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Speaker 1: Hey, dude, you know what I realized. Okay, but I haven't changed my pop filter. Like the fuzzy thing on top of the mic, I know, you know, um yeah, maybe five years. It's gotta be black molden it. Well. I noticed because there's so much hair on it, like dog hair sticking out of it at every angle. I gotta buy actually fuzzy top. I'm thinking of just getting a new mic, just getting several, like, because these are not the best, and I'm like, I could, I bet I could just kill a lot of these sound problems that I occasionally have, or noise problems if I just got a better mic. If you hear a little tapping noise, it's me pulling dog hairs out the mic. People. Um, you're welcome to my world. Dude, you're getting a puppy, right, do you? Is the puppy? No? No, the landlord killed that killed your dog. If you can, I think you can see killed my infant dog. No. I believed I was going to they were gonna say yes. They said they were probably gonna say yes. Then they said no, Wow, how or just what a weird jerk around to be? Like? No, I decided I changed my mind. Yeah, I know, I said, I was probably gonna say yes, but no, yeah it was. Sorry dude, that's right. Well it's okay. Either take your mind off it or channel that frustration into shitting on our game. This lea who knows, my god, but it is one upsmanship where Michael Adam Ganzer to life Pals talk about games as a medium, and today we're talking about Atomic Hert Atomic Hert. I love I love that you slow rolled into this because I was going to pitch what if I just did Sexy Kiosk as the intro of this podcast. Oh yeah, push by buttons. Oh right, put your cartridge in my slot? Yea, it is, well, it is upgrading in this game. If you're Terrible Nightmare. If you're familiar with our uvra, you might know that we both worked at Cracked, so like we sure did We really really know sharp incisive jokes when we see them, and if we see them, try it out. Maybe not this episode, but yeah, yeah, yeah yeah we sure Atomic Heart it was. It's a Russian game, I believe, if I'm not mistaken. H yeah, I'm just pointing that out because I think that actually might well, I know the theme is but the dev's as well. I didn't know that. That's I think they are. I'm going to look that up real quick as we pass our very first checkpoint, which you may go right in to tell me like, I mean, yeah, much like Chris Malone me, I think I'm in wet, hot American summer. We have mounted and fucked a fridge. Essentially, it's the implication in order to upgrade our sentient glove pretty much spoiler alert because we spoil plots in this show is the big bad right, that's right. Good thing you never masturbated with that glove. He probably would have gotten up to some no good business. Yeah, we we have a thing this year where sentient gloves are your companions and then antagonists. Yeah, it's like a it's a thing. I think this wasn't I think this game was made by a Russian team. I can't tell for sure. It was developed by Mundfish and published by Folks Entertainment, so I don't know. Yeah, do you want to do the do you want to do the tell me like I'm bitter? Do you want me to? Bah? Okay? Good, So I'm gonna let you do it, sir. All right. Um McCart has been described by me and many others as BioShock overlaid with the Fallout esthetic, if through the guise of the USSR nostalgia instead of the Western style nostalgia, but from the same period, well a little later, seventies eighties instead of fifties and sixties, but the retrofuturism of Russia rather than the retrofuturism of American culture. But the gameplay is like BioShock, And what I mean by that, if you're unfamiliar, is it's a first person game where you have a gun in one hand and you shooty shooty, and you have some ability to do powers with the other hand. In BioShock, it's like genetic modifications in a lot of other games. It's magic in this It's that you have the sentient Glove that is your constant companion and walks you through the plot. And you guys have banter and you so yeah, and he can also free stuff, electrocute stuf, etc. A lot of style, a lot of unique looking environments, and batties. The batties, story wise, are all robots that went insane. It's basically the Insane Scratchy Land episode of The Simpsons you are private security for this guy who's invented the next level of the Internet, which is a thing you that actually you put on your head and you can both communicate. I'm simplifying it, but you'll be glad I did communicate with each other. You know, use the internet using only your mind, and you can control robots using only your mind. But then one day all the robots freak out, and at first you think it's sabotage from one scientist and another scientist. You're like the loyal bodyguard of the guy who invented this thing, and you're on the eve of the launch and you're trying to cover up, cover it up for bad pr reasons. And then you're trying to capture the people you think did the sabotage. And then it becomes a more gray area, and it turns out that people doing the sabotage may have a point and it might be sinister, and so you start, you know, questioning your loyalty and realizing you may be being brainwashed or even controlled by certain control phrases total BioShock ripoff, Like when he calls you my boy, you always do exactly what he says after that, and you end up turning against your creator and thinking that you are solving everything, only to then find out your glove itself is the trapped consciousness of another guy who's gonna do something even more evil or whatever. The fuck. Everyone's corrupt. All the power players are fighting for control of this Internet thing because it's been set up in such a way that whoever turns it on has a back door and makes it and you can't take it off. And like they would control the Earth, they would control everyone's thoughts for all time, and they could make the robots forcibly put it on anyone who won't put it on, like you'd be king of Earth. So everyone's trying to be king of Earth. You go through, as we mentioned, your main point of contact is the Upgrade Room, where a sentient fridge that is has like the is like an infomaniac. It just loves fucking or whatever all the time. Is gives you all your upgrades. You upgrade, you go around, you shoot robots, you save the world. I no, I think it ends tragically Wait wait wait I actually have this red down. It kind of matters. You find out your ex wife who is tragically killed, her personality has been split into two Ballerina robots that the evil scientists made. Okay, I'm gonna say it later because I think the ending matters, but I can't find my notes fast enough, so I'm gonna end there. Okay, fair enough. I had forgotten this fact, but it definitely bears mentioning. So the developer, Mundfish is a Russian development company. They have offices in Moscow and Saint Petersburg. There have been some accusations that they might be harding the data of users in Russia and providing it to Russia's security services. I don't know if that's true. I'm just saying that is a controversy. Also, they were going to release this game on the anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine and they didn't, and then people were like, dude, what are you doing on a political game company? Yeah, okay, well, the studio is quote unquote undeniably a pro piece organization against violence against people. And then Ukraine Ministry of Digital Transformation said no, no, you should be criticizing the Putin regime, which they didn't do. So there is some controversy here. I can't speak to more than I'm just reading. These are the issues. We're not going to talk about them because we're not educated about them. By the way I found my notes. The ending is you bravely die. You know, you save the world, but you sacrifice yourself, and as you die, there's a little vision implying that you see your wife again, either for a split second as your brain shuts down, or maybe in the afterlife. It's just like a moment of he gets rewarded by seeing his dead wife, which was the whole point. They took away your memories of your dead wife. You get them returned to you, but you die and you fight. You fight your sentient glove by literally reaching with your other hand and squeezing the glove, which is so funny, shaking your own wonderful. What a game, a lot of interesting contexts. Thank you for adding that. Sorry, before we get out of tell me like I'm a bit, I forgot to mention all the powers come from this other wacky invention called polymer, which is this plastic that's basically magic and can do anything you swim through it throughout the game, and ultimately the evil plan was to like take everyone's thought imprints and put them in polymer people that you control so basically you'd just become like the god of a planet full of action figures, which they get by blending animals. This is the thing that you see in the first level. They're like blending f farm animals and getting this magic goo. Yes, somehow you blend up cows and pigs and it becomes a sentient plastic like And maybe there's a piece of lore that I could have picked up that would explain it, but I didn't, So I'm going to choose to believe that this is all blended cowgu That's what it's. It's and it's magic. Hey, I'm going to pass our next checkpoint, which means I've endured a cooing Randy rant from a upgrade Kiosk and now finally have the ability to slightly elevate enemies above the ground and then drop them into the game or rants, and I can go first. Is that cool? Yep? Okay? Great player one. Adam Ganz are plugging in. Rarely, rarely do I refuse to finish a video game for this podcast. Rarely. Most of the time I feel obligated to to see the entire game before I make a judgment on it. But I just really, really did not like this game. I really didn't like it, and mostly I didn't like it for sensibility reasons. There were some gameplay things too, but mostly the sensibility of it really pissed me off. And here's what I mean by that. There is just a very juvenile, irritating tone that's going on throughout this entire game. The best places to notice it are in are the sexualized kiosk, which we've made jokes about, but literally the kiosk is like, oh, baby, stick your like thing in me. Oooh, Like it's doing that while you're getting upgrades, and it's relentless, and it goes on the entire game, and it's like, Bro, that wasn't funny when I was thirteen, Like it's been thirty years since that was an interesting idea. If then you know, like it's just so out of touch and out of tone. The other pieces that our protagonists is just a grumbling, fucking, complaining piece of shit. He's just argumentative and negative the entire time, kind of like I'm being right now to his Yeah, crispy, he argues with fucking everything like needlessly. He's a he's a he's a whiny bitch. You know, and I just fucking hated him, Like I really really hated the protagonist. And I've never had that problem before in a video game where the protagonist was objectively hate herble like this. Um. I've had protagonist I didn't care for or disagreed with or thought they