Does Perfect Dark Hold Up In 2023?

She's perfect, and she's dark. That's why we call her... Lollis Shaded. Welcome to Trippock-A-Kook, where we bring the games to you. Today, we are talking about an N64 game that many made us all play, called Perfect Dark. Do we like it? Do we hate it? What do we think? Let's discuss. I'm Jason Schreier. I'm Kirk Hamilton. And I'm Maddie Myers. Hello! Hello! Hello! Should we be playing Cool Spy Music in the background of this one? It's like all of those listening to... Dun dun dun dun dun dun... Do... Do... Do... Do... Do... Do... Yeah, I called up Grant Kirk Hope. I was like, can you write us some music for our episode? I am very excited because next week I get to see Kirk Hamilton for the first time in person in like four years. Isn't that crazy? In years! That's crazy. Yeah. Yeah. Nothing makes you realize the toll that the pandemic took to then making plans like that. Yeah, the three of us have not seen each other since Katakis put screen live in like early 2019. Yeah, that was the last time the three of us saw each other. That's crazy. Wow. Although we see each other again. We'll see each other again. On video calls every week. Yes, we will see each other again. Another live show on May 18th. We will all be in New York. Speaking of it, she can buy tickets right now. Still available. Right now. You can buy physical tickets to CS in Brooklyn or digital tickets to CS Live on Twitch, which is very exciting. It is exciting. I'm glad that I will see you at GDC next week because otherwise it would be setting a weird precedent if the only time that we saw one another live was for live shows of our past. But the best thing is there for Maddie. Nothing's there. That only time we see Maddie live is live shows. That's true. I guess that's true. Nah, it will be true forever. No, it won't. Hey, did you guys know that Max FunDrive is coming real soon? Yeah, so soon. Max FunDrive is starting. Next week even. Next week. And next week. That is very exciting. We are a course listener supported podcast and we are able to make this keep happening because of all of you find Max Fun members out there. And if you become a Max Fun member during Max FunDrive, which says next week, you get a lot of cool stuff. We're doing bonus episodes from us every single month. Can we say what we're talking? Let's say what we're talking about this month, our March bonus episode. Yeah, for sure. We are going to dive into the last of us on HBO, which is going to be a fun conversation. All of them are going to get spilled. There is so much to say. There's so much to say. I'm very excited for that conversation. It's going to be fascinating. We're also looking for audience statements on why you love TripleClick and your TripleClick stories for Max FunDrive. So we'll include the details on that. There's an email or a phone number where you can leave a message. And if you want to join, go to MaxFunFun.org slash join, but we would recommend you actually wait until next week. If you want to be a member, just wait. You'll get cool stuff if you just get cool. You're fired for a week. Yeah, he'll be good. He'll be good. And then Kirk, you have a thing to share before Maddie starts us off with the topic of today. I do have a very brief thing that I just wanted to mark that happened this week at the Academy Awards. I didn't actually watch the Academy Awards, but I caught up after the fact. I was very happy to see all of the winners, a whole bunch of very deserving folks from largely from everything everywhere all at once. And the movie I loved. But there was one thing that happened during the ceremony that I just feel that we should mark on this podcast. And that was that there was an exclusive trailer reveal at the Academy Awards. A World Premier. There was a World Premier. Jeff Kealey came out on stage. No, just kidding. That didn't happen. Two of the stars of the Little Mermaid came out on stage to show a trailer for an upcoming Disney movie. And I just saw that after the fact and thought it was really funny as much as we've talked about. Oh, if only the Game Awards could be a little more classy like the Oscars. Unfortunately, I think things are going to go the other way. Yes, the Oscars are going to become a little bit more commercial like the Game Awards. I don't think we've said that. I think the Oscars are the most boring thing on the planet. Yeah, which is why they need a Twitch live chat. People saying poggers throughout for the winners, etc. They need emojis. They need more instantaneous racism, etc. They need all that stuff in there for the Oscars to really be modern. Kealey also tweeted shortly afterwards saying, imitation is a serious form of flatter. Oh, did he? He did do that. Oh, that's very funny. Kealey is a funny guy. I got to say he's a funny guy. Yes. He knows how to seize the moment, capitalize on the conversation. But let's get into our conversation. Shall we just talk about it again? Yes, he's using the moment. The game that everyone's talking about. Yeah, it's everywhere right now. You know why? Because it's 2023. The year in which this game was set. It's called really dark. Really? Is that true? Oh, yeah. Didn't it seem really like a leap through to the moment? Does it seem like it should have been intentional? Like I should have chosen this as a game that the three of us would play in 2023 because it's set in the futuristic world of 2023. Complete coincidence had no clue. I just thought it would be a fun first-person shooter for all three of us to play because I won a little bet that the three of us have. If you don't know what that is because you're a new listener, well, you can go all the way back and listen to our video game predictions episodes and you'll get the gist. So I made Kirk and Jason play Perfect Dark. And I will say I did play this game not when it first came out. It came out in May 2000 for the Nintendo 64. I didn't actually have an N64 for what it's worth. I did play Goldeneye a lot at a friend's house. This game was a spiritual sequel to Goldeneye. Lots of similarities with Goldeneye. We can get into that. But the version of it that I did play was on the Xbox 360. It was remastered. Looks a lot better, although to our 2023 eyes, perhaps it doesn't. It looks a lot better in the 2010 version, which I played and I believe I played all of it in co-op or at the very least switching controllers back and forth with a roommate at the time, which made the game a lot easier for me. And I've known that I played it on at least the medium and I think the hardest difficulty, which meant that this time around when I played it on easy, I was like, wow, this is a totally different game because each of the three difficulty settings actually change the objectives in every single mission. So before I talk to you too about your experiences, I'll just kind of quickly go over the plot of the game. So this is a mission based- Good luck with that, Betty. I know, right? I can. My thoughts and prayers are with you as you embark on this adventure. They lost me at Elvis. But I don't know why. Elvis, greatest character in the game. So you play as Joanna Dark, who's sort of James Bond-like, but she's engaged in what I would call corporate espionage, although it's sort of ill-defined because she also works with various governments around the world, seemingly. She's the president, but she's kind of a corporate agent, I think. She works for the Carrington Institute. She has a British accent. So you might think maybe she works for MI6, but as far as we know, she does not. So she goes on various missions. She kills a heck of a lot of people. It's almost like she has developed in the UK and so she has a British accent. It's almost like she's a gender-swapped, sexy version of James Bond. Not to say James Bond isn't sexy as well, but he doesn't wear a catsuit with a zipper like that. And it is also a science fiction story. About halfway through the game, you find out that aliens are real and that that is a huge part of the spy mission that you're on. Up till then, it's mostly just sci-fi tech. There's an AI doctor that you have to save in the very first mission, for example. That gets increasingly bizarre over time. There's an alien character named Elvis. That might be a reference to Men in Black. I don't know. There's a lot of weird jokes in here, but