Fight Club

Welcome back to another episode of Disk Read Error, the podcast where every week we dive into the fascinating and extensive library of the greatest selling video game console of all time, the PlayStation Two. I'm Derek Kicker.

I'm Ian Golding.

And this week, Ian's going to put me out of my fucking misery because we're playing Fight Club.

You can't talk about fight maybe we shouldn't talk. It's the rules. Let's just not talk about Fight Club. It might be better. All right.

See you next week.

You okay? Fine. You're asking about Tyler Dirt?

I'll tell you what you need to know. Fight Club. Fight Club. The most unbearable person you knew in high school's. Favorite movie.

Yep. I really like how many people made it, like, most of their fucking personality and quoted it incessantly.

Yeah. Absolute dorks. I mean, the movie is good. Sure. I don't think it's aged particularly gracefully, but it's fine. Yeah. Again, I think the book aged better.

Yeah. And I think that's the thing I'm not the first one to talk about this, but there's like a subset because Americans just fully don't understand anything. Just the fact that this isn't supposed to be aspirational just like American Psycho, just like Wall Street and yet breaking Bad. Yeah, breaking bad. And yet people tried to act more like this. Because, again, Americans just are fucking stupid and just cannot take in art without trying to adopt it. Because if they like something, they want to be in it. So I think in that, the book has probably aged a lot better because Americans who read are probably a little better at that. But people who watch movies oh, boy.

Yeah. If that's all they're doing.

No, exactly.

Yeah. Anyone whose yearbook quote was a fucking quote from this movie was a Tyler Durden quote. Dear God is probably in prison right now.

Oh, yeah.

Or a cop.

Yeah. Desperately. Itching their ankle monitor.

Right?

Yeah.

Or pulling out their service weapon because a dog barked at them.

Yeah. Just thinking off. I just went over there. The dog barked right at me. I could get away with it.

Yeah. This movie was a real masterclass in missing the point for a lot of people.

A lot of people.

But this game very different than the.

Movie, but also missing the point. Different way.

Yeah. A little bit. This game came out in North America on November 16, 2004.

Sure.

This was not a PlayStation exclusive. It also came out on the Xbox.

Sure.

It was developed by a company called Genius Games.

Ironic.

And if you try to go to Genius Games on Wikipedia, it basically takes you to the one other game they did, which is and we've got to do this game. 50 cent bulletproof.

Yes. Which is this one of those games that's, like, secretly good?

I don't think so. It looks like a I mean, we talk about The Godfather so much on this podcast. We should just fucking do that episode already. But it's like, one of those things where around this time there were so many just absolute rip offs and reskins of Grand Theft Auto right. That I think that that's what that was. Fucking just like this is basically like, a rip off and a way worse version of Def Jam Fight for New York 100%.

A way worse version, too.

Yeah.

Like, way yeah. For some reason, the 50 Cent game has some kind of occupies some piece of my mind, like my memory or, like, it's notable in some way, and.

I'm not I think it looked good.

Okay.

I think visually and I mean, there's some pieces of this game even that kind of look good.

Can't agree with that.

Artifice. Sure. Mainly opening cutscene is all I'm thinking of. That kind of yeah, sure, sure. Yeah. But this game was published by Vivendi.

Yes. Vivendi Universal.

Vivendi Universal. Of course. Going back to our and at the end of this, I think we'll do, like, a little retrospective on how Blockbuster Month went. Blockbuster Month. Blockbuster Month. But they were really just mining for properties to make fucking games out of 100%. But yeah, there's not a lot to talk about development wise with this game. Clearly. Nobody tried.

No, no one tried. No one fucking cared.

Fun little bit of trivia, though. The pal version of this game was published by Sierra okay.

Of old point and click Adventures fame.

Yeah.

Okay. I love me some Sierra.

Yeah, sierra. Of what? They did the hobbit. Did they Hobit the hobbit game for PlayStation Two? I believe so.

I really only remember them from King's Quest. Space Quest. Whatever. Quest knights. Quest. Police quest. Quest. And the porn game. There the leisure suit.

Larry yes. Leisure suit. Larry. We got to do an episode on that one, too. There's a PlayStation Two. Leisure suit.

Larry oh, is there? Oh, yeah. I got to play that.

