# Chapter Select, [[S3E5 - Conker's Bad Fur Day]] Transcript This transcription was completed on March 4, 2026 with the application MacWhisper on macOS. This was done automatically, without human input during the transcription process. The transcription used the Parakeet v3 model. My hope is that by offering this transcription – however accurate it may be done by a machine learning/AI – will help you, the listener. I’d love to offer full, proper transcription some day, but that is not feasible at this time. Thank you for listening and reading. I hope you enjoy the show and that this document was helpful. Enjoy. --- Uh yeah, I uh that script sucked, uh in my opinion. *00:00* I think that's the biggest problem with that move. *00:04* The script, interesting. *00:06* The script script is bad *00:07* I think that and by that I mean every character is trying to crack a joke or equip every two seconds in the movie to the point of like *00:08* exhaustion. *00:17* Like I think comedy has become like a pillar of Marvel, but like these characters are just like one-liner machines now. *00:18* That's all they are. *00:28* All of them. *00:28* Basically. *00:30* Yeah, and it's like basically reaching a point of exhaustion. *00:30* This is Tyka specifically. *00:34* I think it's just a Tyka thing. *00:36* It is. *00:37* This specifically I do not want to see another Tyka Marvel movie. *00:38* Don't worry, he's doing Star Wars movies now. *00:42* Yeah, I know. *00:44* Woohoo. *00:45* Um he I mean clearly what they saw was Ragnarok was a huge success *00:46* And they've said, make more, please. *00:52* And we had please double down on that idea. *00:54* And they've taken that and I think a lot of it is inspired by James Gunn's style The Guardians as well. *00:57* But those still have like an emotional center to them. *01:03* Like this movie I feel like does not at all. *01:06* I think it's like from the characterization and the character moments *01:09* that the Guardians movies has is drastically better. *01:12* It is, I agree. *01:15* Yes. *01:16* I think they tried to do that here, clearly. *01:17* Um *01:21* But I really my biggest complaint is like the total waste of characters and casting. *01:22* They just like Natalie Portman just *01:29* Done with her. *01:32* Um after this big help up to get her back. *01:33* Didn't you see she's back? *01:37* I I will say though, I don't know how much you know about this. *01:38* I'm pretty sure I haven't actually read the arc, but I know like the Cliff Notes stuff *01:41* I'm pretty sure the arc that they went with in this movie is the one in the comics. *01:45* Like that's how she becomes Lady Thor is she like has cancer and she turns to the hammer. *01:49* So like that is pulled from the comic That was cool. *01:54* That actually was really neat how they brought her back *01:56* into the narrative, but then she die but quote unquote dies at the end and that was a big waste. *01:59* I thought I thought Christian Bale was a waste *02:04* Um because he's barely good. *02:07* That's what sucked. *02:09* And he's like barely in it. *02:10* He's barely in it. *02:11* I actually thought his performance was a bit w weird. *02:12* Because like when he's with the kids, he's all like creepy clown. *02:15* But then when he's fighting Thor, he's like, I am the destroyer of God. *02:18* I don't know. *02:21* It fell. *02:21* Yeah, like all over. *02:23* And then Russell Crown was a big *02:24* Uof, like that was not the type of Zeus I expected, and I think that was a big crude waste. *02:27* I I also thought the movie was like unnecessarily crude at parts. *02:33* Like *02:38* For a Marvel movie, I think they went over the the crude line. *02:39* Like what? *02:43* Like oh let's play in the orgy. *02:44* Let's say orgy four times so everyone knows the fresh. *02:46* I thought that was funny because that's like how gods are depicted a lot and those things. *02:50* I think Thor having Thor be like lost and not really knowing what to do made the movie feel lost and not really know what to do. *02:54* Yes, yes. *03:02* He has like no like the best scene is finally when him and *03:03* The best scenes were like him and Jane just f like talking and hashing out their past together. *03:08* And then like they don't do anything else like with that stuff and I liked like throughout. *03:12* I liked the final *03:17* fight. *03:19* I thought having giving all of the kids the power of Thor was actually pretty funny. *03:20* Like I hated that. *03:24* It just got like, what's to keep him from doing that all the time? *03:26* Like everybody gather around, I'm gonna give you the power of Thor now. *03:29* Like why didn't he do that in the battle earlier? *03:32* Why doesn't he uh why hasn't he done that in literally all the other movies? *03:34* Well it was funny, it was funny. *03:38* Like that was there's yeah. *03:42* That was the moment when I was like, okay, this is Iron Man 3 because that reminded me of like, oh all the Iron Man suits are flying in out of nowhere and oh there's all I'm like, okay, this is too much and this is getting z *03:43* into stupid territory. *03:55* I thought that was a rule-breaking, dumb thing. *03:56* The other thing that I don't understand is that they're like, oh, Stormbreaker is the key to uh opening this thing and going and getting a wish. *03:58* I'm like, what's to keep Thor from *04:06* Leaving this realm, just grabbing Stormbreaker and be like, alright, well I'm just gonna go open this door back up again and then wish for Jane to be back alive. *04:08* Like they did say it was only the first person to make it to eternity gets the wish. *04:16* Oh, okay. *04:21* Did they? *04:22* Yeah. *04:23* So it's the one person gets a wish and now it's just gone forever. *04:23* I guess. *04:27* I don't know. *04:27* I thought the eternity silhouette looked like the big *04:28* Maybe he's called Druggernaut. *04:32* I feel like he's an X-Men villain, like the massive massive person. *04:33* Who is that? *04:38* He's like pink and stuff. *04:39* Not Magneto. *04:40* Galactus, that's a fantastic four villain. *04:41* Okay, well it kinda looked like that. *04:43* Like the helmet thing? *04:45* I don't know. *04:46* Sort of. *04:47* I saw it like Thor adopting Gore's daughter *04:48* Horrible. *04:54* Yeah. *04:55* Well what I wanted to text you after the movie, I have to wait till you see it was like, oh wow, Thor copied The Last of Us. *04:55* It's so it's just like *05:03* I mean maybe they could flesh her out and make her like a character we care about in future ones, but just like it didn't fear. *05:06* And any part of the movie that like, oh, maybe Thor uh could be like a dad is just when Korg just sit offhand says, like, oh I think he'd be a good dad. *05:19* Well also looks at the baby through the window in like the dating montage that splings. *05:26* Oh yeah, yeah *05:31* Like they drop hints and stuff. *05:32* It just didn't feel earned or not. *05:33* But like that was more implied, like he specifically wanted to have Jane's baby a child with Jane, because he loved her. *05:34* Not just pick up a child that f uh falls into his lap out of nowhere. *05:41* Yeah, I didn't feel earned. *05:47* Um I will say this though. *05:48* I really *05:50* In hindsight, I do really like the use of sweet child of mine and all the advertising now. *05:52* Like that all the movie was Guns N' Roses. *05:57* I don't know if you knew that. *05:59* Oh, yeah. *06:00* November. *06:01* Yeah, all of it. *06:02* It was all in there. *06:03* But I liked City was in there. *06:04* I liked Welcome in the Jungle's in there. *06:05* I liked uh you know, Sweet Child of Mine being the *06:07* um you know, advertising music and I like the name of the movie, Love and Thunder again at the end. *06:10* That was I thought that was good. *06:17* But I hated that even at the end when they tie in the like it's just- I just liked it. *06:18* I just didn't I just didn't like the kid at all, period, full stop. *06:23* I thought that was a terrible idea *06:26* It would have made sense if he would have been like, please watch over her and Thor's like, okay, I'll bring her to Asgard and people can watch over her there. *06:28* But for him to be like *06:36* Sure, I'll adopt this ch kid and give her my hammer and we'll travel the galaxy and fight people I was like, what? *06:37* Yeah, it didn't feel earned. *06:43* It's just a bummer. *06:45* Um *06:46* But then that then like there's no there's no setup for things right now either. *06:47* Like that this is the other thing I'm struggling with like *06:53* And I don't need all the movies to constantly build towards something. *06:55* Like I think that can get a little annoying on its own sometimes, but even the stuff they set up at the end of this, I'm like, well, what is. *06:59* What are we what are we what are we establishing here if you're the feature? *07:06* Hercules is a cool character in the comics. *07:11* I like Hercules in the comics. *07:13* But I'm saying it's the same sort of tease like ah, a character. *07:14* Um they just show characters and it's in the TV shows and it's just like what are we doing? *07:18* Like what nothing feels I don't know. *07:24* Like everything in the other phases at least felt like it was like, oh, I know how this will affect this, and I know like at the you get to the end of this and it's like, oh well Jane's and Valhalla, cool. *07:28* What exactly does that set up? *07:38* Like I don't under I don't know. *07:40* Don't understand. *07:42* Like And then I I've seen some other people say like well does this establish that *07:43* Mainline MCU Canon Loki is also in Valhalla and running around there, and they could bring him back if they wanted to do something with that. *07:49* It's like, okay, we're getting a little too crazy here. *07:57* This is what this is what I've I've told you before too. *08:01* And this is we're totally inning entering comic book territory with this for real. *08:04* No one's ever really dead *08:08* Ever yeah, no. *08:10* Ever. *08:11* Iron Man will stay dead, but that's because Robert Downey Jr. *08:12* doesn't want to play around in the back in Iron Heart. *08:15* If if he won *08:20* If Robert Downey Jr. *08:23* wanted to come back, if Robert Downey Jr. *08:24* wanted to come back though ever, they could bring him back to life in a heartbeat. *08:26* Yes, unfortunately. *08:34* Do you think again, no one's ever really dead, but do you think Chris Evans would ever come back? *08:36* I don't think so. *08:42* I think him and Robert are done. *08:43* I do genuinely. *08:45* I think Chris Evans would I think the Russos could talk him into it, but it would have to be like the right script. *08:46* I don't think Robert Downey Jr. *08:53* wants to *08:55* to come back. *08:55* I don't think I'll yeah. *08:55* No. *08:58* I'm w the one thing is they can never take uh the infinity saga away from us. *08:59* Like we'll always have those 22, 23 movies. *09:04* I don't think it's like I don't think what they're doing now is like bad. *09:07* It's just like I don't *09:11* care. *09:15* Like even last night I was like, Well, I guess I'll go see this movie. *09:15* And then I saw it and I was like, okay, I really didn't need like it's reaching the point where I'm *09:20* I'm going to just start wishing for Disney Plus for some of these. *09:26* And I already did that, I guess, with Eternals. *09:30* I am but like I had even beyond that, like I am just not *09:32* Yeah. *09:37* Caring. *09:38* They are just coming out with all of these things I don't I hope Black Panther's good. *09:38* I have faith in Ryan Kugler. *09:44* I d have faith in Ryan Kugler, but I have zero faith in that film, unfortunately. *09:46* Yeah, it's a really tough spot for them to be. *09:52* Also because they're introducing Namor in it, and Namor, I'm sorry, is a Fantastic Four character that should be introduced with them. *09:54* Like *10:03* I don't know. *10:05* Yeah, it's a lot. *10:06* There's too there's there's there's just too much the this is the actually this is the biggest way I can boil it all down right now. *10:08* There's just *10:14* too much. *10:15* It's overload. *10:16* They are reaching. *10:18* I think I would be I think I would be more fine with going and seeing Thor last night. *10:19* If it was one of like four or five Marvel projects that come out came out annually. *10:23* And even if I didn't like it, I'd just be like, eh, okay. *10:28* Like, you know *10:31* But now it is like four movies, four TV shows. *10:32* Yeah, they bridge the gap from year year beginning to year end. *10:35* Like this year alone it has been what on the *10:38* What what have we had so far this year? *10:42* Moon Night's Miss Marvel, um Doctor Strange, Spider-Man was dec end of December. *10:44* Um, now Thor, Black Panther, She-Hulk is next month. *10:50* Yeah, so it's been like it's been Spider-Man leads into uh was there anything I thought there was another TV show. *10:55* I guess it was Spider-Man led into Moon Knight, which led into Doctor Strange, which led in Marvel *11:03* Which led in or Miss Marvel, which led into Marvel, which led into this, which will lead into Shehawk, which will lead into Black Panther, which will lead into Guardians of the Galaxy holiday special. *11:07* Is the holiday special this year? *11:17* Yeah, I think so. *11:19* And then I think early next year is Ant Man. *11:20* Which yeah someone told me Kang is the villain in that. *11:23* Yeah, I'm looking forward to that. *11:27* So like that theoretically would *11:28* Kickstart something? *11:32* I don't know. *11:34* Oh, we also had Hawkeye at the end of last year. *11:35* So within the past. *11:38* Within the past couple months alone, we have had, okay, just since December of last year, we've had Hawkeye Moon Knight, Miss Mar Miss Marvel, uh Spider-Man, Doctor Strange, Thor. *11:40* Six different things. *11:52* When was seven or eight months. *11:54* When was Shan Chi? *11:56* Shanchi was like it was like August or September, I think. *11:57* Okay. *12:00* And then Eternals was like November, I wanna say. *12:00* Yeah. *12:03* And then Black Widow was before that in the summer. *12:04* Yeah, Eternals eternals was November. *12:07* So if we go it I mean it's like eight or nine things within the past. *12:10* It's just th there's too much of it and none of it's linking together. *12:15* You've got and and the the other problem is too right now they're trying to introduce new characters, which I'm fine with. *12:20* Like I really like Shang-Chi for the most part, other than *12:25* Big CGI dragon fight at the end. *12:28* That's my only problem with that movie. *12:30* Otherwise, I thought Shang-Chi was really good. *12:31* Um, but you've got this mix of like *12:34* New characters they're wanting to introduce to get people to like, and you've got old characters that they're trying to continue to do things with. *12:37* And old characters just feel like they're kind of just floating, other than Spider-Man. *12:44* And that's only because they did the thing that people have been telling them to do the thing with. *12:49* It's almost like fans wrote that movie. *12:54* So