I want to hear from you too. Was this the first time each of you played it? Jason, why don't we start with you? Yeah, so this is my first time playing Perfect Dark to set the context here. Rare, of course, the developer also made GoldenEye, as you mentioned. I played a bunch of GoldenEye back in the day, on N64, mostly co-op or split screen with people, not co-op, competitive split screen with people, which is always fun. I remember Oddjob always having the advantage because he was shorter than everybody else. I believe that was the thing and the height was only real difference. But anyway, there was no Oddjob games where people would play with a rule like no one could play as Oddjob. Or you'd have to do all slaps or just the big head mode, for example. There are all kinds of silly modes. This game has silly modes you can unlock as well. There's like small mode and big head and so on. All Golden Guns was another silly mode. But anyway, this is my first time playing Perfect Dark in any capacity. And yeah, it was a tough one for me to grapple with today for a few reasons. One is that the controls and the shooting are just not fun by mountain standards. They were back then, for sure. And I can attest to that playing Golden Eye. But if you ever try to play Golden Eye today, it is a tough hang to use Matty's words for trying to see, couldn't do. It is a tough hang. It is a tough hang. The reticle doesn't quite move along with the stick for whatever reason. It just doesn't quite work. It just doesn't feel great. There is this game. At least I switched to Easy Mode for reasons I'll get into in a second. So with Easy Mode, at least there's an auto aim that helps and makes it feel a little more palatable. But still, it's not particularly fun. I expected it to be a lot more stealthy than it was. Instead, it's more of a run and gun shooter. I expected to be using the Spy Gear a lot more than I was, but was not. I had to switch to Easy. And the third mission was really tough for me. Our third level, whatever it was. Basically, the end part of the anodine. What is it? Dana? Dana Dine. That building, the third part of that was pretty rough for me. Because the helicopter knocks down all your health and there's no way to restore health in this game. And I had a really tough time with the lack of checkpoints and the fact that you had to start from the beginning every single time. When I switched to Easy, it was a lot more pleasant to breeze through the whole thing. But then I felt like I was really lacking the proper experience. And then you can't switch back to Easy once you beat one level as Easy. You can't switch to Medium for the next level, which is annoying. Yeah, it's really tough. And tough to grapple with today, I think, by modern standards for those reasons. The story is whatever. The kind of incomprehensible. Yeah, the third mission, I mean, that really spoke to some of the problems I had with the game because at the beginning, there's a timer and the whole building is dark. And you can put on your night vision goggles and kind of sneak around, which I thought was really cool. But then as soon as I opened, I could take out the first guy without a problem. But then as soon as I opened the next door to get to the second guy, he just started shooting at me and there was no stuff whatsoever. And the walkthrough I was using, because you pretty much need a walkthrough, recommending that I like open the door from the corner of the room. And I tried to do that. And it was just, he just kept seeing me and shooting at me, which is very frustrating. Because I was like, oh, cool, I could do some self stuff. But again, it just didn't work. And then the final thing I'll say is that the objective system is just complete nonsense. The fact that you can just randomly fail objectives and have to restart the mission. And again, the lack of checkpoints really hurts that. I wanted to explore this game as if it were, as each level was like a hitman level, and like complete missions with different ways and play around with it and have that kind of sandboxy feel where I was doing more stealth and playing with gadgets in more ways. But the lack of checkpoints and the fact that once you fail, you just have to start from the beginning again, just make that impossible. And so yeah, I got to say I did not really enjoy the experience of playing this game, unfortunately. Mm-hmm. Kirk, how about you? Yeah, I thought this game was really interesting. A little bit of a torturous experience at times for reasons that I think we all experience than anybody playing a long experience. The lack of checkpoints is a big one. Like Jason says, the fact that you can fail some of your objectives and have to start over. So I played through the whole game on special agent difficulty except for the final mission, which I finally just bumped down to agent because like you said, Jason, there were no missions after that. So I was like, all right, I don't care anymore. And it was late last night and I was tired. And that mission is lengthy, difficult, and then there's a really tough boss at the end. And if you die to the boss, you have to do the whole mission again. The thing again, yes. Classic. The checkpoint issue. So I think this game is fascinating though. I mean, I think it shows a lot of the literacy that designers of console games had not yet built into the controller-based game style, especially when you compare it to a couple of other 2000 games or games from the year 2000, Deus Ex, which came out in 2000, and no one lives forever, which came out in 2000. Deus Ex is really, I mean, kind of similar to Perfect Dark in some ways, you can tell that the people designing both games were playing with the same ideas. There are moments in Perfect Dark where you get that kind of immersive sim design style. The Chicago level is kind of that way, where it feels a little like the AI can be played with. I was reading in the walkthrough that I believe we all read, an IGN walkthrough. They said that if you go into this club, one of your options is to disarm people. If you switch to unarmed combat, you can disarm the guards, and then the guards will go and run away from you, and they'll open a door that only they can open. But when they open that door, you can follow them in, and there's a hidden weapon in there. So there's stuff like that that does feel like something that would work, or that would be present in Deus Ex in particular. But of course, Deus Ex has a quick-save system and is built around the whole idea of an actual world that you can experiment with and reload your saves and go back. And it's much, much more complex and simulated because it's a PC game and it's in the sort of looking glass lineage of System Shock and Thief and those games, where this game still largely feels like an arcade game made for the Nintendo 64, which of course it is, even though it has some of those elements in there. It's really fun playing it because I can kind of see the way that games have converged. And now, console PC doesn't mean anything, but it really did back then. There were significant differences in the approach to design, in the controls, the approach to interface, like the interface in Deus Ex is not great. It's very complicated. It's like, if you play that or System Shock 2, it's bananas. It's like a whole operating system. But there's a ton of stuff you can do where I found the user interface in this game to be, I mean, big-yling, funny almost in how ridiculous it is. But it's called Perfect Menu. Do you not think it's a perfect menu? I guess they've got me there. What can I say to that? I found that very cute. Very like Mortal Kombat asked to just call things perfect within Perfect Dark. You mean how Mortal Kombat spells everything with a K? Exactly, precisely, yes. Like to just have sort of a gimmick in here where people will also call Joanna Dark Perfect as one of her code names. Because she was such a skilled trainee or an attorney. Or it's like the game itself is perfect. So, right, of course. So you call up your inventory with the left shoulder button and this sort of cloud of words appears in front of you. And then you have to move a cursor onto one of those words in order to select anything from a different overlay, like an infrared sensor or a new weapon or a disguise. I mean, it's just