommelier route or try it out, see if I like it, who knows? But if you want to go down that route, you can do certification. And it's like any career paths, like, you know, you don't need the certifications, but they don't hurt. So there's this court of master sommeliers that is you take those and you have to like, you know, learn tasting, learn theory and learn service. And you take those tests and then you pass. And then you can work. You don't need those. But it helps to work in some like high end spots in New York or San Francisco or London or Cleveland, wherever you might be, where there's like wine bars and restaurants. But I'm taking wset, which right now is. That's more generally geared toward if you want to go into importing or sales or teach or be an academic in the wine area, that's, it's, it's geared toward that. So I'm taking WSET level three. There's four total. Four is the actual diploma. It takes generally two years because you're doing like, wow, five or six modules.

[Mary Kish]

I'm so into it. I mean, I think it's crazy if you, what do you think is more important, like having these certifications which obviously do help, or having like a heck of resume of like working at like five well established places.

[Mike Mahardy]

Probably the latter, which if you have them both, great. Also, some people do the certification just to prove that they could take the test or pass the test. I don't know if people have seen like the Psalm documentaries.

[Mary Kish]

I've seen Frasier and I think that they do the test that's a documentary and they, they fight over it and like, who is. Who is like the better. And they make them wine test in front of each other in front of like six people.

[Mike Mahardy]

Oh, I've seen that. And he purposely picked like a cheap wine to get him to think it was a Bordeaux. Yeah, something like that.

[Mary Kish]

But it's good.

[Mike Mahardy]

No, the Psalm documentaries are about this group who was just trying to pass the master sommelier test. It's like in terms of pass rate, it's like demonstrably maybe the hardest test in the world. Mind you, I'M not saying it's the most important test in the world. We've got training to be brain surgeons and whatnot. I'm not even gonna put it on.

[Mary Kish]

Move over spine surgeons. We're talking wine. It's hard. I don't understand.

[Mike Mahardy]

So it's, you know, the master psalm test is like, it's, it's sometimes derided for just being masochistic and you. To go that level, I think There are only 280something master sommeliers in the world. Whoa. At some point, if I wanted to do the quarter master sommeliers, you take an introductory course, which is like three days that you just pass that to basically get invited, quote unquote, to take the actual certification, at which point you can go and pay like $10,000 to go to do a 16 week course for that. And then you take the test and you're a certified som and it's a great thing to have on your resume if you like. I, I'm not working in restaurants. It's. It would be tough for me to work in a restaurant when I already have a day job in video games. Right. So that certification can help springboard somebody once you. Then there's the advanced sommelier, which is level three, basically. And that's also very tough. At that point, you need to know individual vineyard names within regions and whatnot across the world. And then there's the master sommelier test, where the theory portion alone you just, you need to be able to say like, oh, okay, name these regions in Romania where they grow wine. And also, what's the principal grape in Japan and what are the flavor profiles of it? And also, like, if you were in this part of the world and they were serving you this kind of food, what historically would they serve you with? But in recent years, how have they been reevaluating it? And I'm sure all those things I just mentioned, those would all be softballs for many people. But yeah, I think people just take those tests at a certain point just to prove they can. And also if you prove you're one of the 290 or whatever it is master soms in the world, then at that point you kind of get. People get job offers the day they pass that test to go work for big champagne houses or to go be the beverage director for an entire restaurant group that has restaurants all over the world. But yeah, I started this course in my free time. It's once a week for 16 weeks. But it's a lot more self study. I just figured all Right. I'll try it out. Maybe once I make wine an obligation, I'll start disliking it a bit more and want to just keep it a pure hobby. But like Drew, you said it earlier, it's kind of a rabbit hole. It's like the more I learn about it, the more I want to learn about it. So that hasn't slowed down yet. And it's going really well. My tasting's way better. My theory is definitely. I just enjoy reading about wine. And my favorite part of wine studying is like looking at maps and piecing together, like how the, the ocean influences and the ocean currents and mountain ranges have similar effects in Chile as they do in California and the west coast of New Zealand. It's cool to look at the world like that.

[Dan Reichert]

That's so cool.

[Mike Mahardy]

Yeah.

[Dan Reichert]

I fully endorse getting certifications for stuff. Like, I think it's just such a fun way to engage with the topic. Yeah, Yeah. I, I got my. Inspired by Vinnie. I got my ham radio license, which is a completely different scenario than you are describing because there's something called a ham cram where you go in and they, they say, okay, at the, at the end of this, like multi hour session, you're going to take the test to get your ham radio license and you need to be licensed because like, your body. Yeah. So you have to cram for the test. So the way that they do it, and I can't believe this is actually like legal or that this stands, is they have a book of all of the questions that are gonna be on all of the potential questions that could be on the test. And so for many hours, all you're doing is just looking through those questions and answers. And because the test doesn't scramble A, B, C or D, they instruct you to just memorize, not look at any of the wrong answers. Just read the question, read the right answer, and then when you come across it on the test, you just remember the one that you read.

[Mike Mahardy]

Okay. Interesting.

[Mary Kish]

That's a ham scam.

[Mike Mahardy]

They really want people to pass. Right. So, like, they want more people in on this, on this practice. So ham radio. Correct me if I'm wrong. You could, if the way it functions, you could tune into different channels right now and hear someone who just happens to be speaking to that channel.

[Dan Reichert]

Yeah.

[Mike Mahardy]

Okay.

[Dan Reichert]

Yes. And you wouldn't need this. It's been a while. You don't need a license to tune in. You need a license to transmit.

[Mike Mahardy]

Okay.

[Dan Reichert]

And it's actually, it's not. I misspoke earlier it's not a broadcast. Broadcast means multiple channels. It is. Ham radio is just one channel.

[Mike Mahardy]

Yeah.

[Dan Reichert]

Which is why you need an FCC license, because you're broadcasting or you're. You're transmitting to a frequency that anyone could theoretically pick up.

[Mike Mahardy]

So the. The license. You could do that, right? Or Mary could do it right now if she wanted to. But if she didn't have the license, could she transmit? Like, could she actually. Like, does she have the means to transmit? She just.

[Mary Kish]

Can I transmit illegally? Is what he says.

[Dan Reichert]

Oh, yeah, you could. Is there a radio station?

[Mike Mahardy]

Yeah.

[Dan Reichert]

Yeah.

[Mike Mahardy]

Is that what pirate radio is? Like, unlicensed? Oh, gotcha. Okay, cool.

[Dan Reichert]

But it's tough to do because of the way that, you know, physics work. You're very easy to triangulate.

[Mike Mahardy]

Yeah, I was gonna say. Would they be able to track you right away?

[Dan Reichert]

Yeah.

[Mary Kish]

Yeah. But what do they do to the FBI? Come and, like, knock down my little shed where I, like, play banjo for, like, three other. How much do they give a shit?

[Dan Reichert]

If you're interfering with stuff, they'll absolutely come after you.

[Mike Mahardy]

What kind of official authorities use ham, those kind of radio waves to communicate.

[Dan Reichert]

So mostly it's for emergency response. So when there's no cell towers, you know, emergency coordination will be done over ham radio. I've also seen it for, like, when. Like, on cycling rides, like, fundraiser cycling rides that I've done, different stations will communicate with each other over ham. Because sometimes there's not cell service.

[Mike Mahardy]

Okay. As morbid as it is, I do like the idea. It makes me laugh to think about, like, an evac helicopter just circling Portland, and it can't find an emergency because Mary's just, like, thrashing her upright base on her pirate radio. Mary 2.67.

[Mary Kish]

This goes out to all six of you out there. I know that some of you might be looking for emergencies, but this is also an emergency. How many worlds must. I got a rift to do.

[Mike Mahardy]

Yeah.

[Mary Kish]

Then the FBI breaks through my windows and tackles me. This is a really interesting concept, though, like, when you're getting a license or when you're. When you're going through this process, like, are you doing so with the intent to broadcast like you want to broadcast, Drew?

[Dan Reichert]

Um, it's tough because to. I would love to be able to talk to Vinnie, but he's on the other side of the country, so it would be possible, but we would both need really big antennas, and that's something that's tricky to do in San Francisco.

[Mike Mahardy]

Oh, okay.

[Dan Reichert]

Right where I live.

[Mary Kish]

Yeah.

[Mike Mahardy]

That's so funny that does sound like a cool thing to do. Like the analog nature of it. Like the idea that you do. Like you would actually need a bigger physical thing to send it farther is so refreshingly like one to one as opposed to everything else. I don't understand with the Internet today.

[Dan Reichert]

Yeah. So I actually did study for the test. Yeah. And Because I just wanted to learn this stuff. And you're right. It's like, oh, it needs to be. It just clarified a lot of stuff that I missed in physics class in school where like, of course the antenna needs to be that tall because the actual wavelength is like multiple meters. Like the wave that is going from the air is physically this large.

[Mike Mahardy]

Okay. From the peak to the valley, whatever you want to call it. Or there's probably more official terms.

[Mary Kish]

No, that's it. Peak and valley.

[Dan Reichert]

Yeah.

[Mike Mahardy]

Yeah.

[Mary Kish]

You could pass your. Your ham test today.

[Mike Mahardy]

Your valley's interfering with my rifts. Yeah, that. That sounds cool. So you are licensed. You passed it. This.

[Dan Reichert]

I did. There are three levels. I am at number two.

[Mike Mahardy]

Okay. And do you just get increasing permissions at the third level or.

[Dan Reichert]

Yeah, you can broadcast or you can. Sorry. Transmit on more and more frequencies as you go up.

[Mary Kish]

Are there only 291 other tier 3 ham. Ham specials?

[Dan Reichert]

I'm totally getting close to that. Because they're all dying.

[Mike Mahardy]

Do they have to?

[Dan Reichert]

It is definitely like flying. It is for olds.

[Mike Mahardy]

Do they also have to differentiate between Nebbiolo and Sangiovese?

[Dan Reichert]

Oh, yeah. There's probably a good Venn diagram.

[Mike Mahardy]

That Bermuda Triangle of red wines. In Italy.

[Mary Kish]

You can get pretty drunk and jam out on your ham radio. But you should not drink and fly.

[Dan Reichert]

Interestingly, you cannot curse because it is FCC regulated frequency.

[Mike Mahardy]

Interesting.

[Mary Kish]

But again, you can't be the FBI going to knock down my door because I said a couple F bombs.

[Dan Reichert]

Don't get wow, you'll get fined. Yeah. Cause they know the frequency that you will be transmitting.

[Mary Kish]

But who's hearing me?

[Dan Reichert]

They're assuming, I guess, if you're transmitting to no one. If a tree falls in the forest.

[Mary Kish]

If a tree says go fuck yourself in the woods is the fcc. Find them.

[Dan Reichert]

Just get a walkie talkie and turn off the other one and go to town.

[Mary Kish]

I do have walkie talkies. Me and Josh, my bud who lives in Portland, have walkie talkies and we use them on road trips. And it's really fun to be able to talk to someone via walkie talkie. I think there's something classic about it. Makes me feel like a kid again. And I really love it. So we did a road trip last Christmas and it was maybe like a four hour road trip. So we had these walkie talkies where we could just be like, you know, gotta stop to be, you know, over. And we would do that. But then one of the places that we were stopping to get gas, it was really close to a, just a hardware store. And as we were talking to each other, a person came on was like, yeah, we need someone to come to aisle three here. And it turns out that whatever we were broadcasting on, the people who were working at the wood shop were using the exact same broadcast frequency for their radio. And so.

[Mike Mahardy]

That's great.

[Mary Kish]

Yeah, Josh and I would just keep being like, hey, we need to go get some more Slim Jims before we start back.

[Dan Reichert]

All right?

[Mary Kish]

Over. And then they'll be like, tana, Tanya, is that you? You could hear them.

[Mike Mahardy]

We don't have any Slim Jim.

[Mary Kish]

I don't understand messing with their frequencies and their radio. But it's so neat that in a simple act of us communicating, we're, we're on the same frequency as people doing their jobs. It felt really fun to, to talk back and forth like that. And I actually, I love my walkie talkie.

