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If you're a paid supporter, you're currently playing Currently playing a monthly show for me, Daniel, or ask people what they're currently playing.

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Because we record this.

It's Saturday, the day of rest on this Labor Day weekend, the holiday celebrating how hard everyone works.

And we celebrate that labor by giving everyone time off from that work.

So what better way to celebrate time off than by getting to work, talking about pursuits of leisure, like video games it's currently playing.

I'm Daniel.

And today we're talking to bathe a person who I don't know in the slightest.

Babe, you emailed me at the e-mail address that I drop at the front and back of the show and I dumbly don't check it that often.

So I didn't get back to you for a full week, but thanks for being on the show.

No, and I did not expect you to get back to me at all.

I figured that you were busy with all the other people who wanted to be on the show, so I'm I'm really glad to be here.

I guess I, I will just like flat out, I'll put all my cards on the table.

I would love it if more people would e-mail me at that e-mail address 'cause then I'd have I, I do OK putting together this monthly show, but it is, it's truly insane, like doing that type of thing.

It's a terrible thing of my own design that I've, I've put out the show that is, you know, I have to track down a guest, talk to them, etcetera.

And it's always a new guest.

That's at least what I want to do is a new guest every every month.

And I'm not the kind of person that likes to really get out there and meet people.

So it's always, it's always just like I'm optimistic and maybe I'll maybe I'll find somebody that wants to talk about games.

You find a lot of people who are like college educated at least.

So it's a fascinating show in that regard.

You find the right guest.

I am not that kind of guest.

You are not going to get the professor talking about Kingdom Hearts as an impressionistic game this week.

Not this time.

You never know you you sound like a a relatively smart person.

So, you know, I hopefully we talk about something that I I can sound smart on, even though I'm going to definitely be pretending all.

Right, all right.

And and also I'll add this little extra bit.

You don't know this, but actually a few weeks ago, before you emailed me, I was trying to record a ton of podcasts in advance of a a trip that I just took.

That way there would be no interruption to the whole release schedule and I was extremely desperate for a guest to e-mail me and I just didn't check that e-mail address because you had emailed me.

And we could have.

We could have lined this up by weeks ago.

But I need to get better at checking that e-mail.

It's all right.

We're here now.

We're here now.

And I, I'm glad that we had that time because the game I want to talk about this conversation is based on a movie that I had not seen previously.

So it it's kind of good that we had that time because now I've been able to do some research and this goes so, so deep.

Well, that's, that's great.

You know, I did minor amount of research, but it sounds like you did a lot more than me.

But before we get into that, tell us about yourself.

What makes you bathe?

OK, so I'm not anyone special.

I don't have a social media presence or anything.

For me, gaming is my appreciation of the artistry of it.

So that's just, it's like a hobby, but to me, I'm also trying to learn from it.

So that's a pretentious way of saying I, I, I want to learn about storytelling through gaming And I, I kind of want to incorporate that into the discussion today because especially given how this game in particular has a movie that it's connected to, it tells its story differently than the movie does and changes some things and does some things better or potentially worse than the movie.

And to me, that's, that's kind of what's fascinating.

In addition to that, I'm also a bit of a trophy hunter or like an achievement hunter.

So that's kind of like the completionist aspect is going to invade the conversation too.

So everyone gets like a, a sense of if I'm complaining about something, why I'm even still playing the damn thing, It's because I have this sort of goal in mind to like 100% or at least get all the trophies and kind of experience everything in it.

Because most people when I I talk to them about how I play games, they're like, why are you still with that?

Why are you still 50 hours in when you told me you hated it?

Like 5 hours.

And it's like, because I need to know.

I need to know what it is.

You don't realize this, but you are tapping stepping into a future bullet point that we will talk about later in this show.

So that's very, very fascinating.

And it's actually pretty fortuitous.

I don't know if this was an accident or or on purpose, but it's fortuitous that you you selected the the game that we're going to talk about.

I think the game we're going to talk about on this laborious of days, because after I watched the movie based on your your recommendation, I identified a bunch of themes about like collective action and solidarity, which is, you know, really obviously connected to the reason we have Labor Day.

You know, I'll just reveal it.

We're talking about what they've, they've, they've, they've seen the title of the episode, but we're talking about the Warriors.

Warriors 1979.

Oh, the gang movie that everyone's seen the poster of but I don't know if that many people have actually seen.

Yeah, it's one of those that like, I remember being, you know, a teenager and, and for whatever reason, I'm watching MTV like a teenager does in the mid 90s, late 90s, and they're interviewing like every rapper and every rapper's like, oh, the Warriors, It's such a good movie.

And I'm like, OK, probably never going to watch that.

That's really interesting because when I was doing my research for the movie, it's it's weirdly one of the few like as it appears.

So I should just say the movie is based around gangs, although it's a very idealized and almost surreal depiction of gangs.

And because of it being so focused on gangs, it was really popular among like young gang members and and little like criminals, like petty criminals who would watch it.

And then there were reports of violence at the theaters.

And it's kind of like we, we blame media for causing violence or not us, but like other people have.

And it usually it's, it's complete nonsense.

But here it's like it kind of did not directly, but because it it brought those people out.

And then turns out gangs sometimes don't like each other.

I don't know if you knew that.

That is news to me because I've never been in a gang.

So no, I just obvious.

Obviously they don't like each other, but yeah, yeah.

So, yeah, but I, I'm interested in the collective action because I, I, I have a few things on its themes that I, I want to discuss too.

That wasn't really one of them, but I like how we can have like two different things to discuss here.

That's interesting.

And I'm no scholar or, or I guess I, I did go to college for media studies, but but you know, I, I don't, I don't consider myself any kind of like film genius or film buff or whatever.

But as I'm watching it at the start, you've got Cyrus the sort of like, I guess de facto like guy in charge of one of the bigger gangs.

And he's saying effectively, if you count up all the gang members versus all the cops, we outnumber them.

And if we just band together, we can have the society run how we want it rather than respecting an authoritarian regime, right.

And then also just in the smaller group of the warriors, anytime one of them went off on their own, they got captured, they got killed.

But when they banded together, that's when they were stronger.

And so that's kind of like a theme that I kind of picked up on.

I don't know if that was intentional by the film makers, but it seemed like it was definitely like part of it.

That's interesting that you point that out because I I do actually know.

I know what the story behind one of those scenes and I don't.

I don't know if the like the characters going out on their own being intentional because there's a point in the movie where a character gets hit by a train.

The only reason why that character gets hit by a train is because I believe the director just didn't like the actor.

Like they just would get into arguments all the time.

So he wrote a scene where the character gets hit by a train.

I'd read a bit about that.

Yeah.

He just was like, I don't want to be in this movie anymore, Write me out.

And and then they did.

Right.

And and I don't say that, I don't say that's a discount your point.

I just say it because that's an interesting thing, because the movie it's based on a book that it changes quite a bit about, and then that book was based on Xenophon's and a basis.

What is that?

That is an ancient, I believe, Greek text.

Let me actually look it up.

It's a 4th century BC work by a Greek soldier and writer, Xenophon.

So it's, it goes all the way back.

And that's I didn't, I did not read Anabasis in preparation for this conversation.

I didn't either.

So that's all good.

I, I wouldn't even be surprised if actually I would not be surprised if somebody in the audience has read it and they can point out all the mistakes we're going to probably make.