your whole inventory is there in a kind of word cloud. But there is no consistent way, unless I couldn't find it. No, I don't think so. I don't think there is no consistent way to select things. You can't like cycle through with the D-pad even, for example, where it's just each time you click the D-pad, it goes to the next one. You just have to use the thumbstick and kind of feel it. So it's like the hardest part of the game. Furthermore, and I will just call this out, is one of the only truly unforgivable things that happened to me when I was playing this game. One mission requires you to infiltrate some base. I'm trying to remember which, oh, I think it's the Chicago. Is the Air 51 case? Oh, okay. Sure. So that's the Chicago base. Anyways, you have to get a scientist costume and put it on. Yes. Mm-hmm. Yep. So you go through the level, run into the locker room. There's a guy there. You murder him in cold blood because you can't make you... You don't have to kill all the innocent guys, murder this guy. He drops this costume and I pick it up and I'm like, okay, I guess I picked up the costume. So then I haven't read every line of the walkthrough, so I like go to the door where the guy's going to let me through with the costume. Nope. He spots me and I fail. I'm starting all over again. Because you need to select the costume, see, in order to put it on. Now you say that as though that is an easy thing to do, but I think, okay, maybe I need to select the costume. So I watch a walkthrough. There's a video I've got running. This is because the text walkthrough from IGN contains sentences like this one that I wrote down. Quote, return to the small side ramp that you passed earlier just past the blue-green doors. These are the kinds of instructions you have to give in a game where every single room in every wall looks the exact same as every other room in every other wall. So there are a lot of times reading the walkthrough where he's like, go left, go down the ramp, the ramp from before. I'm like, oh man, I haven't been paying close enough attention. So anyways, I look at, there's a video walkthrough, which is easier. I've watched him. He kills the scientist, picks up the outfit, goes into his inventory and it says, lab clothes right there in the inventory. He selects that. She puts it on. He goes unarmed and then he goes through the door and I'm like, oh, I have to equip it. So I go do the thing, kill the guard or sorry, kill the scientist, pick up the outfit, open up my inventory, lab clothes are nowhere to be seen. They are not in my inventory. So I'm like, well, okay, maybe I'm wearing it. I go and I fail the mission again. Then I'm googling and I find on game facts, there is a thread about this because I'm not the only one to run into this. And as it turns out, there's only so much room in the word cloud of your inventory and it doesn't show you everything that you're carrying if you carry too many items. So you have to hit the select button to bring up your goals, which is all I thought that was. Turns out you can actually go left and right in those menus and you can go to your inventory screen which shows your full inventory. Then you have to press the select button on the lab clothes in your inventory. It doesn't actually tell you you've selected it. So then you just have to leave that menu and then you see that she's wearing it if you were paying attention. So that's pretty bad. So anyways, that was a long story. But I think it's very interesting all the way the skin falls short in addition to the ways that it is interesting. And we can talk about them more in detail as we go. But yeah, this was a rough hang but also very interesting. Yeah, I promise I was not elaborately pranking you guys. I had such good memories of this game, but I am capable of admitting when something doesn't hold up. And I would say this doesn't, but I also found it really fascinating to revisit as a historical object. And also as a challenge of just UI design, game design, storytelling, I mean, everything about it, I'm like, I've played games that have done all of the above better than this, but I understand why I was impressed by this even in 2010, which in 2010 it's an old game, but I also played its sequel, Perfect Dark Zero Around That Time, which is a bit more user friendly. And I was playing Metroid Prime around then also from some more time period early 2000s era. And I've been playing that again lately. So I have a lot of patience for some old games that require walkthrough. But this one, yeah, it's, I don't know, I apologize, but also it was only a game that half her is long. So I feel like it was fine. I think it was really interesting. It was good for you guys. You ate your vegetables. It was interesting for me, like I said, to play it in the context of the PC games I came up playing because this period of time was a really fruitful time for game development. So Half-Life comes out in 1998. Maybe I'll make that a bet game sometime. I know I made the two of you play through Half-Life 2. Oh, yeah. I'd play the first one though. Half-Life is itself very, very interesting and just a couple years before this, but on a whole other level in terms of storytelling and design, but playing with some of the same ideas, Alien Warfare, the kind of emergent stuff, but a largely linear shooter. Then in 2000, No One Lows Forever comes out. I love that game. I've talked about it many times. And by 2002, that's when No One Lows Forever 2 comes out, the graphical differences between those two games are super wild. You go from totally flat, what do you call this style of face where it's just like a person's face? Just a polygon? Just a shape. Yeah, it's like a Max Payne style is what the characters look like even in this 2010 version where it's just like a flat face that doesn't move and then words come out of it. And it's called painting on a pumpkin. Right. Yeah. It's kind of what it looks like stretching a photo. It's like printed out on a piece of paper and then you bend the piece of paper around your face as though that's a mask. That's what every character in this game looks like. Right. It has a kind of paper mache, craft look. Or Max Payne is a good comparison because Max Payne had what Sam Lake's face is like on Max Payne. It's like a photo of him grimacing, but it looks very strange. So that style of game just to put that in context. So this is in the year 2000. In 2002, Kate Archer is a star of No One Lows Forever. It's worth looking up. Maybe we can find a link somewhere to see what she looks like two years later. She has like a fully animated face. Her eyes are opening and closing. Her mouth is, she's like expressing and moving and it was amazing looking. This is just a couple of years later because 3D processing came so far so quickly. And then by 2004 Half Life 2 comes out and you've got Alex Vance talking to you and like fully emoting in glorious 3D. So this is just like a six year period of time. It's like the amount of time since it's less than the amount of time since the PlayStation 4 came out. So it was really things were really happening fast and I think it was cool to play a game from this moment in that time period. Yeah. I also think this is a point where the 2D games from this particular era of late 90s, early 2000s have aged so much better than the games. Oh my god. Because the games like they're really just first day. I mean Mario 64 generally considered to be like the the pinnacle of 3D platform or the the first big 3D platform and really a game that kind of launched the 3D revolution in games. That was what 96 or so. So this is really just four years after that. People are still learning how to understand 3D spaces and 3D level design and stuff. And I bet if a level designer in 2023 looked at this game, they would just find so many like horrifying like principles violated. A non level designing saxophone player had the same feeling. Yeah. In 2023. I think one of the most frustrating things is just like how many dead ends there are. Oh yeah. Which is generally not something you want in in level those doors. Just straight up secret doors that look identical to a wall. I mean that is a different problem. I think that's closer to the problem of like the objectives and everything being opaque and just never really defined. Like a game will tell