Tiers of the Kingdom: Video Game Film Adaptations

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Guys,

awesome, bodacious, don't have a cow.

I'm here in early 1991, and I am so excited.

I don't know why I just said the year.

We all know the year.

It's because we're all excited about this decade of economic prosperity that will last forever.

It's going to be an incredible decade for the world, a decade for America, definitely a good decade for Japan.

And I just want you to know we have gotten the rights here in Los Angeles, here in Hollywood, California.

Hollywood, where dreams are made, baby.

We've gotten the rights to Donkey Kong, the iconic Nintendo property.

We're going to make a two-hour feature film here at Universal.

I have a pitch.

I have a pitch for casting.

Let's go.

I don't want you guys to think I'm joking.

I think I got a banger for us.

All right, let's hear it.

John Goodman.

John Goodman, in the year of our Lord, 1991.

Okay.

For Donkey Kong.

He's going to...

He's going to be Donkey Kong.

No, he's just going to be like a man, like a man named Donkey Kong.

Right.

Yeah.

We get, we take the ape completely out of it because that'll confuse audiences.

We make it into a man.

People won't really believe an ape could lead a movie.

And I know what you're thinking.

I know what you're thinking.

Don't even say it.

The Planet of the Apes movies, that's different.

Well, let alone King Kong, which is the spiritual.

That's right.

Yeah, that's right.

Yeah, King Kong.

Also, it's just different.

Forget about it.

It's its own thing.

Yeah,

that was the past.

Okay,

maybe my enthusiasm.

Maybe my enthusiasm was a little bit too hype.

Maybe I infected the room with my energy.

It feels like we've taken a big leap here and we didn't necessarily have to.

I'll put it on the board.

I'll put John Goodman is a man named Donkey Kong.

His name probably shouldn't be Donkey Kong.

It should probably be something like

Don.

Don Kingsley.

Don Kingsley.

Don Kingsley.

John Goodman is Don Kingsley.

Yeah, that's pretty good.

That's pretty good.

Because now we're not even

acknowledging what the original is, so we won't confuse audiences.

Okay, okay.

Again,

I want to maybe we should just take a refresher on the things we do know from Donkey Kong before we break it into a film.

Are you guys familiar with that?

I got one actually because my son Ronnie named him Afro Reagan

was really addicted to that cabinet.

He was just pumping quarters into that thing.

And so I watched him play it a whole bunch.

Oh, so you're super familiar.

Okay, here we go.

Here we go.

Donkey Kong, John Goodman, as Don Kingsley likes to throw barrels.

Yes.

That's not going to look like anything on stage.

A man.

I mean, mean, up on camera.

Well, we're gonna film it on a stage.

We're gonna film it on a soundstage.

That's what I was thinking of.

So, like, of course, I think instead of that,

he should be throwing baseballs.

Maybe the movie is that he, Don Kingsley, is a pitcher in the major leagues.

Yeah, that's really, really good.

I do have something because my son, also a big fan of the games, my son OJ

loves the games.

1991.

It is 1991.

He loves the Donkey Kong games.

He's always talking about the other guy in the games.

The other guy?

Jump man, aka Mario.

Yes, right.

Mario, instead of being an adversary for Don Kingsley, is his like best friend, his like beer buddy.

Yeah, he should be his best friend.

Yeah.

And he should just, his name, I mean, his name could still be Mario.

I think his name is

Mars, short for Mario.

Mars.

Like he's just like a nickname.

His name is Mars, and he's played by Ted Danson of Cheers.

Honestly, for 1991, we got John Goodman in the cast and Ted Danson as the co-lead.

We're about to make

a million dollars.

This is going to be crazy for us.

Let me suggest someone else.

Steve Gutenberg's got to get in there.

Oh, we're getting Gutenberg in there for sure.

You know what?

I got to be honest, as much as I love John Goodman,

I think he's really good, but I think he's kind of getting oversaturated.

I think instead of Goodman, uh we could get someone else in there we could get um

uh tom sellek oh wait wait wait wait wait that's yes absolutely tom sellek as don kingsley yeah

throwing baseball throwing baseball

major league now the concept's completely different get rid of the baseball yeah you're right these are three bachelors who live together and a baby gets dropped off at their doorstep and they got to raise it so let me get this straight you want the donkey kong movie to be about a baby that is dropped off at the house of three men

who live together.

Yeah.

And they have to raise the child.

Yeah.

All right, let's make it.

We crowbar in fan service and frustrate diehard fans as we make our video game movie adaptation tier list this week on get played.

Welcome to Get Played, your one-stop show for good games, bad games, and every game in between.

It's time to get played.

I'm your host, Heather Ann Campbell, along with my fellow host, Nick Weiger.

That's me, Nick Tiger Weiger, along with our third host, Matt Apodaka.

Hello, everyone.

Hello, Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the premiere video game podcast, where this week, it's time to get crying because we are talking tears.

It's time to get crying because we are talking tears.

Get your hankies out.

Have a box of tissues ready.

Not for that, you sick fuck.

Yeah,

don't.

That's against the law now, I think.

Yeah.

You're in your car.

So

stop crying and start jerking off.

We're going to be talking about video game movies this week, an interesting

sort of sub-genre that was much beligned, that was completely like they, everyone pretty much got it wrong for years,

for decades.

And then there was a point when they figured it out and they started to, in some cases, get pretty good.

So we're going to talk about all those.

But before we do that, before we get into the meat of this week's episode, let's do a little update on what video games everyone is currently spending time with.

It's time for what are you playing?

What are you playing?

Hi, it's me, the Resident Evil Merchant, and I'm here to ask you guys what you're playing, because that's my job.

So, Matt Obadaka, what are you playing?

Look, I don't, I look, I'll tell you right now what I'm gonna play.

I just want to point out, I'm not trying to derail us.

This is the fastest we've ever gotten to this.

We're like, really?

Oh, I'm

a speedrun.

You don't got to slow run.

It kind of feels good.

It kind of feels like

it's a lot of people.

You guys have ever been to a water park?

A water?

What?

A water park?

Yeah, I used to go all the time as a kid.

I can't imagine going as an adult.

God.

A childless adult.

A childless adult water park is weird.

They should have like an adult-only water park, but then it's like kind of horny and they kind of do have that, like a Vegas day club.

I think it's functionally that.

I don't like it.

I don't like it either.

Lime in the pool.

Yeah, well, this is the thing.

People are just pissing in there.

And I know they're doing that at actual water parks, but there's something about extra-depraved about standing in waist-high water in a Vegas pool, drinking a piña colada, and knowing that the person you're conversing with is just urinated.

I mean, they're probably pissing in there, but you know, also the old adage, what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas?

Probably come in the water, too.

I would not be shocked if that was happening.

Vegas is still there.

Yeah, it's still there, as an evil merchant.

I agree with you.

I don't know.

You're coming at it from a.

Yeah,

I thought it was closed.

No, it's still there.

I agree with you.

It's still there.

You asked that.

Have you ever been to a water park?

Did you have some agenda?

Oh, you just found out about it this week.

Oh, so this is a new thing?

Very, did you decide to go yourself?

No, no, no.

I found out there's like slides for notes and children.

Yeah, they're a lot of fun.

But that's the thing about slides is that slides are fun.

Slides are fun.

I know it sounds like I'm joking.

I legitimately love a fun slide.

That's great.

That's good clear.

I don't think you are joking, and I agree with you.

It made me think, slides are already fun and you add water and they get crazy.

So what else could you add water to?

I think they should add water to the Indy 500.

That'd be interesting.

I mean, it'd certainly be a hazard.

Make the track faster.

Yeah, I mean, I would worry about some sort of auto wreck happening.

That's pretty dangerous.

If so much water is being thrown in there and you've effectively flooded the track, now you've just got a boat race, and that's a different thing.

Yeah, no, no, no.

There's like the same amount of water that you have at a water park

on the track for a racetrack for driving.

We're not really doing boat races, though.

Like in general.

I feel like that's not really like a...

You see it in like

an arcade cabinet sort of like video game, but I'm not aware of like a popular boat race.

I think we should be doing it.

The speed boat race, I feel like, has kind of declined.

We should bring it back.

There's like the Tory, you know, the blue blood, you know, regattas, the rowing races, or

the yacht races around the world.

But yeah,

the founder of Benny Hana, Rocky Aoki, his second act was he got really into boat racing, like speedboat racing.

A fascinating family, an unbelievable family.

But anyway, you asked me what I was playing.

Yeah, what are you playing?

Rochelle, you like a water park?

Oh, it's wench.

Have you guys ever been to Marongo Casino Resort?

Mar-a-Lago!

I know Ranch is a Marongo freak.

Tell us about it.

What?

Not Mar-a-Lago?

What if Ranch is like, yeah, I go to the Mar-a-Lago, and I love it there.

What else happens there?

My boyfriend Mark and my roommate Nate have a joint birthday party there every year.

Wow.

And there's a league over and a small slide.

Oh, nice.

Yep.

It's amazing.

Wow.

Sounds like a good time.

Matt!

Where are you playing?

Okay, so I mentioned previously that, well, first of all, I got

a puzzle quest running on my 2DS XL.

Wow, you're in a match three kick after our discussion on our Candy Crush episode.

Yeah, and

it was interesting to re-experience it

having some distance from it from like, like, what, gosh, at this point, almost 20 years distance from the version of it that I was trying to do.

That's upsetting.

I, like, don't know why I liked it.

Like, because I was talking about the puzzle,

I can't remember what the subtitle is, unfortunately, but there's a puzzle quest for the DS that was originally for PSP, and it's been ported a bunch.

You can get it on Switch.

I didn't know that it, I thought it was like some buried treasure, some diamond in the rough, and it's available on truly everything.

That's like my experience of Luminese, where I was like, Well, I guess I'll never play that again.

And the truth is, you can play it again.

You can just play it on anything, but

I think that is it, Nick.

Puzzle Quest Challenge of the Warlords.

Yes, Challenge of the Warlords.

And it's an RPG

match 3 game.

Yeah.

So, like, you can pick

a starting class.

And

in certain classes, they have advantages and disadvantages.

It's crazy.

Can we see a picture of this?

Yeah.

It's,

I think, the PC version.

I'm not sure you can see it.

I don't know why I liked it because it is so complicated.

But I would spend hours and hours just playing.

Because I guess once you get into the match three stuff, that's like all you need to know, really.

But it is, it's very complicated.

There's a bunch of storytelling going on.

There's like anime-looking like fantasy characters.

There's boss fights.

Yeah.

And it's crazy.

But that's not.

I've been sort of dipping my toe back into that.

My main thing that I'm playing is on my 2DS XL my new 2DS XL I feel like you should specify Because it has the little nub Yeah built onto it I've been playing Kingdom Hearts dream drop distance and I'm now further in it than I've ever been and I've started it a couple of times on different pieces of hardware and

I'm loving it.

It is inscrutable.

It is it is it is insane.

There's like a Pokemon element to it as well.

Okay.

And it's just, it's just really fun.

I'm really enjoying it.

The, the little nub.

Have we talked about this little nub on the new 2DS and new 3DS Excel very much?

You know, you talk about the nub and you have a think pad, like an IBM think pad on your, on your lap here, and it's basically got the nub.

It's got this, but the thing about this, this thing, I guess this is kind of nub.

This is nub.

Yeah, because I thought it moved a little bit and actually does not.

So the little nub on the and there's a name for it and it's escaped.

It's left my brain.

The Nintendo nub.

It's like, it's not a cease nib.

Nubtendo.

Because it's not a stick.

It's the Nubtendo, I think is what it is.

And

I thought when I, because I had not experienced this before,

I thought when I touched the nub for the first time that mine was broken.

Oh.

Because it didn't move

anything at all.

No.

But it's just like a static rubber nub that doesn't move, but it responds to touch.

Yeah, it's pressure.

It's pressure.

And I was like, I'm going to hate this.

Yep.

But I'm here to tell you something

how I feel about the nub actually.

And it's that I think I'm a nub defender.

Wow.

I think I like the nub.

The nub is good.

You're pro-nub.

I'm pro-nub.

Wouldn't you be furious, though, if the Switch 2, they replaced the Joy-Cons with nubs?

Yeah, that'd be bad.

But for what this is,

I mean, could they have just put another analog stick because it does already have one that fits within the clamshell form factor?

Absolutely, they could have.

They could have done that easily, handily.

They could have done that.

Yep.

Do I still like the nub?

Yeah, I think the nub is funny.

The nub is good.

I want to play

Metal Gear Solid 3 Snake Eater 3D with the nub.

See what that nub can do.

Matt, have you ever played the PSP

Kingdom Hearts game?

Birth by Sleep.

I don't know what it's called.

Yeah, I played it, but I didn't play it on PSP, unfortunately.

But you played it somewhere else?

It was re-released?

Yeah, in one of the HD packages.

Gotcha.

I played it on PlayStation 4, I think.

HD Megamix 2.0 reloaded.

Nick, you're making fun.

The names aren't that stupid.

No, but

I did send a screenshot to our group chat where we we were talking, where somebody on the Kingdom Hearts subreddit, which I am

subscribed to, but I never commented, I never posted, and I never will.

I just like to see what people are saying.

I get it.

Somebody's pointing out, somebody pointed out that they use Roman numerals and regular numbers in their titles, and they were like, wait, why did they do that?

A combination.

It would be like Roman numeral one and then dot five

Arabic number.

I hadn't ever, it really occurred to me before.

It looks, now that I see it, it looks bad and dumb, but I think it's good.

I think it's good.

They're so crazy with it over there.

I love it.

I'm so excited about the next Kingdom Hearts game because I have this head canon that Tetsu Nomura is.

constantly trying to make his version of Final Fantasy 13 versus, which became Final Fantasy 15 when he was taken off the project.

And

now that Sora is in the real world, I'm like, oh, he's doing it.

He's going to try again to just make a game that's like an anime role-playing protagonist in regular Tokyo.

Yeah.

I think I'm looking, I can't wait for it.

I'm doing this one so then I can finally start,

you know, I started it before, but I want to restart Kingdom Hearts 3 and see it all the way through.

So this is my last piece of the Kingdom Hearts puzzle before I get going.

But that's me.

That's what I've been doing.

I love to hear it.

I love to hear it.

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What about you, Heather?

What are you planning?

Well, guys, here's the thing.

When we were talking about the games we were looking forward to last year,

like the games of this year, I said a a title and I was like, I'm looking forward to this game.

