Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance with Brendan James

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All right, team, look,

I know we're very close to shipping this game here.

The title is a big issue right now.

It's been rejected.

It was originally going to be Metal Gear Solid Rising.

It's a no at corporate.

So So we have to, we got to just retitle this bad boy.

So we're taking any and all pitches.

What do you guys, what do you guys got?

All right.

So,

you know, I want to have that sense of action, that intensity, that conflict.

So my pitch is Metal Gear Rising Retrovolution, which is like retribution and revolution.

Oh, okay.

Okay.

Retrovolution.

Retrovolution.

I'm just going to say that that's a confusing word.

Okay, okay.

That's tough to hear.

It's a good first pitch, though.

I actually have something that's a little bit, you know, kind of maybe like a pitch on that pitch.

Retributaliation.

Metal gear rising, retributaliation.

So it's like retaliation.

It's retribution and retaliation.

Yeah.

And those in some ways are a similar word.

Yeah, like the same word, like synonyms.

When you put them together, and it's like an extreme version.

So it's just a little redundant, I think, to have the,

it doesn't work.

All right, all right.

How about that?

this i like i like sticking with metal gear rising though but i think we can go further than metal metal gear rising

aggression

which is aggression and assassination that's really good aggressination look that

that is really good but i just know that they're never gonna go for something like that who is they corporate corporate aren't we corporate like every time we have these conversations creative okay okay okay we gotta never you'll never see me wearing a suit.

Okay, we got to convince corporate.

All right, all right.

How about this?

Metal Gear Rising.

Payback.

Oh, Shakolaka.

Is that a real one?

Kind of like an NBA Jam sort of take.

Yeah, okay.

You know,

I get it.

It just doesn't, it's not really cohesive with the Metal Gear brand, you know.

All right.

What else you got?

Metal Gear Solid

Recompense,

which is recompens an insect.

That's pretty good.

How about this?

Metal Gear Rising, homicycle of violent but deadly.

Could you give me that one again?

Homicycle of violent but deadly.

So it's like homicide?

Yeah, but cycle of violence.

Cycle of violence.

But silent but deadly.

Silent but deadly.

Like a fart?

Well, yeah, by any means, it's not, it's a fart thing.

Metal gear rising

a nalahore

so that's

I just want to be really careful with this one.

I just want to be extremely careful with this one.

Well, I'm thinking about how we're like taking a taking like a sword to the cannon.

So that's annihilation and lore.

That's good.

Okay.

Annihil horror.

I was just really worried about what the two parts were.

How about this?

See if this sets off any red flags.

Metal Gear Rising.

Diarrhea Assassin.

We know that we can't do that one.

You know that we can't put that one.

No, because

the A becomes A in a

I know that this is like ultimately a futile and thankless task.

It makes me want to get some sort of

like revenge against corporate, but I just don't know if I have the

vengeance within me to

I said that I don't have the vengeance within me to enact.

But you also said you also said revenge.

Revenge and vengeance.

Revenge.

Wait, wait, wait.

Hold on.

Revenge.

Vengeance.

Revenge.

Vengeance.

What about

vengeance?

Like that?

Metal Gear Rising.

Vengeance.

Coming soon.

We enter blade mode and battle a nano machine-enhanced U.S.

Senator as we discuss much-memed Metal Gear spin-off Metal Gear Rising Revengeance 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, Heatheran Campbell, along with my fellow host, Nick Weiger.

That's me, Nick Weiger, I'm here with our third host, Matt Apodaka.

Hello, everyone.

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the premiere video game podcast, where I'm very excited about this week's episode because we're talking about a game in the Konami Pantheon.

Developed and produced by Platinum Games.

It's Metal Gear Rising Revengeance.

Yeah, I mean, one of the all-time great subtitles.

We'll get into it, but it's, you know,

there's a lot to discuss here.

This is a game that came out in 2013 that has had a resurgence in recent years because

a revengeance.

Thank you, Heather.

Thank you for the correction in recent years.

Partly because it is, once again, you know, another Kojima-affiliated game that has been kind of prescient about our, you know, political reality.

We'll get into that one second.

I do have a couple quick announcements.

First off, our producer, Rochelle Chen, ranches back after a Fortnite absence.

Nice to see you, Rochelle.

Good to be back.

Wait, wait, wait.

You weren't playing Fortnite this whole time you were gone, right?

Yeah, I was.

Sorry.

What the hell?

What Fortnite skin are you using these days?

Still Eminem?

No, I'm not using Eminem anymore.

I'm back to a generic anime character called the Yuki.

Yeah, that's a good choice.

Another announcement real quick.

Welcome back, Ranch.

Yeah.

Are you going to ask me ever that question?

What Fortnite skin are you using?

I use the Terminator.

I know it's either Terminator or Xenomorph.

No, I use Ivor when I'm not Terminator.

Okay, sorry.

I apologize.

Those are my two.

Also, one is...

Didn't you use the Xenomorph at a certain point?

Yeah, when I first started playing the game.

But it's weird to see that the Xenomorph holding a gun is what I've decided.

It's really, yeah, it's really asynchronous.

It's the same as buff Peter Griffin holding a gun.

It's just like, what is going on here?

So,

you're asking, Nick, that meant a lot to me.

Of course.

Another announcement next week's.

Matt, what Fortnite skin have you been using?

I don't really play it anymore.

Yeah, me neither.

Another announcement.

Next week's episode, we will be doing a We Play You Play on Astrobot, the new PS5 platformer that we all have a lot of thoughts on.

We've all been playing.

We're like, why not?

Let's just do an episode about it.

So that'll be coming next week if you want to play along and you want to join in on that.

But right now, I want to introduce our guest.

He co-hosts Blowback, a podcast about the history of the American Empire.

Season 5, Cambodia, is available now at blowback.show.

Brendan James is here.

Hi, Brendan.

Hi, everybody.

Thanks for having me.

Thanks so much for making time for us.

Congrats on season five.

Very excited for it.

I'm a big fan of the show.

The work you all do is really, really impressive and I think necessary.

So

God bless you.

On that note, we went to you and we asked you about some things that we could possibly discuss today.

And one of the things you mentioned was a name I had not heard in a long time, Gex the Gecko.

Yeah.

Did you play Gex back in the day?

I remember when I was on Doughboys, we got into a loop of.

I reminded you that Dana Gould played Gex, he was the voice of Gex.

That's right, that's what it was.

Yeah, we talked about we because we were talking about Banjo-Kazooie, and then we ended up talking about a bunch of like nostalgic video games.

And yes, the Dana Gould Gex connection.

But then you said Dana Gould was Gex, and I said Dana Gould was Gex.

And then you said it again, and I said it again, and it just became this sort of mantra of this like soothing,

soothing fact about like that game from 1997.

but yeah i played all of those i played the first one which was the side-scroller on the ps1 and then the um the second one where he's like a secret agent and then the third one where i they basically do that again and they're not good

but i know i miss i miss them i miss him it's it was that interesting era and heather you maybe remember this as well but like this post sonic the hedgehog era of of mascot games where they were everyone was like well we should come up with our new kind of like you know edgy mascot we we had of course, we've talked about Bubsy Bobcat at length on here, but there's also Arrow the Acrobat.

Earthworm.

Earthworm Jim was part of that.

Bloomberg man.

Glover.

Castle?

Glover, yes.

Glover, very much so.

And then Restar?

Yeah, and then Conquer's Bad Fur Day became the ultimate expression of that.

Yes.

But yeah, Gex, I like those.

That was a...

I remember him being particularly annoying.

Yes.

Maybe I'm wrong about that.

They tried to sort of,

he was closer to the Conquer side of things where he had like risque, you know, stuff for the adults, I guess.

But they tried to give him a catchphrase, which was, it's tail time because he, he has a tail, I guess.

Like, yeah, sure.

It isn't even the most.

I have that as a tramp stamp on my back.

Yeah.

For some people, it really caught on, obviously.

But, but, uh, even as a kid, I'm like, like, he would, he would, like, make little quips about like, um, Jerry Garcia and like, don't, don't go to his, his cocktail party because because you'll like drink an acid drink or something.

It was like stuff that was flying fully over the heads of the nine and ten year olds who were playing Gex, I think.

Yes.

Yeah.

The 40-year-old game developers.

It was like references that were meaningful to them.

Not that they're funny, just riff, Dana.

No, no, no.

Yeah, it wasn't the Simpsons.

It wasn't The Simpsons writer's room writing the Gex copy, I don't think.

Right.

That would be a completely different history.

Gex would be known as one of the funniest things ever.

And I am comforted by that it is Dana Gould, though, for some reason.

I do like that.

He is.

Yeah, I was like, he is kind of a poochie

in a sense.

Gex is, yeah, very much so.

The Simpsons thing is so weird because I just, I remember like being like 11 and like laughing at a joke about Gorvey Dahl, a man I did not know who he was or what the like, like I just, but just like the way this, it was presented on the show.

I was like, oh, that's a funny, that's a funny punchline.

Yep.

I used to watch reruns of Late Night with Conan O'Brien.

Yeah.

And Abe Vogoda was a frequent character on that show.

And I thought he was so funny, but I had no idea who he was.

I didn't know because he was just like an old man that they would wheel out.

Yeah.

But he's like a, you know, he's like a sitcom star.

He knows how to turn a joke.

But like he's a great performer.