that each level will tell you like go and find the scientists uniform. Go and sabotage the weapon and never explain what that means. Explain where it is. There's a map. I think that the games like Deus Ex are an interesting comparison because Deus Ex came out the same year and I think that does a better job of kind of signaling to you what you have to do. There were a lot of games these day. I mean Diablo two came out this year. There are a lot of games that have waypoints and mini maps and quest markers and stuff like that. It's not like this stuff was was obsolete at this point. It's just the decisions they made for this particular game. But yeah as far as the 3D level design just the dead ends. The fact that every room looks the same in so many of these areas like especially I think area 51 is probably the worst of them all because every single door looks the same. I'd say that's the most frustrating part of the game. It's very frustrating. And at least for me it was the one that took me the longest to beat this time around. I can't remember back in the day which one I found hardest but this one area 51 was the worst. I think because I was using the walk through the least because I was too cocky. There's a part where you have to carry around an explosive box and really the best way to beat that part is just leave it at the very beginning of the level of kill every guy in the level and then go back to the box. I kept cockily being like come on I'm pretty good shooting. I can just shoot these guys before they shoot the box. No, no you can't. Why did I think I could do that? Yeah I don't know. Okay so some of those moments are pretty cool. I remember having a pretty cool moment where I learned the layout of a level and was like oh okay now I'm getting it. It's just that the game doesn't give you a chance to enjoy that because as soon as you die there's no checkpoint. And making things worse and again the reason that I switched to easy where I basically couldn't die and that was the only way I made it through this game. Like I would not have played through this whole game. And there are almost no objectives in easy mode. Yeah and there are fewer objectives which actually is a little not but whatever. The thing that's probably most frustrating is that there's no way to regain your health. So you have to think of it as like in addition to trying to understand the objectives trying to learn the levels you were also thinking of it in terms of survival mechanics. It feels almost like a rogue like. Yeah which is so annoying. And where the shields are. So there's shields around which adds some shields to your health. And if you remember where those are which I mean that's kind of what I enjoyed about playing it this time around was the hitman aspect of it or even the Dark Souls aspect of it where I would just remember a level by the time I was extremely close to beating it and I would just enter that brain zone of not being annoyed when I died and knowing that I could do it extremely quickly the following time around and just completely maximizing every aspect of the play where I'd be like okay this is the best gun for every scenario. I know exactly where the shields are. I'm just going to defeat the level as quickly as possible which is really like the fun way of playing this game. Yeah which would be fun if the objectives are spelled out. If things are clearly marked if the design was better. If there if a lot of things were done right that would be a really fun way to play the game and I'm sure it was in 2000 I mean this game is highly regarded it's critically clean. Oh sure I mean then I'll also add like I mentioned playing it in co-op for a reason. This was a lot more fun with someone else. Yeah I can totally imagine that. Even switching controllers back and forth like between two people we could both remember where each item was where the secret doors were so even playing on perfect dark difficulty in 2010 I remember being pretty easy which is part of why I didn't feel bad about select collecting this game in 2023 but then playing it by myself and also being old tired and not having the reaction speeds I had 13 years ago I guess. I just was like wow this is freaking hard and I don't remember anything anymore. Like I think my tolerance or memory was higher back then or perhaps just I was used to playing games of this kind. Like in this time period I was also playing a ludicrous amount of gray shooters on every platform imaginable so like the idea of everything looking the same and some hallways or dead ends just didn't frustrate me in 2010 the way that it does now. So that's another difference is just I just didn't notice those issues in the same way that I do today. Yeah I can imagine this being a really fun game for someone who only has a Nintendo 64 and just has this one game and then you get into that repetition loop that you're talking about Mandy because I think it's really cool that they designed this game to have the sort of additive approach to objectives. The objectives are cool once you know what they are like you said Mandy you can just fly through the level and while as frustrated as I was that there were no checkpoints that also meant that I got really fast like in Area 51 I could clear that warehouse out so fast run through with the bomb so fast get to the annoying blonde contact guy so fast you know get back and I died at the very end of that mission a couple of times I believe that was when I sent you the message in the middle of the night of these Area 51 missions are trying my patience. But even so the repetition was you know I could see how if you just had this game you're mostly playing multiplayer with your friends and then you'd be like okay let's go through a mission and then you're just screwing around through missions over and over again that'd be pretty fun. I remember having the same experience with GoldenEye a few years earlier and also that game had these cool set piece you know James Bondi story missions that I remember playing and being like oh this isn't very fun especially because of the time I was like playing Half-Life and you know then later playing Deus Ex like I was playing I will say much much better games on PC. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I was playing Halo so you know. Well in Halo actually I was going to mention that earlier not to get sidetracked from my own train of thought but Halo is an interesting one to mention because Halo also brought some new first person control ideas to consoles and it's another one I think to include in this whole this like kind of magical six year term frame. Yep. Yep. I think levels where sometimes you're running around and not entirely sure where to go but it's a little better at navigating. That's true. It's a little bit undirected in some ways. Yeah. It's interesting that GoldenEye thing I think you make an astute point whereas yeah I think GoldenEye had two really things really going for it. One is that it was so true to the movie that if you were like a big James Bond fan and you were watching the movie you're like oh this is so cool like I get to fall like this. Cool. Yeah. Yeah yeah yeah yeah like the tanker and the hangar. I remember the dish of the satellite. Yeah the dish. I remember the missions all had just those like one word names like hanger like bridge whatever it was. And the second thing of course was multiplayer which really there had been nothing like that on the consoles where you could have this like I mean this like really cool I wouldn't say amazing because even then it felt a little kind of busted but like split screen like competitive shooting with your friends there's nothing else like it. And perfect arc I mean to be fair to this game we didn't play any of the multiplayer either co-op like you mentioned Matt and you can absolutely imagine it being the same. It was great. Yeah which I think yes yes in 2000 if you had an NCC 4 you hang out after school a bunch of buddies and play the shit out of this game like that. You'd already bought extra controllers because you had 007 so you were ready for another game like that. No yeah exactly and that context. Yeah and when you're on your own you just play Majora's Mask or something like that. That's something that's like which came out the same year too. So yeah I mean I do think