And I think one of you said,

that game has a problematic

director.

And I was like, oh, fuck.

But I forgot what game that was.

So last week, I went ahead and purchased the $90 version of Kingdom come to Deliverance or Kingdom Come Deliverance 2.

I think that's the title.

I think 2 Cups Lost.

And

I was

enjoying the fuck out of it before Nick was like, yeah, too bad about that director.

And I was like, fuck.

I thought it was a different game.

So here's the way I'm going to manage this sort of psychologically, which is there are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people who are involved in the making of a video game.

Right.

And there's only one person who is the problematic figurehead lightning rod of that game.

The original game was like

Kingdom Come 2 Deliverance was, or Kingdom Come, I don't.

Kingdom Come Deliverance is the original.

Kingdom Come Deliverance 2.

Whatever the fuck the original was.

Game titles got too many words in them.

Stop.

Stop it.

Kingdom Come 2 dash hearts.

And too many numbers.

Stop.

So

the first one was notable because, like, on the,

I'll say the more conservative branch of video game fans for it for only featuring white people in an historically accurate white region.

And

people were championing that as sort of like, oh,

we're getting back to the...

the good old days of video gaming, whatever the fuck that means.

This new one is significantly more diverse and takes place in an area where

the diaspora of the medieval period

was such that there were other

peoples and

cosmopolitan trade routes that allowed for integration of cultures.

I wouldn't go so far as to call it woke,

but it's definitely so far not the problematic game that I expected it to be once Nick was like, uh-oh.

So I do want to talk about it a little bit because I do think I'm going to keep playing it

because I've already purchased it and the damage is done.

This is a game that's like, what if Skyrim was extremely accurate?

You have that same first-person perspective, and you have your, you know, your weapon drawn, and you're charging at villagers who are saying they're, I mean, that's how I'm playing it, but

however, it is that you might play it.

And the difference is, is that like your combat isn't just swing a sword.

It is

swing a sword to the left, swing a sword to the right, swing a sword to the head,

poke the sword, do a combo, repost.

Like there's so much involved in just the combat.

And that sort of,

I want to call it.

density applies to everything in the design.

So you can't just equip armor.

You have to equip armor in the correct

lineage of items, or else your armor will be less effective.

So, one of the steps to equipping your armor is learning how the armor works from like a book that is in your

sub-menus.

And the book is like, oh, you got to do this and you have to put on that.

And you make sure you put on this before you put on that, or you won't be able to absorb as much damage.

And also, your reputation will suffer because you'll go into a town and they'll be like, you look stupid.

There's like a spider web that extends out from your player character to all of these if-then statements of like how you function in your village, how you adorn your items, how your reputation is affected by the way you talk to one guy over here in such a way that is far more complicated, it feels like to me than Skyrim or Fallout.

Um, I'm really enjoying it.

I do wish that there was a Viking version of this game, since I'm so much more interested in Viking history than I am the sort of uh

uh,

I don't know, the pastiche of regular medieval history.

Sure.

Um,

and I will say that again, Assassin's Creed did a fantastic job with Viking history.

I just wish there were more games about it, um, especially historically accurate ones.

Uh, But

it's a good game.

It's, I'm enjoying the fuck out of it.

I know there's going to come a point where I've ruined my reputation so much that I'm not going to enjoy the game anymore because every village is going to be like, get the fuck out of here.

But I'm trying to play it nobly with a good core.

Like, I'm like, I'm not going to go in and play a thief or an asshole.

I'm going to try.

Like, in my first set of choices, I had choices to be like a jerk or to defend honor or whatever.

And I was like, I'm going to choose to defend some honor.

So, until the world itself pushes me to a line, I'm going to play a good person and I'm going to try and keep going in Kingdom Come.

Nick, what are you playing?

Let me just real quick add a little bit of additional context because we mentioned the

studio War Horse and its director and co-founder Daniel Vavra.

And

my

understanding is

I'm not sure sure how much of a

Gamergate sympathizer he actually is, and how much of it is that Gamergate supporters became fans of his and the game because of its content and because of his social media presence.

So, I, you know, I don't know.

I don't want to necessarily impugn, like you were saying, I don't necessarily impugn the entire studio or the game itself.

Because also, I'm kind of neutral on that shit.

The Ori games, which I really loved,

both those games, you know, Ori, the Will of the Wisps, and Ori, and the, what the hell is the first one called?

Blind Forest.

Yes.

Yeah.

Those, it came out that that developer, Moon Studios, had like a horrific internal culture.

And

people were really like, you know, especially the higher-ups were extremely abusive.

I still don't feel any like sort of negative way about those games or about having enjoyed those games because, again, they're very collaborative practice or whatever.

But I do kind of feel like a bit of the

reaction to the first

Kingdom Come was maybe perhaps a little bit overblown.

Maybe perhaps it became a little bit of a

flashpoint because of timing.

Interestingly, and this is a BBC article I pulled up that I'm going to read a little bit of here.

Vavra defended the first KCD, which was Kingdom Come Deliverance, which was criticized for its lack of diversity as being historically accurate to the time and location of its setting, although there is not universal agreement about this.

At the time, he also made public statements against perceived attempts to force diversity into games, saying his upbringing in communist Czechoslovakia had made him an opponent of, quote, censorship in the name of good intentions.

This won him supporters among the so-called Gamergate movement, which emerged online in 2014 and is widely seen as a backlash against attempts to make gaming more inclusive.

Members celebrated Vavara for his outspoken, uncompromising approach.

But as the release of KCD2 approached, some of those voices turned against him as it emerged that the sequel features a black character and a gay love scene that can play out if players make certain decisions.

One of the voice actors has a quote here.

I think it's quite an interesting thing that's happened.

With the first game, there was a backlash from more left-wing mentality, and then there's been something of backlash this time around from the right-wing mentality.

And I don't know.

I think it's maybe a thing of like the studio may have actually been responsive to some of the criticism with the sequel, and now they've alienated the people who liked it because it maybe had some issues.

And it's like, I don't know, it's just, it's kind of interesting to see that cycle play out.

That's insane, yeah.

But yeah, I'm glad you're enjoying it, Heather.

I'm really intrigued by the game.

I was thinking of getting into it, but I'm also like, oh man, can I manage another 90-hour RPG?

I mean, I, I, I'm, I, I, again, I'm not sure that I'm going to play it all the way through the finish line, but as a sandbox to like run around in and like explore a world, the closer we get to a holodeck with these things, the more excited I am by them.

And this is very holodeck adjacent.

It's like, okay, I gotta, this guy's coming at me.

Oh, fuck, he just switched to his left hand, so I've got to switch to my left hand.

Fuck, do I have my helmet on?

i can't go to the menu also

it is extremely uh judicious with its saves and i mean did i use that word right i think so like you can't save very often oh

i don't know the opposite trying to wait what would the uses of judicious be there because you're attributing it to the game yeah it's extremely uh conservative with its saves yeah that's good there you go you can't save very often at all so there is also a tension and an anxiety when you are trying to do stuff in the game game that might get you killed.

Right.

Of which I've only done several things.

So I'm having a good time.

Hey, speaking of sequels that

expand upon the original and are much more ambitious and more critically and commercially successful,

to answer your question, what are you playing, Heather?

I didn't ask you.

You did ask me.

No, you did.

You said, you said, Nick, what are you playing to tee it up to me?

You did say that.

Yeah, I said.

Now, the merchant also said it earlier, but the merchant said it, I think, in general.

Yeah, I think so.

Well, see, I said it to Matt.

He said it to me.

I do want to just sort of address that for a second.

Heather and the merchant can say the same things, and that's fine.

It's fine.

It's fine.

Sometimes they both say the same thing.

I don't know what everybody's so fucking mad about.

I'm like drumming up like a fake controversy so then people can like go back and listen to the episode.

I can't believe how often people complain about

Heather and the merchant saying the same thing.

It's so crazy, too.

It's just so many, like, it's as if there's so many instances of it that people could just, like, kind of go back into the free feed with ads and just replay the episodes over and over again to hear, to hear that.

Maybe compile some sort of super cut of Heather and the Resident Evil Merchant both saying the same thing.

What if I said the same thing as the merchant?

There it goes again.

That guy like fucking talks about his electronics being wet.

I don't talk about that shit.

You actually,

in stark contrast to the merchant, you talk about how well kept your electronics being.

Yeah, I take care of it.

That's a great point.

Yeah.

It's a clear delineation.

The game I am talking about, the sequel that I am going to discuss, Alan Wake 2.

Rochelle, are you still playing?

I'm still playing.

What do you think?

Where are you at with it?

Because

I will say I am fully wake-pilled.

I have gotten super into this game.

I just finished at Coffee World.

Wow, okay.

Where are you at?

I'll talk about it.

I'm in a similar sort of space, but I also want to be a little bit like spoiler light because I think like it's like, even though it's a couple year old game, because it goes in such, it takes such huge swerves, it's kind of like a, it's kind of like a very easy game to spoil just by pointing out something that happens because it so comes out of nowhere, you know?

But, but I, I'm glad you're enjoying it.

Um, and I would just want to say generally,

and I'm not sure how the two of you feel, but like one of my favorite things about doing this podcast from a listener interaction perspective is when I talk about a game I really like, that I've really enjoyed, that I put some time into, and recommend people play it, and then I hear from people who are like, hey, I played it and I liked it, or hey, I'm really into this game now.

Yes.

Matt, you have done this for me, and I believe ranch now, which is that your advocacy of Alan Wake 2 got me into this game

and got me fully into this game.

My life is better for it.

Wow.

Thank you.

That makes me feel really good.

I've finally done something good.

there was one chapter i finished

there's one chapter i finished where it was so satisfying like like dramatically and from a gameplay standpoint that i said aloud to myself afterwards uh what i was sitting in my pc i just said fucking awesome

just

just wait yeah there's like moments in this game that like i can't i mean i won't spoil they're everywhere online if you've like followed anything about alan wake to you've probably seen some of the stuff that's like crazier later on that i can't wait to discuss when you guys get to there.

Yeah, this is honestly probably what Heather would feel like if we played Mother 3.

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Okay, on that note, and to talk about a game that we have all played,

I kind of feel like it does Silent Hill 2 better than Silent Hill 2.

Wow.

In case of that sort of like that, the psychological prison of being trapped in like not understanding what is real and isn't real.

It's like, it's like treading the same ground, I'm sure, heavily inspired by it.

Although other inspirations like David Lynch obviously wears more on its sleeve, but

it's so effective at that.

Just making you feel unmoored from reality.

If I was like a smarter

person

and a better podcaster and interviewer, I would want to talk to Sam Lake so bad.

Yeah.

He's so fascinating to me.

If I was just like better in every single way, I don't want to bother him with who I am now.

Yeah.

But if I was like a better version, I would love to talk to him.

You'd want to sit there like Mr.

Doerr and have him on your talk show.

God, it's so fucking...

So, so let me just

walk through a few things.

And one thing I think I can

being super spoiler light, L-I-T-E, one thing I think that

people know is that there are are multiple protagonists you do play as the titular Alan Wake at a certain point.

There is a mechanic, the Angel Lamp, Ranch.

You've already gotten through this part for sure, which is, you know, like a, for people who play the game, you know what this is, but it's...

It's like a Mario kind of Astro bot like level would be built around this mechanic.

It's basically like you've got a light that when you flick it, it changes your reality.

And there's certain context sensitive places where you can use it, but it will be a thing like, you know,

change a, a, a, a blocked off barricaded area into a stairway you can ascend.

Now you have a totally new different area of the play so you can you can explore.

As a as a game play mechanic, the thing that it does kind of miss a little bit versus like a mascot platformer is you don't have like that crystal clarity of like when you where when and where you can use it and how exactly it will work, but it's okay.

So there are some parts that feel maybe a little bit opaque and inscrutable, but it does give you like this dreamlike feeling very well.

And it's also just really, really cool just to see like, oh, wow, this environment has completely changed.

There's a different place I can reach.

And in some cases,

the other way that it happens is that Alan Wake can kind of rewrite sections of reality.

And that intersects with another thing that the game does really well, really effectively.

Also, I think that's an element, Metaphor Refantasio, is just the idea of like the line between fiction and non-fiction being a little bit blurry, that fiction informs non-fiction, that fiction can be as important as non-fiction, that something not being real does not mean it's unimportant.

And it's just, it's, I don't know, I, I just, I love exploring these kind of heady things, and I like that that it's, it's, it's presented in a way that's interactive.

They've managed to make a game

like about storytelling.

Yeah.

It's fascinating.

It's really

so deeply about writing, but you're a man with a lamp.

And and the idea that your subjective reality just is reality.

Like whatever's personal to you, it's like like, like, I, I,

it, I don't know, I, I love that.

It just, it feels like looking those, those times in life when you feel like you're like kind of looking through a pane of frosted glass and you can't really tell, like, it's like, what, what the fuck's going on right now?

It just, it gives you that feeling, you know, as interactive entertainment.

The part, the Mr.

Door talk show, I did have like a big shit-eating grin there because first off, I love the choice of

Yeah, it's a survival horror thing.

It goes back to the, the, the opening of the original PlayStation Resident Evil, like having live-action footage that coexists with, with 3D models of these characters.

And

it makes sense production-wise because you don't have to

spend all these animator hours in this extended cutscene, but also it's just like to see actual actors.

Like, there's an actor playing Alan Wake, there is Sam Lake himself being interviewed.

Sam Lake playing, like playing Sam Lake, who is a character in a thing.

Who's a character in a thing?

He's appearing because he's a character in an adaptation of a book that Alan Wake wrote.

It's like, it's very, very good.

It's so complicated, but also by just being so weird, it's first off like very funny, but also just, again, just has this Vidir surreality to it that just,

I don't know, it's unsettling.

It's the grotesque.

It's both terrifying and funny.

It's as funny as if, like, if...

I would have hoped that Kojima would do this, but he probably wouldn't do it because my version of it is a bad idea.

If in Death Stranding 2, Kojima is in the game and his character is called the Game Master.

Yeah, right.

Which he almost does yeah like he's like you know you've got uh when you've got you know like guillermo del toro like a like a character that's modeled after guillermo the likeness of guillermo del toro or conan o'brien in the game i mean it it kind of is achieving that uh combat wise i mean rochelle did how do you feel about like the actual like fighting in the game um i was on normal but i changed it to story mode yeah it was a it's like too complicated for me to do the light and then shoot like there was just like too much going on for me I think that's fine because I also find like the, I, I am, I'm still playing on default difficulty, but like, I do kind of feel like the combat,

I kind of just wish there were fewer enemies just because I'm, and they had the, you know, smaller health pools.