that was just like a surefire win for obvious reasons. *12:57* But everybody else just feels like they're treading water right now post-end game. *13:01* Like Black Widow was that movie didn't need to happen. *13:06* Doctor Strange was good, but it relied on a ten-episode TV show for you to watch it and a lot of other stuff, honestly. *13:09* Like the best moments of that movie are *13:18* Things that don't really have a lot to do with Doctor Strange directly. *13:20* I really like that movie though for the most part. *13:24* Apparently there's a Halloween special for Marvel this year. *13:26* Untitled Halloween special. *13:31* Oh, the holiday special is this year. *13:32* And then Secret Invasion Iron Heart Armor Wars and an Awakanda series. *13:35* Like *13:39* I'm drowning over here. *13:40* Have you even started Miss Marvel or Moon Knight? *13:42* No, no. *13:44* I just I'm burnt I'm just burnt out on all of this. *13:46* Star Wars the other day I started trying to watch Book of Boba Fett again, just totally. *13:49* I got through like one episode. *13:53* I was just like *13:54* I do not care. *13:54* Like I I cannot care about this right now. *13:56* Rise of Sky Star Wars is its own thing though. *13:58* Like I've said this before, but I'm thousand percent serious. *14:01* Like Rise of Skywalker legitimately damaged. *14:04* my love of Star Wars. *14:09* I think th that trilogy as a whole sucks because of it. *14:10* Altogether, sure. *14:15* I still do think that um *14:16* Oh, why am I blanking on the name of it now? *14:21* The Last Jedi? *14:23* Yes. *14:24* The Last Jedi is a good movie. *14:25* Grumpy Luke is good Luke. *14:29* I like it a lot. *14:31* I think I think there are aspects of that movie that are fine, but as a whole that movie's great it takes things that *14:34* I it I I just don't think any of it's good. *14:44* I I don't think any of it's good because I s I can't separate it from the other films around it. *14:46* I think seven set things up well. *14:51* And then Ryan Johnson came in and said, Let's not do half the things that Seven set up or the things that he did. *14:53* Yeah, there's no it's just totally it's just totally incoherent. *15:00* They had an end destination to get to. *15:05* Yeah. *15:08* And something that tied it all together, which is great. *15:08* Um the sequel trilogy is just incoherent in its directors and writers *15:11* Fighting over the things they want to do, or actually it's not even fighting over things they want to do. *15:16* It's them not knowing what to do and basically just making it up as they go with a multi-billion dollar franchise. *15:20* And then the whole time you've got Kathleen sitting at the head saying, Oh, we've always had these ideas and known what we're gonna do with this trilogy. *15:26* We've been planning to bring the Emperor back the whole time. *15:33* No, you haven't. *15:36* What are you talking about? *15:36* Yeah, it's uh I heard I've been getting like in the in the weeds with this stuff lately too. *15:38* I've been doing like a bunch of like retrospective lookbacks at that movie. *15:45* Daisy Ridley said they were shooting the movie and still didn't know if she would be related to Palpatine or not. *15:48* That's bad. *15:55* She said that like a year after the movie came out. *15:56* She's like, Yeah, JJ just kept kind of broaching the idea on set with me and *15:58* Asking me how I thought what I thought about it and stuff like that and then we decided to do it. *16:02* I don't disagree with any of that. *16:08* I guess uh *16:09* I guess I can just take them as individual movies and like I think the Last Jedi is really good by itself. *16:10* I can't separate I can't separate them from each other. *16:16* And it sucks because I like Force Awakens a lot and I thought Last Jedi was *16:18* I liked the Last Jedi more before I saw how they capitalized on it in the next movie. *16:23* Which is to say they did nothing with any of it. *16:28* Yeah, that's a shame, but I'm you know 'cause I do think there are interesting things that they set up in that movie. *16:31* And then literally in nine, they're like, what if Kylo Bryn put his element back together? *16:37* And what if he was evil, very evil? *16:42* And what if they did a kiss? *16:47* Kylo Smooch. *16:48* Yeah. *16:50* I just can't I don't get I don't that I don't disagree. *16:51* I can't look I can't look at the things that the interesting aspects of The Last Jedi without seeing like, well, how did they then capitalize on these later? *16:54* Oh *17:02* I have I have friends who will not listen to my recommendations anymore because I think The Last Jedi is the best Star Wars movie. *17:06* They they feel that strongly. *17:13* Oh my god. *17:15* I think that movie's just bloated too. *17:15* I think they could have chopped out like 20 minutes of that movie. *17:17* Oh weird. *17:21* It's like the casino scene is about 18 minutes total. *17:21* Well that could have been trimmed down a lot. *17:26* There's just a lot of stuff that could have been trimmed down. *17:28* Remember when Legends? *17:31* That's horrible. *17:33* She should have just died there. *17:34* Like that's what I'm saying. *17:36* Like there are aspects there I'll say this there are thematic aspects of The Last Jedi that I liked *17:37* And then there's a bunch of stuff like that that I just loathe. *17:44* Leia flying for no reason. *17:47* Finn doing literally nothing the whole movie. *17:49* But I gotta help him. *17:53* They set him up to be like the main character. *17:54* in the previous film, other than they set him and Ray up to be like co-leads of the trilogy. *17:57* And then they get to the second movie and they're like, Well, we don't know anything to do with this guy. *18:02* We'll just go have him run around and do a whole lot of nothing for two hours. *18:06* Yeah. *18:11* Um Yeah, whatever. *18:14* I'm I think the exhausting thing about Star Wars for me is when I heard that and or is *18:16* like twelve episodes or something and the next season's like twenty four. *18:21* I was like, nah, I can't do it. *18:24* And I think Obi-Wan, they botched a lot of Obi-Wan, which really upsets me. *18:27* You finished that, right? *18:32* Yeah, I didn't. *18:33* Yeah, I think Opie one was a big bummer. *18:34* Um which is sad. *18:38* Really sad. *18:41* Um but whatever. *18:44* Again, bloated. *18:46* Like uh normally I'm not a fan of the six episode runs because I think they're too short. *18:48* I think they're too short when you're introducing *18:53* Like new characters. *18:56* Like the thought of Moon Knight being six episodes. *18:57* I'm like, wow, I feel like you need like 10 or 12 to really flesh out this character. *18:59* And I haven't watched Moon Knight again, but just *19:03* And face value like six episodes to introduce a new character seems short to me. *19:05* Oscar Isaac is great. *19:10* The rest of it is a whole lot of fun. *19:11* But yeah, OB-1, it was just like drug out. *19:17* Yeah, that um that whole fifth or third or whatever number sister she was, absolute atrocious. *19:21* I didn't like her. *19:28* No. *19:29* They lost me when she like ran like a cheetah on top of the roofs in the second episode. *19:30* Parkour, baby. *19:34* Yeah, that was terrible. *19:36* I her whole plot and motivation and everything was I don't understand how she got off the planet after being stabbed. *19:37* They're like, okay, we're gonna stab her, and then she's like *19:44* Oh, this kid is d uh tied to Obi-Wan. *19:48* Don't worry, there's just a ship nearby, I guess, and I can get off this planet and jettison over to *19:51* Tattooing in five seconds. *19:56* Yeah, no, it was terrible. *19:58* I thought her character's involvement was, yeah, not good. *20:00* They could have found another way to lure Obi-Wan out and get him to go toe-to-toe with Vader without having to involve. *20:03* Her. *20:10* I I don't know. *20:11* And just the other thing with her too is like they they they showed their hand with her immediately. *20:12* Yeah. *20:18* Like as soon as they started with the flashback and the kids, and then they showed her later, I was like, oh well, she's just one of those kids. *20:19* Like I knew that episode one. *20:25* Yeah. *20:27* I was not *20:28* There's not any and then they get to the episode five or whatever and they're have this reveal moment. *20:29* I'm like, okay, well shocking. *20:34* Wow, can't believe it. *20:37* Um *20:39* Oh well. *20:40* Well, yeah, and I I think the worst the worst thing about her in that whole show, the thing that I think is unforgivable that I can still cannot believe that they did. *20:41* Is that they had the reveal of Anakin being alive and being Vader, just her saying just her saying that to Obi-Wan. *20:51* That was it. *21:00* I wanted Obi-Wan to like come face to face with Vader and be like, what the he who the heck is this guy? *21:01* And then *21:07* Vader like make it known to him who it is and then and then he can freak out and go from there. *21:08* Like that would have been really cool. *21:15* If he didn't know Anakin was alive until he came face to face with Vader. *21:16* Instead she's just like, hey, he's alive. *21:20* Did you know that? *21:23* Didn't you know that? *21:24* While I'm hunting you between boxes. *21:26* Yeah. *21:29* Yeah, big th it was it was it was not bad. *21:30* Like the final scene I thought was cool too, even though I don't understand how like *21:32* About like three or f three or four dozen boulders just explode off of Vader's body like it's nothing. *21:38* Like oh my gosh. *21:44* If I hurled a rocket at you, you would crumble. *21:46* That whole fight *21:49* Was that was my biggest problem. *21:51* It was a mix of cool and terrible. *21:54* It was cool. *21:56* I thought the lighting was awesome. *21:57* It was completely out of character. *21:59* It was completely out of character for Obi-Wan. *22:01* To laun I just don't understand like I will kill you now and then you're supposed to guess in fifteen years that he peacefully just surrenders to Vader and turns into a force guest. *22:03* No no no. *22:14* Obi-Wan was never going to kill Anakin and that's totally out of *22:14* I had a buddy saying that no, you gotta watch Clone Wars to like truly understand everything going on. *22:17* And I'm like, guys, I can't do this. *22:22* I don't I just I don't understand uh *22:26* How they uh I just had a brain fart. *22:31* Um *22:37* Dang it. *22:39* Oh, the cool part was uh the mix of Hayden and James Earl Jones' voice when he cut the helmet off. *22:40* I thought that was really cool. *22:46* That was right. *22:47* Super good. *22:49* The thing I don't understand though is that they keep showing in these shows, and this has been a problem with Star Wars progressively over the years. *22:50* This is something I heard red letter media bring up too, is like *22:58* Why do these people keep fighting with laser swords when Vader can rip a ship out of the sky and tear it open with his fist, and Obi-Wan can hurl rocks at it like *23:02* Why are they fighting with laser swords? *23:15* Well why doesn't Vader just try to crush Obi-Wan's skull with the force or tear him in half or like what are they they're fighting with laser swords and they can do all this wizard magic like *23:17* It used to just be like they had like basic moves like oh we can push each other and we can do this, this, and this. *23:30* Now I can now it's like they're going uh yeah, it's getting like force unleashed levels of stupid *23:35* And then it just m makes it weird that they opt to fight with sorts. *23:41* Lightsabers of all things. *23:46* Can you you gotta admit how cool it was when he ripped that ship down to the ground. *23:49* No, I hated it. *23:54* Oh, I thought that was cool. *23:55* I hated it. *23:56* I hated it because it was so *23:57* I thought when it wa I thought he was just gonna stop there and like hold it and then the ship would get away and then I was gonna be like, okay, that'd be it that's like a cool show that that alone I thought would have been a cool showing of his power that he's even able to briefly hold the ship back, I thought would have been cool. *23:59* No, he straight up rips it out of the sky and tears open, and then only for you to find oh that was the fake ship actually. *24:13* Our real one was behind the ship, and it's like, how does that make any sense at all? *24:19* No, I liked it. *24:24* I thought it was cool. *24:25* The fight with him and *24:26* Whatever number sister she was. *24:27* I thought that was pretty neat. *24:29* The third sister. *24:30* Well, okay, correct me if I'm wrong. *24:32* In uh the video game, what is the video game called? *24:34* With Cal Castus. *24:39* Uh Jedi Fort Fallen Order. *24:41* You fight a sister in that game too, right? *24:44* Like a bunch of them. *24:47* The fifth sister. *24:48* I get them mixed up. *24:49* I forget. *24:50* There's a number thing. *24:51* I can't remember what number she uses, but yeah, it's another sister. *24:52* I hope that game. *24:55* Another Inquisitor. *24:55* I hope that game's *24:56* Survivor? *24:58* I think it'll be good. *24:58* That's probably my favorite Star Wars thing I've seen in the past couple of years, honestly. *24:59* Mm-hmm. *25:05* Especially since uh *25:06* Uh I'm excited. *25:07* That's early next year, right? *25:09* Skywalker sucked in March or something. *25:10* It should be. *25:11* They haven't confirmed that or announced it yet, but based on like EA's *25:12* Like physical outlook, it seems like that's what it'll be. *25:17* Okay. *25:20* Um I think the biggest problem with Thor now that I think about it. *25:22* Is that Loki wasn't in it. *25:29* Oh, what are you talking about? *25:32* Loki was there at the very beginning, doing a wonderful performance on stage. *25:33* I think I think Thor needs to play off of Loki in order I think that's what makes a lot of Ragnarok really good. *25:37* Is that they're playing off of one another throughout and they are good. *25:46* It was fun to see come on. *25:49* It was fun to see Matt Damon do it again though. *25:51* That was *25:54* That was pretty cool. *25:54* Yeah, but then they kept bringing him like I would have been fine with just the one scene, and then he shows up again, he's like, Hey, how about we make a production about this? *25:55* I'm like, all right, where's that? *26:01* No, I like that. *26:02* I was *26:03* 'Cause it also showed it. *26:03* Running the joke into the ground a little bit. *26:05* But it also showed how old he is. *26:07* Oh my gosh. *26:09* His hair's all gray. *26:10* How old is he? *26:13* Probably like fifty f he's fifty-one, okay. *26:14* That's younger than I thought, honestly. *26:17* I thought he'd be like fifty-five. *26:18* A lot of people are getting old, man. *26:20* Um yeah, who else is in? *26:23* I don't know. *26:26* I've been seeing like a lot of movies lately and I'm like, wow, this person's *26:27* Getting up there. *26:31* And then I think about what that means for me. *26:32* I'm like, oh no. *26:34* George George Clooney's and Julia Roberts are in a rom com together later this year. *26:35* Yeah, I