But that's OK.

Well, The thing is, is like with the movie, and I didn't read the book that it's based on either.

I, I skimmed the Wikipedia summary of the book.

So obviously take this with a grain of salt.

The movie changes a lot about the book in terms of like characters, like the gangs themselves.

It changes a ton of the names.

What it doesn't do is change the plot beats.

So there's there's like several scenes in the movie where they kind of just do something random like so that the warriors I, I should say this to like actually set the movie.

Oh yeah, yeah.

So we talked about the the Cyrus calling all the gangs together to try to convince them to band together.

Cyrus is eventually killed in the middle of that meeting.

And then the warriors, who are the main characters who have no context for why they're there.

There's no characterization beforehand.

They're just like, there's a few conversations in the title sequence and then they're just the main characters.

You don't even know who the actual main character is until everything kind of settles down at the meeting.

They're a gang from Coney Island in New York, and they're kind of like a smaller gang.

So they get blamed for the killing even though they didn't do it.

And then they they run off.

And a lot of the scenes in the movie are like them encountering other gangs and then having like a fight or running away from them.

And there's even there's a scene where they meet a gang called the Orphans who are like even lower than them on the ladder.

And then they're having this conversation.

They're saying, hey, can we move through your territory just to escape all these other gangs trying to kill us for thinking we killed Cyrus and the Orphans agree to let them through.

And then a woman comes down from an apartment and says, hey, orphans, aren't you manly enough to take on the Warriors?

They're just going to let them go through.

And they had this kind of weird conversation that kind of sets up the world of the Warriors and what the gangs are supposed to be, but still feels a little stilted, a little awkward.

And then eventually the Warriors decide to bring that woman with them, despite the fact that she was trying to get them all killed.

And then she's a main character for the rest of the movie in a completely inexplicable way.

In the book, that scene happens with all the characters being rearranged, being shook up, different, but there's still that woman coming down and kind of like taunting the Warriors and they bring her.

And then this is a clean podcast, so I won't say exactly what happens to her it.

Doesn't.

No.

You can.

You can say whatever you want on this show.

Okay, well, I'll just say she was the the Warriors, the main characters, just they're not called the warriors in the book, but the main characters decide to sexually assault her.

And then I believe, I don't know if she dies or if she's just kind of left there, but she is not a main character through the rest of the movie that has a romantic arc with the the male lead that that does not happen in the book.

That's interesting that the movie changed that detail and and just made her kind of a main character the rest of the movie because I mean, it's from the 70s and like they had a completely different set of norms and stuff.

There's almost some sexual assault moments in the in the movie, but they don't quite go that way.

But like, it's from an era where it could have, you know what I mean?

Yeah.

And they they outright say like, yeah, we could.

But then they just decide not to.

And then they they kind of do the thing that happens in old movies where the guy is like really aggressive towards her.

And she's like, hey, why don't you like me?

He's like, I don't like anything about you.

And then they make out.

And you kind of wonder how anyone had kids back then because there doesn't seem to be any chemistry between these people.

Yeah, But the point of that scene in the book is to talk about the sort of toxic masculinity.

And obviously I had, again, I haven't read the book, but like in the summary and how people have talked about it after reading the book, the analysis is that that scene is an expression of the gang's toxic masculinity.

And there's other points where they're like having pissing contests and, you know, having these petty arguments where it's like they're proving their manhood even though they're all kids.

And in the movie, all of that context is kind of just wiped clean because they don't want to actually go to that place.

They want to have this weird romantic subplot.

So it just kind of doesn't mean anything.

And Mercy the the female character's name kind of just feels like this weird hanger on to the rest of the film.

And there's other instances where they, they have those same scenes of the books and they just translate into the film without the point behind them.

And you're just kind of sitting there wondering what is the point of this?

You know, like, why are we doing this specifically?

I, I understand why the book does it.

I don't understand why the movie does it.

Yeah, well, that's all well and good, but but we're here to talk more about games, so, you know, so you No, no, no.

And and I, I will say, you know, like I've not played the game.

I did watch the movie because you'd emailed me and we both had time to watch it.

And that's my only real touchstone for this.

But but you came to the game first and and then watched the movie.

I guess my question is like what drew you to the game first?

So the game is made by Rockstar and it seems like a very obvious choice for them because it's based around crime and gangs and all that.

I had seen the game when I was younger, like on the video rental store because I'm 27 years old.

So like that game came out I think when I was like 7-7 or eight or something.

So I remember seeing it.

I remember seeing and it has that classic iconic poster that probably everyone's seen.

And like I've mentioned earlier, probably no one's ever seen the movie, but they know the poster by sight.

And I always wondered like, what is that about, you know?

And all I've seen is the Rockstar logo and that kind of telling me like, Oh yeah, this is probably going to be violent and my parents don't want me to play it.

But what really drew me to it is because Rockstar also made a game called Bully.

And I won't get too much into Bully because obviously we already went on a bit of the tangent with the movie.

But Bully was made one year after The Warriors the game and 2006.

And when I saw footage of the Warriors the game, I was seeing all the little artifacts of Bully in it.

And I absolutely love Bully, even though I will 100% say that it is extremely flawed and has just some horrible moments in it that I I kind of unforgivable content that I don't even think that even the most like free speech warrior kind of person could even say, Oh, it was just a different time back then for but I I love that game.

I have a lot of nostalgia for that game.

And then I was seeing like specifically like the enemies have like little rings underneath them to show their health and it's in the Warriors as well.

And I'm like, wait, is this just like the prototype for Bully?

What that showed to me, like when I played the game, I'm like, it is, it's not in the way that I thought it was.

It's not like an identical game, but it made it obvious that Bully was taking a ton of stuff from the Warriors the game.

And it like made this whole through line for me as I was playing more and more of it.

So I played it just as like essentially do some research on this game that I loved and thought I knew everything about.

And then, oh Nope, there's a whole new cavalcade of information that I did not see.

And that is incredibly important into actually understanding what Bully is.

So that that's what brought me to it.

Well so did you play the the Gtas on PS2?

Not when I was a kid.

No, I don't.

I think I've played like a few minutes of like Vice City and San Andreas.

They definitely have like the similarities to Bully.

But if you play Bully and then you play GTA, it's so clearly different that it's like, it's like the similarities between them are like the audio quality because Rockstar had this very specific crispiness to their dialogue microphones and some of the sound effects.

But it's not like like Bully and the warrior share like animations.

They share assets and they're not made by the same studio.

But I will die on this hill when I say it had to have the same people making these games in some way, like whether it's just like a team.

I don't think it was.

I looked on the Wikipedia page.

It doesn't appear to be anyone who would be like in the main credits who's like connected, but like there has to be like a ton of people who worked on both games and like incorporated that DNA into Bully that they took from the Warriors because it's just too similar.

Yeah, I mean, they do kind of have a house style.

I played GTA3, Vice City and San Andreas when they all were brand new.

So then when they announced that they were doing the Warriors, I was like, you know, like I had said as a, as a teen, I was like very interested in that property.

And, and it was like, wow, they're they're doing like a direct adaptation instead of, you know, this like mafia pastiche that, that the GTA series kind of became.

It's kind of interesting that they're doing this.

So I was, it was on my radar, but I, I never played the game.

I didn't know that piece that there was a, that the warriors was the like sort of midpoint between GTA and Bully.