But yeah, he just was kind of brought out as like a living prop.

And I think part of it is like, obviously, he was doing funny stuff, but like half of the joke is, look at Abe Vogoda's here.

And I was like,

I guess that's cool.

I don't know.

I don't know who this fucking old guy is, but I love him.

I love it.

It's like Mystery Science.

That was Mystery Science Theater 3000 for me, where I mean, half of those jokes for a nine-year-old, they're talking about, they were talking about like Reagan and the Contras.

They were talking about, you know,

Al Gore and stuff.

And I laughed because I knew they had set it up well and executed it well without knowing whatever the substance was.

And that's the that show is a miracle.

It is.

It is probably still my favorite show of all time.

So,

you know, I was going to say that I don't have a lot of experience in the arena that you're describing, but my similar experience is that the very first anime I ever watched, Project Echo, was a parody of other anime.

Wow.

And I had no idea that it was a parody.

So I was just like, wow, this is fun and funny.

And I didn't know that these were specific references.

I was just having a good time.

That was a huge part, I think, of the Austin Powers audience.

I think there were a lot of people who did not understand that Austin Powers was a parody of like not just

like James Bond, obviously, but like in like Flint, all these like classic like British spy movies.

They just had, they had no context for it.

I learned that.

It's still funny, though.

I learned that like four years ago.

Like, I had no idea.

I thought they were just like, he just made up a guy and like made up all this stuff.

Gold member.

That's funny.

Yeah, that's hilarious.

I love it.

Gold finger.

What the fuck?

That sucks.

Okay, I also wanted to ask about the Odd World franchise because these are games I have played.

I played specifically Oddworld, Abe's Odyssey, and Abe's Exodus, which were the first two 2D games.

And then there was the Xbox one.

I didn't play the shooter.

I don't know if you played that one, but there was the game with, I think it was Munch's Odyssey.

Munch's Odyssey was the Xbox first one in 3D.

And then Stranger's Wrath was like a kind of third-person adventure action one that I never played.

Okay.

I never played that one.

I did play all the ones you just said.

The best ones are the first two.

Yeah, really good.

And then the

realizing all the games I suggested to you are like pre-1999 games.

Like, I don't think I have any cred past that year, except for the Metal Gear series, maybe, but, and Resident Evil.

But

the

later ones, they kind of remastered the early ones, and then they came out like 30 years later with a sequel, an official sequel called Soulstorm, and I played that, and

it was quite good.

So, you know,

show Oddworld some love, everyone out there, and go buy their new game game or newish game.

Abe's still kicking.

Oddworld was one of those games that was,

if I'm not misremembering, was in the vein of the original Prince of Persia,

Flashback, Out of This World.

Wasn't it like kind of a intricate

semi-puzzle, two-dimensional

side-scroller?

It was like a puzzle platformer, precision platformer, and

you had to go through a series of screens.

There were a lot of like, so

you were

an enslaved factory worker in this dystopian, you know, alien reality.

And

a lot of it was recruiting other of your allies to like help you solve puzzles.

You saved other factory workers.

That's what was so neat about it, at least for me as a kid.

It's like you didn't have any weapons.

You didn't kill anybody.

You could eventually...

kind of rig things up to kill your enemies, but you were just supposed to save people.

That was like your points.

It wasn't how many people you killed.

It was how many people you saved.

And it had a good sense of humor.

It's actually weirdly kind of presaging Avatar in a way, because you're a blue guy.

Oh, sure.

And

you're fighting this industrial evil

kind of like exploitative species.

But it was really fun.

And

it was kind of one of the first games, I think it was a launch title for the PS1.

and had really gorgeous cutscenes that integrated well like into the gameplay.

And as much as Final Fantasy VII VII and indeed Metal Gear kind of got credit for that, I think Oddworld was sort of doing a lot of that before many others.

Yeah, definitely not at that tier of popularity.

No.

But

a game I remember really enjoying.

And yeah, I thought that they were just going to kind of keep making them.

But I think that developer.

Actually, is Oddworld Inhabitants?

I mean, is that who made

the Soul Star?

Yeah, I guess

they're not.

They got back together or something, or it was sort of kick-started in some way.

I should mess around with the new one because I have heard that it is good, and I did enjoy the original.

But yeah, the character design that you mentioned is just

a big part of what's so appealing about it.

They're really, really cool looking.

Your main character, Abe, in the first couple, is really cool.

And then

the evil aliens also have a really cool look to them.

Yeah, the slug, the slug executive, they're like little slugs.

They got big shoulder pad suits.

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Do you have, because like, as someone who operates so much, you know, professionally, like you're exploring and researching the political sphere, you're so conscious

you know, the, the, the evils that exist in the world.

Do you have any,

like, does that color, like,

because I sometimes feel that like, and, and, and I'm not somebody who's as plugged in or as knowledgeable as you, but like, if I'm playing like a historical, like, strategy game, you know, I'm sometimes like so hyper-conscious of like, oh, well, this is a game where like colonization

and conquest is like a gameplay mechanic, you know, I know a lot of people feel that playing, like, I don't play shooters, but a lot of people playing like military, like first-person shooters are like, this is kind of weird because this, this product is just kind of propaganda.

And what my player character is doing in this is actually, you know, pretty horrendous.

Do you ever have those feelings about video games or inactive experiences?

If anyone's interested, I mean, on a, on a blowback,

you know, video game

crossover, that's a fun episode back in season one.

But no, I, you know, I, um, the only games I can really say I ever felt queasy about with that, because I am a believer in, you know, there's a way to enjoy nasty things in art or culture without, you know, believing in

their

moral value in the real world.

I do think the Call of Duty games gross me out.

Yeah.

They're just, you know, maybe I also think they're art fun, so that's why I'm making the, I'm picking them.

But God, there's some just vile stuff in those games.

And then Oliver North is in them.

It's just, it's so, they really just like went for it.

So that's the only one that comes to mind for me because I talk about strategy games.

Like I loved StarCraft as a kid.

Yeah.

I never, of course, that's in space.

That hasn't happened yet.

But I never played like Command and Conquer or the other ones.

I don't know a lot.

I basically know all the games you've said and none other, no others.

So I didn't really explore.

maybe some of the other more nasty real world references when I was playing games as a kid when i uh got my sega master system the first game my parents gave me was a game called aztec adventure which i have an image of right here you know yeah a tip a traditional um god that ipad is so nice thank you so much just seeing that screen right now it's like that's so nice thank you yeah heather's got the best tablet in the room Anyway, it sucks.

Anyway,

so the core mechanic of Aztec Adventure was that you were

like a Spanish colonist or Zawodi colonizer.

And there would be like all these like Aztec soldiers that were like dogs and cats and bunnies, but they were still soldiers.

Right.

And in order to

progress through the level, you could throw money at them until they would join your side and attack their friends.

And so like your, your goal going through the game would be to like assemble a small, uh, a small collection, like a party of bribed locals who would then help you slaughter

their villages.

And as a kid, you were just like, Yahoo, yay!

I gotta throw money at these guys.

And then, as an adult, you're like, what the fuck is that kids' game?

That's, that's a nightmare.

Sounds like edutainment to me.

Yeah, that's crazy.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's, it's a,

look, a lot of this stuff is a nightmare.

But you, you are, Brendan, there are some games that you are, that you do know very well, and those are the, the, the Metal Gear games.

I mean, I'm curious about Kojima games in general.

Did you ever, did you ever mess around with Death Stranding or a game like Snatcher back in the day?

Did those ever connect with you?

I haven't played the Snatcher stuff.

I have

only played, other than the Metal Gear series, I have only played Death Stranding.

And I was late to it because that came out during COVID, right?

It was another one of his prophetic moments.

Right before it.

His prophetic moments.

I just, because I didn't get to Metal Gear.

I'm relatively new to Metal Gear itself, all things considered, until after the pandemic, because during lockdown, or after lockdown,

I got an Xbox during lockdown because I was like, well, if I'm going to regress.

This is probably the time to do it.

I'm going to buy a video game system.

Because I hadn't played video games since I was a kid.

I did not play them in high school.

All the best games are coming out.

Resident Evil 4 is coming out.

Halo 2 is coming out.

I'm missing all of it.

And then in college, I kind of, you know, screwed around with maybe a Wii game here or there in the dorm room or whatever, but I didn't play myself.

So it was only a couple of years ago with the pandemic, I started playing.

And that's when I started playing Metal Gear.

So then Death Stranding, I got to, and I really enjoyed it.

I hated the sections where you had to shoot stuff.

I felt It felt like you had to find Mads Mickelson and shoot him in the head five times

and then run away again.

And it felt like a weirdly like, felt like the studio demanded that he put in a stealth section for like, I don't know, Kojima trademark reasons.

And I didn't like that.

But I loved the rest of the game and I'm excited for the second one.

Yeah, it's, I mean, I thought it was an awesome experience.

I did take some time to warm up to it.

And I know what you're talking about, those little interlude chapters are like, they're not gameplay-wise.

They're not the funnest part of the game, but I think, you know, story-wise, they tie in pretty well.

But we're all huge Death Stranding fans here.

I mean, it's like, it's, I don't know, it's, it's kind of peak Kojima in a lot of ways.

Yeah, it's a phenomenal experience.

And also,

um, you know, playing it.

So I think I started playing it December 2019.