They weren't as much of bullet sponges just because I'm more interested in the exploration and like the tone of it.

I think it's pretty good survival horror combat, Matt.

I'm not sure how you felt as someone who's played through the entire game, but it's like, I do like using the flashlight and the light as a way to ward off, you know, these

kind of undead, haunted sort of creatures.

But the actual gunplay is just kind of like, it's kind of basic, whatever.

Yeah, it's not like it's not the point of the game.

Exactly, it's not the point.

It's like the other stuff is the point.

There needs to be gunplay in the game so that it doesn't feel like, it doesn't feel boring, kind of.

But I kind of like that with the parts where it's just a walking simulator.

Like when you're just walking around, like, say, the police station and just sort of like talking to people and exploring things.

Like, I don't know.

I kind of like that.

Well, that's that shit.

It's because the environments are so fully realized.

They're so detailed.

Yeah, they just feel like real places.

Yeah.

And it looks, I mean, I know that you had said this, and maybe you're going to get to this, that like, you're like, it's like one of the most, like, one of the best looking games you've probably ever played.

They did not

slouch on anything in this game visually.

It's insane how good it looks.

Yeah, so the other reason I picked this game

beyond Matt's advocacy, which was the principal reason, but the other reason was that I saw it appear at the top of lists of most technically demanding PC games, and I just had built a new PC.

And last week I mentioned that I was getting an audio glitch, which was, you know, my VO getting out of sync and cutscenes that some people were saying was related to the game running on

a standard hard drive instead of an SSD.

I did remember.

that when I did my PC build, I just kind of wasn't paying attention.

My M.2 SSD, I installed in the second slot instead of the first slot when I was like assembling things.

And then I was able to install Windows and everything seemed hunky-dory.

So I was like, oh, well, that's probably fine.

But I did when I was trying to debug this thing and I was like, you know what?

Why don't I just try putting that into the first slot and seeing if that fixed it?

And you know, the thing, like, this is, this is, for instance, like I

had a fucking hole in my wall for way too long from when I hit where I hit my head on a towel rack and knocked it out of the bathroom wall.

What?

Oh, yeah, I lost consciousness

in 2023, and then I hit my head on a towel rack with such force that it knocked it out of the wall.

And then there was just like a hole in my wall because I never repatched it.

And I was like, this could take no time at all to fix.

Can I ask you a scary question?

Do you think you're ever going to wake up?

Wait.

Fuck.

So it's, but, but, like, you know, I just had a hole in my wall for my bathroom and I'm renting.

So I was like, ah, fucking, whatever.

But it's like the thing is like, this, this is the easiest home repair.

This is like 10 minutes of work.

It was the same sort of thing with a the computer.

I was like, I waited like a week to fix it because I was like, I don't want to do it.

But then when I actually did it, it was less than 15 minutes.

I didn't even have to reinstall the OS.

It just worked plug and play when I put it in the first slot and fixed it 100%.

No issues at all.

In fact, the game was performing better.

I guess it just streams a lot of data and it just kind of has to be in that first slot that's managed by the CPU.

That it was able to crank the settings up to ultra and turn on ray tracing and still get a great frame rate.

And yes, Matt, from the standpoint of a, of a,

obviously art direction is a factor, aesthetics is a factor, taste is subjective.

You know, a game like Super Mario World 2, Yoshi's Island is a tremendous looking game on 16-bit hardware.

But from the standpoint of like a contemporary AAA

game in a 3D engine, you know, without like a bunch of mods,

it might be the best looking game I've ever played.

It's fucking gorgeous.

And like then, but also some of the stuff you see, you're like, ugh.

Yeah,

I don't want to look at this shit.

I hate looking at this.

But it's just like, it's so great.

And like, I don't know, like, there's so many different things.

Like, gosh, when I was playing the game, it got me like very interested in

like Finnish folklore.

Because I was like, I don't, like, that's a

stuff that I don't really know.

And obviously, there's a lot of like crossover with just like the Norse mythology and stuff.

And that some of that

is like, is part of it.

And I know that

your whole thing.

Why didn't you sell me on the game this way?

Oh, yeah.

You should get into this.

You gotta play it.

Yeah, you gotta play it.

What?

Look.

You'd love it.

It's also all about writing, too, which is like, so it's very much your Norse mythology game about writing.

It's not really a Norse mythology.

What the fuck?

It's not fully about Norse mythology, but there are things that play into it at certain sections of the game.

It is.

Gosh, you know, we talked about doing this.

If we were to do an update of

our top tens, it probably is in there.

It's like, it's because it's so great.

The dlc is so great the dlc is all about how important art is yeah it's like this is a fucking video game this is so crazy it's like it's it's it rules it's so good but there's like nasty little

bits of like finnish um like folklore and just like things of finnish culture alan wake to add it to your library i love it Let's fucking go.

I mean, look, is it now almost two years old at this point?

Probably.

Could it still be a We Play You Play contender?

Yeah, why not?

Well, kind of why not?

I think.

Look, games make unreasonable demands on your time.

It's sometimes there's a game that even if you ostensibly play video games for income,

it's still tough to get to everything.

So sometimes it takes some time.

I'm glad that a year and a half later, I'm not just like, well, I got to play something new.

I'm like, you know what?

I should go back and play this game I missed because I really do love it.

I'm so happy.

One more thing I want to talk about since we're talking about nubs.

The deluxe edition is only 39 the regular edition is 59 yeah i think it's on it's discounted on the epic game store right now for some reason well

um i i one more thing since we're talking nubs and we're trying to figure out a designation for that the the thing this game has which is a survival horror trope is it has like things that are puzzles but aren't really puzzles yeah it's just like like what's the login for this computer and then elsewhere on the desk there will be a post-it with like a four-digit code you know it's like it's like a non-puzzle And

anytime I encounter that, anytime it's like, okay, well, I just got to put the red gem in the slot for the red gem.

Like, this is just a task for me.

Like, what do you call that?

Hmm.

Exhausting.

And it's like, oh no, why did I do that?

As soon as I looked up,

as soon as I looked up, you were describing my nightmare.

It's not that there, there's just enough of this to just kind of like break it up a little bit.

It's not a dominant element.

Nuzzles, maybe, like a non-puzzle.

Maybe we could call it a nub.

Maybe, maybe it's called a nub.

I'm trying to see how much, how much we can say nub.

Let's get nub in the lexicon.

I think they're dopamine hits is what I think they are.

I think they are programmed in so that you get to be like,

fuck, what is this code?

And then you look up and the code's on the desk and your brain goes, bing, and that's enough.

Because some of them.

I can add seven and two.

I'm smart.

Yeah, because some of them are like, it'll just be like whatever the code is.

Oh, we changed the code.

Remember, we're doing it by this like date structure or whatever, but we had to flip it.

So, like, mobile op sec.

Like, so, but when you just a memo sent to the company saying, like, hey, just remember, this is the password.

Yeah.

But, like, I, there's something about those puzzles.

I think Double Mean Hit is right because they're not that challenging.

No.

But you do sort of feel really smart when you figure it out.

You're sort of like, oh, good.

I did it.

It's like, there needs to be an obstacle here.

So I'm not just, you know, like reading things, which also I'd be fine if I was just reading things.

but like there needs to be some sort of obstacle here, and yeah, it's it's it's I guess mildly satisfying.

Sometimes the notes are kind of funny, like you'll find you'll find a funny note.

Okay, that's pretty fun.

Okay, the game is funnier than you think.

It's a very funny game.

I cooled so fast that I was immediately like, I downloaded it.

You know who's gonna love the game?

What?

Mary.

Mary's gonna love it.

Mary's gonna love it.

Okay.

We already made a plan to play because she hasn't played Silent Hill 2.

So she's like, let's play a video game.

I want to play Silent Hill 2.

And I was like, Let's go.

And I downloaded it and bought it.

And then our dog got injured.

And that whole weekend got blown.

And then we never went back to it.

I mean, she still could.

She still could do it.

Yeah.

I know.

I know.

But now she's super busy.

Here's the thing.

Tell Mary to play Alan Wake 1 too.

And then what the fuck?

And then I'll probably go back and do the Alan Wake Remaster after I finish this.

The thing about Alan Wake 1 is that it is funny and good, but it's like just not as good as Alan Wake 2.

Sure.

But I think there's stuff in there to enjoy about it because it is also like very creative and very interesting.

Another thing I like about video games is like you can only play them out of order.

You don't need to play

the previous ones to play the new one.

How many people played the first, I mean, I did, but how many people played the first two Grand Theft Autos?

Sometimes you just start at the second or third entry in a series.

I don't think it was born when this came out.

Okay.

I like that the three of us have.

I'm like getting to an age where I'm like trying to actually be like, I actually am younger.

I'm actually not what age I am.

I'm actually younger.

I like that the three of us have sort of self-filtered into these categories as of this record, which is that you're playing a Kingdom Hearts game, I'm playing a medieval simulator, and Nick is playing a high-intensity PC Allen Wake 2.

I think that's really nice.

We're starting the year off pretty good for us.

Yeah.

Let me, we got to get to the main body of the episode, but I want to touch on one other game that just came out this past week as of this episode's release.

Civilization 7.

I'm a big Civ head.

I love the 4X games.

I played every single Civilization.

I have opted not to buy Civilization 7 yet because of all the fan blowback.

But basically, it seems like I saw a similar sort of reaction to Cities Skylines 2, which is just, this game just isn't finished.

The general reaction seems to be it's more of an early access game that's kind of being marketed as a final build.

Also, that's totally fine.

These games are like extraordinarily complicated to make.

There's so many systems working together.

There's so many things that you can't really like, you know,

they're all kind of publicly beta tested to some degree.

They always require updates and DLC to get up to speed.

But it feels like Civ 7 is maybe in a state where I can just wait for the player base to weigh in, wait for the developers to update it, and then I'll maybe get into it in a few months or so.

So that's where I am with that.

Wow.

All right, let's get into it.

Tears of the Kingdom video game movie adaptations.

I have a question for the room before we start ranking these.

All right.

What is the first first video game movie adaptation you remember liking?

Super Mario Bros.

You mean not the new one?

The original one.

The original one.

The first one to ever come out.

The John Languizamo Bob Hoskins live action movie.

I loved it.

I was a child.

Yeah.

And I also loved Blade Runner.

Yeah.

So when I saw, when I went to see Super Mario Bros.

the movie, I was like, First off, because it's the first one, nobody had said how they could be done.

And

it didn't occur to me that it would be an accurate Super Mario Brothers movie.

I was like, what is this going to be?

So

when it looked like Blade Runner, I was like, whoa!

And then they would like reference stuff.

It would be like, you know, Dennis Hopper is King Koopa, but he's not really King Koopa.

It felt like, it felt like a fever dream.

It was so cool to me.

And I think I remain kind of an apologist to the film.

Like, I still have the novelization that I bought because I went to the store and bought the novels.

Um, and I've, I've watched the director's cut now, which is, which is a slightly expanded work print that you can find online in like secret corners of it's a BitTorrent thing.

Um, but I really enjoyed it.

And then I felt like the first time I was let down by a movie was Street Fighter, because then I was like,

oh, they tried to make it like Street Fighter and it's bad.

A lot of people view those two movies on the same level, so it's interesting that you have like such a split reaction.

It's, I think, Super Mario Bros.

The movie is a huge, like, it is a swing for a home run that is so hard that even though they miss the ball entirely, the stands still get hit with enough wind

that they're like, whoa, something happened.

Yeah, like it's a Cloud Atlas factor.

Yeah, yeah.

Like, they fucking tried something here.

And I fucking liked Cloud Atlas too.

I was like, let's go.

Yeah, not a perfect movie, but the movie's going for it.

Yeah, it really tried.

The more modern

version of this might be Megalopolis.

Oh, man.

Megalopolis.

What a fucking swing.

I still got to see it, but

the Super Mario Brothers, the movie, is the megalopolis of video game adaptations.

100%.

I kind of want to lend Ranch my DVD of the Super Mario Brothers movie so she could watch it.

I think we should just subject it to her today.

Cancel what we're doing and just watch it with Ranch.

I think my answer, and Matt, I want to get yours, but I think my answer is probably the first Mortal Kombat movie.

I think that's the first one.

I was like, wait, this is like, okay, this is like a movie and this gets what's good about it.

Have I told you guys my...

September 11th Super Mario Brothers

story?

I'll repeat it because I think it was on the DLC.

Which is that

after

after 9-11 happens my friend and I are super super blue or whatever and we're like let's let's just like yeah I guess we were sad about it we're we're let's clear our palette let's just watch something stupid and he had never seen Super Mario Brothers the movie and it had been a while since I'd seen it so I was like let's just watch this as a real curiosity Super Mario Brothers the movie ends with the World Trade Centers being destroyed in almost this same visual iconography and we were like oh my god

It was like a ghost had come into our television to show us the same picture again.

My 9-11 video game story.

So during the summer of 2001, Masahiro Sakurai, the director of Smash Brothers, had a blog where he was just slow revealing details about the game.

And so it would just be like an update of just like, hey, there's going to be this new item.

We'll be in it.

But he would sometimes, you know, reveal major things things just in a blog post that would be like the first time this news would be made.

So I'm old as dirt.

So when that, when 9-11 happens, I was already in college and my roommate happened to be a home at the time.

And I did not have a cell phone.

So 9-11 happens, September 12th.

I get a call on the home phone in the apartment.

I pick it up.

It's my roommate.

And he goes, Nick, did you see the news?

I was like, yeah, man, it's crazy.

He goes, I know.

Martha's in Brothers.

Sakurai had added a blog entry on September 12th that Marth from Fire Elder was going to be in Smash Brothers.

And of course, my 9-11 video game story is that I was mad that the TV was being hogged because I wanted to play Crash Team Racing.

Honestly, more productive than watching CNN.

Yeah, absolutely.

I think the first video game movie that I enjoyed was for a video game that I didn't play, and it was Detective Pikachu, which is a more recent movie.

Very contemporary.

Well, look, that's, I mean, I love that movie.

I think Detective Pikachu is

a great movie.

Like a genuinely, really, really good detective movie.

And it also, like, really honors the Pokemon world.

I think that movie is legit awesome.

We'll see how it ranks, but we should just get into this.

Yeah, let's go.