Okay, let's get into the story. What there is of one. I'm fucking done. I came to be a part of something.

You won't be a part of something. You get your paper straight. Tyler does his business there. Now buy me a goddamn beer.

Okay. This game is about Ross from Friends on a mission to find Tyler Durden. And he just keeps barely missing him. Yeah. Because in the beginning of the game, he is telling the story about how his wife left him for another woman.

Oh, you're right. Okay, good. Okay, good. Pull. Yeah. To the bartender.

Yeah. This game starts out with Ross being like, Hi.

See, it's funny. You said Ross and friends. I didn't know what you're talking about. But also, right away I mean, this might be early for this, but did they model the player character after Jimmy Smith's? Because every time he was on the fucking screen, he looked like Jimmy Smith's.

I don't know if they modeled any of these characters after Human beings, to be fair.

Fair. Go on.

They look kind of like mutants.

Yeah.

But yeah. So you're at this bar. You're talking about your problems, and the guy's like, well, why don't you come down to the basement? Which, of course, he does, because if you were at a bar and someone said, hey, come down to this basement, of course you would just do it.

Someone you've just met. Of course you would.

Yeah. I mean, hoomst amongst us hasn't just gone into a basement with a stranger.

Did it this morning.

And there you find yourself in a fight club.

Indeed you do.

And he immediately tells you, first rule of Fight Club is, your first night, you got to fight. Get in there, Newbie.

Get in there and fight.

And then throws you into this fighting pit, and then you fight, and then.

You realize you're playing a fighting game.

Yeah.

Fight Club is a fighting game.

It is a fighting game because Fight.

Club was about the fighting.

Yes. That was the primary thing about it, the fighting. And you'd be forgiven for thinking that the opening fight is like a tutorial, right? You're like, oh, I can't really do much. I can do, like, a punch and a kick, and I can just kind of do that and win very easily.

Very easily.

So this must be, like, my practice fight, my get up to speed fight.

Unlock some more moves as we go on, maybe.

Well, newsflash, Bozo, you're fucking wrong.

Very.

That's the whole game.

You're going to play that fight, like, ten more times.

Yeah. Because you can beat this game in about an hour. Maybe less. I think you can.

Less than an hour?

Yeah, it's sparse.

Yeah. That's a good word for it. And very repetitive would be a good word, where it's just here's a cutscene, then you fight, then there's a cutscene.

Then there's we'll get into the cutscenes. Because this might have the worst cutscenes of any fucking video game ever, if.

You could call them cutscenes.

Yeah. It's not just PowerPoints.

No.

So story wise, then they tell you, oh, you want to get more answers. It's incoherent.

Basically. Got to get into Project Mayhem if.

You want to find Tyler Durden.

Got to find Tyler Durden.

So the next five levels are you going someplace? And being. I'm looking for Tyler Durden.

Dude, the rest of the game is the final round from the where in the world is Carmen? San Diego. Fucking game show. Tyler went to Seattle, dude. Tyler went to Miami. And then you just follow him. You fight someone there, and then they tell you where he went next.

Yeah. And then, eventually, you finally will fight Tyler.

Well, yeah. Well, you fight the protagonist or whatever.

You fight Jack.

Yeah. But after fighting Jared Leto twice, which I did appreciate.

Yeah. Who looks nothing like Jared Leto.

No, of course not.

They couldn't get his likeness. And we'll get into the people. They actually got to come back for this game.

It's almost as funny as funny.

Oh, my God. But then you beat him and he morphs into Tyler. And by morphs, I mean doesn't change at all. Not his voice, not how he looks, but there is an interesting visual change in that when you finally get to the end. The end, basically, is very similar to the movie. Right? Jack is all of a sudden in his underwear. He shoots himself in the head and then the buildings blow up and somehow he looks more like Edward Norton in just this.

Yeah, like it was done.

Yeah, like, this was the first one, and they were like, oh, maybe we might get Edward Norton. Maybe we might be able to clear Edward Norton's.

Right?

And then he saw one fucking look at this and was like, Absolutely not.

No.

Get out of here.

You also discover, though, because in the movie, he's like, he shoots himself, you met me, and blah, blah, blah, and then the buildings just explode across the way.