I also never played Bully, but these were games that like people that I went to college with were, were all playing at the, at about that same time.

Yeah, it was real wild time.

I, I did watch a little bit of the, the, the trailer for the game and a little bit of a let's play and oh man, does it look like a.

Rockstar PS2 game.

It's weird because it is and it isn't.

And I think the the first thing that people will notice is that it is not truly open world, which was kind of a shock to me.

It's it's open levels, which is not something you see much anymore in my opinion.

There's an open like area that's in between missions that you can just chill out and do side stuff.

But it's it's not huge.

It's only like a couple blocks and then the individual levels themselves are like they have linear sections and then there's a block like a few buildings or a single street where you can find some collectibles.

You can randomly rob a few stores, you can buy some spray paint, or you can just buy drugs.

In the game.

It's called flash.

It's not featured in the movie.

They added meth essentially as a power up.

I don't.

Get it?

Yeah, a little bit in the in the stuff that I watched, just anytime they were low on health, they would do something and then they would have full health again.

Yeah, I figured because I again, I, I played the game before I watched the movie.

I figured, oh, this is just a reference to like some sort of thing they do in the movie like a fake drug because they can't say a real drug.

No, the the rock star just decided let's not do health kits this time.

We're a big Red Cross.

Let's just straight up do snorting something.

Yeah so like the gameplay is like it's it's it's similar to a beat em up, but with these open level concepts where you might have to find a few things or like like you can spray paint is the collectible.

So you can spray tags on things which are at times very difficult to find for no good reason.

Most of the gameplay is and essentially like these big brawls, you typically have one other person with you or multiple other like warrior gang members and you're fighting in these, you know like you could be fighting 1015 guys at once at times and it is really not polished in that regard.

You have combos, they don't seem to have much utility between them.

Like you have light and heavy attacks and then you can do light light heavy or heavy light or something like that.

But it doesn't really change the properties of the moves.

Like if you play a similar game, like the first game I can think of is what will a bully bully?

You have like different combos that can like breakthrough guards or you know, they attack a little faster or they can attack the legs of your opponents.

It doesn't do a ton of damage, but it breaks through their guard and kind of like sets them off balance.

And so you have these different moves that do different things and here you just punch and then hope it gets somebody and you have a terrible lock on system.

So you're probably not going to get somebody or just going to be kicking the same dude on the ground over and over again, even though he's long been dead.

Yeah, the thing about Rockstar games is they kind of do a lot of everything and none of it's great.

But like, you know, the the overall, I mean, I guess I'm thinking more about GTA and maybe a little bit Red Dead.

None of it's super great, but it's all like immersive that you, you can do a lot of things.

And so thinking about the combat in GTA, it was mostly gun based.

I think you could do a little bit of punching.

And so, you know, when you watch the movie The Warriors, I think there's a total of 2 guns in the whole movie, which is, you know, a kind of a interesting fact.

What they would consider like the game ridden hellscape of New York in the 70s has a total of 2 guns.

And like that's nothing compared to what guns are now these days.

But that's a different soapbox for me.

So in the game they got to have minimal guns and they got to focus on the brawls.

It is what logically follows.

And then I guess they would just kept improving that punching format from from GTA where it was bad, like terrible to this game where it was kind of like getting better to Bully where it's, you know, kind of viable, I guess.

Right.

Yeah, it's it's it's much more refined and Bully to the point where like if you didn't have the animations between them that like recognize like, oh, the I'm doing the exact same finishing move from the Warriors in Bully, which is hilarious because Bully is set in a school.

Yeah, it's not refined and it's, it's clearly like trying to figure out how to do it, you know, And I, I, I see that a lot with like you can look at other studios and not to get too far off base, but like with Arcane, Arcane has when they made Prey, they had ADLC called Moon Crash, which is when you look at it quite similar to their eventual game Death Loop, where it's like you have this rogue like element to it and you go through these different areas and there's a time limit and you have to make sure you do certain things in a certain order to get the perfect loop.

And then Death Loop took that and improved upon it and made it a bit more accessible.

Maybe.

You know, Death Loop is its own game and it's got its own problems, but it's clearly one studio trying to solve a problem and you can see the progression of it between games.

And here it's just the problem is basic combat rather than an entire grand scope of things like what Arcane was doing with Death Loop.

It's just them trying to figure out how do I make punching someone feel satisfying?

Yeah, yeah.

And I mean with the thing that it's based on just they did get into several scraps.

But like you watch the movie and the characters, a couple of them even say like, I'm sick of this running shit.

And then they're like, I want to fight.

And there is obviously a lot of a lot of fights in the in the movie.

But then to make it more of a game, I guess you have to put more combat in.

And then when I watched the the long play, let's play of it, there seemed to be, like you said, a lot of just kind of like new sections to the the game that they they just like added to, I guess fill it out and make it feel more like a game.

Well the majority of the game is actually taking place before the events of the movie.

Like the the events of the movie are like 1 extended.

It's it's split up into like 5 missions but there's no in between them.

You're just going from one to the next and then it's just all the action scenes from the movie.

So for the most of the time it's going through just these essentially random story beats where you just encounter all the different gangs that you see in the movie, some of which aren't even.

They get like a second of screen time.

Like if you watch the Warriors and one of my big issues with the movie The Warriors is how it treats some of its more surreal gangs.

Because you will see in the 1st 5 minutes there's a fucking mime gang, just a gang of mimes.

And they don't explain them, they don't get like an action scene.

And I will just say the reason why it bothers me is because I feel like there would be more of a punch and more of a surreal aspect to the movie if they kept the weirder shit like behind for the later bits where now they're like, they're already tired and now they're seeing mimes out and about in New York City.

And like, oh God, they're really trying to kill us.

But instead they kind of, you know, show their hand a little too early.

But they they take those mimes, they give them a name.

I don't think they had a name in the movie.

I watched the trailer for the movie before I watched the movie.

I normally don't like doing that, but I I did that this time and they're in the trailer.

They're called the top hats because they they also have top hats, but it's like you should have called them the mimes or something.

And they're not called that in the game.

In the game, they're called the High Hats.

Oh, you know what?

It was the high hats.

I got it.

Right.

OK, OK, then that makes sense.

But yeah, like in the movie, they don't have a scene.

They don't have, they don't fight them.

They're in the meeting.

You can see a few of them in the crowd and like the the image of them coming through the subway.

But yeah, they don't do anything with them.

And that the game decides, OK, let's give them a whole several levels where you're fighting these mimes like meet them at like a, a competition to do spray painting.

And they're like holding the competition.

And then they try to kill everybody there.

They give him a whole boss whose name is Chatterbox.

He has like an area that's a a museum where it's all paintings of him.

You're like, this is a A5 second like essentially a visual gag in this movie.

And you've given it all of this back story.

Well, that's that's pretty cool that I I didn't realize that they did all that.

I mean, now granted, maybe they were a bigger deal in the book.

And also for that matter, that the movie I did read that the movie had like a little bit of a prologue that that got cut for just time, I guess.

So there is more to this world than just the movie Let's on.

So yeah, I mean, it sounds like Rockstar did their homework at the very least.

They definitely tried and they, they tried to expand some of these gangs.

They didn't do it all that well all the time.

Like there's a few racist caricatures that they throw in there just because, you know, let's, why not.

It's Rockstar and it's the, the, you know, mid 2000s.