Okay, so

we have this tier list here.

Matt, are we going in chronological order?

Is there any order to this?

Let's say this is, I mean, I'll have to bounce back and

just kind of scattered all over the place.

We'll just kind of go.

Okay, let's just do it in.

We can just do it in order.

It's a very good idea.

Okay, let's do it in order.

So we also get a sense of like when things really turn the corner.

Yeah.

Even though I'm going to defend Super Mario Bros., the original movie, as at least a C-tier film.

It's kind of crazy that, I mean, because, you know.

Video games had been around for a long time at this point, but I guess none of them had like, I mean, they probably had some like rudimentary story elements, but none of them were like story-driven narrative games.

So, the fact that Mario is the first like movie adaptation of a video game is kind of interesting.

Yeah, I guess, like, you know, like there was The Wizard, but that was where video games were an element.

And then you got other things like The Last Starfighter, but it's not an actual adaptation of a video game.

Tron, yeah, does Tron actually, because the game I think comes out after the movie.

Yeah.

Well, I guess we'll start with Super Mario Brothers.

I mean, the most iconic video game franchise, a movie that doesn't fully work, but a movie that's at least interesting.

It is so fucking crazy.

Like,

there is no way to watch it, especially in the year 2025,

with a group of people who've never seen the Super Mario Brothers movie and not have everybody

every 10 minutes say, what the fuck?

Like, it is.

And as

it is totally engaging, like, you're not bored during it for even a moment because you literally don't know what's going to happen next.

And it's made at a time because this is what 1993, right?

This movie comes out.

Yeah.

So the peak, I mean, Mario is out in 1985.

So like this is like

there's not that much time.

There's not, you don't know that much about Mario.

Well, yeah, he doesn't really have a lot of established lore.

We haven't had things like, you know, Super Mario RPG, Paper Mario that have maybe kind of informed the store, the canon of the Mario world.

It's just Super Mario Bros.

Super Mario Bros.

2 Super Mario Bros.

3 and Super Mario World, right?

Those are all the games that are out at this point.

It has the best Mario Joke

ever written, which I'm going to spoil here on the show.

You already said that it ends with 9-11.

It does end with 9-11,

which is that Mario and Luigi are being booked in a prison.

And they ask their names.

And it's like, what's your name?

And Hoskins goes, Mario.

And then they go, All right, what's uh, what's your last, uh, uh,

what's your last name?

And he goes, Mario.

And then he's like, all right, what's your name?

And he's like, Luigi.

And he's like, what's your last name?

Mario.

And he's like, your last names are Mario and Mario.

And your first name is Mario.

And Hoskins, I think, goes, yeah, we're the Mario brothers.

And

as a child, I was like,

whoa,

just getting like blown back by the TV.

Part of why it's such an interesting movie is that it was a time when Hollywood had no idea what video games were.

Like it's like they were just like, this is a toy for children.

I don't understand the appeal of this.

There was no executive who played video games.

There was certainly no one as there are now.

These companies are populated with people who grew up with video games, who have an understanding of gaming culture.

There was none of that.

And it's also an untested director team.

Right.

Like these are.

This is like their first and only movie, I think, or something.

These are not people who had been like already.

Already doing this again.

Already directing stuff.

So the idea that they were handed the Super Mario Brothers movie is nuts.

Yeah.

I think from a historical standpoint and based on

what is to come, I think we can safely put it in the C tier.

I think it's a C level movie.

I'll put it in the C tier.

It isn't good, but it is not insanely bad.

There are many lows coming

are way worse than this.

I've seen it five times, and I think at least five times, and I like it

more each time, even though it just has no connection to Mario Bros.

at all.

Well, Koopa's in it, Yoshi's in it, Toad is in it, Luigi's in it, Peach is in it.

Yeah, I mean, like, their characters have the same names, is basically what they're sharing.

All right, let's move on.

Should we address this tier?

We'll get to it when we go to the chronologically.

We do have a special tier that I think makes sense.

All right, double dragon.

I haven't seen this.

This movie's really bad.

Oh, really?

It's fucking bad.

Okay.

I, fuck.

Do we, do we need to, do we, can we just

put an F tier?

I don't remember.

Like, I think it sucks.

I think we can put it in an F tier.

Yeah, like,

it's our fucking show.

We can do whatever we want.

I wonder if there are any Double Dragon the movie apologists, but I don't know.

I played that game.

I played a couple of Double Dragon games.

I wonder what happened to that franchise.

The franchise.

The video game franchise.

Who knows?

But yeah, it's pretty fucking rough.

Yeah, it's sitting with a 12 on Rotten Tomatoes.

Not that that's like a way to judge a movie necessarily, but it tells you a little bit of something.

It's also weird because like Double Dragon.

Mark DiCostos and Scott Wolfe.

Sorry, I was just trying to remember.

If you follow Super Mario Bros., Double Dragon wasn't a huge franchise.

No, it's not.

It wasn't like, oh, you know what we need to make is a Double Dragon movie.

Like,

it's a strange second film in the adaptation canon.

I think this is a thing we may run into a few times where it's kind of surprising which rights are acquired and which, especially, you know, it's not always like nowadays, it's like, oh, they're making The Last of Us.

They're making Fallout.

These are these huge totemic IPs.

This makes a lot of sense.

Back then, it was just kind of like, I don't know, what can we get the rights to?

I don't know.

This one's got swords in it.

Let's get that one.

Yeah, Double Dragon.

I think it slides into F tier.

All right, what's next?

Street Fighter 1994.

F.

Fucking bad.

Fucking F movie.

God damn it.

It's maybe a little bit better than Double Dragon, but that's maybe also, I'm feeling that way because I've seen it more times.

It's really fucking bad.

Terrible.

The next one then is Mortal Kombat.

What?

I like how little discussion that will be.

That sucks.

It's like, I mean, it's Raoul Julia's last film.

It is.

You know what?

That's very unfortunate.

The only case for a D tier over F tier, and I'm not making this argument, is it does have the line, like, for you, the day you destroyed, I destroyed your village was the most important day of your life.

For me, it was Tuesday.

Pretty good day.

That is pretty good.

I'll bump it up to D just because it's not.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Mortal Kombat is next.

I think Mortal Kombat is pretty good.

I think that's like, again, it's the first of these ones that I feel like, oh,

this gets the appeal of the game somewhat right.

And we're sure that's the right Mortal Kombat because it has a few of them.

Yeah, there's a second Mortal Kombat here.

Yes.

But there's Mortal Kombat, there's Mortal Kombat Annihilation, and then there's the Mortal Kombat that came out recently.

Yes.

And there's a new Mortal Kombat coming out pretty soon.

I'm actually pretty excited about it.

I think I.

It's relative to other video game movies.

So I'm just like, is it an A tier?

No, it's by the scale?

I think it's a C or a B.

Let's put it in a B because I think it's I think it's a better, more functional movie than the Mario Bros.

movie.

Okay, and then after that, there's, yeah, Mortal Kombat Annihilation in 1997.

Have you guys seen that one?

Yeah, I mean, I don't think that one's as good in my memory, but it's been many, many years.

Yeah, agreed.

I think that's a D tier.

Let's slide it just below.

It's a complete failure like Street Fighter or Double Dragon.

Okay.

But it isn't interesting like Super Mario Brothers or decent like Mortal Kombat.

Here's what I'll also say: because I'd be curious in people's feedback on some of these, because with a lot of these, like, we didn't re-watch whatever the fuck, you know, 40 movies.

So we're going off of memory and some of these, like, this is a movie I've not seen in at least 20 years.

I remember it not being very good and being pretty disappointing from the original.

If there's any Mortal Kombat Annihilation Defenders, I'd be curious.

I've never heard of such a person.

Yeah.

Then the next one, which is a movie that I know that you guys have discussed, at least Nick has discussed as being really bad, Wing Commander.

F.

This is a solid F.

That movie's fucking unwatchable.

That movie's insane.

So I saw that movie in the theater partly because they were showing the Star Wars Phantom Menace trailer before it.

So that was my whole agenda: going to that.

And then I was like, oh, well, we already paid for the ticket.

We might as well stick around for Wing Commander.

I actually had played the Wing Commander games.

I played Wing Commander 2 and and 3, which were PC shooters.

And this is another thing where it's like,

this is not a top-tier franchise.

No.

Like these games were well regarded.

They were good, but this is like, you know, even among PC franchises, this is like maybe the back end of the top 20.

And this is what they choose to make as like a big movie with Freddie Prince Jr.

It's a, who's a big star at the time.

And I think I've heard him say that this movie fucking sucks.

It's so fucking bad.

The other weird thing about this is that the director of this movie, Chris Roberts, is the game designer behind

the Wing Commander games.

Oh, so it's like a kind of thing where it's like, I think it was...

I think it was the studio taking the wrong lesson from like Super Mario Bros.

This is just my suspicion.

And them being like, well, we got people who didn't know anything about the video game and they completely lost what was special about it.

Let's get someone with no film directing experience, but who made the video game and maybe he'll make figure out how to make a movie, but it's a completely non-functional movie.

The suits they have for the enemies, the Kilrathi, is there's some of the worst looking prosthetic like fur suits you'll ever see in like an actual like like a like a Hollywood movie.

It's fucking dog shit.

This is a true F.

Okay, this is where I start to tap in because then I'm starting to see

I'm starting to see more movies at this point.

I'm a little older.

Laura Croft Tomb Raider 2001.

I think the Angelina Jolie first tomb raider is decent yeah it's fine it's like uh

i mean just like it's sort of action adventure indiana jones like you know it's like it's not too crazy like where is a three-star movie in this

you know in this hierarchy is that a b is that a cake it's a b i think a three-star movie on this list might be an a

these movies so far are terrible wrench have you seen anything so far i've seen tomb raider what do you where Where would you put Tomb Raider?

S-tier.

Wait, the original Angelina Jolie Tomb Raider.

I did love that movie.

Holy shit.

I would watch that all the time.

Wow.

All right, I'd say let's kick it up to A.

A!

Because I was thinking B, but then Ranch saying S tier makes me think, like, maybe this is

the curve.

Like, because if Mario is C and Mortal Kombat is B, this tier list is, dare I say, curse.

Okay, great.

Um, and then next is so

the next one is Resident Evil, the Mila Jehovah Resident Evil movies, and we've sort of made an executive decision here on Get Played.

We're ranking all of these movies as one because there are too many.

We're just going to do the franchise.

There's a lot of them.

I have personally haven't seen all of them, and I think like it's probably its own episode to rank all of the Resident Evil movies.

So we're just going to do

the Paul W.S.

Anderson Resident Evils as one category.

And then obviously there's Resident Evil Welcome to Raccoon City, which is its own thing.

Yeah, which we'll get to later.

I think that

there's also a case for A tier here.

I don't think they really

represent the Resident Evil franchise super accurately, but I think they're a good cinematic translation of the appeal of the franchise.

Yeah,

I think if Tomb Raider is an A, then Resident Evil is an A.

And there's something to say about

it being a franchise.

That's true.

There are like seven of these movies, and I don't think any of them are technically good, but they make lots of money, and I think it's funny they exist.

Did we just do the first one on our

main feed?

Yes.

Gosh, do we even do it?

I think we did.

I think we re-watched the first one for the main feed.

I think we did.

That's right.

And I actually enjoyed it more than I remembered when we put it on.

It's a pretty functional action movie.

It's completely out of my brain.

I couldn't tell you a single thing that happens in it.

But we can can put it up in the it up in a for sure yeah i love it i want to say that those two movies tomb reader and within evil are very formative for me wow

man i'm stunned by this the things are the things you learn about a person well they've got the thing about it is it's new information to me and i'm shocked by it but i'm also not surprised it's i am about it adds up

right right right because this is like a tnt

Like they would probably just be running these on like on TV constantly.

It's something to watch so if you were like captivated by it at all you'd be like oh, it's on again.

I got to see it again.

Absolutely.

Um the second tomb raider

Which is cradle of life the cradle of life.

I remember this being a drop-off I don't think it's as bad as annihilation, but it's like a sequel that I but you know ranch maybe uh maybe you have a particular fandom for it.

I would I would maybe put this one into C tier I don't remember this one.

Yeah.

We didn't put it in C if it's a if it's a drop off.

Ah, but is it as I kind of feel like it should be down with Mortal Kombat Annihilation?

We didn't put it in D.

It's okay.

They didn't make any more of these after that.

You know, that's there's something to that.

Again, if there's a Mortal Kombat, or I was sorry, a Tomb Raider Cradle of Life Defender, I'd like to hear from you.

It's kind of shocking that they didn't make

11 of those.

Like, they should have made so many.

I think this is one where there was the first one performed well, and the second one, there was a steep drop off in the box office.

I think that's what it is.

Yeah, and I guess around this time, too, what is this?

2003, Angelina Jolie is like a big celebrity for like the wrong reasons, too.

Like, she's like, maybe just like a little overexposed.

Maybe she was like, I want to do something else.

So maybe I'm not trying to do franchise stuff right now.

The next one brings us to, I think, our special tier, Nick.

House of the Dead.

So here's how we're tackling this.

There's the director

Yuve Boll or Uve Boll.

I'm not quite clear on the proper pronunciation for this director's name.

We have made a U-tier for all of Bull's work because

there's so I've seen of his movies, I've seen House of the Dead and one more, which we'll get to.

And the reputation of all of these is so bad.

And the ones that I've seen are like barely even movies.

Yes.

Like he just is such a merchant of absolute garbage

that it's just kind of in its own category.

Like it's like sub-F tier.

So that's why we've got these these ones in the U tier.

Uh, House of the Dead is going to live there.

If this was like a movie podcast and it's not, even though we're talking about movies today,

it would be fascinating to dig in on like what his whole thing is because he, to me, is

obviously a maniac of some kind, but he like he's always making movies.

He's making like three movies like this year.

He's churned out so many sequels to these movies that I've never even heard of.

No.

And we just discovered that from just from looking at his IMDb.

Yeah.

Do you remember when he had a boxing match with his critics?

I think that does ring a bell because, like, for some reason, I was very plugged into knowing who this guy was because he was like, I guess, somewhat controversial figure.

He's also like a guy who's good at being famous.

Yeah.

He's good at

putting himself in the news.

But yeah, there was a thing where he just ended up

beating the shit out of Lotax, the creator of something awful.