Yeah, you discover this game.

You discover in this game, though, you actually held the remote control. You're the one who set it off.

Yeah.

See, so there's just like behind maybe.

We were the monsters all along.

Think about it or whatever.

It's like someone clearly only saw the trailer for Fight Club.

Yeah.

Like, the last scene the only thing.

And then they had someone's teenage brother explain the movie fucking awesome. They were kicking the shit out of each other all over this one.

Dude, I get into the gameplay.

Okay? Damn, son. Tyler said you could fight. You better hurry back. Tyler needs you back in the house. He wants to meet you.

So here's a very interesting thing. The game contains a wide combination of gameplay and visual elements. Found in several notable 6th generation 3D fighting games, such as multi height zone targeting Combos, which is that's being fucking very generous for what it has. Consisting of heavily reused strikes. Found in Tekken four.

Yes.

The localized damage system in which limbs can be permanently damaged. Found in Tao Feng Fist of the Lotus Wall throws height specific counters and stage transitions. Found in dead or alive. Three, the environmental usage found in Mortal Kombat deception and the overall realism, such as lack of juggling heavy, high recovery move kinesthetics and gritty, grimy urban aesthetic. Found in titles such as Def Jam, Fight For New York Now.

Bullshit. All of it.

I'm going to disagree with all of that. Every single one of those games is better than this.

Yes, in every way.

Even Tao Fang, which I have never played.

I never played it, but I know it's better.

I don't know what the fuck that is. There is zero possibility it could be worse than the combos. What combos? Light. Light, heavy. That's the combo. You can yeah, exactly. It's sluggish. Kind of like Def Jam. Fight for New York. Yeah. Some of the environment can break, I guess. It's not convincing. You can have your arm broken. So there's four real game modes. There's a story mode, there's an arcade mode, there's a Versus mode, and there's a survival mode where you don't heal in between rounds, obviously. And one interesting thing I'm not going to say it's good, but I guess interesting thing because I guess it took them some thought, is you can break your arm, right? So in survival mode, you can have someone fucking break your leg or something. And then the next round, you're like, limping because your fucking leg is broken. Or your arm is just like, useless. Which is something I guess it's interesting.

There's something there.

Yeah. But other than that, all of the modes are essentially the I only in.

Full disclosure, I only played story mode.

Because, of course yes, this game is very simple. And that's not to say that that is a bad thing because a similar game would be the Godzilla game we played.

Yeah. And that was fun.

Yeah. And that was a lot of fun. And that was a pretty simple game with very simple gameplay modes and like a nonsense story that didn't matter but was fun. This game is fucking beige.

Yes.

This game is taupe. This game visually unappealing. Everything looks kind of grungy and everyone kind of looks the same. A lot of the character models look the same. People's faces in this game are horrific.

Horrific.

Yeah. Just terrible. There's like blood and it feels, like, violent for violence sake.

Yeah.

They do the thing that Mortal Kombat does where it's like you punch someone and then it goes close up, x ray, bone crack. Except for it looks like shit. It looks like how a child would draw a skeleton.

Yes.

It looks like a cartoon. Like when you get electrocuted and you can see your bones. That's what this looks like.

Exactly like that.

It is ass. Total fucking ass.

It's just so fucking basic and just such so difficulty we'll talk about, I'm sure. But I found the only time that I wasn't doing well was when the game just decided my inputs didn't count. Yeah, it's just sloppy controls, which happens a lot.

A lot.

Yeah, a fuck ton. Or it's like you'll hit, like, left punch, left punch, and right punch, and for some reason the second left punch won't happen, so the combo doesn't go off. So then you're just standing there and the computer just gets to have a fucking field day with you because blocking does nothing in this game, control wise.

It kind of reminded me of fucking Minority Report. Everybody runs where in that one there's a pretty sizable delay between your input and the action. So you can time it wrong and the action just doesn't work right, which is infuriating I don't remember exactly what the mechanic was in Minority Report, but I remember having that problem. It was like a counter or something like that in the tutorial and completely giving up on the tutorial because of it. Because it was just unplayable. This game feels honestly like someone who's going to what's that school? What's the school where they teach you.

How to play video games?

Fucking how to make video games. Yeah, video game school. Yeah. It was like a tech school. Like an ITT tech ass school.