So I was done with it as

pandemic came down,

but then was just like, what, what is happening?

What, how is this?

I just finished this thing.

Yeah.

Like the moment we started like cheering for delivery people, I was like,

I feel like I've gone mad.

Yeah, you're just thinking about like, thanks, Sam.

You're a hero for delivering all this manga.

Also, it was, it was like, it was the sound, because it was the most recent game I'd finished.

It was the soundtrack that I listened to when I was walking taking a walk on like the abandoned streets of Los Angeles.

I'm almost positive we talked about this on the podcast because we had the same experience.

I remember that like walking around with earbuds and listening to the Death Stranding soundtrack where there's like no one is out.

People who are out are wearing masks outside because

no one knew what we were supposed to be doing.

And then, yeah, it's exactly like I felt like I could just yell, I'm Sam.

Start pushing somewhere.

I built one of those big lobby garages that people could, you know, heel in and bring their motorcycle into just so you know when I got my treats, you know, it was

everyone wins, you know.

That's just doing your part.

All right, well, one more question for you, Brandon.

A question for the room, actually, is what are you playing?

What are you playing?

Hi, is me the Resident Evil Merchant, and I'm always here asking the same question every week.

What are you playing?

McGwagger, what are you playing?

You seem especially haggard this week.

Are you all right?

I've got too many many jobs right now.

Oh, boy.

Yeah, you got a streamline.

I gotta.

You have more than one job.

Yeah, I've got four jobs.

Four?

Four jobs.

And I'm paying the bills with just selling stuff under your trench coat.

No, no, no.

I guess my thought was his only job was this.

So his job as a merchant is one.

This is the second one.

Two.

Okay.

And then two additional bills.

I finally got a job at La Colum, the coffee shop.

And

my final job is i'm a washer at crossroads so you uh crossroads is a

secondhand clothing store yeah uh where you can you can uh donate or sell items to the store yeah uh and then you can buy

and then and that was what was attractive attractive about this place for me well you're also like oh i'm buying and selling i get it yeah what are you buying what are you selling it's your it's your it's your trade already right but you're also like talking about stuff that's

within walking distance of the head gum studio.

So I feel like you're just kind of spending time.

Yeah, I like to keep it local.

So

I've got too many jobs.

I'm working around the clock.

Not to dox myself, but a little too close to my house there, Resident Evil Merchant.

We had an agreement.

I know where Nick lives.

I have no idea where you live.

You'll never find me.

Always sounds like a threat when you say it.

I'll answer your question, which is, at Resident Evil Merchant, I've been playing this game 80 Days.

This was developed by Inkle, and this was released back in 2014.

This is one of those games that got a bunch of Game of the Year praise from like the New Yorker, you know, like a bunch of non-gaming publications, which for me as someone who like plays a lot of games, like I'm always a little skeptical of like this is like going to be like kind of like a like a mist, if you will, like a game for non-gamers, but it is really cool.

It is a narrative game that is based on the Jules Verne novel, as you might infer from the title, with a little bit of more steampunk to it.

I'm playing it on iOS, but it is on Steam, it's on Switch, it's on every platform at this point.

It's been ported everywhere.

And the highlight is just, first off,

the quality of the writing.

It's very, very high.

It's like a...

It's up there with some of the better written games,

the choice-based narrative games that are out there, but also just the quantity of language.

I'll just read a little bit from The Guardian piece about it.

Meg Gianth was the lead writer on this, and this is the excerpt from The Guardian.

Their journey described in Jules Verne's Around the World in 80 Days is complete in a little over 60,000 words.

80 Days the Game, by contrast, contains more than half a million words.

Although you have to play many times before you read them all, the average full playthrough exposes you to about 2% of the game's available text.

So it is just a daunting sort of thing.

It's, you know, I'm a few hours into it, but it's like 50 hours to not complete one playthrough, but basically to see all the game's content.

It's just, there's just an enormous amount within it.

But it's a really cool game.

I'm going to keep playing it.

And part of what I like about it is that Inkle uses their in-house engine, the Ink engine, is now open source and free to use for everybody.

So people can develop their own games with it, which I don't know.

It's just nice when a developer does that.

But yeah, 80 days.

That's what I've been playing.

I love to hear this.

I love it when every time Nick brings up a game and it's like, I haven't heard about this.

It's not on my radar and it sounds fascinating, but also ultimately not from me.

Yeah, I'm always thinking I'm constantly playing games that Heather would hate.

But I love hearing about them.

In a a way, it's kind of like you're my Twitch stream to games that I would never actually enjoy.

I do, for some reason, the story of around the world in 80 days, to me, that's one of the great stories.

I love it.

I love the idea of trying to go around the world in 80 days.

It's pretty good.

It's funny that there used to be a time when going around the world was like...

The craziest thing you could do.

Circumnavigating the globe was this daunting prospect.

Challenging somebody to a race that big is funny to do.

I don't know.

Don't take this the wrong way.

This sounds like something Trump might be saying right now in a speech in a rally.

This is like,

I just have 80 days.

No one could do 80 days now.

We used to do 80 days, 180 days.

Now what we're doing, we're so stupid.

I just love the idea of him getting in a loop

around the world in 80 days.

I can hear it.

Sorry, I interrupted.

I do unfortunately

think and talk exactly like him.

Yeah, I can tell.

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Matt, what are you playing?

I'll tell you what I'm playing.

Well, you'll hear about what I'm really playing next week when we talk about Astrobot.

I can't get enough Astrobot.

I have lots to say about it, and I'll have a lot to say about it when we talk next week.

But I found out recently, as of a few days ago, that my family no longer was in possession of my original PlayStation 1.

Wow.

And I don't know what happened.

I don't know what happened to that.

I have my PlayStation 2, everything else beyond that.

But for some reason, I didn't travel.

I didn't leave the home with my PlayStation 1.

I just assumed it was going to be there safe for the rest of my life.

And I dig it up one day when I'm like going through some stuff over there or whatever.

I'd be like, oh, look, it's my PlayStation 1.

Nowhere in the house, nowhere on the property.

It's gone.

So, what do I do?

I go to eBay and I fucking write this wrong.

And I get, I don't get the original model, which was what I had, but I got the redesigned PS1.

That's a slick piece of hardware.

It's so,

I'll go as far to say it's cute.

It's a cute little boy.

It's a cute little guy.

I love it.

I had no way of

knowing if it worked because I don't have a TV with the red, yellow, or white cables, but I did buy an adapter.

I do have access to a CRT that I just don't have in my home.

I'd love to hear that, Matt.

You have to know how much I love to hear that.

Thank you.

It's in my

fiancé's parents' house, but I just don't have space for it.

But I bought an adapter because I was like, I need to make sure this worked.

I bought two games for it.

Tony Hawks Pro Skater 1, which is due to arrive,

and Crash Team Racing, because those are two of my favorite ones.

I bought two controllers.

I was like, oh, these are like sort of, I don't know what I'm going to bust this out.

I don't know what the plan is.

I just know that I needed to have this.

No, I get it.

And I booted it up.

I was looking,

it came with a memory card and a controller.

So I'm like, what's on this memory card?

Is there anything on this memory card?

Thinking there'd be nothing on it,

I was delightfully incorrect.

There were some save files on it for Resident Evil 2, for Siphon Filter, for

Croc.

Speaking of

before,

Rayman, Crash 2,

Star Wars,

Jedi Battles, I think it's called.

And then

there were three character saves for Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3,

but on the save files, you can say what they named their characters.

And I'm just going to read what the characters' names were or what the saves were saved as.

I'll go from

less bad to most bad.

Okay, great.

Alcoholica,

which which i'm gonna assume was like a a

a custom character yeah fucky bucky

which i'm gonna guess was a bucky lassic uh save and then finally the first one that caught my eye

tony cock bit

And that's that's why I think eBay is the most magical website we have.

Because this came from another person on earth.

This is a Metal Gear related episode, so I'm picturing Psychomantis in the first game

reading.

Ah, I see you've been playing as Tony Cock bitch.

Put your controller on the ground.

It was pretty alarming.

I don't know if everything came.

from the same person, the console, the controller,

the memory card, but as one package,

it was quite a steal.

$60 for all three of those.

Hey, there you go.

So not bad.

It would have been free if my family respected me at all.

But that's it for me.

Brendan, what are you playing?

Well,

you guys might be about to make some news here on the show, actually,

because

I have recently finished my first ever From Soft Souls-type game.

Wow.

I've never played one of those before.

And I had a blast.

It was Bloodborne.

I started with Bloodborne.

Wow.

Wow.

I love it.

And I,

you know, I'm sure this is a well, well-worn story for people who play, but, you know, the first, first couple hours, I'm like, I'm going to give this another day.

And if I get past the first area, I'll be amazed, you know, and, and if I don't, I'm just going to put it down and, and that's that.

And then, you know, flash forward, it was like two weeks later.

I found every boss.

I did the whole DLC.

I was loving it, loving it, loving it.

And I'm only worried now that none of the others are going to quite scratch the itch that the specific system of Bloodborne did.

But

I absolutely had a blast.

So it was awesome.

Do you have any plans to play, you know, go on and play, you know, OG Dark Souls or Elden Ring or Sekiro or anything?

So we'll get, I guess, you know, it, it was, it was weird because I wanted to next play Sekiro,

but then we were going to play Metal Gear Rising, and they're both sword games.