were wrong or whatever, but I've never hated being with a character like this. UM. I don't know if this is a culture gap. I don't know why, but those two things were so visceral that it wasn't just me. My entire stream was watching it and we were all just like, this sucks. This just sucks. UM. So that was my first thing. I didn't finish the game because of what I did look up the plot events. I played about twenty hours, so I put in enough time to feel like I know what it's about. UM. The other thing that I think it just needs to be commented on before we into all the specifics is the puzzles themselves are bloated and meandering and feel so fetch questy in a way that does not feel narratively driven, Like the game feels so arbitrarily expanded upon just to make it long that you get angry and frustrated. Here's a good example in the first levels. In the first level, it takes six keys to open a door that ends the first level. Okay, it takes two keys to get into the room that then takes four more keys or batteries or whatever to open up the doors that leads you to the outside, right, And it's like, why would any room ever in any universe require four fucking keys. We only ask for two to launch nukes. Why would this door need four? Get out of here, you know what I mean. It's just stuff like that that just feels like game designers that didn't care about whether it was enjoyable. They were just sort of following a formula, Okay, that those things were so off putting that the things this game does well, Like, it's very pretty, it's got some really cool art direction, I would say, and like there's some very innovative ideas about not innovative, there's some creative ideas about this world and culture that they're building that I think or cool they deserve to be in a video game, sure, but the rest of it is just drowned by this terrible tone and designed philosophy. That's the essence of my opinion of the game. And therefore that it's my rant. Great great great. Oh. It's so so exciting when we both sketches just shit on a game simultaneously lable because usually someone feels the need to defend it. As you say, this game comes off hateable, like a face you want to punch. So I so we're like a lines like, I feel no need to defend it. Even it was not the worst game I played this year so far. That would be for spoken, and I think even that is more sympathetic where I felt the need to say stuff like but they tried or whatever. Gary Gary Wood has done other good work or whatever. This I started in a place where it came at a good time because there were no other even double A games out on either side of it for quite a while. Maybe I'm neglecting a switch title or two, but I needed something to play real bad, so I was very charitable to it. And like you said, it looks pretty and I actually think the like the Bob robots with the mustaches and the dead eyes who you fight mostly in the game, that's a fun design that I haven't seen before. It is scary and creepy when they run up to you with their fucking dead eyes the first few times and then the banter. I was like, oh, it's like Duke Nukem three D where it's cheesy or whatever. But then it and I even thought the combat was good enough, like you go through shoot shoot power power, there's big complex rooms to clear out. But then as I played more and more, as you say, the sensibility just wore me down, like like someone trying to annoy you into leaving the room, like the pest ably played by mister John Lake Wizama. Like I will say a few things on this, The only that the fucking vending machine talking to you and you going back and forth is the only time I can ever remember in my life muting the TV to stop it because you can't skip it because it's the menu, so your buttons are manipulating the menu. And it went on for a while and I'm like, yeah, that's not funny, but that's okay. And it's like forty seconds later, I'm like, wait, they're still talking, please stop, like literally just the noise is grating, like just stop talking, and I grab the remote muted it, and I'm like, I'm someone who doesn't even skip dialogue or cut scenes ever, and I'm muting the dialogue of the game because it's not just poorly written, it's fucking aggravating. That's not a good sign. And then I started to notice stuff like, you know, shrubs around the world shaped like a dick in balls, and I'm imagining the developer being like, look what I did to that shrub and the other guy that's so fucking funny, and I'm like, it's not. It's really not, guys. And in the end, all I can say is it's This game reminded me of justin Royland. At first time was very excited because it was something that has something to it and it handles edgy humor well, which isn't art and is difficult to do. But then the more I interacted with it, the more at war thin, And then by the end I suspect that there actually might be deeply problematic people at the center of it. Like by the end, I was offended all the time, and not even in a way didn't make me like clutch my pearls. I was like, well that's offensive. Oh that's pretty offensive, like just going around looking at it, and then the other thing I'll think, So I agree with Adam completely. The only other thing I'll add, having played through, the is that the storytelling is clumsy in a way that's just upsetting to a writer. The Glove feeds you the twists completely, spoon feeds you from the very beginning, and as you said, the only reason you, as the audience quote unquote don't know it yet even though you do because they tell you, is that the protagonist is stubbornly unwilling to think that that that the twist is accurate. But the twist being that sets Younov is bad, the glove in the first scene goes, well, maybe sets Younov is bad. He's along with the control and you go, that's not true. He's a great guy, not him. I like, yeah, like, what is this storytelling? The ballerinas who are supposed to represent your wife are high, these hyper sexualized dude the foot fetishy Tarantino esque figures who like it's a woman with no mouse so she can't talk back, and whenever you tell her too, she bends all the way over and like unlocks the nuke with her foot and it's like this guy's a key that where they like slit your womb open and take a crystal out of your works when they like lick your face and you're like, this dude's jerking off to these things, obviously, and so are the people who design this, and I won't stand for it. Like it's it's um, it's in a non shocking, mundane way like you said, shit had teenager offensive where you're like, you're just being edgy for no reason, You're stupid. Yeah, it's badly told. Um. And the parts of the game player that are good are because there it's a BioShock rip off, so like there's a boss there's even a boss fight where you fight a stage designer who's gone mad and his stage full of dangerous props and automated stuff that is literally a like that's a BioShock level. I like Sander Coy, Yeah, I think he's great from BioShock. I really like him. And and then there's a bunch of stuff where they quote unquote innovated meaning just did something different than by a shock that I was so densely put that I actually never figured it out. Meaning the big one is on your world map, there's these little glowing dots called challenge areas. They were supposed to unlock specific things I went there over and over every time we had access to the world map. I kept going to them, and there's nothing to do there, and there's nothing. I never understood how to get into the challenge area, which meant I never unlocked the end of the tech tree. Did you ever figure out how to take a challenge start? This game also has the problem of really poorly explaining the steps you're supposed to do go in those towers and control security cares. That was so confusing. All yeah, yes, that was I mean it was explained. It turns out by your mother in law spoilers. But like part you know what, you know what. We need to talk about this on the other side of the break because it's gonna be too long. Let's Ballerina hop over these ads in such a way that, oh, you can look at our panties. Look as much do you want? You're right, we'll be back. Did you get a good look? Hopefully? It's such a nightmare. All right, let's pass our next checkpoint and get into game on where both Mike and I decide to spend forty minutes in fiscerrating this game. You get stuck on that there's am so there's also platforming, meaning like FPS platforming, like climbing, a little turning, and something like to the maternal Some of them were so finicky that I did it over and over and over like ten times. So that's everything about this game. Everything about this game is a C plus or B minus execution on an idea that I love I loved in a different game, right, Like, for instance, you just mentioned the uh, the video camera stuff, Like they took that from Watchdogs, and I loved that in Watchdogs when they came out with that idea. I actually think Watchdogs is kind of underappreciated franchise and ways, but they did a really poor version of it that was unclear and unexplained and not executed in a way where you knew what you were supposed to be looking for and stuff. So like that's like typologically true of almost everything they do. Almost everything they do. Their weapons, even the upgrades of the weapons are very janky. They're fine, but they're kind of rudimentary compared to the cool versions of it you might get in a game like BioShock, right, or they're the way their fetch quests work or whatever. They are long and bloated, and they don't make sense what you're picking up. But they're similar in structure and emotional veracity to a BioShock mission, except for instead of giving you interesting texture about the world you're in, they make fun of their objectives and how stupid it is that you're doing this because they think that's clever. You also drives on the importance of good pacing, which is tricky, Like there it is, and I mean an experience, not in plotting. There's no bosses forever, and then there's three bosses in a row that are right the giant bullet sponges, and you're like, again, this is going to take fifteen minutes of shooting every bullet I have with this guy who has a limited palette of moves, and the secret is to learn his moves well enough to dodge and shoot him a billion times, Like they're pretty bullet sponge And then I just feel like they didn't even plan. So they're like, we want these long sequences where you and Charles really talk at length, and in buried in there is the explanation of our high concept plot with the polymer and all this shit. But rather than learning this lesson that we've learned for so long, which is when you're traveling through an area where nothing's happening, that's when to talk it consistently. You would approach the threshold where a boss cut scene is about to start, and Charles would go, let me explain such anough whole backstory, and you would you would. I would trigger the cut seen by accident and go, wait, was I supposed to listen to that reset and stand there and go, I'm supposed to stand here for three minutes? Like two feet ahead of us