[Mike Mahardy]

Yeah, I got, when I was younger, I don't know, nine, my next door neighbor Alyssa and I hung out a lot. And at a certain point we're like, oh, let's use these walkie talkies that my older brother had to like, say, hey, do you want to come over or do you want to play basketball? Or do you want to like come over and go swimming? So we basically decided to use those. And the first night we, well, first evening we had them, I went to like right after dinner with my family. I like called her like, let's go, let's, you gotta come over. Let's, let's go swimming. It's super nice out. And like 20 seconds later, Alyssa's dad shows up at our house and like with the walkie talkie's like, this is not happening. And then he just gave it back to us because apparently I had been annoying them during their dinner. And she didn't turn it off. He's like, no, fuck this. You live next door.

[Mary Kish]

Go over and not just turned you off.

[Mike Mahardy]

I know, but he just, he had to make a point. Yeah, that was fuck him. But yeah. Drew, don't you also have your pilot's license of some sort? I do. I'm assuming there are multiple levels to all that.

[Dan Reichert]

Yeah, certainly there's different ratings. So I can fly a single engine land piston airplane. So no jets for me yet.

[Mike Mahardy]

Well, moving on.

[Dan Reichert]

I can't fly a seaplane yet. Although that would be awesome.

[Mike Mahardy]

Yeah, that'd be cool. There's a service here that you could fly between like New York and Boston. They land on like in the harbor and then on the Charles or whatever. Or there was for a while. I don't know if they still have it. So do you fly regularly or.

[Dan Reichert]

No. So I got. I got my pilot's license in February of 2020 and then couldn't really fly during COVID because the place I was renting my planes from temporarily closed because of that. And so the thing about flying is, again, this is why it's for olds, is that if you are inexperienced like me, it is dangerous to fly infrequently because you just get rusty.

[Mike Mahardy]

Yeah.

[Dan Reichert]

So you. If, if I were to pick it back up, I would want to make sure that I could do it with regularity so that I.

[Mary Kish]

Don't kill yourself.

[Dan Reichert]

Don't.

[Mary Kish]

Yeah, Yeah. I think that's super fair. I mean, the thing about these hobbies, I'm like a serial hobby quitter. And I have so many hobbies that I've picked up over the years, like stained glass. I've been like, trying to make stained glass art and I have like my, my stand up base. And sometimes I'll be busy for a couple months, you know, three or four months, and I'll be like, oh my gosh, I haven't played my bass at all. Like, I haven't even thought about it. But I can always just pick it up on day and, and play a tune. And remember, I'll have to regain my calluses. But that's like the worst of it. Like, you are potentially not just endangering yourself, you're endangering the lives of others. If you're like, what does this button do? Midair?

[Mike Mahardy]

Yeah, yeah, it's. You lose it like you lose any other skill set. But the risk is so high than most other hobbies.

[Dan Reichert]

Yeah, for sure.

[Mike Mahardy]

Yeah. I'm not endangering myself by taking a week off from wine tasting. If anything, it's probably better, but that's super cool. Maria, have you flown a plane? Are you flying planes?

[Mary Kish]

I'm in them. I'm in them all the time. I was just in a plane a couple days ago and it was so cute. They did the thing where the kids were in the front with the pilots getting their wings.

[Dan Reichert]

Oh, I'm so glad they still do that.

[Mary Kish]

It's Such a special moment. And they were leaving, and the mom was like, come on, don't bother them anymore. And the pilot was like, what are you talking about? They need a picture. The kids ran back in, and he gave him a big hug, and she took like, eight pictures. Like, obviously he was into it. And I. I think that's really sweet because that's probably what inspires the next gen of pilots, is having that experience and being able to meet a pilot. See on all those sick buttons? That's what. That's what puts me into it. It's like, what. What do all those buttons do? I gotta learn. I gots to learn. That's.

[Dan Reichert]

Yeah.

[Mary Kish]

Piqued my interest.

[Mike Mahardy]

I think for me, it's the ability to fly that entices me.

[Mary Kish]

You fly anyway.

[Mike Mahardy]

That's the end goal for me. No, I know, but I would. I don't know. I. Not. I fly a lot as well. I don't love it. I'm. I go through phases, but I feel like the older I get, the less I like flying. And I'm not saying I'm old, but I'm. I'm getting there. Just that my tolerance for it decreases every time. Maybe I need to go the pilot's route so I can, like, just be more used to.

[Dan Reichert]

Is a different kind of experience in those little planes. Like, you know, an airliner is basically a building.

[Mike Mahardy]

Yeah.

[Dan Reichert]

And when you're in a little plane, you're very. For better or worse, very aware of all the physics going on. Like, you can feel all the wind happening. And like. Yeah, it's. It's a different experience.

[Mike Mahardy]

Yeah. I feel like that would lessen my anxiety getting on an airliner if I had been flying a single engine.

[Dan Reichert]

Yeah.

[Mike Mahardy]

Like that.

[Mary Kish]

I. I disagree. I feel like if I can feel the wind, my anxiety might be peaked. I feel like even. Even with an experienced pilot. Yeah. I would just be like.

[Mike Mahardy]

And like, getting on a United flight would be fine.

[Mary Kish]

Yeah.

[Mike Mahardy]

Jitters there. I had the worst turbulence of my life a few weeks ago coming back from gdc. The plane did one of those things where we tilted so hard, like, 500ft off the Runway that I thought he was turning. Like it was that abrupt. It was after those, like, countrywide storms. So I'm sure it wasn't that bad. But to me, who sometimes is not great with turbulence, it was like, oh, okay, this is it.

[Dan Reichert]

Yeah. I was in a fight coming into, I think, the Portland airport when I was a kid, and the turbulence was so bad, the overhead compartments were popping open.

[Mike Mahardy]

Yeah, yeah. That's never fun.

[Dan Reichert]

Flight attendants were getting hit by luggage. It was. It was bad.

[Mike Mahardy]

That's when the plane. The yaw is when it's the actual. Like this, right. The wings are roll. That's roll. What's yaw?

[Dan Reichert]

Yaw is. Is pivoting.

[Mike Mahardy]

That's what. When the yaw changes, like, the nose of the plane just, like, slides left or right above the run. That's what gets me. I'm like, this can't be good. Like, in terms of physics and landing properly.

[Dan Reichert]

Yeah.

[Mike Mahardy]

But it's fine.

[Mary Kish]

I don't know.

[Mike Mahardy]

We get where we're going.

[Mary Kish]

I love a good pilot.

[Dan Reichert]

I love to share this video of them testing airplane wings. And they basically, like, attach cables to the ends of a plane while it's on the ground under construction, and they winch the wings up. And it is crazy how high the wings can go before they break. It's like, way above the fuselage. Like, it almost looks like a bird flapping its wings before it.

[Mike Mahardy]

Or a Lambda shuttle from Star Wars.

[Dan Reichert]

Exactly.

[Mike Mahardy]

Yeah.

[Dan Reichert]

It's like, maybe not that far, but, like, pretty far up there. And so that. That made me feel pretty good.

[Mike Mahardy]

Yeah. I've heard people say, like, and to be. I'm actually not that bad with turbulence. I don't think she'll mind me saying. My wife really dislikes turbulence. It's the more I, like, actually take the time to learn about the basic physics of it. And they're like, just. Turbulence is like potholes, basically. And again, like, I know statistically, I'm more likely to get in a car crash leaving the air. It still sometimes messes with me. It's just uncomfortable. But, you know, like, the worst of it, I. You know, just. I think the breathing exercises help. But, yeah, in general, it's just. God, you think I'd get used to it, but I. I haven't yet. Luckily, I have to fly often. That's always awesome. Great. Maybe I should just go the sommelier route. I don't. Well, then I'd be traveling a lot, too. But at least I'd just be walking around a restaurant most of the day.

[Dan Reichert]

There you go.

[Mike Mahardy]

But. Well, that's cool. You have cooler certifications than I do.

[Dan Reichert]

Don't worry. You'll get there all right.

[Mike Mahardy]

One day. You guys want to talk about video games?

[Mary Kish]

Yeah, sure.

[Mike Mahardy]

Okay. Last episode, Mary, we had talked. You and Dan had played Assassin's Creed Shadows. I had not yet.

[Mary Kish]

Yes.

[Mike Mahardy]

I have since played between 12 and 15 hours, let's say I'm really, really enjoying Assassin's Creed Shadows. I've always liked the series. I'd say Valhalla really did not do much for me at all. I feel as if Valhalla went way too wide. I also did not find that world to be interesting. I also thought the pacing was not great, especially when you actually go into that. You actually, like, go play as the character's God counterparts. In Valhalla itself, I found those sections to be interminably boring. The overall flow of that game just did not work for me. I tried playing it twice, but I really liked Odyssey. I really liked Origins. Origins is my favorite in the entire series, along with, like, Black Flag Rogue. But Assassin's Creed Shadow is striking that sweet spot where, sure, at the end of the day, it's a pretty fairly standard Ubisoft open world in terms of the actual progression of things you're doing, but I feel as if a. It's absolutely gorgeous. This era of Assassin's Creed, especially like Origins, you're largely, obviously in the desert, but there are these pops of color in, like, the poppy fields or these, like, lavender fields near the Nile. Odyssey, the same thing. Their use of color in this otherwise pretty, you know, dry Mediterranean climate was really impressive. Here they're doing the same thing. And then, you know, like, the actual, like, costume design, the. The verticality in the castles and the towns. The towns themselves feel pretty alive. I'm really enjoying this game. I. I've only just gotten Yasuke back, the samurai character. So now I can, you know, I have. I can get both of them.

[Mary Kish]

Yeah, yeah.

[Mike Mahardy]

But I like Naoe a lot as a character. Also, her move sets. Super cool. I've been using the. I forget what's called the weapon type with like a sick, like a comma on one end and the. The ball, the mate, the flail on the other.

[Mary Kish]

Yeah, I don't remember what that's called either, but it's like a sickle ball. It's really neat. Yeah, yeah.

[Mike Mahardy]

Ball and sickle. So I don't know. I like. I'm liking the game a ton. I think the, like, the flow of tracking down one of your targets is just, you know, done really well. I like the scout system. For those who haven't played it, Odyssey introduced the Discovery mode that many Ubisoft open world games have done now where instead of just putting a waypoint in your map, they're like, all right. He was last seen in this general area. Some people said he really likes to drink. So you'd be like, okay, I'll go look at the taverns in that area. And you'd eventually.

[Dan Reichert]

I like that a lot better. Yeah.

[Mike Mahardy]

When you get semi close, it'll be like, okay, that's him. But you would need to get close. Valhalla, I believe, did something similar. But Shadows does that. Plus, the seasons change throughout the game. So you go back to your hideout, you upgrade your buildings, you plan out your little animal crossing layout, what have you. The seasons change. I don't know the full timeline, like, the actual real world time that it takes for them to change. But most of the time when I do a decent amount of stuff and then go back to the hideout, the season has changed. So it resets your scouts. Scouts kind of play off what brotherhood introduced way back in the day, where you have other Assassin's Guild recruits that you're sending out on missions to bring back supplies and also take out assassination targets. Your scouts, you can a tag supplies in the open world physically with your character, and then those supplies will be, like, smuggled out at the end of the season. So you'll get supplies for your hideout. But when you're on the overall map, you can actually hover over the area where you think a character is or, like an objective is. And you can say, tell your scouts to scout the area and they'll find the objective for you. Which is kind of a nice middle ground, I think, for people who like the discovery mode. But also a flavorful diegetic reason for you finding the waypoint is you sent in your recruits to go.

[Mary Kish]

They found a good, like, way to put it in the story so that it feels real.

[Mike Mahardy]

Yeah.