Yeah, of course.

You know, like there's a they briefly mention in the movie at the beginning, there's like a rivalry between a gang called the Saracens and a gang called the Jones Street Boys.

And then there's a whole mission that explains how the Warriors get to the meeting at all because the Warriors form an alliance with the Saracens to go screw over the Jones Street Boys.

So, you know, with that, that brings up a kind of a criticism I have of the game because it it's kind of cool that it does that that expands on aspects of the world.

But it it starts to get to a point in the game where it's like you ever watch like Beetlejuice?

Beetlejuice, the sequel to Beetlejuice.

I didn't see that because a lot of people love the original and I'm just like about Beetlejuice.

And so I didn't care.

But I, I did hear it's kind of like one note, you know, they just, it's like, well, they made another one and it's the same jokes again.

Exactly that, yes, it is the same jokes to the point where it's like, do they understand what the first movie was even about 'cause it's like there's a a joke in the first movie of Beetlejuice where one of the characters, he's like getting interrupted from bird watching.

It's very small.

It's it's not even all that funny.

And then they decide for Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice that he is going on a whole vacation to go bird watch somewhere and then the plane crashes and he dies and you're like, it wasn't that important that he was a bird watcher.

You're just taking details from Beetlejuice and just expanding on them just for the sake of recognition.

You know, he's been Flanderized to use the The Simpsons thing where where Flanders, for those that don't know, Flanders, I believe when he was first introduced was like, well, I'm going to go to church or something.

And then like a couple seasons later, they're like, this guy is obsessed with church.

That is exactly what I am talking about, yeah.

Like you see in the movie, like a couple of characters do some like obviously choreographed, slightly martial artsy moves, you know, like Cleon, who is the leader of the gang does like a few like back punches, stuff that looks like, you know, someone trying to emulate Jackie Chan would do.

It's nothing like super exotic or, or impressive.

But then in the game, him and the entire gang are like doing these crazy martial arts moves like crosses and like they're they're spin kicking and stuff.

And it's like, OK, so obviously you need to have some variety for the moves, but they're all watching Bruce Lee and thinking, like, I got to do that.

Like it's taking one small thing from the movie and then deciding that has to be a whole thing, if you know what I mean.

Yeah, it's kind of just like maybe they have enough to draw from, from the book or going way back to the the Greek story to where they could like do plot stuff.

But maybe for like that combat stuff, they're like, oh, well, we've got a couple of fights to to draw from.

Occasionally.

This guy does a a cool flip.

Now that guy's going to always do flips, you know?

Right, like there's a character in the movie Rembrandt who one time ambushes an enemy gang by spraying them in the face with spray paint.

And then you can now use spray paint as a weapon to just spray someone in the eyes and stun them.

And then anytime he does, because they give them all rage, which is not related to the movie at all, but it's like they're super Hulked up mode.

And then all of his rage moves have him spraying his enemy in the eyes.

And this guy appeared to be 16 in the movie.

I don't think he's, I don't think he's hulking out and trying to literally kill people.

Yeah, I mean, and that that character, he's called Rembrandt, obviously named after the famous artist.

He is the tagger, I guess, of the group.

And he does, he does get instructed like, you know, do some tags on as you're going around town and stuff.

But then, like when I watched the Let's Play of it, it seemed like tagging was like an incredibly big portion of the game.

Like you do that all the time.

I think he tagged like 1 gravestone in the movie.

Yeah, no, he and it's like not even an elaborate tag.

He just does AW.

And then like in the game, the reason why the Warriors become super famous is because they tagged a ton of trains in a train depot and it's a whole level.

And you're like fighting an enemy gang to like, just be able to tag these trains.

In the movie, he doesn't even seem to be that good at it because, again, it's just a little W It's not anything special.

Like with those.

Like, I don't see that as being like the Flanderization because he was clearly like, you could tell from the movie, this guy is the tagger.

And then you see like, characters like Ajax, this guy is the muscle.

Yeah.

Snow is like the silent type.

And if you just expanded on those, like they expand that with Ajax.

Ajax has some scenes where he's being exactly who you would expect him to be from the movie and it makes sense and I believe they even had his actor voice him in the game.

Oh wow.

Yeah, they had a lot of the actors.

That's interesting.

They sound pretty good generally and but it's it, it feels cohesive for them to be doing that.

But then the the random martial arts moves and then the the gangs that are clearly not as important as they should be.

Like there's a whole level with the orphans where you're fighting them.

And the whole point of the orphans in the movie is that nobody cares about them.

They're a gang that is so low on the ladder, nobody's paying attention.

But then the Warriors decide to pick a fight with them two months before the events of the meeting for the movie, just for essentially, I believe there was a reason, but it feels like there's no reason, you know, it's just there to reference it.

I know that's not exactly Flanderization, but it's in the same ballpark of just referencing things from the movies because you have to or because almost diminishing the point of what happened in the movie.

I don't think the Warriors is as guilty of that as other pieces of media, but the game.

But it's it's enough that you can notice it.

Well, how do you think that this game stacks up against the movie?

Because I mean, I only watched the movie in a little bit of the let's play, like I said, but you did it the the other way.

And I'm always curious like how, how that impacts the viewing of like the movie.

Obviously that's the, the basis point in the some of the later cutscenes that I did watch, they were so faithful that Rockstar was so faithful, like copying camera angles and like staging of like I, I watched the scene where the, the one of them gets arrested in the park and it was like exactly the same, right?

Yeah, so here's a weird thing about how I played the game.

I actually like briefly had to stop playing the game just because of my work is crazy right now.

Sure.

I stopped right before the movie part of the game, like I did every mission before that, and then I ended up being able to watch the movie and then I got to the movie parts in the game.

OK.

So then, yeah, so then you kind of did experience it, not the correct way, but let's just say the correct way.

Well, I would say it is the correct way the way I did it because like I mentioned earlier, the movie does a terrible job of establishing the context for the warriors or anyone in the gang.

There is essentially 0 characterization for these characters and in the movie, essentially the first time you get to experience any of these characters have like a development moment is in the graveyard right after the meeting where there was all this chaos.

And then they end up there and it's just Ajax randomly going up to Snow and saying I want to be the leader and Snow saying no you don't get to.

I get to and Ajax, like it's a very core way to set up the conflict of the movie.

And it it even, it really isn't even the conflict of the movie.

It feels random once you see the rest of it because Ajax and Snow fighting, they do it a little bit, but it's not like they're not fighting at the end of the movie in like a bloody fistfight trying to like determine who's leader.

It's it's almost inconsequential at the end of it, but it's the first time you actually get to see them interact with each other, like as just characters in the movie.

So the game kind of fixes that because you have these interactions with all these characters.

They're able to just be themselves, do small things or like you get to see coaches, one of the characters in the movie who doesn't get that many lines.

It's and it's mostly, you know, moving from one thing to the next.

You get to see his back story of how he joined the Warriors.

So you get to see that he's actually unhinged.

Like in the movie, he just kind of seems like a regular dude in the gang.

In the game, he will take a rival gang member and throw him in front of a train just to distract the cops.

Like I feel like that would be important to know before I see him run away from all these other gang members and like, go through this whole adventure knowing that he'd be willing to kill someone in such a brutal way.

Like that feels like an establishing character point that I would want to know.

And they just don't do that in The Warrior.