IV tech. I don't know.

No, something. But I remember going on a tour there once in high school, and this looks like people's project, like student project, final project looks just fucking like this. I wouldn't even say final project. Like, this thing is fucking nothing.

It's not like a test. It's not like a thing. But like, I find that if I really if a game is really lacking my immediate thing, I think I don't know if you did this or not. I will just try to find the cheesiest way to beat it. And it took me no time to figure out the cheese on how to easily beat every opponent in this game, which was do the running slide tackle, and if it hits them, it hits them. If they block it while you're getting up, do the kick. And it'll 100% of the time, kick them in the stomach, and then you can get up. Repeat as needed. And since there's no timer, you can do it for fucking half an hour.

Yeah, I didn't even have to do that. I just low punch, low kick.

Okay.

Low punch, high kick. Just ducking up and coming up and beat the game in, I want to say almost an hour.

Yeah.

But honestly, I was taking notes, too. I was like, this is shit.

Fucking there was one moment in the game, I think it was really early and actually had hope, where I got behind a guy and I was just punching the shit out of the back of his head. And I think I beat him without him ever getting the chance to turn around.

And I was like, oh, that's always satisfying.

I was like, that might be an interesting mechanic. That if it's hard to do, but if you get behind someone and you're just wailing on them, you can actually win a fight. Maybe this is trying to be but I think it was a bug.

Yeah, I think it was a bug, too. I'm like, I never got behind someone.

Yeah, I was just punching the shit out of the back of his head, and he kept trying to block and reaching forward like I was there. So that's clearly a bug. Yeah.

And there's three combat styles, but what they mean by three combat styles are there are three character models, because is.

That what it is?

Yeah, if they're a swole guy. Right? Because the three combat styles are brawler, martial, artist, and grappler. So if you're a swole guy, you're a brawler. If you're a thin guy, you're a martial artist. If you're a fat guy, you're a grappler.

Sure.

So if you play as Bob bitch tits, you're a grappler.

I guess you have to fight bitch Tits. By the way, we should bring that. Yeah.

Yeah. I did want to bring this up. The last spoken piece of dialogue in this game is when the bomb's going off. Jack or Tyler or whatever, I don't even know, says this line, there's no fucking Snooze bar on this wake up call, which is nonsense.

It's nonsense.

How would you snooze a wake up call?

You can't do that.

It's a call.

Wake up call is from the front desk. They call you. You can't Snooze bar that it's a phone. There's no Snooze bar on the phone.

Yeah, absolute gibberish.

Fucking gibberish.

Yeah, I had to point that out because I heard that, and I I wrote it down. I was like, wait, what?

Yeah, I didn't even I didn't even pay attention to the dialogue at that point. Let's talk about the cutscenes. You mentioned them earlier.

Well, real quick, while we're on dialogue, I don't know if you noticed this, but at the end of every fight, your character goes and talks shit, but.

He doesn't say anything. And when you lose, the bad guys do the same thing, too. And before the fight, it's like the thing where he's like in Mortal Kombat, it'll be like, I'm going to crush you. You and what army? They do the hand motions, but no sound. I thought there was something wrong with my fucking game.

The sound design and dialogue editing and the sound of this game in general is baffling.

Baffling.

Absolutely insane. Doesn't make any sense. And it's not like, oh, there's, like, certain parts. I'm talking the whole game start to finish. There is just, like, bugs and hiccups and mouth moving and no words coming out or words coming out and then mouths moving. It is insane.

Yes.

It made me feel like I had a stroke. I was like, fuck.

I literally thought there was something wrong with my copy.

I'm like looking in the mirror, making sure my face isn't drooping from playing this game.

Raise both hands. Smile. And there's one other thing.

Every other yeah, you got to say chicken noodle soup.

Chicken noodle soup.

Yeah. But yeah, the cutscenes. So the game has, like, an opening kind of cutscene, and it's an actual cutscene, and it's interesting lighting wise. If you look at the COVID of this game and you see the green and brown color palette and it kind of looks like that, it doesn't look terrible. Basically, from then on until the final cutscene, with very few exceptions, throughout all of the cutscenes are stills and not high quality stills. Like normal. Like your game froze storyboards. Yeah.