know. *26:40* That looks really good. *26:40* It doesn't it? *26:41* I'll watch it. *26:42* I'll watch the pump from that movie *26:42* I like rom coms. *26:46* This is I reached my mid-20s and I'm mid to late twenties. *26:47* I'm like, I think my favorite film genre is rom-coms now. *26:51* It's the only thing that consistently pleases me. *26:56* Hello everybody and welcome to Chapter Select, a seasonal podcast where we bounce back and forth between a series of games exploring their evolution, design, and legacy. *27:00* For the season three, we are back with a special bonus episode related to the Banjo Kazooie series. *27:10* My name is Max Roberts, and I am joined, as always, by Logan Moore. *27:18* Hi, Logan. *27:22* Surprise, we told nobody about this. *27:23* It was a top secret operation over here. *27:25* We teased it with uh chipmunk emojis, and that's about it. *27:28* This guy over here. *27:33* We are talking about Conquer's Bad Fur Day, uh, one of Rare's other 3D platformers on the N64 era. *27:34* It all started when Logan one day says, hey, maybe we should play this game, since we're already playing a bunch of rare games. *27:43* Yeah, I just thought it would be a good idea because the banjo season was obviously on the shorter side. *27:53* Um we've done lengthier seasons with our outside of the initial *27:59* trial season we did with The Last of Us, season one and two with Paper Mario and God of War were both much longer. *28:04* Uh so this banjo season by comparison, especially when accounting for Grunny's Revenge, which is like a three or four hour game, was way shorter. *28:10* Um and I I wasn't trying to artificially lengthen the season by any means, but I thought it might just be a good fun time to go play this game. *28:18* Because I know that a lot of people when they think of that old school era of rare and their platformers, they talk about banjo and they talk about Conquer. *28:26* And I, I mean, we we can get into this, but I think for both you and I *28:33* Ye we've we've never played this game. *28:37* We have no real exposure to this game because our parents listen to the warnings on the box art, I believe. *28:39* Probably. *28:46* Didn't get I have a distinct we can get into this with our histories in a bit, but I have a distinct r memory of my mom mentioning that I was never allowed to rent this game. *28:47* Um which is kind of funny. *28:56* Um anyway *28:59* Yeah, I thought it would just be a good time to if we're not gonna play this game now, then we never would have probably ever. *29:01* So may as well do it now. *29:09* Um *29:12* But yeah, let's get into we're gonna run down the the structure of this episode will obviously be a little bit different. *29:12* Uh we're gonna keep things the same for the most part. *29:18* Obviously, we are not going to be exploring the evolution design and legacy of *29:21* Conquer because there is really only one game. *29:25* Uh, actually there are like four, but it's it's even worse than Banner. *29:28* Yeah, but one of them's a remake. *29:33* Uh we'll talk about it here. *29:34* Uh but we are still gonna run down the basics of the game, which is it was *29:36* Again developed by Rare. *29:40* It originally originally released on March 5th, 2001 on the Nintendo 64. *29:42* A remake, like I mentioned before, came to Xbox in 2005. *29:48* That was called *29:53* Conquer Live and Reloaded, which is uh after the Microsoft acquisition, if I am correct. *29:54* Yeah. *30:02* Uh *30:02* Game director on the game was Chris Seaver, the producer. *30:03* We don't have any specific producing credit credits that we could find for this. *30:07* Couldn't find a single one. *30:12* The game itself was published by Rare though, even though it was in tandem with Nintendo, again, and maybe we'll talk about that a little bit more with the history here. *30:13* Nintendo was very much *30:20* Again, I I don't know just probably just a marketing partner on the game. *30:22* Uh if you watch some of the footage that you and I both watch, they talk about Nintendo being a partner on the project, and I assume that's just *30:26* Insofar as like giving them space at E3 and helping to promote the game and stuff like that. *30:33* And then the music was done by Robin Beenland, so not Grant Kirkhope this time around. *30:39* Uh the Metacritic score on this game was a ninety-two out of one hundred, which makes it uh *30:45* Very high. *30:54* What was Banjo? *30:56* Again, I feel like I've brought this up a couple different times this season. *30:57* As you can tell, we don't record all these back to back to back to back episodes. *31:00* So I'd forget this stuff over the months. *31:05* Banjo Kazooie had a Metacritic score of 92. *31:07* That's that's interesting. *31:12* Uh live and reloaded, the Xbox version had a 78 out of 100. *31:14* Uh we're not going to be talking about live and reloaded over the course of this episode, but really that was a full-blown remake of the game. *31:19* Really just the big alteration was the visual style. *31:25* Um and the multiplayer. *31:29* The multiplayer was changed a bit as well. *31:31* Yeah. *31:33* Um and yeah, I I before we get too much talking about *31:34* uh our own experiences with the game and what we thought of playing it here for this episode. *31:39* Uh we did want to bring up a couple other things about this game's history because it is really kind of a *31:43* Fascinating project at Rare. *31:50* Um like this is something along with Banjo Kazooie that they had been working on for quite some time. *31:52* The Bad Fur Day as a project evolved a couple different times. *31:58* Conquer again, his first appearance was in *32:02* uh Diddy Kong Racing, much like Banjo, and I think that was in ninety-seven. *32:04* So they had been working on a Conquer game that they were going to release. *32:09* Which is why he showed up in Diddy Kong Racing same as Banjo, but this game didn't see the light of day until three years after Banjo had released. *32:14* Um which is why it was one of the final Swansong games for the N64. *32:23* Uh the game itself started out as *32:28* Uh it started in nineteen ninety-six and it was just called Conquer's Quest at first, am I right? *32:32* Yeah. *32:38* Um then that evolved into *32:38* Yeah, and then that evolved into 12 Tales Conquer 64, where players could play as either Conquer or Barry, who was a chipmunk. *32:40* Uh the game was kind of conceptualized. *32:49* If you're interested, they talk about a lot of this on rare replay and some of the developer docs that they included in that uh in that release of the game. *32:51* Conquer was kind of the game was set over the course of the Twelve Tales name, I guess, was set over a bunch of different worlds and things like that and Conquer would go to different *33:01* Different worlds with different themes and stuff like that and he would have different powers and I know they talked about how they would give him different hats and things like that that he would *33:09* people to do so it it's kind of similar to how bad for a day turned out in that way at least with the different worlds and stuff like that over although bad for a day had *33:17* A lot fewer worlds by comparison. *33:25* Uh that project though then did up getting uh retooled because they felt like the market was getting highly saturated with QT 3D platformers, rare even invoked its own *33:27* uh its own release of banjo and when you think about like getting into late nineties there really was a ton of that stuff like uh *33:38* I always remember Rocket Robot on Wheels is one of the big ones. *33:47* I don't know why. *33:50* I think that was done by Insomniac, I believe, or Sucker Punch. *33:51* It was one of the two. *33:54* No, Mame and Sucker Punch. *33:57* I think Sucker Punch did that one. *34:00* It was done by um It was done by Sucker Punch, yeah, and published by Ubisoft. *34:03* So I always remember that game for some reason because that was one I rented from Blockbuster quite a bunch. *34:09* But yeah, the market was Glover, Mario, you got the banjo games. *34:14* Um *34:20* So yeah, it was definitely an oversaturated market, so they decided to then turn it into what it is now, which is this more mature *34:21* crude platformer game that kind of parodies other platformers and also has like a rougher edge to it and kind of throws off your expectations of what you would expect from a game of that type, which i in general I think is a really *34:29* Good idea. *34:43* Like I love the idea for what Conquer is personally. *34:44* Um Execution. *34:48* Execution maybe not so much. *34:51* Uh other than that, live and reloaded again, we said like we said, uh came out in 2005, rare. *34:54* Uh was bought or acquired by Microsoft in 2002, and so then they uh *35:00* So then, yeah, I mean Max, you noted here in the notes that they once they got acquired, they made live and reloaded, so they had been working on Conquer in some capacity since 1996. *35:06* Uh so it was a long period of time that the studio was working on something related to Conquer, which perhaps makes sense why *35:14* He then went away for a very long time until he randomly showed up in Project Spark in 2015, which was always a weird *35:23* uh crossover or return for that character. *35:31* And then there was the hollow lens. *35:34* Was that that was just like a demo, wasn't it, that he showed up in in 2016? *35:36* The Wikipedia say it's a platform application release for the Microsoft HoloLens featuring a younger version of Conquer. *35:40* Um so it's just like a tech demo essentially of Conquer interacting with furniture and things in *35:47* We also didn't mention the Game Boy Color game that came out too. *35:55* Pocket Tails. *35:58* Pocket Tails. *35:59* That was technically his first *36:00* appearance outside of Diddy Kong Racing, his first own full-fledged game, and that one was made for like kids, and the story is much more cutesy and similar to what you'd expect from something of the z of the genre. *36:02* So yeah, bottom line is uh Rare worked on a lot of things related to Conquer for the better part of a decade uh at that studio. *36:14* And the only two things we ever really got from it was *36:22* I mean Pocket Tails obviously, but that's a Game Boy Color game was never hugely notable, but then bad for a day and then you had it live and reloaded *36:26* This brings us to though to uh talking about our own experiences playing it here with the gate with this time around. *36:34* Uh *36:41* Mm-hmm. *36:42* And maybe our exposure to it prior to playing this. *36:42* Max, I'll start with you. *36:45* I I mentioned I kind of have my own brief history with this, but did you ever *36:47* Uh have any exposure to this when you were younger in any way? *36:51* I just at the Hollywood video in uh Brownsburg there, which I don't even know what that building is now. *36:55* Uh, you know, it's just one of the games you would see on the shelf. *37:02* Um a squirrel and a bunny leaning against a logo and it says for mature audiences only. *37:06* It was that and the *37:11* I think it was a rock star game that was like rated AO. *37:13* I didn't remember those two games being on the shelf. *37:17* I forget what that was, Manhunt or something along those lines. *37:20* And I just rem I don't I I don't recall ever asking to rent it. *37:24* Um I just remember the box and you know the rated M. *37:28* It was kind of this juxtaposition of a cartoon character and the *37:31* you know, 17 and older rating on it. *37:35* Beyond that, really nothing. *37:38* I mean, Conquer's kind of one of those, if you're in the if you follow video games long enough, Conquer kind of just seeps into your consciousness of. *37:40* Well this is a big, you know he's a a crude, rude, cursing squirrel who drinks a lot. *37:48* Um and he had a and his game's very expensive on N64 because it didn't sell a ton and it was at the end of the console's life. *37:54* I think *38:01* The GameCube may have even been announced or even availed at the time. *38:02* So Conquer was super late. *38:07* Basically in development, the entire life of the N64, in one way or another. *38:09* And so that was really all kind of just osmosis until now when I've actually played it here on the Xbox. *38:15* What's your story? *38:23* Uh yeah, the GameCube would have surely been announced because it the GameCube came out later that year in 2001. *38:24* Uh so it surely would have been shown off or people would have known it was coming. *38:32* Yeah, my own experience, like I mentioned before, uh I had played a lot of these platformer style games or even just rare games in general back in the day. *38:37* Um, whether it be Banjo and then Goldeneye and uh I had Jet Force Gemini 2 back on my N64 that I like to play a lot. *38:45* Um so I don't know if my mom specifically *38:52* knew that, which is why she then said don't rent this game, but I remember there was one point where I was playing my N64 and she just walked in the room and I think I may have been playing with my dad. *38:57* She may have said something like, Oh, this game right here, d we're not Logan's not allowed to play this and uh I was like, What? *39:06* And and then and so that was kind of my exposure to it and *39:14* I remember the ads for it as well, and I was very confused. *39:17* This game had a very strange marketing campaign. *39:20* I don't know how how deeply you may have looked back into that back in the day, Max. *39:23* Yeah, no, I've I've looked at it now. *39:28* I don't remember any of it, but I've seen what it was now. *39:30* It's a little bit more than that. *39:33* Oh it was it was bad marketing, but it was it was they were trying to make it clear that it was not for kids. *39:38* And the way that they did that was they made it stand out quite a *39:43* If they would have just shown commercials with, hey, come buy Conquer's Bad Fur Day and it was just a bunch of clips from the game, then most people by proxy would have just thought it was a game for kids. *39:47* So they did some weird things with the marketing and put a mature edgy slant on it, much like the game, to make it clear that this game was for older audiences. *39:57* Um which I think is how my mom became aware of it, I'm going to guess, and which is why she annotated that I wasn't allowed to play it 'cause there's a squirrel with a beer on the cover of the box and stuff like that. *40:09* So uh *40:21* So yeah, that was really my only exposure to it. *40:23* And I ever I I I think I think for a lot of kids, like when your parents say you're not allowed to do this. *40:25* uh then there's a part of you that's like I wanna do that because my parents won't let me and I that was never how this was with Conquer for me. *40:31* I knew that this game existed I knew it was a mature *40:39* game. *40:42* Because of how old I was though when I knew about this game, which would have probably been around when it came out, so 2001, I would have been six or seven at the time. *40:43* And I really did think like it was for older audiences, and I did think that it was uh there was like bad stuff in the game. *40:54* I did I didn't