So like, knowing that about all the characters and then watching the movie, I almost felt more familiar with them.

I was able to like, have context where otherwise I would just be like, who?

Who are these nearly identical white guys just running around?

Yeah, that that was a problem for me.

I'm watching it and I'm like, OK, a lot of these people look exactly the same.

There's there's two guys with afros, 2 guys with the like, you know, 70s white guy feathered hair style.

And I'm like this is this is a a lot to to keep up with, but it was.

It wasn't by the end I I got a sense of kind of everybody.

But at the start, yeah, like you said, they don't really go into it at all.

It did.

For anybody that is curious about The warriors #1 it's on YouTube for free with ads which is great #2 I'd say watch the trailer first because it is indecipherable without some of these.

Just the the narrator flat out telling you this is this game, this is that game, you know?

For many of the characters, I don't know if they mention their names like in a clear way early enough for you to actually know who they are when they start doing things right.

Like I I think they don't even say Rembrandt's name all that early.

It takes like 30 minutes for you to actually know what his name is in the movie.

Yeah, yeah.

And it is pretty good.

I and I, I will say this as as just as somebody who kind of at this point has a little bit of a reputation for hating everything and all the sorts of media games that he enjoys.

I I didn't mind it.

The movie was was pretty good.

But yeah, it does kind of feel like a 70s like proto indie movie maybe or or I guess what do they call that like a grindhouse almost where it's it's just like some schlock that they just put out.

And it's it's interesting that this movie has this like long tail reputation and I guess it's just a gang aspect of it.

Right.

There's kind of a a common aspect of a lot of movies of this era that kind of have this cult status to them where it's the visuals that really sell it.

You know, this movie has a lot of very visually striking scenes, like especially the the bus that all the skinheads are on and you know, all the, the gangs, like the baseball furies, the weird silent baseball uniform wearing gang that makes absolutely no sense in any sort of realistic situation.

Like these are things that are very visually striking.

And it it's kind of allows a movie that in my opinion, does not have a great plot, does not have great characters, but it allows it to kind of transcend that.

But I, I would say, and I'm also a person that has a reputation for hating things.

I have seen enough movies where they can have these visually striking elements and have a good story.

So I don't give it as much, you know, slack in that sort of regard.

I'm like you could do both well.

What?

What do you think it is about this particular movie that made Rockstar say let's do a direct translation to a game from that versus like, I don't know, I mean, obviously they had kind of mind the the depths of like the Godfather and Scarface in their their GTA games.

I just wonder why did they select the warriors to be like we're going to do direct translation of this one?

Well, I, I think one of the reasons is just that there hadn't been a game for it at all at that point, which I think of as that's kind of unusual cause it's 1979 that's before the NES, but the NES had a ton of tie in games where even if they weren't good at all, they were still there and people would have played them.

So like it's kind of unusual that the warriors being so visually striking, you could sell the game just on like having an NES cartridge with that poster on there.

Like I feel that that would put some units out there, but it just didn't.

So like it seems almost like there was a an absence in the market and they just took it like no one had taken that already.

So I think that might be part of it, just the sheer absence of any other media.

But I also think like when I was a kid, I remember seeing that poster like before I had seen the Rockstar logo on the game case.

I remember seeing it and thinking it would have been like like an 80s sort of blockbustery family, not family friendly, but like PG or PG13 kind of movie, you know, Like the, the poster is painted in such a way that it, it has a lot of colours on it.

There's a lot of characters in the background with these unique outfits.

They almost look like superheroes in a way.

If you're a kid, you could even be like, oh, this is like right next to The Goonies or something like that.

Exactly.

That's the movie I was thinking like the Goonies.

Yeah, I think the Goonies also has like the same style of poster.

Like it it it seems like it would be a movie that you could watch like the Warriors.

Oh yeah.

They're hanging out with their baseball buds and they got to go fight the evil tyrannical whatever, you know.

And since like I do have to mention the character on the poster and the a lot of the characters in the movie are white.

And that is important to say because in the book, the characters are not white.

They have different names, they're technically different.

They fulfilled some of the same roles, but they're intentionally Afro Latino.

But they change the races of at least like half of them for the movie.

And I believe that the quote on the Wikipedia page was to make the movie more commercially viable, or something to that effect.

Like essentially saying they didn't think they could make money if they kept the actual races of the characters from the book and translated that into the movie.

And I feel like it's a gang movie that doesn't represent that sort of reality of gangs, where it's like a lot of gangs are racially segregated.

And that's kind of a known fact about them is that, I mean, especially in like prisons and stuff, gangs are almost exclusively like one race, black people, white people, Latino.

It's just a known fact.

And even though it's not comfortable to express that, like the movie is not being realistic when it shows like all of these gangs and especially the warriors being racially diverse, you know, and it only does that explicitly stated by the film makers because they don't want to sell black characters to presumably white audiences.

Yeah.

It's, you know, it's.

Interesting it's it's like a a proto woke thing on accident right?

I guess they did technically whitewash about half those characters, just like you said, dead, but it's so that's bad.

But then like they're presenting now with this like harmonious gang of of multicultural people.

They're the protagonists of this story, but they're also bad guys.

Like they they kill and you know.

And they're led by a black guy.

And in the game, like, there's no discussion of his race.

He's just accepted as a leader.

Nobody is.

Like, they will make slurs about gay people, but they won't make slurs about the black people in the gang.

So that's, I guess, nice.

But then in the movie The black leader is just disappeared within the 1st 15 minutes, like he's just gone.

You never see him again.

They barely even talk about him.

So it's, it's almost so racist that it, it becomes like it makes a diverse cast, you know?

Yeah, it's kind of kind of they fell backward into that.

Right.

And and I I don't want to have to mention that because I would be maybe more accepting had I not known that they had specifically said to make it more commercially viable.

I'd like, I would love to have this conversation where I didn't have to mention the race of the characters, but then to tie it into what we were talking about with like why they're the relatively like kid appealing aspect of it.

It's like it was designed to be appealing to an audience that was, you know, they presumed white and that they eventually, you know, would have, might have been presumed to be younger, you know?

Yeah, they sold it to the audience that they were trying to sell it to, is what I'm trying to say.

And I don't know if you read this factoid, but apparently they screened it for Ronald Reagan and he was like, I love it.

It's awesome.

Of course.

And I, my guess is that, you know, at that time, he was like, New York is a hellscape.

You know, this was like when Times Square was like you'd go there to like meet up with a sex worker or, or get shot.

And and so like if he's if he's like praising it, I'm sure he's like, this is a very realistic depiction of New York versus like, like I said at the start, in any sort of like potentially leftist readings of, of the themes of it.

The Ronald Reagan praising your film or your book or whatever.

That's just time to close up shop.

You're done.

One last little question, what kind of person do you think would like this game?

Is it worth, is it worth dusting off the PS2 to to dig this one out?

Did you play it on PS2 or did you play like a like a port?

I played it on PS4 so there's APS 4 version.

It's essentially the same game.

I don't even think it's like remastered.

It's not an emulated version.

There's a few games that you can play on PlayStation that are emulated.

It's not an emulated version of the game, it is a port.

It works on PS4.

It has very few changes though that I can see.

I think it's mostly just they made some of the cheats not work.

Like there was a cheat that would let you get 100% the game.

Now it doesn't work anymore.

I think that's the only difference.

So you can play it on PS4.