[Mary Kish]

Yeah. They do that throughout the entire Assassin's Creed. So at some point as well, because it has some of these really linear areas where you're not supposed to veer from the path. And then it's just like you're leaving the memory and it's just like, all right, this is how you keep me within the game world, and you need to be able to sell this to me. I find that one really weak and kind of annoying. This one is something that you can buy. You're sending out scouts, and that tells you whether or not there's something in that area for you to investigate. Yeah, I like that.

[Mike Mahardy]

Yeah. And I think the last thing this game's doing really well. I had no idea it's that they were going for, like, a spaghetti western kill bill thing with this. I don't think I gathered that from any of the trailers, but I don't think this is spoiling much now. He's on a revenge quest most of the game to avenge somebody. But. But there's a scene where the shit. The inciting incident happens. Let's say it's the wedding scene from Kill Bill happens and like this guitar riff straight out of a Tarantino movie plays. But it's got this like Japan like wood flute influence to it. Yeah, but. And then you can see the camera like is zooming in close to each of the perpetrators faces and it just. It's telling you what she's doing. She's like taking mental snapshots of their faces and their armor and stuff. And it like goes between his scabbard and her face. I was like this is fucking badass. Why didn't tell me? It's like. It's as told by Tarantino but it's awesome. It's very highly stylized. It's a pretty simple revenge story overall. But you know, she. They do the ghost of Tsushima stuff where okay, go to this cliffside and meditate and then you'll go into one of those linear memories or what are some other like ancillary activities you can do. Again, you could smuggle goods when you're going past the hideout. You can. There are those obstacle courses like those, those trials where you're like scaling cliffs. It's the parkour challenges.

[Mary Kish]

I love those because I love a good challenge. Just for. It's a platforming challenge and I, I find that so fun. You can turn your brain off for a little bit. I suppose there is maybe some mental gymnastics of like how do you get through? But ultimately it's about being able to press the buttons at the right time. And that is such a nice release from the other aspects of the game of like, oh, I have to hunt down this person and I need to solve this puzzle. I love the platforming components in Assassin's Creed.

[Dan Reichert]

Yeah.

[Mike Mahardy]

And the last thing I'll say as well, it's like having played I think every Ubisoft open world game, probably my measure of a good open world is how confident the developers are in leaving space is empty. Assassin's Creed origins still probably my favorite in the series because at the center of that map there's an entire. I think it's the black desert. There's nothing you can do. You can just. You can traverse it. If you climb to the top of that one spire, the game director left like a tribute achievement that pops. That's a tribute to his late son, I believe. I know that director of that game has fallen from grace a bit. But outside of that there's no objectives. It's literally just an empty desert, which is so cool to me that they didn't feel the need to stuff it with artificial gamified things. They just let it kind of breathe, so to speak. I think Odyssey obviously got away from that. Even when you're on the high seas between the islands, like, oh, there's a pirate ship coming right at you, or there's sunken treasure, or it just. It did not want to lose your attention. Valhalla, I think, went too far in the opposite direction, where there's no verticality. It's just this swamp for as far as you can see. But I think Shadow strikes a really good balance. There's parts where I'm just riding through this forest. I come across a shrine that there's no objective. I think you can maybe pray to it, but it's just a temporary buff or whatever. But it's just. It can be pretty peaceful in between the more hectic gamified areas. Yeah. Yeah.

[Dan Reichert]

I was just. Interesting to hear that, because I think that. And what you were saying about the, you know, not a waypoint, but more of, like, clues. I think a lot of the reason I haven't really dived into Assassin's Creed is that they do end up feeling just too much like a checklist to me and not enough like I'm embodying the character or it's not enough, like, role playing in the lowercase sense. Yeah. And those touches are nice to hear.

[Mike Mahardy]

Yeah. At the end of the day, this is still very much an action game, but, yeah, the role playing progression, or at least inhabiting a shinobi who gets a bunch of buffs at night and is very much like taking people out stealthily or just using more guerrilla tactics. As opposed to Yasuke, who's very much, you know, brute force, heavily armored, legit, bigger weapons as the samurai. I haven't played as him again, enough to see the dichotomy emerge yet. People have told me, late, late, as you get more and more into each of their individual progression trees. It does, but. But in the sense that you mentioned your lowercase role playing as a ninja, it's extremely, I think, effective in that way. And I'm still finding little things I didn't know you could do. I thought it was like a bug at one point, but the way that they structure many of the castles, like Osaka Castle was pretty cool for me. I've actually been there in real life. Apparently, it's not. Again, this game is not the most historically accurate. There's Polygon had an article contextualizing the actual Japanese media's response to the game. Apparently, it's pretty sweepingly positive. They're not saying it's the most accurate thing ever, but they appreciate the. Where the artistic liberties have been taken.

[Mary Kish]

I mean, it's Assassin's Creed, too. I think, to a degree, we should all let these things go a little bit. You kill the Pope into. It's like.

[Mike Mahardy]

Let's just. The Pope is like, hooking up with Karl Marx or something. I think we can. Yeah.

[Mary Kish]

I think we should ease off of, like, literally how accurate is. And more so is. Is. Can you suspend your disbelief?

[Mike Mahardy]

Yeah.

[Mary Kish]

Enough. Where. To Drew's point, like, can you feel like you can, like, actually roleplay a little bit, or are you just, like, ticking boxes here to. To finish the game?

[Mike Mahardy]

Yeah. And. And there's. I mentioned Osaka Castle because there's roof hatches. They let you go, and there's a lot of quality of life traversal things. There's just a roof hatch on many tall towers where you can just press a button.

[Dan Reichert]

It'll.

[Mike Mahardy]

You'll slip through it. But I kept hearing this weird chime that I could not figure out why I was doing it. Turns out there were these winches on the ceiling inside these structures that I can grapple, hook up to, like, eight feet above me to pull myself up to the ceiling into the shadows above the patrolling guard. Like, cling to the ceiling.

[Dan Reichert]

Oh. Sam Fisher style.

[Mike Mahardy]

Splinter cell. Yeah. And then all of a sudden drop down on them. That's pretty cool. They didn't point that out to me at any point. It's just a nice little option to have. That's like. That's the stuff. I Wish Assassin's Creed 3 did more in the woods that they didn't really. Yeah. I'm really liking this game. It's the most excited I've been to, like, get back to playing in Assassin's Creed since Origins. And it. I don't know if this will ring the same for Yujir if you did try it out, having not played one in a while. But I don't get overwhelmed in this one. It's. Nothing feels imperative that I just. Or obligatory. Obviously, killing the people who killed this person I care about is, like, obligatory. And they. They push it home anytime you encounter them. But, yeah, I'm. I'm liking it quite a bit. You know, it's. It's. It's got me hooked. I like it.

[Dan Reichert]

Nice.

[Mike Mahardy]

Drew?

[Dan Reichert]

Yeah.

[Mike Mahardy]

You have been playing the Forever Winter.

[Dan Reichert]

Yes.

[Mike Mahardy]

Survival game Memory Serves.

[Dan Reichert]

So it's.

[Mary Kish]

Sounds like it.

[Dan Reichert]

You'd call it an extraction shooter.

[Mike Mahardy]

Oh, okay.

[Dan Reichert]

I think structurally it has a lot in common with something like Helldivers third person shooter. But you've got a. You've got a hub world where you. It's, you know, it's where you outfit your character and take on quests, buy things from vendors, and then you've got a map where you choose where you go into to do your run. And then it's. It. But I think it's also. And I didn't play a lot of pubg, but I think it's got some of those elements in it too, because, like, when you outfit your character and you go in, it's very. It's a very punishing game. It's like very much a. Like hardcore Helldivers, like, because you take your weapons into the game world and if you die, those weapons are gone. You can do a corpse run and get them back. But it's very much like. Like it's that kind of a game. Okay. And the. I think what's really drawing me to it though is the. The setting and the art and the presentation. Because the developers have said that they're. It's. They basically just tried to make. They were inspired by the future war scenes in the Terminator movies.

[Mike Mahardy]

Right.

[Dan Reichert]

And it is absolutely that. Like, you are not. It's like three different factions on every map. There's a gigantic battle going on and you are none of them. You are just a scavenger trying to pick your way through and find water and like, you know, parts of. For weapons and stuff and just scrape by to get to the extraction zone and get out. So it's really tense and it's just got a really good look. Like a lot of like, visual filters to make it look like a VHS tape. All the text in the game looks like it's an old crt. Like the video input on a CRT tv.

[Mike Mahardy]

Like, get the fuck out. That game did something similar with its UI in game. I don't know if you played that. It looks very similar to that.

[Dan Reichert]

Yeah, yeah, I didn't play it, but yeah, I've seen some clips of it. But yeah, it's in Early Access, they actually just overhauled the way that the water system works. It used to like deplete even when you weren't playing the game. And that was really divisive.

[Mike Mahardy]

That's very hardcore.

[Dan Reichert]

They just updated that. To not do that. No longer does that.

[Mike Mahardy]

Yeah, smart change.

[Mary Kish]

No longer do that.

[Dan Reichert]

Yeah. But if you go in and you keep dying and you don't find water and extract, your overall water will go down because it costs water to go into a map and if it goes down, your base will get raided by like bandits. So yeah, it's cool. It's got a lot going on. It is in early access, so there's still some jank in there. But it's kind of fun to see a game listen to its community. They do a great job with responding to people and putting out video updates and stuff like that. 30 bucks on steam and the Epic Games Store.

[Mike Mahardy]

There's a free demo as well.

[Dan Reichert]

There is, yes. So I played a lot of the demo actually. I've only. It's only one map, but your character can level up and you can get a good sense of it.

[Mike Mahardy]

This sounds rad. I'm always curious about Extraction Shooters because that. Especially with Bungie trying to get in on that with Marathon or at least elements of it. And also I think that term, like Helldivers two to your point, is sort of an Extraction shooter. But I think when Extraction Shooter fans hear Extraction Shooter, they expect some level of punishment, of losing things permanently, of the risk reward being much higher. I am enjoying the games most that borrow elements from that. Helldivers two, I don't know. I liked DMZ and Call of Duty. I'm looking forward to seeing what Bungie does with Marathon. But I saw this and it also reminded me if Remnant was futuristic. Just in terms of the actual. Maybe it's the same engine or something. But it looked similar in terms of. It sounded like the overall game flow too. But this looks rad. Yeah, I had it bookmarked. I didn't play it yet though.

[Dan Reichert]

I heard that some of the team was also part of the team that made hawken. That mech first person shooter that came out like 10 or 15 years ago.

[Mary Kish]

There's a lot of mechs going on in here.

[Dan Reichert]

There's a lot of mechs.

[Mary Kish]

Yeah.

[Dan Reichert]

And that game looked so good. It's like Ghost in the Shell or something. Like very. It's like a cyberpunk future, but destroyed. There are so many friggin pipes everywhere and like just tiny little details all over the place. Like the pedigree there made a lot of sense to me when I learned that.

[Mike Mahardy]

Yeah, I remember Hawking now. Or now it's Hawken. Oh, this is a different one. I think they're trying to do it again, but I know what you're talking about. Yeah, I like this aesthetic. I want to check out Forever Winter at some point, Mary, maybe like we try that for a bonus episode or something.

[Mary Kish]

I mean, yeah, this is a, this seems. How, how many people can you have on a team when you're playing co op online?

[Dan Reichert]

Four.

[Mary Kish]

Okay.

[Dan Reichert]

Yeah.

[Mary Kish]

Yeah. And what happens? So again, like, just so I understand, like, understand, when you say Helldivers, I was like, you know, but when you die in Helldivers, like, they just call you back down. You know, they even have like a really fun system. It's a bit tongue in cheek so that I can just come back to life if I die. What happens if I, if I die in a four person extraction, am I gone?

[Dan Reichert]

Yeah. I haven't played with any other people.

[Mary Kish]

Yet, but I think it's like solo gamer Drew Scanlon.

[Dan Reichert]

Yeah, that's, that's me.

[Mary Kish]

No other people, please.

[Dan Reichert]

I think it's a. It's like you get knocked down and if, if you fail to get pulled back up. I think you're just spectating.

[Mary Kish]

Okay.