know what to think, obviously at the time, I just thought it was very *41:02* It was for adults and it's not for me. *41:06* And it's funny now I I mean we'll get into talking about our own general thoughts on the game now. *41:09* It's funny now that I have played this game, because even coming into it within the past couple weeks that we've been playing it, I was very much expecting this to be a mature *41:15* crude game and in some senses it is, but it it also feels like a game that's made for fourteen year olds. *41:25* Uh-huh It's just *41:31* This game is not as mature as I think it leads on to be. *41:35* Is it mature for the platform it's in? *41:39* Or for the genre it's in? *41:41* Yeah, sure. *41:42* Especially at the time. *41:44* Nowadays though this is tame. *41:45* You see worse things on TV. *41:48* I I I I was even thinking about it. *41:50* I feel like *41:52* I feel like if you removed like the large bouncing boobs in this game that are somewhat prevalent, I feel like this the game would just get like a T-rating nowadays. *41:53* That's the only thing I really feel like modern *42:02* wise that would really push it into that M rating area would be the sex sexualization that is somewhat prevalent. *42:05* Otherwise *42:12* I mean they swear every now and then, but like the F-bombs are all bleeped out. *42:13* Anything that's really uh would be considered the worst curse words are all bleeped out. *42:17* Other than that, like it it very much feels *42:22* tame by modern standards, which is something that surprised me, uh, at least when it comes to the game's reputation as being this crude. *42:26* uh mature game for adults. *42:35* So I don't know. *42:38* Yeah, it was written it feels like it was written by a bunch of high schoolers. *42:40* Um just jossing around the locker room. *42:44* It's just about beer and um just cursing and women and just being silly and killing people and stuff. *42:47* It's very *42:57* immature for being such a quote unquote mature game, it's actually immature. *42:58* It's an immature game for anyone over the age of seventeen. *43:03* It's kind of eye-rolling worthy now. *43:07* Like you're just like, ah, of course, I have to uh pee to douse these flames or it's just dumb *43:10* Like yes. *43:20* Very dumb humor. *43:21* Poop jokes. *43:23* Poop jokes. *43:24* Quite quite literally. *43:25* Quite literally. *43:26* Yeah. *43:27* Yeah, it's just eh. *43:29* I'm it's my I was rolling my eyes. *43:32* I I mean let's just get right into it. *43:35* I don't think either of us have blatantly said this. *43:37* We think this game sucks. *43:39* Uh I wrote absolute trash. *43:41* This game is abysmal. *43:44* And I don't We both think this game is bad. *43:45* I don't understand the love for this. *43:48* I don't understand it either. *43:49* I wanna say I wanna say this though. *43:51* Uh this is the thing that I mentioned before. *43:53* I think I will say some things about this game that will s potentially surprise you. *43:55* For the most part, I think this game sucks. *43:59* I think it's very bad. *44:01* I think it has not aged well whatsoever. *44:02* However, if I can roll the clocks back 21 years and think of myself playing this game back then. *44:05* I think I would have understood why people feel about it the way they do now. *44:12* You and I have played this game for the first time. *44:17* 21 years after it came out, and my goodness, does it not hold up in any regard whatsoever? *44:21* Like this game has not aged gracefully in the slightest. *44:28* And that's compared to *44:31* Like where's other platformers that we've got to do? *44:34* Banjo we just played and we talked about how well we thought banjo held up, especially the original. *44:36* Two we got a little bit of a little bit of a little bit more. *44:40* This game just doesn't feel good to play. *44:48* No. *44:50* It's janky. *44:51* Even the basic stuff like the floating with the like even the most basic moves like floating through the air with the floor. *44:52* They can't seem to nail it for their their squirrel companion with the same power. *45:02* Like this should be just like Dixie or Tiny. *45:07* And it's not. *45:10* And I'm I'm baffled, really. *45:11* A lot of the design decisions here I think are *45:13* Trash. *45:17* So the thing that I really like about the game, and this is one of the goals that they had, is that *45:18* It feels constantly fresh because it is changing up the game mechanics constantly. *45:25* And on paper, I think that that is a good idea for a game. *45:30* But a game of this style where it's throwing a lot of different things at you and you don't really know what to expect around the next corner, whether that be in the form of a boss fight or some sort of *45:37* minigame or just whatever there's so many different encounters in this game that are wildly different from from one another. *45:45* And I think that's really cool for the most part. *45:51* The problem is that the baseline platforming mechanics suck *45:53* And therefore every other gameplay mechanic in this game sucks too. *45:59* And it's changing up things mechanically on a minute-by-minute basis in some instances. *46:02* Like every hour you're presented with *46:08* Two two to three different things that are completely unique to that section of the game for the most part. *46:11* Uh and they all feel horrible. *46:16* Uh so it in a general sense, I like this idea of *46:18* throwing a lot of stuff at the wall and vari uh coming up with variations of the gameplay. *46:25* Uh but none of it is good. *46:32* And that's the problem. *46:34* This game is such a slog to play. *46:35* Like I I I *46:37* Yeah, I I mean that's just the most basic wa way to state it is that everything that you do in this game is just mind-numbingly *46:39* Dole, it's not engaging, it's it doesn't respond the right way. *46:48* And then there are certain sections that are just horrible *46:52* The the the th I I think about the laser section at the end in the war sequence, which I was texting you about yesterday because I had finished the game yesterday at the time we were recording this, and *46:55* Like the gameplay mechanics themselves don't feel good already, like the crawling and the jumping, and then they put you in these scenarios where it's like, oh, now you gotta dip and dive your way through all these lasers or else you'll die. *47:05* And it's like, oh my gosh, like ha *47:16* Uh, it's it's absolutely miserable. *47:19* It is repetitive as well. *47:23* You have to do everything, every puzzle is at least three times you have to go back and forth *47:26* Um to deliver something or bring something somewhere. *47:31* Gotta bring the cheese to the rat three times. *47:34* Gotta roll the poo ball to three different locations, and if you go up the wrong hill, then you're screwed. *47:37* Yes. *47:43* They really don't spell any of that out either in some situations. *47:44* Like this game doesn't even give you prompts for the controls outside of press B over the brief over the B platform. *47:47* Other than that, like context sensitive. *47:55* Yeah, you and I were texting each other things like you're like, oh, by the way, pr uh pro strategy, you can crawl in the war sequence, which I did know that. *47:57* But then you're like also you can pee harder if you pull if you hold down the left trigger. *48:05* Like the game doesn't *48:09* tell you any of this. *48:11* It just introduces these gameplay mechanics and it's like, okay, figure it out. *48:12* I don't know. *48:16* Like like I don't know I didn't know all the moves at my disposal in some of the more unique boss fights. *48:16* Like I think about the Indian boss fight too where I *48:22* had tried it probably twenty-five times and lost and then realized oh there's a block feature to this too where I can block the thing's snapping animation at me, the aliens. *48:25* Um it does not spell any of this out whatsoever, especially compared to uh again, I don't need the games to hold your hands constantly, but if you're gonna introduce a *48:35* gameplay mechanic like like banjo's got the right idea with it where it's like oh hey I'm gonna teach you this move now here's how you do it here's how you do your Brigle bash or here's how you do your *48:45* Or even thing running Donkey Kong Country where they show you an animation of like what it is. *48:56* Like you can do this and that. *49:01* It's so *49:02* Just aimless in a way. *49:04* I also think think about this too. *49:07* Is I feel like it's two different games that *49:09* kind of mashed together. *49:12* This is arguably not even arguably, this is one of the longest games that Rare was working on and you can tell it was started out as one project and turned into something by the end. *49:13* Because it feels like a definitive halfway point where the game goes from here are these like made-up environments to here is every movie reference we could get from the two thousand or from two thousand and put it in one movie or one game. *49:22* And it feels *49:34* disjointed, mashed together, held together by tape. *49:36* None of the nothing feels good. *49:39* This is from the same studio that gave us GoldenEye. *49:43* Banjo, Donkey Kong, um, and all of Conqueror. *49:46* A lot of those of which are like revolutionary from a mechanics standpoint. *49:51* Goldeneye revolutionized the shooter genre on console, especially pre-Halo. *49:55* Like, before the dual sticks came about with Xbox and Halo, like, Goldeneye was the I mean, pun pun not intended, but it was the gold standard for for shooters on consoles. *50:01* Absolutely. *50:12* And then you get into this game and it's like they have so many mechanics that are in here, but they don't tell you how to do any of them. *50:13* And then on top of that, even once you figure them out, they don't feel good. *50:20* Like at all *50:24* It's actually it's kind of convenient or ironic timing. *50:25* I'm actually reading um The Making of Goldeneye, um which is a boss fight books book right now. *50:29* I'm reading a a press copy for review. *50:36* And they're talking about how they made Goldeneye and stuff in this book. *50:39* It's the history of that game. *50:42* But one of the tidbits I kinda learned about Rare, which I didn't know, was essentially the studio was on *50:43* like a farm in the countryside and there were a bunch of barns and basically each barn was a team making different games and there was no cohesion between the teams. *50:49* It wasn't like *50:58* This guy from Banjo is now working on this game, or we can go over here and talk. *50:59* They were all kind of internally competing with each other. *51:02* And you you can tell this wasn't made by the people that made Banjo or GoldenEye or Donkey Kong. *51:05* Like this *51:11* I mean I'm sure some people from those games were brought onto the Conquered team, but it is this was not their A team or even their B team. *51:12* This feels like their *51:20* Yeah, it is kind of fascinating. *51:26* I I I think honestly, if they had not come up with the idea to make it uh more crude, then the game doesn't see the light of day because it's *51:28* clear that they were already wavering on the idea of Twelve Tales and thought it wouldn't be good to release that. *51:35* Um and it's only after the retooling that they really had confidence in the project. *51:41* And even then it didn't *51:45* do well. *51:47* I mean there's a reason there hasn't been another one of these games outside of just a remake in the past twenty years. *51:47* There's so much I have to mention on on the negatives with this game. *51:54* And I'm sorry, we just if you're somebody who li *51:57* Actually I'll mention this right now. *51:59* I literally wrote down in my notes, if you like this game, you only played it as a child. *52:00* Like pretty blank. *52:05* I have a similar game. *52:07* Anybody who ha anybody who modern currently *52:08* uh says that they love this game is lying to you. *52:11* Uh because if you play this game in 2022, if you go play it on rare replay right now and you play the whole game from start to finish, I do not see how you can get out on the other side of that and be like *52:14* Yeah, wow, one of the greatest games of all time. *52:23* I love it. *52:25* Like, it's not good nowadays. *52:26* I wrote down people who think this is good have the thickest Revs tinted glasses on. *52:30* Yes. *52:35* Um *52:36* You can love the game. *52:36* That's fine. *52:37* If you I played some stuff back in the day that I would acknowledge now as trash as a child. *52:38* Like it's fine. *52:43* But this is fundamentally not a good game. *52:44* game, not a good platformer. *52:46* It's not a good shooter. *52:47* It's not a good puzzle game. *52:49* It's it's not even good visually. *52:51* I think there's a lot of jank in the game. *52:53* And it's not even storyline. *52:55* It's not even got a good storyline. *52:58* I think the best thing I the one thing I will say is I think visually it looks pretty good for the system. *53:00* Like it's pretty impressive. *53:04* uh some of these sequences they were able to get run on the N64. *53:06* Like I think a lot of this looks like it would be more well tailored to like the GameCube for the era. *53:11* Obviously there's a visual gap between the two *53:16* Uh but there are some pretty impressive sequences in this game, even stuff that you wouldn't see in banjo. *53:19* Uh, I think the the character models and stuff were pretty expressive and had a lot of character and charm to them. *53:25* I think that that stuff was really *53:31* quality. *53:34* I think the camera though it's just the camera is horrible. *53:34* I don't I don't understand that's the one thing that I was uh *53:39* Trying to wrap my head around is how the camera is so bad in this but not in banjo. *53:43* Like I know you mentioned there's not a c a lot of crossover between the teams, but I didn't have a lot of trouble with the camera and banjo. *53:47* This game's camera gave me *53:53* Issues constantly, like significant issues. *53:55* Yeah, like all the time. *53:58* And maybe that's because we played uh the 360 version of banjo, and maybe they tweak that a bit and we aren't aware of that. *53:59* But I really don't think it is. *54:07* Uh I think that there were sections for me where the camera straight up got caught on walls and I couldn't see Conquer and I had to find a way to like *54:08* Either quit out of the game and restart or I had to like find a way to maneuver the camera in such a way that I could get it around this corner that it had literally gotten got stuck on. *54:19* So the camera's very bad. *54:29* Um *54:32* I I want to talk about the story because a lot of people the thing that made me feel like I was losing my mind the most with Conquer fans is after I beat the game yesterday and I started looking up a lot I wasn't even looking up a lot of stuff *54:33* I was watching some videos and I was reading Metacritic and a lot of people were like, oh wow, this game is one of my favorites, not just because of the gameplay and the crude jokes and stuff, but also because of the story. *54:46* It