I think I got it for 10 bucks, which is probably too much money, but whatever.

I think that the the person that this game would appeal to is maybe a Bully fan like I'd mentioned throughout the because I mean, there's so many connections between Bully that we didn't even get to discuss today.

If you are curious about the history of Bully and I know there's a lot of people, there's a very dedicated fan base for that game who are they would probably be all over this game just for the essentially the historical aspect of it.

But other than that, I mean, probably just anyone who is frustrated with modern games and the way they run and the way they do their thing and you just want to break from, you know, bandit camps and all that crap.

I return to the natural PS2 sort of style of games and all of the problems that come with that.

If you just want to break, I would say this will be for you.

Just don't take it too seriously because like I said early, I'm a bit of a completionist and this game is not easy to be a a completionist for.

It's it's kind of a pain in the butt.

Did it have did they apply trophies to it?

Because I know the PS2 days they didn't have trophies.

So it does have trophies.

It doesn't have the platinum, but the trophies are a they're mostly like complete the game, complete this, that it it like 100% in everything.

But the big problem is that the game has a score counter on it which it's a PlayStation two game.

I don't know why there's a it's a beat em up that's relatively slow.

It's not Arcadia in any way.

So the score counter, it takes up at a snail's pace.

Like you can fight a ton of guys not even get 1000 points and it will for your 100% completion, it will say, yeah, you need 12,000 points for this mission.

You end up at like 2000 and you're like, wow, oh God, what am I even supposed to be doing here?

Wow.

And maybe maybe just like sitting there farming score just.

Kicking the same guy over and over again just getting like 1.1 point.

Yeah, maybe.

Is there anything else that you'd like to add about the Warriors before we move on?

One thing I wanted to say, the reason why Bully and the Warriors are so obviously connected and I think this is the biggest reason why they will explain my point the best I can is in Bully there are cliques in the school, like various groups in the school that you're the main character is attending that are all themed.

They're like preps and they're all wearing the same sort of uniform.

They're very color-coded.

They have a leader who's like looks like the most pure form of whatever stereotype they're trying to represent.

They have the the preps, they have the greasers.

They're all anachronistic in a lot of ways.

They look like they're straight out of like the 50s or 60s, and they operate essentially as gangs.

Like they're always beating somebody up or like trying to steal bikes or something like that.

And looking at that, at the time when I played Bully, I made no connection to anything.

I was just like, this is just how the game runs and I understood that.

It felt like it was out of time, like it didn't make sense in a modern context.

They never mentioned things like technology that we had at the time, really.

And then playing the Warriors and watching the Warriors where there's a ton of themed gangs that have leaders that are the purest form of whatever stereotype they're trying to represent.

And the fact that it's set in 1979 was made at that time.

It's like they literally just translated The Warriors and like took the idea of having these stupid weird gangs and just like what if it was in a school this time?

Well, that brings to mind two different things to me.

Actually, it brings to mind Mean Girls.

Years ago on the talking to women about video games main show, Jonathan and the the the guest was Elsa had talked about what would a Mean Girls game be like?

And now I'm like, it should be the warriors.

It should be bully.

The other thing it brings to mind is the movie SLC Punk.

I don't know if you've seen that.

Oh.

I've seen that, yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

So they had different sub genres of punk inside of that movie that like they all were like we're going to be this style, this style, etcetera and that that brings that to mind as well.

But now I'm thinking about a Mean Girls game.

Right, yeah, Mean Girls game, but with I'm thinking of the exact same game play as the warrior.

So like you can just see all these characters in like bright pink, just body slamming each other and just just on Wednesdays we wear pink idiot.

But that.

'D be great.

Sometimes you buy yourself a video game and then your life gets in the way.

It's time to unclog.

Last month Christine challenged me to pick up a game I had been looking forward to a lot actually, which was Astrobot for the PS5I had loved the packing game Astros Playroom, so when they announced the full game I was excited, but I personally refused to pay higher than $60.00 for any game.

So I waited for the perfect sale.

And wouldn't you know it, Astrobot was actually on sale for about 15% off right at the time I was trying to buy it.

So I got really lucky there.

Have you played Astrobot or I guess even Astros playroom?

So I've played Astros Playroom, I have a PS-5 and I think that's one of the only games I've actually played on it.

I wanted to play Astrobot, but I was in the same boat as you.

I think it was like, it's $60.00 or something like that.

And I looked at it and I thought to myself, I know it's not actually the same as the, you know, pack in that that Astros playroom was, but I could not imagine myself paying full price for a game like that.

I know that probably sounds blasphemous to anyone who played it, but I just couldn't.

I can barely justify paying full price for any game nowadays.

It just never seems like it'd be worth it.

And, and we're just zooming right past the $70 price point to to $80 price point that I'm just like, have fun game industry.

I'm I'm, I'm sitting back here at $60.00.

Oh I've paid, I've paid that for a couple games and even the ones where it's like I I paid that for Yakuza 8 or like a Dragon 8, I still don't feel like it was worth $80.00 and I love that game because I just won't.

So I didn't play Astro Bot, but I played Astro's Playroom.

There's not much for me to personally say about it other than I I got to be a bit of a stinker.

Will you let me be a stinker?

Yeah.

My issue with Astro's playroom and potentially Astro bot if they didn't fix this problem.

I guess it's not really a problem if they don't see it that way.

I did not like how the little bots that represent the characters for the games were just set dressing.

I didn't like how like you see them, they're cute in the levels and you're like, oh, that's a reference to something I like.

But what I really wanted to see was a point where you got to play as them and like, have the powers of the character, you know?

So they changed that a little bit.

There's about 5 levels, I think that they do let you be Nathan Drake or Eloy from Horizon 0 Dawn.

But for the most part you do stick to just being Astrobot.

And I think about once per level they do give you like a unique power up that is unique to that level.

But otherwise, yeah, like you can dress up as some of the some of the other bots, but you don't really get to be, you never get to be like Solid Snake, for example.

You can dress up as him, I think, but you'd never get to be sneaking, you know, the way that like he would.

And that was always a disappointment for me because I was a huge fan of the infamous series.

And I, I think they're they were had to have been and like a little infamous base, like a coal based bot.

And I was like, I would love lightning powers, if just for like a small section of the game, just let me you know.

And then said, no, here's a motion controlled frog robot that you have to get into.

I'm like, I don't care about this.

Yeah, yeah, I mean, so I'll just go ahead and spill the beans here.

I didn't, I didn't love Astrobot.

It was fun and I, I damn near 100% did it kind of like you said, where this this is called back to before where I'm like, OK, I, I'm not loving this, but it's not presenting me enough friction to just flat out stop playing.

So I, you know, the, the game starts and they're like go collect 301 of your Astrobot friends.

And over time it's revealed you actually actually collect a little bit more than that.

And I think I'm about 8 shy of the like 300 and I want to say 327 or something like that that are, are in the game.

And it's just, it's just like a lot.

And maybe that's a like completionist brain issue that I've got the game is, is not telling me I have to go get this number.

You do need a certain number of them, but you don't need all of them.

But I'm like, well, that one's just right over there.

If I just work just a little bit, I can get that one.

And then now I'm like really like feeling like I'm, I'm stuck in the mud on this game.

It's just like so like plotting and so much stuff that I'm just like, I don't, I don't want to do any of this stuff.