[Dan Reichert]

Yep.

[Mary Kish]

Yeah. I mean, it seems brutal. I. I think there's like a lot of pressure I would have with like letting everybody down, but I.

[Mike Mahardy]

So tense. I don't know. We've played like, again, there's that whole like subsect of co op horror games borrowing from Extraction shooters as well. Between Repo Phasmophobia, Lethal Company, I think those all are sort of toying with that structure.

[Mary Kish]

I just don't feel as stressed out. I like accidentally get absorbed by a ghost that makes me vomit bile at you guys while I'm screaming, get away from me. Don't come near me. Like, I just don't get that stressed playing that game. This game, I think has more of a tenseness to it, but I think that that's also like a great way to bond with your fellow buds. And I mean, Helldivers was my goatee last year. It was just so, so much fun to play with other people. So this seems like it'll be really interesting. Are there different biomes? I'm seeing a lot of machinery. Or is it like you're just basically against machines the whole time? I'm seeing animal machines and I'm seeing like giant mechs.

[Dan Reichert]

Yes. There's three different factions and they all have a bit of a different style. Some are like cyborgs, some are just like military dudes. And there's a whole lot of mechs and tanks and all manner of, of very frightening things. Like a lot of like, you know, the upper torso of a T100 crawling at you.

[Mary Kish]

Like, is that Almost like a zombie esque thing. Like I saw them like crawling towards you. That's pretty freaky.

[Dan Reichert]

Yeah. As far as biomes go, I've only. So far. I've only played one map just to try to like learn it. Because the maps are static.

[Mary Kish]

Sure.

[Dan Reichert]

But spawns are different. So you never are quite sure where you know a patrol is going to be coming through. So you're always on the lookout for what's going on.

[Mary Kish]

Cool.

[Dan Reichert]

Yeah.

[Mike Mahardy]

Sounds.

[Dan Reichert]

It's cool.

[Mike Mahardy]

Mary. I know Dan is bummed he could not make it because he was looking very much forward to talking about the game that we delayed this episode a few hours to hit embargo or to meet embargo rather. You've been playing blueprints. And I want to point out, I don't think you spelled it right.

[Mary Kish]

It's Prince. P, R I, N, C E. It's.

[Mike Mahardy]

Yeah, it's a pun.

[Mary Kish]

I wrote it down. Yeah. Okay.

[Mike Mahardy]

So anyway, yeah, take it away. What is blueprints? And I'm hearing a lot of people.

[Mary Kish]

I wish Dan was here, obsessed with it. This is going to be. This is going to be on a lot of people's list this year. This game is fucking incredible. And I'm going to do my best to describe the premise, which I think is one of the great things that this game does, among others. But this game begins with a open letter from your. It doesn't matter. But like, you're like Golder grandpa who is dead. And his last will and testament is that he has nulled all of his other wills and he only now has one will and is that all of his money and all of his estate goes to you, his grandson. However, to get his estate, you have to uncover a secret room on his estate. And there's some rules that you have to follow to find this secret room. Now what's so freaking rad about this game is that this story is a hook. Like that is so interesting to me. So immediately I was like, that's it. I'm my grandson. I'm gonna get my granddaddy's money and I'm gonna start looking at these rooms. And you start at the base of the mansion. This is a huge, huge mansion. And you immediately go to the first doorway and there it is. As you get to your doorways, you unlock three random blueprints of rooms. These rooms could be hallways, they could be closets, they could be kitchens. They each give you different bonuses and benefits. They are randomized and you get to pick one. And what's really Interesting about this. There's so many interesting things about this game, but one of the things I really love about this is mechanically, you have to be very cautious with how you are navigating this space. Because if you pick, for example, if you picked a closet, a bedroom and another closet, now the game is over. You've lost because you don't have any hallways, which means there's no more doors. The game is over wild and you can have runs. This is a day based game. Some of the rules here are that you cannot spend the night, so you go during the day and you go to these rooms. When you're out of rooms. When you're out of places that you can go, your day is over and you go to sleep. And when you wake up, the house resets and all the rooms you uncovered are gone. And you start back at the beginning of this mansion, opening doors and trying to navigate your way to the far back of the mansion, where this room is that you have to unlock and uncover to get your money. Where it really starts to get interesting, though, is that you need items in order to progress throughout this game. It's not just about making sure you hit hallways. Why would you ever choose a closet, you might ask? Well, the closets might have items like keys, rubies, and money. Those are your three main components of currency that you need in different ways. The money will help you unlock items that are going to be very valuable for your journey. Things that you can buy are things like, like food, which I'll get into in a second. Oh, a metal detector, which will help you uncover more keys and money. I found really valuable items. A magnifying glass. Oh, that one's so cool. And so you have this magnifying glass and as you're like going into these bedrooms, maybe you'll see a letter and it'll be from like the grandpa's wife. And there's going to be lore in there. And if you have the magnifying glass, maybe you'll find something you would not have found without that magnifying glass. That's going to be very important in your journey. There is so much lore in this game that is all done through environmental storytelling, and they do it exceptionally well. This is the type of game that you will come across. A bunk bed and it'll sell it to you in the sense that it's like, hey, this counts as two rooms, which gives you more steps. I'll get into that in a second. And so you're like, great, I'll choose the bunk beds and Then you see that there's a book on the bunk bed, and you open it, and it's a diary of one of the boys. And you can learn about these children and how they combat each other. You can learn about their personalities. And this all comes into play on the wider picture of, like, what happened to this family. There is really interesting stuff that's happened to the, like, basically, like, the main landlord, like, old guy who's, like, died now. His wife, who was, like, a writer. Their children. There's a whole family tree of people that are, like, ins and outs, that are, like, have a lot to say about his title and his money and where it came from. The mom was a writer. There's a really interesting story there. And it's all done through finding pieces of paper, finding pieces of their past, and connecting it together. Super interesting stuff. And it's all done passively through, like, finding pieces of writing. Here's, like, the last mechanic that I think is really important, that there's a fourth currency that I consider a currency, which is your steps. The game works that you start ish with 50 steps. Every time you walk into a room, it costs you. A step costs you energy. Essentially, when you get to zero energy, you must end the day like, it just stops your day, even if you just entered a really cool room. So you need to replenish your steps. You can do that in a couple of ways. One is certain rooms, like bedrooms, give you two steps back. Sometimes they'll give you four steps. If it's a bunk bedroom, like, that's important. Food replenishes your steps. So you're constantly like, I got to open a kitchen so that I can, like, get some bananas in me and that I can have more steps to play with. The intricacies of these rooms are mechanically brilliant. There will be times where you will say, like, okay, I've just unlocked a power room, and I'm going to turn the power off on a particular room because this particular room actually costs me steps. But if I turn the power off in this room, it cost. There's. Now it doesn't cost me steps anymore.

[Dan Reichert]

Okay.

[Mary Kish]

And so you're combining particular rooms, same thing with the power. And there's a garage. There's a button in the garage to open the garage door. It doesn't work because there's no power. But if you turn the power on now, all of a sudden, you can open the garage.

[Dan Reichert]

Whoa. Okay.

[Mary Kish]

Okay. And so you start recognizing that there's a lot of patterns between the rooms that you're acquiring and you're choosing. This game is not about the perfect run that gets you to this end door, which is how I started. I started this game being like, I'm getting to that end door. I'm getting this money. Like, I can't wait, wait to find out about, you know, get. Get all that money and win. That is not what is happening anymore. Now I am like, I have to know what happened to my niece. I have to know how this happened. And to uncover that, I need two halves of a broken lever, which means I need the combination rooms that I can combine those levers. I also need to open the pool and the boiler room because there's a connection there. Once you have the pool, you can actually turn on the boilers, which is gonna probably give me some, like, extra lore or like some endgame shit. It is fascinating how intricate these rooms are. I think I'm on day 17 or 18. I don't think this is a crazy thing to say, but Dan is in the 70s.

[Mike Mahardy]

70. Yeah.

[Mary Kish]

Whoa, this game is deep. Whoa, this game is deep. I am probably on the cusp of it. I think I'm very early in this game. I am so fucking hooked on how I combine these games and these items and learn more about these characters. I mean, this is going to be a game we're going to talk about all year. This is it.

[Dan Reichert]

Okay. So just. Yeah, I'm trying to.

[Mary Kish]

Yeah. Try and tldr what I said there.

[Dan Reichert]

I've been trying. Is it like a. Not procedural, but like what you're doing in these rooms? It's first person, right? Yes. You're walking around, looking around. When you're in a room, is it like. Are there like, mist, like puzzles that are going on? Are you pulling levers?

[Mary Kish]

And in some of them.

[Dan Reichert]

Okay.

[Mary Kish]

And I think yes, but not in all of them.

[Dan Reichert]

Gone home.

[Mary Kish]

Yes. I would compare the narrative storytelling to like, gone home or what's that other one with the house?

[Mike Mahardy]

What remains of Edith Finch.

[Mary Kish]

Yes, it has a lot of, like, what remains of Edith Finch in regards to, like, the storytelling family. Yeah, I think that. But the. The intricacies of connecting rooms and items. That is very missed. And I've never seen a game do this before where it's connecting these components. There's also, like, this new, innovative design that I've never seen before, which is almost like some kind of weird deck builder where I will sometimes choose a room, even though that will not help me this run, because now I want to know what's in it. And I need to Unlock it, because it's going to be really important that I'm probably going to be able to use it later.

[Dan Reichert]

Oh, select a room to draft.

[Mary Kish]

Yes.

[Mike Mahardy]

Are you an architect? Is that like the.

[Dan Reichert]

Okay, blueprints.

[Mary Kish]

Yeah, got it. Yeah. Every time you go to a door, you get three blueprint drafts. And again. So some of them are like hallways, some of them are rooms, some of them are atriums. They all are color coded, which comes into play. Complicated. And originally my thought was like, well, I need a hallway that goes north so that I get to the end game. But now I'm. I'm past that blood. Like, now it's all about, like, which room is going to help me progress. What I'm currently trying to get after. And you can't run out of keys or rubies. The further north you go, the more likely that the doors will be locked, which means they'll be like, hey, you. You need a key in order to progress. I've lost this game by running out of keys. I've lost this game by running out of rubies. Certain rooms cost rubies in order to construct them. So if you run out of rubies and you get a hallway that costs nothing, and then two. Yeah, two rooms that cost rubies. And it's just like, oh, now I'm stuck. I needed these rubies in order to progress. So all of these pieces. In my last few playthroughs, something else, like, really interesting happened, which is I had a metal detector and I had a magnifying glass, and I went into this room that allows you to combine items. And I thought, well, I'll combine my magnifying glass and my metal detector. And I. And it became a. I want to say it's like a laser gun or something like that. And I was like, what?

[Mike Mahardy]

Wow.

[Mary Kish]

There's no enemies, so it's not to damage. But they were like, oh, you can turn on lights with that. You can turn. You can. You can use this to burn candles and turn on something. So. Oh, I was like thinking like, like, when in this game, have I been in a dark environment and there is a whole property and underneath the area. When I was investigating earlier, I remember like going into a garage, but you couldn't see anything because it's pitch black in there. And it's like, well, shit, I have to make this fire, like laser fire starter or whatever and go down under this garage and turn this on. I haven't done that yet, but that's like something I really want to. Want to do next. So it's like there's endless combinations that you will be. Your curiosity will be so piqued in this game. There's so many things that you get to do. I wish Dan was here. He's probably like chomping at the bit to jump in on this and talk about it. It is so fascinating. The person who made it is a frickin genius with how many. All the intricacies of these rooms are really something to behold. I mean, it is incredible how much the designer thought about all the different components. Atriums are more likely to have dirt piles. So if you get a shovel all of a sudden now you can dig into all these dirt piles and you can find items through that. So you can have runs where you'll be like, oh, I got a shovel. Early atrium run. You're just constantly making green spaces with lots of dirt piles. That's going to give you lots of items and money that you get to spend. There's rooms where you can exchange your currency. It's also very tongue in cheek. There's. If you get a laundry room, you can launder your money. So in the laundry, the washer is how you can exchange your coins for keys or your rubies for key, you know, whatever you have an abundance of, you can lose. But I find that every run you are rich in something and poor in another. I've had runs where I've had 12 rubies and I'm like, I'm ruby rich. Like, come for me. But I only have seven steps left and I would sell all my rubies for a snack so that I could continue playing. But that's it. That's just the way it is on that run. And so you're just constantly refreshing. My goal ultimately is just to make some kind of progression each life where I feel like I can actually extend the life of my game. And there are permanent upgrades in this game, but they're very difficult to get. So you have to work very hard to get these discs that will allow you to like permanently upgrade a room in the house or your character.