tells such a deep story and *54:57* Really hits you by the g e time you get to the end of it. *54:59* I'm like, what are you talking about? *55:01* Like, look, we've come a long way with video game narratives since this time. *55:03* I'm totally fine with that. *55:08* But *55:10* A deep story. *55:11* What are we like the only thing the main bad guy the main bad guy wants to, and I get that it's supposed to be funny, but the main bad guy is this Panther. *55:13* that just wants a table fixed so he can put a glass of milk on it. *55:23* Which again fight him. *55:29* You don't even fight him or run into him or have a like your your your confrontation is with this person that *55:31* Conquer is not even aware of that exists. *55:37* So it's weird in that regard. *55:40* Like at least with something again, pointing back to Banjo, like Grunty's pretty front and center and is apparent is *55:42* Very clearly the antagonist going against the protagonist. *55:49* Conquer doesn't even know that the Panther exists until the final ten minutes of the game. *55:52* I also wrote down the big thing that people think is like the emotional *55:58* point at the end of the game is Barry dying. *56:03* Barry sucks. *56:06* She's horrible. *56:07* Why do you call it doesn't really care about her? *56:08* He does that that's the other thing I see people care about is like is people are like, oh you get to the end and you realize Conquer just always wanted to get home and he just wanted to be with his girlfriend. *56:11* I'm like, well Barry treats him like *56:20* garbage in this game. *56:22* Like even even when they reconvene at the end and do the stupid Matrix sequence. *56:24* Like she's treating like she's belittling him and treating him like garbage. *56:28* And then she just dies and *56:33* Like the game opens with him like intentionally trying not to go home to be with her so he can stay out and drink with the boys. *56:36* And then it's like and people are like, oh, it's so touch it's so heartfelt when Barry dies at the end and Conquer's so torn up. *56:44* I'm like, why? *56:50* They've done nothing. *56:51* Conquer forgets to bring her back. *56:54* Conquer cares more about killing the alien than his g his dead girlfriend. *56:56* The game is *57:01* It's just mashed together. *57:03* It really is nonsensical, which is fine. *57:04* It kind of fits with the idea of just bouncing between genre and game and movie reference and things like that. *57:07* But there is no plot or story here. *57:14* Not even like the the sub villain who you don't even realize like he's the one that sends out all the teddies to do this war with all the other squirrels until you show up later and he says, You killed all my teddies, gr *57:16* It's just they kind of tease it in his workshop at one point. *57:28* I did see you can see some teddies. *57:31* But then even then, like, well he he's he's also the professor guy is just *57:33* He's the one invoking all of these movie references too. *57:40* Or not invoking them, but he's causing all of them. *57:43* Like I'll call I'll I'll make a war, which is then supposed to be saving Private Ryan. *57:45* And then I'll uh in impregnate the panther with the nail and a xenomorph will pop out of him. *57:50* It's just like, dude, what like *57:56* And again, if I had played this twenty years ago, then I probably would have thought that stuff was much funnier. *57:58* Maybe we're just inundated with the references and remember this? *58:02* Like I wouldn't have the I wouldn't have gotten these references because I hadn't seen Alien or Saving Private Ryan *58:07* Well you probably would have silly. *58:12* Imagine if you were twenty-five and you were playing this in two thousand one. *58:14* Maybe you would have got it. *58:17* You probably would have gotten it. *58:18* Not as a seven-year-old. *58:20* That's what I'm saying. *58:21* Imagine if you were a a the age you are now and you had played this back then. *58:22* Oh sure. *58:26* Yeah, I would have gotten it. *58:27* Because you weren't supposed to play this game as a seven year old. *58:27* The box said that. *58:29* The box does. *58:31* But even but yeah, like the story is not good, and then a lot of the story beats themselves are just *58:32* Ripped off of movies? *58:38* Like how am I supposed to care about this war sequence then when the war sequence is just supposed to be a dupe of saving Private Orion? *58:40* And not even that, but like *58:48* It's it's supposed to be a parody. *58:50* This is what this is what I am not I was struggling to wrap my mind around with some of these sequences. *58:53* Is that it's supposed to be a parody *58:58* But it's just one-to-one mimicking the scenes of the movie, essentially, which is not *59:01* Like when I think about parodies of things, I think about how uh even something as terrible as like the scary movies or whatever, the old scary movie movies. *59:08* Like it's clearly trying to be a parody of, I don't know, Saw or something like that, but then they throw a wrench in this in this scene that you're familiar with for *59:17* For that then makes it a parody. *59:27* I guess in this the the parody aspect of it or the thing that you're supposed to find funny is that oh this is like saving private Ryan except that it's squirrels instead of people. *59:29* Like that's not like lap that's not funny? *59:39* I I I don't know. *59:43* Like it's just they're just changing what the characters are *59:45* There are these reference points, I guess. *59:49* It's like same with the bale of hay, like, oh this is like Terminator now, except it's not Terminator, it's or it's not a man, it's just a bale of hay. *59:51* It's like okay, sure. *59:59* So like *01:00:01* I don't know. *01:00:03* The parodies are a little Yeah. *01:00:03* They beat you over the head with it. *01:00:07* And that's what apparently people love so much about it. *01:00:08* I think *01:00:11* It's exhausting. *01:00:12* It's there's no consistency in this game at all. *01:00:15* Uh it's just a frustration point. *01:00:18* Every *01:00:21* Every new mechanic is something you've got to learn. *01:00:22* Every new challenge is some obstacle with a very small margin of error. *01:00:25* You mentioned the laser hallway earlier. *01:00:29* That reminds me a lot of like nuts and bolts, where if you just touch the wall, you're stuck in the wall. *01:00:32* You spin around, like you're grabbed. *01:00:38* The margin for error is small. *01:00:39* The controls are not adaptable to said margin. *01:00:42* It's just a game that punishes you constantly, but you're supposed to enjoy it because it's funny. *01:00:46* The final *01:00:52* The final like escape sequence from the Gee War chapter, which is far too long, *01:00:53* You know, you have to like one shot these enemies teddy snipers uh with ninety seconds. *01:01:01* And if you don't, you're gonna die. *01:01:08* And it's just them. *01:01:11* You have to use these shooting controls that are some of the most atrocious things I've ever seen in a game that I I don't *01:01:17* The thing that sucks about how we played it too, like we played it through rare replay, like I would have loved some quality of life improvements. *01:01:24* Like *01:01:31* Freaking inverting it to change the orientation of the camera. *01:01:31* Yeah, holy smokes. *01:01:35* Like being forced to play this *01:01:37* The shooting sequences were especially bad because you can strafe with the right stick, but the controls on that aren't inverted, but they are inverted on the left stick, so you're like *01:01:39* Inverted aiming with the left stick and then you're not inverted moving with the right stick. *01:01:50* And it's just like your brain is juggling *01:01:56* And again, when this game came out, I understand there wasn't a two-stick layout, so maybe it was a little bit more easier to wrap your mind around. *01:01:58* But like these are the things that they needed to add to this release of the game. *01:02:04* Yeah. *01:02:08* Just little things. *01:02:09* I I don't feel like they would be have been that hard to do. *01:02:10* And you you have to know if you're releasing Rare Replay 2 as a package. *01:02:13* Like what are the games people are gonna play in this? *01:02:17* They're gonna play the banjo games, they're gonna play *01:02:19* This, they're gonna play Jet Force Gemini probably and maybe like the Viva Pinatas or something. *01:02:21* Like those are the main things I feel like Perfect Dark. *01:02:25* Like those are things people are gonna want to play. *01:02:27* So maybe if you can add a little couple of quality of life features for that release, that would be great. *01:02:29* But no, like they can't *01:02:33* They or they didn't at least. *01:02:35* I will say this. *01:02:37* I was um probably a fool is probably what you could call me. *01:02:38* Like I bought Live and Reloaded as well, which you can still buy digitally for ten dollars. *01:02:43* That game is not included in Rare Replay. *01:02:48* That game is not included in Game Pass. *01:02:51* No. *01:02:53* Um, which is surprising to me. *01:02:54* Just you would think Microsoft would put everything in there. *01:02:57* It controls much better. *01:03:00* Um, thankfully. *01:03:03* It does feel better. *01:03:04* The platforming, the jumping, the control there just feels *01:03:05* much better, it's more modern, thank goodness. *01:03:09* Um which is nice to see after a four-year gap essentially between the two versions. *01:03:12* But they do the thing that you definitely don't like, which is they give Conquer like real fur and graphically just make it very *01:03:18* you know, more real than cartoony. *01:03:27* The font for the speech bubbles is totally out of place. *01:03:29* It's not cartoony or charming at all. *01:03:34* It feels very corporate, which is just strange. *01:03:36* But it at least control-wise, it does feel better in live and reloaded. *01:03:40* I'm I don't know why it's not included in either of these as an option. *01:03:44* It's a remake of the campaign and the multiplayer was the big difference. *01:03:51* And you and I both didn't play multiplayer in either uh game here, but it's *01:03:55* just this kind of t deathmatch shooty hallway game and different modes like capture the flag and things like that, just rename different things. *01:04:02* It's *01:04:09* It's just not good, um fundamentally. *01:04:11* Uh which is a big shame. *01:04:15* I would like to stress again, uh I want to invoke a couple other things that really *01:04:17* bothered me about this and we don't have to spend a lot of time on any of these. *01:04:23* But before I do, I would like to again stress I think *01:04:27* The more I played this game, the more I did appreciate it in a weird, weird way. *01:04:30* Uh I appreciated what it was going for. *01:04:35* And the structure of it, again, like I mentioned before, I think the idea of this game that is throwing a lot of different worlds at you, a lot of different characters, and it's trying to keep you on your toes with different gameplay mechanics and different *01:04:38* objectives and things like that. *01:04:50* I think that is cool. *01:04:51* But again, it just doesn't land any of that because the mechanics suck. *01:04:52* I wrote down why would I like Conquer? *01:04:56* And by that I mean the character specifically. *01:04:58* A lot of people I've seen have invoked like, oh, this is one of the best characters ever in in gaming, blah blah blah blah blah. *01:05:00* I'm like, I don't like there's nothing he does over the course of this game that makes me *01:05:06* Like him. *01:05:11* He's just kind of the conduit for this for all this crude stuff that's going on. *01:05:11* And and even then, he's not even like the crudest part of the game. *01:05:16* He's kind of *01:05:19* Somewhat innocent in some ways, uh not all of them, but I didn't think it was likable *01:05:20* Yeah, but he's just he's just he's just a squirrel that drinks beer and he barfs and he's uh I he's so relatable. *01:05:27* He's like me. *01:05:35* He drinks beer and *01:05:35* Yeah, I don't know. *01:05:38* I there's nothing really about Conquer in this game that I liked. *01:05:39* His voice is also kind of annoying. *01:05:42* Um I wrote we already touched on this, but I wrote main plot with the Panther is stupid beyond repair. *01:05:44* Um another thing I did like, uh this is a positive, I like that this game was very clearly *01:05:52* influenced by cartoons. *01:06:00* Like that's one of the elements I did really like. *01:06:02* Like Conquer whipping out a frying pan out of nowhere and trying and smacking people with it. *01:06:04* Like I like elements like that where it's very clearly trying to be like old school *01:06:09* cartoons with its nonsensical nature. *01:06:13* Uh that's something that I think is readily apparent throughout the entire game and is one aspect of it that I did like. *01:06:16* quite a bit and the even when you uh hear them talk about Twelve Tales and what Conquerors Quest and stuff like that was originally going to be, they mentioned that there was a focus on trying to make this game like *01:06:24* old school cartoons. *01:06:34* And I think that still is uh you can s definitely still see that here in Bad Fur Day and and that is one thing that I do personally like. *01:06:36* I don't know if that's something that you have any feeling. *01:06:44* I didn't really care too much for it, um, because the frying pan didn't work on every enemy. *01:06:49* I can appreciate it from a style perspective, but mechanically none of it really benefits you. *01:06:57* Yeah. *01:07:04* Um which is super frustrating. *01:07:05* Um the one *01:07:07* I think the one thing that I truly did like from this game, to be my own little ray of shunshine or positivity here, is uh *01:07:10* The Great Giant Pooh, or whatever it's called. *01:07:20* That is a that is a good mighty Pooh, that was what it was. *01:07:24* That's a good section. *01:07:27* The boss fight itself. *01:07:29* Getting to the boss fight is not good, but the boss fight itself is actually decent. *01:07:31* Um, funny, original. *01:07:36* That actually made me laugh. *01:07:39* Good job. *01:07:43* It's clear to see why that's like the most memorable part of the game by far. *01:07:43* Yeah. *01:07:48* Absolutely. *01:07:48* There's a whole poop world, which is very *01:07:49* I don't understand why Conquer doesn't need his gas mask inside the Mound of Pooh, but he does outside. *01:07:52* Don't think about it too much. *01:07:59* But the singing was good, the boss fight was tolerable. *01:08:00* Uh mechanically speaking, it was they really went all out there and that was good. *01:08:05* Every other boss fight in the game, not so good. *01:08:13* Pretty frustrating. *01:08:16* One small thing I wrote here, again, we don't need to talk about this too much, is that the fall damage in this game is insane. *01:08:18* Like *01:08:26* Very, very insane. *01:08:27* Because there are sections where you're climbing up and bouncing off all these things and the camera's terrible, so you can't see the depth perception is also *01:08:28* Atrocious. *01:08:36* Uh, I