is the boss? That's so just poorly? Are you doing thought through? Yeah? What are you doing? Yeah? Yeah? Yeah. They just sort of it felt a little bit like the first draft of a team who didn't learn things like and there's a part where you see an underwater city and the glove goes, that's so beautiful. I'm in rapture. Okay, all right, gay yeah, okay, okay, next, let's just move on, next, next joke, move on, move on. Yeah. They just needed like it just didn't feel like on on a structural execution level, they had they did a lot of polishing here. It felt like they kind of just like a lot of stuff got spat out and they're like, yeah, yeah, that's great, Like it's just one of those sensibilities we're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's great, like not this bad, not like you've you've a bowl bad, but like on a continuum where he's the worst version of that right where it's like yeah, yeah, sure, yeah, yeah, it's all good, it's all good. Just stick it in there. It's all good. You know. That's kind of the tone here, and that just doesn't make them think the game fun. You get frustrated with it because of it. I'll say one good thing about it, just in the interest, and then we can do the rest of what we're here to do. But the idea that so you would consistently get knocked unconscious and then be in a dream what I assume was a dream sequence where everything's fluffy and fuzzy and pleasant, and then you'd wake up, and you think that's just a storytelling convention, right, cute, funny dream sequence. I did like that they revealed that all the people who are mind controlled, their bodies are being controlled, but their minds are in that space, that limbo where everything's fuzzy and pleasant. That's actually the opiate of the masses, and you were that's what was happening to you, and you weren't actually unconscious. You were murdering people at sessionas behalf during those moments still telegraph. But I'm like, that's an okay thing. I'm just trying to throw them one bone. I like the matrix. Yeah, I also thought it was very weird, especially now knowing its Russian developers that I was struck by in the beginning. Man, so many narratives are stopped the evil USSR. Kind of fun to play a patriotic person who thinks the USSR makes more sense than capitalism and espouses on occasion actual critiques of capitalism that I agree with, But then the plot devolves into no, the USSR. Russians are the bad guys. They're trying to take over the world and you have to stop them. That's very funny to represent your own your own like people that way. I feel like that fits. I think it fits solidly into the game. But in BioShock Infinite in America is the bad games America? Yeah, I think it. I think it. Every game that's making fun of capitalism or undermining, you know, social structures because of the power corrupt is essentially undermining American government. You know, what I mean, Like, I think this game falls right in that trajectory, right, and like I think it had some of student observations about America and some of student observations about the USSR. Like I think the satire here is okay. That doesn't bother me. Um. I loved the art direction, like I know you were a little bit less excited about it. I thought the way things looked and like the Yeah, it was amazing, Like it was like, this is really unusual. It's definitely coming from a different culture because there's just structures and flourishes that don't that are just not how Kiosks look or any sense or like stuff that they wouldn't be aware of across the ponds that are speaking, Like I don't they got in trouble because in the break rooms there's a TV that's constantly showing old cartoons and they left like black faced cartoons in like racist cartoons that we don't show any more. Yeah, they got in hot water for that. Oh yeah. So it's like it totally makes sense to me that it's like, oh there from there's some culture clash, that's there's some lost in translation. Yeah, they don't, that's it definitely felt like that a few times. Some of the dialogue felt like it was paced incorrectly, and I wondered if Google translated or something. Yeah, yeah, like in Russian. It feels like maybe it's past exactly right. So like this is a game that has a culture gap problem for sure. Uh It's so it's interesting to be on the other side of that and be like, oh huh, I do have some American goggles that this game is inadvertently showing me that part school, and I liked that about it. Uh, I don't think that justifies the decisions they made right right well said, especially the edge Lord. I think especially because uh, I have inhabited not as hard as some guys around me, but um, I've been and want to be edge Lord or like I've been a want to be comedian and thought that edge Lord was part of a well balanced diet and grown out of it in a way where I think it's pretty dumb. So I think there's also embarrassment there. I hate stuff like this now, like stuff that's trying to be edge lordy. I'm like, I just associate it with when I was a shitthead and like young immature shittheads. It does feel like the first instinct of a comedy writer, like a young, growing comedy writer. Yeah, or like even a person who's discovered I'm okay at writing, Like their first instinct is to do the meta sort of self referential winking stuff to prove I know what writing is. But that's like, yeah, but you didn't do it, you know. Um, And like, hey, man, like I've been on this trajectory too, I've I've written things that are cringe e U. And this definitely feels like, yeah, that's what I's a Yeah, it's it's a little bit um. I thought the inventory management stuff was a little bit clunky in this game, like the health like dispensing the health and stuff, and like having to manage your basically you're like you're a tache Case, you know, because it gives you kind of a resume evil for at tachete Case. We have to organize stuff and you varied with scrap and parts. Yeah. Yeah, that felt a little clumsy because there's like different size health containers and to actually get a health container. It's like slower than a Dark Souls game, right, Like Dark Souls is vicious but also perfect because it forces you to like Okay, I have to it takes this long to get healed, so I really have to get far enough away to do that. This game is like what if we doubled that length of time? So you have to like get your stupid tentacle glove to slurp up this health orb and it's going to take you forever to get healed, and you're always in the middle of a firefight. And it was like, bro, can we please speed this along? Although they got to admit the menu music was really catchy and good vibes in a Nintendo e Shop sort of way. Yeah. Actually, I think a lot of the supporting work here is pretty cool, Like the music is pretty cool, the artists pretty cool. I actually, at first I didn't like the robots as enemies very much, but then after a while I kind of appreciated that they were different. You know, Yeah, they're they're weird. They're unlike other batties that you've encountered, right, so there are some really unique experiences to be hit found here. I almost wish there was a version of this game where you could just like mute the glove and your character and just run through it. Wouldn't it be fun? Right? I feel like I really enjoy it. H That's what I'm saying. It would still be yeah fun, not like really really fun. It would be not great exactly. So I do want to like because there was a part of me that was like concerned as I was playing it, like, am I just an American asshole who doesn't understand the culture here? There are other games that have come from that represent other cultures that are less offensive and frustrating, like Metro Exodus and stuff came to mind, so I feel okay, saying like, no, it's more this team and not just as much culture clash, you know, like this it's just a general immaturity. I think, yeah, that's exactly how im which also I know, I don't know. There was a minor viral tweet or dunk party or whatever you want to call it that I remember, right when the game came out of some guy tweeting this is why Automic Heart is so great and revolutionary. Look at the developers and it was a picture and they're all CIS white males, and they were like, this is they haven't polluted themselves with all this progressive, well trans inclusive shit. They're just SIS white males that's why the game is so great. And I'm like, or you know, most people in our circles disagree, of course, And my thought was, it's not why it's great, but I do now see that connect. I see why it is what it is you did show me. I'd find that about the team. But it makes sense. Yeah, you've definitely defined it. Yeah. Is this game in any way a meaningful satire on the shade way, Like, there's a I feel like we're outgrowing lamp shading as a comedy writing community or satire community or or It'll swing back and forth. But there's a great video explainer about lamp shading on the Big Bang Theory, And in its most basic sense, lamp shading is the idea that there's a that a lot of people that were going through a process. I mean we always have been, but at waxes and ways of some of our generation and definitely the next generation, and some political movements trying to expand empathy or the idea of including even more different walks of life and what it is to be quote unquote normal or deserving of rights and society's respect and protection. And there's attempts to do that. In fact, most attempts to do that are actually disingenuous or ignorant in a way that's not mean spirited, but it's just lazy and is tokenism. We call it right, is just there to keep up with the times, but you don't fully understand that the spirit is to expand empathy. So, for example, Big Bang Theory is a big offender because it was famous for being like, we're representing Aspergers and all these various things. It's super inclusive. But then there's this great explainer video of how yeah, but all it does is make jokes at the expense of stereotypes about Asperger's people and how they're assholes and shit. All it ever does is after that joke, it goes like, but we still love you. And that's lamb shading. That's what comedy rights lamb shading. It's where you still do the racist exclusion as sexist problematic thing. Then you pan over to a character going you can't say that that's racist, and it's like, see, we the writers of the show, know what we're supposed to say, but that's not the spirit of what we're trying to do when we progress society and human rights. And I think that's falls a foul of that. That's all interesting, which again I'm like, that's not mean spirited, it's just lazy. But also it's sort of born of a stream of a stream of quote unquote satire that exists over here, like family guy, right, Like I feel like this is like a descendant of that. Lamb shading is huge. That's almost more more quote unquote progressive humor in our mainstream culture is actual hollow tokenism than genuine expansion of human rights. I would say this is the more common version is like, you know, we want to make data jokes because those are the kinds of