Right.

And I started to, I did start playing both, but I started to fuck up in one because I was using the system of the other and because they're kind of different, obviously.

Very much so, yeah.

And so I just put, I put Sekiro away so I could give the best performance for this show with the actual assigned game.

But I want to get back to Sekiro because I was enjoying it as well.

Yeah, I love Sekiro.

Sekiro, so I finished Sekiro.

This was a thing I'd been meaning to do and I finally got around to it last year and I just had an absolute blast with it.

But I also like, you know,

I only recently got around to finally finishing Elden Ring and I'm going through the DLC now.

I mean, I think what you're describing is like a pretty common experience

to a lot of people with Fromsoft games of just like maybe taking a while to warm up to them.

But once you do, it's like,

it's just so, it's, it's like nothing else.

It's just that I know that there's, you know, maybe there's other games where the combat is more essential.

Like, I get the feeling that Fromsoft is about the exploration and the level design and things like that and the world building.

But I really did start to dig the like waltz, you know, of the combat where you retreat and then you swing back and they get their moment, but you have to know the rhythm of like the enemy.

And I had never really played a game like that.

I, I, you know, we've just discussed, I haven't played a game past the year 1996.

So I, I don't really, I wasn't aware of what's addicting about these, uh, games.

And so

yeah,

every time you kind of feel like a god for beating the last boss, the game just kind of gets that much more difficult going forward.

And you're never totally cruising or comfortable.

It's always a really lovely challenge.

So yeah,

I'm going to sink my teeth into Sekro and then maybe Elden Ring after that.

I love it.

Heather, what are you playing?

Well, I've been playing this month's We Play, You Play, Astrobot.

And since I want to save my thoughts about Astrobot until next week's episode, instead I'd like to share an interview that dropped today with Tetsu Nomura about Kingdom Hearts

five.

Which one is it?

Four.

It's Kingdom Hearts Four.

Because there are some interesting...

Matt's face was very displeased when you said five instead of four.

Well, here's what I was worried that I skipped one.

Here's what confused me about it is because he...

calls this in the interview Kingdom Hearts 13 because it is the 13th game of Kingdom Hearts.

Oh, sure.

Okay.

So I was like, wait, which one is it again?

Anyway, there's a couple nuggets.

It's sorry.

Like, actually, number 12 was memory bliss remembered, re-remembered for Nokia engage.

There's some interesting tidbits in the interviews, and I'm not going to read the whole thing,

but one of them is,

the question is, in the Kingdom Hearts series, there are so many foreshadowing elements that span the series.

So how do you keep track of those?

No more answers.

As I've mentioned previously, I write a lot in my notes, but I also make sure the staff remember, and I like watching videos.

So, I watch playthrough videos and reviews on YouTube.

Basically, rather than looking back on my notes, I make sure the staff remembers what happened in past titles.

So,

what Nomura is stating in this answer is that he's watching the same Kingdom Hearts lore videos that we watch when we are trying to make sense

of the Kingdom Hearts series.

And it's informing what he thinks about it.

Yeah.

He also talks about there is a brand new mobile game that's going to be coming out called Kingdom Hearts Missing Link.

Yes.

And that the two of these things are a new entry point.

Kingdom Hearts 4 and Kingdom Hearts Missing Link are going to be new entry points into the series.

So you don't have to know any of the canon of the rest of the series in order to jump right in.

He also says that this is a prequel to all of these games and that he is so interested in retiring soon.

Here, I'll read the

maybe I can read this

reply.

I only have a few years left until I retire, and it's looking like, will I retire or will I finish the series first?

I'm making Kingdom Hearts 4 with the intention of it being a story that leads to the conclusion.

So he's eyeing the end game on Kingdom Hearts after, what, 22 years as of today since the first one,

since the first one came out.

Anyway, I thought it was a really interesting interview.

It was in

today's, as a record,

what is this?

It's September 18th

interview in Young Jump.

And there's a bunch of translations of it online, and you should check them out.

This is not a news broadcast.

Is he really, yeah, it's not a news news podcast?

Is he really approaching retirement age?

I just looked up.

He's 53.

He's not that old.

Yeah, but these games, like, they take so fucking long.

Like, if he's going to do like

two more games.

Oh, I see what you're saying.

Yeah, that's, that's like 12 years in the future by the time they come out.

Yeah.

So, like, he's, if, if he's going to do two more games, Kingdom Hearts 4 and Kingdom Hearts 5, then that takes him to retirement age, which is wild.

Yeah.

All right, let's talk about Metal Gear Rising Revengeance, as Heather mentioned, 2013, developed by Platinum Games, Bayonetta, Nier Automata, some of their more famous games.

This was a Kojima supervised spin-off of Metal Gear focused on combat as opposed to stealth, mostly sword combat, though there are some other armaments.

It follows as a player character, Metal Gear Solid 2 and 4's Raiden as a blade-wielding cyber soldier battling sinister private military corporations who are working to extract the brains of children to build a cyborg army.

I want to read a little bit from an interview on platinumgames.com that came out in 2013 with the scenario writer Etsu Tamari from Metal Gear Rising Revengeance.

He writes:

Even if a game has a good story, if the gameplay sucks, it's shit.

Making gameplay interesting requires a repeating process of creating something and tearing it down.

For example, the game's maps might look interesting on paper, but once you try working them into the game itself, you realize they're boring.

That happens a lot.

Written plans will never convey how the game truly feels, and as such, will never be an indication as to whether or not a game is actually fun.

And I think that's important because this game fucking rocks.

It's really fun.

And, you know,

there was some skepticism pre-release, I remember, of this game, and people were just kind of like, what is this thing?

And, you know,

it looks kind of like a dumb half-ass spin-off.

And, but then it comes out, and everyone's like, oh, we like this.

And it actually felt like it developed a cult fandom.

You sold very well, sold to a million copies, but then like developed this cult fandom that was like advocating for it and had it grow in popularity over time.

I actually bought this on

Steam Sale, I want to say a couple of years ago, but I'd never actually played it.

I just saw it was like, you know, whatever, $4.99 or whatever, one that on deep discount.

And I was like, oh, I want to play this someday.

And so this episode ended up being an excuse to get into this game.

And I will say, yeah,

I think it's super fun.

Brendan, you mentioned that

you're a big fan of the Metal Gear franchise, but this is a fairly recent thing for you.

What was your entry point to the franchise?

What was the first Metal Gear game you played?

So a couple of years ago, I started with Snake Eater

because I

somewhat naively thought this will all make more sense if I start,

you know, the chronology.

Right.

And

it took me a second,

but I then became addicted.

And I went, so I went from, I played the whole series.

The only one I haven't played

before getting to this one which i had not is um survive which i have no plans to play yeah um that did seem like a kind of soulless um

you know afterthought but um yeah so i i i went in with snake eater uh which maybe i don't know is still my favorite and then i did you know uh peacewalker five one two

and then four i i i i got a ps3 so that i could play metal girls all at four

um and and i did enjoy four very much i actually replayed four after playing rising because i it scratched the itch um

so this was this was i didn't know what to think about this one because i was i i i i'm not a guy who plays like hack and slash games and i knew it was a big departure but i i really enjoyed it um i thought it was fun i thought the story was i was kind of ready for it to be sort of half baked kojima stuff um in a way that wasn't satisfying but i thought the story was fun um if anything it just surprised me how short it was it felt like i finished it in like four hours.

And I actually forgot whether or not I played it as the days led up to this show.

I was like, oh, God, I got to make sure I play that game before I go on get played.

I'm like, oh, wait, no,

I did play that game.

I finished that game.

So it just flew by for me, but that's a good sign.

Yeah, it's a pretty brief campaign.

I didn't actually finish it myself.

I played through it, a good chunk of it.

And then I watched a playthrough of this, but I am going to finish it after this record, like later on, because I do want to just play it through to the end.

I just found the combat super kinetic and

super engaging.

And

Heather, the quote, yeah, you used to tee things up.

I was just like, it felt like, and maybe this is a Platinum Game things in general, but it felt like they were so focused on making sure the combat system

felt good and was engaging because that's definitely what I got out of that.

Yeah, Platinum Games

was founded by Shinji Mikami at Sushi, Inaba, and Hideki Kamiya in 2006.

And a lot of the Platinum games franchises like Bayonetta are focused on that extremely tight, very responsive combat.

And so this is just one more showcase of that kind of

specialization from the company.

So

we should mention that Brendan's username on the video chat is Venom Punished Brendan, which we're all enjoying.

But this game has no shortage of,

you know,

like Metal Gear kind of names.

We get Jetstream Sam, Mistral, Sundowner, Monsoon.

But I think the character that everyone knows from this, and certainly was my entry point to this, is the main bad guy, Senator Armstrong, who you see a lot of Senator Armstrong memes continually recirculating,

particularly like in the era of Trump.

It became a big like, like, look, this this was saying, this said,

this character said, make America great again before Trump did, you know, back in 2013 or whatever.

That was a big thing.

But Senator Armstrong is great.

I mean,

it's just, it's sort of like a super buff senator who's like charged up with nanomachines and is like effectively invincible.

He's great.

He looks like Craig T.

Nelson to me.

He looks like Coach.

Very much so.

And that made me like him.

I wanted Dauber to

be his psychic.

Metal gear dauber.

But yeah, no, it was really fun.