think specifically of the one underwater section with the spinning uh fan things or whatever. *01:08:37* Yeah, the blades. *01:08:43* Oh my gosh, dude, that whole sequence *01:08:44* Made me want to lose my mind because you do the depth is so bad that you cannot tell how close or far you are away from some of these things, especially in that whole section. *01:08:47* I hated it *01:08:59* Uh fall damage is atrocious though. *01:09:00* It r it really, really is. *01:09:02* Um especially during some sections where you'll climb up something really tall, like I think about the *01:09:04* The tower sequ the bat tower sequence where you gotta climb all the way up there and then you gotta get back down. *01:09:09* If you don't grab the rope just right, you'll fall. *01:09:15* You immediately just forces you down the rope and you fall to your death. *01:09:18* There's no margin for error in a game that doesn't give you the tools to even stay within that margin. *01:09:23* I wrote down, I already kind of touched on this, and this isn't about the game itself, but I just wrote, I hate the fans *01:09:31* I hate you. *01:09:37* I'm sorry. *01:09:38* If you like this game and you're on the internet praising it. *01:09:38* I I seriously spent Max can tell you. *01:09:41* Max, if you're editing the video version here, feel free to splash all those uh *01:09:43* images I sent you on this section of the video so people can see what I'm talking about. *01:09:48* Some of the way people talk about this game makes me feel like I am turning into the Joker. *01:09:52* Uh I *01:09:57* What is wrong with all of you? *01:09:59* Please, I implore you, go play this game right now. *01:10:01* It is not good. *01:10:04* Uh, last thing I had written down, and then we can move on to talking some other things. *01:10:06* This is something that *01:10:09* It's not really a positive or a negative. *01:10:11* It's just something that I noticed much more with this game compared to Rare's other games, is that this game is incr incredibly British. *01:10:13* Uh *01:10:22* way more than their other stuff, which is funny because I mean Rare's a studio from uh UK. *01:10:23* Uh, but I don't feel like that's really *01:10:29* present in their other games and maybe it's because there's voice acting in this and stuff like that that kind of shows that element of it. *01:10:32* But even even the sense of even the humor and stuff like that. *01:10:39* Like I feel like the humor in uh UK is much more dry compared to what we experience over here in the US, I think, for the most part. *01:10:43* Which is why I think something like *01:10:53* What's the main plot of the game? *01:10:55* Oh, uh, the Panther wants a new leg for his table, and it's gonna be conquer. *01:10:57* Maybe that's something that *01:11:02* I don't know, busts up the guts of people over there in jolly old England. *01:11:04* Uh but here and I'm like, what? *01:11:09* Like I like I ups I like absurdist, like goofy stuff, but that was just like *01:11:12* Just dumb? *01:11:17* Like that's oh yeah. *01:11:18* I don't know. *01:11:20* There's a lot a lot of the game's humor you can tell hails from that region, for sure, I felt like. *01:11:21* Yeah, it's just a s *01:11:29* It just feels very slapped together. *01:11:32* Really. *01:11:35* And I think that's why I wanted to include all that dev history stuff kind of toward the top. *01:11:35* Uh, you can tell this game was stuck and broken, and they just had to get it out eventually, and *01:11:41* That's it. *01:11:50* And Rare was really cranking out some bangers at the time. *01:11:51* And this kind of limped across the finish line at the end of the console's life cycle. *01:11:54* And *01:11:59* The lack of a clear goal or like what you're supposed to do. *01:12:00* Like I felt like I was missing something in the opening hour or two of the game. *01:12:04* I don't know if you felt that way as well, but uh *01:12:07* You just kinda get let loose and it's like go get home and like well am I actually supposed to be trying *01:12:11* It's like what are we doing here? *01:12:18* Your sister's kidnapped. *01:12:22* Go in this witch's castle and go from there. *01:12:23* And it's clear what you're supposed to be doing. *01:12:26* This game, it's just very *01:12:28* You're supposed to get home, but also there's this Panther man who's looking for you, but also there's these worlds and characters go run around in them. *01:12:31* Like I I I I don't know. *01:12:39* It none of it was coherent. *01:12:40* The first like three areas too, it's very open in the beginning. *01:12:42* You can go to the barn. *01:12:46* Yeah. *01:12:47* You can go to the Pooh Tower, or you could you could get to the the Bat Tower. *01:12:48* At the beginning of the game, it could be the very first thing you do is go to the tower. *01:12:52* And then it's a very linear after that, where you go to the caveman dinosaur land, and then it's the vampire, and then it's war, and then it's *01:12:56* The matrix. *01:13:06* That stuff's much more on the back half of the game is definitely much more linear, which I liked because it it wasn't helped. *01:13:06* It wasn't fraying my brain feeling like I was missing something. *01:13:13* Uh yeah, because they definitely kind of because personally I don't know about you, but as soon as I unlocked the poop ball, the first thing I did was I rolled it into the water or whatever and opened that whole section and then I've got the bat tower stuff open with the *01:13:17* uh the junkyard dogfish or whatever the heck it is. *01:13:31* Like I open that whole area and I'm like, okay, am I supposed to go here now? *01:13:35* But I feel like I haven't done *01:13:38* Obviously I knew the Great Mighty Pooh was somewhere in Pooh town and I'm like, am I supposed to stay here and keep doing stuff here? *01:13:39* So I just felt like, yeah, there's a lot of different ways you can go in the opening hours of the game and *01:13:47* uh kind of threw me off to a degree for sure. *01:13:53* It's r it's it's certainly the roughest rare game I've ever played. *01:13:57* Um *01:14:01* I can't I really don't understand the love for this game. *01:14:03* Again, I I can understand it if you played it *01:14:08* Twenty years ago and you have not touched it since. *01:14:12* But I can get it to a degree. *01:14:14* But there are games from 20 years ago that are good. *01:14:16* You know? *01:14:19* There is. *01:14:20* Yeah, like actually that's that's where I'm really torn is the maybe maybe that's the thing that's making me go a little crazy here is the metacritic score. *01:14:21* It's seeing even what critics were saying back in the day. *01:14:31* Like if you were a kid who rented this game from Blockbuster back in 2001 and you played it and you're like, what the heck is this? *01:14:34* Oh my gosh, like I can see how you'd have an affinity for it. *01:14:39* But when I see critics, and again, throw this in the video version if you want to, when I see critics saying, This is the best N64 games, move out of the way, Zelda and Goldeneye, it's like, what are you talking about? *01:14:42* Like *01:14:55* This was bad on th on Xbox when I just played it and I can't imagine playing it with the N64 claw controller and it's that much it's even gotta be worse. *01:14:56* So uh yeah, I I I don't know. *01:15:08* Um so we don't like the game. *01:15:10* If you can't. *01:15:14* No, the game is abysmal. *01:15:15* I hope I I hope if people do listen to this and they are fans of this game. *01:15:17* Realize that one, we didn't come in expecting to dislike this at all. *01:15:21* I came into this very much like excited to play this. *01:15:25* And it wasn't until *01:15:28* train. *01:15:31* I started playing before him and was like, this is rough dude. *01:15:31* And he was like, should we keep going? *01:15:35* Yeah, we we had a conversation of if we should even see this through. *01:15:37* And the reason why we did is because I think this makes her good. *01:15:41* Uh *01:15:44* This makes for a good conversation piece for us to talk about this game. *01:15:45* It's been a while since I've played a bad game and like ripped it, you know. *01:15:48* It's you every now and then you need a bad game and you're you're crit *01:15:52* um your critical line of work. *01:15:55* This is this is some seriously bad gameplay and design *01:15:59* It just makes me sad. *01:16:06* It makes me question if Rare was ever really a good developer or if Nick's got a few lucky games out. *01:16:08* I don't know. *01:16:12* Um let's do the thing that we are go we we have done throughout the rest of this season with associ associated with banjo, which is rank all the levels. *01:16:20* Or I guess in this case we'll rank all the chapters. *01:16:29* Because this game is cut into a chapter by chapter basis. *01:16:31* Uh there are nine chapters in total. *01:16:34* There's the opening uh hungover section when you're trying to get through get into the main area. *01:16:37* There is uh Wendy, which involves the the bee. *01:16:42* There is Barn Boys, which involves the *01:16:46* uh boob flower and the cheese rat and that whole area. *01:16:49* Uh in the Terminator hay bale. *01:16:53* There's the Bats Tower, which has got the cogs in it. *01:16:56* There's Sloprano. *01:16:59* Which has got the great mighty poo and stuff like that. *01:17:01* Uh Oogabooga is the caveman prehistoric area. *01:17:04* Spooky is the vampire section with the mansion and the *01:17:08* We haven't even talked about that whole god awful sequence with the zombies and stuff like that. *01:17:12* Uh the war section is obviously the whole war sequence, and then the final is the heist slash space area, which is *01:17:17* Yeah, uh you uh you do a heist turns into the heist in the matrix, and then uh you end up in space somehow. *01:17:24* That's a great way to combine those two things together. *01:17:32* Uh, Max, I'm gonna guess you think all of these are bad, but is there one that stands out to you amongst the rest as being either truly terrible or better than the rest? *01:17:34* I think the worst level by far is the war level. *01:17:46* It's too long and too hard. *01:17:51* I would say *01:17:54* Well war is the worst. *01:17:57* It's a it's awful. *01:18:01* I it never ended. *01:18:03* You have the tank controls. *01:18:05* You've got the weird boss fight with the missiles that track you and through you. *01:18:08* Alright, let's start at the top. *01:18:12* I think this will be easier. *01:18:14* I'd say Pooh is the best. *01:18:15* It's got the great mindy Pooh. *01:18:16* It's the best boss fight in the game. *01:18:17* It's shot. *01:18:19* It's it's it's it's dumb juvenile humor, but I can uh kind of appreciate an entire world being centered around poop. *01:18:20* It's funny. *01:18:27* I have the brain of an 11-year-old still to that degree. *01:18:28* Um *01:18:31* Making cows poop and then swimming through that diarrhea is funny to me. *01:18:32* Uh blowing them up after you make them poop is kind of weird. *01:18:37* But uh I'd say poop is best. *01:18:42* Poop is best. *01:18:44* Poop number one, you heard it here first. *01:18:45* Shouldn't it be number two? *01:18:47* It should be number two, technically. *01:18:49* Other than that *01:18:51* Yeah, I don't know. *01:18:53* I think war's definitely near the bottom, but I'm trying to compare it to how I feel about some of these other ones. *01:18:54* I think the first half of Uga Booga is good with the dinosaurs, but as soon as you get in the club *01:19:00* I hated that I hated I hated that one way more. *01:19:07* Honestly, more than war, if I'm being real with you. *01:19:11* I just did not like *01:19:14* any aspects of that. *01:19:16* The other thing too in that sequence, I like, I was under the impression that *01:19:18* When Barry gets kidnapped earlier in the game, she gets ki kidnapped by the Panther, I thought. *01:19:24* Which I g uh like I thought that maybe they were coming to her Yeah, that I thought that they were coming to the house because they were looking for a squirrel and they knew Conquer lived there. *01:19:29* And then she opens the door and gets kidnapped by the rock people, and then later on you find out the rock people just kidnapped her for the heck of it, I guess. *01:19:38* They needed a dancer in the club. *01:19:47* I don't know. *01:19:49* I don't understand that all of that. *01:19:50* I hated cavemen. *01:19:52* I'm fine with saying war is the worst if you feel that strongly about it, but I think Uka Booga is pretty bad. *01:19:53* Uh the bomb is really terrible. *01:20:03* I died on that like five to ten times. *01:20:05* Because it's so tight. *01:20:08* Tight. *01:20:11* The window to get there is so tight. *01:20:11* You have maybe like a margin of error being so slim with awful mechanics. *01:20:14* Yes. *01:20:20* The margin of error on that is so, so small. *01:20:20* I think spooky is also really bad. *01:20:23* It's funny because I said, oh, I appreciated how linear the later levels were, but those were also the ones where I'm like, dear God, this is the worst part of the game. *01:20:25* Uh I think Barn Boys is maybe higher near the top, personally. *01:20:33* Sure. *01:20:40* Uh the Barn sequence *01:20:40* I think a rat cheese and then he explodes because he gets gas and then he comes back to life later for some reason. *01:20:43* I don't know, man. *01:20:51* It's so dumb. *01:20:51* The *01:20:53* The bee stuff is inoffensive in the sense of you just have to go into the hive and get that stuff out. *01:20:54* It's really more the hub world that connects everything. *01:21:02* Barn Boys feels disjointed and has a lot of *01:21:04* high level platforming up top and rafters and the tower above, but at least it's n and to get the flower you have to also like bring bees from five different locations. *01:21:08* I we'll put war ninth because I think the laser and then the beach sequence is probably the worst section of the entire game. *01:21:20* Yeah, it's too the whole thing's too long. *01:21:27* Behind that though, I would say I dude I hated the final boss. *01:21:31* Like I almost quit the game. *01:21:36* I didn't. *01:21:38* I was just almost like when I was playing it, I said this game was going to break me. *01:21:38* I uh the whole then the final section was not fair and difficult. *01:21:42* I got through that. *01:21:48* I got through that without any problem. *01:21:49* I did that ago. *01:21:50* I died like 15 times *01:21:52* What on earth? *01:21:53* I just kept sp spamming B on the things and jumping back and forth. *01:21:54* Nope. *01:21:58* They kept shooting me in the jump. *01:21:58* I would wait until they had a group and then jump and they'd *01:22:01* I was just jumping I was just jumping constantly. *01:22:06* I wasn't waiting for the money. *01:22:08* That's how I started and they just kept killing me. *01:22:08* It was abysmal. *01:22:10* Wow. *01:22:11* And then it's a good idea. *01:22:12* Like I hated that with him. *01:22:16* Okay, so let's put that eighth. *01:22:19* Uh I think the alien is atrocious. *01:22:21* Uh it is not that bad with just punching it and then throwing it out the first