jokes were used to writing that work. But let's throw a lamp shade on there so we don't get in trouble. Yeah, so you finished the entire game, what's your what was your favorite piece of it? If you had to like pick the highlight of it? When they would I mean, I'm thinking of one in particular, but I can't really explain at what point in the game it came in. But whenever when they would give me an actual large multi story arena with a variety of rooms and unleash Hella enemies, and I would have to systematically clear it out. I hated the bosses. I hated the traversal. I hated when they tried to tell story one of the laser puzzles that you were. They were constantly buried everywhere. Hate and them I just liked. I found it hard to find them. I also thought it was crazy how little we got to walk around the open world. But I really just liked the BioShock parts, like a room full of enemies and I shoot and use my powers and dispatch them. That was the fun part. Did you feel the powers ended up getting to a satisfactory place by the end um Not really. I only ever used too the phone and the freeze. Everything else seemed totally meaningless. Did you use Telekinesis? I unlocked it and used it and then immediately refunded the points, because that's interests that it got okay. I thought that one got better as it went along, so maybe they all get a little bit better. I found freeze and lightning to both be a little bit or like electricity to be a little like underwhelming. It just felt again it like, uh, it never gets to a point where you're getting like the coolest version of this that you're waiting for like even when you get like a laser pistol or whatever, like the way the laser works is like, oh, that's how it felt. Yeah, yeah, it doesn't feel good, isn't there? Yeah, exactly, And we haven't mentioned I don't know if you had this experience, but also very buggy. I had several game breaking bugs, meaning I fucked around, frustrated for forty five minutes and searched and found a walkthrough and I'm like, oh, they are doing what I'm trying to do. My puzzle solutions correct. The game just won't do it. And I had done install and reinstall and it still did it. And I had to wait for it to say this game has been updated. There was a patch, and then I went and networked, so wow, they had to patch it. I had one. I had one, had to reset a next do an hour of stuff over, which is that kind of stuff does sour you on a video game. I kind of feel like at this point, if you play a game in the first two weeks though, that's probably just a thing you have to expect. That's just part of the game delivery re out landscape now, which sucks. It's why I try not to play games on the opening week anymore because I don't want to be mad at him when I'm playing it for you know bugs. Another, oh, another thing I did like actually is the slight reinvention of what logs are to a thing that diegetically kind of makes more sense because BioShock, of course can or you know, people like us always make fun of everyone people walking around recording these wax cylinders about their day and then just dropping them or like hiding them under or something that's bizarre but necessary. You just accept it in this because they have these collective chips installed in their brains recording their thoughts. The actual corpses left over from the massacre. The people's consciousness is fading and will soon be dead, but you can talk to their device and that was cool, interacted their last few memories. I'm like that, Oh you found a way to make it organic. That's pretty cool. Yeah. Yeah, it was fun to talk to recently dead people and their point of views interesting because they're dead. Yeah yeah, yeah, So again there's some cool ideas here. Like I would say, you know, I don't know what the percentages are, but like a few of the big swings they take are like, oh, yeah, keep that. Like, if they made a sequel to this game, would you refused to play it? I wouldn't be I would be fully uninterested. Okay, I think there's no way I would pick it up unless we were recovering it, or if if we heard it, or if it was called a tumic cart, and then I'd do that got me? Now, the jokes are back, baby, jokes are back. I think I would be okay with a sequel if I heard that they really expanded this in a way that made me excited. I liked the daisy flowers actually, or like I thought the the security cameras were well placed, which is a weird thing to say, but all right, Like I was like, oh, you did put those in a way that made traversing this kind of a puzzle and yet not too frustrating. You can always zamp them down. I'll tell you what did annoy me. The infinite number of drones that come to repair stuff you and you just have to sit there and you can see a counter in the hive of how many drones are left, and you're like, well, they only take one shot to down and they take every seconds to come out. So I got to sit here and depopulate this beehive one drone at a time. Then I can move forward. Pretty bad, pretty bad. Why can't I destroy the Yeah? Yeah, driving cars and running bots over it was pretty fun. No, I just I guess what I'm really saying is that after a while the robots were just not very interesting antagonists, especially because they the humanoid ones in particular, were really silly, like weird and silly like. They were kind of creepy at first. Then after a while it's like, oh, here comes the monopoly guys. Well, the whole feel is very much like you're wandering around future Land in Disneyland and all the animatronics they're trying to kill you. It's basically that is the exact feel I would say, Yeah, right, that is. I think that is what they're going for. It does. It's a small world after all, and they're all trying to kill you. Yeah, yeah, Okay, well I think it's probably time for us to go to some edge and uh, you know, refresh ourselves at a kiosk. I believe so it was not faded to be the longest episode ever just because um, there's not much there, especially because to most gamers. You can say BioShock plus Fallout and they'll understand eighty percent of what this game has to offer. Yeah, I think it's instinctively all right, So let's let's do the dance. Um. I guess that's satire of capitalism. That's technically I described adds a dance. I think that passes the bare minimum of what satire is. Maybe just the irony. Yeah, uh, I don't know if this was an attempt at satire as much as they thought it would be an interesting world to live in. I guess it's satire in the bear as sense. Right, they're just going capitalism silly. I get that counts. That's well, But I also think there was some satire at the fact that people use ideals as a cover for the naked grasp for power. A thing we've heard before and we'll hear it again. It's got to die hard. Yeah everyone. Yeah, there's like four parties who all say they're noble, but they all asked secretly just want to win. I thought it was hilarious that the one guy from the Polite Bureau was like, I'm gonna come there myself and investigate this personally, this like thing I don't believe what you're saying. I'm like, bro, why would you do that? He's gonna murder you here? So dumb? How do you not know that you're murdering people? It's so obvious. Look at it. You fall asleep alone in a locked room with someone that Zacharov wants dead, and you wake up with blood all over you, and you're like, Zacharoff will explain to me what happened, because he's a good guy, exactly. You know what I'm with P three on this, Go ahead and kill this guy. Oh so, whow's his name? P three? I don't under Yeah, give him a person's names to me? Yeah? Yeah, maybe want us to not attach to him. It feels like, yeah, let us connect to somebody in this game. That's the thing. There's no people, there's nobody to connect to. Yeah, oh that shit poster I was talking about who loves the you know, monotonous dev team also is saying, and that's why the women and it are fucking allowed to be hot and in post pictures of the metal ballerinas, and I'm like, you you want to you want to fuck a metal woman with no face? That's serial kids wrong, And like um, a face if you woman. What. Yeah, there's these rubber feet sex toys that sometimes go viral because it's just one of the weirdest products ever made. And the key scene really just reminded me of those those rubber sex feet. This uh, this game gave me douche chills. That's that's how I anyway, I'll keep it, you know, it's the old stand by joke on this show. Um, we're gonna pass our last checkpoint indeed into keeper delete where we exept, where we decide or we vote on whether this game represents the medium in a way that we'd be proud to show off. I will delete Atomic Herds. I'm frankly surprised that so many people were like thought this was at least a good game or about the vibe. They thought it was a fresh vibe. Yeah, and I just don't get that, Like I like, yeah, I don't see it. I'm sorry, I need to delete it. I can't speak to some of the other outside controversies, but the game itself just really struggled to entertain and engage, you know, like just shooting something is not intrinsically fun. You know, you gotta you gotta motivate it and put me in a place where I'm engaged with why we're doing things, you know, like and that just didn't happen here. Yeah, that's right. I wonder if I played Duke Nwcam if I would find it offensive, because I I found it like cheesy, but not offense, not edge lording. I thought it was like big, dumbloud Schwartzenegger fun. I've never thought Duke Nukembe was good. I know that we have friends who swear by it as a piece of as comedy, but I always thought Duke Nukembe was like a like sort of the low art version or whatever booger Man or any yea, and most of those don't work like to me. It's like, yeah, I like portal, you know, and I know that, but dude with a wax mustache and a fedorat drinking an ipa, oh booger Man, Yeah, I like that portal. I like portal. Excuse me, you're on my penny farthing bicycle. Thank you, side me over my Papst blue ribbon if you would, sir, uh, this is the box social I've ever attended. Okay, well, let's portal on out of it. Wait did you vote? Oh, I deleted. I've been deleting this whole episode. You know, let's portal the fuck on outa here. My boy, um, and I said, my boy, which means we have to do it. We're hell, I'm already obeying you. I'm portaling now, but before we do. Thanks shipheads. If you're a fresh shiphead or a shiphead who wants to explore more of our catalog, we actually do, like I think, more than ten different podcasts through our network small Beans. You can find all the free stuff just by searching for small Beans wherever you get podcasts. If you head on over to patreon dot com slash small Beans, you can pay us three to five bucks a month, not a week a month, and get twice as much, including series about like Star Trek, Futurama, Friendship, Depression movies, the movies of or Stephen King adaptations, Cohen Brothers, PTA, Anderson. We've done a lot of deep dives along the West has a good stuff Anderson as well. Check it out. Okay, Mike, we let's get out of here before we explode in the satire fire. I'm gonna sketch away. Remember sketching