that there's this game does have some things going for it there but like yeah revisiting the single player missions in 2023 is tough. One thing I will say another kind of positive thing I'll say is that playing this game actually got me pretty excited for whatever the next perfect arc that is being developed by Microsoft right now the initiative and Crystal Dynamics are working on that. That's a pretty exciting prospect especially if they make it feel more like a spy game and less like a run-in gun shooter because yeah I mean I think that was the biggest disappointment for me that I can't be expecting much more of a spy game than it actually was. I really enjoyed the early missions. Some of the missions are even called stealth. Yeah and then Joanna's voice over shooting everybody. It definitely feels as though I know this game had a sort of torture development or so Martin Hollis started out directing this game who was the director of GoldenEye. I've met him a couple of times by the way he is a lovely man and just like he was one of the first people I ever met in game development. I remember it was at a GDC and I was like wait this guy directed GoldenEye and it was that feeling of whoa I played that game as much as a kid and this is the guy who directed it. He's a really thoughtful guy anyways he was responsible I think or at least he and the people he was working with were responsible for a lot of the basic decisions around this game and then he left kind of halfway through. You can definitely tell it seems to me that there were some decisions made at various points that required them to square some circles that didn't really want to be squared. The way that Joanna is like okay I'm standing again and then you go around the corner and she starts blasting right anyway. I started blasting and then she's like okay yeah I'm putting the door. She was like like so anyway. So she really likes to start blasting and that disconnect is present through the end throughout the game. Her voice over a lot of times implies that there was maybe a stealthier game at some point that she could have been in and instead they're like I we can't make this. So maybe it wasn't very fun and they were like we just know how to have Rashid at the guys like there's a couple moments where like she has to like crawl across a catwalk and like look down a vent into a room and like over your conversation for one of the cutscenes where she's sneaking around like there's a few moments that yes in theory you're sneaking in order to advance the story or she has the the cam spy is that what that tool is called or like a little girl. I wish you barely have to use. Yeah and it used it in a couple early missions and then it becomes almost completely irrelevant. It feels like there are some vestiges of a much stealthier game here but I mean we haven't brought this up yet but I guess I should say like the real reason I liked this game in 2010 is because you play as a female character like it really was just that simple for me at the time in much the same way that I liked Metroid which luckily is a better franchise like that paid off for being a lot more I would say but this game like just bare minimum I was at least in 2010 I was like hey it might not be good but I don't really care because I get to play as a cool lady and I don't really get to do that in Halo so here we are and like I'm not saying Joanna is a well-defined character she's not but it was a big deal to me back then you know. Yeah no it's why I really would love for you to play no one is forever sometime. I think I would like it a lot yeah. What makes that game remarkable is you're not only playing a female lead you're Kate Archer who's this sort of 60s super spy but the story is about workplace sexism and her overcoming all of these borish dudes and there are all these twists and subversions. Because it's set in the 60s right? Yes and so there's like direct references to the women's liberation movement. And even like there are all these things in her job that are designed to kind of make her feel you know to remind her that she's a woman there's a whole sequence in that game where you have to do call signs with people you know the eagle flies at midnight. She's knife cuts the butter but instead they're all designed as pickup lines so she has to pick up the phone and the guy on the other end will be like if I told you you had a great body would you hold it against me I don't that's not what they're a little more clever than that. Sure yeah and she has to put up with this environment. Yes and it but it calls that out and she keeps being like who like she keeps referencing the fact that some idiot wrote these things they never even say who wrote them but there's a lot of stuff like that so it's a much better written game and that is something I would not hold against this game in the end the absurdity of it is endearing. But wow like this story does not connect or make any sense. Well it's it would be a little more fun if they just gave you a little bit more of it I'm going to I know going to put an image into our chat and I want one of you okay Jason I want you to describe the picture that I just put into chat for our listeners as best you can. So okay so you are holding some sort of gun in your right hand you're standing in a hallway that looks like a futuristic like alien type hallway and there is a little gray alien in front of you he looks like kind of the classic gray alien with the big bald head. Huge huge forehead he's holding two guns and wearing a vest with that is an American flag vest with red and white stripes and some sneakers don't forget the sneakers on the back of that vest it says Elvis and he's performed he is performed in a voice that I can only describe as someone in the office could kind of do a Yoda impression. That is also what it reminded me of is like a Yoda impression. I'm alive. I thought I'd be chopped up like the others right now. You're from the Institute aren't you? I recognize you from before. You helped me. Thank you. I'm Agent Dop or join live you prefer. Well Joanna I'm protecting one but you can call me Elvis. So the voice acting was game is. No all the way. Joanna is probably the one that seems the most like it was probably an actor but so many of them seem like they just grabbed someone from the office and even for the time period again to compare this to no one that's forever like there are actors in that game they are funny they are doing bits they are reading lines of dialogue it feels like you're like watching a cartoon this is wild it feels like almost like a mod that was made in the office and they are people from the office by the way I don't I don't I don't I believe is an actual voice actor yeah actual whatever that means but I trained or professional I believe is is the actor I looked into because I was like what else is this guy in and he just his other credits are working on video games being a game designer and I was like okay cool you know right so he makes games he does not act in games not so he was in fact a guy working at the office one assumes and and got to record some voice lines so you're right Kirk that's true just like when Jason when you mentioned the the new one that's coming out something that would be fun would be to take some of the broad strokes of this absurd story that starts as corporate espionage and becomes a proxy battle between aliens and whatever and like turn that into something put a little more meat on the bones like flesh it out have some fun with it this feels so slap shot slip shot so much of the time that it's yeah that is kind of a disappointment something to it that seems like it could be interesting because the story is so minimal and so corny at the same time that you're like well I don't really understand what's going on but the voice acting is very funny and everybody only says about three sentences total so I feel like if I knew a little more I would either be laughing more or it would be an actual spy thriller but it never quite becomes either one of those something I think worth noting is a little bit more context here Kirk you've talked about some of the PC games that had come out around this time half life no one lives forever data sex this is a time when the consoles the games you'd play on each console were very different it's