And then, you know what?

what in a boxing ring i think that bumps up at least one of these movies to f

um because then the next one is alone in the dark which is another one of his so that's in the u tier yeah um

doom we've watched doom as a premium dlc it's so fucking bad i think doom is one of the worst movies i've ever seen in my whole life this is an f there's no way that's not an f that's an f it's awful i wish i could put it in the u tier even direct it

even the first person part where it's like oh here's some fan service hey they're doing doing the first person cameras.

Like, they didn't even get this right.

No.

Fuck this up.

This looks like shit.

Really?

The Rock as a Bad Guy is fucking horrible.

Yeah, really terrible movie.

Terrible terrible.

Really, really bad.

Final Fantasy VII.

Oh, wait.

Oh, we skipped one, actually.

I skipped one way back here.

Final Fantasy Spirits Within.

We didn't even get that one on here.

What to do with Spirits Within?

That's an easy F if I've ever seen it.

The movie's fucking dog shit.

What are we talking about?

It's not that bad.

It's not as bad as the ones and F.

D.

It is a D.

tier.

It is D.

It is a D.

Because, yeah, the F tier.

Is it C?

Nick.

Because here's the thing.

At least, like the Mario Brothers movie, it gives you something to look at.

You know what else gives me something to look at?

The footage of 9-11.

I don't need to see it again.

All right, we'll leave it in D.

It sucks.

I'm just like, it's not as bad as the F-tier movie is what I want.

The point I want.

Yeah,

we can put it in D.

It's fine.

It's fine in D.

Back to the current timeline after Doom 2005.

Did I say this when we watched it?

Is that I have a bus stop poster for Final Fantasy the movie?

Yes, I believe it was

and it has no

financial value.

Like, you can't even sell it on eBay and have people be like, wow.

I would imagine that the aftermarket retail value for things that are at the bus, probably not a booming market, probably.

That said, I still wish

i had the watch it's a good watch the watch is good the watch is really good the watch maybe bumps it up to

um back to 2005 final fantasy 7 advent children now i do think maybe i also hate advent children oh man but it's i think it's better than spirits within advent children is

is a bee for the sephiroth fight alone

like i like that vincent has a cell phone i'll bring it like it's got a couple of laughs in it i'd put it in c tier

mechanic is just something to look at i would maybe put it in c tier but i'm okay with it being in b tier i'd put it in c let's put it in c is good uh dilly dally shilly shally all the way all the way to the c tier um

um

wait if if if this is on here is kingsglave on here Kingsglave is not on here because these are all theatrically released movies.

Got it.

Wait, was Advent Children theatrically released?

Yeah.

Holy shit.

It was on the list.

And Kingsglave wasn't.

Kingsglave was not.

And Kingsglaive, I think, goes in the U tier.

Kingsglave fucking.

No, no, no.

Let's keep going.

Blood Rain is in the U tier.

That's another one of his films.

God, this list is bad.

This is why I have to address the curve, right?

Because the curve is really, really something.

Because in the next film on this list.

If if you're looking for all of movies,

it doesn't make sense to put the Resident Evil franchise in the A tier.

No.

Like, it's not like that's up there with, you know, Lesser Cone Brothers works.

It's not in the same, this is relative

to video games.

Yes.

To video game adaptation.

King Clave had a limited theatrical run.

Look, it wasn't on the list.

I'm not rebuilding the damn thing.

Well, we'll get to it when we get to 2016.

Let's keep going.

Silent Hill from 2006.

Fuck this fucking F.

I think A tier.

I hate this fucking movie.

Nick liked it.

I think

this fucking movie.

Nick liked it.

I think it's good.

Nick liking the Silent Hill movie is my Silent Hill.

I cannot understand why he liked it.

It is such dog shit.

It is also extremely boring.

I do think it's better than Doom.

I think it's better than the stuff in the F tier podcast.

Oh my God.

I think it's better than what's in the D tier.

And I got to be honest, better than what's in the C and the B tier.

Oh, my God.

No, Nick, it is not.

It's not going up to you.

You don't like it as much as the Resident Evil Paul W.

Sanders.

Absolutely not.

No, I think it's pretty good.

Not at all.

There's no character motivation for the protagonist.

I think I'm happy putting it in B tier, but I'm also not happy about it.

Don't put it in B.

No, D tier.

I think D is too low.

No, D is plenty high.

Nick, put it up to C.

Oh, my God, no.

It's just a straightforward demand, not even a request.

I'm asking for A.

I'm willing to settle for C.

No way.

It's a D.

Wait,

are you voting for D or are you saying F and you're compromising with D?

I'm saying F and I'm compromising with D.

I'm saying F and I'm compromising with D.

All right, I guess we're averaging it out.

Ranch, have you seen the Silent Hole movie?

No.

I guess we're averaging out.

Ranch, are you scared because we're yelling?

I feel like it.

Dead or alive.

D-O-A, dead or alive.

I have not seen this.

I have not seen this.

Anybody has not seen D.

This was a movie does not have a good reputation.

Wow, our first and then I haven't seen tier, we're doing pretty good.

Um, postal in the U-tier, which I've seen some of.

Yeah, they made the nut guy.

Postal is truly execrable.

Postal might be the single worst movie on this.

I think postal has a property pretty bad.

Actually, it's postal's fucking awful.

A net bad, yeah.

The games are bad.

Uh, the movie is repulsive.

Um,

then the next one is Hitman

from 2007.

I have not seen this.

I have have not seen this.

I also haven't seen it.

I don't understand it to be a good movie,

which is unfortunate because, I mean, God, the thing about these Hitman movies is that they're kind of, once you take the stealth gameplay out of it, it's just like a generic, like, action, like, you know, assassin movie.

It's not that interesting, probably.

In the Name of the King, a Dungeon Siege Tale, that's in the U-tier.

Far Cry in the U-tier, which brings us to 2008's Max Payne.

Not seeing anyone see the Max Payne movie?

I'm afraid that I might have to see it again.

And the remedy verse, yeah.

I have not seen Max Payne.

I don't remember it being well reviewed.

I'm actually curious.

I want to look it up on IMDb what the score is.

I think there are two Max Payne movies.

I think one of them went to

straight to video, I think.

I'm surprised that this is where we break off of.

This is where we finally got so burnt that none of us are going to see DOA or or Hitman or Max Payne.

Well, so Dead or Alive was like, that one was really poorly regarded.

And I don't even know if it may have gotten a very limited theatrical release.

Hitman and Max Payne were bigger swings, but I think like they were,

I think they were, that was a time when people were like, oh, we know these aren't, these aren't going to be good, you know.

I wish, I mean, I would love to see a good Max Payne movie.

Honestly, let Sam Lake make a movie.

He'd do a good job.

That'd be interesting.

He'd do a great job.

Then the next one on the list, we're out of the U-tier for good.

And now we're talking Street Fighter, The Legend of Chun Lee.

Has anyone seen this?

Oh, this was the

live-action one.

Yes.

This is pretty bad.

Oh, wow.

You've seen it?

I mean, like, years ago.

Wait, let me make sure I know the right one.

I'm looking up on

because there's the

fighting games are interesting as adaptations because you kind of just want to see the fighting.

Yes, it's it's it's Kristen Kriok or Kristen Kruk

who was from Smallville, I believe.

Yes, and plays Chun Lee.

It's not good.

I mean, this is like an F tier.

Let's put this in the F tier.

What do we think of Tekken then from the

from 2010?

Again, was this a live-action Tekken?

Live-action Tekken.

What?

Yes.

Again, I'm right here.

Have I never heard of this?

I'm so burnt out by these things.

I went into Silent Hill with

big,

like, excited expectations when the film came out.

And when that film burnt me, I was like, I'm fucking done.

I'm not doing this again.

And so I take a break from seeing video game films.

Tekken directed by Dwight H.

Little.

Directed a lot of films, big TV director, directed Prison Break, has directed the show 9-1-1.

I used to love Prison Break.

People were really in a Prison Break.

Looks like mostly a TV director, but also directed Murder at 1600, Free Willie 2,

A Phantom of the Opera,

Halloween 4.

Okay, so some actual movies here.

Yeah, Tekken.

I have never even heard of this.

We'll put that in the hasn't seen.

But how did I completely miss a Tekken live-action movie that came out in 2010?

Look, there's one.

Starring John Fu and Kelly Overton.

There's a lot going on.

There are other good because good movies came out that year that you just couldn't concern yourself with it.

From the producer of Ghostwriter.

Yeah, not leading with their strongest foot there.

Look at this poster.

This is the most direct-to-red box poster.

I've ever seen

that.

It looks AI-generated before AI is.

It really does, yeah.

The next one on the list is a movie I did see in theaters:

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time.

This movie sucks.

This movie is really, really bad.

It is, I think, unfortunately in the C tier.

It is.

Here's my case for D tier:

the Jake Chillenhall casting is outrageous.

I mean, it's like easily the worst part about it, and the movie's pretty bad.

It shouldn't.

Look,

should

a white

Gyllenhaal be playing the titular Prince of Persia?

I'm going to go ahead and say probably not.

He's also really bad in the movie.

Yeah, and is the movie,

I think, is normally a good actor.

I like watching movies he's in.

He's in a lot of good movies.

I think the

world of Prince of Persia

just as it deserves a,

you know, some

more games.

Yes.

although I'm part of the problem, because they didn't play the Metroidvania that everyone loved, and they shut out the studio.

You played it, right?

I did play it.

I didn't finish it, but I did read uh the article when they shut the studio that they said it was your fault because you didn't play it.

I feel awful.

My case, my case for D tier is I just, I don't think it's as interesting

as the movies we have.

Well, I guess I could, I could live with it.

And yeah, my case in D tier, I think it's about as good as the other movies that are in D tier.

It's not as interesting as what we have in C tier.

I think that's fair.

C tier, we have Super Mario Brothers movie.

What's the other one up there?

Adventure.

Advent Children.

Advent Children.

I mean, come on.

Those are better than Prince of Persia.

They are better.

I was, and this was like a, you know, I'm in college when this movie comes out.

And I'm like, they made a movie about one of my favorite video games.

Yeah.

This was, this was an attack.

Yeah.

This was.

They did this to hurt me.

That's how I felt at the premiere of Final Fantasy Spirits with them.

them i was like how can you do this to me

i would have done anything you asked i've seen any film the next on the list is silent hill revelation 3d which i had never heard of put it in the f tier for for existing even though i haven't seen it i haven't seen it pyramid head it appears to be on the poster get rid of it put it in haven't seen we haven't seen it we haven't yeah we haven't seen it it's only fair to be in the hasn't seen um

tier

after that then this was a 2012 film 2012 yeah I didn't see this

you have only seen the the good one the 2006 one

kid Harrington Sean Bean Carrie and Mawson Sean Bean returning from the first film yeah Malcolm McDowell maybe watched this movie the their the director of the first silent hill movie is making a silent hill 2 movie yes return to silent hill it's called yeah and I actually like look some people were like there was a lot of negative reaction to that I actually like the choice here's the thing Let him cook.

I'll watch it.

Yeah.

What am I going to do?

Not see it?

I am not going to see it.

We're going to talk about it.

We're going to do an episode on it.

We'll 100% do an episode on it.

All right.

What's next?

Next on the list is Need for Speed starring Aaron Paul.

Pretty bad movie.

Aaron Paul had a lot of juice at the time.

They're definitely trying to go for a fast and furious thing.

Need for Speed is actually like a franchise that feels like it should have been able to translate into a good movie.

Yeah.

I think you could do a pretty decent TV series with Need for Speed.

I think that could be pretty fun.

I don't think it's as bad as, I mean, again, we're just kind of grading on a curve here.

Like, it's like, it's, it's a more functional movie

in my memory than a lot of the rest of these.

Is it, is it maybe D?

Is it maybe C?

It might be C.

I feel weird putting it in C, but it might be C.

It might be C.

Well, I mean, technically, Final Fantasy is a functional film.

It has a beginning, middle, and end.

It has a a goal.

It has setbacks.

It has an act structure.

Like, it doesn't make it a good movie, and I don't think it elevates it above D tier.

Like,

Need for Speed has a great poster.

The poster is pretty good.

I think the poster might put it in C tier.

I kind of think so.

That poster looks good in C tier.

Because, like, here's the thing.

Yeah, Aaron Paul had the juice at the time.

You're like, let's get this guy in the poster.

He looks good on the poster.

He does look good in the poster.

He should have been a movie star.

You guys are making me angry as a listener.

I'm putting him in C.

I think C is where God is.

He's handsome enough that you get him up there.

Jesus Christ.

Look,

this is not our problem to solve.

Hollywood has not done Aaron Paul any favors.

We got to figure out what we're doing with Aaron Paul.

I was optimistic when he started showing up in West Arl, then I was like,

we got to figure it out for him.

Because I think he's good.

I'm a big, big Aaron Paul fan.

He's funny.

Yeah.

He could do comedy, probably.

They also haven't figured out what to do with Walter White after Breaking Bad.

They put him in the single greatest Godzilla trailer of all time.

Yeah.

And then they kill him five minutes into the film.

And let's not forget, he's Zordon in the live-action Power Rangers movie for some reason.

You have no idea what you're dealing with.

So good.

You know what they have figured out?

Dean Norris, who decided to open up a barbecue restaurant in Temecula, California.

Don't even fucking get me started.

It's incredible.

It is so good.

Have you been?

i have not been but i am i am transfixed by his instagram uh me mark carlson broadcaster right is always giving me updates of just like his he's so into having this barbecue restaurant there's live music there he's always like hey come on out

like let me make a promise to you right now

i will go with you anytime

i'll take a day trip to temecula to get his pit master barbecue 100 down let's get a crew together wait a minute yeah you want to come i like barbecue there's barbecue and he also got big cinnamon roll there.

I can't eat that bro.

You can't eat that.

You could watch us eat it and get really sick, probably.

Yeah.

Because here's the thing: cinnamon roll, way too big.

It's really, really big.

And he's there a lot.

For somebody who I think works as much as he does, he's at his restaurant a lot.

He's just there.

He believes in the brand.

The next one, after Need for Speed,

Hitman Agent47, have not seen this.

But I like that they went back to the Hitman well.

I think that's...

That's right.

They made another Hitman Hitman with a different guy.

Yeah.

And here's what they need to do.

They just have to make it with Statham.

They keep dancing around it.

They got to just get Statham in.

Really perfect casting, isn't it?

Why haven't they done it with him?

He's like the guy you want to see in the movie.

I don't know, man.

They just can't.

They can't make a decision like that.

It's too good?

It would crack it wide open.