Speaker 1: Hey, dude, you know what I realized. Okay, but I haven't changed my pop filter. Like the fuzzy thing on top of the mic, I know, you know, um yeah, maybe five years. It's gotta be black molden it. Well. I noticed because there's so much hair on it, like dog hair sticking out of it at every angle. I gotta buy actually fuzzy top. I'm thinking of just getting a new mic, just getting several, like, because these are not the best, and I'm like, I could, I bet I could just kill a lot of these sound problems that I occasionally have, or noise problems if I just got a better mic. If you hear a little tapping noise, it's me pulling dog hairs out the mic. People. Um, you're welcome to my world. Dude, you're getting a puppy, right, do you? Is the puppy? No? No, the landlord killed that killed your dog. If you can, I think you can see killed my infant dog. No. I believed I was going to they were gonna say yes. They said they were probably gonna say yes. Then they said no, Wow, how or just what a weird jerk around to be? Like? No, I decided I changed my mind. Yeah, I know, I said, I was probably gonna say yes, but no, yeah it was. Sorry dude, that's right. Well it's okay. Either take your mind off it or channel that frustration into shitting on our game. This lea who knows, my god, but it is one upsmanship where Michael Adam Ganzer to life Pals talk about games as a medium, and today we're talking about Atomic Hert Atomic Hert. I love I love that you slow rolled into this because I was going to pitch what if I just did Sexy Kiosk as the intro of this podcast. Oh yeah, push by buttons. Oh right, put your cartridge in my slot? Yea, it is, well, it is upgrading in this game. If you're Terrible Nightmare. If you're familiar with our uvra, you might know that we both worked at Cracked, so like we sure did We really really know sharp incisive jokes when we see them, and if we see them, try it out. Maybe not this episode, but yeah, yeah, yeah yeah we sure Atomic Heart it was. It's a Russian game, I believe, if I'm not mistaken. H yeah, I'm just pointing that out because I think that actually might well, I know the theme is but the dev's as well. I didn't know that. That's I think they are. I'm going to look that up real quick as we pass our very first checkpoint, which you may go right in to tell me like, I mean, yeah, much like Chris Malone me, I think I'm in wet, hot American summer. We have mounted and fucked a fridge. Essentially, it's the implication in order to upgrade our sentient glove pretty much spoiler alert because we spoil plots in this show is the big bad right, that's right. Good thing you never masturbated with that glove. He probably would have gotten up to some no good business. Yeah, we we have a thing this year where sentient gloves are your companions and then antagonists. Yeah, it's like a it's a thing. I think this wasn't I think this game was made by a Russian team. I can't tell for sure. It was developed by Mundfish and published by Folks Entertainment, so I don't know. Yeah, do you want to do the do you want to do the tell me like I'm bitter? Do you want me to? Bah? Okay? Good, So I'm gonna let you do it, sir. All right. Um McCart has been described by me and many others as BioShock overlaid with the Fallout esthetic, if through the guise of the USSR nostalgia instead of the Western style nostalgia, but from the same period, well a little later, seventies eighties instead of fifties and sixties, but the retrofuturism of Russia rather than the retrofuturism of American culture. But the gameplay is like BioShock, And what I mean by that, if you're unfamiliar, is it's a first person game where you have a gun in one hand and you shooty shooty, and you have some ability to do powers with the other hand. In BioShock, it's like genetic modifications in a lot of other games. It's magic in this It's that you have the sentient Glove that is your constant companion and walks you through the plot. And you guys have banter and you so yeah, and he can also free stuff, electrocute stuf, etc. A lot of style, a lot of unique looking environments, and batties. The batties, story wise, are all robots that went insane. It's basically the Insane Scratchy Land episode of The Simpsons you are private security for this guy who's invented the next level of the Internet, which is a thing you that actually you put on your head and you can both communicate. I'm simplifying it, but you'll be glad I did communicate with each other. You know, use the internet using only your mind, and you can control robots using only your mind. But then one day all the robots freak out, and at first you think it's sabotage from one scientist and another scientist. You're like the loyal bodyguard of the guy who invented this thing, and you're on the eve of the launch and you're trying to cover up, cover it up for bad pr reasons. And then you're trying to capture the people you think did the sabotage. And then it becomes a more gray area, and it turns out that people doing the sabotage may have a point and it might be sinister, and so you start, you know, questioning your loyalty and realizing you may be being brainwashed or even controlled by certain control phrases total BioShock ripoff, Like when he calls you my boy, you always do exactly what he says after that, and you end up turning against your creator and thinking that you are solving everything, only to then find out your glove itself is the trapped consciousness of another guy who's gonna do something even more evil or whatever. The fuck. Everyone's corrupt. All the power players are fighting for control of this Internet thing because it's been set up in such a way that whoever turns it on has a back door and makes it and you can't take it off. And like they would control the Earth, they would control everyone's thoughts for all time, and they could make the robots forcibly put it on anyone who won't put it on, like you'd be king of Earth. So everyone's trying to be king of Earth. You go through, as we mentioned, your main point of contact is the Upgrade Room, where a sentient fridge that is has like the is like an infomaniac. It just loves fucking or whatever all the time. Is gives you all your upgrades. You upgrade, you go around, you shoot robots, you save the world. I no, I think it ends tragically Wait wait wait I actually have this red down. It kind of matters. You find out your ex wife who is tragically killed, her personality has been split into two Ballerina robots that the evil scientists made. Okay, I'm gonna say it later because I think the ending matters, but I can't find my notes fast enough, so I'm gonna end there. Okay, fair enough. I had forgotten this fact, but it definitely bears mentioning. So the developer, Mundfish is a Russian development company. They have offices in Moscow and Saint Petersburg. There have been some accusations that they might be harding the data of users in Russia and providing it to Russia's security services. I don't know if that's true. I'm just saying that is a controversy. Also, they were going to release this game on the anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine and they didn't, and then people were like, dude, what are you doing on a political game company? Yeah, okay, well, the studio is quote unquote undeniably a pro piece organization against violence against people. And then Ukraine Ministry of Digital Transformation said no, no, you should be criticizing the Putin regime, which they didn't do. So there is some controversy here. I can't speak to more than I'm just reading. These are the issues. We're not going to talk about them because we're not educated about them. By the way I found my notes. The ending is you bravely die. You know, you save the world, but you sacrifice yourself, and as you die, there's a little vision implying that you see your wife again, either for a split second as your brain shuts down, or maybe in the afterlife. It's just like a moment of he gets rewarded by seeing his dead wife, which was the whole point. They took away your memories of your dead wife. You get them returned to you, but you die and you fight. You fight your sentient glove by literally reaching with your other hand and squeezing the glove, which is so funny, shaking your own wonderful. What a game, a lot of interesting contexts. Thank you for adding that. Sorry, before we get out of tell me like I'm a bit, I forgot to mention all the powers come from this other wacky invention called polymer, which is this plastic that's basically magic and can do anything you swim through it throughout the game, and ultimately the evil plan was to like take everyone's thought imprints and put them in polymer people that you control so basically you'd just become like the god of a planet full of action figures, which they get by blending animals. This is the thing that you see in the first level. They're like blending f farm animals and getting this magic goo. Yes, somehow you blend up cows and pigs and it becomes a sentient plastic like And maybe there's a piece of lore that I could have picked up that would explain it, but I didn't, So I'm going to choose to believe that this is all blended cowgu That's what it's. It's and it's magic. Hey, I'm going to pass our next checkpoint, which means I've endured a cooing Randy rant from a upgrade Kiosk and now finally have the ability to slightly elevate enemies above the ground and then drop them into the game or rants, and I can go first. Is that cool? Yep? Okay? Great player one. Adam Ganz are plugging in. Rarely, rarely do I refuse to finish a video game for this podcast. Rarely. Most of the time I feel obligated to to see the entire game before I make a judgment on it. But I just really, really did not like this game. I really didn't like it, and mostly I didn't like it for sensibility reasons. There were some gameplay things too, but mostly the sensibility of it really pissed me off. And here's what I mean by that. There is just a very juvenile, irritating tone that's going on throughout this entire game. The best places to notice it are in are the sexualized kiosk, which we've made jokes about, but literally the kiosk is like, oh, baby, stick your like thing in me. Oooh, Like it's doing that while you're getting upgrades, and it's relentless, and it goes on the entire game, and it's like, Bro, that wasn't funny when I was thirteen, Like it's been thirty years since that was an interesting idea. If then you know, like it's just so out of touch and out of tone. The other pieces that our protagonists is just a grumbling, fucking, complaining piece of shit. He's just argumentative and negative the entire time, kind of like I'm being right now to his Yeah, crispy, he argues with fucking everything like needlessly. He's a he's a he's a whiny bitch. You know, and I just fucking hated him, Like I really really hated the protagonist. And I've never had that problem before in a video game where the protagonist was objectively hate herble like this. Um. I've had protagonist I didn't care for or disagreed with or thought they were wrong or whatever, but