Basically.

Storyboards with dialogue underneath.

Yes. Ironically, you win the game, you beat the game, and then the credits play and there are storyboards. And I'm like, you just colored those in and put them in the game. That was your cutscene, you motherfuckers.

Yeah. The first time it happens, you're like, oh, fuck. Is it my PlayStation broken?

That's what I thought happened.

Is this broken? What the fuck?

Yeah.

And no, it's not the game. That was an artistic decision, was it?

Was it?

I mean, as much as any decision made in a piece of art is an artistic decision.

Well, also could have been budgetary. It could have been fucking talent. Could have been a lot of it.

Was an aesthetic choice.

Sure.

Let's call it that.

Yeah.

Whether or not that choice was made because of finances or sheer laziness. Probably lean towards laziness.

Yeah. It's just the game. At no point did it seem like anyone just gave a shit. Didn't give a shit about the movie.

Your character doesn't even have a name.

Yeah, well, I think that's intentional because Tyler or Jack does not have a name.

You're Jack's fucking Ikea furniture or yeah, it's like that. But this game does hold a surprise, a wonderful surprise, a big surprise. Story mode.

Yeah.

Because you unlock a character. You unlock the man himself, mr. Fight Club. Fred Durst of Limp Bizkit fame is.

One of those like, I didn't know that's what I was it just said, you have unlocked Fred. And I was like, Who's Fred? And then it came up and he had the stupid fucking backwards hat on the character's leg. And I was like, are you kidding, Fred? Are you fucking kidding that Fred Durst is an unlockable character in this game?

This game came out in 2004 and it stuck in 1999.

100%. Did you look up why Frederick is unlocked?

He did a song for the soundtrack in his contract.

Any game he does a song for, he has to be unlockable character.

Makes sense. That's why he's in SmackDown.

Yeah, exactly. It's so fucking funny.

He's such a fucking good that's a baller move, honestly.

Yeah, I guess.

Good for Fred.

Good for Fred getting his so did you have the same experience as I did, where you beat it on Story and then you're like, oh, I'll play around in arcade with Fred Durst. And you gave up before the end of the first fight?

Correct?

Yeah, correct. What I did is I paused it and then I looked up online what the other unlockables were. And boy, not being able to read your fucking audience to get Abraham Lincoln, you have to beat arcade Mode with every character.

Hey, absolutely not.

Are you a fucking kidding me?

Absolutely.

Are you kidding me?

Could not be.

No, never. Never. And there are other unlockable you can.

Unlock like a skeleton.

Yeah, I think you have to beat it with Fred Durst to get something too, which what are you going to do?

No. So I knew about Lincoln. I didn't know how. But I was like, oh, fuck around. I beat. Story mode unlocked.

Fred.

I'm like, oh, we got to see how Fred is. And I got, I want to say, maybe 30 seconds into arcade mode. It's like, I can't play this game anymore, same. I want to fucking shoot this into space.

If it has been like, win one match with Fred Durst to unlock Abraham Lincoln, I still wouldn't have done it because I was just like, what do I care? He's not going to fight any different.

It was too move settings the same.

Yeah.

Let's just put it this way. God will judge us for this game, 100%.

God will judge. And by us, you mean the human race?

Yes. This game undid Christ's sacrifice.

100%.

So sorry, folks, we're all going to hell because we live in a world where this game was made. Sorry to break it to you.

This is just one of those games. I'm just so confounded. I mean, I hated playing it. I hated everything about why? Why is it? Why is it? I know why. For money, universal, blah, blah, blah. But could no one have given a shit at any fucking turn?

No, they couldn't have. They could not have.

Fair enough. Fair enough.

Let's talk about the voice acting in this game. There is a couple interesting wrinkles in this. So before we get into who came back, right? Let's talk about the people who are like the main characters. Right. Tyler Durden is voiced by Joshua Leonard.

Sure.

Who is the guy from The Blair Witch Project.

A choice.

Yeah, a choice. And has virtually done he's not the successful one from that group either.

Is there a successful one?

Yeah, I mean, the one guy, one of the director guys, he ended up doing some stuff.

Okay.

This guy has just done some steady character actor work. He is in an episode of True Detective, but I think this is season two.

Bad season.