not like today we're pretty much getting everything on PlayStation Xbox or whatever switches a little different but still this is a time when everything you'd get on PlayStation one was very different than anything you'd get on N64 and then soon to be Xbox was pretty different so on the PlayStation at this point you had Metal Gear Solid which came out of 1998 and really I think blows this out of the water in a lot of ways that game don't get me wrong that game is not aged well and if you're going to replay it today you should play the Twin Sakes version which is a lot better or like the 3DS version which which have updated the controls and stuff but even at the time that game had proper voice acting that came at a story that was a lot definitely bonkers well I wouldn't say easier to follow it was definitely bonkers but it was a lot more easier than this like there is an interesting ideas explore there weren't a lot of other this game is not like exploring DARPA and the ethics of the DARPA commissioner and stuff like that this game doesn't really have a thought in its head honestly no this game is maybe about on the level of a Halo one we're like replaying Halo one fairly recently I was like wow there's not a lot to this I think that I think the point that I'm making here is that like if you if you not to get into console wars here but I think if you were playing games on the N64 no you're saying Xbox gamers are stupid it's okay I think if you're playing games on the N64 at this point you didn't and only the N64 you didn't have anything else to compare this to which I think explains why like you might have gotten really into this game a lot more as opposed to if you were dabbling with PC games and play sushi games too then it might have been like oh this doesn't really have the same sort of heft to it as some of these other games that I'm playing especially if you are playing PC stuff yeah I mean this this era is the reason that the joke about the PC master race exists it's not actually the later era where PC has have slightly better graphics it was this era where there was a thing where me and my friends who played PC games would play games like this and be like have you guys like played half life though like do you realize what video games are doing over on PC because this is like not there this is stuff that was happening 10 years ago on PC so it really is like that is where that disconnect kind of was at its most pronounced yeah but on console you could play as a woman I don't know I mean it's like you can play no most forever I mean it sure or Laura Crowe's you're playing some metroid yeah or if you are on PlayStation you had Tomb Raider a few years early true which was on PC also right yeah I think about it yeah at some point I would say the thing that you really are getting with this kind of a game is the split screen multiplayer thing for me that was the draw that I loved playing I put up with the golden eye controls even though I knew oh I could be playing whatever it was so fun to play with my friends on TV that that was yeah because you don't have that on PC at all back then right unless you have a LAN party this was like peak that era for me socially so I played counter strike I mean that was the PC game I was very into and I we did a lot of LAN parties but also yeah the reason I had an Xbox 360 was because pretty much all the multiplayer gaming I was doing this time period was in person it was all fighting games and it was all this kind of thing where I was like right let's all play perfect art together let's all play Gears of War together or Halo together etc like that was my life I was doing that with Diablo 2 on PC yeah of course same yeah we talked about that back in the Diablo episode as well like almost everything I was doing in the sort of 2005 to 2015 era was in person multiplayer gaming and playing this again made me kind of miss that a little bit yeah playing perfect dark alone in my office I was like you know what I'm gonna invite some people over for some Super Smash Brothers like remember those days remember that time that was that was cool if only if only we were having an in-person live show in a couple of months where we could play sports games we'll put a projector up and play some place in perfect art n64 of each one can we make that happen let's look into that maybe we won't make something like that happen yeah right after tears of the kingdom comes out we will be playing gold after the show we'll set up a smash we'll set up smash brothers for everybody to play after this look into it people can line up and challenge us and smash brothers after this goodness okay well on that note I guess we can pack it in I don't know that I recommend playing perfect dark in 2023 even though that's the year in which it's set but I really enjoyed revisiting it and I know we will definitely play the new one whenever that comes I am glad that we all played this one because it means we're all going to appreciate the new one so much more when it finally comes out oh absolutely I'm very glad it feels just a one-to-one remaster of this game but they just add in checkpoints that'd be great honestly can they just fix it anyway let's take a little break and then be back with one more thing do you know we're all security people dairy all day max fund drive hey chef we got another one another max fund drive people know it's the best time to support the shows they love you tell them how meet up days back sure did they wanted to know about the live streams though those are finishing up right now we can even send one out on the first night March 20 March 20th I'll give them a heads up they also wanted the limited time thank you gifts for new and upgrading members yep and we got some fresh episodes ready to go to all right we got exciting live streams meet up day fresh episodes limited time gifts oh and both yeah okay let them know that max fund drive 2023 will be ready on March 20th and it'll only be two weeks two weeks she's max fund drive starts on March 20th for just two weeks order up shoot I forgot their water and now a live reading from Rachel's poetry corner elephants there amens Clifton Neopets pore strips jeffson pine smell jelly beans goly goals skittles squirrels and the low celery chopsticks pumpernickel a case of you by Joni Mitchell lullabies tie-dye the more you know all of these things on our wonderful show all these things and more wait for you on wonderful every Wednesday on maximum fund org or wherever you download podcasts we are back Kirk why don't you go first sure my one more thing is a brief classic Kirk more thing I can just tell this is Maddie reacting to what I've written in our show yes yes so this is the beginning of a process that I will just sort of mark them kind of marking things on this episode and then I'll check in a little later to see how it's going I am going to try to train myself to play games with a controller without inverting the y-axis on the right thumbstick so I'm inspired by Chris plant our friend of the show besties co-host Chris plant who was just talking about this on an episode of the besties talking about how his son and he have been trading the controller when playing games and he is an inverter he inverts the y-axis on the right thumbstick much like I always did there are a lot of reasons for that it is a whole separate topic but he's always kind of thought that was really interesting and really liked inverting that he's a little different and inverts the thumbstick and like talking about it with people but his son when playing the games you know the same game is like what like can't get his head around it because why would you it's a totally it's a way it's a ridiculous way to play video games so he's been training himself to play with a regular style you know press the thumbstick up and you look goes up press it down the camera goes down and he said it took him like two months but that he did it and that his brain kind of learned the new the new way of doing things so I'm going to try doing the same thing not for any real reason I do not share the controller with my golden retriever and give her controller every time of time I think she wouldn't really understand it whether it was inverted or not inverted but I just think this would be kind of a fun thing to try to do he said in that