By the way,

I don't know if we were recording yet, but there was a blowback season five Cambodia Metal Gear Rising crossover, which is Monsoon.

And I do use this clip in the first episode.

Monsoon, the boss who can make his body parts split up.

Yeah.

Says something like,

I learned about life from Phnom Penh.

And I think he's referencing the killing fields there,

which is slightly in bad taste.

But I mean, I actually don't care about that.

These games are so off the wall.

So he says, yeah, he name checks Cambodia in the

game.

Wow.

There's another monsoon quote that I roughly transcribed.

Free will is a myth.

We are all pawns controlled by an even greater force, memes.

But given

that this game has had this meme resurgence in the last 11 years since it was published, and I think if you're at home and you haven't played this game and you're not

habitually online, what we're saying is there is a speech by a bad guy in this game who is a senator where he doesn't hint at the phrase, make America great again.

He shouts it in all caps as the thunderous conclusion to a speech he's given about how he's going to transform the United States of America and the presidency into a Darwinian free-for-all where people will become empowered to fight each other in their own private warfare, which is what fucking happened.

It's like a libertarian, like, you know, wet dream of like, let's have everybody, this will be survival of the fittest.

This will be a true meritocracy.

Only the strong will survive and thrive.

but but like for this game to come out in 2013 and obviously make america great again was a ronald reagan slogan so it wasn't like it it poofed out of nowhere but for this game to come out in 2013 and then trump to use that as his campaign slogan in 2015 get elected in 2016 and then we're off to the races with basically the plan from this game.

Of course, this is cited as another piece of evidence in Kojima's like

sort of prescience, even though he's not directly involved with the writing of this

game.

Yeah, I don't know how involved he was exactly.

I mean, he was overseeing development and then it got handed off to Platinum, but I, you know, it's certainly like a thing that he has endorsed and like has asked, like, said there should be a sequel for it.

I don't know if it's going to happen, but yeah, it definitely feels, even if it's not coming directly from him, like it is part of the Kojima

verse, yeah, the

Kojima aesthetic, the Kojima philosophy.

The aura.

It has his aura.

Yeah, very much so.

Kojima, I've seen what you've done for others.

Please think of something good happening to me so that it can happen.

Please, please.

You'll just see your PS1 outside your door tomorrow.

Podcaster Matt Appadaka.

I've seen you on television

in the future.

Oh, cool.

Okay.

Great.

You mentioned the

you mentioned monsoon, and yeah, the body can kind of like fragment and display into a bunch of different pieces.

I mean, this is another thing that I think this makes this game feel very metal gear, even though it is a spin-off, is like the character design and the boss design.

Because like, there's also, um, it's Mistral, right?

Mistral has the

familiars that are the orbs with the hands that walk around, and then the hands grafted onto her, and then she has like a bunch of like spider hands.

It's just like, this is just like a crazy, you know, anime character design, but also makes for like just like a really cool visual and a fun fight.

It evoked Fragile's redesign in Death Stranding 2's trailer for me because she has those gloves that are hanging over her shoulders that light cigarettes for her or whatever.

And I was like, oh man, I've seen this aesthetic more recently.

Right.

Yeah, there's a visual language of Metal Gear that they did a very good job tapping into where, again, I was kind of wondering, you know,

is this going gonna hit the way the other games do and and it's it's not like quite you know in the universe of of of the other games but it doesn't really try to be it's just taking enough from what made those other games recognizably metal gear and then goes you know it's obviously in the future and it's you know all the other stories have been concluded so it's starting new and i love the and it but it also takes there's metal gear rays in the game there's the little fucking three-armed guys that are from metal Gear Solid 4.

So it carries over just enough stuff so that it feels like

contiguous with all the Kojima games.

And I think they did a great job at that.

Brendan, how do you feel about Raiden in general?

Because I remember, you know,

I played Metal Gear Solid 1 on PlayStation 1.

I got made up Metal Gear Solid 2.

I pre-ordered that, played that at launch on PlayStation 2.

And that was a game that had a big backlash at the time because everyone's like, I want to be Solid Snake again.

Wait, wait, I would have to be this whiny guy, Raiden.

But then they kind of like reinvented Raiden in four.

And then, you know, that version of Raiden, this kind of cyborg badass is the player character here.

I mean, do you have any feelings toward this character, any connection towards him?

Well, so because I played the second one, you know, fully,

you know,

so much later than, you know, its release, 20 years later, I already knew that you played as Raiden.

I didn't realize you actually briefly did play as Snake in the beginning.

Yeah.

So I could see why people got kind of felt like it was a bait and switch, but I like that he did that.

I thought it was smart what they did.

Like in four,

you know, four is such a beautiful mess that, you know, throw Raiden in, give him a new cool look and design.

And it did tee up this game to, you know, have him feel fully re-realized,

re-vengeanced, re-realized,

whatever you want to say, because

it just works.

Because it also, on a character level,

he was the rookie in two who didn't know anything about the evils of the world.

He'd only played in VR or whatever.

They keep saying, like, this isn't VR.

And then, you know, he starts actually getting a taste for blood and he becomes Jack the Ripper.

That's, that's a cool arc, you know.

I guess he was a child soldier, so I take back what I said about how he never tasted the real combat before, but he, he, he definitely was like an innocent, you know, uh, who, who obviously obviously off-screen gets corrupted by the time he gets to four or gets a, you know, gets a taste of reality.

Yeah, and he's definitely like, despite his child soldier backstory, he is like, you know, presented as fresh meat in two.

And he is like, this is like his first real like mission.

Yeah, the thing I remember, and Heather, I don't know if you had the demo, but what I remember is I had the, so I bought the game Zone of the Enders, which was another Kojima game, a mech game.

That was all right.

But it came with the, the main attraction is that it came with the

demo disc for Metal Gear Solid 2, which was just the tanker section, the snake, the entire snake part of the game.

And you play that and it's like an incredible level.

Like it's the tanker mission is so, so good and it's like two hours of gameplay.

I played that over and over again on the demo disc.

And then when the so that's partly why when the final game comes out, everyone's like, oh, there's going to be so much more snake.

It's like, oh, wait, no, I played all the snake that's in the entire game.

Yeah, it's, but, but, but to your point, wait, what you're saying?

Looking back on it now and when we revisited Metal Gear Solid 2 and we talked about it on the podcast, like I was like, I love that choice now.

At the time, I wasn't someone complaining about it online, but I was a little bit let down.

But like looking back on it, it was like, oh, wait, no, of course that's such an awesome artistic

way to handle this.

Yeah.

The only thing it did is it kind of, for me, it bummed me out is that five's twist is such a hollow imitation of that, where at the end you realize it's not real, it's a body double.

I, I, like, I, you already did that with Ryden, you know.

Um, but five has a lot of problems in the story level, obviously.

I, I don't, I ignore, I ignore that Venom Snake bullshit, even though my name is Punish Brendan in this chat.

I, I ignore, I ignore the fucking Venom Snake thing.

You're big boss in that game.

It, it, it, I, I don't care who Venom Snake is, but Ryden, yeah, I, I, I thought it was neat, um, even though the tanker section is probably still my favorite part of the game.

Uh, here's, here's part of it, like, going back to how it feels to play, And this is this is like almost childishly simple, what I'm going to say, but I think just like a part of part of why this game works so well and has such a big fandom is it feels great to run around.

And there's in fact like a special running around mode.

And it feels great to use the sword.

Yeah.

Ninja run, ninja mode is good.

Blade mode is really, really good.

It's like...

Because I'll say that like when we were talking about doing this and we had kicked it around in the past before too, I was under the impression that it was bad, that like that people didn't like this.

And

I bought it on Xbox.

I was playing it on my Xbox Series S.

Within like five minutes, I was like, this game fucking rules.

It is so good and so fun.

And it's just, the stuff is just like, it's that, you know.

You had to cut shit up?

Yeah, you chop people.

You get to chop people up.

Human beings.

By choosing horizontal or vertical slice.

Yes.

It rules.

And then you see.

Or free slice.

And then you see the pieces fly off in the direction that you selected.

It's that's very, that's just good stuff.

And it makes a good meat sound.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Really, really good.

And I, you know, I love stealth games.

I love the Metal Gear games.

I like crawling around.

I love using a silencer or whatever.

I love using CQC.

Yeah.

But you give me a sword?

I ain't doing any of that shit.

No way.

What was crazy to me about revisiting this is that it's been long enough now that I was stunned at the PS3's graphics

look that I was like, oh, I recognize this Xbox 360 PS3 era look as a kind of game and as a kind of look.

It felt like surprisingly,

it was like somebody took a Dreamcast and like turned, turned it up to like 30 or something.

Like it still has these smooth like building textures and it still looks extremely video gamey.

Right.

Where now like we're so obsessed with when you walk through grass, does it deform underneath your feet?

Yeah.

And if you step in water, does the water ripple around your ankles?

And at that time, it, it, I was surprised how video gamey it felt.

It feels like, it feels like very, you know, like the environments feel like very boxy and very, very contained, but I mean, it lets them focus the detail on the character models and, you know,

versus like these giant sprawling environments.

But yeah, you're absolutely right.

It feels, you know, I'm playing on PC, but it feels very much like that.

a late PS3 game, but a PS3 era sort of experience.