Bad, yeah, real bad season. Let's see, what else was he in? He was in a couple episodes of Bates Motel.

Fair enough.

He's an episode of the reboot of MacGyver.

Okay.

Yeah. So there's that.

There is.

And he's playing Tyler Durden. Tyler Durden.

Sure.

And then you have Nika Fooderman playing maria singer helena Bonham Carter's Character She's just a working voice actress. Great. Not going to shit on her.

No.

She'S done a ton of work.

She might have two lines of dialogue in this game.

Yeah, she's done a ton of work in cartoons and stuff. Sure. Good on her paycheck. Yeah. The hero, your character is voiced by Justin Gross, which is apt. He is most famous for voicing arthis in Warcraft Three.

Okay. But not World of Warcraft.

No, I think also World of Warcraft.

Okay. So he came back. Okay.

Sure. And the warcraft. Three reforged.

Sure.

Yeah. He's done some anime stuff, too. He plays Ryu in a couple of Ninja Gaiden games, but overall, not anyone to call home about lou, played by the Incomparable. This is a weird case where the person voicing them in the video game is more famous than the person who played them in the movie. Okay, so Lou is the guy who owns the bar and beats the shit out of Jack in the movie. And he's played by Peter Iekaneglo.

Okay.

No, he plays the bartender.

Yeah, the.

Yeah, yeah. In the movie, it's played by that guy. It doesn't look like he's been in Jack shit.

Okay?

But in the game, he is played by Mike Starr. Now, you may be asking yourself, who the fuck is Mike Star?

Who the fuck is Mike Star?

Mike Starr is the guy that eats chili peppers and dies in Dumb and Dumber.

Fucking love that guy. Hell yeah. Love that actor.

Hell yeah.

Hell yeah. That's a lou. Yeah. That's a lou. Yeah.

That is 100% a lou. Real missed opportunity, not having him play Lou in the movie.

He should have played fucking Tyler Durden in the movie.

That's true. He could have played anyone.

Better movie. Yeah.

It would have been great. And then you have Angel Face, jared Leto's character in the movie.

Right.

Played by someone kind of familiar. He's a that guy. Michael McMillan.

Why do I know that name?

Have you seen True Blood? Yeah, he's the preacher.

Okay, sure.

He's also Tim in Crazy Ex Girlfriend, a show that I have seen every episode of.

Never seen it, but sure, yeah.

If you saw his face, you'd know him.

Yeah, but I would. Yeah.

Wow.

Okay. Playing the Jared Leto character.

Yeah. Not more famous than Leto, obviously. Yeah. And then Jack played by Dave Wittenberg, who's a South African born American voice actor. Just a guy has done a bunch of video games. So just a working guy video game and yeah, just cartoon voice actor.

Right.

That's fine. But then we get into the people that came back. The bartender in the halo, the guy who's all fucked. Uh, yeah. That guy also voices his own character in the game. The guy who's in exactly one scene of the movie.

Yeah.

Tom Gossam, Jr. Detective Stern. He is in this. He has exactly zero lines of dialogue.

I was going to say he does great. Good job. Good job.

Payday holt Mcalleny McLaney.

Yep.

That might be yeah. Yeah. He's the mechanic. He is actually kind of famous. He's bill tench on minehunter.

Okay.

Which is a great show.

Fucking fantastic show.

Yeah. And now we get to the biggest get of them all. I could not believe this. Reprising. His role as bitch tits Robert Paulson, the music legend meatloaf.

Meatloaf a day back.

Meatloaf has returned. Rip Voice, his iconic character in the Fight Club video game.

Dear. Fucking Christ.

Now, I need you all to know, Meatloaf is two words. Do not be writing it like it's one word.

It is not the. Food. It's not the food.

No. He is Meat Loaf. Not Meatloaf.

He's not meatloaf. He's meat loaf.

Meatloaf very different. Yeah, don't get it fucking twisted.

Yeah, it's written on his tombstone that way.

Yes.

Meatloaf a day.

Yes. Now it's clear we don't think much of this game, but we're fucking idiots. So let's see what everyone else thought about this game.

Oh, let's.

Project Mayhem has begun. Tyler's going to show us how to.

Get back to the basics.