[Mike Mahardy]

What would those look like?

[Mary Kish]

Yeah, one of them was, I'm going to try not to give it away because I think some of it, like the exploration is so much fun and so discovering these things is a huge joy. But one of these things that I opened over time, I finally got like power on to a very specific thing and I had to do this puzzle, a very mist like puzzle, to Drew's point of like navigating these, these colored buttons and I had to make them All a very particular color, which you could only find in a different room in a piece of paper that tells you that they all need to be a very particular color for a wall to open up. And if you do that, I have now unlocked that every time I start the game, I start the game with two rubies, which is a blessing in that game.

[Dan Reichert]

Yeah, right. Okay.

[Mary Kish]

Because the currency is rare, but it was. It took, like, a long time. You're an Indian. You're going to need a gamer notebook. I take photos on my phone. Every time I come across something, I have come across music sheets. I think I've come across eight pieces of music sheets with one bolded letter on each music sheet. And I am missing a very important music sheet that will give me the final word that I need in order to complete a puzzle. There's also simple puzzles. There's math puzzles for people who are interested in that. There's, like, a fun area where to unlock keys. You have to solve some math puzzles. Oh, and I have to all say because. Because this is something we always say on the show from Dewey Talkie. Yes, you have to, like, read in this game. But something I'm so obsessed with about this game is that at no point did it actually tell me how to do any of these puzzles. One of the times I was in. I was in a billiard room, and I was like, I don't understand how this works. And I would press a button and it would go, meh. I press another button and go, meh. And then I think about it a little bit, and I pressed two buttons, and it let me progress. And I went, oh, my freaking God. I know exactly what they're teaching me. And I learned the intricacies of this puzzle on my own without any. Without anyone telling me what to do. And I figured it out, and it was, like, one of the most rewarding experiences I've ever had. I think four days later, I ended up going into a room that had a piece of paper on it that said, hey, have you guys ever been in the billiard room? It's so crazy. Like xyz. And it explains the puzzle. So if you don't. If you can't solve it, there's hints everywhere. But I solved. You can solve on your own. You can just use your own noodle and figure it out. I. I freaking love this game.

[Dan Reichert]

Wow.

[Mike Mahardy]

I want to play it. It's out. What. What day is this episode? It's out on April 10th. So right later this week, if you're listening to this Episode new. I wanna. I have not played it sounds kind of like, oh, be right back. That might be my.

[Dan Reichert]

You Might be Irish.

[Mary Kish]

If he doesn't answer the next 30 seconds, he has to remain American.

[Dan Reichert]

Yeah. This seems absolutely wild. I always love a game where when I try to think about how. How someone made this, my mind melts. And it absolutely seems like one of those games.

[Mary Kish]

Yeah. Oh, still American.

[Mike Mahardy]

Yeah.

[Mary Kish]

What a loser. Yeah.

[Mike Mahardy]

It sounds like Balatro Hades kind of pick the next thing you're doing meets Knives out what Remains of Edith Finch meets Gone Home. Yeah. Like A Bit of Mist in the Witness. Yeah, Sounds right.

[Mary Kish]

Yeah. It's a new genre. I've never seen a game like this ever. I think this is absolutely untapped, and it will pique your interest in terms of story, in terms of delivery. And then just mechanically, you're gonna have a really good time just being like, what am I gonna build this run? A really fun game. And the fact that he's on 70 to me is like, this has a longer end game than what I have even recognized. The fact that I am. I'm so built. I'm so bought into this game, but I'm only on, like, day 18. I thought maybe I would be beating it by like 25 or 30. I'm. I've. I've, like, started to recognize with myself this is. This is a very deep game. And there's gonna be so much to uncover. I can't wait.

[Mike Mahardy]

Is there, like a end of run recap that shows you the house you built?

[Mary Kish]

Okay, that's also cool. There's a lot.

[Mike Mahardy]

I was hoping so.

[Mary Kish]

I love every time you guys ask me a question, I'm like, you're gonna fucking love this answer.

[Mike Mahardy]

I think Amanda's gonna want to play.

[Mary Kish]

This as well when your run is over. It also even creates a house based on the rooms that you ended up picking. And it gives you. This isn' be bad or good, but it'll be like, oh, this is a cottage because you only unlocked five rooms before you had you. You lost. Whereas when you have unlocked 28 rooms, it's like, oh, this is a manor. And if you open more red rooms, then that will change the name of the house that you've built because of the. The pieces that you've selected. It also tracks everything in this game. And there is a library room, and if you go to the library, it'll be like, did you know that you're least likely to pick this type of blueprint and that this is your favorite item? And it tracks every stat and it's really exciting to go diegetic stat tracking. I mean almost like psychotic where it's like it knows how many steps I've taken. It knows everything. I mean every decision that I've made this game has tracked. Which is. It's fun. I. I mean it's really fun to review and think about like psychologically, like, oh, I've really avoided this very particular type of area. I wonder why that is. Yeah, it's. It's sick. You guys.

[Mike Mahardy]

I want to try it out. I'm looking forward to. I'm sure Dan will talk about it next episode. He's back as well.

[Mary Kish]

I think so too. I think he will have a lot to say about it more than me because he's the one who's been playing it longer than me. But I mean I'm also.

[Mike Mahardy]

It's got roguelike elements so I could see Dan getting hooked on something like that. That's never happened before.

[Mary Kish]

It has a lot. This is why I was like talking about the talky dooie is like I was a little worried. It has a lot of letters but because I think it's very Edith Finch in its delivery. Which is just like you see the picture of the character before you read the news article about what happened to them. Now I'm like in. And there's really interesting lore of what happened to this family. And that's why I'm like willing to read that like three paragraph news article which also will absolutely come into play on one of the later puzzles. And so I'm just taking. I take photos of everything in this game because it all ends up. It ends up benefiting you if you have all of this stuff.

[Mike Mahardy]

Sounds sick. I'm looking forward to playing this a lot. Sounds very up my alley as well.

[Mary Kish]

Yeah. You guys are going to love it.

[Mike Mahardy]

Drew, you've been playing something called Utopia Must Fall.

[Mary Kish]

Must Fall.

[Dan Reichert]

This is another early access game currently on sale on Steam for $7. It is. It's like an. It's like a. Like a. A nouveau arcade game. So Asteroids almost.

[Mike Mahardy]

Or not Asteroids Defender.

[Dan Reichert]

It's Missile Command.

[Mike Mahardy]

Missile Command. Thank you.

[Dan Reichert]

But. But you have one missile base and it is on auto fire. And then you can also click a button to launch a nuke. And then the enemies coming down are more like Galaga or Space Invaders or even like Geometry Wars. Right. They all have very distinct looks and behaviors, but everything looks like. It looks like. Remember that game Defcon?

[Mike Mahardy]

Yeah.

[Dan Reichert]

It's like very stark. Single. Single colors to everything actually I think the developer calls their engine a vector engine. So it looks like a color vector game, but yeah, I guess it's got roguelike stuff between stages. You can, depending on how well you did, upgrade your base.

[Mike Mahardy]

What am I hearing?

[Dan Reichert]

Mary, is that you?

[Mike Mahardy]

Is that me?

[Dan Reichert]

What's going on?

[Mary Kish]

Oh, that was.

[Dan Reichert]

I don't hear anything.

[Mike Mahardy]

That was my Steam. Sorry, I. I was looking at the.

[Dan Reichert]

Oh, did you auto play a trailer?

[Mike Mahardy]

I guess so.

[Mary Kish]

It's so funny. There's like this iconic. I. I was like, what did I do? There's this like, iconic Simpsons episode where Lenny and Carl are going up a mountain. And Lenny goes, carl, did you hear something? And Carl goes, no. And Lenny goes, did I? And Carl's like, I don't know. Have you heard anything, you idiot? Like, attack hacking me?

[Mike Mahardy]

The trailer just started playing on Steam when I opened it up.

[Mary Kish]

That's your fault.

[Mike Mahardy]

I know. That's what's fun about blaming you, though.

[Mary Kish]

Anyway, this beautiful rainbow game, it does have stark, literal colors. Like every. Like, if it's like a certain laser, it's red. If it's like a certain thing attacking you, it's bright green.

[Dan Reichert]

So, yeah, very like a. Yeah, a vector game. And yeah, it's fun. It's a, you know, fairly simple. But like, I'm really impressed with the way that they have taken something that looks like it had existed in the 80s, but updated it to be, you know, something that, like, I want to do a bunch of runs with because it, you know, between each level can change depending on, you know, the role that you get of the options that you can choose. So I. I think it's a pretty small team. It would be great on Steam Deck, but I don't think the Steam deck, it says it's verified on their page, but I. I tried it and last time I did the. The controls did not seem to work perfectly well. But on. On PC, it's. It's really cool. So 7. 7 bucks it is early access, though.

[Mary Kish]

Is there an end game or does it just go, go, go forever?

[Dan Reichert]

I don't know. I've never gotten that far. Yeah, but another game like the Forever Winter that just, like, is seeping with vibes. Like, I really enjoy the. A lot. Like defcon, it has this sort of like, just kind of grim, like, you'll never actually defeat the waves. You're just trying to survive as long as possible. And you know, oh, 12 million people died in your city in this last round.

[Mary Kish]

Sorry, does it say that it's got.

[Dan Reichert]

Some, like, I can't remember any of the actual phrasing, but it's got some like, flippant. Yeah. Lines in it and stuff. It's cool. I really. I really like the. The presentation.

[Mike Mahardy]

Cool. Oh, yeah.

[Dan Reichert]

When you die, it doesn't say, you know, defeat or anything. It says accept.

[Mike Mahardy]

Come to grips with it.

[Dan Reichert]

Yeah, yeah.

[Mary Kish]

Deal with it. All the babies are dead rough. But I love that it knows what it is. And I think, like, you can tell that this game is like going for very specific thing and is committed to it. Also a good price point. Did you buy this in a sale? Did you say? Or did you. Did you?

[Dan Reichert]

No, I misspoke. It's not actually on sale. It is just $7.

[Mary Kish]

Okay. Yeah. That's a good price. Yep.

[Mike Mahardy]

Mary, what is look outside.

[Mary Kish]

Look outside is. I'm like, what is the genre of this game? It is a. I'm really struggling to describe it. RPG survival horror. It's scary.

[Mike Mahardy]

Okay. It sounds like a horror game.

[Mary Kish]

I streamed this and it was a very funny game to stream. I recommend it as a stream game because the very first thing I did was I, you know, you go to the window and I had the option to look outside and I. And I looked outside and I died. I died immediately. And so I started the game again. It turns out that looking outside causes you to either die or mutate into some kind of, like, horrible monster. The premise of this game is you are waking up in your apartment and you have to live. I think the game says this very bluntly. You need to survive for 15 days. Time goes extremely slow in this game. And so while you do have stuff in your house, in fact, I brushed my teeth, I showered, all these things and they all changed my stats of like, morale and cleanliness and stuff like that. And then I was like, well, now what do I do? And so I did a crossword puzzle for two hours. But my morale went down because it's so boring. And I played a video game and then I ate some food. And then I was like, well, at some point I have to fucking leave, I think. And so I left my apartment and there's this huge trail of blood outside of my house. And so I follow the trail, of course, and I stumble across a zombie that's like eating somebody. And I pick up a baseball bat and I ended up killing them. And all of these things that I'm doing are passing time. But it passed. I think I woke up at 6am and by the time I killed my first zombie after eating, showering, you know, video games all that stuff and killing Someone. It was 9:15 and so it's like you have to keep going. You have to keep looking. Time progresses mostly when you walk into a new space. So the game is encouraging you to walk into a new space and discover what's going on in this crazy post apocalyptic world. You do have a life meter. You have stamina. Killing somebody, you can take damage. And so I needed to eat to replenish my health and my stamina. Having more stamina means I can do like a better attack with my baseball bat or my knife or whatever items you can get. Hats and shirts and shoes and necklaces that all increase character stats and traits. The saving is what's interesting in this game. So just like an old school game, there's only one way to save, and it's a hole in the wall with your neighbor's eyeball looking at you. She's like looking at you through the, through the, the wall. And so when you walk a lot.