Remember when I played Astros Playroom, there were a few times where I had to go back and collect some of the things because in that game, the collectibles are the different consoles and the peripherals from PlayStation.

And when you have to replay the levels in a game that is clearly meant to just kind of be this quick burst, sort of, you could play it in one or two sittings and it just moves forward very quickly.

Essentially.

When you have to go back and enter those levels again and see the exact same things again and not be surprised by the things that were meant to surprise you, it ruins the experience in a lot of ways.

Yeah, so like a lot of people compared Astrobot and Astros Playroom to the Mario games, but I feel like they're actually closer to, I don't know if you played Kirby in the Forgotten Land on the Switch 1.

I have not.

So Kirby, if you're not familiar Kirby James, they they're kind of just like you select the difficulty level you feel comfortable with.

It's kind of easy to get through them through through the level.

But like if you want to get everything in it, you need to like poke at all the corners of the game.

And that's sort of what Astrobot does as well.

And yeah, like if you get through the level and you missed something, it's happy to tell you that you missed something.

And then now you're replaying that level and you're just like, OK, I did this already.

I did this kind of like you just said.

Right.

And you don't want to, like, look at a video or look at a guide to tell you to find all those things, you know, the first time because it would make it more efficient to do that because then you wouldn't have to replay the level.

But then, yeah, all the surprises that, you know, were meant to surprise you and that you should see for the first time only, you just get spoiled for you in the video or the guide or whatever.

Exactly.

You never get like the perfect sort of balance of actually preserving your time and preserving the surprise and the the artistry of the game and what it's trying to make you feel.

Yeah, and, and after a minute, like the first, I'd say the games divided into like different galaxies after the first Galaxy, I just got in the habit of like, okay, this one, if I just like, turn the camera just a little bit, I can see over a Cliff and there's probably a little ledge down there where they're hiding a robot.

And like, I got to be where I was.

I was actually, you know, finding 100% of the robots on the first try because I learned the game's tricks.

And so then it's like, well, now I'm, I'm demystified.

I'm not getting wowed by this anymore.

It's not special.

Yeah, and, and that's where maybe if they just had less bots in there or I don't know, I, I don't know how to fix this game, but for for me, me, a lot of people love that.

A lot of people called it their game of the year.

For instance, prior guest Christine said it was game of the year for her.

And I'm just like, it's not for me it and it was partially because it is an all ages game for for very young, very old, you know, all skill levels, etcetera.

But that's one of those scenarios where you've made a game for nobody like because it's it's supposed to appeal to everybody.

So then yeah, who's it?

Who's the like unique audience?

I, I just want to say like, even though I was being a bit of a negative Nancy about the bots and everything earlier, I am so happy for anyone for whom this is game of the year for me.

That's great.

Yeah, certainly.

I mean, I don't, I don't want to dump on anybody else's parade.

I'm just saying my my experience.

Another thing I didn't care for was just the overall like designs of all the different bots.

A lot of people love this game for the the nostalgia factor to be like, OK, well here's this person from like Silent Hill or this person from, I mean, there's Parappa or whatever.

And I'm like, they all look like Funko Pops to me.

Oh.

My God, that's immediately what I thought of and.

I'm just like you're, you're not really like getting me at all with this stuff.

And also a lot of the series that they represented were from the PS1 era and I was a child and so I did not get the PS1 era, you know, I was on in 64.

So I'm I'm just like, well, I never played Silent Hill.

I never played Parapa, never played Abe's Odyssey and I'm just like these do nothing for me.

Yeah, I mean, I was my first gaming console was the PS2, and I mean for whatever amount of time the PS1 was around when I was alive, I not even conscious for.

So when I see Parapa or I see any other references to that, I'm just like, oh, I can.

That was ancient history, you know?

That's alongside Xenophon, you know?

Yeah, yeah.

And I mean the, the, I suppose that is the like they are catering to the like parents who are playing this with their child to be like, you know, the, the Jonathans of the world who were like, I love Parappa, Parappa.

When are they going to make another Parappa?

And, and I'm like, well, I never played that game, so I don't care.

They're not going to make another Parappa.

I don't think they will.

And I think you could probably get a Parappa experience from new grounds like on a flash game.

Like it's a pretty simple game from what I see.

Yeah, it's one of those that when you hear Jonathan talk about it, it's it seemed like a magical time where they didn't know where games were going to go next.

But but then, yeah, when you look at it in action, it's kind of just like you're following the button prompts.

And I mean, GTA San Andreas at least has a a couple of different follow the button prompts sections.

Just.

I mean granted they were probably inspired by Parappa, but it's not that hard to do.

Right.

But you know, when when you mentioned like the older stuff that it reminded me and obviously, you know, I don't want to get too far into this.

I keep on going on a tangent.

I'm sorry.

That's OK.

The PlayStation brand doesn't really have a mascot or any sort of identifiable characters that feel as cohesive as, say, like Nintendo does.

When Nintendo does Super Smash Brothers, all of those characters almost feel like, yeah, they're all supposed to be here.

Like, they're not just disparate and separate.

But with PlayStation, they don't have that cohesive mascot at all.

Like even Xbox has Master Chief.

They could put Master Chief's face on something and you know, it's Xbox.

PlayStation used to have Crash Bandicoot, but then it kind of bounced off of that.

They kind of had Nathan Drake, but he's not visually interesting enough to be that way.

They keep on trying to have people and like Astrobot could be that, but it's the PS 5 already, you know, it took them so long to get that.

And then you see all the Astrobots dressed up as a different characters and they're very weird characters to be next to each other.

You know, you have Kratos and Parappa the Rapper, you know, 2 characters from different eras obviously, but they're so different, so weird that they don't really feel like they should be in the same thing.

And I, I, there was that game, PlayStation All Stars Battle Royale.

I'm surprised I got the name of that right.

And they have they, they, they were so desperate to find characters to put in that at all.

They put Isaac from Dead Space and Hake Princess and then a couple of God of War characters.

It's like, this doesn't even make sense at all.

Like I don't think PlayStation needs to be exactly like Nintendo in that regard, where it has this cohesive identity between the different IPS, but it doesn't have that cohesive identity and when it does something that looks vaguely Nintendo wish like Astrobot does, it only points that out.

Yeah, they all just want to, they all see the, the, the lunch that they're all eating and the, you know, one company is like, I would like that lunch as well.

And they, they copy it and not realizing that the thing that makes them unique is the thing that they've got.

And so just, you know, stick to your thing and do it well.

Don't try to copy like shit.

And you know.

Right.

I mean, they kind of beat out Nintendo recently because Nintendo had that that hack in game for Switch that was terrible from what I hear.

So they kind of beat them out in that regard by doing more Nintendo than Nintendo did recently.

But you know.

It does.

It does make me sad that we don't have a good pack in system for for, you know, video games these days.

Like it should just be the standard.

Like it doesn't have to be a mind blowing game, but just like give me something so I'm not having to immediately drop another 50 to 60 to $80.00 right off the bat.

Just something cute, you know?

Again, like Astrobot, you don't even have to go as hard as Astros playroom did to just be entertaining.

Yeah, it's been a minute since I played the Playroom game, but I do recall liking that one a bit more and maybe it's because it just didn't overstay it's welcome.

The last little bit I was going to say is.

So the game was quite easy for me for the most part, but they do eventually start adding these more challenging levels.