How to weed out all the bullshit. We're pulling down civilization. We will become individuals again. The rest of the world is going to have to get ready. We're going to wake them up too, whether they want it or not. There's no fucking Snooze bar on this wake up call. Ian, would you be surprised to know this has a low score on Metacritic?

No.

It has a trash six out of 100.

That's not low enough.

That's an F. Yeah, well, it's still not enough of an F. That's an F. I think you get 30 points on Metacritic for it just being a video game.

If it boots up, you get 30 points.

Yeah, if it sold a copy, it's 30 points. It's like the writing your name on the Sat.

I was going to say that. Yeah, you get 200 points for writing your name. Fucking great.

Oh, God. So let's read the reception of this upon release. Fight Club was met with negative reception. Crazy. The game has mostly been dismissed by fans of both the novel and movie as an attempt to milk the success of the story for commercial game and was universally panned by critics on its own merits. Yes, critics say the game copies too much from other fighting games without bringing much new to the genre and has repetitive fighting moves and poor animation. I honestly wish they stole more from other fighting games. Maybe this wouldn't suck so fucking bad.

Like an idea of fun.

Yeah, it is rough. The game failed to achieve commercial success. Nevertheless, Abraham Lincoln is ranked fourth in EGM's monthly list of the top ten video game politicians for his appearance in Fight Club.

Okay. Sure.

They were really scraping the bottom of the barrel for fucking people to put on that list.

What a stupid list.

Game Informer plays Fight Club at number ten in a 2011 list of top ten fighting games we'd like to forget.

Oh, okay. I was going to say what the fuck?

Yeah, it's a little thing called timing.

With how it well done. Well done. Well done.

Oneup.Com gave it a D minus to create. They don't like the minus. Just seems like an insult, right? Fuck off. EGM gave it a two and a half out of ten. Game Informer Inexplicably gave it a five and a half out of ten.

What the fuck?

Game Revolution gave it an F. Game Spot gave it a 3.7 out of ten. Game Spy gave it a two out of five stars. Game Zone gave it a five out of ten, IGN a 4.5 out of ten, and official PlayStation Magazine gave it a one and a half stars out of five. I don't think people like this game.

No, I don't think they do at all.

Yeah. I think people think it's bad.

I think you might be onto something with that.

Yeah. But what would you rank this game? How would you rate this? Put your opinion of this game into some sort of numerical value.

Numerical.

How would you do it?

I guess I could do it that way. I don't think okay. If I was given this as a gift, I would hold a grudge to the gift giver for a long, long time.

Blood feud.

Possibly possible blood feud. It's not enjoyable in any aspect. I don't love the movie, but it's not even a good tie into the movie. It doesn't understand its own source material. And then it's a bad fighting game. It's just a bad time. So keeping with my 1000 out of 1000 ranking system, I am going to give Fight Club 142 out of 1142. I am jax, turn this game off before you get in too deep. I don't even know.

Wow. That doesn't seem like you like this game.

I hated this game.

Yeah. If someone gave me this game as a gift yeah. I don't know. Here's my immediate thought, right? I could give it to GameStop, right? And they'd give me a couple bucks towards a much buck. So maybe not blood feud. Okay, perhaps not a blood feud. I would question my friendship with that person and whether or not they know me or care about me and my mental well being.

And what if it's even worse? And they were like, hey, this is my copy. I've played it a ton. It's awesome. You're going to love it. This is my personal makes it worse, right? Much worse. Oh.

Then I questioned their taste.

Yeah.

Questioned. I immediately removed them from my life, obviously.

Obviously.

But as far as numerical value goes, I'm going to give this game one shirtless swole. Abe Lincoln out of got it.

Okay.

I think this is it's difficult. I think this might be the worst game we've ever played.

There's no question in my mind.

I don't know. Because celebrity Death Match is very bad.

I had more fun playing Celebrity Death Match.

Yeah. At least it, like, tries somewhat.

A little bit.

Yeah.

It's just not for us in any way, shape or form.

So, I think. Yeah. This is the worst game we've ever played. 100% is bad. It's really bad.

It's really fucking bad.

This might be a top ten worst games I've ever played.

It's up there. I've played some dogs, I've played some games that literally didn't work, and I think this might be it.

Yeah.

It's saying a lot.