He does every other movie that comes out.

Why haven't they operated him?

There's a new one he's got coming out that I cannot wait to see where he just plays like a construction worker who kicks people's asses.

Yeah, it looks great.

It looks fucking awesome.

I'm like working man or whatever.

Yeah, and his name is Levin Cade.

It's going to be, it's going to be so right-wing.

It's going to be such a conservative movie.

I can't wait to see it.

The fucking Charles Bronson movie.

I got to protect my Mexicans, bruv.

I can say it.

It's okay.

Don't get scared.

The next one.

This is one of those things you see.

This is like, how did this happen?

Alexander Bach, who is the director of Hitman Agent 47, his only IMDb credit.

Just like there was like, oh, that is

this guy direct it.

You know what?

Let me do one.

Like, if everyone can just do it,

I feel like more than other jobs, people get to just make one movie.

Let me just do one.

Yeah, me too.

I could do one.

I could definitely direct one movie.

I think I got it.

I'd fucking knock it out of the park.

I'd ask for a lot of help.

You'd both be, you'd both direct awesome movies.

Oh, thank you so much.

I hope Hollywood gives you a chance.

Hollywood, if you're listening, bang my line.

I've made peace with the fact that I'll never get to direct a feature, but I mean, like.

You'd make a great movie.

I think it's a great thing.

Yeah, it's a great movie, yeah.

You could certainly do better.

Nick makes a shot-for-shot remake for the Silent Hill 2006 movie.

He's like, it's perfect the way it is.

Need for speed, too.

Paul's back.

He's back.

And he's got a mentor.

And he's more on the poster, and you're in the movie just in Lucy.

Hey, buddy.

You got to push on the gas.

Like, I know how to drive, dude.

The next movie is Warcraft, which I think is an interesting movie as an idea because Duncan Jones, David Bowie's son, directs this movie after his incredible movie, Moon.

Have we all seen?

This is a,

it's a good director.

The thing I like about the Warcraft movie is it does have a legitimately awesome score.

And I'm going to look up the composer because I forgot their name.

But it is one of those things where it's like,

if we,

you know, if awards were not just like

awards were not so much based off of the quality of the overall thing, you know what I mean?

It's like, it's like something will get a bunch of different nominations, a bunch of different categories.

But if it was like, actually, we are going to pay attention to the individual craft.

Raman Jawandi,

Jawadi, rather, who is the

composer of

Fallout and West World and Game of Thrones, I believe.

So, you know, it's a really, really impressive pedigree.

And the thing about it, I do think

the CG looks pretty good.

Yeah.

And it looks, the movie looks like how you would want a Warcraft movie to look like.

It has the characters from the game in the movie.

I'm still not going into the theaters in this time.

I haven't seen it.

I saw it in the theater by myself.

It is a, it is not a good movie.

Huge hit in China because of the Warcraft IP.

I think this is maybe a C-tier.

Wow.

Let's get it up there.

I believe you.

Again, just relative to other video game movies, but I'm like, if I'm looking at that sitting right there with Prince above Prince of Persia and below Mortal Kombat, that feels about right.

Yeah, it's pretty good.

Wow.

How about Assassin's Creed starring Michael Fastbender?

I didn't see the Fast Bender Assassin's Creed.

Me either.

I kind of.

One of us needs to watch that.

We could watch it for this show.

We should just do it.

You know what?

Maybe we should.

Maybe we should watch Assassin's because there's Assassin's Creed.

Is it Shadows?

What's the subtitle?

Yeah,

Shadows.

Shadows

is just out.

So maybe we could talk about it.

From what I remember of the trailers, it kind of, I think, focuses on the wrong stuff about Assassin's Creed.

It's also one of those things like that is wild casting.

You're making Fast Spender.

You're putting him in that role.

I know.

He doesn't even get to show his hawk.

He's wearing a fucking cloak the whole damn time.

What the hell?

Feeling shame about that thing?

Come on.

Oh, God, it's just too big.

I'm embarrassed.

That's what that movie is all about.

I'm so ashamed.

So that was Assassin's Creed.

Next on the list, Ratchet and Clank 2016, a Canadian production, Nick.

Okay, so I have not seen The Ratchet and Clank.

This is one of those ones that was in

limbo forever, right?

And then it finally comes out.

An animated feature, of course, it should be said.

Yes.

And is responsible for the PS4

soft reboot of the franchise.

They released Ratchet and Clink, and it's like technically Ratchet and Clank 1.

Yeah, not a well-regarded film,

but and a film that I

have not seen, but the games are some of the best fucking looking games.

They're really.

The games are so gorgeous that you would think that the movie should look good.

We got to put it in the not seen tier, but I do have this bit of context.

Kevin Michael Richardson, the voice of Chairman Jack in the first game, was originally bought in to reprise the role in the movie.

However, during production, he was quietly replaced by Paul Giamatti, but the movie company accidentally mailed Paul's paycheck to Kevin's address.

Jesus.

God damn.

That's how they're going to do it up there in Canada.

What the hell?

That's crazy.

Rough stuff.

Sorry.

Sorry there, buddy.

The next one then is the Angry Birds movie, which I would argue does not need to exist.

I have not seen this, and I think let's put it in the F tier.

Yeah, I think that's like, that's

it's craven.

Yeah, we just put that.

You know what?

I'll put in the second one there too, actually.

I agree.

Both Angry Birds movies are going the F tier side unseen.

Because

there's nothing there.

There's just nothing there, but they did this.

And this is like the start of a trend.

The emoji movie comes in around here as well.

People like their cell phones.

Yeah, you got it.

Maybe we should just make a movie with a cell phone.

This sucks.

It sucks so bad.

And I know that there's a third Angry Birds movie on the way.

Wow.

All right.

We're actually starting to get into something pretty good here.

Detective Pikachu.

S-tier.

S-tier.

This is an easy S-S-tier film.

Perfect movie.

Ryan Reynolds' best performance.

Really?

I mean, yeah.

It kind of.

I forgot it was Reynolds.

Yeah, you kind of forget that it's him because it's wow.

I mean, it has

when Ditto is on screen.

Unnerving.

It is perfect.

It's so good.

It is like it is one of the best.

moments in cinema history.

Yeah.

Is when the guy takes off his glasses and it's Ditto and you're like, oh

my God.

And you get to see, I mean, the fact that the Pokemon, it's a live-action movie and the Pokemon sit in pretty good.

They sit in really well.

It kind of gives you hope that they could be real someday.

It really does.

They will be real.

They will be real.

They will be real.

Justice Smith's first big performance

did fantastic.

And I saw the TV glow from last year.

Arthur Newton, always fun.

Ken Watanabe, just so locked in in that movie.

He's just like playing it like the most

serious crime drama.

And then Bill Nahye, too.

Yeah, giving it so much more gravitas than it needs, but that's part of why it's elevated.

I think it is a great movie.

A bummer that there isn't another one because I think they could have easily turned it into a franchise, but it underperformed.

My Pokemon movie underperformed.

I think this is the single best video game movie ever made.

No way.

I think there's one on the list that it gives it maybe a run for its money.

We'll get to it.

Yeah, I think there's a better video game for it.

Shout out to to Dan Hernandez and Benji Samed, who wrote the script and I think did an awesome job.

Really, really great.

Director by Rob Letter.

Sonic the Hedgehog 1.

S tier.

S tier.

Really, really good.

Look, S tier might as well be Sonic tier because all those movies know where they're going.

I think, here's what I think.

The start of the Smash Brothers Cinematic Universe, too, right away, by the way.

I have a

hard angle here on the Sonic films.

Sonic 1, S tier.

Sonic 2, A tier.

Sonic 3, S tier.

I'm equal.

Here's the thing.

I'm fine with that, but also

they could all be an S tier.

They could all be an S tier.

And actually,

I think I might need to make an additional tier for one of the movies.

All right, let's get it going.

We'll get to it.

We're about almost done here.

Oh, gosh.

I forgot one while we were deriding the

Angry Birds movies.

I have to go back to 2018.

Rampage, F tier, dog shit.

horrible.

Wow.

Is it that bad?

It's pretty bad, dude.

They don't even get naked when they...

They don't even turn into guys.

That's a great point.

They don't.

The one joke.

They don't even turn into guys.

The one thing.

The one joke that's like the best joke in the thing.

But I do think it's better than those.

It's better than Wing Commander.

I'd put it in D tier.

Did you see this, Heather?

I did see it, and I was so angry.

I love a kaiju movie.

Yes.

It's not even fun.

You know, unenjoyable.

You know what?

Leave it in F tier.

How can I make

it?

Unenjoyable, large creature film.

And then I'm also realizing we

I skipped the 2018 Tomb Raider film, which I have not seen.

I think this is a pretty functional action movie to not perform well at the box office.

I think that this is probably a

I'd maybe put this in B, honestly.

I saw it and I don't remember it at all.

Like, I couldn't tell you what like the main thing she was hunting for i know at the end of it she's finally become laura croft yeah tomb raider i think the thing that it has going for it having not seen it is it's seems to be more of a take of the more recent tomb raider games which are very good yeah

i i i don't i don't remember it at all um to go back to then

um

We did Sonic the Hedgehog.

Anyone see the Monster Hunter movie?

I did not see it.

Staring Mila Johovich.

Is this also a Paul W.

Sanderson?

I believe it is.

I didn't see it, but it does have a phenomenal poster.

The poster is really good.

It's a great poster.

You know what I'll say?

Let me bring this up here.

Tony Ja, I like.

Paul W.

Sanderson is the director.

Ron Perlman's in it, I like.

Great poster.

And the other thing I will say,

it makes me think of one of my favorite movies, Tar.

So, yeah, I think

I think we maybe put this one up in C.

You want to put it in C having not seen it?

That's insane.

That's an insane choice.

I think it's fine.

Put it in C.

Okay, I'll put it up here.

Just to make Nick happy.

You don't have to watch it now that we put it in the C T.

I'll say that.

I forgot about Tar.

I didn't really consider Tar when I was.

You're going to have to.

Who would do Tar in the show?

Really?

I would love to do a Tar episode.

No.

Got a video game tie-in.

Oh my God.

Also, I got to say.

We should do all like a bunch of like serious dramas that have a video game.

Like Rain Over Media.

Yeah.

As far, you know,

is it Paul W.S.

Anderson?

Yeah.

I think you can make a case.

Number one wife guy.

Loves to direct his wife in.

He loves putting his wife in movies, and I love it.

I think that's good.

I think think it's wonderful.

I think it's special.

God bless.

I think the W in Paul W.S.

Anderson stands for wife guy.

Okay, so we did Monster Hunter, Mortal Kombat 2021.

Now, I don't think this movie is good.

I don't think it's good either, but it's definitely better than

D-tier.

I think you can go in C.

No.

I think it's better than everything in the D-tier.

I liked it enough to put it in C.

It's a D-tier film.

I think it's maybe a Di Ranch, do you see the new Mortal Kombat?

We talked talked about it on the podcast, right?

We did.

I think we did an episode about it, or we did it.

We did.

I think we watched it.

Yeah.

It's a D-tier film.

We can put it in D.

Yeah, let's leave it in D.

I'm excited about the new one.

Johnny Cage is in the new one.

Look, I mean, look, I'm always rooting for these movies.

Carl Urban is Johnny Cage.

Yeah.

That's good.

The Mortal Kombat should be pure fun.

All right, what's next?

Resident Evil, welcome to Raccoon City.

Really bad.

That's an F-tier.

F-tier.

That's an easy ass.

That's really disappointing.

And it also, like, that's part of why I think the Paul W.S.

Anderson movies are elevated.

Because in comparison, like, what someone else does with IP.

I'm looking forward to the future S-tier Resident Evil film directed by Zach Krager.

That's rad.

That's going to be so good.

That's rad.

Uncharted.

Pretty bad.

Got some good action sequences.

When they're fighting in like the

when in like the Savarro, that's like in like a church.

Yeah, yeah, it's it's a C.

I think it is a C on this scale.

I think it's a C-tier, C-tier video game movie.

C-tier game movie.

It's Tom Holland stretching his wings after, you know, Spider-Man, and then before he realizes, I gotta get back to Spider-Man, baby.

It's the strangest casting choice of all time because there are so many dudes that look like Nathan Drake.

And also, just to cast it so young.

Do you know that they were trying to who's the guy that did the fighter and um uh

um

the other Mark Wahlberg movie with George Clooney and Ice Cube?

David O.

Russell?

David O.

Russell had the rights to Uncharted, and he was going to do Uncharted with Mark Wahlberg as Nathan Drake.

And then it took too long and he got too old.

So then they were like, we're having you come in.

You're going to be Sully.

in the movie.

And then it went to Tom Holland.

That probably would have been his, if he directed Uncharted, it probably would have been his best movie since The Fighter because he seems to have been on a pretty dry spell.

The Fire Player.

I mean, people like Silver Lining's playbook.

I don't really love that movie.

No, it gets worse.

Joy is fucking terrible.

American Hustle?

Not good.

Bad.

Haven't seen anything, I think, since that.

The Super Mario Brothers movie 2023.

Okay, so I'm a defender of this movie.

I do think illumination can animate the shit out of a film.

I don't think all the casting is great.

I think there are some very, very on-the-nose music stings that it does not need, like the pop soundtrack that it has, you know, playing ACDC's Thunderstruck.

I don't think that's additive when the Super Mario Bros.

actual score is so, like, there's such an amazing library of tracks to work with.

And also the scoring that's in the movie is pretty damn good.

That said, it is a dazzling visual display that I think renders the Mushroom Kingdom very effectively.

And I feel for that reason, it is up in B tier.

I think it's B tier.

I enjoyed my time at the movies.

I think it's fun to watch.

Like,

look at what else?

It's with

the new

Tomb Raider remake with Mortal Kombat.

It's like, yeah, okay.

Maybe even A tier.

It might even be A tier, but I'm fine with it in B tier.

It's hard to say that this film that made

more money than all all three Sonic films combined isn't at least an A.

I don't think, I didn't enjoy it.

Yeah.

But, like, if you're a kid, how, like, this is probably a core memory for you.

The Jack Black Bowser alone probably elevates me.

I mean, Peaches?

The Peaches song.

The Peaches song is great.

Jack Black having the time of his fucking life in the booth, just going off.

Yeah.

We love it.

I realized we skipped Sonic the Hedgehog 2.

S tier.

S tier.

You think that's an S?

S S-tier.

I think that's an A.