episode that it feels a little more natural to not be inverted which makes sense if only because when you invert the y-axis but not the x-axis is just a little bit weird that one axis is regular and one isn't so anyways I've been trying it and I did I played perfect dark with regular controls and not a bad game actually because of the auto aim you can kind of be a little loose with the aiming and it's good for just sort of moving the camera but I'm going to stick with it I'm going to see how it goes and I will report back in a little bit to see if I'm able to do it really it's just I want to try to make my brain do new things because I think that's just healthy to try hey yeah can my brain relearn a skill that's kind of a you know not a super important life skill but just something that I do a lot so we'll see I'll maybe talk about it a little more once I've been doing it for longer and have a little more experience with different games that's easier or harder on but I'm giving it a shot if anyone out there wants to try with me let me know and how it goes for you and yeah I will let you both and listeners know how it goes I hope it works I have tried it but never as in as concerted an effort as I expect you will be the main time I had to try was for Dank and Rompa which does not have the option to invert controls but it's not a game where you really need to yeah inverted you can kind of get through it and I never got used to it so I just was like I guess I guess I'm faded to be a controller inverter but maybe not I think if you could you have like a time a time frame that you're gonna like try yeah it sounds like couple months three months I think it'll kind of depend I'm gonna do it on I'm like playing through some death stranding and some games that are like that where it's less arcadey and certainly a game like Resident Evil which I'll probably play with a mouse and keyboard would be a lot harder since you have to really precisely aim and it's very stressful and the more subconscious theming is you know the more stressed I am and thinking about things the more likely it is that'll start falling into muscle memory it really is interesting how your brain has conscious and muscle like types of memory where a conscious memory is okay I'm thinking about this I'm moving my thumb like I would move a mouse I'm thinking about it but then when things get intense and I need to aim at someone and they're really close to me I'm not thinking I'm in automatic pilot mode and that's when my thumb just starts going into inverted mode because it's a different part of your brain I think that internalizes things learning a musical instrument is actually similar to this where things become ingrained in your muscles and then you'll be able to play something that you learned 20 years ago and you're like whoa it's like my fingers are moving on the way because you're kind of accessing a different part of your memory that feels as though it is your muscles doing it even though of course it's your brain and next you have to de-invert all your chords and scales. I'm playing guitar left handed. Yeah that would be kind of the equivalent Kirk have you ever tried to arm aim with the mouse as opposed to aiming with your wrist I guess I'm making an assumption that you aim by moving your wrist. I've done your entire arm in the east course fashion. Right right like lowering the DPI and moving in bigger motion. Moving your entire arm back and forth to me. I know that's more accurate I've seen the people that you think. Supposedly. I've played with it a little bit but it's I'm you know I never really got to that point. I've thought about switching if I do I will talk about it on this show but I'm a little afraid to make the jump but then what if I became really good at games. I think it'd be interesting I mean I really like this kind of stuff like these kinds of worlds and challenges for your brain are really cool. Yeah all right I'll go next. So I played a board game called clue treachery tutor mansion and it's it's clue but it's an escape room board game but it's clue so Tina and I played this together this is a cooperative board game you can only play it once there are several other escape room type games in the clue series I got free copies of three of them including this one and I've only played this one so far. So it's card based and you also navigate around a board that is a tutor mansion and you also are still selecting which characters from clue you want to be I got to be Miss Scarlet etc. And you're solving a mystery while also trying to escape the mansion so this was how I found out that Dina had never seen the movie clue and then I forced her to watch the movie clue. Oh man one plus two plus one plus two very important in the larius because the plot of treachery at tutor mansion is the plot of the movie clue. Oh hell yeah oh I have to play that kind of oh my god yes one of my favorite movies I think they're like a real answer there's a real answer so as people who've seen the movie clue know there is well I would consider the final section of the movie to be the true answer but there are multiple endings in the movie and in this game there is just one real answer that is not the same as the movie so you definitely don't know who did it and also they invented one character for the game not that that's related to who did it so please don't over interpret that they just invented another person who's there I honestly don't know why I feel like it could have been the same as the characters. It's not a singing telegram but it's fine that would have been great actually but no it's not the singing telegram. So this was very fun we've gotten pretty into playing escape academy together which Kirk recommended what I got and also playing various escape room games in board game fashion. And I generally recommend Treachery at Truth or Mansion especially if you have a partner who has never seen the movie clue because it's just more fun that way but I'll also say it's pretty easy it's definitely easier than escape academy definitely easier than some of the other escape room games we've played easier than the Hunt a Killer games which I've also recommended on this show I should say the games recommended for ages 10 and up so if you have a 10 year old who doesn't really mind murder generally and isn't scared of that kind of concept and is willing to get on board for the mystery shenanigans it's a very kid friendly game there's a lot of kind of clue movie ask humor in the cards which took a little getting used to because I'm honestly more used to like adult themed sophisticated escape room games so kind of getting on board for some really goofball humor antics in the cards was a little bit of rejiggering that we both had to do but I generally recommend it and we pass it on to some friends who also like escape room games so yeah if that sounds right for you especially if you've got a kid who likes this kind of thing clue Treachery at Tudor Mansion very fun escape room board game kind of like movie clue Jason what's your one more thing oh man okay my one more thing is a TV show a limited series on peacock no sorry yes on peacock you had it called Paul T Goldman and Paul T Goldman is about a guy named Paul Finkelman who goes by the name Paul T Goldman what okay all right that is the first of many deceptions that this guy may or may not be be pulling so the premise of the show is that this guy Paul wrote a book called duplicity about that he says is a true story about his his this woman who he married and then turned out to be a con artist and con him out of a bunch of money and then turned out to be part of a crazy underground sex ring that was like taking children and selling them as sex workers or something like that and he after writing this book which he self-published he tweets that a hundred film directors try to get one of them to make a movie based on a screenplay he wrote based on this book and one of the store these directors Jason Wallimer bites and says hey I'm interested in making your movie wall and there right wall and there is a wall and there that's a set are they are there and he spends the next 10 years from about 2012 until about 2022 both doing a mix of kind of like a documentary and a recreation so he's both interviewing Paul T Goodman in various forms following