I've never hated being with a character like this. UM. I don't know if this is a culture gap. I don't know why, but those two things were so visceral that it wasn't just me. My entire stream was watching it and we were all just like, this sucks. This just sucks. UM. So that was my first thing. I didn't finish the game because of what I did look up the plot events. I played about twenty hours, so I put in enough time to feel like I know what it's about. UM. The other thing that I think it just needs to be commented on before we into all the specifics is the puzzles themselves are bloated and meandering and feel so fetch questy in a way that does not feel narratively driven, Like the game feels so arbitrarily expanded upon just to make it long that you get angry and frustrated. Here's a good example in the first levels. In the first level, it takes six keys to open a door that ends the first level. Okay, it takes two keys to get into the room that then takes four more keys or batteries or whatever to open up the doors that leads you to the outside, right, And it's like, why would any room ever in any universe require four fucking keys. We only ask for two to launch nukes. Why would this door need four? Get out of here, you know what I mean. It's just stuff like that that just feels like game designers that didn't care about whether it was enjoyable. They were just sort of following a formula, Okay, that those things were so off putting that the things this game does well, Like, it's very pretty, it's got some really cool art direction, I would say, and like there's some very innovative ideas about not innovative, there's some creative ideas about this world and culture that they're building that I think or cool they deserve to be in a video game, sure, but the rest of it is just drowned by this terrible tone and designed philosophy. That's the essence of my opinion of the game. And therefore that it's my rant. Great great great. Oh. It's so so exciting when we both sketches just shit on a game simultaneously lable because usually someone feels the need to defend it. As you say, this game comes off hateable, like a face you want to punch. So I so we're like a lines like, I feel no need to defend it. Even it was not the worst game I played this year so far. That would be for spoken, and I think even that is more sympathetic where I felt the need to say stuff like but they tried or whatever. Gary Gary Wood has done other good work or whatever. This I started in a place where it came at a good time because there were no other even double A games out on either side of it for quite a while. Maybe I'm neglecting a switch title or two, but I needed something to play real bad, so I was very charitable to it. And like you said, it looks pretty and I actually think the like the Bob robots with the mustaches and the dead eyes who you fight mostly in the game, that's a fun design that I haven't seen before. It is scary and creepy when they run up to you with their fucking dead eyes the first few times and then the banter. I was like, oh, it's like Duke Nukem three D where it's cheesy or whatever. But then it and I even thought the combat was good enough, like you go through shoot shoot power power, there's big complex rooms to clear out. But then as I played more and more, as you say, the sensibility just wore me down, like like someone trying to annoy you into leaving the room, like the pest ably played by mister John Lake Wizama. Like I will say a few things on this, The only that the fucking vending machine talking to you and you going back and forth is the only time I can ever remember in my life muting the TV to stop it because you can't skip it because it's the menu, so your buttons are manipulating the menu. And it went on for a while and I'm like, yeah, that's not funny, but that's okay. And it's like forty seconds later, I'm like, wait, they're still talking, please stop, like literally just the noise is grating, like just stop talking, and I grab the remote muted it, and I'm like, I'm someone who doesn't even skip dialogue or cut scenes ever, and I'm muting the dialogue of the game because it's not just poorly written, it's fucking aggravating. That's not a good sign. And then I started to notice stuff like, you know, shrubs around the world shaped like a dick in balls, and I'm imagining the developer being like, look what I did to that shrub and the other guy that's so fucking funny, and I'm like, it's not. It's really not, guys. And in the end, all I can say is it's This game reminded me of justin Royland. At first time was very excited because it was something that has something to it and it handles edgy humor well, which isn't art and is difficult to do. But then the more I interacted with it, the more at war thin, And then by the end I suspect that there actually might be deeply problematic people at the center of it. Like by the end, I was offended all the time, and not even in a way didn't make me like clutch my pearls. I was like, well that's offensive. Oh that's pretty offensive, like just going around looking at it, and then the other thing I'll think, So I agree with Adam completely. The only other thing I'll add, having played through, the is that the storytelling is clumsy in a way that's just upsetting to a writer. The Glove feeds you the twists completely, spoon feeds you from the very beginning, and as you said, the only reason you, as the audience quote unquote don't know it yet even though you do because they tell you, is that the protagonist is stubbornly unwilling to think that that that the twist is accurate. But the twist being that sets Younov is bad, the glove in the first scene goes, well, maybe sets Younov is bad. He's along with the control and you go, that's not true. He's a great guy, not him. I like, yeah, like, what is this storytelling? The ballerinas who are supposed to represent your wife are high, these hyper sexualized dude the foot fetishy Tarantino esque figures who like it's a woman with no mouse so she can't talk back, and whenever you tell her too, she bends all the way over and like unlocks the nuke with her foot and it's like this guy's a key that where they like slit your womb open and take a crystal out of your works when they like lick your face and you're like, this dude's jerking off to these things, obviously, and so are the people who design this, and I won't stand for it. Like it's it's um, it's in a non shocking, mundane way like you said, shit had teenager offensive where you're like, you're just being edgy for no reason, You're stupid. Yeah, it's badly told. Um. And the parts of the game player that are good are because there it's a BioShock rip off, so like there's a boss there's even a boss fight where you fight a stage designer who's gone mad and his stage full of dangerous props and automated stuff that is literally a like that's a BioShock level. I like Sander Coy, Yeah, I think he's great from BioShock. I really like him. And and then there's a bunch of stuff where they quote unquote innovated meaning just did something different than by a shock that I was so densely put that I actually never figured it out. Meaning the big one is on your world map, there's these little glowing dots called challenge areas. They were supposed to unlock specific things I went there over and over every time we had access to the world map. I kept going to them, and there's nothing to do there, and there's nothing. I never understood how to get into the challenge area, which meant I never unlocked the end of the tech tree. Did you ever figure out how to take a challenge start? This game also has the problem of really poorly explaining the steps you're supposed to do go in those towers and control security cares. That was so confusing. All yeah, yes, that was I mean it was explained. It turns out by your mother in law spoilers. But like part you know what, you know what. We need to talk about this on the other side of the break because it's gonna be too long. Let's Ballerina hop over these ads in such a way that, oh, you can look at our panties. Look as much do you want? You're right, we'll be back. Did you get a good look? Hopefully? It's such a nightmare. All right, let's pass our next checkpoint and get into game on where both Mike and I decide to spend forty minutes in fiscerrating this game. You get stuck on that there's am so there's also platforming, meaning like FPS platforming, like climbing, a little turning, and something like to the maternal Some of them were so finicky that I did it over and over and over like ten times. So that's everything about this game. Everything about this game is a C plus or B minus execution on an idea that I love I loved in a different game, right, Like, for instance, you just mentioned the uh, the video camera stuff, Like they took that from Watchdogs, and I loved that in Watchdogs when they came out with that idea. I actually think Watchdogs is kind of underappreciated franchise and ways, but they did a really poor version of it that was unclear and unexplained and not executed in a way where you knew what you were supposed to be looking for and stuff. So like that's like typologically true of almost everything they do. Almost everything they do. Their weapons, even the upgrades of the weapons are very janky. They're fine, but they're kind of rudimentary compared to the cool versions of it you might get in a game like BioShock, right, or they're the way their fetch quests work or whatever. They are long and bloated, and they don't make sense what you're picking up. But they're similar in structure and emotional veracity to a BioShock mission, except for instead of giving you interesting texture about the world you're in, they make fun of their objectives and how stupid it is that you're doing this because they think that's clever. You also drives on the importance of good pacing, which is tricky, Like there it is, and I mean an experience, not in plotting. There's no bosses forever, and then there's three bosses in a row that are right the giant bullet sponges, and you're like, again, this is going to take fifteen minutes of shooting every bullet I have with this guy who has a limited palette of moves, and the secret is to learn his moves well enough to dodge and shoot him a billion times, Like they're pretty bullet sponge And then I just feel like they didn't even plan. So they're like, we want these long sequences where you and Charles really talk at length, and in buried in there is the explanation of our high concept plot with the polymer and all this shit. But rather than learning this lesson that we've learned for so long, which is when you're traveling through an area where nothing's happening, that's when to talk it consistently. You would approach the threshold where a boss cut scene is about to start, and Charles would go, let me explain such anough whole backstory, and you would you would. I would trigger the cut seen by accident and go, wait, was I supposed to listen to that reset and stand there and go, I'm supposed to stand here for three minutes? Like two feet ahead of us is the boss? That's so just