I think it might be an A as well.

But you know what?

No, I think it's S.

I forgot

the very funny

wedding subplot that is for nobody.

It's insane that it's in the movie.

And then, like, the other thing that's going on against that is like Sonic running around in temples.

And there's this other thing going on, and it's a wedding.

Wow.

Very, very funny.

I really, I really, so I talked up Sonic 1 so much that I got a group of friends to go see it, female friends to go see Sonic 2 because I was like, honestly, Sonic is so good.

I couldn't believe it.

It's lonely and sad and fun and interesting.

And midway through Sonic 2, a friend looked at me and was like, this is terrible.

And I was like, I, I agree.

Let me just tell you something.

I'm sitting in the theater for Sonic 2.

I didn't see the first one in theaters.

Saw it at home

as a COVID release.

Yeah, that was like it was really like the last big theatrical movie before the COVID.

It's the last film I saw at the Arclight.

Jesus,

it's the final film I saw at Arclight with Sonic 1.

So Sonic 2 comes out.

I'm like, I loved Sonic 1.

I got to get out there, see Sonic 2.

I go

opening day.

Wow.

First showing.

It's me and a bunch of dads and kids.

I'm there, a childless adult.

All of us in the theater in the post-credit

scene gasp when we see Shadow in the fucking tube.

And I'm just like, this is what movies are all about.

This is going to the movies.

Yep.

They absolutely, let me just say,

casting, you know, Colleen O'Shaughnessy as Tails for your back and then Idris Elba's Knuckles are both just such fucking home runs.

Yeah.

Just really inspired.

Like you have inspired choice.

Because there's only

there's only like one tails.

Yeah, there's only one tails.

Like, you have to have her.

It's important.

And then Idris Elba also

acting his fucking ass off as knuckles.

If you both feel strongly about being an A-tier, I'm not going to override you.

I just kind of feel like these movies are on another level from everything else.

Nick, I'm with you.

It's an S-tier.

Okay, great.

Let's keep going.

Five Nights at Freddy's, bad.

Oh, that's a really fucking bad movie.

I think that's an F-tier movie.

I think it's just not even a movie.

God damn it.

I I think it's F tier.

I will watch every single one that comes out for some reason.

What?

I think that, you know what?

I actually kind of, can I make a case for D?

Go for it.

I think the animatronics look really good.

And I went to Universal Studios Halloween Horror Nights, and they had them on display, and I got to see them.

And I was kind of like, I kind of like seeing them in that they're real.

No fucking way.

F-tier.

I think it stays in the F tier.

Look, I had to make the case.

I didn't think I was going to get overruled, but i just had to get my feelings out there and say it um i hope freddy fazbear doesn't come to your house in the night and eat you

man

if i've just seen the five nights at freddy's movie maybe putting me out of my misery it's really really bad we did we did an episode about it and it sucks it's rough

borderlands

oh f

oh it's fucking bad i saw that in the theater by myself and it's so fucking bad but now think about this is five nights at freddy's as bad as borderlands no but also borderlands is not as bad as wing commander so it's like yeah like how granular do we want to get these all these movies are just fucking failures and that's where it belongs okay that movie's fucking horrible we're at and you know what's even worse amelia peres

i'm not i'm not kidding no i was i watched that movie with my mouth hung open um and not for any other bad reason

i was just like this movie is insane and bad.

Oh, fuck.

We're at the final movie on the list.

I don't want to say what it is yet because we all know what it is.

I have a proposition for all of us.

I'd like to add an additional tier above S tier.

S plus.

S plus.

Maybe S3?

S with three pluses.

Nick.

That's really good.

Oh,

I messed it up.

Yeah, co-signed.

I think it's a triumph.

Let's add a row above, and we can call it

S.

Wow, it's happening.

And the movie that is going in it, a movie that

people laugh when I say, made it into my top 10 films of 2024.

Sonic the Hedgehog 3.

Yeah.

It's awesome.

It's the one, it's now the gold standard, I think, of video game movie adaptation.

Well, look, I like Detective Pikachu better.

I will go with

the consensus here and put this one up.

And I think it deserves special elevation.

I think it deserves highlighting because I think it just absolutely works so effectively.

But I also just want to say, I think Detective Pikachu is similarly a triumph.

I saw both Sonic 3 and Detective Pikachu with Mary.

Mary did not like Detective Pikachu at all.

Wow.

Sonic 3, she was like, this is great.

The way I came home and spoke to my wife after Sonic 3,

my wife was like, what happened to you at the movie theater?

I was like,

it has everything.

It's so good.

And I'm not even a Sonic.

I'm not a Sonic guy.

I almost like no Sonic games.

I like Sonic 2, the one we played, and I was enjoying Sonic Cross Shadow and a little bit of Sonic Mania.

Gallon Reeves in this movie,

it's like,

it's one of his great performances.

It's really good.

It's really good.

He fucking does the Akira slide up a fucking skyscraper.

They found a way to include the gun, which I was like, there's no way they're going to have that gun.

He has a fucking gun.

Yeah, it's so good.

Jim Carrey is in the movie two times.

Yep.

It's all I've ever wanted from a movie.

It's great.

It's great.

It's really, really great.

What a tier list.

We did it.

We did it, team.

We did it.

Also, like, we're almost at the two-hour mark, and we are the original plan, Matt, you had was to do all video game adaptations, including TV.

So I'm glad we streamlined it.

Yeah, I'm glad.

Well, you made an excellent point.

That's two episodes.

That's its own thing.

Not next week, but you know, later down the line at some point.

We revisit.

Like, never.

We've got to do a segment, but I want to check in with Ranch real quick.

Ranch, first off, did you see the new Tomb Raider?

No, I did not.

And have you, where are you on Detective Pikachu and the Sonic the Hedgehog movies?

I have not seen the Sonic movies.

I did watch Detective Pikachu, and I just remember being very scared of Mr.

Mime.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's

fair.

I think that's fair.

So there's the Mr.

Mime who does the whole...

He does the

act out, right?

During the interrogation.

Do you see like mimes being like being burned alive?

It's crazy.

It's crazy.

But is that what you're the ditto that you were thinking of?

I'm pretty sure it was Mr.

Mime.

It was Mr.

Mime, yeah, yeah.

Because the Dittos are also horrifying.

There's a lot of scary.

Look, Mewtwo is pretty scary too.

Let's not discount Mewtwo.

Well, the world of Pokemon is a horror.

Like, the cards describe things that are nightmarish all the time.

Cubone wears his mother's skull on his head.

Like,

if you look at this Pokemon for too long, you'll go insane.

Like, shit.

You're just like, what?

They're like, yo-kaya, Jason.

Yes, absolutely.

This was great.

I think this is definitive and nobody will be mad.

I think this is good.

No notes.

All right, that was Tears of the Kingdom.

Video game movie adaptations.

Tears, of course, spelled T-I-E-R-S.

It's time for a segment.

It's our video game version of Would You Rather?

It's another edition of Would You Blathers.

I'll read a video game-related scenario, and you tell me which option you'd prefer.

Hell yeah.

This is Would You Blathers Final Fantasy Edition.

Let's go!

Wow!

Would you Blathers

wield Cloud Strife's Buster Sword or wield Squall Leonhart's Gunblade?

This is tough.

Because we've sort of, I feel like I haven't really thought that much about the Gunblade because I have not played that game, but I feel like when we watched

Advent Children and when we've talked about Cloud as a character, we learned that the sword is magnetic and his back is magnetic.

So it seems like it's maybe easier to carry.

I don't know if the same thing applies to the gunblade.

It is, it is heavy as shit, though.

It is heavy.

Like the, you know, I'm trying to remember what the line from Berserk is that inspires that sword.

It's like, it's like more like that.

This thing's fucking heavy.

I think this thing's fucking heavy.

There's a guy on TikTok tock who made the berserk sword and has been training for years

what to be able to wield it

for 2025 so like he so like he started with like just like weight training yeah and then he slowly has been adding weight and adding weight and adding weight and then he added length and now he's got the actual sword and he can swing it around wow and like like like he's he'll swing it around on the beach and he's also gone from being like,

not a ripped dude to a fucking jacked dude.

Yeah, well, that's the thing.

Cloud's ripped.

He's

fucking shredded.

He is.

I'm going to answer this first, I think.

And

here's what I'm going to say.

Gunblade was absolutely my first choice.

My concern with the gunblade has always been, wouldn't using it break your wrist?

Because you're using

on an angle yeah a a an item that you should be clutching straight so like when you hold the buster sword your wrists are secured and straight the gun blade you're you can't your hand is at an angle yeah so i'm i'm choosing gun blade knowing that maybe the first time i swing it i break my own wrist

I'm going to go with the buster sword because that sort of then leaves me open to the possibility of acquiring materia and putting materia within the the little holes of the sword.

You can

a game mechanic in Final Fantasy VIII is that when you strike with the sword, you can click the trigger and add damage.

No, that is really cool.

Which means to me that the gun is loaded and somehow sends

like

charge or something through the blade, which is such a cool idea for a fucking blade.

I'm a gunblade.

Gunblade is also a cool word to hear and say.

Gunblade.

This is my case for a gunblade.

And obviously, the Buster Sword is iconic.

And obviously, Final Fantasy VII has a much longer tale of influence and cultural cachet than Final Fantasy VIII, although I do love Final Fantasy VIII.

The gunblade is both the coolest and the stupidest video game weapon ever made.

It's so fucking dumb, but that's part of its charm.

Yeah.

And I feel like I'd just rather have that.

And also, I feel like part of learning to wield the gunblade is someone will explain to me how it works.

So I'll get a sense of like, okay, I get exactly like what Heather was just saying.

What does firing the trigger on the gunblade do exactly if I time it in precision with striking something?

I think you're wrong about it being stupid.

I think there's a lot of stupid video game weapons.

For example, doesn't Titus wield a sword made out of water?

Like,

sure, I mean, but that's that's that's more conceptual and that's not stupid at all.

That's cool.

Sora's sword is a blunt object.

Let's like, you know what?

I'm not going to say anything about the gunblade.

You stop talking about the keyblade.

I'm saying, here's what I'm saying.

I'm saying that there are iconic video game weapons.

The Keyblade is one of them.

Like, you see a Keyblade and you're like, bam, I know exactly what I'm looking at.

Like, the silhouette of a Keyblade, I know what it is.

Yeah.

You see the gunblade, you're like, holy shit, it's the gun blade.

If you see a buster sword, you might be like, oh, is that Cloud's sword?

Or is that Guts' sword?

Or is that, you know, is that one of the,

was it Svihanders from Demon's Souls?

Like, a big blade is not necessarily iconic.

I love the gunblade, and I don't think it's stupid.

I do think it's stupid, and I also love the gun blade.

Rancher, are you, I imagine you can picture the

buster sword.

Are you familiar with the gun blade?

Not familiar with the gunblade.

Here's a shot of just the gun blade in Iceland.

Oh, that's cute.

Okay, so Ray thinks it's cute.

What the hell?

So is that your vote?

Yeah.

Okay, great.

Next up, would you blathers ride on the deck of an airship or ride on the back of a chocobo?

Fuck.

That's tough because airships are really cool, cool, but it would be a dream to ride a chocobo.

But I would imagine it might be a little bit uncomfortable.

I'd be so fucking scared on an airship that I think that I would have to go chocobo.

And I've also leaned towards it because of how often in

Final Fantasy games, they talk about how chocobos smell really good.

Oh, yeah.

And I love the idea of getting on a mount that also smells nice.

I like that that's in there as if somebody somebody was like

playing it or something and being like, God, I bet those things fucking stink.

So I'm going chocobo.

Matt, what's your verdict?

Well, I'm a pet guy.

Yeah.

I have two cats of my own.

I like the idea of having a chocobo as like a pet and companion and, you know, and mount.

Having a mount is a home run.

That's great.

Yeah.

I love that.

In rebirth, you can put on different armor on them and make them look different ways.

And some of the ways are like cowboy or like tropical or stuff, and that's really really fun.

So, and some of them are different colors, yeah, or blue or brown, yeah, or yellow.

Airship, I've been on an airplane before, I'm good.

I don't need to, I don't need to be up there, I'm down here.

I don't even like standing on the top of a skyscraper.

Like, there's no air.

What are you doing up there?

I gotta look at the city in the night.

You're up there in case anybody is looking up and shouting, save us?

Yeah.

And I'll whisper no.

But

one of the unfortunate losses of the Final Fantasy Battle Royale that I used to play was that you had to breed chocobos.

And the chocobos that you brought into a match had stats based on how good you were at breeding them in like a side mini game.

So you would have chocobos that would have like longer stamina, longer duration of flight.

They'd be like extremely fast for a short amount of time, whatever.

And having that kind of an element, like in, say, Fortnite, you can't bring anything to the island.

But with the Final Fantasy game, you could bring your chocobo, which was such a cool addition to the idea of a battle royale.

Final Fantasy VII also has chocobo breeding.

I remember back in the day, I spent at least 10 hours of game time because I remember what my save time creeping up when I just was,

you know, like getting into chocobo racing, getting into chocobo breeding.

And the end point of that is you get some really high-end materia, but it was like so much.

I got really deep into chocobo breeding.

I think chocobo are fascinating.

I

am into the idea of riding on the back of one.

and familiarizing myself with their distinctive scent that is quite pleasing, apparently.

The thing is, it is such a moment of triumph in any Final Fantasy when you get the airship for the first time and the whole world opens.

Yeah,

that is pretty good.

And I do like the kind of steampunk-y sort of like look of an airship.

I do think it's really cool.

But

ultimately, I don't love to fly.

I definitely, you know, I don't even like being on airplanes.

I will never get in a helicopter.

And the idea of being on an airship that is like, you know, a fucking boat, like a, you know, like an old tri-ream, like a trimasted sailing ship that's also got propellers on top of it.

I, I, no, no, no, thank you.

I'm not dealing with that.

So I'm going with chocobo.

Yeah, absolutely.

And what about the fat one?

Fat chocobo is fun.

Store your items.

That's fun.

Yeah.

Because they're not everywhere.

Yeah, I mean, they kind of are, but like, you gotta, you gotta look for them.

Ranch, you got a uh, you got a preference here?

Deck of an airship, back of a chocobo.

Chocobo's cute.

Yeah, chocobo's really cute.

Let us go.

All right, next up.

Would you rather, I'm sorry, would you blathers?

potential fix it?

Would you Blathers?

I'm giving it in.