Which also is crazy because like when I played The Last of Us, when it came out on PS3, which is also insane that that game came out on PS3, I was like, holy shit, this is the realest looking fucking game I've ever seen in my life.

I can't believe this fucking game.

And now you look back at it and you're like, wow, that looks like a video game.

I wonder if I can find, I can't remember if it's Computer Gaming World or PC Gamer, but like there was a 90s cover.

The Unreal.

The Unreal cover.

That was Next Gen.

That was Next Gen Magazine.

There was a cover that was showcasing the Unreal Engine graphics.

And on the cover of the Next Generation Magazine.

Unreal one, like way back in the day, like the first iteration.

is a guy made out of like maybe six triangles.

Like

he's got like a texture of face that is barely recognizable as like

a monstrous face.

And then the subtitle, do you have it in front of you, Nick?

It's Unreal.

Yes, this is an actual PC game screenshot.

I'll show this to Matt because I don't think you've seen this.

Ranch, have you seen this before?

Can you believe your eyes?

Yeah, it is crazy.

I mean, that was, but that was like super impressive in like, what, 1995, whenever this came out?

But anyway, it's all that's to say is that I, I

was surprised how nostalgic I felt for the PS3 look.

Yeah, sure.

Once it was on screen in front of me, like I was like, oh man, this was a good era and it's already retro.

Like, it's two generations old already.

Like, if you were playing games on the N64, you would consider NES games retro.

so the idea that we're on a ps5 or ps5 pro and we're playing ps3 or xbox 360 games it's like yeah this is an old game already this game might have come out when you were 12 and now you're an adult you know it's like this is crazy my childhood

i i thought it looked really good i having just played having just played this and for

um i thought they both looked really good but as you're saying heather with that with that visual style of the era where it's not going for hyper-realism, it still impressed me.

Just the really polished and

detailed look of everybody.

Raiden looks really cool and shiny.

And

the cities look futuristic and the art direction's good.

I was really impressed.

Yeah, it looks rad.

You're absolutely right.

The art direction is,

I mean,

it's always, I think, pretty stellar in these games.

Yeah.

Can I say about Raiden's character design real quick?

You are first introduced to him.

He's in a car.

He's wearing a suit.

Then some crazy shit happens.

And then he takes off his suit to reveal his cyborg

body.

And I just think that that's really cool.

It is cool.

And so he.

I'm

glad you said that, Matt.

It is cool.

Yeah, he's like.

It's cool.

He's like, he's like.

I'm not believable his suit.

we've got the best nano machines.

It reminded me of the naked gun when he just pulls his collar and the entire suit comes off.

He's about to have sex.

And then he's just, he's naked, but Ryden is the opposite.

He has a cyborg suit on.

Yeah, that was hilarious.

And again, just this kind of goofy, like that, that classic Metal Gear goofiness of like, oh, your cyborg suit somehow fit underneath your Brooks brothers.

cool as he looks in that sequence, he gets killed.

Yeah.

Very soon after that, like his arm gets chopped off on the back of his

fucking, his eye gets cut off.

And he comes back looking even cooler.

Yes, yeah.

He has a skull chin strap.

Like his, his bottom of his mouth is metal teeth as if his skull is exposed, which move when he speaks.

And the effect is so fucking cool.

Yes.

I was like, if this guy was a DJ, I'd be like, this is the best club on earth.

I, my thought was, if I was brought back to life like that, I would have been like, just just leave me.

Just, this is hard.

This is too much.

But that also, like, you know, his, his reformed cybernetic body, his full cyborg,

you know, like, like, character model let, like, introduces like the new gameplay system of now you can, like, extract health from enemies, which is also like a cool thing of just, like, being able to harvest as you're to keep yourself alive as you go.

Like, I love that shit.

We haven't really talked about the sort of general story.

And the general story of this game is that it exists in a

time after the Patriots, which are effectively like the Metal Gear Illuminati, have

been dispelled.

And so, warfare is on the decline.

And the enemies in this game are trying to jumpstart war again because war economies are so important to their personal ambitions.

And it's,

you know,

like when you when you

like shrink it down into a sentence like that, I can't tell if it sounds insane or totally reasonable.

Well, it's it's like the, you know, the cold open that we were talking about, where he's

right in his suit is inter is escorting the president of an unnamed African nation as like a bodyguard.

This rival private military corporation carries out this operation to assassinate him to basically, you know, like, because we just need to stir the pot a little bit more.

And this is leading towards a plot that Senator Armstrong is ultimately behind to kill the U.S.

president in Pakistan under a false flag operation to restart the war on terror.

So, as if we needed that pretense.

We just like, let's just keep it going.

You did skip a step, which is during that initial PMC exchange, one of the guys who is on the bad guy side, who's like this super buff.

What's his name, Shepard?

Sundowner?

Sundowner, which also yikes.

Fucking yikes.

Are we talking about Joe Biden, the president?

Talk about a prophecy.

He uses two swords that he snaps together into scissors and beheads a guy with it.

And it's fucking nuts.

Yeah.

So, Brennan, being that you are so

sort of invested in

American Empire and American history, how

financially, personally, I am invested in all of our

holdings.

How many of the things in this game did they get right?

Like, how much of this actually happened?

Well, because this was, what does the game take place?

2014?

Is that

2018?

2018.

Okay.

I always forget there's like, because Metal Gear Solid 1 takes place in 2005, even though it came out in 1997, right?

Yeah.

Okay.

No, I thought I

think these games are always impressively literate in the like, you know, historical political zone.

And

I think they

know enough of their stuff to take

real world,

you know, economic and

military history, and just, you know, dial it up by 50, 60% for a fun, dystopian

version of everything.

But the, the, I mean, geez, the, the plot about Pakistan, like, especially because this game came out in 2003, the dates are flying everywhere.

It came out in 2013 and it takes place in 2018, right?

Yes.

Yeah.

I mean, I mean, it's

that, that shit, that, that shit happens all the time, uh, all, all across the world.

Um,

and this was around the time that Blackwater was starting to become, you know,

for lack of a better word, a household name, and private military contractors were a very visible and somewhat novel presence in the war on terror, the Iraq and Afghanistan.

And we did a whole season about, well, wait, we did.

We did Iraq and Afghanistan.

We did two seasons.

And I think what's great about about these games is

the kind of real-time reaction and

sort of

hyper

normalization of

these ideas into the Metal Gear universe where

it all scans.

Like you said, does this sound reasonable or totally over the top?

I mean, it's over the top because the guy's name is Sundowner and he's, you know,

he's like got a giant mech suit on but it's it's it's a pretty it's it's it's it's a pretty good story and I think all these games however goofy they get are to me very very impressive and how much either Kojima or his team or I guess Platinum Games are trying to you know really really connect with some of these themes about privatization of of the military and the ripple effects across the world and technology.

And even they were even talking about AI back then, you know, I, I, yeah, I love it.

I love it.

Yeah, it's, it's, I, I, and I think, I, I think that's really well said, but, and, and, and just to add on to that, like in terms of like how over the top it is, I do feel like that helps it connect with a lot of people who are like, maybe not, you know, like, like, it's just, there, there's, there's, there's no real need to be subtle here because the reality is so, is so obscene.

So, like, like, like, just by having a character say, you know, all we are saying is give war a chance.

It's like, you know, like, like,

it just makes it really digestible.

I feel like that someone who's playing this game for the sword combat, but is maybe getting like a little bit of insight into how the world actually works.

When there's like a talking dog that's like

PMCs have installed shadow governments inside of deep states in small countries, and they are going to destabilize the region.

What?

What are you saying, talking dog?

Isn't it Blade Wolf?

Is that his name?

Yeah.

Blade Wolf,

I can't believe I didn't think of this.

Talking about Gex earlier, I thought that the Blade Wolf looked like Rez, who is the villain from Gex.

That was what I couldn't stop thinking of the whole time.

Because he's just got like kind of a pointy triangle

head.

And just look it up.

I mean, I know they weren't going for that,

but I couldn't help but think he looked like...

He looked like Rez.

Yeah.

Yeah, the little Blade Wolf.

I like that we had a little companion.

I brought up Rez.

Yeah, yeah.

Definitely bears some resemblance.

Some resemblance, I think.

He was scary.

I thought the wolf was scary and creepy looking.

Oh, and also, by the way, I thought a really, like,

it's not as deep as the other Metal Gear games, but I thought a really good moment in this game talking about, you know, how grounded it is, how much it connects with real stuff and real themes.

The bit where you can start to hear the soldier's thoughts and how they're actually just doing it for a paycheck or, you know, they're reluctant.

They don't even really want to be here.

I'm not even supposed to be here.

You know, like that, that is,

that was almost like Kojimatir for me.

I loved that section.

And I guess you're in ripper mode and you're just like, I don't care.

And you slice them up, but it was, but it was, it was pretty great.

I love that.

It's, it's like, I, I, I mean, I feel like it's almost like a, like, Kojima trope because you see that in, in, in three, certainly.

That's what comes to mind, the part where you're like walking through the, uh, the, basically, the valley of all these people.

Oh, the sorrow boss fight yeah yeah yeah and and like

definitely like that when it's when it's like all these uh whatever these these mercenaries you're killing and then they're all just like well i was a veteran on the street and i had a i was missing a limb and this gave me the opportunity to like make some money i don't yeah exactly and you're killing them it's like i i love that shit i love the are we the baddie stuff god every time i think about that boss fight in Snake Eater, The Sorrow, when you're just walking down the thing, I think that's one of the coolest things in any game.