poorly? Are you doing thought through? Yeah? What are you doing? Yeah? Yeah? Yeah. They just sort of it felt a little bit like the first draft of a team who didn't learn things like and there's a part where you see an underwater city and the glove goes, that's so beautiful. I'm in rapture. Okay, all right, gay yeah, okay, okay, next, let's just move on, next, next joke, move on, move on. Yeah. They just needed like it just didn't feel like on on a structural execution level, they had they did a lot of polishing here. It felt like they kind of just like a lot of stuff got spat out and they're like, yeah, yeah, that's great, Like it's just one of those sensibilities we're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's great, like not this bad, not like you've you've a bowl bad, but like on a continuum where he's the worst version of that right where it's like yeah, yeah, sure, yeah, yeah, it's all good, it's all good. Just stick it in there. It's all good. You know. That's kind of the tone here, and that just doesn't make them think the game fun. You get frustrated with it because of it. I'll say one good thing about it, just in the interest, and then we can do the rest of what we're here to do. But the idea that so you would consistently get knocked unconscious and then be in a dream what I assume was a dream sequence where everything's fluffy and fuzzy and pleasant, and then you'd wake up, and you think that's just a storytelling convention, right, cute, funny dream sequence. I did like that they revealed that all the people who are mind controlled, their bodies are being controlled, but their minds are in that space, that limbo where everything's fuzzy and pleasant. That's actually the opiate of the masses, and you were that's what was happening to you, and you weren't actually unconscious. You were murdering people at sessionas behalf during those moments still telegraph. But I'm like, that's an okay thing. I'm just trying to throw them one bone. I like the matrix. Yeah, I also thought it was very weird, especially now knowing its Russian developers that I was struck by in the beginning. Man, so many narratives are stopped the evil USSR. Kind of fun to play a patriotic person who thinks the USSR makes more sense than capitalism and espouses on occasion actual critiques of capitalism that I agree with, But then the plot devolves into no, the USSR. Russians are the bad guys. They're trying to take over the world and you have to stop them. That's very funny to represent your own your own like people that way. I feel like that fits. I think it fits solidly into the game. But in BioShock Infinite in America is the bad games America? Yeah, I think it. I think it. Every game that's making fun of capitalism or undermining, you know, social structures because of the power corrupt is essentially undermining American government. You know, what I mean, Like, I think this game falls right in that trajectory, right, and like I think it had some of student observations about America and some of student observations about the USSR. Like I think the satire here is okay. That doesn't bother me. Um. I loved the art direction, like I know you were a little bit less excited about it. I thought the way things looked and like the Yeah, it was amazing, Like it was like, this is really unusual. It's definitely coming from a different culture because there's just structures and flourishes that don't that are just not how Kiosks look or any sense or like stuff that they wouldn't be aware of across the ponds that are speaking, Like I don't they got in trouble because in the break rooms there's a TV that's constantly showing old cartoons and they left like black faced cartoons in like racist cartoons that we don't show any more. Yeah, they got in hot water for that. Oh yeah. So it's like it totally makes sense to me that it's like, oh there from there's some culture clash, that's there's some lost in translation. Yeah, they don't, that's it definitely felt like that a few times. Some of the dialogue felt like it was paced incorrectly, and I wondered if Google translated or something. Yeah, yeah, like in Russian. It feels like maybe it's past exactly right. So like this is a game that has a culture gap problem for sure. Uh It's so it's interesting to be on the other side of that and be like, oh huh, I do have some American goggles that this game is inadvertently showing me that part school, and I liked that about it. Uh, I don't think that justifies the decisions they made right right well said, especially the edge Lord. I think especially because uh, I have inhabited not as hard as some guys around me, but um, I've been and want to be edge Lord or like I've been a want to be comedian and thought that edge Lord was part of a well balanced diet and grown out of it in a way where I think it's pretty dumb. So I think there's also embarrassment there. I hate stuff like this now, like stuff that's trying to be edge lordy. I'm like, I just associate it with when I was a shitthead and like young immature shittheads. It does feel like the first instinct of a comedy writer, like a young, growing comedy writer. Yeah, or like even a person who's discovered I'm okay at writing, Like their first instinct is to do the meta sort of self referential winking stuff to prove I know what writing is. But that's like, yeah, but you didn't do it, you know. Um, And like, hey, man, like I've been on this trajectory too, I've I've written things that are cringe e U. And this definitely feels like, yeah, that's what I's a Yeah, it's it's a little bit um. I thought the inventory management stuff was a little bit clunky in this game, like the health like dispensing the health and stuff, and like having to manage your basically you're like you're a tache Case, you know, because it gives you kind of a resume evil for at tachete Case. We have to organize stuff and you varied with scrap and parts. Yeah. Yeah, that felt a little clumsy because there's like different size health containers and to actually get a health container. It's like slower than a Dark Souls game, right, Like Dark Souls is vicious but also perfect because it forces you to like Okay, I have to it takes this long to get healed, so I really have to get far enough away to do that. This game is like what if we doubled that length of time? So you have to like get your stupid tentacle glove to slurp up this health orb and it's going to take you forever to get healed, and you're always in the middle of a firefight. And it was like, bro, can we please speed this along? Although they got to admit the menu music was really catchy and good vibes in a Nintendo e Shop sort of way. Yeah. Actually, I think a lot of the supporting work here is pretty cool, Like the music is pretty cool, the artists pretty cool. I actually, at first I didn't like the robots as enemies very much, but then after a while I kind of appreciated that they were different. You know, Yeah, they're they're weird. They're unlike other batties that you've encountered, right, so there are some really unique experiences to be hit found here. I almost wish there was a version of this game where you could just like mute the glove and your character and just run through it. Wouldn't it be fun? Right? I feel like I really enjoy it. H That's what I'm saying. It would still be yeah fun, not like really really fun. It would be not great exactly. So I do want to like because there was a part of me that was like concerned as I was playing it, like, am I just an American asshole who doesn't understand the culture here? There are other games that have come from that represent other cultures that are less offensive and frustrating, like Metro Exodus and stuff came to mind, so I feel okay, saying like, no, it's more this team and not just as much culture clash, you know, like this it's just a general immaturity. I think, yeah, that's exactly how im which also I know, I don't know. There was a minor viral tweet or dunk party or whatever you want to call it that I remember, right when the game came out of some guy tweeting this is why Automic Heart is so great and revolutionary. Look at the developers and it was a picture and they're all CIS white males, and they were like, this is they haven't polluted themselves with all this progressive, well trans inclusive shit. They're just SIS white males that's why the game is so great. And I'm like, or you know, most people in our circles disagree, of course, And my thought was, it's not why it's great, but I do now see that connect. I see why it is what it is you did show me. I'd find that about the team. But it makes sense. Yeah, you've definitely defined it. Yeah. Is this game in any way a meaningful satire on the shade way, Like, there's a I feel like we're outgrowing lamp shading as a comedy writing community or satire community or or It'll swing back and forth. But there's a great video explainer about lamp shading on the Big Bang Theory, And in its most basic sense, lamp shading is the idea that there's a that a lot of people that were going through a process. I mean we always have been, but at waxes and ways of some of our generation and definitely the next generation, and some political movements trying to expand empathy or the idea of including even more different walks of life and what it is to be quote unquote normal or deserving of rights and society's respect and protection. And there's attempts to do that. In fact, most attempts to do that are actually disingenuous or ignorant in a way that's not mean spirited, but it's just lazy and is tokenism. We call it right, is just there to keep up with the times, but you don't fully understand that the spirit is to expand empathy. So, for example, Big Bang Theory is a big offender because it was famous for being like, we're representing Aspergers and all these various things. It's super inclusive. But then there's this great explainer video of how yeah, but all it does is make jokes at the expense of stereotypes about Asperger's people and how they're assholes and shit. All it ever does is after that joke, it goes like, but we still love you. And that's lamb shading. That's what comedy rights lamb shading. It's where you still do the racist exclusion as sexist problematic thing. Then you pan over to a character going you can't say that that's racist, and it's like, see, we the writers of the show, know what we're supposed to say, but that's not the spirit of what we're trying to do when we progress society and human rights. And I think that's falls a foul of that. That's all interesting, which again I'm like, that's not mean spirited, it's just lazy. But also it's sort of born of a stream of a stream of quote unquote satire that exists over here, like family guy, right, Like I feel like this is like a descendant of that. Lamb shading is huge. That's almost more more quote unquote progressive humor in our mainstream culture is actual hollow tokenism than genuine expansion of human rights. I would say this is the more common version is like, you know, we want to make data jokes because those are the kinds of jokes were used to writing