Would you Blathers have Clive's face tattoo from Final Fantasy 16 or have Zidane's prehensile tail from Final Fantasy IX?

Tail in a heartbeat.

I hate the tattoo

on a good-looking man.

I hate the tattoo.

Yeah.

I never want that tattoo on my face.

I'd have a monkey tail all day.

Matt's looking up the tattoo.

For a game that I love so much, I like, I forgot what, like,

those people are called.

You know how they're like the ones who get tattoos to

show their allegiance?

What is that?

I don't know.

No, they're like, they're magic users, so they're, they're like the cursed or something.

It's like the phages.

It's like, oh,

they're called bearers.

Oh, bearers.

Yeah.

And

you know what?

I haven't played

that other Final Fantasy game, nine.

Yep.

But I have played 16

a lot.

I've played all the DLC.

I've put a significant chunk of time in it.

I really, really love Final Fantasy 16.

And I already have tattoos.

And if I could align with the Bearers and take on their plight and help them in

taking on the great battles,

I'd do it in a heartbeat.

Wow, you know the likes of Clive?

Wow, and his brother Joshua?

Wow.

You talk about Final Fantasy

16 the way that I talked about Avatar 2

after I saw it, where I knew all of the Navi names and all the like the whale's name, like Tilcum or whatever it was.

It's Payakon, the mighty Tolkoon.

Never mind.

Yeah, I like.

I started a new game plus on Final Fantasy 16 at one point.

God.

I love it.

That makes me both happy and weird.

I feel like happy because I love Final Fantasy as a series so much.

And I'm happy that you found your Final Fantasy because I think that's such a nice like threshold to cross.

It's like, which one is my Final Fantasy?

Yeah.

It's just weird to me that it's that one for you.

I was looking at the spine of the box recently because the Final Fantasy, like the mainline Final Fantasy games, the spines of those games are, to me, are very iconic because it's just, oh, it's a, it's white.

Yep.

And it just says in the Final Fantasy text, Final Fantasy, whatever the number it is.

And I really, really love that.

I got the special edition for Rebirth, and it came in a steel book, and it doesn't have that.

And I do sort of wish I had the other one instead.

Yeah, yeah.

I was listening to the soundtrack to 12 the other day, and I was like, should I replay 12?

It's so good.

I own 12 on Switch.

I've been thinking, I would like to play all of them.

It's still a big project of mine that I'd like to complete at some point.

I have finished nine.

I bounced off of 16.

16 was just, you know what, you know what, Matt's fandom of it makes me feel is like old.

Because I'm just kind of like, this is like for me, I'm just like, this is maybe not what I'm looking for from a Final Fantasy.

Although I do think Final Fantasy VII Remake does a great job of modernizing it.

And I'm, you know, I'm a big fan of that.

And even though I haven't played Rebirth.

Ranch,

I got some images for you.

First up, this is a cosplayer with Clive's face tattoo.

So you can get a sense of this.

Interesting that you couldn't just get a picture of Clive with it on.

I can feel like that's going to be a little more

representative.

Ranch liked it.

Yeah, but it's hard to get a close-up of the tattoo from

in-game.

And then the second is this is Zidane.

This is some fan art of Zidane from Final Fantasy IX.

Kind of not fair because one of them is obviously cuter than the other one.

In Another Life, I had a face tattoo.

Wow.

Wow, let it go.

Nick, what's your answer?

Here's the thing.

Oh, my God.

Even though I like Final Fantasy IX more than 16,

if I have a tail, I'm a freak.

Whereas

I will say...

Really?

The thing that's stopping you is a tail?

Okay.

No, but I mean, like, that's just like a freak.

That's like a freak show thing.

That's my defining attribute.

You're the guy with.

You are using that word like a slur

and it is not good, dude.

I got to go face tattoo.

Holy shit.

That's the only tail in the room.

Yeah, I got to go face tattoo.

I will say with my size, ethnicity, and body type,

and my buzz cut, people have become scared of me.

And if I add a face tattoo, I feel like they're crossing the street when I approach.

Yeah, that's pretty true.

It's pretty

prehensile tail.

I'm in a fucking carnival and I just, I don't want that to be my life.

Yeah,

they don't see, they don't, they don't see fear when they see you with the tail.

They see dollar sign.

Just think about like the, the, the balance that we don't know that we're missing because we don't have a tail.

That's true.

If you have a tail, suddenly you have, you're like, oh, I was always off balance previously.

Yeah.

I also think about like, imagine all the itches you can scratch on your back with your tail.

Yeah.

That's great.

I don't want the tail.

That's actually a good point.

I've just learned something about my tail.

I don't want it to touch me.

Okay, next up.

Would you, Blathers, have your archrival stab your crush to death like in Final Fantasy 7 or have to fight your own dad to the death like in Final Fantasy 10?

I'll answer right now.

I'm fighting my dad.

And you know what?

Dad's going down.

Here's the thing.

I don't want to look, my dad's already dead.

I like my odds, dude.

I'll let you kick his ass again.

Yeah, I don't want Mary to die.

I would never let that happen.

So I've got to have a crush on your wife.

I've got to fight.

I've got to fight with my dad.

And it's your enemy.

It's like the person you're already is like, I can't believe they have that up on me.

Even if I ultimately get revenge, they fucking took that from me.

Yeah, yeah.

I'll give you despair, he says.

Yeah, not that fighting your own dad is a picnic, but I'm just saying, like, you know, dads are really strong, yeah.

I mean, like, you know, you pick that fight the wrong age, you're in a world of hurt.

Yeah, you have to wait till the balance is either equal or in your favor,

little eight-year-old.

Come here, dad, kick your ass.

Ranch, are you fighting your dad or uh letting your crush get stabbed by your enemy?

Let's all kill our dad.

Dads took an L this week on getplayed.

Sorry, dads.

So did Tails.

Crazy.

We still love mommies.

Next up.

We love mommies.

Would you, Blathers, witness the destruction of your reality by apocalyptic energy flare like the end of Final Fantasy 14 1.0

or

accidentally share Tifa Hentai during a work zoom like happened in Italian Parliament?

So this is tough.

Yeah.

Because

one one of these things could happen to any of us.

And

you sort of have to empathize with somebody that's so human.

On the other hand, the other option could also happen to us.

Yeah, that asteroid keeps going up in chance.

Now it's as of record, I think it's one in 42 that it's going to hit us in 2032.

I think that the asteroids are starting to be like, you know what?

I think I'm just going to do it.

It's not like they're in a path.

They're like, I'm actually going going to go that way instead.

Fuck this.

I would rather share T-Vahentai in part because

I'd do it and then I would turn around the camera and give the thumbs up.

Yeah.

And then it becomes a totally different move.

And then so what I would do in that moment is because I would pick the same one,

but my move would be,

how'd you even know what it was?

You've seen it too then.

Yeah.

If you're, if you know what it was enough to identify it,

you saw it,

you've seen it too.

So I actually, I'm normal, actually.

The first Congress person who calls you out and is like, was that Tifa Hentai?

You're like, yeah,

wow.

Ranch, embarrassing porno on Zoom or World Destruction.

Tifa's cute.

Yeah, that's right.

That's right.

Nick, what about...

Is she going to like the gunblade?

She says, Q is the gunblade.

What about you, Nick?

Here's the thing.

no one's being surprised if i'm sharing tifa hentai

and there is something fascinating about witnessing the end of the world like a thing that's been prophesied

and why are you going i will say this when i watched when i've watched video i not i have not played final fantasy 14 i certainly did not play it in its pre-realm reborn era but when i've watched video of that moment it's there's like a serenity amongst all the player base like just everyone in the chat is just kind of like observing the world ending and just sort of standing together.

It's like a moment of humanity.

It's a video game.

It's a fucking video game.

It would be cool to see.

It'd be kind of amazing.

I don't want this shit at all.

You know what's happening.

You're watching the stars fall.

You know, you're watching everything crumble.

The speed with which people would start stabbing each other for no fucking, like the moment that shit is announced, people will just...

At a restaurant, if you're fine, if you find out at a restaurant, somebody in that restaurant's going to stand up, go to another table, and stab a man.

You know why we can't fully relate to this?

People are afraid of Nick because of how he looks.

Nobody's bothering him in a situation like that.

If anything, he's doing it first.

All right, I'm on an island here.

Finally,

in honor of our tier list today, would you Blathers be forced to re-watch Final Fantasy The Spirits Within or be forced to re-watch Kingsglave, Final Fantasy 15?

Kingsclave.

Let's fucking go.

You don't have to force me to watch it.

I own it on Blu-ray.

Let's fucking go.

That's really, really hard because I really dislike both of those movies quite a bit.

Kingsglave is

fine.

You guys are crazy.

I don't think it's fine.

No, Kingsclave makes Final Fantasy Spirits Within look like Avatar the Way of Water.

You guys are nuts.

It's gorgeous to look at.

Kingslave

makes Final Fantasy Spirits Within look like Sonic 3.

Wow.

I think we should watch it again because I think you're starting to color it in your memory.

There's no way we're watching this again.

No, the podcast.

Never, never again.

Unless I play.

You know what?

I have to play.

How about this?

When I roll credits on Final Fantasy XV, I'll give Kingsglaive another go because maybe I'll appreciate it more as somebody who's played the game.

Absolutely not.

Don't do that.

When you finish Final Fantasy XV, you're done.

It's over.

And you'll sit with it and you'll be like,

wow, this was good.

And then you never have to touch King's Glaive again.

Here's the thing.

But every day that goes by that you haven't started Final Fantasy 15, you must watch it.

I like that other option.

That sounds pretty good to me.

Yeah, no, I have to pick Spirits Within.

15 is the only Final Fantasy game that's made me cry.

Wow.

Like, actually, cry like as if I'm watching a TV drama or some shit.

Like a real one.

You haven't seen me in like 10th round of of a boss fight.

When?

When?

I can't win.

Video games never made me cry.

That's interesting.

Uh.

Gosh.

He sounded like.

Have you seen the TikTok guy in China called Yilam Ma?

I have seen that guy.

You sounded like a video game.

Gosh, has a video game made me cry?

I'm sure one has.

I feel like the what's your what remains of Edith Finch probably got close.

The very emotional game

um

I yeah you know what I probably shed a tear when I beat the Elden Lord certainly

it's a good time but not like a sad tear of course but yeah King's King's Glaive did you cry when you accidentally killed me in the hallway um honestly maybe because I was scared that you were gonna come kill me for real

Rochelle remind me I can't remember if you watched King's Glaive with us I think I did I think you did yeah I think you did too did you have you seen seen Spirits Within?

No.

I'll watch that one.

Do you pick that one so you can see it?

It's an interesting fact.

It's an interesting move, honestly.

Unprecedented, actually.

Hey, that's this week's Get Play at our producer is Rochelle Chen.

Ranch, yard underscore underscore sard.

Are you doing any streaming of Alan Wake 2?

Yes, I'm still streaming Alan Wake 2.

That's over at twitch.tv/slash your username, yard underscore underscore sard

yes our music is by benprunty benpruntymusic.com our art is by duck brigade design duck brigade.com and hey check out our patreon patreon.com slash get played where you can find our retirement prehead gum back catalog plus ad-free main feed episodes and also our patreon exclusive show get animated matt what are we watching this week you know what we're watching baby dandadan dandadan dandadan dandadan dandadan dandadan dandadan dandadan dandadan dandadan dandadan dandadan we're loving it we're loving dandadan and Just get in there if you haven't seen it.

It's a hilarious, heartwarming, incredible show.

I think even if you've not ever watched anime, you might love it.

Yeah, and I would say like everyone's got Netflix.

It's the hegemony

amongst streaming services.

So you got Netflix.

Check it out.

Maybe you'll want to join us over on the Patreon if you enjoy the show.

Yeah.

URL, by the way.

Patreon.com slash get played.

Thanks, Matt.

You're welcome.

You know what?

I was going to say you got played, but.

I think we should talk about our merch.

Were you going to say I was going to?

Weren't we ever going to talk about our our merch?

I meant to add that to my notes.

Yeah, we do have merch.

Sweatshirts.

Kinshipgoods.com slash get played for all your get played merch needs.

There's some really incredible stuff.

Kinship has done some really great work for a bunch of great shows.

Now they're supporting us.

So go over there, buy some merch,

and rep your favorite, rep your favorite video game podcast.

How about that?

Yeah, we got a zip-up hoodie there that is so comfortable.

The merchant long-sleeve tee, I don't know if the merchant knows this, is sold out.

That was in such high demand that you can't even get that anymore, but that's a really high quality.

I would never tell that man.

Oh, no, yeah, he's going to want to cut.

There's a logo shirt, there's a logo dad hat, there's a logo sticker, and then there's a button set that includes a get played logo, a hello, everyone, a get played red ring of death, which is a design Kinship came up with, which I really like, and a ranch button.

So that's a lot of fun.

So check that out.

We love it.

And hey, there you go.

But you were going to back to this real quick.

Yeah.

You were going to say I got.

I was going to retract it because I was like, don't know, I thought you did a good job shouting out the URL.

Hey, thanks, man.

Yeah, I think I did do a good job with that.

Yeah, you sure did.

Did I watch Kingsglaive in

Apple Vision Pro?

Was that how I watched it most recently?

So, I'm gonna watch it again with a gun in my mouth.

That was a head gun podcast.

Quick, time to choose a meal deal with McValue.

The $5 McChicken meal deal, the $6 McDouble Meal Deal, or the new $7 daily double meal deal.

Each with its own small fries, drink, and four-piece wet nuggets.

There's actually no rush.

I'm just excited for McDonald's.

Price anticipation may vary.

What's up, everybody?

I'm Kyle Mooney.

And what's up, everybody?

I'm back by.

And man, ooh, we got something to tell you.

Oh, yeah, we definitely do.

Yes, it's a brand new podcast on Headgum.

That's right, and it's called What's Our Podcast?

Yep, and that's because we don't have a single idea what our podcast should be about.

Yeah, we don't.

So we actually have guests come on and they tell us what they think our podcast should be about, and then we try it.

Yep, guests like Mark Marin, Jack Black, Brittany Broski, Cape Berlin, Bobby Moynihan, Make Stalter, and Tim Ball, Landon Axler, Joel,

Joni McGrease,

and Dender.

And Dender.

New episodes release every Wednesday.

So subscribe to What's Our Podcast on YouTube on YouTube or any of your favorite podcast platforms.

Yeah.

I'm going to go do it right now.