And it does the thing that, I don't know if you played Super Mario Odyssey, but at the end of that game it does, you know, these quite challenging levels.

But in both games, the only reason that they're challenging is they just remove the checkpoints.

So it's just like, you're not really making this harder.

You're just making it more like rote memorization.

Like, OK, I have to push left and jump and then go this way and dodge that guy.

And it's like, it's not actually harder, it's just how much can you memorize?

I think I re downloaded Astros Playroom just to play those little challenge levels and there it took me like a single sitting.

I don't even think it was an hour.

You know, they were slightly challenging because they had like this benchmark time that you had to hit.

It was a benchmark time adding up all the times of the different levels.

So you could really beef it on one and then do better on another.

So it was the most forgiving thing ever and I'm not mad about that, but it didn't make it exciting.

Yeah.

Well, I guess let's get to the final phase of the show, the backlog challenge.

I don't know if you've got it in front of you the the big board of games that I've got.

Is there anything on there that you'd recommend for me?

So I have one question, because there was one game on here that I played before and that I have a very strong emotional connection to, but I wanted to make sure it was the right game just because.

So it's King's Quest.

When you put that on your list, did you?

You didn't mean the really really old version version of that game, you meant the the newer.

One the redo, yeah, 2015.

Yeah, that one.

So that's the one I'm going to recommend for you today because so I'm going to say I don't think I would have played this game had I not been a trophy hunter because it is.

It does a terrible, terrible job of being able to advertise itself to anybody.

It's based off of the old King's Quest games.

It's not like those games.

It also tries to kind of steal some of the systems of the Telltale Games, like Telltale's The Walking Dead, but it's not really like those either.

It can't be either of those things.

And once you're a person who wants one of those things and goes into it and sees that it's not like that, I kind of think that person might you would you would bounce right off of it.

That's what actually happened to me because I think I explained my system is I, I highlighted green because I've played a tiny bit of it, but never not enough to like form a full opinion.

And so I did play a little bit at the start and I was like, oh, what is this game?

It's kind of kind of off, but I was always curious to go back and check it out.

So yeah, I, I appreciate you you recommending it.

I'll just say find a guide or a walkthrough and just follow it because that's what I did.

Because it's one of the, there's a, a kind of subset in games that where I'm trophy hunting for where it's a story based game like Telltale, but it will have a ton of trophies based on specific decisions that you make that are highly miscible and you can't go back to them easily.

So I just keep a guide with me when I'm playing those types of games and with like the general idea, like, OK, I'll see some things that I might not otherwise have seen.

It's enough like one of those point and click adventure games where it can have some very just bizarre logic to the puzzles where you're sitting there is like, what do you want me to do?

But then it will also have parts because it's episodic.

So there will be like the first episode is very much like a point and click adventure game.

And I could see someone playing that who who came from the original King Quest, like seeing what they want to see.

But then episode 4 specifically, almost all of the puzzles feel like something you would get like maybe on your phone, like with the simple sort of.

Visual.

Logic to them and I don't mind them because I'm not someone who comes from that point and click sort of era or not really liking those games.

So to me, I didn't bother me and I had that guide with me.

So anytime I got stuck on a puzzle I just looked at the guy and I like OK, that's what I was supposed to see because I have no integrity.

But I seen a lot of people online talk about like what the fuck is this?

Why am I now playing like the most simple like casual puzzle game ever in in the fourth episode so deep into King's Quest of all things?

That's a good heads up on that because yeah, I would probably be like, what am I doing here?

What?

Why did they put this in?

Right.

And it just keeps on going and that's not a great thing to say when I'm trying to recommend a game to you.

But like I said, just keep a walkthrough with you.

Maybe if you want to follow it religiously, that's fine or just like whenever you get stuck, that's also good.

I followed it pretty religiously and what you get outside of that game play is a lot of like really heartfelt and sincere scenes with a Christopher Lloyd's in the game.

But it has a ton of celebrities in there.

And they have the guy who played Gastone in Beauty and the Beast the Animated 1.

He plays a character who's nearly identical to Gastone and he's hilarious.

They have the guy from The Princess Bride who's like the with the cups.

With the cups.

Oh, Wallace Shawn.

Yeah, he's in it.

There's several scenes of him with the cups, like they're keep on doing the cups as a gag and it's him just being the exact same character from The Princess Bride.

It Christopher Lloyd has this aspect to whenever he's voice acting, because I've heard him in Kingdom Hearts, I've heard him in Back to the Future of the Game, and now this.

He will put emphasis on any word.

He will just pick a random word in a sentence and then go like just for no reason, I'm here for it every single time.

So if you can push through maybe some weird gameplay moments and just appreciate the story for what it is, you're going to get a kind of cartoonish, not super serious, but really heartfelt and sincere story out of it, which to me is really important to me, even if I'm willing to criticize it till it cows come home.

Well, that's, that's great to hear.

Yeah.

I, I was a King's Quest fan from the old days, not the ancient, ancient days where they came in on floppy disks, but the one of them came on ACD ROM for Windows 95.

And I, I played that and I was like, this is awesome.

I, I want to say it was like King's Quest four or five.

I'm very, very pumped actually to, to jump on that quest.

So that's yeah, Love, love that recommendation.

Yeah, well, I mean, you're welcome and I, I hope it, it's, it's good for you.

I think one of the there's several of those games that are actually represented in the episodes, because each episode is kind of a remake of one of the games in the series.

So you might even like be replaying that game that you played, but I'm not exactly sure if that's going to happen.

Interesting.

Well, I'll keep an eye out for that.

Well, bathe.

It's been a blast.

Is there anything you'd like to plug here at the end of the show?

No, I don't have anything.

Perfectly, perfectly fine.

That is totally OK.

I'll just do a little bit of plugs for stuff that I've been doing lately.

Last week I was the fill in Co host and interviewer for the maximum Utcast, which we didn't included in this show.

But Beth you didn't even know that maximum Utcast was a thing.

So.

I'm so behind.

It's OK.

It's it's such a new thing that we only have three episodes out at the time of recording.

And I filled in for Jonathan on the third episode as as sort of the Co host with Zoe.

And so that was a lot of fun.

I was also the interviewer.

So like I'm all over that episode.

I don't know exactly why I talk so much in that one, but that's that's just how it goes.

It's also an incredibly long one.

We cover a lot of ground, so there's a lot to hear, mostly about my bad opinions of video games.

And then of course, I'm also a musician.

So on the music front, I haven't put out any new music in the hot minute, but I'm looking down the barrel at my annual album of music that I put on this this podcast feed that'll eventually become a Spotify release.

And then there's also the Fixture Hard or Die podcast soundtrack that is only on Band Camp at the moment.

It'll eventually be on Spotify as well once I finish that up.

So keep your eyes peeled for those.

And lastly, if you want to be on this show just like Baith did, you can e-mail currentlyplayingpodcast@gmail.com or hit me up on Blue Sky where I go by at DWI Bjorths dot bsky dot social.

That's DOUIBYORTHST.

And if you are enjoying the show, please like, share and subscribe.

And thanks again, Baith, for being on this show and thank you, audience, so much for listening.

Thank you.

Thanks for listening to Currently Playing, which is produced and hosted by me, Daniel.

I also make the music.

Check out the show notes in your podcast app for info about our guests.

You can support this show and everything else in the Maximum MUT Cast feed by going to patreon.com/TTW AV.