Yeah, it's fucking good.

Yeah.

Because if you do a non-lethal run,

you just walk like five feet and you're done.

But if

you kill people, you're fucked.

Yeah.

I was going to say, I think one of the coolest things I've seen in a game, it's sort of thematically on topic, is when you shoot somebody in Last of Us 2 and they say, oh my God, John, no.

Call out their friend's name in dismay.

Yeah.

Kevin!

You son of a bitch.

The stuff that like parallels the real world, like when you guys talking about this, like

I, I,

I'm not, uh,

uh, I'm not very smart.

So

when I see something like that happening in real life, I am thinking, oh, this is like Metal Gear, not the other way around or like something from real life.

I think that works.

I don't think it matters which side of it you cut.

As long as you recognize it, it's yeah, it fucking is Metal Gear.

You seen those fucking dogs at like MIT where they're constant dynamics.

Yeah, they're fucking running on treadmills.

It's like that's Blade Wolf.

That flavor is, yeah.

I mean, it's fucking, or one of the Beauty and the Beasts from 4.

One of them's like a dog lady.

Like, that's being made right now.

So, Matt, I think you're, if anything, you're on the right side of looking at it.

Thank God.

And, you know, there was plenty of room for you guys to say, no, Matt, you're smart.

That's okay.

I thought about it.

You know what?

I'll take that.

That's good.

That's fine.

Matt, you are smart.

Thank you very much.

You are smart.

Thanks.

I wish I knew more about stuff that was going on.

It's bad.

All of it's bad.

It's bad.

Yeah, it's really bad.

There's no good news.

I subscribed to because I was like, okay, I'm, I'm getting fucking inundated with like, like

stress, trauma.

I'm, I'm so, like, if I read anything about the environment, I'm like, I'm fucked.

I'm fucked.

We're all fucked.

Like, we're going to, we're not going to have any fish in five years.

So I subscribed to a subreddit that was like good news.

It's like the good news subreddit.

Who runs it?

John Krasinski.

The problem is that there's barely anything on the subreddit.

Like, there's hardly anything that like ever comes up on my feed.

Once in a while, it'll be like new kind of spaghetti found.

And I'll be like, oh, what is this article?

And I'll be like, oh, this is from the good.

This is the best they could do today.

Like, that's

the article.

That is, that's to me, I think Nick's pretty interested too.

That's pretty much the spaghetti.

I, I, uh, I, I barely use it anymore because i've i i i it makes me nauseous to be on it but i on twitter i have um

you know you can make a list instead of just the for you obviously not the for you tab or the or the following tab yeah and i just i i just you know i made a list of like all the people i actually know and like on there so i can just see their stuff and i called it nice world

and so on the top of the on the top of my feed i have for you following and then nice world and i just click on nice world and that's and that's what i see if i live if if i'm going to live on twitter i'll just go to nice world you know i'm so sure that guy is going to get ousted that I'm just hanging on.

What do you mean that guy?

The guy.

The guy who bought Twitter.

Shmilan Schmuss.

Oh, Senator Mithi B.

Oh, okay.

Like I'm saying.

Senator Armstrong.

See, but the thing is, you're talking about Twitter.

Guys like that think they're Senator Armstrong and they're fucking

not

he he thinks he thinks that when he like clenches his gut in he has the nano machines like surrounding his body and he he looks awesome.

And you know what?

If any of these fucks were actually buff, maybe I would listen to them.

I punched them.

I obey them immediately.

Not at some Ivy League school at Texas.

So great.

I had for him.

As he's punching a man

on the back of a ship.

How cool would it be?

I don't care which candidate did it.

It would be kind of funnier if it was Trump, but they just show up to the debate in that giant mech from the end of the game.

It's just like,

the podium is like this, is like this big, and then he's just this giant ass mech, and he's like, got a microphone.

I'm ready to follow any single person that presents themselves in a functioning mech.

Yeah, if you show up in Metal Gear, Ray, you got my vote.

I'm in.

I'm in.

And you got my max campaign donation.

And, yeah, and I'll campaign for you.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

I'll be like, please, please, the cyborg needs to lead us.

You want to show me Scientology's real?

Put a mech on.

I'm in.

Take me to fucking space.

I'm down.

Jetstream Sam was a bad dude.

All right.

Any other thoughts on Noga Rising Revenge?

I mean, just a really cool game.

I think that

anyone who

hasn't played it, I mean, I think it's a good one.

As Brendan was saying,

it's a brief experience.

So, you know, it's a good one to buy on sale, but it seems to go on sale a lot.

But also, I think you can watch some videos of it and get a sense of the tone and the aesthetic and kind of the fun of this world.

And I don't know.

I think it's worth at least dipping your toe in the water with this one because it is a very cool experience.

Yeah, I guess I had a question for Brendan since you finished it.

Did you think any of the boss fights lived up to the greatness of like the really great boss fights in any of the Metal Gear games?

I can't say that.

It's not that I didn't enjoy them.

I thought they were all fun.

I think Monsoon was probably my favorite.

Senator Armstrong was okay.

You really have to do the move where you dodge.

You can eventually buy a dodge from the like, whatever, Ryden store.

And you have to do that with him, I found, because there's just so many of his attacks are unblockable.

But

no, I wouldn't quite say that.

Although my opinion might be invalid, because apparently everyone hates the boss fights in four, and I love them.

And it was like some of the most fun I've ever had playing games.

So maybe

my boss tastes

is garbage.

I don't know.

It's interesting information.

No,

I feel like, I mean, I guess I haven't finished four.

I have a PS3 and a copy of four

that I guess I should just fucking play.

It sounds good.

Four is also short.

The cutscenes are like 80% of the game.

That sounds all right.

Yeah.

But, you know, I love four.

That scene at the end with Big Boss and Snake put a little lump in my throat.

Is that your favorite?

How do you rank the Metal Gears?

No, no.

Four is a mess.

But

I love it.

I love all of them.

But okay,

this is indulgent, but how would I rank them?

I would say if you're going purely on gameplay, I would say five for me.

It's just so, it's so intuitive and so creative and fun.

You can do so many different things.

It streamlines everything that came before.

On a story level, though, five is like almost non-existent.

And the story of Metal Gear is some of the best parts of Metal Gear.

So that's a tricky thing.

One is kind of my favorite pure storytelling, but of course the gameplay is a little simple.

And so

I would say maybe three is the perfect harmony, you know, of a great Metal Gear story

with some clunkiness, which I actually find kind of charming in the controls and the mechanics.

You know, we don't love going into the menu after every injury and putting fucking,

you know,

stent in our rib or whatever.

But it's got enough of both worlds that I think Snake Eater still remains the GOAT.

I like Peacewalker.

I like to, I find two a tad repetitive in the environment.

It's like the big shell.

I always, when I first played it, I thought you'd be going to somewhere else and you never do.

But

yeah, I mean, so I'd probably say Snake Eater is the ultimate.

is the ultimate one.

I'm curious how this remake is going to go.

Yeah, me too.

Seems like they're playing it safe.

I'm positively optimistic, but yeah.

Yeah, they're playing it safe.

It could just be just a fresh coat of paint and bringing nothing new to it, of course.

Well, but you know, though, the because you mentioned Resident Evil earlier, and the Resident Evil 4 remake is like, oh, I mean, that's like, did you end up playing that?

Primo.

I played that like three times.

Yeah, it was awesome.

If they, and I think that's, I would, I don't know, but I feel like they're looking toward that

because that was just innovative enough, but also was very faithful.

So if they're anywhere near the zone of the Resident Evil 4 remake, that would be pretty good.

My dream is that they actually will remake Metal Gear 1 and 2.

Not Solid, but Metal Gear 1 and 2 as a fully...

you know, 3D game, because that's where actually Solid and Big Boss fight.

And you never actually see that in the Solid series.

It's always just this off-camera thing that is the foundation of the whole fucking you know legend and it'd be neat to just kind of take that which I think a remake team could do maybe

and just flesh it out into one of the solid type games but I guess we'll see how snake eater goes yeah metal metal gear like not solid that those games like the first off the The second one, I feel like was never actually released in North America officially, but those are games that are weirdly like not super available.

I think

they were bonus features on the uh the the Metal Gear Solid 3 disc, but

they're in the HD collection.

Oh, the HD collection, that's what they are, yeah, yeah, and therefore, maybe the master collection they just put out, which was just a fucking port of the of the HD collection from like 10 years ago, but yeah, yeah, good games, cool games, proud to say that they didn't get me with that.

That's like, that's like, that's an absolute trap made specifically for me, and I didn't, I didn't succumb.

Am I waiting for a sale?

You bet.

All right, let's do a segment.

All right, this is a segment that we've done once before.

It's called Bargain Bin, and it's based off of a meme format you may be familiar with, Brendan.

It's basically: you have $15 to spend money on

these particular things.

And the category is games from the year 2018.

Okay.

And so.

So this is the year, not the year this came out, the year this is set in.

Yeah,

the year this is set in.

Got it.

And so

there's going to be a list here that we're going to present.

Okay.

Oh, oh, oh, oh, okay.

And

can you embigen that at all?

I need my peepers.

Okay.

Okay, we have we have four in each category, it looks like.

Yeah, there's four in each category.