time. *01:22:24* Uh the third time, because you have to throw it out the air like three times. *01:22:30* The third time it's a crapshoot of whether or not you'll get to do it. *01:22:34* It'll let you punch it the first time. *01:22:37* The second time you usually just have to dodge or block one sequence, and then you can do it. *01:22:39* The third time, totally random if you're gonna do it or not. *01:22:44* It just decides it just decides *01:22:48* That y when it'll when you're allowed to punch it. *01:22:53* And a couple times, I don't know if this happened to you, but I would punch it like twice and then it would dodge the other shots and then I wouldn't be able to finish it off. *01:22:56* And you couldn't finish the combo. *01:23:03* Yeah. *01:23:05* It was just *01:23:05* You mentioned to me like, oh, it was just dumb luck when I finally did it. *01:23:06* Same thing here. *01:23:09* I don't know what I did in the run where I finally beat the boss compared to the ones where I didn't. *01:23:10* It was just *01:23:14* It's true. *01:23:16* It just it just let me finally hit it, whereas the previous times it would not. *01:23:18* Horrible. *01:23:22* I don't have any single idea. *01:23:23* what I did in t in that successful run compared to the others. *01:23:26* Uh I don't get it. *01:23:30* I really hate prehistoric Phil. *01:23:32* I would have to put that seventh. *01:23:33* I really do not like it. *01:23:35* That and Spooky, I would say the one thing Spooky's bad too. *01:23:37* Spooky is just meandering, especially when you have to fly all the villagers there, but at least it's easy. *01:23:43* Yeah, I didn't have many problems with Spooky. *01:23:49* Um the three keys thing was the one that annoyed me the most. *01:23:52* Super annoying, because you have to *01:23:56* go through this whole again, it's just these quest of we've gotta do something three times and it's far away and slow and difficult and I'm *01:23:58* It's just not good. *01:24:12* I think the caveman can be seven. *01:24:13* I just hated the caveman more. *01:24:16* Like, I have I have problems with spooky, but *01:24:18* I I would say the bat powers is gotta be six. *01:24:22* I would say the bat tower at least is not that long. *01:24:26* It took me forever because it kept falling off the rope. *01:24:31* That took me a bit too, but I would say comparatively it is not that long. *01:24:34* Comparatively, it's not that long. *01:24:38* Uh but it's also super fetch questy. *01:24:41* It is. *01:24:45* It's a the worst part of the bats tower was running around in the circle area trying to smack the cogs with the frying pan because *01:24:46* The animation of you pulling out the frying pan and smacking them is so slow that by the time you get within smacking distance of the cogs, they're already running away. *01:24:53* So I I just like *01:25:03* There's so many little things like that throughout the game that I wonder like was this play tested? *01:25:04* Like I understand like okay you you want you want to smack the cog with the frying pan so that you can then pick it up. *01:25:10* But w when they were internally playing this game, how *01:25:15* How quickly were they able to do that? *01:25:18* Because stuff like very simple trivial stuff like that where I knew what I was supposed to be doing, and it was simple in theory, took me way longer than it should have. *01:25:21* And that's just not *01:25:31* That's not fun in the slightest. *01:25:32* Like why is why is that taking so long? *01:25:33* I would say I'm fine with putting Bat's Tower fifth. *01:25:35* Again, I do think the saving grace is that it's not that long. *01:25:38* Um it really is not. *01:25:41* You just swim into the thing *01:25:43* Uh you climb the tower, you pull the lever, but then the category is put a micro into the safe, and then you're swimming. *01:25:45* Oh, the furnace in the safe, I forgot about that. *01:25:52* And that's got the underwater sequence. *01:25:55* That's really bad. *01:25:57* Yeah. *01:25:58* See, I had to look up a U. *01:25:58* spooky. *01:26:00* Yeah, that's fine. *01:26:01* The worst part of Spooky is I'm fine with that, yeah. *01:26:02* Uh the worst part of Spooky is *01:26:06* Uh writing the barrel down the thing. *01:26:09* Horrible. *01:26:12* Oh, so hard. *01:26:12* I get I got it on my first try, don't ask me how. *01:26:14* I felt like I almost fell off like six different instances on the way down. *01:26:17* Just total luck *01:26:21* But it was atrocious. *01:26:22* And then the first lead up to the gate to the the what's the Grim Reaper's name? *01:26:24* Greg? *01:26:32* Greg, sure. *01:26:33* I think it's Greg. *01:26:34* Uh he opens the door for you to get into that area. *01:26:35* But you have to kill all walk through the graveyard and kill all the zombies. *01:26:38* The zombies just pop up from the ground and you have no idea like there are like invisible lines that you'll cross where then the zombies will spawn. *01:26:42* I basically just got to a point where I tiptoed through the whole path and then the second I heard them jump at *01:26:51* jump up and at cause I cross some certain threshold, then I would run back down the path, then I would turn around and wait for them to slowly stumble towards me *01:26:56* Interesting. *01:27:04* I jumped on top of the gravestones and just shot at them beneath. *01:27:05* That is a better idea. *01:27:09* That's a pro strat for that sequence, I would guess. *01:27:10* Yeah, I was I've realized I could get up there safely and *01:27:13* I would not I would say that the B stuff is higher than uh hungover. *01:27:18* Hungover stinks. *01:27:25* I don't like chasing the key around and smacking it with a pan. *01:27:26* Hungover is better because it's short. *01:27:29* Well so is the bee. *01:27:31* The bee you just go up to the hive, take it down. *01:27:33* And then I guess the other time you go back up and then you take it down again *01:27:36* Yeah, I don't know. *01:27:39* I didn't care for Barn Boys has got uh term I will say the Barn Boy sequence *01:27:40* That's a great example of not telling you what to do because they don't tell you that you have to use the pitchfork dash to like take out all the bales of hay. *01:27:47* I knew that. *01:27:56* I I I kind of assumed that pretty quickly. *01:27:57* I kept trying to hit it with a frying pan and nothing was happening. *01:27:59* No, no, I assume that that was the case, so that I didn't struggle on that front. *01:28:02* That was abysmal. *01:28:06* I will say that that sequence had the best thing I'll say about Barn Boys is that it probably had my favorite characters in the game. *01:28:08* I like the paint and the brush *01:28:14* And then I like that they bullied the pitchfork into going to hang himself, which is just horrible. *01:28:15* But it was funny. *01:28:22* That was one of the sections in the game that I actually thought was pretty humorous. *01:28:23* was that they tell this pitchfork to go kill himself and then he does and then he's like, wait, I don't have a neck to hang myself by. *01:28:27* Like that that was a that was one I've seen some people say like you couldn't make this game today. *01:28:36* That's one thing that I don't think they would put in the game. *01:28:41* That joke would not have cut it today. *01:28:43* Yeah, that and all the boobs would probably not be as prevalent nowadays. *01:28:45* Definitely. *01:28:48* But yeah, I I I did find that kind of funny. *01:28:49* Otherwise though, the notion that you couldn't make this game day, what are you talking about? *01:28:52* Again, this game is so juvenile. *01:28:56* I feel like there's more *01:28:58* uh crude games out now for sure. *01:29:00* Uh especially in like the indie space and things like that. *01:29:03* Okay, so for ranking them slot Sloprano *01:29:07* Slaprano, I guess. *01:29:13* The poop poop area. *01:29:14* Number one. *01:29:15* Number two will say hungover, the tutorial area, because it's short. *01:29:16* Three is the B area, wendy, because it's also short. *01:29:19* Four is Barn Boys. *01:29:23* Five will say is Spooky. *01:29:24* Six is Bats Tower. *01:29:25* Seven is Oogabooga, the pre-historic area. *01:29:27* Eight is the heist in space section. *01:29:30* And then nine is it's war. *01:29:33* But if we're bringing honest, they're all bad. *01:29:36* Yeah, I think the one thing we haven't touched on uh in our discussion so far is just the music and the sound in general. *01:29:39* Uh like I said at the top, the composer this time around was Robin Beenland. *01:29:46* Uh so this was handled by a different composer compared to the banjo games that we've been playing here. *01:29:51* Uh what did you think about the music in this game? *01:29:57* Because *01:30:02* This is one aspect of Concord that I was privy to, at least to some degree, before we started playing, so I had heard some of the tracks that were in this game. *01:30:02* uh beforehand, but I I I really didn't know what to think about it until I had played the game. *01:30:11* Do you like it, dislike it, or where are you at? *01:30:17* Uh I said it's annoying and I don't like it. *01:30:20* And I said, how does anyone have a soft spot for this? *01:30:23* I don't know why this soundtrack got a vinyl record release. *01:30:26* I think this is pretty abysmal. *01:30:28* I think *01:30:31* The thing that I realized the more we played this is that uh when I had heard the music from Conquer previously *01:30:33* Uh just on its own I did not like it. *01:30:42* So yes, if I was to buy a vinyl record of this, I would not want to put it on and just listen to the tunes of Conquer's Bad for a Day *01:30:44* I do think the music in the game matches the game itself quite well though. *01:30:52* Um especially the main overarching overworld theme and the variations on that. *01:30:57* I do like that the *01:31:02* Over uh similar to banjo, if you go to different aspects of the main kind of hub world, the musical change at least a little bit and stuff like that. *01:31:03* Uh and I do think it matches this kind of style of world. *01:31:10* I I mentioned also before that I feel like it's *01:31:14* This game is trying to go for like a cartoon sort of vibe to it compared to something like Banjo. *01:31:17* Like it has the same art style as Banjo and a lot of other platformers is of that era. *01:31:23* But this game specifically I feel like is trying to be like a crude Saturday morning cartoon. *01:31:28* And in that sense, I think like even the m the main theme of the game specifically I feel like harkens back to that old timey era. *01:31:32* Which I kinda liked. *01:31:40* Um I I I think it matches matches the game quite well in that sense. *01:31:41* Obviously there's other songs in the game the *01:31:46* Pooh song is is good, it's funny, it's a it's a great idea for let's have this large turd sing opera, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, and throw poop it conquer. *01:31:48* Uh *01:32:00* Other than that, there's not anything particularly about the music that stood out to me. *01:32:01* Again, this is not a soundtrack I would just *01:32:07* pull up on YouTube and I I feel like listening to the Conquer soundtrack today. *01:32:10* It's not one of those, but I do think it mashes well with the game. *01:32:13* And you're grimacing here in front of me, but I think *01:32:19* It's so bad I just I found it annoying. *01:32:23* But what would you have rather them gone for, I guess, with the soundtrack *01:32:27* You think this game is annoying about the biggest thing? *01:32:31* You think that this game is annoying and bad, so maybe it's kind of fitting that you get an annoying and bad soundtrack to deal with. *01:32:33* When you were like, yeah, it matches well with the cartoon aesthetic, I'm like, it more matches well with the annoying. *01:32:40* aspect. *01:32:45* It's uh the only thing memorable is the poo song, and that's because there's singing involved. *01:32:46* The rest of it is just *01:32:52* No, it you just like nails on a chalkboard. *01:32:54* Like I just want to shut it off. *01:32:58* I didn't want any of it. *01:32:59* I didn't think any of it really *01:33:00* enhanced the experience. *01:33:02* It was just I wanted to forget it as much as possible. *01:33:04* I think the thing that annoyed me to the degree that you're talking about here. *01:33:09* Um in relation to the sound would be the voice acting. *01:33:13* I did not like the voice acting throughout. *01:33:16* That was the thing that kind of was also bad. *01:33:18* But I I chalked that up to early two thousands voice acting, not so much *01:33:21* That was what I chalked it up to as well, but some of these voices, I just if there was not speech bubbles, I would not have any idea what certain characters are even saying. *01:33:27* Like the professor is one that I think about, which I know he's supposed to have like an accent or whatever, so it's kind of why he he that's why he talks differently. *01:33:39* But again, I like I could I could not make out what he's even *01:33:47* sane if not for the speech bubbles that accompanied the voice acting. *01:33:51* Right. *01:33:55* Uh yeah, a lot of these characters just I I I attribute a lot of it to the the time period and that voice acting wasn't really a thing in games back then. *01:33:55* uh just yet. *01:34:04* So maybe in that sense that this game this game was somewhat ahead of its time. *01:34:06* But yes, I I that was the thing that really graded on me was just all of the poor *01:34:12* voices throughout and the poor quality. *01:34:17* I think I mentioned to you you at one point, like, wow, this is really terrible. *01:34:19* It sounds like lower quality microphones than if we you were to record this on a snowball uh *01:34:22* uh a Yeti snowball mic or something current days. *01:34:29* Like it was very, very bad. *01:34:32* Like I don't know what they recorded that dialogue with, but it was *01:34:34* Not good. *01:34:38* And I get it. *01:34:39* I get it was it is it it's on a cartridge. *01:34:39* I was gonna say maybe it was the compression of the N64 carts themselves and you couldn't do a whole lot in that sense. *01:34:42* a lot of them for trying to put voice acting in the game, but it's just I think it just continues to show that this game was in development for far too long and had too many cooks in the kitchen. *01:34:50* and came out a disaster. *01:35:02* I would argue maybe it didn't have enough cooks in the kitchen if some of these gameplay mechanics turned out the way that they did, even though Rare has shown in the past that it's *01:35:04* More than capable of creating some really good gameplay experiences. *01:35:13* Especially again, the the shooting sequences in particular kind of baffle me because Jeff Force Gemini was felt good back in the day. *01:35:16* Uh Goldeneye felt good back in the day. *01:35:23* And again, maybe if I had played this game when it came out, I would have thought it would have felt good at the time too. *01:35:25* But *01:35:30* Maybe. *01:35:31* That is not the case. *01:35:31* Let's kind of wrap up here. *01:35:33* Uh talk uh have our final sort of legacy discussion. *01:35:35* Obviously