that work. But let's throw a lamp shade on there so we don't get in trouble. Yeah, so you finished the entire game, what's your what was your favorite piece of it? If you had to like pick the highlight of it? When they would I mean, I'm thinking of one in particular, but I can't really explain at what point in the game it came in. But whenever when they would give me an actual large multi story arena with a variety of rooms and unleash Hella enemies, and I would have to systematically clear it out. I hated the bosses. I hated the traversal. I hated when they tried to tell story one of the laser puzzles that you were. They were constantly buried everywhere. Hate and them I just liked. I found it hard to find them. I also thought it was crazy how little we got to walk around the open world. But I really just liked the BioShock parts, like a room full of enemies and I shoot and use my powers and dispatch them. That was the fun part. Did you feel the powers ended up getting to a satisfactory place by the end um Not really. I only ever used too the phone and the freeze. Everything else seemed totally meaningless. Did you use Telekinesis? I unlocked it and used it and then immediately refunded the points, because that's interests that it got okay. I thought that one got better as it went along, so maybe they all get a little bit better. I found freeze and lightning to both be a little bit or like electricity to be a little like underwhelming. It just felt again it like, uh, it never gets to a point where you're getting like the coolest version of this that you're waiting for like even when you get like a laser pistol or whatever, like the way the laser works is like, oh, that's how it felt. Yeah, yeah, it doesn't feel good, isn't there? Yeah, exactly, And we haven't mentioned I don't know if you had this experience, but also very buggy. I had several game breaking bugs, meaning I fucked around, frustrated for forty five minutes and searched and found a walkthrough and I'm like, oh, they are doing what I'm trying to do. My puzzle solutions correct. The game just won't do it. And I had done install and reinstall and it still did it. And I had to wait for it to say this game has been updated. There was a patch, and then I went and networked, so wow, they had to patch it. I had one. I had one, had to reset a next do an hour of stuff over, which is that kind of stuff does sour you on a video game. I kind of feel like at this point, if you play a game in the first two weeks though, that's probably just a thing you have to expect. That's just part of the game delivery re out landscape now, which sucks. It's why I try not to play games on the opening week anymore because I don't want to be mad at him when I'm playing it for you know bugs. Another, oh, another thing I did like actually is the slight reinvention of what logs are to a thing that diegetically kind of makes more sense because BioShock, of course can or you know, people like us always make fun of everyone people walking around recording these wax cylinders about their day and then just dropping them or like hiding them under or something that's bizarre but necessary. You just accept it in this because they have these collective chips installed in their brains recording their thoughts. The actual corpses left over from the massacre. The people's consciousness is fading and will soon be dead, but you can talk to their device and that was cool, interacted their last few memories. I'm like that, Oh you found a way to make it organic. That's pretty cool. Yeah. Yeah, it was fun to talk to recently dead people and their point of views interesting because they're dead. Yeah yeah, yeah, So again there's some cool ideas here. Like I would say, you know, I don't know what the percentages are, but like a few of the big swings they take are like, oh, yeah, keep that. Like, if they made a sequel to this game, would you refused to play it? I wouldn't be I would be fully uninterested. Okay, I think there's no way I would pick it up unless we were recovering it, or if if we heard it, or if it was called a tumic cart, and then I'd do that got me? Now, the jokes are back, baby, jokes are back. I think I would be okay with a sequel if I heard that they really expanded this in a way that made me excited. I liked the daisy flowers actually, or like I thought the the security cameras were well placed, which is a weird thing to say, but all right, Like I was like, oh, you did put those in a way that made traversing this kind of a puzzle and yet not too frustrating. You can always zamp them down. I'll tell you what did annoy me. The infinite number of drones that come to repair stuff you and you just have to sit there and you can see a counter in the hive of how many drones are left, and you're like, well, they only take one shot to down and they take every seconds to come out. So I got to sit here and depopulate this beehive one drone at a time. Then I can move forward. Pretty bad, pretty bad. Why can't I destroy the Yeah? Yeah, driving cars and running bots over it was pretty fun. No, I just I guess what I'm really saying is that after a while the robots were just not very interesting antagonists, especially because they the humanoid ones in particular, were really silly, like weird and silly like. They were kind of creepy at first. Then after a while it's like, oh, here comes the monopoly guys. Well, the whole feel is very much like you're wandering around future Land in Disneyland and all the animatronics they're trying to kill you. It's basically that is the exact feel I would say, Yeah, right, that is. I think that is what they're going for. It does. It's a small world after all, and they're all trying to kill you. Yeah, yeah, Okay, well I think it's probably time for us to go to some edge and uh, you know, refresh ourselves at a kiosk. I believe so it was not faded to be the longest episode ever just because um, there's not much there, especially because to most gamers. You can say BioShock plus Fallout and they'll understand eighty percent of what this game has to offer. Yeah, I think it's instinctively all right, So let's let's do the dance. Um. I guess that's satire of capitalism. That's technically I described adds a dance. I think that passes the bare minimum of what satire is. Maybe just the irony. Yeah, uh, I don't know if this was an attempt at satire as much as they thought it would be an interesting world to live in. I guess it's satire in the bear as sense. Right, they're just going capitalism silly. I get that counts. That's well, But I also think there was some satire at the fact that people use ideals as a cover for the naked grasp for power. A thing we've heard before and we'll hear it again. It's got to die hard. Yeah everyone. Yeah, there's like four parties who all say they're noble, but they all asked secretly just want to win. I thought it was hilarious that the one guy from the Polite Bureau was like, I'm gonna come there myself and investigate this personally, this like thing I don't believe what you're saying. I'm like, bro, why would you do that? He's gonna murder you here? So dumb? How do you not know that you're murdering people? It's so obvious. Look at it. You fall asleep alone in a locked room with someone that Zacharov wants dead, and you wake up with blood all over you, and you're like, Zacharoff will explain to me what happened, because he's a good guy, exactly. You know what I'm with P three on this, Go ahead and kill this guy. Oh so, whow's his name? P three? I don't under Yeah, give him a person's names to me? Yeah? Yeah, maybe want us to not attach to him. It feels like, yeah, let us connect to somebody in this game. That's the thing. There's no people, there's nobody to connect to. Yeah, oh that shit poster I was talking about who loves the you know, monotonous dev team also is saying, and that's why the women and it are fucking allowed to be hot and in post pictures of the metal ballerinas, and I'm like, you you want to you want to fuck a metal woman with no face? That's serial kids wrong, And like um, a face if you woman. What. Yeah, there's these rubber feet sex toys that sometimes go viral because it's just one of the weirdest products ever made. And the key scene really just reminded me of those those rubber sex feet. This uh, this game gave me douche chills. That's that's how I anyway, I'll keep it, you know, it's the old stand by joke on this show. Um, we're gonna pass our last checkpoint indeed into keeper delete where we exept, where we decide or we vote on whether this game represents the medium in a way that we'd be proud to show off. I will delete Atomic Herds. I'm frankly surprised that so many people were like thought this was at least a good game or about the vibe. They thought it was a fresh vibe. Yeah, and I just don't get that, Like I like, yeah, I don't see it. I'm sorry, I need to delete it. I can't speak to some of the other outside controversies, but the game itself just really struggled to entertain and engage, you know, like just shooting something is not intrinsically fun. You know, you gotta you gotta motivate it and put me in a place where I'm engaged with why we're doing things, you know, like and that just didn't happen here. Yeah, that's right. I wonder if I played Duke Nwcam if I would find it offensive, because I I found it like cheesy, but not offense, not edge lording. I thought it was like big, dumbloud Schwartzenegger fun. I've never thought Duke Nukembe was good. I know that we have friends who swear by it as a piece of as comedy, but I always thought Duke Nukembe was like a like sort of the low art version or whatever booger Man or any yea, and most of those don't work like to me. It's like, yeah, I like portal, you know, and I know that, but dude with a wax mustache and a fedorat drinking an ipa, oh booger Man, Yeah, I like that portal. I like portal. Excuse me, you're on my penny farthing bicycle. Thank you, side me over my Papst blue ribbon if you would, sir, uh, this is the box social I've ever attended. Okay, well, let's portal on out of it. Wait did you vote? Oh, I deleted. I've been deleting this whole episode. You know, let's portal the fuck on outa here. My boy, um, and I said, my boy, which means we have to do it. We're hell, I'm already obeying you. I'm portaling now, but before we do. Thanks shipheads. If you're a fresh shiphead or a shiphead who wants to explore more of our catalog, we actually do, like I think, more than ten different podcasts through our network small Beans. You can find all the free stuff just by searching for small Beans wherever you get podcasts. If you head on over to patreon dot com slash small Beans, you can pay us three to five bucks a month, not a week a month, and get twice as much, including series about like Star Trek, Futurama, Friendship, Depression movies, the movies of or Stephen King adaptations, Cohen Brothers, PTA, Anderson. We've done a lot of deep dives along the West has a good stuff Anderson as well. Check it out. Okay, Mike, we let's get out of here before we explode in the satire fire. I'm gonna sketch away. Remember sketching