And I'm going to need some help discerning some of these it looks like we got red dead redemption 2 spider-man uh

uh super smash brothers ultimate and god of war the playstation for remake that's in the five dollar five dollar tier four dollar celeste uh hitman is that two hitman two return of the living overden into the breach um uh

number three dollars we got detroit become human uh tomb raider which tomb raider is this shadow of the tomb raider shadow of the tomb raider octopath traveler and a way out uh two dollar Firecry 5, Dark Siders 3, Astrobot.

Astrobot Rescue Mission.

The Rescue Mission.

Was this the VR one?

Yes.

Okay.

And then Just Cause 4.

And then at the $1 tier, we got Judgment.

We got Sea of Thieves, Donut County, and Among Us.

This is an eclectic mix.

Imagine, you assembled this on your own?

I made this one myself.

Yeah.

I just Googled games that came out in 2018, and I just kind of made some choices.

But I kind of looking at this, this kind of feels right.

This feels pretty good.

Don't come for me if you think Judgment deserves a spot in the $5

area.

I made this myself.

You can make your own if you want.

So I'll stop to kick things off, why don't I start?

Okay, great.

In the $5 tier, this is really, really hard because I love all these games so, so much.

And it's actually going to pain me.

This is actually going to hurt me and make me sad because I love the God of War franchise more than anything.

I think I have to go Red Dead Redemption 2 on this.

Not because I like it more, but because I think it's more bang for my buck.

A lot of gaming.

I think there's a lot you can do in there, and that's just how I'm going to do it.

In the $4 tier,

I'm going to go ahead and pick Hitman 2.

As I mentioned before, I love the stealth missions.

I love stealth games.

And these Hitman games, Brandon, if you haven't played them, scratch that Metal Gear itch as well.

Really, really fun.

I dabbled.

I dabbled, and I need to go back because I enjoyed it.

I think you would really love it.

In particular, three is really, really good.

In the $3 tier, you know, I've been looking for an excuse to play Octopath Traveler.

So why not?

For $3, why not?

This is real, right?

Yeah, it's real.

Look under your seats.

Oh, but you've got Detroit, become human.

In the number two slot, I am going to go because I have been loving Astrobot so much.

Astrobot Rescue Mission.

I have been lightly considering buying a PSVR, but that is insane, of course.

And number one,

look,

I've bought it a bunch of times.

Among Us, baby.

I love Among Us.

Yeah, cool game.

Ranch, you gave a laugh of recognition.

Do you ever mess around with Among Us?

Oh, yeah, I love Among Us.

Did you get super into it?

Yeah, like during the pandemic, we would play like all the time.

No, you're probably, you're one of those people who's like sneaky good at it, right?

Like, were you very good at lying?

Yeah.

Jesus.

I was going to say, Ranch is extremely imposter-coded.

Fucking terrifying.

Can I go next?

Yeah, you can go next, Heather.

I'm not doing one from

each

tier.

You don't have to.

You can spend the 15 however you like.

So from the $5

category, I'm taking two games, Red Dead Redemption 2 and God of War.

Wow.

Then I'm jumping all the way down to the $3 tier to get Octopath Traveler and to the $2 tier to get Astrobot and VR.

Those are my picks.

Great picks.

Thank you very much.

All right, I'll go and I'll let Brendan take it home.

Okay, so I'm going to take,

here's the thing.

Into the Breach was my favorite game of 2018.

I think it's perhaps overpriced as an indie game in the $4 tier.

That's okay.

I'm not going to quibble with this, Matt.

Thank you for making this.

You can make one of your fucking.

Yeah, so I might make one of my own.

Maybe price it a little bit less.

But I will take Indo the Breach.

I will take Celeste as well because that's one of my favorite games of all time.

And I have a Celeste poster in my office.

That's $8 of my budget.

That leaves me with $7 to spend.

Boy, I want Return of the Obradin.

I would love to have RDR 2.

None of the $3 games really appeal to me.

And honestly, none of the $2 games either.

So I think what I'm going to do is

Let's see, of my $7, I think I will spend $5 on Red Dead Redemption 2.

And that takes me to, am I doing the math here?

That's $13.

I've taken $2 left.

I'll skip all the way down to the $1 tier and I will grab Judgment.

And I will also grab Sea of Thieves, which is a game I've never played.

But you know what?

Talking about bang for the buck, that is a game that you can play the shit out of endlessly.

And for one buck, why not?

Brendan, what do you think?

I walk in, I'm buying five copies of Detroit Become Human.

And

I'm distributing them to my friends and the public to tell them:

this will make you think.

And

what if humans are the real monsters?

That's what I'm going to do.

Wow.

Yeah,

no, I tell you what, I would probably just get Red Dead, Spider-Man, and Super Smash Brothers in colour.

That is pretty nice.

Do you like Detroit Become Human?

No, I'm kidding.

I saw a friend play it and I was like, I mean, I don't want to, if anyone anyone here liked it, I'm not trying to be mean.

I just thought it was hilarious.

No, of course.

No, yeah.

There are no Detroit become human defenders in the room.

Don't worry.

Okay, yeah.

It was funny how bad it was.

Yeah.

But I, yeah,

I will buy it.

Actually, Noah, my co-host, came in one day and he had found a copy of that on the street.

And he likes it, hey, yeah, here you go.

And I was like, I don't even want this as a joke.

Did somebody throw it out there?

What happened there?

You know, you sometimes there's just stuff out, you just find stuff sometimes.

Yeah, sometimes you'll find, but I

feel like a full price, like a full, like a recent game, like a retail game, is not something I ever found on the ground.

I guess that's true.

Maybe somebody was moving.

It was in like a box, you know, it was like,

right, yeah.

Here's a music, you know, with like a copy of, you know, Point Break or whatever.

Right.

Hello, give me that.

I was like, thanks for picking up fucking the stupid game.

I wanted that movie.

Well, that was a bargain bin.

Bargain bin.

That was bargain bin.

And then, hey, that's this week's Get Played.

Our producer is Rochelle Chen Ranch, Yard underscore, underscore sard.

Our music is by Ben Prunty, BenPruntyMusic.com, who composed the score for Into the Breach.

How about that?

Art is by DuckBrigade Design, DuckBrigade.com.

And hey, check out our Patreon, patreon.com slash get played, where you can find our entire pre-head gum back catalog, plus ad-free main feed episodes, and our Patreon exclusive show, Get Animated.

Matt, what's up this week?

Oh, this week?

We actually don't know yet because there's a poll as of recording.

There's a poll out right now.

So either it's going to be Violet Evergarden

the first movie, which is Eternity in the Automan Redoll,

or we will have been starting Terminator Zero.

Yes, yes.

Dun dun dun dun dun.

Yes, yes, yes, yes, please, please, please, please.

So go to the polls.

The polls close by the time this comes out, of course.

So you'll know on Wednesday exactly what's coming out.

But it's either one of those things.

Patreon.com slash get played for all that.

And hey, check out blowback.show for blowback season five, Cambodia, available now as of this episode's release.

Brendan James, thanks so much for being here.

Please tell everyone about Blowback and anything else you would like to promote.

Hey, if you like learning about nasty stuff like coups and assassination attempts and wars and CIA shenanigans,

ours is the show for you.

We did a season about the Iraq War.

We did a season about

the Afghanistan saga.

We did a season about the Cuban Cuban Revolution.

And this season is one people have wanted for a long time.

You got Nixon and Kissinger.

You got the backdrop of the Vietnam War.

You got Cambodia.

You got the Khmer Rouge.

You got Pol Pot.

And

we are very proud of it.

I'm still editing it at the time of this recording, so I hope it goes well.

But it's going to be good.

Go to blowback.show and subscribe.

You'll get all the episodes at once and the ad-free back catalog.

And one last thing, I promised Matt that I would do a little snake voice because I'm, I, I, I have a little David Hayter gene.

Uh,

but I can only do the parts where he eats something

when he like picks up a ration.

So let me think of one of the reactions he get.

Okay.

So it's a little, you eat it and there's a little noise.

I want some more.

That's really, really good.

Yeah.

Thank you.

But yeah, check out Blowback, Blowback.show.

And thank you guys for having me on.

I had a total blast.

This was so much fun.

People should listen to Blowback.

It's an awesome show.

It's super informative.

It's

kind of, I mean, like, you know, you're dealing with grim stuff, but for me, part of why I like listening to it is it's like, it reminds you that the stuff has kind of always been rotten and bad stuff and bad actors have always existed.

And like, that's not something that's unique to our time.

And so it's just kind of baked into, you know, the American experiment.

But it's also just like a really impressive audio production.

It's just like a really well put together show.

And

y'all are doing really great work.

Blow back that shit.

Check it out.

Thank you.

Nick, you got played.

What the fuck?

That was a hit gum 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 sweat nuggets there's actually no rush i'm just excited for mcdonald's price anticipation may vary hi i'm alana hope levinson and i'm dan o'sullivan and this is the outfit the new podcast from higher ground and head gum you know we're two journalists who are slightly obsessed with the mob and organized crime and other nefarious stuff like that every week we're going to bring you a story about a mobster some you've heard of some you definitely haven't but all of them are going to help explain why america is like this see the mob explains all sorts of things from milk expiration dates to why we got into Cuba to Las Vegas, gay bars.

Who knew?

Who knew?

The mob's involved.

All that and more.

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