we've already this is a bonus episode tacked on to the end of this season. *01:35:38* If you want to hear our thoughts about *01:35:41* Banjo and we talked about Rare as a whole, uh, kind of in our previous episode about Grunty's Revenge. *01:35:43* But *01:35:50* Let's have a little bit of a larger discussion on rare, especially this era of rare, um, before we go. *01:35:51* Uh this is something I mentioned I want to put a pin in, but *01:35:58* Is rare actually as good as we believe they are? *01:36:02* I don't think so. *01:36:07* I feel like this is the discussion we have at the end of all of these seasons. *01:36:09* Like Paper Mario, we got to the end of it and we're like *01:36:12* Is Paper Mario really as good as we think? *01:36:15* And then we played some of the God of War games. *01:36:17* We're like, is God of War really as good as we think? *01:36:18* For the most part, God of War games are pretty good. *01:36:25* I think the *01:36:27* the worst God of War games would be like Ascension and maybe Chains of Olympus. *01:36:28* You know, I think the rest of them hold up fairly well. *01:36:32* And Paper Mario *01:36:35* Papermore is a bit interesting because some games kinda like at least these 3D platformers try different things. *01:36:38* different experimentations and also were made all by the same developer, but at least some of them do, you know, work well. *01:36:45* Well I was gonna say banjo is the other example of one I know we got to the end of and we talked about this in our previous episode like *01:36:52* Nuts and bolts stinks. *01:36:58* Grunty's Revenge is just kind of this Game Boy game that's only a couple hours long, so you can't think much about that. *01:36:59* And then I know with Tui, you and I were really let down with Tooie because it just felt so *01:37:04* So bloated and so much larger than it needed to be, and that game does not really hold a candle to the original banjo. *01:37:09* So even when looking at that franchise, it's like, well, there's *01:37:15* one good banjo game and the others are either bad or just unnotew not noteworthy at all. *01:37:18* Uh yeah, but this one for sure makes me wonder, like *01:37:25* Is rare good, you know? *01:37:31* Kazooie's good. *01:37:34* I think there are parts of Diddy Con Diddy Con Racing probably still holds up, at least as a cart racer of the time. *01:37:35* Gold. *01:37:41* It was this game. *01:37:43* It was Conquer, which went into uh grabbed by the Ghoulies, which went into Conquer Live and Reloaded, which went into *01:37:44* Uh Perfect Dark Zero, which is bad, which went into Cameo Elements of Power, which is unremarkable, which went into Viva Penata, which people liked, but that's like a totally different style of game in a lot of ways. *01:37:52* But also *01:38:03* People liked it just like they liked Conquer, so maybe Viva Pinata's really bad. *01:38:04* I don't know, I haven't played them. *01:38:08* Yeah, uh maybe we'll put out another surprise bonus episode playing Viva Pignata. *01:38:09* Sports Connect games? *01:38:15* Well now they that even I wouldn't even think about that. *01:38:17* I'd think about, you know, Bandrix doing nuts and bolts as well in that mix. *01:38:19* And then the Connect stuff's kind of its own category. *01:38:23* Launched rough *01:38:26* But is it pretty good now? *01:38:27* But then but then even then you look at rare currently and they've got Sea of Thieves and that's in a good position, but this Everwild game they're supposedly coming out with is in like development hell and who the heck knows what's up with that. *01:38:29* Uh *01:38:40* So yeah, it really I'll say this. *01:38:41* Rare is very much a good studio back in the day, because you gotta think about all the Donkey Kong Country games, you gotta think about Perfect Dark and Goldeneye being revolutionary console shooters. *01:38:44* Banjo Kazooie 1 is legitimately a an excellent game and is one of the best platformers, I think, to this day. *01:38:53* I do think though that when you go back and look at *01:39:01* Conquer and then s a lot of those other projects, like you can start to see the decline in quality over like it like I think for some of us it was like a very sudden thing when all of a sudden you got into the late *01:39:06* 2000s and it was like, wow, rare's really not what it used to be. *01:39:18* But no, like, as you got into the I'd say post-Banjo Kazooie, everything that rare really started to release was *01:39:22* A bit rougher. *01:39:30* Even in even with like Donkey Kong 64, which I know is a game you like, but I would say that game as well doesn't really hold a candle to Banjo Kazooie. *01:39:31* I'd say everything post-Banjo Kazooie has been a slow, steady decline for rare *01:39:38* Uh because Goldeneye was also Goldeneye was 97, I think, if I'm correct. *01:39:43* So I think it was 97 Goldeneye, 98 Banjo, and then from there rare *01:39:49* Sort slowly not a m it didn't fall off a cliff, but Tui was a little bit of a letdown. *01:39:54* Donkey Kong sixty four was good but had problems and then you get into this and all all the other things I mentioned. *01:39:58* So it was like this slow decline over the course of about a *01:40:04* decade or so were rare really started to fall off a bit. *01:40:07* Um I don't think that takes away from what they did though from the Donkey Kong country games on SNES and stuff like that leading up to Banjo. *01:40:11* I think that span of about *01:40:19* What would that be like six to eight years there was really special stuff they were putting out. *01:40:21* Uh but then once you get into the early two thousands is when it really star *01:40:27* It starts to fall apart, I think, a little bit for them. *01:40:32* all striving to do similar things or push the console to its limits and they lost their way, I think. *01:40:43* Um *01:40:51* It's an unfortunate thing. *01:40:52* But I think you could argue that some of the things that they were doing that were wildly different worked. *01:40:54* You had 2D platformers with Donkey Kong Country, that was working. *01:40:58* You had Goldeneye, which was a good one, which they were smaller. *01:41:01* They were smaller. *01:41:04* Then you had GoldenEye, which is a first person shooter, and that worked for them. *01:41:05* You had a 3D platform with Banjo, that worked. *01:41:08* You had them make a cart racing game with Diddy Kong, and that was good. *01:41:10* So like they were *01:41:13* able to find success with having these different teams and bouncing off and doing these different genres. *01:41:15* I'm more wondering I I think for me the question is like *01:41:20* Who was potentially leaving or staying at the studio around that time? *01:41:25* Like I would need a deeper look into the studio's history of *01:41:29* who was around and maybe who wasn't or like what things started happening internally within Rare that could have prompted this sl slow sort of decline. *01:41:33* And again I think it fought it was a place that could foster good talent. *01:41:42* Goldeneye is a good example of it. *01:41:46* Like I said earlier, I'm reading the history about that game, so it's very fresh in my mind. *01:41:48* But that was a small team of beginner developers that *01:41:53* had a love for Bond and like that was a good place for them because Rare had essentially unlimited resources and money and the top of the line tech and they were able to make something really great. *01:41:56* But *01:42:06* They were also spread across so many different teams and so almost unchecked, where a game like Conquer could fester for s five years. *01:42:07* and be brought out and kind of shambles, I think. *01:42:18* But then there are teams there that can make banjo and Kazooie, and that was a really great game that excelled at the Super Mario 64 kind of formula that came out at the launch of the console. *01:42:21* But it just a lot of stuff got let out, and I don't think that it was tight enough, but there was an ability to foster really great talent, and that's just waned over the years. *01:42:32* I think the thing uh again, one or one other thing I really want to stress with Conquer is that you and I have played this game. *01:42:44* In 2022. *01:42:52* Like I think we are being retroactively a bit like you said, like Conquer came out in shambles. *01:42:53* Conquer's definitely got problems, but if we had played this game 21 years ago, I do not think we'd be *01:42:58* anywhere as near as hard on it as we are now. *01:43:03* It's just it has not aged gracefully. *01:43:05* I think at the time it was much some of the things that I'm mentioning now that I think are still unique and interesting about the game, I think would have been that much more so *01:43:08* unique and interesting at the time. *01:43:16* Again, I'm not trying to say that it was I don't because the way people talk about it is mechanically good. *01:43:19* Yeah. *01:43:26* DiddyCon's mechanically good. *01:43:27* Goldeneye is mechanically good. *01:43:29* I think I think I still would have had these problems. *01:43:31* I'm I'm honestly baffled. *01:43:33* And I don't know, maybe the people were just out in the desert dying of thirst of 3D platformers or something, but Rockery North Time was good mechanically, and that has aged incredibly well. *01:43:36* Mario's aged well? *01:43:48* I don't know, man. *01:43:51* Uh don't make me don't make me fight you on Mario aging well there. *01:43:52* Uh Mario I you know I have things to say about Mario sixty four. *01:43:56* Um yeah, I don't know. *01:44:02* Like I I *01:44:05* I I don't think again, I don't think that this game came out and was like, oh wow, Conquerors Bad Fur Day sucks, rare's horrible. *01:44:06* I think this game found an audience, it did something different, and that's fine. *01:44:13* Because it is very it say what uh for all the things we have said mechanically about the game that is bad. *01:44:17* You cannot deny that the broad elevator pitch of let's create a platformer because these are so popular now, but the slant on it is that *01:44:22* It's for adults and it's crude and it's it's not made for children. *01:44:31* Like that is a great idea, I think, at its core. *01:44:35* Like, because it is very subversive in that way. *01:44:39* Uh *01:44:42* It's just yeah, mechanically it just does not hold up. *01:44:43* It and I don't see how anybody could play this game. *01:44:46* Even if you think it is hilarious and you are twelve years old and you are playing through this game for the first time and you think it's so funny because poop and *01:44:49* uh boobs and all the dumb little gags in it are such a huge joke to you. *01:44:58* I don't see how you could find the act of actually playing the game to be enjoyable whatsoever, which is like the inverse of all the other games we mentioned, so *01:45:03* I don't know. *01:45:12* I I would not say retroactively that Rare is a bad studio because you cannot undermine the things that they did do. *01:45:13* But yes, it's it playing this game does finally recontextu it does recontextualize my the way I view the studio though because when you hear people talk about Rare's best games, this is often mentioned right alongside Banjo *01:45:22* And this is why we played this game. *01:45:36* Is because we were like, okay, if we're gonna go play rares 3D platformers, we may as well throw this into the mix. *01:45:38* And Donkey Kong didn't feel like it fit well and we didn't want to play that, and there's really *01:45:43* No great way or well, isn't it? *01:45:48* It's on Switch Online now, I guess. *01:45:49* No, it's on the Wii U. *01:45:51* It's not on Switch Online. *01:45:53* I thought it was on Switch Online. *01:45:54* Anyway, oh I think I know what I'm thinking of. *01:45:56* I think there's like a rumor that it's coming or a leak or something that potentially teased that it was coming to switch on the possible. *01:45:58* Anyway, uh Yeah, I don't know. *01:46:03* Do you have anything else you want to say about this, Max? *01:46:06* No, I think that does it. *01:46:09* Yeah. *01:46:11* I uh I will be I'll I'll say this. *01:46:12* If you listen to this episode and you are someone who has an affinity g for this game *01:46:15* I would love to hear from you and I would also just encourage you to go play the game again right now. *01:46:19* Because I cannot stress *01:46:24* enough that we have zero rose tinted glasses for this game, and I feel like a lot of the fandom does for sure. *01:46:27* Uh and if you go play this game now on rare replay or wherever else you might want to play it, I just *01:46:35* I think there's a a good chance that you will come away and have a different conception of the game. *01:46:41* Yeah. *01:46:47* But yeah. *01:46:48* Yeah, I think that does it for Conquer. *01:46:49* Um thank you for listening to us bash on a game for, you know, the last hour or so. *01:46:52* Um *01:46:58* I know that can be tough to listen to the cathartic. *01:46:59* It is very I I think I briefly may have mentioned this at the top, but I just would like to say one other thing. *01:47:03* I am very glad I played this though. *01:47:08* And I don't know if you feel the same way. *01:47:11* Like I finished it. *01:47:12* And it I was very happy that I had like I can now say that I've played this game because I've had like a morbid curiosity about it for so long. *01:47:14* And uh *01:47:22* Now, whenever it's brought up, I can immediately interject that it's terrible. *01:47:24* So I I think I think if we had stopped if I had stopped after two hours, I would have *01:47:27* felt fine. *01:47:34* I I'm actually not glad I played this game all the way through, except for the show. *01:47:35* I think it's fun for the show. *01:47:39* But beyond that, I would have dropped off very quickly on this game and and never touched it again. *01:47:40* But if you wanna follow with the rest of what we're doing here at Chapter Select, including season four, which is The Fast and the Furious, and then Season Five, which is Resident Evil, you can follow the show on Twitter at Chapter Select. *01:47:45* You can follow Logan on Twitter at Moreman12 and his writing over at comicbook. *01:48:00* com. *01:48:05* You can follow myself on Twitter at Max Roberts143 and my writing over at maxfrequency. *01:48:06* net. *01:48:11* If you're interested in joining alongside in either season four or five, you can send either one of us a message on Twitter. *01:48:11* That would probably be the best way. *01:48:18* Those will be starting production here fairly soon. *01:48:20* And then *01:48:23* I think beyond that, that's everything I got. *01:48:25* Um, thank you all for listening. *01:48:28* And until next time, adios. *01:48:30* Bye-bye. *01:48:32* Chapter Select is a max frequency production. *01:48:34* This episode was research, produced, and edited by me, Max Roberts. *01:48:37* Season 3 is hosted by Logan Moore and myself. *01:48:41* Season three is all about Banjo Kazoe. *01:48:44* For more on this season, go to chapterselect. *01:48:47* com forward slash season three. *01:48:50* Follow the show at ChapterSelect, and check out previous seasons at chapterselect. *01:48:53* com. *01:48:58*