I would rather play anthem.

Yeah.

I would rather play highlight.

Sure.

I would rather play Et. For the Atari superman.

For the Atari Superman 64.

Superman 64. I'd rather do nothing but the ring level in Superman 64 yeah. Than play this game any longer.

Yeah.

It's very bad. It's very bad. I don't recommend it. I don't recommend playing it just to see how bad it is. Yeah. Please, just save your mental health from this game. You need saving because this game is a destroyer. This is the oppenheimer of video games in that it is probably responsible for a couple hundred thousand deaths.

100%. Yeah.

This game has become death. The destroyer of mental health.

Of podcasts.

Yeah. So this being the final game in our blockbuster month yes. Let's just talk about what we think. I had no idea that the scope of this was going to be so wild. The range of games. Like, you have The Thing, which I think is a genuinely great game.

100%.

And then you have this fucking turd. Genuinely not Reservoir Dogs. Also just a dog. Terrible. But then jaws unleashed, I thought was pretty decent.

Yeah. It wasn't bad. Like, for what it was again. And it was surprising that we found two games. You had to fucking fight Shamu in front of children. We found two games, too, that we have suspicions that current games, current developers were influenced by. That being Jaws with that other shark game you were telling me about and Darkest Dungeon with The Thing. I think it's interesting that half of the games might have a legacy to them and then the other two are just the most forgettable pieces of trash in the world. Yeah.

And I think going into it, I had very low expectations for all of these games. Right.

100%.

For Jaws. I don't know. I don't love the NES Jaws game.

No, it's not great.

So I didn't really expect much. I didn't expect much from Reservoir Dogs. I didn't expect a ton from Fight Club. The Thing, I had high hopes for, but not really high expectations for.

Right, exactly.

And overall, I think it was a good theme. July. It was a good theme. And I definitely think we should do it again next year.

We definitely will. And I'm going to say, I think just this existing blockbuster month is know, we had the whole barbenheimer thing. Like people getting back to movies. Remembering blockbusters in the summer are a thing. Like, people credit the Tom Cruise airplane movie last year.

But I think it's more about this. I think it's more about the podcast.

I think it's about 95% us. Just these episodes, really, because you get to the end and literally a couple of days right before this ends is when there's like this fucking explosion of box office.

Yeah.

Really? Mostly us.

I think people listening to us immediately after they get home from their commute, listening to this podcast, their thoughts are, I want to make a big old bucket of popcorn.

Yes.

And I want to have a pour.

Some snow caps on those popcorn.

Yeah. Or the little crunch things or peanut M and Ms perhaps. And I just want to sit down and watch a movie. And I think that that just built up over the first three weeks of Blockbuster month into a frenzy.

Oh, a frenzy the likes of which I don't think we've ever seen.

So would I call us tastemakers or trendsetters? Yes, absolutely. Will we take all the accolades and money that comes with such a title? Absolutely, yes. Immediately, please.

100%.

But we do it for the fans, of course.

I mean, we don't want the money. We'll take it.

We'll take it.

We'll take it. We'll take it.

Please send it.

Send it. We'll take it.

Yes, we will. Cash do not post date the check.

Yeah, just go ahead and just send it. We'll be fine. We'll work it out.

And we'll continue to sort of set culture from now on. Kind of be the compass, pointing people towards True North.

A lot of people's touchstone is this podcast, especially with what's kind of happening in the world, climate change, politics, all that. I think people are going to need somewhere to look and I think they found it, honestly.

I agree.

And it's here.

Yeah. So if you care about the world, if you care about global warming, which, who knows, I mean, if we get enough listeners, we could maybe tackle that too. We did solve theater. Theater is back in business, baby. And it's thanks to Discrete Air next we can take on climate change. But that's dependent on you. It's dependent on you hitting that subscribe button. Smashing. Like following us on social media. Discrete AirPod at Instagram, you can follow me at funeral casual games on Instagram.

You can follow me at Ian Golden games. And I'm sorry if I sound a little I'm just a little thrown off by how smooth that transition hell yeah. Just did. I know, it's fucking butter.

We're just getting better.

Yeah.

But we will definitely see you on the next one.

We'll see you then. Thanks again for listening.

Badaboom, badabing you.