[Dan Reichert]

Like Wilson in Home Improvement.

[Mary Kish]

Yes, very exactly the same. And so I go up to the eyeball and she's like, what have you been? What have you seen out there? And it lets me save. And that's like my save. Once I do that, she goes away because she's already heard what I've been up to recently. And so I cannot save again. I have to go out into the world and I have to go into a bunch of different rooms and find stuff and sometimes die. And that did happen to me. I lost my save multiple times by like dying. Each room you open, there's like a progress bar on the bottom of the screen that appears. And if it gets to the save file, then you can go back to the lady and tell her that you've what you've seen and save again. So it makes you go into the unknown spaces.

[Dan Reichert]

I love weird save systems.

[Mary Kish]

I do too. Yeah, it was annoying. I lost my save, I want to say like four or five times. And it is grading. But it's so interesting how it makes me go into uncomfortable situations. There were rooms where I was like, I don't want to go in there. But I haven't hit my save yet, so I have to. And so it forces me to go into scary situations. I also think that this game is. Is quite well written. I did go into a space where I met a painter and he said, something's wrong. I've been painting and I think the paintings are coming life. I actually think they're trying to be me and I need you to like, help you Gotta kill all these other guys. They say they're me, but I am the only Fred, and I need you to help me. And he's like, I think one's in the fridge. And you're like, okay, that's weird. I go to the fridge, I open the fridge, and there is, like, this grotesque monster with, like, the melted off face of Fred. And he's like, you gotta help me. I'm Fred. This other guy that you've been talking to. Fake Fred. I'm the real Fred. You have to kill him. You have to kill him for me right now. And so now you're making a decision. Do you kill Fridge Fred? Do you kill painter Fred who claims he's the original Fred? Do you kill none of them and just, like, let them sort it out? But originally, like, the guy was like, I'm the real Fred. You gotta believe me. And I was like, well, you do have a bug body. And he's like, ah, you got me.

[Mike Mahardy]

All right.

[Mary Kish]

I'm not a real friend. It's very cheeky and funny. As you continue to progress in this. And this is just one area, but if. As you continue to progress in this one area, I met, like, six different Freds, all, like, absolutely fucked up, like, completely incredible art design of how they have, like, made these mutated Freds that have apparently, like, jumped off the canvas. My goal is to get a very dark painting that Fred said is, like, super bad and evil, and I have to get it. But every time I go down this path, I've died because, like, something kills me in this face. But it's scary. It's interesting. I mean, it's absolutely piqued my interest. I will say, like, I am blown away by the effort that they have put into all of the components of this game to make it feel so real. I mean, down to, like, you know, showering and, like, cleaning myself with a bar of soap that I found in Fred's bathroom, which increases my morale, which helps me have a better swing of my bat the next time I, like, come across some kind of grotesque creature. I think it's. I think it's a triumph of this. Of this team to be able to make something so intricate. But it takes a big stomach because it is gross and it is scary and it is intense. And I also just think it's very hard. I lost my save so many times.

[Dan Reichert]

Yeah, I love the look of it. It looks like a Sega Genesis game.

[Mary Kish]

Mm.

[Mike Mahardy]

Sounds rad. There's a lot of stuff on Steam I gotta catch up on this One's neat.

[Mary Kish]

Yeah. I think this one is a fascinating. I am afraid this is a sleeper. I feel like people aren't gonna try this because it's so weird and it's. It's probably hard to stomach, but I have to say, I really encourage people. If you like scary games or if you're interested in this type of thing, I really encourage you to play this and give it a whirl.

[Mike Mahardy]

Check it out for sure.

[Mary Kish]

It's quite good.

[Mike Mahardy]

Cool. And the last thing, Drew, you wrote Halo Master Chief, Collection E3.

[Dan Reichert]

Yes.

[Mike Mahardy]

Explain this to me.

[Mary Kish]

What are all these letters?

[Dan Reichert]

Like every male who was in high school in the early 2000s. I loved Halo. Still love Halo. Yeah. And I distinctly remember my buddy Mike had fast Internet and so he downloaded this video from IGN and burned it to a CD for me, which is a very old phrase. It's also illegal. No, no, no. It was a game trailer or I guess a video of the Halo 2 presentation at E3, 2003.

[Mike Mahardy]

It was on the Halo 1, Halo 2, Halo 1 disc. I believe there was a certain version of Halo one that had it. If this is the same thing I'm.

[Dan Reichert]

Thinking of, I think you might be thinking of the. What Halo was like the Halo 1 demo before, or it was a first person shooter.

[Mike Mahardy]

I'm thinking of the thing. There was a Preview of Halo 2 of a mission that was never actually made it into Halo 2. And it was different. I played all of Halo 2, wondering when it was gonna happen. But. And that's here nor there.

[Dan Reichert]

Okay, so this is when Halo 2 was first shown at E3. And like, people should go look up a video because I frequently. Well, I not frequently sometimes return to this video because of the goosebumps that it still gives me because it was the first time anyone had ever seen Halo 2. And it is a bespoke demo level that they made just for E3.

[Mike Mahardy]

That's what I'm thinking of.

[Dan Reichert]

There's a moment in there. And the best version of this video is the one that has the crowd reaction because no one knew anything about Halo 2. And then there's a part in it where Master Chief, someone hands him a second submachine gun and he. You're. And then suddenly he's dual wielding them. And if you find the video with the audience reaction, they just lose their minds. And this. That's the part that gives me chills because again, as like high school era Drew, watching this video that I got from my buddy on a burned cd. Yeah. Was. Was mind blowing. And I just. I don't know, I just think back to, you know, the leaps that we were making back then. Like, I'm sure you guys have memories of the first time you saw like polygonal graphics, right? Second weapon in Halo was up there for me in one of those moments. Anyway, you can now play that level on the PC version of the Master Chief Collection.

[Mike Mahardy]

What the fuck?

[Dan Reichert]

Yeah. So if you own Master Chief Collection on Steam, if you go to Steam Workshop, there's a mod team that basically worked with Bungie or I guess 343 industries at this point to take. I think they copied files from old Bungie Xbox dev kits and then recompiled this thing because E3 demos are always smoke and mirrors and barely held together and highly scripted. But they basically made a playable version of this and it's free if you own the Master Chief Collection, which is frequently on sale. And I played through this, this E3 demo recently and it just brought the biggest smile to my face. It is like. It's a pretty janky level. Like if you deviate from the path at all, it just breaks or it doesn't crash. But, you know, there's just. There's nothing over there. But yeah, I picked up the sub second submachine gun and jumped on the ghost and. Yeah, it's just.

[Mike Mahardy]

I gotta try that. I remember I watched that so much. Yeah, I. What, some version of Halo that I bought or some. Like, maybe my Xbox came with it that was on a DVD or something that came with something I bought. And I remember finally playing Halo 2 and I loved that game. I still do. But I remember playing through Outskirts the mission and thinking that was gonna be that. I didn't understand that they made. They crafted that demo solely for E3. I was like, this isn't okay. Maybe it's the next mission. And then I kept playing and I was like, we've left Earth. I don't know when that's gonna happen. I didn't know that it was a bespoke thing. So that's really cool that it exists, even if it's janky. I want to load that up. Yeah, that sounds awesome.

[Dan Reichert]

It's cool.

[Mary Kish]

Yeah.

[Mike Mahardy]

Do you guys want to do emails?

[Dan Reichert]

Sure, let's do it.

[Mike Mahardy]

Okay. Welcome back. As always, you can write into firescapecastmail.com for questions you want read on the show or. Or in the case of one particular email today, something that might be exonerating one of our cast members. Although I don't agree with the email, we'll get to it. That's firescapecastmail.com Mary, I usually toss to you for the first one, but I think it makes more sense if someone else reads it because it's a reference to episode 100. We decided the top 64 games of all time. Yes, Mary, you said something that didn't. It turned my head as well. Not just dance.

[Dan Reichert]

The top 64 games or the top Nintendo 64 games?

[Mike Mahardy]

Top, sorry, top 64 games on any platform of all time. It just 64 made sense for the tournament bracket. We did a bracket. Okay.

[Mary Kish]

So it was weird where like that.

[Mike Mahardy]

Would sound like that until you asked because.

[Mary Kish]

Yeah, that's why he's here. The idea was, yeah, it's 1V ones in a bracket style tournament to determine the best game of all time to us. And the way I did it was I asked Dan and Mike and myself to write your top 20 and any game that was in your top 15 automatically made it. So that was our 45. Even if I didn't agree. Right. Even if I was like, there's no reason that you need to have eight metal Gears. But all Metal Gears were in Dan's top 15. So they were all in our bracket list.

[Mike Mahardy]

Yep. And 3D Marios and all Mario's.

[Mary Kish]

And then to fill out the rest of the 64, I picked like really popular, beloved games that just should be in this list, like Tetris. And that's how the bracket was constructed. So there was some debate because sometimes.

[Mike Mahardy]

Well, specifically what this email is referencing is when Mary, you told Dan and I that you think Diablo 2 historically in the context of video games is more important than Mario 64.

[Mary Kish]

That was my argument.

[Mike Mahardy]

Still think that's asinine, but I stand by it.

[Mary Kish]

I stand by it.

[Mike Mahardy]

Someone agreed with you. Our friend Darian from Toronto wrote in to say, dearest Scarpers, Quake came out the day before Mario 64 games would have figured out 3D without the fat plumber. What's 64's legacy? More Marios and 3D platformers become a niche genre for dinosaurs. Meanwhile, Diablo has infected every game of every genre with its randomly generated loot, skill trees and repeatable, endless gameplay. As Leon Trotsky won once said, Mario 64 belongs in the dustbin of history. Lots of love, Darian from Toronto. Bonus points if Dan knows who Leon Trotsky is. So I still disagree, but there's valid points there. Mario64 wasn't the only thing doing 3D at the time. Ocarina of Time was doing its thing. It was after but. And true I, you know, I didn't think of it in the context of we really are chasing after loot and armor and numbers go up in many, many in every genre today.

[Mary Kish]

So point there, it was iconic. And I don't think, to Darian's point, I actually don't think I articulated this very well. I knew, here's what. This is something that happens every once in a while when we have an argument. But if we have an argument and I've kind of know from the beginning that I'm going to lose, I panic and then I just start insulting you and.

[Mike Mahardy]

Oh, I, Yeah, you're saying this like, I don't.

[Mary Kish]

I forgot to make really good statements. Salient points about why Diablo genuinely is extremely innovative. But as Darian is saying, like the systems that it constructed are now staples in every video game. For better or for worse, till the dawn of time. Everybody is doing this. I also think this was like before a lot of stories of games had incredible carryover from 1 to 2 to 3 to 4. And Diablo 2 has one of the most like iconic inside insane, mind blowing endings of any game of all time and is so fucking good. And so I just think like there was these monumental things that Diablo did ahead of its time that everybody was like, write that down, write that down. And now we all do it. And that's why I feel like it really was a contender. But it's not Mario. So, like, it didn't win.

[Mike Mahardy]

Okay, yeah, you're swaying me a bit, but you still have some work.