him around the cameras and Goldman Goldman and he's both interviewing Paul T Goldman in various forms following him around in the camera getting him doing kind of studio interviews and also recreating scenes using actors including Paul playing himself from this this screenplay that Paul has written and as the show goes on you start to wonder hey how much of this is the truth is this really a true story Paul sure seems like a character what's his deal does he is he is he what is he exactly is he whoa he seems kind of like a jerk and then there are twists and turns along the way and it's all I'll make clear all is made clear by the end it's sort of like it's very much like the rehearsal I was just gonna ask it's very similar in that it's kind of like a documentary that is like questioning the nature of documentaries and and kind of playing with what's reality and what's not although I will say by the end it's a lot clearer what actually happened with this movie than it with this series than it is with the rehearsal it's also got this like crazy compelling character at the middle of it in Paul who is really just like this very kind of charming possibly associate path dude who is really compelling to watch and it really it it's it's an interesting watch because it's at times funny it's smart it's challenging sometimes to watch because watching him kind of do some of the things he does or say some things he does can be like tough to watch and yeah it's it's really interesting and I really recommend it I highly recommend it to people because I found it really enjoyable and and thought provoking and it's really a work of craft in that like this guy really spent Jason Walliners really spent 10 years piecing this thing together and the reason and they go through this in the in the series itself the reason that it took so long is because his his story was rejected and they made a pilot and then there was like they tried to go on Quibi which did not work out that part is very funny and yeah it's really interesting and then it winds up getting very meta in the last episode Paul is shown some of the documentary work that has already been done and I won't get into all the details because I don't want to spoil the whole thing but it really it asks a lot of interesting questions and we'll leave you thinking yeah about the nature of documentaries among other things yeah I watched this too and finish it over the weekend so Jason you and I have been texting about it quite a bit but so Jason Walliner the director of Borat subsequent movie film it should we should know like he is this is very much the waters that he likes to play in this kind of verite although he's been working on this one since 2012 so long way longer that was that Borat movie was 2020 I just mean that is indicative of his yeah sort of bent as an artist and sensibility yeah sensibility yeah so it has that same kind of feeling where you're not sure who's being pranked and how you feel about it there are definitely times watching it where I felt great pity for Paul T Goldman I guess as he as he calls himself who is a pitiable character and does seem somewhat delusional in that he believes these things that are clearly not true and can't like watching him reckon with reality is it's fascinating but also uncomfortable there were times where I'm like I just feel like we're making fun of this guy who has some serious problems but then there are other times where it's like this guy is horrible and we're just indulging in his fantasy so that's also awful and then there are times where I'm just laughing and laughing because this is so ridiculous that it does like a thing that is common to the rehearsal where they will be performing you know the Hollywood lighting to have the hair light and the mood lighting and the camera lens with the deep focus and he'll be like what are you telling me about the sex ring she was running it this whole time and then the next shot will pull out to like a documentary camera pointed at the set where there's like you know of things spraying fake rain on them and like the lighting is all there and there's people standing around checking their phones and it was kind of constantly puncturing the fiction that is so obviously a real fiction that he's created and that stuff is just it is fascinating I mean it really is a work of craft however complicated I might feel about it at times like I'm Jen in the end I was like I'm fine experiencing art that makes me feel a lot of different complicated ways at different times I really yeah I do recommend people watch it and it's short too it's like six episodes and they're like half an hour each it's a pretty breezy watch and you'll probably want to watch the whole thing once you start it yeah the last one is an hour the the some of the best moments are watching the director Jason Wallander just kind of his reaction is to Paul or like the actor who plays the direction there's a lot of stuff where you're like one of my watching there is one clear villain to a point where I feel like it actually does a good in exposing them in the form of a psychic who is really just in like an unabashed is pretty awful yeah who like really just like like takes this guy's money and leads him on and does some awful things I think and and is on camera and being interviewed quite a bit and very clearly awful there's one incredible moment where where she talks about how she can channel Abraham Lincoln and she gives quotes from Abraham Lincoln that nobody's heard before and someone talks about how profound they are and then it and then it shows one of the quotes and the quote is this is me paraphrasing but the quote is essentially a great society is made up of good people yeah it's I was trying to think what it was and that's yeah it's something like that you're just like wow it makes you think man yeah really crazy anyway we shouldn't spoil any more of this show yeah I want to watch it you should check it out Maddie you'd enjoy it for sure it's on peacock if you got peacock to get poker face you know I do you know I do watch it I'm a we're already watching all the below deck on yeah I wish it got I wish it was getting more attention I feel like it deserves more attention than it's gotten because it's really interesting and the rehearsal I know resonated a lot of people and I think this will as well yeah I think the rehearsal was big with the journalist sector and this sounds like it would be too for exactly the same yeah but it hasn't really been marketed and peacock is a tough you have a tough one to get people on but yeah maybe less now maybe it could have I mean it's fairly recent and because of poker face and then this upcoming seems to be popular a couple other cool upcoming shows that maybe more people will watch it well I'll watch it and that's gonna really tip the skills it will blow up the chip up like bump the matty my response yeah totally it's not as mentioning it on the show it's me watching it yes yes the matty mike is fun for exactly what it is well we've done it again another app we completed perfect dark the bet is complete folks we did well one half of the bed now we have to play Starcraft to yes that's true the next a little later in the year the humiliations have not yet ended more multiplayer to come probably over the summer I feel like in July we have a kind of a break between the day and sit out be good time to do up but well yeah that'll be great we will we will and we'll also talk to each other again next week so we'll see you then listeners yes you after Max Fun Drive starts bye triple click is produced by Jason Shrier of Maddy Myers and me Kirk Hamilton I had it mixed the show and also wrote our theme music our show art is by Tom DJ some of the games and products we talked about on this episode may have been sent to us for free for review consideration you can find a link to our ethics policy in the show notes triple click is a proud member of the maximum fun podcast network and if you like our show we hope you'll consider supporting us by becoming a member at maximum fun org slash join find us on Twitter at triple click pods send email the triple click at maximum fun org and find a link to our discord in the show notes thanks for listening see you next time and I'll see you then. 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