[Mary Kish]

Shut the fuck up. I don't need this. I don't need you to placate me and tell me that it was right. Darian denied me. It's right.

[Mike Mahardy]

Speaking of mind blowing endings, we talked about M. Night Shaman last week.

[Mary Kish]

He's moving on. He's just pushing past what I said.

[Mike Mahardy]

No, we just. You got your point across. You made good points and I admit that. But we talked about M. Night Shyamalan last episode.

[Dan Reichert]

Yeah, Mike, you said that the Happening was like a fun movie.

[Mike Mahardy]

Speaking of. Speaking of.

[Dan Reichert]

Respectfully, no, but speaking of.

[Mike Mahardy]

What the fuck did you just say? Moments I started.

[Dan Reichert]

That movie is bad. That movie is not good at all.

[Mike Mahardy]

Are we talking about movie here with Mark Wahlberg, Zoe Deschanel? The Earth is killing.

[Mary Kish]

It's unredeemable.

[Dan Reichert]

Oh, my God. I know what you're saying, but I never saw the Village.

[Mary Kish]

Oh, you're changing the point.

[Mike Mahardy]

I. I talked myself into a hole where I'm like, oh, I really like M. Night Shyamalan.

[Mary Kish]

Last episode now you're doing it.

[Mike Mahardy]

It's unabashed.

[Mary Kish]

Beloved M. Night Shyamalan lover Mike Maharti.

[Mike Mahardy]

Thought wrong not to swing.

[Dan Reichert]

No one brought up Unbreakable.

[Mike Mahardy]

I like Unbreakable quite a bit as well.

[Dan Reichert]

Unbreakable is good.

[Mary Kish]

Unbreakable was the peak. That was it. And then it was all downhill after that, I think.

[Mike Mahardy]

So this one, we could probably omit this. P.S. here, that's a fun anecdote, but just in the interest of not reading a.

[Dan Reichert]

Novel, you know who loves lady in the Water? Former Giant Bomb designer Dave Snyder.

[Mike Mahardy]

Does he really?

[Dan Reichert]

Lady in the Water? Yeah.

[Mike Mahardy]

That is if that would be the happening or that would be the hardest for me to argue with. Good. I think that I really, really enjoy the Village, despite the dumb twist. But, like, the first time I saw that movie, I shit my pants. Like, and I know everybody else did, so stop trying to act like you didn't. Adrien Brody's performance was questionable in hindsight, but yeah. So let's read this. Mary, you want to take this one from Eric. And again, you can probably omit the PS Just because it's longer.

[Mary Kish]

Sure, sure. Hey, gang. Your talk about the.

[Mike Mahardy]

Yeah, it's.

[Mary Kish]

Oh, did you. Oh, okay. Your talk about M. Night Shyamalan last week got me excited. I love M. Night Shyamalan. I find all of his late stage movies to be bad in the best way possible. He kind of plays a game of if this, then what? In a lot of his movies, movies like Split Old, the Visit and Trap are enjoyable movies to watch once you realize he can't write dialogue and maybe has never spoken to a person or a child. When he made the Happening, he said he was trying to make a high budget B movie. And if you watch all of his more recent films, that lens, it's enjoyable. So to that point, who is your favorite mid director? A mid director is a person who's arguably has great films like the Sixth Sense or Unbreakable, but also has a lot of trash in a lot of cases. You enjoy both. My boy Minaj. Oh, I'm not going to say this right. M. Night Shyamalan is mine. Who is yours?

[Mike Mahardy]

If M. Night Shyamalan is the measure of a mid director, I think my other favorite mid directors are probably Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Catherine Bigelow has done some great stuff. No, the person that came to mind for this is probably someone like not Paul Thomas Anderson. The Paul W.S. anderson did event Horizon, stuff like that. What else did he do? I gotta look this up.

[Dan Reichert]

The Resident Evil movies.

[Mike Mahardy]

Yes. Like, I love that shit. Like, that's. I like when people are doing B movie stuff like that.

[Mary Kish]

What the hell, Drew? That was you, right?

[Dan Reichert]

Did you guys hear that?

[Mary Kish]

Everybody heard that.

[Mike Mahardy]

It's not Fleet week, is it?

[Dan Reichert]

That was definitely a fighter jet.

[Mary Kish]

Is your ride here to pick you up?

[Dan Reichert]

It is not Fleet week. Fleet Week is later in October, so I don't know why there's a fighter jet flying over that's slightly distressed.

[Mike Mahardy]

Could I CNN for a second and just double check? Yeah, I think Paul W.S. anderson is.

[Dan Reichert]

That's a good one.

[Mike Mahardy]

Is up there, but, like, there's probably. Is Anderson Mid Paul W.S. anderson, not Paul Thomas Anderson is like, one of the.

[Mary Kish]

The other Anderson.

[Mike Mahardy]

Paul Thomas Anderson is my favorite director, period. And he's incredible. But. And I can't fucking wait for one battle after another. His upcoming movie with Leo DiCaprio, based on Vineland by Thomas Pynchon. That's so many of my douchey interests. No, Paul W.S. anderson, very, very different.

[Dan Reichert]

I think mine is. See, this is hard because I imagine it'd be offensive to some people. I can't believe you'd call him a mid director, but please know that I say this with love. Paul Verhoeven.

[Mike Mahardy]

Oh, I can see.

[Dan Reichert]

Love, RoboCop, Total Recall, Starship Troopers, all bangers. I've not seen Showgirls. I've heard that it, like, you gotta watch Showgirls. Horrific reviews, but also is well loved by Verhoeven fans.

[Mike Mahardy]

Yeah.

[Dan Reichert]

I've also heard his most recent film, Benedetta is pretty good. So that's a good one. That's a director who. I have not watched his entire filmography, but I would.

[Mike Mahardy]

Yeah. Ameri, do you have anyone that comes to mind? Because I just thought of someone else.

[Mary Kish]

I mean, I don't know if this counts, but I think actually Sofia Coppola might be, like, mid. And I hope that is also not offensive. I think that their films and Lost in Translation is, like, so iconic and, like, so important to me. And I think it was, like, a beautifully made film. And then they've also made, like, the Beguiled and, like, stuff that I don't care for and, like, didn't.

[Mike Mahardy]

Do you like Marie Antoinette?

[Mary Kish]

It's okay. I just think there's, like, a lot of back and forth with me on Sofia Coppola, but I do like their ability to, like, navigate characters and I don't know. I think there's. I think there's really good meat there. But I also have like watched stuff and been like, where are they? Where were they on this? Like, what was the point of this? I don't know.

[Mike Mahardy]

I've. My wife recently showed me Marie Antoinette for the first time and I think we both agreed it's not a phenomenally like written or directed movie but my God, the set dressing and like the set design. The costume design is.

[Mary Kish]

The pieces were there, man.

[Mike Mahardy]

Yeah, no, it's really good. The other person that came to mind for me is again, I, I, I almost wouldn't even call him mid. I think the both of these directors. The first one that's going to piss people off is Darren Aronofsky.

[Mary Kish]

Oh yeah, that's gonna piss a lot of people off. Yeah.

[Mike Mahardy]

Some Edge lords who could be like, well, no, I, I, I love Black Swan. I, When I was 18, I loved Requiem for a Dream. Yeah, I don't anymore. Well, I haven't watched it in a long time. I don't play.

[Mary Kish]

Fight Club is your only favorite movie now.

[Mike Mahardy]

Mother was way over my head in those ways.

[Mary Kish]

So that was a crazy film.

[Mike Mahardy]

Or I completely understood what he was trying to do and just hated it either way. And then what was it? What's it? Noah. He's got a bunch. I love some of his movies. Others, I think this suits the email's definition in the way that he's made some in my mind, some phenomenal movies, but others that I just really, I don't think he's got the batting average of the greats. Yeah.

[Mary Kish]

Oh, I got a really good one.

[Mike Mahardy]

Go for it.

[Mary Kish]

Rob Zombie.

[Mike Mahardy]

We're gonna get emails.

[Mary Kish]

This guy's mid is. House of a Thousand Corpses is brilliant. It's so good. It's up. It's an absolute classic horror film. He knew exactly what he was doing. The Devil's Rejects is also wild and takes some massive swings. There's like a 10 minute end sequence that is just like all set to a song. It's so wild. And then he also made Halloween and it's just like what happened here? And the monsters, like, where's where? This guy like lost the saw somewhere. But like, dude, the original components of these films were so good. So Rob Zombie.

[Mike Mahardy]

Yeah, the one that came to mind, I think I was, I took some time to to say he sucks in a few. A few episodes ago. Is Nicholas Vining Refn. I rewatched. Was that on Firescape? I talked about rewatching. I rewatched Drive like a year or two ago.

[Mary Kish]

Oh, right. And you didn't like it?

[Mike Mahardy]

It was on fire. Escape. Oh, my.

[Mary Kish]

And you didn't. And you didn't like it. You're becoming Dan.

[Mike Mahardy]

No. Wait, what? No, he does the opposite.

[Mary Kish]

Forgot.

[Mike Mahardy]

No, but this. This is because I. This is more because I always talk about how much I dislike Nicholas Finding Refn.

[Mary Kish]

Right.

[Mike Mahardy]

Again, I'm just. I'm being harsh because I. Last time I watched Bronson, that movie was awesome. When I watched the Pusher trilogy, I like those quite a bit. I. It's when it gets to, like, revisiting Drive, which, again, I think there are some cool parts. I think the overall vibe of it, aside from the soundtrack, has just not held up of Ryan Gosling and Carey Mulligan staring at each other wordlessly for 30 seconds on end is no longer romantic to me. And then. Oh, my God. Only God forgives. I know Nicholas Vining Refn is the biggest only God forgives fan in the world, and I don't want to offend him, but I still think that movie's dog shit. Yeah, he. He fits the bill in the sense that, like, if anything, I think I don't even calling him mid. Might be doing him some favors. I know Hideo Kojima and him are good friends, as Nicholas likes to say every chance he gets.

[Mary Kish]

Anyone who's friends with Kojima?

[Mike Mahardy]

Yeah, I think it's just like, maybe I just don't like the guy, which is fine. I don't need to. But, yeah, I need to. I need to, like, go back and watch Bronson at some point to see if I still like anything of his that much. And then there's one more I'm forgetting. I think it was Valhalla.

[Dan Reichert]

It was called Valhalla Rising.

[Mike Mahardy]

Valhalla Rising. I haven't watched that in a while either. But anyway, Drew, do you have anybody else?

[Dan Reichert]

Yeah, I've got one more. Roland Emmerich, who did Universal Soldier, Stargate, Independence Day. If you don't like Independence Day, you're a bad person.

[Mary Kish]

Yeah, I saw Stargate in theaters, and it worked. My baby mind.

[Mike Mahardy]

Yeah, you should replace your eyes and your ears and your brain if you don't like Independence Day.

[Dan Reichert]

You did the 1998 Godzilla.

[Mike Mahardy]

Was that the one with Green Day doing the theme?

[Mary Kish]

That was the one with the eggs.

[Dan Reichert]

With the eggs in Madison Square Garden.

[Mary Kish]

I saw that in theaters, too. I was a believer. Everybody walked out of that film and was like, what a mess. And I was like, but the eggs, they were happy matching at the same time. It was like Jurassic park in there. It was crazy. Such a good film.

[Dan Reichert]

He followed that up with the Patriot starring Mel Gibson.

[Mike Mahardy]

I gotta admit, I have to admit.

[Dan Reichert]

Dude, he wails on those dudes with those hatchets.

[Mike Mahardy]

I have always loved that movie. The scene, I will say what the. The fucking scene where he. Okay, I'm gonna spoil this movie. If you haven't seen it, it's your fault. And also if you don't wanna watch something with Mel Gibson in it, I'm gonna spoil it so you don't have to. There's a scene, I think his eldest son gets killed by, oh, Jason Isaacs of White Lotus Season 3 fame. Now he plays Peter, right? The dude from North Carolina, the rich dude, white family dad, they're all rich and white. Oh yeah, good point. He's Jason Isaacs. He was, you have to be more specific.

[Mary Kish]

Yeah, okay, yeah, Lucius, great villain.

[Mike Mahardy]

He was the villain in the Patriot who kills. Mel Gibson, who is a former was at this like. He's got PTSD from this like massacre where they killed a lot of native American Indians at this fort during the French Indian War, I believe. Mel Gibson character, his oldest son gets killed by Jason Isaacs, like executed if memory serves. He's. And then Mel Gibson like basically gives his two very young sons rifles and he's like, follow me. And they sprint into the woods and he sets up an ambush in the woods with his like two pre teen sons to kill like this squad of redcoats. And he's got like rifles placed at strategic points along the path. And it's tense as. Because he's telling his like 8 year old son, hey, do not shoot until.

[Mary Kish]

You see the wax of their eyes basically. Yeah.

[Mike Mahardy]

And then he, he's like, don't shoot until I shoot. And then I'm gonna be sprinting around. It's actually pretty tense, I haven't seen in years, but I remember that scene like sweating watching it.

[Dan Reichert]

But the end of that movie. So he finally. The showdown at the very movie's like almost three hours long.

[Mike Mahardy]

It's so. It does not need to be this.

[Dan Reichert]

Long, but it's, it's, it's him and the bad guy finally facing off on this battlefield and Jason Isaacs is charging toward Mel Gibson who's on foot. Isaacs is on a horse. Mel Gibson grabs an American flag, plants it in the ground and then stabs his horse as it's running at him.

[Mike Mahardy]

Is this the best movie? I don't know if this is a mid director we're talking about. This is like an all time.

[Dan Reichert]

Yeah.

[Mike Mahardy]

In that same battle you see a cannonball, like kind of Bouncing low on the ground. It hits some guy's shin and takes his leg off. It's.

[Dan Reichert]

It's good stuff, but.

[Mike Mahardy]

Yeah, it's typical. Yeah.

[Dan Reichert]

Anyway, day after tomorrow.

[Mike Mahardy]

Oh, what?

[Dan Reichert]

Yeah. Speaking of solar storms, Mary, maybe that's what hit.

[Mary Kish]

What a filmography. Yeah. I don't.

[Mike Mahardy]

Jake Gyllenhaal.

[Mary Kish]

Too soon.

[Dan Reichert]

Yes.

[Mike Mahardy]

Yeah.

[Dan Reichert]

And what's his name? Dennis Quaid. Yeah. 2012 White House down. And I have yet to see Moonfall Sounds, but that's where the moon falls.

[Mike Mahardy]

It's a Majora's mess. Bit of a spoiler adaptation. Yeah.

[Mary Kish]

Yeah. Interesting. What a fucking filmography. That is crazy. That is a crazy path to take Hollywood.

[Dan Reichert]

Also, yonder Bond, who did Speed and Twister, which are there. Those are just bangers.

[Mary Kish]

Well, that's just not mid. That person's just.

[Dan Reichert]

You're right.

[Mary Kish]

Perfect. Wait, I'm sorry. What else besides Speed and Twister, or just. That's it.

[Dan Reichert]

That's pretty much it. Yonder Bond also did Speed two. Cruise control.

[Mary Kish]

Okay. They're perfect. Perfect director.

[Dan Reichert]

Yes. And one of the Tomb Raider movies. Oh, which one was it?

[Mary Kish]

Yeah.

[Mike Mahardy]

Oh, Gerard Butler and that silver skin suit. I think I've seen it. I'm pretty sure I've seen that movie. Something tells me something deep in the recesses of my brain.

[Mary Kish]

Is that when you had your first awakening?

[Mike Mahardy]

Oh, I had many, many awakenings to that movie, if you know what I mean.

[Dan Reichert]

Yes. And 1999's the Haunting with Liam Neeson and Katherine Zeta Jones. Speaking of Liam Neeson. Oh, my God, I am so excited for the Naked Gun.

[Mary Kish]

Oh, that looks very funny.

[Dan Reichert]

Yes.

[Mary Kish]

The end joke is what kind of made me realize that they are going to have a spicy sense of humor with this film. It's very important that the Naked Gun didn't just. It wasn't just funny. It was like kind of dangerous funny. They took some risks. If you haven't seen it yet, everybody should watch the trailer because that trailer will tell you that they are taking risks with this movie. They are going there. I think it's good.

[Mike Mahardy]

It's good stuff. I recently started. I think it was Naked Gun. Forget. Maybe it was the sequel. It starts off when there's like this drug deal going down on the docks somewhere and they're in a boathouse and none other than O.J. simpson shows up as, I think part of this drug deal. And the bit where he dies, basically. Or again, I didn't go past the scene. He's just like. He gets shot a bunch and then he's Stumbling around this boathouse and falling into different things. At one point, there's just a full wedding cake in the corner that he like face plants into before he falls over the railing into the ocean. Yeah, I miss that kind of shit, so I'm glad it's coming back as well.

[Mary Kish]

I love that shit too. Like, that's such a. A golden era. And like, I was raised where my dad was like, you're finally over old enough. We're watching Airplane. And it's just like, it was important that I watched this piece of cinema, but he had to wait until he was like, you are now ready for the scene where everyone's.

[Dan Reichert]

We've gotta have.

[Mike Mahardy]

But first, let's watch it.

[Mary Kish]

I was still pretty young, for the record, but I think he was like, you can handle a pair of tits that are just hanging out in this scene. And so like, it's just a funny. A funny time. But I mean, I. To this day, if that movie is on, like, if I'm like in a hotel or whatever and I'm just like sifting through cable, dude, finding that is like finding a gold mine. It's so good.

[Dan Reichert]

All those movies Wrongfully Accused is really good. People don't know a lot. I have an. It seems like not a lot of people have seen Top Secret, which is the one they made that team made before Airplane stars Val Kilmer, R.I.P. oh, shit. That one's really good too.

[Mary Kish]

It's been years, but I have. I just think I like spoofs in general. I mean, I always liked Hot Shots and Hot Shots Part two.

[Dan Reichert]

Yes.

[Mary Kish]

They're just really important to me.

[Dan Reichert]

Yes. Yes, me too.

[Mike Mahardy]

We're gonna get a lot of emails after this episode. It's gonna be fun. Well, that's our show. Good stuff. Thanks so much for joining us, Drew. Again.

[Dan Reichert]

Absolutely.

[Mike Mahardy]

You can write into firescapecastmail.com Also, if you're not a patron and you want to be, you can go get ad free versions of the audio episodes. You can go get video versions of all the episodes. You can also get access to our bonus videos. We did a co op with Dan and Jake. Mary and I played Repo, which is a very fun game if you played Fazzle. So Funny or Lethal company are trying to scratch that itch with something even funnier that's still like horror based. Then go check out Repo on Steam. We also, I'm Vinny and I are cruising along with our co op series in Total Warhammer 3. I believe next week we'll be putting up or today if you're listening to this. When this episode goes up, there's a new episode over on Nexlander in our evil campaign. I think that's the first one where I believe I get into a full on army on army battle with the vampire zombie pirates. That'll be fun. And then we'll have the new episode up on Fire Escape. Or Mike and Vinny save the world as opposed to destroy it next week on Fire Escape.

[Mary Kish]

Drew.

[Mike Mahardy]

Drew, what do you have going on?

[Mary Kish]

Tell us about Alt F1 and all the other projects you have.

[Dan Reichert]

Yes, it's now called shift F1.

[Mary Kish]

Damn it.

[Dan Reichert]

We changed the name after. After we both left cbsi.

[Mary Kish]

Jake, change what?

[Mike Mahardy]

I said more elegant name change. Mary and I had Resident Knievel and then we left CBSI and just call it Resident Canadi.

[Mary Kish]

It doesn't make any sense.

[Mike Mahardy]

Someone. Yeah, someone said it. One of our fans and it said. Anyway, sorry, Shift F1.

[Mary Kish]

Shift F1.

[Dan Reichert]

It's a. It's a Formula One podcast. We do a. We kick off the season which actually just started. We're only two races in and already there is someone. Much drama in F1. It's great. This, like one of the leading teams kicked out their driver after two races because he sucked so much. Yeah. I mean, it's a soap opera. That's why we love it. But our first episode every season is like the. It's like a double length episode that assumes that you know nothing about motorsports and like tells you all about how the sport works and who everybody is. So it's like our onboarding episode. So if you're curious, you can go back and. And watch that or listen to that. I do it with Danny O'Dwyer of Noclip and Rob Zachney of Remap3.

[Mike Mahardy]

Three moves ahead.

[Dan Reichert]

I'm not sure Rob is still on that. I think the show is still going, but I'm not. I'm not sure he's still on it. And I have a. I recently started another podcast, really unique idea. It's a movie podcast that I do with my wife. I don't know if you've ever heard of maybe Dan doing something similar.

[Mike Mahardy]

No, we've never done any of Dan's shows.

[Dan Reichert]

Yes, it's called I think it's about. And one of us has seen a movie and the other has not. And the one who hasn't seen it tries to guess what it's about based on just like the cultural osmosis, like what they've heard it's about or just looking at the poster and Then we watch it and see how right they were.

[Mary Kish]

That's a funny idea. I like that. That's really cool. Has it been around for how long have you guys been doing that?

[Dan Reichert]

We are 14 episodes in, I think. Yeah, yeah.

[Mary Kish]

Getting into a good groove.

[Dan Reichert]

Hard swings. We did Pride and Prejudice followed by Predator.

[Mike Mahardy]

Nice. Oh, Predator could get pretty interesting if you really don't know much about it.

[Dan Reichert]

Yeah, yeah.

[Mary Kish]

Pride and Prejudice and Predator could be described similarly.

[Mike Mahardy]

Expand. What?

[Dan Reichert]

Go on.

[Mary Kish]

It's a hunt. There is. That's it.

[Mike Mahardy]

Someone covers themselves with mud in both of them.

[Dan Reichert]

That's true.

[Mary Kish]

The weather is involved.

[Mike Mahardy]

Mr. Darcy, I can't see you. You have mud all over you. So, yeah, I do want to give a shout to Danny O'Dwyer, the second most Irish person in the video game industry. Mary, what do you have going on?

[Mary Kish]

I'm still streaming on Twitch on Mondays. That's actually how I played. Was it called Don't Open the Curtains or Open the Door or Just Look Outside? Look Outside, as I remembered perfectly. I think what's fun about this dynamic is often I will stream those games there first and then I will talk about them here. So if you hang out and watch the streams, you might catch me playing a game that I'll end up chatting about on this podcast, which is fun. You get to experience it before we. Before we chat about it. So that's really it. That's all I'm up to.

[Mike Mahardy]

Cool. I'm just doing my day job. It's not forward facing. This is mainly the forward facing stuff I do. And that's about it. Thanks, everybody for joining. We'll be back in two weeks. Like I said, go subscribe to the Patreon if you want to and you haven't yet. We're on the subscription model now, so it's not going to charge you on the 1st of every month. It's going to just charge you on the day that you actually sign up every month, which is a nice quality of life thing. Drew, thank you so much for joining.

[Dan Reichert]

Yeah, thanks for having me. This is fun.

[Mike Mahardy]

Of course. I can't believe it took this long.

[Mary Kish]

Yeah.

[Mike Mahardy]

We always have people on. We're like, why have you not been on before? We don't have subs often. We're usually around. But Dan's Globetrotting, doing whatever he's doing. Going to see stuff here.

[Mary Kish]

I might be gone next epi because I think I'm going to St. Jude, but we can chat about it offline. But in two weeks. Twitch always goes to St. Jude to learn about how we can help support creators who are raising money for St. Jude Charity Hospital. It's a wonderful organization. So cool. Maybe I'll talk about that next time I'm hanging out with you guys.

[Mike Mahardy]

For sure. All right, well, we will be back in two weeks with our 105th episode. Thanks, everybody, for joining. Until then, have a good time.

[Mary Kish]

Bye.